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TOTW: Anarcho-gifting

Regardless of your spiritual practices or lack thereof, this is the time of year when a substantial portion of the world is giving and receiving gifts. Many people, anarchists included, will expend their time, energy and credit, sometimes far over what would be considered reasonable most other times of the year, to give of themselves to others, sometimes including complete strangers.

And yet, as Neal Keating reminds us in a passage worth quoting at length from their essay Rioting and Looting: As a Modern Day Form of Potlatch, “...because of the nature of human interactions in the context of modern economies which prevail during the rest of the year — these efforts are usually consigned to either the paltry exchange of commodities, or the rather painful realization that there is very little intimacy possible in the given circumstances. People may mean well when they engage in reciprocal gift exchanges at this time, but all they are really exchanging are images of reciprocity.” Personally, I’m not as negative about gift giving occasions, and I think they underestimate the significance of commodity exchange, but the point stands that it’s small potatoes (and at worst, a mockery of the potatoes themselves) when compared to the gift economies they’re comparing it to.

But for us, there has to be something in between gift economy, disappointing workplace secret santas, and occasional looting, right?

What distinguishes anarchist gift-giving from its more mundane forms? What are examples of this you’ve heard of or experienced? What’s the best gift you’ve gotten related to anarchism? What’s the best you’ve given?

This doesn’t have to be something physical!

(image source)