Virtual and Network States
A network state is a theoretical community of users—called “subscriber citizens”—connected via the internet, who accumulate enough capital, territory, or political clout to achieve diplomatic recognition as a state. [10]
For crypto-anarchists, creating such a virtual or network state to increase freedom and reduce physical coercion has been a consistent talking point since at least 1992, when Timothy May initially discussed a version of these ideas in his article, Libertaria in Cyberspace. [11] May said:
This is the most compelling advantage of "Crypto Libertaria": an arbitrarily large number of separate "nations" can simultaneously exist. This allows for rapid experimentation, self-selection, and evolution. If folks get tired of some virtual community, they can leave. The cryptographic aspects mean their membership in some community is unknown to others (vis-a-vis the physical or outside world, i.e., their "true names") and physical coercion is reduced. [11]
In his 1999 book, Virtual States, cypherpunk Jerry Everard explored these ideas through the lens of Foucauldian philosophy, especially in the context of discourse formation. His discourse analysis focused on the interrelationship between objects and statements describing the state. He acknowledged the state exists as a monopoly on violence in relation to its subjects. In other words, the state enjoys a power imbalance between itself and its citizenry. [12]
Everard formulated the idea of disaggregating various elements of the nation state while considering what voluntarily procured "virtual states" in a market environment would look like. He suggests that virtual states based in cyberspace will take over the “goods and services economy” aspect of the state apparatus. In the final treatment, he did not believe the "state" would face an extinction-level event, only that its power may be diminished in some areas but strengthened in others. [12]
Technologist, angel investor, and former Coinbase CTO, Balaji Srinivasan, has fully fleshed out the idea of network states. In his 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start Your Own Country, he details how a non-territorial affiliation of like-minded individuals could join to enact a covenant to share, build, and distribute power in the form of a network state. [10] Srinivasan articulated the definition concisely:
A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states. [10]
He furnished a fuller, more complex articulation as well:
A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition. [10]
The "moral innovation" piece of Srinivasan's crypto-anarchist articulation underlies the goal of a network state. His motivation is to align ideologies more cohesively, disrupt political infighting, and institute a freer human future. Throughout the book, he expresses the problems with traditional nation states and emphasizes their territorial, coercive nature. In the section on Nation States, he says, "(State) refers to the entity that governs these people, that commands the police and the military, and that holds the monopoly of violence over the geographic area that the nation inhabits." [10]
In one prominent section, Srinivasan argues for a modern variation of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis. He makes the case that frontiers throughout history have been open, uncontested territories allowing exploration, experimentation, and settlement. In his modern take on the thesis, cyberspace represents the crypto-anarchist new frontier for social creativity and growth. It is only through these new frontiers, he claims, can people secure greater sovereignty and build saner, more voluntary governance mechanisms. [10]
The Frontier Thesis is reminiscent of John Perry Barlow's famous, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace , where he eschews the domination of nation states by comparing cyberspace to a frontier inhabited by the "virus" of freedom. [13]
Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. An anarcho-capitalist philosophy extends the concept of ownership to include control of private property as part of the self, and, in some cases, control of other people as private property. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society a system of private property would still exist, and would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies that were selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police, similar to a state apparatus. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and advocating that the interests of the individual should gain precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism makes the individual its focus, and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation".
A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since at least the late 1980s and early 1990s.
An assassination market is a prediction market where any party can place a bet on the date of death of a given individual. This incentivises assassination of the individual, as parties with foreknowledge of a potential assassination can profit by placing accurate bets on the date of the death. Because the payoff is for accurately picking the date rather than performing the assassination, it is substantially more difficult to assign criminal liability.
Timothy C. May, better known as Tim May was an American technical and political writer, and electronic engineer and senior scientist at Intel. May was also the founder of the crypto-anarchist movement. He retired from Intel in 1986 at age 35 and died of natural causes at his home on December 13, 2018 at age 66.
The Argentine Libertarian Federation is a libertarian communist federation which operates in Argentina, out of the City of Buenos Aires, San Pedro, La Pampa Province, and Rosario. Founded in October 1935 with the name of the Anarcho-Communist Federation of Argentina the FLA adopted its current name in 1955. It is governed by the Declaration of Principles and the Organic Charter approved by its congress. Its structure and operation are federative and are coordinated by Local Councils and the National Council.
The nature of capitalism is criticized by left-wing anarchists, who reject hierarchy and advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. Anarchism is generally defined as the libertarian philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authoritarianism, illegitimate authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor, which have generally been opposed by most anarchists historically. Since capitalism is variously defined by sources and there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category, the designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.
National-anarchism is a radical right-wing nationalist ideology which advocates racial separatism, racial nationalism, ethnic nationalism, and racial purity. National-anarchists syncretize ethnic nationalism with philosophical anarchism, mainly in their support for a stateless society, while rejecting anarchist social philosophy. The main ideological innovation of national-anarchism is its anti-state palingenetic ultranationalism. National-anarchists advocate homogeneous communities in place of the nation state. National-anarchists claim that those of different ethnic or racial groups would be free to develop separately in their own tribal communes while striving to be politically horizontal, economically non-capitalist, ecologically sustainable, and socially and culturally traditional.
Left-libertarianism, also known as left-wing libertarianism, is a political philosophy and type of libertarianism that stresses both individual freedom and social equality. Left-libertarianism represents several related yet distinct approaches to political and social theory. Its classical usage refers to anti-authoritarian varieties of left-wing politics such as anarchism, especially social anarchism.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that places a strong emphasis on the value of liberty. Libertarians advocate for the expansion of individual autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights, including the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice. Libertarians often oppose authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of Libertarianism. Scholars have identified distinct libertarian perspectives on the nature of property and capital, typically delineating them along left–right or socialist–capitalist axes. The various schools of libertarian thought have also been shaped by liberal ideas.
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.
Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism, or right-wing libertarianism, is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a variant of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an anti-authoritarian approach to property and income. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, the non-aggression principle, and a significant transformation of the modern welfare state. Practitioners of Right-libertarianism usually do not self-describe by that term and often object to it.
Individualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Benjamin Tucker, Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert Spencer and Henry David Thoreau. Other important individualist anarchists in the United States were Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Batchelder Greene, Ezra Heywood, M. E. Lazarus, John Beverley Robinson, James L. Walker, Joseph Labadie, Steven Byington and Laurance Labadie.
Anarchism as a social movement in Cuba held great influence with the working classes during the 19th and early 20th century. The movement was particularly strong following the abolition of slavery in 1886, until it was repressed first in 1925 by President Gerardo Machado, and more thoroughly by Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government following the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s. Cuban anarchism mainly took the form of anarcho-collectivism based on the works of Mikhail Bakunin and, later, anarcho-syndicalism. The Latin American labor movement, and by extension the Cuban labor movement, was at first more influenced by anarchism than Marxism.
James Dalton Bell is an American crypto-anarchist who created the idea of arranging for anonymously sponsored assassination payments via the Internet, which he called "assassination politics". He was imprisoned on felony charges of tax evasion in 1997. In 2001, Wired called Bell "[o]ne of the Internet's most famous essayists" and "the world's most notorious crypto-convict".
Contemporary anarchism within the history of anarchism is the period of the anarchist movement continuing from the end of World War II and into the present. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in anti-globalisation, peace, squatter and student protest movements. Anarchists have participated in armed revolutions such as in those that created the Makhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia, and anarchist political organizations such as the International Workers' Association and the Industrial Workers of the World have existed since the 20th century. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.
CryptoParty (Crypto-Party) is a grassroots global endeavour to introduce the basics of practical cryptography such as the Tor anonymity network, I2P, Freenet, key signing parties, disk encryption and virtual private networks to the general public. The project primarily consists of a series of free public workshops.
A classless society is a society in which no one is born into a social class like in a class society. Distinctions of wealth, income, education, culture, or social network might arise and would only be determined by individual experience and achievement in such a society. Thus, the concept posits not the absence of a social hierarchy but the uninheritability of class status. Helen Codere defines social class as a segment of the community, the members of which show a common social position in a hierarchical ranking. Codere suggest that a true class-organized society is one in which the hierarchy of prestige and social status is divisible into groups. Each group with its own social, economic, attitudinal and cultural characteristics, and each having differential degrees of power in community decision.
Wei Dai is a computer engineer known for contributions to cryptography and cryptocurrencies. He developed the Crypto++ cryptographic library, created the b-money cryptocurrency system, and co-proposed the VMAC message authentication algorithm.
Bitnation, or crypto nation, was a cryptocurrency-based project self-described as a "voluntary nation", wherein all citizens chose to be citizens, founded in 2014 by Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. A part of the process for becoming a citizen involved recording vital records, identity, and other legal events through the use of a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain.
