There are countless ways in which a willing person can contribute to the revolution of social and economic relations in our world. If a person becomes interested in social change and political reform, then they only have an entire history of revolution to look to for advice. The existence of today's conservative, for example, can only be excused for those who were considered radical by society's standards several hundred years ago. It was once common to think that a king's absolute authority of life and death over every person was just, that the rule of government can be exerted without the authority of the people, that the general will of the population is inconsequential, that the ruling class needs no excuse. These and a thousand more foul lies were once considered public wisdom by the philosophers of the past age. And before these things were believed, even more cruel and bitter philosophies were preached as religion. Before this, there was no conception of justice, no idea of right or wrong. When men thought of morality, they simply thought of what the men who spoke for god said; when men thought of fairness, they simply thought of what the men of government said. It is true, that as we look back in history, we find eclipses in timelines, where a people were defiant, revolutionary, and bold -- where men and women dared to live by their own means, not by the guidelines of a king or priest. But such societies were small and lasted very shortly. Yet, all of this evidence is clear to all who are interested in changing today's social, economic, and political affairs. If you have this interest, then know this. There is reason to hope that things will change. And this hope is fueled by our understanding of history, our own philosophy, and of how today's society operates.

     The most popular and well known of the methods of reform is that of the union. People of a particular trade or business unite together so that they can collectively demand better conditions, through practices like a strike or boycott. The interest of the common labor union is antithetical to every interest of the Capitalist class. The labor union demands higher wages, fewer working hours, better working conditions, and fair treatment of workers. These are the things that drive up the costs of the businesses. A corporation, which the sole interest of gaining power and wealth, looks to union activity as the greatest offense; it is a small group of people who have combined their power together, so that they might force oppressive groups to change their behavior. The method of the union is the most peaceful method of social change. The greatest threat its members ever pose to society is the threat to stop working, to start boycotting, and to start picketing. Their goals are not achieved through violence, but by a very Gandhi-like style.

     The effective goals of the union are simply the improvement of the working class's conditions. It has always sought economic reorganization, demanding that nobody can be fired except with very good reason (job security) and demanding that the workers are paid fairly according to their labor. While it is true that these are good and valid causes of any standard labor union, it shouldn't be forgotten that a union could be used as a political tool. Consider a city council that has just been bribed by corporations to remove the living wage law (a law that provides around $15 per hour minimum wage). The working class of the city will be greatly hurt. Their living conditions will start to fall, and in a short while, they will feel that their condition has reached their original position. They would either see the impending blow to their movement coming, and do nothing, lay still, take the suffering the state thinks they deserve. Or, all labor unions would combine together, for an enormous general strike. It must be understood, that products being produced, distributed, and consumed, is the government-sanctioned form of slavery. For everything bought or sold, money is given to taxes, to support the state. For every hour you work, money is given to federal taxes, to support the state. For everything owned, money is given as property taxes, to support the state. If everyone, from every union in the city, from the services unions, the administrator unions, the manufacturing unions, the transportation unions, if every union in the city were to go out on strike at the same time, they would inflict massive, irreparable damage to the government. They could use their power as unions to force the government to change its decision; otherwise the entire infrastructure would collapse under this pressure. This is also a worthwhile tactic if one union is having difficulty gaining better conditions for itself, and the unions its federated with could go on strike. They go on strike, to tell their employers, to tell the other CEOs, to listen to their unions and accept some collective bargaining agreement, so that business can proceed as usual and the Capitalist system can continue.

     It is unfortunate that today's unions fail to see the necessity of a federation of unions and of advocating for political causes that directly affect them. Unionizing labor today is legal. That is something they need to realize. True, the burden of poverty is over their heads; they must work so that they can feed themselves. It is always the habit of the weaker victim to be less assertive, less bold in their attacks of their enemy. But we must unite in order that we can oppose our enemies of Capitalism. We must unite, and we must be strong, in that we can overcome our enemies. And also, while I said it was a largely peaceful effort at social change, there is no doubt that the Capitalists have done to keep it anything but that. Investors hired armed police squads to subdue picketers. The social organization of our society has turned us on ourselves. We are killing and murdering each other for crumbs. All the while, an army of police officers is guarding corporate headquarters all across the United States while people are suffering from poverty and want. Unemployment is high and the wages are low. We have a very good reason for revolting at the state of things.

     Another popular effort to gain control of the situation, and create a worker's paradise is to form a political party, and to try and gain as many positions in government as possible during elections. However, it has been this method that has received the most criticisms from the general public. Efforts of the state to achieve a truly Socialist effort have had dismal results: the U.S.S.R., the Dictatorship of Cuba, the murder by the allegedly communist governments of Vietnam and Korea. And then, the efforts of minor socialist parties and international communist tendencies, these efforts have accomplished so little. True, there are some European countries that have started to elect Socialist parties, and to enact Socialist legislation. There are campaigns to reduce the average workday, to give better benefits to workers, to protect the consumers from harmful products, and to pay the workers more. But most Communists agree that they want the economy to be in the control of the people; so too, must the political structure of a society under their rule. For this reason, most Communist and Socialist reformers have taken to the method of control via unions; to employ it to obtain political ends on behalf of the working class is to engage in a practice of Anarchy known as Anarcho-Syndicalism.

     There is also a popular case against voting based on Anarchist principles. Anarchists often argue that if we refuse to vote, then the whole justification of consent with the government falls apart, and the system will collapse. I can hardly see any justification for this. Less than a third of the population votes anyway. If more than two thirds of a nation is not enough force to gain superiority, then at what point do we become effective? Many Anarchists maintain this position: that to refuse to vote is to make a revolutionary step. I hear their arguments, and I don't quite find the logic of their evidence. I do not see how refusing to vote is doing anything to stop the oppressors from continuing to oppress us. If they find at least one thing sacred, or at least semi-sacred, and they are willing to respect the will of the people in electing a representative of their interests, then why should we shut off this method of social and political change? Why should we vilify it, destroy it, and inhibit all of its functions, when it is the only method we are legally allowed and encouraged to change the system? Consider this one scenario. There is an island with twenty people on it. There is a Democratic vote on whether this person is to be hung for his crimes or not. Among those who decide not to vote, they argue, "I do not think the collective should ever be able to vote on the life or death of a commune member, so, I shall not vote, and demonstrate my opinion this way," yet, if the majority votes for the killing, then it's the inaction of the Anarchist that played a great role in the murder. For this reason, and reasons like this, we are apt to believe that we can use voting to change things, whether we are voting on a measure or a proposal, or for a person who seems to be the lesser of two evils (despite the fact that evil is evil).

     Perhaps some Anarchists will consider by ideals much less Anarchist and much less Libertarian if I support voting to a certain extent. Perhaps they will say that I am a reformer, but not a revolutionary, that I am reformist Libertarian, or some other such terms. I have only called myself an Anarchist because my ideals have been in unison with those of passed history, including Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. I disagreed with them on points, of course, but the basic philosophy remains in tact: elimination of the state, communal ownership of all property, mutual organization of social units, abolishing poverty and all drug prohibition, among so many other efforts to create a better, more lasting peace between men on earth. If this basic philosophy cannot be defined as "Anarchism," then I can see of no other word to fit my arguments.

     Among many projects of the Anarchists and Communist, there is that project known as a worker colony. A worker colony is a collection of workers, who live and work together in close quarters. They are all assigned housing units and jobs, most of these places catering to industrial or manufacturing jobs. Then they work four to six hours a day, and are given leisure and a suitable pay for the rest of their day. Sir Robert Owen was a philanthropist businessman of the early eighteen hundreds, and created such a society. Instead of the fourteen-hour workday, these workers were only required to work eight hours a day. They were given good, high quality food at inexpensive prices and they were given free medical care. The leader of the collective, Robert Owen, was capable of turning a profit with this business venture. In fact, many of these communities were started up by investors; however, they soon became unfashionable at the sight of rising costs and competitive markets. Many Anarchists of the new era have suggested the creations of such communities, so that people are capable of living as workers and consumers in a society where their happiness is the main end of all productivity. I am not aware of any situation where Anarchists and Communists combined their finances in order to buy land and create such a community, but it is definitely a valuable idea to be considered, even if it's just on a small scale.

     There is the last implication of the term "Direct Action": Illegal or semi-legal acts of sabotage and vandalism. In a way, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were both followers of the Direct Action method. The first used direct action in protests and marches, to bring the issues of civil injustice to the knowledge of the public, to let all the people know how brutally and cruelly the cops were treating black people. Malcolm X organized the black youths of the nation in to rebellious units that fought for their own freedom. Both were effective in accomplishing their aims. The French Resistance was a crucial ingredient in the United States Army pushing back the Nazi regime; without these criminals, there is a chance that the Third Reich might still be active and powerful. Consider the underground networks of safe houses for Jews during the Holocaust. Consider the underground rebels of these states that spent long nights constructing bombs and planning with fellow revolutionaries on overthrowing the Nazi government. Think of Thomas Paine. Think of Margaret Sanger. Think of Big Bill Haywood. Think of Alexander Berkman, Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and all the others. These were men and women of revolutionary ideals, and they were all viewed as criminals by the governments of their own worlds. And tomorrow, I can see what heroes we will hail. It will be the men and women, the anonymous revolutionaries, who threw bricks through Starbucks windows, in protest to the corporate entity violating the rights of indigenous people. It will be the soldiers who wore black masks to cover their face, spray painting "Criminalize the DEA" over DARE billboards, vandalizing the property of corporate headquarters, and burning a McDonald's in after hours because of their cooperation with the exploitive powers of the world. I'm not here to advocate or advance any method of revolution; I am simply presenting this means, criminal activity, as one of the methods that revolutionary change has been accomplished.

     Finally, there is the most popular and accepted method of spreading Anarchism and bringing about the revolution. That method is propaganda. This can take numerous forms. It can be everything from marches and protests to picketing to leafleting. Personally, I find that leafleting is the most effective way of swaying public opinion against their enemies. A piece of paper briefly outlining our ideals will be something that a person approaches on their own, it is not an argument or a debate, and it allows the person to ingest the ideas at their own speed. It is almost a re-education process. People have to unlearn that social organization should be based upon fear and misery, and have to learn that all social relationships should be cooperative and fair. Plus, with more people educated and of Anarchist, Marxian, Communist, Socialist, or Libertarian opinions, there will be more people sympathetic to the cause of the unions. There will be fewer people who will work as scabs at a striking business or shop at stores where unions are boycotting. More people will vote for Socialist parties, environmental safe propositions, and Socialist measures. More cities and regions are to obtain a healthy Anarchist and Socialist population. The more people in a city, the more that can contribute to a massive project like a worker colony. The more who are convinced of the Anarchist position, the more who are likely to bring that issue to the eyes of the public, in spray painting across corporate property or marching in line at a protest. With all of these methods, I can hardly see these Anarchists and Communists doing nothing to bring about change.

A Free Society: The Appeal for Anarchism

     I can no doubt expect that many of these ideals are enormously progressive in the eyes of today's American worker. He looks to these principles, these ideas of workers owning the productive forces in society, these revolutionary fundamentals of the workers being paid the wealth they produce, he looks to these, and he might as well be looking in to the future by thousands of the years. He is impressed, but also intimidated, and almost scared of the change. What it would take to change society, he argues, would involve moments of poverty and misery, such great reorganization of the social order, that it must be impossible. And, even if it were possible, it would be necessary that some government should guide it, that some revolutionary vanguard party is necessary to the construction of a new society. Without a large collection of highly armed, highly volatile, highly greedy men, nothing that we seek to change would get changed. It is necessary, in the eyes of these men trained to be hopeless, it is necessary that a government always exist, in order that society can have civil discourse, while the cruel element of mankind is subdued by the police forces and the military barracks.

     I allude to one incident I uncovered in Portland, Oregon. Fortunately, it is an extremely Leftist town, full of as many Anarchists, Communists, and Socialists, as there are Liberals and Democrats. This has allowed some interesting experiments to come up, since so many people of the same political beliefs are collected together in this one city, and can work together on massive projects. There is one particular cafe which advertises itself as "Worker Owned." It is called Back to Back. In reality, it is owned by the I.W.W., or the Industrial Workers of the World (AKA: "Wobblies"). It just so happens, though, that the people who work there are not the owners, and beyond that, they are 100% volunteers. The only payment they receive is in tips. This is not the realization of the worker's paradise; it is the realization of his worst nightmare. In their vanguardist efforts, the money that is raised with sales should go to two places, in the eyes of the IWW: To other Capitalists, to fund their exploitation of the working class, by helping them sell their products, and to bureaucrats, who can sit around for hours a day arguing with each other over wealth distribution, convinced that they are the essential piece to Proletarian revolution.

     But, I do not know all the arguments of the IWW. Perhaps, they will use the same language of Corporate America. "In recreating the world, we feel that it is necessary that workers are paid nothing, that they are to live humbly off of charity, while all the wealth in the world is concentrated in the hands of a very small number." We will hear their arguments about cost production, about competition, about inflation. They will speak on the same terms that McDonald's or Walmart would speak, in justifying cost reduction and retail increases. We are Anarchists and Communists. We believe that the Capitalist system must go if there is to be any justice in the economic or social sense; and, above and beyond that, we believe this change in the socio-economic sphere of the world can best be done by our own efforts. So many great tragedies and miseries in the world have been caused by people doing exactly as they are told, by people who act without thought, becoming the slaves to some inhuman entity. We do not need new rulers or more party politics; we need the people to rule for themselves, for each man to be his own master and his own slave.

     My appeal here, then, for the American people, is an appeal for a Communist economy, as much as it is an appeal for an Anarchist society. The efforts of previous liberation groups has been in a vanguard party, in a despotic government coupled with all capital as public property, these are the greatest of dictatorships. The essential argument behind each argument, that of Anarchism and that of Communism, is the same. The idea of people deserving the wealth they create, and the idea of people living in a democratic society are similar in that both are a demonstration of the common will and desire of the people. They are both based on improving the lot of the majority of people. Besides, Communism cannot be properly carried out unless the most Democratic of conditions exist in society. Look at the Leninist revolution. It was followed and supported by a wide range of social reformers, but the conclusion was the over empowerment of the government, to the point of dictatorship. Lenin held elections once. He lost, and then used his military power to dispose of the winning political candidate. A reign of terror, of secret police, of torture chambers, of a government subverting the natural will of the people to rule themselves. The same can be said of the Castro-led revolution in Cuba. At first, it was a hopeful situation for those who wanted a dramatic change in the social order of the world. But, it was not long before the revolutionaries who sided with Castro quickly turned against him when they found out he chose himself as dictator. Castro violated the will of the people, while parading around like he was its greatest demonstration. So did Lenin. In both of these international cases, it was a revolutionary party that refused to let the people rule themselves. If we are to be successful, we must pay respect to our Socialist brothers, and understand the faults that they made. We must create an Anarchist society, if the Communist economy is ever to be justly employed.

     I hope that the philosophy, the politics, the economics, and the social views displayed in this essay were enlightening or even heart-warming; I hope I have helped many other workers realize that they are not alone in their opposition of their two greatest enemies, the Capitalists and the government. The first strips him of all his deserved wealth, the second strips him of all freedoms. It is the poverty of slavery, the chains of misery. I hope that the suggested methods for achieving our new world prove helpful, and that the workers of the world are bold and strong enough to try these tactics with me. By uniting, by organizing, we are becoming stronger than the leader of our enemies. Stay strong, and stay linked together.

Punkerslut,

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