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Harbingera pioneer outpost o the uture

a weapon or childrena secret passage into the CrimethInc. underground

for anyone who has ever seen a smokestack and winced

apocalypse. catastrophe. ailure. mob rule. desertion. extremism. insurrection.

When the world ends, white dust will ll the air likethe curtain at the end o a play. A rain o desperatebodies will all rom the windows o burning buildings,drumming the concrete below. Men with splinters intheir eyes will stumble through streets choked with debris;women clutching babies will pick through the rubble andtear out their hair. Our generation will go to its graveshouting its last words into a cell phone.

Or perhaps it will arrive as a thie in the night, stepby invisible step. Factories will disappear overseas andcorporations vanish into thin air, taking jobs and retirementunds with them. Cities dying rom the inside out willspread like ringworm, the shrapnel spray o suburbs slicingthrough orest and eld. Wars will reach rom continentto continent and neighborhood to neighborhoodtheterrorists who wont make peace against the horrorists whoenorce it at any price, who keep trying to impose harmonybetween oppressed and oppressor with ear and repower.ides will rise with global warming, acid rains all with thelast o the redwoods, computer systems crash with stocksand stock markets . . . until one dayeveryonehas cancer.

Or else nothing will happen at all, business willcontinue as usual: prison guards pace concrete tombs,psychiatrists contemplate madness, demons glare romthe eyes o ministers, consumers are bought and sold inthe marketplace. Its ater the end o the world, whispers thehomeless man on the cornerdont you know that yet?

Others, mysterious and knowing, who have heldthemselves aloo rom the discussion until now, nallyinterject: Whichworld?

THE END OFTHE WORLD

Some run or cover, we rush to bear witness.th communiqu two and a hal years in the making F R E E

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DISASTERYes, birth rates increase immediately ollowing disasters,

just as the rate o natural death declines during them. Peopledont oten die o old agethat is to say, boredomin themidst o catastrophes*. Lie, however precarious, is worth stay-ing awake or; in act, its never tasted so sweet. Te urgencyo emergency provides just the spice that the constant low-in-tensity stress o daily lie never could.

But what about the people who do die in disasters? Itstrue that people lose their lives in heat waves, ash oods,and airplane hijackings; they also die in automobile collisions,workplace accidents, o drug overdoses and heart attacks andlung cancerand, in unprecedented numbers, alone andorgotten in rest homes. Te really strange thing is that, as asociety, we xate so earully on disasters, when everyday lie isstatistically more dangerous to us; and that, at the same timeas we ear them, we nd them so ascinating. o get to thebottom o this, we must reexamine both disasters and theirsupposed opposite, normality, and gure out which is reallywhich. Lets begin by looking at disasters rom the dissidentperspective, through the orbidden eyes o the secret part oeach o us that rejoices in them.

Disaster as Interruption

Its a public secret: disasters are exciting. rying as theymay be, we come alive in them. In our normal lives, we ac-commodate ourselves to the smallness o what seems to bethe world, and that accommodation becomes, itsel, a prison.Disasters throw everything into disarray and into question: thewide world reasserts that anything is indeed possible, and wend ourselves tossed out o our prisons, ready or not, shiveringon the sidewalk beore the ruins. In these new conditions, wecan become heroes, work and witness miracles, suer tragediesrather than mere indignities; we nd ourselves ully engaged,

thankul or each other and everything we have,even or what we have lost. Danger and distress donot always arrive uninvited; to trade ones tiresomeold ears and rustrations or new and compellingones can be a real relie. In the wake o a disaster,everything has weight and meaningtears andlaughter both come easily, and no one knows orsure what will ollow next. Aterwards, many ndit difcult to readjust, to resign themselves again toall that knowing.

Disasters deliver the equality law promisesbut ails to ulll. When disaster strikes, a boy in awheelchair is no less than a haughty executive: thetwo watch the burning high rise side by side. Out-siders and outcasts can nd themselves elevated topositions o prestige and approvalindeed, theymay be the only ones prepared or the situation:when the Is evaporates, people who have investedeverything in it must rely on those who have spenttheir lives pondering the Could Be. Skills that seemed special-ized and irrelevantghting riot police, or surviving in thewoodssuddenly become essential or everyone, and dissi-dent utures the pragmatic once dismissed as impossible takeover where the ormer chains o cause and eect leave o.

Disasters render the social acts that comprise reality ne-gotiable; abrupt reedom takes the place o hackneyed choice.Lost hikers teach themselves to start res with wristwatches,errand-running mothers lit automobiles o children, docileairplane passengers commit cannibalism and are celebrated

or it. When school is closed and the roads are impassable,

when everything is up in the air, one is no longer at the mercyo routine, atrophying commitments, cowardice and inertia:complete sel-determination, in the new and alien landscapeo upheaval, is inescapable. Catastrophes are sometimes de-scribed as experiences o total liberation, heretical as such anotion is in our saety-rst society. Its no coincidence theMillennium reerred to in so many religious traditions is to beushered in by a phase o terrible destruction: the kingdom oheaven arrives through the smoke.

Tat the notion o such an apocalypsewhether as nu-clear war, nal judgment, or total revolutionis so pervasivein our civilization suggests a popular ascination with extremesin which conventions no longer apply. Our preoccupationwith danger and tragedy implies a barely disguised longing orrisk and uncertainty. What would you do i you learned youhad only twenty our hours to live?From inside our cubiclesand conessionals, we can only envision total reedom andauthentic living in the context o imminent destructionsowe do, constantly.

Here in the world o structure, saety, and routine, weknow disaster only rom aar, as spectacle: news reports, mo-tion pictures, rumors. Tese representations serve a hosto purposes, the oremost being intimidation: they keep uscowed, grateul or the protection o our noble leaders. Tedisaster we see through these screens, like the wilderness alleg-edly beyond the walls o civilization, is a nightmare in whichlie is short, brutish, and ugly. Tese portrayals also, moretellingly, serve an economic role: they cash in on the immensepopularity o the apocalypsevicarious living, through actionmovies and video games and the like, is bound to be in greatdemand in a society that sties rst-hand adventure. In theprocess, they teach the important lesson that the momentso truth we secretly pine or are distant, inaccessible, perhapsonly ctional; certainly nothing we could participate in or, or

that matter, precipitate. Tat is to say: those noble leaders aresimply protecting us rom ourselves! Or is it themselves theyare protecting?

Ater all, where do our leaders t in the anatomy o ca-lamity? Airlited in by private jet to address the mourners (andcameramen), they speak as i they suer our own tragediesmore than we do, but theyre not the ones who bear the bruntwhen something goes awry. Students o disaster tell us thatwhile disasters can increase the opportunities or exploitation,they also reduce the motivations or it, at least among thepopulation that experiences them; thus the only exploitationin disaster conditions is usually perpetrated by outsiders, pro-iteers who take advantage o the situation to eece survivors.Our leaders are the proteers o disaster; they rely on itmore precisely, on the terror the thought o it provokesto

maintain their power. Disaster works or themespecially i

we never experience it ourselves, but only see it on television,in the papers, in our nightmares. In act, these leaders are theones endangering usit is their policies which give us cancerand turn suicide bombers against us. Our protectors run theultimate protection racket.

But are they protecting us? Once upon a time oil spillsand shootings were considered disasters; today these arepractically standard eatures o our society, built into thesocial abric and accounted or in advance. Tey are notanomalies, but routines. Real interruptions in which the sys-tem breaks down, on the other hand, such as blackouts andbomb threats, are still described as disasters, whether or notanyone dies. Already harrowed by the vicissitudes o the sys-tem itsel, we dutiully ear them, but those who have livedthrough such disruptions know how sweet it can be whenSomething Happens.

Te essential quality o disasters as we know them is thebreak with the status quo; this is the one eature they all share.It is not destructiveness that sets disasters apart: the slaughter-houses, suicides, and collateral damages o Business As Usualtake more lives than all the worst catastrophes combined,while many disasters dont result in any deaths at all. I thecasualties o all disasters were tallied and compared to thoseo normal lie, disaster would look very sae indeed, just asthe number o deaths and injustices that have resulted rompeople obeying authorities ar outnumber those perpetratedby those who have broken laws. Yet there are some who live inhorror o disasters while uninchingly extolling the virtues owar: these, then, must be people who ear the boundlessnessand unruliness o lie but are quite at home with the orderli-ness o its opposite. War, in particular, is a sae ritualit isthe protector o the status quo, the reassertion o normality.It is no coincidence that the runaway disaster o September11, 2001 was ollowed immediately by a series o warsand

which calamity has ultimately been the more bloody, assum-ing you count oreigners as human beings?

So only the coward ears disastersthat is to say, thereis a cowardly part o each o us that would keep everythingamiliar, whatever the cost in lives and lie. Tis is ear o theunknown in its purest orm: it projects chaos, destruction, anddeath onto everything beyond the pale o the ordinary, projec-tions all the more ironic in that they can only be modeled onthat which is known. From this i rony, we can conclude thatthose who most ear the unknown reveal in doing so that theworld they know is a place o terror. It is precisely the terror-ized, those caught in thrall to ear, who most dread to leave itsterritory. Te ree, the earless, ready to live and all too awareo what is insuerable in the everyday, welcome new horizons,disasters included.

Te Disaster asPermanent Condition

Waithow could that be, that disasters are the apex oadventure, community, lie itsel? Does that mean that i wereally want to live, we have to spend our lives as disastour-ists, quixotically chasing the ew brie moments o upheavaldestiny aords each o us, longing or the eeting, borrowedwings o destruction and rebirth as we wade through years odeadening routine in the meantime? Is that practical, practi-cable, worthwhile? Does the woman ed up with her car pay-ments and marriage really crave tornadoes and typhoons, or isshe just desperate or an honorable way out?

Perhaps we have everything backwards heremaybe di-sasters arent so great ater all, but the realDisaster, the worstone, is the Disaster we live every day: the emptiness o ourull schedules, the trivia that trivializes us, the machinery that

runs on rivers o blood. Tat would explain why we eel so

ree whenever something, anything, however dangerous ordifcult, interrupts all this. Perhaps the excitement and imme-diacy that break out in emergencies are simply indications oa return to our natural state, in the break they herald rom theull scale slow motion train wreck that is our society. I that isthe case, then it is not disasters per se that are liberatingitis, rather, a question o perspective: a disaster that disruptsa lie o constraint is experienced as a moment o liberation,when that normal lie is actually Disaster in disguise.

Most o the disasters we really suer rom can be tracedto this invisible Disaster, anyway. Te destruction o rainor-ests and the ozone layer, holocausts perpetuated with biologi-cal weapons and smart bombs, even global pandemics likemad cow disease, anorexia, bulimia, depressionthese wouldnot be possible without centralized state and corporate power,and the meaningless busywork o billions that engenders it.o live with the unknown ahead o and around us, to struggleonly with the natural disasters our ancestors aced, wouldalmost be idyllic ater all this.

Could we ght Disaster with disaster? I we stopped eed-ing its ames with our hard work and a ttention, i we ceasedpaying tribute, the Disaster would surely crash and burn onceand or all. I this status quo is the ultimate Disaster, i it reallyis disorder and tragedy normalized as a system, no lower-casedisaster could be worse. Interrupt the Disaster!

Some o us are already practicing this. We dont live inthe Disaster, but in encampments at its edgeyes, in a stateo ongoing disasters and difculties, but nothing comparedto the misery o lie in the Disaster area proper. We dont allor popular propaganda about disasters; were conducting ourown experiments with them. We dont have to wait or catas-trophe to strike to enjoy its benetswe can throw a disasterany time we like. And we are.

-Disastronauts Dilemma Goldman and Calamity Jane

When the world ends, people come out o their apartments and meet their neighbors or the rst time; they share ood,stories, companionship. No one has to go to work or the laundromat; nobody remembers to check the mirror or scaleor email account beore leaving the house. Grafti artists surge into the streets; strangers embrace, sobbing and laugh-ing. Every moment possesses an immediacy ormerly spread out across months. Burdens all away, people coness se-crets and grant orgiveness, the stars come out over New York City; and nine months later, a new generation is born.

Disasters bring people together, imparting a common context and project. In this suddenly opened and democratized atmo-

sphere, individuals whose lives were ormerly separated identiy with each other. Tis sense o community oers intimations o a dier-

ent kind o society, turning calamity into a harbinger o better things. Disasters are oten the crucibles o millenarian and revo-

lutionary movements: in such extremes, people experience the broad possibilities o lie and subsequently set out to realize them.

-National Research Council Committee on Disaster Studies, Convergence Behavior in Disasters: A Problem in Social Control

disasterDisaster

*Its not just birth and death rates, eitherdomestic violence decreased dramat-ically in South Central Los Angeles during the r iots in 1992, or example, whileit hits a national peak on the day o the Superbowl. One ordinary weekend ismore bloody than a ull month o insurrection, as a French student comment-ed back in May o 1968, having had the good ortune to experience both.

Nadia , quoted in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns atlas ohuman suering and inhuman repression Te Gulag Archipelago,recalls the time when she was being taken to interrogation byan impassive, silent woman guard with unseeing eyeswhensuddenly the bombs began to explode right next to the BigHouse and it sounded as i at the next moment they wouldall directly upon them. Te terried guard threw her armsaround the prisoner and embraced her, desperate or humancompanionship and sympathy in the ace o the end. Tenthe bombing stopped. And her eyes became unseeing again.Hands behind your back! Move along.

Tat was a disaster that didnt goar enough.

TeDisastertakescareoeverything.Tatis:the

Disasterruinseverything,byleavingeverythingintact.

WecontemplatedisastersromwithintheDisaster,

theirsupposedopposite.Frominhere,theylook

righteningeverythingdoes.Tinkingodisasters,we

alwaysseethemaheadous:agangomonstersaround

thebend,holdingtheuturehostage.

Butinactitisthepresentthatholdsouruture

hostage.TeDisastersurroundsus,adesolationwelive

dayaterdayanditisthishorror,nottheunknown

aheadbutthatwhichisthemostbanalandamiliar,

thatwecannotconcede,cannotconront.Teguarantee

that,unlesscatastrophehits,everythingwillgoonas

is,everylastinjusticeandhumiliationincludedwhat

couldbemoreterriblethanthis?

TeDisasteristhatthereisnodisaster.Onlyareal

disastercouldsaveusromtheDisaster,whichisthereal

disaster.WecanlearnalotabouttheDisasterromwhat

itsaysaboutdisasters.

TeDisasterneedsthespecterodisasterstoplay

badcoptoitsgoodcop;butwheneverithastoleta

bonafdedisasteroutothecage,theDisasterendangers

itselorassoonasweestablishanunmediated

relationshiptodisasters,thatspecterisexorcised.Itis

onlypopularearodisastersthatkeepstheDisaster

inplace,aterall.Whenpeoplerecognizethatitisnot

disastersbuttheDisastertheyhavetoear,thenext

disasterwillputanendtoitonceandorall.

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AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!

A sociologist is an authority on crowds like apoliceman is an authority on people.

Bill Buord,Among the Tugs

I you go to the expe rts to learn about crowds,you will read that they are mindless monsters:people gone mad or returned to their primitivestate, animals out o control, ocks o sheep thatmust be properly dominated lest they becomepacks o wolves. Te rabble long to be roused, tobe hypnotized by their own brute orce, and thatis all there is to it. Such crowd theory gives theimpression that the theorists are simply apolo-gists or their patrons crowd control; the analysisis all so one dimensional, the accounts all so su-perior, that youd think the closest they ever cameto the subject was in pe ering down rom the high,narrow windows o their ivory towers.

And youd almost be right. But in act, theytoo are submerged in a crowd: it is simply a big-ger one, so much bigger that it is unrecognizableas one. Te crowds they claim to explain are dis-sident microcosms o the same orm; these canbe identied as crowds only because they are dis-tinct in some way rom the colossal crowd thatis the theorists society. Inevitably, these smallermasses look crazed and irrational to the special-ists o the status quo, becauseor however briea timethey are acting according to a dissent-ing sense o reality and v alue. So there are alwaysat least two crowds in any equation: in the caseo the mob that riots and loots a shopping dis-trict, or example, the other crowd is the one that

built the shopping district, that owns the shops

and organizes advertising campaigns to promotetheir wares, that takes it or granted that thatspacenot to mention lie in generalis bestutilized or buying and selling. Te act that thisdominant crowd is also a mob o sorts, only moreentrenched and institutionalized, may only beapparent rom outside itor instance, rom theperspective o one o the looters.

Reality itsel is determined by consensusthat is to say, by crowds. What is possible, what isimpossible: these are decided collectively, accord-ing to what people believe to be so. Te world

we inhabit is not made up merely o physical orsensory acts; these raw materials gain meaningas signs, tools, customs, and so on rom their so-cial context, and the resulting orest o signs isthe greater part o what we mean when we sayreality. It is those social conditions that createeach individual, including her choices and thevalues by which she makes them; but, as theseconditions are themselves the result o individualdecisions, they only persist because people de cideto reproduce them.

Why does this happen, then, in the case onotoriously unpopular social conditions like war,pollution, miserable employment? Generally,people make choices based on what they con-

sider to be realistic, rather than on what theywould like to happen; and what they considerrealistic depends on what they believe othersconsider realisticthis is how the stock market

works, or example. Tus, any given social orderrests on a kind o mob mentality, a collective psy-chosisand is by no means guaranteed to be inthe best interests o those who comprise it.

When people do not recognize themselvesas part o a crowd, but think o themselves onlyas sovereign individuals who just so happen tospeak, vote, shop, think, and eel the same waythousands or millions o others do, they tend tosee reality as xed and undisputable. Tis is therst kind o crowd, the most primitive kindacrowd that lacks awareness o its own existence.Tis sort o crowd is no less powerul than otherkinds, but the power it has rarely does anyoneany good, as it is never wielded consciously.Crowds o this type are characterized by an in-ability to question their own assumptions anda total denial o responsibility or their actions;

when eighty million televisions sets go on in uni-son at the end o the workday, thats an exampleo such a crowd in action.

Te second kind o crowd is a crowd that isaware o its existence, but not its power. A goodexample o this is the mass o ans at a sportsor entertainment event. People will go to greatlengths to come together in such settings, to eelthe excitement in the air when a great numbershare a common space and ocus. Lets not becoy about this: there is something thrilling aboutbeing part o a crowd, something undamen-tally pleasurable about eeling your experiencesand reactions mirrored in the ones around you.

Te disappointment many voice at low-turnout

events indicates a common awareness that it isthe atmosphere generated by the mass, not thesupposed main attraction, that makes such a-airs interesting. Yet the members o such crowdsdo not think o themselves as the authors o thesituations they create. It is their money, their at-tendance, their interest alone that make thesepossible, but they attribute this power to othersoutside themselvesthe organizers, the promot-ers, the Rolling Stones or Atlanta Braves.

But sports ans dont always limit themselvesto buying tickets, shouting chants, and ling inand out o stadiums. Sometimes they get carriedaway. Every promoter who brings together a greatcrowd in order to sell them back their own to-getherness runs the risk that some o his custom-ers will take things too ar and engage in somestreet sports o their ownootball hooliganism,or example. Te usual pundits decry this as bar-baric, uncivilized behavior, but it is actually morecultured, more civilized, than mere spectatorship:these are people coming up with their own ac-tivities, not just ollowing instructions like chil-dren. Joining in large-scale street ghts, provok-ing riots and conrontations with policetheseotherwise senseless activities give the participantsthe opportunity to orm the third kind o crowd:

the crowd that is aware o its own power to de-termine reality. Tis is the crowd as protagonist,as subject rather than object; that people will-ingly join in such violent, unpleasant activitiesis not just evidence o how screwed up they are,but also o how desperate they are to exp eriencethemselves as something other than passive ves-sels o commerce. Small wonder such misbehav-ior is so contagious; once a crowd gains a sense oits ability to reinvent situations, the peanuts andpopcorneven ront row seats to someone elsesgamelose their luster. Tis is not to say thatevery renegade crowd is a good crowdlynchmobs are, ater all, mobsbut only to point outhow, in a society based on segregation and pas-sivity, any sel-generated, sel-determined groupactivity is seductively subversive.

All the same, a crowd that has a sense o itsown power is not necessarily liberating or those

who orm it. As a crowd, they may be ree romthe domination o other crowds, but this is noguarantee that any o them are ree within thecrowd. Individuals who know they are powerultogether arent always aware o the part each playsin creating that power, or o how to join in decid-ing how it is applied.

Crowds are vulnerable to authority, to be-ing controlled by minorities or outsiders, to theextent that each participant is unaware o how toemploy her agency in the group. Conversely, acrowd is capable, durable, and likely to act in thebest interests o its members to the exact degreethat all within it are conscious o their own pow-er and amiliar with applying it*. Te ourth kindo crowd, then, is the crowd made up o indi-viduals who recognize that the crowd is nothing

more than the sum o their individual choices,

Exiting the venue, the throng did notyet recognize itsel as a crowdit wassimply a mass o consumers, as can be

ound in any shopping mall. Teir movementsand motives were determined rom without:Mother Market had raised them to respond tocertain aesthetic stimuli, and tonight they hadcome to pay to do so, ollowing the d irectivesrom the microphones on the stage above them.Teir choices were made individually and with-out any consciousness o their cumulative e-ects: this was reedom on the North Americanmodel, each customer deciding rom a selectiono products as i in a vacuum, and the resultsascribed to the inscrutable workings o the Mar-ket rather than its participants. All the same,the heady experience o being packed into closequarters to join in an entertainment ritual hadinvested them with a sort o boisterous camara-derieas had the rumors, which had arisen as iout o nowhere, that tonights concert would beollowed by a little extracurricular activity.

Piles o drums and noisemakers had sud-denly appeared outside at the conclusion o theshow, and some people were already playingthem and handing them outthough ater-

wards, nobody would be able to say ex actly

who it had been. One thing was certain: theywere part o the mass, not outsiders, or e lse noone would have ollowed their example. At anyrate, they were not alone or long: the concerthad generated an energy that had yet to bedischarged, and others began picking up drumsand joining in.

Te events o the preceding weeks had cre-ated a tense atmosphere, but in this particularcity, nothing had come o it yet. Right across theparking lot lay the towns main thoroughare:some o the politically inclined among the con-certgoers had thought o blocking or seizing it togive their opposition teeth, but such a thing wassimply not possible. Politically engaged or not,everyone there knew what that street was or: it

was or car trafc, just as the sidewalk was orpedestrian shoppers and the occasional street airto attract more pedestrian shoppers; the ques-tion o whether these limitations were oppres-sive or constraining never even crossed anyonesmind, or the streets role was not negotiable.

And yet some o the drummers steppedinto the street, right into the middle o it, halt-ing trafc; a couple o them had a great banner,

too. Now the street was also or drumming, orshouting and dancing and marching. Te others

watched them rom the sidewalk, hal-expectingsomething to happen to those who crossed thisthreshold. Tis was the crucial moment. At rstit seemed that things would go no urtherthecrowd was narrowly stretched out, some rushingahead and others lingering behind, and it lookedlike it might ragment and dissipatebut thenthe momentum o the rst ones o the sidewalkspread to everyone else, and what had been arandom assembly o consumers became a parade.

As the mass began to move down thestreet, a subtle transormation took place. Clear-ly, taking the street was possible ater all, and

was possible because a critical mass had deemedit so: now this mass, which had been composedo individuals and small groups, came to thinko itsel as a deliberate togetherness, a grouppossessing the magical power to renegotiatereality. Organs developed: individuals sharedinormation (a boy on a bicycle reported thatthere were no police ahead o them yet), madedecisions (a ew turned let at the stoplight, theones with the banner ollowed, everyone elseell in behind them), gave their shared eelingsvoice (chants were improvised and adjusted

with humor as they spread rom one side o thecrowd to the other). But there w as no master

with a megaphone, no distinction betweenbrain and body: this was not the kind o massthat once cheered or Mussolini.

Tis transgressive togetherness was in-toxicating: suddenly everything in the amiliartown was new, urgent, exciting. Something washappening! Police began to arrive, a ew at atime; but with no oreknowledge o the event orcontext or what was going on, let alone ordersrom their superiors, they stuck to the sidelinesin conusion. Had ten people attempted to blocktrafc at this time o night, they would certainlyhave been arrested; but when two hundred didthe same, the laws themselves seemed to shit.One ofcer turned his car sideways in the middleo the street, as i to block the way; but, ushed

with a condence that had blossomed out othin air in the past ew minutes, the crowdsimply walked around it, disregarding this now-meaningless symbol o power and leaving itsdriver hufng and impotent behind the wheel.

Just as the throng reached the towns cen-tral intersection, a bottle rocket shot up into the

air and burst overhead. Tis was the act o oneindividual, or perhaps a couple; but, sensing itto proceed rom the context they had authoredtogether, the whole crowd cheered, each partici-pant eeling as i he had bee n the one to lightit. Another recracker shot into the sky. At thatmoment, moving switly to outmaneuver thepolice who were nally arriving rom all sides,two people pulled a dumpster into the middleo the street; ames leapt up rom within it asthey disappeared into the mass.

At this moment, someone appeared in themidst o the crowd, standing on a mailbox: it

was a member o the band that had played thatnight, waving his arms in agitation. OK, thatsenough! he shouted. Scatter! Disperse! Go,go! Do not take this back to the venue!

When people in a crowd take over a streetor carry o some similarly impossible action, alltheir strength comes rom the sense that theycan count on each other, all their condencedepends on the condence o their companions.

What a group, acting together, believes to bepossible, becomes possible; what some believeimpossible, becomes impossible, and thus noone can believe in it to make it so. And so, hear-ing one prominent personality loudly doubting

the possibility o holding the intersection anylonger, many suddenly doubted it themselves,and ed, as i taking orders.

In ight, the bulk o the mass remainedtogether, but it was now a very d ierent crowd.Its members were no longer bound by a senseo shared strength, but by their ear o the po-liceand, more importantly, o responsibilityor themselves. In a dangerous situation, norisk could be more terriying than the act thatevery individual is ultimately responsible orthe decisions that bear her to saety or misor-tune. Tis is why people almost always ee enmasse i they can, whether or not it is the wisestdecision: by doing so, each hopes to evade theobligation o making wise decisions, placingit on the shoulders o those aroundwho aredoing the same, unortunately. A earul crowdcan be exponentially more earul than a earul

It was not a column but a mob, an awul riverthat lled the streetthe people o the abyss, madwith drink and wrongs, up at last and roaring orthe blood o their masters. I had seen the people o

the abyss beore, gone through their ghettos, andthought I knew them; but I ound that I was now

looking on them or the rst time.

Tis ascinating spectacle o dread surged past myvision in concrete waves o wrath, snarling and

growling, carnivorous, drunk with whisky rompillaged warehouses, drunk with hatred, drunkwith lust or bloodmen, women and children

in rags and tatters, dim erocious intelligenceswith all the godlike blotted rom their eatures

and all the endlike stamped in, apes and tigers,anemic consumptives and great hairy beasts oburden, wan aces rom which vampire society

had sucked the juice o lie, bloated orms swollenwith physical grossness and corruption, withered

hags and deaths-heads bearded like patriarchs,estering youth and estering age, aces o ends,

crooked, twisted, misshapen monsters blasted withthe ravages o disease and all the horrors o chronic

malnutritionthe reuse and the scum o lie, araging, screaming, screeching, demoniacal horde.

-Jack London [socialist, reormist, etc., etc.],Te Iron Heel

CROWD DYNAMICSAND HE MASS PSYCHOLOGY

OF POSSIBILIYAn account o spatial movement, an allegory o social movement.

and make those choices accordingly. For such agroup, mass activity is a chance to share selhood

with others, or people to multiply themselves byone anothernot a cover under which to abdi-cate responsibility.

Te afnity group o political activists, inwhich decisions are made by consensus amonga group o riends who not only have developedtheir conception o what is meaningul togetherbut also are in the habit o acting on it decisively,is a microcosm o such a crowd. Te do-it-your-sel music counterculture, in which pleasure itselis rened and redened through collaborative ex-periments in aesthetics that inuence and inormone another, is a somewhat larger-scale version othe same thing. In such contexts, where realityis determined consciously and collectively, onesreedom is the sum o all others reedom, not thenarrow space let over in the margins.

For those who desire this reedom, the chal-lenge is to transorm crowd dynamics. Actualthrongs are excellent laboratories or studying

ways to do this. In close proximity, the processesby which people read and respond to each otherspeed up; thanks to this eedback loop, new re-alities can quickly be generated in the collectivepsyche. Tis is why the mob is always maligned

by guardians o the status quo: small, tight-knitcrowds can be pressure cookers o social trans-ormation. In our society, every eort is made toprevent people rom coming together in masses,to prevent masses who have come together romrecognizing themselves as masses, to preventmasses that recognize themselves as such romgaining a sense o their power, and to preventthose who participate in masses that have a senseo their power rom recognizing their own indi-vidual part in this power. But all it takes to un-leash the crowd is to name it or what it is, andengage with it; we are, ater all, living in the mostcrowded era o human history.

A small group that behaves condently as ithey are living in a dierent world can call intoquestion things everyone else takes or granted; ithey take their departure ar enough at the righttime, they can make the impossible possible bypersuading others that it is so on the strength otheir own conviction. Tis can be done withoutcoercion or instruction: one can demonstrateoptions with ones behavior that were invisiblebeore, and others will join in i what they see isattractive to them. Tus the yearning o a veryew can be taken up by a mass and become a sel-ullling prophecy; all it takes is or a ew dream-ers to practice believing and desiring outside thelines while resisting the quarantine o pigeon-holing, and then demonstrate those dreams andtheir aith in them in public.

individual, just as a courageous crowd can bemore courageous than a courageous individual:this is why it is important or anyone whodabbles in crowd participation to know how toextricate hersel rom the crowds groupthink ata moments notice.

And so, long experienced in crowd situa-tions, our heroinesuddenly emerging out othe aceless mass at the conclusion o our sto-rywithdrew in a dierent direction, down aside alley that bore her to saety. Walking calmlyand alone, no longer wearing the jacket shehad been earlier, she passed eortlessly by thepolice who were now scrambling to nd somescapegoat to arrest or leader to blame. Later she

joined some riends, checking in to make sureno one had been arrested and discussing thenights experiment: What would have happenedi the police had showed up when people wererst entering the street? Was it authoritarianthat the ones at the ront o the parade deter-mined its route, or merely inevitable? Were thepeople who set the dumpster on re irrespon-sibly endangering other participants, or wasit good that they had escalated the situation?

Was it wrong that the guy rom the band hadelt entitled to give e veryone instructions? How

could individuals be prevented rom seizing thereigns o group activities in the uture? Mostimportantly, how could the sense o power thathad enabled a ew people to conceive o andinitiate the event be shared with everyone whoenjoyed participating?

Te ones who set the parade in motionnever gave any ordersthey simply opened a

window o possibility by carrying out actionsthat let room or others to join in. But or a to-tal sel-managed revolution to be possible, everyindividual must be versed enough in sel-deter-mination, and every group experienced enoughin quick collective decision-making, that no onecan usurp control. We need to be trying thingslike this constantly, the woman told her riends,in the streets and everywhere else, to get thepractice well need to get our lives and our com-munities back in our own hands.

o learn more about instigating your own spontaneous crowdactivities, consult the anarchist cookbook orthcoming rom

the CrimethInc. Institute or Subversive Studies.(some assembly required)

*Tisstandsinstarkcontrastto themilitary modelogrouppar-ticipation,inwhicheachindividualissystematicallybrokenohissenseoautonomyandindependenceso hecanunctionmoree-cientlyinastrictchainocommand,withtheimplicationthatitisconormist,hierarchicalunitythatgivespowertoa group.Coulditbethatarmiesactuallyexisttostrippowerromtheirmembers,to

createdeenselesscrowds underthe pretenseo deendingthem?

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Tat isnot only is money costly to obtain, but,like any addictive drug, its less and less ullling!And the urther up you get in the work hierarchy,the more you have to give up to remain there. Temiddle class worker must abandon his unruly pas-sions and his conscience, must convince himselthat he deserves more than the unortunates whoselabor provides or his comort, must smother hisevery impulse to question, to share, to see throughothers eyes; otherwise, he would be unt to playhis social role, and some more ruthless contenderwould quickly replace him. Both blue collar andwhite collar workers must kill themselves to keepthe jobs that keep them alive; its just a question ophysical or spiritual destruction.

Tose are the costs we pay individually, butthere is also a global price to pay or all this working.Tere are work-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths:every year we kill people by the tens o thousands

to sell hamburgers andhealth club member-ships to the survivors.Tere are the pollutionand destruction o theenvironment, obviously.And above all, more ex-orbitant than any otherprice, there is the costo never learning howto direct our own lives,never getting the chance

to answer or even ask the question o what we woulddo with our time on this planet i it was up to us.We can never know how much we are giving up bysettling or a world in which people are too busy, toopoor, or too beaten down to do so.

Last time economic recession caused massive

layos in Japan, a social epidemic spread in whichout-o-work businessmen, ashamed to admit to theiramilies that they had lost their jobs and so unamil-iar with reedom that they could not imagine whatto do with it, would leave their homes every morningto spend their ormer working hours sitting in parks,alone and despondent. What a sad civilization this isthat creates such aimlessness and dependence!

The reproduction of production . . .Why work, i its so expensive? Everyone knows

the answertheres no other way to acquire the re-sources we need to survive, or or that matter to par-ticipate in society at all. All the earlier social ormsthat made cooperative, recreational liestyles pos-

sible have been eradicatedthey were stamped outby conquistadors, slave traders, and corporationsthat let neither tribe nor tradition nor eco-systemintact. Contrary to capitalist propaganda, ree hu-man beings wont crowd into actories to serve ithey have other optionsnot even in return orname brand shoes and sotware.

Working every day, selling our labor on themarket rather than using it to create new alterna-tives, we perpetuate the conditions that necessitateour submission to that market. Capitalism existsbecause we invest everything in it: all our energyand ingenuity in the production process, all our re-sources at the supermarket and in the stock market,all our attention in ollowing the mass media. obe more precise, capitalism exists because our dailyactivitiesareit.

Instead o each buying our own set o tools thatinevitably sit rusting in the basement while wereout working to cover the payments, we could allcontribute a little towards a neighborhood toolsetto be shared; likewise, instead o all trying to makeit on our own, we could save a lot o trouble bymeeting our needs in cooperative groups, outsidethe exchange economybut we dont, because weear no one else would join in, because were too ex-hausted rom working to get started, because weretoo busy to even meet each other in the rst place.

Here we arrive at the catch-22 that maintainsthe status quo: revolution is not possible untilpeople change their lives, and vice versa. But some-body has to break this vicious circle and test out itsimplicit corollary: that revolution ispossible whenpeople change their lives.

. . . and SubmissionIt is a oregone conclusion or the aver-

age white collar worker that she would neversell sexual avors on the streetbut spendingher lie in a cubicle, engaged in meaninglessrepetitive tasks, she willingly sells away moreprecious parts o hersel.

Obeying teachers, bosses, the demandso the marketnot to mention trafc lights,parents expectations, religious scriptures, so-cial normswe are conditioned rom inancyto put our needs on hold. Following ordersbecomes an unconscious reex. As ree-lanceslaves hawking our lives hour by hour, we cometo think o ourselves as each having a price; the

amount o the price becomes our measure o

live. Alternatively, it could mean turning your jobagainst capitalism: surreptitiously redirecting re-sources rom the company to the community, orsabotaging rom the inside. As no employer willever pay you the ull value o your labor, nor canplaying by the rules in even the most civic-mindedproession ever counteract the total impact o thesystem in general, you should never take a job with-out having some trick up your sleeve to even thescales. And i you have been thrown aside by theeconomy entirely, de-classing might mean takingadvantage o having nothing to lose to make yourpoverty cost the ones who are counting on you togive upor nding a way to convey how thingslook rom where you are to people in very dierentsocial positions. Whatever it takes, no more busi-ness as usual.

Whereas merely individualist eorts towardsworkless living can remain within the territory ohedonism, a collective struggle or reedom romwage slavery amounts to civil war. Such a strugglerequires that we build massive support networksand connections between disparate social circles.Tere are already individuals and groups rom manydierent demographics out o work, or at least disil-lusioned with it; they must discover what they haveto share with one another, and how to do so. Tiswill demand a ruthless clarity rom each o us aboutwhat our personal advantages are and how they canbe applied or the benet o all. Really de-classingyoursel does not mean cashing in your privileges,but contesting them and privilege in general by put-ting them at the disposal o those who have less ordierent privileges.

Tis is the opposite o the charity usually prac-ticed by the bourgeoisie, which reinorces deeperinequalities than the supercial ones it addresses: in

oering handouts without actually correcting dis-parities in means and status, would-be do-goodersonly send the message that not only are they harderworking and thus wealthier than the unortunatesthey assist, they are also morally superior to them.Children o the middle class, i they would establishsolidarity with those o other classes, must actuallylive as they do, acing the same challenges; you canonly make common cause in a common context.

Dclass war maniests a working model othe world we ght or and dream o. Tose whowould otherwise be segregated rom each other byclass can orge mutually benecial relationships in which each provides the resources to which theothers have been denied access. Historically, the

most revolutionary situations have resulted romalliances between reugees o dierent classes, whomet outside the walls in the course o their strugglesor reedom. Arming the homeless with the meanso the bourgeois and the ex-bourgeois with streetknowledge, bringing together migrant workers,temp slaves, hobos, unemployed philosophers, andinuriated accountants in a class to end all classesand a war to end all wars, we can give capitalism areal run or its money.

Te time is ripe or a new resistance. As manu-acturing jobs disappear overseas, this nation isshiting rom a production-oriented economy toa service-oriented one. With this shit comes in-creased job insecurity, more requent relocation ojobs and workers alike, and the total demoralizationand atomization o the workorce. Whether or notthe old class-based organizing strategies were evereective, they are less and less so today. Our jobswere once the one thing we all had in common, andthereore the best site or organizing opposition; ourlabor is still the oundation o the economy, but asjobs no longer provide us with a reliable oundationor our own lives, let alone or organizing, we mustcome up with a strategy that solves the challengesthis instability poses and takes advantage o it tobuild momentum towards a complete transorma-tion o lie. Dclass war is just that strategy.

Dclass Wardropouts cutting class (exiting the economy as a strategy for reclaiming your life and saving the world)

Dclass: (adj. or n.) having lost class or status in society

De-class: (v.) to reject ones social and economic roleAntivocation provocation by Average Guy Fawkes and Citizen Caine, CrimethInc. Labor Union of the Unemployed Local 47. If this sounds g ood in theory but you cant imagine how to go about it in practice, we can provide

a wide variety of concrete testimonials through any of the various CrimethInc. addresses. As for the admittedly cursory analysis of class and declassing, were condent you can work out the subtleties yourself.

*A slow sort o country! said the Queen. Now here, yousee, it takes all the runningyou can do, to keep in the sameplace. I you want to get somewhere else, you must run atleast twice as ast as that.

Id rather not try, please! said Alice.

The OccupationOccupation. Te word brings to mind images o

Russian tanks rolling through the streets o EasternEurope, or U.S. soldiers nervously patrolling hostileneighborhoods in Baghdad.

But occupation is not always so obvious; some-times occupations go on so long that the tanks areunnecessary. Tey can be rolled back into storage, aslong as the conquered remember they can return atany timeor behave as i the tanks were still there,orgetting why they do so.

How do you recognize an occupied people? Temost common indication is a tithe they must payto their conquerors, or a service they must renderthem. A tithe is a sort o rent the occupied pay justto live on their own lands; and as or the servicewell, whats youroccupation? You know, what occu-pies your time? A job, probably, or two, or prepara-tions or one, or recovery rom one. You need thatjob to pay or rent, among other thingsbut wasntthe building you live in built by people like your-sel, people who had to work to pay their rent too?Te same goes or all those other products you haveearn money to pay oryou and others like youmade them, but you have to buy them rom thecompanies that employ you, and they neither payyou all the money they make o your labor nor sellthe products at the cost it took to produce them.Teyve got you coming and going!

Our lives are occupied territory. Who controlsthe resources in your community, who molds thecharacter o your neighborhood and the countrysidearound it, who sets your schedule day by day andmonth by month? Even i you are sel-employed,are you the one who decides what you have to do tomake money? For that matter, picture your idea operect blissdoes it bear a suspicious resemblanceto the utopia you see in television commercials? Notonly our time, but also our ambitions, our sexuality,our values, our very sense o what it means to be hu-manall these are occupied, transormed accordingto the demands o the market. As the days and nightso work and recovery add up, eventually you canthelp but wonder: have you lived ten thousand days,or just the same day ten thousand times?

And we arent the only territory under enemycontrol. Te invisible occupation o our lives pro-vides the resources or the military occupation oareas at the ringe o this conquered land, placeswhere guns and tanks are still necessary to enorcethe property rights o robber barons and the libertyo corporations to trade at the expense o hostile

localssome o whom may still remember what lieis like without leases, salaries, or bosses.

You might not be all that dierent rom them,yoursel, despite having been raised in captivity.Maybe in the bosss ofce, or in career counselingor romantic quarrels, whenever someone was try-ing to command your attention and your attentionwouldnt cooperate, youve been chided or beingpre-occupied. Tat issome rebel part o yoursel

is still held by daydreams and antasies, lingeringhopes that your lie could somehow be more thanan occupation.

Tere is a rebel army out in the bush plot-ting the abolition o wage-slavery, as sure as thereare workers in every ofce and actory carrying onthe guerrilla war with their own loang, pilering,and absenteeismand you can join up, too, i youhavent already. But beore we start laying plans andsharpening spears, lets rewind a bit and go over allthe reasons to make a break or it, just in case theresanyone out there who hasnt learned about workinglie rsthand.

Liberationits not working!At this very moment, a black woman is looking

ater white womens children instead o spendingtime with her own, a tree is being hewed down in arainorest, a bullet is being red rom a soldiers orpolicemans gun into one o our bodies.

Lets ocus in on the shooting. Tose bulletsdont come out o nowhere. Each one was manu-actured in a actory by workersand at each othose actories, there was a boss, and a secretary, anda janitor or two. Someone kept track o accounts,someone made coee in the mornings, somebodytacked up motivational posters on the walls. Otherworkers drove the trucks that delivered the bullets,loaded and unloaded them, pumped gasoline intotheir tanks, repaired them when they broke down.Tere was an advertising executive who promotedthe product, a designer who made sure it looked itsbest, a programmer who maintained a webpage, asales representative who negotiated the sale to thepolice orce. Inside that police orce, writing memos,training new ofcers, taking out the trash, were hun-dreds more workers, not to mention the thousandswho invested in the corporation selling bullets, andthe hundreds o thousands whose taxes unded thepurchase. Every murder has one million accomplic-esas does every polluted creek, every case o lung

cancer, every teenager who stops eating lunch ater

seeing one too many ashion magazines. Guns dontkill people, entire civilizations kill people.

Meanwhile, somewhere else somebody is out-raged about another shooting. He writes an angryletter to a newspaper or email listserve, perhaps heeven takes time out o his busy schedule to go toa demonstration. But between writing and dem-onstrating, he has bills to pay, so he, too, goes towork. Perhaps he works at a actory himsel, or inan ofce or restaurant; regardless, his labor servesto keep the economy running at ull tilt, and thateconomy keeps power centralized in the hands othe ones who ordered the shooting and benet romit. Perhaps his hard work turns a prot that his em-ployer deposits in a bank that loans money to thecorporation that produces bullets; perhaps he serveslunch to an executive o the trucking corporationthat delivered them; perhaps when he comes homerom work, exhausted, he opens a bag o potatochips made by workerslike himsel in a actoryowned by a companythat pays taxes that undthe police departmentthat used the bullets.He decries the injusticesaround him, but it is hislabor and consumption,in concert with the la-bor and consumptiono millions like him,that power the system that guns down innocents,cuts down orests, addicts people to nicotine, andteaches young people to hate their bodies.

Clearly, resisting this system cant just be a part-time hobby inevitably undercut by the ull time jobsthat keep it in place. When the economy itsel is an

engine o destruction, withdrawing rom it isnt justa matter o personal taste, or a hedonistic exhibitiono privilegeits the only way to engage with thetotal horror o it all, the only way to contest it indeed as well as word.

Te man in our example may eel tiny andpowerless in the sea o millions like himandhes right to eel that way, so long as the majorityo his energy and time goes into perpetuating theprocesses he would oppose. But the good news isit takes all that labor to keep those processes go-ingmodern capitalism is only possible on a globalscale, can only sustain itsel by expanding and ex-pending constantly. Tat explains all the pressure tostay employed, pay bills, and get ahead, then: the

cartels are terried that someday, somewhere, some-one will throw down his apron or briecase with thewords I quit!and know exactly what he is goingto do instead.

On that ateul day, whenever and wherever ithappens, everything changes.

It sure costs a lot to make money!Cost o living estimates are misleading, to say

the leasttheres little living going on at all! Costo working is more like it, and its not cheap.

Everyone knows what maids and dishwasherspay or being the backbone o our economy. All thescourges o povertymalnutrition, addiction, bro-ken amilies, debilitating medical problemsarepar or the course; the ones who survive these andsomehow go on showing up to work on time areworking miracles, albeit or senseless ends. Tinkwhat they could accomplish i they were ree to ap-ply this power to something other than staying justbarely alive enough to earn more prots or theiremployers!

What about those employers, those ortunateenough to be higher on the pyramid? You would thinkearning a higher salary would mean having moremoney and thus more reedom, but in practice its notthat simple. Every job entails hidden costs in propor-tion to the wages it provides: just as a dishwasher hasto pay bus are to and rom work every day, a corpo-rate lawyer is expected to be able to y anywhere ata moments notice, to go to posh gol courses or in-ormal business meetings, to own a small mansion inwhich to entertain dinner guests that double as clients.Tis is why it is so difcult or anyone, at any salary,to save up enough money to quit while theyre aheadand get out o the rat race: trying to get ahead in thisworld basically means running in place*. At best, youmight move on to a ancier treadmill, but youll haveto run aster to keep on it.

And these merely nancial costs o working arethe least expensive. In a well-known survey, peopleo all walks o lie were asked how much moneythey would need to live the lie they wanted; rompauper to patrician, they all answered approxi-mately double whatever their current income was.

value. In that sense, we become commodities, justlike toothpaste and toilet paper. What once was ahuman being is now an employee, in the same waythat what once was a cow is now a medium raresteak. Our lives disappear, spent like the money orwhich we trade them. Commodities are consumed,working to produce commodities, and we becomeless than the sum o our products.

Consumptionits not just anineteenth century disease anymore!

Having become merchandise ourselves, werush to consume merchandise to prove we stillhave some power. Purchasing, once a necessaryevil suered to obtain the resources necessary orsurvival, is now a sacred act; in the religion o capi-talism, in which value comes rom nancial powerand spending is thus proo o worth, it is a kind ocommunion. Te store is the temple in which theconsumers status as one who can buy is afrmedin the actual act o buying. Tats why a certainclass o people will gladly pay or bland ood at anexpensive restaurant when there is cheaper, tastierare right down the street. For the consumer incar-nate, spending money is the main point; everythingelsetaste in ood and clothes, investment in thelatest technologies, even political sympathiesisjust a means to that end.

Tis compulsive disorder, which keeps us allrunning back to our jobs to earn more money as thecredit card bills pile up, would be bad enough onits ownbut its also gobbling the world up rombeneath our eet. In the absence o beautiul moun-tain tops destroyed by mining and pickup gameso street hockey outmoded by televised spectatorsports, we cant imagine what there might be besidesconsumerism to ll the aching void selling our lives

away leaves within us.

Work Mentality: ServitudeMany o us have a real problem with initiative.

We cant show up on time to band practice, but wenever miss a day o work. We lack the discipline tokeep up with the reading or our book clubs, butwe always nish papers or school. Tis is a sel-perpetuating symptom o employment; thanks toit, we are our own worst enemies when it comesto providing or our needs outside the exchangeeconomy. When a person stops working, she usuallygoes through a period o restlessness and inactivity;but this is not a reason to keep looking to someoneor something outside ourselves or directionon

the contrary, its one more reason to quit serving, sowe can learn to come up with our own projects andcome through on our commitments.

Tis is not easy in a society that punishes eco-nomic desertion with total embargo. But once ourvery survival depends on being able to direct ourown activities rather than being incapable o do-ing so, were sure to learn what it takes not only tosurvive but also prosper without work. Necessity isthe mother o invention, and unemployment is theuncle o necessity.

Work Morality: Sacricerading the moments o our lives away, we be-

come so used to sacricing that it comes to be theonly way we know to express what we care about.We martyr ourselves or ideas, causes, love o oneanother, when these should be enabling us to ndhappiness together. Tere are amilies, or example, in which peopleshow aection by competing to be the one who givesup the most or the others. In such amilies, gratica-tion is not only delayed, it is passed down rom onegeneration to the next. Te responsibility o nallyenjoying all the happiness presumably saved up overyears o thankless toil is deerred to the children; yetwhen they come o age, i they are to be responsibleadults, they too must orswear all pleasure and beginsaving to send their ospring to college.

But the buck stops here. I postponement

breeds postponement, mightnt the same be true oenjoyment?

But what about the children?For that matter, what about the insurance cov-

erage, car payments, student loans, overdue creditcard bills, cat ood, eating at your avorite Tai res-taurant, that digital camera you want to buy? Ocourse, existing in this trap, weve all invested our-selves in it, made lives out o our compromises withitand that means whenever we think about get-ting out we have to consider the hostages aectedby our choices.

But seriouslywhat about the children?Shouldthey grow up with absentee wage slave parents, su-ering secondhand stress and resentmentlike weall had to? Should we go on selling ourselves tothe highest bidder, treating our breakdowns with

mood-stabilizing drugs and psychiatric therapysothat they can too, one day? Let the children grow upwithout televisions or social statusin order thatone dayeverychild might!

Useful unemploymentand its professional enemies

What i nobody worked? Te assembly lineswould stop, orsaken plastic gadgets would sit or-ever on their shelves, paper money would be usedas restarter as people reverted to barter and evengit-giving. Grass and owers would grow out ocracks in the sidewalk unchecked. Pretty soon therewouldnt even be enough working cars to have atrafc jam!

And, the nay-sayers announce, we would allstarve to death. But were not exactly subsisting onair resheners and Hallmark cards, are we? We builtthis world with our labor, andthinking and act-ing enthusiastically or ourselves, rather than reluc-tantly or compensationwe could surely build abetter one. Tat wouldnt mean abandoning every-thing weve learned, it would just mean abandoningeverything weve learned doesnt work: hierarchy,coercion, cutthroat competition.

Once upon a time, beore time cards and powerlunches, everything got done without work. Knowl-edge and skills werent the exclusive domains olicensed experts, held hostage by expensive institu-tions; emotional and practical needs alike were metin the course o recreation. Acting outside the work/leisure paradigm today, we can do the same.

Henry Miller in Parisian povertyvs. the indignant and materialisticclass war militants

Whenever you question the necessity or the wisdom o working, someone inevitably accusesyou o sel-indulgence, laziness, privilege. Workingis an emotionally charged issue.

Lets be rank about this: in an oppressive so-ciety, the moment o sel-liberation is oten expe-rienced as a separation rom, or even a lashing outagainst, ones ellows and ormer coworkers: Toseslaves!Tose who would propel themselves out othe orbit o a liestyle or ideology must build upquite a bit o momentum, and such intense energycan make them difcult to bear; being judgmentalis a sign o lie, as one wise woman put it.

But in the long run, i such escapees are to

succeed in orging a dierent lie, they must nd

common cause with others, and eventuallymake their way back to the ones whosesociety they edas the context or indi-vidual lives is determined by the content

o all lives, liberation is or all or none. Re-sentment among workers and sel-righteousnessamong ex-workers are twin obstacles that must beovercomeas are all sentiments that proceed romour own insecurities.

So much class war is really about envy. I wedidnt subconsciously eel that the ruling classsposition indicates their superiority, our campaignsagainst them would be conducted with more pitythan spite. But i were right that wealth and powerare not the greatest goods, our oes, the supposedvictors o the class struggle, cant be any bettero than we are. We shouldnt strive or what theyhave and are, but desert the whole equation. Weshouldnt seize their means o productionall thisproduction is itsel destructive, and would prob-ably be impossible without the accompanying hi-erarchiesbut destroy and replace them. Tis canbegin right now, in our own lives.

Making a virtue of necessity:You cant re me, I quit!

Unemployment isnt oreign to everyone inthis countryin act, many o us dont even havea choice in the matter. extile actories close down,jobs emigrate overseas, amily arms are seized, start-up companies go broke, corporate ofces downsize,and we end up with pink slips instead o pay-checks and, as everyone knows, the longer youare unemployed, the less employable you become.

Te unemployed, too, have a job to do in capi-talismto be miserably, orbiddingly deeated. For-tunately, like any job, this is a job that can be quit.

I youve lost your job and cant nd a new one,all the potential energy and ree time that was beingtaken rom you is now back in your handsget ac-tive with it! ake all your crazy ideas, and whateverresources you can get your hands on, and put themat the disposal o all-out revolution! Make your lib-eration into a godsend, and choosehowever retro-activelya lie o gainul unemployment!

Tis is hard to do, o course, when it eels likethe whole world is telling you that you are a ailureand your lie now has no meaning. Tis is wherecommunities come in. Well need each others loveand support more than ever as we set out into thisunknownnot least because, as the demands o themarket have broken up almost all the social inra-

structures our ancestors had, the workplace is nowone o the only places people interact. We need tobuild connections with each other that can provideor all the needs weve relied on institutions to han-dleand above all, we need one another to buildup the momentum that living and acting against thegrain requires.

Not only should our communities take careo their own, but they should also be accessibleand welcoming to others. Tere are hundreds othousands o people unemployed in this nationalonethink how much unharnessed energy theyhave! Must they languish in dejected isolation romone another, when they could be rescuing the worldrom corporate greed, mass alienation, and ennui?Every neighborhood and township should have anex-workers union, open to all, oering a variety ostarting places or idle hands to do what business-men have always called the devils work.

But with what resources will we do this work,being at broke and all? Workers arent the onlything being thrown out, you knowwastebasketsand sidewalks overow with our ellow trash, yearn-ing to be put back into circulation. I there werentenough ood in the garbage to go around, we scav-engers would be ools to encourage others to joinusbut here in the agship nation o conspicuousconsumption and waste, theres ar more than that.Every night at closing time, enough useul materialto eed, clothe, and equip several armies o insurgentex-workers enters the dumpsters o this country.Hell, there are whole districts standing empty, wait-ing to be occupied and put to use! Without jobs, wehave the time and energy we need to reclaim these;all we need is the networks to do so, and the nerveto decide that we deserve such playgrounds.

Te working class may not have yet managed tosock it to the system, but those o us without workhave both the ree time and a good reason to do so.And the alternativesalcoholism, homelessness, in-capacitating depression, total ostracismdont havemuch to recommend them. All power to the unem-ployedso we can learn to employ our own power!

The question of lifestyleA person who ails to nd a way o lie that in-

tegrates her political belies, social inclinations, andpersonal needs into one total approach will oreverbe disabled choosing between them, her choiceseither cheating her o parts o hersel or canceling

each other out.

Once upon a time it was chic or certain radi-cal inghters to accuse their oes o being liestyleanarchists, the implication being that they weremore ocused on enjoying their own lives than onChanging Te World. But it is actions that mat-ter, not theories, and an anarchist or activist whosepractice does not extend into every aspect o herlie, comprising a total liestyle, is an anarchist oractivist in theory onlythat is to say, liestyleanarchism is the onlyanarchism. Similarly, the ul-timate question or anyone seeking social changeis how to make it possible or people to live dier-entlyand a little eld experience goes a long waytoward that end.

At war with classLets be clear: were not just talking about quit-

ting jobs here, but about deserting and ultimatelydestroying the class system itsel. raditional revolu-tionary ideology has extolled membership in a revo-lutionary class, the proletariat, which ghts or itsinterests against other classes. In place o this gangrivalry, we propose a universal rejection o all pos-sible positions within the social order, in order tocreate classless communities.

Te capitalist economy reduces not only in-dividuals but entire demographics and nations totheir economic unctions. Tis is the enorcemento stereotypes asreality: under corporate monocul-ture, you cant grow anything but bananas in thebanana republic, and the same goes or silicon val-ley and motor city. Such stereotyping is a mania weshould leave behind with capitalism.

Waging dclass war means resisting the temp-tation to establish new standards or norms o resis-tance; the communist glorication o the workeris no less alienating than the capitalist glorication

o the movie star. Tis is not a struggle or the tri-umph o one class or ideology over others, but anongoing cultural war against all the roles currentlyon the marketand against markets, classes, andideologies in general.

Reusing to play our class roles, ceasing toevaluate and engage with ourselves and each otheraccording to the logic o capitalism, we underminethe assumptions that perpetuate it. When it is im-possible or others to interact with you in any o theways prescribed by the marketthey can neithersell you real estate nor career counseling, neitherpeg you as a spoiled student nor a despondent pau-peryour every encounter has the potential to jerkthem out o their roles as well.

Dclass war!Make no mistake about itin a system that

runs on exploitation, desertion and reusal are es-sential to any eective resistance, are indeed the es-sence o resistance. Whether domination and sub-mission or cooperation and consensus triumph asthe predominant social orces is decided every dayby the activities people participate in. Most peopledont much like pollution, warare, or brainwash-ing, but are too busy selling their labor to manu-acturers, warmongers, and advertising agencies todo anything about them. I we are to put an end tothese, there is no substitute or taking our lives andassets out o their hands, and out o the cycles ocontention o which their power is but a symptom.

Te Disaster is not just the work o an elite ew.Every class is complicit in maintaining it: the bossesmanagement would be nothing without the work-ers labor, and even the unemployed do their partby staying out o the way. We all have to stop play-ing our roles, whatever they may be. Tis will takedierent orms or dierent individuals, accordingto the classes they are escaping and the details otheir lives. It could mean quitting work completely:cutting your commodity consumption down to thebare minimum, exploring what resources are avail-able in abundance outside the exchange economy,and staking everything on nding another way to

I I am captured I will continue to resist

by all means available. I will make every

eort to escape and to aid others to escape.

I will accept neither parole nor special

avors rom the enemy.

-Article 3, U.S. Military Code o Conduct

Out of OrderSorry for the Inconvenience!

We are not merchandise or mercenaries. We are not products that sell themselves. We cannot bebought or leasedwe are already sel-possessed.

What child earnestly dreams o growing up to be a grill cook, a popcorn vendor? Whatyoung heart yearns to manage advertising accounts or supervise ellow team members at acorporate supermarket? We are dropping out because the market oers us no wealth we canrecognize. Digital video discs? Were sick o watching actors, we want adventures o our own.Political parties, legislative solutions? We want, or once, the experience o using our own power,representing ourselves. ell us we need more education, well laughwe know there isnt roomor all o us at the top, and were starting to question whether we want to be there, anyway. ellus we need better work ethics, prescription drugs, career counseling, psychiatric care, perhaps asummer on the student hostel circuit, well jeerwe know, nally, that the problem is not us.We are through with symptomatic treatment, blaming the victim. You always told us i we lost

our jobs, it would be the end o the worldsounds like its worth a shot.

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MAXIMUM ULRAISM is the antidote to every-thing stiing in democracy and polite society. Ultraists

wage a lie-and-death war against consensus reality orthe liberation o all and o all other realities.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is a provocation, thats orsure. Te devil, and the devils advocate, both are Ul-traists, and theyve done more or reedom and range

o thought than God ever has.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is the art o ollowing everyidea through to its logical conclusion. It means neverdoing anything by hal. Ultraists mortiy underhandedpoliticians by putting everything on the table or all tosee. Even and especially when they are wrong, Ultraistsdo everyone the great service o revealing the virtuesand weaknesses o theories and strategies in their pur-est orms. Every community needs a ew Ultraistsaround to test out new possibilities.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM opens up horizons: everyUltraist is a pioneer. Te Ultraist escapes disciples, andyet enables others who would never have dared beoreto try positions similar to hers. Te Ultraist sets a prec-edent, and thus makes it possible or the less openlyradical to give themselves permission to explore themiddle ground that has now opened up between themainstream and the radical.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is not dogmatic or doctri-naire. o be an Ultraist is not to surrender ones sel orsenses; orthodoxy, anaticism, these are simply compet-ing brands o Standard. Te true Ultraist invents herown ultimates and issues her own ultimatums.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM does not call or converts; itis a challenge to all to establish themselves at extremeso their own.

MAXIMUMULRAISM is nota competition, nor astandard o measure or somenew elite. More-ultra-than-thou isa contest without meaningthere areextremes enough or ever ybody. Moreover,the practice o transgressing boundaries and push-ing limits reveals that there is no center, and so noextremes either.

Tus MAXIMUM ULRAISM is non-hierarchical;no sel-respecting Ultraist looks down upon othersas less Ultra than herselto do so would be to ac-cept the conormist myth that there isa standard onormalcy at all. Te true Ultraist recognizes that allare extremists*, that the mainstream is a myth o thesheepish and sheeplike.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is not about getting dolledup in a suit and tie or the administration, practicingdiction or the cameras, or adopting local customs to

seduce recruits. Insincerity is the oundation o thissick society; people have learned to smell it a mile awayjust to survive. Youre not doing anyone any avors byreinorcing its ubiquity in your own act ivities, nor byinsulting their intelligence and passion assuming theyarent ready to be as radical as you secretly are. Like-

wise, Ultraists dont disguise themselves as moderatesto work with others towards moderate goalsyouraverage group o moderates is just a bunch o closetedUltraists waiting or partners with whom to go or it,anyway.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is a deliberate attempt toalienate the massesor who is the greatest enemy oliberty and individuality, i not masses? B esides, letsnot kid ourselves: those masses are the ones ormingmilitias, gunning each other down in post ofces andhigh schools, joining cult groups that promise im-mortality through sel-castrationthese people craveextremism, theyre desperate or it! I all they neededto join the movement was a radicalism that lookedexactly like the politics theyre amiliar with, the Greenparty would have won the last election. No, people areholding out or a dierent way o lie. I your radicalstance has isolated you, maybe its because you haventgone ar enough.

Enthusiasts oMAXIMUM ULRAISM arent araido looking like the radicals they are. Bashulness, em-barrassment, watering-downnothing makes us lookmore like we have something to hide in our politics

than these. Ultraists positions are more attractive or

being held with condenceand without apology; in the longrun, endless disclaimers alienate morepeople than they placate.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is ailsae, anyway. TeUltraist can set people against himsel and his ideas i

he does injury to them (through terrorism, etc.). Tismakes him less dangerous to society than the moder-ate, who can do a great deal more damage to othersthrough common, accepted practices without attract-ing any attention at all.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM can complement positionsand tactics perceived to be less radical. Some, who takestances they see as moderate, accuse Ultraists in thesame camp o alienating their constituencybut inact, such Ultraists can make those positions attractiveto people and orce their enemies to make concessionsby providing a less palatable alternative: Parley withus, or youll have to deal with . . . the Ultraists.

Needless to say, no one associated with MAXIMUMULRAISM conducts surveys or gives a good god-damn about statistics. Youre responsible or youropinions and choices; a glance at recent history showsthe majority knows best only by accident. Lie is notsomething to be voted onyou have one o your own,its all you have to work rom, no one else can knowbetter whats right or you. Te p aralysis o waitinguntil youve learned enough about the issues doesno one any gooddraw some conclusions rom yourexperience and act on them! Tose who see an expres-sion o their secret selves in your actions, or who standto benet rom what youre doing, will take notice and

join in.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM will not alienate yourpeersit will win you the recognition o the most dar-ing and passionate among them.

But let it not be said that MAXIMUM ULRAISMis not or the weak o heartUltraism is a way to de-velop strength o heart. o move daily through a worldthat contradicts and denies your values, your veryexistence, is to orge a rmness o character that can-not be undercut by any peer pressure or passing ad.Ultraists can be counted upon to say what they eeland practice what they preach; they have nothing tolose and nothing to hide. An Ultraist, i she is o thesame mind as you, is the most trustworthy ally youcan gain.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM buries treasures or theuture. Tink o all the geniuses and visionaries whodied marginalized and unsung! I they had worked in-stead to water down their revelations and adjust theirvisions to their times, they would have cheated usall o these riches. We should be thankul they werear-sighted enough to isolate themselves so they couldchannel into being the world that was to come. Se-clusion, obscurity, the mask o insanity, these can en-able one to discover truths and possibilities invisibleto those blindered by expectation and the demandso being realistic. We can allbe such geniuses, i we

trust and ollow our own visions. A commitment toUltraism signies aith in the boundless ertility othe imagination and the endless possibilities o theuniverse.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is a holistic way o lie wed-ding theory to practice. Te Ultraists belies play anactive role in her day-to-day existencehers are notmere conversation pieces to be trotted out at dinnerparties! By working out her own principles and actingin accordance with them, by taking hersel and her

destiny seriously enough to reuse any walk-onrole in the scripted spectacle o some

Silent Majority, she is guaranteeda leading role in a lie story

o adventure: highstakes to play

or,

triumphs to achieve, tragedies to suer. Boredom,eelings o insignicance and impotence, these will bethe least o her many problems. When she laughs, shelaughs all o her laughter; i she cries, she cries all oher tears. An Ultraist may live a lie o desperation, butyou can bet your bullets it wont be a quiet one.

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is the opposite o thehappy medium promoted by the happy media. It is achallenge to those who oppose concentration campsin the name o moderationa moderate degree ocontrol, a moderate degree o reedom, a moderatedegree o lie and a correspondingly moderate degreeo death. Ultraists counter this with a passionate dedi-cation to lieor the ones dedicated to death are nolonger with us!

MAXIMUM ULRAISM is unique in its every mani-estation. MAXIMUM ULRAISM cannot be co-opt-ed. MAXIMUM ULRAISM is radically democratic.Individual Ultraism is an act o solidarity with all oth-ers believing, dreaming, acting outside the lines.

For a revolution without limits, against restraintsand restraint! Long live the superlative!

-CrimethInc. ask Forceor Moderation and Mediation

Te reasonable adapt themselves to the world;the unreasonable struggle to alter it: thereore all

progress depends on the creatively maladjusted.Te one who listens to reason is lostreason enslaves all minds not strong enough to resist.

Maximum Ultraism in Action:A ew years back, the local environmental action

group sent canvassers around to raise awareness about theharmul eects o the nuclear power plant that supplieselectricity to our whole county. One o them ended up at adoorstep out on the edge o townat Hollys dads house,as it turned out. Te young activist rang the bell and de-livered his spiel to the grizzled veteran that answered thedoor, who listened patiently or its duration, interruptingonly to swear in outrage at the accounts o injustice andcontamination. Concluding his presentation, the young-ster politely explained that the action group was collectingcontributions, which were tax deductible, and invited theolder man to sign a petition. Te latter was nonplussed:Youre telling me these scumucks are destroying the landwe live on, and you want me to sign a petition? What

good is that going to do?Well, sir, weLook, i what you say is true, we should be going

ater these motheruckers with guns! Seriously, thats just apiece o paperare people gonna do something about this,or what?

Yes, er, butwe have to start somewhere, andSon, i youre not gonna be any help, run along

youve got a job to do anyway, right? Ill take care o thismysel.

Hollys ather called up Duke Powertrue story!

and asked them i what hed heard about their powerplant was true. Teir answers were evasive enough that hewas convinced, and he demanded that they send a truckto disengage his house rom their system. One can onlyimagine the bewilderment o the representative who tookhis call:

Excuse me, sir?Tats right, I need you to send somebody down here

right now to disconnect me rom the grid. Were throughwith your services or good.

Im sorry, sir Im not sure theres anyI mean,Ive never heard o anyone asking to have their power dis-connected like this

Listen, Im not just asking to have the power discon-nected, Im telling you you need to take down the wholerig, wires and all, and get it the hell o my property, orelse Im gonna do it mysel! And dont think you can getaway with this bullshit anymore. Were on to your tricksnow, you scum-sucking leeches.

Tats why when Henry went to start taking martialarts classes rom him, Hollys dad had no electrical powerat his house. Give us one hundred men and women likehim and well nish this thing right now. Tats

Maximum Ultraism!

*I this is true, then all are Ultraists, whether they embrace MaximumUltraism or not. In that case, an exhortation to Ultraism, such as thisone, should not be read as an attempt to persuade people to chooseone manner o committing themselves over another, but rather as

a refutation of thealibis of moderation

and deferenceto popular

opinion.

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THE FUTURE

The world is coming to an end. Make no mistake aboutit, the days are numbered. Where you are, you cant evenimagine what it will be like when the bottom hits.

Or, to put it differently, the world isalways ending.What comes next is up to us. Every morning we wakeup and sweat and bleed to put an exact duplicate of the

previous days world in its place. We need not do this,but we do, out of fear, or despair, or psychotically de-luded petty ambition, or sheer stubborn lack of imagi-nation. At any moment we could all stop paying rentand going to worknothing could stop us if we all de-serted togetherand rebuild society from scratch with-out landlords or loan payments. Heaven knows weveall had that daydream at least once. Its not police orpoliticians that keep the wheels turning and the bodiesburning, its our own compliance and complacency, notto mention lack of faith in each another.

Yet even if we insist on keeping at it, the Disaster isnot sustainable. Capitalism as we know it is not goingto be here in ve generationsany environmental

scientist can tell you that. Likewise no one has to arguefor the destruction of the middle classits alreadydestroyed: it is the class of people laid waste by theirown materialism and duplicity, suffering emotional andpsychological consequences to which any psychiatrist

can attest. Its no longer a question of whether the

QuickExErcisEin FrEEdomo push the old saw through timber once more, reedom is not choosing between set options, but setting

the options yourselnot voting or or against, but creating the context that determines your choices (Radical:We create the world by which were made. Reactionary: Quit your meddling.). o get a taste o it, tear thispublication up into pieces and reassemble them in a orm o your own choosingto share it, pass your collagealong with the same dare!

NO, dont just reect on the clever metaphor and nod sympathetically, or shake your head in suspicionand malaiseDO it! RIGH NOW!Dont worry about the paperthere areplentyo these printed, you canalways get another! Freedom, on the other hand, cannotbe mass-produced, nor attained by mere agreementwith any article or argumentit has to be orged, person by person, action by action, object by object i itcomes to that, putting each one through the re o reinterpretation and recreation. Its good practice not tobe too deerential to mere things, anyway, i its reedom youre ater!

And dont just tear it up reorm it! (No, not thatkind o reorm!) Watch as xed acts become negotiable,as new meanings appear under your hands. Now go out and repeat this process with everything else!

o prepare or this, spit out words, and suck on tongues.

Waiting or you out here where the world ends,armed to the teeth and dressed to kill

system we grew up in has created the best of all possibleworldseverybody knows the answer to that questionby nowbut of how were going to handle the mess nexttime the terrorists get through the checkpoints, the fuelsupply runs out, the computers and power plants breakdown. Considering other options, trying them out, thatsnot radicalits just common sense when the writing ison the wall.

But are we really going to live to see anything else? Dowe dare hold our breath for another world?Despite the seriousness of our situation, the future

isnt one monolithic, inescapable doom. There are severalfutures ahead of us, just as today there are people who liveside by side but inhabit different worlds; which one youlive to witness will depend largely on what you do in themeantime. This nightmare exists precisely to the extent thatwe invest ourselves in itevery day we work for it, buy fromit, and stake our lives on it, we are buying into the protectionracket that keeps it the only game in town. Correspondingly,the world of our dreams exists to the exact degree that webehave as if were already living in ittheres no other wayit can come to be. The turning point for each individual isthe turning point of society, in miniature. Dont ask when orwhether that point will come, but how you can reach yours;if you can get there yourself, everyone else can too.

When you really start to go for it, when your actionsopen a bona de portal to another way of life, others will

come out of hiding and join in. What, did you think you

were the only one going crazy here? It takes an entiresubjugated nation to keep things running, and there areplenty of others among that number who know howlittle theyre getting out of it. They are the millions whodont get consulted for newspaper polls, who mightpick you up hitchhiking but never appear on television.Ten thousand sleeper cells wait for the point of criticalmass to arrive, ready to spring into action with their