On Cooperation

We have no illusions about cooperatives. Class war happens on the industrial front. Because capitalism is a more than simply a mode of production but an way of social organization that permeates us, each of us, through and through, we recognize that there is no outside of the battle. It will be the self-activity and organization of all workers in all industries that will produce a new world, a social revolution, from within the shell of dead labor.

Cooperation is not a solution to capitalism. Cooperatives attempt to invert a system based on profit by isolating themselves (as much as possible) from the market. But they are still wholly within a society governed by the logic of capital. By attempting to invert the logic of profit without actually inverting the logic of profit, cooperatives are like the camera obscura—the inversion of the image becomes the reality of problematic politics.

And yet, trench warfare is always a game of inches. We see our efforts as an inch. What is this inch? What to make of this negligible difference? The imperceptible inch. The catalytic of new existential constellations. What Guattari calls the molecular: “this dimension of interrogation of the relationship between subjectivity and all kinds of things, the body, time, work, problems of daily life, all the becomings of subjectivity addressed by these molecular revolutions.” Something as simple as brewing beer with your comrades valorizes our power to make our present reality different than it is without really changing anything. This seems to us to be a basic survival mechanism from the doldrums deep within enemy territory.

It is also quite Practical. Good beer costs Big bucks. We like Good beer. We make No money. We brew own Good beer for Cheap. We make Friends and Share. Call us americans if you must. Huh!