Capitalism Means Never having to say You’re Sorry
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Author : Dot Matrix

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Poke an anarchist whose project involves an exchange of money for goods,
and chances are you will have to duck to avoid the stream of sticky,
apologetic defensiveness.



“If we don’t charge, how do you expect us to provide you with this
stuff and still sustain ourselves?”



“What should we do?”



“It’s classist to think that people can do this for free...”



And so on.



While the apologies and excuses do acknowledge that something contradictory
and complicated is happening, the rationales tend to fall back into the
same old purity reasoning, not much more engaged than disingenuous
complaints about Zerzan’s use of a typewriter.



These simplistic responses distract us from the questions that we could get
creative with. Once we acknowledge that capitalism is in the air we breathe
then we can have more interesting conversations.



Part of the problem is people’s desire to make money doing things that
they believe in. While we all understand wanting a coherent life in which
what we spend most of our time doing leads to what we envision for a better
world, there is a strong argument that any exchange allowed by this culture
is recuperable. (Volunteers and social workers are both easily integrated
into — even more, are crucial components of — capitalism.) So maybe we
have to give up on the idea that anarchist projects are compatible with a
livable wage. Even though this goes directly against the Marxist thinking
that our political validity is based on the kind of work that we do.



Which are the circumstances, projects, and times that we can best do for
free? What are the limits on what anarchists do for money? What is the
appropriate relationship of anarchists to businesses, especially businesses
that wave the circle-A? What makes an anarchist project different from a
nonprofit (nonprofits being notorious for demanding that employes be
“true believers” who must dedicate far more hours and energy to the
organization than most businesses would, or could, ever ask for)? What
counts as sustainable for an anarchist project?



One of the reasons for charging money for goods is to play a part that
makes sense to newcomers. Commercial exchanges are interactions that are
comfortable for people in this culture, even more comfortable than the
other projects that are the other common first faces of anarchy (like
Critical Mass and Food Not Bombs). And it’s exactly the transitional
space that commercial anarchist projects inhabit that makes them both
thorny for dedicated anarchists, and easier for newbies to deal with.



Part of the issue is the disparate and mutually exclusive definitions of
anarchist. There are all kinds of projects that call themselves anarchist
and that practice ideas contrary to each other. How about a for-profit
publishing business that is worker-owned and -controlled, but that requires
people to work overtime and produces only a small percentage of anarchist
titles relative to their large percentage of non-anarchist books? Does it
make sense to call theirs an anarchist business? What about a business that
competes with other anarchist publishing and distribution projects, becomes
financially successful through this competition, and is thus a centralizing
force in the anarchist book publishing niche? Can this project and its
success appropriately be called anarchist? Is there any way to avoid this
scenario when projects attempt to compete on a large scale (especially if
they succeed)? How about big, well-known businesses that sponsor events on
the same day as other smaller anarchist events, because “it’s the only
way that the businesses will survive?” What about businesses that call
themselves anarchist and hire anarchists, but that seem to denature the
people they hire, none of whom engage in anarchist activities or
communities once they’ve quit or been fired from the project?



Some questions to consider for specific projects... Does anyone engaged in
it expect to live off the profits? Does the project attempt to compete on a
large stage (ie does it use the standard capitalist business model)? How is
the project open and transparent? How is it not? Does it encourage and
support, or shut down and compete with, other anarchist projects? What else
are the people in the project involved in? Does the project have a
centralizing tendency, or is it part of networks, and if so, what kinds of
networks?



Anarchists are engaged in juggling two incompatible concepts: one is a
fundamental opposition to the world we live in, and the other is the need
to actually live in, and we hope have an impact on, this world. We all have
to find our own ways, with as much help and critical feedback as we can
stand. Sometimes more.


(Source: Anarchy: a journal of desire armed.)


     From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org

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     Capitalism Means Never having to say You’re Sorry -- Added : January
09, 2022

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