We unite against using the threat of violence to further our ends, but this fundamental moral commitment puts us at a disadvantage.

It Takes Courage to Change Our Relationship to Power

By Max Borders
Practicing Irish Democracy, satyagraha, and subversive innovation might seem too radical, but moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

The following is a chapter for Mike ter Maat’s new collection, A Gold New Deal ([link removed]) . The book represents ideas from the realistic to the radical, though there is a refreshingly heavy dose of pragmatism in its pages. I was delighted to contribute a chapter.

We unite against using the threat of violence to further our ends, but this fundamental moral commitment puts us at a disadvantage. Authorities are our adversaries because they are willing to compel us—or have their proxies do so—from seats of power.

Because most humans have a submission instinct, authorities derive their power from fear.

In Underthrow: Why Jefferson’s Dangerous Idea Will Spark a New Revolution ([link removed]) , I argue that we must do everything in our power to move toward a consent-based order—everything, that is, but threaten violence. Instead, we must practice what Gandhi called satyagraha, or “truth-force.” That means speaking up for what’s right with a full throat. And we must embrace clever, innovative means to change our relationship to power, which I call subversive innovation.

But these paths are not without risk.

Courage Despite Fear

To speak and act on behalf of human freedom requires tremendous courage.

If you successfully speak against the powerful, whether in justice or in jest, the powerful might make an example of you. Just ask Paul Hughes, an ordinary fellow who lost his decade-old social media account because he questioned the wet-market theory of COVID origins on the platform. Or journalist Matt Taibbi, who got an ominous visit by an IRS agent the day he testified before Congress about the federal government’s partisan weaponization. Ask Douglass Mackey, convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn of “Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.” Translation: Mackey posted satire against a partisan presidential candidate. Or ask members of the African People’s Socialist Party who face up to 10 years in prison for allegedly acting as illegal agents of Russia.

The First Amendment is moribund.

If you successfully act against the powerful, they might make an example of you. Just ask Ross Ulbricht, who used the dark web to circumvent the war on drugs, or President John F. Kennedy, who challenged the national-security state, or Julian Assange, who sits deteriorating in a British prison, awaiting possible extradition to the US for the crime of receiving sensitive government documents as any good journalist would do.

Changing our relationship to power takes courage.

Think about how the American Founders felt with their quills poised nervously over Jefferson’s Revolutionary Declaration. Courage, after all, is not the absence of fear but finding the will to take action despite your fear.

“Perhaps this then is the next step for our current societal governance,” writes Holacracy founder, Brian Robertson in a chapter of his book, Holacracy. The publishers excised that chapter. Let’s read a bit of this forbidden section:

Perhaps it’s time to allow the centralized power of current governments to give way and dissolve, and allow new methods of achieving order to emerge from the ashes—ones that don’t have legislators and regulators to buy, or the power to make aggression legal or peaceful exchange illegal. Ones that are themselves subject to the forces of evolution and selection based on the value they add, rather than holding themselves outside of that process as monopoly providers.

It’s no wonder Robertson’s publishers cut such language. Most are handmaidens to the powerful. Most are afraid, subservient, or both. Still, it’s time to let these top-heavy hierarchies buckle and sink into time’s dark waters.

Innovation as Subversion

In Underthrow, I argue that “we need a different kind of revolution.”...

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Read the rest of this article and others like it on our website ([link removed]) .

Max Borders is a Senior Advisor to The Advocates, you can find more of his work on Underthrow ([link removed]) .

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