Corporate whore by day, anarchist by night?

international | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Wednesday August 11, 2004 08:47 by Eoin Dubsky

How can I work for a multinational corporation during the day, and still call myself in good conscience an anarchist because of the work I do in my spare time? Someone asked this question here the other day and it was removed before I could hit "post comment" with my follow-up... hopefully this one won't get the chop so fast. :-)

Right now people might be thinking of holidays, but somewhere in the back of some people's minds is "oh shit, where am I going to find a job?".

Ciaron O'Rielly has posted here on occasion about the "job" != "work" thing: "Some jobs - eg. the military industry, the list is endless - are not work! Some work - eg. child raising, the list is endless - are not "jobs." ( http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=65105 comment No. ?). So the question an activist might pose herself/himself is: "how am I going to find a job which compliments, or at least doesn't undo the effort of, my activism work?"

But well-meaning activists, from the radical anarchist end of the spectrum in Ireland, are working for, and have worked for the most rotten of capitalist institutions around. Sure, if you're working as, say, the Environment Officer or Human Rights Officer or something, then it's easy to see how your work at, say, Microsoft, can compliment your activism work. But what if you just work in IT support, or Sales?

I recall getting attacked here some months ago by Chekov of WSM when I declared my candidacy in the European Parliament elections ( http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=64923 ). Around the same time he was interviewed for a profile in The Phoenix mag, which included a passage about his work for a mobile phone company and some banks (putting TopUp functions on ATMs). C'mon people.

With all of the privilege, talent and creativity which people here have, can't we find better things to do with our "work time"? How can people take us seriously as "radical activists" by night if we're corporate whores by by day?