In this essay, we describe the psychological worldview of Marxism in relation to Bitcoin culture.
In a previous essay, we touched on Marxism being a “revolutionary” worldview. What does revolutionary actually mean in this context? After all, there are just revolutions in response to tyranny. We need to be careful not to conflate the phenomena of revolutions per se with the individual psychology of a revolutionary Marxist. The pursuit of, or return to, Freedom should not be conflated with the motivation of personal pride.
Bitcoin’s Revolution vs. Marxism
Bitcoin is a revolution of the former: circumventing and replacing a tyrannical and corrupt banking structure built on abuse of the participants. How do we know? Because Satoshi walked away.
Marxism is an outgrowth of a narcissistic worldview. It is through a life of dissatisfaction, envy, or feelings of resentment that this person nurses the idea that it would be better to change everything that is.
Marxist View of Reality
Reality is too restrictive and oppressive. The alluring and childlike desire to live in an imaginary world of your making requires everyone else to live in it with you. Children are the most harmless example of the phenomenon, as children and their nature are as they should be. Marxism is infantile.
Youthful Ambition and Temptation
A young person, early in their career, joins an important firm and feels that urge to distinguish or prove themselves. It’s only natural, after all, they have a career to build. Solutions seem so simple, and all it would take to get recognized and build a body of work is turning (inverting) the founding values of the organization on their head.
Understandable, even forgivable, because there’s no one that has not felt this temptation in youth. Adults with wisdom to see the error step in and mentor a revolutionary youth until life experience can show them that “progress” is an illusion in the absolute sense. There are only trade-offs
Mary Harrington (@moveincircles) is worth a follow if you find that idea interesting.
Modernity and Fiat Culture
When we’re young, new experiences, ideas, technologies, and features carry with them a self-justification because their novelty tickles the senses and amuses. New = Good, Old = Boring.
In fact, our entire Global culture is captured by this convention of modernity: AND IS THE RESULT OF FIAT ECONOMIES.
- I must buy the “new” phone because it has the “new” feature –> Therefore, an Economy based on producing ever derivative products with obsolescence as the goal.
- Classical art is “boring” it has no “originality”. –> Therefore popular culture producing ever degenerate material for shock value.
- Bitcoin is “useless” it has no “utility”. –> Therefore the desire to include more data, economic reports, JPEGs, GIFs, videos and NFTS, porn.
Saifedean’s Critique of Fiat Art
Saifedean put it so well in his book:
“In the era of unsound money, no artist has the low time preference to work as hard or as long as Michelangelo or Bach to learn their craft properly or spend any significant amount of time perfecting it. A stroll through a modern art gallery shows artistic works whose production requires no more effort or talent than can be mustered by a bored 6‐year‐old. Modern artists have replaced craft and long hours of practice with pretentiousness, shock value, indignation, and existential angst as ways to cow audiences into appreciating their art, and often added some pretense to political ideals, usually of the puerile Marxist variety, to pretend‐play profundity.”
Fiat Brain and Marxist Mindset
This is the Fiat brain default state. This is the addict’s need for immediate gratification. This is the juvenile’s desire to be ‘different’. This is the short-term preference of value. This IS the insistent and selfish world of the Revolutionary Marxist.
The adult iteration takes a far more sinister path…
Progress as a Weapon
If the aforementioned young professional lacks proper mentorship and is allowed to successfully implement their revolutionary agenda, they learn the lesson that “all change is good change”.
Their desire for progress becomes totalizing, and is the lens through which they see all of reality… if it worked in the micro, why not use it in the macro?
They then turn PROGRESS as a weapon against the social layers of law.
Attacking Social Norms
Most things we do in life don’t require laws. There is no law that states that I should treat my friends well. There is no law that states I shouldn’t sit down in an elevator. There is no law that states I should have to bathe. But these are norms that we enforce at the social layer because in a strong culture, that is the only place we should have to.
This “law of the social layer” is where the adult Marxist attacks. Why? Because no law exists to stop them, and no normal person spends their time policing the unconscious day-to-day norms and relationships that we all take for granted…Unless you’re obsessed like me 🙂
Marxist View of the Body
To the scientist, the human body is a technical biological marvel worthy of admiration for its complexity. To the religious, the body is a sacred icon of its creator, worthy of care and respect. But to the Marxist, the human body is viewed as a prison in which we are forced to experience suffering, disease, disabilities, aging, or physiological and biological restrictions, and the ultimate insult: Death.
They ask, “Should we not have full mastery over the human body? Let us change it to be the “new man” recreated perfectly in its own reflection.
Transhumanism and Fiat Marxism
The pipeline from BBLs and leg extensions to cybernetic implants is, of course, only logical from the revolutionary worldview. And the Fiat addict wants the new radical body augmentation, the latest pharmaceutical, the premium subscription brain chip without midroll ads!
Transhumanism is only the modern regurgitation of far older ideas. Are you truly a man or a woman? Or is it simply the body you are imprisoned in? Creation is simply not good enough and would be better shaped by anyone other than the creator.
Fiat Theology
Marxism is not a political worldview; it is a theological worldview. At this point, the reader should roll their eyes
and accuse me of making this a “religious issue”. But I’ll provide you with the opening words and dedication to Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” It is the seminal handbook for Marxist political movements since 1971:
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins—or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.”
Lucifer, Marx, and Satoshi
I’m not asking you to be religious, nor am I trying to prove any supernatural aspect. I’m showing you that there are a limited set of human conditions, and for each of them, there is a classical story that has been used to educate, inspire, warn, or protect us during the few years each of us has on this earth.
Lucifer judges creation and its creator as insufficient and takes it upon himself to replace God and INVERT reality to his own designs. Marx took direct inspiration from this act and created Marxism. Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” honors this tradition and continues the PROGRESSIVE, universal and PERMANENT revolution of Marxism.
Satoshi created Bitcoin, an economic Revolution overturning centuries of tyranny and corruption, saw that his creation was good, and then he left.
Bitcoin’s Culture vs. Marxist Progress
Satoshi’s sacrificial act terminated the revolution within its intended boundaries, instilling cultural laws and ethics into the social layer of Bitcoin. This is a culture not of perpetual innovation or technological progress, but one thing only: Uncorruptible sound money.
In my last essay, I described ways that Marxists attack institutions, but for now focus on these two:
- The founders
and,
- Identity/Culture.
To them, Bitcoin is not sound money; it is a tool of power and revolution to forward PROGRESS and shape the world.
So you see, to the Marxist… Satoshi Must Fall. Creation and its creator are simply not good enough, lacking, restrictive, unimaginative, unfair, and a new Creator must continue the work.
I can smell it.
“You see Satoshi did not create the 21 million limit… you see that was a bug… it had to be patched… The Creator erred.”
So I put the question to you as you’re reading this: Does Bitcoin have a culture worth conserving? How much of what makes Bitcoin ‘Uncorruptible sound money’ exists at the level of hard code, and how much of it is governed by unwritten culture, and relationships between node runners, miners, plebs, and devs?
The Boomers will die, and then Gen X and so on.
Marxism is never defeated. It shifts and moves to infect a new host, and all ground not held will be taken in the name of permanent PROGRESS.