Anarchism in Digital Era: Anew potential with a help of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies
I thought about anarchism a lot. I have tonns of books in my mobile app on this topic, which I'm still reading and trying to figure out why this idea was always appealing and controversial to me at the same time?
The feeling of something is missing didn’t leave. Something that limits the anarchism idea development to make it credible indeed for lots of people. Something that can drive forward anarchism further from the picture of a person in a balaclava or historical personalities, who tried to deploy the concept in a coup, military operations, revolutions and partisanship. Something that can help it to become safer for individuals and smarter than just protest.
During Carolingians-Merovingians times internal threats to power displacement could only come from extensive peasant hunger riots or external invasions. The first could be pacified and the second defeated. In fact, a range of threats was limited as well as Political Science university textbooks today have the same old list of endogenous and exogenous factors of state welfare violation!
If you ponder a little about what anarchism is, look once again at its entire history and approach effectiveness from an unconventional point of view, suprise, you can come to a contradictory and paradoxical conclusion: anarchism was (and is) usually an obstacle to itself.
“Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions. These are often described as stateless societies, although several authors have defined them more specifically as institutions based on non-hierarchical or free associations.” (wikipedia.org)
What is more, there is no single fixed doctrine that describes anarchism view, because there is no a clear one. It comes anarchism is rather philosophy, than a version of world order, which is quite honest to individuals — anyone can contribute and call in question, because there is no a “central issuer” of an idea. Just take a look at various schools emerged in anarchism philosophy, not mutually excluding each other and not limited to:
Source: reddit.com/r/Anarchism
Imagining different scenarios, there are several minuses that make anarchism nonfunctional within the day-to-day framework to my opinion:
- High risk.
- Low scalability.
- Restrained competence.
I don’t question an impact and credibility here respecting different beliefs (even contrary ones, that’s not on agenda), I question the global practice. What about techno-anarchism? It has a potential to be the most successful branch now enough to see changes in the aim of “self-governed societies”. Liberating power is what technology gives to society.
“Guiding many of its practitioners, however, is a general theory about the innate nature of technology itself. While other anarchists are concerned about the degree to which technology is controlling our lives, these techno-anarchists understand that technology not only can promote freedom, but that it tends to do so.” (newsbtc.com)
Internet as a technology should be added to the state violation factors list and seems it was done behind the scenes. Achieving your rights had become both easier and more difficult at once. A common illusion of increased freedom always flows out of hands here and there. Technologies give more power to institutions also, but question is how do they use it and what for.
“The 90s, you may recall, were awash with optimism about our online future: limitless information and total connection would make us more informed, less bigoted and kinder citizens.” (theguardian.com)
Basically we don’t need to go on the streets, demand and protest, because we became slactivists while digital bureaucracy simplified our lives: dissatisfaction is poured into online posts, petitions and authorities in social media. Institutions stay clumsy, but create bureaucratic systems in digital, giving us the image of change and “can-do” feeling. Absurdity of digital bureaucracy is the same to offline — terms do not change, but the field of control expands into a virtual part of society’s life. Just going online submissively with a hope gives regulators a chance to penetrate into “free” virtual space.
“But the internet is an overwhelming mess of competing facts, claims, blogs, data, propaganda, misinformation, investigative journalism, charts, different charts, commentary and reportage.” (theguardian.com)
We see a result in the recent Net Neutrality vote down, Twitter shadow bans, Google undesirable links removing in SERP, Google certain websites bans, Google and Facebook certain products ads bans (like ICOs and cryptocurrencies) and now rumors about Twitter to do the same. Internet is constantly adjusted and cleaned from what you don’t need to know and think about. There is no place where one can have an unobstructed speech. You might say “I have nothing to hide”, but this is a matter of politics, conditions and inconvenient topic on the agenda, like it happened to many of Twitter influencers in cryptocurrency theme.
Humans are in full view on the web, if they don't use cryptography. This is what crypto-anarchists, being highly paranoid, always tried to say before innocent technologies aimed to make people buying more products will be directed to full management on purpose.
“Most of us chase their latest shiny toys and have no real understanding of what we’re doing.” (theguardian.com)
Remembering a story with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, fair enough. Do we need new social networks like Steemit?
Empowered individuals can form almost a self-sufficient crowd, but this vision was always perceived as utopia. Simply, because you need to take the control over huge infrastructures and this point raise important questions:
- How to conduct a widescale consensus between many without trusting a third-party in the face of government institutions?
- How to organize conditions for this consensus excluding usage of institutional infrastructures?
For example, Uber and Airbnb, are convenient for people and inconvenient for some industries and regulators. These might be an examples of businesses for people, but still centralized. A long story short, technology is great, but some technologies are greater. While some of them are built with control potential, others are designed to empower individuals.
Remember "No gods, no masters"? What can be a great example horizontal organisation without any hierarchy? The blockchain technology looks like an answer. The blockchain, cryptocurrencies, 3D printers, P2P-networks and New Internet are better examples of technological blessings from people for people.
Money have always been a historical mean of сonquest and imposition, later an economic trouble concerning central banks issuance, endless emission and constant inflation. Many loose trust in banking system wanting to break off a robbery relationship, but we are stuck in the layer of intermediaries. It appeared Bitcoin became the first and tangible use case for blockchain, making it possible to develop the whole cryptocurrency market worth of $329 254 239 432 market capitalization. Huge work done by Satoshi Nakamoto in [“Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”] (https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) resolves raised concerns about money transactions how we know them:
- All transactions are publicly announced.
- Participants agree on a single history of the order in which they were received.
- Chain of ownership is fully trackable.
- No information is linked to transactions, except the amount.
- If there is an attacker, he would have to conduct all the work with block and blocks after, than catch up with the honest nodes which makes an attack almost impossible.
So it comes, a widescale consensus between many without trusting a third-party can be achieved, as well as it doesn’t require to build new and huge infrastructures or war down old ones. These also mean lower risk due to low level of violence, bigger scalability thanks to P2P and more competence in delivering what is being self-governed. Imagine if history could be written on a blockchain since the beggining of humanity? Clear, transparent, honest and full-recorded history. It is time to discover as much blockchain use cases as possible to get more autonomy.
Thanks for reading!