Human nature

Socialism could never work as it goes against human nature. We, as a race, naturally compete.

Ha. Whom says this? The capitalists. In this system, yes, we compete instead of cooperate. We do this because we live in a competitive system, where the few exploit the majority to live in luxury and throw the rest to the devil- as long as they still work. Let me take you back to pre-civilisation, as it is so called (doublespeak).
What would man have to gain from turning on his brother? Nothing.
If they cooperated, however, they could get more than 2 men working alone. Thus, it doesn’t make sense to compete.
We have overcome these hardships that hunter gatherer societies faced. Now, a few hundered men with machinery can feed ten thousand. Survival is the key motive, the will to live. With money abolished, we are merely cutting out the middleman between work and survival, as we need money to live, thus, we work to live.
The ‘communism can’t work because of human nature’ argument has been debunked, ironically using human nature and examples from so called ‘primitive communism’.
Capitalism can’t work because of human nature, as humans don’t like being exploited. Anarchism means one is free to do what they want as long as it does it involve exploration of another, or it limits others freedom.
We will have no economic chaos, or any chaos.
Opposed to the caricature of anarchism, anarchy equals order.

By Anton

God and the state

By Anton

Every state, with no exception, has been an instrument by which a privileged few have wielded power over the immense the majority.
Every church has been the loyal ally of the state in the subjugation of mankind. Bakunin best sums up this relationship between inequality and religion in his book ‘god and the state’. Religion, by it’s very nature, minimises the role of humanity, instead replacing it with the glory of God.

Bakunin writes:
“God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave.”

As with the state, Religion and God are the enemies of and limit equality and liberty. Because of this, to quote Bakunin again: “if God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him”.
As long as there is a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth; as long as there is a state, we will not be free, we will not be equal, and we will be exploited by a privileged minority. Have no illusions about religion, it teaches us to be content and sit here with folded arms. Instead of bringing earth to the heavens, it tells us to be content with the conditions we are in, not to create our own paradise on earth, or so to speak.

The future…

By Leon J Williams

As the economic crises deepens and businesses continue to go under some workers are banding together, taking over their workplace and keeping production going.

The bakers keep baking, the teachers keep teaching and the doctors keep healing.

As people start to run out of money due to the dire finance and banking situation these new worker run businesses continue, in free exchange with each other.

The teacher goes to the baker and gets what they need, the baker’s children go to school and get educated etc.

The industries that these worker businesses belong to continue to be regulated to ensure high standards, some people call the regulators unions, some call them coregs which comes from cooperative regulators.
Either way they are groups made up of representatives within the industry.

For example, there are 300 universities in a society, society is divided up into 50 suitable geographic areas, the universities from each geographic area send 1 person to be part of the coreg, these representatives must be experts in their field.

Some problems rose, some people who did not contribute to society and living with the old greed mentality would go to a new worker business and take, for example, 5 televisions, one for every room in their home, meaning when other people went to the business there are no televisions left, or not enough to go round.

So, a new system was introduced, the social contract.

To be part of this new society, people would have to agree to a certain set of rules:

No individual can force another individual to do something against their will.

A person must be ‘contributing’ to society in order to receive the benefits of the society.

Contributing means being one of the following:

Employed (in a worker business)
Self-employed
In education

All self-employed people and workers businesses must belong to a worker regulatory body (coreg).

Employment cannot be denied to anyone who agrees to this social contract. This does not mean that an uneducated person can become a brain surgeon, if a person wants to do this job they must become qualified to do so but if, for example, a person wants to become a baker, they can go to their local bakery or regional bakery organisers and seek a suitable placement to be trained on the job.

Food example:

The benefits to being part of this new society are a set of guarantees:

A home
Food
Education
Health
Security
Transport
Services

The future is in our hands, take control!

The abolition of money

By Anton

Capitalism has lowered the masses to the point where they have to sell themselves to survive. Rich people have the commodities and money they have either through inheritance or exploitation, and their father, grandfather or whoever they got the money from would have exploited people ‘lower’ than him to get that money.

A common argument of those among or brainwashed by the bourgeoise against anarchism (or communism, socialism et cetera) is that with the abolition of money (which they claim is the sole thing that motivates people) people will not work. So, why do we work? For money is the simple answer, but let us go deeper. What to we use money for? We use money to buy commodities, to buy food, to pay the bills or the rent or the mortgage.

But in an anarchist society, there is no money; money has been abolished. Why does one work then? Let us say you require a coat, for whatever reason, and your job in your area is, let’s say, a shoemaker. You go up to the tailor, and say:
“Please may you make me a coat. Here are my measurements. I would like it to be x, y and z.”
What does the tailor say? Does he say “no, I do not need to work, I have my food, I have my house, I’m happy.”?
No, the tailor is wearing shoes (I would hope so anyway).
Whom made the tailor them shoes? You.

The tailor makes you a coat because without you, he would not have shoes. By abolishing money, we are removing exploitation, corruption, and quite frankly an unnecessary process in acquiring commodities. In an anarchist society, one would be free to do whatever they wished, as long as an act did not harm others or their liberty.

Barbaric civilisation

By Anton

We live in a world where such a thing as vital as water is sold as a commodity, where housing which is fundamental to survival is sold and rented, where basic foods which are needed to survive our sold. These things are basic human needs, and should be freely available to all, but no. One is required to sell their labour hourly and daily to survive, we have to sell ourselves to be able to buy a loaf of bread. But these company owners, they work too, don’t they? No, they do not. They live a life of luxury off our labour, more than we can ever dream of. These people contribute nothing to society, yet take of those who do.

All exploited have realised that they are being exploited. The capitalists can not keep up their illusion for long. We have seen their economy, full of contradictions, is built upon quicksand, and is quickly sinking. Recessions are a result of these contradictions inherent in capitalist society, it is a flawed system, thus recessions and depressions will continue to happen. Each time the petit bourgeoisie lose capital, which is accumulate in larger and larger quantities by the bourgeoisie. We have the scraps that the bourgeoisie do not want. Even to live, even to quench our thirst we have to sell ourselves. It is nothing more than barbarianism, when we have to work day in, day out to survive whilst we have scum at the top of society, no better than parasites, about as much use as a virus is to the human body.

A world without money; what would you do?

By Anton

When Johnny Rotten wrote anarchy in the UK, I bet he didn’t think it would come true. Sadly, our ‘future dream is a shopping scheme’.

The poor get poorer and the rich get richer, the worlds in deep shit with many people starving, people are losing their jobs, but we are being distracted from this by the ever adapting capitalism.
We live in a world where money is everything. We are raised to do jobs we don’t want to do, so we can carry on living to do a job we don’t enjoy.
So, here is my advice to you: if money was not relevant, what would you want to do for a job? Do what you desire!
Forget about the money, because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing then you will be wasting your time. You will be doing things that you don’t like doing in order to carry on living, that is doing things that you don’t like doing.

It’s better to live a short life of enjoyment, rather than a long life of misery.

Worker Cooperatives & their role in the economic crisis

By Leon J Williams

Back in early March last year I wrote about ‘Worker cooperatives‘ explaining briefly what they are and how they work.

With the current ‘economic crisis’ that seems to never end in Europe and with the UK and US on the verge of a triple-dip recession I thought I would revisit the topic.

Sometimes in life it can feel that we are all helpless, unable to control our own lives and destiny while governments and the corporate world dictate how things are going to be, businesses are going into administration at what seems an unprecedented rate and job security seems like a distant dream.

It would seem that this is the perfect time for worker cooperatives to thrive, people banding together to secure their own futures without any dependence on the state or an employer.

Why aren’t they?

Have people forgotten what a worker cooperative is?
Do people not know enough like-minded individuals?

Two reasons come to mind:

1) People are so full of fear about their current plight that they have become paralysed, on one side they have a job that could go any day or they are unemployed with precious little money to risk and on the other there is the unknown with a society that’s screaming just take what you have and be grateful!

2) People have become so accustomed to the capitalist way of thinking that they would rather keep their jobs in the hope of maybe one day earning lots of money than they would set up a co-op with other people are share their profits.

Maybe cooperatives are booming but are hidden away with the media not wishing to cover or have we become so selfish that we would chance it to make lots over stability shared?

For additional information on setting up a cooperative click on the appropriate link below:

UK
Ireland
USA