holy shit this is some useless liberal bullshit
literally none of these things hurt capitalism. that’s not to say they aren’t good things to do, they definitely are, but you aren’t going to destroy capitalism by changing your consumer habits.the main problem with the solutions @punkshitposts offered is that they are individualistic. personal solutions to systematic problems will never change the system and thus never make those problems disappear. don’t get me wrong, i like DIY as much as the next punk, but if we want to be a threat to capitalism, we have to work together.
some things you could do to help destroy capitalism:
– help other people so they don’t have to rely on the state to survive. for example, get involved with something like food not bombs, or organise it yourself with some friends.
– if capitalism is making the world worse around you, try to stop it. say a logging company wants to cut down a local forest? sabotage their machinery, lie down in front of the trees, occupy the forest… there’s no affordable housing in your neighbourhood? squat a house with friends and make it yourself. a big aspect of being a radical is not asking for permission (though that can still be useful sometimes).
– talk to friends, colleagues, and family about why capitalism sucks, and spread anticapitalist “propaganda”: zines, stickers, posters, graffiti…all of these things get easier if you are involved in anticapitalist groups, and have friends/comrades who you can work together with. if you live in a place where nothing is happening and all your friends are liberals, i recommend reading this zine: https://toleratedindividuality.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/small-town-organizing-for-anarchists1.pdf
also, i’m sure i forgot a million ways you can fight capitalism, and the three categories i drew up are pretty arbitrary, so if people want to add things that would be cool.^^^^^ this
– fight fossil fuel infrastructure/companies tbh
– don’t forget self care and community care, don’t burn yourself out
– pick your battles. there is SO much necessary work to be done, do what you can and like and are good at and don’t beat yourself up over not being able to do everything at once
❤ great additions
With regard to the second thing:
– be aware of the 5 year burn out. A lot of activism feels like it’s not too hard on people in the short run but drains people too much in the long run. If it looks like almost no one in your community has done the activism that they’re doing for longer than 5 years and almost everyone seems to leave after 3 to 6 years to ‘do other stuff’ and ‘focus on themselves’, then that communityis pushing itself too hard and losing the benefits of bulding truly sustainable multigenerational resistance. Look after each other. Talk to people who are pushing themselves too much. Create communities that support missing protests and taking time off.
At the risk of sounding like a half liberal hippie : shouldn’t we do both of those things ? Like actually fighting the state-capitalist apparatus and starting to learn to try to live without it ?
I recently read marxist’s Helen Meiksins Wood who past some years ago about the origins of capitalism.
Her original analyse identifies the beginning of capitalism not with the industrial revolution like traditional marxists but with the British enclosure period and the reforms that follows.
What she basically says is that modern capitalism wasn’t born only out of a political revolution of reforms in the law (decrees, etc) but as a social and economical practice of private property that changed the nature of class struggle, which leaded to the most known political revolutions from the reforms to the European “spring of nations” to the American revolution (which, let’s be honest, wasn’t just about political independence : but financial and economic independence based on a pure former capitalist system).
So some thought came to my mind.
What about communism was not something that will just pop out of a revolution or even struggles but as a social and economic practice that would change (and maybe reinforce) the nature of class struggles. Give it something to actually fight for and with.Isn’t that exactly what’s happening when “landless” peasants are defending their lands and collective use of it ? Or when workers use production through a strike and sell the goods for their own ? Or when squatters fight to keep their free housing ?
That sounds like stateless communism as praxis to me.
What about we start asking ourself how we break the false dichotomy between “life-stylism” and struggle anarchisms/communisms/anticapitalisms ?
I don’t think anybody is arguing against “learning to live without capitalism.” But I do think “lifestylism” is a problem. The key is this right here:
“the main problem with the solutions @punkshitposts offered is that they are individualistic. personal solutions to systematic problems will never change the system and thus never make those problems disappear. don’t get me wrong, i like DIY as much as the next punk, but if we want to be a threat to capitalism, we have to work together.”
The solutions that were dismissed as useless liberal garbage actually aren’t in and of themselves. The problem is that they are very clearly framed as individual projects. That’s the flaw at the heart of what is criticized as “lifestylism” I think the question is less about breaking the false dichotomy between lifestylism and strugge, and instead asking how we can transition these concerns from lifestylism to collective action.
Want to repurpose reusable materials? Think less in terms of lifestyle changes (or, God help us, private business opportunities) than in terms of a sustainably-organized community project with the goal of driving down the profits of corporate products in your area and increasing local self-sufficiency. Want to grow your own foods? Learn how you can work with local cooperatives, or bring other people on board, and work to change the local practices with an eye toward the various forms of exploitation and oppression that are intricately related to food systems. Get groups involved. Create new systems at the grassroots. Empower people to come together to sustain and govern themselves.
In my understanding, that’s where the difference lies. And that’s also what’s being criticized in “lifestylism:” A lifestyle is a personal choice that fits neatly within a consumeristic framework and has no intrinsic relationship with revolution. Only when we think in terms of collective action and subversion of larger systems does our activity really make a difference.
From Do It Yourself to Do It Together.
And the thing is that even when we do that we need to do both building and resistance. We could collectivise our food production with a million people and we would STILL need to fight the destructive food industry because not only would they not leave us alone for a goddamn second, they’d continue making the world uninhabitable for all of us.
We get revolutionary when we go from trying to cleanse ourselves from our personal involvement in capitalism to trying to reduce our societies collective tolerance of capitalism.
What solutions out there exist for someone who is disabled, lacks access to transportation, and isolated in a backwoods town filled with Trump supporters?
Like, to be honest: not a fucking clue.
With activist communities being as small, inaccessible and urban as most currently are, not much. We have a long way to go.
But I know it doesn’t start with expecting individual isolated disabled activists to recycle and take shorter showers so they’ll individually be ‘doing something’. It starts with a move from individual choices to collective change.
That is exactly why DIY culture needs to become Do It Together culture, because the able-bodied activists that expect every anarchist to meet all the right anti-consumption standards and be able to fix their own bike are not considering the fact that we do not all have the same abilites and access.
By participating as little as possible in it!
Start using reusable shit like water bottles, sandwich boxes (instead of bags), etc. so you don’t constantly buy more. And if you’re someone that gets periods, get reusable pads or a diva cup!
DIY as much as you can! Learn to sew and build your own things. Soaps, clothes, simple furniture, whatever you can. A simple google search can help you get started with that, and there are many youtube tutorials that can show you too.
Learn to fix things! Again, most of the time you can google or search on youtube fow to fix your broken things.
Start a garden! If you’ve got a front lawn or back yard being neglected, start growing some veggies so you don’t have to go grocery shopping too often!
Of course, we still have to participate in it to survive. It’s just doing the most we can by ourselves!
-mod kip
“Much of the anarchist tradition rejects the ideology of individualism and focuses on mutual aid, or, in queer-crip language: interdependence. If disability studies and activism could offer a corrective to the anarchist practice of mutual reliance it will be to the concept of DIY, including anarcho-primitivism, which is DIY culture taken to an extreme. A focus on self-reliance and a “return to nature” requires a non-disabled body for its ideal society. Such calls will have a devastating effect on the lives of disabled people who truly embody a spirit of mutual aid every day by relying on personal assistants, friends, and family members to achieve independence abd autonomy, also core practices of anarchism. Through a queer-crip lens we should perhaps focus more on DIT – Do It Together."—Liat Bent-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella and AJ Withers in: Queer-Cripping Anarchism
QueerAnarchism 