On Incrementalism

Piecemeal Abolition of the Nation State Via Non-Kinetic Warfare

Anarchists often call for governments to be torn down immediately. I have been guilty of this mindset. Do not pass go. Do not capitulate. Go directly to freedom; unleash the instant coffee version of a failed state.

If subversives call for an immediate snuffing-out of government and authority, it is through aggressive political activism, assassination markets, i.e. Jim Bell, protesting, rioting, or hurling Molotov cocktails. They want to burn it down now. While I empathize with this viewpoint, it is impractical and dangerous.

Another perspective on abolishing the State is via incrementalism.

We abolish it slowly, exquisitely, in a piecemeal fashion, dismantling it by leveraging non-kinetic, asymmetric warfare. Non-kinetic warfare means using nonviolent means to undermine and disrupt the nation-state while chipping away at its soft underbelly. Non-kinetic means nonphysical and nonviolent. Asymmetric means having parts that are not equal or, in this context, unpredictable and distributed.

This article will explore why we want to end governments and how to proceed in a practical manner. We will also analyze modern methodologies of abolitionism, including exit strategies, pirate utopias, and network states. Hopefully, these methods will generate better results for human liberty. First, let’s answer some questions for the uninitiated. Why do we resist and revolt?

Jefferson’s Folly

Thomas Jefferson once quipped: “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

Although Jefferson was not an anarchist, he understood the ultimate aim of an all-powerful government: the total subservience of the population, the erosion of civil liberties, and a jail cell or tomb for those who resist.

Jefferson’s folly, as we will call it, was that he believed governments could be tamed, fair legislation could be drafted, and social contracts could keep the beast lurking inside governments at bay. He and the rest of the Founding Fathers were wrong.

He and many others missed or denied the problem: Governments are power aggregators and accumulators. They are engines for maintaining dominance over a gullible and lackadaisical population. The idea that they could be tamed or controlled was a historical mistake with unprecedented consequences.

Imagine thinking that a piece of paper called a “Constitution” can halt power, stop bullets, or contain evil. Do not believe me that all government is evil? Let’s demystify the idea.

The Truth of Government

Some see the government (or nation-state) as the institution or system that maintains social order, protects rights, and manages society. They ignore or handwave away violent bloodshed it causes as a consequence of “human nature.” They even call government a “necessary evil,” as if any evil can or should be necessary.

Anarcho-capitalist scholar Murray Rothbard provided a much more lucid and honest definition of government in his timeless work “Anatomy of the State”:

That organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

So, there it is — the truth. Government is merely a group of men who tell everyone what to do under the threat of violence. Of course, this group of men go to great lengths to convince people that their enterprise is virtuous. Another name for this act is “propaganda.” Since the invention of the printing press, governments have used words, signals, and messaging to dupe people into accepting their tyranny. The politicians who control the mechanisms of government convey propagandistic messages to conceal the violence at its core.

For more information, review the statistics on democide from the University of Hawaii. The short story is that nation-states regularly and brutally slay their own people. It is a trend, not an isolated incident. Let’s now discuss how we can incrementally and peacefully abolish this predatory institution.

Incremental Abolition: Exit and Erase

In anarchist and tech bro culture, “exit and build” is a common rallying cry for creating change. The idea behind that maxim is that if we “can’t beat them, then leave them.” The idea is not about abolishing government but escaping its clutches. It is about opting out of their jurisdiction. The problem is hostile governments will eventually seek to destroy parallel societies and economies.

Luckily, within our non-kinetic warfare strategy, we are not just escaping. We will be “exiting and erasing.” We will be slowly eroding the nation-state’s power. I will not mince words or cower beneath the sacred totems of “strategic exit” or “playing nice.” We want to abolish institutions not serving us, even if it happens slowly and methodically.

The famous activist Mahatma Gandhi had this idea of satyagraha, loosely translated as “truth force.” It is a form of nonviolent resistance; it implies a forceful lack of force to incite purposeful change. In the modern era, we are enacting “digital satyagraha” via technology to incrementally “compel” governments to abdicate their power. These technologies often include anonymised cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and network states, which we will discuss shortly.

It is relevant to mention that Gandhi did not pretend to do anything other than resist the British regime in his country. He was direct and honest in his motives. We are now doing that on a global scale against the modern nation-state.

However, at first glance, abolishing all government seems far-fetched. After all, nation-states appear omnipotent. So, how can we achieve these goals? Thankfully, the nation-state is already unravelling (a topic I will discuss more at a later date). We only have to expedite the process.

Pirate Utopias

Hakim Bey notoriously wrote about the idea of “temporary autonomous zones” (TAZ), where the everyday person could erect a popup sanctuary to conceal themselves from the nation-state and its appetite for theft and destruction. He referred to the idea as eluding formal control structures. 

In his essay, he mentioned the need to create an internet-based “pirate utopia” by exploiting information supernets and flows. In other words, an autonomous zone is akin to pirate mimesis — or piratic mimicry. However, Bey did not consider pirates to be merely bandits. He claimed historians largely misrepresented and misinterpreted pirate ideology. The reality is pirates were more like social misfits and sea hackers. He explained:

It is simply wrong to brand the pirates as mere sea-going highwaymen or even proto-capitalists, as some historians have done. In  a sense they were "social bandits," although their base communities were not traditional peasant societies but "utopias" created almost ex nihilo in terra incognita, enclaves of total liberty occupying empty spaces on the map.

Indeed, these pirates created distributed networks via island sanctuaries to hide from the State apparatus and live freely, largely pillaging governmental ship networks. The eponymous example is Captain James Mission, who allegedly founded Libertatia in the 17th century, a libertarian enclave of “pirates” seeking refuge from the state apparatus.

On the internet, our pirate Utopias — our Liberatatia —are the digital zones, punk networks, and communication flows with fellow freethinkers, crypto-anarchists, and demimondes. 

In this sense, the pirate utopia is an internet utopia, where cyber rebels retreat to become invisible from the State, undermine it, and exact freedom through disruption of internet supply lines and infrastructure. However, “pillaging” is just a form of nonviolent defense to undermine the political stability of governments.

A Network State is an emergent type of pirate utopia, or TAZ, as imagined by Hakim Bey. It is the one idea that can realize the vision of the pirate utopia.

Network States

Balaji Srinivasan coined the term “Network State.” He defined it as “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.”

Srinivasan definition is precise, albeit the “diplomatic recognition” part will depend on the individual network state. Some network states may exit the traditional political ecosystem altogether by leveraging strong anonymity and privacy safeguards for their digital governance. Furthermore, these network states may not even attempt to crowdfund territory, instead relying on a purely digital existence. All of these are possibilities in a future where digital governance becomes ubiquitous.

Indeed, network states are the apotheosis of the pirate utopia, with a strong affinity for non-kinetic warfare against governments.

The Network State is an iconoclastic idea whether any given network explicitly announces its goal to undermine the nation-state. The mere presence of network states forces nation-states to compete with novel governance offerings. In essence, this is a type of soft power—i.e., non-kinetic warfare. The presence of competing governance models engenders human capital flight from Nation-States and incentivizes their citizenry to become netizens of a network state.

The nation-state will then have no choice but to follow this competitive model, lest they risk losing their brightest minds. In other words, it must start serving rather than harming its citizens to compete with emergent governance mechanisms initiated and formalised by network states.

Basically, governments will have to finally submit to market dynamics, like any other business seeking to offer a product or service. For a deep dive into the network state idea, read Srinivasan’s book, and for a brief history, read my previous article.

Conclusion: Counter Governance

At the end of the day, non-kinetic warfare is a part of the anarchist toolbelt. This non-kinetic warfare can also be called “counter governance,” which means deploying our governance structures and solutions to force the nation-state to finally play fairly. This innovation in governance aligns global incentives for the management of society. It should also help decentralize power structures, creating more local and optimised governance functionality.

In his book “The Breakdown of Nations”, Leopold Kohr suggested that a more miniaturized and decentralized governance apparatus in the form of competing states could solve humanity’s most vexing question around power and control dynamics. In my estimation, wanting to optimize governance for localism, small-scale action, and service to its citizens will be the crowning achievement of the incrementalist strategy — finally realizing the anarchist’s centuries-long project for human liberation.