A Counter-Governance Manifesto
Or Digital Satyagraha
Attempts to overthrow the State in recent history involved direct action, or what the insurrectionary anarchists called "propaganda of the deed." This is just a fancy term for the assassination of politicians, monarchs, and industrialists.
The Galleanist anarchists shot, stabbed, and bombed their opposition. They committed regicide and spilled blood for the people. The results of their deeds are clear: governments hit back with a vengeance, arresting and executing anarchists en masse. Worse, these acts motivated governments to expand their intelligence capabilities and crack down on the anarchist contingent.
Today, anarchists have evolved their methods of countering the state.
Crypto-anarchists now see the value of peaceful transitions and nonviolent resistance. They practice a kind of digital satyagraha. They acknowledge that violence only begets more violence and incites hostile retaliation. Instead, they seek to "underthrow" the State by unleashing agorism, alternative governance, and strong encryption.
This "underthrow" could manifest in several ways but will likely come to fruition as a technological exit and/or incremental abolition. Either the anarchists leave the State through cyberspatial dark forests and decentralized infrastructure, or the State is dismantled piecemeal as autonomous political formations appear and whittle its power away.
Both of these options will likely manifest through agorist agitation. "Agorism" refers to using counter-economics and the circular economy to usurp power from the nation-state. Under agorism, transactions occurring under the table and in gray markets move power from the state to the individual. It is a form of horizontal will and power transfer. The idea was formulated by libertarian thinker Samuel Edward Konkin III, also called SEKIII.
The crypto variation of agorism includes counter-governance, where alternative governance models emerge and operate in adversarial environments, commandeering power, resources, and capital from the State.
Counter-governance involves cyber guerrillas, coders, and operators exiting old systems and embracing crypto-states via lunartech, which anonymizes and hides its developers and devotees. These systems employ zero-knowledge cryptography, P2P storage markets, privacy-centric comms, fully homomorphic encryption, and credibly neutral organizations powered by individuals enveloped by the dark forest.
These counter-governance operators will provide "governance services" for underserved, mistreated, and apostate citizens. They will largely be "unbundled" from government control and offered voluntarily by incumbent dissidents on the open market.
Incremental technological change will force governments to “compete” with these new service offerings, but they won’t like it. Similar to their response to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, they will fight back the only way they know how—with appeals to legality and brute aggression. They will sue and arrest counter-governance developers, enthusiasts, and visionaries. They will infiltrate communities, surveil them, and engage in psyops to compromise or hijack them, like they did with Bitcoin. They will spread the lie that crypto-anarchists are terrorists.
Mainstream headlines and broadcasts will read: “Crypto-Anarchists enable criminals, money launderers, and rogue nations. The government will spare no expense in the fight against these terrorists to save the nation and disrupt criminal activity.” In this way, anarchists become the new “hobgoblin” that is terrorizing the nation and causing fear in the masses, echoing the sentiment of H.L. Mencken.
However, the emergence of counter-governance, crypto-states, and unbundled state services will quickly inundate the world like a tsunami engulfing society's shores. They will be ubiquitous; these offerings will exist in every space, occupy each mind, and flourish inexorably. Eventually, through their antifragility and competitive service offerings, crypto-states will become the undisputed norm. Governments will cede bits of their power and imagined authority to this new market of governance services. Over time, they may relinquish all their power and crumble to dust.
No one will need to be assassinated or harmed; the anarchists will not spill a drop of blood. It will be propaganda of the code, digital resistance, and revolutionary renaissance—for and by the people. If blood gets spilled during this transitional moment, the blame will lay squarely at the heels of the political elite. This new, decentralized, p2p form of anti-government activity is here. We only need to keep building to turn the tides of history.
This uprising is for Aaron Swartz, Ross Ulbricht, Julian Assange, Roman Semenov, Roman Storm, Alexey Pertsev, Ian Freeman, Keonne Rodriquez, William Lonergan Hill, Roger Ver, and too many more to name.
“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.” ― Étienne de La Boétie
Digital satyagraha it is then!
One small village at a time.
for Tim C. May