What is the role of the individual in bringing about social change? How does crypto help the common man to achieve independence from a ruling class? The former question is what Karl Marx addresses in his "Part 2" of the Communist Manifesto, while the latter question is what I have derived as the leading focus, or thesis if you will, of cryptocurrency as related to Part 2. Reading this classic has helped me to view the social dynamics that led to populist 20th century uprisings around the globe, as well as having more clearly defined labor, fiat currencies, and cryptocurrencies as a social force, with the latter having the potential to liberate entire nations and preserve the fruits of one's own labors as an immutable and non-devaluated property through crypto.
Through this article, I do not endorse any political or social ideologies, but rather provide this as education for a 21st century audience.
"All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this [appropriation of wages], under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it."
In this sense, cryptocurrency is a strong tool to "do away with", as Marx put it, the appropriation of wages necessary to sustain a bare minimum of existence. There are two parts to this idea: FIRST is that, once a person owns crypto, the amount of crypto proper does not increase depending on how much work or lack of work the owner does. This is because the value of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin rises or falls based on, primarily, public trust in the network. The value of crypto is not pegged to labor, and hence, can not be used by the bourgeois as a means to guarantee a fixed amount of income into the hands of the proletariat, which Marx's assumption is that this fixed amount (presumably in fiat) is pretty much the bare minimum to stay alive and keep working to gain more profit (capital) for the bourgeois. To put this in a rather humorous, fictional example: if I worked for one week gathering lumber, and on Friday was paid for all my work in Bitcoin, which amounted to about 100 dollars worth (.009515 BTC at the time of writing). I go to bed, and wake up the next morning to a +50% bull run. Theoretically, I could tell my boss that, no thank you, I will not be going to work the next few days, as my Bitcoin has provided value for 3-4 days worth of work. This is how Bitcoin and crypto "do away" with the appropriation of wages that keep the proletariat reliant on the bourgeois. SECOND is that the fluctuating nature of Bitcoin and crypto does not permit manipulation via growth of assets to the proletariat elite. The decentralized nature of Bitcoin, along with the feature of fluctuating value, puts a check on the power of the bourgeois to tip the monetary scales in their favor. For example: if a merchant and his team of workers yield labor for a monetary value in Bitcoin, the team of, let's say 10, will be entitled to about 66% of that value (arbitrary estimation) while the merchant keeps the rest. The workers can team up, sell their collective 66% of Bitcoin, thereby devaluing the sell price of Bitcoin, while locking in their value in fiat, while the merchant loses value on his 34%.
"From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital... you say, individuality vanishes... by 'individual' you mean no other person than the bourgeois..."
In the scope of cryptocurrency, there technically is no "individuality", other than the wallet address you are assigned to store your crypto. This is akin to the physical unit of Earth where you go about your day to day existence, but the part where you stand, walk, sleep, and work on is not part of "you" it is just part of the physical matrix which hosts you (just as the wallet is not part of your crypto, it's just where the crypto is hosted. the important part is not really the wallet, it's the crypto inside it.) By utilizing the grassroots means of producing more crypto (a.k.a mining), your crypto can grow in value without it being assigned the value by a central authority. Nobody is there to negotiate and tell you, "today your mining power yields X amount", while in another place the same power is equal to Y. A distinctive feature of the crypto system is that it governs itself (halvings, validations, Proof of Stake protocols, etc). In the sense of "individuality" vanishing, it's not to say that everyone gets a neutral appearance, same clothing, talking in a monotized voice, but rather that the governing authority, who dictates value and assigns arbitrary value to the people they see fit, is no longer there. Instead the value is determined through the nature of the system itself, which keeps it fair for everyone and doesn't play favorites (real life parallel: by hunting twenty pounds game to feed your family & trading two pound of this meat for a couple bars of soap, rather than buying both the soap and the meat and having to rely on the particular store to provide best prices. crypto parallel: mining operations are straight forward & the cryptocurrency prices determined by public trust, supply and demand, and functionality). Just to lock-in the idea, another quote by Marx, "Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations."
"The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got."
Bitcoin when held as more that just an investment to be traded interchangeably with fiat, can take on the meaning as an entity. In other words, it is a piece of code that acts as a representative of your labor, in the sense that it stores value (not just creating, as would be the case with trading), and not a mere disposable product of labor itself. Fiat money itself can be seen as a store of value or a mere disposable product of labor, but at the same time, it is a less reliable store of value due to inflation. In this sense, Bitcoin can be likened to gold as a store of value that doesn't decrease over time. If your labor yesterday earned you 50 grams of gold, it is still the same 10 years from now as it was today. In the sense of having "no country", there are many dimentions of cryptocurrency that could be correlated with this statement, first things first, Bitcoin is an effective trans-national payments that is not subject to taxation and laws regarding its regulation such as trying to fly with more than $10,000 on your person. Furthermore, if I take 3000 USD on a one-month vacation to Vietnam, eventually I will have to exchange those dollars into Vietnamese Dong, as the dollar is not the national currency, and would be difficult to make peer to peer transactions with this nationally endorsed currency (which in this case is different from the country of the merchant or transactor). With cryptocurrency, the merchant very well could take a Bitcoin payment (provided they are technologically prepared and familiar with these payments). Furthermore, one could say that having to exchange USD into BTC, and BTC back into Dong is a fault in this logic due to the exchange rates. This only holds true if you are using cryptocurrency as a source of fiat, which would take us back to using cryptocurrency as a disposable product of labor, where in this case the situation not apply, as we are seeing it as a undefined but measurable store of value. Aside from cryptocurrency not being subject to the laws and conventional uses of currency, as denominated by a nation, cryptocurrency also serves well to by-pass censorship and centralization. There are many cases of this happening in modern world governments, such as in India and Venezuela, where political turmoil and actual, straight up attempts to manipulate the currency have led to severe drops in the value of those currencies, and consequently inflation. Cryptocurrency is immune to that, due to the fact that at this point there are just so many different types that even if one were to somehow fall into the hands of a centralized bad actor, that cryptocurrency's value would drop so fast and people would remain away from it (due to lack of trust) such that the power of the bad actor is limited. Furthermore, just wielding enough computational power to hijack an entire network of cryptocurrency would be an impossible feat.
Marx himself alluded to these points later in the text, by saying "the supremacy of the proletariat will cause [the ruling class power] to vanish still faster." In other words, who cares if I'm paying in a nationally denominated currency like the dollar or Vietnamese Dong? Not the transactee or transactor, because cryptocurrency accomodates a universal payment. Who cares if a centralized malicious power is in control of one cryptocurrency network? Not the subjects to the network as they can easily exchange their bad crypto for another, or at least hold on to what they do have knowing it can not be forcibly taken or quantitatively diminished.
Aaaand just for good measure, I will end with a final quote that directly parallels the revolutionary nature of DeFi cryptocurrency in 2020.
"When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keep even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence."
This speaks volumes and can be directly paralleled to the fast-growing DeFi economy. There was an (article on PUBLISH0X itself where somebody explained how big finance is trying to paint Bitcoin as a money laundering scheme, even though the main accuser and their cronies had proven and documented instances of shady tactics and business with bad actors. This is because the DeFi system and its break-neck speed development is seen as a threat to the traditional banking system, which furthermore, has been created as an inevitable consequence of the concentration of power despite gaping flaws in the current financial system, as well as the general mood of elites to impose this system despite the flaws and inconveniences to the common man. In my personal case, the only purpose of my bank account is to serve as a bridge between getting paid from my job and putting my money into crypto (disclaimer: this strategy is not recommended for any crypto investor who has barely started).
Thanks to all who support Publish0x and the free exchange of ideas, particularly in regards to crypto education. We are the current champions of this social force, and the pioneers of the future with mass adoption!
