It will be increasingly difficult to preserve the illusion that any government could solve the problems of capitalism
Adam Procter sent me this video which explains the ‘squeeze out’ that’s been happening over the last 30 years or so. It happens in five stages:
- The rich start to accumulate more money, as they are not taxed enough. They buy up assets, out-competing the working classes for resources, and driving them into debt.
- The working classes have run out of money and cannot borrow or spend any more, so there is an economic depression and a crisis. So the government has to step in.
- The government starts to run out of resources as well, so borrows from (or enters into public-private partnerships with) the rich.
- The government has no choice but to slowly eviscerate the middle classes. Eventually there is no wealth left other than that held by the rich, meaning that the physical structure of society changes so that it only supports consumption by them.
- There is no-one left to squeeze. The rich own everything, and the only way they can try and grow their wealth is by sending people to fight in wars against each other.
Like Cory Doctorow’s three stages of enshittification it’s a useful overview of a process that would otherwise be difficult to pin down. Is it 100% accurate everywhere and all of the time? No, probably not, but it’s a useful framing.
Given the absolute destruction of the world and dismantling of civil society that’s happening at the moment, I’m a little bit less reticent to state that I’m an anarchist. Not like the ridiculous caricature of anarchists as terrorists and in books like The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton (which is otherwise an enjoyable novel). Nor am I out there actively fermenting trouble. But that broadly libertarian socialist angle is my starting position for understanding how the world should be.
If there was ever a time to be reading more revolutionary stuff, it’s now. So I’m pointing you towards Crimethinc. “a rebel alliance—a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action—a breakout from the prisons of our age.”
The future may hold neoliberal immiseration, nationalist enclaves, totalitarian command economies, or the anarchist abolition of property itself—it will probably include all of those—but it will be increasingly difficult to preserve the illusion that any government could solve the problems of capitalism for any but a privileged few. Fascists and other nationalists are eager to capitalize on this disillusionment to promote their own brands of exclusionary socialism; we should not smooth the way for them by legitimizing the idea that the state could serve working people if only it were properly administered.
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Rather than seeking state power, we can open up spaces of autonomy, stripping legitimacy from the state and developing the capacity to meet our needs directly. Instead of dictatorships and armies, we can build worldwide rhizomatic networks to defend each other against anyone who wants to wield power over us. Rather than looking to new representatives to solve our problems, we can create grassroots associations based in voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. In place of state-managed economies, we can establish new commons on a horizontal basis. This is the anarchist alternative, which could have succeeded in Spain in the 1930s had it not been stomped out by Franco on one side and Stalin on the other.
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As the crises of our era intensify, new revolutionary struggles are bound to break out. Anarchism is the only proposition for revolutionary change that has not sullied itself in a sea of blood. It’s up to us to update it for the new millennium, lest we all be condemned to repeat the past.
Source: Crimethinc.