The weekly shop, anticapitalist style

Yesterday members of the spanish trade union, Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores, raided two supermarkets (english article).
200 people entered supermarkets in two towns filling up trollys with basic food stuffs and after a tussle with some supermarket security left without paying. The food was distributed to those who needed it via a food banks run by unnamed charitable organisations. There are even rumours that Ecija’s  left-wing mayor had ordered the local police to not intervene in the action or that other trade unionists distracted and confronted the authorities outside. Either way the raiders made off with nearly all of the food.

This action follows in the foot steps of actions by Greek anarchists which have become increasingly frequent over the past five years.  Currently the situation in Greece and Spain is worse than here in the UK ( in the latter country for example all benefits are stopped after two years of unemployment). However as the government here has only implemented around 7% of its planned decade of cuts and we enter another quarter of recession  we can assume things are going to get worse.

Could this action be part of a genuinely radical and, more importantly, possibly successful strategy of fighting against government cuts/austerity?  Forget telling the government not to cut a service or to please give us more jobs, lets just make sure our material needs are met. If their capitalist system can’t cope with that, well then, that’s their problem not ours. All we should care about is the fact that we need food, housing, health care and hell some entertainment once in a while, and we still live in a country of plenty. Despite (or because of) the recession, whilst we’ve all been tightening our belts the richest in our country have been hoarding even more wealth, soon the time will come when we have to start taking some of it back for ourselves.