“What I believe is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.”
—Emma Goldman

Anarchist Economics in Practice

Uri Gordon

It cannot be enough to criticize capitalism, even from a distinctly anarchist point of view. Nor will it do to merely construct models of free and equal economic arrangements, no matter how inspiring and realistic. In addition to these, the discussion of anarchist economics must also involve a look at ways of getting from here to there. In other words, it requires that we examine anarchist economics in terms of concrete, present-day practices and assess their role within the more general context of anarchist revolutionary strategy.

In this chapter I attempt to initiate such a discussion by surveying and examining the significance of the actual economic practices undertaken by anarchists and their allies today. In what ways are anarchists organizing to engage in economic practices that depart from the conventional, profit-oriented capitalist economy? What challenges and opportunities do anarchist economies confront in the contemporary landscape of social struggle? And to what degree do they serve as a meaningful contribution to revolutionizing society and replacing capitalism with non-hierarchical, unalienated forms of production and exchange?

In what follows, I begin by examining various economic practices that anarchists display in their everyday organizing, which can be meaningfully understood as a form of resistance to capitalism. I then attempt to situate these practices within the context of several key contemporary terms in anarchist revolutionary thought: direct action, propaganda by the deed, and the politics of collapse. To be sure, most anarchists also regularly participate in the conventional economy—working for wages, purchasing goods, and paying for services. Yet what interests us here are the kinds of practices that anarchists undertake against these prevalent modes of production, consumption, and exchange.

Before turning to a survey of the various types of economic practice in which anarchists engage, there is a preliminary point to be made about the broad choice of examples. Some readers may object to the inclusion of certain examples, which, they may argue, do not in fact qualify as anarchist. Alternative currencies and workers’ cooperatives, for example, would receive criticism from anarcho-communists since they retain, respectively, the use of symbolic means of exchange and the payment of wages. Thus they are not only islands inside capitalism, but also not sufficiently prefigurative of an anarchist-communist society—one in which there are no wages, and products are not exchanged but distributed according to need. Similarly, anarchists who strongly endorse the primitivist critique of civilization would almost certainly object to most of the examples given here, since they continue to be anchored in domestication and rationality.

There is certainly substance to these objections. Nevertheless, I have chosen to keep the tent as wide as possible, if only for the reason that readers new to anarchism and less familiar with its internal controversies deserve to be introduced to the entire variety of practices that broadly fall within its sphere and left to make up their own minds. More generally, however, I would like to emphasize that the entire discussion of anarchist economics in practice must take place under the lens of imperfection and experimentation. This has to do with the distinction that Terry Leahy makes between purist and hybrid strategies, that is, between strategies that completely embody anarchist ideals and ones which continue to rely on aspects of capitalism.[284] Hybrid strategies have always been part of the anarchist repertoire of social resistance; yet the relevant question is whether hybrid strategies are viewed as already embodying the end point of desired social change (that is, a reformed capitalist system), or as necessary but temporary compromises with the ubiquity of capitalist social relations, a stepping-stone towards more comprehensive social change. As Leahy argues,

To an extent hybrid strategies are symbiotic with capitalism. They can be seen as productive for the capitalist class in ameliorating some of capitalism’s excesses. Yet they are also antithetical to the culture and economy of capitalism as a system. Given enough time and enough proliferation they will replace capitalism with something completely different….For those who ultimately want nothing but the best that an anarchist utopia can offer, the thing to do is to be mobile and seize opportunities for hybrids as they arise and move on as they grow stale.[285]

It is in this inclusive and experimental spirit that I offer the following examples. While limitations of space mean that the discussion is necessarily cursory, I have referenced some relevant literature throughout the exposition, and the reader is invited to consult it for further information and analysis.

Varieties of Anarchist Economic Practice

Withdrawal

Perhaps better defined as a “non-practice” than as a practice, the term “withdrawal” here indicates the various ways in which anarchists may abstain from participation in central institutions of the capitalist economy—primarily the wage system and the consumption of purchased goods. The goal of such a strategy is to weaken capitalism by sapping its energy, reducing its inputs in terms of both human labor and cultural legitimation. To be sure, the ubiquity of capitalist relations means that the options for withdrawal remain partial at best. Most of us must work for someone else to survive, and buy necessities that are not otherwise available for acquisition. Nevertheless, there are ways in which participation in capitalism can be significantly reduced, or undertaken on its qualitatively different margins. Rather than seeking full employment and aspiring to a lifelong career, anarchists can choose to work part-time or itinerantly, earning enough to supply their basic needs but not dedicating more time to waged work than is absolutely necessary—perhaps on the way towards the abolition of work as compulsory, alienated production.[286] In the area of housing, squatting a living space rather than renting one also abstains from participation in capitalism, though this option is less sustainable in most countries since it will almost certainly end in eviction. Anarchists may also reduce their participation in the moneyed circulation of commodities by reusing and recycling durable goods, and by scavenging or growing some of their own food rather than purchasing it from the supermarket.[287] Such practices can never by themselves destroy capitalism, since in the final analysis they remain confined to the level of personal lifestyle and rely on capitalism’s continued existence in order to inhabit its margins and consume its surpluses. Nevertheless, strategies of withdrawal do complement other practices in carving out a separate space from capitalism, as well as in expressing a rejection of its ideologies of dedication to the workplace and of consumption as the road to happiness.

Anarchist unions

For the majority of us who cannot escape wage labor, joining an anarchist union can be a useful way to defend our rights and struggle for improved conditions within the capitalist workplace. The largest anarchist labor unions today are in Spain (CNT, CGT) and France (CNT-AIT). In English-speaking countries the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is the most prominent one, with about 2,000 members, most of them in the United States but also in Canada, Britain, and Australia.[288] Though very small compared to its heyday a century ago, the IWW is very active in several small and mid-sized firms—primarily in the printing, recycling, retail, and social services sectors. In the last decade, it has gained prominence through organizing immigrant warehouse workers in New York City as well as the struggles of its affiliated baristas in the Starbucks chain of coffee shops. Anarchist unions, in the view of their members, are not merely organizations that struggle on workers’ behalf within the capitalist system, but rather part of the radical social movement that seeks its abolition. As the Preamble to the IWW constitution states, the struggle between the working and the employing classes “must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth.”[289] This is the strategy of anarcho-syndicalism,[290] which strives to get the majority of workers in all sectors of the economy to join militant workplace organizations, weakening capitalism through their organized force and building up to a general strike. At this point the workers would not only halt production to negotiate better conditions, but seize the factories and land to establish an anarchist society with the same workers’ unions now running the economy through democratic planning along with communities.

Workplace and university occupations

Another tactic related to syndicalism in its realization of action “at the point of production” is the workplace occupation. In such actions, workers lock themselves into the factory—either a means of resisting layoffs, or during a strike to prevent the employment of strikebreakers, or, under conditions of more widespread economic crisis and social revolt, in order to take over manufacturing and manage it themselves. Waves of workplace occupations have occurred throughout the past century, most prominently during the 1920 “hot summer” in Italy,[291] the May 1968 events in France,[292] and the Argentine rebellion of 2002.[293] Most recently, in the wake of the current financial crisis, a number of factory occupations have already taken place in response to layoffs and plant closures—including the Visteon car factories (formerly Ford) in Britain and Northern Ireland, the Aradco auto parts supplier in Canada, and the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago. While these occupations ended in agreements with management to provide the workers with improved severance packages, they also displayed a powerful example of solidarity and indicate a rise in workers’ militancy, which can be expected to expand.

Extending the logic of the workplace occupation to the “knowledge factory,”[294] occupations of universities can also be seen as a form of anarchist economic practice in their resistance to the corporate takeover of higher education and their practices of self-management. University occupations have characterized periods of large-scale protest, as with the May 1968 events in France and the Greek riots of winter 2008.[295] In 2008, the New School in New York City was occupied in protest of the reorganization policies of its president, and in the UK over thirty universities were occupied in protest of the Israeli army’s attack on Gaza. Most recently, British students staged occupations around the country in response to rising tuition fees and cuts to teaching budgets.

Cooperatives and communes

Cooperatives are democratically run associations which can be established for production, consumption, or housing. Thus workers’ cooperatives are businesses that are owned and managed by their workers. Unlike normal private firms where decisions on production, spending, and pay are made authoritatively by the managers and dictated to the workers, in cooperatives such decisions are made democratically, in meetings where each worker has an equal say. A consumer cooperative is a group of people that comes together to regularly purchase goods (most typically food) in bulk, and thus at reduced cost, later distributing them among the members. Housing cooperatives will typically own a building, with members occupying bedrooms and sharing the communal resources. Cooperatives usually adhere to a set of principles similar to the seven “Rochdale Principles,” adopted in 1844 by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, an early consumer cooperative in England. In one contemporary version these are: open and voluntary membership; equal control among members; limited returns on investment as interest or dividends; fair distribution of profits among members; educational and social objectives in addition to commercial ones; cooperation with other cooperatives; and concern for the community.[296] Communes can be viewed as intentional communities that combine the three types of cooperative in one arrangement. Members live together in one house or in separate units in a village, jointly own their productive resources (which can include agricultural land and workshops as well as collectively owned service businesses or tourist facilities), and collectively manage their consumption. Communes are thus perhaps the most ambitious variant of anarchist economics, since they are settings in which anarchist economics can be practiced comprehensively, in all aspects of daily life, rather than as a specialized activity.

Local currencies

Voluntary, self-managed networks through which participants exchange goods and services without profit or the use of standard national currency have proliferated worldwide in the last two decades. The Complementary Currency Resource Center currently lists 152 such systems in thirty-two countries, with a total membership of close to 338,000 people and a yearly volume of trade exceeding 56 million.[297] Instead of their national legal tender, such systems use various forms of local currency and credit as an independent means of exchange. These credits, vouchers, or notes may be equivalent to the national currency or they may account for a different standard such as a working hour. In English-speaking countries the most common variety is the Local Exchange Trading Scheme (LETS). Each year the members of a LETS receive a directory in which they all advertise the skills and services they offer and their contact details. Each new member receives a number of “credits,” normally equivalent to a working hour, which they can spend or earn by receiving and giving services to other members. Local currencies encourage the consumption of local produce and thus keep wealth circulating within the community rather than being taken away by large corporations. The exchange networks created can also serve to build solidarity and mutual aid in the community. Although such systems are usually not explicitly anti-capitalist and are promoted as complementary to the standard economy rather than as an all-out alternative, anarchists do initiate and participate in such systems as a hybrid strategy.

Food Not Bombs

In organized Food Not Bombs events, practiced most widely in the United States, anarchists cook nutritious vegan food and distribute it for free in a public space. The first FNB group was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1980 to accompany a campaign against nuclear and other weapons. The practice rapidly proliferated, with over 400 groups active today worldwide. Explicitly presented as an act of protest rather than charity, FNB events promote the idea of food as a basic human entitlement, detached from ability to pay, while at the same time publicly opposing the massive funding of the military and the arms industry at the expense of social needs. According to the movement’s handbook, “the major contribution to stopping bombs is our withdrawal from the economic and political structures of the death culture. As individuals, many of us engage in war-tax resistance; as an organization, we operate outside the dominant economic paradigm. We do not operate for a profit; in fact, we operate with very little money compared with the value of the food we distribute.”[298] Despite their entirely nonviolent nature, FNB events are often subject to repression and arrests, reflecting many municipalities’ hostility to the poor and homeless. In addition to regular events, FNB groups have also supplied food for activist gatherings and protest camps, and have been some of the first to appear on the ground and offer food to the survivors of major disasters such as the San Francisco earthquake and in Hurricane Katrina. The network has also been one of the major contributors to popularizing the practice of decision-making by consensus in activist groups.

Free shops and “really, really free markets”

These are permanent or temporary spaces where goods such as clothes, books, tools, and household items—as well as services from bicycle repair to tarot reading—can be given and taken without the use of money. Free shops are permanent spaces, usually located in squats and social centers, whereas “really, really free markets” are regular events, usually taking place the last weekend of each month. Both of these initiatives—as well as Food not Bombs—manifest and propagate the idea of a gift economy. Gift economies have been widely studied by anthropologists in the context of tribal and traditional societies, but they are also easily discerned within any family or friendship network.[299] In gift economies, individuals freely give goods or services to one another without immediately receiving anything in return. Yet by maintaining through their actions the practice of gift giving, they too can expect to receive gifts themselves as part of a generalized culture of reciprocity. In attempting to launch an entirely different culture of exchange, anarchist practices of gift economy are the most distant from capitalism and do the least to partake in its structures.

DIY cultural production

Anarchism has a long history of association with artistic and countercultural movements, from Dada and abstract expressionism to beat poetry and science fiction.[300] In more recent decades, a prominent aspect of anarchist involvement in visual arts, theater and music has been the promotion of a do-it-yourself ethos of cultural production. This is an approach to the creation of art and culture as a popular and nonprofessional activity, independent of corporate interests and the pressures of the capitalist culture industry. As an economic practice, the DIY ethic displays anarchist values of accessibility, community, autonomy, and self-sufficiency in cultural production. As a political practice, it is most often accompanied by anarchist messages and social critique, and has been a major inspiration for the rise of contemporary anarchist activism.[301] Perhaps the most important field in which this approach was developed was the punk movement. Most punk bands start their way by producing their own self-recorded music on independent labels and putting on shows in homes and garages rather than commercial venues. Among punk fans, DIY culture has created a steady stream of amateur fan magazines (known as fanzines or simply zines), which contain reviews of records and shows alongside poetry, comics, articles, and recipes, all produced using photocopied and collaged images and a combination of hand-scrawled and typewritten texts.[302] Apart from punk music, the DIY ethic is clearly on display in the work of street theater troupes performing in public spaces, anarchist art collectives that put on exhibitions in squatted venues, and collaborative web design projects online.

The electronic commons

Though not by itself an anarchist initiative, commentators have drawn attention to the Internet’s libertarian and communitarian features, particularly “its nonhierarchical structure, low transaction costs, global reach, scalability, rapid response time, and disruption-overcoming (hence censorship-foiling) alternative routing.”[303] Though there is another side to this coin (e-consumerism, surveillance, and social isolation), the decentralized structure of the Internet has given rise to a free informational economy online, based on “commons-based peer production” and “group generalized exchange.”[304] Contributors to projects such as the GNU/Linux operating system and Wikipedia produce and manipulate information without monetary compensation, motivated instead both by social recognition and the intrinsic enjoyment of their work associated with the “hacker ethic.”[305] Many anarchists are active participants in contributing to the development of the electronic commons, and in Europe there is also a developed network of HackLabs—community spaces housing self-assembled computers that offer free Internet access and training in programming.

Anarchist Economics and Revolutionary Strategy

Having looked at some concrete examples of anarchist economics as they are practiced today, I move to the second stage of discussion: in what way can such examples be tied to broader anarchist revolutionary goals, and what opportunities and challenges do they face in this context? In order to clarify these questions, I would like to offer three different strategic outlooks under which we can interpret these practices: constructive direct action, propaganda by the deed, and the politics of collapse.

The ethos of direct action, central to anarchist politics, is too often recognized only in its destructive or preventative guise. Thus, for example, anarchists who object to the clear-cutting of an ancient forest will take direct action by chaining themselves to the trees, blockading the bulldozers, or sabotaging their operation. This sense of direct action is often invoked in opposition to other courses of action, such as petitioning politicians or mounting legal challenges through the courts—a “politics of demand” that extends symbolic legitimacy to the same institutions that anarchists oppose by appealing to them to rectify injustices. Yet direct action also has a creative and constructive aspect, manifest in the practice of anarchist economics in the present tense. Constructive direct action means that anarchists who seek a world based on different social relations undertake their construction by themselves. On such an account, for social change to be successful, the modes of organization that will replace capitalism, the state, patriarchy, and so on must be prepared and developed alongside (though not instead of) the attack on present institutions. Therefore, the cooperatives, DIY cultures, and gift economies that anarchists practice today can be seen as the groundwork for the realities that will replace capitalism or, to use the familiar Wobbly slogan, as “forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”[306]

The insight that anarchist economic practices ultimately function within rather than outside capitalism is important in this context. As we have seen in the survey above, most forms of anarchist economic practice are by no means entirely detached from the capitalist economy. Most of them, in fact, can be seen as islands that operate within capitalism, albeit with a different internal logic, and in a constant attempt to eat away at the prevailing system from the inside by propagating and proliferating alternative social relations among people. Contamination is the name of the game, yet the attempt to contaminate capitalism also carries the risk of being contaminated in return, a process of co-optation or, to use the Situationist term, recuperation. Can anarchist economic practices avoid becoming just another form of business enterprise, wherein the financial sustainability of the project gradually comes to take precedence over its political significance? This is not an easy question to answer. Yet as Andy Robinson comments,

to remain anarchist, an anarchist business operates as a means, as the tool of a flow leading out of the system, never as an end in itself. It may, in a certain sense, be working inside the system, using dominant forms and means; but it should remain outside on the level of intentionality and desire, never reducible to these forms and means, always treating them as strategic choices, as means to be used for a purpose and discarded should they fail to serve it. To be sure, the tightrope of the danger of recuperation is not taken away by conceiving it in such terms…but it is possible to negotiate this risk in more or less creative ways, in ways that are more or less effective in sustaining the insurgent desire in exteriority.[307]

These comments on recuperation occasion two further remarks. The first is to mention that alongside the strategic dimension, anarchist economic practices should be related to the broader ethical commitment among anarchists to a “prefigurative politics”—that is, to using political means that are by themselves an embryonic representation of an anarchist social future. Thus anarchist values are expressed in everyday activities and practices, stressing the realization of egalitarian social relations within the fold of the movement itself, rather than expecting them to only become relevant “after the revolution.”[308] The second remark is that an individualist anarchist motivation can be seen at work within constructive direct action, quite separately from its strategic and ethical dimensions. From an individualist point of view, activists participate in anarchist economic practices not only in order to change society, but also simply out of the desire to inhabit such different social relations, and live equally among their comrades rather than conforming to the expectations of capitalist society.

Returning, however, to the strategic dimension, a question immediately presents itself: if the construction of a new society is to be the work of anarchists themselves, then the small number of participants surely means that this is a hopeless prospect. Without transforming current anarchist economic practices into the stuff of a mass movement, they will remain inspiring but insignificant efforts. Can this be overcome?

This brings us to the second prism under which we can view the practice of anarchist economics—that of propaganda by the deed. Despite the ill repute gained by this term, which became narrowly associated with bombings and assassinations in the last decades of the nineteenth century, propaganda by the deed can also be understood more broadly as pointing to the potentially exemplary nature of all anarchist action. On such an account, the most effective form of anarchist propaganda is the actual implementation and display of anarchist social relations. The practice of anarchist economics in publicly visible manner serves to demonstrate the possibility and desirability of alternative economic arrangements to a wide audience. The living practices of resource and income sharing, gift economies, and so on may directly inspire people by way of example, and encourage them to take up these practices by themselves. It is easier for people to engage with the idea that people can exist without bosses or leaders when such existence is displayed, if on a limited scale, in actual practice rather than merely argued for on paper. Thus Gandhi’s assertion that “a reformer’s business is to make the impossible possible by giving an ocular demonstration of the possibility in his own conduct.”[309] Or, in the words of a commentator on the practice of “really, really free markets”:

Long-term participation in ’Free Markets dispels the materialist programming that makes people covet useless items by denying access to them, and demonstrates just how possible and fulfilling the anarchist alternative is. It also presents a point of departure for further struggles: if this is what we can do with the scanty resources we’re able to get our hands on now, what could we do with the entire wealth of this society?[310]

At the same time, all of these strategies seem to have some inherent limitations. After all, the various anarchist economic practices discussed in this chapter have had a continuous presence in Western societies for the past forty years. Still, they do not seem to have precipitated anything like the large-scale social transformation intended. On the one hand, the anarchist movement is so small that even its most consistent and visible efforts are but a drop in the ocean. On the other hand, political elites have proven themselves extremely proficient at pulling the ground from under movements for social change, be it through direct repression and demonization of the activists, diversion of public attention to security and nationalist agendas, or, at best, minimal concessions that ameliorate the most exploitative aspects of capitalism while contributing to the resilience of the system as a whole. It would seem that ethical commitments to social justice and the enhancement of human freedom can only serve as a motivation for a comparatively small number of people, and that without the presence of genuine material interests among large sections of the population there is little hope for a mass movement to emerge that would herald the departure from existing social, economic, and political arrangements.

And here we come to the final point: fortunately or unfortunately, the conditions for such motivations seem to be rapidly emerging. The converging crises of the twenty-first century—climate change, financial meltdown, and the imminent peak in oil production—may be the only hope for large-scale social transformation. As capitalism becomes literally impossible to maintain under conditions of dwindling energy reserves and climate instability, the populations to which the anarchist minority in the West is appealing may finally conclude that a break with the system is in their material interest. Rather than a gradual and piecemeal social change, then, it may be that the tasks of anarchists and their allies is to create the kinds of initiatives that will allow populations to revolutionize the process of industrial collapse. The successful result of such efforts would be neither a continuation of hierarchical social relations in more locally self-sufficient forms (perhaps resembling feudalism more than capitalism), nor yet the deterioration into a Mad Max scenario of barbarity and gang warfare, but rather the emergence of qualitatively different societies in those places where people will have managed both to carve out a significant degree of autonomy and to use that autonomy in order to reconstruct the way they live. Yet there is no guarantee for any of this. The crystal ball remains murky.

Currency and Café Anarchy: Do-It-Yourself Economics and Participatory Resistance to Global Capitalism

Caroline K. Kaltefleiter

“No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.”
—Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchism

The recent global economic crisis continues to leave many people worried about their future, as 2009 brought news of higher unemployment rates, plant closings, falling house prices, and lower levels in consumer confidence. The gloom-and-doom discourse bantered about in the mainstream press fueled collective fear by posing questions like, “What happens if the US economy collapses? How will we survive? Can we as citizens and a national state thrive?”[311] The notion of an economic apocalypse is epitomized in an advertisement for a book titled The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide. The image for the ad is that of an atomic blast with the signifier of a dollar going up in smoke, symbolizing the annihilation of the American Dream. My initial reaction to this advertisement was similar to perhaps many who viewed it—“times are tough and boy are we as a society, especially young people, screwed.” A few seconds later, I read the image differently as I realized the system was imploding, that a revolution was taking place inside/outside the system. I saw a politics of agency (re)emerging into a dominant sphere, embracing those who had been fooled by capitalism for far too long, allowing them to reconsider their place in society and actively to combat rampant globalization, ecological destruction, and economic inequalities inherent in an explosive global economy.

My analysis is grounded within the framework of cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall, whose work on encoding and decoding texts offers us a way of looking at competing readings in/out of a text and by extension scenarios of representation in contemporary society. Hall emphasizes that texts, through every moment in the process of communication, allow for active message composition (encoding) and message reception (decoding).[312] “The message continuum, from the original composition of the message/code (encoding) to the point at which it is read and understood (decoding), has its own determinants and conditions of existence.”[313] Hall identifies three primary positions of decoding messages and signs, including the dominant position or “preferred” reading, the “negotiated” position, and the “oppositional” position/reading. He suggests that oppositional readings entail that the reader/viewer understands the preferred reading being constructed, but (re)interprets the message within an alternative frame of reference and social critique.

In the case of the economic crisis, readers/viewers whose social situations, particularly social class, align with the dominant scenario of representation have encoded in their consciousness protecting one’s property, job, family, or, perhaps most importantly, status in society. On the surface, the dominant narrative of citizens “losing ground” in the face of an economic catastrophe is reinforced through daily media reports, images, and propaganda used to keep the national consciousness tied to capitalism. However, the current economic crisis offers oppositional readings and actions to achieve a fulfilling life. This paradigm shift calls upon citizens to reject the narrow “possessive individualism” imposed by capitalism as a means to transform global consciousness. A reshuffling of the dominant narrative related to global economic conditions entails drawing upon an anarchist(ic) culture that is self-organizing, self-reflective, and citizen-driven—and allows us to note possibilities within this culture for an anarchist economics. Indeed, anarchist economics might give us means by which to establish counter discussions and oppositional readings of both the market and the state so as to foster a dialogue that eliminates a culture of coercion and creates a vision of a free society.

In this essay, I situate myself not as an economist, though I hope to help develop anarchist economics here as its own unique (and holistic) form of economics, not simply focused on the rationalized and instrumental processes most often studied by economists. Surely others have much to say about the realities of prevailing wages, gross national product figures, or market trends—including anarchists. My analysis, however, is grounded in media and cultural studies’ intersections with anarchist economics and seeks to examine capitalism and the phenomenon of globalization by deconstructing the ideas of spectacle, consumption, and exchange value. At the heart of this discussion is an interrogation of the concept of money and how in one’s everyday life we might rethink the value of a state-issued currency over community-produced currencies. The very essence of opting for alternative currencies over a state issued monetary system represents a continuum of anarchist practices that allows for the gradual weaning, or deprogramming if you will, from a (pre)disposition to capitalism while, at the same charting new ways of (un)doing business and revolution. Anarchist theory and praxis present opportunities to (re)appropriate public spaces from enclosure and incorporation of globalization. The final portion of my essay demonstrates sites of resistance wherein everyday citizens participate in alternative currency exchanges, café collectives, and street actions to reclaim not only their communities, but purpose in their lives.

Global Economic Chaos and Uniform Distlanceless

“The danger is that people are not aware of the danger. Everybody talks about the global financial markets as if they were irreversible. But that is a misconception.”—George Soros[314]

Globalization is a ubiquitous concept readily discussed in the halls of academia and via broadcast outlets around the world. Scholars such as Waters and Held et al. divide theories of globalization into political, economic, and cultural globalization and conceptualize each factor accordingly.[315] The transient nature of a global economy is intrinsically tied to the individuals who participate in such transactions. I am interested in social and cultural issues related to global capitalism, and how one might (re)negotiate a politics of understanding and agency that would allow for a rethinking of concepts such as money, exchange value, and commodity fetishism. In his text The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens defines globalization as “the intensification of world-wide social relations, which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”[316] German philosopher Martin Heidegger is often criticized for his fascist sympathies, however, his work on spatial analysis offers insights that foreshadowed contemporary debates about globalization. Heidegger not only described the “abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary condition, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no-less-fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity: “All distances in time and space are shrinking.”[317]

In his analysis, the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience “everything is equally far and equally near.” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multifaceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most individuals, the abolition of distance generates a “uniform distanceless” in which fundamentally distinct objects (subjects) became part of a bland homogeneous experiential mass.[318] The loss of any meaningful distinction between “nearness” and “distance” contributes to a leveling down of human experience, which in turn spawns an indifference that renders human experience monotonous and one-dimensional. This idea is effectively demonstrated in news reports of the 2008 global financial crisis. The economic meltdown first reported on Wall Street quickly reverberated in countries around the world including China and Japan, illustrating the interconnectedness of a global market collapse of local and national markets. Peter Gumbel of Time magazine reported the impact of bank failures in the United States. According to Gumbel, “On September 29, 2008, governments from Germany to Iceland rushed to five ailing financial institutions with huge cash infusions or full-blown nationalization, making it one of the grimmest days in the history of European finance.”[319]

No Future: Globalization and Capitalism

While the mass media tend to report about the global economy and its financial crises in terms of dollars and cents or pounds and pence, we must acknowledge that globalization is about the socio-spatial relations between billions of individuals and that below any economic base is a lively interaction of people adding and subtracting value exchanged through an animated process of exchange.[320] In his text The Philosophy of Value, Georg Simmel notes, “The fact of economic exchange confers upon the value of things something super-individual.”[321] Today’s capitalist market is predicated on the notion that economic value is never inherent in the object itself, but rather is created through a politics of desirability or as Simmel put it, the practicality of economic value is “conferred upon an object not merely by its own desirability, but by the desirability of another object.”[322]

Value then is created when men, women, and, now even more pressing, when children establish a personal and societal style. Today marketing consultants, branding gurus, and “cool” hunters seek out ways to market teen spirit—teen “cool”—to kids in the mainstream by co-opting the style, fashion, language, music, and culture of the margins—aboveground and belowground. Such cultural co-optation is not new. Consider the early punk movement. Many of the youth involved in that movement were from working-class families; were working low-paying jobs, unemployed, or students with little money to spare. A song, “No Future,” by the British punk band the Sex Pistols articulates the despair of youth in Great Britain. As a result, they sought to find ways to fight class domination and societal repression through personal style and do-it-yourself (DIY) actions.

The legacy of cultural subversion and the DIY ethic of Punk can be traced back to the Situationist International (SI) that formed in 1957. The SI was a collective of avant-garde artists in Europe, including French theorist and artist Guy Debord. Julia Downes notes, “The SI revolted against the dominant discourses, images and ideas of capitalist consumer culture known as the Spectacle and sought to incite revolution by employing cultural tactics that exposed contradiction and openly critiqued society.”[323] The SI encouraged others to express their frustrations through doing their own forms of cultural subversion in their everyday lives.

Like their British counterparts, punk youth in the United States opposed society-sanctioned wardrobes and capitalist clothing companies by creating their own retail resistance, reinventing everyday items and secondhand clothing. Utilitarian items such as safety pins and electric extension cords used by punks in the early days of the American punk movement provide two examples. Safety pins were used as jewelry and badges of courage—as punks elected to pierce unconventional body parts such as cheeks, lips, eyebrows, chests, and elsewhere. Electric extension cords were adapted as belts—used to hold up thrift store pants that were several sizes too big. The connector ends of extension cords were used as belt fasteners. As a participant of the punk scene in Athens, Georgia, I shopped at the Potter’s House, a thrift store that sold clothing by the bag for as little as one dollar. As a working-class student at the University of Georgia, I had little money and often purchased men’s suit trousers that were several sizes too big to make both a fashion and political statement. Belts were hard to find in the piles of clothing; however, there were boxes of discarded appliances and extension cords. The most unusual cords were those from 1950s appliances that were encased with fabric with speckles and dots around the wiring. Voila, one had an instant belt that was functional and stylish—not to mention the shock factor as people often stared at my belts as I walked down the street. The cords created a symbolic connection between cultures of the past and present but more importantly, a retrocritique of affluence and gender connoted by the fabrics and designs of tailored men’s trousers.

Such fashion accessories would soon become a style that suburban kids, known as “posers” by many punks, would clamor for and argue with their bourgeois parents to obtain. In response to this “emerging market,” US-based chain stores found in suburban shopping malls, such as Claire’s Boutique and Hot Topic began to sell mass produced safety pin jewelry in primary colors and “extension cord” belts with a twisted-coil jelly rubber design in rainbow colors. Hence, the market co-opts styles of necessity and turns them into styles of desirability by collapsing the domains of individual expression and need into a uniformed distant commodity that is abstract from the cultural ethos and revolutionary politics that emerges as part of everyday life experience. The independent band Cake critiqued poser culture and capitalist exchange in the song “Rock n-Roll Lifestlye” (from 1995’s Motorcade of Generosity):

Your CD collection looks shiny and costly…And how much did you pay for your black leather jacket…Is it you or your parents in that income tax bracket. How much did you pay for a chunk of his guitar…And how much will he pay for a new guitar, And how long will the workers keep building him new ones…As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones.

Cake’s song explores the concepts of commodity fetishism and alienated labor, cornerstones of capitalist ideology that Karl Marx wrote about over a century ago. Marx argued that the working class was the victim of an illusion that he referred to as commodity fetishism. As Heath and Potter note, “Rather than perceiving the economy as a set of essential social relationships between individuals, the market gives an appearance of natural laws. Losing your job seemed to be a matter of bad luck. The ups and downs were determined by forces completely outside anyone’s control.”[324] Such objectification of social relations leads to the cultivation of a false consciousness wherein workers are alienated from their own work and see their labor as merely a means to the attainment of other ends/material goods. In other words, individuals participate in their own alienation and oppression through a false understanding of a need to compete with others for limited goods.

The recent global financial crisis offers an example of the competition cycle, and its unwitting impact on society. Workers queued up to spend cash on consumer goods that they desired—but didn’t need or ultimately couldn’t afford. High on debt and with easy access to credit, the workers are alienated from their labor; their actions inadvertently serve to drive up production and force companies to find new ways of producing more goods with less people. Ironically, the result is workers eliminating their own jobs or solidifying their place in the production line with few, if any, opportunities for autonomy.

Capitalism (re)distributes necessary labor and creates a value system cloaked in commodity fetishism that serves to obscure the reality of exploitative social relations and a culture of oppression. As Georg Simmel wrote, “The economic system of the world is assuredly founded upon an abstraction that is between sacrifice and gain.”[325] Simmel’s analysis suggests that we as citizens understand such abstractions and take direct action to counter capitalist practices, including co-optation, by creating alternative value systems, local currencies, and community-driven exchanges for goods and services.

Ithaca Baby: Dollars and Hours

“We need not wait for the government or a central bank to save us during this economic crisis: we can set this system up ourselves. It bypasses greedy banks and recharges local economics and gives local businesses an advantage over multinational corporations.”—George Monbiot, 2009[326]

Economists note that economics is an inexact science. The economic roller coaster of the past two years has prominent experts scratching their heads as to what the markets will do next. Some economists give us reason to hope that the job market will improve and that the stock market will continue to tick upward. Yet mainstream media reports suggest otherwise. Watching the New York Stock Exchange trading graphics on CNBC in real time is like watching the roulette wheel spin around in Las Vegas and other casinos around the world. However, what happens to capital exchanged in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. The profits taken in at casinos from ordinary citizens are rarely reinvested in the local landscape. The gambling adrenaline rush is played out in everyday life through competitive consumption and it all starts with the illusion of money.

Popular and scholarly understandings of money tend to share some common traits found in narratives of globalization and modernity dyads. Cultural anthropologist Faidra Papavasiliou argues that money is a “fact,” a reality that almost assumes the status of an agent, an agent that is increasingly unified and uniform across sociocultural, political, and economic boundaries. “The notion of net worth is a standard of measure of economic and social viability. While money is primarily a token denoting value, under current global capitalism it takes on the guise of a commodity, becoming an object of value itself. In this sense, it is also fetishized.”[327] She notes that what emerges is the uncomfortable space between economic abstraction and lived experience, the two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of materiality as defined by modern money.[328] The spatial existence between economic abstraction and everyday life is in a Heideggarian sense a uniform distance where desire is reconfigured as utility that fuels consumption. In his essay titled “Home of the Brave,” Steinsvold writes, “We Americans love our freedom; yet we have allowed the use of money to completely dominate our way of life. Indeed, we are no longer a free people. We are trillions of dollars in debt. We live in fear of depression, inflation, inadequate medical coverage, and losing our jobs.”[329] Steinsvold advocates the complete dissolution of money to regain individual freedom. While a complete disavowal of money may seem extreme, some communities are embracing alternative currencies as a means to wean citizens off an economy backed by national currencies and to raise awareness that traditional money systems create serious social problems that devastate our local economies by removing money from local communities and transferring it to large corporations and financial centers. Local currency or “scrip” monetary systems became popular during the Great Depression. George Monbiot of the Guardian newspaper writes, “Businesses in the Unites States issued rabbit tails, seashells, and wooden discs as currency. The medium of exchange could be anything as long as everyone who uses it trusts that everyone else will recognize its value.”[330] Corner Exchange, for example, is a sustainable community currency based in the Pacific Northwest where participants elect to use local currency over state issued currency for their economic exchanges.

Decisions to use local currencies are actions of resistance to a globalized economy wherein new possibilities for rich and multifaceted local interactions are actualized. My own experience with alternative currencies began over seven years ago when I moved to upstate New York. I live in Tompkins County near the town of Ithaca, home to the local currency Ithaca HOURS. Local residents sometimes refer to HOURS as “that other money.” Ithaca’s commitment to localism is often cited as one of the key reasons why the HOURS monetary system endures. The HOURS currency emerged during a period when the regional economy of upstate New York was going through tumultuous times, as factories shut down, businesses closed, and consumer spending declined—a shockingly similar situation to the current global financial crisis.

From its inception in 1991, one HOUR was set to be the equivalent of $10 US as this was the mean hourly wage for Tompkins County at the time. The currency calculation “evoked the principle of a living wage and demonstrated the system’s commitment to social equity and justice.”[331] Today a number of local businesses participate in HOURS systems. The farmers’ market remains at the heart of the system. In her ethnography on alternative currencies, Papavasilio explores the social meaning of HOURS through narratives of local citizens,

There is trust and relationships. You feel like you have a link with the other person, a common belief in community. What HOURS represent... is an acknowledgment, honoring time... One time I had about $150 in HOURS and I needed plumbing work. So I looked for someone who took HOURS and met this new person [and] we had a long philosophical discussion about HOURS, and value, and money and work that you wouldn’t otherwise [have] had with a regular plumber.[332]

Like many Ithacans, I too shop with HOURS and have established friendships and relationships with area merchants, be it Green Star, the local co-op or the farmers’ market. My use of HOURS now goes beyond food purchases and home repairs to include medical services. Last year, my eight-year-old daughter was having difficulty seeing and reading in school. After an initial eye examination it was clear that my daughter not only needed glasses, but also vision therapy to help address her disability. I was pleased to find a pediatric optometrist who accepts Ithaca HOURS. I paid portions of my bill with HOURS as the total exceeded what I currently had in my HOURS reserve. Needless to say, this experience made me realize that the HOURS currency surpassed a novel system of exchange and was becoming integrated into mainstream culture. Through everyday experiences—a trip to the local co-op, art frame shop, or the eye doctor, citizens use alternative money systems such as Ithaca HOURS and challenge the way in which we have come to understand materialism and exchange value.

In short, everyday citizens who use Ithaca HOURS are social entrepreneurs who recognize that traditional money contributes to the creation of social conditions that devastate communities by removing money locally and transferring wealth to large corporations. Such actions leave people without a medium of exchange in their community. In response, using local currencies is investment in one’s community and its future, intentional actions that counter global capitalism by supporting local economic activity, encouraging fairness and social equity, and promoting environmental education and sustainability.

Café Capital: Coffee, Communication, and Possibility

“There is a silver lining emerging from a declining economy. We’re remembering something more important than money, which [is] each other in community. I’m optimistic that this, of infinite value, will grow. This is what will provide us with the right foundation for building a new ‘economy.’”—Trena Gravem, 2009, NPR comments[333]

The capitalist agenda contributes to what Heidegger referred to as the loss of any meaningful distinction between “nearness” and “distance” and contributes to a leveling down of human experience, which in turn spawns an indifference that renders human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.[334] It is within this space of one-dimensionality that a sense of community is lost unless local citizens take responsibilities for charting their own forms of social change. The recent downturn in the economy has affected both business relations and social relations in many communities. In the northern village of Ellsworth, Michigan, a town of 500, the unemployment rate is nearly 16 percent, with vacant storefronts everywhere. Bob Felton, an Ellsworth resident, recounted the demise of his community. “It was depressing. We needed a place in Ellsworth where neighbors could catch up with each other, preferably over a cup of coffee and a cheap meal.”[335] Last fall, the people of Ellsworth mobilized to create their own café called the Front Porch Café. The café grew out of discussions residents at area churches had about finding a place for people to come together, share a meal, and exchange ideas on improving life in the town.

The café cultural experience in Michigan bears a striking resemblance to the startup of the local cooperative café in my village of Dryden, New York. The Dryden Café was founded in 2007, not only in response to a declining economy in upstate New York, but also to a call to action to create a space of communication and exchange for local residents. With most residents commuting out of town for full-time employment, Main Street, the heart of the village, was grinding to a halt. Like Ellsworth, Michigan, several businesses closed or relocated out of town, leaving a roadway of vacant buildings and empty storefronts void of personal interactions. Residents were strangers as they passed each other going divergent directions to work, shop, and even get a decent cup of coffee. The idea for the café started in October 2006. Dryden resident and community leader Wendy Martin is often credited starting the café movement in the village. Martin notes that Eliot Spitzer, a 2006 New York gubernatorial candidate, used the mainstreet of Dryden as part of an advertising campaign to turn around the economy in upstate New York. The Spitzer campaign showcased a “For Rent” sign in Charlie’s Diner which had been the town’s local eatery. Yet after Spitzer’s successful election, the landscape of Dryden remained desolate and unchanged. In an online interview with me, Martin recalls the collective despair of the town: “I walked through our village and looked at the FOR RENT sign. I was saddened by the message the empty store front sent to the thousands of people who pass through our village every day on their way to larger towns and cities.”[336] Talking with friends and other residents, Martin envisioned the possibility of reconfiguring the old diner space into a café that would be cooperatively run. She recalls, “I spent the next few months talking to various friends and community members about the idea of a co-op style venture and as the conversations progressed, the idea of the café as it is today was formulated.”[337]

A communication action plan for the space was drawn up, “fliers were sent to everyone in the village explaining the concept [and] announcing the date of the first public meeting to gather input for the project.”[338] Outreach communication included taking down the “For Rent” sign and replacing it with a neon orange poster that read, “Interested in Starting a Local Café. Are You In? Meeting 7PM August 18, 2006, Village Hall.” I remember seeing the sign in the diner window and thinking, “I’m in.” Other local residents heeded an invitation to participate in a conversation to start a café and eighty people turned up to hear about the idea of a locally owned, locally operated café. Martin remembers the optimism of people coming together to change their community, already present the night of the first meeting.

I believe what brought people together was the naïve optimism that we could do this. We were fearless. My feeling was we had nothing to lose and everything to gain. In fact the night of the meeting, I told everyone even if we are only open one month—in that time, friendships would be formed and thus we would have already succeeded. It was exciting to see people together and share their ideas.[339]

The creation of the Dryden Café also facilitated communication among local residents. As Wendy Martin put it, “There were a lot of people who felt isolated and wanted to be connected to something.” Those involved with the café are inspired by a commitment to community.

The greatest success for me and I believe everyone is when you take a moment, sit still and look around. You see people quietly chatting, children playing, and friends greeting one another, but most importantly friendships forming. The number of people who have formed lasting friendships continues to thrill me.[340]

In all, the participation in the cafe is based on the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and taking care of others, and sends a message to even the youngest patrons of the café: take responsibility for one’s community and take care of others in need. The Dryden Café cooperative is an example of community anarchism wherein cooperative values of self-help responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity are lived out every day as volunteers serve homemade meals, using fresh produce from local farms and original recipes of village residents. All of the baking at the café is done by volunteers. Food and baked goods from the café are often donated to local food banks. The café features artwork by local artists and live music on Friday nights—genres so far include folk, celtic, jazz, zydeco, and even punk.

My own experience with the Dryden Café certainly attests to creating new friendships and experiences that chart new roots of sustainability, exchange and in participatory economics—or as Michael Albert puts it, “parecon: life after capitalism.”[341] Recently I attended the annual Dryden Dairy parade that showcases the work of organic farmers and milk producers. I was pleased to see Main Street thriving. Later, at the local festival, members of the café had their own booth where we made do-it-yourself Father’s Day gifts. Most of the activities at the park were free and those for profit went to benefit area organizations. At the end of an exhausting day, it occurred to me that no matter what economic struggles lie ahead, this community would rally in its own space and create its course of resistance to globalization with sustainable goods from the fields, organic dairy farms, artist workshops, and even fair trade coffee at the Dryden Café.

Conclusion: Another World Is Possible

“I must have dreamed a thousand dreams. They’re moving into the streets. This is the world we live in. These are the hands we’re given…Use them and let’s start trying to make it a place worth living in.”—“Land of Confusion,” Invisible Touch, Genesis, 1986

Driving home from Ithaca to Dryden the other day, I became entranced listening to the Genesis tune “Land of Confusion” on the radio. The lyrics offered a text of possibility in situating the work that goes on everyday as anarchists undertake actions such as alternative currency exchanges, café collectives, and street actions, including the Reclaim the Streets (RTS) movement. RTS is both an organization and a grassroots tactic. Its direct action strategies are a deliberate rejection of mainstream mediated politics and culture. Giorrel Curran suggests that RTS establishes sites of resistance by creating “unity between means and ends.”[342] RTS anarchist actions (re)situate Heidegger’s notion of space, that every experience is equally far and equally near. The RTS movement challenges capitalist encroachments and opens up new possibilities of multifaceted interaction at events by creating “temporary autonomous zones (TAZ) and showcasing a ‘politics of pleasure’ that celebrates identity, creativity, and autonomy.”[343] RTS employs Situationist strategies and ideas. RTS activists embrace carnival actions as a political theater of autonomy theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin.[344] According to Bakhtin, “Carnival does not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectator. Carnival is not a spectacle seen by people; they are in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all people.”[345] The street party is a DIY event whose success is determined by those involved in the event. As Stephen Duncombe notes,

Reclaim the Streets is a protest that only works if everyone participates. This is true not only for the organizers but for those who just show up on the day of the protest in costumes, with radios, drums or fire-breathing apparatus, and ready to dance…what happens at the action depends upon what people bring with them and what they do once they are there.[346]

Recently, community members and RTS activists in Galway, Ireland came together to rename their Main Street, Anti-Shop Street. Activists boycotted and blockaded big box stores and multinational retailers. RTS activists stated,

we are here to take back our space from the capitalist, consumerist culture which has taken it over, with its bizarre ideas of a life dedicated to shopping, spending, buying and profit, so that we could share an experience of another world, where everything is free, people share and give food, fun, stuff and life, simply because they can and it just feels good![347]

Activists poured into the street chanting, “free food, free stuff, free social interaction, and a free world for everyone.”[348] Chanting “Feck Money!” a “really really free market” was set up in the street, with clothes, videos, cards, and other goods organized on tables to be taken by citizens for free. As one activist reports, “Some people were confused by the idea of free stuff—asking ‘what’s the catch’? Our reply was there is none, just a group of people who believe in a better world where gifts can be given freely and the only profit sought is making others happy.”[349] The event included Galway’s Food Not Bombs group that shared vegetarian food and messages for peace and a better society and “distributed vegetarian soup, bread and vegan cookies at the REAL recession busting price of no euros and no cents.”[350] The carnival atmosphere of the Galway protest situates spaces of resistance by blurring the lines between the demonstrators and spectators. Through their own curiosity, economic fury, and creative fervor, individuals located on/off the street engage in an economy of outrage that embraces all people in the creation of a just economic world.

The global spatial expansion of capitalism is created by capitalist consumption that includes not only the colonization of land spaces, exchange space, and monetary spaces, but also the lifeworld interactions of individuals. Returning to Heidegger’s notion of uniform distanceless, the compression of space increasingly means that from the perspective of human experience “everything is equally far and equally near” and therefore reduced to a unidimensionality that creates a homogenous mass of consumers who appear to be at the mercy of corporations and the state. However, the recent global downturn presents oppositional readings of the event by creating existential spaces wherein individuals and social groups are refusing and resisting the clarion call of capitalism, opting instead for local forms of anarchy highlighted in community currencies, café culture, and street actions. Here individuals construct their own self-identities and self-economies that open new possibilities for rich and multifaceted interaction and exchange. In all of these sites of resistance, participants create spaces of engagement that serve to critique global capitalism and to underscore actions of change by letting people know another world is possible. These spaces, however, exist within the cracks of capitalism and often succumb to its pressures. As I mentioned before, there is a tendency towards co-optation under capitalism and even the most reflective attempts at creating anarchist(ic) spaces can be rendered harmless through commodification. However, a radical politics that does not engage in everyday practices is an empty gesture. After all, radical politics—anarchist politics—should aim at nothing less than the restructuring of the whole of society. These attempts (community currencies, café culture, and street actions), then, can function as a necessary part of a revolutionary movement allowing us spaces in the here and now to experiment and refine anarchist ideals and lead us closer to an economy of democracy, participation, and sustainability.