Nov 3 Meeting

[benbrucato]

Hi all,

This meeting was excellent. I especially appreciate Shanna's suggestion to speak in the round and get everyone involved. I think we identified many point that we can unite around, both in terms of statements of principles and in terms of strategic orientation.

I'm looking forward to seeing Drea's and Mike's notes, and I will try to work on the synthesis of our meeting points that I was hearing. I'll try to re-articulate those in a single message so that people can add to, amend, alter, etc.

On some points, I was quite surprised by how fundamentally radical certain principles are that we all share. We seem to all agree that the system needs to be fundamentally reorganized to be consistent with governing exclusively through participatory means. That's pretty revolutionary! No political reform will allow for that. The private ownership of the means of production won't allow for that. The industrial-capital division of labor won't allow for that. A market economy won't allow for that. These are some very strong principles, and I'm really happy to see people share them.

As I mentioned last night, to me, these are necessary but not necessarily sufficient principles. I'm okay with that. That's where we'll end up. Many of us won't have our entire politics represented here.

As I see it, the issue is to find how much of our politics are shared, how far that can go, so that we can collectively advocate for them, so that we can find ways of collectively turning them into practical, action-based items and integrate them into our outreach, education, and activism at the occupation and beyond.

Thanks again to all of you,

Ben

[hz]

Sorry I missed the meeting. I would love to hear from other people, and their thoughts on what their idea of what a "system needs to be fundamentally reorganized to be consistent with governing exclusively through participatory means" means to them personally.

One of my favorite parts of Tuesday's meeting was listening to all the different opinions and voices in the room.

[Ryan R.]

Wait, so did the caucus actually become a caucus then? Was a platform of opposition to a mode of production where the means of such are privately controlled was officially agreed upon?

If such is the case, then this is a very progressive step in the direction of forming an organ of revolutionary interest.

[benbrucato]

Wait, so did the caucus actually become a caucus then? Was a platform of opposition to a mode of production where the means of such are privately controlled was officially agreed upon?

If such is the case, then this is a very progressive step in the direction of forming an organ of revolutionary interest.

Not precisely.

We talked at length, and nearly everyone spoke on the issue of identifying as "anti-capitalist." It seemed that everyone agreed that they were anti-capitalist, but some had some strong reservations (i.e. capitalism has it has existed versus as it could exist).

An issue that does not have resolution is the correct concern among many that capitalism is difficult to define, and there is no consensus on what is meant by capitalism and what is meant to be anti-capitalist.

One person said it's best thought of as an economic system predicated on exploitation of labor.

I argued that locating "capitalism" as a system of organization is impossible. There are capitalists - those who accumulate capital and own the means of production - and there is the ideology of capitalism, but a system of capitalism in its pure form has never existed and probably never can. I suggested at the end of the meeting that perhaps we flesh out what we mean by capitalism through discussion so that if we propose to reach consensus on this issue that it be more meaningful and clearly expressed.

It seems to me that there is consensus that:

1) We want our communities to run through participatory democracy.
2) Capitalism in theory and in practice precludes such participatory control.

I suggested that we consider addressing:

1) The abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and of non-personal property (by this I mean spaces outside the home and its contents); and
2) The abolition of the division of labor (this is tough to define; my definition is fairly absolute, and I'm sure we would not get consensus on it; we could define this as "the industrial-capitalist division of labor" to be more specific).

It seemed to me that several or many agreed that being more specific and having a more robust explanation would have advantages both internally and in communicating to those outside the caucus as to our purpose.

Shanna and Colin had some important contributions to this discussion that I agreed with. Drea had some important contributions to this discussion that I agree partly with and some that I disagree with. I think in these discussions we will find some strong points of unity.

[Ryan R.]

Perhaps it would be wise for this group to operate along the lines of a political organ of the working class as opposed to a debating society. Look, I've not a single issue with such discussions, but it is a question of context. The reality of the matter is that a political caucus needs a unified platform through which to participate in the currents of class struggle and through which to advocate a policy firmly in support of the working class, this is not going to be done by reinventing the wheel of political economy.

As Comrade Lenin once said, "The strength of the working class is organization. Without organization of the masses, the proletarian is nothing. Organized it is everything. Being organized means unity of action, unity of practical activity."

Marx handled the definition of capitalism and has already provided the theoretical basis for such thought some time ago, we need not go over it in depth in the trenches of immediate mass action.

Also, I raised this point at the first meeting, but this is an international struggle which we are involved in. The exploitation of the capitalist class knows no national borders nor does the struggle of the working class, there is absolutely no reason for any revolutionary organization or caucus to accept such a restrictive premise.

[genconc]

Nov 4, 2011 14:15:36 GMT -5 benbrucato said:

1) The abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and of non-personal property (by this I mean spaces outside the home and its contents)

This raises a few questions for me. Does the "abolition of private ownership" imply "public ownership"? If so, do we recognize different granularities of public ownership? Is a grain mill on the Poestenkill serving a community of 100 proximate families owned by all the the people of the world? All people of the nation, or state, or county, or city? Is it owned by the community of interest, presumably the 100 families that are served by the mill?

It's often said that under communism the means of production are owned by the state. A friend who is more studied than I on such matters, tells me that marxism promotes a slightly different and more localized notion of ownership whereby the means of production are owned by the collective.

If my neighbor and I decide we want to build a sawmill together so that we can cut boards to build wooden sailboats, can we call ourselves a collective?

Speaking of boats, I don't know how literally to interpret your definition of personal property. Since a boat probably won't fit in my house (and I wouldn't want it there anyway), can a boat be personal property?

I suspect most people who support this movement favor a broader definition of what is or should be public property. I certainly do. I'm glad to see this topic raised here.

[anonanon]

I think discussion of these 'granularities' are not for us to discuss - they are for the future society to discuss. There is little value in us talking about them since we don't live in a world where we can implement our decisions on granularities. I think we should create a platform that we are generally opposed to the fundamental assumptions and values of the system and that it needs to be replaced with one based on the alternative principles ben mentioned. Phrases like 'publicly owned' should be understood loosely and rather than commit to a strict definition we should support a society where these debates are worth having because democratic decisions on granularities can actually be implemented, experimented with, and continuously altered/improved upon. It's similar to debating how a future society will deal with a person who refuses to work - its a discussion for that future society to have not for us in the now.

[dylan]

There are examples of what these future societies might look like, and there's a possibilities to start building them now. Please check out this video on worker coops in Mondragon Spain, I'm interested to hear what y'all think of it.



There's also a network of worker cooperatives, the Evergreen Cooperatives, in Cleveland Ohio.