I’ve lost count how many times I’ve said in the past ten years that I’m an anarchist. To most people, when I say this, it sounds like I’m declaring war against the world. I think that reaction exists because the propaganda has already won most of the battles.
You see, it’s not true that anarchism is the lack of order. It’s definitely not about wanting to throw Molotov cocktails at police cars. The ideology may not be monolithic, but it does revolve around a core idea: decentralized governance.
The idea we call democracy is, in my estimation, not much more than an illusion. We don’t really pick the laws we want or the rules we deem necessary. We pick representatives—people who are supposed to work for us, to convey our collective needs to other elites in order to evoke change.
And it’s probably right there where the illusion breaks.
A good friend of mine likes to tell me I’m not grounded enough. That change is slow, gradual—and that’s a good thing. It’s not that I don’t see his point, but I insist it’s just not good enough for me.
I don’t think I’ve done a great job explaining anarchism to him. But I do think I finally got my wife to understand my position.
“If we could only vote on policies,” she said to me, “then things would make sense. Where do you want your taxes to go? A menu. A buffet. A way to vote with your money.”
What does that sound like to you?
A flavor of anarchism, I’d say. Not pure, I admit—but clearly of the same vine.
Anarchism proposes direct governance. People participating voluntarily, organizing to effect change. In that sense, you could argue it’s the purest form of democracy there is.
I’m not naive. It has shortcomings. It seems to work best in small groups and tends to break down at scale. But we’ve also never had the tools we have today.
The idea of a DAO—a Decentralized Autonomous Organization—is so new that most people outside the crypto space haven’t even heard of it. For the first time, though, coordination at scale without centralized authority doesn’t feel impossible.
It may never be the case that society as a whole becomes anarchistic in nature. But I like having the ideal clearly visible—like a star that always points north.
Real authority cannot be imposed, even if we pretend to obey.
And no matter how old I get, I don’t think I’ll ever accept our current systems of governance as ethical. All I’ve seen in the four-plus decades I’ve been alive are mafias fighting for bigger pieces of the pie—actors who learn to play the game, feeding the masses just enough to keep them satisfied with crumbs.
-MenO
