The Christmas Gift That Keeps on Giving

 http://libcom.org/news/gift-keeps-giving-hatred-ruling-classes-21122020

The meaning of Christmas.

Christmas, the vast, commercialised festival of selling and consumption is upon us again. It’s supposedly a time of peace on earth and goodwill to all, but there is precious little peace on earth to be found, and very little goodwill for the working class.

Christmas is a time of delusion when lots of us reflect that if we only had the spirit of Christmas all year round, and were kind, and nice, and generous to each other all the time, then all the world’s problems would be solved.

This delusion fosters the idea that the troubles of capitalism are caused by the fact that people are bad and, if only people were better, then the world would be a better place too. In reality, people should be asking themselves why they behave as they do, and why the world is as it is.

We need to realise that there is nothing essentially wrong with the vast majority of people. When we get a chance to relax, when we are given the time to try to live like sociable human beings, we enjoy ourselves. Perhaps, it is the fact that this is what a lot of people try to do at Christmas. Some, for a few days anyway, actually succeed, and they put it all down to the Christmas Spirit.

The fact is though that it is the conditions of living and working under capitalism which largely make us who we are for the rest of the year. Tired out and bludgeoned into senselessness by dead-end, low paid bullshit jobs, with idiotic, bullying bosses on our backs; or struggling hopelessly below the poverty line on benefits, means there’s not much spirit left for goodwill, and no money for generosity. We just have enough energy to get through day to day.

This outmoded and insane social and economic system ensures that poverty exists in the midst of plenty, and unaffordable slum housing, hunger, pollution, illness -both mental and physical, and destruction of the environment are the gifts we receive all year round.

Anyone who preaches peace and goodwill without calling for an overthrow of capitalism have yet to demonstrate how these objectives can be realised, and are fooling themselves and trying to fool you.
This longing for peace on earth and goodwill can only be fulfilled only through a social system based on human needs, not profit. A social system that will see us working together, living together and loving together, not just for one day a year, but every day.

So here is our gift to the capitalist system this Christmas – the same gift we give them every day of the year – our hatred.

To everyone else – the message of love and peace and sharing, the message of solidarity.
The fight for socialism is the fight for peace on earth and goodwill to all.

Merry Christmas to all the comrades, dreamers, malcontents and misfits – let’s make it the last one under capitalism.

In 'Emblematic Parting Blow,' Trump Moves to Take $700 Million Per Year Out of Tipped Workers' Pockets ~~ Kenny Stancil

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/23/emblematic-parting-blow-trump-moves-take-700-million-year-out-tipped-workers-pockets

A waitress serves guests as people dine outdoors in Pasadena, California on December 2, 2020. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

 

"This rule change will make tipped workers even more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse," said Saru Jayaraman of One Fair Wage. "What workers need now, more than ever is a full, fair minimum wage."

Just hours before President Donald Trump surprised millions by pushing for enlarged stimulus checks in the new coronavirus relief package, his administration on Tuesday added to its extensive record of anti-worker policymaking by finalizing a regulatory change that enables employers to dispossess tipped workers of more than $700 million per year.

The new regulation (pdf)—long sought by the restaurant industry—expands tip pools "from front-of-the-house employees alone to include back-of-the-house employees" in the handful of states where servers receive the standard minimum wage. It also relaxes limits on the amount of nontipped work that can be done by tipped employees earning a subminimum wage, which exists in all but eight states.

By requiring tipped workers "to share that gratuity with nontipped staff members... the new rules allow businesses to use tips, rather than wage increases, to compensate dishwashers, cooks, and janitors," critics of the changes told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday.

And by increasing the share of nontipped work that can be done by tipped workers who are paid a lower base wage, the Trump administration's new rule "will transfer large amounts of money from workers to their employers"—causing employees to lose more than $700 million annually, wrote Heidi Shierholz and David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank whose research foregrounds the interests of low-income workers.

The "rule change regarding tipped workers is outrageous," Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, said Wednesday on Twitter. "It would steal more money from millions of tipped service workers who are already struggling on the brink of homelessness and starvation."

Prior to Tuesday's changes, tipped employees "had been protected by the very clear '80/20' rule, which says they can spend a maximum of 20% of their time on nontipped duties while still being paid the subminimum wage for tipped workers," Shierholz said Tuesday.

The new regulation removes the "80/20" measure, "replacing it with vague, much less protective language," she noted.

As Shierholz explained, the rule modification will negatively affect the earnings of tipped employees because it allows them "to be paid the subminimum tipped wage while performing an unlimited amount of nontipped duties—as long as those nontipped duties are performed 'contemporaneously with tipped duties or for a reasonable time [emphasis added] immediately before or after performing the tipped duties.'"

The Trump administration, however, does not define "reasonable time." According to Shierholz, "Its ambiguity will make it difficult to enforce, providing employers an immense loophole and leaving workers behind."

In addition to hurting the income of tipped workers, Shierholz and Cooper wrote, the new regulation disincentivizes hiring nontipped, minimum wage-earning workers. According to the pair of economists, "As employers ask tipped workers to do more nontipped work as a result of this rule, employment in nontipped food service occupations will decline by 5.3% and employment in tipped occupations will increase by 12.2%, resulting in 243,000 jobs shifting from being nontipped to being tipped."

Both the projected reduction in nontipped restaurant job opportunities, which are more likely to be held by people of color, as well as the estimated $700 million in annual wages "captured" by employers were calculated before the Covid-19 pandemic. As Shierholz put it, "The impact of this rule will likely be much worse for workers during the Covid-19 era, since nontipped work now makes up a much greater share of work being done in establishments that employ tipped workers (for example, restaurants have shifted their services from dine-in to takeout)."

"The Trump administration opting, in its last 29 days and during a pandemic, to take more than $700 million out of the pockets of service workers is an emblematic parting blow from this administration to the working people of this country," said Shierholz. "The rule will not take effect until after President-elect Biden has been sworn in—the Biden administration should move immediately to postpone the effective date of this rule and use the time to develop a plan to rescind it."

Adding to the chorus of criticism, Jayaraman noted that One Fair Wage is strongly opposed to allowing "restaurants to pay the subminimum wage for tipped workers even when their employees are performing work that does not allow them to interact with customers and thus earn tips."

"Our studies show that tips are already down 50-75%," she added. "What workers need now, more than ever... is a full, fair minimum wage for all workers with tips on top."

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IWW Organizing Manual

https://usa.anarchistlibraries.net/library/industrial-workers-of-the-world-iww-organizing-manual

A few snips from the detailed IWW manual about how to organize..

What Is Organizing?

Organizing is the process by which a group of people take power over some aspect of their lives—on the job or in their communities. While community struggles are important in their own right, this Organizing Manual concentrates on organizing our fellow workers in the workplace—where we, as workers, have the industrial power to enforce our demands. Too often, organizing is viewed as leaders’ selling an external agency to workers to ‘represent’ them. A vast body of law and huge bureaucracies exist to reinforce such notions. But this is not what our organizing is all about.

IWW organizing aims at enabling a group of working people to build a union and use it to express their needs and desire and to accomplish the changes they want to make in their economic lives. The important consideration is their needs and their lives. The organizer simply makes the tools available to them. The union is the people in it. If it is not, it will not be worth the trouble of fighting for, and it will be abandoned at the first pressure.

The basic feelings most working people share, that make the union their natural tool, are already there: class consciousness, the conviction that their interests are not identical with their employers’; alienation from jobs they see as unrewarding and/or useless; self-respect that is outraged by the conditions of their work or the attitudes of their superiors. Organizing involves first understanding these working people as they now are, and then giving them information they need in order to be able to figure out how a union can meet their needs. The understanding is the important part.

A Class Conscious Working Class

For many, “working class” has become a dirty word since the 1930s. Paternalistic liberals try to define the working class out of existence by assigning workers above the poverty line to the middle class and the rest to an underclass (to become objects of government ‘benevolence’). Part of the elitist left likewise tries to deny that wage workers are a class conscious, potentially revolutionary class, and many left political parties identify class consciousness with acceptance of their party line. Establishment academics and politicians try to hide the working class in an amorphous middle class. None of these opinions changes reality.

The potential for a class-conscious working class exists because capitalist production exploits wage workers. Class consciousness depends not on labels and revolutionary rhetoric, but on the fact of oppression and each worker’s awareness of his/her own individual exploitation. The intensity and breadth of working class struggle depend upon the pressure of exploitation and the viability of the practical tools available for struggle.

Each generation of workers learns for itself the bitter truth that, regardless of the myths and success stories they were taught in school, in reality they will not rise out of their class. The options are closed off, and they are stuck. For the next 40 years or so they will work (assuming they can find jobs) for wages. And for most those wages will be so modest that they will live their lives on the edge of financial disaster—only two or three paychecks from the street.

For most workers, class consciousness does not extend beyond their particular employer and their immediate fellow workers. They do not connect their situation to a capitalist class controlling a capitalist government for their enslavement. Nevertheless, every time a worker supports his/her fellow workers or union—any union—that worker is saying: “My employer is my enemy. I must combine with my fellow workers to fight this situation.”

Our job as organizers is to build on that latent class consciousness, to show our fellow workers how their individual situations are fundamentally the same, and result from the structure of the workplace, the economy and the society. Only by working together, by recognizing that an injury to one is an injury to all, can we hope for substantive improvements for ourselves.

Who Can Organize?

Only class-conscious working people can organize their peers. We learn class consciousness in our blood and bones. We, each individually, learn the feel of our own particular boss’s foot on our own particular neck. Without this personal experience, the knowledge in our heads is useless.

Our shared work experience develops understanding impossible to acquire in any other way. If you have never felt that you simply could not stand the last hour of a shift, how can you hope to understand that feeling in others? Or endured the humiliation of a boss’s bawling out because you couldn’t afford to quit? Or, for that matter, faced a job you hated every day because people you cared about depended on you for support and you didn’t see another job in sight? If you have not had to make the thousand and one compromises with yourself and the way you would like things to be, how can you possibly understand most working people, who are forced to make such compromises?

Any class-conscious worker can be, and should be, an organizer. The business unions and government have led many of us to think of organizing as a job for specialists—rather than as something we do everyday on the job. The labor movement was not built by professional organizers (many of whom have never worked the jobs they’re trying to organize). It was built by working people like us, who recognized that only by uniting on the job—in industry—could we hope to win better conditions and build a better world.

.....

Part 5: Conclusion

Workers are increasingly becoming convinced, and for good cause, that the AFL-CIO business unions are incapable of stopping the current world-wide employer offensive against labor. Several strategies have been tried as alternatives—rank and file groups, union reform, corporate campaigns, political parties, electing new officers, and reform of labor laws. While all of these indicate a rebel spirit, none of these approaches has been effective.

The Industrial Workers of the World has demonstrated that a labor movement can be controlled by workers, win immediate improvements, and make major steps towards social change. Our experience shows that strong, fighting unions can be built in workplaces large and small, that workers can unite across ethnic and skis lines, and across national borders. As the old Wobbly saying notes, “Direct Action Gets the Goods.”

The IWW is practical, democratic, and up to date. While the AFL-CIO and kindred organizations limp along with structures, ideas and tactics forged in the 1800s (and obsolete even then), the IWW recognizes that class collaboration is a dead end, and that the employing class and those they hire (the working class) have interests as different as those of any group of buyers and sellers in the market place. IWW unionism looks toward the future, building on the lessons of the past.

The time has come to return to the tried-and-true methods of revolutionary industrial unionism. Growing numbers of workers are turning to the IWW, both to win better conditions from their bosses and to help build a brighter future for all workers. Whether or not the IWW takes root at your workplace and in your industry will depend upon you and your fellow workers, and the effort you’re willing to put into building the IWW.

This organizing manual is intended to help you get started.

 

Collective Statement of Total Objection to Military service

https://usa.anarchistlibraries.net/library/xupoluto-tagma-collective-statement-of-total-objection-to-military-service

This declaration is a collective public statement of total objection to military service. What does this mean? It means that we refuse to enlist to the army. We want to make our objection publicly, under our own names, not only because we do not want to hide, but because we also want to encourage others to declare their objection. It means that we are not looking for individual solutions for each one of us separately, but we are seeking ways of collectively responding to the problems that the capitalist system produces. It also means that we are not merely trying to avoid military service, but we want to oppose the institution of the military as a whole – what it represents, protects and reproduces.

This is not an easy task. Both the Left and Right of this country have unanimously presented the role of the greek conscript army as an obvious, necessary and accepted part of domestic affairs (despite years of dictatorships and juntas that committed terrible crimes in greece in the last century). Our friends, family, neighbours, enemies and military judges will all ask: Why will you not go to the army?

In a society flooded with charity events, humanists, intellectuals, democrats, christians, Non Governmental Organisations to suit every taste, avid supporters of the “condemn-violence-from-wherever-it-may-come-from” doctrine and soppy lunchtime TV shows about everyday “human suffering”, how is it possible that the existence of the military is considered so obvious, whereas objection to it is not? Is it not because democrats export weapons at the same time as boring us with quotes from Voltaire? And is it not those ‘neutral’ scientists who make sure some of these weapons are deadlier than others? Is it not christians who ‘bless’ these weapons to guard their business interests? And is it not the same philanthropists and charitable ladies who fund the care of underaged refugees coming from countries that their husbands and their armies have ‘democratised’ by firing “humane” bombs? If we’re not mistaken, aren’t all the above intrinsically linked to state power and capital?

We want to reverse the question and ask: Why should we go to the army? We get a variety of different answers to this question. From the most typical ideological ones: “You should join to serve country and nation and defend it against its age old enemies. Anyone who doesn’t join is a traitor!” To the more modern approach which appears more innocent and cynical: “What’s the big deal, you won’t really have to go to war anyway, times have changed, it will be a laugh. And ok, it’s a waste of time but it’s compulsory, you have to go, there’s no other way. We all went, were we all idiots?”

We respond by saying that as part of the lower ranks of this society, we stay away and stand against the ideological constructs of “national unity” and “patriotic duty”. We’ve learned that “national defense” translates as “the bosses’ appetite”. Which war ever called itself ‘aggressive’, and which ruler ever said “slaughter each other to serve my interests”? Fortunately, we realised early on that war is not a thing of the past, but a constantly present, ubiquitous solution for restructuring the system, especially at times of crisis. We can also see that at times of ‘peace’ (meaning times of ongoing social war where bombs are replaced by systematic impoverishment), military service has many reasons to remain obligatory. And none of them are for our own good. Under these terms, the role model of the harmless, respectable and law abiding individual is not one that appeals to us. It is certainly not the right model to bring about change… So the argument that we should go to the army so that we don’t get into trouble with the law is not at all convincing. In fact, it is better to get into trouble with the law, because that way we avoid much worse things. Like chasing migrants at the borders alongside Frontex’s murderers, or offering our labour for free and therefore devaluating our class further, or being trained to obey and submit, or even serving a mechanism that can at any point be used to oppress an uprising like that of December 2008. Back in December 2008 we chose which side we were on- that of revolt, (and we will do so again at the next uprising). This is the path that our political stance and class consciousness dictate. And following this path, it is possible that total objection to military service can become a political demand supported by a wider movement.

Our political stance means that we will not enlist to the greek, or any other army, and we do not need any official supporting documents, other than this statement to make our position clear. We turn our backs on all individualised solutions, even the more dignified ones (like claiming incapacity, anonymously deserting or using contacts to get out of doing the service). We want our political demand to be universal within and beyond state borders. And since we are not demanding just the abolition of military service or the greek army, but the abolition of all armies on the face of the earth, what could we propose to another countrys’ national where there is not even the option of claiming incapacity in order to avoid military service? We also do not want to try our luck with any alternatives to military service. Not only because we do not accept the state punishing us for our ideals by sending us to places far from home to work for free without the right to unionise. Nor because the military’s Conscience Inspection Committees’ standards are impossible to meet (in keeping with the military’s brutalising character, even comrades who have tried to be recognised as conscientious objectors have been rejected). But mainly because we don’t want to serve the military or the Ministry of Defense in any way, irrespectively of the degree of involvement and whether we are holding a gun or a mop. We feel that actions such as our total objection are a genuine contribution, not to the vague ‘social whole’ that alternative service claims to serve, but to all those oppressed in this system. It is exactly these kind of small and bigger objections that if collectivised and merged with other struggles within society, and placed in a decisively anti-systemic framework, can lead to our overall emancipation and to a classless society. Is there anything better than an action that contributes, even slightly, to such a beautiful cause?

We follow on from the growing number of public statements of objection to military service and we collectively sign our own. We see this objection as part of a wider field of objections and social resistance. From the struggle in Skouries against the gold mines to strike actions. In this respect, any criticism from the Left accusing us of acting as heroes should also say the same about anyone taking part in any kind of struggle that risks imprisonment or prosecution (like the residents of Skouries in Chalkidiki remanded in custody). Why do they not accuse us of heroism when we struggle in our workplace with the risk of losing our jobs, or when we take part in self-organised unions or squatted political centres?

In addition, there could not be a better time to cosign such a statement. The state and its’ militarists are constantly increasing their preventative and punitive prosecution of antimilitarists. Talk of increasing the duration of military service, and the increase of military trials, arrests, transfers, and fines aim to further militarise society and halt our antimilitarist action. It would therefore, be a tragic mistake to put our foot on the break now. Let’s be honest. After a period of relative flexibility on issues around military service, the first measures put forth by the authorities, (like the establishment of a 6000 EURO fine for failing to enlist) may not have been enough to make us rethink our decision, but was still a heavy blow. But two years later, at the aftermath of the recent wave of prosecutions, our decision is more solid and final than ever. A few high ranking officials have been irritated in the process, and we are very happy about that.

It’s in our hands, to prevent the wave of total objection from weakening, to strengthen it so that it reaches more and more people, until the antimilitarist movement uses its dynamism to change the power balance. So that those who refuse to enlist do not have to justify themselves. But those who do want to enlist and join the militarists who will enthusiastically celebrate that fact that there are always some fools to fill the ranks, have to justify themselves instead.

And to finish, let’s take a look at the military oath which illustrates what we have to believe in in order to enlist (or at least what we have to pretend to believe in, as many of our friends and comrades chose to do for reasons that were beyond them):

“I pledge to be loyal to the Homeland.

To obey the Constitution, the Laws and the States’ legislation.

To submit to my superiors. To carry out orders willingly and without argument.

To loyally and devotedly defend the Flag with every last drop of my blood.

To never abandon or part from it.

To observe all military laws.

And to conduct myself as a loyal and conscientious soldier.”

Because there is not a single word in the above paragraph that is not degrading for human dignity, freedom and self-determination, we would rather take the following, paraphrased “oath”, a promise to ourselves and our comrades:

We do not pledge to be loyal to any country..

We do not obey any Constitution, law or legislation of any State, when these are against our interests, the interests of our communities and our class.

We will not submit to our ‘superiors’. We will not carry out their orders willingly and without resistance (not even sheep would do that).

We will not loyally and devotedly defend any flag under which the members and supporters of the bourgeoisie have exploited, suppressed, murdered, humiliated and raped thousands of our proletarian brothers and sisters within and beyond the states’ borders, whether in the battlefields or in the daily social struggle in neighborhoods, streets and workplaces.

And as far as our last drops of blood are concerned, we will keep them firmly in our veins so that we can live, be joyful, be sad, fight for our collective emancipation, love, but also hate those who deserve it.

We will not therefore observe any military laws, but we will fight to abolish them, their legislators, the state and the bosses.

In one phrase: We will not enlist!

Costantinos Goinitsiotis, Thanos Nedelkopoulos, Dimitris Aggelakis

Ioannina — Thessaloniki, September 2013

===================

Greece currently has universal compulsory military service for males from and over 18 years of age. Under Greek law, all men over 18 years of age must serve in the Armed Forces for a period of 9 months. Women can serve in the Greek military on a voluntary basis, but cannot be conscripted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Armed_Forces#:~:text=Greece%20currently%20has%20universal%20compulsory,basis%2C%20but%20cannot%20be%20conscripted.

Social Democracy- An Unworthy Goal ~~ Kacey SW

https://usa.anarchistlibraries.net/library/kacey-sw-social-democracy-an-unworthy-goal

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IS NOT DESIRABLE

(bolding emphasis mine, NB)

We write this to live in a world against misery and false hope. Politics in our world come in 10 second sound-bytes spun to obfuscate truth, and we seek to reach out our hands to those who are trying to see past illusions. Social democracy (as opposed to “democratic socialism” or “actually existing socialism”) as a political goal has been gaining popularity in American politics since the onset of the #Occupy movement in 2011.[1] This phenomenon of demanding social and economic reforms comes as no surprise to us with one simple look at the current climate of America. People are fed up with the contradictions of “the billionaire class” while the rest of us work most of our waking lives for sub-par housing and sub-par nutrition if we’re “lucky” enough to find work at all. Meanwhile, others still are pushed into prisons or deal with the trauma induced by wars at home and abroad.

To want a better world, one free from capitalist misery makes perfect sense to us, but we need to critically examine the political and social movements involved in trying to change the world in order for us not to end up in this same mess all over again. We are not writing this to say that social-democrats are the enemy, but rather that social democracy falls into the trap of structuring itself through a capitalist nation-state. We understand that those involved in social-democratic organizations and movements have been comrades alongside us in recent years, particularly in the struggle against fascism, authoritarianism, exploitation, and hate, but we must take the opportunity to show why social democracy as a political system is fundamentally undesirable.

Social democrats would like to believe that we can use electoral power to vote these monsters out. It’s a belief that if we rally, protest, lobby, and vote enough times, then we will win our demands. The problem with social democrats is not necessarily only in their long-term idea of how they want the world to be, but also with the fact that on the one hand they say capitalism is wrong/socialism is right, and on the other hand, focusing their damnedest of efforts into a losing battle-- a battle of electoral politics that has already been decided by the parties of the ruling class.

The game has been rigged, and we working people have no need to play it. How many hundreds of years of bourgeois elections will it take for us to realize that this stage is a farce, and that our time would be better spent breaking that fourth wall from the audience rather than begging our way on stage? The liberals and conservatives know this stage well, and their deliberate maintenance of capitalism is only more proof that the arena they built is the arena on which they, and only they, will win. To be a social democrat in this world is to ignore the fact that lines have been drawn, the stage has been set, other working people have their places, and so do you.

Some who gravitate towards the social-democratic position genuinely want a better world. Why then, does this better world come through the same channels of government? Why then, would this better world maintain the roots of private property? Surely the soft-anti-capitalists are misunderstood!

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY REAFFIRMS THE NATION-STATE

Social democracy as an ideology is one primarily concerned with domestic policy, i.e. the distribution of resources and legislation of individuals and morality within an established nation-state. Thus, it is unable to address a particular nation state’s role in upholding imperialism and global power dynamics. Individual social-democrats may pay lip service to decolonization movements and anti-imperialism, but as a whole, social democracy fails to challenge the overarching structures of global capitalism. Even the Scandanavian socialists, who are talked about so much and loved so dearly are contributors as nation-states to global capitalist and imperialist institutions such as the IMF, WTO, and NATO.[2]

The ideology and implementation of social democracy fundamentally relies on the state form as an agent of social change. Citizens within the state territory work (or own businesses) and pay taxes much like our current system; they are then afforded quality food, shelter, education, and healthcare with less corruption in government. The idea is that if we rightfully tax the capitalist class-- those idle financiers and titans of industry--their fair share, then we can start living a life of comfort rather than toil. Those who are part of the state, which is viewed as a citizen’s public entity from the social-democratic point of view, can simply do their part for society through labor or capitalist innovation, and they can rest assured that all of their needs and more will be met.

The issue again, is not necessarily that we don’t believe our lives would materially be better under social democracy, but that we cannot and should not ignore the base structure providing the framework for our needs to be met. Any state, even a friendly happy social democracy, relies on borders. Borders are nothing more than imaginary lines drawn by those with the power to enforce them in order to divide and define humans according to who pays taxes to which ruling party.[3] Borders, as well as the complications and misery which accompany them, are necessary for social democracy as the state still needs some way to territorially define who is paying into the system and who is reaping the benefits. Such an enforcement of a state’s definition of both their territory and their citizenship can only be accomplished through a hierarchical and stratified armed organization operating under the implicit understanding that they hold a monopoly on legitimate violence- be it called an “army”, “police force”, or “Department of Homeland Security”, etc.

Though social democrats engaging in activism may have pragmatic beginnings of campaigns on a local level, the campaigns themselves as well as the end-goals of the campaigns are all contained within and reach no further than the nation-state as a form. We see this evidenced by their calls for clean water which neatly fit into pre-existing municipal state forms, their demands for universal healthcare which also contain themselves to the particular American nation-state, various school board races as a “bottom-up” approach for a more honest and credible way to enter politics, and the promotions of other such state-run and state-funded programs which unfortunately are unable to be envisioned as programs that could exist in a reality of a society beyond the state. They fail to see that the nation-state form--the political form which takes the imagined community, rather than class solidarity or humanity itself, as its primacy-- is the exact enemy of their goals ,yet they wish to use it as a political carriage for delivery.[4]

No doubt, the social democrats are largely against war, concentration camps, and violent border disputers, but they fail to see that the more-humane system they promote will lead to similar issues as the fundamental structure remains unchanged even under the new form. Social democracy is beholden and specific to the modern capitalist nation-state. Their desired political form still requires a documented citizenry, inclusion/exclusion to and from the republic, and quite literally, above all else, a police apparatus (separate from the workers themselves) to oversee and enforce such a territory-based economy. They want a better world, but fail to see that the system of the nation-state cannot and will never provide all that can be offered.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY RELIES ON REPRESENTATION

Before every positive structural change to the world is a mass movement. Mass movements start from collective demands, in our cases, material collective demands, to seek direct and immediate change to conditions while resulting in opening further social dialogue. Mass movements against capitalist structures or entities do just that, and the solution requires nothing less than a total restructuring or abolition of current socio-economic relations. Social democracy seeks and achieves mass movement and engages with collective demands, yet the movement becomes separated from its own foundational power by turning to state power and political figures for the end solutions.

It should be seen as fact that the question of Bernie Sanders’ presidency and the United States as a social democracy could have only been made possible by the political conditions created by the #Occupy movement. What started from a simple call and sporadic recent history of radicals using occupation as a tactic, quickly became a massive grassroots movement of “have-nots” (and the occasional conspiracy wingnut or small business owner who was unhappy with the financial system). We attempted to disrupt Wall St., question public and private property relations, and bring the question of class to the front of the American political landscape. By no means were the camps and ideologies of the movement monolithic, but actions to freely distribute resources, provide mutual aid, fight evictions, and disrupt commerce were direct, concrete, and targeted. Undoubtedly, some in the movement sought right off the bat to channel the movement into electoral politics, and we recognize that was one of its downfalls. Electoral politics through the Democratic Party is “the graveyard of social movements” as the saying goes.

The movement for social democracy, by having a long-term goal of functioning through democratic statehood relies on a representation of the ‘will of the people’ so to speak. Once again, to say this is not to challenge that their demands are popular or materially beneficial to the working class; instead it is to point out that when we as individuals or collectives entrust our needs and desires to a political figure, or ‘higher power’ if you will, we functionally separate ourselves from our own power which initially created the conditions for such a representative or statesman to thrive in the first place.[5] If one is elected for a full time position to represent your interests against those billionaires while no longer (if ever) living the way you do and knowing your day-to-day struggles, how can they possibly be entrusted to represent you not only accurately, but effectively?

For these reasons, we recognize political representation as fundamentally false. One, or even a reasonably sized group of people, may entrust a person with a political, economic, or moral responsibility and delegate to them a task to engage in politics with others who are delegated. A difference between delegation and representation, we should point out, is that a delegate is one who is elected to carry out tasks for the collective while a representative is one who is elected to derive will/power from a group and then be entrusted to legislate freely as an individual regarding policy and stakes. To rely on a system of territorially-based elections in which one person would then represent that territory/state/locality and engage in politics on your behalf with other territorially-based representatives will either be laden with corruption or be a series of follies at best. “The workers have no country.”[6]

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY RELIES ON PRIVATE PROPERTY

The movement for social democracy fails to challenge property as a system. We might have such a better world where some property is held in common, while other property is privately owned.[7] This notion is fundamentally capitalist/liberal as it recognizes that the means of production and distribution are still able to be profitable for individuals or small groups of individuals. Certainly under social democracy, the “essential workers” would be under industries owned by “the public,” but there is no question raised as to why any non-essential industry should be profitable. Moreso, what is considered “essential” (literacy, internet, public transportation, etc) is continuously shifting through both the demands of Capital and the demands of workers. In this regard, social democrats mediate between the two parties using state-based politics to offer “essential” services as if such wealth and services weren’t already a collective product of the workers ourselves.

The nationalization of industry not only reaffirms the nation-state form which we discussed earlier as being undesirable (lest we also forget about the many indigenous people who are opposed to resource extraction in their localities under capitalist and “socialist” governments alike), but it also relies on the basic hierarchy and power discrepancy of boss and subordinate, owner and worker, producer and consumer. Apart from a gamble on potential material benefit, what good could come from having “one big boss instead of lots of little bosses. Someone will be in control of course, and either way, you will be working.”[8] This system is surely not cut out for any desirable way a free being would choose to live their life.

The slogans of “tax the rich,” “tax the 1%/we are the 99%” and even “Chop From The Top” from more radical groups engaging against austerity at the time (pre-and circa #Occupy), are still slogans which demonstrate the needs for changing processes within the system and what the system can offer us, rather than the acknowledgement that we, as working people, simply do not need this system nor its playbook, however creative and accommodating it may be.[9] When we say “we need to tax the rich,” of course, in our current nation-state’s way of doing things, that is the best option. When we say “we need to tax the rich,” we also lend ourselves to the belief that we are not able to access the resources and wealth which we’ve created and are rightfully entitled to; the demands themselves imply that such power implicitly lies within either governance or markets, rather than in our human activity itself.

Our call is not to take such an easy task as to beg for crumbs among the billionaires and millionaires; our call is for us and every other working person to take the whole damn pie! There might even be agreement among us and social democrats regarding such a statement, but we need to understand that any wealth which is created, is never created by any individual. All wealth, all society, everything which exists is a product of all living activity which came before it. All goods and services produced and exchanged carry with them, not just the labor of those who worked and provided the raw materials we deal with, but the labor of the entire history of humanity and earth which provides us the materials to work with in the first place. So long as you speak a language, any at all, your being in this world is at least partially a product of who and what came before you.

The land we toil and rest upon, the knowledge we crave and learn, and all of the various consumer goods which allow the continuation of our existence as we know it, are all products and developments of those who came before us. There is no possible way to quantify such a thing-- this is why property is impossible. I may say that I will defend what is proper to me, that which I find in this world to be of my belonging and will, and hold truth to my rights as an individual, but we would be fools to pretend we are alone in this world.

This is why we do not settle for simple reforms of “tax the rich,” but why we struggle for nothing less than a full-scale social revolution--a revolution which understands that everything we have has been made possible by others, and everything others have, has been made possible by ourselves and people like us. Social democracy’s insistence on maintaining even a sliver of private property is a maintenance that is either ignorant of, or refuses to acknowledge the facts which have been stated prior.

WE WANT IT ALL

We hope our message above properly illustrates that social democracy is not only not feasible as a revolutionary ideology, but more importantly, is undesirable in itself because the only cure for the social ills in this world is nothing less than full-scale social revolution. Even the most “humane” societies that fall under the umbrella of social-democracy are either participants of, or trapped within, the larger social structure of global capitalism and nation states. Rather than demanding measures that “work” for this or that population, we need to organize ourselves as workers against our work being seen and experienced as a commodity form.

We need to damn the nation-state form which pits one nation’s workers against another. We need to eschew attempts of representation; such attempts are a falsehood. A properly organized proletariat needs no representation in government. We need to end the relationship of property and capital- that relationship which realizes land, labor, and capital to be held privately for profit rather than for a recognition of communal organization. And for us to be true to ourselves through our needs, we must take an organizational attitude which refuses class collaboration.

We need revolution now, lest people keep suffering and the world keeps burning.

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Notes at link above