The Basics of Marxism (Keith) by X.

Three concepts are necessary to understand the basics of Marxism: Class, Surplus, and Exploitation. Before proceeding to these three concepts a caveat is necessary. Marx and Engels' collected works fill 50 volumes and many texts remain unpublished. The secondary literature on Marx's theory is elephantine, not to mention the original contributions to revolutionary thought from practicing Marxists as well as revolutionaries from other theoretical traditions. So, it would be a remarkable lie if I were to say that the introductory remarks below represent the essence of Marxism or socialism--it is a big topic. And there are very many Marxisms, each with their own emphasis and developed in differing historical conditions. If this weren't the case Marxism wouldn't be a theory but a religion. And it is important to remember that anyone who tells you that their Marxism is the only Marxism is not a revolutionary theorist but a priest trying to build a religion.

The most important concept in my view is surplus labor and its related opposite, necessary labor. Surplus just means "more" or "extra" -- as in more than is necessary. All societies produce a surplus of goods and services. Take, for example, a communal egalitarian society like the Iroquois or Cherokee in their pre-European contact state-- all members of the tribe work except the very young, the very old, the sick, or disabled. In order to care for those that cannot work (the young, the old, etc.) those who can work must produce a surplus, extra—they must produce more than is necessary for their own sustenance. This extra is the difference between what the people who do work need to live and what they produce for others. These societies are egalitarian or non-exploitative because the people who produce the surplus control it collectively and decide how to use it-- to take care of the old, the young, and the sick.

Now let's look at surplus in very different social relations. Take slave-based societies: The slaves do the work and the master gets the product of their work and decides what to do with it. The difference between what the slaves get back as food, clothing, and shelter and what the master keeps is the surplus. This form of social organization is very different than the arrangements of the Iroquois or Cherokee. In those societies the people who do the work decide on what to do with the surplus. In slave society the people who do the work have no say over the surplus—that is exploitation by definition. Exploitation occurs when the people who do the work and produce the surplus are different from the people who get the product of that work and the surplus. The difference between the people doing the work and the people getting the surplus produced is a class difference. Exploitation is at the heart of class difference. In a society where the people who create the surplus are different from the people who get the surplus and decide what to do with it, there are class differences, and class struggle.

Marxism defines class by the relationship between groups of people (classes) and the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus. I should qualify that assertion by saying different Marxists have different ways of thinking about classes, some identify classes by consciousness, others by property or power, mainstream discourses usually think in terms of income or status: i.e., "blue collar or "white collar," or "middle class." Sometimes these alternative ways of thinking about class yield insights, but often they obscure the question of exploitation. Thinking about class in these different ways will lead to very different politics and social practices. I will say more about this towards the end of this essay, but first we should look at a couple more class structures.

In European feudalism somewhat different arrangements for exploitation occurred. In the corvée system a peasant might work on a piece of land for three days and kept the fruit of his labor for himself. Then he was required to work an additional three days on a different piece of land—the fruit from this labor was delivered to the feudal lord. The first three days are necessary labor (necessary to re-produce the peasant by providing food, clothing, shelter and so forth) and the second three days are surplus—taken by the lord.

Exploitation and class difference are obvious under slavery and feudalism. The slave and the peasant know that they do the work and their lords and masters don't work. The systems are justified in two ways: violence and ideology. Slavery and feudalism require the extensive use of force, but force can be a blunt and limited tool. In addition to force ideologies are developed to win the consent of the exploited. Some religious ideologies, for example, propose that social hierarchies are ordained by god and reflect the spiritual world, or ideologies like paternalism, or white supremacy which racialize class differences making them seem natural, biological, or divinely sanctioned. The obviousness of exploitation in a slave or feudal society disappears under capitalism.

What is clear under slavery and feudalism becomes mysterious under capitalism. The hidden nature of capitalist exploitation accounts for the rise of economics as a science. Economics emerged with the rise of capitalism because it was unclear, for instance, how market prices were determined, or where profit comes from. Marx's most important works, the four volumes of his magnum opus Capital (totaling over 4,000 pages) is a study of how surplus is produced, appropriated, and distributed in capitalist societies, or as he called it "the capitalist mode of production." Marx built on the work of his predecessors, especially Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and David Ricardo another important classical political economist.

The short story of work under capitalism goes something like this: When you go to work part of the day you spend producing the goods and/or services that you will get back in the form of wages or as a salary. This is the necessary part of the working day because you are making the value that you need in order to buy the things you need to live. But once you have accomplished this you will keep working, and during this time you will be producing surplus that the capitalist will take. Part of the surplus produced by workers becomes the capitalist profit and the rest is distributed by that appropriating capitalist to others (some goes to other capitalists like bankers as interest, landlords as rent, some goes to the state as taxes, and so forth). This surplus will take different forms, capitalist profits, bankers' interest, landlord rents, stock holder dividends, and can be used by the capitalist (or in a modern corporation the board of directors) in a large variety of ways. Marx wants us to see that labor produces surplus and the exploitation of workers is the origin of these different forms of capitalist income.

The story is simple when looking at an egalitarian society, or a slave society. In these societies everyone knows that labor produces the goods and services that we need to live on. It is no mystery. But under capitalism it is a great mystery. The mystery emerges basically for two reasons. The first is what Marx calls commodity fetishism and capital fetishism. Fetishism is expressed in an idea like "money makes money." Under capitalist social forms it appears that money magically produces itself. What is hidden then is the exploitation of labor, money only makes money if it exploits labor somewhere along the way. The second reason for the mystery of exploitation under capitalism is ideology. Workers are daily bombarded by an ideological assault (paid for out of the surplus we produce) telling us that the system is just, that "capitalist take risks" and so they deserve a "reward," or investors "contribute" their capital and "deserve a return" and other such nonsense designed to legitimize exploitation.

As we argued elsewhere on the blog, revolution is a process. So ending exploitation is not something that will happen by decree after a great revolutionary event. Overthrowing the capitalist mode of production is a process. In the past many Marxist and socialists thought state ownership of the means of production and suppressing the market (markets are just places where people buy and sell) were the way to overcome capitalism. Identifying socialism with state ownership of the means of production follows very naturally if class is defined in terms of property ownership. In this view capitalist are "owners" and workers are "non-owners." I see three problems with this "classical view." First, exploitation is based on the production of surplus value and the appropriation of the surplus by people different from the workers who made it. Is this situation changed by state ownership? Not necessarily. In a modern capitalist enterprise, known as the corporation, the "owners" don't appropriate the surplus they just "own" a piece of paper (the stock certificate). The surplus is appropriated by the board of directors which makes the decisions about what to do with the surplus. Or take an example of state ownership: The state owns the postal service and still postal workers labor under the same basic conditions as the rest of us. This leads to the second problem with this view: State ownership was the goal pursued in the Soviet Union. During the revolution workers seized their factories and turned them over to the "workers state." After the revolution surpluses were appropriated by commissars or state managers. Without addressing the achievements and shortcomings of the Soviet experience it is enough to point out that using the definition of exploitation discussed above the Soviet Union wasn't able to overcome exploitation (in fairness they weren't trying to, they defined class by property ownership and were concerned with ending private capitalism through state ownership.) The last problem with this version is getting from private ownership of the means of production to public ownership of the means of production requires an (unlikely) insurrection and momentous seizure or power, because there is no transition, no in-between stage: The workers must take state power and make private industry public.

Choosing to define class by surplus production is in keeping with the strategy and tactics of revolutionary democracy and in keeping with our rejection of the politics of insurrection (and their kissing cousin—protest mode). Insurrection, just like protest, is a tactic, not a strategy. Whether or not there is an insurrection in the future, we still have to overcome exploitation step by step, starting today, as a part of the revolutionary process. We have already discussed on the blog an overarching revolutionary democratic strategy. Overcoming exploitation is the same process: People who do the work also make the decisions about how that work gets done and what to do with the surplus that work produces. In a modern corporation the board of directors gets the surplus and decides what to do with it. We must develop tactics so that workers can take these boards over. Every union's long term goal should be the democratic seizure of the board of directors by the workers. In Universities our goal should be the democratic seizure of boards of trustees and boards of governors by faculty, staff and students. We can also set up worker co-operatives where the people who do the work decide on how to spend the surplus. Some of that surplus can be used to finance the movement –the growing revolutionary democratic movement will make sure social conditions that allow worker co-operatives to exist continue and expand.

Overcoming exploitation is a major theoretical and practical project. In the above I put forth a few rudimentary ideas. We must start thinking seriously about this question, and experiment practically with tactics to overcome exploitation one shop, one factory, one college, one school, one corporation at a time. But in order to think about exploitation we must know how it works.

In New Brunswick, the Revolutionary Democratic movement is organizing an electoral campaign to transform the city council from a system based on at-large representation to one based on neighborhood representation. As the city becomes increasingly democratized (a ward based system is a step in this direction, part of the revolutionary process) we can propose and agitate for laws that will spur the development of worker co-operatives. Instead of tax breaks for corporations, we argue for tax breaks to worker co-ops and state-funded programs to assist in setting up co-ops.

As part of the local movement, we can urge teachers and staff and students to take over the board of education, and with an increasingly democratic city we can demand laws and policies to make it feasible. We don't have to wait for some distant future event or "crisis" to end exploitation. We can start working for it now.

In the above discussion I relied on Marx's works especially the four volumes of Capital (the fourth volume is called Theories of Surplus Value). In addition, Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, have been arguing forcefully to put Marx's theory of surplus production back on the agenda. See especially their texts Knowledge and Class, and Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. See also Lenin's essay "On Cooperation."

What's Revolutionary about the Working Class? (Keith) by X.

The Financial Times (FT), the standard bearing newspaper of the global capital, recently published an editorial entitled: The biggest threat from cyber warfare lies in the future. The author, Stephen Fidler, responding to reports that the so-called People’s Liberation Army of China hacked into the Pentagon’s computer begins his commentary with this seemingly doomsday scenario: “The lights go out; the internet goes down. Banks close; cash machines fail. Radio and television stations stop broadcasting. Airports and railway stations bar their doors. City streets are jammed with traffic. After a night of uncertainty, power and communications are still blacked out - in fact, they might not come back for months. People start to panic and, as looters emerge, police are unable to restore order.” According to Fidler’s the United States would go from “super-power to third world nation” overnight. The paper goes on to call for greater security measures from the department of homeland security. And maybe (though probably not) these securities measures could prevent an attack like the one recently put on the Pentagon’s system. Secretly embedded in the “nightmare” story told above is the secret of working class power.

Stephen Fidler’s editorial unwittingly explains why the working class is the “revolutionary agent” and it is a lesson that despite all of the lip-service paid to the working class has been long forgotten. Workers are revolutionary not because of what they think, not because they are oppressed, not because they are poor, but because they make the system work and if they stop the system stops.

Fidler is worried about terrorism and international espionage but as a follow up letter to the editor points out cyber-attacks could well be inside jobs. This letter then explains how workers (in the author’s deluded mind they must be foreign terrorist moles) in the IT sector could bring about the above scenario from inside the company. That is they could shut down the functioning of the global capitalist system. He even speculates that many of the Microsoft windows security flaws which are patched up by windows updates could be purposefully placed breaches. Indeed, when Microsoft attempts to limit access to security updates to those who have a “legal” copy of the operating system hacks are immediately posted on the web—the hacks are almost certainly provided by Microsoft workers.

One of Marx’s most important and famous concepts is commodity fetishism, but perhaps even more important is his lesser known concept of the capital fetish—the idea that money makes money is an example of it. Marx explains that workers confront their conditions of work as they would an alien power. Capital --the machines and tools (like computers) -- seems all powerful and we seem weak. But this is the illusion. Capital has no power except what is provided by living labor-- by us going to and doing the work. Marx sometimes refers to capital as accumulated dead labor, and capitalism is then a system in which dead labor dominates living labor.

By theorizing the capital fetish Marx responds to various bourgeois economists who think that capital creates value. Marx explains that capital is not a thing but a social relationship, and if it is a social relationship then it is a class relationship, and if it is a class relationship then it is a relationship of antagonism and struggle. For example: a lawn mower may or may not be capital it depends on the social relationships in which it is used. If Jill mows her lawn with the lawn mower it is not capital. If Jill mows her neighbor’s lawn and gets paid $20 to do it, it is still not capital. The lawnmower is capital if Jill hires a worker to mow her neighbor’s lawn with her lawnmower and her neighbor pays her $20 and she gives the worker $10 and keep the other $10 as profit. The lawnmower is capital because it is used to exploit labor, to extract surplus value from living labor. As a budding capitalist her job is to accumulate more capital. If she is frugal and has the entrepreneurial spirit she will plow that capital back into her business buying more lawnmowers, hiring more workers and mowing the lawns of entire neighborhoods and corporate parks. If Jill has one hundred lawnmowers she can exploit the labor of one hundred workers, instead of “earning” $10 profit from one worker she can pump surplus value in the form of profit from each one, and so on.

As the business gets larger the source of profits becomes more mystified. The lawnmower appears to be everything when it is actually nothing. The lawnmowers appear to be the source of profit – that is the capital fetish. Without the worker it isn’t capital, without the workers the capitalist could not get the $10 as profit nor could the capitalist get the profit from 100 lawnmowers without workers. If the workers stop working there is no profit, if the workers get rid of the capitalist they can keep the lawn mowers. Clearly, the capitalist needs the workers but workers don’t need the capitalist. And here is the revolutionary potential of the working class. If the worker refuses to work for Jill then her mowers are no longer capital, if she can’t get anyone to work thecapital is destroyed because the social relationship is ended. Only workers can end the social relation of capital. The capital relation is terminated at the point of production -- that’s why workers are important and that’s why they are revolutionary.

Historically when revolutionaries sought to organize workers they sought out workers at the point of production in “the commanding heights” -- strategic industries where job actions like strikes could shut down the whole system. They usually organized workers in sectors like steel, auto, rubber, transportation and so forth. But today the commanding heights are quite different. As the editorial in the Financial Times revealed the commanding heights are in IT and other sectors of the so-called “new economy.”

This brings us to the central problem of political practice. What we are beginning to get from the above is a class analysis -- an analysis of the class structure in the United States. But it is only a beginning. In the long term expanding and extending the analysis is essential because it allows us to organize in the most effective way possible. But for the time being it should cause us to re-consider the class position of college students.

When the original SDS fell apart in the late 1960’s nearly all factions agreed on one thing -- students were not workers and workers had to be organized. The result was the destruction of the student organization in an attempt to organize workers, or to organize in the “community.” This was a fatal error that flowed from an incorrect class analysis, and especially of students’ position in the class structure. It is wrong first of all because it is self-evident that students historically have played an important and often leading role in revolutionary and other social movements. And secondly the analysis was based on a persistent but incorrect assumption that students were not, nor would they ever be, workers. According to the old story students would be managers or coordinators of capitalist production processes that exploit workers, but most students will not be coordinators. They will become skilled workers. Organize them into the movement now and we are organizing the working class of the future.

Be militant, NOT stubborn! (Erik) by X.

Militancy is a disciplined commitment TO A GOAL. It involves determination, taking risks, making sacrifices, but only when doing so is necessary to achieve the goal. What is necessary is defined by real circumstances, and therefore the more we understand the circumstances the more we can understand what is necessary. So the more knowledge we have about organizing, strategy, and power building, the more militant we as revolutionaries can be.

The world is incredibly diverse, and there are unlimited situations with different specifics, and each one needs tactics that are relevant to those specifics. A militant revolutionary is constantly analyzing to see what has been effective, and reanalyzing as new evidence arises and as new circumstances arise.

Militancy is a willingness to use necessary tactics, as opposed to stubbornness and tradition which is a tendency to use particular tactics. For example there is a mistaken belief that people who engage in street fighting, black block protests, who refuse to engage in certain tactics labeled “reformist”, and who get arrested are very militant. These people may be militant, but only if they can explain how applying tactics the way they do is building a movement that can achieve its goals.

Stubborn people may have good intentions, but people are dying every day from the cogs of capitalism and organizers with good intentions are little consolation. The fact is that what is militant is not always dramatic or glamorous, in fact its usually not.

The interesting thing about understanding militancy like this is that interesting things can be militant. Phone-banking, recruiting members, maintaining a spreadsheet, preparing an agenda are some of the most militant things people can do in the movement. Slowing down to avoid burnout, when all you want to do is throw yourself into the cause can be militant. Mentoring others rather than doing work yourself is EXTREMELY militant. These are the things that keep the movement growing.

Dramatic confrontations with state power are sometimes necessary, but only a minute fraction of the time that must be spent building democratic dual power. So as it turns out, militancy doesn’t belong to a super-committed elite. Anyone can be militant, the truth is, not everyone wants to.

The movement does not have to be elitist or cliquish (Tim) by X.

Often left-wing groups, especially student groups, gain notoriety (deserved or not) for being insular and cliquish. Organizers must constantly keep aware of group dynamics and the effect this has on allies and potential members. Besides obvious problems such as sexism or hetero-normativity, in-group out-group behavior can also be very detrimental on retention: insularity can be easily and often unconsciously reinforced by usage of inside jokes, leftist jargon, etc.

Special effort should be made to make new people feel welcome in the group, and to solicit their participation as early as possible, thus giving them a stake in the movement. This can be done by something as simple as directing the person toward a particular project or committee. Even more elementary: if a new person shows up to a meeting, take time out to talk to this person before or after, and make sure that everyone else does too. This can be difficult if, say, you are at a meeting with a close friend you haven’t seen for a few weeks, or perhaps you see someone else you’d prefer to talk to. But we should always keep in mind that we are trying to create a movement which anticipates a better society, a society for all, not just a few.

An anticipatory movement (Tim) by X.

“Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.”
- The Internationale

We wish to live in a society which is not sexist, racist, homophobic, class-riven and militaristic. We wish to live in a society which is more fundamentally democratic and participatory; one in which people have a say in the decisions which are governing their lives. Yet we cannot reach this goal if our movement is anti-democratic and authoritarian, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. As much as possible we should attempt to have a movement which serves in some sense as a model for the configuration of the society of the future.

However, many deep-seated forms of injustice cannot be adequately addressed by simply attacking them within the movement. If we spend all of our time addressing issues of, say, hierarchy or privilege within the movement, we will have little time left for eliminating the much more egregious forms of hierarchy and privilege which currently deform our society. The establishment of non-hierarchical relations within a small group is itself a form of privilege which is moot if not extended to one and all. Unfortunately there is no tried-and-true method for successfully combating oppression both within the movement and without simultaneously. One method we will suggest is the paradigm of consciousness-raising.

Simply put, consciousness-raising is based on the realization that not everyone comes to the movement with perfect politics. All of us are, to greater or lesser extents, recovering racists, homophobes, etc. What is needed, then is a space in which people can become more radicalized and learn, but in a context where they feel it is okay to make mistakes and that they are surrounded by comrades who will forgive but will also hold them up to higher standards.

Applying this paradigm to revolutionary democracy means that consciousness-raising cannot be permitted to be the prerogative of the few, but that the consciousness of the people must be raised on a mass scale. A simple example of mass consciousness raising comes from the “red ribbon” campaign undertaken by HIV/AIDS activists in the early 1990s. This was a participatory tactic which was a major part in increasing awareness of HIV/AIDS and changing public perception of the issue.

Democracy in the movement (Keith, X., Tommy D) by X.

Whereas many on the US Left mistakenly think that democracy is dangerous and that the rule of the majority is a threat, Revolutionary Democracy holds that the greatest threat is a lack of democracy—the lack of democracy makes the arbitrary rule of the wealthy minority possible. Democracy cannot be based on the comfort of a permanent, unchanging majority but -quite the opposite- it can only reach its full potential through the fullest emancipation of all, the fullest expression of all and the fullest exchange of ideas.

Revolutionary Democracy is practiced and developed within the movement just as it is in society at large. Revolutionary Democracy insists that the people that do the work to build the movement, its organizations, events and activities are also the ones that make the decisions. The movement itself must be radically democratic so it becomes the image of the society it aims to build. The project is non-exclusionary: Anyone that wants to contribute can and their contribution means they get to decide how things are run. The movement must not imitate the power structure of capitalism (big capitalist shareholders, for instance, contribute nothing, but under capitalism they make all the decisions). Instead, in a revolutionary democratic movement, everyone is entitled to make decisions based on their contribution.

As the movement grows along these lines, it will expand the model of revolutionary democratic participation into more aspects of productive and social life. While the movement may grow in fits and starts and at times make great strides forward, the revolution is in the process itself and in its expansion. Rather than saying “power to the people;” we say “people are the power.” Their power becomes realized as they organize themselves into a movement and supplant the non-democratic society with a democratic society of their own making. Revolutionary Democracy rejects the old saying that “political power flows from the barrel of a gun.” Political power grows out of the movement of people.

"This is what democracy looks like!" (X.) by X.

The slogan “This is what democracy looks like!” hit the big time in 1999 during the street protests opposing the World Trade Organization at their meeting in Seattle. It became the title of a seminal underground documentary that narrated and helped define the events for progressives all over the country. The slogan was obviously a direct response to the highly undemocratic character of the WTO and to the authoritarian and repressive counter-protest tactics of the Seattle police department. But the ease with which those few words spread throughout the broader movement (and especially the younger generation) hints at something deeper: In many ways, the Seattle protests represented a reaction to the waning power of the traditional US Left. They were a reaction to the complacent 80’s and 90’s during which the advocacy faction took over the leadership of the movement and led it into steep decline, displacing the protest faction that dominated the 60’s and 70’s. In this sense, the crowds of activists in the streets of Seattle also chanted: “This is what the movement looks like!”

A large and relatively diverse array of groups had gathered in Seattle for the largest protest in years, in direct opposition to the powers-that-be. The WTO protesters delivered a broad critique of the system on the system’s own turf. But not only did they challenge capitalism’s “new world order”, they challenged the prevailing “common wisdom” of the advocacy partisans in positions of leadership throughout the US Left that for years have channeled the movement into reformist, single-issue activism by proxy (from union contracts to affirmative action to abortion rights to saving endangered species). The demonstrators -made up largely of dissidents young and old within the US Left- organized a mass (if short-lived) challenge to big capital. And it blew their minds that by working together they successfully prevented business as usual for the rulers of the planet. For a little while, they “shut down” the WTO…

The success of the protesters in achieving their goal unfortunately overshadowed the most important aspect of the Seattle experience. While the mainstream media focused mainly on isolated incidents of vandalism, the movement narrative (as told in the “This Is What Democracy Looks Like!” documentary, for example) focused much attention on the confrontation pitting the mass of protesters against the police and WTO bureaucrats.

The most revolutionary democratic activities did not take place during those street battles, however. Quite to the contrary, democracy was mainly built before and after each protest. The key factor that set the WTO protests aside from most prior protests is that they lasted for several days during which a vast but fragmented network of progressive activists had to contend with tremendous logistical challenges in close proximity to one another. The planning of daily marching routes, resistance to police repression, first aid assistance, room and board, jail solidarity, teach-ins, liberation of resources, etc required a multitude of activists of every shade of the Left political spectrum to cooperate in some way. Numerous decentralized, grassroots initiatives brought together groups that previously had never worked together, building coalitional trust and fostering unity of action to overcome ideological differences. In other words, the movement had to try and practice democracy in order to exist.

The most striking examples of budding revolutionary democracy in action can be found in interviews of the diverse activists that participated in the three days of WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 (these interviews are available at the online WTO History Project hosted by the University of Washington). In the weeks that led up to the protests, a multitude of labor unions, issue groups, student groups, revolutionary groups, etc. cooperated in one form or another to plan for the demonstrations (amidst a host of disagreements over the purpose and the tactics of the protest). A careful reading of the activists’ interviews shows how rapidly the movement coalesced at the grassroots level in the last few days and especially during the “downtime” in between protests once the WTO ministerial conference had begun.

This so-called “downtime” was in fact the “organizing time” during which thousands of activists of every shade of the Left political spectrum resided in close proximity to one another in de facto “liberated zones” in and around Seattle. The geographic closeness and the magnitude of the logistical challenges led these activists to exchange ideas, share resources and make plans together. They became movement organizers as they began to work and decide together, as they began to practice democracy like they never had before. This process of budding revolutionary democracy is credited in many interviews for the decision by a number of “older” protesters to break away from the relatively non-confrontational, pre-approved march routes to join “younger” activists in direct actions in the “no protest” zone declared by the city police.

Richard Feldman, Director, Worker Center, King County Labor Council, AFL-CIO:

… And then there was other coalition activity, as it got closer, there was a regular meeting, kind of a coordinating meeting that I attended, that was hosted by the Citizen's Trade Campaign folks that brought together some of the prime organizers and organizations, including DAN [Direct Action Network] and a very diverse kind of group of organizations that met and just kind of more or less kept each other somewhat up to date on what people were planning.

(…)

Well, it was a coalition in terms of everyone coming together dealing with the events of the week, for example from the students' perspective, obviously having been hit the hardest, and the students that had been doing civil disobedience and not doing civil disobedience, just been sitting around and getting whacked by the cops, they brought anger and disbelief. Then us just seeing what had happened and the wrongness of how protests had been met. And it was because we were in coalition and had the energy and ability that enabled us to quickly put together a march with 5,000 people. We wanted to go into the no-protest zone on Friday to show we could have protests and that we could have our voices heard. So things happened pretty quickly.

(…)

Things came together incredibly quickly. A wide variety of things happened very quickly, just remarkable how quickly. I guess in terms of true coalition activities, people took ownership, came together and achieved, in a very short time, something that normally takes months to plan and figure out. And that was because everyone had been working together. And this was also something that was also more locally driven. It wasn't people from D.C.

Han Shan, Ruckus Society:

“That’s actually a bigger conversation and a really important thing. That’s something that’s new and something that we saw develop in Seattle to a large degree. There are a lot of groups working in very different ways with different constituencies, and maybe different ultimate goals who nonetheless are recognizing that as the right has come together with various goals, but recognizing they have similar adversaries, at least, we’ve recognized that we need to come together. In Seattle, there were a lot of folks who maybe didn’t work super closely with each other in their discrete strategies, in their tactics that they took to the streets, but tried to at least talk and keep the lines of communication open. I talked to a lot of Labor. I talked to folks who were visibly nervous about who Ruckus was and what we might have planned, who nonetheless showed goodwill and recognized that we were allies in this battle. I think that kind of coming together is a rare thing and it was certainly gratifying.”

Robin Denburg, Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange:

“The coalition, I think, while there were ups and downs, it was very effective in allowing a level of coordination so that the environmental community knew what the labor community was doing and then the labor community would then go back and work out the details, but at least there was some level of coordination and that was exhibited during the week of the WTO when you had one day which was focused on labor, one day which was focused on the environment, one day which was focused on agriculture. If you hadn’t had that, the dialogue and the trust established beforehand, you could have had a hodgepodge of seminars and teach-ins and rallies going on at the same time. So I think it was really effective in that respect. I think it was also effective in terms of creating good relationships between communities that hadn’t normally worked together. In particular for me, working with the faith-based and labor communities was, especially the faith-based community, was a new thing for me, so I think that was effective as well.”

Self-Determination vs. Racism & Sexism (Tommy D, Keith, X) by X.

Because Revolutionary Democracy strives for the full emancipation of all people, the revolutionary democratic movement cannot ignore historical and contemporary differences in oppression and exploitation suffered by different social groups. Communities that have been victimized by colonization directly or indirectly, that have had their land stolen, that were enslaved workers or that are descended from enslaved workers, suffer different degrees of social and political oppressions and particular types of super-exploitation. The legacy of slavery and colonialism continues in the ensemble of present day social relationships and is outwardly manifested as racism and discrimination in its various institutionalized and interpersonal forms. Revolutionary Democracy recognizes the different historical experiences of peoples and communities and their right to determine their future in relation to others, i.e. their right to practice democracy as a people and to control their resources, including the reparations they are owed for centuries of oppression and super-exploitation. In other words, Revolutionary Democracy must include the right to self-determination.

Self-determination is key to overcoming racism and racial segregation and it forms the foundation for genuine coalition-building between communities and organizations of different racial, ethnic, and/or national backgrounds. In the revolutionary democratic movement, coalition-building is based on a foundational respect for the political and cultural integrity of communities with different historically-constituted experiences of oppression and exploitation as well as resistance. The practice of revolutionary democracy is at the core of such an approach because: 1) a revolutionary democratic movement recognizes the right of each group to practice democracy and determine its own process of emancipation and, 2) the practice of self-determination allows for an increasing amount of democracy to be practiced in coalitions of groups that are traditionally segregated from one another, without ignoring the very real political and cultural inequalities that exist between such groups –inequalities that form the basis of anti-democratic power dynamics, and 3) the right to self-determination is the first step to eventually achieving the type of mass equality necessary for a truly democratic society. In this sense, working to practice Revolutionary Democracy in a multi-racial/multi-ethnic society requires self-determination, and the revolutionary democratic movement cannot succeed without it.

Women have also suffered unique forms of oppression and exploitation that are perpetuated in present day social relationships and outwardly manifested as sexism and sex/gender discrimination in its various institutionalized and interpersonal forms. Historically, women have suffered from restricted access to democracy: to the public/civil sphere of society as well as to equality of participation and equality of rights in all areas of society (in the home, workplace, universities, church, etc). In addition, women have been burdened with unequal amounts of unpaid labor (traditionally providing most if not all of the labor in the family including, most significantly, reproductive labor). Even further, women have been denied 1) the right to control their bodies (both directly, as with laws that restrict women’s reproductive freedoms, and indirectly, as with the State’s refusal to prosecute physical and sexual assaults on women), and 2) the right to control their minds (as with formal or informal injunctions on women’s education or participation in the workforce). This denial of democracy has rendered many women in the condition of second class citizens.

Unfortunately, the conditions associated with this denial of democracy have not been adequately addressed by much of the U.S. Left, leading sex/gender inequality to persist or even fester in many of its organizations. And too often women are accused of “divisiveness” when any or all of these issues are raised. Divisiveness is not caused by the struggle for equality and emancipation but by attempts to curtail the struggle. A revolutionary democratic movement must recognize the history and root causes of sex/gender inequality and understand that those conditions must themselves be addressed and overcome in the process of building actual democracy. Therefore the revolutionary democratic movement inherently recognizes the full equality of women but must also strives for full democratic participation by working to subvert the causes of sex/gender inequalities within the movement and in society at large. The strategy of dual power must involve building a revolutionary democratic movement and alternative society that recognizes women’s rights to full democratic participation in all spheres of social life and guarantees women’s rights to control their bodies and minds. Further, the revolutionary democratic movement must strive to address the foundational inequalities in reproductive and unpaid labor in society. Such efforts begin in the movement itself (for example, the movement should provide child care and elderly care that historically are left as women’s burden and responsibility.) Finally Revolutionary Democracy supports the consciousness-raising groups and women-only spaces that have been central to the feminist movement for the last four decades. Consciousness raising groups, in fact, are spaces of democracy, where previously ignored social issues are brought to the fore of attention, leading to new opportunities for the movement as a whole to address persistent inequalities.

Historically, revolutionary movements posited that racism and sexism would be overcome after the revolution, and many people rightfully rejected this formulation. Alternatively, many identity-based movements posit that revolution can not be waged until people in traditionally “privileged” social positions “overcome” their racism and sexism. Revolutionary Democracy, with a process-based approach to revolution, contends that overcoming racism and sexism are essential aspects of the revolutionary process of practicing democracy itself. The revolution is thus in large part the process of overcoming racism, sexism and all other forms of oppression and discrimination that divide people and obstruct the advance of democracy. This is not a process at the individual level; practicing “anti-racism” or “anti-sexism” isn’t centrally a process of becoming a better individual (non-racist). It is instead the process of fighting the material foundation of racism itself in society, a process that will lead to a society of increasingly non-racist and non-sexist individuals. No amount of sensitivity training workshops can end racism or sexism. Similarly, electing a token representative of an oppressed group to an organization’s governing body (or “slotting” a seat for a token representative) will not overcome racism or sexism. These unique oppressions and inequalities are not caused by “ignorant individuals,” they are rooted in material and structural inequality (police profiling, and brutality, the denial of access to quality healthcare and education, limitations placed on access to housing and credit, dual labor markets, limitations on intergenerational transfers of wealth because of legacy of slavery, etc.). The personal ignorance and interpersonal indignities of racism, sexism and homophobia are mostly symptoms of the systemic inequality that reinforce the system’s oppressive character. Racism cannot be cured at the level of the individual. The truism that “racism is taught” misses the more important point: Racism is not just a bad “idea.” Rather, our society is organized to reproduce racial inequality and it is the society itself that needs to be transformed.

Racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of systemic discrimination will not end and democracy will not blossom until the people cooperate to build a new society and, in this process, redress the brutal inequalities borne of history, repairing the foundation of the country which was incorrectly built through the denial of democracy. “Anti-racism” and “anti-sexism” must be developed in the process of establishing revolutionary democracy and through the practice of self-determination and coalition-building. There are no ready-made programs; the revolutionary democratic movement must learn by doing. And it is in the very process of uniting to transform society through a democratic and collective drive towards equality of means for the free development of all that racism, sexism, and other forms of inequality will be confronted not as some abstract wrong but as an obstacle to progress that must be overcome by all.

The Black Arts Repertory Theater/School (Keith) by X.

The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BART/S) was founded in Harlem by Amiri Baraka to take music, poetry, art and performance out of the academy and into the street. As Baraka put it in a poem “we want poems that wrestle cops into alleyways and take their guns away.” BARTS is a great example of an alternative revolutionary institution that builds dual power and provides a material foundation for revolutionary ideas and culture.

LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) leads the Black Arts parade down 125th Street toward the Black Arts Theater Repertory/School on 130th Street, New York City. (Source: Liberator 5.6 [June 1965], 27)

In 1965 Baraka, with Charles and William Patterson, Askia Toure, Clarence Reed, Johnny Moore and others to open the school. The school received funds from the a Johnson-era anti-poverty program. The funding source did nothing to change the revolutionary character of the school. The mission of BARTS was to build "a repertory theatre in Harlem, as well as a school. As a school it will set up and continue to provide instruction, both practical and theoretical, in all new aspects of the dramatic arts." The school held classes on creative writing, acting and other arts, philosophy, reading, math, and so forth.

While the BARTS itself didn’t last because of financial problems and internal political problems, it launched the Black Arts Movement which became the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement, and it remains one of the most important literary movements in US cultural history.

Alternative institutions and revolutionary culture (Keith, X., Tommy D) by X.

The role of the movement is not merely to compete with the system in the area of “politics” but to build an alternative infrastructure for the production and reproduction of all aspects of cultural and social life. This infrastructure must provide means and opportunities for musicians’ unions, artists’ collectives, writers’ circles, theater troupes, film-making coops, dance groups, fire spinning crews, etc. as well as sports clubs, yoga classes, health and nutrition coops, online support networks, community-based counseling, etc. that provide people with the means of expression needed to live a fulfilling creative life and the social and cultural foundation required to participate actively and meaningfully in the movement for the long term.

For the system to function, people must not only be capable of working under undemocratic and exploitative conditions when they arrive at work or at school, they must also be willing. The powers-that-be cannot rule by force alone; they must rely on a whole system of cultural production (universities, publishing houses, movie studios, churches, TV networks, art foundations, etc.) to make their rule appear good, just or at least inevitable. For the movement to develop we must have alternative institutions which can promote an alternative vision, alternative ideas, and a place to critique and deprogram ourselves from the system.

Too often, the traditional US Left relegates art and culture to the role of temporary interlude in the all important business of politics. Revolutionary Democracy does not draw such a line between culture and politics. Both are essential to the transformation of society. Culture is key to revolution and democracy. When practiced effectively, it encourages the unleashing of individual and collective potential that are suppressed or under-developed in the anti-democratic atmosphere of most of society’s existing institutions and organizations. The revolutionary democratic movement must organize progressive artists, cultural workers and people everywhere to build democratically-run institutions and organizations dedicated to the creative production of art and culture rooted in the experience of the movement, of people’s lives and of the transformative experience that comes with changing the world. The movement must build its own cultural events, theaters, studios, underground clubs, websites, etc. to challenge the backward culture spoon-fed to everyone by the corporate media but more importantly, to spur on, inspire and enlighten all people as they struggle with the concrete challenge of waging revolution in a new way.

A revolutionary party (X, Keith) by X.

In 1997, the city of New Brunswick passed a repressive ordinance that required all parties to be approved and registered by the police in advance (at $20 per permit) if any gifts or money was to be exchanged. This law was obviously targeting the very successful fundraising events of local grassroots groups that the city machine didn’t like (especially the New Brunswick Coalition Against Police Brutality).

Local progressives and revolutionaries decided on a creative revolutionary democratic approach to overturn the law: On one hand, sympathetic attorneys filed a lawsuit on the grounds that the law unconstitutionally violating freedom of speech and assembly. On the other, they immediately organized a "Party Without A Permit." The best local bands were recruited to play (they opposed the law because it threatened their ability to throw their own parties) for a 12 hour festival at Brower Commons - a traditional rallying space at Rutgers University. At the party, organizers symbolically collected pennies to break the law. This event put the music in the forefront and kept political speeches only in between acts and sets (which is unusual for the Left). The crowd was not bored by the speeches (also unusual!) because they took the form of TV commercials in between the main events. The city police did not fine anyone nor try to stop the huge party that drew over a thousand and shut down Main Street.

The movement lawyers were then able to argue that the police were selectively enforcing the law since they took no action at the "Party without a Permit." The city was forced to come up with the silly excuse that the ordinance did not apply on university grounds. Following the same approach, the organizers then planned a "Picnic Without A Permit" in a local park in the heart of the city, inviting families to bring their children to play games and BBQ. Pennies were collected again to break the law, while children played and parents engaged in discussions about police brutality. Once again the police found themselves unable to enforce the law.

The movement lawyers took this back to the court and the city was again forced to make the absurd argument that the law didn’t apply to the parks. As the organizers now prepared to challenge the law at a private party, the exasperated judge in the case overturned the law on constitutional grounds. And the city had to pay for the legal fees!

US Leftists often talk about organizing legal challenges on two fronts, in the courts and in the streets. However, this usually means asking people (in the street) to come to court or hold a protest in front of it. Instead, we organized a mass cultural event that made it possible to gather enough revolutionary democratic social power to challenge the illegitimate law openly. With hundreds of participants at the permit-less events, the police could not enforce the law. If we understand that most laws are designed to protect the system and that the strength of the movement lies in finding ways to organize masses of people to resist the system in creative ways, we can restrict the state’s ability to enforce these laws and even make these laws depend on our strength or weakness. Our lawyers couldn't have won the case before we had proved in the street that the law was unenforceable.

The Party Without A Permit victory also highlighted the lack of public space for free expression in New Brunswick and inspired further efforts to not only challenge oppressive laws but to create performance spaces. The struggle against the permit law provided organizers with experience that they later used to create "Art House" –a monthly cultural event that featured, poetry, hip-hop, bands, and art exhibits. This tradition lives at Tent State University with open, free nightly music events.

Revolution is a process, not an event! (Keith, X., Tommy D) by X.

Instead of “waiting” for the revolution to solve social problems, Revolutionary Democracy holds that revolution involves the process of solving these real problems. The traditional US Left views "the revolution" as an event, to be waited for patiently or to be hastened through frenzied protest or "resistance" activity. Instead, revolutionary democracy puts forward that people will not transform the system after the revolution, they will make the revolution by transforming the system in every aspect: work, school, culture, politics, etc.

The People's Campaign (Keith) by X.

The People’s Campaign organized an electoral challenge for three city council seats in 2000 in New Brunswick NJ, after years of organizing on the Rutgers campus and five solid years of organizing with the New Brunswick community around education, housing, and police brutality. Our work prior to the electoral campaign gave us a number of contacts within the community as well as some recognition and respect as dedicated organizers. We began by conducting surveys of the various communities as the basis for a platform. (1) The surveys also gave us the opportunity to discuss the campaign and its next step: an open convention where the candidates, platform, campaign manager, and steering committee would be voted on. The convention was one of the campaign’s great successes: Hundred of people attended and the students were represented in numbers closer to the portion of the population that they actually make up in the city (unlike in previous events). About nine people vied to be chosen by the convention as candidates. Some had the backing of an organization while other ran as individuals.

The three candidates chosen at the convention were an Afro-American bus driver, a Latino van driver (who only spoke Spanish) and a white revolutionary who had graduated from Rutgers. In addition to electing candidates, the People’s Campaign featured –a first in the United States– an elected campaign manager and a steering committee that most people at the convention felt should be broad and representative of different communities and social classes opposed to the existing political machine. So the revolutionaries had to not only deal with small business people and petty landlords among others but also to negotiate to keep them supportive of a radical program—these were real lessons in coalition building and “politics” which much of the Left, because they refuse to engage in grassroots electoral work, has never even experienced.

The program was extensive and radically redistributive. New Brunswick had been re-nicknamed by city officials the “Healthcare City” because of the number of hospitals and medical research facilities in town. The People’s Campaign platform called for free healthcare for all residents, admittance to Rutgers University for all New Brunswick high school graduates, rent control, an elected civilian police control board, affordable housing, a public swimming pool and so forth. The candidates and all positions of responsibility were subject to recall at any time up until two weeks from Election Day. (The group decided to place this limitation on recall so that everyone could focus on the election in the final weeks.)

Our opponents were long time incumbents of the Democratic Party, one of the most powerful political machines in the State of New Jersey. The previous mayor, John Lynch, is not only mobbed up (now under indictment), he is also the king maker of the statewide democratic party. The machine is backed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J), a global corporation whose world headquarters are located in the center of downtown New Brunswick. The local Democratic Party does J&J’s bidding and J&J rules the city with a mix of coercion and consent. They set up NGOs that attempt to determine the cultural and social life of the city, making sure it is corporate friendly while striving for pseudo- hipness.

The local Democrats dominate local small business through intimidation. For example, they have fire and health inspectors that can shut a business down. Small businesses are expected to make substantial financial contributions to the machine as part of the cost of business, and display Democratic Party propaganda. The machine also awards contracts and can make sweetheart deals for things like property purchases and liquor licenses. In order to work for the city as a firefighter, cop, in sanitation, or in the parks department you must regularly attend fundraising dinners and make campaign contributions. These workers are also the machine’s ground troops, they tear down opposition posters, hand out and post machine literature and work the polls on Election Day. We learned this during the course of the People’s Campaign became a crash course in politics—politics 101. Despite five years of organizing before the electoral campaign we had little sense of how the city was actually run until we faced off against the machine for political control of the city at the ballot box.

We organized to win, not to protest. We handed out over a quarter million pieces of literature (no shit!) and recruited hundreds of new people to the movement. Clausewitz famously commented that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Well elections are the closest thing to war without bloodshed. We battled their hired campaign goons on the streets: When they ripped down one of our posters, we ripped down ten of theirs. We ran from the police, got caught by the police, and finally negotiated with the police with the help of supportive attorneys that since the machine was tearing down our literature (and the police weren’t stopping them) they would no longer stop us either. While we negotiated this agreement, we had won it first on the street: The police couldn’t stop us since our numbers were too large. They agreed to stop bothering us so that they would no longer look like incompetents.

Election Day was the major battle. We recruited progressive lawyers to volunteer to monitor for fraud on Election Day (the machine is notorious for cheating through fake residences for supporters, vote suppression, etc.) We had some two hundred and fifty volunteers at the polling stations and getting out the vote (GOTV). This required high levels of organization and planning. Much of it is very basic: All campaign workers must be fed (that has to be organized and planned) and we need people at every polling station handing out literature and talking to people, winning votes and reminding supporters. Inside the polling place, we need challengers and lawyers who monitor the process and determine which supporters have voted and which voters still need to brought to the polls and so forth—it is a tremendous effort.

Nonetheless, electoral politics, at least for the foreseeable future, is one of the best ways to engage with the day-to-day struggles of the majority of people, they provide a vehicle for revolutionary democratic forms of organizing and they allow for the actual seizure of power by the people. Winning control of a city council or winning a mayoral election means the control of jobs, resources, and the ability to pass laws: The war on drugs could be over in your town, the domination of landlords could be ended, minimum wage laws can be passed, etc. Running and winning local election is a school of revolutionary democracy and a way to build the movement. Not the only way, but an important and necessary way.

Zen and the Art of Electoral Politics:
The Conclusion of the People’s Campaign

In Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist western El Topo, the gunfighter protagonist (for whom the movie is named: El Topo or the Mole) confronts four master gunfighters. The philosophy of one of the gunfighters should be adopted when engaging in electoral politics. The gunfighter tells El Topo that he no longer tries to win gunfights, he only tries to attain perfection in each fight; and thus bullets have no effect on him and he never loses.

The major error we made in the People’s Campaign was long term planning. We failed to consider seriously what we would do if we won, if we lost, and most importantly how to maintain, consolidate, and grow the movement that we had built during the course of the campaign. Indeed, winning or losing is a secondary concern that we confront at the level of tactical consideration: The strategic question is beyond winning or losing, the strategic question is how to grow a revolutionary democratic movement where people work and decide together. If we do that, we can then do certain things if we win the city council seats and other things if we don’t, but the main thing is that the movement grows with people taking control over their lives, working and deciding. We develop the revolutionary process whether we win or lose.

On Election Day our candidates received over two thousand votes each (28% of the total) and our first meeting following the electoral loss was still attended by over 80 people. The possibilities were enormous. We had accomplished more than any other grouping that challenged the local political machine in decades. But our accomplishment was not the number of votes we got (although that reflects what was happening), our accomplishment was bringing people together to work and decide, to build an electoral movement based in democratic participation. Unfortunately, most of the people who attended the post election day meeting didn’t return for another. They never returned because our conception of revolutionary democracy only really emerged after the campaign was long over. We focused, unlike the master gunfighter, on winning and losing, rather than on building revolutionary democracy. The initial meeting deteriorated in petty bickering and half-baked proposals. We had failed to consider what to do if we lost (not to mention what to do if we won). We could have immediately planned, discussed and debated the next election, what had gone wrong during the last campaign, what went right, etc. etc. We could have consolidated a movement of very committed people.

By trying for perfection the gunfighter wins without trying to win. The same is true in electoral politics. It is not that winning is unimportant. We are not advocating running electoral campaigns as protest campaigns, or agitation campaigns, or to get a certain small percentage of the vote and then get matching funds. We run electoral campaigns to build the movement and do our utmost to win the election, to organize people to seize power little by little, bit by bit. Elections are a tactic. If we build the movement along revolutionary democratic lines, if we strive for perfection, if we keep our strategic goals in the forefront, if we grow a movement of fully engaged people, working and deciding together, we will win at the ballot box and everywhere else we take on the system.
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(1) Surveys are a great way to learn about issues people face day to day. The mistake with our survey was that we generated the questions for people to answer and rank amongst our core organizers and then went to people to discuss them. A better way would be to add an additional step and let people develop the survey itself.

Speak Truth to Power? No Thanks! Let’s Take Power! Electoral Politics: Build Dual Power, Dismantle the State (Keith) by X.

Participation in electoral politics is one of the more controversial issues among significant portions of the Left. Many revolutionaries don’t vote and don’t participate in local elections. Two misconceptions blind revolutionaries to the possibilities of electoral politics. First they see revolution as an insurrectionary event in the distant future to prepare for, and the primary means of preparing is protesting and perhaps publishing a newspaper. Revolutionaries opposed to electoral politics have many other objections but let’s not rehearse them all here; they are as familiar as they are tired. Electoral politics is one of the best tactics available to revolutionaries who want people to seize power immediately to dismantle the state piece by piece and replace it with the revolutionary democratic power of organized self-determining people. Elections and the system’s (false) claim to democracy are the Achilles’ heel of the system which is only protected by our own inactivity.

“Protest Mode” is the way that Amiri Baraka described a form of organizing that made demands on the “powers that be” but failed to actually take on the task of organizing to take power. As Baraka put it, “we need to organize to take power where we can literally put our hands on it.” What does he mean? In the 1994 speech, he joked that would-be revolutionaries announce “death to the bourgeoisie, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that to the bourgeoisie” but these revolutionaries can’t get a school board member elected in a local election, “they can’t even elect a dog catcher.”

Participating in electoral politics is full of risks, but the risks are our opportunities as well. The system tries to constrain electoral campaigns to promote the individual candidate and limit mass democratic participation. This undemocratic structure is even more developed and dangerous once a candidate wins. Once the newly-elected official enters the halls of government, the people are kept out! This way the system can work over politicians like Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We cannot surrender to this imposed anti-democratic structure. But the best way to destroy it is to organize electoral struggles along revolutionary democratic lines and to build a revolutionary democratic movement that retains precedence over individual candidates. We not only need to beat the system in the elections, we must continue to beat the system after the elections. A real “people’s campaign” must maintain its independent momentum and organization (dual power) to support its candidates after they have won but also, if needed, to remove them by recall if they decide to sell out. This is one of the best ways to build dual power because it strengthens the movement while at the same time it weakens the power of the system by undermining it. One of the main tasks of an elected revolutionary democratic candidate is to start dismantling the antidemocratic structure of the system from within.

Strategy & Tactics (Keith) by X.

Revolutionary Democracy is a strategy as well as a broad set of tactics and organizational forms or structures. Revolutionary Democracy provides an organizational form because it poses that the people who do the work should make the decisions, and that this is the most effective, efficient and powerful form of organization. The strategy is about the long term and the goal of the movement. The strategy of revolutionary democracy is then to build a movement, an alternate society, a dual power, where the people who do the work make the decisions. From this strategic idea almost any tactic is possible. Tactics would be things like protesting, lobbying, electoral politics and so forth. The strategy informs the tactics because the point of any tactic is to advance democratic participation. Organizing, for instance, a protest against the war is a tactic. But what is the point? That is the strategic question. Usually there is no point, unless we are utterly naïve and believe that Bush or the Democratic Party will make decisions based on our protests. Millions protested the war against Iraq before the first bombs were dropped. In many countries the majority of people opposed the war and made their views known through protest yet their governments went ahead and supported the war. Protesting, however, is not futile if the point is to organize people—not into little sectarian grouplets—but in a revolutionary democratic fashion so that they begin to participate, do work and make decisions about that work collectively. Most existing left-wing groups are either secretive about their strategy or are only interested in getting people to join or follow their little thing. Instead revolutionary democracy empowers people to participate fully in the transformation of society, wherever they are. That is the strategy for which the tactics are means. Ani DiFranco says “every tool is a weapon if you hold it right” and we say that any tactic can be revolutionary democratic if it organizes people to work and decide together.

Advocacy at Tent State (Erik) by X.

Tent State University is a mass revolutionary democratic event where students take over public (university) space to radically redefine education and demonstrate a student run alternative to the undemocratic university structure. Students camp out, run classes, workshops, play music, and engage in planning and coalition building. Tent State also includes an advocacy campaign where passers-by are encouraged to call their state legislator and call on him to support higher education. Advocacy serves a number of purposes. It allows us to work in coalition with, and receive funding from, more centrist minded organizations like the student governments. It allows us to reclaim university space with the tacit approval of our administration, because they share our goals of increased funding for the university, and see student advocacy as a great avenue to get it. It creates sympathy among moderate students for the hard work we do “defending” Higher education. It allows us to have access and credibility with politicians who can potentially spark movement building reforms. The legislative presence also aids us in attracting media who might react to a bigwig political name over a radical activity. TSU makes use of the traditional advocacy process to engage in highly revolutionary activity, and to engage and gain the sympathy of the more moderate students.

Advocacy & Lobbying (Erik) by X.

Advocacy consists of convincing people in positions of power to change laws and rules. Advocacy is usually associated with elected officials, but can apply just as easily to working at reforming any undemocratic system by essentially trying to convince the people who control power that they should use that power to do what you want. Conscious consuming is just another form of advocacy. Lobbying is the most advanced form of advocacy and involves actually paying people to advocate on a full-time basis.

The radical Left mostly rejects advocacy because they perceive it as ineffective. They see advocacy as dominated by professional lobbyists who represent giant corporate interests, and who can use the allure of highly undemocratic campaign contributions, and the permanence of (often times multiple) full time lobbyists to monopolize control over politicians who depend on their money to stay in office.

For the mainstream Left however advocacy is the only ways to enter the political system. Many advocates may object that grassroots mobilization is a big part of much advocacy work, they get petitions signed, hold educational events, invite politicians to campus, etc. But they only work directly with people to get money or to substitute public support for money when they advocate. They still see the people as only a means to influence power (leaders) not as having power themselves.

Advocacy offers an opportunity to make small improvements in people’s real lives that are beyond what the movement could accomplish without political support. In order to use advocacy correctly the movement must ALWAYS remember that power flows directly from the people, and that the politicians are just avenues through which to exercise that power for the growth of the alternative independent movement. By eschewing traditional lobbyists the movement can culture jam advocacy campaigns by making them about mobilization. Legislative victory becomes (a welcome) consequence of growing the movement, not the purpose of growing the movement. Legislative goals should serve to advance the ability of the movement to grow either directly or indirectly by improving the lives of the people you hope to organize. No legislative goals are as important as building independent institutions and mass revolutionary democratic activity.

The "Great Rutgers Walk Out" of 2007 (X., Tim) by X.

In a short few weeks leading up to fourth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq a small coalition organized an antiwar walkout at Rutgers University. (1) On March 20, 2007, between 400 and 500 students walked out of class and joined an antiwar rally. Some 300 then marched to a local recruitment station and temporarily took over a major highway. The Rutgers antiwar organizers pulled off this protest –one of the largest on any US campus this year- without any support from any national organization and with very limited resources. Their revolutionary democratic approach to the protest tactic dramatically improved the turnout, diversity, boldness and outcome of the event.

Going to the Students & Addressing Everyone

The walk out organizers engaged a large section of the university community through active outreach (handbilling, dormstorming) rather than passive outreach (tabling, flyering). They distributed thousands of handbills directly to the students announcing the upcoming walkout. They crafted different messages to address the various concerns of different segments of the university, alternately focusing on the need to bring the troops home, on the cost of the war, on the massive killings of Iraqi civilians, on the illegality of the war, on the impact of budget shortfalls on higher education, etc. A special appeal was made to all students to consider their responsibility to get their peers out of Iraq (many of whom had to join the army to get ahead in life). The entire focus of the mobilization effort was to assume mass support and to call on the overwhelming majority of the university community join the walkout on their own terms, not just to reach out to the usual suspects in the “activist” community.

Assuming Support

With the protest still a month away, a handful of organizers decided to start creating antiwar armbands for distribution on the day of the event. The purpose? Many expected that their peers would not walk out of class. Therefore they could “participate” by wearing an antiwar armband! Several assumptions were made here, but the most important being the assumption that on the date of the walkout, students would not walk out of class. As the date approached however, organizers realized that instead of assuming hostility of the student body, they should assume support.

On the day of the rally, the crowd was told to contact people wearing red armbands if they encountered any problems. Since the armbands had already been haphazardly distributed, there was no way to know who all had received one. By putting armband-wearers in positions of responsibility (even if they had no formal link to the organizers of the rally), these supporters were invited to take a more proactive role in the success of the rally, and to make it theirs in a much more real sense. Thus the tactic of creating armbands was thus shifted from “resistance mode” to a revolutionary democratic organizing tool.

Diverse Coalition & Unity of Action

The walkout coalition was small but diverse: It included student groups from a variety of communities (Middle-Eastern, Latino, African-American, “white” Left, hippies, pirates, etc.) A number of these groups had previously worked together (on such issues as immigrant rights, university democracy, etc.) and had held joint cultural events, building an important foundation of trust. Additionally, off-campus alumni and antiwar community activists participated (mostly in an advisory and support capacity) and added to the experience of the group.

The coalition was new and its goal ambitious. The organizers had to quickly establish a rudimentary communications and decision-making process in order to maintain unity despite real differences of opinions. Despite the inevitable flaws in this ad hoc process, a firm commitment to the success of the action, to open discussion and to respect for democratic decisions kept the group together at critical times.

Building up Momentum & Claiming Space

As the date of the walkout approached, the organizers stepped up their activity: They spread word of the walkout door-to-door throughout the dorms and made announcements in dozens of classrooms (before class or during class if they had the support of the professor). Individual initiatives were welcomed: When a new organizer proposed to hang a pro-walkout banner from her dorm room window, the group quickly adopted the idea and produced dozens of antiwar banners to hang from the windows of friends and sympathizers and even on the trees leading up to the classroom buildings.

The organizers chose a key location for the walkout rally (the largest concentration of class buildings at the university) and began to claim it as an antiwar space way ahead of the day of the walkout. For weeks, thousands of students going to class got used to a constant presence of antiwar organizers handing out handbills, unfurling large banners and wallpapering buildings with flers.

The university grounds were claimed visually and physically but also educationally and culturally: When isolated reactionaries criticized the walkout in the student newspaper as being counterproductive to learning, the antiwar organizers responded that the walkout was a revolutionary and democratic form of education sorely missing from the standard curriculum. Creative cultural approaches played an important role in winning hearts and minds among students and professors: One organizer announced the walkout in a Shakespeare class by reciting one of the legendary bard’s classic antiwar sonnets to great applause. (2)

Numerous letters to the editor and a full-page ad in the student newspaper put a final touch on the peaking momentum in the days leading up to the walkout. A collective sense of anticipation could be felt throughout the campus. Unlike many isolated antiwar actions that had been ignored or dismissed by the majority of students in the previous couple of years, the walkout became a fact to be acknowledged before it even happened. Posters all over campus counted down the days until the action and students everywhere began to talk with their friends about what they planned to do on March 20.

Asserting Dual Power & Democratizing Protest

The three dozen or so active organizers in the antiwar coalition managed to temporarily change the character of the university by creating a dual power situation through their revolutionary democratic mobilization efforts. Day by day, they gathered the support, sympathy and/or friendly neutrality of the vast majority of the faculty, staff and students. They built a loose yet enormous antiwar social network that forced the administration and local police to think twice about trying to stop or curtail the walkout. In fact, a number of sympathizers within those system forces ended up giving their tacit support to the action (the dual power situation emboldened them to oppose the system even in small ways). Because the coalition succeeded in drawing on the social power of masses of people (as opposed to the minor social power of a few activists), the authorities were unable to pick out specific targets for arrest or suspension.

The palpable sense of rising momentum in turn emboldened the organizers to plan, prepare and run the walkout boldly and powerfully. During the final couple weeks of organizing, they discussed previous walkout experiences at Rutgers and elsewhere (including watching the movie Walkout about the 1968 Latino high school walkouts in Los Angeles). The antiwar coalition debated, defined and visualized what the walkout event should accomplish - agreeing when they could, and otherwise agreeing to disagree.

On the day of the walkout, the organizers refused to be intimidated or distracted by a small group of reactionary provocateurs, wagering that encouraging their fellow students to ignore counter-protestors isolate these elements more effectively than arguing with them or exchanging insults. Organizers went into classes to help their fellow students gather their resolve to join them (starting with friendly classes with supportive students and/or professors). The rally kept speakers rolling (without interminable lectures), emphasizing students and peers as speakers (no “talking heads”), and offered a wide range of informative and engaging perspectives that kept the crowd involved with innovative call-and-response techniques.

The organizers further infused democratic content into the protest format by asking the crowd to decide where to march next and whether or not to take the highway, making sure to keep the best communications possible between key organizers from all the groups in the coalition. The assumption of mass support proved to be a successful gambit, and a learning experience, as many “activists” were surprised to see construction workers on the highway flashing peace signs and pumping their fists in support.

Following Through & Building the Movement

The walkout, rally and march turned out great; marchers returned to their starting point having closed down a major highway and (thanks to the mass number of participants) suffered no arrests. The students felt a real sense of accomplishment and empowerment, having pulled off the largest walkout at Rutgers in at least 20 years.

Organizers wanted to ensure that the enthusiasm of the crowd was not wasted when everyone went home and that participants would be given the opportunity to begin deciding the next step of the movement immediately; when the march ended, dozens of students signed up with the coalition. Coalition events had been scheduled in advance so that students signing up were all reached with one mass email announcing all the different groups, projects, etc. which they could join (not just being told to come to the next protest!). As a result, all groups in the coalition got to grow. The revolutionary democratic approach of the organizers helped the movement move away from the individualistic militancy typical of activism, and towards building the mass militancy of an organized movement.

Of course, the student organizers identified a number of shortcomings: There should have been more preparation of students in the classes ahead of the walkout, media coverage should have been better organized, the process of coalition democracy needed improvement, etc. But the overall success of the event left the entire antiwar coalition eager to plan for a bigger and better walkout next year.

The Rutgers walkout turned out to be a skillful use of the protest as a tactic within a movement-building strategy. Such success could not happen if you protested every week as a ritual– the point is to use the tactic at the right time, at the right place and to do it strategically: Organize large numbers of people, engage them in the building of (temporary) dual power, and use the action not merely as an end in itself, but as an opportunity to grow the movement. (3)
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(1) The original call for the Walk Out at Rutgers was issued by the student group Rutgers Against the War (RAW). RAW was soon joined by Students for Belief, Awareness, Knowledge, and Activism (BAKA), Tent State University, the Student and Education Workers Union, the Latino Student Council, the United Black Council and others.

(2) “But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a
heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads,
chopp'd off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day
and cry all 'We died at such a place'- some swearing, some crying
for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some
upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I
am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how
can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black
matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were
against all proportion of subjection.” (Shakespeare, Henri V)

(3) One of the definitions of a successful action is that it leaves the movement stronger than it was before the action.

Protest Mode, Advocacy Mode & the Loyal Opposition (X.) by X.

Most of the traditional US Left still functions either on the Protest Mode or on the Advocacy Mode (or a bit of both). That is, leftist activists take the tactic of protesting or advocating and repeat it over and over for its own sake, almost by reflex, as if it was the only possible means of struggle. In other words, they turn a useful tactic into useless strategy.

Despite their differences, both protest and advocacy modes of political work are fundamentally undemocratic in that they rarely provide many people with genuine opportunities to work together and decide together how to change society. Both claim to represent people’s aspirations, but neither is rooted in the practice of democracy and neither aim to build democratic alternatives to the current power structure. Consequently, they play the role of “loyal opposition,” either begging (advocacy) or demanding (protest) that the powers-that-be change their policies on this or that issue on account of their lobbying or protesting. The partisans of the “protest” and “advocacy” trends often criticize one another bitterly, and yet they fail to recognize that their political approaches –although different in form– are quite similar:

• Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans are fragmented into a myriad narrow, issue-based groups and/or isolated sectarian organizations. Neither camp offers concrete or convincing proposals to build a broad-based, nationwide progressive movement that could radically change the system. Both thereby acknowledge an unwillingness and/or inability to organize the great majority of people. In fact, the very nature of their main activities is exclusive of the majority since few people can participate frequently in a meaningful way in protests or advocacy campaigns. These groups then end up simply asking people to donate money.

• Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans elevate their tactics to the level of a strategy. Their chosen activities become the only means to be considered by the movement to effect change; they are presented as the essence of progressive action under the present system, because they are more “militant” or more “realistic”.

• Whatever their intent is, both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans implicitly or explicitly recognize and legitimize the system’s authority. Whether they are advocating for the powers-that-be to listen to their recommendations or protesting their decisions, it is clear that all decision-making power rests in the hands of the powers-that-be.

Just as "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" in England, the loyal opposition that dominates the US Left does not fundamentally challenge the system (i.e. capitalism): The advocacy mode because it merely reforms the system, the protest mode because -no matter how militantly- it merely criticizes the system. What differentiates Revolutionary Democracy from the Loyal Opposition is that it not only challenges the legitimacy of the system, but that it makes use of a multiplicity of tactics to organize people to practice democracy and directly challenge the ability of the powers-that-be to enforce their illegitimate control of society.

Take a walk on the wild side (X.) by X.

Gandhi launched a nationwide revolution in India by walking to the beach. Does that sound ridiculous? The struggle for Indian independence lasted decades. Many lives were lost to the ruthless brutality of the British Empire. It was a hard and painful road to win that freedom. But the first step to victory came when Gandhi realized the people could shake the system to its foundations with a long, peaceful stroll to the shore.

The British had set up a colonial system to control all aspects of Indian life. They rigged the rules to exploit the people and their land. Those who resisted were arrested, beaten or killed. One typical colonial law said that only the British could produce or sell salt. Salt had always been easy to find on India’s long coasts. People would collect it for free on the beaches. Now they were forced to buy it from the colonial government.

Indians were denied so many rights – who would care about salt? But salt, it turns out, plays a very important role in Indian culture. It has a powerful symbolic meaning (to “eat someone’s salt” means to have a duty of loyalty towards them). Gandhi’s brilliance was that he figured out the salt laws were a critical weakness in the English colonial system.

On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and a few dozens of his followers began a 240-mile march to the coast. They walked for 23 days, going through dozens of villages. Thousands of others joined them along the way until they reached the beach on April 5. From wikipedia:

“The following morning, after a prayer, Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud (with reports varying as to how much) and declared, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." He then boiled it in seawater, illegally producing the controversial commodity. He implored his thousands of followers to likewise begin to make salt along the seashore, wherever "was most convenient and comfortable" to them, not to the British Empire.”

The Salt March sparked a nationwide explosion of civil disobedience as thousands of Indians made and bought “illegal” salt. Caught by surprise, the British government threw over sixty thousand people in jail trying to stop the rising movement. In complete panic, a maniacal general ordered his British troops to shoot down nonviolent demonstrators in the city of Peshawar, killing hundreds of innocent people (the Indian soldiers had refused to open fire). For of its vicious repression of a mass movement, the British drew international condemnation. And although it took another 17 years and many more hardships for India to gain its independence, the Salt March was a turning point in the struggle: For the first time made it possible for thousands of Indians from all walks of life to defy the illegitimate rule of the British Empire.

Through years of practice and study, Gandhi and his fellow organizers developed a most revolutionary understanding of the Indian people and of British colonial rule. Gandhi grasped that the colonial system was not invincible and that its laws could be bent to the point of open rebellion: What was needed was for masses of people to subvert the system at its weakest point. To make this possible, he devised a mass direct action deeply rooted in the cultural, social, political and economic life of the people of India.

Some severe shortcomings of the Gandhian movement must be acknowledged regarding its lack of internal democracy (especially discrimination against women). But these shortcomings do not take away from the inspiring legacy of the Salt March as a revolutionary democratic event:

• It successfully united people across all regional, class, religious and ethnic boundaries that were all affected by the illegitimate and frankly absurd salt laws.

• It was a simple, culturally and socially legitimate event that almost anyone could participate in and yet it was a most subversive event that directly challenged the system’s legitimacy.

• It was a mass popular action that both radicals and moderates could support and yet it struck at the heart of the system’s political and economic authority.

• It empowered the Indian people to continue challenging the system on their own as they sold and bought salt, earning or saving a little money through continuous acts of civil disobedience that reaffirmed their legitimate cultural heritage.

• It demonstrated the system’s inability to stop masses of organized people and thereby established the beginning of nationwide dual power: the power of the people continually negotiating with the power of the system, until the system was overcome.

No one in India would have ever believed that a nationwide rebellion could begin over salt until the march occurred. Revolutionary Democracy assumes that a mass, popular direct action of this magnitude is equally possible under any other oppressive system, including in the US. It is up to us to figure out how to do it…