Crypto without Criticisms
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Crypto without Criticisms
How Anarchism Without Adjectives Can Point Towards a Method of Unifying Crypto
By Erik Cason
Posted October 7, 2019
Anarchism without adjectives was a form of anarchism developed in the late 19th century a few decades after anarchism split with communism in 1872 over authoritarianism and the use of the state in creating a stateless society. While anarchist were unified in their idea of a stateless society and the need to create it without the state, there was no consensus on how this was to be done, so a number schisms developed within anarchist movement itself. From individualist anarchist, to anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist, there were many different flavors of what a stateless society could look like under the banners of anarchism. In response to the petty narcissism of small differences between various anarchists, anarchism without adjectives rejected specific forms of anarchism for a synthesis of operable praxis. It wanted to focus on what worked, rather than the ideology of what they thought would work.
The great advantage of this strategy is it creates a revolutionary front through the praxis of revolutionism first. It synthesizes all revolutionary tendencies, solidifying them into a primacy of solidarity around the organization of the revolutionary struggle itself. This is how the I.W.W. one of the largest and most revolutionary unions to ever be created functioned was through a synthesis of many revolutionary traditions under the umbrella of ‘one big union.’
Drawing from the history that allowed for anarchist to create such a revolutionary movement that was able to threaten the very foundation of the state, we can again create such an organization through unify crypto under a similar banner. Through the creation of one big union people realized that rights were not something that were meant to be protected by the state, but were something that people must defend for themselves together. Through the tradition of ‘An injury to one is a concern of all,’ crypto renews this same revolutionary struggle into the digital age, with concern to the digital rights of all.
Satoshi Nakamoto gave us a form of money that the state can never control. We need to take this seriously if we are to use this form of money, and everything that has come after it as part of our arsenal in the secret war that is taking place to free humanity from the shackles of fiat money and the state’s totalitarian economic control. We need allies if we are going to win in our various struggles against whatever masters may have claimed us for themselves. Through taking this idea of anarchism without adjectives and applying it to crypto, we can find a new form of synthesis; or syndicalism, that can help weave our revolutionary movement together.
Crypto without Criticism, but Critiques
Now I want to be clear, crypto without criticism should not mean crypto without critiques, nor should it mean that we accept fungable tokens, stablecoins, or other shitcoins that are really panoptic statist ledgers, and not crypto at all. What this strategy acknowledges is that bitcoin, while being revolutionary in its own right, and containing the messianic potential to end law and destroy the Westphalian state as we know it; there is still a great possibility that it could fail, or even worse, be seditiously compromised. Every one of us must be vigilant, thoughtful, and apply adversarial thinking to each step of our process in order to ensure that the revolutionary nature at the center of what is being done is never compromised. By very nature of what crypto is, we cannot have any single point of failure, which is why we must be open to other projects and the potential merits (or failings) they may offer.
Bitcoin unequivocally is one of the greatest invention of humanity. There is no question that what Satoshi Nakamoto created has radically changing the world, and has opened a new horizon for human freedom and action. It is even quite possible that bitcoin is messianic, and that Satoshi is the prophet of a novus ordo seclorum that will liberate us from the old law, and allow for us to enable something totally new in its place–but only time will tell. While I zealously have given myself to the cause, and believe Bitcoin to be the most revolutionary vehicle that we have, I still cannot call myself a maximalist (majoritist maybe).
We must be open to the possible that Satoshi is a statist, that a deep reorg 51% attack will happen, the core devs are all somehow compromised, or there is something fundamentally broken in the bitcoin code. We must be open to the worst possibilities in order to create redundancy, to build our ranks, and educate people about the possibility of freedom from fiat, however that may come. Only through creating a robust collective movement that is focused on building and using the revolutionary technology of crypto without anyone’s permission for whatever purpose it may be, will be able to create the revolutionary movement that can finally win the freedom and liberty to which we are entitled.
The political objective of what crypto is, how it functions, and why it creates power is of the utmost importance and we must ensure that the technologies of the future really are ‘crypto’ and not something else. As I warned in the poverty of tokens, there is a real risk of creation a panoptic nightmare of unparalleled proportions if we run the risk of deploying broken ‘crypto’ that isn’t crypto at all.
Through the tradition of anarchism without adjectives, we can create a movement for crypto without criticism. A movement which can be ideologically committed to the values that represent crypto, while also offering valid critiques of each crypto projects and their weaknesses. It is only though such intellectual exchange, inquiry, and explanation will we be able to understand one another, and create a space in which we can work together.
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