Urban Anarchy Meeting Basic Needs
I will be direct and let the cat out of the bag. Much of what I am proposing in this Urban Anarchy series is creating coops, mutual aid and other anarchist solutions within the confines of the state with a desire to see stateless solutions grow. In this it is my goal to see the formation of the new society within the shell of the old society which will result in the shedding of the state and corporations. This is a basic concept I will be relying on heavily. I will be going in depth with a few specifics but we are not limited to the areas I will be pointing out in further articles. We will not have limits that exist within the confines of a rigid centrally controlled government or capitalist structure. In anarchism we have the one true anarchist solution and that is that anarchism allows for many solutions. The solutions provided within this will not be limited to these ideas, we will look at other concepts like creating a life that we can afford, sustain and maintain outside of the current economy. I will look at basic concepts for us to reach realistic solutions to real life issues we face daily like paying our bills.
One important thing to note is that in working with the working poor and lower classes many of us will be more interested in meeting immediate needs before talking about philosophy or theory. The key to this is to make anarchist solutions to meet immediate needs so that we can move forward in our goal to obtain anarchism. This is not the only solution, path or way to anarchism. I hope that the socialist, communist, agorist and others can unite in this effort. The capitalist may not like what I’m proposing but I’d rather be with the commies and socialists anyway.
The more needs we can work together to meet through voluntary cooperative means the larger we will be able to grow. We are looking to maintain the product of our labor without surplus labor being redistributed to the ruling classes, politicians and capitalists. This is not unheard of. The two areas in history I have been looking at and will be looking further at will be specifically the great depression and the decades leading up to the Spanish civil war. I will look to see why certain things took off and worked and where the failures lay.
In meeting immediate needs we must focus on practical organizations. We all struggle to meet our monthly bills. We will look at not paying our bills. How can we begin to meet the needs that are met by paying the corporate entities who have monopolized our basic needs? We must also look at areas we are dependent on as a spring board for this effort. Some areas that tend to impact our lives are transportation, food, energy and protection. Alone we may not be able to provide as many solutions but as we grow in numbers we can meet more and more needs.
The politicians and capitalists will seek to meet these needs as an effort to gain your support in their rule. We must be aware that much of what they offer will be a danger and we will see this in the great depression when I write further on this. As we meet more needs there will be a desire to put our free society under the rule of those who seek power over us. We will create a self contained economic system that will provide for ourselves even in the event of depression or other tragedies of the larger economy. If the system collapsed over night we should feel little impact from this and be able to provide alternatives for those who are suffering due to being dependent on the system which has collapsed. A self contained economic system has been achieved in the great depression here in the United States but it again was sabotaged by the state, again another point I will expand on when I go in depth with the great depression.
As we go forward we must be aware that this is product of our labor. Meaning we will have to labor and produce to make this occur. Instead of looking to the government or capitalists for jobs we will be creating them ourselves. We will be migrating from our current means of employment within the state to new means to meet our needs outside of the system. You may cling to your current job for a while but part of moving forward is to get out of that job you hate and have control of your own life. In the next few articles we will ask how and lay out a few concepts of how we can do so. We will keep in mind that we are currently dependent on the system and we will work within it when necessary as an effort to get away from it.
We must keep in mind that this will take our efforts. It will require our work, labor and cooperation. We will empower ourselves and other within our communities. We will put aside our higher level philosophical theories and work together in building up the society we desire not the society we are offered by corporations and governments. We will give Power to the People.
