The Economics of the Black Bloc

The black bloc, at least as I have experienced it, is a very extreme departure from everyday economic life.

No one buys or sells anything — in fact, you shouldn’t even bring your wallet to something like this. They’ll use it to ID you. Instead, everyone gives everyone else things — if you need anything in the bloc, you just ask around. Someone will get it for you. There are no laws, of course — within the bloc, all legalities are suspended. So far, so anarcho-communistic.

It would seem as though I should be quaking in my LWMA boots at this disproof of everything I’ve been saying!

But there is also a lack of other hallmarks of communism: there is no reputation, or at least no long-term reputation. We become nearly indistinguishable within the bloc — nearly fungible people. There are no commune-wide meetings. There isn’t even anything resembling a commune! There is no production within the bloc, or at least no production of physical objects. There is consumption of goods, certainly, but no production of them — just as there could be said to be production and consumption of services. If it is a sort of communism, it is a deeply post-left and insurrectionary sort — Crimethinc, not Kropotkin.

However, despite the absence of workers, there is a sort of quasi-hierarchy, based on –of all things– ownership. When I show up to the bloc in nothing but my simple blacks, I am treated as disposable and accorded no respect. When I show up with a helmet, a shield, armor, a visible weapon…