About a decade ago The Third Industrial Revolution was published, and a few years later The Zero Marginal Cost Society came out by the same author, from a mainstream and politically moderate economist who advises the EU and German government, making very radical predictions such as moving to a society without money as a result of industrial development. During the same decade, The Homebrew Industrial Revolution and Postcapitalism came out as well, by Kevin Carson and Paul Mason with a similar analysis, the former articulated a political economy of independent backyard manufacturing while the latter called for a ‘radical social democracy’. All three of them have independently reached similar conclusions, that the price signal under capitalist markets will eventually wither away to some more complex decision making for coordination. However, they diverge on what it would be replaced by, from a strong welfare state to socialist planned economy, or barter and local currency exchange. 

Politically, the Green New Deal seems the most likely candidate, not as a result of its objective merit, but because it is the easiest to implement with the existing framework of liberal democracy. When a moment of crisis rises, such a program will be the point of least resistance to implement, in other words, a modern reboot of social democracy. While such a plan will very likely uplift millions out of poverty and improve living conditions for many, it also functions as a crude patch and avoids questioning the legitimacy of many existing social institutions. To show how things can head in the wrong direction, the original New Deal created the social safety net, which today translates to a stock market being two thirds owned by pensions, so the workers have ‘won’ by being the legal owner of the means of production, but as a result of structural layers across the economy, they still function as a property-less class when it comes to negotiating with their employer, and financial institutions use their own pensions as leverage against them and to the benefit of minority investors in a housing crises.

What seems to be gone from today’s labor rank and file organizers, is that labor organizations do not last more than a few generations until they become ineffective. From guilds as an association of independent artisans, to craft unions organizing skilled wage laborers along skill lines, until employers managed to nullify their bargaining power by introducing the assembly line and replace them with unskilled workers. Which left the room for the industrial union to form organizing along class lines and was later out maneuvered with global logistics and supply chains, making capital more mobile than labor.  Just like syndicalism was a force to be reckoned with in the inter-war period, eventually the political economy adapts to avoid friction. The labor movement has always been aware that the organization isn’t supposed to be the end on its own, but a transition vehicle to a better society, but the act of transition has been understood as something far in the distant future, such as a general strike, or winning electoral seats by a socialist party. Rarely has it been seen as something to be done in the here and now. 

The idea of envisioning a society with realistic material abundance isn’t necessarily new, it can be traced back at least to Bookchin’s Post-Scarcity Anarchism in 1971. Since the 60s in North America it became physically feasible to have a society with enough surplus going around to pass the necessary threshold to distribute resources without relying on price signals and splitting hairs with quid pro quo social relations. What has been changing since then, is with each decade passing by, the barriers of entry get lower and lower to have such a society until eventually it becomes hard to avoid. Today, it is possible to build a neighborhood with 90% self sufficiency in energy, and given the price of solar that is projected to grow at 16% annually in terms kilowatt hours purchased per dollar, not only is self sufficiency is around the corner, but the entire stack will keep declining in cost adding more surplus energy every year to be distributed according to need and not for exchange. The same can be said with manufacturing, with compute doubling every two years advances in robotics follow suit leading to similar exponential growth rates and ever declining cost of producing goods, to eventually be cheap enough where social relations outside exchange and distribute goods in a way that favors needs becomes more feasible.

While a post-scarcity society isn’t fully here for every single good and service, it has been feasible for many fundamental needs, such as food, water, shelter, and basic energy. The reason that we don’t live in a society where some fundamentals are distributed based on need where possible and the remaining resources are left to be distributed by the market — whether capitalist or not —  is in of itself a collective action problem that needs to be solved. Markets don’t seem to be useful for such coordination, but they can help lower the cost of goods drastically enough to be solved by non-market collective action bodies. The most obvious non-market collective action body is the state, and assuming the state is democratic, it has its own overhead costs in terms of actually getting whatever action to be considered to be on the ballot box, plus the need for a majority to take the simplest action. What remains outside the state and market is admittedly much smaller, from civil society associations and community institutions, most are special interest groups related to a religious group or ethno-linguistic community and aren’t meant for mass organization, the ones that remain are political parties working outside electoralism and labor unions.

There doesn’t seem to be many political parties formed explicitly along anti-electoral lines beyond the Bolsheviks, and even that is questionable. And the ones that do exist, tend to end up being political organizations formed as labor organizations. Labor unions, when not busy negotiating with employers, can also serve useful with ‘internal economic calculations’ for their members, such as having their own insurance or credit union. While currently unions don’t coordinate resources as effectively as they could, historically there was a period where the Knights of Labor had within its structure producer and consumer cooperatives to provide essential services for its members. Such services and coordination is exactly what is missing from the modern labor movement to manage the transition into full or relative post-scarcity.

The labor movement is not only fit as a mass organization to be the coordinating body for a post-exchange political economy, but also situated such that it can leverage itself to be the main organ to build and sustain the transition, while still improving working conditions under legacy institutions, where each dollar gained by labor increases the operating costs, which in turn makes more alternatives viable.  One of the more brutal conditions of capitalism has been the company town and the company store, where the money given in wages goes back as sales in goods and rent, this ‘circular economy’ isn’t exclusive to capital per se and can be flipped by labor, such as demanding the company to fund and build the neighborhood energy grid on the company dime, and have a contract that dictates the company purchases a fixed percentage of its goods from community cooperatives. This isn’t to say that the coordination problem has been solved, far from it as price signals are still the primary method of organizing, but what has been solved is the coordination of opening up a pipeline of resources from the old political economy to its successor. What comes afterward is a transition period with experimentation until the optimal method is found without relying on price signals. To use the example of energy again, should the distribution be minimum quotas for all and the surplus be up for grabs, or should there be a measurement where those who consume the most will be queued to be unplugged the first when energy is in need, in order to create the incentive to be considerate? Many of these methods will be developed one by one to solve each class of resources at a time, dropping the need to rely on price signals one at a time, but what this requires is the right environment with enough material abundance. As such, having resources flowing from the old political economy is necessary.

Out of the Cybernetic Socialism literature, one text stands out as the most libertarian, Information Technology and Socialist Construction, it reads mostly like a text from De Leon or council communism. It still relies too much on worker council democracy and hierarchy to coordinate, but at least it shows that it’s possible to have a planned economy without a central state controlling everything and being driven by labor, by having worker councils openly advertise their needs and ability, a model is built to coordinate the optimal method, even if the trade off is that it treats worker councils as the main organ in society, not the individual worker. When Rudolf Rocker coined anarcho-syndicalism, he took existing syndicalism as worker praxis into a political program and the union as a vehicle to build an anarchist society, and such a praxis has been useful in implementing the biggest anarchist social experiment during the Spanish civil war. If we want to solve the collective action problem, something similar has to happen, a labor movement that gradually solves the distribution problem, one class of resources at a time. While still raising the ceiling for wage laborers in a steady state transition. As the Wobbly tradition goes, to build a new world in the shell of the old.

Mutual Exchange is C4SS’s goal in two senses: We favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to C4SS’s audience.

Online symposiums will include essays by a diverse range of writers presenting and debating their views on a variety of interrelated and overlapping topics, tied together by the overarching monthly theme. C4SS is extremely interested in feedback from our readers. Suggestions and comments are enthusiastically encouraged. If you’re interested in proposing topics and/or authors for our program to pursue, or if you’re interested in participating yourself, please email editor@c4ss.org or emmibevensee@email.arizona.edu.

There’s an eerie familiarity to the stay-at-home orders issued during COVID-19. I can’t help but relate this to my experience as an 11 year old during the month-long curfew after the communal riots of Bombay. 

Growing up in India, communal life dominated our lives. While the state functioned along the lines of rigid, monopolistic, soviet-socialist principles, life on a daily basis was steeped in genuine cultural diversity. There was a vibrancy and multi-dimensionality to everything around me, ranging from the arts, to food, to philosophies. I grew up familiar with five languages (not dialects) without realising that it was not a common feature of most people’s lives.

But the riots brought an ugly side of community life to the fore. I still recall peeking through the window (when I was specifically warned not to) to watch one religious community wreck the homes of neighbours from another community. I wondered why they would do this to each other after spending generations co-existing. To me, it highlighted the vulnerability in relying on one another. 

This came at a pivotal moment in India’s journey. The 90’s were marked by the country’s long awaited leap into globalisation. As we opened borders for trade, we were invited to join in on the neoliberal trend that was gripping the world. The bargain was simple: if we were willing to trade in (or mute) our messy cultural identities, we could participate in the hyper- efficient, frictionless flow of capital and labour across the globe.  We could free ourselves from the menace of tribalism and join the postmodern, FRIENDS-watching, Michael-Jordan-adoring monoculture. The world was flat, and so were our identities.

But we’ve always known that the bargain would catch up with us. Nowhere has this been more apparent than with COVID-19 marking the inevitable collapse of Neoliberalism. Being confined to my home in Singapore, I’m reminded of the curfew back in Bombay. While the riots sparked a move towards homogeneous centralisation, this crisis seems to be begging us to return to a more wholesome cultural expression. 

It might be that the principles of Gram Swaraj,¹ a movement built by Gandhi during India’s Independence struggle hold the key to rebuilding decentralised organising capacities. 

The movement was built on the understanding that asking the Imperialists to leave wasn’t answer enough for emerging India. Colonization was embedded within the heart of industrialization, and it’s homogenizing force could be disastrous for a country built on radical diversity. The key to building decentralised organizing capacities however, lay in instilling a sense of wholesome pride in our identities without descending into tribalism. 

The Economic Model for Gram Swaraj

The iconic charkha, or spinning wheel, could be considered the ideal representation of the economic model used for the movement. Each community had access to the low-cost technology behind the charkha, and could fork designs based on spinning techniques they were comfortable with and the strain of cotton they grew. The design, coupled with a distributed network of ‘Satyagrahis’ helped facilitate the revival of diverse cultural identities across the nation.

The charkha when pitted against the textile nation provided the perfect contrast for differences between decentralised and centralised economic models. Industrialized models thrive on holding the technological design sacred, in order to generate a stream of revenues back to the owner. Decentralised models hold cultural boundaries as sacred, and technologies may be tweaked to suit the context. 

In a nutshell: moving from centralisation to decentralisation is incomplete without an underlying narrative that supports diversity in culture. Monoculture is the antithesis to distributed networks. Memetic propagation was the key to arriving at a design that worked for a community since there were no centralised gatekeepers that could hold back forks in designs. 

The organising principles for these two realities could be summarised as: 

Centralized Economies: ‘Apps or Businesses’ 
Built through Specific Technologies, Generic Culture

Decentralized Economies: ‘Neighbourhoods’
Built through Generic Technologies, Specific Culture.

The Importance of Formalisation

How can communities build specific culture without the traditional socio-patriarchal patterns that can often devolve into tribalism? The work of Gandhian economist, JC Kumarappa outlines principles for validating different forms of value, as capital, using a broad spectrum of currencies. Some of this has been adapted by authors like EF Schumacher, and more recently through the currency design work of the Metacurrency Project and the Commons Engine. 

Noted Gandhian author Rajni Bakshi’s words in Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom articulate the problem as an extraction of market forces from social fabric.² 

The key therefore may lie in building a formal economic language for social fabric that could complement, if not compete with monetary capital. 

In other words, we might be able to re-engage with our cultural identities if we create formal economic languages that help us articulate social capital.

Such designs could be built by amplifying the use of reputational currencies (as proposed by organisations like Sacred Capital). Reputational currencies tend to be endogenous, contextual, relative, and non-zero-sum and provide the perfect fabric for capturing, yet preserving the nuanced nature of culture. 

This is, however, possible due to the gradual rise in agent-centric designs for technology (a narrow subset of distributed ledger systems) like Holochain. With each user maintaining their own immutable version of the ledger, we have situations where the ‘truth’ doesn’t need to be recorded in one universal place. This allows us to piece together highly contextual snapshots of reality, and more importantly, enable agency for people over their records. 

The radically low costs for maintaining such records mean we gain the capacity to formalise not just the monetarily important, but also the contextually critical.   

In particular, we see the possible revitalization of prominent themes of Gram Swaraj through the following mechanisms:

• Memetic Propagation: 

The agent-centric nature of these technologies is primed for the ability to ‘fork’ large blocks of technical tools that can be repurposed to suit a wide spectrum of contexts. Initiatives like Holo-REA, ValueFlows, Sacred Capital under the umbrella of Economikit are enabling these possibilities. This implies that communities have the ability to articulate their own culture instead of being forced to operate under the overarching generic culture imposed by tech empires in the name of easy-to-use-technology.

Centralised economies have traditionally used a combination of monetary and regulatory systems to articulate culture, and facilitate propagation within their eco-system. But agent-centric technologies democratise the ability to formally articulate reputation and harness the power of narratives within any community irrespective of scale. The use of reputation fabric facilitates propagation through resonance, as opposed to rent-seeking due to its non-zero-sum nature. As cultural ideas and memes are generated by communities, their transfer occurs through the process of memetic propagation similar to the evolution of DNA during the process of evolution. Projects and conversations developed by Microsolidarity are likely to define how we achieve this more skillfully.

• Memetic Mediation:

Agent centric technologies enable individual users to port their reputational data through consent across ecosystems. It means individuals can show up in new networks or communities not as strangers, but with prior, relevant contexts.

Through the process of mediation, we could see functional, contextual bridges open between communities that haven’t been an option for people prior to this. (Projects like ‘Neighbourhoods’ and the Reputation Vault may play a key role here). In the long run, this facilitates the shift away from tribalism as communities develop feedback mechanisms for collaborating and communicating with each other. Over the past few decades, ‘trade’ has been the primary bridge between tribes across the globe. With this story falling away in the last couple years, perhaps the new collaborative story will rise through the process of shared cultural evolution and mediation. 

Mastering the art of memetic propagation and mediation over the coming decade could provide solutions not only to the knowledge sharing and organisation problem, but could also help develop contextual guardrails for the flow of capital, content, and labour over the long term.

Eventually, porting capabilities may build distributed webs of social intelligence which guide our engagements and interactions within and across communities. This could represent an agent-centric, decentralised alternative to our growing dependence on centralised algorithmic engagement. The lure of AIs efficiencies in light of pandemics, climate change and monetary shocks is strong, even though it is this thinking that actually exacerbates the issue. As the percentage of overall corporate profits generated by large corporations continues to rise, populous nations across regions are very genuinely questioning the role of human agency, and if enabling entrepreneurs is really the key to a thriving national economy. Generating new feedback loops, which articulate and amplify new dimensions of value are therefore critical in building a vision that uplifts a broad spectrum of society.

1. Gram (n): village, community;     Swaraj (n): Self-sovereignty emerging from agency
   Gram Swaraj, a special term coined by Mahatma Gandhi and later developed by Vinoba promotes conversion of every village into a self-efficient autonomous entity where all the systems and facilities for a dignified living are available. Gandhian ideology has inspired to keep human happiness in tandem with sustainable growth. Swaraj is self rule with continuous effort towards independence and self reliance. Gram Swaraj or village self rule is decentralized, human centric and non-exploiting. It adheres to working towards simple village economy and to achieve self sufficiency.
2. Economic Transactions were always part of society, but were cradled within social fabric (we negotiated aggressively with each other but were still bound to look after the same people in our communities). However, the rise of global trade has led to markets that are removed from society, leading to a homogenizing force that is dominant above all else.

Mutual Exchange is C4SS’s goal in two senses: We favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to C4SS’s audience.

Online symposiums will include essays by a diverse range of writers presenting and debating their views on a variety of interrelated and overlapping topics, tied together by the overarching monthly theme. C4SS is extremely interested in feedback from our readers. Suggestions and comments are enthusiastically encouraged. If you’re interested in proposing topics and/or authors for our program to pursue, or if you’re interested in participating yourself, please email editor@c4ss.org or emmibevensee@email.arizona.edu.

Akiva Malamet is completing his BA in Government at the  Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC) in Israel. He is an incoming MA student in Philosophy and a member of the interdisciplinary program in Political and Legal Thought (PLT) at Queen’s University, Kingston, and Frédéric Bastiat Fellow in political economy and public policy with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has written for Liberal Currents, Libertarianism.org, and other publications. He was a winner of the 2018 ‘Carl Menger Undergraduate Essay Contest’ for his paper “Spontaneous Order as Social Construction”, from the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics (SDAE).

You can find the essays mentioned here:

• https://www.liberalcurrents.com/fearing-ourselves-dignity-and-disgust-in-a-pandemic/
• https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/vice-virtue-nationalism
• https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/reconciling-libertarian-leftist-views-power-equality
• https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/postmodernism-libertarian-introduction
• https://www.liberalcurrents.com/if-not-now-when/
• https://sweettalkconversation.com/2018/06/03/the-zen-of-chaos/
• https://www.spreaker.com/user/camilomgn/akivamalamet

Additional Programming Notes:

First, I want to apologize for the slow production schedule these past few months. We’ve of course been dealing with pandemic-related chaos, followed by Zach’s house flooding, and now many of us are involved in organizing in our cities as accomplices to the movement for black lives. We’re trying to get back onto a regular production schedule, but we appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Secondly, at the beginning of this interview, we talk a bit about the movement for black lives, racialization, and white supremacy. It’s directly relevant to Akiva’s work on nationalism and identity formation, but I want to note that Akiva and I are both white and encourage listeners to seek out the voices and writings of black anarchists and radicals in this time. There are a few essays and manuscripts below that I would recommend, including the work of William C. Anderson and Mariame Kaba, who are both black radicals worth reading.

Black anarchists/radicals:

• https://www.8toabolition.com/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
• https://www.akpress.org/as-black-as-resistance.html
• https://www.akpress.org/burn-down-the-american-plantation.html

Finally, an update on podcast merch! We’re planning on releasing new Mutual Exchange Radio merchandise in the fall. Thanks to everyone who responded to our poll on Patreon, it was helpful in deciding what items to stock. All patreon supporters will get one piece of merch for free when we release the line up, and it looks like coffee cups were the most in demand. Before the merch is finalized, we’re also updating the MER logo, so look out for a newer, slicker logo towards the end of the summer, and a whole line of new swag shortly after that.

This article is best started by briefly outlining two historical figures: Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992).

Christopher Columbus is believed to have been born in Genoa, Italy and most famously, as the rhyme goes, “sailed the ocean blue in 1492” in order to find a route to Asia under the patronage of the Spanish Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. And, as is well known, he actually ended up on one of the Bahamian Islands (most likely San Salvador) and then moved from island to island, eventually establishing a settlement on Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic). But Columbus was not a heroic explorer or adventurer, as he is often portrayed, but a genocidal and tyrannical colonizer. This can be succinctly but shockingly demonstrated in a Vox article by Dylan Matthews which draws largely from Laurence Bergreen’s book Columbus: The Four Voyages. Columbus did not “discover” the Americas, as they had been populated for a millennium by indigenous peoples—specifically in the Bahamian Islands by the Arawak of the Greater Antilles and South America. And almost immediately after arriving, Columbus and his Spanish crew went to work decimating their culture and population. On Hispaniola, they captured and enslaved more than a thousand Taino people (an Arawak subgroup)—including 9- and 10-year-old girls for sexual slavery—in addition to sexually assaulting numerous indigenous women themselves and cutting off the ears of Taino leaders as punishment for non-compliance. This brutality led 50,000 natives to commit suicide to avoid the wrath of Columbus and his men. And 56 years after Columbus first arrived in the Americas, only 500 of the original population of 300,000 Taino remained in Hispaniola—a people and culture left decimated. 

Despite this horrific reality, Columbus is still memorialized and celebrated across the United States to this day. In a Jacobin piece adapted from her book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues that this glorification is demonstrative that “from US independence onward, colonial settlers saw themselves as part of a world system of colonization.” And as Howard Zinn puts it:

What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots. They used the same tactics, and for the same reasons — the frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stockholders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in Western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism, to participate in what Karl Marx would later call “the primitive accumulation of capital.” These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries.

In essence, Columbus’s legacy is one of slavery, genocide, and absolute brutality that helped lay the groundwork of much of the oppression that persists to this day. And yet the people of the United States continue to celebrate him.

There could hardly be a more antithetical figure to Columbus than Marsha P. Johnson. No brief summary can really do justice to her beautiful and incredible life, but here is a well-intentioned attempt: born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she moved to New York City with just some articles of clothing and $15 dollars, describing herself—in a 1992 interview—as “nobody, from Nowheresville.” But she was far from “nobody.” As Maddox Wilson puts it in an article for Left Voice, “Marsha was a mother and friend to many, a talented performer, an advocate for homeless trans youth, and a radical black organizer. With a working class perspective and a criminalized identity, she was at the forefront of the fight for LGBTQ+ visibility and rights in New York.” And Keegan O’Brien writes that Johnson, alongside Sylvia Rivera, was one of the most important trans activists in the Gay Activists Alliance and Gay Liberation Front. Together she and Rivera also formed Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) which worked to provide services for trans street youth. Wilson explains how STAR was started…

as a housing program, resource center, and advocacy group for homeless transgender youth. It started out in a parked trailer, opening their doors to trans youth as a safe alternative to living on the street. Marsha and Sylvia eventually moved their trans and gender nonconforming children into an apartment and sponsored the group through sex work.

Johnson is famously often credited for helping begin the 1969 Stonewall Riots by throwing the “shot glass heard around the world.” As Johnson told Eric Marcus in a 1989 interview, “We just were saying, no more police brutality and, oh, we had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places.” There has been contestation about whether Johnson actually began the riot, but Wilson argues that this is an attempt to “whitewash the riots, attributing the resistance solely to the white cis gay men who frequented the bar. It is important to resist this whitewashing of history: on the front lines of the Stonewall riots were the transgender drag queens and lesbians of color who put their lives on the line to stand up against the oppressive state institutions.” The Stonewall Riots now serve as the direct inspiration for modern pride parades, so Johnson’s legacy lives on in integral elements of the LGBTQ+ community. And this is all by no means exhaustive of Johnson’s amazing life and work which the reader should explore extensively.

Now, who deserves to be commemorated in the form of a monument, Christopher Columbus or Marsha P. Johnson? This is the question raised and answered by Celine Da Silva and her boyfriend Daniel Cano in a petition to “[r]eplace the statue of Christopher Columbus with a statue of Marsha P. Johnson” (which is linked to again at the end of this piece) in Johnson’s hometown of Elizabeth. 

There was much controversy throughout the 2010s over monuments that glorify racist violence, particularly Confederate ones; the most infamous perhaps being the protest by white supremacists against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. This culminated in the horrific ramming of anti-racist counter-protesters by a right-wing radical in a speeding car that killed activist Heather Heyer and injured several others. And even more recently, sparked by the sickening murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, David McAtee, and numerous other POC by law enforcement, there has been a further push to topple many of the monuments that glorify slave-owners and mass murderers in conventional American history. Some argue that this sort of removal is “erasing” history, but particularly in the case of Da Silva’s petition, it is not erasure but rather the rejection of the glorification of the monsters of history in favor of the commemoration of those like Johnson who truly represent liberation.

In an anti-authoritarian spirit, Cano is quoted in a Pink News article by Emma Powys Maurice as saying, “Obviously we’re not asking the city council to consider putting up a statue. This is a demand. Ultimately, a statue is going to come up no matter what. And we’re going to honour Marsha in the way that she deserves to be honoured.” But as important as ending the glorification of genocide and commemorating truly liberatory history is, it is equally if not more important to ensure the defense of LGBTQ+ individuals—particularly of color—in the present and the future. As Helena Evans comments on the Pink News Facebook post, the construction of the statue deserves support “[a]s long as the town asks itself why Marsha left, why Marsha didn’t return etc. Hopefully not just ask itself, but looking at making sure the next Marsha doesn’t have to leave in their teens with just a bag full of clothes.” This means fighting poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity; establishing the sort of non-state ‘infrastructure’ (mutual aid funds, market pressure groups, housing cooperatives, community land trusts, community food projects, etc.) for LGBTQ+ individuals, POC, and those suffering from homelessness that Johnson worked to create in her lifetime; and perhaps working to create forms of community defense like the Pink Pistols who advocate the arming and training of the LGBTQ+ community in firearms usage or the famous Black Panther Party who sought to create self-governing and self-defending communities of color [1].

Black lives matter, LGBTQ+ lives matter, Black LGBTQ+ lives matter, all deserve to be remembered and celebrated. Johnson, whose life and work stand as testaments to human freedom and ingenuity, deserves to be remembered and celebrated. 

Let us commemorate her! Here is the petition.

1. Further discussion is required around such topics as the decriminalization of sex work and the international reparations and restorations long overdue to Indigenous peoples and members of the African diaspora victimized by the systems set in motion in large part by Columbus; all of which are subjects pertinent to this discourse.

Introduction: Towards a Combined Anarchist and Communist Approach to the Question of Central Economic Planning

This essay deals with the question of central economic planning, or minimum viable economic planning (MVEP) from both anarchist and communist perspectives. The central operative terms will be collectivization, or the process of pooling resources to be shared at the collective or communal but not “national” level, and economic democracy, or the democratic control over collective resources. To put my cards on the table, I am a communist-leaning anarcho-communist who believes in decentralization of forms of governance and economic structures for the sake of maximizing the autonomy of collectives within the broader society to come to their own conclusions about how to plan and distribute resources. I don’t necessarily believe that either an anarchist- or a communist-style scale and form of distribution are the only necessary organizations of post-revolutionary or post-capitalist society. In other words, I don’t assert that an anarcho-communist arrangement of economic resources and systems of governance (whether formal or informal) is the ideal scale to organize collective resources. On the contrary, I uphold the necessity of an ecology of societies post-capitalism, some of which are communist in nature while others necessarily are not, that work together through mechanisms of trade and aid (T&A) in order to overcome concrete and logistical problems of resource allocation and scarcity. 

Anarchism without communism, and communism without anarchism, are two possibilities that form a mutually reinforcing and intolerable aporia (site of critical doubt). One cannot, I argue, valorize communism over anarchism in the heightened form of the distinction of communism without anarchism or anarchism without communism, or vice versa. This aporia exists because heightening the decision to non-overlapping fields of possibility — the possibility of a communist future absent the critique of the state, or the possibility of an anarchist future without a critique of class power¹ — creates the central tension that renders all possibilities, and therefore the debate itself, futile and meaningless. There is no ideal outcome of post-capitalist society that is predicated upon the exclusion of either communist or anarchist principles. We need both at some scale and implementation, as I aim to show, and we would be better off imagining the co-existence of these principles rather than their mutual exclusion, or the impossible ideality of a global society that operates on one set of principles to the exclusion of the other. The revolution will never happen this way. 

Council vs. Direct vs. Representative Democracy 

One way to parse out the question of MVEP and T&A agreements between respectively communism-based societies and anarchism-based societies in a post-revolutionary ecology of various levels of centralization and planning (or lack thereof), is to look at the question of democracy. I don’t purport to prescribe the form of democratic participation most adequate to address the needs of societies not even in existence yet; however, I do want to parse out the merits and drawbacks of individualist arrangements versus councils versus representative democracy. 

Let’s start with representative democracy, which is what we have today in the US (or some bastardization of it, anyway). Representative democracy is inefficient because it relies on votes-by-proxy by representative members of political parties in order to represent the basic needs of those represented by these figures. There is an information gap between the individual voter and the representative of that voter and many others like her. The representative knows that they have been selected based on the voter’s preferences, but does not know what these preferences are in any holistic way. Of course, you can write to your representative and inform them in detail of your preferences, but this requires extra effort not built into the democratic system of voting. And that is just one perspective among many; in short, the representative has a partial and incomplete view of why they were selected to represent voters in the first place, and does not always have their own voters’ best interests in mind.

Now, in participatory democracy this information gap is largely closed by direct participation in the decision-making process. Each policy or action proposal gets voted on by all members of a society on an individual basis, meaning that everyone gets a say in how things are determined to go. The problem with this system, despite the large number of problems it solves inherently, is in situations in which majority rule is unfair, such as determining the rights of and appropriate actions towards a minority. 

To this end, council democracy incorporates aspects of direct democracy along with “representation” albeit of a very different kind. In council democracy, “councils” are made up of stakeholders on a particular issue, identity, working sector, commitment, or various other “natural” forms of affiliation. There is no predetermined size of these councils, but the council as a whole comes to a consensus/majority rule (for either consensus or majority rule however defined, or even another process could be used within the particular council) that reflects most accurately² the needs of their constituents. The advantage of this system is that there is no need for a predetermined way for the council to function — Quakers, for example, build consensus-based approaches to social change while unions tend to be majority rule. What matters is that some sort of process is established to determine the needs of the members of the council, which can then be raised to a larger body as the concerns and needs of the council and all its members. In this framework, there would be various scales to council organization. Just as in faith collectives there is the local parish, synagogue, temple, or mosque, and then there is the larger organizing body that locality is affiliated with, so also with councils there are more local and broader channels for decision-making processes. A council may vote on distributing resources for itself, but it may also petition larger and more resource-laden councils for support in the form of trade and aid (T&A) agreements. 

A council can form around any affiliation and need not be called a “council” to function as one. Churches and synagogues and the broader movements they are affiliated with are good examples of how religious institutions can function as this kind of council system. As a practicing Jew, I consider the synagogue to be a great example of this form of democracy. Synagogues are typically represented by a board of elected officials, who make budgetary and logistical decisions about how the resources of the synagogue will be spent (such as which Rabbi to hire–note here that unlike, say, Catholicism where a priest is appointed to work in a certain community, the synagogue itself or more precisely its board decides which Rabbi to hire for the service of the community). Then they distribute decision-making power however they want, often ceding liturgical authority to the Rabbi, while letting the synagogue as a whole participate in community programming and decisions regarding resources. This form of collective decision-making is indeed a council, as it is a way of internally working out the needs of the community in the form of a council of actors with vested interests in their own community. This latter part is essential: whereas in representative democracy the representative may not have a vested interest in the communities they represent, in council democracy all members of a council (unless brought in in an external advisory capacity) are stakeholders in the decisions being made. 

Now, when certain decisions or needs are brought to a larger body (an individual shop may have a union, but be affiliated with a larger coalition of union politics and bodies; the Philadelphia Socialists are an affiliate of the Marxist Center, churches belong to denominations and movements, etc.), they are represented as the central concern of a smaller body in which the individual has already had a chance to meaningfully participate and debate. So, yes, there remains an information gap in that the concerns brought to the larger body may not reflect every individual concern of the membership of the smaller body. But it is significantly mitigated by the fact that an individual has not only the opportunity to vote on the smaller council, but also to deliberate, argue, make their case, gain supporters, mobilize dissent, and all manner of real, authentic civic engagement that is lacking in both direct and representative democracy. A vote is not the extent of civic engagement, and having a council of one’s affiliate peers who share goals, resources, and process with you is a much more robust form of participation than simply voting, even in the case of political defeat (when your particular perspective does not sufficiently influence your council to a particular course of action). 

Economic democracy would describe either individual democratic or council democratic control over economic resources, and the processes of decision-making that would guide such control. Collectivization is a correlate term, which describes the pooling and mutual utilization of resources for prosocial and communal needs. 

All of this discussion of democratic forms of participation is to say that I think the drawbacks of a representative system are obvious, while the merits and potentially ameliorating function of direct or council democratic system are equally obvious. This brings them into consideration as to how democratic decision-making should work. It should be apparent from my opening remarks that I think a combination of direct and council democracy is the most efficient system or eco-system. One of the central perspectives of this essay is that, in fact, the “ideal” solution is not out there (yet), and that it is only in encounters with particular problems that ideal solutions will manifest themselves. In other words, I simply don’t know what is best; in the meantime, I’m arguing for an ecology of solutions and arrangements to better manage the uncertainty of the problem. While many other heroic efforts in this Symposium propose concrete economic arrangements to solve particular problems of distribution and production, I offer no such solutions, and instead encourage individuals and groups to think about the possibility that not everyone will want to or will engage with your “ideal” solutions under the best of circumstances, and we aren’t likely to face best circumstances for many decades out. Whatever emerges will be a difficult and piecemeal solution to problems on-the-ground; scarcity and shortages will exist; attempts at equitable distribution may indeed make such problems worse; doing nothing would be equally disastrous. There are in fact no one-size-fits-all solutions to the problems, and I am not an economist! What I offer, however, is the barest-bones suggestion about how we might think about these problems moving forward.

The Tithe as an Alternative to Taxation

One aspect of the problem of MVEP is the problem of taxes, and just what amount of taxes is necessary to ensure the functioning of society, to what extent taxes imply a state, and to what extent taxes need to be scaled in order to be effective. Don’t worry, I intend to sidestep most of these problems by offering an alternative to taxation! But in the meantime, it is perhaps a good idea to discuss one argument against taxation that is revealed by a consideration of real economic choices, or the problem of revealed versus stated preference.

A group of, say, US Democrats, may indeed vote for politicians who promise to raise their taxes, on the basis of their stated preference for a large social-support network and government assistance to the poor. Or simply because they believe in things like public libraries and parks. However, their revealed preference is seen in the real, actual economic choices they make. Certainly most if not all of them would not choose to give to charity at the same rates they ask the government to tax them. The same percentage of their income they apply to taxation would not be allocated for charitable donations or direct help to the poor or even mutual aid societies. In fact, we can expect the actual number of charitable allocations to be much smaller than the percentage of income taxed by the government even in the absence of such taxation. This may be different in a society in which mutual aid and other institutions of the like are properly supported and culturally valued. However, putting culture aside for the moment, economically speaking it doesn’t make a good case for taxes being the thing that people really want. 

An alternative to this framework of taxation vs. charity is seen in the form of the tithe. The tithe is a religious form of charity (in Hebrew, tzedakah, related to tzedek or “justice”) that was and is practiced by many societies over the centuries. The intention of the tithe is to distribute wealth and income more evenly and fairly over the civil body, with an eye to aiding especially the poor and downtrodden, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. The tithe in Judaism is set at 10% of one’s income; in Islam the zakat or alms-giving is set at 2.5% of net worth. Depending on the situation, a smaller percentage of net worth may mean significantly more wealth than a larger percentage of one’s income. These mechanisms help ensure that the poor always have assistance and the rich participate in the aid of society to combat inequality. Other measures in, for example, the Hebrew Bible are designed to accomplish the same. Hebraite society was one of the first to mitigate against permanent slavery, with servants and slaves being released during the Jubilee year (every 50 years) and ancestral land returned to the families that owned it originally. In this way families that could not afford their land are returned these goods in time. Price gouging, additionally, is forbidden. Finally, there are many precepts such as the practice of gleaning, leaving the corners of one’s field unharvested so that the poor may gather or glean their fill from the farmland, suggesting that a permanent institution to assist with the poors’ food needs is necessary for a just society. I am not suggesting taking on any of these practices literally or applying them in a contemporary context willy nilly; indeed, the notion that slaves ought to be freed every 50 years flies in the face of a more contemporary perspective that refuses slavery wholesale on moral grounds. 

Nonetheless, I believe there is merit and virtue in practices that are agreed upon and enforced by social norms rather than laws or government. The tithe is a practice that is agreed to by a community and enacted through mechanisms of good-will and, on the other side, shame for not participating to the extent of one’s means. Tithes are understood to be adjustable based on one’s income and net worth, and even in terms of absolute percentages people with less are understood to give less, while people with more are understood and expected to give more. Tithe contributions are voluntary while being enforced by a broader social and cultural framework that acts as a check on feelings of self-interest or greed. Social stigma of those who contribute below their means would help enforce the tithe without the threat of imprisonment or legal litigation, or the necessity of a state. Social norms and cultural expectations exist outside of government bodies, and can be a way to solve the financial responsibility problem of how to support those with less, without necessitating the intervention of a potentially armed political body to enforce them. The tithe is a great example of a system of economic democracy enacted through social norms that forms institutions for the benefit of society as whole. Thus the humanizing trajectory of the tithe. 

What interests me about the tithe is the possibility of an experiment in revealed preference that sees what people’s actual economic choices are when checked by a broader social norm that encourages mutualistic economic practices and altruism while discouraging hoarding of economic resources and selfishness. This combination of revealed preference with mutually enforcing social norms is necessary for a free and autonomous society to flourish. People ought to be free to make economic decisions based upon the information they (and only they) have about their situation, but should not be free from the social consequences of failing to contribute their fair share. The tithe as a social norm would accomplish both tasks, being both voluntary and socially coercive at the same time. This latter aspect of social coercion might be unsavory to many, but it is certainly preferable to forms of government coercion that I see as the alternative. 

Tithes may be set at any rate and utilized for any purpose. The point is for the councils at the local scale to set the tithe at a rate they believe to be efficacious and necessary for the support of their scale of organization. So, the council determines the tithe, with the contribution and consideration of the needs of its members, and determines how to allocate the resources gained by the tithe to whatever ends they determine most prudent and necessary. While a tithe may be used to alleviate the burden of the poor, it may be used for any purpose. A tithe for reparations, a tithe for trade for essential goods and services, a tithe for the poor, a tithe for emergencies, a tithe for famine or public health or wildfires. Temporary tithes, permanent tithes, modified tithes, tithes subject to change and development with changing economic conditions. Let a thousand tithes proliferate! As many tithes as there are forms of economic arrangements and as many tithes as there are societies within a global post-capitalist civil body. Each council would determine its own resources and how to allocate them. Trade and aid (T&A) agreements would still be the primary mechanism for resource allocation, but these would be supplemented by and supported by institutions of economic support. 

T&A is an important element of this, as it is the backdrop in which economic institutions such as the tithe exist and thanks to which they thrive. Trade and Aid represent the range of possibilities afforded to societies in interacting with each other at more than just the local level. A combination of the two may be implemented: trade at a discounted rate, for a certain range of goods, for a certain period of time, for example. Societies may determine among themselves, using both market considerations and ethical ones as well, for these are not mutually exclusive, how best to assist each other in allocating scarce resources. Trade is the main mechanism, with aid being an exceptional alternative when faced with serious need or circumstance. Trade and Aid together form the twin poles of economic interaction in a post-capitalist society, replacing the profit incentive with a more tempered system of mutual exchange and benefit. 

Conclusion

To summarize my argument, I contend that any attempt to determine in advance the economic structures that will best allocate resources for a particular community is doomed to failure. Not only because advice even by experts tends to be ignored, but also simply because we cannot know the conditions of the future. Further, societies and collectives at the local level have a right to determine the economic institutions necessary for the support of such societies and collectives (even if they’re wrong about the most effective way to do this!). 

It may be true that larger tithes may become necessary; for example, a continent such as Australia may implement a tithe at 1% for the whole region to combat wildfires, and may lift this tithe during times when it is deemed unnecessary. A global tithe to combat COVID-19, were a similar crisis to take place post-capitalism, may be necessary as well. There would no doubt be a complicated process of deliberation for deciding upon such measures. 

The point is that a tithe is not a determined economic structure, but a framework for instituting such structures in a way that maximizes freedoms and autonomy of collectives in determining their own needs. The form of their collectivization is economic democracy, in other words, the means for sharing resources is one of collective and social economic control. Allied to procedural and organizational principles such as council or direct democracy, institutions like the tithe could be the life-blood of a new and emerging global order.

1. Any discussion of what these possibilities actually mean would obviously require an attention to definition or else would produce a widely caricatured and parsed-down discussion. I have opted for the latter for the sake of space, please bear with me.
2. Again, not prescribing in advance what procedures would result in a “most accurate” representation, but trusting that establishing the scale of the council does significant work towards this end, for reasons to follow.

Mutual Exchange is C4SS’s goal in two senses: We favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to C4SS’s audience.

Online symposiums will include essays by a diverse range of writers presenting and debating their views on a variety of interrelated and overlapping topics, tied together by the overarching monthly theme. C4SS is extremely interested in feedback from our readers. Suggestions and comments are enthusiastically encouraged. If you’re interested in proposing topics and/or authors for our program to pursue, or if you’re interested in participating yourself, please email editor@c4ss.org or emmibevensee@email.arizona.edu.

Di Logan Marie Glitterbomb. Originale pubblicato il 20 giugno 2020 con il titolo Is It Time to Reopen the Economy? Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

C’è chi scende in strada armato per protestare contro le esagerazioni di stato… dimostrando un’ignoranza spettacolare.

Sono solidale con chi lotta per vivere e non ha un lavoro, con chi aspetta un aiuto economico che non è mai arrivato e ora è preoccupato perché non ha di che sfamare la famiglia, e magari rischia anche la casa; sono profondamente solidale anche con chi protesta contro le misure di polizia rispettando le distanze e usando la mascherina; ma non ho alcuna simpatia per chi ignora spudoratamente la medicina e i consigli dei medici sulla base di teorie complottistiche raffazzonate. E non ho alcuna simpatia neanche per chi crede che dobbiamo sacrificare i più deboli per non fermare l’economia. Infine, non provo simpatia per chi pensa che chiedere di indossare una mascherina in pubblico per la sicurezza altrui sia una forma di oppressione.

Come se lo stato cercasse un motivo per costringerci ad indossare maschere che, oltretutto, impediscono il riconoscimento facciale. Ma questi riflettono sulle loro teorie? Strano, poi, che molti di quelli che dicevano “tutte le vite contano” ora sono disposti a sacrificarle, queste vite, per non fermare l’economia. Ma credevano in quello che dicevano?

Certo, è più che giusto che si protesti contro le misure di polizia. Uno non dovrebbe essere arrestato perché prende il sole da solo in una spiaggia vuota, o perché va in barca a ben più di due metri dalla riva, meno che mai perché guarda il tramonto al sicuro nella sua auto. Né si dovrebbe finire dentro per essere andati a messa in una chiesa che rispetta gli standard di sicurezza, come quelle che fanno servizio drive-in o che impongono una distanza minima interpersonale e l’uso di mascherine. Soprattutto quando poi si finisce in una cella in cui il distanziamento è impossibile. Cosa che contraddice le misure di sicurezza e non aiuta nessuno. Tanto più che ora scopriamo che più del 70% dei detenuti testati ha il covid-19.

Fin da subito ci sono state proteste, ma la maggior parte sono state fatte in modo intelligente. Associazioni di inquilini e scioperanti dell’affitto chiedono una moratoria degli affitti, dei mutui, degli sfratti e delle utenze, impediscono gli sfratti e occupano alloggi vuoti. Chi è contro la prigione protesta davanti alle carceri, ai centri di detenzione per immigrati e agli uffici istituzionali, chiede di bloccare l’arresto e l’espulsione degli immigrati senza documenti, nonché il rilascio di tutti i detenuti non violenti per ridurre il sovraffollamento. Sindacati e lavoratori in sciopero sono scesi in piazza per chiedere protezione sul lavoro, misure protettive contro il virus e permessi per chi è malato o in condizioni precarie; mentre chi svolge lavori considerati non essenziali ma che durante la pandemia è costretto a lavorare pena il licenziamento, chiede la chiusura dell’attività finché non saranno rispettate le norme di sicurezza. Chi protesta conosce i rischi e fa del suo meglio per minimizzarli indossando mascherine e guanti e mantenendo le distanze. Si protesta per ridurre il rischio e salvare vite, non per sacrificare queste ultime in cambio di qualche effimera comodità.

Non sacrifichiamo la vita in nome del capitalismo. Sì, la gente è preoccupata, fatica, ma invece di lottare per riavviare l’economia molti dovrebbero concentrarsi sull’aiuto reciproco e i diritti dei lavoratori. Distribuiamo alimenti e beni di prima necessità a chi ne ha bisogno. Sosteniamo chi fa lo sciopero dell’affitto e invitiamo altre persone ad unirsi per evitare che la gente finisca per strada. Non occorre rischiare la propria vita lavorando per avere queste cose quando possiamo rivendicarle.

Cerchiamo di spingere altri politici ad unirsi a The Squad (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilham Omar, Ayanna Pressley e Rashida Tlaib) e altri in un “salvataggio progressista” che comprenda una moratoria degli affitti, dei mutui, degli sfratti e delle utenze, l’annullamento del debito di studio (perché dovremmo dare al sistema quei soldi che ci sono stati presi con le tasse?) e il rilascio dei detenuti non violenti. Se lo stato vuole dare aiuti economici, che li dia alle persone e non agli interessi aziendali; convinciamo altri politici ad unirsi a The Squad, Justin Amash e chi chiede un reddito di base universale.

Sfruttiamo il momento per avviare le nostre iniziative economiche, singolarmente o con altri, sotto forma di cooperative o collettivi. Promuoviamo il lavoro a domicilio. Incoraggiamo i lavoratori ad associarsi e lottare per avere condizioni di lavoro più eque e sicure. Uniamoci a chi fa lo sciopero dell’affitto, creiamo alleanze strategiche con quei padroni di casa e con quelle aziende che davvero vogliono lottare per bloccare il pagamento degli affitti e dei mutui in risposta alla crisi. Dobbiamo lottare per avere più controllo dei luoghi in cui viviamo e in cui lavoriamo. Dobbiamo lottare per una comunità più giusta, basata sull’aiuto reciproco, il libero commercio e la cooperazione economica.

Le ansie finanziarie sono fondate e toccano gran parte del paese, ma dobbiamo avanzare proposte serie e prendere la pandemia con serietà. Non vale la pena morire sull’altare del capitalismo solo per tenere in moto l’economia, quando abbiamo altri modi per badare a noi stessi e alle nostre comunità. Sfruttiamo l’opportunità per edificare strutture a doppio potere. Siamo tutti nella stessa barca, remiamo assieme.

Like every other intelligent person, I find violence repulsive. Violence is effectively the definition of “how to do something if you’ve not an ounce of cleverness.” In nature, the symbiotic relationship constitutes the ideal: it generates a sustainable and ecologically sound means of enjoying the little bit of time any one of us has here on Earth.

So why don’t more humans try it out?

Answer: they forget!

And I want to provide solace for those who find themselves a member of that fault-ridden species, Homo sapiens, when it comes to this disturbing realization. The method of finding out what to do often results in many unintended outcomes. When we started applying maths to this issue, we came up with “cybernetics” and “fuzzy logic.” But I don’t think we need to understand the math in order to apply the general idea to our current circumstances.

When you find that you’ve messed up or made a mistake—even a terrible one (perhaps, especially, in the case of a terrible one!)—the best thing to do involves making amends by changing your behavior. Often, instead of this approach, I notice people fashioning unbendable, concrete molds out of the belief system that got them in trouble.

I suggest you don’t do that. I suggest, instead, you do what any ingenious toddler would do when it tries to walk and fails: try again, modifying your approach in accordance with the results you really want, rather than deciding that the world around you must somehow be “all wrong” and your current, ineffective approach must Somehow, Mysteriously, hide a “greater truth” which your crawling about on all fours is Somehow, Mysteriously, “proof of the validity of.”

If you’re a cop or a politician or anyone else who believes that the general run of humanity—despite all the evidence of every other species we know of and claim, for some bizarrely speciesist reason—must be caged or beaten or threatened into “being good,” I would like to offer perhaps a Way Out of your predicament: give up.

There is great power in your paycheck, I know! You have so many friends and family members who would look at you askance if they Found Out that you Didn’t Believe As They Do—I know! I’m sorry that the world looks like an awful, villainous place of Terror and Threats to you…now.

But perhaps…maybe…you can relax? I’m not saying you can, by the gods, no! But, like when you suspend your disbelief for a time to enjoy a good book or movie, what if it were possible to just relax? What if that horrifying notion of “surrender”—the one you’ve been suggesting your “enemies” do for all these years—what if that notion holds the very key to your own freedom?

What if you tried it—giving up the notions that are keeping you from truly enjoying this little bit of time you have? Perhaps your superiors are wrong—perhaps they want to give up too?

I apologize—I know that even reading this has made you feel something…but I want you to consider, perhaps, that what you’re feeling is okay. What if…? What will you have lost if you don’t forget to try again, differently?

It can all be different, this time around. I want you to know that you are in good company! Anarchists are a jolly lot—we don’t beat people up, we don’t kill or maim or injure anyone. You’re safe with us! Even better, it’s like getting the best of both worlds: you get to retain and develop your individual identity AND enjoy the comfort of a symbiotic relationship that will further everyone’s best interests!

But THEY say that I’m NOT to accept this! THEY ALL SAY it will LEAD ME DOWN THE WRONG PATH! What if I get addicted?

I cannot guarantee that you won’t. Freedom and love, joy, and intelligence—these are addictive substances! Not killing or hurting—this may be weird to you now…but I promise, it will end your fear.

WHAT IF YOU’RE MAKING FUN OF ME?

I’m not. But I have been made fun of before, so I know and understand your fear. This “anarchism” thing is (while being ancient and your natural state) wild, and new, and—like any fun ride—very scary sometimes…your friends and family may not understand. But they can. It is real—and it is immediately available for you to try out.

We won’t stop you from wanting to be who you are. But we will be here to help you if you want to do it. So I ask you, if you’ve made it this far, to give yourself a chance: you only have a little bit of time here on Earth. Don’t waste it!