Communism of the Now: The Revolution of Conscience- Building Anew Amidst the Death Throes of Capitalism

The Lilith Emancipatory Collective reflects on the historical experience of Marxism and the failures of past revolutionary movements, and argues for a fresh approach to building communism in the present moment. Instead of the traditional role of the working class and vanguard parties, it proposes instead a form of collective action and ethical engagement rooted in everyday communal practices and solidarity as the basis for creating a new, post-capitalist society.

Chapter 1: The Death Throes

Late stage capitalism is not a system in triumph, but a system in decay and rot. It is a metaphysical disease, a plague of the soul, extending beyond the economic realm into the ecological and spiritual. It is a corpse that refuses to accept that it is dead.

The capitalist unlife—an economic lich—sustains itself by leeching off everything. It exploits and oppresses the global South through financial manipulation, economic sabotage, and military coups. It feeds off the Earth we rely on, bringing a sledgehammer into the ecological equilibrium that has existed since the beginning of the Holocene. It commercializes the very soul, fragmenting the communal networks that have composed humanity for millenia.

Modern global capitalism has birthed an entity even Marx never predicted, what sociologist William I. Robinson termed the transnational capitalist class. a stateless oligarchy whose loyalty is to capital itself, not any nation or people. The IMF banker, the multinational corporate head, the hedge fund investor. These are the men: the Larry Finks, the Rupert Murdochs, who speak of quarterly reports and union-busting in the same breath; whose lobbyists disembowel environmental protections in Acre while their supply chains trigger famine in Kinshasa. Their god is growth, their gospel extraction.

And yet, this system of exploitation is not equal. It lays its weight predominantly upon the global South, the colonized world. Nations like Vietnam, Brazil, the Congo, Bangladesh, bear the brunt of exploitation. Their working class slave away in mines for cobalt, in sweatshops for clothing, in factories for iPhones; a burden falling overwhelmingly on Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples, revealing capitalism's intrinsic alliance with racial and colonial hierarchy.

If and when a nation attempts to break free from this globalized system of oppression, international capitalism requires a bludgeon. The stick to the carrot, the global police state. America, the arch-imperialist power, and its authoritarian-financial complex.

Through structural adjustment, debt leverage, and currency manipulation, the West ensures that the colonized world remains trapped in cycles of debt and poverty. If those fail, the so called “free world” is more than willing to utilise coups, invasion, or internal destabilisation to maintain its hegemony, the fate met by Allende’s Chile and barely avoided by Castro’s Cuba. These interventions are justified through what Naom Chomsky termed “manufactured consent,” as the global media hegemonies justify war, coups, even genocide, through the use of false crises. It’s a form of permanent, collective insanity, a society driven to the warpath by manufactured fear.

Capitalism is not just insane, it is ecocidal. It takes the very Earth and hurls it into the furnace of industry for a quick dollar. We are playing chicken with ecological collapse, and it isn’t going to let up on the gas. Svante Arrhenius already predicted that CO2 emissions could cause global increases in temperature in 1896. And yet, we have continued to drive headfirst towards the edge of the cliff. This is not a mistake, it is institutional design. The blind drive for short term profit above all is the core of capitalism, and it will kill itself and drag us along with it.

Green capitalism offers a pretty solution. It is a ruse. “Green” capitalism still requires unrelenting, unsustainable growth to function. It attempts to replace the fuel of the engine while the car drives off a cliff. The economy must always grow, must always consume, must always expand. Humanity, every year, consumes 1.7x the natural resources that the Earth can naturally regenerate. This is a metabolic rift that severs humanity from the regenerative cycles of the Earth, treating it as an open sewer to dump waste and an infinite mine for resources, a form of ecological suicide. This rift no longer merely describes pollution; it defines a new geological era. We no longer exist in the Holocene or the Anthropocene, but the Capitalocene; an epoch where capitalism’s insatiable hunger becomes the primary geological force.

Techno-utopianism, as an alternative form of eco-modernism, is another facet of the same lie. The Jevons paradox, described by economist William Jevons in 1865, explains that when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use, increased demand can contradictorily cause increased total consumption of said resource. He argued that contrary to common intuition, technological progress could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption. Electric cars will not solve the climate crisis, but they will spark new wars over lithium.

Utopian ideas such as carbon capture technology, global terraforming, or even plans to blot out the sun itself, are fantasies, attempts by a society trapped within capitalism to foresee a solution to the crisis without radical change. This is not a luddite’s cry, but a realist’s warning: technology divorced from the growth imperative is essential, technology married to it is suicide. Eco-modernism, then, is an elaborate coping mechanism for the end of the world. Futurism is not a solution, it is a fantasy of absolution from a system unwilling to stop sinning. They are the ultimate expressions of capitalist realism; dreaming of a technological deux ex machina to avoid the radical change necessary.

Capitalist realism is the lynchpin that holds the entire rotten system together. It is the decaying of the human soul, of hope, for a sunken resignation. It is the pervasive and poisonous belief that capitalism is not just the best, but the only plausible economic and political system, making it impossible to even imagine alternatives. As Mark Fisher famously argued, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."

Capitalist realism is the most insidious threat, because it coopts and subsumes all critique. It leads to Che Guevara tshirts, the commercialization of anti-capitalism into an aesthetic, the redirection of radicalism into attempting to bring about change within the system.

A society that believes that there is no other option is a submissive society, one that not only accepts commercialization, but welcomes it. Community itself is turned into a commodity, marketed as subcultures or aesthetics.

The invention of the internet, once a decentralized network, soon corrupted into a corporatist hegemony, exacerbated this tenfold. The rise of algorithmic content has allowed capitalists to alienate and isolate us on a scale never before seen. Our every move, our every action, is turned into a marketable statistic. Even resistance against the system is commercialised into faux leftism, such as liberal performativity, putting BLM on your profile pic and using “I Voted” stickers while the world burns.

Capitalist Realism’s ultimate victory is not just convincing us the system is good, but convincing us we are the broken ones. The anxiety, depression, and atomization that characterize modern life are seen not as systemic issues, but as personal failings. In truth, they are a rational response to a deeply sick society. The destruction of authentic community, the erasure of stable employment, a lack of a livable future, individually are crises. Together, they are a kill switch to human contentment and happiness. This depoliticization of despair is the most effective barrier to the revolution of conscience, as it turns rightful anger at the system inward towards the self. The system pathologises our sane response to its insanity.

In such a world, where capitalism has not only won, but has proclaimed itself the end of history, the leftist has overwhelmingly been trapped in what Antonio Gramsci called the “morbid symptoms” of a dying era: Nostalgia, Collaboration, or Nihilism.

The nostalgic is permanently trapped in 1917. They are haunted by the storming of the winter palace, Red October, over and over again, never understanding why. This is a form of twisted conservatism, where the nostalgic idealises a non-existent past out of an inability to imagine a better future.

The collaborator has capitulated to the system. They have seen the permanence of capitalism, and decided the best, no, the only course of action is to try and do good within it. This is the social democrat politician, the average Bernie voter, the liberal feminist. They try to stem the bleeding, but have given up on closing the wound. They are the managers of the apocalypse.

The nihilist has seen the failures of revolution and the compromises of social democracy, and chosen despair. This is the cynicism of postmodern leftism, which critiques but does not provide any feasible alternative. This is not a personal failing, but a rational and logical endpoint of living in a society that seems doomed to the abyss. In the worst case, nihilism bleeds into accelerationist fervor, a desperate grasp for hope in annihilation.

These three distinct paths–looking to the past, the present, or the future–form the Trilemma of Surrender. While their manifestations are divergent, they share a common root. They all are driven by their relation to the past mythic defeat, whether through worship, rejection, or dejection. Their response, whether escapism, negotiation, or despondency, share a root cause, the historic failure of Marxism to truly manifest. Together, they constitute the Moirai of the Left: who spin out, measure, and cut the same thread, again and again, each time hoping that this time the story will change.

Nostalgia, collaboration, and nihilism are logical conclusions to a century of defeat. Yet they are all, fundamentally, forms of surrender. A surrender to fantasy, to the system, to despair itself. Nostalgia has fixated on a past that never was. Collaboration has resigned itself to managing the present. Nihilism has abandoned the future. These are not paths forward. They are stewards of a grave. But a grave is also earth, and given time and effort, seeds can take root in even the most barren soil. If the old revolutionary subject is a phantom and the state is an impenetrable fortress, then the revolution must begin elsewhere: in the immediate, the local, and the conscientious. It must begin with the radical act of building non capitalist relations in the present, not in some distant future. We will give up the certainty of stewarding history for the reality of gardening the present. This is the Communism of the Now. Its tools are not the party and the state, but the tenant’s union and the municipal council. It's battlefield not the future, but the doorstep.

Chapter 2: Communism of the Now

Subchapter A: The Conscientia of the Now

So, now what? Capitalism has won. The left has thrown in the towel, more focused on internal factionalism than moving forward. What do we do, if not give up?

Here, I shall propose a word for a new communism, one with deep roots in the left. It is already practiced, in the communes of the Zapatistas, in the democratic confederalism of Rojava, in your local mutual aid group and public library. This is conscientious communism, a praxis driven communism, built not on historical inevitability but on purposeful future building.

Conscientia. The Latin root for conscience. Yet, it does not have the same modern connotation of passive morality. It means “knowledge held within,” or “shared knowledge.” This Conscientia must be the driver of our new communism. It is not the class consciousness of the proletariat, but an ethical imperative against exploitation and domination, accompanied by practical knowledge for communal living. How to tend to a communal garden, how to form a mutual aid group, how to organise a tenant's union. This is the dialectic between ethics and skill. The ethical imperative demands action, which requires practical knowledge. The act of putting knowledge to action, praxis, deepens and refines the ethical imperative. Ethics without praxis is sentiment, praxis without ethics is meaningless.

The Conscientia is our anti-surrender. Unlike revolutionary nostalgia, it is grounded in the immediate present, not in a distant past. Unlike “pragmatic” liberalism, it refuses to work within the system, instead choosing to build autonomous power outside it. Unlike cynical nihilism, it chooses constructive hope over despair, not in historical destiny but in the deliberate process of creation.

Conscientia does not materialise on its own. Capitalist alienation without guidance can lead to revolutionary praxis, or it can lead to despair, or even embrace of fascism. Therefore, it must be cultivated through already existing networks. Mutual aid groups, soup kitchens, municipal councils. These already practice Conscientia on a daily basis, all that's missing is a theoretical and political framework. But who is to be the revolutionary subject of this new Conscientia?

The recipient of this Conscientia cannot just be the proletariat. That strategy has failed. The working class has been fragmented along racial, gendered, religious, and cultural lines. The creation of a labor aristocracy along with the rise of a service and gig economy have dissolved what unity was left. So, if the proletariat cannot carry the banner, then who? We propose a new name for an old formation: the Solidariat. Not a class, but a voluntary association of individuals bound by a shared commitment.

The Solidariat is the carrier of the Conscientia. They are an active participant in their community, participating in communal, democratic structures. They support the vulnerable in their communities, and receive aid without shame when they are vulnerable themselves. Vitally, they are human, and thus imperfect. When they falter, when they cause harm or hurt; they accept fault, and to the best of their ability seek to mend what they broke. The Solidariat practices humanism in the most literal sense: they embrace the very humanity that capitalist realism seeks to alienate.

The Solidariat is not defined by their relation to the means of production. It is a categorization that accepts that the proletariat is no longer one class, but many. However, the Solidariat is not post-class. We do not reject class analysis, but we acknowledge that the ethical imperative against exploitation in all forms is the catalyst. We reject the abstraction of the “worker” as a monolith while embracing the specific, stratified material reality of the vulnerable. We understand that the primary form of economic exploitation, wage-labor, is still the reality for billions. Therefore, the Solidariat focus must be strategic. We organize with and for the struggling, the economically endangered, those among us whose crisis is not philosophical but visceral: a matter of rent, food, and dignity. The academic, the skilled worker, the middle manager is of course welcome, but we must acknowledge material realities. We must, as a moral and ethical demand, focus our support for those highest on the hierarchy of need. The disabled worker whose state stipend barely keeps him alive, the homeless queer whose parents abandoned them, the single mother who juggles three jobs for her children. Our primary goal is to support the most vulnerable among us. We build a new society not just for the sake of it, but for those left behind.

However, we are not a charity with a red coat of paint. The goal is not to create a provider class and a vulnerable class, but to empower the vulnerable into co builders. It is not a project of pity, but of partnership. Material aid—housing, electricity, water, food—must be inseparable from the praxis of Conscientia: the education in self governance, the invitation into mutual aid networks, and the forging of real bonds and community. We reject the false liberal dichotomy of giving a fish versus teaching to fish; we build a commune, we share a fishing pole, maintain a boat, and we share the fish between us. The goal is the person receiving aid becomes the community organiser, the gardener, or the roommate of tomorrow, and just as importantly, the aid giver can become the recipient if they ever need. We are creating not the humiliating paternalism of charity, but a mutualistic ecosystem of reciprocal aid. The gardener shares produce with the librarian, who provides housing support to a student, which enables them to provide books back to the gardener; a gift economy where everyone provides what they can and receives what they need.

To dismiss this as mere “lifestylism” is to misunderstand the nature of power. The state is not a king or master, but a social relation. Its authority is a collective fiction, composed of and maintained by the masses which sign its social contract. By making the state, step by step, obsolete, we demonstrate that the social contract is a lie. Every tenant union reminds us that the landlord’s power is a paper threat, every mutual aid collective revives the ancestral memory of providing for one another, every community garden helps stitch up the metabolic rift. These federating networks of autonomous cells create a rival organism within the state's body politic, a dual power. This is not a substitute of mass politics, but its only plausible manifestation in the 21st century, a praxis of Conscientia made large: the ethical knowledge of community that renders the state redundant.

However, the Solidariat is also defined in opposition to exploitation and domination. Therefore, they exclude by definition the exploitation of the CEO and the hedge fund investor, but also the bigoted domination of the racist, the misogynist, the queerphobe, and the antisemite.

A transgender professor of history may be more likely to embody the Conscientia than a racist factory worker, not because the factory worker is ontologically evil, but because the principles of conscience are incompatible with racism. The factory worker, to truly stand against capitalism, must unlearn their own oppression, which includes the racism that divides them from their comrades. The door to Conscientia is closed to bigotry, but never barred for individuals, given willingness to change. The Conscientia is open to all, but they must be willing to learn, and to do, a praxis of growth and redemption. We stand together, or not at all.

Conscientious communism refuses to repeat the past. We refuse to throw the queers into camps, abandon the Black worker, or surrender Palestine to her fate.

We make these refusals not out of sentiment, but out of ethical necessity. Our revolution, if it does not liberate all, is not a revolution worth having. It will fail, not merely because it divided instead of uniting—but because it deserved to fail.

This moral commitment is the heart of the Conscientia. It is our refusal to accept the transactional, lives for lives logic of capital.

If this chapter resonates not as a distant ideal, but as a description of the world you are already trying to build in your daily life—through small but meaningful acts—then you are not alone. You have been doing the work of revolution. You are the Solidariat. What changes now is not your status, but your understanding. You see that the garden you've been tending is not an isolated plot but part of a vast, hidden, but growing ecosystem growing from the ashes of the old. So take heart, comrade. The most difficult step—the choice to begin—is already behind you. Let us build, together.

Subchapter B: The Praxis of the Now

As we said earlier, ethical conviction without praxis is merely sentiment. As such, this subchapter shall move from the what to the how, a practical illustration of what the new world we will build could look like.

First, I must acknowledge that this is not a new invention. Conscientious communism, though under different names, has been practiced for decades. As alluded to earlier, the Zapatistas have been practicing building non-state power since the 1980s. Anarchists have been building a theory of direct democracy as contemporaries of Marx. This is not a wholesale invention, but a collection and synthesis of ideas already in practice.

As well, note that this example is merely that, an example of the kind of society we will create. Inevitably, we will need to adapt to the material conditions we face. Do not treat this as religious dogma. Treat it as one possible manifestation of the future.

Now, in this illustration, we shall begin on the scale of the individual, as that is the unit from which all political power originates. The individual under capitalism has been atomised and alienated. Our first goal is to undo this. To build true community, and forge real human connections. This is the mechanism through which the Conscientia spreads.

Through the individual, we cultivate the daily practice of Conscientia, building the practical knowledge necessary for communal living. It's the decision to shop at a food co-op, to reject fast fashion, to participate in your municipal council, to simply get to know your neighbours. It is to reject the atomisation with the only tool you have, your humanity. The revolution must start here, between people, not above them.

From the individual, we must zoom out to the neighbourhood, the apartment block, the local community as the cell of society. The goal of the Solidariat is to build communism on this scale, for this is the scale of the human. To overthrow a nation is a daunting and insurmountable task. To democratize a neighbourhood is scary, but doable. It is a goal you, as an individual, can meaningfully progress towards.

This is the role of the tenant’s union, the mutual aid group, the municipal council. Through these forms of voluntary association, we transform the Solidariat from an individual activist to an autonomous collective. A tenant union can not just strike, but form eviction defence networks, repair collectives, and even tenant owned buildings. A mutual aid network is not a mere charity, it is a small piece of a gift economy that dismantles the logic of capitalism, a small piece of communism in the now. The municipal council is the most democratic institution of the state, and thus the most important to reclaim. This is the mind of the Solidariat, where we decide on local issues, allocate resources based on need, and plan projects.

Importantly, the revolution must operate on both the material and the abstract. While the mutual aid network ensures everyone gets enough to eat, the community-run workshop teaches not only skills, but also the ethical imperatives that are key to the Conscientia. The goal here is not just to teach life skills, but to build a new culture of solidarity.

But what next? How do we prevent the Conscientia from becoming a localism? How do we prevent creating small pockets of communism that are easily crushed? The answer lies in federation.

What differentiates a federation from a state is consent. A true federation is a voluntary association of voluntary associations. Power is built not vertically, but horizontally. Decisions are made off consensus, not off decree.

The glue of the federation are the credit union, the community land trust, and the solidarity business. These institutions subvert the logic of capital for the good of the community. They are the circulatory system that prevent our communes from becoming isolated islands in a sea of capital.

The credit union is the mechanism for growth. It provides low interest loans to the Solidariat for housing repairs, medical emergencies, land purchases for CLTs, and co-op start ups. They provide the funds for the revolution’s expansion, without the predatory extractionism of traditional banks.

Community land trusts are the roots of the revolution. They capture parts of the Earth back from capital, returning it to the community in perpetuity. This ensures affordable housing for the community, and land for communal use such as gardening or workshops. They are the earth upon which our new world will be built.

Solidarity owned businesses, meanwhile, are not just “nice businesses.” They are businesses owned by the workers, operate on democratic principles, and circulate surplus back to the community, directly attacking the endless growth imperative of capital. These coops are the veins of the revolution, transferring resources based on need, not profit.

This is the glue of federation, but we need a nervous system. That is the role of the council, the “soviet” in its original meaning, never again to be usurped by a vanguard. These are the regional autonomous decision making centers of our new revolution, linked to the economic glue through delegates and liaisons.

These councils must operate on a voluntary and democratic basis. The Solidariat must not become a professional politician. Delegates are just that, delegates of their communities. They must be recallable, with strict term limits, and limited powers. We are not creating a new state, we are dismantling one.

Communities can provide petitions to the council, who would, based on a direct democratic process, vote on them. Their role is granted in trust by the commune, not vice versa. Their role is coordination, regional projects, intermediating inter commune disputes, and self defence, not micromanaging individual commune affairs.

The key principle is subsidiarity, making decisions at the smallest, most local level with sufficient capability. A decision concerning a town will be made by the town council, a decision concerning a province will be made by the provincial council. All power and action originate at the smallest, most immediate scale capable of addressing a need. The Solidariat grows from the hyper-local outward, not from the central downward. We will not replicate Democratic Centralism in our new society.

These councils are the Solidariat’s will made manifest. They fund infrastructure projects, support the creation of new coops, organise region wide skill shares, run solidarity based insurance funds, and manage the digital infrastructure of the revolution. They provide access to medicine, and industry through liaising with doctors and industrial unions. They are what the revolution looks like on a large scale.

These councils must utilise the tools of the 21st century. The rise of the internet has given capital many tools, but it has also given us just as many. Community social networks for organising, transferring resources through encrypted platforms, open source software for sharing of knowledge, these are our revolutionary tools. Importantly, we must avoid using platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Instead, encrypted open source platforms such as Mastodon and Signal will be our digital Agora, and community owned mutual aid platforms our public granary. We must own our digital commons just as fiercely as we own our land and labor.

It is at this point that the core question of the chapter arises. The question of confrontation. The lesson we learned from the 20th century is that capital does not stand idly by as we dismantle it. What happens when a city government attempts to dismantle our community land trust, when their auditors attempt to sabotage our credit union, when the landlord calls the police to break a strike? As such, we need a strategy of not warfare, but defence.

The revolution necessitates a spine, a skeletal system that provides structure to the body politic. This is the role of the Self Defence Guard.

The goal of this group is not to wage a guerilla war against the state. It is to provide defence for the revolution, and to force the state to either back down or prove its brutality. They prevent the police from breaking our picket lines. They protect our rallies from fascist violence. They are not our sword, but our shield.

The Self Defence Guard must not become an army of professionals. They are a rotating unit composed of our Solidariat, a collective duty of the community. Their goal is not to engage the state in a suicidal firefight, but to descalate through a strategic show of force. The goal, after all, is not to die for the revolution, but to live for it. We explicitly reject martyrdom as a means to an end. Our strength is in our will to withstand and build, not in our capacity for sacrifice. Just by showing up, we show them that the revolution has teeth, and a beating heart.

Of course, there are moments where this will not be enough. The state will crack down. They will send cops, and then soldiers, and then tanks. We cannot win in a military confrontation with a modern nation state. What we can do is learn from history.

Movements like the Black Panthers, the Zapatistas of Mexico, the Democratic Confederalism of Rojava, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and more teach us victory does not necessarily mean the destruction of the enemy. Methods of civil disobedience, sabotage, and quiet resistance can, in the long run, lead to victory through endurance. The state can crush a rival government, it can’t crush an idea.

This does not mean pursuing a suicidal frontal assault. It means that when the state moves to crush a community land trust or break a tenant strike, our resistance must be as multifaceted as the attack. Our power lies not in matching their force, but in applying our own: the collective force of withheld labor, the guerrilla war for truth, the reclamatory force of occupation and disruption, and a united front of targeted, strategic non-cooperation. The modern state is a giant, but a slow one, paralyzed by bureaucracy and dependency on our compliance. We are David against a Goliath, but we do not have the luxury of a sling and a stone. We must rely on our flexibility and mobility. To evade and taunt the giant until it collapses from its own exhaustion.

A crucial distinction we must make is between pacifism and asymmetric resistance. We reject all out warfare, but we also reject the false dichotomy offered by pacifism. There is a middle ground between revolutionary martyrdom and pacifistic idealism, and we must walk that line carefully. Digital disruption, industrial sabotage, mass non-cooperation aimed at crippling the global supply networks, halting the military industrial arms trade, these are tools. Like all tools, they are in of themselves morally neutral. It is the context of their use that justifies or condemns, not an ontological revulsion from violence in of itself. A good comrade learns to the best of their ability to defend themselves and others, and how to heal when someone is hurt. Learning basic first aid, how to tourniquet, how to do CPR, alongside learning self defence, how to hurt someone trying to hurt you, these are as important to the Conscientia as gardening and organising.

Along with shielding the community from outside violence, the Self Defence Guard must protect and deescalate conflict within our communities. We will not rely on cops, who collaborate and enforce the system. We will have protection of the community provided by the community. And our justice will be restorative, focused on reintegration into the community, not punitive. Unless absolutely necessary for community safety, we will not work with cops.

Alongside the Self Defence Guard as our teeth, we need legal and financial claws. A Defence fund to fight the legal battles, to use the laws of the state against it, is vital. The battleground of the courts is an unglamorous one, but a vital one nonetheless.

Eventually, the goal is not to seize the state, but to render it irrelevant. When the death throes of Capitalism finally give way for its inevitable, cold, death, we will be ready. Our society, our cellular network spanning nations, has already functioned autonomously and separately from the state. It will not be easy, but our society will have a new responsibility, to manage the fallout and soothe the birthing pains of a new world.

This is the guide. It is not a dogma, but a vision, a view of a future unshackled from capital or state, built from the why of conscience, through the what of theory, to the how of daily practice. We have taken the ashes and planted a seed. Now we need to nurture it.

You may feel a great weight upon you. It is not the glorious weight of a gun slung on your back, but the humble weight of a trowel in the hand. The revolution will not be televised because it will not be an event. It will be the slow, unglamorous work of meeting minutes, and harvested vegetables, defended tenants and organised strikes. Its heroes are gardeners and librarians, not generals and demagogues.

Do not mistake that weight for sorrow. It is the weight of agency. Let it be the ballast that steadies you when the work feels heavy and the world feels heavier. The revolution is not something to be done to you, it is something you can do, right now.

This is the communism of the now. It is a rejection of the revolutionary fantasy of the nostalgic, the resigned utilitarianism of the collaborator, the cynical despair of the nihilist. It is to plant a tree so that everyone can sit in its shade.

However, a blueprint is not a map. A vision does not tell you where to put your next step. If you have not been deterred, if the weight is not a burden but a calling, then continue on, comrade.

The next chapter is your toolkit. It is the “what next” for the person who asks: “Alright, you convinced me. Now, what do I do on Monday?”

We will move from architecture to action. We will discuss how to form a tenant union in your building. How to practice restorative justice in your community. How to plant onions and how to organise your workplace. Most importantly, we will address the hygiene of the mind, practical and actionable techniques to manage the despair and anxiety caused by a diseased society.

You do not need my permission to begin. You only need your own.

Chapter 3: Revolution of the Conscience

Subchapter A: Mental Sovereignty

Congratulations on turning the page. The hardest step, the first step, has already been taken. All that’s left are small, daily, incremental steps. The daily practice of Conscientia.

But to begin, we must first decolonize our minds. Capitalist realism infiltrates every aspect of our society, including our thoughts. It manifests as dread, anxiety, depression, and hopelessness. This guide seeks to allow us, the Solidariat, to practice mental sovereignty, the first act of reclamation.

Under our current system, dread, anxiety, and depression are not side effects, but intended symptoms. They alienate us, extracting our attention, sowing division, and suppressing our native instinct for solidarity. It’s a colonialism of the mind. Mental sovereignty is the declaration of independence for our own psyche. A mentally sovereign Solidariat is one that is resilient.

This guide is a collection of various techniques from CBT, DBT, ACT, Mindfulness Therapy, and other psychotherapeutic approaches. The goal of this guide is not to replace therapy. Professional mental health services are invaluable, but in our current society, restricted to the privileged and the secure. Those most in need of these services are denied them. As such, this guide is meant for the vulnerable, as a collection of mental health techniques that have helped me and others over the years, backed by psychiatric science.

An important clarification I need to make is on the topic of mental disorder. While it is true that capitalism creates and exacerbates disordered thinking, we would be wrong to assume that all mental variation stems from capitalism. For example, I deal with both autism spectrum disorder and borderline personality disorder. My neurodivergence likely exists due to a mix of nature and nurture. This is to say even without capitalism, I would not be neurotypical. However, environment is important. A world without the dread and despair caused by capitalism would be one where my neurodivergence and disability is not treated as a burden, but as a part of being human. Though I will forever be disabled in this aspect, there could exist a world where that does not limit me in the same ways it does now.

These techniques are not about achieving a perfect, happy individualism. They are about creating a stable internal platform from which to engage in the collective struggle. We are clearing the fog of capitalist-induced despair so we can see each other clearly, organize effectively, and build the world we know is possible. Your healing is not separate from the revolution. It is its foundation.

Mindfulness: Observing the Colonial Police in Your Head
If mental sovereignty is our declaration of independence, then these are the first drills of the psyche's militia. We begin not with weapons, but with attention.

Mindfulness is the foundational practice of metacognition; thinking about thinking. Under capitalism, our thoughts are often colonized by its logic: productivity anxiety, social comparison, and the dread of capitalist realism. This practice is not about emptying the mind or achieving calm, but about becoming a witness to the occupation.

When stress, intrusive thoughts, or self-loathing arise, pause. It will feel instinctive to try and suppress them. This time, observe them with detached curiosity. Note: "Ah, here is the thought that I am worthless because I am not monetarily productive today." Write it down. This act of observation is the first step of reclamation. You are no longer just the thought; you are the one who sees it. You begin to separate the self from the colonizing narrative.

Writing Down and Rationalising: Interrogating the Lies
Once observed, we must interrogate these thoughts. They are not random; they are often internalized propaganda from a system that thrives on our insecurity and isolation.

Take the written thought "No one really likes you; all your friends hate you." Now, apply the rational scrutiny you would to a political claim. Assume it's a statement from a stranger, and investigate its evidence.

Examine the Evidence: "If no one likes me, logically, I would have no friends. But I have friends who seek me out. Therefore, this is false."

Identify the Source: "This 'waste of space' narrative—who benefits from me believing this? Does it make me more docile, less likely to demand connection or community? Yes. This is a lie that serves to atomize me."

Reframe with Conscientia: Replace the system's lie with a truth rooted in your reality and ethics: "I am a person of inherent value, part of a community. My worth is not conditional on my productivity. My friends' actions are the real evidence, not my job and assets."

This practice is not naive optimism. It is the disciplined application of reason against the irrational, despair-inducing logic of capital.

Cognitive Defusion: Depersonalizing the Political
Cognitive defusion is the advanced practice of mental sovereignty. It is the realization that you are not your thoughts. Your mind generates thoughts—including the corrosive ones implanted by a sick society—but you have the power to choose which to engage with, which to believe, and which to dismiss as propaganda.

A powerful technique is to externalize the voice. Imagine the painful thought being shouted by a stranger on the street. Would you automatically believe it? No. You'd recognize its source and intention. Apply the same skepticism to the internal voice.
The "What Would a Friend Say?" Protocol: Practicing Solidarity with the Self
Here, we directly apply the ethics of the Solidariat—mutual aid and solidarity—to ourselves. We are often our own most brutal critics.

When you have the thought, "I'm a bad person," perhaps after an honest mistake (say, saying something hurtful), pause. Now, imagine your dearest friend came to you having made the same mistake. How would you respond? You'd likely offer compassion and encourage repair and reconciliation. You would not define their entire being by a single error.
Why do we deny ourselves the solidarity we would freely give to others? This double standard is itself a product of alienation. To break it is a revolutionary act. Treat yourself with the grace of a comrade. This isn't self-indulgence; it is internalizing the gift economy of kindness, breaking the transactional, punitive logic we've been taught. By becoming a friend to yourself, you strengthen your capacity to be a true friend and comrade in the collective struggle.
Putting into Practice

What does using these techniques in tandem look like? Say, let's take the thought "I'll never make a difference; it's all pointless."

The first step is noticing that thought emerge in the first place. Then, we observe the thought and separate it from ourselves. “Ah, that’s the voice of nihilism and despair.”

Then, we interrogate that thought. “Why is it pointless? Because I can’t change the world? But I can change my neighbourhood. I can make a friend laugh when they’re sad. Isn’t that enough?” Then, we can reject the thought. “I am not pointless, I am a valued and important member of my community.”

Finally, we use the friend protocol. “If a friend came to me and told me they felt pointless, I’d point to all the concrete good they do. I deserve the same kindness.”

Radical Acceptance
These techniques help us reclaim our mind from the lies of capital. But what about capital’s very real truths? Capitalism exists in both the material and mental worlds, and in the material world, the violence it leverages are very much real. We mustn’t confuse the taunts of the cop for the bars of the prison. For the bars, we don’t need refutation. We need a saw.

The above techniques are useful tools, but not all tools work for all situations. And in our world, not all unhelpful thoughts are untrue. Thoughts like “I can’t make rent next month. I’m going to be homeless.” or “My boss is a useless piece of shit who’s completely underqualified and I can’t do anything about it.” are not necessarily untrue.

The techniques of observation and interrogation are our defense against the lies our minds tell us. But capitalism is not merely a liar; it is a brutal fact. Its violence creates realities that are true, painful, and inescapable in the immediate moment. For these truths, we need a different tool: not refutation, but grounding.

Radical acceptance is a skill from dialectal behavioural therapy that aims to allow one to accept reality as it is. It is the practice of Conscientia itself, the acceptance of “shared knowledge”, the knowledge that our world is fundamentally broken. It doesn’t mean capitulation. Nor does it mean delusion that the world is fine, because it isn’t. Radical acceptance means understanding that, without judgement, and saying “Okay then. What can I do tomorrow?”

Radical Acceptance is the ultimate practice of the Now. It forces us to plant our feet in the actual, rocky ground of today, not the dreamed-up fertile fields of tomorrow or yesterday. The revolution begins only where we actually stand.

The first step is to name the reality. “I am facing eviction.” “My job is abusive and exploitative.” Feel the pain, the anger, the fear. Do not try and smother it, but also do not fan the flame. Say to yourself: 'This is what is happening. It is horrible, and it is true.' Then, when you are ready, prepare to fight.

The next step is what makes this not capitulation or collaboration. It is the reclamation of agency. Now that we see the reality for what it is, ask the revolutionary question: “Given that this is true, what can I do now?” You cannot 'solve capitalism' or 'make my boss a good person.' You can call the tenant union hotline tonight. You can discuss your salary with your coworkers tomorrow. You can document your boss's abuse to build a case. Radical Acceptance clears the debris of 'what should be' so you can see the next, actual step of 'what can be done.'

Most importantly, the Solidariat never acts alone. We understand our power is in our solidarity. The tenant union hotline, the coworker you trust, the mutual aid spreadsheet; these are the material expressions of our shared agency. Your isolated crisis, when accepted radically, becomes the nexus of a spreading Conscientia, which can enable collective action.

The practice of Mental Sovereignty therefore follows this discipline: First, Diagnose the thought. Second, choose your tool. First, we use mindfulness to document the thought. “My boss is a homophobic stuck up twat who is going to fire me for being queer.” Then, we interrogate it. In this case, the thought is true. Now what?

We move from the previous protocol (separate the thought, reject the thought, use the friend protocol) to our new tool. We accept the thought. “My boss is a piece of shit, and my anger is justified.” We allow ourselves to feel. We feel the rage, the injustice, the fear. We let it flow through us, and we acknowledge it as rational. Then, as it begins to fade, we do not allow despair to take its place. We ask the crucial question: “Given that my boss is an asshole, what can I do about it, in the short and long term?” I can, tonight, text two coworkers I trust and say, "This is unsustainable. Can we talk?" I can, this week, look up the IWW's 'train the trainer' guide on workplace organizing.' I can, this month, form a union. This is the Conscientia becoming praxis.

Values Therapy: Building the Solidariat:

We have learned to clear the debris. We can diagnose the colonizing thought, withstand the brutal fact, and reclaim our mental ground. But a cleared lot is not a home. Sovereignty is not an end in itself; it is the prerequisite for construction. If our reactive work was the saw for the prison bars, our proactive work is the blueprint for the world outside.

We now move from reaction to proaction. From diagnosing pathology to architecting health. This is the practice of building the Solidariat from the ground up; and that ground is you.

Here, we turn to a powerful tool: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Not for coping, but for creation. ACT posits that a fulfilling life is built not on the absence of pain, but on values-guided action. In our terms, it is the methodology for aligning your daily existence with your Conscientia.

Step 1: Finding your Compass
Your values are not your thoughts or feelings. They are your chosen life directions, your deepest ethical compass. They are the "why" behind the "what." Capitalism seeks to replace them with hollow substitutes: consumption for connection, status for solidarity, productivity for purpose.

The revolutionary question is: Stripped of what capitalism says you should be, what do you truly stand for? Is it Care? Community? Creativity? Justice? Liberation? Authenticity?

Do not list what you should value. Dig for what causes your heart to clench with recognition. A value feels like a north star, not a yardstick. Solidarity is a value. "Being a good person" is a vague and punitive moral judgement. Find the words that resonate as your core principles.

A good way to find your values is to take a piece of paper. On that paper, draw a circle. This is you. Now, think about what you want to embody. For each value, draw a line from that central circle, and write that value at the end of the line.

Step 2: Follow your Values
A value without action is a ghost. Valued Action is the tangible behavior that brings a value to life. It is the bridge between your internal Conscientia and the external world.

If your value is community, a valued action might be: Introduce myself to my neighbour this week. If your value is justice, a valued action might be: Attend the tenant union meeting on Thursday. If your value is care, a valued action might be: Volunteer for the mutual aid grocery run.

A good way to practice Valued Action is to take that mindmap you made and extend it. For every value, write down at least one goal that is small, doable, and immediate that aligns with that chosen value.

These actions are not grandiose. They are specific, small, and immediate. They are the molecular structure of the new world. Every valued action is a thread in the fabric of the Solidariat.

Step 3: The Values of the Solidariat
When your actions are consciously tied to your deepest values, you build an internal fortress. The system relies on your need for external validation. When your validation comes from internal, intrinsic, deeply held values, they lose their power. You are no longer acting for a distant, abstract future or for external approval. You are acting because it is an expression of who you choose to be.
This is the driver of the Solidariat. It is why we wake up every morning, why we withstand despair, why we don’t fall to nihilism. It’s because we’re working for something bigger than ourselves.

Step 4: The Society of Values
The final, crucial step is to syncretize your values with the collective. This is what prevents Value from turning into liberal individualism. The Solidariat is not a monolithic bloc, but a symphony of aligned commitments.

Use your values in coordination with others. Use your courage, combined with your coworker’s charisma, to organise your workplace. Use your creativity, along with your neighbour’s nurture, and your friend’s solidarity, to build a new community garden.
Your personal values are the diverse raw materials—wood, stone, glass—that, when combined through shared Conscientia, build a society far stronger and more beautiful than any uniform monolith.

Subchapter B: Crisis Management

We have mapped the territory of the mind: how to clear its colonized corners, how to build upon it with values. But maps are not the terrain. The terrain is uneven, and we will stumble. We are not an imagined superhuman vanguard; we are human, living in a system designed to break us.

To falter is not to betray the revolution. It is to confirm the enemy’s brutality. One cannot blame themselves for breaking against a sledgehammer. Our failures: the days when the thoughts win, when the dread paralyzes, when the despair takes over. These are not moral failures. They are data points. They are the inevitable strain from the immense weight of the system upon the individual psyche. To treat them as personal sin is to internalize capitalism’s most insidious lie: that systemic violence is a test of individual character.

The revolution will be built not by those who never fall, but by those who have learned, collectively, how to get back up, how to tend to each other’s wounds, and how to read those wounds as a map of the enemy’s weapons.

Part 1: In the Trench – Crisis Management
When the storm hits and the mind becomes a room with screaming walls, theory is useless. You need an anchor. These techniques are not cures; they are life rafts. Their sole purpose is to bring you from a state of active danger to one of relative safety.

1. The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Drill (For Dissociation & Panic)

Stop. Breathe. Name, out loud if possible:
5 things you can see. (The grain of the wood floor, a smudge on the window, the red of a book spine.)
4 things you can feel. (The fabric of your shirt, the floor under your feet, the air on your skin, your own pulse.)
3 things you can hear. (A distant siren, the hum of the fridge, your own breath.)
2 things you can smell. (Coffee, dust, soap.)
1 thing you can taste. (The aftertaste of tea, the neutral taste of your own mouth.)

This forces your nervous system out of its catastrophic loop and into your senses, into the Now.

2. The Shock to the System (For Numbness or Spiraling)
If you are dissociated, feeling nothing but static dread: Hold an ice cube in your hand until it melts. Or splash very cold water on your face. The sharp, brief physical sensation provides a "reset" signal, pulling awareness back into the body.

3. The One-Minute Task (For Paralysis)
Set a timer for 60 seconds. Your entire job is to do one, tiny, meaningless task for that minute. Wash this one dish. Put these three books on the shelf. Write two lines of a journal entry. You are not solving your life. You are proving to yourself that you can still enact your will upon the world, one minuscule piece at a time. Action, however small, is the antidote to helplessness.

4. Bilateral Stimulation (To Calm the Nervous System)
This mimics the processing of REM sleep. Slowly tap your left knee, then your right knee, back and forth. Or move your eyes slowly from left to right. Follow a metronome set to a slow beat. This simple, rhythmic action can help discharge the trapped energy of anxiety and slow a racing mind.

5. If the Thought is "I Want to Die"
Listen. This thought is not a truth. It is a scream. The pain is real, the “solution” is not.
Your only task is to get through the next five minutes. Then the next. The wave will pass. The pain is real, but it is not permanent. You are needed. Stay. Call a friend, or if you need, the hotlines below.
Do anything you can to delay. Think about non guilt based reasons for living, no matter how silly. A new video-game coming out soon, the joy of your pet on your lap, the smile of your best friend after you crack a joke. Exercise caution, and stay alive.

Part 2: In the Aftermath – Failure
Once the crisis has passed, you will feel shame. You will loathe yourself. You will see yourself as a failure. These are lies. To falter is to be human, and to fall is to be picked up. It is not an ending, but part of the process.

Give Yourself Grace. You are not the same person now as you were in that moment. Past-you was operating with limited data, flooded with stress hormones, and fighting the best they could. If they had known a better way, they would have taken it.

Investigate with Kindness. Ask: What was the trigger? What did the despair feel like in my body? What did I need in that moment that I didn’t have? This is not blame. This is gathering intelligence for the next battle.

Plan for Next Time. Based on your investigation, make one small plan. *"Next time I feel that tightening in my chest, I will try the 5-4-3-2-1 drill before I spiral."* Or, "I will save the crisis number in my phone now."

Remember. No matter what, you have value as a human being. Whatever you have done, however horrible you believe yourself to be, to punish yourself with death gives up the chance of doing better.

This is the revolution of conscience in its most intimate form: the refusal to abandon yourself. One cannot help others if we cannot help ourselves. We tend to our wounds, we let our scars fade, and we help each other. We are practicing, on ourselves, the first principle of the Solidariat: We will fall, and we will help each other get back up. Again, and again, and again, because that is what it is to be human.

Chapter 4: The Solidariat’s First Steps

Having fortified the mind and clarified our values, we now turn our hands to the earth. The first and most fundamental act of building is to learn to sustain life itself.

The Garden as a Political Act

To plant a seed in common ground is a declaration of war against the logic of capital. It is a direct reclamation of the metabolic rift: the severing of humanity from the regenerative cycles of the Earth that we diagnosed as a core function of the Capitalocene. The communal garden is not a hobby. It is the primary cell of ecological and social restoration, the sustenance of the community, and a cultivator of Conscientia. It is where we practice, in microcosm, the stewardship of a shared world.

This guide is a blueprint for growing more than food. It is for growing solidarity, skill, and sovereignty. A community that feeds itself is a community that can weather many a storm.

Phase 1: The Grounding — Scouting and Seeding the Idea

1. Find Your Co-Gardeners (The Solidariat in Embryo)
Begin not with land, but with people. The garden is its community. Post in local mutual aid networks, tenant union chats, library bulletin boards, or radical bookstores. Frame it clearly: "Looking to start a communal food garden. No experience needed, only willingness to learn and work together. Goal: grow free food, build skills, create community."

2. Reclaim your Land
Land under capitalism is a commodity. We treat it as a commons.
Look for the wasted spaces. Vacant lots, neglected church or school yards, the sun-filled corner of a public park. Ask: Who owns this? What is its story?

Next, negotiate access, not ownership. Contact the owner (municipality, private, institution). Be prepared, honest, and offer a benefit. "We are a community group wanting to transform this vacant lot into a productive garden for neighborhood food. We will assume all liability, clean the site, and provide free produce. We seek a renewable, rent-free lease." Have a simple written agreement.
If access is denied, the ethical calculus changes. A hidden, unused plot may be quietly cultivated. This is a higher-risk act of reclamation. The garden becomes a secret, a shared truth that defies the logic of private property. Solidarity and discretion are paramount. This is not an act of theft, but of reclamation. The risk is violence from property enforcement. The reward is a hidden sanctuary of solidarity. Weigh this choice collectively, with care.

3. The Soil Covenant: Testing and Healing
The soil is the first member of your community. You must listen to it.
Test the Soil. A basic home test kit is essential. Check for pH and key nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium). If the site has an industrial past, test for heavy metals (lead, arsenic). Do not grow food in contaminated soil.
To avoid contamination, build raised beds with fresh, clean soil and a cardboard liner at the base to block toxins.
For poor soil, use sheet mulch (lasagna gardening). Smother grass with cardboard, then layer: green matter (kitchen scraps, grass clippings), brown matter (leaves, straw), compost. It builds rich, living soil from waste.

Start a compost pile immediately. It is the garden’s stomach, turning community food scraps into black gold. It is a daily ritual of the cycle of return.

Phase 2: The Structure — Building the Organism

4. Choose Your Crops (Strategy for the Now)
Plant for resilience, yield, and joy. Start with radishes, leafy greens (lettuce, kale, arugula). They germinate quickly, building morale. Then, move on to the survival crops. Potatoes, beans, squash, tomatoes. They provide real sustenance. Then, start thinking for the long term. Asparagus, rhubarb, berry bushes, herbs. They require patience but return year after year, a gift from past to future.
Importantly, don’t forget the marigolds, borage, sunflowers. They are not decoration; they are allies, inviting the insects that will secure your harvest. By securing our harvest, we are restoring our relationship with nature.

5. The Tool Library
Tools are the means of production. They shall be held in common trust. Secateurs, trowels, gloves, a watering can, a few good hoes are all you need to start. Store them in a communal, accessible locker.
Tools are cleaned and returned by the last user. This small act of care for a common resource is training for a post-capitalist world. Caring for a common hoe teaches the same principles as managing a common fund: responsibility, maintenance, and trust.

Phase 3: The Cultivation — Where Conscientia Grows

6. The Work Day as Praxis
The weekly garden shift is not a chore. It is the living school of Conscientia. The experienced gardener teaches the novice how to prune a tomato sucker. The tech-savvy member sets up a shared signal chat for coordination. The builder rigs a rainwater catchment system.
Make sure the garden is not just a project, but a space for sharing. Begin by sharing how you are, what’s on your mind. End by admiring the work done together. This builds the bonds that defy atomization.

You will face obstacles. Pests, disease, weeds. Don’t panic. Research together. Try companion planting, neem oil, manual removal. Every problem is a lesson in cooperative ecology.

Inevitably, someone will falter. What happens when someone doesn't do their watering shift? Or harvests more than their share? A neglected bed is not a failure; it's an opportunity for the community to gently check in, reassess capacities, and redistribute tasks; a practice of non punitive accountability.

We must, as a community, give grace to both ourselves and each other. When someone is dealing with a crisis, offer to cover their shift. If they are vulnerable and in need, support them with an equitable share, not an equal one. Expulsion from the communal garden should be a last resort.

7. The Harvest as a Gift Economy

The moment of harvest is a sacrament. It proves the theory.

Have a regular "harvest stand" time. Leave surplus in a publicly accessible box with the solidarity sign. Host canning, drying, or fermenting workshops in the autumn. Turn abundance into resilience for the winter months. Explicitly set aside a portion for tenant union meetings, mutual aid fundraisers, or striking workers. Let the garden literally fuel the movement.
This is how we build. Not with manifestos alone, but with seed packets and shared calendars. The garden is our academy, our kitchen, our clinic, and our council. It teaches us ecology, equity, and endurance. Every tomato harvested is a bullet against food insecurity. Every shared watering shift is a thread in the fabric of the new world.

We are not waiting for permission to build a better society. We are planting it, row by row, in the wasted spaces of the old one. From this garden, other cells will grow: the tool library expands, the skill-share becomes a workshop, the harvest stand becomes a community kitchen. This is the revolution, not as violent uprising, but as a perennial, spreading growth.

The Tenant Union as a Fortress

A home is not a commodity. It is the bedrock of life, the prerequisite for dignity, stability, and community. Under capitalism, it is transformed into a weapon of extraction and control. The landlord is not a provider, but a gatekeeper to a fundamental human need. To form a tenant union, therefore, is not merely to negotiate repairs. It is to declare that your home is a commons, and that those who live within it are its rightful stewards. It is the direct, collective seizure of power in the space where you are most vulnerable. It transforms a building of isolated units into a fortress of solidarity.

This is a blueprint for building that fortress. It is a guide to transforming fear into collective power, rent receipts into leverage, and neighbors into a Solidariat.

Phase 1: The Foundation — From Isolation to Collective (The "Stealth" Organizing)
1. Find Your People (The Embryonic Solidariat)
Your first goal is not to confront the landlord, but to discover your own collective strength. You are mapping the human terrain of your building.

Begin with your immediate, trusted neighbors. A casual conversation in the hallway, by the mailboxes, or in the laundry room. The opener is simple: "Hey, how’s it going? Dealing with any issues with the building lately?" Listen. The complaints about heat, pests, leaks, or rent hikes are your organizing materials.

Next, create a secure, private communication channel. A Signal group is ideal. Do not use public-facing social media. This is your digital commons. Name it something innocuous: "Oak Street Chat."

Finally, map the terrain. Create a simple list of units. Note who you’ve talked to, their main issues, and their readiness to act. Identify natural leaders, the long-term residents, the person who already fixes things for others.

2. The First Gathering: The Covenant of Trust
Once you have 3-5 committed neighbors, hold your first meeting. This is where the Conscientia begins to crystallize.
The ideal location is a private apartment, or a quiet corner of a park. Not a public space where management might see.

Go around. Let everyone name their single biggest issue with the building. This is not a complaint session; it is the ritual of discovering your shared reality. You are building a collective diagnosis from individual symptoms.

Next, define the union, and demystify the concept. Explain it simply. "A tenant union is just us, organized. We’re not a formal entity yet; we’re a promise to each other to act as one. Our power comes from our unity, not from a piece of paper."

Now, you’re ready to pick your battleground. Choose a single, universal issue for your first campaign. A broken front door lock. Chronic lack of heat. An outrageous fee. The goal is not to solve all problems, but to win a victory together. Winning proves the theory of collective power.

Now, once you have the battleground, take initiative. Decide on your first step. This could be a joint, signed letter to management (everyone signs one document), or a polite but firm group visit to the rental office. The action is less important than doing it together.

Phase 2: The Structure — Building Your Fortress (Going Public)

3. The Public Launch: Showing Your Strength
After your first small victory (or if a major crisis forces your hand), it’s time to go public. You are no longer a secret chat; you are a power bloc.

Draft your founding document. This is your Tenant Union Pledge. It is short, clear, and powerful. It states: "We, the tenants of [Address], hereby form a union. We pledge to act collectively to ensure safe, habitable, and affordable housing. We will negotiate as one. An injury to one is an injury to all." Circulate it door-to-door for signatures.

Deliver a copy of the signed pledge to management/ownership via certified mail. This formalizes the relationship. You are no longer individual complainants; you are a united front.

4. Fortify Your Defenses: Systems of Mutual Aid
A union is not just a negotiating committee; it is a mutual aid society.

Create a solidarity fund. A small, voluntary monthly contribution from members (even $5) creates a fund for emergencies: a neighbor’s sudden rent shortfall, legal fees, or supplies for a direct action.

Document the skills in your building (legal knowledge, carpentry, graphic design). These skills are your weapons in the war. Create an "Eviction Defense Protocol" so everyone knows the steps if a notice is served.

Like any battle, you need a war plan. Hold monthly meetings. Use a rotating facilitator. Keep minutes. This is the council of your building—the practical school of direct democracy.

Phase 3: The Campaign — Waging the Struggle (The Praxis of Power)

5. Escalate Strategically: The Ladder of Engagement
Your power is your ability to disrupt the landlord’s profits and peace. Escalate actions thoughtfully, always giving a clear path for the landlord to meet your demands. Present clear, written demands with a deadline. "We demand a working intercom system within 14 days."

If they refuse, go public. Tenant testimonials on social media (anonymized if needed), posters in building windows visible to the street, flyers at nearby coffee shops. "Does [Landlord Corp] think its tenants don’t deserve security?"

The Rent Strike is your ultimate weapon. This is a serious, collective decision. It must be near-unanimous. The logic is simple: We withhold the commodity (rent) until our demands for the commodity (a habitable home) are met. Consult with a tenant lawyer first. Place rent in an escrow account to show good faith. A rent strike is a seismic event; it forges unbreakable bonds and reveals the true nature of the housing relationship.

6. Practice Restorative Solidarity (When the Union Falters)
Not everyone will participate equally. Someone will cross a picket line out of fear.

Do not vilify. Fear is rational. The system is designed to isolate and scare us. Approach the fearful neighbor with compassion, not condemnation. Re-explain the union’s protection. Offer more support.

The goal is to bring them in, not cast them out. A union that can win over the most scared tenant is a truly powerful one. This is the practice of the Solidariat: our strength is in our capacity to hold each other’s fragility, not just our collective rage.

Conclusion: From Fortress to Foundation
A tenant union that wins repairs is a success. A tenant union that transforms a building from a collection of rent-payers into a community that shares skills, defends its vulnerable, and knows its own power is a revolutionary cell. It is a living example of dual power: managing the affairs of your own home, making the landlord’s authority obsolete one won demand at a time.

This fortress you build is not an end. It is the foundation for the next struggle. The relationships forged here will become the networks for community land trusts, for political advocacy, for mutual aid beyond your walls. You have not just fixed a leaky roof. You have learned, in practice, the fundamental lesson: We are many. They are few. Our home is ours. Now defend it, together, and then build outward.

The Workplace as a Terrain of War: Forging the Solidariat on the Shop Floor

The workplace is the engine room of capital, the primary site where our time and life are metabolized into profit for others. Here, exploitation is not an abstract theory but a daily reality: in the rhythm of the shift, the sting of the paycheck, the quiet hum of disrespect. To organize here is to declare that this engine will run for us, or not at all.

This guide draws from the century of hard-won knowledge of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); a union built not on compromise with management, but on the principle of worker solidarity and direct action. Their method is not to wait for salvation from above, but to build power from the shop floor up. This is the careful, deliberate work of turning a collection of isolated individuals into a Solidariat of labor, capable of first defending itself and then demanding a new world.

The Quiet Reconnaissance – Mapping the Terrain
Before a single word of protest is uttered, you must become a cartographer of your own workplace. Organizing begins not with a loudspeaker, but with a listening ear. Your goal is to understand the human and social landscape that management already studies and manipulates.

The boss wants every grievance: the unsafe condition, the impossible schedule, the disrespectful supervisor, to feel like a personal problem. But the personal is political, or can be made political. Your first task is to listen. In break-room conversations, during shared tasks, in muttered complaints, you will hear the same themes repeated. When Alex is written up for being late due to a broken bus line, listen for the unspoken truth: "The schedule doesn't account for any of our real lives."

Your first step is to identify the informal workgroups: the clusters of people who talk, eat, and socialize together. Within each group, find the "natural organizers"; not necessarily the loudest, but those others listen to and respect. Also note the isolated, the fearful, and the company's loyalists. This map reveals the existing networks of trust you can strengthen and the fault lines management exploits.

Phase 2: The First Bonds – From Conversations to a Core Group
With your map, you move from observation to connection. This phase is about building a foundation of trust so solid that fear cannot shatter it.

Forget leaflets and mass meetings for now. The foundational act is the personal conversation. Meet a trusted coworker outside of work. Listen more than you speak. Ask open questions: “What's the hardest part of the job for you right now?" "If you could change one thing tomorrow, what would it be?" Your goal is not to recruit on the spot, but to understand, to validate, and to prove you are a person of integrity and discretion.

Once you have 2-3 such relationships, introduce these coworkers to each other. Share your observations. You now have your core: a clandestine council. Meet regularly. Assign concrete, small tasks: "Sam, you'll get to know the warehouse crew this week. Riley, you'll document every instance of the broken safety guard." You are not a talking shop; you are a cell, methodically expanding its network of trust.

Phase 3: The Test of Power – The Escalating Campaign
A committee without action is a phantom. You must now choose a battlefield. A single, winnable issue, to test your collective strength and prove the theory of solidarity.

Look at your list of shared grievances. Do not start with the existential threat. Avoid pay for now. Start with something clear, universal, and eminently reasonable: malfunctioning equipment, a blatantly unfair policy, a particularly toxic supervisor. The goal is not to transform the company overnight, but to transform your coworkers' belief in what is possible. You need a small victory, for morale and discipline.

Your committee drafts a clear, polite, and factual letter stating the problem and the desired solution, signed by every affected worker you've built trust with.

If ignored, move to collective action: A coordinated "work-to-rule" (performing every duty exactly to the letter, slowing production through perfect compliance) or a brief, surprise "goodbye strike" (a coordinated walk-out five minutes before shift ends on a busy day).

A full strike is your final tool, to be used only when your support is overwhelming and the stakes justify the risk. Its power comes from its totality and surprise.

Phase 4: Fortification and Federation – Building the Permanent Structure
Victory in a campaign reveals your power. It also paints a target on your back. Now you must solidify your gains and prepare for the boss's counter-attack: union-busting.

Study the boss’s handbook. Learn how they break solidarity, and warn your coworkers of what is to come. The "captive audience" meetings full of fear-mongering, the sudden "open door policy," the promotion or isolation of your leaders. Frame this not as your failure, but as proof your power is real. Why else would they seek to break it?

To withstand this, you fortify. This is the moment to seek formal recognition as a union, anchoring your shop-floor power in legal standing. The IWW provides the structure for this leap. Crucially, remember: you are the union. The power resides not in a distant lawyer, but in your collective will. The formal structure is just a fortress to protect the Conscientia you have already built.
To fortify and scale your power, explore federation. This can mean affiliating with a larger, established union body for resources and legal clout, or it can mean forming alliances with other independent workplace committees in your industry or city. The principle is the same: our power stems from our number.

Conclusion: The Slow Fuse of the Now
Workplace organizing is the slow, patient fuse of the revolution. It begins not with a manifesto, but with a question: "How was your shift?" It progresses not in a single explosion, but in the gradual, terrifying, exhilarating process of discovering you are not alone.
Each one-to-one conversation is a stitch in the fabric of the Solidariat. Each mapped workgroup is a reclaimed territory of trust. Each small, won victory—the fixed fan, the rescinded write-up—is a crack in the edifice of capitalist realism.

You are not just bargaining for a better price for your labor. You are practicing, in the belly of the beast, the democracy, solidarity, and collective agency that are the essence of the world to come. You are learning to run the engine yourself. Tend this slow fuse with care, for its spark is the light of the Now.

Chapter 5: The Absurd Why

We’ve covered a long journey together, you and I. We began with history, a eulogy putting the ghost of Marx to rest. We continued on to a prognosis of society, and its three symptoms, the Trilemma of Surrender. We identified a cure, the Conscientia, and a new historical agent, the Solidariat. We outlined the first steps of the Solidariat to spread the Conscientia across their neighbourhood, their apartment, their workplace.

But we haven’t asked the most important question. Why bother? Capitalism is more firmly entrenched than it ever was. Why even try to build something new, if we aren’t guaranteed to succeed?

To that question, I cannot give a reasoned, logical answer, because there isn’t one. There is no logical reason why you should try. There’s no guarantee that what we are trying to build will survive capitalism’s collapse. It may be that nuclear war ends us all tomorrow, and all of this is for naught.

There is, however, an absurd answer. Albert Camus once wrote “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” His crucial insight is that one can find meaning in the absurd, choose to reject nihilism not because the universe has intrinsic meaning, but because there is none, and therefore life is an absurd thing that is one’s own to live. To find meaning in the eternal, futile struggle. To push that rock up a hill, watch it roll down, and to laugh.

Yet, we are not Sisyphus, because we have a choice. We can stare into the abyss, and surrender to it. I would not blame you for it. It is a logical decision from a brutal set of premises. Or we can look into the void, understand it for what it is, then begin to build a fence for our garden. Not because we know that the fence will hold forever, but because the act of building, the act of declaring “No. You will not take this from us.” That is to be human. To know the universe is absurd and indifferent, and to live regardless.

The act of building, of growing carrots and tomatoes to share with your neighbours, of standing up to a cruel boss, of loving, and being loved. It may not last. The inevitable entropy of time may erode all we’ve tried to build. But the very act contains meaning in of itself. Because Sisyphus was alone. We are not. We are the Solidariat, and we carry the rock together.

The universe may be indifferent, but we are not. Our love and care for our fellow human, our struggle for dignity, our stubborn refusal to surrender to the absurd, that is the closest semblance of meaning we will ever get. Our struggle for a better world may or may not succeed, but either way it will create something beautiful.

I cannot offer a historical dialectic or a destined revolution. I can offer only this: a trowel, and a choice. And maybe, together, under the indifferent stars, we can try and grow a seed.

Author’s Note

This work is a deeply personal piece of mine. As a leftist since the day I first read Das Kapital in high school, I found myself wandering from tradition to tradition without finding any clear answers.

This was all the more complicated by my personal experience as a trans woman. During a time where living through politics felt uncertain and terrifying, so did living in my own body.

In those years, when I was still learning what being trans meant for me, I considered adopting the name Lilith.

Meaning ‘creature of the night,’ Lilith was the archetypal rebel, refusing to live in paradise if it meant her submission. It is for this reason why I publish this work under the Lilith Emancipatory Collective.

This work is for that scared, young girl, and the woman she would grow to become. It is for everyone who feels adrift and lost in this age of loneliness and alienation. It doesn't provide all the answers. But it gives a place to start. A small patch of soil from which a seed could grow.