How Steemit and the Blockchain Turned Me Into an Anarchist

When I first joined steemit I had no idea about the underlying philosophical vision of many of the original steemit enthusiasts. I just thought it was another social media site.

But when I started digging into it I discovered that many steemians and crypto enthusiasts are anarchists/libertarians or at the very least people who place a high value on freedom and autonomy.

This concerned me at first because my background is fairly statist albeit very progressive/socialist. I’ve always voted with the Democrats though I was a Bernie supporter in the recent election.

My exposure to anarchism was largely through media stereotypes of angry punks throwing molotov cocktails and my working assumption was that anarchists were incredibly naive about how the world actually works.

For me anarchism was always more of an interesting thought experiment than a pragmatic reality to be realized. It seemed intellectually fascinating but thoroughly utopian in the pejorative sense. I just couldn't think of a practical application of the anarchist vision of a stateless society.

But then I started learning about blockchain technology and reading more about the philosophical ideology behind steemit and crypto. I started learning about the ethos of decentralization and how the blockchain has become a real-life manifestations of anarchist ideals.

I became deeply intrigued and started doing more research. The arguments that seemed previously utopian now seem decidedly more real. Looking at the runaway success of blockchain tech made me start thinking seriously about what a stateless society might look like in terms of autonomous decentralized organization.

I was still hesistant to fully adopt anarchist principles in my own political worldview. As someone who feels at home in progressive/socialist politics I have always been concerned that anarchism has no viable pathway to creating a social safety net for the least well off. And for me, there are strong philosophical/moral arguments for having a social safety net in place.

But then I learned about all the iterations of anarchism including anarchist-socialism/anarchist-communism and other variations of anarchism that focus on not just freedom and autonomy but also communal/egalitarian principles of mutual aid and solidarity. My vision of the future has no room for racism, classism, sexism, ageism, transphobia, ableism, or any other form of discrimination so it's important to me that my political ideology has the necessary mechanisms for dealing with oppression in all forms.

I began thinking about how blockchain technology has the potential to create a stateless/anti-capitalistic society that works to realize a social safety net without the apparatus of the State. Bitcoin is just one application of the technology but like the origins of the internet I feel we are only beginning to realize the use potential of the blockchain.

I can imagine entire new avenues of decentralized voluntary cooperation where we aid our fellow humans because we are first and foremost social creatures. Think about hunter-gatherers: the classic anarchist society. They have a social safety net through voluntary, autonomous cooperation. So in order to make anarchism work for everyone we have to develop the technology to mutually aid each other while also getting our individual needs met.

I became aware of the direct, grass-roots voluntary mutual aid in the recent hurricane relief efforts in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. And I'm also becoming more aware of all the ways in which the State has made such relief efforts worse through bureaucratic inefficiency, political cronyism, and disaster capitalism.

I believe steemit is a possibility-model for the future where we can engage in voluntary cooperation as autonomous beings. Just think: steemit works through mutual self-interest. The whales have what they need out of the system but they are also very generous in their aid to the minnows. And likewise the minnows are getting paid for their efforts while also contributing to the strength of the community. And all this is happening through a completely voluntary, decentralized network. Take that model of mutual aid and scale it up in a huge way and I can start to envision the outlines of a stateless, anti-capitalistic society.

Imagine getting rid of Facebook and replacing it with steem powered social media. That’s one less corporate monstrosity profiting off the workers who power the site with our content. And we the content-producers will be getting paid for our time and effort without the corporate middlemen who work to entrench the power of the 1%.

In a society that is increasingly being automatized and work itself is becoming more informational, digital, abstract, and creative, getting paid directly through cryptocurrency to engage in content production represents to me a very interesting development towards an anti-capitalist society.

We don’t need the capitalists of Wall street or the cronyism of the political elite. We don’t need the brutality of the police state nor do we need fascism and nationalism. We have ourselves and our innate desires for direct social cooperation.

But what has made me interested in anarchism is learning more about various socialist iterations that make space for some kind of regulatory distribution concerning public goods such as our air, water, and natural resources. We are all free as individuals and own our bodies but nobody can own the air we breath and the water we drink. We have to work together to secure our future on this planet and anarchism cannot descend into the far-right anti-regulatory future where individuals are free to contribute to the ruination of public resources and this planet as a whole without considering the broader impact on the Public Good.

In a nutshell, steemit has forced me to reconsider my entire political outlook. Blockchain technology has given me a glimpse of the anarchist future and I must say: I am impressed by the scope and magnitude of that vision.

Steem on!

a steemit original
images: pixabay