This Christmas, Support Interregnum

By the Interregnum collective

Holidays under capitalism are basically a smokescreen for two things: relentless consumption and relentless sales. For the workers behind the products that get bought and sold, holidays mean more work (and hence money to survive), but also excruciating levels of exhaustion. For the rich, the holidays mean picturesque retreats to the – rapidly melting – Alps. For the poor and precarious, they mean even more debt and the guilt associated with not being able to get their children 'proper' presents.

In short, this holiday period means different things to different people, depending on their position in society and their disposable income. Mostly, these different meanings will inevitably be filtered through the prism of life under capitalism. And yet, for anarchist theorist Pëtr Kropotkin, one of the most impactful figures of 19th century transformative politics, Christmas could symbolise something else: a complete reimagining of our very collective existence.

The anarchist historian Ruth Kinna writes that, according to Kropotkin, Christmas could be used to represent the principles of mutual aid and to symbolise a society that collectively worked to meet everyone's needs. Kropotkin understood the violence that allowed different social groups to experience Christmas in completely different ways; he dreamt of joyful expropriations, where toys would be distributed freely to children that needed them. He even etched a quick poem in his notes:

On the night before Christmas, we’ll all be about
While the people are sleeping, we’ll realise our clout
We’ll expropriate goods from the stores, ‘cos that’s fair
And distribute them widely, to those who need care.

Wonderfully, it seems that a few friends in Canada recently heeded his call.

But Kropotkin's thought didn't stop there. He used the metaphor of Santa's workshop as a blueprint for a future organisation of society: a society where we all worked, under conditions of equality, to produce and distribute what we all need. This would be a society that would prioritise everyone's happiness and well-being. Christmas, and the gifts and celebrations associated with it, could be used as a metaphor for imagining this novel society.

Our task remains to rescue the potential contained in Christmas from its current capitalist nightmare – a nightmare that perverts and exploits its most beautiful components – and allow it the space to grow as a dream in our minds. Gradually, we want to build these dreams into existence.

Interregnum's dream

At Interregnum, we are not pompous enough to compare our thought with Kropotkin's. But we are one of the groups that are attempting to promote the radical imagination, in the same way that he wanted us to imagine an alternative conception of Christmas.

In the two years since our relaunch, we have hosted more than 70 texts from authors, organisers, academics, artists and poets from all over the world. We have also organised events in five countries that have brought our website's ideas into people's lives and communities. These events have been more than just one-off forms of radical entertainment: concrete projects have sprung up thanks to the connections forged within them. Behind the scenes, our collective's members are active in a plethora of social movements, creating change on the ground rather than simply writing about it. We are just getting started.

Below is a small description of our dream – what it currently is, and what we wish it to be. The extent to which we can realise it depends directly on your support.

Independent structure for independent thought

Through Interregnum, we have created a platform to promote the radical imagination. This occurs both through writing and through events in our communities. We see our role as existing in between and beyond the various social movements that oppose capitalism's assaults upon us: we are a platform that brings theories, movements, and humans together, attempting to coordinate our resources in a way that will help our ideas become accessible and relevant to communities around the world.

We are completely independent. This means that the money to run the website comes directly, and only, from your subscriptions and donations. We do not have any external funding, choosing to maintain our freedom even if it makes things difficult.

The back-end of our website runs on the Servus platform, an autonomous community server based in Austria. This allows us to steer completely clear from Google's servers, and work without invasive analytics and surveillance mechanisms. It also gives us an added degree of security. Simply put, if someone uses the contact@interregnum.live email address to message us from a warzone or an area of intense repression, governments and private businesses will find it difficult to see their message.

We use the open-source Ghost platform to publish our writing and manage the presentation of our website: once again, Ghost does not keep analytics, and allows you – the subscriber – to support us directly. We use this method because we want to steer clear of corporate-owned social media: anyone can subscribe to our website and receive our content directly in their emails. In short, we are trying to operate as independently, ethically, directly, and collaboratively as possible.

Everything we do is completely free to access.

Internationalist collaboration

Interregnum is comprised of a core collective of eight people based in Glasgow, Melbourne, Oxford, London, Sheffield, and Vienna. We manage the website and ensure that its daily operations proceed smoothly. That is our role. We do not show our faces in our About section because we are here for a purpose, and that is more important than who we are.

Beyond the core collective, we recently created an external circle of around 30 organisers, academics, reporters and artists spread across the world. This circle is accessed via invitation, and brings together the people we meet on our journey who want to work on the Interregnum project. These comrades are not burdened with the responsibilities of the website – they are free to write articles, proofread and edit texts, organise events, or do whatever else they want within the Interregnum banner. In so doing, they directly nurture the collaborative dreams of the project.

Everything you read, every event you attend, contains hours of collaborative work by these contributors. Yes, this might mean that content production is inconsistent: life happens, projects get scrapped halfway through, people become unavailable, and sometimes we have to drop everything to support each other. However, this also means that everything you do see is the product of an independent, collaborative, emancipatory process.

All this work is voluntary. Readers are usually surprised when they look at our website and realise that nobody gets paid for it. Our response is that this website is testament to what can be done when we work together on something that we believe in. This takes time. But it's worth it.

The future

We want to expand our range of articles and events. We want to include more perspectives from organisers and social movements across the world. When something happens – be it a revolution in Nepal or the continued attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank – we want Interregnum to be the instinctual website where organisers and social movements send their writing, reports, and analyses.

We also want to host more accessible writing on social theory and our collective history, helping to build our collective resilience against the rise of the far-right or defeatist politics. We want to bring more academics, journalists, and other writers into this project, and closely work with them in editing their ideas into formats that can be read by anyone with a basic level of English. We also want to slowly begin translating our work into other languages, further strengthening our connections to social movements around the world.

We view art as an indispensable component of freedom. We want to expand our Culture & Power section, but we also want to host more art and poetry by creators around the world. We want to explore ways in which Interregnum can work with community centres, DIY spaces, independent cinemas, and any other artistic initiative to develop, support and curate underground art: without art, there is no imagination. Without imagination, there is no radical change.

All the above will come together through our events. From DIY hip hop gigs to informative events on the impacts of AI, we have vast experience in organising whatever we feel is necessary in a given context. As Interregnum’s pool of contributors expands, so will our presence around the world. Ideally, we want to foster a vast network of autonomous clusters of people connected to Interregnum, in a constant feedback loop between local groups and the wider website.

The plan looks like this: Interregnum will help comrades organise events in their communities → The events will bring people together, allowing them to develop bonds of organising about the issues that affect them → These events will also expand people's awareness of our website → As the website expands, more comrades will be added to our wider pool of partners, allowing us to host events in even more communities. These events will hopefully trigger more organising opportunities, and the process will develop its own momentum.

In short, we dream of a situation where the website fosters a form of radical imagination that leads to organising – and this organising, by feeding in to the website and its wider collaborative structure, will enable even more sustained forms of organising.

The project is ambitious: if it weren't, there'd be no point in us even launching it.

What will my money be used for?

These dreams require money.

We currently make just enough to cover our running costs. For an independent website, that in itself is a massive success. However, after paying our annual dues to Servus and Ghost, we are left with pennies.

This means that every little bit counts – and you, yes you, can make a massive difference simply by becoming a paying subscriber and contributing something around the price of a cup of coffee per month.

We do not give you any perks for becoming a paying subscriber: no sneak-peaks, no hidden articles, no videos, no closed community chats. Those that can afford it pay, so that those who cannot have access to everything for free.

Currently, less than five percent of our subscribers donate anything to the website. If we were to push this up to twenty percent, we would be able to do so much more.

More money would primarily allow us to organise more events. Every event takes hundreds of pounds to pull together: from promotional work to room booking, having a larger income stream would allow us to be much more ambitious in bringing radical thought to communities around the world.

We then want to reach a point where we consistently raise an additional £200 a month. This means that if only around 60 more people become paying subscribers at £3 a month, we will have reached our goal. This is literally less than the total number of people that attended our last gig.

This money will allow us to begin paying working-class and marginalised writers for their contributions. Although the Interregnum collective works voluntarily, we recognise that not everyone has the space, time, resources, or mental and physical capacity to write for free. Since we currently cannot monetarily support contributors, we inevitably receive submissions from those who do have the energy, resources, and time to write for free. Class dynamics and privilege become reproduced even within our operations.

With only £200, we will be able to meaningfully commission one piece of writing a month by someone that wants to write but lacks the capacity and resources to do so. This money will not be offered to permanent academics, secure writers, or anyone who doesn't need it: they will continue writing and contributing to Interregnum because they have the resources to do so.

The use of this sum will therefore be strictly biased in favour of our precarious, marginalised, and working class comrades. Beyond providing crucial support for the emergence and promotion of new voices, this will also allow Interregnum to expand its reach across communities, as those around the author will begin reading and disseminating their texts. In short, the initial £200 pounds will travel much further than the production of one article.

Finally, we want to reach a stage where we can pay one of our working-class comrades £2,000 a month for a total of six months to act as a full-time editor. Since everything we do is voluntary, we have to squeeze Interregnum around our busy, messy, and exploited working lives – and this inevitably hampers our operations. We want to give one of our comrades the space to comfortably and consistently work on this project for six months, steering it to become what we envision it to be. Through this sustained engagement, we hope to increase our subscribers, which will in turn allow us to pay more people for their work, organise more events, and build a solidarity fund that will be available for social movements around the world.

We want to do a lot, and we need your support. You can donate to Interregnum here. However, we urge you to become a consistent paying subscriber: this option is available across our website by clicking on the green button. If you are already a subscriber, we urge you to change your subscription and contribute £3 a month.

Are there any other ways to contribute?

Yes. Think of Interregnum as a digital social centre: you can come and go as you please, but you can also choose to come back, stay with us for a bit, and help us build this project – this would be our dream. Whether you want to write with us, organise events, help us with graphic design, or simply be a bridge between us and social movements in your community, we will always try to find ways of working with you.

Make your mark on Interregnum, not just for this Christmas, but for many more winters to come.

This Christmas, we ask for your support.

This Christmas, join us.

Interregnum is what you make it.

Ever waiting to welcome you,

The Interregnum Collective.