Apr 22, 2011

Libcom's Guide to Organising

By Libcom / libcom.org
Libcom's Guide to Organising

The problem:
We wake up every day to go to work, taking orders from a manager. We sit at work counting down the minutes until we go home, counting down the days until the weekend, counting down the weeks until our next holiday, wishing our lives away. Or worse, we can't find a job, so we have to scrape by on benefits. We worry about paying the bills and making rent and we always seem to have the same bank balance at the end of every month. We wonder if we'll be able to put anything by to one day start a family, and think maybe next year. We get angry about the latest war the government's decided to start, and they're ignoring us again. We watch the latest news on climate change and wonder if our children have a future.

The problem is that every day we recreate a world that wasn't built to serve our needs and is not under our control. We are not human beings, we are human resources, cogs in a machine that knows only one purpose: profit. The endless pursuit of profit keeps us stuck in boring jobs, or looking for them when we're out of work. It keeps us worrying about the rent or mortgage payments every month when our homes were long since built and paid for. It keeps the planet on course for an environmental disaster as climate change accelerates and world leaders pontificate.

In this world, everything has its price. Every day, more and more things enter the market. A century ago it was automobiles, today even DNA and the Earth's atmosphere have a price. For those things which we enjoy most in life - friendship, love, play - the idea of giving them a price is absurd or even obscene. The idea strikes us as absurd because the market does not work by the same principles we do. 'Market forces' leave hundreds of millions starving in a world with surplus food. Millions are denied AIDS drugs while pharmaceutical companies spend half their budgets on marketing and administration. The market does not recognise human needs unless they are backed up with cash. The only way to get the cash is to work for a boss or claim benefits. By working for a wage, our own bodies and minds enter the market as things to be bought and sold.

When we work, we create more things which can be sold on the market. But we don't get paid the full value of what we create, otherwise there would be nothing left over as profit for the bosses. If the company can't make big enough profits, it will shut down, we will be made redundant and the money will be invested elsewhere. The bosses' interests are not the same as ours. The problem with the market is not that prices are too high or supply too short. The problem is not too much regulation or too little. The problem is that everything has a price. In the world of the market human needs only feature if those humans happen to be rich enough to satisfy them. The world's governments all work to uphold this order, sometimes with the carrots of democracy and welfare, sometimes with the sticks of dictatorship and warfare. This is not our world.

Every day, ordinary people are fighting back. Workers organise, strike, occupy and revolt, standing up for human needs in an inhuman world. This site is for them. You. Us. Those of us with nothing to sell but our labour power and nothing to lose but our chains. Those of us whose lives this deadening world sucks dry like a vampire. When we stand up for our needs, we foreshadow a different world, a world based on the principle 'from each according to ability, to each according to needs.' A world of liberty and community - libertarian communism.

What To Do

Libcom's organising toolkit - guides to organising at work, in your local area and more.

  • Workplace organising guide - Tips and advice guides for organising in your workplace.
  • Community organising guide - Information, guides and tips on organising around issues which affect you and other people living in your local area.
  • Housing guide - Advice on taking action to house yourself cheaply and know your rights
  • Demonstrations and law enforcement guide - advice on organising and participating in demonstrations and direct action safely and effectively, as well as dealing with law-enforcement agencies and possible imprisonment.
  • Media and publicity guide - How to get the word out about your group or campaign? There are two main approaches, which should both be used: using the mainstream and corporate media, and building your own independent media. This page contains advice on both.
  • General organising guide - Basic information on running a political or campaign group democratically.
  • Personal guides - Some advice on dealing with personal issues such as bailiffs, debt and crime.
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