I remember when I first participated in the Occupy movement, marching with 700 others in the city of Lansing, MI. What I witnessed there I could only describe as anarchism in practice. The most beautiful thing about this was that it was a spontaneous and natural methodology of action. There was no institutional hierarchy or leadership, decisions were made by consensus and direct democracy, all were invited to participate in the decision making process, and the spirit of solidarity permeated everything.

Anarchy, despite its negative connotations, is not a plea for chaos and disorder. Anarchy is exactly what I experienced in the Occupy movement; participation, direct democracy, solidarity, equality, individual autonomy, and direct action. Historically, Anarchism is the movement for the creation of a truly free society through the self-emancipation of the working class from all forms of oppression. Anarchism aims to create a world without hierarchy and coercive authority; its aim is to dismantle social hierarchy in favor of a social order based on voluntary cooperative associations of free individuals.

We are all indignant in regards to the excesses of modern global capitalism and the oppression of the state, which is really nothing more than an apparatus of violence controlled by the 1%. We know very well what is wrong with the world we live in. The problem is, we are far from clear about what kind of society we want to see. If the Occupy movement is to rebound and progress, we need to hammer out a vision of the future we want to create. I am proposing that Anarchism, particularly social Anarchism, is the only viable and desirable alternative to global capitalism.

Capitalism IS the crisis, it cannot be reformed, it must be done away with. This is the first and most essential point for us to understand. All the means of life have been appropriated by a few, with the rest of us being denied access. The force of the state ensures the continuation of this monopoly. As the disenfranchised, our only real option is to sell our time and freedom to an employer in exchange for a wage, which grants us access to socially-necessary resources. This fundamental dynamic of capitalism creates a ruthless class hierarchy, between those who “own” the means of existence and those who do not; the capitalists and the working class. Rather than being compensated for the fully value of our labor, workers are paid as little as capitalists can get away with paying us. This is nothing less than wage-slavery, and it is inherently exploitative. We can reform capitalism all we want, but as long as this dynamic remains in place, we will never truly be free.

Capitalism also spells ecological disaster by its very nature. The inherent systemic logic of capitalism is the perpetual acceleration of production, including the perpetual consumption of nonrenewable resources. Rather than producing for the sake of human need, capitalism produces for the sake of profit, and this production must always continue and expand. We occupy a finite planet, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this way of life is not, and can never be, sustainable. 

Capitalism must go, but we must never fall for the marxian dogma of assuming that “we the people” can somehow rule over a state. There is not, has never been, and never will be such a thing as a “workers” or “peoples” state. The state arises historically as a result of social stratification, particularly due to the appropriation of resources by a minority. To ensure the perpetuation of the hegemony over socially-necessary resources, states emerge, their purpose being to defend class divisions. The state is a centralized apparatus of institutionalized violence, claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given geographical area, and always exists to defend the privileges of an elite class. If we wish to see the end of domination, the end of classes and hierarchy, we must abolish the state along with capitalism. The two are inseparably linked; they must both be overcome.

What could we possibly create to replace capitalism and the state? The occupy movement itself provides a potential model of a free society. Voluntary associations of free individuals,  networked together cooperatively, can fulfill all necessary social functions. From production to distribution, from community management to self-defense, non-hierarchical organizational models can effectively and efficiently be used to order the multiplicity of relationships that make up our civilization. Rather than having privately owned firms competing in a market, we can imagine self-managed work-places cooperating together to meet the needs and desires of communities. We can begin to imagine bottom-up federations of self-managed workplaces organizing production, and bottom-up federations of consumers councils, in collaboration with the networks of workplaces, ordering distribution. Down the road we can even envision the elimination of scarcity, the end of money, and creation of a truly global gift economy, where all can produce according to their proclivities, and all can freely consume according to their self-determined needs and desires. 

Let us begin to imagine a whole new social structure, based on self-managed communities where all members have a say in all decisions that affect them, and all decisions are made directly democratically. We can imagine voluntary networks and federations of self-managed communities, coordinating together wherever necessary in mutual projects for mutual benefit. 

This is the network age. The internet has brought us all together on non-hierarchical lines like nothing ever has before. Social hierarchy has become an anachronism, and is now only slowing us down and thwarting our potential as a species. The answer to all the woes that move us to action is the project to dismantle social hierarchy in favor of a truly free society; anarchism. It is my contention that the Anarchist project provides the only real answer to the multitude of social problems that assail us. If we wish to move forward as a movement, and bring about real, lasting, revolutionary change, we ought to embrace the Anarchist perspective, method, and vision. Nothing short of the total revolutionary transformation of society can get us out of this mess and save our civilization. Reformism simply won’t cut it. I invite all comrades in the occupy movement to educate themselves on Anarchism and the Libertarian Socialist vision of society. The Anarchist FAQ is without a doubt the best place to state.

http://www.infoshop.org/AnAnarchistFAQ

In Solidarity,

Matt.

“No one puts a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up takes from the garment, and the rent is made worse.  Neither do you put new wine into old bottles: or the bottles will break, the wine run out, and the bottles perish: but put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.”  — Jesus, Gospel of Matthew 9: 16-17

Immediately after I for Earth Day posted a bulletin with documented specifics about the City of Seattle corporate government/police department partnering with the US Department of Homeland Security to install supposedly green, solar-powered Intellilamps surveillance lights coupled with surveillance cameras on our streets and aerial drones in our skies, I found myself suddenly locked out of both my primary Yahoo email account, as well as my Facebook account. I had already been locked out of my Yahoo account a number of times for the past several years immediately after publishing such specific information.

A Facebook message indicated that messages that I was posting had been flagged as “spam”, and so I was being locked out of my Facebook page for fifteen days.  Pointedly absent in their disciplinary process was their bothering to state what messages I had posted had been flagged as “spam”, who the parties were who so flagged them, the Facebook corporation giving my side a fair hearing, and a fair process of appeal.  With the help of an IT-adept activist associate, I finally was able to get back into my Yahoo email – which now has a totally dysfunctional Catch-22 security password system – as well as my Facebook page, despite these two online corporations’ efforts to stop this.  Then, today when I went into my Facebook account to post some relevant activist messages to some key open Occupy Group pages, I was immediately given this message:

_____________________________________________________________

You can’t use this feature right now.

You’ve been blocked from using this feature, because you made posts on Facebook Pages that have been reported as spam.  Learn more about what you can post.

When I reread the Facebook “Community Standards”, it was evident to me that I had not violated any of them.  What I was posting was not abusive, threatening, hate speech or phishing, nor were any of these messages commercial advertisements for products.  I was posting to open activist groups messages that were relevant to their mission.

Therefore, after attempting to deal with “Tracebook” for the past four years, I have come to these conclusions:

o  “Tracebook” – founded by CIA-connected Mark Zuckerberg, who, along with the top executives of Yahoo and Google attends bankster cabal-connected Bilderberg meetings, and who has called “Tracebook” users “Dumb f—ks”,  

http://www.dailypaul.com/172555/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-founder-attended-

the-bilderberg-conference   

http://www.henrymakow.com/social_networking_dupes_the_ma.html —

exists primarily to:

o  Harvest personal data of its users, particularly activist groups, through constant online surveillance of personal information many users are naïve enough to publish on their “Tracebook” pages by government/military and commercial corporations;

o  It also exists as a gatekeeper/emotional vent valve to control and limit the free speech of its users, encouraging/allowing widespread discussion of only personal or relatively trivial matters within rules that “Tracebook” staffers and their corporate government/military handlers make up as they go along, according to how threatening each activist post might be to what are fast becoming the powers that were. 

I therefore want to ask all of the prominent grassroots activist groups, such as the Occupy movement, who have their primary presence on Fascist Facebook, why do you keep putting your new wine into old wineskins that are about to burst?  Why don’t those of you with stellar IT talents start working on creating authentic social networks for planetary change agents freely to pursue their missions, rather than being possessed by the IT version of Stockholm syndrome, in which “Tracebook” and other ISPs – Internet Surveillance Predators – seek to keep the evolutionary spirit of the times within their malevolent masters’ manipulative control?  If we massively moved our money from the corrupt global banking cartel into credit unions, precious metals, local currencies, Bitcoin, as well as residential safes and mattresses, why do we not massively move our information/energy from existing predatory social surveillance networks to help create those that will truly further the cause of planetary transformation?