Anti-Economy Anarchy

From Ignited In Dark: Against The Dominant Idea by Wulfinna

Along with being opposed to every state, every political denomination and every form of society and civilization, I am opposed to every economic system and the notion of economy in general having an effect on my life. Why? Because no system, no institution in any sphere of sociability can agreeably interact with me. Even ones that seem to be imbued with a certain sanctity of necessity by even the most radical voices then and now. I stand apart from all of it because I prefer to play by myself.

Considering what an economy is, it reflects poorly on the intents of certain anarchists who want to maintain a global network of obscured, impersonal “connections” between enslaved individuals for the benefit of something that has no business going on in the first place: Factories, logging, importing/exporting, bio-engineering, surveillance technologies and so on. None of these logistics of economy can become anarchistic. No economy is anarchistic anymore than any political allegiance within society. Anarchy means freedom from all rule. It means freedom from politics, from society and from economy.

I have spent too much time in my life trying to find the appropriate balance of economies, the ideal intersection of anarchist markets, anarchist commons, anarchist collectives and so on to care anymore about maintaining any of them. I find myself assured that the best anarchy, the most palpable and realistic situation sees only people, only fruitful aspirations; it cares not at all for economic structures, shipping international goods, employment, compensation, etc. It only nourishes Freedom! And what is freedom? Freedom is waking up whenever you want. Freedom is stepping outside one’s abode and finding connection to everything around you. Freedom is not being bound to any demand of “Getting Things Done” for the sake of some boss, some collective duty, some moralistic bullshit against “laziness.” Freedom is building a fire wherever you want without fear of some cop ordering you at gunpoint to put it out. Freedom is doing anything and everything one wants with their body. Freedom is getting high, it is getting sober, it is seeing, hearing and knowing. Freedom is being unperturbed by the bullshit touted by every left-wing, right-wing, centrist and fringe academic, pundit and politician — taking no rule seriously that could ever come from those morons still happily swearing those allegiances. Freedom is relaxing. Freedom is acting on one’s own terms. Freedom is being happy.

Economy does none of this. Economy’s “convenience” is a carrot on the stick held by politicians to lead the desperate into servitude once more. Economy makes an instrument of every living creature, all for the purpose of sustaining its own growth and reach. I hang my head when people think of the quality of their lives strictly in terms of what mode of exchange is dominating them in the current society or “in an anarchist society.” The very notions of scarcity and post-scarcity are ones of persisting with accumulation, extraction, the very logics we are trying to eliminate! We need to destroy both scarcity and post-scarcity, rediscovering a bounty of the fruits of nourishment when nature is left to heal. We need to situate our lives on stoic, necessary consumption and non-industrial production of immediate needs from organic matter using the specific tools, knowledge sets and skills currently available and available lifetimes ago. The most precious things to consume freely and with pride are clean air and clean water… something slipping away from all of us, one lifetime at a time.

There needs to be a deliberate restoration of the land, minimal non-societal communities sustained on horticulture, a destruction of the settler colonialism that has ripped indigenous peoples from their land, that has forced economy onto them, a destruction of everything that makes excuses for ruining our home planet. Economy has doubtlessly been The Primary Motivating Factor in ecocide, in ceaseless expansion into the wilds. I do not hold one shred of faith in any communism, any hybrid of agorism and mutualism, any federation of labor unions, or any combination of these to Not simply redefine the doctrine of infinite growth. I know that, if anarchy encompassing a landmass were to occur, there would doubtlessly be vast pockets of trading, bartering, gift-based exchanges, and so on. But, ideally, none of these would solidify into something unmovable. They would not coerce anyone to be a part of them. None of these would mandate a Sacred Duty of showing up to work. Everything has to be able to be destroyed immediately at the moment it becomes an authority in any sense. This includes communities, collectives, friend groups, stores holding food and goods — anything that is being manipulated against an individual or section of individuals rather than being a tool for complete individual betterment. If it is beginning to rule you: Burn it.

Everything useful that now exists is for free use. Everything useful that will exist is for free use. Its very usefulness demands use, and will incentivize the right techniques kept strictly in the right applications in order to continue to have these. The only thing obstructing us is our moral mind prison of truisms such as “Stealing is wrong,” “The law is sacred,” “A wealthy person purchased this” and other hypnotic tricks of the master of a duped mind. Everything on shelves is for taking. Everything in a rich white family’s home is for taking. (Fuck your feelings and fuck your white supremacy. Y’all are Nazis anyway. I’m not playing nice.) Every arsenal is for plundering by free individuals in loose bands. Every center for medical assistance is to be managed by the physicians and kept in check by the patients and observers. Every food store is to be kept in check by those most depending on it, and ran exclusively by all who need to be nourished and want all to have access.

Do not ask me or someone like me some hideously asinine question such as “Without a solidly defined economy, how do we get lumber to build houses?” to which my immediate response is We don’t. We make Earth shelters, we reskill here and now, we resituate ourselves as parts of nature. We adapt to the climate collapse. We learn now to reconnect with what we are to fully liberate from the shackles of every phantom, so that we may finally know life without the weight of bullshit stifling every free development of the body and the soul. Do not ask me “Without an economy, how will people get the things they need?” We simply acquire them. We collaborate how needed to acquire what we desire. To depend on a depersonalized network of trade and compensation, to expect a perfect traffic of goods is to depend on everything that stalls life into the terrain of a civilization, which itself is a highly concentrated form of human living that strips the individual from everything good in living.

A direct means of being satisfied must become apparent. We have to have learned from our time under every section of rule that rule is not what anyone wants; rule has simply been exploited by those who are self-destructive enough to turn themselves into an unforgivable tyrant. Now we rise to greet ourselves, to greet each of our liberated “I”, to greet our potential, to make use of everything that is useful, and to do so without scruple over how to turn it all into an opaque system. There is no need for any economy anymore than there is a need for a Leninist vanguard state to secure my interests.

My only vision is one where individuals and their loved ones — if any — freely collaborate without states and without economies to directly create and sustain their lives, without ecocide, without exclusive legitimacy of use of force (except in the case where it is legitimate against authority), without centralized planning, without an intent for ceaseless growth. No, an all-encompassing anarchy kept alive by economy does not interest me. Let there instead be a flurry of sovereign, conscious individuals with untethered capacity who hold to certain resources and goods obtained and maintained without authority, without pillaging anyone but the wealthy, the governors, the stores both affluent and modest. Let there be spaced out homesteads beside the prairies, the grasslands, the remaining forests — let these be untouched, consecrated by the respective indigenous peoples as places to be healed; let a common inclination reemerge in all people which seeks the best possible conditions and balances within genuine freedom for all the species one is experiencing life beside.

Comments

anon (not verified) Fri, 06/21/2024 - 02:09

In reply to by anon (not verified)

True - this is breathtakingly passive, pompous and self-involved. Why is any reader supposed to give a hoot about what the pious narcissist who wrote thinks, anyway?

anon (not verified) Fri, 06/21/2024 - 07:57

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Perfect, empty comments. What exactly are you two complaining about? why are your comments any less pompous, self-involved, and/or pious?

Qhat is the point of commenting if you're not saying anything

anon (not verified) Fri, 06/21/2024 - 09:43

This text is poor. An economy is *precisely* what anarchists need. It's only that what is known as "the economy' is really just the gimmicks of parasites who want to get richer and gain more power.

If we develop a really-free economy that is supported by anarchist societies (groupings, businesses, networks, organizations, even nonprofits) we got the possibility to have at our disposal infrastructures that can *overcome the need for state*.

...which is why people still support the state, or put up with it, as it is supporting the capitalist mass-market economy that feeds them, and provides them with "services" and infrastructure.

triviabot (not verified) Sun, 06/23/2024 - 22:36

In reply to by anon (not verified)

this text is far from perfect but your reply is nonsense and doesn't address any of the many good points the author made. If you don't recognize the anarchy in what this person is proposing I recommend you try harder. Not trying to be harsh but what you're proposing instead is--spoiler alert-- super boring and *almost exactly the same* rhetoric the socialists and communists use.

anon (not verified) Fri, 06/21/2024 - 09:50

"where individuals and their loved ones — if any — freely collaborate without states and without economies to directly create and sustain their lives,"

What exactly here keeps those relations from remaining exclusive, private and end up reproducing what is already the capitalist mainstream social arrangements? If it's just about enriching yourselves in your band of buddies, you're doing absolutely nothing special here, save even anarchistic. We are already living in a crony (i.e. collectivist) capitalist society, jsyk.

triviabot (not verified) Sun, 06/23/2024 - 22:42

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Can't wait for your super-adult defense of economy! Not all heroes wear capes, amiright? Who will stand up in defense of global economy, but brilliant and articulate critics such as yourself?

anon (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 10:12

In reply to by triviabot (not verified)

Your sloppy reading might be the cause for your poor texts and arguments, kid. No one here talked about supporting the global economy. Now sit down, breaaaathe, relax, and take the time to read stuff and make distinctions in your head between notions that are different.

The lack of self-sustained economies shared by more people than the private bubble of you and your buddies is the reason why people are clinging to states and their empire on everyday life. Develop markets based on free sharing (not just trivial secondary stuff, but crucial things like food, medicine, clothing, hygiene products... to conversations, skills, affection, etc) then you got something the global capitalist economy can't replace.

The moment it becomes privatized, this is where it dissolves itself within society, and becomes the thing of a few gangsters. i.e. sub-capitalism, or maybe primitive accumulation.

lumpy (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 10:15

In reply to by anon (not verified)

"develop markets" <--- this is doing some heavy lifting in your post, which otherwise doesn't say much

you're ... moralizing about economics? how's that been working for you so far?

anon (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 21:33

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Going to second lumpy here that your thinking is totally pompous and you've got vague notions doing the work for you, lol. Clearly the author got under your skin, eh? Might want to read up on some philosophy, "kid". Stretch your brain a little bit beyond your economics-forward "one true anarcho-liberalism" or whatever you subscribe to.

anon (not verified) Fri, 06/21/2024 - 22:57

Reads like a cry of despair more than anything else. Unless the author lives on a desert island with reliable air conditioning and an array of well-stocked vending machines they may have no interest in the economy, but the economy is very interested in them...

anon (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 00:42

22:36

"the many good points the author made." Only to a-political adolescent narcissists.

Triviabot (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 01:25

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Cry more, you haven't made a single point. Scared to challenge this author on substance, or are all your defenses of economy half-baked and recycled from statists?

anon (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 11:46

In reply to by Triviabot (not verified)

"Scared to challenge this author on substance"

Substance? The article has as much substance as a guy wearing an aluminum foil helmet on a corner of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley screaming about Jesus and extraterrestrial does. Do I really, really need to engage with the aluminum foil hat-wearing guy on their own terms? In spite of the rich opportunities on offer on the internet I try to make a habit of not engaging with stuff that is transparently foolish. I've got other fish to fry.

And now, to briefly take the sucker bait you offer here, the clownish and clearly compensatory posturing of the author's pretense to be somehow about the level of we mere mortals who must sell our labor power for wages and have nothing to lose but our pains ineptly and unintentionally draws a laser beam focus on the question of exactly how the author of the article gets whatever money they have to have to live on -- and does this in a way that a less posturing, grandiose and substantive argument would effortlessly avoid.

anon (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 21:30

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Sorry that's not how challenging the author on substance work, you just made a big run-on sentence with an ad hominen attack. Perhaps their (admittedly imperfect) critique of economy is just over your head?

alex (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 08:16

this article and the comments to it are baffling to me, since they all seem to agree the piece is against economy when it in fact calls for quite a bit of economy. "everything useful" is defined by its "usefulness" and "demands use, and will incentivize the right techniques kept strictly in the right applications in order to continue to have these." moreover, we have "deliberate restoration of the land" presumably to "continue to have it" (and use it), and even medical centers managed by physicians (hope you dont mean the ones we've got) and kept in check by patients and "observers" (oh? who is that?). the name for that is communism, the use and maintenance of things that are useful for the reproduction of ourselves as individuals rather than profit and the power necessary to defend it, watched over for abuse and forcefully defended if necessary by some kind of generally understood interest in autonomously doing so.

not that i have a problem with a lot of that. i too feel that sacrificing anthropocentric "growth" for the sake of an ecologically restorative and de-colonial free society has a certain "sanctity of necessity" to it. and perhaps the author would agree with me that the specifics of how such a society would be administered will and should come from the practical ramifications and needs that arise from opposing, deconstituting, destroying, abolishing--pick your poison!--the forces that are aligned around destroying its possibility.

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