Category: Crisis

Reading Amyl and the Sniffers’ “Capital” Politically

“Comfort to me, what does that even mean? One reason, do we persevere?/
Existing for the sake of existing, meaning disappears.”

Thus opens the song “Capital” from the Australian punk band Amyl and the Sniffers’ new album, Comfort To Me. The album is shaped by the same driving intensity of their previous music, but it takes further steps towards conscious political opposition to patriarchy, capitalism, and settler colonialism. In this short piece, I analyze the lyrics of “Capital” to explore this political evolution. After detouring through Marx’s “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” I ultimately argue for the utility of cultivating radical political consciousness in subcultural milieus, which seemingly laid the foundation for Amyl and the Sniffers’ political turn.

***

The turn to conscious politics is signaled first by the recognition of the politics of personal experience. The singer, Amy, attempts to reclaim her body and life from the world of patriarchal standards and violence, and she recognizes this as the first step in “basic politics”:

“Meanwhile, I only just started learning basic politics/
Meanwhile, they sexualize my body and get mad when I exploit it”

On another song on the album, “Knifey,” she addresses the threat of violence against women and vows to fight back.

“All I ever wanted was to walk by the park/
All I ever wanted was to walk by the river, see the stars/
Please! Stop fucking me up
. . .
Out comes the night, out comes my knifey/
This is how I get home nicely.”

Since society will not accept her efforts at self-determination or even basic safety, Amy realizes that she has to fight for it. This basic recognition of the contradictions of patriarchal violence and exploitation lay the foundation for a broader reckoning with a sick culture that is ultimately driven by capital. The chorus of the song puts it simply:

“It’s just for capital/
Am I an animal?/
It’s just for capital, capital, capital./
But do I care at all?”

The “animalization” of humanity by capital takes us back to Marx’s early analysis of wage labor under capitalism in his “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Marx argues that labor under capitalism has been transformed into an experience that alienates us (removes us) from what makes us human, and thus reduces us to the level of animals.

Marx argues that capitalism is experienced as an intensely alienating social system because it perverts the fundamental activity that makes us human. Unlike animals, humans produce the conditions of our own social lives: food, clothing, shelter, culture, etc. When we labor, we put part of ourselves into the object of production. In a non-capitalist system, we produce goods for the use of ourselves, our families, and our communities. We put our life into the products, but we “regain” this life when our community uses the goods.

Under capitalist wage labor, commodities are produced not for use but rather for exchange value. We labor not to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves and our community, but rather for the sake of profit for a capitalist. We imbue the commodities we produce with our life, but they confront us as something outside of ourselves, in control of another person for their profit. These commodities become “fetishes”: they seem to be imbued with energy of their own which is disconnected from the labor that has produced them. Capitalism becomes a system in which commodities interact with each other in the marketplace, disguising the real social relations between humans. We suffer a profound disconnect with the world and our own sense of humanity.

The characteristic of labor as external to the worker means that “the worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.” But this feeling of alienation at work has expanded to encompass our entire lives. Unlike in Marx’s time, we are now confronted with an entire world that takes the commodity form. Western societies have turned into mass consumer societies, where what makes us human outside of work is literally buying commodities. If these commodities are the products of something that is so alien to us, this is bound to be a very alienating existence. We have as little control over the world of commodities as we do over the political processes that lead to the destruction of the natural world. Again, “It’s just for capital/Am I an animal?”

***

In the next verse, Amyl and the Sniffers turn towards the destructive effects of climate change:

“Australia is burning, but, aye, I’m not learning how to be more conscious/
And the farmers hope for rain while the landscape torches/
Swimming in the river, I’m part of the river, not convinced how much will change/
Experiencing experiences as if they’re all the same”

Amy is swimming in the river of existence, seeing the terrible effects of climate change but unable to conceive of how her actions could change the situation. She is left with a feeling of alienation from existence, alienation from her own experience. This is a classic response to the alienation of life under capitalism. As she says in a second part of the chorus: “Freedom don’t exist/humans don’t exist/existing to exist/life is meaningless.” This again reflects Marx’s analysis: capitalism animalizes us, meaning that humans no longer exist; under capitalism, we exist just to exist, work just to survive, and thus life is meaningless.

***

After beginning with her own experience as a woman under capitalism, Amy begins to question the entire existence of Australia itself. In the next verse, she snarls that:

“First port of call should be changing the date and changing the flag/
Of course I have disdain for this place, what are you thinking?/
You took their kids and you locked them up, up in a prison”

She is referring to the process of settler colonialism in Australia, specifically how the children of the aboriginal peoples were stolen as official government policy up until the 1960s and into the 1970s. Settler colonialism and genocide of the indigenous peoples laid the foundation for Australia as a country. Thus, the entire project is rotten and must be challenged at its core.

The key here, for me, is how she expresses this analysis: “*of course* I have disdain for this place.” It is a common sense rejection of the brutality of settler colonialism, a common sense rejection of the Australian project: “of course.” And yet, this is clearly not broadly shared across Australian society. Rather, I think it is a common sense that is actively cultivated in youth subculture, particularly punk. This is how a punk band such as Amyl and the Sniffers can release a song with a “common sense” rejection of the Australian state and capitalism. The common sense is also based on an ethical connection between the personal and the political: Amy easily connects her own experience as a woman fighting to determine her own relationship to her body and sexuality to an ethical rejection of settler colonialism and capitalist exploitation.

***

So, where do we go from here? Given our alienation and the meaninglessness of life under late capitalism, perhaps an answer begins with the cultivation of intensity: new forms of life that are non-commodified, that prioritize direct experience in the search for meaning. The last verse of “Capital” gestures towards this possibility:

“So ordinary and normal, don’t see the intensity that it is/
And I wonder why I get dopamine released when I give/
Disdain and excitement dually, the illusion can be fleeting/
I love feeling drunk on the illusion of meaning”

Of course, this ends on an ambivalent note. Does the intensity of a punk show provide real meaning, or is it just another illusion? The next step, I think, is to take the intensity of a punk show—and the broader forms of life and common sense that the punk scene enables—and draw connections with other oppositional spaces, intensities, and projects. This can help create archipelagos of resistance, networks that produce a fighting coalition of (sub)cultural forms that together can challenge capital and replace its animalization with a meaningful life. The question then becomes how to move from scattered subcultural resistance to a broader, more coherent counterhegemonic force. We can start with punk, but we cannot end there.

The Quarantine Commune

We call ourselves the Moth Mother Collective to honor our kitchen’s many winged inhabitants. Even before coronavirus, we strove to live our lives in common. Six days of communal meals each week, a rotating chore wheel, a garden and workspace, and collective care for the needs and desires of five beings: three humans, our cat Reno, and our wise old hamster Toby. Social distancing measures have forced us to band even closer together to face the crisis. We are becoming the quarantine commune.

Social distancing has paradoxically compelled every household and living group to orient towards the commune form. In their book To Our Friends, The Invisible Committee argue that “what constitutes the commune is the mutual oath sworn […] to stand together as a body […] So a commune was a pact to face the world together. It meant relying on one’s own shared powers as the source of one’s freedom. What was aimed for in this case was not an entity; it was a qualitative bond, and a way of being in the world.” Today, a home must be a commune or it will fracture and die. Each decision must become a collective decision: how much risk to take, how to relate to others outside the living group, but most importantly the collective decision of how to live together, of how to be together in the world. The quarantine commune-orientation is a silver lining of the crisis which we should embrace and deepen.

We cannot go back to normal when this crisis ends, for returning to life as atomized individuals would be a significant defeat. Instead, the commune may become the new foundation for our social relationships. Before, during, and after social restrictions are lifted, each commune should make prudent contact (physical or otherwise) with other communes. Links should be forged, networks formed (mutual aid and beyond), the territory of communal relations deepened and enlarged. We have taken the first step—whether by choice or necessity—in the fragments of our own immediate living situations. The next step, when we can take it, is to link the fragments, to form circulation between them and collectively elaborate a new form of life-in-common.

Lifting social distancing restrictions will release a torrent of energy, mobility, and circulation. In our fragmented, socially distanced world, bringing people and places back into contact and re-articulating our social relationships in new forms becomes even more crucial. There is an opportunity to build from our communal foundation towards an entirely new community. As The Invisible Committee put it years ago but seemingly speaking to our moment, our goal “is the great health of forms of life. This great health is obtained through a patient re-articulation of the disjoined members of our being, in touch with life.”

For the Moth Mother Collective and each other quarantine commune, it is time to begin.

From Mutual Aid to Counter-Institutions: Revisiting scott crow

Mutual aid networks have rapidly spread across the United States in response to the coronavirus crisis. While mainstream media outlets have approached this with some confusion, this is nothing new for anarchists: mutual aid is the bread and (vegan) butter of anarchist theory and practice. Following the post in which I compiled a reading list on Disaster, Coronavirus, and Mutual Aid, I found it useful to revisit scott crow’s excellent book on the anarchist response to Hurricane Katrina, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective (2011). scott crow’s book is a gripping, eminently useful account of mutual aid that also points beyond the immediate responses to disaster. How can we transform mutual aid networks into permanent institutions with transformative capacity? crow encourages us to embrace our “emergency hearts” and act in a spirit of love and solidarity to meet people’s needs now while planting seeds in the concrete that can blossom into broader autonomous infrastructure and counter-institutions.

Black Flags and Windmills tells the story of the Common Ground Collective, a mutual aid organization formed in response to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. As we know, the state cared far more about establishing military order than it did about helping people, particularly poor Black people. crow rightly insists that the real disaster was the long history of oppression and exploitation of the poor Black community in New Orleans. In response to the state’s inaction, the Common Ground Collective was established by Malik Rahim (a former Black Panther), scott crow, Sharon Johnson, and others to provide food, shelter, medical aid, and other necessities. Common Ground successfully organized to save lives and rebuild destroyed neighborhoods—not only without the help of the state, but indeed in spite of the efforts of the state and white racist vigilantes to disrupt their organizing. For anyone interested in this experience and its political implications, Black Flags and Windmills has so much to offer, from practical organizational knowledge to theoretical background. I can’t recommend it enough, especially in these times.

crow encourages us to think about turning mutual aid networks into durable autonomous infrastructure. “Could street medics and their temporary first aid stations become a permanent clinic or hospital? Could groups who served food once a week set up long-standing free kitchens? Would we be able through alternative media […] to tell the deeper untold stories that countered mass-media sensationalized hype?” (66). This seems crucial to moving from networks of limited mutual aid to actually establishing anti-capitalist alternative infrastructure that can support life long-term. crow’s reflections upon his experience in New Orleans showed him that “movements need infrastructure and counter-institutions if we want people to stay engaged. If we want people to leave the destructive capitalist system, we have to create something better” (168). This led him to help create a network of cooperatives and mutual aid projects in Austin. Could we similarly pivot in the coming months from mutual aid networks to counter-institutions and infrastructure? One could certainly imagine local food systems deepening in strength, neighborhood networks transitioning to grassroots organizing, and online organizing becoming real-world activity.

Apart from mutual aid, crow’s discussion of his political influences is fascinating and very helpful. He identifies three main movements that inform his work: anarchism (largely from Spain), the Black Panthers, and the Zapatistas. These three influences lead him to approach political work undogmatically, and he takes some of the best parts from each. He emphasizes the kind of anarchism that I can most identify with, which is based in building autonomy and direct alternatives to capitalism. From the Black Panthers, he emphasizes self-defense, survival programs, and political education. His entire approach is shaped by the Zapatistas, who he says created a “living revolution” which “chang[es] people’s lives now and after the revolution” (83). The Zapatistas’ “anarchism that is not anarchism” provides perhaps the best path forward for serious anti-state and anti-capitalist political work, acting as what crow calls “a living synthesis of two disparate methods for liberation: the Black Panther Party’s integrated programs and the open-ended horizontal practices of anarchism” (83).

This was realized, however imperfectly, in the Common Ground Collective, which crow says was “closer to the Zapatista model, with a base decision-making body that consulted and accepted some leadership from the various communities we were in” (136). What more do the Zapatistas, the Black Panthers, and undogmatic anarchism have to offer to our own practice of mutual aid today? In moments of respite, we can reflect on the political implications of this crisis and orient ourselves towards the radical possibilities of mutual aid networks.

In response to the continuing disaster we live in and the greater ones we see coming in the future, Black Flags and Windmills provides hope. In response to these disasters and crises, crow reminds us that “another beautiful and flourishing tendency has been revealed: the efforts of decentralized responses to disasters, both ecological and economic, rooted in anarchist-inspired solidarity, direct action, and mutual aid. These emerging tendencies are offering rudimentary, but viable alternatives to the continuing crisis wrought by climate change and capitalism’s effects on communities in direct response and in rebuilding pieces from below” (178). If we all embrace our “emergency hearts” and help to cultivate seeds in the cracks of the system, perhaps we will not only survive the coming disasters but actively use them to help create another world.

Disaster, Coronavirus, and Mutual Aid: A Reader

The coronavirus mutual aid response networks that have been created to care for each other through this crisis are inspiring examples of anarchism in action. I’m reworking the syllabus of my current undergraduate course on anarchism to add a unit on disaster and mutual aid which will use the coronavirus mutual aid networks as a case study. Here is a modified version of the readings and videos for the unit (almost all of which are available for free online through these links, with the exception of a few of the books).

Week 1: Introduction to Mutual Aid

Week 2: Disaster and Its Uses

Week 3: Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Week 4: Coronavirus and Mutual Aid

Stay safe, stay healthy, and take care of each other.

Ten Theses on Coronavirus

1. The coronavirus pandemic will cause widespread death and suffering that will strain social bonds and the system of production itself. Economists predict a massive economic crisis and unemployment rates unseen since the Great Depression. This opens the door to a radical restructuring of society, but the outcome is not guaranteed.

2. The fascist right will respond with blood and soil nativism. They will rally to defend the supposed purity of the white social body against the “foreign” elements of the virus and other perceived threats. The old, the immunocompromised, the poor, the “non-productive,” and the non-white will be allowed to die to preserve the health of the social body and economy. This is the path towards eco-fascism.

3. Neoliberalism will use this crisis as shock therapy to deepen economic restructuring that enriches the few and immiserates the many. Privatization and commodification will thrive off of the crisis.

4. Profiteers will exploit this moment to make untold sums of money. Petty hoarders and resellers are only the tip of the iceberg; the rich will take advantage of the plunging stock market and the widespread destruction of small businesses to cheaply buy up large swathes of the economy and reshape it in their image.

5. Capitalists will attempt to further commodify our social relations in the guise of tools to overcome the isolation of social distancing. They are already developing new apps that will monetize connections between homebound people. Commodified social connections will deepen our sense of alienation and despair.

6. Technological innovations also have the potential to transform our social relations in a decommodified fashion. Online mutual aid groups, free apps that facilitate neighborhood organizing, and free online live concerts are the first signs of an emergent paradigm. An online-coordinated rent strike will lead to a national rent freeze; this will be a major step towards the decommodification of housing.

7. In the face of callous state inaction, a new wave of mutual aid is emerging across the world. Online mutual aid groups will organically develop into systems of care and survival from below that have the potential to replace the functions of the state and market economy.

8. Against the alienation and atomization of social distancing, we will regain social cohesion through sustained individual and collective effort. Liberatory art, music, and poetry will be shared for free, producing a new culture of hope and possibility. Coronavirus will help us regain a sense of the social bonds that make us human.

9. The necessary decoupling of work from survival paves the way for a Universal Basic Income. We should embrace this moment as the beginning of the transition into a UBI-supported radical Green New Deal that points the way beyond capitalism towards an ecological society.

10. This crisis will force society to change. We may go further down the path of authoritarianism, ruthless competition, and ecological catastrophe. But we may instead embrace our inclinations towards joyful collaboration, mutual aid, and ecological stewardship. Strengthening these latter tendencies will guide us through the crisis and provide the basis for new forms of life.