In Victoria, there was an addictions recovery resource center located in the midst of a fairly classy downtown shopping area. Its location in the downtown core was ideal for the city’s marginalized and homeless, it was very accessible and saw a lot of use. This caused no end of frustration to the local community business association, the presence of obviously impoverished people is bad for the image of the area. And that’s bad for business. Across the street from the resource center was a small undeveloped gravel lot, it was a popular space to stop outside the center to smoke and socialize. This too was part of the success of the center, it’s absolutely necessary for that kind of place to have somewhere people can smoke, and the sidewalks were narrow and unsuitable as Victoria is full of stuck up health yuppies and punishing civic bylaws.
The business association brought a proposal to the city: they wanted to give back to the community, and contribute to the beauty of such a lovely city. How kind of them! They wanted to build a community garden. What an excellent idea! They received approval from the city, and the business association reached out to various affluent leftist groups in the area to help with the project: the organic growers guild, student groups on campus, that sort of thing. They all loved the idea, community gardens are fantastic! It’s good to see corporate types contributing to the community, maybe they’re not so bad after all. On the empty lot, they built a beautiful garden.
Of course, a garden needs to be sheltered so that things can grow, so they built a fence around it. And we can’t have cigarette buts polluting the soil, so littering was vigilantly and harshly penalized. Gradually, due to the lack of a socialization space and the increased presence of cops and clueless do-gooder students who want to feel safer, attendance at the center declined. The local business association came forward with another proposal: the current location for the addictions recovery center wasn’t very popular anymore, but they had a larger place further out of town that they would generously lease for cheaper. The city thought this was an excellent cost saving measure for a program that had mysteriously declined in effectiveness.
They moved their offices, and now if you want to get to the center from downtown (where all their people are) you have to take the incredibly expensive Victoria transit system. The place is always practically empty. On the old downtown block, the business association is very happy.
Society wages a kind of vital warfare to appropriate, to acclimatize, to institutionalize the risk of thought, and it is language, that model institution, which affords the means to do so… – Roland Barthes
There was much faux outrage by American conservatives when the Lego Movie was released due to its apparently stringent and clear anti-business message. Certainly a plot line consisting of a totalitarian corporation, led by a dictator named President Business, forcing its denizens into bland conformity is not a narrative “business” would prefer to be associated with. However, such a superficial analysis entirely misses the underlying ideological message of the movie. While seemingly anti-big business, it fully encourages a new form of corporate culture beginning to be dominant in the first world capitalism. The message of the Lego Movie is a manifesto of sorts for the liberal corporate culture of Silicon Valley rebelling against the more entrenched “old-style” business model. The film is a product of a neoliberal culture attempting to embrace individualism and capitalism with a human face. Rather than Orwellian monopolies, it sees the need for hundreds of “Master Builders,” people with the creativity to usher in a new and exciting variety of products and services. There’s another word for these people currently in vogue: “entrepreneurs.”
The idea of the entrepreneur is the new neoliberal spin on the old Ragged Dick story, although in this case the rags are esteemed business schools and the riches consist in the possibility of stock options. The logic of this appeals to the young and privileged who flock to cities such as San Francisco to pursue their start-up dreams. Resisting the stodgy old guard, the “President Business’” among us, they form new tech companies and when they fail, they fail proudly, just more experience to add to a resume and eventually jump ship to an established company. And like legos, cities themselves become playground for the wealth and excess capital of the new class of entrepreneurs, much to the chagrin and detriment of the original population as the cost of living rises.
Now that high-tech companies must source their young employees from a pool that is increasingly educated and literate, it must contend with the sort of postmodern cynicism of institutions that is fostered in such a demographic. The old bureaucratic and military style of business organization is intolerable if a company wishes to actually inspire loyalty and diligence in those in their employ. Instead, the methods of the modern corporate office attempt to inspire feelings of uniqueness, fun, and productive relaxing. The office fridge is stocked with beer and the ping-pong table is open all hours. Ask an Apple store employee to sum up their work life in one word and you are likely to hear “family.” Corporations have become extremely skilled at hiding the fact that the profit motive trump any loyalty to their employees should it come to the bottom line.
Slavoj Zizek is fond of the phrase he calls “cultural capitalism.” Corporations heed liberal concerns for human rights and environmental disaster not by addressing the systemic root causes of the problem, but by finding market solutions that ameliorate the negative perception of the consumerist act. Buying a coffee in Starbucks also becomes a charitable act that funds a slightly greater percentage of profit for the bean farmers and healthcare for its employees. Buying shoes for a little more money also clothes Africa. Investing your money also becomes an opportunity to give a micro-loan to an impoverished third-world farmer. Whether such acts actually end up doing more good than harm, especially when the corporation’s financial livelihood is contingent on the existing structural oppression in place, is irrelevant as long as the consumer feels they made the world a better place with their purchase. This logic is a sophisticated form of what Roland Barthes called an inoculation, which “…consists in admitting the accidental evil of a class-bound institution the better to conceal its principal evil. One immunizes the contents of the collective imagination by means of a small inoculation of acknowledged evil; one thus protects it against the risk of generalized subversion.” Now in contemporary culture we have begun to address these “accidental evils,” proving the overall benevolence and good that these institutions do and obfuscating the principal evils even more.
A main focus in neoliberal thought is to dismantle old radical narratives and refocus the pieces into one emphasizing individual empowerment while maintaining the systems of oppression that gave rise to the original radical resistance in the first place. Corporations now allow room to “have a conscience” while also leaving plenty of space to make profit. Its ideology is focused on making sure the two don’t seem anathema to each other. Indeed, even originally well-meaning efforts succumb to this logic, a fate identity politics has lately been suffering. An important concept such as privilege is relegated to an obsession with individual states of being and the status of the messenger being more important than the message. Rather than the author being dead, her very material background becomes a noise that drowns out the content of her text.
On an even broader scale, movements such as feminism or gay rights find themselves with corporate sponsorship and earnestly promote those individuals who have found success as business entrepreneurs. Neoliberals embrace the conservative canard of upholding the success of an individual as evidence against the systemic institutional discrimination of the group. And certainly capitalism would rather appropriate the market of oppressed groups and turn them into consumers. And in doing so the formerly radical impetus of social justice groups become dedicated to merely integrating their communities into the wider capitalist system rather than overthrowing it. In the mean time, the plight of the poor or those outside the first-world continue to suffer from this newly invigorated capitalist system.
Those supporting the narrative shifts towards neoliberalism occurring in these identity groups hide behind the admittedly important idea of agency. If an individual finds female empowerment within the context of violent pornography, who are others to speak down her choice? Epistemologically there’s no way to know another’s individual motivations and life story. Creating moral prohibitions on the basis of the good of society, or to protect others’ bad choices, reeks of paternalism at best and a wholly conservative or fascist project at worst.
The compelling anti-authoritarianism of this logic appeals to many on the left, who quite rightly feel uncomfortable at someone from outside a group telling them how they should choose to live. And yet this argument is being used to support the choice not to threaten institutions of oppression, but to wholly embrace them as areas of supposed empowerment. Beneficial reforms to areas of cruel oppression, like the strip club or brothel, end up reinforcing a kind of “benevolent” oppression, making it stronger, more accepted, more pervasive, and, importantly, more profitable. It is always better if the exploited learn to embrace their exploitation as a function of their individual identity and freedom. Such a perverse dialectical compromise allows for patriarchal and exploitative institutions to exist as long as those being exploited consent to their bondage. The media and neoliberal culture in general work well to promote the views that give such consent – from both the left and the right. Neoliberalism appears as a nexus in which different arguments are provided to both political arms to arrive at the same consensual action. The left supports NATO intervention for humanitarian reasons while the right supports it for defense, both of which lead into the neoliberal objective to pry open markets from anti-imperialist nations.
Into the effort at the inoculation of radical ideas come mass cultural products like the Lego Movie. Not only does it offer the usual profitable and kid-friendly entertainment fare, but also serves to redirect the passions of leftist narratives into a friendlier capitalist paradigm. The apparent absurdity of a film for a branded toy line owned by a billion-dollar a year company being “anti-business” is explained by the underlying neoliberalism contained in its individualistic and anti-conformity messaging. Those of us who wish to preserve radical narratives must recognize it when our signs are being appropriated for a message glorifying individualism over society. There is a war of ideas being waged to coopt the energy of well-intentioned and well-meaning people for the betterment of the capitalist system. Acknowledging and understanding the process being used is a first step in resisting it.
As most of the people here know, the way we farm our food now is largely inefficient and mindbogglingly wasteful and stupid when you think about it for a fraction of a second. The solution to this is within reach as it has always been.
People practice sustainable farming techniques all across the world, mostly because they have to. They live on arid, dry, land with bad soil and they have to use regenerative and sustainable techniques or they starve.
A primary concept in sustainable agriculture is the usage of the polyculture. A polyculture is a set of multiple different plants that grow together that provide different functions that help each other grow. This is opposed to the monoculture, which is mostly how we farm now and is consisted of huge spaces of the same crop. Monocultures are much more susceptible to the elements, pests, and disease than polycultures are. Also monocultures are incapable of fertilizing themselves, unlike polycultures.
Polycultures are also called “plant guilds” and the act of planting things in guilds is called “companion planting”. So say if you wanted to grow some nice strawberries. Well you could just google “strawberry companion plants” then to see what you could plant next to it to make it thrive.
Native Americans used polycultures everywhere. They cultivated vast forests full of food and medicine that barbaric, dirty, white, men burned and slashed down over the centuries after systematically murdering them. One of their more well known plant guilds is called the “Three Sisters” it is consisted of corn, beans, and squash.
Here would be another example of a polyculture:
The use of perennials is key in sustainable agriculture. If you expect to maintain your crops without having to interact with them then you’re going to have to plant perennials around them to maintain them for you. Much of our fruit comes from perennial species of vegetation as well. Many people have gardens that are entirely perennial because they are seen as much more productive than many annual species. Self-propagating species, such as Egyptian walking onion, or sweet potato are also key.
Sustainable agriculture is encompassed in a term called “permaculture” which was coined by Bill Mollison. Permaculture basically means cultivating ecosystems in a way that makes them both highly productive for humans and reciprocate with and reinforce their surrounding ecosystems. It doesn’t just encompass gardening but livestock as well.
Not everyone has access to land. In fact a whole lot of people don’t. You can use these principles to grow plants in pots and small beds just the same and grow some food for yourself on your balcony. If you’re in a living situation where no sunlight enters your home (that sucks btw) you can grow shiitake mushrooms with oak logs still! That’s if you really want to grow some food for yourself.
Above is an example of Sepp Holzer’s work. He is an Austrian farmer that basically writes manuals on stacking functions and where to utilize them. In this you can see him using hugelkultur, swales, berms, and rocks. He also observes the different microclimates that are created when you alter the shape of the earth like this and plant things accordingly.
Farming this way can make you money if you do research on local demand. It’s tricky and you’ll need financial security after you purchase the land for at least 5 years. I would aim for 10 honestly, but once you get your farm going its kind of hard not to make money, since if designed with these principles in mind, it basically maintains itself.
I’m going to share some tips and tricks now.
Passive Heating Techniques
Greenhouse: This one is pretty obvious but it’s important. All you need is a structure propping up a medium which light passes through but air and moisture don’t. So, cellophane, glass, transparent plastic tarp that doesn’t degrade in the elements. You can buy these things for under $20 you know. I mean a whole greenhouse. They aren’t fancy but they do the job.
Compost Power: In every compost pile, occurs countless chemical reactions between bacteria. The larger the compost pile, the more volatile these reactions are as a whole. This power is converted into heat and potentially combustible gas. A cool French dude named Jean Pain figured out that by distilling wood pulp and other types of mulch in water a certain way he could generate heat for hot water and gas for electricity and other heat sources in his house using just compost. He generated 100% of the power he needed for his home this way.
You could potentially use compost to heat a greenhouse to significantly extend your growing season if you live in a rather cold climate. It would also expand the varieties of crops you could grow as well. It provides natural gas and heat, there are really all sorts of applications.
Passive Cooling Techniques
Planting stuff: vegetation does three things to cool the air. It removes CO2, it adds moisture through transpiration, and it shades the soil around and below it from the sun. There are certain plants and trees that naturally cool and regulate the air better than others. You would be surprised at how many fruit trees thrive in desert biomes. Letting trees and bushes grow around your living space will cool it significantly even if it’s not in the direct sun.
Evaporative cooling: is quite an old system of air conditioning that is still heavily used today. You redirect warm air into a dark chamber full of water to cool it as it enters the house. It is a principle that can take many forms. Cooling the air in certain places causes air pressure to change and air to move, cooling the air even more.
Here is a diagram of a wind tower system that uses evaporative cooling principles:
Passive Water Harvest/Irrigation Techniques
Roof runoff: if you don’t do this already, hooking up water holding barrels to your rain spouts and drip irrigation systems to those barrels can and will make long droughts a lot more tolerable for wherever you’re trying to grow food. There are many things you can do to make your property harvest and utilize rainwater more efficiently.
Berms/Swales/Earthworks: one of the biggest issues concerning erosion is water runoff. If you just have flat planes of earth with nothing blocking rainwater runoff you’re going to have areas of erosion and the groundwater levels aren’t going to be as high as they potentially could be. When you do hugelkultur you’re essentially creating a berm, and when you dig a swale you’re redirecting the flow or rainwater so instead of running straight downhill it maybe zigzags downhill and much more of it is absorbed into the water table. Earthworks are just pinpointed depressions in the earth designed to slope runoff and rainwater into areas with plants.
People use berms, swales, and other various earthworks in hilly or mountainous areas or around depressions in the earth to restore natural springs. Overtime, multiple earthworks can harvest so much rainwater that certain levels of the soil can no longer hold it so it comes to the surface in certain areas. If you have multiple acres of property, depending on what type of terrain there is, you could potentially do this. You can apply the same idea to wells like I pointed out earlier. Earthworks around wells will harvest more rainwater runoff and if you plant trees and shrubs on those earthworks the well will harvest even more water because the soil would be able to retain more of it. To clarify though, make sure the root systems of the species you plant around your well won’t get big enough to crack the well or plumbing around it or the pump. Willow trees are a bad choice for example because they head straight for water and spread out. This isn’t as much of a problem if you have a modern well installation because they tend not to have the cracks in their structure that tree roots can get in.
Air Wells: are quite a neat concept. At their most primitive, air wells are basically cairns, mounds of stones. When air passes through them it is cooled to the point where moisture collects on the rocks inside of the mound and drips down into the soil. A little more thought put into this concept goes a long way for sure.
Stone structures can be designed in a way to cool air efficiently and harvest surprising amounts of water but going beyond that, dew condensers also exist. A dew condenser is typically a specialized hydrophobic plastic film covering a layer of insulation and it condenses droplets of water as air runs across it’s surface. This can be observed to occur in desert climates. Air wells inspired dew condensers. I have yet to see a measured example of the two concepts combined but I’m sure people are working on that.
Ollas: Ollas are basically any container designed to gradually leak or sweat water out into the surrounding soil but only if it’s dry. They can be unfired clay pots filled with water and buried in the ground, or they can be orange juice boxes with a little hole at the bottom and top. They’re good for makeshift solutions to irrigation.
Wicking beds: if you have cloth or some kind of wicking medium between a reservoir of water and soil, the water will wick up to the soil and keep it hydrated very efficiently. It’s constantly watering the soil from the ground up so there is little loss from evaporation.
Here’s an example:
Wicking can be utilized in multiple ways. I’ve seen it used to automatically aerate someone’s aquaponic system. I’ve seen it used and used it myself in individual potted plants and potted gardens, and of course garden beds. Remember that logs of wood can serve as wicks, they aren’t as immediate as cloth but they do the job.
Not So Passive Techniques
Chop and Drop: just have a machete or something that can cut down vegetation quickly and go around slashing “weeds” or otherwise plants that have gotten too big for your liking or need a trim. If you don’t feel like composting them just leave them there. As you chop and drop weeds over and over you’ll start to observe change in your soil structure and what types of plants are growing on your property. I mean really, chop and drop is considered pretty passive as it’s something you do when you harvest usually. Every technique I’m going to describe is supposed to be as “hands off” as possible.
Wood Gasification: if you have a lot of property or even a backyard you probably have varieties of “weed like” trees that like to spring up out of nowhere and have really hard wood and also tend to coppice when you cut them. Essentially with wood gasification, if you have a lot of wood you don’t know what to do with you can put it to efficient use and even generate electricity from it. It also burns very clean.
English: A schematic showing the wood gasifier built by Dick Strawbridge and Jem Stansfield for the show “Planet Mechanics”.
Parts:
A: wood
B: fire
C: air inlet (air going to 4 nozzles)
D: reduction zone; contains charcoal; smoke goes trough the accumated charcoal and reacts with it. H20 and CO2 becomes H2 and CO
D1: top grating (movable)
D2: lower grating (not movable)
D3: handle: used to stirr up the wood to provide evenly high temperature over top grating
E: smoke
F: single-cyclone seperator (coarse filter)
G: partially filtered smoke
H: radiator (reduces heat of gas and hence condenses the gas, making it more flammable/potent)
I: cooled, partially filtered smoke
J: fine filter (consisting of clay balls on top of a grating)
K: wood gas (= fully filtered, cooled smoke)
L: air/gas mixer (replaces IC engine carburator)
L1: air inlet valve (operated via handle mounted to gear stick)
L2: choke valve
When you burn wood in a high temperature environment with little amounts of oxygen you release it’s natural gases which can be utilized to generate larger amount of heat and even electricity with a wood gas generator. If I’m making some scientist rip their hair out because I’m wrong or am not clarifying anything please correct me. Wood gas electricity generation is a viable resource for power generation on both small and I believe, large applications.
Remember that the growing techniques I previously described aren’t oriented towards certain plant species or anything they’re just working with plants in general. Individual plants themselves actually serve different functions on your plot. Here are some of the more common functions and some example plants:
Nitrogen fixers and dynamic accumulators both restore the soil with their mulch, pest confusers and insectaries, and wildlife habitatsattract predators that eat pests that would otherwise ruin your crops. Pollinator attractors are basically anything with flowers and those boost the productivity of your garden, especially if you grow fruit of any kind.
What I’ve posted here isn’t really even the tip of the iceberg. It’s just essentials really. It’s stuff that you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD KNOW before you get started because this is actually quite a complicated subject and the answers to questions that may arise aren’t always obvious. The cool thing about growing things, is that nature lets you experiment. It gives you lots of opportunities to reproduce your plants, and to fuck up. So yes, you should go into cultivating food with as much knowledge as possible but you can also start from knowing nothing too, you’ll just have a more difficult time.
If you have a yard (or maybe not even a yard!!! maybe some land that no ones doing anything with that you just want to plant stuff in!) you can turn it into a garden without spending a penny. You could go around looking for natural perennials and self-sowing plants and clone them there, or plant their seeds there. You can spend like $10 at the grocery store and plant garlic, green onions, some sweet potatoes/ or potatoes, and maybe some leeks. Every time you cut into a new onion, cut it’s root off and leave about a centimeter of onion. Go plant that root cut in your garden with the root facing down about 6 inches deep and an new onion will grow from it. You can do the same thing with that onion for another onion.
The point is, growing things this way doesn’t require a lot of money. Money helps, but it doesn’t need money. In fact these techniques can be oriented towards a concept called “guerrilla gardening” which is sowing and planting hardy, productive vegetation on unused lots and unused land.
These techniques convey an idea to me, that humans do not have to destroy their environments to live comfortably or even in excess. It’s interesting to think about how these techniques would work on a mass, systematized scale.
Post whatever you want, but I would greatly appreciate posts that contain: informative links
pictures of your agriculture projects or other peoples projects
useful tips for cultivating certain foods/materials
questions relating to agriculture/ answers to those questions
discussion of agriculture in general
A Great Beginning: Communist Saturday & Alternative Cultural Spaces
Quote
”Frente a estos valores “civilizatorios” se levantan resistencias. Los cuerpos se transforman en trincheras, las palabras en acciones, las teorías se replantean, las prácticas se reconstruyen, lxs individuxs transformadxs en colectivxs, los sentidos y sentimientos se agudizan, la calle es el espacio de encuentros fraternos y de enfrentamientos con el poder “
“The bodies are transformed into trenches, the words into actions, rethinking the theories, practices are reconstructed, the indviduals transformed into collectives, senses and feelings are intensified, the street is the space of fraternal meetings and confrontations with the power”
– “Otra cultura posible y necesaria,” comrade from Balcarce, Argentina writing on the possibility and necessity of an ‘alternative cultural space’
I’ve been meaning to write something substantial about my experience in Argentina for some time now, but it wasn’t until very recently that I felt that I could consolidate my thoughts into one place. Even still, it will be difficult if not impossible to convey the real value of what I learned. My hope is that this writing will serve as a resource for future organizing and a catalyst for reflection. If this mere recollection of a lived experience can loosen the grip of atomizing misanthropy or inspire new ways of thinking about social and personal change, even by a small amount, then this will not be in vain. The latter, I believe, will reinforce the former.
Finally, I cannot overstate how lucky and privileged I am to even have had this opportunity. Recognizing this privilege, I feel it would be simply unconscionable to keep to myself the knowledge I have gained from it. With that said, I’ll start from the beginning.
I spent roughly four months in Argentina on a study abroad program, from March to June of this year. I lived with a family in the upper middle-class parts of Buenos Aires, Capital Federal. It’s important to note that I had never spent time outside the United States before this, my Spanish was terrible and I was basically that gringo.
Fast-forward to the end of March and it’s the weekend of the “Day of Remembrance”. This is one of the most important days in Argentina, when people remember the 30,000 communists, labor activists and complete bystanders that were killed and disappeared under the Videla dictatorship. Videla came to power in 1976 in a military coup that brought new repression and violence in the name of a “return to security”, very typical of right-wing authoritarian regimes in Latin America. Although there were armed left-wing groups (Monteneros, ERP) who fought to defeat the regime, it wasn’t until the failed war in the Malvinas that Videla finally caved.
On that weekend, some American friends and I decided to go to Mar Del Plata since we had extra days off class. MDP is a small-medium sized beach town in Buenos Aires province, about 4 or 5 hours away from the capital by train.
When the six of us arrived in MDP, I think on a Friday, my state of mind was mixed. Politically, I felt about as alienated as I have ever been. We all know how bad the political situation in the States was, and that feeling of hopelessness only sank further into me when I was submerged in the conservatism of my host family. MDP was going to be an escape from that, and politics generally. This was going to be a “get drunk and hang out at the beach all weekend” type of trip.
It’s now about eight or nine o’clock at night in MDP on the Day of Remembrance and I’m walking through a market area with a couple of friends. We start hearing a loud voice over a PA system in the distance, so we head over to check it out. Then I see this:
and a whole demonstration of the Argentine Communist Party. Naturally, I’m kind of excited and the urge to talk to someone was huge, but I kept hesitating. I still don’t know why it took so long but eventually I just walked up to someone and said “Hola, soy una Marxista”. They ask where I’m from and when I say los estados unidos every head turned to me. Genuine disbelief, and honestly I don’t blame them. They tell me the demonstration is in solidarity of the communists lost during the dictatorship. So I’m sort of struggling to convey any kind of meaning with my horrible Spanish and finally ask if anyone speaks English. At this point a small semi-circle of people were kind of crowding around when a woman came up and said “Yes! I’m a translator.” So we started translating back and forth, learning and teaching new words, etc.. After a while she asks me if I want to go to their headquarters with them to have drinks and choripan (choripan owns). Why not?
This is the headquarters:
We sat on the rooftop terrace for at least 3 hours that night, talking, drinking, smoking. There were about 30 of us give or take, people from around the city and elsewhere and most were members of “La Fede” (FJC), the youth wing of the Communist Party. We talked about Obama, Libya, Chavez, liberal democracy, Kirchner, the Simpsons, the recession… pretty much anything. After people start leaving, they tell me that tomorrow is Communist Saturday and that they would like me to join. At the time I had no idea what that was but I was interested so…
Communist Saturday. This is really why I wanted to make this post. I went back to the commune that Saturday and greeted everyone in the meeting room which looks like this:
We have lunch together (an amazing lunch) and continue talking about a whole lot of things. After a while one of the members says “we really need to start working. We’re here talking, and they are up there working!” They explain to me that Communist Saturday, modeled after the Soviet Union, is every Saturday. The members get together to work on the commune, clean it, repair and build new things. The objective today was to clear off the rooftop terrace.
Now, I don’t have a before picture, but the terrace was pretty much littered with all kinds of junk, scrap metal, wood planks, etc. I took one look at it and thought “this is going to take all day and night.” I was very wrong. Almost organically, people started moving, lifting, hauling, sweeping… no one was really in charge, men and women shared tasks… if someone was struggling, two would come to help. If someone gave directions or commands, they were expected to follow those commands as well. I just asked to be put to work wherever and went at it. All the while, we kept talking, joking, and generally having a good time.
After no more than two hours I felt tired but also revitalized. The sense of working toward something rather than for something, with over a dozen people sharing that labor – and it’s fruits – collectively triggered in me something I had never experienced before. It was more than just household labor, where one person produces a surplus for others to reap. It was collective from start to finish, no exploitation, no hierarchy. Add to that the knowledge that you are participating in building communism, in the concrete and personal sense. I told a member that I was amazed by this and she said “Well, this is communism. Every Saturday.” And the terrace looked amazing:
So we celebrated our labor with some mate and smokes:
I found out here that this commune used to be an abandoned house that the Party bought. When they found it, it was an absolute disaster. But every Saturday they worked on it, knowing that, despite the difficulty, they could turn it into something positive. The next project was to rebuild a room downstairs and turn it into a sort of alternative cultural center: a place for music, radical books, theater, etc. These are all models that have been repeated by the Party throughout the country. Underlying each project is the philosophy that communism is built, shared, defended and advanced in every area possible: culture, politics and every day life. It is just as much a personal and private transformation as it is social. As one comrade put it: “Everyday of your life must be revolutionary in some way, some how. This commune didn’t just appear, it was built piece by piece.” I am not a very good communist but when I remember this I have to ask myself: am I building or destroying? I think for too long we have been thinking “anti-capitalism” and not enough about what the next world will look like. More importantly, are we going to build it or is it going to be built for us? Right now I think it is the latter, but we can change that. It is in our muscle, nerve and minds.
What did Lenin have to say about the “Communist subbotnik”? He records in a Pravda article titled “A Great Beginning” that:
“There is no doubt that we have far more organising talent among the working and peasant women than we are aware of, that we have far more people than we know of who can organise practical work, with the co-operation of large numbers of workers and of still larger numbers of consumers, without that abundance of talk, fuss, squabbling and chatter about plans, systems, etc., with which our big-headed “intellectuals” or half-baked “Communists” are “affected”. But we do not nurse these shoots of the new as we should.
Look at the bourgeoisie. How very well they know how to advertise what they need! See how millions of copies of their newspapers extol what the capitalists regard as “model” enterprises, and how “model” bourgeois institutions are made an object of national pride! Our press does not take the trouble, or hardly ever, to describe the best catering establishments or nurseries, in order, by daily insistence, to get some of them turned into models of their kind. It does not give them enough publicity, does not describe in detail the saving in human labour, the conveniences for the consumer, the economy of products, the emancipation of women from domestic slavery, the improvement in sanitary conditions, that can be achieved with exemplary communist work and extended to the whole of society, to all working people.
Exemplary production, exemplary communist subbotniks, exemplary care and conscientiousness in procuring and distributing every pood of grain, exemplary catering establishments, exemplary cleanliness in such-and-such a workers’ house, in such-and-such a block, should all receive ten times more attention and care from our press, as well as from every workers’ and peasants’ organisation, than they receive now. All these are shoots of communism, and it is our common and primary duty to nurse them. Difficult as our food and production situation is, in the year and a half of Bolshevik rule there has been undoubted progress all along the line: grain procurements have increased from 30 million poods (from August 1, 1917 to August 1, 1918) to 100 million poods (from August 1, 1918 to May 1, 1919); vegetable gardening has expanded, the margin of unsown land has diminished, railway transport has begun to improve despite the enormous fuel difficulties, and so on. Against this general background, and with the support of the proletarian state power, the shoots of communism will not- wither; they will grow and blossom into complete communism.”
…
“It is precisely proletarian work such as that put into “communist subbotniks” that will win the complete respect and love of peasants for the proletarian state. Such work and such work alone will completely convince the peasant that we are right that communism is right, and make him our devoted ally, and hence, will lead to the complete elimination of our food difficulties, to the complete victory of communism over capitalism in the matter of the production and distribution of grain, to the unqualified consolidation of communism.”
And this report of how much more effective this communist organization of labor really is:
“How the work is done at these communist subbotniks is described by Comrade A. Dyachenko in an article in Pravda of June 7, entitled “Notes of a Subbotnik Worker”. We quote the main passages from this article.
“A comrade and I were very pleased to go and do our ’bit’ in the subbotnik arranged by a decision of the railway district committee of the Party; for a time, for a few hours, I would give my head a rest and my muscles a bit of exercise…. We were detailed off to the railway carpentry shop. We got there, found a number of our people, exchanged greetings, engaged in banter for a bit, counted up our forces and found that there were thirty of us…. And in front of us lay a ’monster’, a steam boiler weighing no less than six or seven hundred poods; our job was to ’shift’ it, i.e., move it over a distance of a quarter or a third of a verst, to its base. We began to have our doubts…. However, we started on the job. Some comrades placed wooden rollers under the boiler, attached two ropes to it, and we began to tug away…. The boiler gave way reluctantly, but at length it budged. We were delighted. After all, there were so few of us…. For nearly two weeks this boiler had resisted the efforts of thrice our number of non-communist workers and nothing could make it budge until we tackled it…. We worked for an hour, strenuously, rhythmically, to the command of our ’foreman’—’one, two, three’, and the boiler kept on rolling. Suddenly there was confusion, and a number of our comrades went tumbling on to the ground in the funniest fashion. The rope ’let them down’…. A moment’s delay, and a thicker rope was made fast…. Evening. It was getting dark, but we had yet to negotiate a small hillock, and then our job would soon be done. Our arms ached, our palms burned, we were hot and pulled for all we were worth—and were making headway. The ’management’ stood round and somewhat shamed by our success, clutched at a rope. ’Lend a hand, it’s time you did!’ A Red Army man was watching our labours; in his hands he held an accordion. What was he thinking? Who were these people? Why should they work on Saturday when everybody was at home? I solved his riddle and said to him: ’Comrade, play us a jolly tune. We are not raw hands, we are real Communists. Don’t you see how fast the work is going under our hands? We are not lazy, we are pulling for all we are worth!’ In response, the Red Army man carefully put his accordion on the ground and hastened to grab at a rope end….”
““The first communist subbotnik in Tver took place on May 31. One hundred and twenty-eight Communists worked on the railway. In three and a half hours they loaded and unloaded fourteen wagons, repaired three locomotives, cut up ten sagenes of firewood and performed other work. The productivity of labour of the skilled communist workers was thirteen times above normal.”
Most importantly:
“This new discipline does not drop from the skies, nor is it born from pious wishes; it grows out of the material conditions of large-scale capitalist production, and out of them alone. Without them it is impossible. And the repository, or the vehicle, of these material conditions is a definite historical class, created, organised, united, trained, educated and hardened by large-scale capitalism. This class is the proletariat.
Clearly, in order to abolish classes completely, it is not enough to overthrow the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, not enough to abolish their rights of ownership; it is necessary also to abolish all private ownership of the means of production, it is necessary to abolish the distinction between town and country, as well as the distinction between manual workers and brain workers. This requires a very long period of time. In order to achieve this an enormous step forward must be taken in developing the productive forces; it is necessary to overcome the resistance (frequently passive, which is particularly stubborn and particularly difficult to overcome) of the numerous survivals of small-scale production; it is necessary to overcome the enormous force of habit and conservatism which are connected with these survivals.”
This is really one of my favorite pieces by Lenin and is worth reading in whole.
I told them that I want to recreate this model in the US. I’ve since found out that the Communist Party does similar things but not this extent. Plus, its CPUSA. They’re practically all Feds. Can we (not just LF, I mean in general) do this in the States? I think so.
Back to Argentina. Later that day we worked on posters that would be posted at the local university. Some examples:
Also, later that night I asked them to write down some of their marching songs for me. They decided to give me a demonstration and…. well:
Guess which one is me 🙂
I’m gonna end this here. In another post I’ll talk about the organizing we did at the University when I came back, if there is enough interest! Thanks.
Being unemployed bums, most of you probably aren’t “hip” to some of the newer trends in the workplace productivity space. I’m here to bring you in on the “Time Management Revolution!”
Today we will use a standard instance of these applications, one competitor in a field of dozens, even hundreds. As it turns out, corporate monitoring software is easy to code and produce, so in general success in this field is determined by marketing, business-to-business contacts, and web presence as much as quality of software. Here is one such competitor:
Here is your most common readout. A simple comparison of “Productive” versus “Non productive” time spent. Many companies today will actually dock your pay for all of the “Non productive” (as defined by the program) time you spend at your desk.
Here is your common activity intensity chart:
An industry standard and, surprisingly, a relatively recent advance in Productivity Management software, activity intensity metrics determine the behavior patterns of your employees. How much time is spent on break, how much time spent reading, typing, clicking, and whatever else you care to track is easily accessible. This is a way to distinguish beyond simple “results;” for example, a productive employee may not be working at his full capacity, or an unproductive employee may be trying her best but not be up to snuff. Companies have different policies regarding this, but most often “productive slackers” are looked upon poorly as lacking work ethic and even being immoral.
One funny story from my company is when intensity was tracked for “productive” versus “non productive” work time: as it turns out, many employees conduct their activity far more intensely when they are “non productive!” Wow, you people are just begging to be fired with cause! Spike our unemployment insurance payments? I think not!
The productivity map:
Ah, here is a nice little innovation: the Productivity Map. A nice geographical chart highlighting exactly where employees spend their time. These are nice little visual representations that help a firm “eyeball” potential “labor thieves,” also known as unproductive employees. As always, the goal of Productivity Management software is to maximize the value of your labor!
One recent development is the use of screen tracking software. In this program, it is possible to click the bubbles; the bubbles are mapped to timestamps and screenshots. This is useful for “ambiguously productive” applications like Outlook (as pictured here), since it is possible for employees to conduct both productive and non-productive activity while in this program.
A common trick among savvy employees is to tunnel into their home computer or use a tethered wireless connection, so that only a single connection to an outside network can be “seen” by the IT department. Installing Productivity Management software defeats this and every other deceit your simple-minded employees might conceive! Of course, Productivity Management software monitors all keystrokes, all web activity, all connections made, and can even monitor web camera inputs without the employee’s knowledge (catch those tricksters who waste valuable time conversing with their peers!).
Track every form of employee theft! Exterminate every non productive behavior! Maximize every labor hour! No longer will the parasites steal from your business!
LF Effort Posts 