If there’s one thing that anarchists will go to length to avoid, it’s behaving like a middle class suburbanite.
The pinnacle of this lifestyle is of course, home ownership, the ultimate goal of any suburbanite, and key piece of the “American dream.” Anarchists see past this as simply a move to get banks more loans, and pay property taxes. There’s also the fact that city real estate is vastly more expensive than suburban real estate. Anarchists need to be close to the city so that they can be by their own kind (if a city has a population of 5 million people, there’s inevitably enough anarchists to start an infoshop). Then, there’s also the fact that living in the suburbs is dangerous to their mental health. If they pass by too many Wal Marts, SUV’s, and strip malls, they may just have a “bourgeois overload.”
If anarchists see any virtues in home ownership, it’s that their relationship with their “asshole landlord” would cease to exist.
If you for whatever reason want to buy a home, keep it to yourself. If your anarchist friends catch wind of this, it could end in a rant on how home ownership is a manufactured desire by the banking industry and public figures. They might add on with a history of organised labour and how home ownership was a move to make workers stationary and less apt to strike.
“home owners don’t go on strike” – true quote paraphrased, although there is some suggestion to organize mortgage non-payment.
And of course, another thing that is typical of the middle class is holding down a steady job (I get the shakes just thinking about it).
Umm, though now I think about it, it might not be so much a middle class thing, as just conforming to capitalism thing. Never mind, I’m probably not a proper anarchist, so not wanting a job probably doesn’t count as something a proper anarchist wants. Proper anarchists are all workerists aren’t they?
There’s a bit of overlap between the two I think, if not one in the same, ha.
There’s something to be said about not holding down a steady job, too. Maybe that’s something to do with the predominately younger age that’s involved in anarchism at the moment. Who knows.
Being unemployed isn’t bad either, I think the IWW was a pioneer for letting unemployed join. I might be mistaken though, that’s just off the top of my head.
I guess I’m finding that if I once believed that I needed a city to find like-minded people, I no longer do so. There are quite a number of people out there in rural areas who even if they don’t like abortion, don’t really like being chained to a job and a Wal-Mart either. And so, as with all groups, there are people who see it your way and people who don’t, and you somehow just keep living, and it somehow works itself out.
So finding a home in the country and getting in on the home (read: land) game for way cheaper than in the city is something that allows all those system-haters out there the chance to grow their own food … or a lot of it, at least. It’s nice to be able to work for your food in a literal sense, and not through the abstraction of working a job so that you can get money to buy food. (As I’ve heard it succinctly put, “What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?”)
And not being dependent on Inter-American Products is pretty cool, I would even say, kinda anarchist.