Workers??..Community??

[StoneFrog]

Please correct me i what i am about to say is wrong. From looking at Communism and Anarchism, why is so much emphasis placed on the workers? From what i have gathered it seems the work place come first then the community follows? Our lives are already controlled by the work place with capitalism and the infinite pursuit of material wealth. Are we going to bring this pursuit of material wealth along with us?

Everything seems to be focused on building the community around worker unions. Why not build the unions around the community, for that is the real purpose of even working. Reduce working and increase community time, but yet very little that i have read is about building the community. Its about forming the workers, is the community just suppose to form around the workers unions?

Maybe someone can clear some of this up for me, from both groups Anarchists and Communists. Not sure if i got what i was trying to say out, tried my best to convey my thoughts.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

What makes you think that the workers and the community aren't one and the same? When the workers seize control of the means of production and organise democratically through syndicates and councils the community will be born.

[Invincible Summer]

Please correct me i what i am about to say is wrong. From looking at Communism and Anarchism, why is so much emphasis placed on the workers? From what i have gathered it seems the work place come first then the community follows? Our lives are already controlled by the work place with capitalism and the infinite pursuit of material wealth. Are we going to bring this pursuit of material wealth along with us?

This may come out the wrong way, but I wouldn't say Communsits are opposed to material wealth - after all, one of the aims is to provide great material comfort for everyone.

The issue with capitalism isn't necessarily its "infinite pursuit of material wealth," but rather the exploitative manner and unequal distribution of said wealth, which is characteristic of capitalism. We're not (all) Buddhists or something and reject earthly possessions or whatever.


Everything seems to be focused on building the community around worker unions. Why not build the unions around the community, for that is the real purpose of even working. Reduce working and increase community time, but yet very little that i have read is about building the community. Its about forming the workers, is the community just suppose to form around the workers unions?

This is where I lose you. Workers are inherently part of their communities, and therefore I always thought it was a given that community would "build," whatever that means, when workers are liberated.


Maybe someone can clear some of this up for me, from both groups Anarchists and Communists. Not sure if i got what i was trying to say out, tried my best to convey my thoughts.
Anarchists are Communists, btw. But Communists aren't necessarily Anarchists.

[Pogue]

The two main areas in which we organise are just that, workplace and community, especially in anarchist circles we actually have two defined strategies on each one, my group does anyway.

[Искра]

Emphasise is not on the workers (like people who work), but on the working class.

Here's one interesting text which shoves anarchist (libertarian) ways and methods of all kinds of organising: http://libcom.org/organise

[Muzk]

Seriously everyone is a worker

[h9socialist]

The perceived distinction between "workers" and "community" is false. In a truly socialist society "socialization" proceeds according to the needs of the working class. That means that the "community" and the working class are for the most part synonymous -- or at least "not in contradiction." The more poignant question here is whether or not the community caters to the individual excesses that some of the better off workers acquired under capitalism -- or whether the community nurtures truly socially functional relationships. I cannot perceive socialism as a situation in which all workers live like Rockefellers. I perceive it as a system where all human beings live in a society of material sufficiency and human dignity -- and where all are welcomed into the community by virtue of common humanity. At that point the working class as we know it gives way to the "human community."

[StoneFrog]

I did some more reading, i see now where my line of thought fits in more with Anarcho-Communism, and not in the Syndicalist sense of organizing the workers but organizing the community. I just feel, that focusing on the production of goods will keep the mentality that society has today; that we need bigger and better than our neighbors. I am also seeing that its more the working class not the workers, but in a Anarchist or Communist sense would there even be a working class? In our time now we have a working class, but wouldn't everyone be in the same class there fore making no classes?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I did some more reading, i see now where my line of thought fits in more with Anarcho-Communism, and not in the Syndicalist sense of organizing the workers but organizing the community. I just feel, that focusing on the production of goods will keep the mentality that society has today; that we need bigger and better than our neighbors. I am also seeing that its more the working class not the workers, but in a Anarchist or Communist sense would there even be a working class? In our time now we have a working class, but wouldn't everyone be in the same class there fore making no classes?

Communism would create a classless society yes, but we would still be workers.