Samuel Edward Konkin III (1947-2004) was an influential libertarian writer, publisher and activist.
He was born and raised in Canada. He graduated from the University of Alberta, cum laude, in 1968. He went on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, and then at New York University. Among the writers who most strongly influenced him were Robert Heinlein, C. L. Lewis, Murray Rothbard, Robert LeFevre, Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. He was a good friend of Dana Rohrabacher, who became a US Congressman. Konkin was an avid science fiction fan.
Also known as SEK3, he was the author of “The New Libertarian Manifesto.” He 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).
Konkin was a proponent of a political philosophy he called “agorism” -- a leftish form of anarcho-capitalism or “market anarchism.” He founded the “Agorist Institute” and the “Movement of the Libertarian Left.”
In keeping with his outlook, he fervently opposed US military interventionism in foreign countries, and all forms of state collectivism. He was an ardent defender of free speech and free intellectual inquiry. He was a good friend of the Institute for Historical Review. He addressed the Third IHR conference (1981), contributed to the IHR’s Journal of Historical Review, and for years was a member of the IHR Journal’s Editorial Advisory Committee.
During the later years of his life he lived and worked in southern California. He died at his apartment in West Los Angeles in February 2004, at the age of 56.
His short-lived marriage to Sheila Wymer in the early 1990s produced a son, Samuel Edward Konkin IV.
