Despite the fact that the bailout package was utterly insufficient to deal with the crisis we face and the Democratic Party’s history should lead to no surprises about where the Party’s real interests lie, the public discussion about the failure of the Bailout Vote to pass is quite over the top.
Huffington Post reports:

“House Republican Leader John Boehner said, “I do believe that we could have gotten there today, had it not been for this partisan speech that Speaker [Pelosi] gave on the floor of the House. I mean, we were — we put everything we had into getting the votes to get there today, but the Speaker had to give a partisan voice that poisoned our conference, caused a number of members who we thought we could get to go south.”"

So what did Nancy Pelosi say exactly?  What was so “out of line” that caused the GOP to vote “no” because their feelings got hurt? Well she commented that:

“Today we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership … We choose a different path. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future.”

“It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies-policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”

People do seem to be responding to the absurdity of the GOP’s claim - that GOP politicians got their feelings hurt and as such, risked the entire market collapsing by voting no - but right from the beginning the Democratic Party, lead by the Congressional leaders and Senator Obama, responded to McCain’s call for “bipartisan efforts” in a positive manner. Any party with the slightest hint of liberal politics would called the GOP out on their shit: the administration, corporations, and individuals who caused this mess have no right to claim the higher ground. They created the crisis - they don’t get to solve it - nor attack those who attempt to do so. And yes, partisan attacks in a time of fundamental crisis are very appropriate. Those who cause crises should face the public spotlight when they occur.

These comments are less about the actual bailout package, and much more about how those interested in genuine freedom should point out both the hypocrisy of the GOP’s stance and the unwillingness of the Democrats to stand up for what they call “Main Street”. Until they start foreclosing the war, the dirty energy economy, and poverty, the Democratic Party has no right to talk about “Main Street”.

She also went on, of course, to say that:

“Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos.”

Thankfully they actually admit what the free market does. It makes advocating opposition to capitalism and the presentation of democratic alternatives all the easier.

Without any doubt my favorite quotation from Karl Marx comes from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. He writes:

“The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living, and just when they seem to be revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something entirely new, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from the names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time honored disguise and borrowed language…. The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past but only from the future.”

Such eloquent wisdom is unfortunately seldom taken to heart by his disciples. The statement is equally true today: the social revolution of the twenty-first century cannot draw its poetry from the past but only from the future. The theories, strategies, ideas, and methods of the past need to be critically analyzed and, where flawed, revolutionized and not merely amended. A vision of a democratic society must be central to our message to add inspiration to our programmatic demands.

In order to win the war, those who seek victory must organize to build a new revolutionary left in the United States. The tasks of such a Left will be widespread and will require much debate, but some of these tasks can be easily summarized. There certainly might be other things, but a new revolutionary left will necessarily include among its focuses:

Humanism: learning from oppression that exist within past social movements, a new revolutionary left in the United States will seek to fundamentally transform the defining institutions and ideas in the realms of economics, kinship, culture, and politics. It will take each of these areas equally seriously, knowing that victory is impossible without a holistic and comprehensive revolutionary transformation of society.

Vision & Hope: understanding that our generation is overwhelmed with feelings of hopelessness, a new revolutionary left will formulate, discuss, debate, and refine, a vision of what a participatory society could look like, outlining the core defining institutions and social relations of what a participatory economy, feminist kinship relations, egalitarian inter-community relations, participatory democracy, international solidarity, and environmental justice will look like. It will bring this message of hope and positive alternatives to every community in America.

Organizing: actually making the change we want to see, a new revolutionary left is made of organizers, not merely activists, the latter being those who take action while the former being those who organize ever greater numbers of people to take action with increasing commitment and effectiveness. Such a Left understands that change can only occur if progressive forces are intellectually, institutionally, and politically ready to lead humanity to liberation.

Strategy: seeking maximum effectiveness, a new revolutionary left will study the art of strategy, learning from successful progressive social movements as well as from military, business, and rightwing strategy. It will train a generation of critical thinkers and thoughtful strategists.

Study: not wanting to replicate past mistakes and seeking to learn from past lessons, a new revolutionary left will be articulate, well-educated, and committed to on-going study, both of historical and current events. It will build programs of internal education for existing members and programs of external education to break down the dominant ideology.

Critical Thinking: loathing dogma, a new revolutionary left will train itself in the art of intellectual self-defense, emphasizing critical thinking, logic, reason, critical self-reflection and collective reflection, and summation of experiences. Instead of following old formulas and strategies, it will analyze the current situation and formulate appropriate strategies and methods relevant to the present day.

Numbers: in order to maximize participatory democracy and ensure eventual victory, a new revolutionary left will seek to build both a growing core of revolutionary organizers and a vibrant majoritarian progressive coalition aimed at breaking the rightwing domination of society. It understands that in order to win a new world, we will need tens of millions of people on our side committed to transforming society.

Raising Social Costs: understanding that hierarchical institutions are built upon the consent of the governed, a new revolutionary left will create dilemma situations whereby elites must choose: give into our demands or lose legitimacy and, as a result, aid in the growth of the Left. It will raise the social costs that elites must pay to carry out unjust policies, forcing them to give into our demands or pay infinitely more than they had expected.

Counter-Hegemony: since it has its fingers on the pulse of the nation, a new revolutionary left will seek to do everything in its power to break through the dominant culture and ideology. It shall seek to build a counter-hegemony, taking serious the task of education, cultural revolution, and revolutionary leadership.

Liberatory Practices: with its commitment to actively combat internal movement oppression, a new revolutionary left will develop thoroughly liberatory practices which develop and elevate the leadership of every individual in the movement, combating past oppressive norms of sexism, racism, heterosexism/homophobia/transphobia, class inequality, and authoritarianism. A new left will seek to embody the seeds of the future in present to the highest degree possible.

Effective Communication: embracing the power of language, a new revolutionary left will carefully craft its message so as to communicate effectively and precisely to the constituencies we want to win over. It will understand that our actions, words, slogans, and attitudes all convey a message to the public and that these messages are vital to our success.

Democracy and Participation: because it can’t win by using undemocratic means, a new revolutionary left will maximize democracy and participation within all of its organizations. It will understand that democracy and participation are dependent on access to knowledge, equal distribution of empowering work, and liberatory practices which level the playing field in a world which thrives on vast inequality. It will involve an ever growing number of people and, eventually, being to build new institutions based on democratic values, especially workers’, neighborhood, and kinship assemblies which will be the nuclei of the new society.

Leadership: following its commitment to democracy, a new revolutionary left will understand the responsibility of leaders to pass on their knowledge, skills, and lessons to an ever expanding core of revolutionary leaders. It will be a left that trains thousands of new leaders each year, preparing them for the challenges they will face as political organizers.

Relevancy: being in tune to the concerns, hopes and aspirations of large numbers of people, a new revolutionary left will orient its efforts towards being relevant to diverse communities who don’t yet identify as progressive, left, or revolutionary. It will build its program based on what the majority of the population cares about, what will most strengthen, expand, and prepare the movement for future gains, and what will make the most tangible difference in people’s lives.

Beloved Community: because it knows it can be better than the world outside, a new revolutionary left will be a warm, welcoming, and empowering Left. It will seek to embody all of our values to the highest degree possible. It will empower its members to grow. It will take seriously our internalized oppression and the need for each of us to heal the wounds inflicted upon us by the authoritarian society, by racism, by sexism, by homophobia, by gender binary, by alienation from work, by exploitation and oppression, and by detachment from our natural world. It will be a Left of love, of hope, and of compassion.

These are just a few tasks. When learning from the past, its useful to practice STORM’s principle of “take the best, leave all the rest.” We should take the best of theory, strategy, vision, and organizing methods, while leaving all the irrelevant stuff behind. In analyzing our own efforts, we should not merely seek to tweak what needs revolutionizing.

(Part Four coming soon…)

(Note: This is part 2 of a multi-post series… Part Three can be read by clicking here!)

An Offensive Left in America

I was going to word this slightly differently, something along the lines of “what would it take to win”, but after reading a terrific post by my friend Matt, I’ll ask instead “what would it take for the (future) Left to go on the offensive?” That is, what would it take for a growing American Left to actually be relevant when crises happen in the future? What would it take for the American Left to seize the moment when the climate crisis worsens, or recession deepens? Returning to the original phrasing: what would it take to go on the offensive?

Thinking About Winning Through a Different View of Power

Leftists need to start conceptualizing power differently.

Progressives in the United States often have a strangely authoritarian view of power. If I’d have to argue an origin of the analysis of power, I’d probably have to point to the obvious one: growing up in an authoritarian system. Most leftists see “winning” as an inherently top down endeavor. This view probably comes from not transcending what we’ve been taught by the dominant ideology. They see revolution as either “seizing” or “smashing” what they see as “the State”. Often in conceptualizing the state, they do not include the institutions of society on which it is based and dependent.

A common definition of the State (i.e. the government) used by progressives is “a force that is alienated from and above the people”. Coming from a different perspective, the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, and well as American progressive Gene Sharp, both explained how governments are dependent on the consent and cooperation of the “governed”. More accurately power is seen as not a division between “the State” and “the People”, but rather those who control the state bureaucracy and those who just passively participate in its foundational institutions. These institutions - schools, churches, workplaces, our communities and local governments - all form the spine of the state. Without the active cooperation of the majority of these institutions, the government would cease to exist. The greatest myth of State power is that it is “alienated and above the people”. Without the participation of soldiers and police for example - two segments of the people - a State can’t exist. Another one may rise in its place, but that particular form of government disappears.

Winning means weakening and taking away the State’s power, transforming its power, and revolutionizing the type of power the institution wields. You can’t chop off the top of the power pyramid and expect to win. Nor can you expect the pyramid to just “fall apart”. To win, you’ve got to gain control of the pyramid. Sometimes that means seizing the top of it. Sometimes that means getting the majority of the pyramid’s base to agree with you. Usually it means gaining control of the balance of power - that is, gaining control of enough of the pyramid, enough crucial locations within it as to be able to exercise control over the entire system. In a practical sense, this means putting a lot of work into breaking down the dominant ideology which keep people cooperating with the government instead of building institutions of self-rule.

Victory Means Winning the War
Following that, winning isn’t primarily about the day-to-day battles. Rosa Luxembourg, the courageous German revolutionary, once said: “you lose, you lose, you lose… you win.” By this she meant that on the path towards victory there will be many setbacks. There will be many places where the going gets tough, where it seems like victory is impossible, where it seems like the game is rigged (because, in fact, it is). But winning isn’t about winning all the battles. While innovating and honing our strategy will lead to more tactical victories, we will always face setbacks. Winning is about winning a series of reforms and about increasing the strength of the movement in such a way which ultimately leads to our eventual seizure of power throughout society - seizure of power, institutionally and ideologically, in religious institutions, communities, families, workplaces, and government. Winning is primarily about winning the war.

To win we will need very large numbers of people - millions of people - who actively are fighting for the new world, who share a common vision, who have a common analysis of  the task ahead, and who are organized into fighting political organizations capable of consolidating gains, and pushing further after every reform campaign that is one.

An Offensive Left

In the United States, there is no left-wing force that is capable of defending past gains much less going on the offensive to win increasingly more radical, bold, yet winnable demands on a path towards social revolution and seizure of power. There are leftists in the U.S., but no Left. But there is no commonality of action, vision, and strategy among them. And a population, however big, that does not have unity of vision and action, is no force at all.

Crises are a combination of both threats and opportunities, the point at which things can begin to change in various directions. In our situation, with our society being plagued by deep ecological, cultural, and economic crises, we are faced with great threats and great opportunities. The ecological crisis in particular is a race for the survival of all life on Earth. You can’t find a bigger threat than that.

Yet despite these threats and opportunities, there is no Left to take the offensive during this crisis. There is no organized Left that has the ability to organize for and maximize reform gains and recruit new people who are questioning the nature of the system itself. There is no movement which is making the connections between ecology and economy, at deep, fundamental levels, counterpoising 1. capitalist chaos with the justice, stability and peace of a democratically planned economic system; 2. white supremacy with racial justice and imperialism with internationalism; 3. patriarchy with feminist kinship relations; and 4. the state with participatory democracy.

This relates to the authoritarian view of power that many leftists hold: They see the primary obstacles to social change as the military-police forces, the ruling class’s control of wealth, and the monopoly of elites on the media. As such, they don’t orient themselves towards the primary obstacle of what it really takes to win and what that precisely entails, namely the organizing of millions of people and the training of tens of thousands of revolutionary leaders and organizers.

Going on the offensive would mean that revolutionary organizations would be built to fulfill that task: to build movement organizations in their own right and push them forward in the most effective direction, to host study groups and education efforts, and to provide support and community to progressive and revolutionary forces. Instead of bickering about precise “lines” about revolutions which occurred a century ago, such a left would concern itself with unity of vision, strategy, and program. It would be the principled voice of reason and long-term goals within coalitions and movement organizations. It would win thousands to its cause not through the constant need to argue, but by reasoned debate where appropriate rooted, based on real contradictions that progressives run into, and by being the most dynamic, strategic and visionary force in the movement.

Its high time revolutionary democratic forces took their task of building for revolutionary seriously and oriented their actions towards achieving victory. Only then can we even begin to think about going on the offensive in the U.S.

(Read Part Three!)

(Note: This is part 1 of a multi-post series… Part Two can be read by clicking here!)

For the last few days, I’ve been hearing virtually the same thing from everyone with half a brain or half a conscience: why is the U.S. Government bailing out Wall Street while doing nothing to help ordinary Americans.

I’ve heard this from news anchors, and while walking down the street in New York City, reading in a cafe, sitting on the train, and talking to my family. I’ve event heard, on several occasions, people and news anchors directly questioning the very nature of free market economics and capitalism. More importantly, this is a consistent message coming from ordinary people across the political spectrum. I want to draw two points from this.

Tell Us Something We Don’t Know!

Everyone has thought for ages, continues to thinks, and will keep thinking in the future that our world, our economy, our government, and our culture are all utterly corrupt, undemocratic, and unjust. Someone close to me told me last week, flat out: “Brian, it’s the end of the world.” They were referring to the simultaneous bank failures, multiple hurricanes, Midwest floods, and other symptoms of the ongoing climate and economic crises.

Mind you, almost none of these messages are coming from the “American Left”. And for a very good reason: there is no “American Left”. There is no organized force in the United States capable of responding to crises such as these. But I’ll come back to that point in minute.

As I wrote in my last post, both President Bush and Senator McCain have been talking about how market economics are the “best system ever devised” (Bush) and how the “fundamentals of our economy are strong” (McCain). Senator Obama quickly responded that it showed how McCain’s statement was detached from the reality of what’s going on in our country. An organized left, if one actually existed, would have responded slightly differently I think. McCain isn’t detached - at least not on this issue. Neither is President Bush. They both know exactly what they are doing. They know that when the entire population is questioning if capitalism is even a workable system, you have to parrot back: “there is no alternative, stupid”, and “grow up”, “deal with reality”, or more precisely “capitalism is the best system ever devised” (Bush). An organized left would have seen these statements for what they are: apologies and propaganda used to uphold an utterly flawed and profoundly undemocratic economic system which is currently in deeply in crisis.

Even better, the people in this country needed no convincing that capitalism is a garbage system - they already knew it. It wasn’t the left who convinced young people that this system is undemocratic and unjust. Their daily experiences taught them that. Gone are the days when leftists in American have any justification for their belief that we can win Americans to our cause by explaining to them, day after day, why the system is rotten. They know that already. Gone are the days when leftists - both “old” and “new” - have any justification for their argument that we don’t need an inspiring and hopeful vision of the future in order to compel people to action. Barack Obama has a vision for America’s future. John McCain has a vision for America’s future. A developing left needs a vision for America’s future. People are tired of hearing about the problems. They already know what’s wrong. They want to hear about solutions. They want to hear about alternatives. They want to hear about a life after capitalism.

(Read Part Two!)

“In the long run, Americans have good reason to be confident in our economic strength. Despite corrections in the marketplace and instances of abuse, democratic [sic] capitalism is the best system ever devised.” - George W. Bush, September 25, 2008

“The fundamentals of the economy are strong.” - John McCain, September 15, 2008

You’ll hear lots of politicians, CEO’s, and media pundits using similar language in the days ahead. The economy is “strong”. capitalism is the “best system possible.” Or, perhaps more bluntly, they’ll say what they really mean: there is no alternative.

Fundamental crises like these, where the government has to step in to prevent the market system from literally collapsing and sending us into a depression, are proof enough for the average onlooker that market capitalism is a deeply flawed and profoundly undemocratic system.

Right-wing politicians like Bush and McCain, who claim to favor “small government”, have been exposed for who they really are. While social programs have been cut over the last four years, our national debt has skyrocketed to nearly  $11 trillion dollars. Small government? Ha! While bipartisan politicians and Wall Street CEO’s rob taxpayers of money to fund an unpopular regional war in the Middle East and bailout criminal corporate robber barons, millions of Americans can’t afford to travel to work, buy food, or pay their rents and mortgage.

While the climate crisis is spiraling out of control, with the north pole becoming an island - detached from all surrounding continents - for the first time in 50,000 years, the Washington-Wall Street racket is spending $3 trillion dollars - and killing millions of people - on a fossil fuel drilling expedition in Iraq.

McCain and Obama’s answer to the crisis? Slightly different programmatic positions, but McCain articulated their commonality best: “Drill Baby, Drill.” The gas prices issue leads to their common (non-)solution: “energy independence”. What’s the term really mean? Read: having a backup plan should imperialist endeavors in the Middle East fail. While leaders like former Vice President Gore are calling for 100% clean energy by 2019, advocating young people utilize civil disobedience to achieve it, Senator Obama - the Democratic Party candidate for President - advocates “energy independence” by 2020. Climate change is a global crisis and should not be turned into sell-out slogans to pick up votes and gain the presidency. The two presidential candidates should grow a spine and take a real stance on the issue. Unfortunately the American people will have to force them to do so.

So why exactly are Bush and McCain bringing out the “there is no alternative” (TINA) argument when both the economy and climate are in deep crisis? Hmmm. I wonder. What we have are two crises that exist, largely due to the chaotic nature of market economics. Costs of production and consumption on humans and the environment aren’t figured into market transactions. The government is forced to use hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to bailout corporations that have caused the economic spiral towards recession.

So why all the talk about “capitalism being the best system ever devised”? Its simple, because none of these problems would exist in a democratic economy. Go figure.

No sooner than I started to put my thoughts about the environment and markets onto paper, did I stumble upon a concrete example of one of the main things I was thinking about. I got out of bed this morning, went downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee, went outside to the end of the driveway, and grabbed the morning paper. As I was pulling the paper out of the box, a small headline indicating an article at the center of the paper caught my eye: “Utility finds foes to renewable energy line plan.”

The problem the article talked about was straightforward. We desperately need a green energy revolution – that goes without saying. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. wants to build a $1.5 billion solar power plant in the California desert which would provide clean power to half of the utility’s population, almost 750,000 people. Fair enough. So here’s the problem: power plants need power lines and they want those power lines to cut through 23 miles of pristine desert parklands.  Many people, quite understandably, aren’t too fond of the idea.

Why I was surprised I don’t know. Corporate destruction of communities and the environment is inevitable and endemic under market capitalism. And for good reason – people have no democratic say in what companies do with their land and to communities and the environment. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t want economic democracy. When asked, people always say they want a democratic say over the decisions which affect their lives. People want a democratic approach to our economic life and, when pressed, most people support either venues of public input or government regulation. Putting aside democracy for a second, both methods involve an intentional and planned response to market chaos and tyranny. Government regulation prevents markets and corporations from completely destroying our society, while avenues of public input (which are usually very limited or a sham) prevent people from completely revolting against their economic masters by providing concessions to them– they give a semblance of democracy in response to the naked tyranny of the “free” market.

I’m an advocate of what I think is the only solution to this problem: the abolition of markets as an economic system, and the establishment of a democratic and participatory economy with participatory planning to take its place. In short, I want to replace the hellhole we call capitalism with real economic justice, freedom, and democracy. This is the topic I think we all need to start talking about.

Whatever one thinks about cutting through pristine parklands (especially considering the myriad of alternative locations and methods for construction), there is an irrefutable contradiction in our current economic system: under capitalism, people neither have or ever will have a democratic say in the decisions which affect their lives. Development, economic growth, and the shaping of our economic future are all left up to people in corporate boardrooms with no connection to the lives of ordinary people. Every time there’s a new technological development, no matter how it might improve our lives in the long run, ordinary people somewhere end up getting the short end of the stick. This usually revolves around one of the central tenants of capitalism, namely that someone else – virtually always the superrich and their mega-corporations – gets to define your economic future (or more precisely, your economic hell is the byproduct of the prosperity of the owning and coordinating classes). Markets have no mechanism to allow for democratic control – we couldn’t have a democratic say in the economy even if we wanted to. In a market economy, the interests of the owners and managers of society are always fundamentally opposed to the needs and aspirations of society’s poor and working people, which, in America, are disproportionally people of color.

What makes all this more tragic is that there are alternatives to the chaos of markets and class inequality. Democratic workplaces where all people share in empowering work, management, and the more difficult work can replace undemocratic workplaces where ordinary workers have no say in decisions and do only shit work. Such workplaces could be collectively owned and organized to benefit our entire society. Those democratic workplaces – along with community councils or governments – can network into local, regional, and national networks of councils – that is, we can form economic governments to democratically decide what our economic futures should look like. Workplaces and worker-run industries could submit annual workplace plans for production. Community councils could submit annual plans of what they need and want society to produce. A process of negotiation –a sort-of economic conversation about what’s needed and wanted for the year – would occur and, after a few rounds of back-and-forths between the councils, would lead to a plan for that economic year. The plan could be changed as needed throughout the year, but we’d accomplish something that would be truly remarkable: we’d have a directly democratic way to decide what should be produced, what products we want to use that year, how to effectively and sustainably use resources and protect the natural environment, how to go about promoting growth, what technologies to invest in, how to protect human, civil, and labor rights, and how to have a more empowering and secure society and economy. The point is, there are democratic alternatives to the current chaos we live under.

If green development is left up to big corporations, not only will they be resistant to it for many years – coal and oil companies certainly aren’t gonna give up without a fight – but it will be the rich, and not the rest of us, who will benefit from the greening of our economy. As is evident by the San Diego power plant example, many corporations that do “go green” will do it out of a drive for power and profit, instead of ecological necessity and sanity. And even if that weren’t true, plans made in ivory-tower board rooms will never take into account the needs and ideas of our communities and families. Ordinary people will suffer from these failings. Areas of the natural environment will be destroyed; communities will be devastated, and much, much worse. A clean and just energy revolution is needed more than ever, yes. Such devastation would happen without a clean energy revolution in a thousand other, and more destructive, ways. But what I’m saying is that we can have clean and green energy and economic justice and democracy. And more, I’m saying that it’s likely that it will be impossible to solve the climate crisis without being well on the way to economic democracy.

If we think economic democracy is a desirable aim, then that necessitates that environmental groups fighting for clean and just energy put economic justice and democracy – namely democratic workplaces, social ownership of those workplaces, liberatory labor compensation norms, and democratic economic planning – on their agendas. A participatory economic future needs to be one of our central demands. We need to build such an economy from the bottom up. We need to fight for reforms which leave us stronger than we were before, lift up those who most need lifting, and lead us on a path towards the democratizing of the economy. This is one of the most important tasks for my generation. It is our generation calling.

When the alternatives to economic injustice and tyranny are so clear, the only remaining question is: “why not?” And if the only major question is “why not”, why don’t we add economic emancipation to our list of aims, goals, and demands. Shouldn’t our organizational platforms, culture, and conversation reflect what we actually want? And more so, while some level of reform is possible, will a clean and just energy revolution be possible without economic democracy? Unwavering action, more thorough organizing, and bolder demands seem, to me at least, to be the only logical course of action for our movement for a greener, more just, and more democratic society. We should leave nothing up to chance.

We are trying to win a new economy, a new realm of daily life and love, a new culture, a new polity, a new ecology, a new internationalism, all without hierarchies that condemn some people to subordination. We reject roles unsuited for humanity - the role of the owner, boss, manager; the role of the patriarch, misogynist, homophobe; the role of the racist, religious bigot, fundamentalist; the role of the denier, decrier, decider, dictator; the role of polluter of air, sea, and land; the role of bombardier, cultural commissar, empire expander. Gone with all of that.

We are pursuing this better world that will leave behind these horribly oppressive aspects by seeking improvements in people’s lives right now, from the washed out streets in New Orleans to the porn strewn back alleys in Chicago, from the black lunged mines in West Virginia to the dignity destroying commercialism of billboards and TV, from rural poverty to urban blight, from self-imposed diets seeking false beauty to society-imposed diets imposing criminal starvation, from the flesh houses of Los Angeles and its glam and glitter to the cardboard homes under bridges in Philadelphia, from the miles of AA meetings to the miles of local bars, from the capacity crushing horrors imposed on eighty percent of our school’s students to the elite Ivy farms spewing out scholars who lack sense and humanity, from the modern slave houses called prisons to the court houses that function like auction houses, from elections that are bought and sold by rich corporate executives investing in their preferred paths of domination to acres and acres of misguided commodity production remorselessly destroying our weather and water, from the endless skyways of half empty hotels to the endless alley ways of homeless children, mothers, and fathers.

We seek more income for the poor, more power for the weak, more status for the forlorn, more social ties for the lonely, more responsibility for all our crying souls. We seek equitable material well being, self managing influence, and mutual fulfillment of all kinds. We seek, as well, to ensure that our demands today not only partly redress the suffering caused by the world we now inhabit but also move us toward a better future in which worldly and spiritual benefits of society reach a high level and then persist due to the intrinsic logic of our new institutions rather than only when we win against harsh opposition.

And why we are doing all this? We are doing it tirelessly, steadfastly, and vigorously, for the memory of revolutionaries and visionaries and humanists from history past, for people all around us now, and for history’s and humanity’s future.

We are trying to win a new economy in which there are no classes. No one in the better world we seek will own workplaces, resources, or other people’s ability to do work. There will be no owners of Walmarts or Microsofts. There will be no private profits. There will be no wage slaves, working under the dictates of others. Further, no one will monopolize empowering conditions at work, as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and managers so typically do now, and on that account rule over those left only menial and obedient tasks. No one will earn inequitably whether from property, power, or output. No one will have more say over decisions than the fair share that we all are entitled to in accord with how much we are affected. There will be no top and no bottom of who decides what for whom. There will be no order giver and no order taker about production, allocation, or consumption. There will be no class responsible for decisions while another class is suppressed and responsible only to obey. We will all be elevated to use our fullest capacities and express our fullest desires, rather than most of us learning only to endure boredom and to obey orders showered down on us by the anointed masters of all that occurs. Our new economy will be classless, at last. Out with the old boss - and out with any new boss, too. We will enjoy a participatory economy, operating as one part of a participatory society.

But our project is not just about economics - we are not economistic. We realize that life is not working and consuming alone. For example, we are trying to win a new polity too, that will incorporate the will of all citizens in legislation, that will adjudicate disputes to produce justice, that will respond to violations to attain rehabilitation and liberation rather than vengeance and retribution. Our new polity will have citizens of diverse age, belief, experience, and knowledge, but will not have rulers and ruled. We are not merely seeking new Presidents and Senators because we understand that our political problem is government by a few - not simply the oddities of any particular few who happen to be prowling around the White House and Senate at any particular moment. We won’t have political choices mediated by dollar bills but by the will of informed citizens, each with equal rights and comparable means. We will have in our new society’s new polity, participatory democracy and self management. We won’t have information conveyed by agents of corporate power. We will have education, communication, and popular participation that together prepare all citizens to be full participants in social life and decision making. We will build and responsibly contribute to assemblies that express our informed desires for legislation allowing us to self manage our political and social life. We will build media that conveys expert information so we can function wisely. We will adopt decision methods that apportion influence over outcomes to those affected in proportion as they are affected so that we collectively self manage our conditions and projects. We might well call all this participatory politics, one more part of our new participatory society.

Beyond economy and polity, however, we are trying as well to win a new realm of sexuality, nurturance, socialization, and daily life. Do the roots of sexism reside in nuclear marriage as we know it? Do they stem from a gender division of labor that is women mothering and men fathering rather than both parenting? Is sexism born in a disparity in who does caretaking work and who doesn’t? Are there other roots of sexism, other structures that continually toss misogyny up into our lives, reproducing its contours year in and year out, and thereby subverting our potentials for sharing and caring? Whatever the roots of patriarchy are, whatever produces and reproduces sexism, it will all be transcended in a new world. Sexism will be only a memory in the new world we will win and celebrate. Will we need communal living arrangements, new modes of parenting, new ways of apportioning the labors of life, all even beyond the obvious need for fair and free access for women to all positions in society? If we do, then that’s the feminism we must and will achieve in our new participatory society. If something more or other is needed, then that too will be done. We will have participatory kinship, participatory living, in our new participatory society, nothing less is acceptable.

We are trying to win a new culture, as well, that celebrates cultural diversity while defending each community’s every participant. Our preferred new society will include social structures and relations that welcome spirituality and religious sentiment even as our new approaches escape the strictures of fundamentalism of all kinds and respect atheism as well. In our new society, we will all still celebrate, communicate, identify, and forge ways of seeing and understanding ourselves and our communities - but we will do it with mutual respect, taking pleasure not only in our own solutions but in admiring, learning from, and enjoying the rich variety of other people’s solutions too. We will choose our cultural communities freely, move among them as we choose, and refine and enrich our ties to them over the course of our lives. Racism, religious bigotry, ethnocentrism, and all kinds of self identification based on or presupposing the inferiority and subordination of others will have become a thing of the past, and our ways of constructing our communities and the institutions we adopt in our new cultural relations will have to respect, abide, and propel that outcome. New cultural institutions, that is, will guard the rights and norms of all communities, but particularly of the smaller in disputes with the larger. The name for all this might be multiculturalism or perhaps intercommunalism, another leg for our new participatory society to stand on.

We seek a greener world too, but not just sustainability. We are not content with the idea that the best we can do is to avoid suicide, which is what sustainability literally mandates. Rather, in our participatory society not only will our culture and daily life respect our natural environment, but our legislation will freely and effectively protect it and our economy will properly discern its interconnections and their value. Likewise, even beyond our own shores, we seek a community of countries that goes beyond being at peace to attain a condition of mutual benefit. We will have war no more - of course - but we will not dispense with global ties. On the contrary, we will enrich and extend global ties so that countries freely share their lessons and virtues, protect one another from harm, and exchange not according to competitive norms that ensure that trade benefits accrue mostly to whoever is richer and more powerful, but instead exchange in a way that always reduces disparities in wealth and power. In the time-honored tradition of our predecessors, we can call this internationalism, but it is ultimately just participatory societies participating in cooperative solidarity with one another.

But how do we win all this, that’s the question, isn’t it? We know we must. We know we will. But how? Of course, we only know some things about this massive question - the rest will be revealed only in the clash and jangle of struggles and constructions as we pursue the road forward. But, even now, there are some insights we can commit to, as we develop and share more.

In our future there will be participatory self management via worker and consumer councils in the economy, via people’s assemblies in the polity, and via new personal and collective arrangements in culture and in kinship as well. We can’t grow that kind of future participation using movements that are harshly hierarchical. No more of that. We can’t attain equitable remuneration, self management, classlessness, women and men in partnership, sexual liberation, political participation, wide dispersal of information, cultural intercommunalism, a wise relation to nature, and internationalism, if we use movement vehicles that incorporate the ills of the present. No more of that. We can’t have racism, sexism, or classism in our movements. No more, no more.

We will win a better world by winning sequences of improvements in people’s lives within existing society which also win our movements ever more consciousness, ever more commitment, and ever more infrastructure of struggle, until they are powerful and wise enough to win not solely modest elixirs for pain, but also the infrastructure of full freedom and liberation.

We can’t create a society of sharing souls by having fragmented, alienated movements. We can’t generate responsibility and initiative with movements that denigrate and debilitate. We can’t sustain participation with movements that are as oppressive as society at large - indeed we can’t win with these flaw in our movements since winning entails a movement of perhaps a hundred million involved participant leaders. Without movements that give their participants better lives than they would have outside, more friends, more love, more dignity, more empowerment, more knowledge, more confidence, we can’t win. So we must create such movements.

We can’t use anti democratic means to produce democratic results. We can’t use anti egalitarian norms to produce equitable distribution. We can’t use authoritarian culture and conceptions to produce participation. We can’t maintain soul wrecking values much less elitist and egocentric behaviors to produce intercommunalism.

We need to have our eyes on the real prize which is to enlarge membership, enlarge consciousness, enlarge commitment, and enlarge infrastructure, all consistent with our long term aims and not solely our short run priorities and tactics.

We do it for workers on the line, bored, tired, impoverished, and robbed of their creative days. No more Maggie’s Farm for us, instead classlessness.

We do it for women door-opened, pinched, decultured, feminized, impoverished, beaten, raped, advertised, psychologized, ball and chained. No more hustle and no more Hustler for us, instead Feminism.

We do it for Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians…nameless, robbed of dignity and means, legally lynched, harassed, low paid, running, jailed. No more plantations in the midst of plenty for us, instead Intercommunalism.

We do it for the drunks and addicts, the worn out and the never lively, for the old and ill who should be long lived and wise, for the forgotten, the dispossessed, the lonely.

For the young, schooled and unschooled, enduring boredom, sniffing glue, stealing sex and losing love, trying to escape or trying to find a way in, whether they exist under a massive thumb or are trying to grow a massive thumb with which to hold down others.

We do it for those on welfare or off it, looking into the mall or looking out from it, employed or unemployed, alone or crowded beyond sanity, hiding their sex or flaunting it, angry, sad, or mad.

We do it for all those who feel less than they could feel, for all those who have been made less than they could be in this rich land, the United States - and -

We do it for the Colombian, Paraguayan, Guatemalan, Haitian, South African, Congolese, Liberian, Sudanese, Iraqi, Iranian, Palestinian, Pakistani, Indian, Thai, Malaysian, and Chinese exploited, robbed, starved, cheated, tortured, ambushed, kidnapped, and death-squadded.

We do it for all the world’s citizens suffering the brutality and indignity of electric shocks and murdered relatives, suffering secret or public bombs, suffering Guantanamos and Abu Ghriabs, suffering poverty and even starvation, suffering the military boot and the cultural stamp.

We do it for the empire’s citizens, proud but beleaguered, and also for the empire’s enemies, our forebears:

We do it for the strikers, the saboteurs, the feminists and anarchists, the Marxists and nationalists, for those with no ideology but liberty, and for those who had too much ideology as well.

We do it for the memory of Che and the Cuban freedom fighters - we will be “guided by great feelings of love.”

We do it for the memory of Amilcar Cabral and the liberation of Africa - we will “tell no lies and claim no easy victories.”

We do it for the memory of Rosa Luxembourg and the revolutionaries of Europe - we will move, and therein we will notice and break our chains.

We do it for the memory of Alexandra Kollantai and Russians in revolt - we will not only create direct means of popular rule, we will preserve, revere, and utilize them.

We do it for Emma Goldman and the anarchists in struggle - we will dance on our way to, on our arrival at, and in celebration of our new world.

We do it for Simone de Beauvoir and feminists everywhere - we will accept no biological, psychological, or economic fate deterring women in our future.

We do it for Ho and the Vietnamese, the Vietnamese who yesterday taught us all, and who will have their day too, around the corner, over the hill, when we win the world we all desire.

We do it for r Martin Luther King Jr. - his mountain is our mountain, his vision looking into uncharted mists will become our daily pleasure, surrounding us during each breath of our lives. We will win for Martin too.

We do it for Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Righters, for Dave Dellinger and the new leftists, for Fred Hampton and the Panthers, for Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers, for Lolita Lebron and the Puerto Rican nationalists, for Leonard Peltier and the fighters in AIM, and for all the fine souls who resisted and died in the past and who nonetheless live on.

We do it for the young who dodged the draft. For the young who went to war and disrupted. For the young who went and died - or lived. For the Vietnam Veterans against war, and especially for the Iraq Veterans against war.

We do it for the French in the streets of May and the Italians in Autumn, for the Mexicans in the summer, and the Czechs and Chinese, for the Nicaraugans, the El Salvadorans, the Haitians, the Bolivians, and the Venezuelans. For the ANC and landless peasants movement. For the anti globalization veterans of Seattle and Prague. For the camepasinos in Brazil and the piqueteros in Argentina, for the Zapatistas in Mexico and for movements all over Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas - for the millions who opposed the Iraq War before it began and the many millions more who oppose it now.

We do it for everyone who has fought, fights, or will fight for a better wage, a better home, more dignity, more respect, a better life, a better world than they were, are, or are going to be bequeathed.

And at the same time, necessarily:

We do it against the Rockefellers, the Waltons and Buffets, the Somozas and Pinochets, the CIAs and FBIs, and the Bushs, Clintons, and Kissengers all.

We do it against the doctors coerced by their positions to deal in dollars but not in dignity, against the landlords, the corporate lawyers, and the politicians with their eyes closed to injustice or wallowing in its waste.

We do it against the owners, administrators, bosses, rapists and racists, those on top and those who aspire only to be on top, against all the dealers of bad hands, against the stacked decks.

We do it against the social ties and unties that breed the pain and all who grow ugly by benefiting from its continuance, one step above those suffering below.

We do it against the intellectuals who keep information as it if were their little toy, who enshrine their ignorance under false halos and who hide it behind big words, who justify barbarism or technically dissect it as their interests require, never shedding a tear, never raising a fist.

We do it against the media liars, the news pimps, the career thinkers with brains the size of cornflakes, the academics - left and right - who propagate propaganda to preserve this system or some other, and yes, we do it against the academics who call themselves socialists and always do nothing, the ones who succeed but don’t stay angry, the ones who don’t really care.

And finally, we will make this new world for our parents, our friends, our children, our children’s children, and for ourselves too.

To succeed, we must all soon agree on at least the essential core aspects of what a better world can and will embody.

To succeed, we must flexibly agree on what it will require to make it so, what skills must be learned, what tasks accomplished, what obstacles overcome, and to succeed, we must act, and act, and act, and refine our awareness as we learn from our actions.

Let us not mince words. Let us not call ourselves less than we are. The name for all this is revolution.

The name for those who believe in it, who aspire to it, who devote themselves to it, is revolutionary.

Till when there will be fewer acquaintances and many more friends and lovers, we must be revolutionary, we must be revolutionary, we must be revolutionary - to win our new world.

In capitalism, owners together with about a fifth of the population who have highly empowered work decide what is produced, by what means, and with what distribution. Nearly four fifths of the population does largely rote labor, suffers inferior incomes, obeys orders, and endures boredom, all imposed from above. As John Lennon put it, “As soon as you’re born they make you feel small, by giving you no time instead of it all.”

Capitalism destroys solidarity, homogenizes variety, obliterates equity, and imposes harsh hierarchy. It is top heavy in power and opportunity. It is bottom heavy in pain and constraint. Indeed, Capitalism imposes on workers a degree of discipline beyond what any dictator ever dreamed of imposing politically. Who ever heard of citizens asking permission to go to the bathroom, a commonplace occurrence for workers in many corporations.

Capitalism’s ills are not due to antisocial people. Instead, capitalism’s institutions impose horrible behavior even on its most social citizens. In capitalism as a famous American baseball manager quipped “nice guys finish last.” More aggressively: “garbage rises.” Witness Washington’s White House.

Participatory economics is an alternative way to organize economic life.

It has equitable incomes, circumstances, opportunities, and responsibilities for all participants. Each participant in a participatory economy has a fair share of control over their own life and over all shared social outcomes. Participatory economics eliminates class division.

It produces solidarity. Even an antisocial individual in a participatory economy has no choice but to account for social well-being if he or she wishes to prosper.

It diversifies outcomes and generates equitable distribution that remunerates each participant for how long and how hard they work as well as for harsh conditions they may suffer at work.

It also conveys to each person a say in what is produced, what means are used, and how outputs are allocated, all in proportion to the degree he or she is affected by those decisions.

Participatory economics, in other words, has completely different values than capitalism and to further its different values participatory economics incorporates different institutions.

It has workers and consumers councils where workers and consumers employ diverse modes of discussion, debate, and democratic determination. In a participatory economic, there are no corporate owners and managers deciding outcomes from the top down.

It has balanced jobs in which each worker does a fair combination of empowering and rote labor, so that all participants have comparably empowering circumstances instead of 20% of the workforce monopolizing all the empowering tasks and 80% doing only subordinate labor. In a participatory economy there is still expertise. There is still coordination. Decisions still get made. But there is no minority monopolizing empowering information, activity, and access to decision making positions while a majority is made subservient by doing only deadening daily tasks with no decision making component.

In a participatory economy, each and every job, which means each and every person’s work, involves a mix calibrated so that each participant has essentially equally empowering conditions. A participatory economy has no owning class. It has no technocratic, managerial, or coordinator class. A participatory economy has only workers and consumers cooperatively creatively fulfilling their capacities consistently with each participant having a fair share of influence.

It has remuneration for effort and sacrifice, which translates to remuneration for the duration, intensity, and harshness of the work people do. It rejects remuneration for power, property, or even output. Instead of gargantuan disparities of income and wealth, a participatory economy has a just distribution of social product.

It also does away with markets which pit each actor against all others, destroy solidarity, impose class division, mis-price all public goods, ignore collective effects beyond direct buyers and sellers, violate ecological balance and sustainability, and have many other faults as well. In place of markets it utilizes a system of workers and consumers, through their self managing councils, cooperatively negotiating inputs and outputs for all firms and actors in accord with true and full social costs and benefits of economic activities.

In a short article it is impossible to make even a quick much less a compelling case for an entirely different economic system. I can only offer a brief list of participatory economics’ values and institutions. I know such brevity is vague and hard for unfamiliar readers to give substance to. But here we have no room for clarification, supporting argument, or detailed discussion. My apologies.

What I hope, however, is that readers who know from their own experience that capitalist economies routinely cause us to fleece each other, deny us having a say over our own lives or force us to dominate the lives of others, distribute massive outputs to those who do the most pleasurable or even who do no work at all and distribute meager outputs to those who do the least pleasurable and the overwhelming volume of work, will hope that participatory economics is a real alternative.

I can hope, in other words, that instead of quietly accepting rich people’s passivity-inducing mantra that “there is no alternative,” we will all seek something better, beyond capitalism, and that, moved by our aspirations we will carefully consider participatory economics on its merits. One place that you might begin, if you don’t accept that humanity is forever doomed to suffer gross inequality and hierarchy via capitalist ownership, corporations, and markets, is at the Participatory Economics website.