As a strategy for achieving political and economic change, agorism eschews practical politics, even casting a ballot, preferring the establishment and encouragement of new libertarian institutions to overtly political means such as campaigns and legislation. This idea that libertarians should use political parties and the political process to further libertarian objectives Konkin labeled “partyarchy.” In his condemnation of limited government libertarianism (as opposed to the anarchism that he and, for example, Murray Rothbard espoused), Konkin coined another now well‐​known and oft‐​used term: “minarchism.” Contending that politics and partyarchy had demonstrably failed, proving themselves hindrances to the libertarian project or worse, Konkin proposed his agorism as an alternative, a route to a free society through the immediate and unhesitant application of its principles. If politicians and government bodies are the enemies of freedom, Konkin argued, then libertarians should quite deliberately avoid the struggle to acquire public office or political power. This agorist stance placed Konkin at variance with the large segment of the libertarian movement that saw a need for political participation, particularly for the creation and promotion of a specifically libertarian party. Konkin’s notion that libertarian means and ends are conceptually inextricable, that the only way to freedom is through its practice here and now, shares certain similarities with the anarchist ideas of Pierre‐​Joseph Proudhon. Though he was a member of the French assembly for a time, Proudhon discounted the role of practical politics in the liberation of the subject classes from the state and the economic oppression it created. He became convinced that the state could not be defeated “on its own ground” — that is, through “any kind of activity that could be termed political” — but rather must be replaced gradually “through economic and social action alone.” 2 Consciously or not, Konkin inherited Proudhon’s idea that organic and horizontal economic action, directed by creators and producers from the ground up, was the only way to truly destroy the state.

Slowly and steadily, the counter‐​economy results in infrastructural substitution, the replacement of the increasingly atrophic state with networks of voluntarily cooperating and trading individuals. As Konkin’s close friend, the novelist and filmmaker J. Neil Schulman, put it, “Seeking that tipping point in a Starvation Curve is the revolutionary strategy of Agorism in a nutshell.” Despite the dearth of literature developing Konkin’s ideas further—even many libertarians remain ignorant of Konkin—agorism and counter‐​economics have had a certain appeal for the tech‐​savvy practitioners of crypto‐​anarchism. The Internet seems almost tailor made for the kinds of circumvention and anti‐​state counter institutions championed by agorism. In point of fact, the Dread Pirate Roberts, fabled founder and proprietor of the Silk Road online market, counts agorism as a key influence. In the fall of 2012, he wrote, “Every single transaction that takes place outside the nexus of state control is a victory for those individuals taking part in the transaction. So there are thousands of victories here each week and each one makes a difference, strengthens the agora, and weakens the state.” Agorism’s individualistic, anti‐​authoritarian flavor finds a natural home in hacker culture and what Konkin called “the free‐​market anarchist haven known as the Internet.”