I can’t find a job.
Well I could but there doesn’t seem to be any jobs that fit.
Or if there are I can’t find them. (But I don’t think so)
The biggest problem is that I live in estonia and it seems there really isn’t a well-developed anarchist/socialist/syndicalist movement here. The IWW doesn’t have a branch and searching online doesn’t really yield any results (aside from a couple of socdem groups),
I don’t know how to search for a job that isn’t just doing menial labour for some company.
I would like to work for a global fully-remote anarchically managed tech syndicate. But I don’t think those exist and I imagine starting one is incredibly difficult. (Well starting it wouldn’t be difficult, but finding people capable and willing to work for something like that, while getting enough income, is.)
At the end of the day the means dictate the ends. Looking for a job in a capitalist way is going to land you with a capitalist job. I need to look for a job in a anarchist/socialist/syndicalist way, but how do you do that in an environment where those ideas aren’t widespread?
It’s not Estonia, it’s the world. I’ve been running one of these in Finland for 5 years (yeah, with our burn rate), but things just degrade - can’t land any jobs now, it seems EU is funneling cash into the wars and all the capitalist thieves benefiting from it (I tried getting into supply chain, after all, there seem to be clear good guys and bad guys - but good guys are behind thieving government wall, so they just can’t pay), and US is just jerking off to their king. Trade is dead and something is about to happen, but my cooperative degraded into 2 people now, and maybe some who would return if I can feed everyone when something happens.
I’ve been doing lots of tech jobs for crypto people, as long as they keep doing liberal things, we kind of align. But they divided between those who can barely pay anything and those who lost last shreds of ethical behavior. Either way, I’m kind of known person in those circles and that does not help.
I tried to find some activists who might be willing to commission some work (as I said, I did some military things, sure there would be socialist liberals who need hardware and have some resources to help me stay afloat and build things), but no luck so far.
So it’s some global issue. I’m trying to ground now, get in touch with local community and build something out of it, more gift economy kind of vibe and screw them money if capitalists want to just rob us all. But really I’m as lost as you are, no matter how world class professional I am at what I do. Still, we need to hold onto our connections. My contact is in user profile.
If it’s to provide opposition to Russian aggression, that is something that should be done. I am fully behind opposing fascism and imperialism.
This is where the problems ooze out of the woodwork. Too many piggies at the trough, too many politicians linked to those piggies.
Build a tall wall between capitalism and state, like how we are (ideally) supposed to have total separation between religion and state.
And most importantly: start by eliminating all forms of corporate welfare beyond the ma-and-pa level of capitalism. If a company is “too big to fail”, it must, by default, also be too big to be privately owned, and must be nationalized or collectivized, with owners/shareholders seeing 100% loss in their “investment”.
‘social’ patriotism is still fascism. the proletariat have nothing to gain in a war waged under capitalism. you can oppose the war without supporting the military-industrial complex. revolutionary defeatism remains as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago.
just as then, this clash of civilisations narrative is creating a left-to-right pipeline and disappearing comrades into militaries or (if they refuse) prisons. anticapitalism is being sidelined for ‘national unity’ and ‘social cohesion’. money that previously didn’t exist is now allocated to US-bound tributes and funding for corporations which are in the business of fucking killing people, to support the nationalist programme of a Banderite State as these two capitalist countries grind each other’s lower classes against each other. surveillance becomes a ‘necessity’ to defeat the Evil Nonwhite (read: Nonhuman) Hordes. the Bad Refugees need to be expelled to make space for the Good Refugees. housing and funding for refugees and integration programmes suddenly materialises, and these Good Refugees get expedited (and sometimes exclusive) access to such help. literal nazi ideology and dogwhistles are rehabilitated to make all this more palatable.
where is the antiïmperialism in this? where’s the antifascism? i am convinced militarist-patriotic ‘left’-ists don’t personally know any comrades from Ukraine.
I said absolutely nothing about patriotism. Patriotism in many cases is toxic to humanity and peace in general.
And an aggressor like Russia will roll over Europe if there is no military opposition regardless of the system in place. Better to have a military-industrial complex providing viable opposition than having entire nonmilitary populations being forcibly exterminated as Russian forces are wont to do.
I advocate dealing with the aggression first, and then figuring out an ideal system moving forward afterwards, rather than bikeshedding away any advantage that may currently exist.
TL;DR: Use the tools that you have right now, and figure out something better once you have the breathing room to do so. Because right now, Russia ain’t planning on providing Europe any breathing room. It would gladly retake all of Eastern Europe given half the chance.
i see. so we must escalate the security dilemma and bolster the capitalist military to defeat the Oriental Hordes to protect our managers’ very peaceloving and democratic ways of life. only once the capitalists have installed someone nicer to manage the Orient can we hope to return to begging the capitalists to relinquish their weapons and their power, of which they now have more of, and which many more people have been integrated into. in the meantime, leftists need to put their shit on hold. none of this will contribute to the rise of the far right or stoke xenophobic tendencies. i’m not a nationalist; joining the military is simply the forward-thinking thing to do. military service very famously attracts good people with good intentions. this is definitely not a right-wing position based in false consciousness and a Tom Clancy-esque view of geopolitics. this posturing has no relation to how we ended up in this situation. the fact that all of this benefits international capital is merely a coïncidence. mutually assured destruction means nothing to me.
with business going so well for the MIC, Gaza beach resorts should be open just in time for the postwar economy to swing back around! we could all use a little time in the sun after making everything worse.
/s
the military is not my/our tools. it’s the state’s tools.
our tools are being torn at to make way for a war economy, for a war that isn’t ours.
and if you tell me you’re not advocating for joining the military, then who does?
There is no escalation dilemma here. History is overflowing with examples of countries with good militaries stopping much larger and more powerful countries from invading.
You think Switzerland just told the Nazis “pretty please don’t invade”?? No, their entire population was armed to the teeth and the entire country was geared for war and a strong defence, along with defendable topography. Had Nazi Germany actually invaded, it would have likely crippled itself from the attempt.
Now, maybe that would have been a good thing, historically speaking, but bullies are only stopped by people they think they cannot easily bully. And for countries and unions of countries, that means a strong military and leaping to each other’s defence.
Conversely, Russia only invaded the Ukraine because it saw that country as weak and an easy invasion target. Europe failing to back Ukraine tells Russia that it can walk over Europe, taking out countries in sequence, and no-one will make any serious attempt to stop it until it is too late.
Your comment seems to be steeped in reality-free ideology, and bereft of practical history.
To focus on political structure when Europe is under immediate threat of an emboldened Russia is bikeshedding at its worst.
Given a choice between enlisting for a country in it’s defence - or the defence of the entire continent of which it’s a part of - and being exterminated by the invader who threatens all countries there, I’ll take the former any day of the week.
The greater evil is the imperialistic-driven extermination of you and everyone you love, not serving in the military for a war that you would prefer not to be in.
That is true - by capitalist rules, if someone reduces someone else’s risks, they should also reduce their shares/profits. But then there are indirect dividends, so the system is kind of capitalist-sound.
As you might’ve noticed from my recent activity here, I’m also working on applied political science from unpopular freedom-humanitarian point of view side.
And indeed, there is little worse - from both capitalist and freedom points of view - than corporate wellfare, it kills both economy and people. But it’s existence is indeed in local energy minimum, so it’s here to stay with us at least until the next big upheaval. (Ironically, if Russia wins, then moves on and barbarians plunge the world into dark ages, that would be an upheaval; hopefully, we’d find better options?)
And the issues you describe are inevitable in current state of capitalism. They seem to be inevitable in any kind of capitalism. And according to my recent findings (I’m sure there were others who came to similar conclusions, so I’ll be digging the literature now), it is all inevitable with current laws of universe.
Which we, humans, are quite capable of bending. So the rebellion is bigger then class war or opposition to power, it’s rebellion against the world. We are doomed to win, whether for good or for bad.