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wolven91 · 1 year

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The Anarchist Baker

Ross sighed dramatically as he looked around at his robbed bakery, his hands on his hips and a resigned smile across his face. A chair or two had been overturned, but it was the counter that had received the brunt of the attention. Nothing was broken however, and the door was still on its hinges, so he had that going for him. Which was nice.

As the man walked towards the counter, he reached down to pick up an empty muffin wrapper between two fingers that had been left on the ground. The crumbs tumbled out of it, but aside from that; crumbs everywhere, nothing edible remained. He moved around to behind the counter and gently tugged at the old-style cash register drawer. It didn't budge.

Still secure. There was nothing inside it, but not everyone knew that. The 'thieves' had gone for the baked goods, just like last time.

The human gave a nod and fired up the ovens.

A few hours later his tasks in the kitchen were done with foodstuffs on their way to being delicious. Using a mental checklist, Ross just had to return the front area back to having some semblance of tidy and he'd be ready for customers. The glass cupboards were all open and the shelves were bare with only the lace doilies that usually were found beneath his confections remaining.

Walking through the archway from the kitchen to the counter, he found a ursidain already sweeping the floor with his oversized broom. He recognised the brown fur and missing ear section instantly.

"Ah, you don't have to do that Mary." Ross pointed out with a smile, already picking up a smaller hand brush to clean out the counter cupboards of leftover crumbs. 'Mary' wasn't the ursidain's name, but Ross couldn't pronounce her name correctly, so it became Mary as it was close to how the first half of her name sounded. She'd never corrected him and had never said it bothered her.

"Nonsense, I knew it was too early, but you know how I can't sleep in." She replied with a large grin as she got at the edge of the counter with the bristles.

It was true, the great big brown bear-like alien was usually his first customer, often chatting with him while he set up. He liked her company; it distracted him from his usual jobs and meant he was left alone by the rougher occupants of the station. Mary had her own rumours that stalked her, but she didn't care about them and had merely ignored Ross when he had asked about them.

The station that he had opened his bakery on was not a popular destination due to the ugly poisoned planet below its orbit, which meant that whilst most ursidain were pleasant to be around, there were some that weren't as friendly. Especially not in this backwater section of ursidain space. Still, it meant Ross could hide from pirates and was given leave to follow his dream of a bakery.

"They 'robbed' you again?" Mary asked, smiling down at him as she rested her chin on the top of the handle. The ursidain stared at him with a warm hearty but knowing smile.

Ross tried to resist the urge to smirk back and turned away. Rattling the dustpan into the bin. He tried to speak calmly, to not give anything away.

"Yeah, I think I forgot to lock the door again. All the food that I was going to have to throw away this morning... Well... it's all been eaten." He gave his resigned smile again and a shrug back at Mary, although he never met her eyes. "I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on.!"

Mary grabbed the broom and lent it against a far wall in a corner where it usually lived before plodding over to the counter with rumbling ursidain footsteps where Ross was finishing up and reading the trays for the confectioneries once they were done in the next few minutes. She leant against the counter and rested her huge head in one of her dinner plate sized paw as she watched him closely. She squinted at him.

He flicked his eyes to her's then back to his work. The rumours might say she had never cracked under law enforcement pressure, but Ross wasn't that skilled.

"What?" He asked, 'innocently'.

"You're good people Ross." Mary declared.

"Not a clue what you're on about."

He retreated into the kitchen, but Mary could still see and talk to him through the serving hatch. He was doing busy work, avoiding her and the implications of his third 'robbery'.

"Those kids get food from the station, but your stuff is the best thing they're going to get and put some weight on them too." She pointed out. Seemingly knowing that it was the crowd of kids that had done the robbing of his store.

Ross didn't reply as he brought the hot freshly baked goods out to the front between two oven mitt clad hands. The ursidain's mouth began to water at the smell of hot sugar.

"I don't have a clue what you're on about." He assured her, as he gingerly popped the new items onto the shelves.

The orphans that inhabited the station weren't bad kids, they were just left without much guidance. Sure, at first, they might have graffitied Ross's shop, but the one time that happened, the following day a gang of short alien teddy bears turned up, asked Ross for a bucket with water and soap and proceeded to scrub the paint off his shop front. He'd 'paid' them in sandwiches.

The fact that each time he had a surplus of baked goods his door ended up unlocked, meaning that the following morning, his shop was 'robbed'. As such, he couldn't be accused of giving food away nor selling out of date products either. The rather heavy-handed law enforcement of the station had made that clear to him.

He wasn't allowed to give food away. The rules of the station were designed to funnel the hungry to certain 'careers'. A hungry young ursidain would agree to anything, but one that survived until they reached the right age could do whatever they wanted.

So, Ross became an anarchist baker. And Mary had started showing up shortly afterwards. It felt as if she was checking up on the smaller human, his size could leave him vulnerable to intimidation and yet he'd received no visits from anyone untoward. Any time someone serious showed up, Mary had appeared next to the counter and whilst it was always for a fresh cup of something hot, Mary had always eyed the newcomer until they either sat down or left.

Ross glanced at Mary as he finished up loading up his shelves. He wasn't sure if he could see her being one of the 'dangerous' ones, but with her being so huge, he at least wouldn't deliberately get on her wrong side. She was currently eyeing either him or his pastries hungrily. At least he wasn't a pastry.

Still, if it kept the kids out of trouble and our of being exploited, the human didn't mind baking more than what was needed.

#conservationverse #cuddleverse #haso #hfy #humans are space orcs #human #furry #human x furry #ursidain #bear

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mintakablue · 1 year

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cool details i noticed + things i loved in across the spiderverse

spoilers ahead!

i think the stylization of the different spiders was even more distinct in this movie than the last one! i like that when the camera is focused on certain characters, you get their aesthetic “bleed” into the world (e.g. gwen’s painterly strokes in her silhouette bleeding outwards, miles and his family having chromatic aberrations in theirs, manny’s chunkier outline, etc.)

i LOVE that the spot is miles’ nemesis for a couple different reasons. he aesthetically opposes how colorful miles’ world is, he is a “villain of the week” that peter parker originally faces off against rather than miles, the major inversion he gets (becoming black with white spots) kind of feeds into the underlying theme of asking who the good guys are--especially when we learn that miles would have been prowler in earth-42! obviously also the fact that he and miles are both anomalies is great. i also think it’s good meta humor to have made the bagel guy become the spot.

there’s also a bagel billboard above the spot’s apartment. in some ways very fortuitous that everything everywhere all at once related bagels to the multiverse.

the stylization of three side characters really stuck out to me--pavitr, ben reilly, and of course, hobie! i love pavitr and mumbattan, i think it was a good choice for the trailer and stylistically a really strong and complementary style to bridge miles’ transition into this aspect of the spiderverse. ben reilly’s stylization i love because it evokes the mobile spiderverse game that introduced a lot of people to some of the more obscure spiders. and DUH i love hobie’s style, you can really tell that they incorporated tons of actual britpunk influences in there. also let me not forget margo kess! she’s so cute in this i genuinely like that she’s a VR spider. i hope to god they make jokes about her being on the web. please.

on that note i do like that the prop design also retains obvious notes of which things belong to which spiders! hobie’s is obvious, but you also see it with gwen’s items. also i like that each spider has a different way of swinging through the air that’s more obvious in this one! gwen and pavitr both have an dancerlike quality to them, hobie’s is a little more erratic (anarchist), and miles of course is still figuring out how to nail some of those more tight swings, but he’s way cooler with being in freefall than any of the other spiders. also miguel using his claws instead of swinging and jess using her motorcycle were very cool! lots of aerial play in this one that i’m excited to watch again and follow the eyetrace for.

good moments with miles and his family! i almost always hate the moody teenager plot because it’s like. you don’t see why they even Should care about their family or the family is so overbearing you start just siding with the teenager, but this movie struck a really good balance there for me. also i just really really like that there are scenes where miles and his mom just speak spanish with each other :’) the rooftop party was so real to me. i am not Latine or live in ny, but i am Filipino and i have been at one million parties like that with my family. and those pink cake boxes from a small bakery that your parents like is iconic.

i genuinely enjoyed the commentary on faking the struggle to get into school LMFAO i think that’s very real for a subset of poc, but especially more affluent Black and Latine people.

OH YEAH miles cracks a joke about ATM machines and then pavitr (my king) cracks the same kind of joke about chai tea and naan bread. a bit of an old joke but hey the movie has been in production for 2.5 years and i do think it serves to highlight the way that spidermen crack the same joke. especially when after in the spiderverse HQ a ton of other spidermen crack the same kinds of jokes about spotting The Spot. across the spiderverse, spidermen are the same

pointing spiderman meme is terribly funny i will stand by that forever

more funny meta commentary about donald glover being people’s pick for miles’ voice and not becoming spiderman, so he’s the prowler--in the same way that miles, had he not become spiderman, would have been the prowler. more obvious is his appearance in mcu spiderman, but i still think it’s fun foreshadowing!

on foreshadowing, i think this movie does a great job of laying out a lot of those bits of information. starting off with highlighting earth-42 and making sure you know that sticks in your mind (and it’s also impossible to choose the number 42 and not evoke the cultural memory of hitchhiker’s guide lol), having the spot talk about how the spider came from a different earth, getting another glimpse at it, seeing miles’ earth number right in the splash screen, saying that the big spider device sends you back to your universe via DNA analysis + margo seeing the big EARTH-42 instead of earth-1610 on the screen. and then even in earth-42, the color palette is really different from 1610! 1610′s opposing color for miles is like a deep blue color (opposing his red suit accent), so 42 having a primarily green palette opposes the prowler’s purple accent!

not to mention that when miles pulls into his bedroom, you can see that he doesn’t have a drawing desk up (or his sashimi/supreme poster). i think it’s a sad little detail that the movie seems to imply that his mom didn’t notice a major change in his appearance (having a short afro instead of braids) is because she works so much she doesn’t see him that often :(

fun sound design in this movie! in the scene where miles-42 gets revealed as the prowler, you actually hear that growling sound effect first when miles-1610 gets tackled and then again twice: once we see miles-42 in shadow as the prowler, then when he says his name!

in fact there’s actually tons of fun sound design details! miguel gets a futuristic sting, gwen has like a full on leitmotif, miles has a short leitmotif which i believe is part of “what’s up danger” (i would need to go back and watch the movie a second time to really pick up on it), pavitr and hobie have their own musical instruments associated with them... and even the spider from earth-42 has its own sting! i might have misheard, but i actually also think hobie and pavitr’s “thwip” sounds are a little different than the standard ones!

i love when those little notes show up in the lower corner. very comic book! a lot of those details make me smile, i really feel like they cared a lot about evoking some of the writing styles of different spiderverse writers there

aesthetically and tangentially related, i like the sketchiness of some of the characters! it’s most obvious in the spot and the alternate universe vulture, but it’s such a neat visual trick. it also serves to give the spot an almost “unfinished” look while also giving him better volume. very excited to see the behind the scenes from the riggers/animators/3d artists

the idea of canon events is such a good one for spiderverse--i think it’s great! one of them that i’m almost certain they’ll bring up in the next one is that. um. gwen usually dies when spiderman is trying to save her. straight up i actually thought they were going to pull that one instead of officer singh dying after gayatri is falling! after all spider-gwen almost got shot, plus miles straight up almost drops her after he glitches out in mumbattan. sony please don’t break spider-gwen’s neck...

genuinely loved all the calls to different spidermen too! there’s like one really prominent shot of paperbag spiderman that made me and my sibling giggle. here’s how the fantastic four can still win

in that vein, i have at least Some prediction of what the spiderverse resolution will be? i can imagine that because miles is an anomaly, his canon event breaking might actually be permissible to some degree... perhaps only if he returns to his own earth? truly truly i cannot IMAGINE that they would make us watch his dad straight up die onscreen because like MAN we already watched his uncle die. that would be way too devastating... but obviously miles-42 and miles-1610 have a lot to say to each other about watching an older man in your life that you love die. i’m a little back and forth about the idea that miles was “destined” in some way to become the prowler in an alternate universe but i’m gonna put my faith in the team to not make it weird ykwim. seeing as they already slipped in commentary about the fact that like Yeah it’s partially because miles’ family has money in 1610 that he is even able to “stay out of trouble” i think there will be an interesting conversation to be had about class dynamics between miles-42 and miles-1610! i am like wildly excited for the next one, i have a lot of hope that it will be even more gorgeous than this movie was and will have the same depth of writing/foreshadowing!

lastly and i know i’m just saying this because to ME spiderman is a very trans character. but peter parker from spider-gwen’s universe was just taking his testosterone okay. and spider-gwen having that painterly pink blue and white as she was saying essentially “i want to live my life fully in my identity” was so... happy pride!!!

#spiderverse #across the spiderverse #spider man: across the spider verse #LOOONG post i have even more thoughts but i tried to condense them here if you can believe it

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dailyanarchistposts · 6 months

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Chapter 6. Revolution

How will a common, anti-authoritarian, ecological ethos come about?

In the long run, an anarchist society will work best if it develops a culture that values cooperation, autonomy, and environmentally sustainable behaviors. The way a society is structured can encourage or hinder such an ethos, just as our current society rewards competitive, oppressive, and polluting behaviors and discourages anti-authoritarian ones. In a non-coercive society, social structures cannot force people to live in accordance with anarchist values: people have to want to do so, and personally identify with such values themselves. Fortunately, the act of rebelling against an authoritarian, capitalist culture can itself popularize anti-authoritarian values.

Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber writes of the Tsimihety in Madagascar, who rebelled and removed themselves from the Maroansetra dynasty. Even over a century after this rebellion, the Tsimihety “are marked by resolutely egalitarian social organization and practices,” to such an extent that it defines their very identity.[107] The new name the tribe chose for themselves, Tsimihety, means “those who do not cut their hair,” in reference to the custom of subjects of the Maroansetra to cut their hair as a sign of submission.

During the Spanish Civil War in 1936, a number of cultural changes took place. In the countryside, politically active youth played a leading role in challenging conservative customs and pushing their villages to adopt an anarchist-communist culture. The position of women in particular began to change rapidly. Women organized the anarcha-feminist group Mujeres Libres to help accomplish the goals of the revolution and ensure that women enjoyed a place at the forefront of the struggle. Women fought on the front, literally, joining the anarchist militias to hold the line against the fascists. Mujeres Libres organized firearms courses, schools, childcare programs, and women-only social groups to help women gain the skills they needed to participate in the struggle as equals. Members of Mujeres Libres argued with their male comrades, emphasizing the importance of women’s liberation as a necessary part of any revolutionary struggle. It was not a minor concern to be dealt with after the defeat of fascism.

In the cities of Catalunya, social restrictions on women lessened considerably. For the first time in Spain, women could walk alone on the streets without a chaperon — not to mention that many were walking down the streets wearing militia uniforms and carrying guns. Anarchist women like Lucia Sanchez Saornil wrote about how empowering it was for them to change the culture that had oppressed them. Male observers from George Orwell to Franz Borkenau remarked on the changed conditions of women in Spain.

In the uprising spurred by Argentina’s economic collapse in 2001, participation in the popular assemblies helped formerly apolitical people build an anti-authoritarian culture. Another form of popular resistance, the piquetero movement, exerted a great influence on the lives and culture of many of the unemployed. The piqueteros were unemployed people who masked their faces and set up pickets, shutting down the highways to cut off trade and gain leverage for demands such as food from supermarkets or unemployment subsidies. Aside from these activities, the piqueteros also self-organized an anti-capitalist economy, including schools, media groups, clothing give-away shops, bakeries, clinics, and groups to fix up people’s houses and build infrastructure such as sewage systems. Many of the piquetero groups were affiliated with the Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD). Their movement had already developed considerably before the December 2001 run on the banks by the middle class, and in many ways they were at the forefront of the struggle in Argentina.

Two Indymedia volunteers who traveled to Argentina from the US and Britain to document the rebellion for English-speaking countries spent time with a group in the Admiralte Brown neighborhood south of Buenos Aires.[108] The members of this particular group, similar to many of the piqueteros in the MTD, had been driven to activism only recently, by unemployment. But their motivations were not purely material; for example, they frequently held cultural and educational events. The two Indymedia activists recounted a workshop held in an MTD bakery, in which the collective members discussed the differences between a capitalist bakery and an anti-capitalist one. “We produce for our neighbors... and to teach ourselves to do new things, to learn to produce for ourselves,” explained a woman in her fifties. A young man in an Iron Maiden sweatshirt added, “We produce so that everyone can live better.”[109] The same group operated a Ropero, a clothing shop, and many other projects as well. It was run by volunteers and depended on donations, even though everyone in the area was poor. Despite these challenges, it opened twice a month to give out free clothes to people who could not afford them. The rest of the time, the volunteers mended old clothes that were dropped off. In the absence of the motives that drive the capitalist system, the people there clearly took pride in their work, showing off to visitors how well restored the clothes were despite the scarcity of materials.

The shared ideal among the piqueteros included a firm commitment to non-hierarchical forms of organization and participation by all members, young and old, in their discussions and activities. Women were often the first to go to the picket lines, and came to hold considerable power within the piquetero movement. Within these autonomous organizations, many women gained the opportunity to participate in large-scale decision-making or take on other male-dominated roles for the first time in their lives. At the particular bakery holding the workshop described above, a young woman was in charge of security, another traditionally male role.

Throughout the 2006 rebellion in Oaxaca, as well as before and after, indigenous culture was a wellspring of resistance. However much they exemplified cooperative, anti-authoritarian, and ecologically sustainable behaviors before colonialism, indigenous peoples in the Oaxacan resistance came to cherish and emphasize the parts of their culture that contrasted with the system that values property over life, encourages competition and domination, and exploits the environment into extinction. Their ability to practice an anti-authoritarian and ecological culture — working together in a spirit of solidarity and nourishing themselves on the small amount of land they had — increased the potency of their resistance, and thus their very chances for survival. Thus, resistance to capitalism and the state is both a means of protecting indigenous cultures and a crucible that forges a stronger anti-authoritarian ethos. Many of the people who participated in the rebellion were not themselves indigenous, but they were influenced and inspired by indigenous culture. Thus, the act of rebellion itself allowed people to choose social values and shape their own identities.

Before the rebellion, the impoverished state of Oaxaca sold its indigenous culture as a commodity to entice tourists and bring in business. The Guelaguetza, an important gathering in native cultures, had become a state-sponsored tourist attraction. But during the rebellion in 2006, the state and tourism were pushed to the margins, and in July the social movements organized a People’s Guelaguetza — not to sell to the tourists, but to enjoy for themselves. After successfully blocking the commercial event set up for the tourists, hundreds of students from Oaxaca City and people from villages across the state began organizing their own event. They made costumes and practiced dances and songs from all seven regions of Oaxaca. In the end the People’s Guelaguetza was a huge success. Everyone attended for free and the venue was packed. There were more traditional dances than there had ever been in the commerical Guelaguetzas. While the event had previously been performed for money, most of which was pocketed by the sponsors and government, it became a day of sharing, as it had been traditionally. At the heart of an anti-capitalist, largely indigenous movement was a festival, a celebration of the values that hold the movement together, and a revival of indigenous cultures that were being wiped out or pared down to a marketable exoticism.

While the Guelaguetza was reclaimed as a part of indigenous culture in support of an anti-capitalist rebellion and the liberatory society it sought to create, another traditional celebration was modified to serve the movement. In 2006 the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday that syncretizes indigenous spirituality with Catholic influences, coincided with a violent government assault upon the movement. Just before the 1st of November, police forces and paramilitaries killed about a dozen people, so the dead were fresh in everybody’s minds. Graffiti artists had long played an important role in the movement in Oaxaca, covering the walls with messages well before the people had seized radio stations to give themselves a voice. When the Day of the Dead and the heavy government repression coincided in November, these artists took the lead in adapting the holiday to commemorate the dead and honor the struggle. They covered the streets with the traditional tapetes — colorful murals made from sand, chalk, and flowers — but this time the tapetes contained messages of resistance and hope, or portrayed the names and faces of all the people killed. People also made skeleton sculptures and altars for each person murdered by police and paramilitaries. One graffiti artist, Yescka, described it:

This year on Day of the Dead, the traditional festivities took on new meaning. The intimidating presence of the Federal Police troops filled the air — an atmosphere of sadness and chaos hung over the city. But we managed to overcome our fear and our loss. People wanted to carry on with the traditions, not only for their ancestors, but also for all those fallen in the movement in recent months. Although it sounds a bit contradictory, Day of the Dead is when there is the most life in Oaxaca. There are carnivals, and people dress up in different costumes, such as devils or skeletons full of colorful feathers. They parade through the streets dancing or creating theatrical performances of comical daily happenings — this year with a socio-political twist. We didn’t let the Federal Police forces standing guard stop our celebrating or our mourning. The whole tourist pathway in the center of the city, Macedonio Alcalá, was full of life. Protest music was playing and people danced and watched the creation of our famous sand murals, called tapetes. We dedicated them to all the people killed in the movement. Anyone who wanted to could join in to add to the mosaics. The mixed colors expressed our mixed feelings of repression and freedom; joy and sadness; hatred and love. The artwork and the chants permeating the street created an unforgettable scene that ultimately transformed our sadness into joy.[110]

While artwork and traditional festivals played a role in the development of a liberating culture, the struggle itself, specifically the barricades, provided a meeting point where alienation was shed and neighbors built new relationships. One woman described her experience:

You found all kinds of people at the barricades. A lot of people tell us they met at the barricades. Even though they were neighbors, they didn’t know each other before. They’ll even say, “I didn’t ever talk to my neighbor before because I didn’t think I liked him, but now that we’re at the barricade together, he’s a compañero.” So the barricades weren’t just traffic barriers, but became spaces where neighbors could chat and communities could meet. Barricades became a way that communities empowered themselves.[111]

Throughout Europe, dozens of autonomous villages have built a life outside capitalism. Especially in Italy, France, and Spain, these villages exist outside regular state control and with little influence from the logic of the market. Sometimes buying cheap land, often squatting abandoned villages, these new autonomous communities create the infrastructure for a libertarian, communal life and the culture that goes with it. These new cultures replace the nuclear family with a much broader, more inclusive and flexible family united by affinity and consensual love rather than bloodlines and proprietary love; they destroy the division of labor by gender, weaken age segregation and hierarchy, and create communal and ecological values and relationships.

A particularly remarkable network of autonomous villages can be found in the mountains around Itoiz, in Navarra, part of the Basque country. The oldest of these, Lakabe, has been occupied for twenty-eight years as of this writing, and is home to about thirty people. A project of love, Lakabe challenges and changes the traditional aesthetic of rural poverty. The floors and walkways are beautiful mosaics of stone and tile, and the newest house to be built there could pass for the luxury retreat of a millionaire — except that it was built by the people who live there, and designed in harmony with the environment, to catch the sun and keep out the cold. Lakabe houses a communal bakery and a communal dining room, which on a normal day hosts delicious feasts that the whole village eats together.

Another of the villages around Itoiz, Aritzkuren, exemplifies a certain aesthetic that represents another idea of history. Thirteen years ago, a handful of people occupied the village, which had been abandoned for over fifty years before that. Since then, they have constructed all their dwellings within the ruins of the old hamlet. Half of Aritzkuren is still ruins, slowly decomposing into forest on a mountainside an hour’s drive from the nearest paved road. The ruins are a reminder of the origin and foundation of the living parts of the village, and they serve as storage spaces for building materials that will be used to renovate the rest of it. The new sense of history that lives amidst these piled stones is neither linear nor amnesiac, but organic — in that the past is the shell of the present and compost of the future. It is also post-capitalist, suggesting a return to the land and the creation of a new society in the ruins of the old.

Uli, another of the abandoned and reoccupied villages, disbanded after more than a decade of autonomous existence; but the success rate of all the villages together is encouraging, with five out of six still going strong. The “failure” of Uli demonstrates another advantage of anarchist organizing: a collective can dissolve itself rather than remaining stuck in a mistake forever or suppressing individual needs to perpetuate an artificial collectivity. These villages in their prior incarnations, a century earlier, were only dissolved by the economic catastrophe of industrializing capitalism. Otherwise, their members were held fast by a conservative kinship system rigidly enforced by the church.

At Aritzkuren as at other autonomous villages throughout the world, life is both laborious and relaxed. The residents must build all their infrastructure themselves and create most of the things they need with their own hands, so there is plenty of work to do. People get up in the morning and work on their own projects, or else everyone comes together for a collective effort decided on at a previous meeting. Following a huge lunch which one person cooks for everyone on a rotating basis, people have the whole afternoon to relax, read, go into town, work in the garden, or fix up a building. Some days, nobody works at all; if one person decides to skip a day, there are no recriminations, because there are meetings at which to make sure responsibilities are evenly distributed. In this context, characterized by a close connection to nature, inviolable individual freedom mixed with a collective social life, and the blurring of work and pleasure, the people of Aritzkuren have created not only a new lifestyle, but an ethos compatible with living in an anarchist society.

The school they are building at Aritzkuren is a powerful symbol of this. A number of children live at Aritzkuren and the other villages. Their environment already provides a wealth of learning opportunities, but there is much desire for a formal educational setting and a chance to employ alternative teaching methods in a project that can be accessible to children from the entire region.

As the school indicates, the autonomous villages violate the stereotype of the hippy commune as an escapist attempt to create a utopia in microcosm rather than change the existing world. Despite their physical isolation, these villages are very much involved in the outside world and in social movements struggling to change it. The residents share their experiences in creating sustainable collectives with other anarchist and autonomous collectives throughout the country. Many people divide each year between the village and the city, balancing a more utopian existence with participation in ongoing struggles. The villages also serve as a refuge for activists taking a break from stressful city life. Many of the villages carry on projects that keep them involved in social struggles; for example, one autonomous village in Italy provides a peaceful setting for a group that translates radical texts. Likewise, the villages around Itoiz have been a major part of the twenty-year-running resistance to the hydroelectric dam there.

For about ten years, starting with the occupation of Rala, near Aritzkuren, the autonomous villages around Itoiz have created a network, sharing tools, materials, expertise, food, seeds, and other resources. They meet periodically to discuss mutual aid and common projects; residents of one village will drop by another to eat lunch, talk, and, perhaps, deliver a dozen extra raspberry plants. They also participate in annual gatherings that bring together autonomous communities from all over Spain to discuss the process of building sustainable collectives. At these, each group presents a problem it has been unable to resolve, such as sharing responsibilities or putting consensus decisions into practice. Then they each offer to mediate while another collective discusses their problem — preferably a problem the mediating group has experience resolving.

The Itoiz villages are remarkable, but not unique. To the east, in the Pyrenees of Aragon, the mountains of La Solana contain nearly twenty abandoned villages. As of this writing, seven of these villages have been reoccupied. The network between them is still in an informal stage, and many of the villages are only inhabited by a few people at an early point in the process of renovating them; but more people are moving there every year, and before long it could be a larger constellation of rural occupations than Itoiz. Many in these villages maintain strong connections to the squatters’ movement in Barcelona, and there is an open invitation for people to visit, help out, or even move there.

Under certain circumstances, a community can also gain the autonomy it needs to build a new form of living by buying land, rather than occupying it; however though it may be more secure this method creates added pressures to produce and make money in order to survive, but these pressures are not fatal. Longo Maï is a network of cooperatives and autonomous villages that started in Basel, Switzerland, in 1972. The name is Provençal for “long may it last,” and so far they have lived up to their eponym. The first Longo Maï cooperative are the farms Le Pigeonnier, Grange neuve, and St. Hippolyte, located near the village Limans in Provence. Here 80 adults and many children live on 300 hectares of land, where they practice agriculture, gardening, and shepherding. They keep 400 sheep, poultry, rabbits, bees, and draft horses; they run a garage, a metal workshop, a carpentry workshop, and a textile studio. The alternative station Radio Zinzine has been broadcasting from the cooperative for 25 years, as of 2007. Hundreds of youth pass through and help out at the cooperative, learning new skills and often gaining their first contact with communal living or non-industrial agriculture and crafting.

Since 1976 Longo Maï has been running a cooperative spinning-mill at Chantemerle, in the French Alps. Using natural dyes and the wool from 10,000 sheep, mostly local, they make sweaters, shirts, sheets, and cloth for direct sale. The cooperative established the union ATELIER, a network of stock-breeders and wool-workers. The mill produces its own electricity with smallscale hydropower.

Also in France, near Arles, the cooperative Mas de Granier sits on 20 hectares of land. They grow fields of hay and olive trees, on good years producing enough olive oil to provide for other Longo Maï cooperatives as well as themselves. Three hectares are devoted to organic vegetables, delivered weekly to subscribers in the broader community. Some of the vegetables are canned as preserves in the cooperative’s own factory. They also grow grain for bread, pasta, and animal feed.

In the Transkarpaty region of Ukraine, Zeleniy Hai, a small Longo Maï group, started up after the fall of the Soviet Union. Here they have created a language school, a carpentry workshop, a cattle ranch, and a dairy factory. They also have a traditional music group. The Longo Maï network used their resources to help form a cooperative in Costa Rica in 1978 that provided land to 400 landless peasants fleeing the civil war in Nicaragua, allowing them to create a new community and provide for themselves. There are also Longo Maï cooperatives in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, producing wine, building buildings with local, ecological materials, running schools, and more. In the city of Basel they maintain an office building that serves as a coordinating point, an information hub, and a visitors’ center.

The call-out for the cooperative network, drafted in Basel in 1972, reads in part:

What do you expect from us? That we, in order not to be excluded, submit to the injustice and the insane compulsions of this world, without hope or expectations? We refuse to continue this unwinnable battle. We refuse to play a game that has already been lost, a game whose only outcome is our criminalization. This industrial society goes doubtlessly to its own downfall and we don’t want to participate. We prefer to seek a way to build our own lives, to create our own spaces, something for which there is no place within this cynical, capitalist world. We can find enough space in the economically and socially depressed areas, where the youth depart in growing numbers, and only those stay behind who have no other choice. [112]

As capitalist agriculture becomes increasingly incapable of feeding the world in the wake of catastrophes related to climate and pollution, it seems almost inevitable that a large number of people must move back to the land to create sustainable and localized forms of agriculture. At the same time, city dwellers need to cultivate consciousness of where their food and water come from, and one way they can do this is by visiting and helping out in the villages.

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yabagofmilfs · 8 months

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As someone who plans on visiting Pittsburgh hopefully in March, what recommendations do you have for the city? What did you like looking at/going to/eating? 👀

As our resident pittsburghian, you should really ask @rimouskis! She has all the knowledge.

This is my third time here and it’s typically been short trips just for games so I haven’t done a ton, but a few notes:

we’ve stayed in Lawrenceville, Mexican war streets, and now downtown. While the convenience of being downtown has been great because traffic to get to the arena is a nightmare and every single uber/lyft driver will complain about it good naturedly when they pick you up, the other neighborhoods have much more character and it’s easy to walk around and stumble into some cute shops or restaurants. So kind of a trade off depending on what you prefer!

as far as touristy stuff, definitely do the incline (it hasn’t worked out for us yet but it looks awesome). The Heinz history center was great even beyond the sports museum portion.

food:

- La gourmandine. Get the almond croissant.

- Walter’s if you like bbq / southern food

- butterjoint had a great menu and fun drinks

- mediterra is a nice cafe / bakery great for breakfast

- if you like chicken, coop de ville and the eagle were both excellent

- el sabor food truck in lawrenceville has great tacos (I highly do NOT recommend condado for tacos though. It was like cold slop in a tortilla.)

- trace was a cool brewery with a nice patio outside, very chill

- mary’s vine is a library bar with live music (we haven’t gone but highly recommended by some locals)

Other stuff: we’ve spent a lot of time in the white whale bookstore, which is charming and well stocked and has a nice coffee bar inside. We also stumbled into the big idea anarchist bookshop a few blocks down which was very cool and funnels its proceeds into mutual aid.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot! I hope you have fun, Pittsburgh seems like the kind of city where it doesn’t really matter where you end up, you’ll find something to do.

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faebriel · 1 year

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kai faebriel pretty please tell anon number i don’t even know anymore and the audience abt the tangled au thoughts..

okay i wouldn't say i have a perfect list of coherent thoughts happening like i do with some other aus but here are the main points i think. keeping in mind we have magical long haired wilbur and mildly swashbuckling rogue niki.

there's a magical flower in a field somewhere.

the antarctic empire rules over the land with a fist that is unjust only when it is extremely funny. lifetime buddies techno and phil are co-rulers; phil also has his son, wilbur. for the kid of an emperor wilbur is allowed to run around a lot, and he makes a lot of friends - from street urchins to bakers' daughters. stick a pin in that thought

unfortunately, one day pre-teen wilbur gets very sick. distraught, phil orders that the empire is turned upside down to find a cure, and they find it - the flower. it is infused into a tea, which wilbur drinks. his sickness disappears, and his hair turns white-gold.

double unfortunately, this pisses some people off

dream, noted Some Guy of the forest, had been using this magical flower to stay young and exert his power and authority over the forest for almost a century. needless to say, when the flower was taken by the empire, he was pissed. he swears revenge, and when restoring his youth through song doesn't work, he kidnaps wilbur. and teams up with some friends to overthrow the empire (pulled to pieces over the loss of its favourite son) and send the royal family into hiding. oh and he bullies some street urchins which mysteriously disappear and are replaced by a loud fucking chicken in the middle of the forest but like don't worry about it. in the chaos of kidnapping wilbur soot is struck in the head and loses his memories

the relationship between dream and soot is more of a patronage than a parenthood - dream provides protection and manpower while soot provides "strategy" (this started as internal knowledge on the kingdom but now dream just kind of keeps him busy) and of course, magic rejuvenating hair. over the years dream tells soot all sorts of lies about the outside world, and about how they would treat a "cursed" man like him, and soot is mostly more than happy to stay inside, even if something doesn't feel quite right.

and every year he sees a massive show of flame and fireworks from his tower window.

on the other side of the coin - when the empire falls, a young niki loses everything. she loses her parents, her family's bakery, and her home. first she's locked out of the castle, abandoned by her childhood friend, then she's locked out of everything - she ends up fleeing to an orphanage that her letter-friend lives in a kingdom over, carrying a dark, angry bitterness in her small heart that grows as she does. the kids whisper about the anarchist syndicate, remains of the old empire, who name themselves after gods - with a harsh tongue and nothing but memories drenched in perceived betrayal, niki calls herself nemesis.

as an adult, she teams up with fellow orphan and loser jack to generally swashbuckle. they don't trust each other (even if they're both awfully lonely), but they have the same goals. most of the time. like stealing old, relic crowns from decade-dead empires.

nemesis runs into the forest, the manberg guard hot on her tail, and finds a tower. and a man with the longest hair she has ever seen in her life.

soot's life is kind of pathetic. he literally cannot remember the last time he has been outside, his only friend is a chicken he has to hide from dream, he's cursed and would be hated for it if he dared step outside his tower, and everything he could possibly care about exists within four tiny walls. dream has truly managed to convince him that he deserves nothing. but, he's still an opportunist, and he's curious - dream is gone for three days, so if nemesis takes him to investigate the reason for these explosions every year, he'll give her back her dumb tiara. and nemesis does not really trust people as a rule but unfortunately she does silently long for company even though she doesn't realise it (c!niki moment) but also quite frankly wants her satchel back so she agrees.

cue road trip!

this post is already getting so long so here are some miscellaneous thoughts:

i haven't figured out who the snuggly duckling folks are but i know that instead of singing abt money niki is singing about exacting bloody revenge on all people who have hurt her Ever actually

after almost drowning in a mineshaft nemesis reveals that her real name is niki, which throws soot for a loop - he knows that name, which is impossible, but he does. from where? i wrote a bit of this scene actually

they also have a bit of a heart-to-heart afterwards where soot heals niki's hand and manages to wheedle her into talking a little bit more about her history. she had a friend when she was very young, you see, a prince who left her in the fucking dust when times got bad. and she never really got over it, even as the evidence increasingly started to suggest that something worse than abandonment happened to him.

("why don't they recognise each other?" 1. the magical power of aus working when i need them to 2. wilbur's magical dye job also niki's less magical dye job 3. puberty! puberty. has happened to friends of mine. potentially combined with mutual mild faceblindness)

they finally make it to the city and have a wonderful day braiding soot's hair and encouraging people to partake in graffiti and they turn the city upside down until they find someone with old newspapers from the empire (they had to convince them by holding nemesis' wanted poster up to niki's face. even though she had plain blonde hair two dye jobs ago, ugh) and soot does his best to memorise this information while trying not to throw up looking at crude renders of flags belonging to the small territories that cropped up beneath the empire.

betrayal moment so sad, schlatt almost executes niki for being an annoying dormouse, wilbur realises he is wilbur actually and dream has been longcon fucking with him for the last several years, niki gets stabbed and manages to only put together that soot is wilbur about three seconds from dying, she gives him the big chop, fortunately wilbur cries so so hard that his tears are magical too

CHICKEN TOMMY MURDERS DREAM

oh yeah and as it turns out the fireworks/fires are a bit of theatrical terrorism emduo put on in wilbur's name on his birthday every year. after dream dies wilbur and niki manage to track them down to reunite wilbur with his family and also get niki some cool friends :]

there's still some holes here but do you See the vision. do you see these losers sneaking around and reading books and painting with chalk as kingdom dance plays. Do You See Niki Being Harassed By A Chicken

#i dont know if this is danny or wam or just has brother vibes. but ty for the ask nonnie!!#asks #i feel like a tangled au is something that crops up in every fandom. personally this is my third (had a clingyduo one and also inside job).#but i like this one. theyre silly :] and maybe its just hunger games au getting to me but separated childhood friends rainduo is something #that can be so personal #rainduo #aunonnies

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mityenka · 1 year

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How did you get into ML?

hi i'm not sure if i understand your question right, if you're asking what radicalized me it was working in a bakery chain as a student and seeing how the permanent personell got treated by our supervisor (12 hour shifts of which only 8 hours were paid, having to work 13 days in a row when the place was short on staff, trouble finding a job after having to live off unemployment benefits for a few months due to a knee injury, etc). if you want to know why i'm a ml instead of like an anarchist or something idk i just engaged with different works of theory and made an informed decision 👍

#mailbox #pol

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m3rkur3 · 2 years

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in this 5am post i talk about how i feel about the Rusty Quill allegations and (inexplicably) how using an anarchist co-op approach in the industry could maybe possibly potentially have not allowed these issues to happen (from experience!)

honestly please read cuz now i want to start a podcasting co-op and it would be great if others did too.

i really loved tma (until plot>statements cuz i can't really follow the plot that much and i much prefer anthology horror that only hints at a wider plot and this is quite a long tangent actually) so this is kinda disappointing fr.

as someone who works in an anarchist co-op it's interesting to see how business who start out with horizontal leadership & pay devolve into full-on capitalist practices. is this inevitable? can i trust in the process? our bar, for example, works. at least, that's what it looks like to me. we're all paid the same, we all have equal rights within the business, we all have a stake in it, even though we all do very different jobs: bartending, hosting, talent-sourcing, sound-tech...ing. but i guess a massive difference is intent. from the start, the bar had a mission: prove that a business model like ours can work in parallel with capitalist businesses, creating networks of anarchist businesses, federation stuff etc etc, spread the anti-capitalist, if not explicitly anarcho-communist message throughout the city. a local bakery/cafe is also doing just that and they are fricking booming tbqh, it's remarkable.

with rusty quill, it's not a co-op, it's a capitalist business. hence the CEO. could the bar scale to this level and keep its core mission intact? well, i guess another difference is the fact that not only do we not expect to scale in that way, neither are we gonna franchise. it doesn't make sense. our aim would be to help other upcoming co-ops and related create their OWN co-ops, not come under our wing and become a massive co-op. is it possible to create a workers co-op in the podcasting world? pay everyone the same wage but keep that wage a healthy amount above minimum wage? No bosses, just people who do it because even in the hard times its what they WANT to do. Any creative job could be like that under a different system.

underneath this cut i go into a little detail of what i think a rudimentary podcasting co-op would look like and how it solves at least 1 (one) of RQs missteps and honestly i did not expect to talk about this and its 5am so it's a bit of a ramble but tldr; i think its possible and (obvs i'm biased) much preferable. given the time, interested people, and literally any knowledge of podcasting, would try to implement. tldr 2: capitalism sucks and it will kill everything you love if you're not paying attention.

I mean that's what we're trying to do. We are a grassroots music venue in a place that people never consider when they think about the country's culture. and yet we've managed to be a hotspot for people who've heard about us from word-of-mouth whenever our city is mentioned. yes, in general we have shit advertising but what works works lmfao.

so back to RQ: my point is it literally doesn't have to be like that. the music industry, from local venues to big studios, is extremely exploitative and such a scummy example of capitalism at work but WE MANAGED! Against the odds, a blooming spot in a tired, dying town. Can other industries do the same? Can podcasters do the same?

What would be the issue? What are the differences that make it more or less difficult? What issues befell RQ? Mismanagement and lack of communication? In a co-op, would this be fixed? I would venture a tentative "yes", because you no longer rely on a central body to have these discussions. You are the decision maker, as is everyone in the business. If it's "we should raise our pay", everyone else can say "well we want to pay for this studio or that bit of advertising, maybe we shouldn't" or they can say "yes, good idea because we have this surplus and can afford to spend less on this kind of microphone" or whatever. Everyone votes to change an established reality, and if there's a consensus, we go ahead! If it's a query that would affect only YOU and YOUR production, guess what? you need ask NO ONE!

This is just one of the ways in which i see a way out for this industry. Eventually, capitalism will come for every last one of our beautiful, independent podcasts. It's obviously already happening. And then the monopolization of it all into one, formless, Disney blob. Podcasts, one of the last bastions of high-quality, widely accessible art that so many people love and anyone can create, succumbing to the maw of the approaching terror that is the death of creativity at the behest of the invisible hand. This isn't about Rusty Quill anymore, really. I am just advocating for one of my favorite things to wrest itself from its destiny before it becomes nothing. All we'll have are the podcasts that made us think and feel decades ago:(

This became me just telling everyone to form co-ops. Also join the IWW - it's a massive international workers union. kill capitalism before it kills the things you love. do things today that make sure those things can continue being a light tomorrow. honestly, if making a podcasters co-op is viable then pls someone do it, i know nothing about podcasting, i cannot act or make sounds in microphones of high quality, so there's not much i can do on my own really. but if literally more than one person got up to this part then 1) you are a champ and 2) lmk if this is a good idea cuz rn my body is saying yes it is and that i can do anything rn.

i am sorry that this is just a stream of conciousness rambling, again i have been prescribed new adhd medication and accidentally took more than they told me to.

I am doing this instead of my C++ assignment. If anyone can also tell me how to understand operational amplifiers or how to calculate the uncertainty of a standard platinum resistance thermometer that would be fantastic.

xoxo not a girl

#rusty quill #the magnus archives #i have shit to do #uni exams i am shitting myself about #yet here i am #5 am #tma posting #and communism posting #some things will never change #anarchism #communism #how about a bit of both #anarchocommunism #how did i end up putting these things together am i insane #or just high on elvanse #how about a bit of both x2 #tma #the extra meds were not an accident i lied dont try this at home kids i cant sleep and i am shaking

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anarkittyuwuuniverse · 2 years

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Just to prove to the anti-vegan crowd that we're not puritanical: Hi, I'm a vegan, but I sometimes eat animal products. I'm of the opinion that any food that is free is vegan, because the way I see veganism is not "I must keep my body pure of animal products at all costs", it is rather "To avoid perpetuating and contributing to animal exploitation as much as possible".

I'm part of an organization that does food saving in my city, that is we go to bakeries and stores and pick up food they would otherwise throw out. Sometimes I pick up bread from a bakery and end up getting some non-vegan croissants and cheese bread, but I'll still happily eat them, because I didn't pay for them and thus didn't contribute to their production. The same logic applies to dumpster diving. Dumpster diving for meat generally isn't as safe as doing it for vegetables but like, if you're at a restaurant and you see someone didn't finish their chicken? Take it. Imo you're still vegan.

I have a pair of leather boots that I got a long time ago before I knew what veganism was, and I still wear them, because they're still functional, it would be a waste to throw them out and continuing to wear them doesn't really do anything.

And honestly, if you have health conditions that prevent you from eating plant-based and dumpster diving and stealing isn't viable for you, you can still be vegan, even if you have to eat meat. Because again, it is not about keeping our bodies pure of animal products, abstaining can be a great way to protest and also get used to living in a more plant-based world, but it isn't the end all be all of veganism. You can also do activism, consciousness raising, animal advocacy - and if you're anarchistically inclined - sabotage. I say this to my fellow vegans as well, because I think this focus on purity and moralizing is hurting our movement more than it's helping. And I get it, I really do, it is really frustrating to be aware of how much pain and suffering goes into getting animal products on people's plates and see how little the average person cares, but guilt is not a good motivator, and simply living in this global capitalist hellscape means that we're all contributing to oppression in some way. People just need to do the best they can, and we need to help them and encourage them to make those choices.

#veganism #animal liberation #anti vegans #freeganism

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anarchistbakery-vtubers · 2 years

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Intro cards made for transfem anarchist Cupcake "Isareal" Rebel and the Wanderin femboy Cutiepie Vox are done. We're excited for our debut (or Redebut in my case) January~ (Date is still tba)

#vtuber uprising #indie vtuber #vtuber model #vtuber debut #envtuber #lgbtuber #trans vtuber #femboy #Cupcake Rebel #Cutiepie Vox #Anarchist Bakery #did system

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mj-106 · 28 days

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Hi, my name’s MJ (Any pronouns). 22, Cancer/Virgo/Cancer, Pansexual.

How I’d describe myself in pop culture (Aug, 2024):

Music champagne problems • Taylor Swift / Cool With You • NewJeans / Good Luck, Babe! • Chappell Roan / I Love You, I’m Sorry • Gracie Abrams / 360 • Charlie XCX / Normal Girl • SZA / Linger • The Cranberries / La La Lost You • NIKI / obsessed • Olivia Rodrigo

Shows Good Omens / Emily in Paris / Percy Jackson (the entire franchise) / Bridgerton / Stranger Things / Wednesday / Marvel Disney+ Shows

Sitcoms Friends / How I Met Your Mother / The Office / Parks & Rec / Modern Family / Brooklyn 99 / The Good Place / New Girl / Abbott Elementary / Kim’s Convenience / Superstore / Schitt’s Creek

Movies Lady Bird / Everything, Everywhere, All At Once / 13 Going On 30 / 10 Things I Hate About You / How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days / The Proposal / Made of Honor / First Daughter / 27 Dresses / Crazy, Stupid, Love / 50 First Dates / When Harry Met Sally

Fictional Character Mary-Jane Watson / Annabeth Chase / Leo Valdez / Peter Parker / Evelyn Hugo / Kate Sharma-Bridgerton / Kat Stratford

Podcast The Basement Yard / RAPOT / Sruput Nendang / Trio Kurnia / Jenna & Julien Podcast / Abdur & Mamat

Interests in general Cats / Animals / Wild Life / Ocean / Bakery, Baking, Bakes / Cooking / Solo Traveling (Lies. Like, going on a 30 mins drive to get coffee, or solo-cinema date) / Windah Basudara (not ironically, like I’m really really serious about him)

DNI homophobic, racists, 02 voter :/ tone-deaf, bleak political view, anarchistic for no reason, nosey, newjeans anti

Let’s link up on letterboxd: https://boxd.it/8QuHB

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doe-eyed-disaster · 3 months

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getting mad at the anarchist bakery like how do you call this place "conquest of bread" and you don't even have a gluten free option

#doe eyed disaster

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dailyanarchistposts · 2 months

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I.8.8 But did the Spanish collectives innovate?

Yes. In contradiction to the old capitalist claim that no one will innovate unless private property exists, the workers and peasants exhibited much more incentive and creativity under libertarian socialism than they had under the private enterprise system. This is apparent from Gaston Leval’s description of the results of collectivisation in Cargagente in the southern part of the province of Valencia:

“The climate of the region is particularly suited for the cultivation of oranges … All of the socialised land, without exception, is cultivated with infinite care. The orchards are thoroughly weeded. To assure that the trees will get all the nourishment needed, the peasants are incessantly cleaning the soil. ‘Before,’ they told me with pride, ‘all this belonged to the rich and was worked by miserably paid labourers. The land was neglected and the owners had to buy immense quantities of chemical fertilisers, although they could have gotten much better yields by cleaning the soil …’ With pride, they showed me trees that had been grafted to produce better fruit. “In many places I observed plants growing in the shade of the orange trees. ‘What is this?,’ I asked. I learned that the Levant peasants (famous for their ingenuity) have abundantly planted potatoes among the orange groves. The peasants demonstrate more intelligence than all the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture combined. They do more than just plant potatoes. Throughout the whole region of the Levant, wherever the soil is suitable, they grow crops. They take advantage of the four month [fallow period] in the rice fields. Had the Minister of Agriculture followed the example of these peasants throughout the Republican zone, the bread shortage problem would have been overcome in a few months.” [Anarchist Collectives, p. 153]

This is just one from a multitude of examples presented in the accounts of both the industrial and rural collectives. We have already noted some examples of the improvements in efficiency realised by collectivisation during the Spanish Revolution (section I.4.10). Another example was the baking industry. Souchy reported that, ”[a]s in the rest of Spain, Barcelona’s bread and cakes were baked mostly at night in hundreds of small bakeries. Most of them were in damp, gloomy cellars infested with roaches and rodents. All these bakeries were shut down. More and better bread and cake were baked in new bakeries equipped with new modern ovens and other equipment.” [Op. Cit., p. 82] In Granollers, the syndicate “was at all times a prime-mover. All kinds of initiatives tending to improve the operation and structure of the local economy could be attributed to it.” The collectivised hairdressing, shoe-making, wood-working and engineering industries were all improved, with small, unhealthy and inefficient workplaces closed and replaced by larger, more pleasant and efficient establishments. “Socialisation went hand in hand with rationalisation.” [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 287] For more see sectionI.8.6 as well as section C.2.8 (in which we present more examples when refuting the charge that workers’ control would stifle innovation).

The substantial evidence available, of which these examples are but a small number, proves that the membership of the collectives showed a keen awareness of the importance of investment and innovation in order to increase production, to make work both lighter and more interesting and that the collectives allowed that awareness to be expressed freely. The collectives indicate that, given the chance, everyone will take an interest in their own affairs and express a desire to use their minds to improve their lives and surroundings. In fact, capitalism distorts what innovation exists under hierarchy by channelling it purely into how to save money and maximise investor profit, ignoring other, more important, issues. As Gaston Leval suggested, self-management encouraged innovation:

“The theoreticians and partisans of the liberal economy affirm that competition stimulates initiative and, consequently, the creative spirit and invention without which it remains dormant. Numerous observations made by the writer in the Collectives, factories and socialised workshops permit him to take quite the opposite view. For in a Collective, in a grouping where each individual is stimulated by the wish to be of service to his fellow beings, research, the desire for technical perfection and so on are also stimulated. But they also have as a consequence that other individuals join those who were first to get together. Furthermore, when, in present society, an individualist inventor discovers something, it is used only by the capitalist or the individual employing him, whereas in the case of an inventor living in a community not only is his discovery taken up and developed by others, but is immediately applied for the common good. I am convinced that this superiority would very soon manifest itself in a socialised society.” [Op. Cit., p. 347]

Therefore the actual experiences of self-management in Spain supports the points made in section I.4.11. Freed from hierarchy, individuals will creatively interact with the world to improve their circumstances. For the human mind is an active agent and unless crushed by authority it can no more stop thinking and acting than the Earth can stop revolving round the Sun. In addition, the Collectives indicate that self-management allows ideas to be enriched by discussion.

The experience of self-management proved Bakunin’s point that society is collectively more intelligent than even the most intelligent individual simply because of the wealth of viewpoints, experience and thoughts contained there. Capitalism impoverishes individuals and society by its artificial boundaries and authority structures.

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