Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
The slogan was launched by a horde of elves: “Christmas is ours.” In the heart of Montreal, a group called Les Robins des ruelles raided a Metro grocery store a few days before Christmas. This action seems to be a response to the call made by Les Soulèvements du Fleuve the previous week, which invited people to reject the current food production and distribution system. In an exemplary gesture of sharing, some of the food was left in the middle of Place Valois (in Hochelaga) – at the foot of a Christmas tree erected for the occasion – while the rest was reportedly distributed to community refrigerators throughout Montreal.
This inspiring act of resistance calls for greater openness as the holiday season approaches. Let’s leave the boring debates about solstice celebrations to the priests and secularists. Christmas belongs to no one and therefore to everyone! Let’s rediscover the spirit of the holidays, that of giving and sharing, which is necessary opposed to the logic of the economy. Signaling the return of the revolutionary question, the elves have spoken unequivocally: “Let’s expropriate the grocery chains, create collective kitchens, turn parking lots into large vegetable gardens, and monoculture fields into collective pantries. This world does not belong to them.” As the philosopher Alain Badiou, undoubtedly as old and red as Santa Claus, said:
If revolution is conceivable for us, it’s through the tradition forged in those famous or obscure moments when ordinary workers—both men and women—demonstrated their capacity to fight for their rights and for everyone’s rights, to operate factories, firms, administrations, schools, or armies by collectivizing the power of equality among all.
The call from the elves to expropriate grocery chains — and to do so immediatly — tentatively aligns with this long tradition of actions propelled by the power of equality, a time always ripe during festive seasons. When discussing conspiratorial Christmas gestures, we inevitably return to that famous affair of Christmas 1914, when German and British soldiers decided to lay down their arms for an evening, dancing, drinking, and even playing soccer to unwind. What’s often overlooked is that such improvised truces continued throughout the years of the Great War. During these pauses, meetings frequently occurred on the Eastern front between German and Russian soldiers, exchanging information on living conditions and grievances against military leadership, but also sharing the seed of revolution.
One can easily imagine, during these Christmas truces, soldiers exchanging a few words: “Christmas is ours… and soon, the world!” Indeed, this series of small conspiracies among soldiers heralded the greatest international conspiracy ever witnessed: the Russian and German revolutions. A thread connects them: the councils (Soviet or Räte). The immediate removal of authorities in factories, ports, theaters, neighborhoods, schools, train stations, and throughout all levels of public service and military. For months—and in some places for years—uncompromising self-management blossomed. Councils emerged everywhere, ungovernable, egalitarian, spreading the idea: the world is ours, starting now.
A little over a century later, it’s time to reclaim this motto. If a beginning is necessary, let’s start from this call of the elves; let’s begin with Christmas. As they articulate in their open letter:
Our horizon must resonate with the firm footsteps marching into the street. The price of bread is rising, and history repeats itself. Those who hope to hear only the silence of social peace must prepare for disappointment. The future belongs to those who rise up. We will not remain hungry for much longer.
Let us seize these moments of reunion and sharing to invent relationships beyond those mediated by commodities. We steadfastly reject the logics of law and economics. Let us rediscover the Christmas envisioned by the conspirators and deserters of the First World War. In this time of authoritarian turn, lets refuse the logics of the capitalist world — those of exploitation and imperial war. Let us expropriate those who exploit us, turn our weapons against those who dominate us, and launch our war: revolution is within our grasp.