8. Our organization should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
This reminds me of Matt Stoller’s “no titles” policy; no one can suddenly claim to be a Professor of Revolution or an Admiral of Equality. To quote myself—always the sign of a well-managed ego—those in government are administrators; those in municipal positions are servants; our relationship to “police” or “traffic wardens,” should the community vote for such institutions, are not subordinate, they are horizontal.
9. Our organization, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
Remember what Adbusters said about corporations? They used to be set up to do a job, then were disbanded. Then, for no other reason than profit and individual advancement, they became ongoing immortal money-guzzling entities. This tradition prevents that. We set up a committee to build a nice juice bar or hold a World Cup, and when it’s finished, it’s disbanded. “Ta ta, Sepp, glad you enjoyed it; you can stand for reelection in four years. We’ll let you know.”
10. Our organization has no opinion on outside issues; hence the organization name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
This principle ensures the autonomy of other groups. Clearly our ideology is defined not by us wanting to be free from boozing, one day at a time, but free from our addiction to a corrupt and corrosive system. We are addicted to destructive ideas. When consent is achieved on our collective agenda, we can then determine what “the incontrovertibles” are. Likely they are based on ecological responsibility and individual freedom. I know what I’d like, but that is probably different from your requirements. As long as we both know neither of us has a hotline to God or inherent superiority, we should be cool.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
This principle is dangerously close to being transgressed right now. You’ll note that I haven’t declared my affiliation, because were I a member of organizations defined by these traditions, I’d have no right to. What is implicit in this principle is the obligation to make your primary focus your own conduct, not telling other people what to do—another big challenge for me personally. I love giving advice on how to change the world; it’s much harder to get on and live like a good man. How effective and beautiful to have a tradition to remind us of this.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
Here we see that the titular anonymity which defines these organizations is not solely in place to prevent sloshed old drunkards getting embarrassed by their condition; rather, it is to emphasize that individuals are all equally valuable and equally expendable. I like this principle very much, as it returns to the primary battlefield where Revolutions must be waged: our own consciousness. It’s not that I want to oust David Cameron or Barack Obama or Angela Merkel; it’s that we must collectively overcome the structures that promote the egocentric in all of us.
Me and you and David Cameron and everyone else have to individually yield to the divine within us so that collectively we can manifest a society worthy of beautiful beings. One day, David Cameron’s ego might be playing up, but that’ll be okay because collectively we have a system that can avert that. Another day, I might get flash; that doesn’t matter because we have principles in place which prevent anybody’s negative nature becoming dominant.
“Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance,” said the filmmaker Albert Maysles, referring to institutions or individuals who oppress truth to ensure that their version of reality dominates.
Whether that’s Philip Morris removing the nuance of the carcinogenic properties of different types of fags to perpetuate sales, or me deceptively managing information within my own relationship, or the gun lobby insisting that guns shoot peace out of them, not lead.
We have a culture where principles mean nothing and personalities mean everything. And I can see why it caught on—I’ve done very well out of it. My personality allows me to get away with all sorts of rubbish: riding the wrong way up a one-way street on a stolen bicycle (I didn’t steal it though; I bought it off a dodgy bloke), winking at the police as I pass, years of trouble-free promiscuity, tables at restaurants. But without principles, I was freewheeling away from God.
Here are some more examples of ideologies that flout the Establishment’s insistent jingle that their way is the only way:
So, many corporations will be “killed,” according to Adbusters’ excellent suggestion. Perhaps we should use the word “cull,” like people do when they want to kill something cute.
“Are you killing that badger?”
“No, sir, culling it.”
“When you’ve finished ‘culling’ it, will it be dead?”
“A bit, yes.”
“So explain the difference between killing and culling?”
“Well, it’s a ‘u’—and a sort of tuneful sense that the creature is being gently lulled to death rather than killed with a hammer.”
“And what’s the hammer you’re holding for?”
“Culling.”
So maybe we should cull some corporations.
Once we’ve culled them, their resources and materials can be returned to communities to run themselves. Outlined here is a suggestion for how a corporation could be structured more fairly.
EMPLOYEE INVESTMENT FUNDS—SWEDEN 1970s
• Every large Swedish corporation had to give its employees shares equivalent to 20 percent of its profits every year.
Well, that’s novel—the empowerment of workers within a corporate structure. Sure, it’s limited; 20 percent isn’t enough. The workers should have 100 percent, and there should be no hierarchical distinction between any of the workers, regardless of their costume; title abolition will help towards that. We’ve begun negotiations—good. Well done, Sweden.
• The shares were not owned by individuals but were controlled by regional management boards, which were democratically accountable.
Fair enough. We’re not after a new elite—collectivization and lateral autonomy. Cool. No wonder Volvos are so safe.
• The boards had to use the shares “for social priorities and the public interest.”
That’s good. I mean, I think huge sectors of the financial industry would be entirely dispensed with, given that the whole thing is an elaborate mathematical metaphor designed to legitimize fraud and theft. Nice to know that if any form of market did remain, there’d be no unaccountable bankers getting bonuses during an economic crisis that they caused. Viva IKEA.
• As the shares in the companies grew, so did the influence of the workers’ management boards on corporate decision-making.
Clever: The destiny of the board and workers are inextricably linked. From what we’ve discovered so far, this structure still seems a bit hierarchical, but at least it proposes a form of empowerment for workers, which we could easily amplify. ABBA forever.
• Unfortunately, this scheme was never put into place, due to widespread hostility from employers.
Oh, right, they never actually did it. It was a hypothetical corporate Revolution. Typical—the sauna-dwelling, porn-watching, suicide-committing pervs.
Understandable, really. It’s a method of financial reform that could never be imposed without union power and regulation that modifies the power of corporations. Bloody ironic.
Even though I think this measure is too modest, look at how it would have an impact in a country like Britain on a company like Tesco.
• In 2014 Tesco posted profits of £3.3 billion. They would have to transfer £660 million to the employee share trust, meaning they would still keep £2.64 billion.
Well, they can’t moan about that, can they? They’d still get billions in profit. Let’s pause to recall that profit means “surfeit money tha
t you don’t actually need after all your costs have been covered.” We know that for profit to exist in one place, deficit has to exist elsewhere, so I don’t think this goes nearly far enough. Nonetheless, let’s look at how this modest reform would impact Britain.
• The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham cost £545 million to build in 2010—and you’d have more than that amount to spend every year just from one company—and they’d still get to keep 80 percent of their profits.
Wow. That means that corporations that make huge profits, with a modest amendment, could be making life-saving contributions to the society they profiteer within. That seems so reasonable, fair, apposite, and just.
Hey, how come not one mainstream democratic party anywhere in the world has policies like that? Why could that be? Why aren’t Labour or the Democrats or even self-declared people’s parties (they’re ALL meant to be people’s parties) like Ukip proposing gentle, effective regulation of corporations? Unless … they’re all utterly supplicant to corporate tyranny. Ah, yes, that’s it.
So that’s one idea, that in my view is a piece of pipsqueak reformism and not worth dying for, that no party in the “democratic” space would ever propose, because it conflicts with what Chomsky outlined for us earlier as the true function of power: to protect itself and to control us. What the above example does is demonstrate another alternative to “the way things are” and shatters the convenient lie that there are no alternatives.
Here’s another example of things being run differently. This time it’s truly representative democracy—that means “something worth voting for”—a system that actually means the will of the people can be manifested.
It’s called participatory democracy.
In Porto Alegre in Brazil, a city with a population of 1.3 million, 22 percent of whom live in shantytowns and slums where typically people aren’t that well educated or affluent, large-scale participatory democracy has proven to be very successful.
Since 1989, the expenditure for the whole city has been designed as an annual participatory budget so people can decide how the money is spent. That seems unfeasible. All these slum-dwelling, City of God–emulating, barefoot-with-an-orange-football-on-the-beach folk are each year involved in the economics of their community—it can’t be done. Alright, how is it done?
• In March, there are micro-level discussions in preparation held all over the city.
Okay, so people understand that they are part of a community and can take part in its management.
• In April and May, assemblies are held to decide on priorities for the coming year.
I see, so the first meeting, the micro meeting, is to establish priorities—some people might want to have more-regular refuse collection, others might want more community housing, others might be worried about immigration. Bring it up at the micro meeting, work it through, then take it to the assembly the following month.
• Forty-eight delegates are elected from the assemblies to attend the budget council.
So there’s a representative element, but it doesn’t feel as dislocated as our politics; there’s a sense that you are making decisions that will affect your life. I bet if we were able to present that information interestingly, people would be as interested in that as they are in Dancing on Ice.
• The requests of the citizens arising from the assembly meetings are handed to the mayor.
Mayor, hey? How did he get that gig? I don’t remember voting for him. The title “Mayor” would have to go in Matt Stoller’s utopia and the incumbent of the role entirely beholden to the people in Dave DeGraw’s. Like with the Revolutions we’ve read about, we’re under no obligation to replicate their ideologies wholesale; we can democratically cultivate our world together.
• The budget council meets from September and the delegates, councillors, and administrators work through the budget, which is adopted by the mayor at the end of the year.
Sounds like a lot of bureaucracy, and I bet it fucking is. That’s what politics should be: admin. No power, just clerical work, enacting the will of the people. The mayor doesn’t get to make any crafty moves to help out his banker pals or get bikes named after him; it’s just graft and service.
• The procedure is aided by a team of coordinators who liaise with the community throughout the process.
Real-life democracy, where the issues that you care about are addressed. Me, I don’t see immigration as a real issue; for me an immigrant is just someone who used to be somewhere else, and the sooner we unite and organize to dismantle the structures that prevent all of us being free, the better I’ll feel.
You might feel differently, though. You might want strict border controls, like Bill O’Reilly or Nigel Farage.
Now, whilst I’d argue that the only reason we even think stuff like that is because we’ve been given duff and manipulative information, you may not care. In a truly representative democracy, we’d be presented with the arguments, then we’d vote. If after all the pleading and exposure of actually culpable bankers and corrupt politicians, there was still a determination to blame immigrants, some crazy racist deal could be voted in.
Given that we’re all meant to be deeply apathetic, our refusal to vote regarded as slovenliness rather than an unwillingness to participate in a system that knowingly harbors and protects political pedophiles, the concern would be that no one would bother to take part in this new, empowering system.
Well, 31,300 people took part in the process in Porto Alegre in 2002, up from 1,300 in 1989. This goes to show that participation escalates when people see that they’re not wasting their time. Also, it clearly wasn’t as boring as I worried it would be; it caught on like Rubik’s Cube, or, if you’re young, and I hope you are, loom bands.
That’s a huge number, positive in itself but, imagine, also to the increased sense of community and connection. Compare this to what we’re mugged off with by way of democracy:
• In London, twenty-five elected members of the GLA and the Mayor of London decide how to spend a budget of £14.6 billion.
Sounds like there’s a bit of wiggle room there.
When this new type of democracy was implemented in Brazil—let’s call it actual democracy—the majority of participants were women and “poor people.” Isn’t that what we need in all democracy? Underrepresented groups to come to the forefront? I think our communities would greatly improve if more women and blokes that hadn’t all gone to the same school got stuck into running them.
What happened when they got involved in Porto Alegre?
• Spending on health and education rose from 13 percent to 40 percent;
• 98 percent of houses were connected to water mains and the sewage system;
• the number of schools increased by four times.
That’s what happens in representative democracy—people get represented, instead of mad policies that allow spying, new water cannons, arms deals, and the carving up of health services. Generally speaking, when empowered as a community, or common mind, our common spirit, our common sense reaches conclusions that are beneficial for our community. Our common unity.
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Worth Voting For?
THESE MODELS ALREADY EXIST. THEY ARE ALREADY WORKING. WE know the current system isn’t—shrug—“not perfect, but the best we can do.” It’s fucked, and it’s fucking us, and it’s obsolete. Now there are alternatives. We have the means; we just haven’t used our power to assert our will. The technology that enables us to vote for TV talent shows can be used for truly representative, localized democratic process—that’s common sense.
The trade agreements that benefit transnational corporations can be rewritten to provide food and resources for the people of the world.
The utilities and facilities of major corporations—Monsanto, Apple, Time Warner—can be confiscated and given to democratic collectives so we can have food, technology, and communication on a local level without needless global tariffs, Mickey Mouse product updates, and senseless
ecological damage.
The U.S. writer Walter Mosley said: “We have the formal structure of a democracy, but not the substance.”
The structures exist, the resources exist; the only thing that stands in the way of this necessary Revolution is the venal entitlement and self-interest of the people who benefit from things staying as they are.
Now, as David Graeber said to me once, these people aren’t going to just stand aside, say, “We see your point,” and let us get on with the Revolution. When fear and propaganda finally fail—and that process has begun—they will, of course, use force.
Military force, police force, and private security. The good news is, as Che Guevara pointed out, the people that do all the work in those institutions are getting shafted like the rest of us and will only go so far for a pension. Their compliance is kind of a habit. Habits are hard to break, but—and this I know from personal experience—you are more inclined to break them when they stop working for you.
As the degeneration of our governing institutions becomes more blatant, more and more of the brave men and women that have sworn to protect and serve the people are going to see that oath runs directly counter to what they’re being paid to do.
The battalions of ex–service people living on the city streets of the UK and United States are a cruel testimony to the true sentiments of our governments towards those that are willing to give their lives. Sixty thousand homeless people in the States, and 25 percent of all London’s homeless, have formerly served the country that now does them such a rank disservice.
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