We organise specific anarchist groups and get involved in social struggles to push our ideas as best we can.
How do we get to Anarchy?
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setting up a commune or a community garden doesnt do a lot either
Wrong. We set up a community garden in an area lacking greenspace and it recieved massive community support. When it came time for eviction locals came to support us and we have hundreds of signatures in support of common ownership of the land. We are now discussing with the council the setting up of a legal garden, have a list of supporters of our Class-Struggle Anarchist Organisation and several locals who want to join.
So actually, I would say that adressing the needs of your community and making material gains through confrotnation will win you a lot of support and is a good place to start. Also consider getting behind things like your local residents association or housing/tennants associations...
Make sure you have clearly defined politics and proposals so that people can comprehend your politics.
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We are now discussing with the council the setting up of a legal garden, have a list of supporters of our Class-Struggle Anarchist Organisation and several locals who want to join.
Workerist Anarchists supporting a community garden! Where was I the past week?
Hmmm, you really do touch on a good point.
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a single issue campaigner [does nothing].
One of the main problems in anarchy (and especially in the mainstream Left) is single issue fights. We must address the problemas a whole and try to bring the whole system down at once. I'm not saying we shouldn't concentrate on some of the immediate problems with particular force, but we need to keep in mind the big picture.
David UK wrote:
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We set up a community garden in an area lacking greenspace and it recieved massive community support. When it came time for eviction locals came to support us and we have hundreds of signatures in support of common ownership of the land. We are now discussing with the council the setting up of a legal garden, have a list of supporters of our Class-Struggle Anarchist Organisation and several locals who want to join.I'm not from the UK, so forgive my ignorance here. Who or what is "the council"? Is it not the local government? So, if that is right, you are discussing with the local government the idea of setting up a legal garden? Assuming you are successful in achieving a legal garden, in what way is that not reformism? I don't see how a legal garden is remotely antagonistic to capitalism.
I wouldn't start from the perspective of ''how we reach anarchism'', i'd start from the perspective of how you can individually and collectively improve your own life, so to speak, with anarchist ideas. Hence you organise using anarchist ideas (eg direct action in the workpalce, direct democracy etc) in issues that effect you in your own community and workplace, afterall if you can't find a way in which anarchist ideas can benefit yourself, how are you going to convince 6 billion other people that its a good idea.
As far as i can see revolutions don't occur because a group sits down and works out a perfect strategy of how to ''get involved'' in this or that struggle or because x amount of people want to live in a better world, they happen when enough people keep organising in their day to day lives along radical lines until they hit a brick wall where they see the limitations of what capitalism has to offer them. Not saying don't organise as part of an anarchist group mind, just saying only do that if you get some sort of benefit out of it.
As a start, we can return to representative money. Our current system is called fiat money, in which paper notes are backed only by the traders' "full faith and credit" in the government, in particular by its acceptability for payments of debts to the government (usually taxes). Instead of having full "faith and credit" in government, a representative currency would allow us to own the product our bill represents. it can be anything from gold (called a gold standard) to food stuffs, to labour worked.
Refused wrote:
We stop making jokes and concentrate on improving our lives.
And better integration of our illegal gardens with our illegal squats and all of this will of course be financed by our illegal flea markets with assistance from our illegal mutualist banks working on a gold standard illegal currency.
For this post I would actually like some concrete ideas and suggestions as to what can be done to effectively challenge authority and capitalism.
We know that fighting with police doesnt work, protesting doesnt work, neither does summit-hopping, dropping out, NGO work, doing the petty crime things like graffiti, shoplifting and dumpstering, we know that blockading Faslane isnt going to stop war and that setting up a commune or a community garden doesnt do a lot either. Maybe we could all go to work and try and set up unions and organise 'the general strike', but being an enviromentalist does nothing and neither does being an animal rights activist, a solidarity peace activist, a single issue campaigner or a squatting punk. So what do we do, scenes are for losers, rioting is what you do when you are 15, graffiti is for bored people and doing NGO stuff is too liberal. We dont like Crimthincism or Green anarchism.... where do we go from here?