The Pirate Organization: Lessons From the Fringes of Capitalism (15 page)

Second, the increasing contribution of private capital to such expansion efforts strengthens the position of organizations of the milieu, but it also strengthens those on the fringes, both pirate and corsair. The normalization of exchanges as implemented by new coalitions involving multiple states and organizations is therefore embarking on a new phase for which the definitions of property, responsibility, and legitimate profit are still in the works. Organizations such as Celera are competing directly with the sovereign states regarding technological breakthroughs. With every advance, they are questioning the current capitalistic code of property. They contribute to normalizing the gray areas, fighting fiercely for their cause as pirates or accepting a letter of marque from the sovereign to continue their research as corsairs. Today, the terms and conditions for the codes concerning legitimate property are waiting to be defined—or codefined by these new coalitions.

Moreover, to achieve its expansion over the partially uncharted biogenetic and extraterrestrial territories, the state must normalize increasingly specialized and delocalized competences to successfully maintain its control and prevent temporary social structures from being established to its detriment—and to the detriment of the societies from which it stems. The problem here is that the ideals upon which the nation-state system has been premised over the last centuries may not fit the needs of such ambitious expansion plans. On whose behalf can the Human Genome Project or a multinational mission to the Moon be implemented, and with what official purpose? Because the will of “the people” can only be expressed within the current geopolitical system at the nation-state level, and typically in the name of democracy, who is to validate future expansion plans designed beyond the traditional boundaries of the Westphalian sovereign state? If governments cannot resolve this dilemma anytime soon, pirate organizations may just end up preempting the territories that sovereigns are leaving behind because of their inability to update the now archaic nation-state system.

Pirate organizations seem to be more ready than most states to switch their attention to the transnational level. WikiLeaks and Anonymous, just like the sea pirates of the seventeenth century, claim to serve a purpose that goes beyond the idiosyncratic needs and wishes of any particular sovereign state. In fact, pirate organizations have almost always operated above and beyond the boundaries of the Westphalian nation-state system. From an evolutionary perspective, they may well enjoy a competitive edge over the sovereigns as normalization becomes essentially a transnational process.

Finally, this puts into question the symbiotic relationship between the state and capitalism. Powerful organizations of the milieu—Google and Amazon in cyberspace, CVI and Monsanto in biogenetic territory—and probably pirate organizations from the fringes as well represent the most powerful driver of change, as global capitalism ceases to be a sovereign-centric network and morphs into something else.

Chapter Fourteen

THE FUTURE OF THE CAPITALIST STATE

The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Nature’s secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state as the only condition in which the capacities of mankind can be fully developed, and also bring forth that external relation among states which is perfectly adequate to this end
.

—Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” 8th Proposal, 1784

The sovereign state for nearly four centuries fought against the pirate organization, which contested territorial expansion and the normalization of trade. Today, sovereign states are caught between the pirate organization and a series of metasovereign organizations with wide-reaching normative capabilities, impressive overcoding power, and a reservoir of monetary and human capital.

The idea of sovereignty is in the process of changing as the number of multinational organizations grows. Some are politico-legal, like the UN or the European Union, which extend their influence to an ever-increasing number of areas and seek the emergence of regional and international metasovereignties. Others are economic, such as financial markets that trade more and more assets and increasingly sophisticated derivatives. Others, such as banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds, impinge on state sovereignty by using the debt of struggling companies and governments as their currency. The bankruptcy of Iceland and Greece (and possibly Spain and Portugal) and the attempt at a resolution for the euro monetary crisis through the involvement of private debt holders illustrate this new landscape.

In this turbulent era, certain states have already chosen their camp. The Bahamian archipelago, as part of a de facto alliance with the pirate organization, is host to, for example, Clonaid-style semiclandestine laboratories, money-laundering establishments, “sensitive” computer servers, and so forth. Iceland has overtly teamed up with WikiLeaks to design a series of thirteen laws under the Iceland Modern Media Initiative, whose goal is to turn Iceland into a haven for the freedom of speech, expression, and information. This partnership between the state and the pirate organization began soon after an Icelandic news channel was pressured into not covering the publication of a local bank’s loan book, which was obtained by WikiLeaks. Other states are seeking to attract the finance world in order to accelerate economic deterritorialization and dematerialization rather than being subjected to it. Yet others, such as the member states of the Eurogroup, come together in a metasovereign structure—which gives rise to a whole range of institutional problems in the event of a financial crisis like the one Greece has had to go through since 2010. Instead of public debt crises, the total independence claimed by certain organizations is the greatest risk facing the sovereign state and its four-century-long marriage with capitalism.

Sealand: A Pirate Sovereignty?

As early as 1966, a former British soldier turned pirate radio DJ decided to challenge the limits of sovereignty. He took possession of a fort that had been abandoned after the Second World War in international waters, off the English coast. Skillfully exploiting the noble idea of the right of nations to self-determination, he renamed the fort Sealand and declared its independence. Then he started calling himself Prince Roy and made his intention clear: “Sealand was founded on the principle that any group of people dissatisfied with the oppressive laws and restrictions of existing nation states may declare independence in any place not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity.”
¹

Prince Roy quickly created a state company that oversaw all Sealand affairs: the issuing of passports, granting of visas, printing of bank notes in Sealand currency, and development of the local economy. Regarding this last point, business is going rather well. Sealand attracts all sorts of businesspeople who are looking to conceal activities that are considered illegal in other parts of the world. HavenCo developed discreet hosting activities in Sealand for computer servers storing illicit content, especially content associated with online gambling, tax evasion, or sharing copyrighted files. For about forty euros, anyone can become a citizen of Sealand and receive official documents that are issued by the Sealand administration. Newcomers can choose between two noble titles: lord or baron. For an additional twenty euros, you can become a premium citizen and receive a citizenship title autographed by Prince Roy himself. Sealand is a libertarian sovereign state that sells its privileges and segments the citizenship market.

The State versus the Pirate Organization: What Vessel for Capitalistic Expansion?

The extreme case of Sealand raises a simple question: can sovereignty one day become the subject of capitalist deterritorialization? After all, peasants left their native soil to work in factories, and the feudal system yielded to the central state. Massive shifts have happened in the past and more are to be expected. Could capitalism unfold within a radically different system—one that would not be centered around the nation-state? Could non–state organizations grant some form of citizenship to individuals? Being prouder of one’s company than of one’s country? Defining one’s identity as a member of an organization before being Greek or American or British? Even if nationality does not officially have a price, everyone knows that certain stolen passports are worth more than others on the black market. This is also true of sovereign territory. Conquering, mapping, and normalizing territory is a long, difficult, and costly process for the state. So why not sell or lease parts of it to a separatist movement or value-creating organization in order to recoup the cost—why not make sovereign territory a tradable good?

It may sound crazy now, but these types of transactions happened in the past. Islands in the East Indies were sometimes purchased or exchanged between European sovereigns. In 1674, the Dutch gave away Manhattan Island to the English as part of the Treaty of Westminster, in exchange for the guarantee that Suriname would remain Dutch. The British South Africa Company, established in 1889 by Cecil Rhodes, had the same prerogatives as a sovereign state over the British colony named Rhodesia. The company was authorized to sign treaties with neighboring powers, to own and trade land, and to maintain an army and a police force.

Early in 2010, for unclear reasons, Kazakhstan signed an agreement to lease nearly a million hectares of its territory to China. Opponents denounced the lease as a violation of the country’s sovereignty, taking their discontentment to the streets and carrying signs reading
THE DESTINY OF THE LAND IS THE DESTINY OF THE NATION
and
KAZAKH LAND IS OUR LAND
. The Kazakh president pretended not to understand what could possibly be wrong with his move—really, why shouldn’t he lease this unproductive piece of land to businesspeople willing to pay a high rent for it?

It is not hard to imagine ways in which capitalism could become increasingly independent from the sovereign state. Capitalism could seek out a coupling with other semistable organizational forms to pursue new territories, to assemble flows of capital and labor in new ways, or to normalize new trading activities. Portions of sovereign territories could also be deterritorialized and connected to flows of resources held by private organizations, leading to the creation of “franchises” within the sovereign state. Which organizations would be in the best position to overcode the flows currently controlled by the state? Would it be organizations of the milieu, which influence norms of exchange in order to achieve a symbiosis with the state divested of its prerogatives? Or pirate organizations, which would move from the fringes to the inside of known territories to spread the pirate code? Put simply, who should we trust more to defend our rights as “netizens”? Homeland Security, Google, or Anonymous?

Answering these questions is far from easy. Immanuel Kant believed that there could be harmony among the sovereign states, as stated in the epigraph at the beginning of the chapter. Yet, the state form itself is not a steadfast and immutable entity. What about the pirate organization? Even though it does not assert itself in the long term as an alternative to the sovereign state, the pirate organization does successfully participate in the development of capitalism. What does this mean? Historically, the pirate organization spreads certain normative patterns that are replicated and incorporated into capitalism, either as alterations or in their original form. In the end, these variations change the structure of capitalism in a largely unforeseeable way. By bringing about mutations in the sovereign code, the pirate organization modifies the direction of capitalism’s future.

Again and again, capitalism joins together deterritorialized flows. It recombines and transforms what currently exists. There is a sharp distinction, however, between current pirate organizations and the pirate organizations of yore. The latter did not fundamentally modify the substratum of flows being combined and recombined. Today’s and tomorrow’s pirate and corsair organizations have the potential to make such changes. As they tinker with DNA, biopirates could alter the very abilities of human beings, not only in their physical dimension but also at a cognitive level. This will force us, in the future, to clearly define what we mean by
humanity
if we want that notion to remain the referent for determining the legitimacy of territorial control. Today’s pirates can force sovereigns to withdraw unwanted bills such as the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), rejected by a large majority at the European Parliament in July 2012, following waves of street protest in various European countries. Maybe more than ever, pirate organizations have the power to alter the capitalistic code. They are legions.

The crucial question is whether capitalism itself has a transcendental limit to its own progression, to exploiting resources and combining deterritorialized flows. Indeed, nothing guarantees that the sovereign state will indefinitely maintain its stranglehold over capitalist expansion, the conquest of new territories, and the normalization of flows. Can organizations of the milieu be a vector of transnational changes and a new vehicle of capitalist expansion? Can other powerful organizations from the fringes, such as the pirate organization, bring the public cause of humanity to a higher level than the sovereign state can?

Chapter Fifteen

CONCLUSION:
To the Fringes and Back

One of the ironies about modern situations is that we would have to retroactively prohibit everything that we risked to make them happen
.

—Sloterdijk,
Crystal Palace