Were Pirates the First Anarchists? Possibly, Here’s Why:

It’s because although Anarchism as a modern political philosophy is believed to have started in the 18th century, the Golden Age of Piracy started around the mid-17th century.

If we can argue that pirates can accurately be described as Anarchists, then they may have been the first. Let’s take three main defining principles of Anarchism and see if pirates meet them. If they seem oversimplified, this is for the sake of brevity.

So then:

1. Anarchism rejects all authority/hierarchies: Pirates did this: most of them were mutineers or escaped criminals who had rejected the extremely hierarchical nature of society at the time, especially in colonies of the Americas and Africa, where most pirates lived.
2. Anarchism rejects the concept of the state: Pirates did this, they lived on their boats or on uncharted islands where they weren’t subjects to the laws of any land, and could live as free men.
3. Anarchists reject traditional forms of ownership: As Pierre-Joseph Prudhon argued ‘property is theft’: Pirates generally pillaged with abandon and had no respect for the ownership of what they took.

This is a loose argument, so let’s quickly examine some literature on the subject.

In his book, Pirate Utopias, Anarchist writer Lamborn Wilson speculated on historical accounts of secret islands where pirates met and networked and he argued they could have been early forms of autonomous proto-anarchist societies.

One, in particular, has even been written about — ‘Libertatia’ which was on what’s on Madagascar — however, it is unsure if it was fact or fiction, as the primary account of it was written by Captain Charles Johnson, who many believe to be a pseudonym of author Daniel Defoe. If true though, this is surely evidence that pirates were the first Anarchists.

Is the internet now a modern-day Libertatia? Are digital pirates surfing the seas of the algorithms, plundering states, with data and cryptocurrency instead of cannons and booty?