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--- organization [2018/10/28 16:45]
Sam Friedman
+++ organization [2018/11/18 13:35] (current)
admin
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-===== Organization =====
+===== Politics =====
 ==== Then ====
-[by **Fred**, 12/8/17, based on //DiEM_Left-Is-Dead.pdf//]
+[Previous Europe-specific text moved to [[regions#Europe|Regions/Then/Europe]]]
-The historic defeat of the German Social-democratic Party (SPD) in the 2017 federal elections marked the end of the political framework that had shaped European societies since the end of World War II. Such a framework has rested on two pillars, i.e. a social-democratic and a bourgeois-liberal pole, which long competed for government, by articulating clearly distinct sets of policies, while agreeing on the basic tenets of liberal, capitalist democracy. As the social-democratic pillar crumbled, the way was opened for the rise of right-wing, national-populist, or even fascist-type parties. Those parties succeeded for a time in appealing to social and demographic groups that had historically supported not only the Social Democrats, but the Left in general, such as “blue collar” workers, students, public employees and young voters.
-Thus the crisis of social-democratic parties was nothing but the tip of the iceberg, the base of which consisted in the crisis of the entire Left, ranging from classical Social Democracy, to green and post- or neo-communist parties. Second, such a crisis was not only political, since it impinged on the very social basis of progressive politics. What then needed to be done? To answer such a crucial question, it was necessary to grasp the nature of the relations between left-wing parties and their social base. Historically, social-democratic, communist and green parties had always risen as the political offshoots of vibrant social movements: trade unions, working class mutual aid associations, cooperative societies, religious communities, environmental protection organizations, anti-colonialist, feminist, civil rights and LGBTQ movements. Such movements not only provided progressive parties with electoral momentum, but they also built large networks that allowed the disenfranchised to socialize and to empower themselves.
-The crisis of the political Left was thus nothing but the final act of a tragedy that started to unfold at the end of the 1970s, the deep sense of which was perfectly summarized by Margaret Thatcher’s notorious phrase, “There’s no such thing as society”. As the historian Tony Judt put it, what was unfolding was "the steady shift of public responsibility onto the private sector to no discernible collective advantage”, which caused, in turn, “an increased difficulty in comprehending what we have in common with others”. It followed that bringing back progressive politics meant bringing back society itself, understood as the common space where individuals could reclaim the capacity to flourish, through free collective association and with the support of public institutions. The question remained, which forces could possibly achieve such a goal? And how would they go about it?
-Existing progressive forces seemed doomed to fall short of the mark. Western communist parties had already lost most of their social base even before they were buried by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and only became further marginalized. As for the Greens, they had embodied the hope for a renewal of progressive politics throughout the 1980s and the ‘90s, fueled by new forms of civic engagement. However, they steadily abandoned their “alternative” roots to fully integrate into existing institutions.
-Social-democratic parties long presented themselves as a beacon for progressive politics in western Europe, by helping to craft the welfare state system in the 1950s and 60s. But by a strange irony of fate, those same parties were instrumental in dismantling that system in following decades. The demise of social-democratic parties could not, however, be reduced to the treachery of their élites. On the contrary, it was rooted in two structural weaknesses of the compromise between capital and labor that they helped to bring about. As Tony Judt remarked, social-democratic parties benefited from “a very particular combination of circumstances”, both from a political and an economic point of view, which were doomed to fade away. Moreover, they tied their political action to the framework of the nation-state, which was in crisis as globalization proceeded.
 ==== How ====
-Those seeking a way out of this impasse pointed to three key notions: The first was “grassroots”, since any new movement would need to establish the largest possible social base, while supporting all the other forces that shared its goals. The second was “communication”, since a new movement would also need to spread its values and policies as broadly as possible, by combining old and new media activism with street activism, canvassing and new forms of political action. The third was “electoral action”, which, in the context of a democratic state, constituted an essential tool for establishing and reversing power relations between social groups. Left-wing “electoral vehicles” had historically emerged as the culminating point of a long process of self-organization, promoted by social movements that shared the same long-term goals. It was therefore be argued by many that the grassroots and the communication phase should be prioritized over the electoral one.
+Those seeking a way out of the political impasse of the early 2000s pointed to three key notions: The first was “grassroots”, since any new movement would need to establish the largest possible social base, while supporting all the other forces that shared its goals. The second was “communication”, since a new movement would also need to spread its values and policies as broadly as possible, by combining old and new media activism with canvassing and new forms of political engagement. The third was “action,” which meant finding ways to mobilize the grassroots base in practical activity against capitalism and for the reorganization of society on a just and sustainable basis.
-Proponents of electoral activity cited Machiavelli's teaching that political action is nothing but the result of the struggle between the will of political subjects and ever-changing conditions which are not of their own choosing. In such a struggle, timing is essential, even more in times where opportunity windows open and close very rapidly. Thus they called for building electoral vehicles that were tightly connected with broader social and political movements, going well beyond traditional parties.
-In the period after Donald Trump's election as US president in 2016, ... **[start here, for Sunday 10/21]**
-Voter suppression had long been the major electoral strategy of the racist right in the U.S., going back to the Federalist era, the tragedy of the post-Civil War Reconstruction of the slave-holding South with the nation-wide triumph of Jim Crow, and again in the 21st century with the the reversal of the Civil Rights era’s victories of the 1960’s. The usual voter suppression tactics were revived with renewed Gerrymandering, closing of polling places, strict voter ID laws and massive arbitrary purging of voter rolls all aimed at minorities and the poor.
-Obviously, the way for the anti-racist left to counter this strategy was to mount a vigorous  voter registration campaign. This had been the strategy of the Rainbow Coaltion proposed by Jesse Jackson, but the national Democratic Party never endorsed it. The DNC, dominated by the millionnaire donors and established politicians, was afraid of being challenged by an expanded base and apparently preferred losing elections to the Republicans (who won the presidency twice with a minority of the popular vote). The real scandal of the Democratic defeat of 2016 was not the largely ineffective Russian stealth propaganda campaign, but the illegal suppression of the populist Sanders challenge which left Donald Trump as the only populist in the field.
-The amazing success of the grass-roots 2016 primary campaign of Sanders, an avowed socialist as well as several public opinion polls revealed that millions of Americans prefered socialism to capitalism. Socialism was no longer identified with totalitarian Communism as during the Red scare, and people were eager to learn more about it. And when the racist, mysogonist, bully Trump was “elected,” many gave up on the existing political system altogether and began looking for alternatives.
-Within less that two years, a more-or-less moribund organization with the attractive name of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) had 50,000 new members and counting. DSA was the latest incarnation of the historic U.S. Socialist Party/Social Democratic Federation. The SP’s perennial Presidential candidate was E.V. Debs, who was thrown into prison by Democrat Woodrow Wilson for his opposition to the U.S. entry into WWI (in 1920 Debs garnered a million votes from his cell in Leavenworth).  The SP was decimated by the post-WWI Red scare and later was pushed aside by the more radical Communist Party. The post-WWII Red scare reduced both parties to mere shells.
-In 1958 a Trotskyist splinter-group, the International Socialist League, whose leading theoretician was Max Schachtman, dissolved into the SP/SDF, whose leading lights were Michael Harrington and Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin. This merger dynamized the old SP through activity in the Civil Rights struggle and the growth of its youth wing, the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL), which foreshadowed the “new left” and educated a whole new radical generation, many of them still active a half-century later, in the fundamentals of socialism.
-However, under Schachtman’s influence, the new SP strategy, “political realignment,” called for working within the Democratic Party to eliminate the Southern Dixiecrats and turn the Dems into a “labor-liberal party” – a strategy which eerily prefigured Nixon’s successful 1968 “Southern strategy,” winning the racist Dixiecrats over to the Republicans. In the 60s, the SP, loyal to the Dems, refused to condemn JFK’s Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and LBJ’s escalating Vietnam War, and it also opposed community control of NYC’s de-factor segregated public schools, as well as the seating of the Mississippi Freedom Delegation at the 1964 Democratic convention. The SP thus lost the support of the student movement, the Black movement, and the antiwar movement. However, the SP retained its influence in the establishment labor bureaucracy, where its members held leading positions which they used for despicable ends, doing their best to squash the antiwar movement and the burgeoning labor rank-and-file movement of the later 1960s.
-The SP soon lost the support of YPSL’s anti-racist, anti-imperialist youth, whom the SP leadership expelled. YPSL members dispersed into SDS, the International Socialists, the Young Socialist Alliance, News and Letters, and other radical groups. Disgraced and isolated, the SP shrank to a marginalized splinter group called the Social Democratic Federation and spun off a more leftwing group led by Michael Harrington called initially the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), which later fused with an SDS remnant, the New American Movement, to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) which persisted as a tiny group for many years until 2016, when they were rapidly revitalized by a new generation activated by Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and #NoDAPL, inspired by Bernie Sanders, and outraged by Donald Trump, who were seeking a socialist home. DSA rapidly became “the only game in town” for socialist youth.
-The revitalized DSA rapidly broke with its past, resigning from the neoliberal Socialist International (which included France’s François Holland and Greece’s Papandreou) and repudiating Harrington’s subservience to the Democratic Party, while struggling with the issue of what kind of electoral strategy to pursue without falling into the same trap. [RG]
-As the label "the left" ceased to have substantive meaning - encompassing everyone from Hillary Clinton to ___ - a new terminology gradually emerged:  Utopians vs. Conformists. [Sam Fassbinder]  https://caucus99percent.com/content/utopians-vs-conformists-part-two
+In the context of states that still preserved democratic forms of rule, "action" often took the form of participation in elections, which was seen by many as an essential tool for establishing and reversing power relations between social groups. Left-wing electoral vehicles had historically emerged as the culminating point of a long process of self-organization, promoted by social movements that shared the same long-term goals, so it was often argued that the grassroots and the communication should take priority over electoral activity. Proponents of the latter countered with Machiavelli's teaching that political action is nothing but the result of the struggle between the will of political subjects and ever-changing conditions which are not of their own choosing. In such a struggle, timing is essential, even more in times where opportunity windows open and close very rapidly. Thus they called for building electoral vehicles that were tightly connected with broader social and political movements, going well beyond traditional parties.
-Branch here to 3 scenarios in 2024:
+[by **Richard**; edited 11/18 by Fred] In the United States, voter suppression had long been a key element in the electoral strategy of the racist right wing, going back to the Federalist era, the tragedy of the post-Civil War Reconstruction in the slave-holding South with the nation-wide triumph of Jim Crow, and again in the 21st century with the the reversal of the Civil Rights era’s victories of the 1960’s. Such voter suppression tactics were revived in the 2010s with renewed gerrymandering, closing of polling places, strict voter ID laws and massive arbitrary purging of voter rolls all aimed at minorities and the poor.
-.	Election is annulled, but the people revolt
-.	The social democrats win the election but do their usual thing, and then the people revolt
-.	The social democrats win and succeed in reforming the economy but run up against the environmental crisis
-a.	Friedman scenario: the people revolt
-b.	Schwartzmann scenario: solar communism
-[Choose your candidate: Bernie, Michelle Alexander, Rev Barber, Barbara Lee] won the presidency in 2024 along with 312 DSA members elected to the House of Representatives and 53 who joined the US Senate. Hopes and fantasies bloomed among the Utopians and their supporters. In the daily operation of government, the new DSA regime and its officers were soon confronted by capital flight: The rich and their corporations moved bank accounts to the banks of other countries, cut back on investments and on opening new facilities in the USA, and sped up their transfer of portable operations to other countries. The FBI claimed to have found evidence that bots supporting Bernie had been organized and financed by billionaires in Abu Dhabi and party hacks in Venezuela. Bernie and the DSA members of Congress spent months defending themselves from these accusations and finding ways to give corporations subsidies to bring jobs back to America. The fascists among Trump's supporters did their best to organize racist reaction against Sanders and his ilk, all of whom they claimed had African-American blood in their genomes, one part in 12,000.
+Obviously, the way for the anti-racist left to counter this strategy was to mount a vigorous voter registration campaign. This had been the strategy of Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s, but the official Democratic Party never endorsed it. Dominated by millionaire donors and established politicians, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) feared being challenged by an expanded base and apparently preferred losing elections to the Republicans (who won the presidency twice with a minority of the popular vote). The real scandal of the Democratic defeat of 2016 was not the largely ineffective Russian stealth propaganda campaign, but the illegal suppression of the left-populist challenge by Sen. Bernie Sanders, which left Donald Trump as the only populist in the field.
+The amazing success of the grass-roots primary campaign by Sanders, an avowed socialist, as well as several public opinion polls, revealed that millions of Americans preferred socialism to capitalism. Socialism was no longer identified with totalitarian Communism as during the Red scare, and people were eager to learn more about it. And when the racist, misogynist, bully Trump was elected with a minority of the popular vote, many gave up on the official political parties and began looking for alternatives.
-Meanwhile, millions of working women, working and unemployed Blacks, immigrants, and large parts of the 90% were disappointed and pissed off. Their lives were not improving. The environment continued to go to hell. They got poorer and poorer, and the cops continued to run amok in their communities, even as 1/4 of the cops and their families were on food stamps due to cutbacks. As the Utopians had long expected, all hell broke loose.
+Within less that two years, a more-or-less moribund social democratic outfit with the attractive name of [[dsa-history|Democratic Socialists of America]] (DSA) had 50,000 new members and continued to grow rapidly. The revitalized DSA rapidly broke with its past, resigning from the neoliberal Socialist International (which included France’s François Holland and Greece’s Papandreou) and rejecting subservience to the official Democratic Party, while struggling with the issue of what kind of electoral strategy to pursue without falling into the same trap. [end Richard]
+In subsequent US elections, DSA-supported candidates gained ground rapidly. Before long [Bernie Sanders, Michelle Alexander, Rev. William Barber, Barbara Lee...] had won the presidency and DSA loyalists gained a majority in both the US House and Senate. Hopes and fantasies burgeoned among these Utopians and their supporters. But in the daily operations of government, the new DSA regime and its officers were soon confronted by capital flight and other forms of sabotage by the now fearful one percent. The rich and their corporations moved their accounts to offshore banks, sharply cut back on investments and new facilities in the US, and sped up the transfer of portable operations to other countries. State security bodies such as the FBI and NSA leaked information claiming that bots launched and financed by Russia, Iran, and Venezuela had been crucial in DSA's electoral success. President [Sanders...] and the DSA members of Congress spent months defending themselves from these accusations, while trying to entice corporations to return jobs and resources from abroad. Meanwhile, fascists among Trump's supporters sought organize a racist backlash against the new socialist regime.
-The movement to create decent lives for ordinary people, to constrain the growing police state, and to prevent climate change disaster, had begun to grow itself a head to go with its heart—kind of an inverse of what happened to the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.  So as they saw their hopes beginning to be betrayed once again, a remarkable thing happened.  In a local Starbucks on 6th Avenue in Manhattan, the store manager forced a barrista to have sex with him and then described her as a dirty slut to some of the other workers.  They walked out and formed a picket line. Other retail workers joined in the picket lines, and also struck their own employers over ways they had been coerced into sex or had their dignity attacked.
+[**Friedman** 10/31/18] Millions of working women, working and unemployed Blacks and Latinxs, immigrants, and large parts of the 90% were by now disappointed and pissed off. Their lives were not improving. The environment continued to deteriorate as global warming intensified, bringing on devastating rain and windstorms, coastal flooding, and inland wildfires that ravaged large parts of the country. Working people got poorer and poorer, and the cops continued to run amok in their communities, even as 1/4 of the cops and their families were on food stamps due to cutbacks. As the Utopians had long expected, all hell broke loose.
+The movement to create decent lives for ordinary people, to constrain the growing police state, and to prevent climate change disaster, had begun to grow itself a head to go with its heart (an inverse of what happened to the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz).  So as they saw their hopes beginning to be betrayed once again, a remarkable thing happened.  In a Starbucks on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, the store manager forced a barista to have sex with him and then described her as a dirty slut to some of the other workers. They walked out and formed a picket line. Other retail workers joined in the picket lines, and also struck their own employers over ways they had been coerced into sex or had their dignity attacked.
 And then it spread. Walmarts. Insurance companies. The Federal Reserve Bank. The mass of warehouses and truck-related workers who served New York City.
@@ Line 78: / Line 44: @@
 In explaining how they managed to minimize these disasters and to build the good world we have today, we really need to understand the problems, complexities and hopeful possibilities of the situation “the day after” the working class took power. In retrospect, we were very lucky in how the revolution took place.  It could have been so much less favorable!  Most important, the revolution was truly global. It only failed to come to power in a few of the smaller countries—and over time, they joined the new society too. Furthermore, although by no means peaceful (in spite of the wishes of the movement), the revolution and ensuing revolts by the old ruling groups and their supporters were not so destructive as to destroy civilization. This good luck let us avoid untold problems that might have destroyed humanity.  As it was, our ancestors could concentrate on the contradictions and difficulties implicit in the notion of workers’ revolution per se—that is, what do we could do with our power—rather than on problems of maintaining power in case of a geographically-limited victory or coping with a devastating nuclear war.
 So, on the day after the revolution, problems and positive possibilities both were plentiful and confusing. On the positive side, the very fact that we were strong enough to win meant that we had gone through enough revolutionary experience, and had set up strong enough and democratic enough organizations, that we had organization, consciousness, and considerable unity as a shared resource. This let us go from being the done-upon and manipulated of history to being the new ruling class. It also was essential that we had not merely conquered state power but also had taken control over most workplaces and many community institutions. Thus, workers’ power and discussions could be implemented in many different parts of the social order. That is, we could figure out what to do—and then make our decisions actually happen and, critically, learn through our own experience where and how to modify our plans.
 Of course, workers and other people had many different views on why they made the revolution, whose actions had been key to winning, what structures needed to be set up, what looming disasters to prioritize, and what kind of world we wanted to build.  This proved once and for all the folly of one section of the pre-revolutionary left which thought that workers could only come to power through the leadership of a single united party and that they would thus have a unified consciousness when they won.  The people who thought that clearly had never understood even the movements they had been part of, with their constant arguments, different views of what should be done, and so forth. They did not realize that a monolithic working class revolution had never happened, nor had revolutionary situations and near-revolutionary situations ever had any semblance of such unity—whether in Russia in 1917-21, Italy, Germany or Hungary in this same period, Catalonia in 1936, Hungary in 1956, France in 1968 [in spite of the presence of a strong Communist Party—which, indeed, did what it could to defeat the revolutionary upsurge], Portugal in 1976, Iran in 1979, Poland in 1980-82, or South Africa in the early 1990s. And they did not realize that out of the arguments and battles of revolutionaries we could build mutual love, mutual respect, and mutual solidarity.  As the pre-revolutionary and almost-unknown poet Sam Friedman put it:
-      Conferences
+Conferences
-                               (Dedicated to the attendees of the 1995 North American Syringe Exchange Convention)
+(Dedicated to the attendees of the 1995 North American Syringe Exchange Convention)
-What I see is love around me
+What I see is love around me\\
-love in action, love in deeds
+love in action, love in deeds\\
-love among the hundreds of trench-fighters
+love among the hundreds of trench-fighters\\
-impatient doers who keep at it,
+impatient doers who keep at it,\\
-preventing new infections
+preventing new infections\\
-while suffering sneers
+while suffering sneers\\
-every day
+every day\\
-every week
+every week\\
-every year
+every year\\
-love in action
+love in action\\
-love in deeds
+love in deeds\\
-love, sometimes twisted
+love, sometimes twisted\\
-into spiteful words
+into spiteful words\\
-resentment
+resentment\\
-envy
+envy\\
-greed
+greed\\
-aspiration for fame,
+aspiration for fame,\\
-desire for respect,
+desire for respect,\\
-twisting love
+twisting love\\
 into griping distrust.
-Sometimes,
+Sometimes,\\
-what looks like conflict
+what looks like conflict\\
-is really love,
+is really love,\\
-when two or more people face off
+when two or more people face off\\
-across the faces
+across the faces\\
-of a silent meeting room
+of a silent meeting room\\
-to show each the other
+to show each the other\\
-why the other is wrong,
+why the other is wrong,\\
-why the mistakes can cost hundreds
+why the mistakes can cost hundreds\\
-of new infections.
+of new infections.\\
-These words may be bitter
+These words may be bitter\\
-but they embody love
+but they embody love\\
-and after the session
+and after the session\\
-these battlers go out for a chat
+these battlers go out for a chat\\
-or to plan new ways
+or to plan new ways\\
-to battle the hated virus
+to battle the hated virus\\
 and the powers that support it.
+Beneath the honest conflicts \\
-Beneath the honest conflicts
+beneath the painful shyness\\
-beneath the painful shyness
+the envy\\
-the envy
+resentment\\
-resentment
+backbiting\\
-backbiting
+and occasional spite\\
-and occasional spite
+what I see is love around me\\
-what I see is love around me
+total support among the bickerers\\
-total support among the bickerers
+when the shit hits the plan\\
-when the shit hits the plan
+when the friends of the virus\\
-when the friends of the virus
+or the care-less careerists\\
-or the care-less careerists
+besiege one of the battlers\\
-besiege one of the battlers
+total support\\
-total support
+love in action\\
-love in action
+love in deeds\\
-love in deeds
+love among the trench-fighters\\
-love among the trench-fighters
+love—\\
-love—
 and we need it.
@@ Line 163: / Line 129: @@
 And we had the experience of the revolution itself.  Billions, of workers had individually and collectively learned how to struggle for power and had as a result discovered new needs for knowledge and new opportunities to use what they had learned—and thus our ancestors knew how to build coalitions, how to run meetings, how to resolve differences, how to postpone decisions that could be postponed, how to recognize decisions that could not be postponed, and how to mobilize goodwill and solidarity. Such learning was needed for successfully taking power—but such learning would of course be put to use in behalf of conflicting desires, conflicting needs, conflicting agendas.
-Our billions of ancestors were collectively were in charge—but they discovered that they needed to invent new ways of doing things and new values and ethics, in the face of crises, disagreements, and internal battles. This was not a question of “overcoming false consciousness,” but rather of building a world anew without any pre-existing sources of the “right” answers. Marxism provided some useful guides, particularly in its critiques of past revolutionary failures, but different parts of our movements had different needs, different conceptions of their (and our) interests, and different ideas about how to proceed. Sometimes, these differences were embodied in political parties or other organizations, but sometimes they just took form in the spectral atmosphere of the internet, television, or printed media..
+Our billions of ancestors were collectively were in charge—but they discovered that they needed to invent new ways of doing things and new values and ethics, in the face of crises, disagreements, and internal battles. This was not a question of “overcoming false consciousness,” but rather of building a world anew without any pre-existing sources of the “right” answers. Marxism provided some useful guides, particularly in its critiques of past revolutionary failures, but different parts of our movements had different needs, different conceptions of their (and our) interests, and different ideas about how to proceed. Sometimes, these differences were embodied in political parties or other organizations, but sometimes they just took form in the spectral atmosphere of the internet, television, or printed media.
-==== The Immediate Tasks They Faced ====
+** The Immediate Tasks They Faced **
 Depending on how you think about it, they faced three or four immediate tasks once they took power.  Each took decades to resolve, and they went through many struggles over which took priority in different concrete situations. One common theme in these struggles was disagreements over localism versus centralism of decision-making. This theme was not so much an “immediate task,” however, as a central part of the dialectical process that structured and at times energized the resolution of these tasks.
@@ Line 171: / Line 137: @@
 Three tasks were: (1) resolving the divisions that history had created among humanity; (2) resolving the ecological crisis and the alienation of humanity and nature; and (3) reorganizing production and distribution of physical and mental goods and ending the Law of Value. A fourth task, of a somewhat different kind, was doing all this while maintaining the massively democratic and participatory nature of decision making and of working together. These are discussed in the following sections of this history.
+==== Now ====
+=== From Improvisation to ‘Planning Factories' ===
-[cut/paste from https://www.dropbox.com/s/5g6kruk92t9fq2l/Friedman_How-our-grandparents-revolution.docx?dl=0]
-If I type something here and SAVE
-Now
-From Improvisation to ‘Planning Factories’
 Once peace was re-established on the planet, the Internet revealed itself as a horizontal networking and sharing tool as useful now as during the period of revolutionary emergence. The first order of the day was to make a rapid assessment of the state of the planet and its population so as to address the most urgent needs, the first wounds to treat.The Net facilitated first the gathering of information and then the matching up of needs and resources around the planet.
 During the period of capitalist collapse and revolutionary emergence, networks of anti-capitalist scientists and other specialists formed in every country to exchange data on agriculture, ecology, migration, refugees, famine, drought. Global data bases were established. Statistics brought together in the data bases permitted specialists working with the popular assemblies to simplify choices by permitting discussion of alternatives, their advantages and disadvantages. This whole system, if you want to call it that, was improvised in haste. There was a planet to heal, with its human, animal and vegetable inhabitants.
 As reconstruction progressed, the network system was refined and elaborated. Research Centers were created on the regional, national and planetary levels to bring together all the economic data transmitted by collectives of producers and consumers and by the local assemblies. These centers also had the task of classifying and analyzing this data, then transmitting the results to the regional and local Assemblies in a form readily accessible to ordinary workers.
 The researchers were also responsible for producing a range of alternative plans in every domain: different plans each with their own forecasts about the costs in human effort, the time it would take to complete, its environmental impact and the benefits it would bring to individuals and collectivities. These ‘Planning Factories’1) as the centers were commonly called, provided the kind of information about alternatives which made possible truly democratic and popular debates all on essential questions of social and economic life.
 The Internet also permitted great planetary debates and referendums on certain fundamental questions: ecology, health, human rights. There were competing global plans for limiting the extraction and use of fuels emitting CO2 and other gases dangerous to the ozone and the atmosphere. There were proposals for the creation and coordination of sources of alternative energy. There were also plans for saving plants, animals, seas. The different choices proposed by the ‘planning factories’ and their likely consequences were clear and comprehensible to every voter.
-) Foreshadowed by Cornelius Castoriadis in On the Content of Socialism, published in Socialisme ou Barbarie in 1957 and in English as a Solidarity pamphlet.
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+The researchers were also responsible for producing a range of alternative plans in every domain: different plans each with their own forecasts about the costs in human effort, the time it would take to complete, its environmental impact and the benefits it would bring to individuals and collectivities. These ‘Planning Factories’((Foreshadowed by Cornelius Castoriadis in [[https://www.marxists.org/archive/castoriadis/1955/socialism-1.htm|On the Content of Socialism]], published in //Socialisme ou Barbarie// in 1957 and in English as a Solidarity pamphlet.)) as the centers were commonly called, provided the kind of information about alternatives which made possible truly democratic and popular debates all on essential questions of social and economic life.
+The Internet also permitted great planetary debates and referendums on certain fundamental questions: ecology, health, human rights. There were competing global plans for limiting the extraction and use of fuels emitting CO2 and other gases dangerous to the ozone and the atmosphere. There were proposals for the creation and coordination of sources of alternative energy. There were also plans for saving plants, animals, seas. The different choices proposed by the ‘planning factories’ and their likely consequences were clear and comprehensible to every voter.
+=== Reconstruction ===
+Ironically, thanks to the technology inherited from capitalist barbarism, reconstruction was less difficult than had been feared. The dismantling of the armaments industry freed immense industrial resources that could now be put to the service of the people and the planet. As in the ancient prophecies, people literally “beat their swords into plowshares.” The enormous bulldozers that had once served to demolish Palestinian houses now served to make water available to the Palestinians. Factories for war planes were being transformed into factories for agro-economic transport. Near Hartford, Connecticut (USA) a former tank factory was now producing mini-tractors and trams.
+How had theses transformations come about? At the end of the global general strike, the strikers occupying factories, mines and refineries had taken stock and begun little by little to restart production of goods and materials needed for immediate consumption and to keep other industries supplied. The practice of making decisions democratically acquired during the strikes and occupations now carried over into an improvised forms of cooperative self-management by assemblies and workers’ councils. Internet links enabled these cooperatives to ‘advertise’ for the materials they needed and trade them for finished goods they produced. Thanks to this global ‘E-Bay’ system, goods were exchanged through an intricate system of barter.
+These forms of economic self government operated smoothly. They had evolved quite naturally out of the various types of organisation that had been thrown up to meet the needs of the strikers during the struggle. The common principles among them were these. Leaders were elected and subject to recall by their constituents. Terms of office were kept short to prevent the creation of a professional political class and to keep representatives in touch with their base. ‘Officials’ were paid normal workers’ wages, and members of a collective more or less rotated in office. There was no firewall between the executive and legislative functions of self-government. Those who voted measures were also responsible for carrying them out. Thus the ecotopians had revived the ancient Greek ideal of participatory democracy – but no longer restricted to free native-born males.
+=== Development vs Simplicity ===
+As various projects were discussed in neighborhood assemblies and collectives,  the debates generally turned around the choice between plans considered "productivist" and more conservative plans that put the emphasis on the reduction of work time and minimal environmental impact. Some Utopians argued in favor of a greater immediate effort to construct infrastructures that would make life easier or safer in the future. For example a crash program using carbon-based production methods to rapidly construct wind, solar and other sustainable energy sources that would replace them permanently. Others opted for a slower rate of accumulation, a simpler life, the least impact on nature, the liberty to dispose of their own time.
+Groups of citizens with projects to propose could also ask the 'plan factories' to prepare estimates and technically feasible plans. By this process, each consumer, each worker, each local community could clearly see the choices that suited them best. In practice, the great diversity of societies simplified things. Certain regions opted for greater productivity, others for greater simplicity. As long as the basic needs of the environment and the rights of neighbors were respected, there was no problem. The dissatisfied always had the option joining other communities better suited to their ideals and their lifestyles.
+Participatory democracy was not limited to geographical conscriptions. People were also associated in networks and assemblies as consumers, parents, workers, and in all aspect of their multiple identities. Assemblies tried to come to conclusions by consensus, but if a consensus could not be reached, a majority decision might be called for. Even then, if the minority were large and resolute, the decision might be put off or imposed for a limited period only. In any case, all decisions were periodically reviewed. If a plan caused negative or unforeseen results, it could be changed or even withdrawn.
-**Branch here to 3 scenarios in 2024:
-  - Election is annulled, but [[people-revolt|the people revolt]]
-  - The social democrats win the election but do their usual thing, and then [[people-revolt|the people revolt]]
-  - The social democrats win and succeed in reforming the economy but run up against the environmental crisis
-    - Friedman scenario: [[people-revolt|the people revolt]]
-    - Schwartzmann scenario: solar communism
-[Choose your candidate: Bernie, Michelle Alexander, Rev Barber, Barbara Lee] won the presidency in 2024 along with 312 DSA members elected to the House of Representatives and 53 who joined the US Senate. Hopes and fantasies bloomed among the Utopians and their supporters. In the daily operation of government, the new DSA regime and its officers were soon confronted by capital flight: [details] The FBI claimed to have found evidence that bots supporting Bernie had been organized and financed by billionaires in Abu Dhabi and party hacks in Venezuela. Bernie and the DSA members of Congress spent months defending themselves from these accusations and finding ways to give corporations subsidies to bring jobs back to America. The fascists among Trump's supporters did their best to organize racist reaction against Sanders and his ilk, all of whom they claimed had African-American blood in their genomes, one part in 12,000.
-Meanwhile, millions of working women, working and unemployed Blacks, immigrants, and large parts of the 90% were disappointed and pissed off. Their lives were not improving. The environment continued to go to hell. They got poorer and poorer, and the cops continued to run amok in their communities, even as 1/4 of the cops and their families were on food stamps due to cutbacks. As the Utopians had long expected, all hell broke loose.
-[cut/paste from https://www.dropbox.com/s/5g6kruk92t9fq2l/Friedman_How-our-grandparents-revolution.docx?dl=0]
-If I type something here and SAVE
-==== Now ====
-** From Improvisation to ‘Planning Factories’ **
-Once peace was re-established on the planet, the Internet revealed itself as a horizontal networking and sharing tool as useful now as during the period of revolutionary emergence. The first order of the day was to make a rapid assessment of the state of the planet and its population so as to address the most urgent needs, the first wounds to treat.The Net facilitated first the gathering of information and then the matching up of needs and resources around the planet.
-During the period of  capitalist collapse and revolutionary emergence, networks of anti-capitalist scientists and other specialists formed in every country to exchange data on agriculture, ecology, migration, refugees, famine, drought. Global data bases were established. Statistics brought together in the data bases permitted specialists working with the popular assemblies to simplify choices by permitting discussion of alternatives, their advantages and disadvantages. This whole system, if you want to call it that, was improvised in haste. There was a planet to heal, with its human, animal and vegetable inhabitants.
-As reconstruction progressed, the network system was refined and elaborated. Research Centers were created on the regional, national and planetary levels to bring together all the economic data transmitted by collectives of producers and consumers and by the local assemblies. These centers also had the task of classifying and analyzing this data, then transmitting the results to the regional and local Assemblies in a form readily accessible to ordinary workers.
-The researchers were also responsible for producing a range of alternative plans in every domain: different plans each with their own forecasts about the costs in human effort, the time it would take to complete, its environmental impact and the benefits it would bring to individuals and collectivities. These ‘Planning Factories’((Foreshadowed by Cornelius Castoriadis in [[https://www.marxists.org/archive/castoriadis/1955/socialism-1.htm|On the Content of Socialism]], published in //Socialisme ou Barbarie// in 1957 and in English as a Solidarity pamphlet.)) as the centers were commonly called, provided the kind of information about alternatives which made possible truly democratic and popular debates all on essential questions of social and economic life.
-The Internet also permitted great planetary debates and referendums on certain fundamental questions: ecology, health, human rights. There were competing global plans for limiting the extraction and use of fuels emitting CO2 and other gases dangerous to the ozone and the atmosphere. There were proposals for the creation and coordination of sources of alternative energy. There were also plans for saving plants, animals, seas. The different choices proposed by the ‘planning factories’ and their likely consequences were clear and comprehensible to every voter.

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