Discussion · Bonfire Dinteg Labs

Taking notes from the successes and failures of the Russian revolution, a group of anarchists (including Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian anarchist militant who was critical in defeating the Tzar's army and who later also fought the Red Army) wrote a document titled the "Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists." This document came to be known as "The Platform." It remains one of the most important first-hand revolutionary documents, outlining a clear revolutionary plan.

I've taken this, the Viable System Model from cybernetics, and my own organizing experience, to describe an organization to confront the current set of crises.

This continues to build on the stuff I have been writing, but it's a lot less high level theory and a lot more specific.

https://anarchoccultism.org/building-zion/a-solarpunk-fractal-microservices

As always, editing notes (typos, grammar, spelling, etc) are always welcome, as are any questions. My ADHD brain tends to go a lot faster than anything else, so I have a tendency to drop words and have a lot of trouble catching them later. Between my ADHD and mild dyslexia, it can be pretty hard for me to catch when autocorrect gives me the wrong word.

A lot of folks have already been super helpful in offering their editing support, and I'm really grateful. Writing this has felt collaborative, and it should. On the one hand this comes from my own experience and research, but on the other I'm also voicing things that have come from conversations here. This has all been a bit of my voice and a bit of the federated world, and I'm really appreciating that.

hex

@Hex@kolektiva.social replied · 4 days ago

Live Like the World is Dying

The Astoria Food Pantry

[audio src=

Mother Anarchy

@ArcMother@kolektiva.social replied · 4 days ago

@Hex keeping an eye on this, I'm sure it will be incredibly useful

book_dragon

@JeanieBurrell@mstdn.social replied · last week

@Hex Apologies for not keeping up with your Kairos. Medical issues in the way lately. Which have made me very dependent on the NHS here in England. So, after reading both Microservices and Structure and Purpose, I need to ask if Services can possibly offer a medical system for those who cannot live without its intervention? Who will make pharmaceuticals? Who will build MRI's? How can the collective take care of its sick, its disabled?

hex

@Hex@kolektiva.social replied · last week

@JeanieBurrell I mean, we already do all of that now and it's all made by people. The same people can do the same things, just with less overhead from managers randomizing them, sales people selling things they can't build, shareholders taking the majority of the value they produce, and CEOs squeezing everyone on behalf of the shareholders.

Real disaster preparedness means we have to prepare for neoliberalism stripping away every last thing folks tend to imagine the government is for, except, of course, violence. I wouldn't imagine it would be easy to build that type of infrastructure for a while, but anything that can be built by people under one system can be made by people under another system.

hex

@Hex@kolektiva.social replied · last week

@JeanieBurrell really, we're just talking about a different kind of disaster. The real difference is scale. We all need to take care of each other at some point.

hex

@Hex@kolektiva.social replied · last week

@JeanieBurrell I think about this a lot actually. My mother-in-law has Parkinson's. My dad is a disabled Vietnam vet. After being shot I've spent a good amount of time in and out of the hospital. I feel like I'm just waiting for when something will go wrong.

I have a few friends who are stuck in the US because of chronic illness. They can't leave because countries tend to just not let people in who they see as a potential "burden." But they also are at risk of being kicked off insurance, or losing access to hospitals, as Republicans finish off their eugenics program.

The US is collapsing faster than anything can be built. Even if everyone started tomorrow, it would be years before there's a group big enough to start even one hospital. But it's been done before. Weird little communities have built their own systems before. Churches have built and bought hospitals in the past, and still do. Rajneeshpuram (go watch Wild Wild Country) had a hospital (with a bioweapons program, which... Is definitely not the kind of hospital I'd want to see built, but it was a hospital none-the-less).

Nothing stops an alternative system from building and operating hospitals. I believe that would fall under the works committee to build and the services committee to operate. I'd imagine a hospital operated for the good of the collective would probably be worker organized, and would probably operate much more effectively than one operated by a business person who is just trying to extract as much money as possible. I don't know how any of that would compare to the NHS, but I wouldn't trust neoliberals to not underfund anything good so they can privatize it and strip it for parts.

book_dragon

@JeanieBurrell@mstdn.social replied · 6 days ago

@Hex Two, doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists all have specialized education and training. Can a community fund that? And what medical professional would want to work for a side of organic beef, or free housing, or whatever service we can provide? I don't see a way to entirely produce both hospitals and staff without interfacing with capitalism. 2/2

hex

@Hex@kolektiva.social replied · 6 days ago

@JeanieBurrell A lot of schools of anarchism assume that the old world needs to be destroyed before the new one can emerge. I don't believe that's true at all, so yeah, I do expect that people will probably interface with capitalism.

So let me introduce you to this thing robber barons used to build the first monopolies: vertical integration. Rockefeller Steel needed coal to smelt, so they bought coal mines. They needed trains to move the coal, so they bought train lines. Sometimes they built new train lines. Oh hey, they already have steel to build the rails and they already have coal to power the trains. Suddenly they can out compete anyone because their whole supply chain is within their organization. From there, they could undercut everyone else's prices to drive them under and buy them out. That's how the first monopolies were built.

It's illegal now, for obviously good reasons. It's far too powerful to trust capitalism with. But a distributed system could share or trade goods internally for lower costs than they sell them externally. They could figure out internal supply chains to sell things externally, then distribute the profits back... or keep prices super low to sink capitalist competition. An organization like that could follow exactly the monopolists pattern of using market share in one domain to leverage into control of other markets, taking over the whole thing bit by bit. It would be extremely hard to stop since there isn't any law stopping a non-profit from being a monopoly and, even if they created one, they wouldn't have a centralized organization to go after.

Such an economic strategy would be really hard to counter.

But that would take a little bit to scale up to. Just starting small, yeah, I'd absolutely assume a lot of interaction with capitalism. The whole point would be to just reduce the burden a bit in one area so people in the collective do a bit better than people outside. That brings more people in, which lets you do more, which lets you take a bit more pressure off. People bring their skills when they join.

Now, after I got out of the hospital I had a couple of (unofficial) visits from nurses and other medical folks. I didn't have to pay for them. I didn't have to figure out insurance. They were anarchists. They were limited in what they could actually do, legally, but they volunteered a bit of time and their skill to help me because I put my life on the line to fight something we all opposed. That's just mutual aid.

So I don't think it's necessary to figure out how to bootstrap an entire medical system tomorrow. I don't think I could do that. I don't expect individuals could. But I already know anarchist medics who would be happy to work outside the system if they could have basic needs covered. Now how many people does it take to do that? That's a good question. The more people work together, the more mutual benefit. Being alone and poor is expensive. But if you work together you can afford to buy things in bulk, making stuff cheaper. You can rotate cooking so people have a bit extra time. People can take that extra time and socialize, recharge, or work on other projects to bring in a bit more cash. Cooperation compounds over time. Little bits of extra money saved by cooperating can go in to a susu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susu_(informal_loan_club) or something similar, which lets people invest in things that make their lives even easier/cheaper/etc.

Now, I assure you, there are absolutely people who would be thrilled to trade their medical skills for a chance to exit the system. Since you bring up midwives, there was actually a commune that brought midwifery and home birth back to the US in the 60's. A lot of US midwives trace their influences back to that commune.

It's not only in the realm of possibility, that kind of thing has absolutely happened. It's really a matter of scale. The important difference between this proposal and the commune movement is that communes tried to be completely removed from capitalism while this continues to interface with it while working towards a full exit.

Susu (informal loan club) - Wikipedia

1 more replies (not shown)

book_dragon

@JeanieBurrell@mstdn.social replied · 6 days ago

@Hex Shot?! Glad you're still here, man. And while I have no access to view Wild Wild Country, I did read an in-depth episode summary. I remember the arrest. 12 Rolls-Royces, one of them gold-plated. That was a personality cult!

I keep running into two difficulties. One, how could a community built on barter, trade, and compassion adequately fund materials for and compensate a small medical practice? If we have to exist alongside capitalism, who would negotiate prices? 1/2

#resist #antifa

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