We’re all suffering under capitalism. There are lots of efforts out there to shift the world to a better place. And yet, it doesn’t yet feel like enough, at least to me. So I want to start logging what I’m seeing out there in the world, so far as fighting back. I know it’s there. Hell, I know a lot of people doing the actual work. I take small steps in my own life to help create a more just world. But I truly feel like we’re on the cusp of something different. As Saul Williams opened with when I saw him last year, we are the death doulas of empire.
A bit ago, I brought together folks from the anticapitalist art and music festival I help produce, neighbors organizing against fascism, and some guests from the esteemed East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative to talk about wealth redistribution. I imagined the arc to be: how do we take wealth away from those who have far more than is reasonable, redistribute it in a way that shifts but doesn’t collapse what we have now, and what does that mean about our everyday living?
We kicked off by talking about how wealth is created and held in our country. We talked about the stock market and how stocks are owned by a smaller and smaller set of people, removing any “collective intelligence” from “fiduciary responsibility.” We talked about real value versus market value, and how many of the ultra wealthy don’t actually have cash on hand, but borrow against their market-valued assets to pay for expenses, rather than selling and getting taxed. And we came to a fork in the path of how to redistribute wealth — should we try to take imagined wealth away from those who have it, as absolutely does impact what they have access to, power they hold especially with politicians, etc; or should we focus on turning our backs on the oligarchs to build and control real value within our communities?
The thing we came to, with much respect to those who go the other path, is that we don’t actually care if some chucklefuck wants to live on a private island and jump out of planes every day, so long as they leave the rest of us alone. If the end of the world does come, they’ll get killed by their guards anyway and/or die alone. Choosing this path means building alternative political structures as well as holding onto our own wealth, as the current political system is essentially owned by those with lots of imagined wealth.
But, as Noni from EBPREC pointed out, the goal is not to simply pass debt around in our communities. So how do we open up space for those with more wealth than they need to invest in communities without the expectation of ownership? Poor Skool does this in radical ways, as does EBPREC. Seed Commons allows folks to invest in community-led work with a lower return rate than the stock market, but still a return.
We also brushed on hyper individualization in this country making it hard to get organized, including with eviction culture making it difficult to impossible to invest with and know your neighbors. But what if we shared what organizing is working? Great work is happening, but it’s hard to see. So I might start collecting stories and sharing them, unless someone is already doing this. Point me to great things! Let’s all share what’s working. And let’s also bring our neighbors cookies, no matter how long or short we might know them for.
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