art and space and dreams

You deserve mutual aid. You’re not too privileged for it, you’re not stealing it from people who need it more - you have a right to use community resources just as much as anyone else

I’ve seen food rot, clothes and books be forgotten in storage, because the people volunteering at or supporting these projects don’t think the resources are for them. Then those same volunteers will go out and put money they don’t have into the capitalist system to buy the resources they could’ve gotten for free

You’re thinking like a charity. You’re drawing a line between the people giving resources and the people taking them, which inevitably leads to a feeling of separation and eventually superiority, unconsciously seeing yourself as a savior coming in and helping the less fortunate. That alienates the people you’re helping from you, and results in neither side fully recognizing the other as human and the same as them

There’s a reason we say “solidarity not charity”. There’s a reason mutual aid is called mutual. Because by lifting each other up, we all become stronger. In solidarity and mutual aid, there is no separation between giver and receiver, because everyone involved is benefited by it

10 cans of peaches, 2 5lb cans of crushed tomatoes, 6 loaves of bread, a whole box of tuna packets, 8 mangoes, 6 1lb bags of rice, 10lbs of frozen chicken tenders or fajita meat. And it’s like wtf? They gave this to a family of 4??? They can’t even fit some if that in their fridges/freezers half the time so it gets donated to us.

I had my neighbors stop me before last distro to hand me all those items, plus other things. This one of many small examples, that pounded in my skull, that if I want/need it, I’m taking it.

Do you, the westerner reading this, have access to more and higher quality stuff than someone in the Congo or in Honduras? Yes? There you go, you're benefiting from imperialism.

How does this come about? It's due to the export of finance capital.  What does finance capital do? It creates a political-legal structure of value transference through the use of various institutions (debt, agreements, treaties, etc.).  What do these structures do? They ensure that value generated by the labor in an imperialized country flows to the capitalist-imperialists in control of these financial structures.  But that's not going into my pockets, though? The value the capitalist-imperialists extract comes in the form of real commodities: coffee, cotton, minerals, bananas, oil.  Do you have access to any of these? Then you have access to imperial spoils.

That is the fundamental reality when you strip away the abstractions: Stuff flows from the imperial periphery to the grocery store you visit. Less stuff flows back to the periphery.

"but i produce stuff too! not my fault they can't afford it!"

When the things that you manufacture in your industrial job (cars, planes, ships, computers) -- made with raw materials coming in from the periphery -- are sold back to the periphery, it ensures that the worker in the periphery must toil more hours per item purchased than you do. Not only must they work the hours required to mine the minerals for the computer, they must then work additional hours at extremely low wages if they ever wish to buy the computer you assembled. How to save money when you're being paid less than it takes to put food on the table? You work even more, and your family works double duty to sustain you.

The things you make in your white-collar job (software, medical research, patents, media) are subsidized by the increased rate of exploitation in the periphery, and are likewise then sold to the periphery. You can do your job of producing intellectual property because someone somewhere mined the cobalt in your computer, grew the fruit you ate for breakfast and picked the cotton your clothes are made out of. And to top it all off, the intellectual property you export is essentially free to replicate! The only reason it's profitable is because of the coercive legal power finance capital wields, of the superstructural institutions it props up to enforce concepts such as "intellectual property."

So why doesn't the periphery simply ignore these bad deals, unadvantageous laws and sketchy treaties?

How do you stop people from breaking legal agreements? You send the cops after them. That's what the US military is.

"ok so should i just feel bad and keep doing what i'm doing or...?"

Two things are true simultaneously: You benefit from imperialist exploitation, and it is also in your own best interest to bring an end to imperialism.

See, imperialism is inherently unstable just as capitalism in general is. Why is the US currently lashing out in seemingly irrational warfare, both armed and economic? Why are social democracies in Europe dismantling their welfare systems and increasing military spending? Why are conservatism, the far-right and outright fascism on the rise? It's because of the decline of imperialism: just as the rate of profit falls with the mechanization of domestic industry, so does the rate of imperial superprofit fall when exploited countries, due to slow but steady industrial development, gain the capacity to contest and break free from the monopolies of extraction propped up by the imperialists. To bring profitability back, to discipline anyone who would break free, the imperialists become nakedly violent and coercive. Once hiding behind banks and treaties is no longer enough, they become mobsters and pirates toward the rest of the world.

Fascism is imperialism turned inward. When the exploitation of the periphery is no longer enough to maintain profitability, imperialists lash out abroad, and invariably turn their attention toward their domestic working class too. Socialized healthcare, cultural amenities and welfare benefits exist as a class compromise. "We give you basic stability and necessities, and you don't overthrow the government" is the deal. But when the capitalist class can no longer maintain this compromise, when they must restore profitability at all costs, the compromise must be dismantled. They cannot let themselves become unprofitable -- this is not because of greed, it's because the system of capitalism literally does not work without self-expanding value, without profit.

What does a working class whose welfare state gets gutted do? They start getting a bit rowdy, they start looking for alternatives, they start getting a bit socialist. What is the response to this by the capitalists, then? They can no longer pacify the workers with welfare and treats, so they use violence. Fascism is let loose to discipline the working class. Fascism is capitalism's self defense against socialism.

Nuclear/renewable energy will mean far less pollution.

Transit oriented development will mean you won't have to own a car, and improved public health due to far more people being active.

An increase in domestic manufacturing means more jobs.

High speed trains instead of driving or flying.

Shutting down resource intensive and unpopular data centers.

Moving freight with electric trains instead of trucks means less wear on the roads, and less air pollution.

More people who needed my service would have more access to it and they would get a much better service under socialism than capitalism.

Not only would I be much happier to work for my community than to work for money, but I would also be capable of providing a higher standard of care because I would have the time, I would have the resources of the community behind me, and I would also have access to care and necessities that I cannot access now despite working hard to be able to.

If you don't care enough about your community to help them without a financial incentive that positions you above them, that's not common sense, it's senseless and counterproductive. We are nothing without our communities. Our families have nothing without our communities.

If you think blue collar workers don't want the Health, Safety, Retirement, Time off, etc. benefits that they work so hard for, that socialists won for them with blood, that they are constantly cheated out of by health insurance companies, car insurance companies, managers, bosses, the government giving the workers' money to big corporations, then you must not know very many blue collar workers.

Just because the names of communism and socialism have been sullied by the lies of greedy politicians and businessmen, and the people have been engraved with the lie of capitalism that promises but never provides, doesn't mean the people don't want a better life.

It's not capitalism thats going to give it to them, or it would have by now. It's not capitalism that gave them medical leave to be with their babies when they were born. It was socialism. It was organized labor. It was workers, fighting and dying for the shreds of the life they were promised, that were stolen from them. It's not capitalism that gave you the weekend. It was socialism. It was communism. It was organized labor.

The communists and socialist died for your right to live, for your freedom, for your liberty, for your safety. The capitalists murder and continue to murder to take it away from you, all in the name of greed.