Making an Anarcake Part 1: Planning a Cake
First, it is important to define the principles such a cake would adhere to. Anarchism is based on an opposition to and absence of arbitrary hierarchies by which one person rules over another (Prichard 4), as these hierarchies end up harming those who are not in power; such hierarchies existed most obviously in governments like the absolute monarchies and medieval lords of the past, but also continue to exist in the form of modern bosses with companies or socioeconomic hierarchies. These hierarchies can also exist between humans and other life, such as the relationship between a farmer and the non-human animals they assert control over. For the purposes of making a cake, the most relevant hierarchies to note are human hierarchies over each other, and human hierarchies over non-human animals.
Human-Human Hierarchies
The hierarchies most widely considered when discussing anarchism are often between humans, the most obvious of which exist within companies, where a boss is hierarchically above their workers. According to the labour theory of value, “value comes primarily from labour, and that inequality arises from the appropriation of the surplus value (created by collective labour) by capitalists, who own the means of production (i.e. tools and factories)” (Prichard 78), so that this hierarchy of boss and worker magnifies over time. Because companies are generally profit driven out of self-interest, their actions are often harmful: Walmart is “challenged for exploiting its suppliers, taking advantage of taxpayer subsidies, and paying extremely low worker wages” while Tyson, a meat-processing company, “is reproached for its pollution, poor treatment of farmers, and contributions to the decline of rural communities” (Howard 1).Another product of profit-seeking companies is increased division of labor, which further entrenches inequality. In Fields, Factories, and Workshops Tomorrow, Pyotr Kropotkin writes how under capitalist notions of efficiency, the ideal of a workman is one “without the knowledge of any handicraft, without any conception whatever of the industry he or she is employed in, who is only capable of making all day long and for a whole life the same infinitesimal part of something: who from the age of 13 to that of 60 pushes the coal cart at a given spot of the mine or makes the spring of a penknife” (Kropotkin 23). This worker who is trained to only do one specific task would therefore face severe difficulty in being able to work outside of an industrial factory with such specialization of labor, further increasing their dependence on corporations and the company’s relative power over them.
This extends beyond industrial workers—Kropotkin further describes how farmers who used to find relief and sanctuary from hardship through his land and its crop were being replaced “by an occasional servant hired for the summer, and discharged as the autumn comes” (Kropotkin 23), with the family farm being replaced by “Bonanza farms” which operate on a large scale, and are operated in a manner similar to factories by managers in order to maximize efficiency and profit; the agricultural worker is therefore similarly reduced into a laborer within a hierarchy, and any independence that would have been afforded to them by their occupation is largely eliminated.
On a larger scale, profit also drives countries to specialize as well. Kropotkin states that a widely held sentiment is that certain countries are best at and ought to produce only specific goods; “that Hungary and Russia are predestined by nature to grow corn in order to feed the manufacturing countries; that Britain had to provide the worldmarket with cottons, iron goods, and coal; Belgium with woollen cloth; and so on. Nay, within each nation, each region had to have its own speciality” (Kropotkin 24).
Specialization between nations remains to this day: specifically to food, in America, “Imports have increased steadily for decades [and] More than half of the fresh fruit and almost a third of the fresh vegetables Americans buy now come from other countries” (Karper). A significant reason for this is, once again, profit: growing crops abroad instead of in America often means having “lower labor costs [while] many American farmers, facing regulatory hurdles at home, have responded by shifting production abroad, mainly to Mexico” (Karper).
Kropotkin disagrees with the very basis of this specialization, which is the assumption that profit should be the goal, stating that “The narrow conception of life which consisted in thinking that profits are the only leading motive of human society [proved] in disaccordance with the tendencies of human life [and] precisely in proportion as the work required from the individual in modern production becomes simpler and easier to be learned, and, therefore, also more monotonous and wearisome – the requirements of the individual for varying his work, for exercising all his capacities, become more and more prominent” (Kropotkin 24). Although specialization at an individual or national level may increase efficiency and productivity, it is not good for the worker—especially when efficiency and productivity are sought out in the name of profit, which goes to the corporation, not the workers.
Additionally, the consequences of specialization are clear. On a small scale, workers lose fulfillment from their jobs, be they industrial or agricultural. On a larger scale, “Russian peasants sell their corn, and for four, six, and sometimes eight months every year are compelled to mix bark and auroch grass to a handful of flour for baking their bread” and “famines are so common amidst the growers of wheat and rice in India” (Kropotkin 35). Meanwhile, Kropotkin describes produce imported from abroad as “half-ripe” and “incomparable” in quality (Kropotkin 56). This phenomenon remains to this day; even though imported produce may provide greater variety at the grocery store, this produce “may be picked less ripe [while] Varieties may be selected for durability at the expense of flavor, and treatments mandated to kill pests (hot water for mangoes, cold temperatures for citrus) can degrade flavor or texture” (Karper).
The solutions proposed by Kropotkin are thus two-fold: firstly, he advocates for “integration of labor” rather than division of labor, where “each individual is a producer of both manual and intellectual work; where each able-bodied human being is a worker, and where each worker works both in the field and the industrial workshop” and secondly, “where every aggregation of individuals, large enough to dispose of a certain variety of natural resources [such as a nation or region] produces and itself consumes most of its own agricultural and manufactured produce” (Kropotkin 25).
Meanwhile, in order to make such locally produced food more economical, Kropotkin advocated for more emphasis on local production in the first place, noting that agricultural productivity in Great Britain at the time was low “because agriculture had fallen into neglect” (Kropotkin 43) after the agricultural collapse of the 1870s that occurred in Britain. Part of this collapse can be attributed to farming abroad; because “Foreign supplies were plentiful following the opening up of virgin territory abroad and the fall in rail and shipping rates [the] price [of these imported agricultural goods] at English ports fell drastically… Wheat was to all intents a homogeneous product, it sold on the classic international wheat market, and the price received by the English farmer was a direct function of the world price; it fell from [56 shillings] od. a quarter in 1867-71 to [27 shillings 3 pence] in 1894-8 and was accompanied by a decline in the English acreage from over three to one and three quarter million acres” (Fletcher 419) because demand for grain could be met internationally, not just domestically.
As Kropotkin notes, part of this decrease in grain production was countered by an increase in the production of meat and milk. The era saw a rise in income in Britain, and as Fletcher notes, “It is a commonplace that with rising income civilized man prefers to purchase the more expensive and appetizing proteins rather than the cheaper starches… Contemporary references to the changing pattern of food consumption abound and were neatly paraphrased by Graham in 1899 in his wellknown phrase, ‘the sort of man who had bread and cheese for his dinner 40 years ago now demands a chop’” (Fletcher 419). For English farmers, the impact of “this changing pattern of demand was naturally to stimulate the production of meat, milk, and dairy products at the expense of wheat and potatoes” (Fletcher 419), so that “livestock farmers increased their quantum of output appreciably and even significantly raised its value, wheat growers suffered the brunt of the price fall and cut back their acreage severely” (Fletcher 421).
However, as Kropotkin notes, not all of this increase in demand was met by local production, with significant amounts being imported from abroad. For both meat and dairy products, “Most foreign supplies on the English market fetched lower prices than the home product [and] the price difference widened” (Fletcher 419-420). As such, Kropotkin finds that “The increase of live stock which took place during those twenty-seven years was not sufficient to cover even the area reclaimed from waste land” (Kropotkin 43), and other crops like turnips also saw decreases in acreage, so that overall, British land was being underused for farming, even in areas with fertile soil. Kropotkin describes how “Field after field [went] covered with nothing but grass” while orchards went to ruin (Kropotkin 46) and other land was reserved to be used as hunting grounds for the entertainment of the rich (Kropotkin 47). Years later, Colin Ward also notes that this era saw “dereliction and decay [and] the fields full of thistles” (Ward 86). Kropotkin therefore argued that should Great Britain do a better job of adequately and effectively utilizing its farmland, there would be no need for it to import food from abroad.
While Kropotkin’s conception of Britain’s agricultural possibilities was deemed as “over-optimistic even by Kropotkin’s fellow anarchists” (Carson 85), the principles behind his proposals remain true: a shift away from corporate, highly specialized agriculture towards buying locally would aid smaller-scale farmers, supporting their autonomy and quality of life, instead of a corporation’s profits.
An interesting example of local agriculture meant to serve communities in a way that does not involve authorities is the phenomenon of community gardens throughout the United States, and especially in New York City which, since the 1970s, “has had one of the largest and most robust community gardening programs in the world, with a broad base of resident engagement” (Campbell 113). These gardens are a common sight in the city, particularly in Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and most locally, the Lower East side. Such spaces are community managed, and can serve as spaces for recreation, performance, and cultural practices, as well as areas to grow food (Campbell 113). Beyond simply growing food nearby for the sake of proximity, there is also a strong emphasis on supporting communities, with focuses including food justice, neighborhood stabilization, and youth empowerment (Campbell 112).
In City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America, Laura Lawson traces community gardens back to the late 1800s, during the Progressive movement. During this time, much attention was given to unpleasant city conditions, and city gardens were seen as a solution that would “simultaneously improve both the environment and the behavior of the participants… They would not only provide a venue for the moral, physical, and economic development of the poor, but also result in a cosmetic improvement to the unattractive physical manifestations of land speculation and urban environmental conditions” (Lawson 21). Since this movement was largely defined by the actions of the upper and middle classes, it was these “reform-minded wealthy and upper-middle-income volunteers” (Lawson 22) who led these efforts.
Meanwhile, “upswings in urban agriculture correspond[ed] to crises or downswings in the economy”, and the 1970s in particular was when many civic organizations supporting individual and grassroots engagement in community gardening that are still relevant today were formed, such as the Green Guerillas and Greenthumb (Campbell 114). During this period, skilled labor occupations relocated outside of cities, while cities lacked manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs, which meant that those with the means to do so moved out of the city and to the suburbs, while low-income and minority groups were trapped in the city by “Segregation policies, discrimination, and the central location of public housing and other services” (Lawson 218).
Efforts by government authorities to address these issues largely failed, since “To many planners, politicians, and others, the solution was urban renewal through clearing blighted areas and developing them anew”, which only meant that communities were displaced and neighborhood fabrics destroyed, since new developments and housing took time to build, leaving residents with even fewer resources (Lawson 218-219). Interestingly, this parallels efforts during the Progressive Era to solve unsanitary city conditions, which consisted of demolishing those neighborhoods and building parks and boulevards on that land, but without trying to provide proper replacement for peoples’ homes (Lawson 21). This makes sense, since in both scenarios it was people occupying high positions in societal hierarchies trying to personally fix problems that they could not understand, without involving people who would better know how to address these kinds of issues.
Since the decade’s urban decay “led to property abandonment and arson by private owners and left the city struggling to manage vacant land”, Greenthumb was developed to offer “temporary, low-cost leases to residents engaging in gardening on vacant lots” (Campbell 114) and making good use of this land. Similar efforts had been made in Europe in years prior, as well as in Detroit in the 1890s as well, where “this program’s success in occupying the unemployed, improving urban nutrition, and providing opportunities for the poor to earn income through their own efforts inspired emulation in many other industrial cities and influenced later garden-relief projects” (Lawson 21). Importantly, these gardens were started by neighbors and activists (Lawson 214), rather than the local rich, and were “usually [self-managed]”, some with “regular meetings to negotiate and assign tasks” between gardeners, and some with gardeners “happy to defer to a coordinator or a committee” which would run the garden (Lawson 222). In either case, these gardens were run by community members rather than governments or wealthy outsiders, and for the direct benefit of community members, which is a sharp contrast to how urban gardens began under the Progressives.
Importantly, New York City’s community gardens have been historically apart from and often opposed to governmental authority, which is not unusual. During the Progressive Era, these gardens “were frequently justified as local contributions that compensated for limited municipal engagement in local problems” (Lawson 22), and acted in areas where the government hierarchy had failed the people; a century later, gardens sprung up as a way to help communities that authorities had been failing as well (Lawson 218). Furthermore, Campbell writes that “The fact that GreenThumb is housed within a municipal agency [specifically the Department of Parks and Recreation] is something of a unique institutional structure in the community gardening sector in the United States, where many umbrella organizations that serve gardens are independent nonprofits” (Campbell 117), rather than being involved with a governmental body.
In spite of this, however, the 1990s saw the gardens be put at risk by the government, specifically Rudy Giuliani, who starting in 1998 “targeted community gardens as potential sites for housing development”, intending to bulldoze and then sell off the land of 113 gardens in an unrestricted auction to make way for affordable housing; this lead to large-scale protesting and immense media attention, especially since there were other vacant lots that could have been used as land for new housing, rather than the land that already housed the gardens. Fortunately, the New York State Supreme Court stopped the unrestricted auction, which allowed two nonprofits, the Trust for Public Land and the New York Restoration Project, to negotiate the purchase of numerous threatened gardens (Campbell 115-116).
This moment is an example of community members resisting the actions of authority figures in order to preserve the well-being of everyday people, which align with anarchist values. Unfortunately, however, these gardens are still not immune to hierarchies. They were created in response to harsh conditions of the past, and were used by low-income people, especially Black and Hispanic people who “endured decades-long disinvestment, crime, and violence” as a strategy for “neighborhood stabilization” and food-provisioning” (Campbell 121). Nowadays, New York City is no longer in economic crisis, and “is booming economically in comparison to the 1970s and 1980s when many gardens were founded. Consequently, there is a new demographic of white, affluent, educated people engaging in urban agriculture” (Campbell 121-122).
As a result of these changing demographics, typical racial and socioeconomic hierarchies have come into play—while these gardens get significant media attention, some have noted “a disparity in media coverage and attention between long-time community gardeners and next-generation urban agriculturalists”, as well as racial disparities ‘in terms of access to funding, access to city land, and other resources’” (Campbell 122). As such, New York City’s community gardens are certainly not a perfect system, but still a step in the right direction when it comes to food production that opposes inter-human hierarchies.
Human-Animal Hierarchies
A second set of harmful hierarchies exist between humans and non-human animals. Veganarchism, which is a combination of anarchism and veganism, sees veganism and vegetarianism as being in opposition to hierarchies placing humans above and in control of non-human animals, and therefore a natural progression from anarchist scrutiny of power structures between humans. In The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism Erika Cudworth writes about this issue in “Farming and Food”, discussing how in spite of many modern improvements in non-human animal welfare and humane farming, humans raising non-human animals for meat and other products inherently should be critiqued.It is fairly intuitive that animal agriculture rests on the exploitation of non-human animals and the removal of their autonomy—animals are raised and often killed for the sole purpose of human consumption, and they are unable to live otherwise when humans can almost always just pen them up or do something else to control them. Even within their lifetimes, autonomy and quality of life are further reduced because controlling every aspect of an animal's life is key to the inherent incentives of a farmer: to cheaply produce animals in a specific manner, whether they are are “bred to gargantuan size” or raised to be “fat-rich” (Cudworth 643), in order to maximize value to a human consumer, and thus profit.
For example, when raising chickens for meat production, “higher returns can be obtained as the number of birds per unit space increases” (Estevez), so farmers are incentivized to put as many chickens in the same amount of space as possible. In addition to harmful health consequences like physiological stress, chickens also experience “reduction in space use and movement” (Estevez). In another case, Cudworth describes how cattle feedlots raise cows in “fenced in areas with a concrete feed trough” that leave the animals with “nothing else to do”, while the animals are fed on corn, soy, and additives like cardboard and cement as well as being given growth-promoting hormones, all in order to promote flesh-growth (Cudworth 644). This eliminates a cow’s autonomy in being able to move about freely or graze on what they would like since they can’t just wander off in search of grass.
Key to this argument is also the idea that non-human animals are relevant in such a discussion of hierarchies, and that their personal autonomy matters and ought to be preserved. This is not a prevailing sentiment, as “moral anthropocentrism [which argues that humans should be given moral priority over non-human animals] captures the way the vast majority of people think about the relations between humans and non-humans”, even regardless of intelligence; most subjects in a 2022 study “prioritized humans over animals even when the animals were described as having equal or more advanced mental capacities than the human” (Caviola et. al.)
Cudworth characterizes this prioritization as a “hierarchy [that] is constantly reproduced by the active dehumanization of animals” (Cudworth 649). Therefore, the idea that animals should not be counted as relevant in a discussion of harmful, unjust hierarchies is in and of itself another hierarchy, which anarchism is opposed to; as such, if the ideals of anarchism are to be followed to a full extent, they must also be applied to the autonomy, rights, and lives of non-human animals.
Also, it’s important to note that any measures to increase animal welfare or their quality of life cannot solve this, insofar as it is the farming of animals by humans itself that removes their autonomy; even if a chicken in captivity is given excellent treatment by humans and lives in a well-maintained cage, it is still in captivity and in a cage. Thus, Cudworth states that the way forward is “through the promotion of plant-based diet and transitions away from animal agriculture [and] industrial farming” (Cudworth 655).
A historical example of this occurred in France during the late 1800s, with a group of people who believed in a subset of anarchism called “individual anarchism”, which advocated for them to “[transform] themselves and their environment immediately and in their ordinary daily lives” instead of “waiting for a hypothetical future revolution [which they believed] prevented people from changing their lives in the here and now”. To that end, individualist anarchists experimented with various lifestyle changes to their relationships, education, and diet, and “were the strongest proponents of vegetarianism in anarchist circles” (Frayne 86).
Included among them were Élysée Reclus, who saw “similarities between the process of human socialization and that of animal domestication” (Frayne 85), both of which involve submission to authority, and Louise Michel, who “Like many other anarchists [drew] a parallel between the exploitation of workers and that of nonhuman animals” (Frayne 85). Later, in the early 1900s, libertarian colonies such as Clairière de Vaux and Bascon formed as “spaces in which anarchist ideas could be applied, tested, and refined” (Frayne 88); veganism and vegetarianism was a frequent practice.
Being vegan or vegetarian is also present in the modern day. Reasons for adopting plant-based diets differ, and include concerns about personal health and climate change, but for many, autonomy for non-human animals remains an important reason, even if not through an anarchist lens. One individual, for example, stated “I believe that animals want and have their own life and that it is morally wrong for humans to artificially inseminate, cage, break their spirit, use, eat, kill them, etc. I do not believe other animals are here for humans to use as they please” (Newton 46), which aligns closely with the anarchist notion that animals deserve autonomy.
Plant-based diets are also becoming more common and societally accepted. While statistics vary, a combination of several different polls “found the percentage of vegetarians to range from 1.2 percent in 1977-1978 to 5.3 percent in 2013-2018” (Newton 48). Meanwhile, a greater variety of vegan and vegetarian-friendly products are available, such as Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based alternatives to meat, and Impossible Foods, which makes plant-based burgers. Non-vegan and vegetarian companies are also taking note of the increasing interest in plant-based diets, such as Tyson Foods, a meat-processing company, which purchased a 5% share in Beyond Meat in 2017, and ice cream creator Ben and Jerry’s offering non-dairy ice cream (Newton 49).
Another plant-based option that is becoming more popular is vegan or vegetarian recipes, which makes this aspect of an anarchist cake relatively easy. Cakes are generally meat-free, and the eggs and butter that I would usually use when making a cake can be omitted in favor of plant-based recipes with “mashed bananas, silken tofu, soy yogurt, vegan buttermilk, a mixture of water and ground flaxseed or a combination of corn starch and potato starch” and “plant-based oils” or “Vegan margarine”, respectively (Guha et. al. 25). As such, the resulting cake would not rely on any hierarchy between human and non-human animals.
A historical example of this occurred in France during the late 1800s, with a group of people who believed in a subset of anarchism called “individual anarchism”, which advocated for them to “[transform] themselves and their environment immediately and in their ordinary daily lives” instead of “waiting for a hypothetical future revolution [which they believed] prevented people from changing their lives in the here and now”. To that end, individualist anarchists experimented with various lifestyle changes to their relationships, education, and diet, and “were the strongest proponents of vegetarianism in anarchist circles” (Frayne 86).
Included among them were Élysée Reclus, who saw “similarities between the process of human socialization and that of animal domestication” (Frayne 85), both of which involve submission to authority, and Louise Michel, who “Like many other anarchists [drew] a parallel between the exploitation of workers and that of nonhuman animals” (Frayne 85). Later, in the early 1900s, libertarian colonies such as Clairière de Vaux and Bascon formed as “spaces in which anarchist ideas could be applied, tested, and refined” (Frayne 88); veganism and vegetarianism was a frequent practice.
Being vegan or vegetarian is also present in the modern day. Reasons for adopting plant-based diets differ, and include concerns about personal health and climate change, but for many, autonomy for non-human animals remains an important reason, even if not through an anarchist lens. One individual, for example, stated “I believe that animals want and have their own life and that it is morally wrong for humans to artificially inseminate, cage, break their spirit, use, eat, kill them, etc. I do not believe other animals are here for humans to use as they please” (Newton 46), which aligns closely with the anarchist notion that animals deserve autonomy.
Plant-based diets are also becoming more common and societally accepted. While statistics vary, a combination of several different polls “found the percentage of vegetarians to range from 1.2 percent in 1977-1978 to 5.3 percent in 2013-2018” (Newton 48). Meanwhile, a greater variety of vegan and vegetarian-friendly products are available, such as Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based alternatives to meat, and Impossible Foods, which makes plant-based burgers. Non-vegan and vegetarian companies are also taking note of the increasing interest in plant-based diets, such as Tyson Foods, a meat-processing company, which purchased a 5% share in Beyond Meat in 2017, and ice cream creator Ben and Jerry’s offering non-dairy ice cream (Newton 49).
Another plant-based option that is becoming more popular is vegan or vegetarian recipes, which makes this aspect of an anarchist cake relatively easy. Cakes are generally meat-free, and the eggs and butter that I would usually use when making a cake can be omitted in favor of plant-based recipes with “mashed bananas, silken tofu, soy yogurt, vegan buttermilk, a mixture of water and ground flaxseed or a combination of corn starch and potato starch” and “plant-based oils” or “Vegan margarine”, respectively (Guha et. al. 25). As such, the resulting cake would not rely on any hierarchy between human and non-human animals.
Planning a Cake Part 1: Restrictions
Hierarchies between humans, on the other hand, are more difficult for me to avoid. The ideal means of obtaining ingredients in a manner that does not support hierarchical corporations would be to grow my own food, but considering that I live in a dorm in New York City, this isn’t exactly an option; my singular attempt at growing any plant to consume, specifically scallions, failed within two weeks because of the lack of space and lack of light. The best space in my building to grow any food, that actually has enough space with good access to fresh air and sunlight, would be on a balcony or the rooftop, but because of rules established by hierarchies within the dorm—which are, in my opinion, completely understandable—I am not allowed to go there, much less start planting crops and gardening. A perfect solution would be to get food from a community garden, but I have not been planting and tending any crops lately, so that is also not an option.Even if none of this was an issue, and I still lived where I grew up in suburban New Jersey, in a town filled with farmland, I would still struggle to grow my own food due to the specialization Kropotkin discusses. Citing historical figures like Galileo and Newton, Kropotkin states that before recent specialization, there was a lesser distinction between “brain workers” who studied science or mathematics and manual workers, since Galileo and Newton themselves conducted manual labor and knew how to manufacture their tools, not just use them. However, Kropotkin continues that “Under the pretext of division of labour, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker” (Kropotkin 132).
This extends to the way that children are educated, and Kropotkin describes how parents “despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin’s teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the ‘lower classes only.’” (Kropotkin 135-136). This hints both at why I was discouraged from gardening as a child in favor of studying for exams, and at another societal hierarchy, where manual labor and farming in particular are deemed as being a “lesser” occupation than a job in corporate finance, for example.
As a result, students grow up striving for such corporate jobs, and the average age of farmers continues to rise; the 2017 Census of Agriculture found that "The average age of all producers is 57.5, up 1.2 years from 2012" (White and King). In my town, the farm that I grew up next to is no longer operating because its owners grew too old to manage it on their own, and their children moved off the farm to pursue other careers. Small-scale, family-based agriculture as a whole is declining in America.
Farms, meanwhile, are growing ever larger; across America, smaller farms take up a smaller share of the industry, and “The smallest 60 percent of farms as well as 70 percent, 80 percent, and 90 percent, all have a lower share of total sales in 1997 than in 1987 and a lower share in 2007 than in 1997” (Sumner 150), and “formerly mid-sized commercial farms are now small and what would have formerly been a large farm is now considered mid-sized” (Sumner 152). In 1899, Kropotkin wrote of the American agricultural system as one that Great Britain should look to as an example, extolling its “countless small farms” that operate better through “better organised production and facilities for sale, and without being compelled to pay to the landlord a toll of one-third part, or more, of the selling price of each quarter of wheat” (Kropotkin 62); clearly, this is no longer the case.
Another interesting parallel is underutilization of land. In Great Britain, Kropotkin criticized “hunting grounds” reserved for the entertainment of the rich as being a waste of land that could be devoted to agriculture. While hunting in America is certainly not reserved for the rich, an omnipresent part of suburban life is the lawn, a stretch of grass that is not particularly useful for agriculture. “American homeowners spend billions of dollars plus untold hours and energy on their front lawns every year [and] grassy yards are so familiar and so common that it is difficult for Americans to imagine an alternative residential landscape without them” (Jenkins 2). Meanwhile, in the same ways that hunting grounds were the domain of the rich, lawns were “a luxury of the wealthy” and “became a status symbol of the middle class” (Jenkins 5), a way to reinforce perception of socioeconomic divides, as the sentiment was that other people with less money and education would see these lawns as an example set for them.
Upkeep of lawns involves extensive weeding, mowing, and watering, which fuels a multibillion-dollar industry (Jenkins 5). As such, even if I had been still living at home, I would not be able to plant a garden—the idea of me ripping up precious grass would be inconceivable to my parents. Thus out of options, it becomes clear that all I can really do in order to make a cake aligned with anarchist values is to buy from producers that align with them, while not using animal products as ingredients.
Planning a Cake Part 2: Choosing a Recipe
In order to establish what ingredients I would need to purchase, I first would need to figure out what recipe to use. While substitutes exist for animal products I would usually use in baked goods, not all of them work the same way or are able to replicate the same sort of texture that would be created using animal products. Margarine is a pretty good substitute for butter, along with specifically designed vegan butters, and many recipes already use vegetable oils anyway, but eggs in particular are important in cakes because their protein content that solidifies while baking helps to bind a cake together and trap air pockets, which means a cake that is less likely to crumble and fall apart, but is also lighter and fluffier because of all the trapped air. I’ve used different substitutes in the past, but the resulting cakes tend to be quite crumbly and dense.
One type of cake that adapts particularly well to being eggless, however, is carrot cake, since the strands of carrot that are grated into the batter help to hold the cake together, similar to how strands of protein would do so, and the resulting cake falls apart less. This type of cake also presents its own problems, however, since carrot cake typically contains various spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, as well as vanilla. All of these ingredients are mostly imported into America from abroad, mostly Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, and while certain brands grow them locally, these brands are significantly smaller and harder to access. As such, in order to align with Kropotkin’s ideal of food being grown locally for local consumption, I would be omitting these ingredients. Personally, I am not opposed to this—I find that carrot cake tends to mask the flavor of carrots themselves, and often taste more of spices than carrot.
Therefore, our final recipe, which is adapted from a recipe by Nora Cooks, calls for all-purpose flour, brown and white sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, oil, applesauce, almond milk, and grated carrots. Just for fun, I will be icing it with an icing made of powdered sugar and coconut oil instead of a butter or cream cheese-based frosting. The next step is to figure out where to purchase these ingredients from.
Planning a Cake Part 3: Where to Buy?
When trying to buy ingredients for this case, two good places to look are New York City’s greenmarkets and co-ops, both of which are places to buy food from community members, rather than from corporations.According to the National Coop of Grocers, co-op stores are “member-owned, member-governed businesses that operate for the benefit of their members [and are] voluntarily owned by the people who use it” (NGC), therefore circumventing corporations and their hierarchies altogether. New York has several coops, but most of them are member only, and I am not yet a member. As such, my best option is 4th Street Food Co-Op in the Bowery. In 1995, this store replaced the Good Food Coop, which began in 1973 as a buying club and became a storefront food cooperative. The store is also “run by unpaid working members, who work in exchange for a discount” (4th Street Food Coop), which is reminiscent of the moneyless society some anarchists advocate for. The coop has an extensive stock of dry goods including various beans and grains, as well as the all-purpose flour, raw almonds to make almond milk, oil—specifically coconut oil, baking powder, and baking soda, that I would need for my cake.
Another place to go is the Union Square Greenmarket, which is operated by GrowNYC. Founded in 1970 as the Council on the Environment of New York City, GrowNYC is an environmental organization that aims to improve the city’s quality of life; to this end, the organization runs programs for education, composting and scrap collection, and garden construction, as well as a network of Greenmarkets (GrowNYC). These markets operate at different times of the week, and are located throughout all five boroughs. In these markets, consumers buy directly from producers that grew the food (GrowNYC), eliminating corporate hierarchies and supporting small farmers. Here is where I would purchase carrots, to be grated into the batter and apples, to make my own applesauce.
All that is left, now, is to get baking!
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