Get a Job!
On the Usefulness of Jobs and Small Businessess for Illegalist Anarchists

Anarchists sometimes need money: we need to pay our cell phone bills; buy bus tickets to the hopout; get enough money to buy the squat that we’re about to get evicted from. Some things are just hard to steal, like guns, or are only available online, like decent scanner radios or jamming equipment.

Individualist and lifestyle anarchists hold their nose and do legitimate work just long enough to get what they need, aiming for enough money to comfortably hit the road, hit the hay, or hit the target.

Socialist anarchists, on the other hand, are willing to engage in legitimate work, seeing it as an opportunity to connect with the working stiff, hoping to radicalize them into joining a revolutionary organization.

Here we present a third, illegalist, option: working a job to create new opportunities for crime. Working a temporary job can often provide insider information that can then be leaked to comrades who easily scoop up the loot; starting a small business can provide a front for other illegal activities.

Throughout this piece we consider an illegalist criterion for work: that the damage done in terms of lost gross domestic product through fraud, theft, and other unsavory means is greater than the amount contributed to the system, in gross domestic product, through legitimate labor. In other words, the contribution to gross domestic destruct (GDD) is greater than the gross domestic product (GDP). And if you hate numbers, don’t worry, you can still do any of the things mentioned here because you want to, and ignore all the accounting.

Why Would an Illegalist Anarchist Get a Job?

It may seem slightly unintuitive, but engaging in a legal activity can often enhance one’s ability to engage in other illegal activities. In a different domain of direct action, working as a security guard or janitor at a facility that one’s affinity group wants to target would obviously give the group important information. In a real life example, according to the RICO indictment, an employee for the Flock camera corporation allegedly leaked information to Defend the Atlanta Forest defenders about the location of cameras. The same holds true for work: shoplifting, burglary, robbery, fraud, blackmail, and many other schemes become more possible, and more impactful, with an insider.

Consider some (hypothetical) examples

• A janitor drops the keys to a car dealership in an agreed upon location. The dealership is burglarized that night.

• A bank teller gets robbed and forgets to set off the silent alarm or put the dye pack in the cash bag.

• A sales clerk at a department store leaks the loss prevention schedule.

• An assistant who works at a corporation that supports arms manufacture leaks information about how to get into the manufacturing facility, and where critical equipment is located.

• A cashier fails to check for fake money.

• A caddy works at a golf course and learns the location of the safe, along with when it gets emptied.

• A T-Mobile worker accidentially renews cellular plans for free.

Some suggestions to keep in mind if you decide to explore your life in the workforce.

1. It’s probably a bad idea for the person working the job to do the heist.

   Insider jobs are not uncommon. I’ve heard of janitors being fingerprinted before being hired. Do some research on how insiders get busted, and avoid making the common mistakes.

2. If possible, separate the person working the job from the heist in time and space, without making it obvious.

   Leaving the job the day before, day of, or day after the heist is probably going to look fishy. If there’s a natural reason to leave, like the job was temporary to begin with, then you’re less likely to raise suspicion. Temporary jobs that are off the books, without requiring ID, are the safest, but harder to find and likely less impactful.

3. The person working the job may want to limit contact with the heist crew until the investigation has gone cold.

   Wait a month or two before connecting together in public areas, and maybe even in private, depending on how much heat you’re expecting. Better to not see each other for 1–2 months now than 1–2 years later when you’re behind bars.

4. The person working the job should not show any outward signs of increases in wealth after the heist.

   No new cars, gold chains, or big deposits to the bank account. Keep a low profile.

Why Would an Illegalist Anarchist Start a Small Business?

Small businesses are one of the most annoying topics to discuss with leftists, liberals, conservatives, and sometimes even anarchists. Small business owners are only slightly less holy than Jesus. You shouldn’t shoplift from small businesses, you shouldn’t rob small businesses, you shouldn’t smash their windows, and you shouldn’t even block the street during a demonstration because they might lose some revenue!

Fuck all that. Small business owners are the worst. They definitely love the cops and want your ass in jail. They’re as counterrevolutionary as any other class, and serve as a beacon for your would-be comrades. Paraphrasing one thinker, the proletariate don’t want to be revolutionaries, they want to be small business owners.

But hey, I’m saying that you too can be part of the backbone of “American” society! Just don’t let any of the bootlickers know that almost everything you’re doing with your small business is illegal.

Why start a small business as an illegalist anarchist? Because small businesses can fulfill one or more of the following purposes

1. a standard fence: mix in stolen goods with legitimate goods sold by the small business.

   Run a used hardware shop (could be an all online business), scavenge and buy used hardware legitimately and resell it, then mix in stolen hardware from booster friends with the legitimate goods.

2. a semi-fence: sell products where most of the cost of the product comes from stolen materials. A little legitimate labor is added to the stolen materials to launder it.

   Steal printing supplies and print AI generated art to be sold on Etsy. Steal USBs and load Tails on them, or Google Pixels and load Graphene on them.

3. an infiltration/exfiltration vector: use the small business to gain information or access to resources and assets that can then be exploited.

   A sex worker gets compromising information to blackmail an executive client. A white hat cybersecurity firm leaks information to black hat counterparts. An illegalist vendor exit scams a legitimate market.

A note on safely running an illegalist small business: Because you’re engaging in illegal activity, best to keep it to a small scale, at least the legal portion. You don’t really want to file taxes or have to create an actual LLC. If you keep the legal revenue small enough, and that should be easy given that you probably don’t need that much money for Red Bull and punk show tickets, you significantly reduce your risk. If you want to go to the moon with your business, take a look at how organized crime syndicates get busted, like the mafia, to mitigate risk.

Temporary versus Long-Term Employment

There are advantages and disadvantages to using jobs and small businesses as a long con versus a short con. Short operations are safer, require less effort and commitment. Yet short operations are limited in terms of their impact because businesses and government limit the access given to new employees and firms. Long operations have the opposite problem, with greater potential impact but also greater risk and effort. Further, the more you work legitimately, the more you become a worker and see yourself as a worker, and the more you contribute to the GDP rather than the GDD.

Filtering In

While illegalist anarchists rarely condition their behavior on beliefs in messianic and eschatological myths, like revolution or the collapse of civilization, infiltrating the economic seats of power can have plausible practical benefits. Blackmailing an executive, and other brutes in high positions, either by getting information about them through a job, or collaborating with them with your small business, might get you a free house, money, and connections with other elites. By implicating and embroiling elites in our affairs, we ferret out their dirty secrets, and use their wealth an energy as our inexhaustible treasure.

A Clarification Before the End

We’re not saying everyone should get jobs. We’re saying that if you must work a job, and can’t figure out how to get what you want by illegal means, consider leveraging that job into extra cash or influence through criminal activity. There’s no pressure, because ultimately, if you don’t enjoy the scams, schemes, and heists, you’re not going to do a very good job anyway. But if you’re a little excited about turning a $10/hour wagey nightmare into a hilarious jackpotting opportunity, we hope you experiment, and that some of the ideas presented here are helpful.