I'm not too fond of hierarchical relationships. It's hard for me to admit that people aren't equal. I never got used to the idea that people should have a boss. I could prefer an environment governed by anarchist principles.
While liberalism, social democracy, and communism came to power in certain countries and became influential on those societies, anarchism could not have achieved such success. How could an ideology against power come to power? I remember reading Peter Kropotkin's books to get to know anarchism. Let's read how Peter Kropotkin, the great thinker of anarchism, described anarchism in his article written for the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1910:
"Anarchism is the name given to the principle or theory of life and management in which society is designed without a state. In such a society, harmony will be achieved not by submitting to the law or submitting to any authority but by free contracts between various territorial and professional communities freely established for production and consumption and the fulfillment of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized entity. In a society that will evolve on this structure, voluntary units that will begin to cover the whole of humanitarian activity areas will gain even greater spread to take up all the functions of the state.
They will be used to commemorate an intertwined network of local, regional, national, and international, all sizes and levels, groups, and federations, which are either transient or very short-term. They can come together for all possible purposes: production, consumption, change, communication, health arrangements, education, mutual protection, field defense, and more. But, on the other hand, they will also work to fulfill the ever-increasing scientific, artistic, and social requirements. Moreover, such a society will not represent anything that does not change. On the contrary – generally as seen in organic life — it will be due to the constant changing regulation and rearrangement of the balance between the powers and the effects, and it will be easier to maintain this arrangement because no power is under privacy protection."
Kropotkin is referring communities, voluntary associations, intertwined networks, communities' purposes such as production, consumption, communication, education, and art in the definition. Perhaps it has caught your attention, as the described concept resembles the environment we are trying to form around blockchain technology.
The concept of crypto-anarchism expresses the realization of anarchist thinking through the cyber world and cryptography. Crypto-anarchists support the use of cryptographic software to protect their privacy, political and economic freedoms while exchanging information over computer networks.
Encryption makes it difficult to find the relationship between the identity of a particular user or organization and the nickname it uses, as long as the user does not expose the association. It is impossible to determine which country's laws are valid, as the participant is unknown. Using nicknames, participants can do all sorts of operations through intelligent contracts in line with their online reputation.
The Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto was revealed in 1988 by Timothy C. May. When the systems used are not in a distributed architecture, the state can follow all communication in the virtual world. Thus, internet censorship can be raised. In addition, in the non-distributed architecture, data on user information and operations are being collected on a small number of institutions. This situation creates power asymmetry.
The spread of the internet has brought significant gains in the access to information of the masses. We now reach information via Wikipedia out of charge. In addition, open-source software has helped to spread the benefits that the information age provides.
On the other hand, cyberspace had a limited influence on the economy before the blockchain. There was a bank-dependent structure for money transfers, and the digital world's most important source of revenue, advertising, was on monopolies such as Google and Facebook.
A closed-loop structure is available with blockchain technology where information, money, and contracts can turn around the cyber world. States, banks, and big technology companies seem to be taking a toll in this process. There are signs of a future in which the inefficiencies hidden in institutional structures are evident, where small actors will create communities and deal with big ones.
The domination of economics and culture is important means of establishing control over society. In the industrial age, unions functioned as mechanisms to balance the power of bosses on workers. In the developed world, after the industry lost its importance and the service sector came forward in production, the mechanisms to protect the large masses were weakened. White-collar workers without class awareness are the carriers of the current system. Participating in politics by voting every five years does not produce productive results for the masses. The television and cinema industry, dominated by big capital owners, ensures the continuity of the system.
The deficiency of communism was the gathering of political power on the Communist Party. However, despite this deficiency, it played a serious role in forming the welfare society in developed countries. Moreover, because of the fear of communism, employees had acquired serious rights.
In the crypto world, those with money are dominant in communities. No worldview or ideology is perfect. Despite this, I think the crypto world is empowering the masses. Young people who can hardly get a share of power can come forward in time thanks to the crypto movement.
I hope that the crypto revolution will provide new gains for the masses, opening the doors of an exciting new world.
Thanks for reading.
Image Sources:
https://unsplash.com/photos/IoQioGLrz3Y
Kropotkin GIF by Giphy.com
