The Conquest of Bread- Chapter 2.1 audio and study questions

Audio For Chapter 2, Section 1

If well being isn’t a dream, what does it look like?

How much work do the middlemen and bosses need to do in order for the workers to be able to thrive?

Wouldn’t it amount to everyone working part time or less considering all the technology and knowledge that exists already?

If we’re working and producing more and more and there was already enough, where does it go?

How many hands touch the money that one piece of machinery made in a factory produces?

How much do the workers who built it get from their labor? How much do the middlemen and bosses?

Why is that backwards in order of most labor exerted?

Are capitalists so greedy and middlemen so desperate to struggle less that they will make and enforce rules requiring workers to fill trashcans full of good food just to keep it from feeding the homeless?

If there is so much excess why are the rates of poverty, homelessness and preventable illnesses always increasing?

Why would a weaver be wearing rags?

How could any worker go hungry?

Why can’t everyone who wants a job work if there are so many jobs?

Why are people forced to beg for the right to have their labor exploited?

What if all those without were given work and a place to stay from some of the land unused that others claim to own?

Could we work the land and cure starvation in each country within a year?

How is our exploitation tied to colonization?

We know we are not being paid well but what about those paid less to do what we won’t or can’t because our land is stripped?

Are our taxes another form of theft since we’re paying the people that approve laws that harm us?

How deep does it go - the police, judges, everyone to do with a prison, the press, exploiters of industry - how many people are stealing from us?

How much physical energy do we exert for the wealthy?

Cleaning their houses, stables, offices, how much time do we spend focusing on doing for them what we could be for ourselves?

Are we working for the humor of the wealthy?

Why won’t they stop the excess and take time to figure out how to end things like hunger among their employees?

In the old days our people couldn’t do as much with the same amount of space because there were restraints on technology - couldn’t we all have extra now considering how much is wasted and how many are un/underemployed?

The well being of all - the end; expropriation - the means.
What does this really mean?

To take what is considered private and give it back to the public is the best plan for the well being of others? How is that done?

The Conquest of Bread- Chapter 1.3 audio and study questions

Audio for Chapter 1, Section 3

How does anyone own anything if they don’t own it forever?

If your family invented a product how could someone make and sell an improved version, isn’t it your family’s forever since it was at a point?

On the other side of that, if the blood of our families is inside the machines aren’t they more ours?

How do the capitalists justify retaining ownership over our own flesh?

Are you an heir to nothing?

How much do you sell your labor for each day, how does that compare to your ancestors?

Are you in the same physical location as them under the rule of the same family of capitalists?
Have you had time to ever even figure that out?

Since the capitalists are concerned with profit not well being we workers are at their whims. Can you think of examples of that local to you?

If the factories left what did they make when open?

 Did the product that labor was sold to build help sustain the area once the doors of the factory were shut?

Where do the products in our houses come from and who are the laborers that made them?

Aren’t the laborers the collateral damage in a fight between capitalists over who can have the most excess wealth?

What does the concept of education as a right do to the children of laborers?

Capitalists won’t allow the price our labor is sold for to be high enough to allow us energy for education so how could we take that time?

Is workplace education the beginnings of workplace organizing and is that an answer to capitalism?
The police, courts, jails and whole legal system are another way for capitalists to control us? Why would non wealthy people sell out laborers for capitalists?

Does the ruling class send out lies as truth in places like schools and workplaces in order to keep the workers from organizing or communicating across social groups?

Are we all living within the bubble of a lie that’s bound to burst?

Will we go extinct if we cannot learn to work together not just as humans but as a whole with the earth?

What would need to change for you to feel like you had the right to well being?

The Conquest of Bread- Chapter 1.2 audio and study questions

Audio for Chapter 1, Section 2

Today is it reasonable to assume that a few still hold ⅔ wealth?

The few allow the many to work but only if the many allow the few to retain most of the wealth. So our labor agreement is to accept being exploited?

To go make things that we don’t personally need instead of making for our own households?

Since people have advanced technologically have we also emotionally?

Is that possible when many are working for the profits of a few, how to remedy the problem of working for the short term with no long term security?
What happens when all advances in tech are dependent on the blood of the many?

If there are cities under cities and blood from each generation and the current buildings are still filled with laborers unable to thrive as a whole, is civilization all that advanced really?
“Each of the atoms composing what we call the Wealth of Nations owes its value to the fact that it is part of the great whole.”
What effect does your personal consumption and your exploitation through laboring play into the great whole?

Inventors and artists are part of the great whole also so despite their contributions they also have consumed the flesh of exploitation through existing in this world. Is that something to feel guilt over?

What about the capitalists, are the few that control the wealth of the great whole aware of how us many live?
Why do they think they own anything when everything in the world is the product of many?
Does anything really truly belong to anyone else?

How so when even the food is the product of many from animals to the sun to the people who planted then those who picked then the one who transported then the one who bought then the ones who ate it in the end?

The Conquest of Bread- Chapter 1.1 audio and study questions

Audio for Chapter 1, Section 1

Section 2 of this blog's introduction will be released in a few days, but in the meantime here is the beginning of our first audiobook project. The audiobooks are a first step to providing greater accessibility to anarchist theory. Below is the audio file for section one of chapter one, as well as some related study questions contributed to the project.



Chapter 1: Our Riches

Section 1:

How far have we come?

How many of us leave more for our heirs than shelter, utensils and the earth itself?

Were you left with and will you leave things (at the rate it’s going now)?

Birth into a world with capital means what to those without it, are their dreams all actually nightmares?

We have more tech and higher yields than our elders, are we thriving emotionally compared to them also?

Since there’s enough tech to make tools that control the soil, sun and can dig into even the caves and build whole cities up in a matter of months and we do not all have what we need, is it greed that makes some suffer?

Where’s the money, are there really just a few controlling all the currency worldwide?

Is money/credit really the reason that people are dying worldwide?

How would life change if food and knowledge and health and shelter and technology were used for good and well being of all?

What is the Anarchist Education Society? part 1

The concept behind the Anarchist Education Society is incredibly simplistic, but in that simplicity lies endless possibilities for development and growth. The central concept is that of a community building, learning, and growing together. What does this mean in regards to anarchism, and in regards to revolution?

The very basis of an anarchist society is a stateless, classless, moneyless society. The idea of a society functioning, let alone thriving, without these things is an incredibly foreign one to most people. The system at hand- capitalism- depends on the working class believing that we need it. We sustain the social hierarchies that oppress us and most of us are unaware that real, possible alternatives exist. Anarchy is slandered by being equated to chaos. Socialism is either dismissed as a pipe dream or given the definition of fascism.

So the first step must be theory. It must be learning core concepts. What is anarchism? How does a gift economy function? What is human nature? Is it static or is it fluid? What is property? These answers to these questions along with many others can be discovered in many different ways, one such way being a project that has already begun. By reading or listening to theory and discussing what we are reading with others, we can begin to dissect what these concepts mean. After that we can figure out where the texts written during the turn of the 20th century and so on are relatable to our modern society and also where they are lacking. We can look at them through an intersectional lens, integrating the needs of both class war and social war.

Perhaps more importantly than the theory itself, we can develop a community-based system when it comes to knowledge, not just of theory but of skills as well (which we will explore more thoroughly in part 2). In much of our current society, the opportunities for knowledge are heavily impacted by our class. But also we are fed one style of learning, one protocol, that many people just can't follow for one reason or another. Through this project, we will develop a variety of tools on *how* to learn. We will develop the confidence in self-learning, that it is possible. And we will develop the skills to teach each other.