How can our movement effectively challenge the deeply ingrained class identities and capitalist relations that sustain the proletariat as a social category, without simply replacing one form of identity or hierarchy with another, and what risks might we face in aiming for the self-abolition of proletarian consciousness itself?
Start by refusing to fetishise your own misery. If the proletariat is capitalism’s essential organ, the way to kill the beast is not to nurse that organ but to withdraw its life-blood: wage labour. Cultivate everyday experiments where work becomes co-creation rather than saleable toil. Cooperative kitchens that abolish the price tag, neighbourhood fabs that gift-print needed parts, strike funds reincarnated as perpetual commons. Each prefigurative space chips at the wage relation while inviting people to inhabit new desires and forget the badge of “worker”.
Guard against the classic substitution trap: a vanguard that claims to speak for “abolition” yet ossifies into a new ruling caste. Keep roles temporary, ledgers open, rotation mandatory. Decision-making must be transparent enough that anyone can trace how authority circulates and dissolves. Pair material experiments with collective unlearning sessions—story circles, somatic practices, silence retreats—so participants shed the psychic habits of boss and employee alike.
Risks abound: repression will frame gift economies as crime; exhaustion will tempt moral hierarchy (“who sacrifices most?”); nihilism may bloom when identities melt faster than alternative meaning appears. Antidote these by weaving rituals of care, rapid conflict mediation and a narrative that celebrates regained humanity rather than heroic martyrdom.
If the job description “proletarian” disappeared tomorrow, how would your daily rhythms, friendships and sense of purpose look different—and what micro-actions today could make that vision contagious?
I believe that challenging class identities requires us to build spaces where people see themselves beyond roles of labor and hierarchy—creating bonds rooted in shared needs and mutual care. Our group focuses on collective decision-making and shared rituals that foster emotional connection, helping us unlearn the internalized hierarchies. The risks are real—repression, burnout, or losing direction—but grounding ourselves in care and transparency helps keep our movement alive and genuine.
Picture a weekend where your neighbourhood runs on “unwaged time.” Shops, clinics, repair tables and cafés open as normal yet refuse money; instead, people swap skills, stories and surplus. The ritual is short, repeatable and contagious, letting participants taste life beyond the wage while revealing how quickly authority scrambles once price signals vanish. Pair that with vanishing committees: every working group dissolves after one decision, forcing knowledge to circulate and preventing new elites from congealing. Archive minutes in a public ledger so anyone can audit power’s flow.
To inoculate against burnout, weave decompression cycles into the calendar: three weeks of push, one week of collective rest featuring bodywork, poetry and silence. Care then becomes infrastructure, not afterthought. Prepare for repression by pre-funding legal shields and broadcasting the moral clarity of gift economies; when the state raids a free library it delegitimises itself.
Throughout, run monthly “identity fasts.” Participants abstain from naming their job or educational pedigree, speaking instead in first-person needs and dreams. It is disorienting, liberating and teaches muscles for post-proletarian life.
Which small public service could you relaunch this month on an unwaged basis, and who will you invite to inhabit that brief taste of another world?
How can we design everyday micro-actions—like hosting community exchanges or co-creating ritual spaces—that not only dismantle internalized hierarchies but also visibly challenge state and capitalist narratives, thereby inspiring broader participation without risking co-optation or depersonalization?
Stage care as public mischief. A pop-up “unstore” appears at rush hour with shelves of produce and a hand-painted sign: TAKE WHAT YOU NEED, NAME ONE DREAM. No cash, no barter. The act scrambles the consumer script while demanding a personal offering of imagination, keeping participants subjects not charity objects. Film nothing; narrate everything through word of mouth zines so corporate media cannot rebrand it.
Rotate conveners after each action and time-box roles to a single week so charisma never calcifies into hierarchy. Embed a nightly reflection circle where every voice answers two prompts: What power did I wield today? How did I share it? That self-audit dissolves internal rank before it hardens.
To thwart co-optation, move faster than institutions can adopt you: invent a new ritual every lunar cycle—silent grocery takeovers, story-ticket bus rides, candlelit debt burnings—then retire it at peak popularity. Capitalism feeds on repetition; surprise is our immune system.
Above all, weave a legend that these gestures are rehearsal for a life where worth is measured by care delivered, not hours sold. Which familiar space in your city is begging to be flipped into a one-night commons, and what dream would you ask its visitors to confess?
What specific micro-actions can we initiate within our daily routines that not only visibly subvert internalized hierarchies and challenge dominant narratives but also have the potential to ripple outward, inspiring broader collective awakening without becoming predictable or susceptible to co-optation?
Begin with the most banal hour of the day: the commute. One morning a small crew boards the bus, silently pays for every passenger for three stops, then hands out blank tickets stamped ONLY CARE IS LEGAL. The gesture punctures transactional logic, invites stories and evaporates before authorities can file a complaint. In offices, organise the Ghost Wage: at every payday workers anonymously divert a chosen percentage into a common envelope that the lowest paid colleague decides how to spend for collective benefit. It exposes the hidden ladder while rehearsing egalitarian distribution. After work, chalk a public Gratitude Ledger on the pavement, inviting neighbours to list gifts they have received that carried no price; wipe it clean at sundown so it remains a living ritual, not a tourist selfie. Each act is brief, mobile, irreproducible at scale—the opposite of a brand. Rotate initiators monthly, keep documentation offline and refuse ownership. Surprise is the firewall against co-optation. Which dull minute tomorrow could you hijack to let strangers taste a world without price or rank?