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The case against Republics and for Anarchism
I'm working on an archive project that is going to end up being some important texts, mixed with my own thoughts and observations. I'm temporarily using Gaia as a place to store these thought pieces. I'm not here to debate you, I'm just quietly debun
On Universal Material Security
If the disease is systemic, then the cure cannot be sentimental. One does not abolish exploitation by pleading for mercy within it; one abolishes it by dismantling the conditions that make exploitation possible. The central crime of capitalism is not merely inequality, nor even greed — it is the commodification of survival itself. It forces the human being to sell their life in fragments in order to continue living. Shelter, food, water, warmth — these are not rights but products. Existence itself is auctioned.

Therefore, the revolutionary demand must begin not with niche grievances nor with the defense of particular professions, but with the unconditional guarantee of material existence. Housing, food, clean water, energy, and basic utilities must be decommodified and secured as universal material foundations. Not charity. Not means-tested humiliation. Not bureaucratic paternalism. Universal provision as a matter of social organization.

This is what is meant by universal basic assets: the direct social allocation of the means necessary for survival and dignified participation in society. Land for housing. Infrastructure for water and energy. Agricultural capacity oriented toward nourishment, not speculation. The redirection of wealth — accumulated through centuries of extraction — back into the commons from which it was taken.

A modest wealth tax — even as small as 2.5% on those above subsistence — represents not confiscation but correction. The reallocation of a mere fraction of military expenditure — one percent of an empire’s war chest — could eradicate homelessness within a decade. The numbers are not utopian; the refusal is political. The resources exist. What does not exist is the will to subordinate capital to humanity.

To guarantee the material basis of life is to undermine wage slavery at its root. When survival is no longer contingent upon obedience to capital, labor ceases to be coerced in its most brutal form. The worker who cannot be starved into submission is already half liberated. The landlord without leverage is merely a property holder. The employer without desperation is forced to negotiate.

From this foundation, the abolition of capitalist domination ceases to be rhetorical and becomes structurally inevitable. Once housing is guaranteed, speculation loses power. Once food is secured, the threat of hunger evaporates. Once utilities are public and universal, private monopolies weaken. Each guarantee removes a pillar from the edifice of coercion.

In such a society, art would not need special protection, because survival would not hinge upon its profitability. Creativity would flourish precisely because it would no longer be forced to justify itself in the marketplace. The same is true of intellectual inquiry, craftsmanship, and invention. Tools such as artificial intelligence would cease to be existential threats and would instead become collective instruments — augmentations of human capacity rather than competitors in a scarcity economy.

The general trajectory, then, is clear:
1. Decommodify survival
2. Neutralize coercive leverage
3. Dissolve the structural power of capital
4. Expand democratic control over production.
5. Gradually render hierarchy obsolete through abundance.

This is not a call for vengeance. It is not sadism dressed as justice. It is structural transformation. The revolution worth pursuing is not one that selects new elites, nor one that preserves artisanal privilege, nor one that centers cultural anxieties while prison labor persists. It is one that eliminates the condition in which any human must beg, starve, or submit in order to exist.

Only when survival is guaranteed can solidarity become sincere rather than transactional. Only then can movements stop competing for urgency and begin building a society in which urgency itself is no longer manufactured by deprivation.

The task is not to defend positions within capitalism, but to make capitalism itself structurally impossible.

That is the trajectory.





Subtle Allegory
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  • 02/15/26 to 02/08/26 (5)
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