Guest post: Where is the action?

James Knaggs, who is fast becoming a regular at our CLUB meetings, published a brilliant provocation on LinkedIn this week. With his permission we are re-posting it here. We think you’ll enjoy it.

So much talk of revolution, Degrowth, socialism and equality. So many NGOs and talks of “third spaces”. So many of you drawing huge wages and producing nothing meaningful, yet where is the action?

What if there was somewhere warm, always open? A social place where you could cook, eat, chat and organise. Store and process food. Borrow a book. Fix your broken thing or borrow from a library of things. Get some clothing. Use a gym and take classes. A credit union with collective bargaining and investments for members. Swap goods and store things. Donate unused furniture. A safe place for your kids to play and learn without too close supervision. All under one roof.

But the catch was you had to be a fully paid-up member and participate in the running, tasks and bureaucracy.

You’d have full voting rights. You wouldn’t be a customer or a service user. You’d be a full subject — a prole with an obligation to work with and for yourself and each other according to ability. With no obligation to participate or vote if you simply wanted to be a member because you thought it was a good project.

By not being a service user, it wouldn’t necessarily be about helping the poor or homeless. And it wouldn’t be for you to show up, do nothing and demand the boss makes it better for you just because you pay.

You’d get out what you needed and buy what you put in, all decided by the collective and yourself. The only rules as such would be the ones we decided ourselves.

The project would be explicitly socialist, but open to all flavours of this. With a broader aim to have other spaces in other towns, replicated, and to build political, cultural and social power beyond the state.

How much would you pay to be a member? Considering how much you already pay for all this? For £200 you would have a stake in a building containing a gym, kitchen, workshop, library, food system, social space, childcare provision, meeting rooms and a whole community of people — and be able to decide what happens with excess funds.

500 members at £200 a month is £1.2 million a year. If they all contribute 4 hours a month, that’s 24,000 hours a year. Even people on benefits could afford this and live substantially better, more dignified lives.

A community of mutual aid and care and universal benefits outside of the state. A union of sorts. Nothing utopian. Probably imperfect. But many hands make light work, and everything is cheaper in bulk or as raw materials.

We waste so many resources, or they go to a charity seeking profits that do not benefit anyone but a wage bill — things that could otherwise be fixed, sold or donated to a member.

Yes, gyms, food banks, cafés, crèches, arts clubs, warm banks, pubs and charity shops already exist. But they’re atomised, isolated and you have no say or sway or authority nor autonomy. They are run for profit by a boss or a landlord and limited by wage bills and reproduce the capitalist system we would leave at the door!