Samuel Edward Konkin III

Personal life

Konkin was born in Saskatchewan, to Samuel Edward Konkin II and Helen. He had one brother, Alan. He married Sheila Wymer during 1990 and had one son, Samuel Evans-Konkin IV. The marriage ended soon afterward. Konkin was also notable for his style of dress: "To show his anarchist beliefs, he dressed completely in black, a color associated with that movement since the late nineteenth century."

On 23 February 2004, Konkin died in his apartment in West Los Angeles, California, of natural causes. He was buried alongside his father in Edmonton, Alberta.

Political opinions

Konkin considered libertarianism as radical. He was an initiator of the Agorist Institute.

Konkin rejected voting, believing it to be inconsistent with libertarian ethics. He likewise opposed involvement with the US Libertarian Party, which he regarded as a statist co-option of libertarianism. He was an opponent of influential minarchist philosopher Robert Nozick, and referred to Nozick's devotees as "Nozis."

Konkin presents his strategy for achieving a libertarian society in his aforementioned manifesto. Since he rejected voting and other means by which people typically attempt social change, he encouraged people to withdraw their consent from the state by devoting their economic activities to black market and grey market sources, which would not be taxed or regulated. "Konkin called transactions on these markets, as well as other activities that bypassed the State, 'counter-economics.' Peaceful transactions take place in a free market, or agora: hence his term 'agorism' for the society he sought to achieve." He also strongly opposed the idea of intellectual property.

Konkin was editor and publisher of the irregularly-produced New Libertarian Notes (1971–1975), the New Libertarian Weekly (1975–1978), and finally New Libertarian magazine (1978–1990), the last issue of which was a special science fiction tribute featuring a Robert A. Heinlein cover (issue 187, 1990).

Criticisms

Political theorist Ulrike Heider criticized Konkin in her book Anarchism: Left, Right, and Green for endorsing historical revisionism. Konkin personally rejected Holocaust denial but endorsed the Institute for Historical Review because its freedom of speech was being disputed. Konkin was also willing to allot advertisement space to the IHR in The New Libertarian, spoke at an IHR conference in 1981, and was a member of the IHR Journal for Historical Review's Editorial Advisory Committee and a contributor to the Journal. In 1984, Konkin wrote a positive review of revisionist historian James J. Martin's book on Raphael Lemkin (published by the IHR) that disputes the extremity of the Holocaust; in the review, entitled "Thrusting the Stake into Lemkin's Bleeding Heart," Konkin makes sympathetic reference to Martin's "proof" that a "[m]assive Jewish exodus from Germany and Poland in 1940. [left] few to be 'exterminated'" and that the Katyn Massacre of Polish officer corps was "'probably the only genuine mass atrocity of World War Two which was accompanied by evidence.'"