Q: “who would be the garbagemen under anarchy?"
A: Anarchists get asked who takes out the trash so often it’s almost funny. It seems emblematic of a larger issue—who would do thankless jobs that obviously aren’t their own reward?—and ties Instead of just writing my own answer, I’m going to share some of my favorite takes on this from anarchist theory—then write my own response.
From Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays (not directly pertaining to the trash, but about the general issue of people who don’t want to contribute to society):
The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.
From Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed:
“All right, but how do you get people to do the dirty work?”
“What dirty work?” asked Oiie's wife, not following.
“Garbage collecting, grave digging,” Oiie said; Shevek added, “Mercury mining,” and nearly said, “Shit processing,” but recollected the loti taboo on scatological words. He had reflected, quite early in his stay on Urras, that the Urrasti lived among mountains of excrement, but never mentioned shit.
“Well, we all do them. But nobody has to do them for very long, unless he likes the work. One day in each decad the community management committee or the block committee or whoever needs you can ask you to join in such work; they make rotating lists. Then the disagreeable work postings, or dangerous ones like the mercury mines and mills, normally they're for one half year only.”
“But then the whole personnel must consist of people just learning the job.”
“Yas. It's not efficient, but what else is to be done? You can't tell a man to work on a job that win cripple him or kill him in a few years. Why should he do that?”
“He can refuse the order?”
“It's not an order, Oiie. He goes to EMvlab — the Division of Labor office — and says, I want to do such and such, what have you got? And they tell him where there are jobs.”
“But then why do people do the dirty work at all? Why do they even accept the one-day-in-ten jobs?”
“Because they are done together...And other reasons. […] Here you think that the incentive to work is finances, need for money or desire for profit, but where there's no money the real motives are clearer, maybe. People like to do things. They like to do them well. People take the dangerous, hard jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can — egoize, we call it — show off? — to the weaker ones. Hey, look, little boys, see how strong I am! You know? A person likes to do what he is good at doing.”
From Peter Gelderloos’s Anarchy Works:
If everyone is free to work as they choose, who will take out the trash or perform other undesirable jobs? Fortunately, in a localized, anti-capitalist economy, we could not externalize, or hide, the costs of our lifestyle by paying someone else to clean up after us. We would have to pay for the consequences of all our own actions — rather than paying China to take our toxic waste, for example. If a necessary service like garbage disposal were being neglected, the community would quickly notice and have to decide how to handle the problem. People could agree to reward such work with small perks — nothing that translates into power or authority, but something like getting to be first in line when exotic goods come into town, receiving a massage or a cake or simply the recognition and gratitude for being a stand-up member of the community. Ultimately, in a cooperative society, having a good reputation and being seen by your peers as responsible are more compelling than any material incentives.
Or the community could decide that everyone should involve themselves in these tasks on a rotating basis. An activity like garbage collection does not have to define anyone’s “career” in an anti-capitalist economy. Necessary tasks no one wants to perform should be shared by everyone. So instead of a few people having to sort through garbage their entire lives, everyone who was physically able would have to do it for just a couple hours each month.
The Christiania “free state” is a quarter in Copenhagen, Denmark, that has been squatted since 1971. Its 850 inhabitants are autonomous within their 85 acres. They have been taking out their own trash for over thirty years. The fact that they receive about one million visitors a year makes their achievement all the more impressive. The streets, buildings, restaurants, public toilets, and public showers are all reasonably clean — especially for hippies! The body of water that runs through Christiania is not the cleanest, but considering that Christiania is tree-covered and automobile free one suspects most of the pollution comes from the surrounding city that shares the waterway.
So what are the takeaways from all this? Well, here are some of the main points I got from these anarchist theories of the trash (a sentence I never thought I’d say):
✭ When thinking about this question, as the CrimethInc. graphic established, it’s always important to consider who takes out the trash—and provides care to others—now. Thankless, dirty, and emotionally taking jobs are disproportionally pushed into queer, femme, POC, and low-income people in today’s society—especially child and elder care. Statistically, housework (including, yep, the trash) is disproportionally pushed onto women and femmes—and not only the physical labor aspect, but the mental load. It’s not as if a patriarchal, statist society has discovered the perfect division of household labor whereas anarchy has no good solution. In a statist society, the most marginalized people take out the trash.
✭ As EG highlighted in Anarchism and Other Essays, people are more willing to do essential care work (including housework) in a society without exploitation and labor alienation—and without privilege. Similarly, without a patriarchal system that socialized cis men to ignore dirty jobs and everyone else to do them without complaint, cis men would likely feel less resentment about doing them.
✭ Importantly, a job can be rewarding even if it isn’t traditionally “fun”—as Le Guin pointed out, without capitalism, social capital and building trust and solidarity with others matters a lot more. In most anarchist spaces I’ve been in, there’s often a social expectation that everyone who’s able contributes labor such as trash (and, you know, other household chores), childcare, logistical planning, tech support, emotional labor, and all the rest—and people do this in part to prove to others and themself that they care about the space and its networks of care.
✭ According to Gelderloos, given the hyperlocalization of anarchy, it’s much harder to outsource dirty jobs in an anarchist society (at least not the physical ones, technology based stuff is often different)—so if they are being pushed onto marginalized people, that’s much more obvious to the community and can be more easily rectified. And, as he also points out, autonomous zones actually exist and usually don’t struggle with issues such as the trash.
✭ All this is to say: people are capable of providing care for reasons other than capitalism. And not only are we capable of this, an egalitarian and collective ethic of care is the only way to handle domestic and care work while resisting oppression. This labor does not magically “go away” in hierarchical societies. It’s just done by people who hierarchy oppresses.