The early internet was a capitalism-free zone. If anything, it seemed like an homage to Soviet Gosplan – the State Planning Committee whose job was to replace the market mechanism: a centrally designed, state-owned, non-commercial network. At the same time, it featured elements of early liberalism, even tributes to what I call ‘anarcho-syndicalism’: a network without hierarchy, it relied on horizontal decision-making and mutual gift exchange, not market exchanges.
