Newspaper Hawkers and Websites: A Plan to Build a Revolutionary Democratic Movement in the U.S. (Keith) by Keith

One of the great curiosities of the revolutionary left is the newspaper hawker. At every protest, at every progressive and radical conference they appear. Trotskyites outside (they are never invited inside, -- apparently they have no manners) with insufferable papers like The Workers Vanguard, or The Militant. Inside crusty old “new left” Maoists, and their unwitting youthful acolytes, push the latest edition of Revolution with insights from their maximum leader. To sell these papers you must be disciplined, you need guts, and a tolerance for abuse—most of the people who you try to sell the paper to refuse it. You must be prepared to hear “no.”

I was once one of those sad hawkers with my newspaper. I didn’t sell one the established papers like The Challenge, FightBack, or the People’s Weekly World. My secret communist cell published our own newspaper. That’s why I can explain this curiosity—the newspaper hawker and their newspaper—to you, dear reader, I was once a newspaper hawker myself.

The newspaper, that marvel of 19th century communication technology, which is today breathing its last gasps under the weight of new communications technology, somehow remains the preferred vehicle for the communication of revolutionary news and analysis by all manner of Marxian sects, why? Because in an important little essay entitled: “Where to Begin,” and in a follow up pamphlet called: What is to be done, V.I. Lenin said a newspaper was necessary to unite the revolutionaries and to organize the impending insurrection. Our modern revolutionaries read Lenin’s essay like a cookbook recipe—what is to be done? Just add water. Lenin’s plan was brilliant in 1901 and we have much to learn from it, but only if we update the plan for the twenty-first century.

First and foremost newspapers are no longer cutting edge communications technology. Secondly, the new technology, most notably the internet, can not be considered in isolation from new forms of social organization. The newspaper and the vanguard party built in the course of writing, editing, publishing, and distributing that newspaper are organizational, communicative, and cultural forms that correspond to one another, and the level of development of the productive forces. In other words, newspapers and top down vanguard parties go together, but they are completely out-dated forms. To use them today is like using a typewriter instead of word processing, or a television with rabbit ears instead of cable.

Although the newspaper is increasingly anachronistic many organizers, allies, and revolutionary groups still use newspapers and plenty of people still read them. We are in the middle of a transition from one era to another. How long that transition will take no one can predict. We must find ways to unite with progressives, revolutionaries, and workers still using newspapers. But newspapers can no longer play the role of collective organizer that Lenin envisioned.
Since Lenin’s essays there have been a number of revolutions in communications technology: telephone, radio, cinema, television, and the internet. Revolutionaries have missed nearly all of them.

But what is even worse, or sadder, is that all of these revolutionary groups with newspapers have retained the aspects of Lenin’s essays that are no longer relevant: the newspaper and top down organization, while they ignore entirely the most important elements of Lenin’s plan.

Lenin shows that political organization is built around communication technology. He insists that the newspaper is not just for news it is a “collective organizer” The newspaper, according to Lenin, is supposed to do much more than report the news—the paper is supposed to be a place for revolutionaries to communicate with one another, to explain their practice to one another, to share experiences, and resources, to debate and argue out ideas and analysis—and in this process revolutionary unity is built, revolutionary culture is developed, revolutionary practice begins to become coordinated, and revolutionary organization is expanded. Most of the sects use their newspaper as self-promotion, they rarely have open discussions and certainly never discuss their practice in a serious way so that it can be critiqued and improved upon. They are more interested in maintaining their little sects as small businesses that can fund the careers of a few so-called leaders.

How can we put Lenin’s plan into effect with modern communication technology and organizational forms? Lenin called for a single newspaper to unite all the small local groups. Today we have all sorts of small local groups and their websites and they are connected through links. But what we need is a radically open website where it is easy and simple to contribute and where the value of a contributions is weighed not be an editorial board or moderator but by our fellow revolutionary democrats. The technology is now available, some of it is used on websites like “DailyKos,” , so that readers of a web page can “vote” on which articles and essays are most useful. Those with the most votes appear at the top of the web page and become the most read. In this way the site moderates itself. Posts that are disruptive will slide to the bottom of the page in the same way.

We need a website, that can unite all the local forces based on principle of revolutionary democracy that allows everyone full access. But openness and democracy are not just principles they are necessities. Openness and democracy are expedients. If we are to build the movement and transform this society we need the unrestrained and self-directed energy and creativity of the majority of people. Currently, no site on the left is this open, most retain the trappings of the 20th century: top down organization (moderators, and editors who determine content).

To get the project off the ground will require a commitment from organizers who are building dual power locally in numerous cities. We propose that Piratecaucus.com act as a bridge between now and the future open website we are proposing. To that end we are opening its space initially to organizers we have had direct personal contact with until the site gets out of the cradle and is ready for the harsher, even if ultimately more productive, environment of radical openness.



Appendix 1: Excerpts from Lenin’s Where To Begin
In our opinion, the starting-point of our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organisation, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newspaper. A newspaper is what we most of all need; without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy in general and, in particular, the pressing task of the moment, when interest in politics and in questions of socialism has been aroused among the broadest strata of the population. Never has the need been felt so acutely as today for reinforcing dispersed agitation in the form of individual action, local leaflets, pamphlets, etc., by means of generalised and systematic agitation that can only be conducted with the aid of the periodical press. It may be said without exaggeration that the frequency and regularity with which a newspaper is printed (and distributed) can serve as a precise criterion of how well this cardinal and most essential sector of our militant activities is built up. Furthermore, our newspaper must be All-Russian.

If we fail, and as long as we fail, to combine our efforts to influence the people and the government by means of the printed word, it will be utopian to think of combining other means, more complex, more difficult, but also more decisive, for exerting influence. Our movement suffers in the first place, ideologically, as well as in practical and organisational respects, from its state of fragmentation, from the almost complete immersion of the overwhelming majority of Social-Democrats in local work, which narrows their outlook, the scope of their activities, and their skill in the maintenance of secrecy and their preparedness. It is precisely in this state of fragmentation that one must look for the deepest roots of the instability and the waverings noted above. The first step towards eliminating this short-coming, towards transforming divers local movements into a single, All-Russian movement, must be the founding of an All-Russian newspaper.

Lastly, what we need is definitely a political newspaper. Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in the Europe of today. Without such a newspaper we cannot possibly fulfill our task—that of concentrating all the elements of political discontent and protest, of vitalising thereby the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. We have taken the first step, we have aroused in the working class a passion for “economic”, factory exposures; we must now take the next step, that of arousing in every section of the population that is at all politically conscious a passion for political exposure. We must not be discouraged by the fact that the voice of political exposure is today so feeble, timid, and infrequent. This is not because of a wholesale submission to police despotism, but because those who are able and ready to make exposures have no tribune from which to speak, no eager and encouraging audience, they do not see anywhere among the people that force to which it would be worth while directing their complaint against the “omnipotent” Russian Government. But today all this is rapidly changing.

There is such a force—it is the revolutionary proletariat, which has demonstrated its readiness, not only to listen to and support the summons to political struggle, but boldly to engage in battle. We are now in a position to provide a tribune for the nationwide exposure of the tsarist government, and it is our duty to do this. That tribune must be a Social-Democratic newspaper. The Russian working class, as distinct from the other classes and strata of Russian society, displays a constant interest in political knowledge and manifests a constant and extensive demand (not only in periods of intensive unrest) for illegal literature. When such a mass demand is evident, when the training of experienced revolutionary leaders has already begun, and when the concentration of the working class makes it virtual master in the working-class districts of the big cities and in the factory settlements and communities, it is quite feasible for the proletariat to found a political newspaper. Through the proletariat the newspaper will reach the urban petty bourgeoisie, the rural handicraftsmen, and the peasants, thereby becoming a real people’s political newspaper.

The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser. In this last respect it may be likened to the scaffolding round a building under construction, which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organised labour.
With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organisation will naturally lake shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence these events. The mere technical task of regularly supplying the newspaper with copy and of promoting regular distribution will necessitate a network of local agents of the united party, who will maintain constant contact with one another, know the general state of affairs, get accustomed to performing regularly their detailed functions in the All-Russian work, and test their strength in the organisation of various revolutionary actions.

This network of agents[1] will form the skeleton of precisely the kind of organisation we need—one that is sufficiently large to embrace the whole country; sufficiently broad and many-sided to effect a strict and detailed division of labour; sufficiently well tempered to be able to conduct steadily its own work under any circumstances, at all “sudden turns”, and in face of all contingencies; sufficiently flexible to be able, on the one hand, to avoid an open battle against an overwhelming enemy, when the enemy has concentrated all his forces at one spot, and yet, on the other, to take advantage of his unwieldiness and to attack him when and where he least expects it. Today we are faced with the relatively easy task of supporting student demonstrations in the streets of big cities; tomorrow we may, perhaps, have the more difficult task of supporting, for example, the unemployed movement in some particular area, and the day after to be at our posts in order to play a revolutionary part in a peasant uprising. Today we must take advantage of the tense political situation arising out of the government’s campaign against the Zemstvo; tomorrow we may have to support popular indignation against some tsarist bashi-bazouk on the rampage and help, by means of boycott, indictment, demonstrations, etc., to make things so hot for him as to force him into open retreat. Such a degree of combat readiness can be developed only through the constant activity of regular troops. If we join forces to produce a common newspaper, this work will train and bring into the foreground, not only the most skillful propagandists, but the most capable organisers, the most talented political party leaders capable, at the right moment, of releasing the slogan for the decisive struggle and of taking the lead in that struggle.

In conclusion, a few words to avoid possible misunderstanding. We have spoken continuously of systematic, planned preparation, yet it is by no means our intention to imply that the autocracy can be overthrown only by a regular siege or by organised assault. Such a view would be absurd and doctrinaire. On the contrary, it is quite possible, and historically much more probable, that the autocracy will collapse under the impact of one of the spontaneous outbursts or unforeseen political complications which constantly threaten it from all sides. But no political party that wishes to avoid adventurous gambles can base its activities on the anticipation of such outbursts and complications. We must go our own way, and we must steadfastly carry on our regular work, and the less our reliance on the unexpected, the less the chance of our being caught unawares by any “historic turns”.

Summer in the City (Chloë ) by Keith

(Note from Keith: This is an essay by Chloë, a member of the George Mason chapter of SDS, about her experiences working with Rutger's SDS's summer in the city project.)


I went to New Jersey a bit cynical. It was about a month before I was scheduled to leave for Taiwan and at best seemed like a nice way to occupy myself before the real adventure started. I also went into it feeling pessimistic about my current situation, watching my Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter fall apart and dreading the inevitably, large amount of effort that it will take to put it back together again. A task that at a large commuter/suitcase school seems more like a chore than something that I would take pleasure in. Going to Summer in the City, sponsored by “Empower our Neighborhoods” (EONS) Campaign and Tent State/SDS at Rutgers, New Brunswick, may not have brighten my outlook when it comes to George Mason but it definitely reminded me, again, why I organize.

The campaign that they are running is to change the city from an at-large electoral system for city council member to a ward based system, touting that it will increase democracy in the City of New Brunswick. Like most of New Jersey, New Brunswick is largely corrupt with little to no checks and balance. The people that are in power are old guard democrats who surprisingly (or not) supported Hillary Clinton in the primary. They like the way the city is run and call it a vibrant city, focusing on the gentrified parts of town and the grandiose hospitals. New Brunswick residents will paint a different picture though. The schools, which are failing, stand in stark contrast to the newer gentrified parts of town that hold the head quarters for Johnson and Johnson. Some wards streets haven't been paved in decades and gang violence, like unemployment, is forever on the rise.

As I went around the city gathering signatures, I couldn't help but notice the differences that exist in the city. A lot of the people that I talked to remembered better days and had small requests for improvement. One man told me how at one point they paved the curbs but never came back to pave the roads. This part of town is mostly populated by working class Blacks and Latinos. Others had different comments; at least two women that I talked to seemed troubled by the gang violence that happens almost daily on their door steps. At a town meeting, gang violence was one of the most popularly cited problems in the city to the extent that it has moved into the towns south of New Brunswick, stemming from the city. This comment was not surprisingly followed by complaints about the condition of the schools and the education that the students, K-12, receive in New Brunswick.

In adopting a ward based system with 6 council people from each of the wards and 3 elected at-large, there is a great hope within New Brunswick that these problems will be addressed. But it doesn't stop there. EONS wants to push for neighborhood councils that will make direct demands on their council people, allowing everyone in the community to have a say including undocumented immigrants, a population that is growing rapidly in New Brunswick.

The majority of things that I have done in my organizing career, which is very short, have been protests. I am quickly accumulating a laundry list of protests that I have attended and helped plan in D.C. and as that number grows I haven't become anymore confident in the lefts ability to change the United States or stop the War in Iraq. Each protest, minus those that have become a fad recently in D.C. (Funk the War) have grown smaller and smaller, signifying rightly the publics waning hope in the anti-war movement and the radical left as a whole, something that has been happening since the 1960's and something that is quite justified.

But the more I talked to people, the more my excitement grew for the ward campaign. Not only did the organizers have a clear plan with theoretical backing on how to change their city but I saw every day the direct result of how the ward system could change New Brunswick and maybe people's lives.

The campaign in New Brunswick signifies a new sort of movement, focused around the theory of revolutionary democracy; they hope to make change on a local level. The organizers are not unrealistic in thinking that this is going to be easy or clean, or that protests are the answer. They know that they are little more than a tactic that one can use among many a tactics. They understand that sometimes you have to work within the system to change it but that you have to be smart about it and know how to fight dirty. EONS knows the city government's weaknesses and they know their tactics and because of this they know how to work against them. They also understand the history of the city and where the current city machine came from. They have studied and been a part of other campaigns so they know what works and what doesn't and how to learn and adapt when challenges present themselves.

One of the most important parts of this is that they also understand what can happen if they don't win. The organizers see the importance of bringing the community together and getting to know people and the problems that they face. They are not trying to help people in a detached fashion by throwing money at their problems or protesting things that are happening half-way around the world but by talking to the public directly and seeing exactly what the people want to change about their city and how they want it done. Something that is invaluable.

After about a month of working with Tent State/SDS (or EONS), I began to realize how much I valued the work that they were doing. Not only do they have an awesome sense of community within themselves, but they are able to connect and understand the community that makes up New Brunswick. I now have a greater sense of the work that progressive organization can do and some of the best ways to do it. I have a new found confidence in the American Left and I have the greatest hope that we can all learn from Tent States/SDS projects and bring back their ideas to our communities. I also see the Summer in the City program as sort of training camp for those who want to learn about making change on a local level. I hope that as more local movements grow, we can learn from each other and give the left a new face that will help inspire and change America into a truly more democratic society.

Students and Dual Power in Chicago (Nick) by mrsituationist

Students have a unique role to play in building dual power. Contemporary social movements have overlooked the capacity of the university and especially students to participate in building alternative institutions. Student organizing has chiefly taken place in a vacuum, outside of a coherent strategy of building power. This lack of a larger strategy has been highly problematic and has been responsible for the stagnation of our movement. Building power and creating alternative institutions such as legal and medical clinics, cooperatives, education programs etc. are impossible tasks without the professional and occupational expertise learned through higher education. To say the least our movement has not taken an appropriate inventory of our strengths and capacity to transform society. Law students, pre-med students and engineering students have only been as potential sign holders; or if they are truly committed to the struggle, punching bags for the police. These limited opportunities for long term participation and the extremely limited career options offered through existing movement institutions have significantly bounded our demographics. This has favored those who can make a career dealing with social justice, lopsidedly fine arts and liberal arts majors.

Students do not need to wait until graduation to engage in building community power. Universally acknowledged is the fact that universities can do more to benefit their surrounding communities. Offering positions in the cafeteria, even with a union contract, is a sorry excuse for community engagement. Students within the university have a special leverage on the direction of their institution, as well as the direction of individual departments. Changing how the university interacts with the surrounding community takes organization. One example of such student faculty collaboration in Chicago is the New Life Volunteer Society at University of Illinois at Chicago (NLVS). NLVS is now a national student organization of students in the medical field emphasizing service to the community. UIC’s chapter worked with the university and the faculty to open a registered community health clinic on Chicago’s northside that is largely staffed by UIC students for internship credit.

Similarly most law schools in the Chicago offer students the ability to obtain course credit for staffing the school’s affiliated legal clinics. While such opportunities are valuable to low income Chicagoans, their reach is limited, as most law students do not want to sacrifice an opportunity to intern at a high paying law firm internship to work at the schools’ clinics. This represents the clinics’ problem with orientation. As most clinic work is done within the context of a permanent welfare state and not as part of an effort to fundamentally change the dynamics of society, the majority of students are not interested in sacrificing their careers. Few people have the wherewithal to make a career out of being the proverbial thumb in the dam. The story is the same for almost every skilled profession. Our movement desperately needs the skills and talents of students enrolled in universities, but students as struggling individuals almost universally prefer a well paid, secure position at a firm over a lifetime of toil, frustration and projected failure being a “social worker.”

If our movement is to overcome the psychological barriers separating our communities from those qualified to operate the necessary institutions in our communities we need a political strategy. Revolutionary Democracy is a political strategy of building a dual power. We aren’t interested in drawing ourselves and our colleagues into being the footsoldiers of the welfare state; we want an equitable, participatory society, one that ends the exploitation of contemporary capitalist society. As organizers we need to be relevant through orienting ourselves and our neighborhoods around the dynamics of the society we envision. Revolution will only be materialized once enough people have transformed their daily lives around the values of cooperation. This transformation is only possible through participation in alternative institutions. Progress towards a revolutionary transformation can be benchmarked by the public adoption of the dynamics championed by our alternative institutions.

Student organizing has to take another direction, one that is parallel to organizing and building alternative institutions. Not only should organizing be done through at-large chapters at universities but also by professional and occupational interests. Such a tactical orientation recognizes the greater potential of students in the same department cooperating together on the same project. Organizing on campuses should be related to organizing in the larger communities in which the universities are embedded.

In Chicago one immediate goal of SDS could be to organize students in the medical field to reopen one of the cook county satellite clinics closed because of the county’s fiscal mismanagement. Federal subsidies are available for such efforts, as well as loan and tuition reimbursement for those students who guarantee they will staff such community health clinics after graduation. Knowledge of how to run such clinics efficiently can be shared between SDS and student organizations like professional student unions that already coordinate internships, and groups like NLVS at UIC.

Another idea would be to recruit students with plans for small scale green enterprises. With the help of the revolutionary ward organization, they could approach local banks and credit unions for lines of financing to start operations in the neighborhood, with the affiliated campus organization pressuring the university to lend its support to the new enterprises. Leveraging support from specific departments at Chicago’s major universities for local green entrepreneurship would be a great initial goal for such a community development effort. Most likely however, qualified local entrepreneurs will be found in the Chicago City College system, or at less high profile institutions like the Illinois Institute for Technology. Making inroads at such locally focused institutions would also be a great objective for our student movement which has virtually ignored organizing on such campuses.

Focusing on connecting students with entrepreneurship opportunities would be a winning tactic for a dual power strategy. In Chicago such a dual power strategy would probably take the shape of ward organizations. Such organizations would work with affiliated student groups to bring investment into their wards, and would reap the collateral benefits of successful endeavors. Each successful community entrepreneur would bring the ward organization closer to its goal of being a substantive political alternative to the incumbent alderman. Eventually enough people in the community would be connected to the ward organization through social and economic cooperatives and institutions that they would be willing to participate in a political cooperative. Such a cooperative embodied in the ward organization, would make decisions in a directly democratic manner and communicate decisions to a delegated alderman that would run to replace the incumbent alderman who acts on the alderman as representative model.

Coordinating the expansion of the ward organizations is another opportunity for student involvement in building dual power. Although the ward organizations were conceived as efforts initiating in student neighborhoods, they should also work to attract students interested in local politics from around the region. The Summer in the City project out of New Brunswick New Jersey, is a model for Chicago’s revolutionary democratic ward effort. Students from across the country are participating, canvassing neighborhoods, organizing events like bbq’s and concerts and bringing people out to Empower Our Neighborhoods meetings. Something similar in Chicago could involve the ward organizations putting up students on semester breaks to work building ward organization.

Students have a crucial role to play in building dual power in Chicago. They will be the lifeblood of the ward organizations since they are at the heart of the new institutions being built. Students have the ability to leverage the university to support the efforts of the ward organizations. Realizing this powerful capacity will take a shift in strategy in the contemporary student movement. We have to move away from the strictly reactionary politics of protest and move towards a strategy of building power in our neighborhoods. Initially such power building efforts should take place in wards where students live, taking full advantage of the position and resources of the existing student movement. A successful dual power strategy will coordinate the parallel efforts on campuses in neighborhoods, and would effectively harness the potential for the university to transform our neighborhoods.

Architecture of Dual Power in Chicago (Nick) by mrsituationist

Dual power was a phrase coined by Lenin, referring to alternative revolutionary institutions functioning in competition with the institutions of the established power. In his work, “The Dual Power,” he outlined the basic qualities of a people’s dual power, first that it cannot be legislated into existence. It must be a “direct initiative from below,” a direct, local seizure of power. This initiative seeks to replace “officialdom,” or the bureaucracy of the state with the direct rule of the people. Local councils in geographic areas and in workplaces, called Soviets in Russian, were the base of this dual power, operating on direct democracy principles when convenient, when it was impractical representatives were selected and were to be immediately recallable, to be simple agents of their constituency and were to be remunerated similarly to any other worker. Similarly if these local councils were to participate in the established power, through the legislature or any other branch the individuals elected were to be directly responsible to their constituency and were supposed to be held to the same standards of accountability as representatives of the local councils.

Lenin also wrote about the importance of arming the people by the dual power as a counter to the reactionary and class oriented institutions of the police and military. Though this question was eminently relevant in April of 1917, its relevance is not as immediate for 2008 Chicago. What is important however is the long term strategy thrust forward in “The Dual Power.” Lenin was arguing that revolutionary situations were the result of acute clashes between powers in society . Such situations were only possible through the diligent construction of institutions responsible to the people within the context of conflict with repressive established institutions.

As organizers our roles are to be the engineers of the dual power. We have to use our limited resources to build durable, lasting institutions. Revolutionary upheaval will materialize when we can replace the institutions of capitalism and corporate government and make their institutions irrelevant enough to either topple or to quietly fade away. Generations of organizers have been involved in the struggle to build alternative power. We’re faced with what’s left of the old and questions about where, when, and how to begin anew.

Concentric Interactions: Importance of Building Revolutionary Identities

Whether we are transforming the economy, social relations or the government our strategy must be to build our dual power at the most basic, tangible levels available. Without starting at such constituent levels our engagement faces needless abstraction and theoretical confusion as we over extend our resources and begin to treat people as numbers, statistics and “data.” Revolutionary communities are built through the adoption of revolutionary identities by individuals. Any identity is constructed through social interactions, whether revolutionary or reactionary. More interactions means a stronger affiliation with the identity being constructed.

Our strategy to build dual power must be oriented around the idea of concentric social interactions. Commitment towards a political idea is engendered through increasing the number and intensity of relationships sharing similar dynamics. This can help explain the paradox of how such broad based organizations like Moveon.org can wield so little actually power. Movements that fail to build institutions that people interact on a consistent basis have small returns on the limited investment of their members.

The literal construction dual power necessitates an understanding of the how power is exercised by different institutions in society. The first step is identifying the fundamental actors in each institution and how they are related. Next we have to envision our own institutions framing new dynamics between these fundamental actors. Each new relationship someone has with our revolutionary movement, the more invested they become in the idea of social transformation.

Dual Power in Chicago: Where to Begin

In Chicago, the first decision to make about organizing is geographic, where to begin. Chicago has many rich and diverse neighborhoods, but the most fundamental units of government are the city wards. City Council is composed of alderman from each ward, with a mayor elected from an at-large vote every four years. While neighborhoods often overlap with wards, to be politically relevant we have to work on the level of the ward. Politically, our goal must be to build a directly democratic institution alongside the representative aldermanic one, essentially creating a revolutionary democratic ward assembly to replace the dynamic between alderman and constituent.

Chicago’s political realities and the privileges and powers yielded to the aldermen and mayor necessitate a nuanced approach to building dual power. Although our goal is to transform our City Council, and eventually our country, we have to build institutions in ways that won’t overstep our resources. Taking on an alderman connected to Mayor Daley without adequate preparation would not only lead to an embarrassing defeat but also alienate many potential supporters who can’t afford to alienate the Mayor and his allies without having alternatives already in place.

The solution: Ward based organizations whose identity and membership are built through economic, social and other dual power institutions. Applying the concept of concentric interactions, we can build revolutionary power without immediately confronting the power of the aldermen. Under the economic institution of capitalism, the basic actors are producers and consumers, with their relations determined by individual market transactions. Challenging capitalism using a dual power approach means organizing consumers and producers to act collectively. Dual power applied within this context would have our ward organizations creating purchasing cooperatives, building institutions that could eventually replace their capitalist counterparts (Sam’s club, Costco etc.) Consumption of services like childcare, healthcare, as well as education can also be reorganized into cooperative alternative institutions. Similarly changing the context of production in our society would necessitate not only organizing unions to balance the power of management, but engaging in entrepreneurship and employee ownership to change the dynamics of ownership and management altogether.

Exactly which institutions should be organized first should be answered only after a careful analysis by organizers working within a particular ward. The general idea however is to start with those institutions that have the greatest return on invested resources for the residents and to continue introducing new institutions until there is enough commitment on behalf of the ward to engage in a challenge against the seated alderman. Once a person or group is involved in one institution, for example a grocery or childcare cooperative, it is less of an effort to get the same people involved in a workplace or political campaign championing the same ideas and relationships. Social mapping techniques can shed valuable insight into building new institutions and engaging in existing institutions in neighborhoods. Not simply an academic exercise, social maps of neighborhoods can be crucial tools towards leveraging influential individuals and institutions to either participate or at least not oppose organizing in neighborhoods.

Connecting with Existing Institutions

Luckily brilliant and inspiring efforts have been undertaken across Chicago by people who share the ideals of participatory democracy. What has been missing has been the focused coordination around such efforts to build tangible power. An initial inventory of a ward for organizers would include existing institutions that could serve as allies in building dual power. Within the context of sympathetic institutions, for example existing purchasing cooperatives, our goal would not be to outcompete them but to engage their members with revolutionary democracy and our objectives for building a ward organization. Even if the existing institutions in question fail to support our mission or endorse our goals, we could almost be certain that some members within such institutions would be sympathetic and we must be ready to involve them in building dual power.

A key task is to support our natural allies struggling to change how power is exercised in existing institutions, for example in unions or schools while also maintaining a critical distance from the agendas of such institutions. We want to simultaneously organize within the base of these institutions while also working to involve those who are more invested in these institutions in our organization. To this end, we want to involve them, like anyone else, in as many dual institutions as possible to cement their identification with and commitment to social change. One relevant example of this happened during the heyday of the CIO and the Communist Party, along with other revolutionary socialist organizations. These groups recognized the power wielded by the industrial unions and sought to build their membership within the unions. Our contemporary organization should also work to build memberships within unions and within other sympathetic organizations with the aim of solidifying relationships between our organizations.

Criteria for Initial Ward Organization

Choosing exactly which ward(s) to begin organizing is a decision with important consequences for the long term development of the campaign. The first ward would ideally be one controlled by a Daley machine alderman so we wouldn’t be challenging a potential ally on City Council. Choosing a Daley stronghold would be a foolhardy decision however, since there are many wards with machine aldermen which would be more receptive to our message of revolutionary democracy and participatory democracy. We want to choose a ward that has resources we could tap into, for example a ward near a major university so we could tap into the resources of the student movement, or a ward with allies who are already mounting a challenge to the ward organization. One tool to suggest potential wards would be social maps of neighborhoods, allowing organizers to make decisions on which wards to begin with through comparing inventories of networking resources available. Once an initial ward organization is started through the efforts of a number of organizers within the neighborhood and through organizers loaned from other neighborhoods, the model could be transplanted to other wards across the city. Each planned expansion into new wards would mean collateral benefits for existing ward organizations, for example, 100 people can purchase goods and services for less than 50 people. Economies of scale will accumulate if we can establish solid initial ward organizations that can anchor future growth.

Prospect for Success of Ward Organizations

The prospects for the success of our revolutionary democratic movement in Chicago are bright. Daley Jr.’s machine is in a state of decomposition after being weakened by federal hiring probes. Contributing to the decomposition is the defection and counter mobilization of Daley’s traditional constituencies, labor unions and Chicago’s Hispanic communities. Although the administration is courting the white liberal vote through initiatives like free rain barrels and bike paths, there has been little commitment to Daley shown by those constituencies with little over 15% overall turnout in the last mayoral election. Our short term goal is to create a number of localized ward organizations that will be engaged in building revolutionary communities. These communities will be built through engaging ward residents in alternative institutions such as free childcare programs, purchasing cooperatives and free education initiatives. While the ward organizations are growing it would be appropriate to lobby the specific aldermen of those wards to become more independent of the machine. Long term however, the goal is to create a more directly democratic ward organization whose will would be expressed in the City Council through a delegated Alderman, maintaining the integrity of the decisions made at the level of the ward organization. If the initial efforts at building ward organizations prove successful, Chicago can become a model for transforming local governance, as well as transforming capitalism into a more participatory economic system.

Building Neighborhood Committees, Canvassing, and Winning (Keith) by Keith

These are some notes on organizing in New Brunswick but I think that they may be useful to others who are thinking about dual power and seizing power locally.

We must build neighborhood committees if we are going to win on election day and if we are to build a lasting revolutionary democratic movement in New Brunswick. In many ways the committees will be one of the most important outcomes of the whole campaign. Below I put down some notes on building the committees and the crucial role they will play on election day with Get Out the Vote.

The universal task of all neighborhood committees’ is to get out the vote. Beyond that each committee will develop organically, based on the concerns and issues faced by the citizens in that neighborhood. In some neighborhoods parking is the main issue, in others police violence and gang activity, and other neighborhoods have issues that will only emerge as citizens meet and talk. As people come together and feel their collective power, other issues and possibilities, that are presently beyond their imaginative capacity and ours, will emerge. In other words they will change the conditions and themselves and thereby make new possibilities.

Our biggest challenge at the present moment and the key to winning election day is getting these neighborhood committees off the ground. The committees are an organizational structure so to understand what kind of structure we need we must first understand the practice or activity the committees will engage in. Again much of the activity will be determined by the committees themselves, but one activity that we know will be asked of all committees will be getting out the vote on election-day. So we can build structure around that task, and then allow other practices and organizational forms to develop organically based on the needs of the citizens in the groups.

When we knock on a door we may be talking to a neighborhood leader, or a future neighborhood leader (or a national leader in embryo!). We should offer each person the highest level of participation and work down. This is especially important in Latino/a neighborhoods. We will need to find bi-lingual people who can organize Spanish speakers. Additionally, Revolutionary Democracy recognizes all residents as citizens and therefore they have full rights and freedom to participate regardless of their “status.” So while they cannot vote in November they will be able to vote in their neighborhood committee.

A key component of our campaign must be building neighborhood committees as the basis for our anti-machine local revolutionary democratic movement and the canvas is the place to get them started. Ideally each committee will be made up of five or more registered voters. The chair of the committee will be responsible for making sure that all committee members vote on election day. Mobilizing the group on election day will take preparation, that preparation is the basis of the committees initial existence.

Recruiting neighborhood leaders while canvassing
When canvassing we come across people who are natural leaders of the neighborhoods, people others turn to for help, or people who command respect. If these people, for example, tell other to sign a petition they are listened too. When canvassing we should try to get these people to become leaders of a neighborhood committee. We have to lay out the whole vision with them. We are trying to transform this city in a democratic way. We want schools that provide the best education for our children and makes it possible for the kids to do whatever it is they want to, their background and the school system should not be a limitation but an advantage. We want the schools to be community centers and recreation centers that provide job training and job placement. We want professional police who help the community end gang violence instead of encouraging it. And so on (we can talk vision stuff in another essay). The point is that we lay out the dream and then we lay out the path that leads from here to there. The path is the ward campaign. We can explain neighborhood committees, how they will function to discuss neighborhood issues and how they will function in relation to a real democratic city council.

Then we explain how to build the committee: Do you know 3 or more people you can register to vote or who are registered? Can you hold a meeting to explain the campaign? what we are doing? and how we will be counting on them to come out and vote on election day? Can you stay in regular contact with your committee? That is minimal. The committee’s can do much more, but that is a start. At this level of organizing it is all face to face, ultimately this networks include elements of friendship. You can invite a potential committee chair to Sunday dinner and hook them more deeply into the campaign. The idea is to get them close to the campaign and also feel ownership so that they willing to take initiatives to help develop it. We can help with the initial meetings and send organizers. Building trust and friendship will be crucial.

Recruiting neighborhood leaders at Public Meetings

When we hold a public meeting it is important to lay out the vision of a democratic city, and then link the ward campaign to that vision. The next step is to explain the role of neighborhood committees, what the job of the committee chair will be and ask people to volunteer to host a first meeting. Again, the first meeting can be your brother, your cousin, your momma and neighbor and your sister’s friend, start with whatever is doable and build-- something is better than nothing. Whoever it is we have to get together explain the campaign and how to vote for it and the role of the committee on election day. The more resources we can provide so that people take ownership over the process and their committees and develop them creatively according to the needs of their neighborhood the more we will build revolutionary democratic power.

Amiri Baraka: "Obama & The Tragic Errors of The Weimar Republic" (posted by Keith) by Keith

The post Word War 1 journey of Germany from an Empire, which was overthrown and then a Democratic republic and finally the overthrow of that republic and the emergence and domination of Hitler’s Nazi Fascism, is important for us to understand. Because some of the facts of these years still apply to contemporary United States.

With the withering depression that had set in in the late 20’s in addition to German’s war loses, when the international stock market collapsed (US Wall St) in 1929, a worldwide depression of staggering proportions set in. And it is this depression and the rise and fall of governments in Germany that set the stage for the final takeover by Hitler and the fascists and finally the beginning of WW2.

Although McCain’s adviser Gramm says this is a “mental recession”, unless he’s referring to himself and McCain, today’s depression in the US is not just mental. We shd also factor in the outright theft of the last two elections, the general public bankruptcy of the Republican party, who have been playing and still are playing a “white card”. (The democrats have not won the majority of white male voters since John Kennedy!)

But the spreading foreclosure menace of the subprime (fraud ridden) mortgages, now at 6000 foreclosures a day, the closing of the huge banking mortgage regime, Bear-Sterns. Then the Bush cabal agrees to revalue Bear Stearns stocks so that the historically infamous speculator JPMorgan can get a better payday. No aid for the people losing their homes at terrifying rates. Today the government announced it had a new plan to save more banks. If there’s no recession why the plan to save “unthreatened” banks?

Suffice it to say there is a deepening depression in the US, the nation going from a surplus at the end of the Clinton regime till now deficit, much of it caused by the 10 billion dollar a month war in Iraq. Even many straight up backward Americans are convinced of the bold corruption that is the real cause of the war and the spiraling gas price since it is the oil swindlers who hold state power in the US. While they talk bad about the “Arabs” the Bush group is clearly in bed with the Saudi’s, Arab Emirates, Dubai now becoming a financial capital to compete with Wall St. and London.

There is no doubt that US forces are losing in the Middle East, just as they got wasted in Viet Nam. The whole ugly scam of removing oil billions from Iraq ( all those contracts for privatization of Iraqi oil went to the big US oilies) based on the 911 episode, the reality of which is still covered with crude lies, but now at scam’s end with a raging depression setting in and war incurred deficit climbing into the trillion, the stage is set for stunning rightward surge that will perhaps bring street fighting to the US and a final toppling that will make the current shrinking of the dollar, .60 per Euro, seem mild. China already holds US paper, the US is China’s top debtor. Indy Mac Bank has just failed in California.

So that this is a time much likes that in Germany, during the last phase of the Weimar Democratic Republic. Ostensibly a democratic republic, the depression caused widespread unemployment and great public unrest. And as the curtain began to raise for fascist takeover, (See Brecht’s Berlin) the country, especially the large cities like Berlin were inundated with pornography, sex crimes, business and political scandals and street fighting, usually between the rising fascists and the communists.

What brought the democratic era to an end was a split between the Communists and the Social Democrats, i.e., the Left and the Near Left and the Liberals, which permitted Hitler’s National Socialists in a coalition with the Conservatives and Nationalists to win the election, even though the Left Center coalition had more voters objectively. It was the split which allowed the right to consolidate power.

Recently in the US presidential campaign we have seen two tendencies, the one to vilify and distort Obama from the right e.g., the recent New Yorker cover described as “satirical” with Obama as a Muslim, his wife as a machine toting militant with an American flag in the fireplace and Osama bin laden in a portrait of honor on the wall. It is objectively a message from McCain, the US Right and the Israelis.

But as well there is the tendency on the presumed Left and the social democrats and people styling themselves “progressives” to attack Obama for moving to the right, thereby disappointing some very vocal would be Obama voters. One woman publicized prominently in the NY Times said now she “hated him”. But as I have said repeatedly this is an imperialist country, with two imperialist parties and a media controlled directly by the 6/10ths of 1 percent of the people that own the land wealth factories, the means of production.

There is no way Obama is even in the presidential race condemning Israel or embracing Cuba. Not to know this is not to know where you are or where you have been for the last forty years. But even with this clear motion to the center for the purposes of the general election, McCain is still a more backward and a more dangerous candidate and exactly the kind of right leaning militarist that would fit the paradigm for the weak chancellors during Weimar’s last throes that President Hindenburg removed and then appointed Hitler.

It is this split between the Left and Near Left, that is being exploited by the Right with War & Depression threatening to dump this whole nation on its head, so that Obama will be defeated, McCain elected and with the McCain opening plummet the country headlong into the far far right. Bush 2 has already obviously set the stage for this. Those elections were stolen out of desperation. The fact that Gore & Kerry were such weak liberals, tied clearly and obviously to the ruling class of this imperialist state allowed that theft to take place with minimum real struggle.

So that is the real struggle unfolding before us. First, to oppose the empty idealism which elitist base allows it to claim to represent the masses but actually have as little to do with them as possible. Allowing seemingly intelligent people to throw their votes away on McKinney or even the racial chauvinist, Nader, thus formalizing a hole in an actual progressive constituency which allowed Bush 2 to seize power in 2000.

We must also oppose the absolutising of Obama’s progressive stance and with that drawing away from him as he gets closer to the general election and tacks toward the middle. This would be the other aspect of the tragic Weimar breakup of the fragile democratic coalition that caused millions to die in fascist purges, concentration camps, or World War 2.

On the other hand it should be part of our campaign tasks to create a document of planks of progressive character to submit to Obama and publish and popularize this as well, to exert what pressure we can bring to bear on the campaign and publicly for a reversal of Bush’s neo-fascist creations, war, depression, unemployment, violation of democratic rights, diplomatic isolation from the rest of the world, a general weakening morally and politically and economically of the country.

Revolutionary Democracy and Dual Power (Brian) by Keith

What is “dual power”? Dual power, most generally, is the phenomenon of the existence of two distinct powers in the social relations within the institutions of a capitalist society (the system and the people, the state and the resistance, capital and labor, etc.) – the existence of an entrenched, constituted power AND a transformative, constituent power. Revolutionary Democracy’s definitions and uses of dual power differ from previous ones.

Leninist-derived groups express dual power only vis-à-vis the state. The “second power” within this dual power relation exists only as resistance to (and for seizure of) that state power. They really only use the term “dual power,” then, to describe an event – the sufficient empowerment of the transformative, constituent power on the precipice of revolution.

Many anarchist groups also operate mostly within a state-bound formulation of “dual power,” but instead build toward a second power that exists totally outside of the state. Other anarchist groups do organize otherwise isolated examples of resistance to the state (and thus don’t completely forego engaging state power), but that dual power is still state-based, and has its ultimate goal as the unequivocal abolition of that state.

Revolutionary Democracy sees dual power differently – temporally, corporeally, and strategically.

In Revolutionary Democracy, dual power exists all the time and everywhere – at work, in your home, in the broader society, even within the movement itself. This conception of dual power is more in tune with people’s everyday experience of being forced into a labor process that creates surplus for someone else, and our many daily forms of resistance to it – from slacking at work to organizing and empowering others. And this clearly is not just an economic/labor phenomenon. Just about everyone, everywhere can measure their power against capital’s power – or against other entrenched, constituted power – and know, at a gut-level, “the system sucks.”

This recognition of dual power as an ever-present phenomenon is in no small way linked to Revolutionary Democracy’s recognition of capital (in its broadest definitions) as a social relation, not as a static “thing” – that is, once something is intended to be used as capital (or has become capital), it is inherently imbued with an exploitative social process. Transforming capital into a tool of the people – bending the machine to our will instead of raging against it – is one way that Revolutionary Democracy succeeds in making dual power (cognizant of capital as a social relation) a “living theory” (linked to practice) – a theory in action, a theory in motion.


Therefore, Revolutionary Democracy will sometimes use the term “dual power” to also mean the building or establishing of the “second power.” One might say the city machine was entrenched power, but the growth of EON (dual power as an action) created a state of more clearly discernible dual power (dual power as a phenomenon or fact). Creating consciousness-raising empowerment – direct experiences of agency and self-determination – therefore renders the phrase “dual power” an ongoing strategic process (one that both leads to radicalization as people simply “live the revolution,” and one that furthers cause of achieving specific goals – an example is the widening outreach of “Empower Our Neighborhoods” at present).

Dual Power, Strategy, and Tactics

Dual power meant as the cultivation of the “second power” then, is perhaps the very essence of Revolutionary Democratic strategy. When we strategize, we identify enemies and allies and gain a general plan of how we attack the problem. If the phenomenon/existence of dual power (two powers present in an institution/social relation) is, according to Revolutionary Democracy, omnipresent, then the ongoing fundamental answer to the question “How do we win?” is simple: “Build dual power (cultivate, strengthen the second power). Build it everywhere.” It is here that we see Revolutionary Democracy willing to utilize and infiltrate existing, constituted powers while simultaneously strengthening transformative, constituent power outside those structures. This means we do not dismiss actions such as running for elected office as revolutionaries (an example might be the People’s Campaign of 2000), or, say, building dual power even in institutions like the military or police (unlike anarchists bent on statelessness per se).The degree to which any institution, social relation, etc. is allied with the cause of the people determines how that “dual use” (of the system, and of forces outside it) will take shape. All tactics – more specific, immediate, concrete answers to that question, “How do we win?” – flow from the strategic Revolutionary Democratic theory AND practice of “dual power.”