The anarchist shaping of technology

[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions by Alexander Prugger, developed within the context of the Conceptual clarifications about "Utopias and the Information Society", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

Overview

The Article has the purpose to present how Anarchism could influence the shaping of Technology, for this the terms Technology and Anarchism are defined in the context of this work. The main aspect is the contrast this approach to Technologies provides and to showcase advantages it.

What is Technology?

To fully understand how exactly anarchism and technology are connected, it is important to first find a common ground, or rather to lay down some common definitions of those two words and furthermore to put up some principles.

Definiton

Technology, “science of craft” from the ancient Greek word “techne” (art, skill, cunning of hand) means nowadays generally every needed aspect to produce or provide something. This is the most basic definition in my opinion yet does it conflict to some extend with the common imagine we’ve in our heads if this word is used. Yet, while most people probably connect the word “Technology” directly with the Product itself, like a Personal Computer (PC), for the following Chapters we’ll use the provided definition which does include not only the Product itself, but also the knowledge, the skills and the means of production needed for its creation.

Historical Overview

Interestingly, yet less surprising, the definition of the word “Technology” isn’t unified in a historical context. As mentioned, the provided definition will be the ground on which we will expand. Nevertheless, the history and changes the word has endured are not entirely irrelevant in regard to the following Chapters.

From the earliest days of Humanity, Technology on its own was destined to become a part of us, because due two really important factors which differed our Human Ancestors from other animals were the development of language, or rather they don’t use Language to the same extend as Humans do it , as well as stone tools. Even when we still didn’t have the right word for it, we still had basic technology and it enabled us to evolve and build a society, to reach the point we are at today.

Yet only in 18th Century we begun to define it – So wrote Christian Wolff 1740 in his Book “Philosophia Rationalis sive Logica”, that technology is the science of craftmanship and its Products. Later on, in the 19th Century, a certain Karl Marx also spent some words in regard to technology and its definition and connection to humanity. Although, really to prominence – regardless of the language itself – rose the word most certainly only in the 20th Century with the second industrial revolution. Thorstein Veblen brought through his translation of the German word “Technik” into the English language as “Technology”, therefore without a difference between “Technik” and “Technologie” which means both get translated as “Technology”, which lead to the development that the word “Technology” in the early 20th Century referred to the industrial arts themselves.

What is Anarchism?

Definition

Anarchism itself has a bad reputation, the term itself is often used to describe a chaotic and destructive state, which on its own is wrong and could serve as a perfect example of the Concept “Framing” in the science of Languages. Anarchism on its own is the political philosophy of a social order without “authority” or rather without a strict hierarchy, especially not with a hierarchy which is strictly “down from above”, which becomes clear if we take a closer look at the term itself; anarchism derives from the ancient Greek word anarkhia which means “without a ruler”. It’s connection with the rather negative association originated in the time in which the European world was still strictly divided between Nobles and peasants. The first “true” anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, which gave formal birth of the political philosophy of anarchism in the 19th century. Anarchism is therefore not chaotic nor destructive – On the contrary, it’s core nature evolves around the organization of free individuals, groups and thus in turn whole societies. It can be considered as the most natural order. Or as Anselme Bellegarrigue puts it; “[…] Anarchy is order, for government is civil war.” due to the nature of any form of Government – as it is founded, it automatically has subjects and therefore also partisans and from that results that it has also enemies. Although all of that, we also have to understand that Anarchism itself is hard to define, because it is a concept which can rather has many different colours instead of a unifying theory. There are many different forms of anarchy itself;

• AnarchoSyndicalism
• AnarchoIndividualism
• AnarchoCommunism
• AnarchoCapitalism
• …

The “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” also provides us with a good overview in which Anarchism itself is structured in the following varieties;

• Political Anarchism
• Religious Anarchism
• Theoretical Anarchism
• Applied Anarchism
• Black, Indigenous, and Decolonizing Anarchism

What is important to understand in regards of anarchism is, that it rejects the idea of a restrictive structure which means that an Anarchist does reject the idea of a oppressive, destructive and chaotic hierarchy in favour of a free, creative and productive order. Anarchism therefore is built on the free cooperation between free individuals without restriction, no privilege, no sanction from any form of a legislative, emancipated from any form shackles and thus anarchism also demands a certain skillset from the individual. An Anarchist is somebody who does not seek to dominate others, somebody who does seek to better himself to become as self-reliant as possible for him, somebody who wants to empower others to be his equals, somebody who takes joy in progress and growth around him. As we’ll see in the following chapter, this flexibility grants this kind of order a strength which allows it to overcome crisis’ which would be devastating for a social order, centered around strict hierarchies.

Examples

Now the question arises, does it even work out? As Kropotkin already argued in “Mutual Aid A Factor of Evolution”, it is beneficial to work together in a collective and we Humans are actually pretty good at it. Yet, often we assume that anarchism never functioned, crumbled or would never work anyway. Following examples of either Companies which are heavily influenced from anarchistic ideas, will showcase how anarchism not only could be implemented but actually already takes a huge influence of our world today.

1. Valve Cooperation

The Valve Cooperation, or short Valve, is undeniable one if not the giant in the “Gaming Industry”. While its hard to find any valid numbers for Valve’s actual yearly revenue, its fair to assume that the Cooperation does make billions. Already 2017, Valve announced that they have over 33 Million daily active players over their “Steam” – their PC game distribution platform. Already 2016 38% of released Games were accounted by Valve via Steam. But how could Valve rival the might of EA and others? An answer provides us their “Handbook for new employees” which was leaked in 2012, in which new employees get encouraged to be self-reliant, cooperate with each other and be confident. Furthermore it rejects the idea of strict, inflexible, non-changing hierarchies. These points are getting achieved not only due to the absence of strict hierarchies, but also due to granting employees bigger freedom on an individual level – They are encouraged to chose the projects they want to work on by themselves, their desks are on rolls so that they can rearrange them and build their own teams as they see fit and there are no mandatory work hours. Valve also does encourage self-advancement through picking up new skills. Valve is also a highly efficient, commercially successful Company in a market which is actually ruled by liberal capitalistic rules – due to their anarchistic approach towards their own organisation and structure.

2. Mondragon Corporation

The Mondragon Corporation is a similar story of success, yet different. The Corporation, founded 1956, by José María Arizmendiarrieta – together with a group of young people - in the town Mondragón is a prime example for the first step in the direction AnarchoSyndicalism. The Company describes itself as “cooperativist movement”. Their principles include wage solidarity, participation in the management, democratic organisation, education, social transformation and inter-cooperation. The Company is split into four main focuses – Financial, Industry, Retail and Education. They provide insurances, produce consumer/capital goods, industrial components and construct whole production systems.

According to their own annual report of 2020, they had an total income of over 11 billion Euro, despite a global pandemic. They invest around 9.2% of this income in their Industrial Area, employ 2,384 Researcher on the same time, provide 25,3 million Euros for social contact activities and have 11,245 students in their education centres. Yet, the Company is not without its critics and while its oriented on anarchistic principles, it isn’t as perfect as it may seems. As Noam Chomsky puts it; “Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker-owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make a profit in order to survive, you’re compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.”, although he also points out the negative effects of markets on the mental health on people and that Mondragon also how a “functioning family” would be the opposite, the shimmer of hope for him and states that the biggest functioning family he knows, is Mondragon.

These two examples shows us that anarchistic principles can work, even in a ‘hostile’ environment – or rather, they show us how anarchistic principles can provide an advantage in Industries which rely heavily on innovation, technical know-how and creativity.

One further example outside of the environment of big, global companies would be the region “Rojava” – the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which is mainly inhabited by Kurdish people. They also follow anarchistic principles under the main influence of the anarchistic political philosopher Murray Bookchin. The structure of their government resembles the one of the “Münchner Räterepublik” , although to analyse the structures of Rojava would be outside of the scope of this paper.

How can we connect both?

The question now is, how can anarchism actually influence the shaping of technology? Until now, we’ve just seen that anarchistic principles can create functional companies and be highly beneficial for those – but how does this apply to technology itself?

Principles

First we need some a frame, some ground rules which we’ve to keep in mind to tackle the theoretical technological advancement we put in place, to stay true to the “anarchistic spirit” we want to apply. Here I’ll use the principles Brian Martin suggested;

• Self-management: people collectively organize their own lives.
• Non-domination: no individuals or groups are exploited or subordinated on the basis of class, ethnicity, sex or other categories; this can be extended to non-human animals and to nature.
• Empowerment: individuals are given maximum support to develop their capacities. As he laid them out in his Article “Anarchist shaping of technology”.

Yet, I also want to add one myself;

• Sustainability: developments are made with the goal in mind, to be as sustainable as possible.

We see, those principles are aligned with the core idea of anarchism as defined in the previous chapters. Also, as Brian Martin rightfully points out in his Article; the first one pretty much implies already that there won’t be a “fixed” hierarchical structure, the second one will support that and prevent inequality and the third one not only promotes cooperation between free individuals, it also supports due to its very nature the first two principles – Because if you are part in the decision making process, the likelihood to get discriminated from it is reduced and you can only become a effective part in it if you’ve the chance to grow.

The fourth one may sound redundant, although it is of extreme importance. While something may be self-managed, non-dominating and empowering – it doesn’t has to be sustainable. Sustainability is though one of the most important factors nowadays in many aspects of technological developments; only if we sustain the resources of today as efficient as possible, we can prevent or at least minimize inequality due to a lack of those tomorrow. This means not only environmental resources, but also the so called “human resources” – We’ve to maintain a balance between what an individual is capable of and what some technological developments may demand of it. Therefore, I would argue that the fourth principle I put forth here, is fundamental for a functional anarchistic approach.

How and why?

Before we answer the question about the how, we’ve to answer the question why we should exactly consider anarchistic principles overall? Sure, as in the previous chapters shown, they can be effective in an organisation of some sort and produce results measured in revenue. Would it have any beneficial advantages for an individual or the society? Because only something theoretically or also practically functions, it doesn’t have to be desirable.

To answer the question, we only have to look at the Internet; as Díaz-Nafría points out in his Articles Cyber-Subsidiarity: Towards a Global Sustainable Information Society and Is the structure of our digital world suited for a fair intercultural life?, the Internet can be highly beneficial for anarchistic structures simple to its own possibilities, yet centralization in connection with “Big Data” and alike threaten those capabilities of the biggest Network on earth. Figure 1 shows the extent to which how Africa’s digital communication is articulated through European hubs and that Latin America’s digital communication basically gets controlled through one Node in Miami. This shows graphically, how highly vulnerable the digital Communication became already, as he shows in his mentioned Articles that this is a trend. Furthermore, as he explains capitalism is using this to exploit and dominate the User of the Internet itself – “Big Data” technology is geared towards taking the creativity of the User themselves and transform this into the profit for themselves.

While José María Nafría-Díaz explains the Structure of the Internet in far more detail, in this paper we’ll look at this from a rather simple perspective; what is this mentioned Big Data actually? To say it simple – it is the sum of all possible relevant Data there is. On an individual level; when you use Google, for what you use it, what you buy on Amazon, which videos you click on YouTube, how long you’ll watch them, if you’ve an Add-Blocker active or if and when you click on the Adds. How many Emails you get, how many you send, … This Data is then fed into algorithm which let “Bots” (Simple AI’s – Artificial Intelligence Programs) which then decide which Videos, Links or Adds they could suggest you to maximize the Chance to get you to click on them. It may sound unbelievable, yet we just have to use Google’s “Dataexport” Feature, to get a sense of what Data Companies have from us.

On a broader level; Clouds for an example. Which also gave rise to so called “Shadow Data” – “Shadow IT is the deployment and use of systems and applications without the knowledge or explicit consent of an organisations IT department.”

The negative thing about that isn’t even that the Data on its own get stored, analysed and used – It’s the secrecy about that and the inaccessibility as well as the non-existence transparency of Tech-Giants like Microsoft or Google.

Besides that, as shown – The Internet is highly centralized already. This means that the accessibility for it is for many people highly dependable on factors, they can’t influence. Which also violates the principle of “Non-domination”. The Internet also already evolved from the “Web 2.0”, in which the Consumer also was the Producer of the Content while some Company earned the Profit (e.g. YouTube) – a so called “Prosument”, to “Web 3.0”.

Examples

Besides of the decentralization of the Internet, there are actually a lot of different means to apply anarchistic principles towards technology.

1. Open Source

One of the mostly used examples in that regard is probably the Open Source Movement which is built around decentralization and open collaboration between people. While we’ve to differ between “Free and open-source software” (FOSS) and “Free/Libre and open source software” (FLOSS) - There is a certain difference between an open source code and a free available license although due to its nature in theory even if the license maybe costs something, it would still be possible to recreate the open source code and be completely fine to do so as soon as you would change and/or add features to it – open source software fulfill the principles nevertheless. Therefore, even in the worst case open source software applies to the principles to some extent. Although, how important free available open source programs are nowadays, is mentioned in a study in regards to the comparison of open source power grid models of the DLR Institute of Networked Energy Systems. Software like SciGRID, GridKit, SciDAVis, LTSpice, Scilab, NumPy and many more – besides of open source operation systems like Debian or Ubuntu as an example – allows its people to actively take part in the development of new technologies. It empowers, helps people to become and stay self-managed, due to its non-dominant nature because everybody has access to its mechanics and knowledge, due to its sustainability because it can always be adapted, changed or simply serve as a basis for new software.

2. Decentralized Power Grid

One of the biggest challenges we face as a species nowadays is the climate change. While anarchism on its own most certainly won’t provide an ultimate answer to that – the principles are still viable and beneficial to help and create countermeasures as well as to develop technologies which can even help to prevent the worst case scenarios. On the one hand the are means of centralized electricity production as an example with nuclear power not in line with the anarchistic principles, due to the many risks of domination which are included in them – From the simple dependency of a large amount of people on one specific source of power, even if it’s owned by everyone there will still be risks involved like the production of nuclear weapons, the risk of criminal or terrorist uses or simply the environmental risk which either calls for some sort of “authorities”, or shows that it isn’t a sustainable strategy – and on the other hand they are also inefficient, because they need a centralized power grid. Decentral power grids are in many cases, technically and economically beneficial, because while our power grids from today would need alternations – they would provide more data privacy and grid operators wouldn’t have to install alternations or rather could spare some computing power on their side. In addition to that, a decentralized power grid would empower the individual to self-manage his own power production better and also enable him to may produce power for his community more easily. That would put the focus on the developments as well as the use of renewable sources of energy even further – which therefore would also fulfil the principle of sustainability.

Other Examples would be also include Crypto-Anarchism.

The Connection between the Concept of an Utopia and the anarchist shaping of technology

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.” – Many people often use the term Utopia to describe some imaginary concept which couldn’t be achieved. Furthermore, if you would ask somebody if he could imagine a Company being organized accordingly to the political theory of anarchism, he would probably say that it would be pure chaos. Although, we've seen in this papers examples which contradict that. Also we’ve seen that that anarchistic principles, if applied to the development of new technologies as well as to the reformation of already existing ones has not only theoretically or morally but measurable, practical advantages.

Pure capitalistic ideals and ideas obviously don’t create an Utopia to any standards, as we see also with the provided example in regards of Big Data technology. I would even argue, that the purely capitalistic view created the opposite, a Dystopia in which the broad mass’ which should actually benefit from technological advancements are exploited, indirectly as well as directly dominated, manipulated and robbed of their individual freedom. Those developments have already lead to a certain distrust in technology as well as the incapability of the individual to take part in those developments. If we look as an example to the hesitancy in regards to Vaccines we’ll see it is due to the limited knowledge the average citizen has on that topic and the solution presented from the government in Germany for an example is; mandatory vaccination instead of using the possibilities of modern technology to explain the topic to everybody in an efficient way. That shows that the focus lays on the symptoms rather than the roots of a problem. Technologies like the Internet became a new way fuelling consumerism, instead of a way to support equality of chances. In connection with technologies, we’ve to emphasize subsidiarity which is supported by the four principles mentioned in this paper. At the same time, those four principles do encourage and support equality, personal growth and fairness between individuals. Even on a far lower, personal level we’ve exactly those mechanism at work; for an example 3D-Printers, which enable people nowadays to design and print certain items at home. One of the best “Slicer Software” (Which basically translates the CAD Model into instructions the printer can understand) is open source, there are world wide communities which share models, the best possible settings and modifications which lead to the development of accessible 3D-Printers. On the same time, collectives built like the cLab at the University of applied Science Munich in which Students help each other to create and build.

So it’s fair to say, that some change is necessary to ensure that our Society as a whole has a chance to grow, to adapt and to overcome the challenges we face. Those may utopian sounding anarchistic ideals, ideas and principles seem to work – So why don’t we use them?