Agorism in the 21st Century Vol. 1

Knowledge base from 'Agorism in the 21st Century: A Philosophical Journal Vol. 1' (2022) ed. Dylan-Ennis & O'Leary. Use when applying agorist foundations — Konkin's counter-economics and phases, Land's cold anarchy, Brekke's market critique, Ireland's weaving geometries, Halpin's cybernetics-vs-crypto-anarchism — or referencing the volume's essays.

Agorism in the 21st Century — Volume 1 (2022)

Authors: ed. Paul Dylan-Ennis, Rachel-Rose O'Leary + anonymous | Essays: 5 + foreword | Publisher: Agorism XXI, 2022 | Generated: 2026-09-05

How to Use This Skill

• Without arguments — load core frameworks below
• With a topic — ask about cold anarchy, counter-economics, patchwork, hypercontrol, etc.
• With an essay — ask for Konkin, Brekke, Land, Ireland, Halpin, ch03
• Browse — ask "what chapters do you have?"

Core Frameworks & Mental Models

Agorism (Konkin, via Dylan-Ennis & Barlowe) — "the consistent integration of libertarian theory with counter-economic practice." Counter-economics = all non-coercive action in defiance of the State; "Agorism is our end, Counter-Economics is our means." Five-phase transition (zero-density conversion → NLA alliances → agorist zones → State/Agora parity + terminal crises → integration). Konkin's 1986 prophecy: encryption solving the counter-economy's information problem = darknet markets avant la lettre; NLAs = DAOs prefigured. Editorial trinity: reject political divisions, welcome dissonance ("everyone appearing in this publication disagrees"), no compromises (partyarchy = original sin).

The Market Triptych (Brekke) — markets as gun to your head (coercive constructs intertwined with state/colonialism; the market holds "a monopoly on the means of survival"), tool in your hand (post-2008 design-space; cryptoeconomics as design-and-planning power), or escape route from hell (legitimate as exit toward multipolarity — "the option to always go elsewhere"). Hayekian designs manufacture mindless selfish automatons; white papers are utopian manifestos carrying "latent desire of covert coercion"; dark markets open a coercion vacuum, they don't abolish coercion.

Cold Anarchy (Land) — anarchy is not a goal but the permanent order of external relations ("it sets the horizon"). Hot anarchy = domestic-framed universalist utopian activism (sanctions anything; purest unreality). Cold anarchy = what realists and French transcendental philosophers converge on: intolerance for the illusion of unity. Direction of history: deepened disintegration — "from hundreds of nations, through thousands, to millions." Combinatorial explosion: exploding the system intensifies it; unity paralyzes ("there is no game, and no exit"). Decentralization method: subtract the pseudo-transcendent element — in blockchain engineering, "the trusted third-party." Sovereignty reconstituted as "distributed hash-power plutocracy." Institutional health = outward orientation; domestic obsession = Leviathan's kidney complaint.

Weaving as Temporal Technology (Ireland) — loom = striated space (warp/weft, royal science, state apparatus); felt = smooth space (entangled fibres, no coordinates); patchwork = piece-by-piece, no centre, Riemannian. Extensive multiplicities (sets, identity-preserving additions) vs intensive (change nature with every addition — temperature, speed). Land's feature groups (classified by attributes — the logic of both identity politics and genocide law) vs unit groups (functional assemblages — the skin cell belongs to its organism, not other skin cells). Haraway's affinity-not-identity. The synthesis: patchwork as massively distributed emergent AI — NRx vision and cyberfeminist prophecy ("the numbers to come") converging on one geometry; "patchwork is an auto-suicide machine for fascism."

Pandemos (Halpin) — pandemic = pandēmos, "belonging to all the people": plagues behave like universal empires and kill them (Antonine Plague → Rome; COVID → American empire's credibility). After empire, the church: Internet protocols as the empire of the mind that persists. Cybernetic genealogy: Wiener's warning ignored; ARPA gave cybernetics its social-feedback foundation; Selfridge's pandemonium → today's opaque AI modulating society. Deleuze's control societies → Agamben's hypercontrol (digital totality); Stiegler's dividuals and fractured generations. Escape: techniques without technology (capability-extending methods vs control systems — the Tarnac commune's pure flight failed); crypto-anarchism as Reformation (distributing computation as reformers distributed literacy); mixnets turning pattern-detection against the detectors. Stiegler's final question: blockchain toward "the internation"? End state: an-archy — world without guiding principle, "every culture and people can finally take their destiny into their own hands."

Chapter Index

#	Essay	Author	Key Frameworks
ch00	Foreword — The Roots of Crypto Are Agorist	editors	SEK3 definition, editorial trinity, unconscious→conscious agorists
ch01	An Introduction to Agorism	Dylan-Ennis & Barlowe	phases 0-4, counter-economy, encryption prophecy, NLA=DAO
ch02	The Market as Gun/Tool/Escape	Jaya Klara Brekke	market triptych, Hayekian mindlessness, dark-market vacuum
ch03	Cold Anarchy	Nick Land	hot/cold, disintegration imperative, subtract-super-ordinate, hash-power sovereignty
ch04	Scrap Metal and Fabric	Amy Ireland	loom/felt/patchwork, feature/unit groups, affinity, patchwork-as-AI
ch05	Pandemos	Harry Halpin	empire→church→reformation, cybernetics genealogy, hypercontrol, techniques-without-technology

Topic Index

• agorism (definition/practice) → ch00, ch01
• alliance / DAO prefiguration → ch00, ch01
• an-archy / internatio → ch05
• blockchain as politics → ch03, ch05
• cold vs hot anarchy → ch03
• counter-economics → ch00, ch01
• cybernetics / Wiener / ARPA → ch05
• darknet markets (origin) → ch01
• decentralization method → ch03
• dividuals / control societies → ch05
• encryption prophecy (1986) → ch01
• extensive/intensive multiplicity → ch04
• feature vs unit groups → ch04
• genocide law / Nanjing → ch04
• hypercontrol / pandemic → ch05
• Konkin / SEK3 → ch00, ch01
• markets (coercion/design) → ch02
• mixnets / Nym → ch05
• patchwork → ch03, ch04
• phases 0-4 (transition) → ch01
• Silk Road / Ulbricht → ch00, ch01
• smooth/striated space → ch04
• techniques vs technology → ch05
• trusted third-party → ch03
• utopia critique → ch02
• weaving / loom / felt → ch04

Supporting Files

• glossary.md — all key terms with definitions and chapter refs
• patterns.md — 10 techniques with when/how/trade-offs
• cheatsheet.md — decision tables and tells

Scope & Limits

Vol. 1 (2022) only — companion skill agorism-xxi-vol2 covers Vol. 2 (2023). The volume deliberately stages disagreements (Brekke vs Land on markets; Halpin vs Land on cybernetics) — preserve tensions, don't synthesize them away. Land's frameworks appear twice (his own essay + Ireland's reading) with different valences. For C's operational agorism, combine with project context — this is the philosophical foundation layer, not a runbook.