kel smith

Endless questions with a few answers Exploring post-capitalist ideology in the capitalist vortex black hole I realize recently that I use writing to process things that I don’t understand, and while I’ll never run out of questions to ask, many of the big questions that I’ve spent the last few years uncovering – around capitalism… Read more: Endless questions with a few answers

Harvesting Arugula Seeds I have had little time for writing lately, or even much interest in it. I am busy in the world, trying my best to do the things I write about and live an intentional life full of practice. Any gardener or farmer will be able to tell you what life looks like… Read more: Harvesting Arugula Seeds

The Unsquashable Local Food Dream I have this dream. It’s been hanging around in my mind for a few years and I can’t quite shake it. I envision urban spaces where we grow food to feed the community. Raised beds on empty parking lots. Small scale farms in front of industrial complexes. In my dream,… Read more: The Unsquashable Local Food Dream

Capitalism and Addiction Thesis: What if the reason that we can’t move beyond our current state of capitalism is because the behaviours that are normalized and reinforced within this system are addictive? I’m not talking about doom scrolling and online shopping, but the underlying systems that creates those types of behaviours. Let’s pan out. Under… Read more: Capitalism and Addiction

Forty Five Today is my birthday and I have successfully navigated another trip around the sun, bringing my total to 45. This feels like a significant number, though I suppose no more than any other, except that the trips seem to be happening more and more quickly as of late. I’m told that this only… Read more: Forty Five

The Snack Potluck Patch Swap Yesterday I held a snack potluck patch swap. I had been inspired by online friends who had held a patch swap (I threw the snack potluck in there myself because who doesn’t love sharing snacks) and put a call out on Instagram to see if there was local folks who… Read more: The Snack Potluck Patch Swap

The Algorithm and AI have killed my writing practice When I started writing this blog back in 2021, I had a clear intention to share ways in which I had worked to deconstruct and opt out of some of the harmful practices of the status quo under capitalism. I started with education, because that was… Read more: The Algorithm and AI have killed my writing practice

There is a common tendency to treat post-capitalism as something that arrives after or later. It is framed as a future stage; something that follows crisis, collapse, or transition. Capitalism is understood as the present condition; post-capitalism as what replaces it. This framing assumes a linear trajectory. One system gives way to another, and history… Read more: Post-capitalism is not what comes after

Rest is commonly understood as the absence of work: a period of withdrawal, inactivity, or disengagement intended to restore energy. Within contemporary work culture, this form of rest typically appears as recovery from exhaustion—time taken after periods of sustained effort in order to return to baseline functioning. This definition is insufficient. If rest is defined… Read more: Redefining Rest

In a world that tries to serve us absolute truths, it’s important to embrace multiplicity. It is true that atrocities are committed by our governments, and we should not turn a blind eye to the damage done in the name of our freedomANDOur brains and bodies are not meant to hold the sheer volume of… Read more: Multiplicity and the Current State of Things

What do we actually mean when we talk about liberation? Too often the word gets used to describe something closer to personal advancement. A person or a group gains power. Someone gets a seat at the table. A barrier breaks and new people are allowed to participate in systems that were once closed to them.… Read more: Liberation Is Collective

Selling your labour under capitalism is one type of work, but it flavours how we think about and experience all other types of work. When I spend a day doing physical work that I can see and understand — planting, repairing, cooking, building, sharing — I am tired, but not estranged. The effort makes sense.… Read more: Work is not the problem.

When I talk about anti-capitalism, or my anti-capitalist practice, I think it’s important to ground the term. I am not hopeful that we will see an exit from the capitalist system. When I talk about designing for what’s next, I don’t mean that we will move from capitalism into something inherently anti-capitalist. I find that… Read more: Post-Capitalism as a Practice

The phrase “design for decay” first appeared in a substack conversation offered by Anarcasper in response to my unending questions about building new structures inside of the capitalist system. The phrase stuck with me because it named something I had been circling without articulating. Not collapse. Not apocalypse. But erosion. A recognition that whatever comes… Read more: Design for Decay

What does it currently mean to make content for the internet? I’ve been a content creator for over two decades before it was labeled. Since a time before LiveJournal and MySpace, before social media existed in any context, I’ve been blogging and “camgirl”ing since the mid 1990s. Before we wrote for the algorithm, we wrote… Read more: Feeding the Spectacle