Strangers is a remarkably tiny collective dedicated to the gift economic practice and the encouragement of alternative culture. Therefore, we offer our products for free both in both physical and electronic form. A few of us were opposed to electronic distribution, feeling that the physical form of a zine allows it more substance, but we agreed that accessibility to alternative culture is more important than purity of form. It’s possible, as well, that at some point we will choose to publish professionally printed books or albums, and we will need to charge for the product. We will continue to offer it for free download, however.
Gift economics is the idea of an entire economic system based the gift as the primary (or sole) means of exchange. In such a society, rather than believing in communal property (as in communism) or individual property collected as capital (as in capitalism), property can either be owned by individuals or groups, but accumulation has no inherent value. Gift economics is not barter, which is merely a primitive form of capitalism.
One of the problems with gifting is that, in a society that prefers to assign monetary amount to an object’s intrinsic value, it is easy for people to take things they didn’t have to work for for granted. Many times we have trouble getting people to take work distributed for free as something that isn’t disposable.
It is also important, of course, to understand that we do not have a unified, utopian world-view, despite being anarchists. Not everyone wants to live in gift-based society, the same as not everyone wants to live under capitalism or communism. We don’t take issue with this. In fact, we encourage diversity of most every sort.
Where do we get the money to create and distribute our work? Well, a good deal of our resources arrived to us as gifts. This webspace was donated. Copies of some of our zines come from sympathetic non-profits. The creator of The Super-Happy Anarcho Fun Pages plays accordion on the streets, using that money to pay for copy and mailing costs. We also, of course, accept donations.
Contact us! strangers[at]riseup.net