It’s clear that the state is going to make us pay for capitalism’s disregard for the health of the planet by tracking our every move. Using initiatives such as road-pricing and bin-chipping, national and local state bureaucracies want us to pay for everyday living, out of our pockets and by us having to endure micro-control over our consumption. Fighting social control of this kind is not straightforward because many environmentalists, who anarchists might otherwise agree with, are in favour of schemes that monitor individual usage of resources and promise to change behaviours. On the other hand you only have to read the mainstream press to see that opposition to road-pricing and bin-chipping are part of a wider right-wing backlash against ‘Nu-Labour’ by half-crazed motoring lobbyists, anti-tax libertarians, anti-EU political parties and climate change deniers.
Road rage
Many environmentalists are in favour of road-pricing and congestion charges to discourage car use. If car drivers pay in proportion to usage, the hope is we will use them less and choose to use public transport more often. Nice idea? Not really, not least because the rich will just pay and carry on regardless. Higher road taxes don’t exactly seem to be reducing the number of SUVs on the road either. But whatever, to make these schemes work, cameras that read number plates (or other proposed schemes using satellite tracking or roadside tag readers) have to be linked to the car’s ‘keeper’ through the DVLA database that is used to tax vehicles.
Over 6000 digital camera systems already exist on motorways and busy roads for enforcing speed limits. In addition, hundreds of petrol stations and parking enforcement companies have access to the DVLA database, under licence. Whilst a lot of speed cameras like the GATSO ones at road junctions use loadable film which has to be replaced after 200 pictures, these are now to be upgraded by digital ones. This, and expansion of the digital camera scheme on to many more roads, will allow the police to achieve their goal of a national network that gathers number plate data continuously, information that they will have unfettered access to at all times.
Should we be worried? Well, as revealed last year in the documentary Suspect Nation, Transport for London’s congestion charge cameras are switched on 24 hours of the day even outside of congestion charging periods! It is known that police regularly request this number plate data for law enforcement, a good example of ‘function creep’. But in July this year home secretary Jacquii Smith lifted Data Protection Act restrictions to give police real-time transfer of number plates of all cars entering or leaving the central London congestion charging zone, for anti-terrorism work, we are told. If, and most likely when, a digital camera network is set up across the UK, the police will be able to track whoever they like, wherever we go by car. We already know that the police do not need encouragement to use anti-terror laws against activists during events like the Camp for Climate Action or to use their Forward Intelligence Teams to photograph activists outside social centres and detention centres, so we can be such that a digital camera network will be used against us.
Pay as you throw
Bin-chipping (or ‘Chip n’ Bin’) is a different example of how individual identification and surveillance is fast becoming part of everyday life. This is already being trialed in Britain. It involves weighing wheelie-bins to work out the amount of waste individual households produce. An RFID chip on the bin enables the refuse collector to make a record of the weight whenever the bin is collected, identify it with an address and so link it to a council tax payer. The carrot offered to those producing less waste is that they will pay less, and a stick for the rest. Bin taxes (or ‘Pay as you throw’ schemes) are, not surprisingly, seen by many as just another way for councils to raise money to make waste collection pay for itself (and also make it ripe for privatisation), in the same way as utility companies benefit from water metering. As a result, it’s all too easy for revolutionaries to concentrate our arguments on the potential unfairness of bin taxes. But this just plays into the single minded anti-tax agenda of the libertarian right. A much better platform to fight on as a class struggle anarchist is the sheer hypocrisy of the idea that persecuting individuals is going to make much difference to the destruction of our environment. Furthermore, it can only weaken community cohesion, since it will greatly discourage sharing of bins (needed after a spring clean, for instance) which is perhaps one of the few communal activities that exists between neighbours in our atomised communities, to be replaced with an individual relationship to the local authority.
Capitalist rubbish
It's fine to advocate avoiding wasteful consumption by carrying reuseable bags, eating local unpacked food and choosing biodegradable products. This shows we are conscious about our relationship with the natural world and looks forward to future sustainable non-capitalist world. But in environmental campaigns anarchists need to get across that we shouldn't feel guilty about individual contributions to waste in the here and now, since so much of is created at the front end by producers who package stuff to the hilt and sell us products that are made to be disposable or so badly made that they break down unnecessarily, whose sell by/use by dates on food often make no sense, processed food that goes stale a day after it's bought - just so we are encouraged to buy more of their crap. All this rubbish is sold by us by capitalists who profit at the expense of the environment … and then we are expected to pay to clear up the mess? No way! Environmental campaigns need to be as antagonistic as possible and not let anyone feel guilt-tripped in anyway. Spying by national and council authorities is just one more kind of divide and rule - dividing us into good and bad citizens. We need turn this thing around and point the finger at the system, making it clear that if they introduce bin-chipping we'll empty our bin bags outside the local council building (being careful to remove envelopes and personalised junk mail first!).
Just as with identity cards, we shouldn't write off opposition to the surveillance aspects of road pricing or bin charging as paranoia or as a side issue to taxation. Class struggle anarchism/libertarian communism is not just about economics, but about recognising attacks on freedom by an overpowering state. We are not talking about some high-minded civil liberties opposition either - more a hatred of civil service bureaucrats who think that it’s fine for them to measure our lives when the excessive consumption of the rich goes on regardless. Neither is it the duty of revolutionaries to find solutions for better dealing with pollution or waste when the root cause is capitalism and our being forced into a way of living that is inherently wasteful of the world's resources. If we had more social living, local production, transport pooling and stored things in bulk this would reduce pollution and waste to an extent, but to make real difference we’ll need to get rid of money and a growth economy based on profit, and for that a revolution will surely be needed.