Information is Not a Commodity

[the cover of A consensus handbook by Seeds for Change, featuring the title in Orange lettering followed by an color drawing of 11 people working on the maintenance of a house]

I'm going to share this as a separate post for those that missed the ask: A consensus handbook by Seeds for Change https://seedsforchange.org.uk/handbook is a free and very handy guide to how to take decisions as a group without leaders or hierarchies. I'm going to drop the chapters here to show off just how much useful stuff it has. If you work with consensus, there's almost certainly a problem in here that you recognize and wish you had some answers to!

“In 1932, Peter Maurin, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was working at hard manual labor at Mount Tremper, New York, at a boys’ camp where he mended roads, cut ice, and did other chores winter and summer and received his living, not a very munificent one, in return. As a French peasant he lived on soup and bread. His account at the grocer did not come to more than a few dollars a week. He slept in the barn which was as close to the Stable as he could get. He spent seven years in the vicinity of Kingston, New York, studied, worked and prepared what he liked to call the Green Revolution. Before this he had travelled through the States and Canada as an unskilled laborer. Before that he had worked in France, where he was born, at the one thing he was skilled at, teaching with the Christian Brothers. But he believed too, that the scholar had to become a worker not only that he might understand the conditions and problems of the worker, but that the worker too might become a scholar, because Peter believed in THE PEOPLE changing their own conditions. He did not speak in terms of THE MASSES, being swayed by some dictator demagogue.

Peter Maurin studied the prophets of Israel and the Fathers of the Church; he studied Proudhon, Karl Marx, Kropotkin and familiarized himself with utopian socialist thought as well as Marxist thinking. He knew to whom to turn among Catholic thinkers, and he introduced us to Romano Guardini, Karl Adam, Luigi Sturzo, Vincent McNabb, among the priests, and to E. I. Watkin, Christopher Dawson, G. K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc as well as E. J. Penty and Peter Kropotkin, who was in a way his favorite among the laywriters. When he waved the encyclicals at us, it was not only the social encyclicals of the Popes, but also that on St. Francis of Assisi. He preferred St. Francis’ way to the industrial council way. He always aimed at the best, and to him voluntary poverty, manual labor was the beginning of all true reform, which was to begin with one’s self. First of all he was a personalist and a Communitarian. “People are always saying, ‘they don’t do this, and they don’t do that,’” he would cry out in ringing accents, “WE is a community, THEY is a crowd.” And a lonely crowd, David Reisman would say, himself crying out against “the damned wantlessness of the poor.” Peter would have liked Reisman’s book as he would have liked Martin Buber’s book, PATHS IN UTOPIA. He wanted people to be taught to want the best, and the best for him was the immediate program of the works of mercy, practiced in the cities and farming communes set up in the countryside where workers and scholars could get together to try to rebuild society within the shell of the old by founding better institutions to take the place of soulless corporations. (He spoke and wrote in phrases so packed with thought, that to expand them would mean the writing of a book.) He saw the need for the works of mercy as a practice of love for our brother which was the great commandment and the only way we can show our love for Christ, and he saw too that such a practice would mean conflict with the State. “Personal responsibility, not state responsibility,” he always said.

Peter’s teaching meant the immediate establishment of houses of hospitality because it was a time of depression and not only the worker, but young Catholic college graduates were unemployed. Peter shocked people by calling for an “abolition of the wage system” and self employment. Young people gave their services and unemployed workers gave their skills, and readers of THE CATHOLIC WORKER sent in material goods and money, so that for the last twenty years we have kept going on this basis of voluntary poverty and “abolition of the wage system,” for those preferred to give their services rather than go out and earn a wage for them.

This self employment was an immediate remedy for unemployment but the long term program meant substituting a new social order to take the place of both capitalism and communism. Peter did not believe in the use of force to bring about this new society, so from the first we have opposed class war, race war, civil war, imperialist war, and have been surrounded by them all. There is even the war between the worker and the scholar, and Peter faced the reality of that. He spoke of the treason of the intellectuals and also of the fault of the worker who permitted his work to be treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.

The impact Peter made on us all, from one end of the country to the other, so that houses of hospitality and farms were undertaken from coast to coast, was because he personally lived a life of poverty and work. He knew the skid rows of the country. He never asked anything for himself. His speech was “yea, yea,” and “nay, nay.” He was a great indoctrinator, a great agitator. He believed in “a theory of revolution” and advocated much study. “The evil is so deep seated,” he said, “that of course much of the time will be given up to an immediate practice of the works of mercy.” But he believed too, in constantly trying to create order out of chaos. “To be a social missionary,” he said in one of his essays, “requires social mindedness, historical mindedness and practical idealism.”

Another world is closer than you think

Above is a portion of the Foundation for Intentional Communities’ map of communes, eco-villages, cohousing, etc. around the world. These are communities who are building a life outside of capitalism, based on cooperation, equity, and justice, rather than competition and endless growth. There may be one or more in the city you live in

If you find yourself unable to swallow the idea of going back to “normal,” here’s somewhere to turn. Many of these communities are looking for new members or trying to expand. You can join them

There is another way to live. There is hope

Mutual aid can be an effective tool for laying the foundations of more sustainable long-term economic and political structures, but it has to come first. Just voting for your preferred candidate in isolation isn't the ticket, you need to organize with your community and meet your neighbors where they're at (inasmuch as it is safe to if you are a minority, to be clear).

And who helped me with that? Not people calling for some nebulous revolution. Not people telling me that the system was useless. Not people preaching at me to grow my own food. It was a church food bank partially funded by the state of Texas that some southern hippies donated a bunch of Whole Foods nonsense to.

And you know what? I’m sick and tired of defeatism. What can we get done right now, huh? Are you gonna accept something a bit better to help people right now or are you waiting for your perfect utopia to come to you?

It's online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.

everyone SHOULD make a zine too, you will feel so good about it 🫶🏼 it's about putting the power of production into the hands of the people! also you don't have to sell it or anything, you can just make one for yourself or trade/give some to friends!

i really love julia grofrer's guide to analogue self publishing aka making zines on 8.5x11 paper

and jaydragon/jdragsky's thread on staple's self serve print centres (if you're area does not have a local print shop, they probably have a staples or fedex print centre)

if you can't draw, here is twitter thread for public domain art and also a mini summary of when thing enter creative commons (generally 70 years after artist death in the US and CAD)

i also have a DIY zine page on my art blog that i am dedicated to updating as i find more resources! (not accessible through tumblr mobile app, mobile friendly, just open the link in a browser)

Practical Organising

“Only the Organised Survive”: A Rebel Worker Handbook

Direct Action in Industry by the Direct Action Movement

Weakening the Dam by the Twin Cities branch of the IWW

How to Hold a Good Meeting and Rusty’s Rules of Order by the Industrial Workers of the World

Community Control of the Poor community

A Practical Guide to Anarchist Organisation – Compiled by Andrew Flood

How to Fire Your Boss: A Workers Guide to Direct Action

The Bosses Need Us… We Don’t Need Them: Common Sense Reasons for Worker Self-Management

Organising in the Workplace

Organising Communities by Tom Knoche

Anarchist Agitation & Community Building by Ronald A. Young