

Before we can build "a new world in the shell of the old," this one needs to crack The US federal government has now been "shut down" now for 19 days. Why aren't anti-statists celebrating? First off, the government isn't actually shut down. While some things, like national parks, have ground to a halt, most of the wheels of the state – military operations, border protection, federal courts, etc. - continue to turn. The most negatively impacted will be the working class. 800,000 federal employees, prohibited from striking, are currently not being paid. Federal low-wage contractors may not even receive back-pay for work done during the shutdown. Federal employee unions have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging the unpaid labor, as some turn to crowdfunding to make ends meet. If the partial shutdown continues, benefit programs that provide support to 42 million of poor Americans and 7 million poor mothers and children are at risk of being disrupted. Fantasies of the government withering away through its own gridlock and incompetence are foolish. In a situation where millions depend on the state to meet daily needs, a vacuum does not provide an opportunity to finally live anarchy. Political unrest is more likely call for the state to resolve its crisis than propose social revolution. Does building our own infrastructure offer a promising path forward? Many anti-state organizations, some linked together in the new Symbiosis network, have recently announced their commitment to building autonomous means of production outside the state, a strategy they call dual power*. They argue for developing directly democratic counter-institutions in many sectors: Workplace: worker’s councils, syndicalist unions, rank-and-file trade unions, and worker-owned cooperatives

Cooperative economies: locally and regionally networked redistributive solidarity economies, communal agriculture and food distribution systems, collectives committed to the provision of mutual aid and disaster relief, community-owned energy, participatory budgeting initiatives, and time banks

Housing: tenant unions, community land trusts, and cooperative housing

Community + care: community councils, popular neighborhood assemblies, horizontal education models, childcare collectives, and community-run health clinics They believe these counter-institutions can meet peoples’ needs without depending on the capitalist system, linking with one another municipally, nationally, then globally, to contest the legitimacy of the current system and set the stage for its revolutionary overthrow. The vision of creating new institutions and means of production that resists the dominant logic of politics and value is admirable and worthwhile. Finding ways to live horizontally in the here and now can help build a life worth living for the few that undertake it. At a certain critical mass, these networks would contribute to a revolutionary process. But, in itself, building counter-power is incomplete as revolutionary strategy. It imagines a world in which the masses are already opposed to an illegitimate state, and are willing to sacrifice considerable time and effort towards a struggle to live without it. It is unclear how the linear growth of autonomous institutions jumps to the exponential explosion of a revolution. At its worst, the counter-power strategy fits neatly with the neoliberal logic of austerity and the bourgeois myth of bootstrap-pulling, reinforcing the argument that the state owes us nothing and we should crowdfund our healthcare and fix our own roads. It further obfuscates the large role of the state in even the most cooperative businesses and labor unions, and the way these organizations reify the logic of capitalism and social domination in subtler ways. Most likely, it will dead end at maintaining the existing order with more workers' coops. The missing link between cooperation and revolution is expropriation. The wealth of society belongs to the very few. It is being kept from us by the sanctity of private property. The structures are already there for us to take, and it strikes as more plausible goal, not to mention far more effective propaganda, to propose taking the this world back rather than building a new one from scratch. We would certainly be better prepared to confront and abolish capitalism and the state if we were not dependent on it. Building toward a cooperative and autonomous life through counter-institutions is beautiful, and we support those who seek it. However our concept of revolution makes us skeptical that we can achieve real autonomy until capitalism is destroyed.

_______ * "Counter-power" has been used to build on Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's proposal for the creation mechanisms of self-management separate from the state apparatus, gradually creating a libertarian socialist economy and polity of networked directly democratic institutions. This differs somewhat from the concepts of “dual power”, coined by Lenin in his description of Soviet Russia after the February Revolution in 1917, when both the Soviets (workers council) and the Provisional State ruled by democratic socialists held state power. Lenin advocated that, in this specific situation, the Soviets should build power through alternative institutions to encroach upon the Provisional State’s domain, and, eventually, to replace it.