The Principles of Cyber–Anarcho–Socialism

Having established the five preconditions for functional democratic governance, it is noticeable that, in the first fifth of the 21st century, each of those preconditions is under considerable threat. The consequence has been the increasing distrust (of politicians) and disengagement (from political processes) in the physical world; but this has been matched by an increasing migration to digital platforms, where the opportunities for citizen assemblies and civic engagement are evident (e.g., [17]). However, many social media platforms have run into problems as a result of testing and optimising for engagement: the most sensationalist material gets the most views and so the learning algorithms recommend increasingly sensationalist material; this is even without targeted advertising, psychological targeting of political messages (sometimes based on privacy-violating data harvesting), and wilful use of misinformation and disinformation.

Civic dignity is deeply and dangerously diminished if citizens are tricked into making decisions that, had they been fully appraised of the facts or the proponents’ agendas, they would not otherwise have made.

Alternatively, by abstracting from the design of decentralized solutions for cyber–physical systems [18], we propose a socio–technical design ethos for digital platforms based on a “calculated technology of self-determination,” or self-determination by technology. This design ethos is complementary to the programme for the design of public interest technology [19], and is based on a political philosophy of cyber–anarcho–socialism. “Anarchy” and “socialism,” as properly construed, or at least as construed in this context, are not dangerous concepts, but instead are the root of security, prosperity and liberty in cyberspace, whether these are collectivities of software agents, or of people, or a mix of both.

The principles of cyber–anarcho–socialism, and how they could—perhaps should—inform the design, operationalisation and runtime self-organisation of cyber–physical and socio–technical systems are as follows:

1. Anarchy is not “no rules.” The derivation of “anarchy” is from “without ruler,” which is consistent with the avoidance of tyranny, and is not necessarily the same as saying “without rules.” Rather than anarchy being a state of chaos and disorder with no rules, it can be seen as a state of (quasi) stability with no rules that cannot justify themselves. The requirement of rules to justify themselves can be satisfied by reflective self-governance, and is intended to avoid the opposite end of the spectrum involving the immutability of rules and the implacable mindset of the utopia of rules [20]. Anarchy should not be thought of as the absolute destruction of systems of self-governance through socially constructed political institutions. In addition, its motivation for self-organization and mutuality based on voluntary association and equal participation is far removed from the nihilistic economic ideologies based on “sovereign individuals” masquerading hypocritically as “conservatism.”
2. Buy-in to the Rule of Law. Having just said there is “no ruler” and “no rule immutability,” the second principle is the trick of the mind that maintains the pretence of everyone being governed by an immutable external authority (called “The Law” or “The Constitution”), while at the same time knowing that authority (“Law,” “Constitution”) is socially constructed (i.e., internal), mutable (by mutual agreement of constitutional amendment), and yet without authority, in the sense that it has no actual capacity to enforce compliance, only peers acting on its (nonexistent) behalf can do this. This requires a collective “buy in” to ensure constraints on power, in particular the arbitrary abuse of power, are mutual and nonrepudiable. This is one of the reasons why responsibility and accountability, like other socially constructed relations such as trust, are so important. These relations offer not only self-organizing mechanisms for self and systemic improvement, but also act as essential guardrails for operating within accepted parameters. The corrosion of the social fabric when “inside” individuals repudiate the Rule of Law without repercussion can be more damaging than “outside” threats and attacks.
3. Independence implies interdependence. The quest for personal freedom is age-old, but this includes both “freedom to” (e.g., pursue life, liberty and happiness) as well as “freedom from” (insecurity, poverty, and tyranny). The key observation of Snyder [21] is that to be free (freedom to do) depends on one’s health, and that health (freedom from illness) depends on others. He argues that the relationship between patient and practitioner should be primarily about medicine, with some transactional component, but the forces of privatisation have made it primarily a transaction, with some medical component. More generally, for any individual to be “free” in any domain of meaningful activity (health, education, the pursuit of happiness, etc.) depends on the pro-social behavior of others. Similarly, online presence is not a presence in a vacuum or a property of an avatar: presence implies others, and others imply dependency. Relationships in cyberspace should therefore be mutual, reciprocal, voluntary, and cooperative, not metricated, commodified and transactional.
4. Polycentricity and subsidiarity. Polycentricity [22] acknowledges the multiplicity of decision-making authorities, and other stakeholders, and their involvement (e.g., through consultation) in self-governance processes. Subsidiarity is the principle of ensuring that decision making is delegated to the closest point at which it will have an effect. Linked to the third principle, just as individual actions depend on have an impact on others, the collective actions of collectivities have impact on other collectivities: this is a system of systems (i.e., an ecosystem). Structures federated through polycentricity and subsidiarity and are less prone to monopolisation, centralization (through preferential attachment at the application layer) or colonization (with subsequent wealth extraction), because principles of self-determination are stronger and more robust in such structures. Moreover, both polycentricity and subsidiarity contribute to ensuring that a collective expression of values, priorities, and preferences is not a timeless, unquestionable and infallible product of some mechanism of social choice (i.e., a vote), but can be revisited and revised through timely and reflective processes.
5. Legitimacy. As previously specified, legitimate self-governance is only enacted with the informed, meaningful, and revocable consent of the governed, whatever form of -archy or -cracy is consented to. Legitimate democratic self-governance can be implemented by the practice of democracy-by-design [23]. Democracy-by- design is another instantiation of the value- sensitive design methodology (and values-based engineering is now an IEEE standard [24]) taking the same approach as other instantiations such as privacy-by-design [25]. In this methodology, a qualitative human value (e.g., privacy, democracy) is identified as a “supra-functional” design requirement and used as the focus of public interest design, not a bonus grafted onto a functional system as an afterthought. Design decisions should be made manifest in the interface or other signals, for example, by design contractualism or costly signaling. Progressive reform and systemic improvement of the ecosystem should similarly be based on reflection and meta-deliberation about socially constructed relations such as responsibility, accountability, and transparency.
6. Public property and the common good. In socialist and mutualist thought, private property (as distinct from personal property) is generally only rejected if that property is considered to be essential to the well-being or effective functioning of the collective; see, for example, the typology of common-pool resources defined by [26]. Applying this to the Digital Society, it can be argued that the private ownership of the means of social coordination and collective action can diminish effective functioning. For example, systems for meeting organisation, conference organisation, or charitable donation, etc., could be made available as non-profit-making public services held and operated in trust, without the need for collecting data, digital advertising (which wastes energy) or excessive executive salaries. The U.K. lottery uses the slogan “your numbers make amazing happen,” to which a reasonable rejoinder could be “so do taxes”; it is just that taxes can be more progressive and more honest about their use in wealth redistribution and pro-social benefits in promoting the common good rather than wealth extraction. (Although the fiction that taxes “pay” for public services is a gross misrepresentation of the way macroeconomics actually works and should be thoroughly debunked in every classroom.)

1. The underlying economic system. The effective functioning of society and self-governance is inextricably linked with the nature of the underlying economic system. As Foucault makes clear [8], historically the economic system underlying liberal democracy was capitalism and the accumulation of capital; subsequently, this process was co-extensive with the accumulation of men. Increasingly, this is now co-extensive with the accumulation of attention. Foucault writes, in 1975, of “anonymous instruments of power, coextensive with the multiplicity that they regiment, such as hierarchical surveillance, continuous registration, perpetual assessment and classification” [8, p.220], thereby anticipating (respectively) surveillance capitalism, social media logins, social media rating and review, and machine learning by some 50 years. The Digital Society needs an alternative underlying economic system different to one based on surveillance capitalism, rentier capitalism, social media influence, and non-fungible tokens, where Foucault’s knowledge–power relation is implicit, anonymized and unacknowledged.
2. Accessible education. As indicated previously, one of the most critical features of civic education is accessibility. There are initiatives to realign the U.S. University system to meet changing cultural, demographic, and socioeconomic factors [27]. Open access is not a notable feature of the U.K. educational system, for all that they call themselves “public” schools, with corresponding predictable consequences of inward-looking self-entitlement and lack of empathy for others [28]. It is therefore essential that access should not be restricted or denied by privatization, delivery should not be metricated [29], the curriculum should not be centrally and politically predetermined [30], and the gatekeepers should not be implicated in iron triangles of mutual convenience [31]. In addition, there should be diverse ownership and regulation of information sources and social media, given the way that social influence works, especially online (i.e., targets seek sources by whom to be influenced, as well as sources seeking targets to influence [32]).
3. Self-governance defined and delimited by the value of human dignity. This is the essential quality of Ober’s program of Basic Democracy [1]. This is dignity both in choice and in office. Following [33], the core problem of democracy is that ability and expertise can be subordinate to numbers, and numbers can be manipulated by distortion and trickery, especially if compounded by the denigration of civic education. As previously discussed, civic dignity is undermined if the people are tricked into making choices that are not in the public interest or common good. On the other hand, the problem of alternative forms of governance to democracy, such as aristocracy and meritocracy, is that ability and expertise can be subordinate to wealth, and wealth can be used to secure office solely for the power and prestige, without actually being interested in, knowledgeable of, or responsible for the duties and obligations that come with holding political office. Those so ill-equipped will diminish both the dignity of office, and by extension civic dignity, as their dishonorable deeds encourage imitation by others.
4. The prevention of “othering.” The dominance of social media and the ruthless exploitation of confirmation bias has led to polarization of opinion. Polarization causes “othering,” i.e., the consideration of people with a different opinion, preference or allegiance as not-people, and therefore not worthy of the same rights and treatment as “real people,” to use the populist parlance. In a polarized society with numerically more guns than people, a historical propensity to violence, a tendentious media, lax gun control, and an education system that does not prioritize critical thinking, this tenet might be considered something of a priority.

One alternative to cyber–anarcho–socialism is the status quo. But in this context, we might consider the question “how does a collectivity dispose of a ‘bad’ ruler?” The evaluation of “badness” might give consideration to any ruler lacking in legitimacy because of a broken or gerrymandered voting system; who has no respect for the triadic values of security, prosperity, and liberty for all, or for any other fundamental precondition of democratic governance; who tramples over mutual conventions, institutions, human rights, the public interest, the common good and civic dignity, while wilfully “othering” anyone who does not support him (it is usually a “him”). Lack of accountability leads to increasingly authoritarian and tyrannical behavior; and a continual lack of accountability leads them to act more recklessly and contemptuously until they do something so egregious that the mirror cracks and their true policies, personalities, and intentions are revealed. At this point, were they to get away with such behavior, there would subsequently be no stopping them. We are left with a choice between their incrimination or their revenge, and it is too late for anything else.