The crisis is everything we know, and everything we are familiar with. The crisis is the comfortable routine of our everyday lives which is presumed to represent universal human values, and is upheld by the empire through the use of police and military force whenever an uprising against the crisis should occur. We can think of the modern-day crisis in terms of individual incidents, such as the Greek austerity crisis that is currently spreading around the globe, or the starving children in Africa who everyone seems to pity and yet they fail to realize how their pity and what we call “white savior complex” is in truth making the problem much worse. However, we are past the point of individual crises. The system is one big crisis where we have been pitted against each other by choosing sides after being convinced to pick a side, rather than stand with our fellow humans in a common struggle. That is modern politics today…countless attempts to manage one disaster after another, while manipulating the hearts and minds of the masses who are the very foundation of what our society is, and what our society could be if we let it. All of this is in the name of power, in the name of the state and national identities, and when we really get down to the bottom of it, it is in the name of human happiness: “What this war is being fought over is not various ways of managing society, but irreducible and irreconcilable ideas of happiness and their worlds”.

I think that a big part of the crisis is that most people do not believe that there is a crisis. There is a common belief, especially in privileged western countries that we are “lucky” to live where we do, we are “lucky” to live in a capitalist system and we are “lucky” that we are given the “freedom” to be part of it. Of course, that “freedom” entails that if we do not participate in the system and play by the rules of those who govern it, we are given the message that we are either not worthy of having a voice (radicals get told this a lot, “if you don’t vote you can’t complain”), or we are thrown into prison cells or put on house arrest…anything to silence those who believe not only that all of the options given to us by the powerful are wrong, but that the very idea of giving up our autonomy to another human, to allow another human the privilege of giving us our options, is a painfully mistaken viewpoint. Being part of the system does not give us peace or freedom, but traps us in a constant crisis that will eventually lead to our destruction. We are isolated from our communities, the work that is necessary for our place in the economy, which due to the nature of capitalism it is in turn necessary for our survival…causing more isolation from the natural world which the economy exploits. Most importantly, we are isolated from ourselves and our social nature as humans.

We are isolated from our communities through indoctrination into the idea of the “self”. One of the ways this happens is through the mass media, which teaches us to shape who we are through trends, clothing, fashion, and individualistic ideologies such as “I am who I am”, “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me”, and even the very concept of “I”. We’re being taught to become brands of ourselves, and in a system where we are built to work we are expected to sell ourselves to employers and to society through wage labour. However, we are social creatures who are connected not only socially but biologically. Scientific studies have shown us that humans are connected in the deepest of ways…chemically, atomically…and the anthropology of human nature has proven to be controversial in the sense that there is a divide between the social Darwinist idea that life is nothing but a game of survival of the fittest, which is a common defense for capitalism and libertarianism, while other ideas, studies as well as our own experiences show that we cannot survive without cooperating with one another…as Kropotkin believed, cooperation not competition. Even corporate CEOs would not have been able to get to where they are without other people, developing relationships and making deals to move up the ladder so that others fall to the bottom of the capitalist pyramid, and becoming wealthy off of their exploitation. On a more positive level, I think we can all agree that having a solid social network, a community if you will, strengthens us mentally as well as catches us when we fall so that our individual crises are not as debilitating as they would be if we were completely on our own. The individualism that we’re taught to embrace only separates us…it forces us to forget that we are unique individuals who are more importantly part of a community. The crisis here is that it feels as though we have lost all solidarity with each other through being forced into capitalist individualism where people care about their work and their assets more than their relationships. I found it interesting when I read that the closest thing we have to real solidarity is activist communities, but they are also isolated in their ideologies that depend on the crises that separate us to begin with.

We can all relate to Marxist rhetoric through its mentioning of exploitation, labour power and surplus value. What a person does for a living is usually what defines them. We see this all of the time and we even catch ourselves buying into it. When we make new friends we ask them what they do. We get a post-secondary education with the hope that we will acquire a fulfilling career. There is a very interesting paradox, the fact that through technological advancement we have seen many jobs die out because machines take over them, and yet humans are defined by their work…we talk about the importance of human advancement and yet this advancement is holding many people back. We have workers without work, and as a result people are desperately turning to whichever powerful politician will create jobs, regardless of how draconian and fascist they are. We are taught that the purpose of democracy is to empower, and yet people are feeling more and more disempowered. We live in a world of war, exile, colonization, and suffering that makes us foreigners on our own planet, in our own communities. How can we take anything seriously anymore, especially when we see politicians and news broadcasters trying to ask serious questions about the world’s problems, yet they laugh at our oppression that is caused by their power? We desperately want to identify ourselves with cultures and social systems that oppress us, such as wage labour, “work”, and when we see communities outside of the norms we’ve created, when we see that sense of community and solidarity elsewhere, some get angry about it because it reminds them that they do not have that. How many times do we hear people criticizing the drum circle hippies for example, by saying “go get a job”? We buy into social norms, such as monogamy or the nuclear family even, because they are concepts we’ve always been familiar with and we think that we can’t live without the familiar or the “normal”. And again, we shame those who do not live by these norms.Work has very much become a social norm not only because we cannot feed ourselves without it but it defines our worth. We get embarrassed if we are unemployed because we are afraid that it will reflect poorly on our character. We blame ourselves for not fitting in and yet the practices of those who influence the structures in which we find ourselves are the ones making it harder and harder to do so. Is it the fault of the unemployed person for being unemployed in a society that creates workers without work, or is the fact that work is an economic and social necessity the part that is truly flawed? When are we going to realize that continuing to buy into these systems of power, and indoctrinating our children into them, will only continue to oppress us and keep us on a choke hold?

Even the physical structures of our environment have become a powerful part of the way we manage and think about our lives. Of course, we do not think of it this way but certain areas (such as what we know to be cities) are built in a way that cages us into a geographical location. Take London for example, and how we think of London as a community. Our location becomes part of our identity. We know people here, we work here, we go to school here, we have our own propaganda, our own police force, our own “leader” and our own oppressors and oppressed. Everything that I mentioned above, social norms and wage labour and isolation…happens for us within a geographical location and is influenced by that community that we join when we move there. Wherever we are at certain times, whatever circumstances we find ourselves in at those times. It is all connected to our human experience. Why is it then, if the here and now is so significant, that people are always concerning themselves with what the future holds? We wake up in the morning, get on a bus or drive to another location to our work or school, and when that part of our day is over we go back home or to another place. People are always on the go and have very little patience. Our main concern when we finish a task is what our next task will be. This is just like when we are working wage labour jobs and we have deadlines to meet, specific hours we are required to be at our workplace and expected to perform to a certain standard. There are few bosses who are flexible and sympathetic to the needs of their employees outside of the realm of what is required by law, such as survival. Your boss will understand if you have to leave work early due to having a heart attack, but if your partner leaves you and you are suffering from severe depression they most likely do not care either way, and will not encourage you to take the day off and heal. Just get on the bus and go to work, and look at the billboards along the way, listen to top 40 music on your ipod and be a good citizen…and for the love of humanity, respect the authority of the police officer who is harassing the homeless in the downtown core! Keep it simple and stay in your comfort zone. There are some people who get dragged into this brainwashing, but there are also some who do not, and funny enough they are commonly the marginalized communities who are struggling to put food on the table. The strongest communities seem to be the least privileged. Everything that is known about survival, about not isolating ourselves, and about living in the moment is born out of the fact that our very survival depends on it. Unfortunately the current state of things is not only applicable to human affairs, but to the affairs of the planet and other creatures we share it with…“a relationship to the world based on management, which is to say, on estrangement”. We are all aware of the statistics when it comes to environmental damage and the petty attempts by politicians to correct the issues while using the same system that caused them. It is the expectation, that because past generations have set us up for destruction, that we are the ones responsible for fixing the problem but doing it in a way that preserves their dominance and prosperity. We are seeing glaciers melt, extinction of countless species, and deathly storms such as Hurricane Sandy that are clearly being caused by the destruction of the environment, and yet governments are forcing austerity measures and corporate tax cuts because WE apparently need to “tighten our belts”…meanwhile, they pretend to be dealing with the problem (but not actually addressing the problem) through things like “carbon tax shifting”. This is called “green capitalism”, and many environmental NGOs work within this structure of making monetary deals with corporations and citizens and using only a small part of their profit to correct the wrongs. They are essentially contributing to the environmental exploitation that is slowly killing us. I do not believe that anyone who is aware of this hypocrisy is looking forward to the day where new policies and pro-environment organizations are no longer sufficient in maintaining a liveable planet.

Aside from forming various communities, separate civilizations no longer exist: “There is no ‘clash of civilizations.’ There is a clinically dead civilization by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet’s atmosphere.”. The plague? Global capitalism. It has been spreading since colonial times, long before and after the discovery of the “third world” after World War Two and during the red scare, when there was not only a cold war but there began a need for the USA to start policing the world. In addition to being part of the formation of the world wide forces of capitalism known as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they desperately tried to take hold of the so called “less fortunate” countries by giving them loans, in order to prevent the USSR from spreading communism, and to have control of their natural resources…and it all went downhill from there. Now we have the Western world in debt, and we have the “third world” in even more debt and stuck in cycles of poverty, dictatorships and war. This actually does not sound much different from the Western world, funny enough…you can see poverty if you go to certain areas of your city, and I would argue that we also live in a dictatorship seeing as how we are forced to abide by whatever rules are decided on by the powerful (rules that none of us truly have a say in creating), and we are constantly going to war with other countries who refuse to bow down to our power or the power of our neighbors, or those countries are pitted against each other by international alliances with similar economic interests. The plague has spread, alright.

“We have to see that the economy is not ‘in’ crisis, the economy itself is the crisis,” is a good way to sum up the current situation, since everything is connected to the economy…all oppression, all injustice, everything that is leading to the destruction of humanity. We are aware of the problems, we are aware of the crisis, but what we have not figured out yet is exactly what we are going to do about it. I wonder when we are going to figure this out! Time is running out for humanity. It is no longer a question of how much more economical, green, or healthy we live within the capitalist system where these are all matters of corporation versus corporation. It is no longer a matter of who we vote in to save us, because no one is going to save us. Saving us would require those who think we do not need saving first of all, realizing this and then sacrificing their authority and financial security. It has become apparent that ending oppression in all forms is impossible in a system that is inherently oppressive, and encourages nothing except greed and exploitation of other humans in the name of “success”. The businessmen who are making deals over expensive coffee dates may feel as though all is well because their subjective experience is one of prosperity, but not one businessman will survive long enough to make such deals if we wipe ourselves out through environmental destruction or nuclear war, in addition to the gradual degradation of the global community through increased poverty, violence against women and children, and everything that goes along with our resources dying out so we have nothing to use for food or any basic necessity, or foster scientific knowledge so that we can cure and prevent deathly diseases from spreading and killing us off. The possibilities for how our destruction will occur are endless.

Insurrection is a violent uprising against government, or any type of authority. There are many people who believe in nonviolent revolution and dread the very thought of arming themselves, being chased or beaten by police, or anything that would create even the slightest risk of a person being injured. We hear references to Dalai Lama quotes or Gandhi’s revolution (which contrary to popular belief, was not completely non-violent). This is all very understandable…humans for the most part are empathetic creatures, and when we think of violence it is easy to put ourselves in the position of the victim, which makes us think how terrible it would be to see our loved ones in such a place. However, there is a growing need for the people who think this way to confront the truth. First of all, there is a difference between physical violence and systemic or inherent violence. The Prime Minister for example, may not physically injure a homeless drug addict…but the fact that the Prime Minister is the Prime Minister, and aside from corporations that lobby him is the owner of privilege and power in Canada, through accumulation of this privilege has left a large part of the population in the same or similar positions as this homeless drug addict. He could use a very small portion of his wealth to feed and house this person as well as allow them to seek treatment for their addiction and the mental health issues that are likely causing it, and yet this person remains in the position that they are in. This is how the entire world is set up, and it is set up so that people like this stay in the positions they are in, because powerful politicians and CEOs remain in their respective positions. Tell me, which is more violent? The cycle of poverty and destruction of the human person, of the human right to life and dignity, or the blac bloc anarchists smashing the windows of a corporation that contributes to the cycle? We have policies against discrimination that are meant to tackle issues such as violence against women, and yet our society values and rewards qualities like dominance and aggression because these qualities are what allow people to advance up the economic ladder. We supposedly have policies against racism, and yet immigrants from certain parts of the world are increasingly questioned and sometimes not even allowed into this country due to threats of “terrorism”, or inability to contribute to the economy on immediate entrance, and very rarely being hired into their fields of expertise because they studied in another part of the world…it is heartbreaking to meet taxi drivers who are trained as doctors or engineers, and what is even more heartbreaking is how common this is. Same-sex marriage may be legal, but that does not come close to addressing our heterosexist attitudes and the amount of hate crimes that occur to gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans individuals, and the amount of hatred and prejudice against the queer community that is still tolerated by authorities. In the case of physical violence, an investigation and prosecution may occur but again, what about the mindset that led to it? Hatred and bigotry are completely tolerated with the absence of a physical act. Unfortunately these are only a few examples of the systemic violence that plagues us…and in my opinion, such systemic violence is much more worrisome than a smashed window or a burning police car will ever be. Another note about violence that needs to be pointed out to those who discredit violent acts of rebellion, is the fact that regardless of whether or not we use violence, the state will react violently against us because we are threatening their power, which they will do anything to uphold. The state has declared war on our rebellion and did so long before we considered taking action. This is no longer a matter of “causes”, but a matter of war. We can choose to arm ourselves and have a fair chance at winning or we can set ourselves up for defeat. Indeed, if we are even considering the notion of insurrection we have obviously been arming ourselves on an intellectual level, as we have woken up from the illusion of perfection that we have been indoctrinated into since day one.

To clarify, this is not to say that the only solution is violence…only that I believe violence may be necessary in the future and we should familiarize ourselves with a diversity of tactics. There are some who are confident using violent tactics and there are those who are not, and that is perfectly reasonable. In fact, forcing everyone fighting for the revolution to use violence would be conflicting with the anti-authoritarian, anti-oppressive ideologies we are using as intellectual, social and political weaponry. To go even deeper, we need to make connections between the personal and the political, “don’t back away from what is political in friendship”. Those of us who are finding common ground and common goals through our discovery of the truth need to stand together and organize ourselves (not necessarily through organizations!), and make current political structures irrelevant. There are many ways to do this, such as organizing free community meals, health clinics, workshops, and turning our workplaces into worker owned cooperatives. The possibilities really are endless, we just need to join together to use our creativity, compassion and skills and share them with each other. Another way is to form communes, which is a way of including all of these things and forming our own communities with the intent of spreading them. If communes grow and we become more dependent on each other than the state, the state will prove to be more and more irrelevant. Through communes we can make everything associated with state power irrelevant…corporations that sell us our food can die out if we start growing our own, health care whether it is public or private can be taken into our own hands and made more personal and less arbitrary if we create our own clinics, children can grow up in stable environments if we form ones that foster safer spaces and creativity in addition to collective child-rearing, and not a single person will be alone or lack basic needs if all of us come together to make sure they have them. As a result, we will not need money, or leaders for that matter because decisions can be made on a community level through consensus…which does not necessarily mean that everyone gets exactly what they want but people can meet each other halfway so that decisions reflect the interests of the greater community. As far as the natural world goes, if we plan carefully enough and make Earth education a number one priority we can learn to harmonize with the Earth, and do all of these things in a way that rather than exploiting it for our own needs we can work with it. After all, the Earth has already given us everything we need to survive.

I think we are at a time where these ideas are all well and good, but we need practical advice as to how to go about them…starting communes, maintaining the social order of them (for example, this social order would depend on personal accountability as well as holding each other accountable), and how to resist attempts at destroying these communities and forcing us to rely on the state. We need to find each other, get organized and start organizing to weaken it. We can look at previous uprisings such as the one of Algerian youth back in 2001, or more recently the Quebec student movement. The inspiration is there but what about situations such as the state clamping down, since the state is going to have more access to the resources needed for our destruction? Most importantly, the whole vision is obviously an idealistic one. How will these new communities address problems within and between that resemble problems on the outside? For example, what would happen in the case of sexual assault? How would the perpetrator be held accountable, rehabilitated and what would we do to support the survivor in the healing process? This is but one example of many important questions that we need to be asking ourselves if we are starting a revolution…as even the most radical individuals can tell you, the problems we face in the society we distance ourselves from do not magically disappear when we become socially conscious and working towards change. There are so many fresh, passionate ideas out there but very little practical instruction as to how to make these ideas a reality. It is something that all radicals seem to struggle with at one point or another, and it will remain our biggest challenge of all.

There are a lot more manifestos than DIY guides to the revolution, which can be both inspiring and problematic. I say that it is slightly problematic, because obviously there is a lack of grounding in the area of practicality…again, these are all great observations, but what do we do about them and where do we start? However, the amount of passion out there is undeniable, for me at least. Sharing this passion with others makes me feel completely fearless at the thought of going to jail or being punished by the state in any way…it reminds me that like many, I am indeed ready to die for the revolution if we happen to get to the point of insurrection in my lifetime. The good thing about idealism is that it inspires people to seek out practical solutions themselves. It inspires us to seek opportunity through the crisis. We may not all come to the same conclusions at first, but I feel as though we can all eventually meet half way through our common struggle. Everything, opportunity included, starts with an idea, with inspiration. Whether or not the insurrection is coming, whether or not we will see a revolution in our time, whether or not current social movements are giving the illusion of influence and change or are truly making headway…This is our opportunity, all we need to do is jump on it. And I leave you with this, comrades:

“If they don’t let us dream, we won’t let them sleep!”–Unknown author

In solidarity,
Bailey

This was written after handing in a book review on “The Coming Insurrection” for my class on radical politics/social movements. All I did was reform it so that it is less of a review and more of just my own thoughts and conclusions I gathered from the book. All quotes are from the book, and I give credit to The Invisible Committee as well as previous lectures from my classes and other books I’ve read. Rather than attempt to find those books or lecture notes, I acknowledge that everything we know, we learned from someone, somewhere, somehow. I am no exception to that. Everything that I consider knowledge of mine, I owe to the person who shared it with me.