What is to be done today? A libertarian socialist outlook on capitalism and the state.
A spectre is haunting the United States, the spectre of Libertarian Socialism. All the powers of the United States have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. Patriarchy has worked with the state, capitalism, White Supremacy, colonialism, LGBTQ+ phobia, and ableism to oppress all sectors of society. Yet there is a growing movement that is bubbling to fight back. This movement does not have a name and does not nor will ever belong to one group. This movement seeks to give workers more power in their lives and is seeking to democratize the economy along with the abolition of commodity production. This movement is seeking to build mutual aid for all of those struck by the violence of the state — poverty.
A movement for a general strike is brewing. We have seen workers despite their lack of unionization in companies such as Amazon launch strikes on May 1st. So now we are at a point where we must ask ourselves what must we do from here or “What Is To Be Done Today?” As workers we must organize our workplaces, as neighbors we must organize our neighborhoods.
On the topic of neighborhoods we must create neighborhood assemblies. This is an institution that represents part of a neighborhood and is governed by direct democracy. To work together with others of our neighborhood we must create neighborhood councils. At this council each assembly sends 1 delegate to the council to coordinate and plan out what will be done with the other assemblies. Then we must go beyond and create a municipal council. This council will have 1 seat per neighborhood. This will function similarly as this will be how each city makes final decisions through bottom up direct democracy.
Before I continue however I must define the term “delegate” and it differs from a representative in liberal democracy. In this sense a delegate can not introduce anything that the assemblies have not given him/her/them to introduce. For example if one assembly comes to a decision that the roads in their neighborhood need to be repaired. The assembly agrees and sends a delegate to the neighborhood council to discuss this. The other delegates can not vote until they have talked to the assembly they represent. This allows each person that would be affected by this decision of repairing the roads to discuss, make suggestions etc and reach a consensus.
Then further if the delegates are making decisions without approval from the assembly they represent they are subject to instant recall. Now to contrast that with liberal democracy a representative can introduce a law that is not popular with their community and can get it passed. The representative is not able to be instantly recalled because of this. For example in California a Single Payer Healthcare Bill was introduced in the California State Legislature yet voted down despite the popularity of the bill and the help it would have given to millions who do not have adequate health insurance in California.
However we must remember that there are groups who can be unrepresented in a system that I propose. This includes colonized people such as Indigenous Peoples, New Afrikan (Black Americans) people, women, the LGBTQIA+ community, the disabled community (both mentally and physically). So I propose caucuses for each group then further to have one delegate per group per assembly along with each group having their own assemblies and the ability to discuss issues in their communities as they see fit. We must build these institutions to take back control of our neighborhoods, communities, etc… right now. That is what must be done in our neighborhoods.
Now what is to be done in our workplaces what must we do to take control of the workplace and abolish coercive work. To create the latter of course we must abolish capitalism, wage labor, commodity production, and guarantee the needs of all people such as housing, quality food, clean air, and clean water. For the former we must take over the firm through workers councils in many areas, radical unions in other areas, and simply provide the funds to buy the business and give it to the workers. Regardless of how worker control is brought about we must confederate (interconnect) with other workers councils in similar industries within our communities.
These many structures must all work together to meet the needs of the people. This will create loose anti-capitalist, and anti-state structures. We must, however, be ready for revolution at the same time, and not be willing to just become assimilated into the bureaucracy and the state. We must fight directly against this not just with words but with actions as well. We must arm those who want to be armed along with training in how to use a firearm properly. These new institutions, no matter how peaceful they appear, will be attacked by the state through the police. We must be ready for this. We cannot forget the MOVE bombing of 1985.
Through these structures we must assault the capitalist economy through the use of a tax strike, election boycotts, and a general strike. To feed the people we must use mutual aid networks, community gardens, guerrilla gardening, etc… To house the people we must create housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and the like, to free the people from state violence (homelessness, food insecurity, and the like). These structures will be governed by the people who live in them and use them. We must bring our homeless population into houses, bring them the things they need to survive and we can do this by using our new neighborhood structures that we have built. We can seize property that is not being used and through our worker owned structures turn them into new homes.
We can use alternative currencies such as mutual credit to deny the state revenue and fund our institutions. We can use mutual credit to build houses, buy land, etc… We must also incorporate cooperative banking (credit unions) within these structures until the revolution. Further we must embrace the criminal element that the anarchist/libertarian left has a rich tradition in. I will not describe these illegal methods in detail but they will have to be used to propagate our message and fund our projects of community self defense from the state (police), against the capitalists who will rob our land, against the industrialists who poison our food, air, and water.
Through a combination of mutual credit/cooperative banking and propaganda of the deed our projects will be funded. Of course once we are in the revolutionary phase mutual credit must be ended so we all have free access to what we need to live through local planning. Mutual credit while unfortunate will have to be with us through the transition to a moneyless society. This offers people a further incentive to join the new institutions that will be created. The people now will not see us as legitimate if we say “join us and you can have everything for free” they will join if we offer them a way to rebel through mutual credit will bring them on board. However other means such as expropriation to fund striking workers in capitalist firms or fund neighborhood assemblies and the like is also an acceptable means of raising money. Both of these methods can also be used to create additional cooperatives and assemblies.
In the end it is up to each assembly to decide how to fund themselves without state money. Another way is to use a GoFundMe (or similar sites) to buy land and form a community land trust. This will require a large amount of people and a large amount of money. Lastly, of course, mass squatting in tandem with guerilla gardening is a very acceptable means and way to take control over the land and create our own food.
Within the authoritarian left, however, they advocate for a vanguard party to rule and take over the state as it currently exists. This party, however, is in charge. Creating rule by the party and not by the people in its supposed transition to a socialist “country.” The authoritarian left has only created state capitalism with a strong safety net in the best case or state capitalism with large human rights abuses. Most of the time, however, it seems to be both. Every state seeks to consolidate power; no state in the history of the world has ever voluntarily dismantled their own institutions and given power to the people directly. This won’t be true simply because the state is in control by the working class. Simply put, the lumpenproletariat will be oppressed by the “working class” being in charge. The lumpen proles by-and-large being the already oppressed groups in society such as New Afrikan people, immigrants, indigenous people etc. Keeping the working class in charge does not give these groups power.
The authoritarian left would have you believe that libertarian socialist methods don’t work. This simply is not true. We can see this through groups such as Cooperation Jackson, Barbacha, Rojava in the modern day. In the past Revolutionary Catalona, The Free Territories, the Shimin Commune, and more. One can even argue that the many indigenous societies in the pre-colonial Americas and pre-colonial Africa were examples of libertarian socialist societies. The history of these places have been suppressed oftentimes by “allies” in the cases of Revolutionary Catalonia and The Free Territories. Others were destroyed by colonialism and empires. Yet these societies were free in the case of the latter. In the case of the former groups such as Cooperation Jackson are fighting for a free society while others have achieved a free society and are defending themselves.
In the end Solidarity,
A.X.
Black Flag Catalyst
