There is no spoon (X.) by X.

In the original Matrix movie (1999) a group of underground revolutionaries try and try again to overthrow an oppressive system that has lulled everyone into complacency. They keep banging their heads against this apparently invincible enemy. Even those who learned how to bend the rules a little –like veteran mentor Morpheus– believe that the system cannot be defeated without the intervention of a messiah. In the classic scene of the bended spoon, this “messiah” (Neo) begins to grasp that the rules of the system can be bent so far that what you thought was impossible becomes possible. Neo is talking to a monastic-looking child of the underground who seemingly bends a spoon with his mind:

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

This classic dialogue hits the fundamental problem that Revolutionary Democracy wants to overcome: The traditional US Left still believes that the capitalist system is so powerful today that people cannot change it. The only options available to the activists are to beg or demand that the powers-that-be concede minor reforms. We are then supposed to wait for a great crisis in the distant future when the system collapses on its own and the revolution “happens”. Most of the activity of the US Left these days consists of trying to “bend spoons”: The radicals protest militantly, the moderates advocate congenially and the “revolutionaries” recruit small exclusive “vanguards” or “affinity groups” and prepare for the day of the insurrection (just as the Christian fundamentalists wait for the day of the Rapture). Meanwhile, the system grows more controlling and oppressive every day, the movement keeps shrinking and weakening and the great majority of people feel more and more alienated from the very concept of revolution. The activists then conclude that people in the US are apathetic and that they reject change, which reinforces the belief that our society cannot be transformed. This cycle of self-defeat goes on and on…

We learn otherwise in the practice of revolutionary democracy: Once we understand how the system works, we can bend its laws so far that we can change and subvert it step by step until it is eventually overcome. We can do this sometimes with little steps and sometimes with big steps, so long as we recognize that the system is not invincible and that it can only be transformed by the social power of masses of organized people. Unlike the Matrix script, we can’t follow a predictable superhero plot. It is only as more and more people get awakened in their daily lives to the reality that “there is no spoon” that they can organize themselves and democratically revolutionize the world. This was the tantalizing promise that Neo made at the end of Matrix 1: To wake up everyone and see what happens (Matrix 2 and 3 betrayed that promise and sucked).

The premise of Revolutionary Democracy is:

• The capitalist system is not some unmovable, unstoppable machine that we can only rage against. It is built upon rules that can be bent, twisted and reshaped until society itself is completely transformed.

• The only force that can transform society is the social power of lots and lots of organized people. The most creative, powerful and long-lasting form of social organization is the one in which people practice democracy in a revolutionary way: Working together and deciding together in all things.

• Progressives and revolutionaries can work with all kinds of people right where they are to help them build and use revolutionary democratic social power.

• As people build and consolidate revolutionary democratic social power, they create a dual power situation that increasingly bends the system until it overcomes it. The transformation begins right away -even if in small ways- just as mass bends space in the universe. The more mass, the more bending.

That’s the strategy. The movement can choose any number of tactics to make it happen depending on the time, place and conditions. We can mobilize for rallies and direct actions, just as we can organize people to pass their own laws or take political power in elections, just as we can build independent progressive institutions like street universities or job cooperatives. No need to repeat the same tactic over and over. No need to reject any tactic off hand. (1) What determines the usefulness of a tactic at any given time is whether or not it empowers as many people as possible to organize themselves and to expand democratic control over society.

Sounds simplistic? It isn’t. The system structures everyone’s lives with the most undemocratic routines at work, school, church, in the home and of course on TV. Everywhere we are told what we can and cannot do as individuals. The very idea of working together to change the rules is banished (voting is only allowed on TV to select idols or eliminate survivors). The usual approaches of the traditional US Left will not succeed: We can’t just proclaim how great the world will be if people just join us; we can’t browbeat people into abandoning their way of life for the vague promise of a better future. And we can’t unite anyone by trying to frighten them with tales of imminent worldwide chaos and destruction. It’s been tried. It doesn’t work.

We must create the necessary conditions for everyone to learn that what they think is impossible (transforming society) is in fact possible. That is the challenge: To organize events, actions and programs where people can experiment with democracy in a revolutionary way; where they can experience the transformative power of working together and deciding together; where they can change their understanding of the world and of their place in it as they begin to build a new world amidst the old.
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(1) We do reject terror as a tactic (the indiscriminate use of violence against people) because it is completely antidemocratic. Violent tactics in general should be avoided in most situations (except in self-defense) because they undermine the ability of large groups of people to practice democracy. It’s not easy to work together and decide together when dodging bullets!