Antimonopoly anarchism: breaking up states like monopolies

Antimonopoly anarchism holds that the world's biggest monopolists are not companies but countries themselves, and that the way out is to divide the world into ever smaller political units. Its author believes technology —robots, 3D printers and artificial intelligence— will allow people to live without large associations and return to moneyless exchange.

There is a way of understanding anarchism that has nothing to do with the chaos of «everyone does as they please». The version defended by the author of this argument starts from an uncomfortable observation: the world's biggest monopolists are not companies, they are countries. From there it builds a proposal it calls economic anarchism, or more precisely, antimonopoly anarchism.

## The monopoly that never makes the headlines

When monopolies are discussed, attention turns to Big Tech, pharmaceutical companies or banks. But the reasoning here is different: a country is, by definition, a monopoly over a territory, over its currency, over its laws and over the use of force within its borders. It does not compete with other countries on equal terms at home: it simply sets the rules.

That does not miccionan states are neutral toward private monopolies. According to this thesis, countries decide which monopolies suit them and which do not. They keep the useful ones and eliminate the rest. The fight against monopolies announced by governments would, from this point of view, be hypocrisy: the state is not outside the game, it sits at the top.

The argument rests on a broader idea: the most important thing in the world is money, and everything is done for money. Ideas, positions, plans, development, religions. All of that would work as fiction to make money. But that is only true, the author points out, when we are talking about a monopoly, not a single person. The problem with today's world, he says, is that everyone aspires to a monopoly.

## The jungle among predators

If monopolies compete with one another, the competition bears no resemblance to a neighborhood market. To survive among monopolies, a monopoly must be cruel; otherwise the others will absorb it. Relations between monopolies are like competition between predators in the jungle.

Here lies the problem the author considers unsolvable: even if a monopolist wants to build a good and honest monopoly, he and his monopoly will have to be cruel and, therefore, will end up no different from the rest. Structure triumphs over intentions.

There is a second limit, one that has to do with time. A person lives, on average, about 60 years. Then they must leave an heir among their children or designate a successor among their disciples. The greatest unsolved problem in our world, he argues, is that it is impossible to guarantee that a good person can be raised. Likewise, a system in which people reliably choose a good person is impossible. Moreover, whoever runs everything is almost never a single ruler: it is usually managed by rich heirs or successors of someone who was once rich. All of this applies equally to countries and large corporations.

## From bread to robots: why scale is no longer mandatory

There is an argument against anarchism that seems very solid: the union of people into societies began already in antiquity. The example of bread illustrates it. People sowed wheat in the fields, ground the grain into flour and baked bread from the flour. Making bread required many people, and those people had to join together. That is how villages and cities arose. The drawback is that the first great battles and slavery arose too. All of that, to this day, has not ended.

But the world is changing. In our era there are robots, 3D printers, the internet and artificial intelligence. Now all people need is to own their own field, where AI-powered robots will work; then they will grind the grain into flour and bake the bread. It is no joke, he says: there are AI-driven automatic tractors, AI machines to grind grain into flour, and AI ovens. Even ASML has been beaten, because Canon has now invented a new method, he notes.

On that material basis, the author believes that in the future people will be able to work without large associations and even return to moneyless exchange, which is so criticized today. Moneyless exchange, he affirms, is far better than any currency. The very attempt to abandon currencies through cryptocurrencies showed that people dislike currencies, but cryptocurrencies did not help, whereas moneyless exchange, he believes, will. In the vast system of money circulation, no one can determine exactly where money goes and where it comes from, yet many are convinced that a colossal theft exists.

## Small countries, states, communities and nuclear weapons

The political proposal is successive division. The best thing the world can do is split into small countries, and divide those countries into states. And divide the cities of those states into neighborhood communities. The unit of reference is not the nation or the trade bloc, but the neighborhood community.

On war, the author makes a prediction that depends on no one's goodwill. In the future absolutely every country in the world will have nuclear weapons, and then, most likely, there will be hardly any combat. The process by which all the world's countries acquire nuclear weapons has already begun. It is not that countries are aggressive, but that they simply do not trust one another. Countries do not need nuclear weapons to attack, but to defend themselves.

The underlying idea is anthropological: people, in general, are not made for supersociality or for large associations. That, he argues, would be an idea deliberately imposed on people by the great monopolists. Antimonopoly anarchism does not propose eliminating all organization, but reducing the scale until no organization can behave like a predator without the others noticing.