Manifesto - Organization for a Free Society

8/3/2019 Manifesto - Organization for a Free Society

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ManifestoHere and Now

We live amidst wars of aggression, initiated in our names against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and Pakistan. We are witnesses to genocides in Africa,occupation in Palestine and totalitarianism all over the world, from China to SaudiArabia. Food, shelter, drinking water, sanitation, health care and education – the most

basic of human rights – are turned into commodities to be bought and sold, and deniedto millions of women, men and children. Working class Black people drowned in NewOrleans, and Haitians starved for weeks without aid. We see violence all around us,from the television to the school, from wars to sexual assault, from ethnic cleansing to9/11. We live in a world where 25,000 children die each day due to poverty, where thereare individuals who have bank accounts larger than the GDPs of entire countries, wherehalf of the world’s hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. Economically displaced,the peoples of the global south migrate to the US and Europe in search of work, only tobe further exploited and discriminated against as undocumented workers, hunted downby the very same forces that caused them to flee their homes to begin with. We see theabuse of people on the basis of their genders, sexualities, races, religions, and a

multitude of other identities. We watch as the trees disappear, the skies gray withpollution, the glaciers melt, the oil vanishes, and the water is contaminated. We watchas the few profit from it, while the many face immediate suffering, and the prospect of worse to come. There seems to be no end to this in sight, unless someone doessomething about it.

At school, where we should be learning about this world and how to change it, we learnto memorize and regurgitate, to defer to authority, to forget the history of the peoples of

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the world, to stop playing, to become individualistic, to become selfish, to stopdreaming. Even the teachers who struggle to show us something different, who try toopen our eyes, are bound by the school system. When we turn to our leaders – eventhe ones who manage to captivate our imaginations as they parade around the countrycampaigning for our votes – we find a political system based on lies, deceit, hypocrisy,

and exploitation. The status quo remains intact, despite the audacious threats from fair-weather reformers.

What’s more, this did not begin today – there was once Rome just as there is now theUnited States, and there was patriarchy before the Bible. The masses of people havebeen under the boot of the ruling economic classes since the day we began recordinghistory, and the kings and pharaohs preceded the dictators, presidents, and CEOs. Weare not the first civilization threatening to wipe itself out by destroying the environment inour own arrogance, denial, and the endless quest for profit carried out by the few in thename of the rest of us – the Maya and Easter Islanders came and went before us aswell.

These forces of domination and exploitation could not exist and sustain themselves if they were not part of a complex system in which they produce and reproduce oneanother. While each of these systems may function in some way autonomously, they alloverlap and coexist, strengthen each other, lean on one another. While different onesmight be central in different contexts, they all reinforce and reproduce each other. Nosingle oppression can be wiped away without confrontation of the others. We will never have fully liberated gender, sexuality, and family as long as there is capitalism. We willnever overcome racism without confronting the hierarchy and authoritarianism of thestate, nor solve the ecological crisis without ending imperialism. We will never destroycapitalism without confronting the race relations embedded in it, and we have no hope

to end authoritarianism in government, without undoing it everywhere else – from thefamily to the workplace. To truly liberate ourselves and those around us, we must seeand address all forms of oppression together.

Systems are much bigger than just people, but they can be undone – when the manyunite to present an alternative, and to struggle for it. We know the world doesn’t changeon its own, but it does change when people decide it must, and they build movementstogether. We know the tide is changing. After all, where there is oppression there is alsoresistance.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the largest worldwide

anti-war mobilizations ever recorded. The ecology movement across the worldrepresents perhaps the largest and fastest growing mass movement in history. Workersin Argentina are taking over their factories, students in the United States are taking over their universities, and indigenous movements in Bolivia are taking over their governments. From the citizens rising up in Greece, to the squats in Italy, to workers inChicago taking back their workplaces, to the many who fight day in and day out in their communities for better housing, for better schools, for a better world – people arecoming together to organize, resist and present new alternatives. The free schools,



cooperatives, communal living arrangements, community gardens, eco-villages,independent bookstores, and countless others are busy building the alternativeinstitutions that will one day replace this decaying social order. Radical eyes areopening all over the world, from under the sheet metal of shanty-towns, from thewindows of workplaces, from behind book shelves at universities all over the world.

People are ready to rise up. They are looking to the Left, and many of them seem tohave come to the same conclusions we have – that a movement must be built.

We come from a long line of revolutionaries. They have made it possible for us tostruggle, they have moved us forward, and they have laid the foundations for theenormous struggle ahead. From Gorz to Gramsci, Emma Goldman to Fannie LouHamer, Malcolm X to Huey Newton, Buber to Marcuse, Marx to Kropotkin. From theIndustrial Workers of the World to the Spanish anarchists, from SNCC to the BlackPanthers, the Cuban revolution to the Vietnamese resistance, from Gandhi to King, fromthe kibbutzim to the Movement for a New Society, from the Paris Commune to theBolivarian Revolution. They all inform our struggle to day, in their successes and their

failures. We are honored to join them, to learn from their mistakes, to continue wherethey left off.

We as a generation are faced with the tremendous task and collective responsibility of struggling for a different society — a free society — a society that will not onlyguarantee the preservation of human life, but one that will provide the conditions for therealization of full human potential.

What We Imagine

Without vision, there can be no movement.

Without a vision of what we want the world to look like, how could we be expected toknow which path to take to get there? How will we know what issues to tackle, and inwhat ways to tackle them? How will we know what structures to build such that webegin to create, even as we fight, the world we want to live in? How could we unite withthe many people fighting for many causes in many places if not by agreeing on a sharedvision of what the world should be? How could we ever ask each other – and you – tofight without an idea of what we are fighting for? We won’t get anywhere if we don’tknow where we are going.

Of course, in revolution there are no blueprints. We have no illusions that the world willlook exactly the way we envision it, and we don’t claim to be speaking for everyone. Wewill learn more as we talk to each other, as we study what took place before us, and aswe struggle together. We will build our vision with our partners in struggle, and from theexperience of many thinkers and revolutionaries before us. We will remain dynamic,flexible and understanding, because it is clear to us that revolution is meaningful onlywhen it exists both in content and in form. We reject orthodoxy in all of its shapes andsizes. And still, we must dream ahead; as revolutionaries, we can’t help it.



We envision a world where people can participate in decision-making in the degree towhich they are affected by the outcomes. We imagine councils – democratic assembliesin communities, from homes, to blocks, to cities, to entire regions. We imagine councilsbeing the most important vehicles for a participatory democracy to truly flourish, and our imagination is informed not only by reason, but by the history of councils as collectives

that emerged at every revolutionary period in history. We have come to the conclusionthat only a participatory democracy – in which each person is part of a circle of thinkingand talking and deciding on a local level, and in which these circles are linked andfederated expanding outwards – can afford us the type of democracy we deserve. Weenvision a society that places importance on this democratic process, such thatprovisions are made in everyone’s work, family, community, and individual life to allowthem to participate – whether that means organized childcare at meetings, shorter workdays that make time for democratic participation, or any other provision acommunity deems necessary.

We imagine an economy in which people are empowered to manage their own affairs,

there are no classes, the means of production of social wealth are owned by everyonetogether, we function in solidaristic communities, and peoples’ needs and desires areaccounted for. Ultimately, we envision an economy that allows people to fulfill their human potential, that allows us live and work in dignity and respect, and empowers usto express our true, human creativity.

We consider the economy to be an essential part of the way society functions as awhole, and think it should be as democratic as any other realm of public life. Weimagine a classless society, in which we own together those things that produce themeans of our existence. We imagine an economy guided by values of solidarity, equity,self-management, and diversity – in which our priorities in production are not based on

the decisions of a class of owners and coordinators, but a thoughtful process of assessing social needs (such as the environment), community needs (such as morework here or a new park there), individual needs, and what it takes – on the part of workers, communities, the environment, and all other agents – to produce those things.We imagine an economy that is efficient, where efficiency means producing and livingwell, but not at the expense of other values such as equity. We reject the marketeconomy, which sees efficiency in terms of profit for a minority at the expense of thesocial good, and squanders the vast majority of human potential.

We believe that people should directly control their workplaces through work councils.These councils, which will represent workers in all workplaces and all industries, will

also establish a way of working together in a participatory planning process. Weimagine a society where the social needs of different communities are weighed incoordination with the needs and abilities of workplaces, and where those groups (of allof us), will propose back and forth a plan that, in the end, we choose together. Weimagine workplaces where we all have a say, and work lives where we all have diverseexperiences that leave no one with a monopoly over the empowering work while therest are subjected to menial and rote tasks. Instead, we imagine a thoughtful processwhere we each have a balanced package of tasks that divides the disempowering and



empowering work in an equitable way, leaving each of us feeling fulfilled, productive,creative appreciated, and essentially human.

We imagine a society in which people can identify with their cultural, communal,religious, ethnic, or other lines as they please – a society where the boundaries

between communities are open and fluid, such that people can freely associate andchoose what parts of their identities to emphasize. We imagine a world where groupshave the right to self-determination and cultural autonomy, where they are given thespace and tools to express their cultures – from time and resources, to respect andphysical space. We envision a world where communities, peoples, nations, and groupsof all kinds, are free to govern themselves and create a true sense of community, wherethose groupings are liberating and equitable, demo7

cratic and accountable, and solidaristic across boundaries. We supportintercommunalism, and we imagine a world where the relations between nations andpeoples are based on solidarity and mutual assistance, not imperialism and aggression.

We envision a world where individuals can define their genders and sexualities however they like, where gender is not fixed but a matter of choice, where people have theopportunity to be and grow into or out of whatever they want. We imagine a societywhere people are free to develop and define their sexual orientations withoutoppression, without constraint, without inhibition. We imagine a world where people areempowered and respected, and where the needs of people of different genders or sexualities are taken into account. We imagine a world where women and men treatone another with respect and equality, where gender oppression has been wiped out of existence, where there are a variety of different genders expressed and no one has topick any at all, and where gender has nothing to do with power.

We imagine a world where people can choose to express their sexual desires freely,partnering in whatever ways make sense to them. We imagine a society that iseducated, informed, supportive, open, honest, and critical enough for choice to bemeaningful. We envision a society where sex is something to embrace rather than beashamed of, to be open and honest about rather than to hide and repress. We imaginea society where our bodies and different forms of sensuousness are things to beexplored and discovered, where we are liberated to truly feel and experience what isaround us, where this is seen as a creative process. We envision a sexuality whereconsent and respect are valued above everything else, where sexual aggression andviolence are not tolerated or permitted against anyone anywhere.

We imagine a world where people can raise children to be empowered, free-thinking,self-managing youth. We imagine a society where families are provided for bycommunities and society at large, where needs of parents are taken into account, wherepeople are supported in providing a safe, open home for a child to develop in. Weenvision a world where people live and grow in a wide array of different arrangements,from family homes, to individual units, to communes, to any other system that provides



institutional frameworks for the diverse needs people have, from privacy to communalintimacy. We imagine a society that creates the conditions necessary for people to livethe way they want.

We imagine a human society in harmony with the planet’s natural environment. We

imagine an economic system that accounts for the environment we all live in, not as aside note or externality, but as an essential factor to be considered in decision-making.We imagine a society that takes care of populations suffering under natural catastropheregardless of their nation or skin color, that does not accept class as a dividing line onwho has the privilege to survive the systematic destruction of the environment. Weimagine a society that does not tolerate that destruction to begin with, that values life,and understands that this planet is not exchangeable. The society we imagine is alwaysmindful of the future of the natural environment and strives for a sustainable life aheadfor human society.

We envision a society where people are able to freely express themselves, their

thoughts, opinions, sensibilities, and dreams without fear of repression and withoutneeding to be part of a privileged class to do so. We imagine a society where freedomof speech is not attached to buying power, where we all get to speak, and where wecreate ways to make that happen. We imagine books, movies, magazines and anendless variety of other forms of media that make us laugh without oppressing specificgroups, that tell us what’s going on in the world without screening out the events thatsponsors don’t want us to know about, that teach us what we need to know in order tobe active participants in the creation of society. We imagine media that are free anddemocratically controlled, available to us as tools to enhance our lives – fromentertainment that liberates,

educates, and builds community, to news and analysis that presents a variety of perspectives.

We imagine schools that build community, helping us to develop as we wish, andteaching us the values we wish to see expressed in the world – solidarity, equity,diversity, self-management, democracy, dialogue, freedom, and more. We imaginehospitals that care about treating people and taking care of them in the long-term, butmore than that we imagine a system that focuses on prevention through healthylifestyles and access to information. We imagine a justice system based onreconciliation rather than punishment. We imagine parks without fences, public spacesthat are actually for all of us, and museums that record the histories, stories, and

cultural narratives of all peoples.

We want a world where people experience equity in all aspects of their lives, wherepeople are free to manage their lives as much as they want, and where people have theopportunity to participate in the institutions and communities that they are a part of andthat affect them. We want a world of solidarity, equity, diversity, and self-management.We want a world that will enhance the ability of all people on earth to live out their full



potentials. We know it can be this way, and we don’t see any excuse for the world to beotherwise.

From Here to There

Revolution is not an event but a process. The transformation of society only happensthrough struggle – through raising consciousness, challenging the ideologicalhegemony of the status quo, building a consensus, developing an alternative, creatingmass movements, and ultimately, confronting the powerful forces that keep the socialorder the way it is. The only way this will ever happen is through the emergence of amass movement composed of a diverse range of tendencies, organizations, andindividuals that share a vision of a new society. Together, revolutionaries

must unlearn oppressive behaviors, live according to new values, create institutions tomeet material needs, and reveal the viability of new forms of social organization. At thesame time, we must take control of existing social institutions, and transform them to

liberating, democratic, solidaristic and equitable ones. Only a movement can do this.

As enraged as people might be, as willing to fight as we often are, as explosive as somepolitical moments seem, movements do not emerge out of thin air. The idea that peoplerise up spontaneously in sustained struggle is fiction – the masses of people who roseup time after time throughout human history had been preparing themselves longbeforehand. They had been learning, raising consciousness, building organizations,living within newly created institutions, and waging reform struggles. It was only theovercoming of history by myth and our tendency to fantasize about instant gratificationthat ever made it seem otherwise. Revolutions require revolutionary organization, withrevolutionary analysis, vision, and strategy.

We see the need for the creation of alternative institutions, from free schools to self-managed workplaces, from communes to eco-villages, from food coops to communitycenters. These institutions lay the foundation for the society that will replace the statusquo, provide us the experience we need as we grow, and puncture the myth that thestatus quo fulfills our needs. These institutions are being built and have been builtthroughout history. We need more and more of them, and we need them to answer themany needs we have – those unrecognized and unmet by the current social order. Weneed these alternative institutions to connect to one another, and we need them tobecome part of a mass movement ready to struggle against the forces that govern our society today.

At the same time, we must work to create counter institutions, those groupings thatactively fight to create the space for the alternatives to exist in. We need massmovements that represent diverse groups of people fight11

ing for social change in a variety of spheres – from housing to ecology, from workers’rights to student struggles, from feminist causes to community control, and so on. Those



struggles are being waged as we speak and have been throughout human history. Weneed more and more of them, and we need to fight with a sense of urgency that reflectsthe condition of the world today. We need these counter institutions to support eachother and link to the alternative institutions on whose behalf they are ultimately fighting.

Together, these institutions create a dual power movement. As we dream ahead andcreate alternatives, we defend ourselves and struggle to dismantle the brutal, inhumanestructures that oppress us. Throughout history, whenever oppressed people haveorganized to take control over their own lives and challenge illegitimate authority, theyhave constructed some form of a participatory council system as both a means and anend in the revolutionary process. From African-Americans forming neighborhoodcouncils to expand community control over education and police, to factory workers’forming councils to self-manage production and take power away from the capitalist andcoordinator classes, participatory councils have proven time and time again to be a vitalpart of the revolutionary process. These councils are a form of dual power, in which theold authoritarian institutions are broken down, while new ones take their place, and a

new society emerges within the shell of the old.

As we dream ahead and attempt to address the fundamental values and institutions of our society, we must do everything we can to improve our day-to-day surroundings. Wedo not reject reform struggles. We do not subscribe to the idea that we will only have arevolution when the world is at its worst; we do not have the right to suffer and let otherssuffer in the hope that it will lead to greatness in another era. We are prepared tostruggle for concrete reforms, but instead of building reform movements that see aparticular change within the system as an end-in-itself, we should always understandthe reform struggle within the larger revolutionary process. We support fighting for revolutionary, non-reformist reforms – struggles that improve our material lives while

providing us with the education and consciousness we need to continue onwards, andemploying the forms that prefigure the society we wish to build. The struggle for improvements today must be seen within the context of the struggle for an entirelydifferent type of life tomorrow.

We understand revolution is a fluid and dynamic process that demands an organizationand a movement that is ready to adapt to changing circumstances. This means we mustbe prepared to draw on a wide variety of tactics within a flexible approach to revolution.We know we must be involved in raising consciousness, carrying out education,connecting struggles to a holistic analysis of the way the world works, and developingothers and ourselves as revolutionaries. We know we must be busy establishing the

infrastructure of the new society within the shell of the old, fighting for reforms in a non-reformist way, and decentralizing power currently monopolized by elites. We know wemust use everything we have, from marches and protests, to pamphlets and elections,to sit-ins and occupations, to general strikes and insurrections. We understand thatpower does not disappear just because we wish it away. It must be confronted, taken,and redirected towards the expansion of democratic control over social institutions. Wemust embody the seeds of the future in the present, and as we do it, usher that veryfuture into existence.



This struggle will not be an easy one. Building of revolutionary movement means facingelites who will not hesitate to use all the tools at their disposal to maintain the statusquo. Still, history reveals our tremendous capacity to resist oppression, defeatauthoritarian rule and exploitative minorities, and take control of our own lives. We havefaith in the passion, the dedication, fearlessness, hope, and enormous power we hold

together. The challenge is great, but we are not afraid; the potential is far greater.

Our Mission

The Organization for a Free Society is committed to building a movement for socialliberation. We aim to transform the governing values and institutions in all spheres of social life. Through study and struggle, we have come to understand that systems of oppression condition our lives by mutually defining and reproducing our socialrelationships. We work to break down all systems of inequality and injustice and tocreate a participatory, democratic, and egalitarian society.

Our members are dedicated organizers from diverse backgrounds who work withingrassroots movements to build, take and decentralize power. We believe in raisingconsciousness and awareness through education. We seek to build alternativeinstitutions that challenge and undermine exploitation and domination and that embodyin the present the values of the future. We envision a world characterized by solidarity,equity, self-management, diversity and ecological balance.

Our aim is to live and organize as close to our vision as possible and to transformourselves as part of the struggle for a free society.

How We Organize

We envision and aspire to create a society built upon the idea that people should have asay in the decisions that affect their lives, proportionate to the degree that they areaffected. In this same vein, we want this to be realized to the greatest degree possiblewithin our organization. We strive to provide one another with the tools to effectivelyparticipate in the decision-making process. We do this by learning together, spending aconcerted amount of time and effort educating new members, being open andtransparent about all leadership structures and work groups that exist in theorganization, and by taking time to intentionally develop a community of trust, respect,and affection inside the organization.

We are passionately democratic. We believe that leadership exists, and should exist,and that those organizations that have no structure for this are ironically the mosttyrannical ones, dominated by their most privileged members. We elect representativesby clearly defining their roles, by discussing with them and without them, by voting, andby recalling them if necessary. Leaders expect the trust of the rest of the group, and thecommunity expects the accountability of its representatives. We make a conscious effortto have diversity and balance at all levels of leadership with regard to gender, sexuality,



the forms of organization that will replace the ones we are fighting against, and becausewe truly believe they make our lives better.

The End and Beyond

We wrote this document in order to join the many voices around the globe today andthroughout history in declaring that the world is not what it should be, and we canchange it. We wrote it to join the ranks of those who have struggled before us, and themany who struggle today alongside us. We wrote it to call out that we are searching for partners, that we have much to learn and experience, and that we are part of ageneration in struggle. We wrote it to say openly and honestly that we know thechallenges ahead of us, and we know we can win. We wrote it to say that we have noright to do anything but fight and fight until the world we wish to see is the world of hereand now.

There is cause for fear and apprehension: The strength of the Right, the fragmentation

of the Left, the ecological mayhem on the horizon, the authoritarianism growing in our midst, the edges of capitalism and imperialism growing harsher day by day. These trulyare serious threats to humanity.

But at the same time, we have great cause to be inspired: People are rising up. Theworkers strikes and occupations from Chicago to Greece, the student uprisings fromNew York to Paris, the grass-roots political movements from Venezuela to Nepal, theindigenous movements from Kenya to Bolivia – they and countless other examplesprove that people all over the world know that our planet is not as it should be, and thatwe must take responsibility for changing it.

We know that revolution is not an event, but a lifelong process. We know that manysuffer needlessly, that others profit from it inexcusably, and that none of us havereached our full potential as human beings. We know that history is marked by millionsof wasted lives and broken dreams. We know it does not have to be this way; there isanother way, and there is no excuse not to fight for that. We know it will takemovements to shape our vision into reality. We know that we have to actively build theinstitutions we see replacing the ones that rule us now, make material differences in thelives of people today, and simultaneously fight an enormous battle to break apart thestatus quo. We know this will demand the vision, imagination, compassion, andpatience of the many people around the globe working to build another world. We knowit will demand the sense of purpose, commitment, fearlessness, and creativity of thoseequally many who are fighting day in and day out for that new and better world to havethe space in which to grow. We know that failure is not an option. We know we areprepared for the struggle ahead.

OFS | Organization for a Free Society




Manifesto - Organization for a Free Society

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