WORK COMMUNITY POLITICS WAR “Everyone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent them from having one about the totality.” Raoul Vaneigem ] We look around us and see a world beyond our control. Our daily struggle to survive takes place against an immense and constantly shiffing backdrop... .moving from natural disaster fo terrorist attack... from new diet to new famine... from celebrity sex scandal to political corruption scandal... from religious war to economic miracle... from tantalizing new advertisement to clichés on tv complaining about the government... from suggestions on how o be the ideal lover to suggestions on how to keep sports fans from riofing... from new police shoofings fo new health problem: The same processes are af work everywhere.. in democrafic and in totalitarian governments... in corporations and in mom n’ pop businesses... in cheeseburgers and in fofu... in opera, in country music and in hip hop... in every country and in every language... in prisons, in schools, in hospitals, in factories, in office fowers, in war zones and in grocery That something is the product of our own activity-our everyday working lives sold hour after hour, week after week, generation after generation. We don't have property or a business we can make money from, so we are forced to sell our fime and energy fo someone else. We are the modem day working class—the proles. WORK “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” Karl Marx We don’t work because we want fo. We sell our fime and energy We work because we have no other way o make money. to a boss in order fo buy the things we need to survive. We are brought fogether with other workers and assigned different tasks. We special forent aspects of the work and repeat these tasks over and over again. really part of our lives. Itis dead fime controlled by our bosses and managers. During our fime at work we make things that our bosses can sell. These things are objects like cofton shirts, computers and skyscrapers or qualies like clean floors and healthy patients or services like having a bus take you where you want to o, having a waiter take your order or having someone call you at home fo fry to get you fo buy things you don't need. The work is not done because of what it produces. We do it to get paid, and the boss pays us for it o make a profit. Atthe end of the day the bosses re-invest the money we make them, and enlarge their businesses. Our work s stored up in the things our bosses own and sellcapital. LI They are always looking for new ways to store up our activity in things, new markets fo sell them to, —_— and new people with nothing fo sell but their time and energy to work for them. What we get from work is enough money to pay for rent, food, clothes and beer— enough fo keep us coming back to work. When we're not at work, we spend fime traveling to or from work, preparing for work, resting up because we're exhausted from work or geting drunk to forget about work. The only thing worse than work, is not having it. Then we waste our weeks away looking for work, without getting paid for it If welfare is available, it is a painnthe-ass to get and is never as much as working. The constant threat of unemployment is what keeps us going to work everyday. And our work is the basis o this society. The power our bosses get from it expands every fime we work. It s the dominant force in every country in the world. alienating, boring and stressful as work 5 a g 2 £ 8 2 3 g 3 2 2 All sorts of other acl ANTI-WORK “Of course, the capitalists are very much satisfied with the capitalist system. Why shouldn’t they be? They get rich by it.” Alexander Berkman Y Work is experienced very differently depending on which side of it you're on. For our bosses, work s the way that they get their money to make more money. For us, work is a miserable way to survive. The less they pay us, the less we make. The faster they can get us to work, the harder we have to work. Our interests are opposed, and there is a constant struggle between bosses and workers at work—and in the rest of the society based on work. The more we pay in rent or bus fare, the more we have to work fo pay our rent or bus fare. The current state of wages, benefits, hours and working condi as well as polifics, art and technology is a result of the current state of this class struggle. Simply standing up for our own inferests in this struggle, is the starting point of undermining capitalism. COMMUNITY “Well, it is about time that every rebel wakes up to the fact that ‘the people” and the working class have nothing in common.” Joe Hill jan -\ Civilization is deeply divided. Most of us spend most of our fime working and are mostly poor, while the owners, who are mostly rich, manage and profit off our work. Al the communities and institutions of society are built up around this basic di racial, cultural and language S divisions and communities. There is division and community around sex el y g4\ community of the nation 1AL and citizenship, as well # Vil as the division between nations and those with and without _citizenship. We are divided and united around religion and ideology. We are brought together fo buy and sell on the market. Poor people from one country can be made to identify with their bosses from the same country and can be made to fight poor people from other countries. Workers have a_harder fime organizing a strike with workers who look different and speak a different language, especially if one group thinks it's better than the other. Some of these idenities have been around for millennia. Some are a direct result of the way we work today. But they are all now organized around capital. They are all used to help our bosses accumulate more of our dead fime stored up in things, and to keep the basic division of this society from tearing it apart. These divisions and communities are reflected in and reflect the division of labor at work. While these divisions and exclusive communities are being pushed on us from one side, an alkinclusive human community is sold fo us from the other. Th community is just as imaginary and false. It denies he basic division of society. e Business owners runthe government and the me the welfare offices and the police. We have our The newspapers and felev Schools teach about the great (or unfortunate) history of their society and produce a spectrum of graduates and dropouts fit for different kinds of work. The government provides services fo keep their society running smoothly. This is not our community. ANTI-COMMUNITY “Such power as the bourgeaisie still possesses in this period resides in the proletariat's lack of autonomy and independence of spirit.” Anton Pannekoek They organize us against each other, but we can organize ourselves against them. The whole point of falking about class and “the proles” is fo insist on the very basic way in which people from different “communities” have essenially similar experiences, and o show that people from the same “communities” should in fact hate each other. This is the starting point to fighting the existing communities. When we begin fo fight for our own interests we see that others are doing the same thing. Prejudices fall away, and our anger is directed where it belongs. / We are not weak because we are divided. We are divided because we are weak \ ‘fi [N i / The existing communities become irrelevant as they are attacked, and they are attacked Racism and sexism are unappedling, when working men and women of fighting their class enemies side by side. And that fight becomes more effective by involving people from different “communities” There will be no need for a standin There will be no need for a government for everything that can be bought to manage society, when society is and- sold-money-when there is not divided between management no need fo measure work fime and workforce-when people can stored in those things. This could run their lives themselves. There only happen when we make will be no need for national or and do things because there racial communities—and ~ there is a need for them and not in could be a human community— order to exchange them. when society is not divided info ———————— mm—————— The way to create these conditions is fo fight the existing condifions. This tendency fo create community by fighting against the conditions of our ogainst work, maney, exchange, bordars, nfions, government, polc, ralfgion, and race-hx at fimes been called “communism”” POLITICS “The more we are governed, the less we are free.” The Alarm jovernment is the model for political activity. Politicians representing different countries, regions or “communities” batfle with each other. We are encouraged to support the leaders we disagree with least, and we're never really surprised when they screw us over. All a poliician’s working class background or radical ideals are worthless once they beginto govern. No matter who is in government, government has its own logic. The fact that this society is divided into classes with opposing interests means that it is always at risk of tearing itself apart. The government is there to make sure that doesn't happen. Whether the government is a dictatorship or a democracy, it holds all the guns and will use them against its own population to make sure that we keep going to work. Not that long ago, an exiremely unstable situation in a particular country could be diffused by nationalizing all of a country’s industries, creating a police state, and calling it “communism”. This kind of capitalism proved to be less efficient and less flexible than good old-fashioned free market capitalism. With the fall of the Soviet Union, there is no longer a Red Army to march in and stabilize countries in this way, and Communist parties around the world are becoming simple social democrats. A working class political party is a contradiction in terms-not because ‘. the membership of a parficular party can't be largely working class, but because the most it can do is give the working class a voice in polifics. It lets our representatives put forward ideas on how our bosses should run this society-how they can make money and keep us under control. Whether they are advocating nationalization or privatization, more welfare or more police (or both), the programs of political parties are different sirategies for managing capitalism. Unfortunately, polifics also exists outside of government. Community leaders, professional activists and unions want fo place themselves between workers and bosses and be the mediators, the negofiators, the means of communication, the representatives, and ulfimately the peacemakers. They fight o keep this position. In order to do that, they need to mobilize the working class in controlled ways fo put pressure on more business-oriented politcians, at the same fime offering business a workforce that is ready to work. This means that they have to disperse us when we start to fight back. Sometimes they do this by negotiating concessions, other times by selling us out. nsalwayscallonustovote, o sit back and let the organizer negotiate, fo fall in line behind the leaders and the specidlists in a kind of passive participation. These non-governmental policiansoffer the government a way to maintain the status quo peacefully, and in return they get jobs managing our misery. Polifical groups are bureaucratic. They tend to mirror the siructures of work, where activity is controlled from the outside. They create specialists in polifics. They are built on a division between leaders and led, between representatives and represented, between organizers and organized. This is not a bad choice of how to set up organizations, to be remedied with a large dose of parficipatory democracy. It is a direct result of what political groups and activities are trying o do-to manage a part of capitalism. The only thing that interests us about politics is its destruction. ANTI-POLITICS “Anarchism is not a beautiful utopia, nor an abstract philosophical idea, itis a social movement of the labouring masses.” When we start to fight against the conditions of our lives, a completely different kind of activity appears. We do not look for a polifician fo come change things for us. ourselves, with other working class people. Whenever this kind of working tance breaks out, polificians try to extinguish it in a flood of petifions, lobbying and- election campaigns. But when we are fighting for ourselves, our activity looks completely different from th We take property away from landlords and use it for ourselves. We use militant tactics against our bosses and end up fighting with the police. We form groups where everyone fakes partin the activity, and there is no divis between leaders and followers. We do not fight for our leaders, for our bosses or for our country. We fight for ourselves. This is not the ulfimate form of democracy. We are imposing our needs on society without debate—needs that are directly contrary to the interests and wishes of rich people everywhere. There is no way for us to speak on equal terms with this society. and against the government and polifics, and to create new forms of organization that do not put our aith in anything other than our own ability, has at fimes been called “anarc So we're in a war—a class war. There is no set of ideas, proposals and organizational strategies that can bring victory. There is no solution outside of winning the war. So long as they have the initiative, we are separated, and passive. Our response to the conditions of our lives is individual: quitting our jobs, moving o neighborhoods with cheaper rent, joining subculfures and gangs, suicide, buying lottery fickets, drug abuse and alcoholism, going fo church. Their world looks like the only . Any hope for change is lived on an imaginary level— separatedfromoureveryday lives. I¥s business as usual, with all the crisis and destruction that this implies. When we go on the offensive we begin to recog and to fight collectively. We use the ways that society depends on us to disrupt it. We strike, sabotage, riot, desert, mutiny and take order o amplify and s. All kinds of new possi over property. We create organization: coordinate our acti We grow more daring and more aggressive in pursuing our own class inferests. These do ot lie in forming @ new government, or becoming the new boss. Our interests lie in ending our own way of life-and therefore the society that is based on that way of life. We are the working class who want to abolish work and class. We are the community of people who want to tear the existing community apart. Our political program is to destroy politics. In order to do that, we have to push the subversive tendencies that exist today unfil we have completely remade society everywhere. This has at fimes been called “revolufion”. www.prole.info