You can't abolish the system playing by it's rules.

For years, I believe that I was planted firmly on the political left. As I have learned more to help direct my own political compass and also have learned more about how the current political system works, my path has led me further and further left. In recent years, though, I have come to realize that the either/or politics of this broken democratic system doesn’t actually make room for my belief system.

I mean, it makes sense. Systems don’t include space for people who don’t believe in the system. There’s no room on the political spectrum for folks that see the farce of neoliberal representational democracy. The system is designed to be self-perpetuating and doesn’t really leave space for non-believers. You align with the left (which is really very center these days) or you align with the right (which feels scarily alt-right these days).

Once I was able to realize that you don’t have to adhere to this spectrum, I was able to take a look at the left and recognize the pieces that don’t fit in with my own ideology and one of these policies is the demand for higher wages for the working class.

Before you come at me, hear me out. Yes yes, wage equality is important and obviously I’m not a proponent for wage INequality - but let’s not turn this into a false dichotomy. My concern with the leftist campaign for higher wages is that it narrows the focus on paying people more money, which in turn continues to place emphasis on the capitalist economic system: a crumbling structure that, as far as I can tell, relies on wage inequality to operate. When you aim to pay people more money for their labour, it necessarily encourages as an unfair system that is inherently built around paying people for their labour. Most folks will agree that capitalism can’t exist without wage inequality, so if we're trying to solve problems by increasing peoples’ paycheques, it’s likely that others will continue to fall out the bottom on the other side, even if we can’t see them.

Rather than continuing to feed this dying economy, I’d argue that we could be putting our energy towards building new systems within the old. While I’m totally aware that we all need to pay our bills, I am also excited by the possibilities of exploring alternative economic systems that are better designed meet the basic needs of all people - something that capitalism has clearly failed to do.

This idea of operating within the parameters of the system to make it a better place versus operating outside the parameters of the system to build something new came up recently with a non-profit that I’ve been volunteering with, and it honestly took me a really really long time to name where the internal conflict was coming from. There were certain decisions being made that left me feeling unsure because my natural reaction is to try and operate outside the system, but I still recognize that improving the current system has a very important place in the active socio-economic climate.

More importantly, this experience helped me to see that trying to build resilience within the parameters of a capitalist economy might actually be at odds of building resilience outside capitalism.

For me, resilient systems need to explore options outside the parameters of capitalism: how do we make the basic necessities accessible to everyone? This isn't just a question around low income: we talk about food and water access as a human right and I truly believe that means that being able to meet one’s own needs shouldn't been tied to one’s ability to pay.

If we’re only focusing on paying people a living wage, we’re putting all our eggs back into the capitalist basket. In order to start building alternative economies that are better suited to serving everyone equally, it’s on all of us to start taking chances and not always expecting a paycheque at the other end. You can’t monetize mutual aid work. Building these new systems isn’t going to pay the bills, but it pays off in other ways: creating solidarity networks, increasing access to good food and clean water, learning from marginalized voices, discovering mutual aid pathways, finding new solutions to problems that capitalism hasn’t been able to solve.

You can’t expect outside-the-box solutions to be born from the confines of the box itself. You can’t expect abolition of inherently unjust systems to grow from playing within the rules. You can’t expect to get paid for doing work to take down the system reliant on economic inequality.

That being said, I really do believe that both of these types of work are important in their own ways: while we all still exist in this system, making it more equitable and fair is a worthy goal. Both types of work are required right now as we continue to see quality of life degrade for so many people and witness the destruction of our planet to line pockets of folks that will never need another cent to live comfortably.

My point is that there needs to be a distinction between these two different goals: 1) fairness and equity for all inside a capitalist system versus 2) the abolition of capitalism.

For myself and my own political compass, I’m happy to have discovered the difference between these two goals because it helps me identify the work that I’m most interested in doing. It helps me better understand my motivations and frames my interactions with others who are squarely in the other camp. I’m interested in doing more research around “recommoning” and what that work looks like on the ground locally where I live. If you have research, podcasts, books to recommend, please share them in the comments below.