In recent weeks we have been discussing and researching ideas on infrastructure as means of dependency and extortion of especially the lowest social strata. This inquiry begun from questions and suggestions sent by readers of this blog. What we will attempt here is a brief introduction to the dialog that has started between us and those in contact on the subject and we will gradually incorporate our perspectives into one document that will be the product of this discussion. We strongly believe that this is the way it should be done. From the bottom we come into the same level and organize equally amongst us to produce something of value to all.
We refuse to revisit the old established theory on the dominant class and the state and reduce the rest as “the people” when in most societies today, and especially on the most “developed” under capitalism societies, there is a “kast” of the ones who suffer the most from the pressure of the hierarchy pyramid above them. Those are also the most dependent and exploited through their dependency for “programs” and “infrastructure” installed by the state. In order for those from the bottom to be liberated it is not enough to overthrow the state and the ruling class but all the apparatus installed by them as means of dependency and exploitation. But some of this structures called infrastructure is needed for societies to survive. Water, sanitation, food, shelter, medical care, education, energy, transportation, pretty much what has traditionally been developed by states and is now handed over to private interests to exploit, through a set of policies better known as neo-liberalism. A society under revolutionary process can not just overthrow all these without forming their own infrastructure to meet needs. Neither can this infrastructure can be readily just taken over without risking reproducing some of the same hierarchical structures embedded in them.
To liberate itself, the bottom kast must develop their own non-hierarchical structures based on social and human needs. If done so properly communities will reach a level of autonomy that will allow them to liberate themselves from the dependency on the state’s infrastructures. Can it be done, and how? We believe it can. As we have said before in other posts, educational material and information exists in very high quantities to consume and digest. Most of this readily available information and resources are based on the needs of the individual. A fallacy ingeniously created by the system to defend itself providing “free” access to the tools of autonomy but specifically to the autonomy of the individual.
We shall escape from this philosophical debate and distance ourselves from this individual freedom and autonomy as we have a strong belief that individual solutions can only exist for individual problems and only collective solutions and collective liberation can lead to real liberation. So we will focus on community level proposals, resources, and information, and not individualistic approaches to solving problems. It is a matter of philosophical choice for us and one we consciously make not to reject the value of the individual life but the value that all human life can only exist within a society or a community and not alone. After all humanity has survived for millenniums while individuals despite their level of autonomy and freedom are restrained by the physical fact of their sort lives. The individual may never free itself from the physical boundaries of life and death, while humanity seems to have no such perceived boundaries. Between idealism and materialism, here in the social “physics” institute we can reject any and all idealisms because we can mutually agree to do so.
We shall call such infrastructure for community autonomy “autonomous counter-infrastructure” or ACI for sort. We will speculate that an horizontally organized community that all can participate equally can set the guidelines of that their needs are and develop ACIs to meet their needs and choices. We shall focus on two parts to develop such informational resources for communities striving for autonomy. One is the matter of social organization itself. The very specifics of how small and larger groups can operate without sacrificing their horizontal and equal principles. The other will be of educational material to develop such solutions. In the oceans of information on DIY manuals very few originate in the community level needs, while most are focused on the individual or a small group as a family. One family can solve their need for food, for shelter, for clean water, but what can the community do?
As we have previously mentioned elsewhere, we can learn how to work in a hospital, or work in maintaining a dam and a water purification plant, in a construction company, as doctors and nurses, builders, laborers, architects and engineers, farmers and bakery workers, as experts and specialists of just about anything we desire as students. But none of those experts has been educated to built and organize a proper hospital, better yet how to address the health needs of a specific community. None know what it takes collectively to utilize your own land best to produce food to meet the community’s nutritional needs. So this is what we will like to do. Develop our school as the school the community attends to learn how to organize and then how to address needs and design ACI to meet those needs. If done so properly one community after another will have no need to sell labor to purchase products.
Such a community can not be exploited or extorted by the rulers once it can survive in a dignified way on its own. Authority declines to zero in such a relation and then only the choice of repression and violence can counterbalance new status. The community of poor and unemployed can no longer be exploited as the members will no longer be counted as unemployed or poor, as they will be working, they will have water, food, shelter, health care, etc. of their own. Can it be possibly done? It has been successful for the past two decades in southwestern Mexico in an area called Chiapas, where autonomous indigenous villagers have taken control of their land and work for their communities and organize themselves through a complex but effective way. They have developed many ACIs and have achieved all this through a war of the federal government of Mexico by military and paramilitary troops. Despite all odds they have been growing and getting stronger while some of the non-organized surrounding villages have been served by the ACIs the zapatistas developed.
So organize and develop ACIs and we will be next to you providing the necessary tools to do so.
4 comments:
Salute from Mexico,
While searching for information for documents in reference to small agrarian communities developing solutions to community problems w found this blog. We think you are on the right track of thinking, a new thinking.
The system may be able to incorporate anything progressive and alternative is focused as a solution to an individual. The left side of the butt of the system will be the door to clean up anything new and launder it in. That is the only use of the left within a democracy, otherwise they would have destroyed the left after the early 90s. But here we have an idea that can not possibly be incorporated into the system and it is outright dangerous.
I would call this a good idea from below. It will not move easily past their watchdogs if it has banners and flags on it. So move silently and hand it over by means you can control to people you trust hand in hand, not through a blog that is controlled by them.
Us and them will never get along but eventually we will win.
Thnaks, we also have an email for further discussion and exchange of materials. isphysics@freemail.gr
We are preparing a list of similar projects and collectivities so we can network ourselves and combibe resources to communities organizing in the same mode of thinking.
When we organize the list in categories we will publish it in the blog and enrich it.
Moving the site to something we can control more is on our list of priorities but we take small steps according to capacity.
I agree with the comment from Mexico in principle but why should "they" limit themselves on the left? All the left was able to produce was a revolution in 1917 that died shortly after, a movement in the late 60s that was defeated in its values not militarily, a few short lived guerrilla achievements in Africa and Americas. By 1990 there was total defeat. What remained was a sterilized left that could be maintained by the system in order to incorporate any and all potential grassroots movements. It has done so ever since with the exception of the anarchist current.
Why and how will the system do exactly the same with anarchists or whether that could be possible it remains to be seen, but it is the new obstacle. The insurrectional individualist black-block trend is exactly what the system needs to go through an other cycle of sterilization. Anarcho-comm/syndicalists are sentenced to share a burned identity with them.
The Zapatista movement if it is not defeated and receives international attention is our way out of the mess we ourselves allowed and have created.
Libertarian in Greece
There are parts of the old left still alive and kicking in the "developing world". In India they have recently executed a number of very high ranking MPs and their guards and different Maoist groups are very active between the borders of Pakistan and out towards the Pacific. They are a real problem to the oligarchical governments of South East Asia.
But not everything that causes pain and anxiety to the state and its elites is a solution to peoples' problems. In that sense I believe this kind of thinking here provides alternatives to the traditional anti-capitalist anti-government struggle.
The means to organize such local efforts under one umbrella, a movement, and create a federation is very far fetched at this point of time. All we can do is head towards a certain direction and hope we some day meet.
Planting seeds of change PSoC
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