Tag: Communism

I Don’t Believe In Markets, I Don’t Believe In Exchange

One of the reasons I distrust systems where people doing “valuable” work get paid more (even under a supposedly socialist system) is that there are so many types of unpaid, unacknowledged forms of labor done by oppressed people that are vital to the functioning of society but are rarely if ever really acknowledged as valuable and like some of these are forms of labor some or many of us are cool with providing, but we just want them to be acknowledged as valuable skills that not everyone has, and like I just don’t trust society to start acknowledging them because we have a “socialist” system.

Like emotional labor, domestic labor, aesthetic and logistical labor to just make things “nice”, being the ones who think of shit like “oh people will want the stiffer paper plates for the sloppy joes” or whatever, like it doesn’t seem that necessary until you try to run anything without someone thinking about that shit and then your event and space is a mess and no one wants to be there or be involved.
The nice little touches, feminized stuff, aesthetic stuff, supposedly impractical shit about making spaces and experiences just a little more pleasant actually makes a world of difference.

Feminized labor is like the User Experience department of the entire world and you better fucking respect the UE department, but also like I think there are so many tiny little things we’ve never thought of as “real labor” that I don’t trust anyone to catch every little act that needs to be compensated and so you’ll still have the valorized fields getting paid extra and those of us who are just quietly expected to get the coffee dealing with everyone’s shit.

My May Day Speech

May Day became a labor holiday in 1886, when police opened fire on a peaceful picket line during a general strike for the 8 hour day. It became a labor holiday in memorial to the four anarchist labor leaders who were hung for their participation, for the one who killed himself with a dynamite blasting cap, for the countless more who spent years in prison all so that workers across the world would not have to sacrifice seeing their families in order to feed them.

On this day we commemorate all our martyrs, the lives and freedom lost in pursuit of a world free from exploitation and oppression, of a world where a worker’s value is more than merely what they produce, where humanity is valued more than productivity and where labor is entitled to all it creates.

But we are here 130 years after the Haymarket riots, not to commemorate a long dead past but to celebrate a living tradition of active resistance against the sovereignty of capital.

I am, as I believe many of us are, sick to death of passivity in the face of the tyranny of the wealthy few. I am not a student radical at a posh university looking towards a future in the democratic party or a cushy job managing an NGO. My politics will not soften with graduation. I am a highschool dropout, I am a sex worker. I am a rank and file union member. I am a simple woman and I am here with a simple message, it is time for us to organize and to fight back.

We are past the point where we can make nice with the powerful, as every right and protection won by the last great wave of the labor movement crumbles as a sand dune into the sea, we must admit that no election, no mild mannered wheedling, no woowoo good vibes bullshit will save us from the dire future we face. However in the face of these deteriorating conditions, a spark of hope remains, and that hope is the same hope that our predecessors knew in 1886. Working class rank and file organization is, as it always has been, our only hope and direct action our only possible weapon against the capitalist class who would grind us into dust if it would increase their margin of profit by a dime. So I ask you, fellow workers, to unite with me to kill what is killing us, not at some distant future “proper historical moment” but in the here and now.

Thank you.

Dear leftist dudes:

If it’ s a compliment you wouldn’t give to one of your dude comrades, then it’s a compliment you probably shouldn’t give to your lady comrades (or comrades of other genders)

In fact maybe just don’t comment on your lady comrades appearances unless you’re really close and know each other well.

Class Is Different From All Other Axes Of Oppression

Class is a material difference based on a social relation, and to abolish the social relation one must abolish the material difference.

All other axes of oppression are social relations based on (often vague and always arbitrary) material differences.  One can leave the material difference alone when abolishing these (e.g. you don’t need to abolish people having different skin tones to abolish to social relation of race)

Which I think is why you can have like men who are genuinely committed to anti-sexism and can be trusted, but no bourgeois is a true comrade.  This is also why international working class sympathy and solidarity is crucial (with the most privileged members of the working class needing to be the ones who aren’t shitty before they can expect help from the rest of us)