introducing new democracy

[new democracy]

Introducing New Democracy


NEW DEMOCRACY was founded in 1992 to help build a movement for democratic revolution. Most people want a more equal and democratic society. Our goal is to give an organized and explicit voice to the revolutionary values and aspirations of working people.

Our confidence in the possibility of revolutionary change comes from our fundamental beliefs:

1. Capitalism, communism, and socialism have all led to societies in which the elite hold the money and the cards. None of these systems is democratic. None of them reflects the aspirations and goals of most people. Communism and socialism failed as alternatives to capitalism because they accepted capitalism's view of people: that economic development is the basis of human development, that self-interest is the primary human motivation, and that ordinary people are a passive mass or a dangerous problem. The basis of a new and democratic society is a new view of ordinary people.

2. Far from being passive, most people in their everyday lives struggle against a culture based on competition and exploitation to create relationships based on equality and commitment to each other. This means that most people are trying to create a better world. This effort is not pure or unmixed in people's lives, and people are not necessarily aware of the meaning of their efforts. But whatever equal and committed relationships people have in their lives, they have created by struggle against a culture based on inequality, competition, and exploitation. People's everyday lives have revolutionary meaning. The everyday struggle of ordinary people to humanize the world is the force which creates both the wealth of society and whatever positive human relationships and values exist within it.

3. Class struggle is a struggle over what values and relations should shape society, what goals it should pursue, and who should control it. Class struggle is a struggle over what it means to be a human being. The fundamental values of the working class in this struggle are equality, solidarity, and democracy. The fundamental values of the capitalist class are inequality, competition, and control from above. The goal of working class struggle is to shape the whole world with its values.

4. Revolution to create real democracy is both necessary and possible. Revolution is necessary because the problems we face are rooted in a system of elite rule that controls people by attacking relations of solidarity and equality. These problems cannot be solved one by one, or without creating a new society. Revolution is possible because the struggle of working people to humanize the world is the force that drives history, and because the vast majority of people want what only a revolution can make possible: a truly democratic society based on equality and commitment to each other.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION"? Some revolutions are undemocratic, replacing one elite with another. We are for a democratic revolution to abolish elite rule itself. Revolution to us means transforming all of society with the best values of working people: solidarity, equality, and democracy. Democratic revolution means overthrowing elite rule to create society on a new basis. It means, for example:

not just better wages and conditions, but the end of the wage system, with working people themselves transforming the goals, organization, and control of work;
not just "equal opportunity" for men and women of different races to get ahead in an unequal society, but working men and women of all races changing an unequal and competitive society into one based on cooperation and sharing, equality and solidarity;
not just the right to vote, but rather the vast majority of people deliberately shaping the goals and relations of society, changing "democracy" from an empty and misleading process manipulated by an elite to a way of life that gives ordinary people the actual power in society.
THE IMPORTANCE OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS: Elites use ideas to control people even more than they use force. They promote the idea that most people are motivated primarily by self-interest; that the good in society comes down from the elite; that inequality and competition are the inevitable results of human nature, and that therefore society cannot be changed. Politicians and the media and other institutions promote these ideas and use them to attack, isolate, and demoralize people.

We cannot build a successful movement without challenging capitalist ideas about people.

OUR VIEWS ON SOME ISSUES: Our positive view of ordinary people has led us to view certain issues in very different ways from conservative, liberal, and leftist views.

--EQUALITY OR "EQUAL OPPORTUNITY"?: Elites can only stay in power by persuading people that the elite are the source of progress toward goals which the people consider important. Most people believe in equality. The ruling class defines equality in terms of competing interest groups. The capitalist view creates categories divorced from the context of class society, by defining "women" or "African Americans" or "white males" or "Asian Americans" as groups with competing goals and interests. It thereby redefines equality to mean equal opportunity to get ahead in an unequal society, rather than creating a classless society.

Through programs such as affirmative action, the ruling class defines racial or gender equality in terms of competition for jobs which the ruling class has made artificially scarce. The goal of affirmative action and other such programs is not to eliminate class inequality or even to help the supposed beneficiaries of such programs, whether women or racial minorities, but to pit working people against each other and preserve the system of inequality.

--RACE AND RACISM: What working people have in common is more important than any differences of race, nationality, or religion. Our task is to shed light on the common class values and goals and common enemy of working people, to help build a united working class movement.

The concept of racism, as it has been used to explain attitudes and behaviors in capitalist society, is profoundly misleading. It has been used to paint the elite as the source of progress and white workers as the enemy of equality.

The remarkable thing about working people of all colors is how much they have resisted the lies about each other which the capitalist media and politicians promote and how much they support or are open to supporting each other. Workers of all colors have values in their own lives which enable them to create relationships with other working people based on class allegiance and shared class values. The basis of a united working class movement is already present in the lives of working people.

--NATIONALISM: Nationalism-the idea of national or group unity transcending class-is always an enemy of working people and a tool of elites. Since the collapse of communism, a very savage nationalism is being vigorously promoted around the globe, especially in the former Soviet bloc. (Nationalism is discussed at some length in the book, We CAN Change The World.)

In the US, nationalism is being promoted mainly under a "progressive" guise, especially on campuses and in school systems. "Multiculturalism," for example, defines "culture" in terms of race or nationality; it suggests that white or black or Hispanic or Asian people have more in common with the elites of their own national group than with working people of other races and nationalities. Likewise the debate over "Afrocentrism vs. Eurocentrism" divides people on the basis of national (or in this case, continental) origin, unites them with "their own" elites, and conceals their common class values and their class enemy.

--SEXISM AND SEXUAL EQUALITY: Our view on these issues is comparable to our view on race. What working men and women have in common-their shared goals and values-is more important than their biological differences. Equality and solidarity among men and women must be fundamental values of the democratic revolutionary movement and of the society we seek to build.

Feminism-the view that men are the enemy of women, that most men benefit from social inequalities between men and women, and that women have goals and values in opposition to men-is a capitalist view of people and should be rejected.

WHAT KIND OF MOVEMENT IS NEEDED?: The world needs a revolutionary movement based not on politicians but on ordinary people themselves as the driving force and leaders of change. Revolutions are built on hope. We want to help build a revolutionary movement which unites ordinary men and women of every race and nationality, in which people's confidence in their ability to change the world comes from their confidence in each other.

MEMBERSHIP: Membership in New Democracy is open to all those who agree with our goals and ideas as expressed in our Statement of Principles.

NEW DEMOCRACY

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES



We live under a dictatorship of the wealthy. Most people want a better world. We can only achieve a new world by openly declaring our goals:

1. We are for revolution to create a real democracy. We call on people everywhere to end elite rule and to create real democracy based on principles of solidarity and equality. Democracy means ordinary people shaping all of society with their shared values. It means people together freely deciding their goals and how they will cooperate to achieve them. This includes transforming the goals, organization, and control of work to create an economy where the productive wealth of society is used to meet the human needs of all.

2. Revolution to achieve real democracy is necessary and possible. Revolution is necessary because the problems we face are rooted in a system of elite rule that controls people by attacking relations of solidarity and equality. These problems cannot be solved without creating a new society. Revolution is possible because the struggle of ordinary people to humanize the world is the force that drives history, and because most people want the new world that only revolution can bring.

3. Our confidence in the possibility of revolution comes from our confidence in ordinary people. Capitalism, communism, and socialism have all led to societies in which an elite holds the power. None of these systems is democratic. Communism and socialism failed as alternatives to capitalism because they accepted capitalism's view that economic development is the basis of human development, that self-interest is the primary human motivation, and that ordinary people are a passive mass or a dangerous problem. The basis of a new society is a new, positive view of people.

4. The everyday struggle of ordinary people to humanize the world creates the wealth of society and whatever positive human relationships exist within it. Most people in their everyday lives struggle against a culture based on competition and exploitation. They strive in their families and workplaces to create relationships based on equality and commitment to each other. People's everyday lives have revolutionary meaning.

5. Class struggle is a struggle over what values should shape society, what goals it should pursue, and who should control it. It is a struggle over what it means to be a human being. The values of the capitalist class are inequality, competition, and control from above. The values of the working class are equality, solidarity, and democracy. The goal of working class struggle is to transform the whole world with its values. The most personal acts of kindness and the most public acts of class war are part of the same struggle to humanize the world.

6. The revolutionary movement must not be based on politicians or union officials or business structures or the courts but on ordinary people themselves as the driving force and leaders of change.

7. Revolutions are built on hope. The revolutionary movement will unite ordinary men and women of every race and nationality in a movement in which our confidence in our ability to change the world comes from our confidence in each other.

8. We invite all who agree with these principles to join New Democracy.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New Democracy works for democratic revolution. Write us at P.O. Box 427, Boston, MA 02130. Or call: Boston: Doug Fuda, 617-323-7213; St. Paul: Tom Laney, 612-731-2649; Decatur: Larry Solomon, 217-763-4451; Chicago: John Cabral, 708-524-0205. E-mail: [email protected]
Webpage: http://www.newdemocracyworld.org.

[oki]

that link doesn't work,which is a shame cause this is interesting.we do need something new....

[new democracy]

you konw i post in politics an article from new democracy called: sould there realy be a jewish state? i am going to give you a link to it: http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/top...m=11&topic=1922 (http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/topic.pl?forum=11&topic=1922)

[new democracy]

try this: www.newdemocracyworld.org

[Michael De Panama]

What's the difference between this and democratic socialism?

[new democracy]

you talk about allot about democratic marxism/socialism. i would like to konw what is the political sturcture of your democratic marxism.

[new democracy]

Communism and socialism failed as alternatives to capitalism because they accepted capitalism's view of people: that economic development is the basis of human development, that self-interest is the primary human motivation, and that ordinary people are a passive mass or a dangerous problem. The basis of a new and democratic society is a new view of ordinary people.

now you see some difference? i am going to post an article that written by dave startmen, i think he was the guy that invented new democracy that going to show more difference between them:

WHY MARXISM ALWAYS FAILS:
A REPLY TO THE NEW UNIONIST


To the Editor:

In his review of my book, We CAN Change The World, ("Attempt at New Theory of Revolution Fails to Supplant Marx," New Unionist, December 1995) George Kane actually shows why Marxism cannot lead to good results.

Kane writes, "A Marxist understands that, while human nature is not infinitely malleable, people develop behavior patterns that their social and economic systems reward. Under genuine communism, people will be cooperative and act to promote the common good because such behavior will be rewarding for the individual, while the competitive, selfish behaviors of capitalism will no longer be rewarded."

In the Marxist view which Kane presents here, working people have no values within themselves as individuals which contradict capitalist values of selfishness and competitiveness. They simply respond (like pigeons in a psych experiment) to the reward system on which society is structured. Under capitalism, they are selfish; under communism, they will be cooperative.

This is a totally demeaning view of working people which has nothing to do with real people. You would never guess from Kane's portrait that working people are complicated human beings, millions of whom engage everyday in acts of sacrifice and solidarity with their families and friends and coworkers and who daily take part in individual or collective resistance to the encroachments of capitalism on their lives.

You also would never guess from Kane's description that millions of workers have fought the class war often at great cost to themselves and their families. It doesn't matter that their explicit demands have usually been "reformist." The point is that workers' motivation in these struggles clearly goes counter to capitalist motivations of selfishness and competition. What capitalist "reward system" were the Hormel meatpackers responding to in their year-long strike? Where are the selfishness and competition in the three-year lesson in courage and commitment provided to us by the Staley workers? Were these wonderful people simply foolish, deluded into thinking they were going to get some personal reward for persisting in their struggle long after it was clear that they could not win on the explicit issues? Or were they perhaps motivated by working class values that go beyond personal gain?

I believe that we cannot make sense of open and collective class struggles or of the everyday lives of working people unless we first realize that workers have goals and values which contradict the values of capitalism and that ordinary people seek to realize these values in their everyday lives and in collective struggle.

Since Kane and Marx believe that workers simply respond to whatever reward system is imposed on them, they must deny that the everyday lives of ordinary people have any meaning which contradicts capitalism. Kane says that, "The everyday conduct of ordinary people may, as Stratman claims, be seditious of bourgeois hegemony, but by itself it has no revolutionary potential. At best it is reformist, and at worst it is conservative."

Following Marx, Kane argues that, "The workers as a class become revolutionary only when their survival requires conditions that are incompatible with capitalist rule."

I think that this view is not only contemptuous of workers. It also is extremely demoralizing, and puts the left in the position of hoping that things get worse and worse for working people so that they will finally "become revolutionary."

The question that all of us who want to make a revolution must confront is, Is there a force for change in society. I believe that there is, but that we cannot see this force through the eyes of Marxism. To change the world, we must see it in a new way.

I argue in We CAN Change The World that the logic of the "dog-eat-dog" culture of capitalism is that this world should be a completely loveless and savage place. But we can see that this is not so. In fact most people in important parts of their lives-with their wife or husband or children, their friends or co-workers- struggle against the capitalist culture of competition and inequality to create relationships based on love and equality and solidarity. Most people try to shape the little piece of the world that they think they can control with values which contradict the values of capitalism. This means that most people, whether they are aware of it or not, are already engaged in a struggle to create a different world.

This struggle may not get very far: capitalism has devastating effects. But to the extent that people have any positive relationships, they have created them by struggle against capitalist culture. People's everyday lives have revolutionary meaning.

This daily struggle to create and sustain relationships and infuse them with anti-capitalist values is the basis of more public and collective struggles. The recent strikes in France and the struggle of the Hormel meatpackers and the Staley workers did not fall from the sky. They were rooted in the everyday values and relations of the working class.

When people's idea of how much of the world they can shape with the values of equality and solidarity grows, they mount strikes and build movements. When their confidence in themselves and each other grows sufficiently, they make revolutions. The smallest personal acts of kindness and solidarity and the most earth-shaking revolutionary movements are on a continuum of struggle to humanize the world.

I believe that the class war is not just over a division of the wealth of society, however important that may be. It is rather a struggle over what goals and values should shape society and who should control it. On the one side stands the owning class, who value competition and inequality and control from above. On the other side is the working class, who value equality and solidarity and control from below.

The class war is finally a struggle over what it means to be a human being. This is a struggle which we and other working people are already fighting, but which we need to understand in a new way if we are to win.

The Marxist paradigm is profoundly anti-democratic; it cannot lead to the liberating revolution which Marx himself desired. "Genuine communism" in the Marxist paradigm will always require a party elite to rule in place of the working class and to remold workers from the "competitive, selfish behaviors of capitalism" so that they are "cooperative and act to promote the common good." Authoritarian rule in the Soviet Union and China has its roots in the Marxist paradigm and the Marxist view of people.

The Marxist paradigm also leads to feelings of powerlessness and despair in those who are explicitly seeking to create a new society, because it tells us that the vast majority of people are against us or at least do not share our goals.

The paradigm that I am proposing shows that the struggle to humanize the world and to shape it with values of solidarity and equality is the most pervasive of human activities. Revolutionaries are not alone. Working for revolution means taking a full and conscious role in a struggle in which the great majority of the world's people are already engaged. Fighting for revolution means fulfilling our lives through all the commitments to other people which already give the lives of ordinary people dignity and significance.

Marx once said that "the revolution will draw its poetry from the future." He was wrong about this. The revolution will draw its poetry from the past and the present: from the meaning of people's lives finally revealed.

Dave Stratman

[Michael De Panama]

Well, I believe that the only true democracy exists with communism. Capitalist democracies are plutocracies. Leninist democratic centralism is just as faux-democratic because it creates the same style of elite class. But in a nation where the economy is equally distributed, nobody could gain more political power than one another by obtaining more economic power. Run that democratically, and you have a sort of super-democracy.

[Michael De Panama]

"DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM: The belief that the equality which socialism is designed to bring cannot be achieved without democracy. Unlike Social Democracy, Democratic Socialists are more Left-wing than centrist. Democratic Socialists are opposed to both Communism and capitalism, feeling that both systems have failed to emancipate the workers of the world from exploitation. During the Cold War, when the Social Democrats sided with the capitalist West and the Communists sided with the East, Democratic Socialists were pulled in the middle, because they saw both systems as evil in different ways. While the Soviet Union had political inequality, America had economic inequality. Perhaps the earliest large Democratic Socialist movement in America was the Socialist Party of America, which was founded in 1901 by Eugene V. Debs and his comrades. Today, perhaps the best-known American advocate of Democratic Socialism is Howard Zinn, columnist for The Progressive, author of A People’s History of the United States, and professor emiritus of Boston University. The largest Democratic Socialist groups are the Socialist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). There are also Democratic Socialists within the Greens USA. Other world Democratic Socialist parties include the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, the German PDS, the Australian DSP, and the Japanese New Socialist Party. "

http://www.red-encyclopedia.org/vocab.html

[new democracy]

well, democratic socialism still accepts the capitalist view about ordinary people right?

[Michael De Panama]

What view is that?

[new democracy]

Communism and socialism failed as alternatives to capitalism because they accepted capitalism's view of people: that economic development is the basis of human development, that self-interest is the primary human motivation, and that ordinary people are a passive mass or a dangerous problem. The basis of a new and democratic society is a new view of ordinary people.

[Michael De Panama]

I'm pretty sure most democratic socialists understand that human nature is maleable enough to break away from the self-interest and greed that is essential to the survival of any capitalist society. We don't believe that humans are passive or dangerous. This is actually a main argument I've been having with some of the authoritarian socialists over at the Lyceum.

[new democracy]

do you believe that the economic development is the basis of human development?

[new democracy]

new democrats believe that ordinary people are not greedy at all and that they are already , even if they are not completely aware of that, fighting every day to create a more equal and democratic society.

[Nateddi]

how do you construct the economy. whats the private/public ratio?

[new democracy]

i am not sure i completely understand your question but if i understand this is the answer:
not just better wages and conditions, but the end of the wage system, with working people themselves transforming the goals, organization, and control of work;

[oki]

what are your views on the state,army and police?
and can you discribe in short what your utopia would look like?upto what point would the choice of the people be untoucheble?

[new democracy]

that i didnt understand completely but in an article called "people get ready" they paisd the popular assemblies in argentina that trying to fight fascist goverment decisions and say that this is agreat way in making direct democracy they also praised the soviets in russia until lenin crash them up.

[new democracy]

also i orderd the book "we could change the world". that book written by dave stratmen, i think he was the guy that invent new democracy so when i get it i could tell you more.

[new democracy]

her is the article people get ready:


People, Get Ready

A New Democracy Editorial


Two million workers converged on Rome this April in the largest demonstration in Italian history. They were demonstrating against government plans to weaken job protections. A week later nearly 13 million Italian workers staged a one-day general strike. In Argentina workers and the middle class have brought down five presidents since December, 2001; workers have seized over a dozen factories there which they are now operating. In March China was shaken by its largest labor protests since the Communists took power in 1949. In Venezuela a US-backed coup by business and military leaders was defeated in 36 hours by a popular uprising. In Washington, DC on April 20 more than 75,000 demonstrated against the Israeli invasion of the Occupied Territories of Palestine and against the war on terrorism. In Germany in May, 2.3 million auto workers began a series of one-day "rolling" strikes. Two hundred thousand took to the streets of Madrid on May 19 against "War and Capitalism," chanting, "Another World is Possible."

Millions of people around the world are again finding their voices, asserting their values, taking to the streets, challenging elite power, imagining a new world, mobilizing for class war. Capitalism no longer offers any real hope of a better future. No one believes anymore that "the market" will make us free or that the rich gorging themselves on the fruits of the earth will somehow lead to a better life for us all. All the system can offer is what our leaders have promised: the terror of war and the "war on terror."

Forces are assembling around the world for conflicts that will define the fate of the planet for decades, perhaps centuries to come. A new era has begun, an era of mass mobilization, war, and revolution. Are we ready?


THE STATE OF THE MOVEMENT


Merely a glance at the mobilizations mentioned above suggests some of the weaknesses of the movement, as well as its strengths.

The struggle of the Italian unions, for example, is purely defensive, and the general strike seems to have been intended by union officials as a show of strength and a sop to the members rather than as a serious exertion of working class power designed to strengthen class forces for further struggle; according to press reports, even as they called the strike, labor leaders were already trying to negotiate a compromise with the government by balancing layoffs with a state-run unemployment benefits system. The one-day "rolling" strikes called by German union officials are a means of letting off steam and dividing the workforce by having one auto plant strike at a time. The Venezuelan uprising succeeded in restoring Hugo Chavez to power, but Chavez is a kind of South American caudillo with authoritarian ways who hasn't delivered on his promises to the poor and isn't mobilizing and arming the working classes to defeat elite power; in fact, after the failed coup Chavez called for reconciliation of the classes in Venezuela and acceded to many of the business elite's demands for more power. The April 20 demonstration in Washington, while a significant mobilization, was also defensive. It raised a number of different issues, all of them related, but not tied together in a coherent analysis or in an encompassing vision of fundamental change. While many of its participants surely had a new society in mind, the march did not challenge the legitimacy of the system that produced the problems it was trying to solve, and it did not call for a new society.


THE IRONY OF IT ALL


The demonstrations of the Chinese oil workers of Daqin illustrate the poignant irony of the historical moment in which we find ourselves. They are fighting a Communist government's capitalist privatization policies.

Capitalism and Communism, the two great systems of the twentieth century, locked in mortal combat for 75 years, turn out to have been two sides of the same coin, two different management strategies for controlling people, two different approaches to exploiting workers and raping the environment, two studies in anti-democracy.

The aggressive "free-market" capitalism which the world has been experiencing these last 30 years was undertaken by the world elite in response to the last great revolutionary wave to shake the world. That massive revolutionary upsurge began in the mid-1960s and threatened capitalist and Communist elites around the globe: in Poland and Prague, France and China and the US and Latin America. The revolutions of the day were defeated because they were trapped between the ugly alternatives of capitalism and Communism. For all their revolutionary energy and aspirations, people simply felt that they had nowhere to go, no vision of a new society which they felt confident would escape the existing models of class domination. The world elites–capitalist and Communist–were able to defeat the global revolutionary upsurge and mount a thirty year counteroffensive because the people of the world were disarmed by the lack of an inspiring revolutionary alternative to capitalism. Capitalism triumphed by default, echoing Margaret Thatcher's refrain: "There Is No Alternative."

The lack of a revolutionary alternative to capitalism bought the system time for its thirty-year counteroffensive. Now time has run out.


A REVOLUTIONARY ALTERNATIVE


There is nothing more necessary for the success of popular struggle in the coming years than a worthy revolutionary alternative to aim for. This alternative must inspire confidence that we can create a truly democratic, humanly fulfilling, successfully functioning new society.

There are developments in the struggle in Argentina that bear on this question and which may have great impact on all of us. In the weeks after the popular uprising of December 19-20, people began to meet on street corners in Buenos Aires and elsewhere to consider how to take further action against the corralito– the government decree impounding the bank savings of small savers. These informal meetings led rapidly to the creation of more than fifty popular assemblies in Buenos Aires alone, involving thousands of people, with weekly meetings of an inter-neighborhood assembly.

The concerns of the assemblies moved quickly from the corralito to the economic and political system in Argentina. In another promising development, the assembly movement and the piquetero movement of the unemployed and poor peasants have joined forces. The piqueteros have operated for several years in the countryside, blocking highways with mass sit-ins to pressure the government to provide economic assistance to the poor.

The assembly movement is an important exercise in direct democracy. It is still fragile and at considerable risk of being high-jacked by the unions and political parties of the left. From our admittedly scant knowledge, however, it seems to be exactly the kind of development that can lead to an authentic democratic revolution in Argentina.

The assembly movement faces huge ideological and political obstacles. In every modern revolution people have spontaneously created similar popular assemblies–in the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the French occupations movement of May, 1968 and others. It has been precisely these bodies of popular democracy that the existing regimes have defeated or that emerging elites have suppressed on their way to taking power.

The key obstacle to the success of direct democracy is the belief that ordinary people are not competent to govern society. This belief is not only endemic to capitalist assumptions about people; it is also central to what has been the chief anti-capitalist philosophy--Marxism. Capitalism and communism turned out much the same–as class societies in which a small elite holds the power–because they are based on the same view of people: that human beings, capitalists and workers alike, are driven by self-interest; that economic development is the basis of human development; that economic forces drive history; that elites act, while ordinary people–unless they are thrust onto the stage of history by economic forces beyond their control–are only acted upon.

This view of people can never result in a democratic society. It can only lead to tyranny of one form or another. The moral of the Communist experience is not that "revolutions always turn bad," but that revolutions based on a capitalist view of people always turn bad.

We began New Democracy in 1992 because we felt we had found the basis for a revolutionary alternative to all the existing systems. We had found it not in a text of Marx or Lenin or in some economic or historical theory. We had found it right in front of our faces–-in people's everyday lives. We formed New Democracy to put this new idea of revolution on the popular agenda.

We reasoned that the core of any political vision is its view of people: their values, their aspirations, their strengths and weaknesses, their role in creating the present society and their ability to create a new one.

The starting point of a new, world-wide revolutionary movement is an understanding that ordinary working people are motivated not primarily by self-interest, as capitalism would have it, but by their belief in solidarity and mutual aid; that the everyday struggle of ordinary people to provide for their families and to create supportive human relationships is the source of the good in society—both the material wealth and whatever positive human values may exist within it; that the struggle of ordinary people to humanize the world and to fill it with meaning is the force that drives history; that the class struggle is a struggle over the texture and meaning of human life and of the values that should shape it; that the successful conclusion of the class war requires the revolutionary transformation of society with working class values of solidarity, equality, and democracy.

Ordinary people, it seemed clear to us, already create the basis of a new society in the shell of the old in the best things that they do everyday with their families and friends and co-workers. Creating a new society is not an impossible step into unknown territory but a fulfillment of values and struggles that are already part of our lives.

This positive view of people is the basis of our confidence that direct democracy movements such as that in Argentina can succeed and that people can create a whole new kind of world reflecting a new set of values–the best values that have been in their lives all along.


WHAT DO WE DO NOW?


If revolution is our goal, what are the practical tasks that lie before us now? Here are a few:

–Spread a democratic vision of human beings. Democratic revolution depends on a positive vision of human beings. The most powerful capitalist propaganda is the idea that society is based on selfishness and greed because that's the way people are. The revolutionary movement must reject the capitalist view of human nature for a revolutionary view. This means rejecting elitist assumptions about people–they're racist, sexist, homophobic, stupid, need to be controlled, apathetic, only care about themselves–that are only too common in political movements, and starting instead from a positive view of people's abilities and values.

–Spread solidarity. Capitalism controls people by dividing us into groups and forcing us to compete–in school, on the job, as entire nations. As the system becomes more threatened, government leaders will increasingly turn to war as the ultimate social control. We need to reject competition with other working people and build ties of solidarity within our plants, our offices, our schools, our countries, and between blacks and whites and Latinos, men and women, Arabs and Jews–in short, among all the people whom the ruling elites are trying to divide. We should refuse to fight any war but the class war.

–Expose the system. Behind every important social problem we face lurks the system of class rule. The things that ordinary people face as problems–unemployment, low wages, overwork, poor schools, competition on the job, unaffordable housing, insecure retirements–are in fact solutions for the ruling class: solutions to the elite problem of how to manage us through fear and also make more money. Such problems as high stakes testing and the terrible stress our children face in school are consciously manufactured by the elite to cause students to fail and thereby to reinforce social inequality. We cannot solve these problems within capitalism. We should be constantly showing people in every examination of these problems that capitalism must be destroyed.

–Build independent labor institutions. The unions are dominated by capital and work on behalf of the companies to manage the workforce and keep it divided and demobilized. We need to build Solidarity Committees free of union control which enable workers to spread solidarity, spread the vision, build a revolutionary workers' movement nationally and internationally.

–Spread the conversation. What we believe and say to each other are the keys to building this revolution. Tom Laney, talking about building solidarity among auto workers, says: "People can participate in the solidarity movement without having to travel, go to meetings or write anything on email....People just need to trust their experience and common sense, to take sides, to be on the side of friendship and mutual support.... They only have to defend solidarity in their conversations and everything will change. Everyone will see that the best things they believe in and try to practice in every way they treat others in their families, neighborhoods and workplaces are the values that should be running the show."

–Build New Democracy. New Democracy is the only organization we're aware of – we're eager to find others – promoting this positive view of people and this idea of democratic revolution. The purpose of our organization is to develop and promote this alternative vision of ordinary people, to give us all the clarity and confidence to succeed.

We are a tiny organization which is having a large effect on national debates around education reform, health care, and labor. We need to do much more. To do that, we need your help. We hope you will read the Statement of Principles on our web site and, if you agree with it, become a member. We ask you to buy a subscription to our newsletter and sell subscriptions to your friends. Let friends know about our web site. Get a copy of We CAN Change the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life, available for only $9.95, for yourself and a friend. Send a donation to New Democracy, whatever you can afford.


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From New Democracy Newsletter, May-August 2002.