Participatory Socialist International

  1. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23692



    To be a contender, "21st Century Socialist" vision needs elaboration, advocacy, and program. To improve focus and increase power, worldwide anti-capitalist organizations, projects, and movements need shared coherence and mutual solidarity. To fulfill these needs, Venezuela's President Chavez recently announced to widespread support and also some critical response that a gathering in Caracas this April would establish a new International.

    But what might this new International look like? What might it accomplish? How might people, such as those reading this essay, and particularly people in grassroots movements around the world, relate to it?

    Not Our Predecessor's International

    Suppose a new International is an excellent venue for debate but has no practical component, or, worse, is a gathering place for big egos who mostly preen at long, aimless meetings. Or suppose a new International intelligently addresses programs and ideas, but is a vehicle for a small group to issue instructions from above. Or suppose a new International's focus, structure, or operational procedures are conceptually rooted in past flawed macho, racist, authoritarian or otherwise oppressive practices. Even if it grew large, such a new International, built with the intellectual bricks, social mortar, programmatic inclinations, and personal habits and ideas of the old world, would not likely help us attain a new world. Liberation will not stand well on old foundations. We must plant the seeds of the future, as best we can, in our present endeavors.

    Most politically sophisticated people of today's movements would not sign up with an old-style International. Even considering the relatively few eager souls who would sign up, most would not remain inspired for long. Predictably, support would not grow strong enough to win major change. We can't win a new world without attaining wide and deep support, and we can't attract wide and deep support offering structures and methods embodying the core ills of the past.

    Thus, lesson one, already familiar to most: If a new International marches to the beat of past drumming, no matter what its members might want, and no matter how courageously its members might seek their worthy dreams, the support they gain will be too limited and their efforts will be too compromised by past destructive residues to generate desirable 21st century outcomes.

    The Focus of a New International

    Issue Focus

    The "subject matter" of a new international should and will inevitably address all concerns which go into and are part of developing and sustaining a liberated society and world but there is no reason to think all sensible and caring people would or should agree about all such matters. Much will have to be worked out in practice. Much will differ from country to country. Maybe there is a best position - but we don't yet know it. Maybe most people think they know a best position, but a few people differ, and perhaps the few will prove right later.

    This indicates that regarding unity we ought to settle only on a minimalist but profoundly important set of principles and commitments that would characterize a new International. What minimal commitments would a new International need to adopt to do its job well. Those who agree with essential inviolable commitments, could join. Those who don't agree with them, might want to join, but couldn't.

    Few would doubt that a new International should be centrally concerned with economics, gender and kinship, culture and community, politics, international relations, and ecology. Further, however, there is no need for, and we have learned in recent decades there is also no point trying to elevate any one of these focuses above the rest. They are all centrally important and powerfully entwined. Thus, it should be the case that a group in a new International might in some country, or at some time, or for some purpose, be primarily focused on one or another of these focuses, but to be part of the new International it would also have to acknowledge that their priority was just one among many, and that other priorities should inform their work as well as be informed by their work.

    Surely, at least these six areas of struggle must be elevated by any organization trying to create a new world because: (a) all these six central domains will critically affect the character of a new world, (b) each of these six domains is capable of manifesting influences that would subvert efforts to reach a new world, and (c) the constituencies most involved in and affects by each of these six domains would be intensely alienated if their prime concerns were relegated to secondary importance.

    But what minimalist political focus and commitment might a new International have regarding each of theses six broad areas of concern? What would it initially need to universally agree about each area to gain the wherewithal to really change that area and legitimately appeal to and empower constituencies most concerned about that area?

    Some possibilities for general agreement are that:

    economic production, consumption, and allocation should be classless - which of course includes equitable access for all to quality and accessible education, health care and the requisites of health like food, water, and sanitation, housing, meaningful and dignified work, and the instruments and conditions of personal fulfillment

    gender/kinship, sexual, and family relations should not privilege by age, sexual preference, or gender any one group above others - which of course includes ending all forms of oppression of women, providing daycare, recreation, health care, etc.

    culture and community relations among races, ethnic groups, religions, and other cultural communities should protect the rights and identity of each community up to equally respecting those of all other communities as well - which of course includes an end to racist, ethnocentric, and otherwise bigoted structures as well as securing the prosperity and rights of indigenous people

    political decision making, adjudication of disputes and implementation of shared programs should deliver people's power in ways that do not elevate any one sector or constituency to power above others - which of course includes participation and justice for all

    international trade, communication, and other interactions should attain and protect peace and justice while dismantling all vestiges of colonialism and imperialism - which of course includes canceling the debt of nations of the global south and reconstructing international norms and relations to move toward an equitable and just community of equally endowed nations

    ecological choices should not only be sustainable, but should care for the environment in accord with our highest aspirations for ourselves and our world - which of course includes climate justice and energy renovation

    Is there room for difference and debate in what exactly each of the above points means, much less about more specific details? Of course there is. But having room for debate is good in an International that means to be a massive bloc of diverse projects each of which retain their own history and agenda. The International becomes the greatest sum of all its parts. It embodies differences as a source of strength. It avoids the temptation to become just a coalition attached only to universally agreed but least common denominator claims, or to homogenize all views into one narrow pattern.

    Underlying Values

    What about underlying values? Surely a new International would elevate solidarity as part of its ethos. An International is, after all, about aligning worldwide movements and projects into mutual aid and collective benefit.

    A new International should also certainly elevate diversity as a core value, both due to the obvious ecological necessity of doing so, and due to the observation that in any undertaking minority views can become majority, or what is thought to be crazy today can lead to what is brilliant tomorrow.

    A new International will no doubt also adopt equity as one of its core values, even if it retains contradictory "certainties" about just what constitutes equity. More, over time, presumably members will reach increased clarity about just what equity entails and requires. One possibility is, for example, that it means every person who can work gets a share of income based on his or her duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, but not based on property, or power, or even output, while those who can't work get special needs addressed and, beyond that, average income.

    Peace with justice and ecological sustainability and wisdom would surely also be guiding values. Serious movements would have no problems with that.

    Finally a new International will of course have to have an attitude about decisions, participation, and power. At a minimum a new International would presumably commit to the value called "democracy." For myself, however, I would hope it would reach further to a more inspiring conception of "people's power," or "participatory democracy," or "self management." And that it will seriously assess the kinds of structural changes and innovations essential to ensure informed, confident, participation by all citizens in political, economic, and social life - perhaps also including, for example, changes in the way labor is divided and carried out, the way education is conceived and implemented, and of course the way preferences are debated, explored, resolved, and implemented. Perhaps that will prove possible, too!

    At any rate, given its place and time of origin, suppose a new International adopts a name like Participatory Socialist International (PSI), where "participatory" connotes that it isn't our forebears' International, but is really new.

    Suppose also that it commits to prioritizing at least economics, gender, race, power, peace, and ecology, and commits to solidarity, diversity, equity, peace with justice, ecological wisdom, and people's power or self management. These commitments would certainly go a long way toward providing a new foundation for a new International.

    But what about all the many clashing views that various members would hold beyond the minimal views they would universally share? How might different positions exist in a new International in mutual respect? How might they engage in mutual careful and creative consideration?

    Currents in a New International

    How can a new International be true to its core commitments, yet also a vehicle for constant growth and development? How can a new International prioritize shared core views, yet also practice diversity and prioritize innovation?

    One possibility is to include and celebrate "currents" that serve as vehicles for contending views. There might be a current composed of various member organizations, projects, and/or movements who share a particular contested economic goal (such as participatory economics or market socialism, etc.), or a certain contested strategic orientation (such as electoralism or nonviolence, etc.). The International's various currents would not be seen as a weakness undermining unity but as a strength warding off sectarianism and guaranteeing constant growth. The respectfully contending positions would all be part of the International, together interactively exploring their disagreements in hopes of reaching new insights.

    To establish a congenial, productive context, currents would take for granted that the intentions of other currents were good, that differences were about substance and not motive, and that they were subject to substantive debate which would be a serious part of the whole project.

    The International would thus welcome different currents affording each ample visibility and means to engage with all others to try to advance new insights bearing on policy and program.

    Currents would not have hidden agendas or think everyone else is a fool because only their own views have merit. Rather, currents would take for granted that even ideas they think odd, strange, or counterproductive, might prove useful in time, so that all views held inside the International should be respected and substantively explored without defensiveness and without doubting the motives of other International members.

    In short, in this formulation, as long as any particular current accepted the basic tenets of the International and operated in accord with its norms and methods, respectful dissent would be considered a strength preventing knee-jerk agreement and constantly pushing the envelope of beliefs toward new insights.

    In debates about policy and program, for example, currents would always be heard. Minority positions would, to the extent possible, be given space not only to argue, but if they don't prevail, to continue developing their views and trying to establish their merit or to discover their inadequacies. The idea of a political or programmatic line that everyone follows would be foreign to the culture and process of this type new International.

    Members and Decisions in a New International

    What permits one to be in the new International? Well, the International would presumably include movements, parties, organizations, and even projects - but a strong possibility is that individuals would not join as at-large members, belonging instead only by way of their group affiliations.

    What kind of group could belong? I would think any group that convinced some agreed percentage - let's say, hypothetically, 75% - of the existing membership that it sincerely accepted the defining norms of the International could belong. This could be political parties, movements, organizations, or even projects - so, for example, it could be the PSUV from Venezuela, or the Landless Workers Movement (MST) from Brazil, or the Rosa Luxembourg foundation from Germany, or even media organizations like ZCom, say, from the U.S. Members, employees, staff, etc., of each new International member organization would in turn gain membership in the International by virtue of their collective organizational membership. Individuals who want to be members of the International, therefore, but who have no member group that they belong too, would have to hook up with one. An at-large membership wouldn't exist, at least in this conception. The benefit of this approach would be that the legitimacy of a person as a member need not be assessed by the international - but only by the member organization of the international that the person is part of. There would be no "paper" members and no mass of unattached and therefore essentially unknown members.

    What kinds of decisions might an International make?

    Every member group would have its own agenda for its own separate operations which would be inviolable. At the same time, each member group would presumably be strongly urged to make its own operations consistent with the norm, practices, and shared programmatic agendas of the International. There would be solidarity among member organizations, but, regarding their separate operations, there would also be autonomy. The International would have shared program, policies, norms, and rules to continually decide on, as well as having to decide on gatherings to hold, campaigns to support or undertake, and perhaps much else.

    How might such decisions be made?

    Membership groups would have wildly different sizes, no doubt - so in the future there could be a group with a handful of members in the International, and another group with thousands, or even millions of members. But since the International's decisions would not bind those groups other than regarding the collective International agenda, a good way to arrive at decisions might be serious discussion and exploration, followed by polls of the whole International membership to see peoples' leanings, followed by refinements of proposals to seek even greater support and to allow dissidents from minority viewpoints to make their case, culminating in final votes of the membership seeking to convey self managing participatory influence to all parties. The little group with five participants could have at most their five votes unless they were more heavily affected by some decision than others were. A big group with ten thousand or a million participants could have at most that number of votes - again, unless they were more affected by some choice - but member votes would not be delivered in bulk, by group, but rather one by one, each being counted individually. Online, this is no longer a technically daunting matter. Are there other possibilities? Of course. This is just one hypothetical, but desirable, possibility.

    Possible Program in a New International

    What might a new International do?

    A new International might call for international events and days of dissent. It might support campaigns for existing struggles by member organizations. It might support member organizations against repression. It might undertake widespread debates and campaigns to advance understanding and mutual knowledge.

    More ambitiously, an International might also decide on campaigns and projects of its own, financed via its membership. It might settle, for example, on a massive international focus on immigration, on ending a war, on shortening the work week all over the planet, and/or on averting climatic catastrophe. There might then be materials to prepare, education to convey, activist campaigns to carry out, boycotts to initiate and sustain, support for local efforts to engender, and even efforts to provide material aid and participants for events occurring across borders.

    All such general programs, would be up to member organizations to decide how to relate to, yet there would be considerable collective momentum for each member organization to participate and contribute as best it can. Thus, program decided by the International would either be about the International's own actions or would be very strong advisories to members, or perhaps calls to them and to the broader world - not legally binding, so to speak, but powerful and effective nonetheless.

    Finally, regarding program, clearly one reason to have an International is to help organizations, movements, and projects escape single issue loneliness by becoming part of a larger process encompassing diverse focuses and united by agreements on various major shared endeavors.

    Dream, or Reality?

    The above is one possible rough picture. It isn't complete and it isn't unique. It could adapt, bend, mature, enlarge, or be refined in all manner of ways, whether before April in preparation, or after April, as an International develops.

    Is it only a dream that worldwide parties, movements, organizations, and projects could operate with intellectual and programmatic respect and mutual aid, with deep diversity and sharp focus, with strong solidarity and equally strong autonomy, with profound coherence and commitment and also with material and social equity and overarching self management?

    Yes, today this is a dream, or a wish, or a hope. But tomorrow, and literally, this April, it could become a reality. Wouldn't that be a huge and historic step forward?
  2. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    Participatory Socialist International?: Critique of Michael Albert and Hugo Chavez on Internationals



    CARACAS – In late November 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez addressed the International Encounter of Left Parties by making an announcement: that “it is time to convene the Fifth International, and I dare to make the call, which I think is a necessity. I dare to request that we create my proposal.” Agreeing to the proposed establishment of “the Fifth Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonize a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism” were, among others: the ruling Movement Towards Socialism in Bolivia, the Proposal for an Alternative Society in Chile, and the recently strengthened Socialist Alliance in Australia (resulting from the revolutionary liquidation of the Democratic Socialist Perspective). Even the ruling party, the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), affirmed this resolution in its First Extraordinary Congress held a day after.

    Things were not entirely smooth, however. Delegates from the mass reformist parties Die Linke in Germany and the Parti de gauche in France “expressed interest in the proposal but said they would consult with their various parties.” A representative from the ruling Brazilian reformist party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), said the Sao Paolo Forum was sufficient. Many Communist parties opposed the proposal, stating that their own regular meetings of “Communist and Workers parties” were sufficient. Also in attendance, unfortunately, were delegates from the ruling revisionist (or post-revisionist) parties in China in Vietnam, not to mention the left Peronistas ruling Argentina and the former long-standing ruling party in Mexico, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).

    Nevertheless, a global conference was scheduled for April 2010, and the resolution allowed undecided parties to join at a later time.

    What, then, is the significance of the proposed Fifth Socialist International?

    History

    Despite the official reason for many Communist parties’ opposition to the proposal, perhaps the real reason lies in Chavez’s own account of past internationals. The president cited the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA) founded in 1864 by Karl Marx, the original Socialist International founded in 1889 but more commonly known as the Second International, the Communist International (Comintern) founded in 1919 in response to the collapse of its predecessor towards imperialist warfare, and the so-called “Fourth International” founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. These Communist parties, despite their own nation-oriented politics, simply do not recognize what the Marxist Louis Proyect acknowledged as a “sectarian mistake” not recognized much beyond parties in France, Argentina, Sri Lanka, and very few others: the so-called “Fourth International” and its splinter successive groups. Therein was Chavez’s diplomatic blunder towards unity with these Communist parties.

    The bigger problem with Chavez’s historical account of internationals lies in what was not mentioned, most likely due to a lack of knowledge. Key resolutions passed by the IWMA go against the president’s own politics, ranging from the latter’s deeming of “the working class as the motor of socialism” to be “obsolete” to measures of the Paris Commune not implemented in Venezuela. The ways in which the Second International helped propel the working class towards real mass organization were not acknowledged. Moreover, other international groups serve as (generally) positively relevant lessons for the new international, over and above one negatively irrelevant sectarian mistake.

    The most important of these groups was the short-lived International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP) formed in 1921, derisively called the “Two and a Half International” by an increasingly out of touch Comintern, which became more and more an infantile, nutter-ish fan club for the Soviet leadership. This “centrist” international acknowledged that any revolutionary period which had arisen in Europe just before the war and which lasted a few years into the Russian revolution had receded; mass hostilities towards bourgeois regimes, majority political support (not just electoral support) for such hostilities towards parties even more hostile towards those regimes, and instability within the organs of those regimes were absent. Among the mass parties of this international were: the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), the main Social-Democratic parties in Austria and Switzerland, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, and what Die Linke’s Dietmar Bartsch contemporarily called “an outstanding role model for left politics today” which “paid attention to the daily demands and needs of workers without yielding its claim to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics” – the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, or USPD). Unlike the Comintern, the short-lived IWUSP retained the key lesson from the Second International on real mass organization, which revolved around what Vernon Lidtke called a party-based “alternative culture”: cultural organizations, sports clubs, and funeral homes all back in the day – today including food banks and larger humanitarian organizations. All these went beyond newspapers, protests and other street agitation, promotions of trade union militancy, and election campaigns.

    Of course, the former realo wing (to borrow from the German language on politics) of the Comintern that drifted into the IWUSP was not strong enough to win decisively against vacillators and liquidationist renegades in that international who were too cozy with the war criminality that was right-wing Social Democracy. This is why the IWUSP should be seen at best as “generally positive” and not plainly “positive.” Mirroring this, obviously, was the unwelcome presence of most of the parties mentioned in the second paragraph of this discussion.

    “Participatory Socialist International”

    In late January 2010, the pareconist Michael Albert (parecon: “participatory economics” as a substitute label for “socialism”) wrote a very constructive article reflecting on Chavez’s proposal:

    Thus, lesson one, already familiar to most: If a new International marches to the beat of past drumming, no matter what its members might want, and no matter how courageously its members might seek their worthy dreams, the support they gain will be too limited and their efforts will be too compromised by past destructive residues to generate desirable 21st century outcomes.

    The "subject matter" of a new international should and will inevitably address all concerns which go into and are part of developing and sustaining a liberated society and world but there is no reason to think all sensible and caring people would or should agree about all such matters. Much will have to be worked out in practice. Much will differ from country to country. Maybe there is a best position - but we don't yet know it. Maybe most people think they know a best position, but a few people differ, and perhaps the few will prove right later.

    This indicates that regarding unity we ought to settle only on a minimalist but profoundly important set of principles and commitments that would characterize a new International. What minimal commitments would a new International need to adopt to do its job well. Those who agree with essential inviolable commitments, could join. Those who don't agree with them, might want to join, but couldn't.

    Few would doubt that a new International should be centrally concerned with economics, gender and kinship, culture and community, politics, international relations, and ecology. Further, however, there is no need for, and we have learned in recent decades there is also no point trying to elevate any one of these focuses above the rest. They are all centrally important and powerfully entwined. Thus, it should be the case that a group in a new International might in some country, or at some time, or for some purpose, be primarily focused on one or another of these focuses, but to be part of the new International it would also have to acknowledge that their priority was just one among many, and that other priorities should inform their work as well as be informed by their work.

    […]

    Finally a new International will of course have to have an attitude about decisions, participation, and power. At a minimum a new International would presumably commit to the value called "democracy." For myself, however, I would hope it would reach further to a more inspiring conception of "people's power," or "participatory democracy," or "self management." And that it will seriously assess the kinds of structural changes and innovations essential to ensure informed, confident, participation by all citizens in political, economic, and social life - perhaps also including, for example, changes in the way labor is divided and carried out, the way education is conceived and implemented, and of course the way preferences are debated, explored, resolved, and implemented. Perhaps that will prove possible, too!

    At any rate, given its place and time of origin, suppose a new International adopts a name like Participatory Socialist International (PSI), where "participatory" connotes that it isn't our forebears' International, but is really new.

    […]

    One possibility is to include and celebrate "currents" that serve as vehicles for contending views. There might be a current composed of various member organizations, projects, and/or movements who share a particular contested economic goal (such as participatory economics or market socialism, etc.), or a certain contested strategic orientation (such as electoralism or nonviolence, etc.). The International's various currents would not be seen as a weakness undermining unity but as a strength warding off sectarianism and guaranteeing constant growth. The respectfully contending positions would all be part of the International, together interactively exploring their disagreements in hopes of reaching new insights.

    […]

    Every member group would have its own agenda for its own separate operations which would be inviolable. At the same time, each member group would presumably be strongly urged to make its own operations consistent with the norm, practices, and shared programmatic agendas of the International. There would be solidarity among member organizations, but, regarding their separate operations, there would also be autonomy. The International would have shared program, policies, norms, and rules to continually decide on, as well as having to decide on gatherings to hold, campaigns to support or undertake, and perhaps much else.

    […]

    More ambitiously, an International might also decide on campaigns and projects of its own, financed via its membership. It might settle, for example, on a massive international focus on immigration, on ending a war, on shortening the work week all over the planet, and/or on averting climatic catastrophe. There might then be materials to prepare, education to convey, activist campaigns to carry out, boycotts to initiate and sustain, support for local efforts to engender, and even efforts to provide material aid and participants for events occurring across borders.

    […]

    Finally, regarding program, clearly one reason to have an International is to help organizations, movements, and projects escape single issue loneliness by becoming part of a larger process encompassing diverse focuses and united by agreements on various major shared endeavors.

    […]

    Is it only a dream that worldwide parties, movements, organizations, and projects could operate with intellectual and programmatic respect and mutual aid, with deep diversity and sharp focus, with strong solidarity and equally strong autonomy, with profound coherence and commitment and also with material and social equity and overarching self management?

    Yes, today this is a dream, or a wish, or a hope. But tomorrow, and literally, this April, it could become a reality. Wouldn't that be a huge and historic step forward?


    General Class Politics and Class Backgrounds

    Even if parties forming this new international were to implement Michael Albert’s suggestions above, there are still lingering problems. Take for example, Albert’s statement that “there is no need for, and we have learned in recent decades there is also no point trying to elevate any one of these focuses above the rest.” While this could be applied to the Green left’s emphasis on ecology, unfortunately it is also used, with more devastating results, against class politics (a concept buried in Albert’s list of principles).

    Before the formation of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) through the liquidation of the main French Trotskyist party, a similar assertion to Albert’s was made more explicitly and noted by Mike Macnair of the UK-based Weekly Worker:

    Durand’s arguments, and in a certain sense those of Artous on ‘alliances’, suggest that the core claim of Marxism - that the struggle for socialism is the struggle for the emancipation of the working class and that the emancipation of the working class can only be achieved through the struggle for socialism - is false. Instead, the struggle for the emancipation of the working class is part only of the struggle for human liberation: “Relations of oppression or exploitation arising from patriarchy, humanity’s predatory conduct towards the rest of the biosphere, racism, the denial of political and individual freedom, choice of sexual orientation or minority cultures” are equally important and cannot be “mechanically transferred back to the resolution of the central economic conflict” (Durand).

    [This discussion is not intended to be an extended political promotion for Mike Macnair’s material on revolutionary strategy, which has been compiled into the book Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity. More discussion on class politics, so-called “social movements” based primarily on non-class politics, and genuine party-building can be read in that book.]

    Albert’s reiteration of lingering New Left dead ends is important, because class politics is something that needs to be explored at a deeper level, inside and outside this new international. As I mentioned before, the alternative culture model from the Second International (primarily from the pre-war SPD) and carried over into the short-lived IWUSP is one such aspect that needs to be revived. Key IWMA resolutions need to be carried over into this international.

    Take, for example, the class demographics of this new international. The modern working class: exists within the wage-labour system (even in retirement by receiving income from past wages), contributes to the development of society’s labour power and its capabilities, and has no significant-influence ownership or factual control over the means of production. This class is comprised of the traditional manual workers and service-providing manual workers mistaken for the whole class (by both the mainstream and many on the left), the clerical workers (office workers, bank tellers, bartenders, and others), and the professional workers (teachers, professors without subordinate research staff, engineers, nurses, and many accountants). One of the resolutions of the IWMA was to increasingly adopt a policy restricting voting membership to individuals in this class, in full accordance with the classic slogan on the self-emancipation of the working class.

    [Small left organizations such as Hekmatist groups, the UK-based Independent Working Class Association, and the Workers Party in America are the only ones upholding this policy, realizing that this is a better “link” to the working class at large and to primarily non-unionized worker movements than mere labour parties based on ever-myopic trade union movements.]

    Contrast the modern working class to the class backgrounds of the leading figures in this new international; all of them exist within the (legal) wage system, but they may not contribute to the development of society’s labour power and its capabilities. Those with this dubious distinction (and more than one class has this) include: artisans, judges, lawyers, police officers, private security guards and strikebreakers, and the ever-unproductive self-employed (most notoriously consultants without employees). Even some mistakenly thought of as being part of the working class but not doing the “work necessary to the support of the direct producers” (according to Paul Cockshott and Dave Zachariah) have this distinction – being employed in, among others: armaments manufacturing, manufacturing and retail of luxury goods, wholesale and commission trade, real estate services (even if not self-employed), public administration (the government bureaucracies proper), most non-profit organizational activity, and even butlers and housemaids.

    If those figures do contribute to the development of society’s labour power and its capabilities, they may belong to the proper petit-bourgeoisie, or they may belong to what Albert himself calls the “coordinator” class – the very class that drove him and others to conceptualize “participatory economics” as an alternative to bureaucratic socialism like that in the former Soviet Union. Because of the productive-unproductive labour divide, the Marxist definition of this class is limited to productive occupations like mid-level managers of large enterprises, all non-owning managers of small businesses, and tenured professors with subordinate research staff (such as the Canadian Marxist Leo Panitch).

    Above all, there is the lingering question about the class status of those belonging to the so-called “Student Left.” In a stratum outside the wage-labour system that enables class mobility, their respective class statuses are not yet determined by anything other than the class background of their parents or by their previous occupation (for the more adult students who are changing careers).

    “Dispossessed Classes” and the Volkspartei Problem

    “Social democracy is from the outset by its very nature an international party. But it has also the tendency, ever more a national party, that is a Volkspartei to be in the sense that the representative not only of industrial wage workers but all working and exploited classes, so the vast majority of the population is, of what one usually calls ‘the Volk’.” (Karl Kautsky)

    In my theoretical pamphlet, I used an older English translation of Kautsky’s authoritative commentary on the Erfurt Program of 1891, the leading program of the Second International. In any case, towards the end of his commentary, Kautsky described how Social Democracy in his day tended to become a “people’s party” that represents even the class interests of independent craftsmen, where “independent” means “self-employed.” Little could he imagine, of course, about the one reactionary mass that flocked to the anti-tax populism of self-employed jocks like Joe the Plumber in the 2008 US presidential elections, or another such reactionary mass of primarily the self-employed responsible for the anti-tax populist amateurisms that are the so-called “Tea Parties.” The main reason, of course, is that the self-employed are by no means dispossessed.

    The mistaking of traditional manual workers for the working class as a whole by both the mainstream and many on the left – not helped at all by myopic tred-iunionizm – has led to the emergence of new terms and related politics, none of which are appropriate. The most notorious of these terms is the post-modernist “multitude,” which is the class-collaborationist culmination of putting equal emphasis on typical class politics, New Left identity politics (race, gender), radical Green politics, and so on – to the point of including blatantly non-worker demographics subscribing to New Left identity politics and radical Green politics. The Canadian Marxist Leo Panitch, himself a coordinator (tenured professor with subordinate research staff) is subtler with his usage of the term “working classes” – as if traditional manual workers, service-providing manual workers, clerical workers, and professional workers are separate classes.

    A more appropriate term and related politics can be derived from the accumulation by dispossession thesis of Marxist geographer David Harvey, but without repeating Panitch’s mistake: dispossessed classes. This Volk encompasses the modern working class in all its sectoral distinctions, the coordinators (because they too are estranged from owning the means of production), the proper lumpenproletariat outside the legal wage system (preferring legal work to the illegal work that they do), and those dispossessed elements who nevertheless perform unproductive labour.

    The demographics of the leading figures and base of the new international pose both a challenge and an opportunity. First, there clearly needs to be a mass sub-organization within the new international itself that restricts voting membership in that sub-organization to affiliates that themselves restrict voting membership to working-class individuals – as an initial means to the “formation of the proletariat into a class” for itself (from the Communist Manifesto on proper proletarian parties). Second, that sub-organization should push the modern working class towards exercising leadership over all dispossessed classes, but without compromising its own class interests by a single inch – thus the “overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy” (again, from the Communist Manifesto on proper proletarian parties) by means of establishing proletarian hegemony. Third, in this period of late capitalism, the broader international itself should adopt a dispossessed-only membership and affiliation policy, and also deem all non-dispossessed classes as – in the words of the not-so-revolutionary but nevertheless great anti-liberal fighter for working-class independence known as Ferdinand Lassalle – “one reactionary mass.”

    “Conquest of Political Power By the Proletariat”

    The third and last goal of a proper proletarian-not-necessarily-communist party, as opposed to reformist labour parties that never seek to fulfill the first two aims, and as opposed to “vanguardists” who forget about the first aim in their schemes for putsches, is indeed something that should be on equal footing with Albert’s assertion that “economic production, consumption, and allocation should be classless - which of course includes equitable access for all to quality and accessible education, health care and the requisites of health like food, water, and sanitation, housing, meaningful and dignified work, and the instruments and conditions of personal fulfillment.”

    For too long the left has been plagued by broad economism. The “struggle for socialism” is an economic struggle and not a political one, and this is something most of the left has long forgotten. The political struggle is the expropriation of ruling-class political power by the working class itself. As quoted above, Albert wrote about “structural changes and innovations essential to ensure informed, confident, participation by all citizens.” I will therefore end this discussion with an almost-complete program of such structural changes and innovations, based on the Paris Commune but incorporating two or more key elements from Athenian demokratia missing too long on the left:

    Taking into account modern developments and critiques, the consistent advocacy of this core of a minimum program for political power – as opposed to the more common and orthodox “minimum program” for continued opposition even after complete fulfillment – emphatically solves the problem of broad economism throughout the class-strugglist left by being much greater than the sum of its political and economic parts. While individual demands could easily be fulfilled without eliminating the bourgeois-capitalist state order, the complete, consistent, and lasting implementation of this minimum program in the pre-orthodox sense (as formulated by Marx himself) would mean that the working class will have captured the full political power of a ruling class, thus establishing the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”:

    01) All assemblies of the remaining representative democracy and all councils of an expanding participatory democracy shall become working bodies, not parliamentary talking shops, being legislative and executive-administrative at the same time and not checked and balanced by anything more professional than sovereign commoner juries. The absence of any mention of grassroots mass assemblies is due to their incapability to perform administrative functions on a regular basis. Also, this demand implies simplification of laws and of the legal system as a whole, dispensing entirely with that oligarchic and etymologically monarchic legal position of Judge and at least curtailing that legalese-creating and overly specialized position of Lawyer.
    02) All political and related administrative offices shall be assigned by kleros (random selection or lot) as a fundamental basis of the demarchic commonwealth. This is in stark contrast to elections for all such public offices, the central radical-republican demand that completely ignores electoral fatigue. With this demand comes the possibility of finally fulfilling a demarchic variation of that one unfulfilled demand for annual parliaments raised by the first politico-ideologically independent worker-class movement in history, the Chartist movement in the United Kingdom.
    03) All political and related administrative offices shall be free of any formal or de facto disqualifications due to non-ownership of non-possessive property or, more generally, of wealth. The Chartists called similarly for “no property qualification for members of Parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.” While the struggle against formal property qualifications was most progressive, even freely elected legislatures are almost devoid of the working poor, especially those who are women. Unlike the Chartist demand, by no means does this demand in the grammatically double negative (“disqualifications” and “non-ownership”) preclude the disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie – and other owners of the aforementioned types of property – as one of the political measures of a more obvious worker-class rule. In fact, the original Soviet constitution deprived voting rights from the bourgeoisie and others even on more functional criteria such as hiring labour for personal profit.
    04) All political and related administrative offices shall operate on the basis of occupants’ standards of living being at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers. On the one hand, formulations that demand compensation for such public officials to be simply no more than “workman’s wage” fail to take into account the historic worker-class demand for legislators to be paid in the first place, first raised by the worker-class Chartists, “thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country.” On the other hand, even freely elected legislators, many of whom have additional sources of income through businesses, tend to increase their collective level of expense allowances beyond the median equivalent associated with professional work. A combination of appropriate pay levels and expense allowances, mandated loss of regular occupations (since these offices should be full-time positions), and other measures can fulfill this demand.
    05) All political and related administrative offices shall be subject to immediate recall in cases of abuse of office. This can be fulfilled effectively under a radical-republican system of indirect elections and hierarchical accountability, as opposed to the current system of direct electoralism (based on mass constituencies) that require significant numbers of constituents to sign recall initiatives. However, like the two preceding demands, this demand is best fulfilled not just when all such public offices function with the aforementioned hierarchical accountability, but also when all such public offices are assigned by lot, thereby minimizing interpersonal political connections.
    06) There shall be an ecological reduction of the normal workweek – including time for workplace democracy, workers’ self-management, broader industrial democracy, etc. through workplace committees and assemblies – to a participatory-democratic maximum of 32 hours or less without loss of pay or benefits but with further reductions corresponding to increased labour productivity, the minimum provision of double-time pay or salary/contract equivalent for all hours worked over the normal workweek and over 8 hours a day, and the prohibition of compulsory overtime. In addition to the extensive analysis provided in the next chapter, it must be noted that proposals for an eight-hour day were made but not implemented within the Paris Commune, and that the development of capitalist production is such that time for workplace democracy and so on should be part of the normal workweek and not outside of it.
    07) There shall be full, lawsuit-enforced freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association for people of the dispossessed classes, even within the military, free especially from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement. If one particular demand could neatly sum up the struggle for the politico-ideological independence of the working class – before and even just after having captured the full political power of a ruling class – it is this one by far.
    08) There shall be an expansion of the ability to bear arms and to general self-defense towards enabling the formation of people’s militias based on free training, especially in connection with class-strugglist association, and also free from police interference such as from agents provocateurs. The aggressive advocacy of this demand separates class-strugglists from the most obvious of cross-class coalitionists, even if the likes of Bernstein pushed for this demand in less formal workers’ action programs.
    09) There shall be full independence of the mass media from concentrated private ownership and control by first means of workplace democracy over mandated balance of content in news and media production, heavy appropriation of economic rent in the broadcast spectrum, unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for independent mass media cooperative startups – especially at more local levels, for purposes of media decentralization – and anti-inheritance transformation of all the relevant mass media properties under private ownership into cooperative property. Although this is an applied combination of more general demands that are in and of themselves not necessary for workers to become the ruling class, a comprehensive solution to the mass media problem of concentrated private ownership and control (not to mention bourgeois cultural hegemony as discussed by the Marxist Antonio Gramsci) is a necessary component of any minimum program in the pre-orthodox sense.
    10) All state debts shall be suppressed outright. Unlike the more transformative suppression of all public debts on a transnational scale, the minimum character of this demand was long established by the historical precedent of the 19th-century imperialist powers periodically going into debt to fund their wars and then defaulting upon them on an equally periodic basis.
    11) All predatory financial practices towards the working class, legal or otherwise, shall be precluded by first means of establishing, on a permanent and either national or multinational basis, a financial monopoly without any private ownership or private control whatsoever – at purchase prices based especially on the market values of insolvent yet publicly underwritten banks – with such a monopoly inclusive of the general provision of commercial and consumer credit, and with the application of “equity not usury” towards such activity. The usage of the word “multinational” instead of “transnational” signifies the minimum character of this demand, given the multinational structure of the European Union and given that, as mentioned earlier, a single transnational equivalent should put to an end the viability of imperialist wars and conflicts more generally as vehicles for capital accumulation.
    12) There shall be an enactment of confiscatory, despotic measures against all capital flight of wealth, investment strikes, and other elitist economic blackmail, whether the related wealth belongs to economic rebels on the domestic front or to foreign profiteers. Ultimately, the flight of gold from Parisian banks by those in control over same banks weakened the workers of 1871 Paris and financed the ruthless suppression of the Paris Commune.




    REFERENCES



    Venezuela’s Chavez Calls for International Organisation of Left Parties by Kiraz Janicke, Venezuelanalysis.com [http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4946]

    Chavez’s Historic Call for a Fifth Socialist International by Federico Fuentes, Venezuelanalysis.com [http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4965]

    Louis Proyect Home Page by Louis Proyect [http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mypage.htm]

    Sr. Presidente: sin Marx, Lenin y la clase obrera, no hay socialismo posible (parte I) by Miguel Angel Hernández [http://www.aporrea.org/trabajadores/a39036.html]

    The Road to Power by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kaut...power/ch06.htm]

    German Left Party honours the founding of the centrist Independent Social Democratic Party by Stefan Steinberg [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/ma...left-m10.shtml]

    The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany by Vernon Lidtke [http://www.amazon.ca/Alternative-Cul.../dp/0195035070]

    Fifth International?! by Michael Albert, ZNet [http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23692]

    Revolutionary strategy and Marxist conclusions by Mike Macnair [http://www.iran-bulletin.org/Marxism/Macnair%20-2.htm]

    Hunting Productive Work by Paul Cockshott and Dave Zachariah [http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/unprod3b.pdf]

    Das Erfurter Programm by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/arch...enkampf.htm#14]
  3. The Idler
    The Idler
    ZMag have sent out an e-mail asking for opinions on a membership organization.
    Hello,

    This is the third draft of a future ZCom poll about joining or not joining an imagined new membership organization.

    When we put this poll up online, it will aim to discover how much support such a new organization would attract.
    Before that, however, we are sending it as an email to all ZCom Sustainers seeking your advice on improving it.
    Regarding alterations, please don’t merely say that we should make it better, clearer, shorter. Instead, please participate more effectively. Please propose actual changes that you think would help.
    Here is how it would appear, as of now, when made a live poll...


    DRAFT THREE: An Organizational Poll

    IMAGINE that a new organization is established in your country. Imagine it has a chapter where you live along with other chapters in your country and in many other countries. Imagine as well that it has the defining features listed below - and that it has no additional features you significantly dislike.
    1. Supposing such an organization was launched, would you...


      • Be confident that with sufficient people and energy, the organization will have a positive impact.
      • Hope the organization will prove positive.
      • Fear the organization’s existence might do more harm than good.
      • Expect the organization’s existence will do more harm than good.


    2. Given your feelings, would you:


      • Promptly join
      • Consider joining
      • Definitely not join


    3. If you were to join, how would you most likely relate to the organization


      • Give it considerable time, making it one of my priorities - including paying dues, participating in programs, trying to recruit, etc.
      • Give some time, I like the idea and support it, but have other priorities as well.
      • Have a wait and see attitude, hoping it would be worth my time, but waiting for evidence.
      • Expect to give little or no time, given all my other responsibilities and my expectation that my priorities would not change much, regardless of the organization’s growth and effectivity.




    Here, then, are the defining features that the proposed organization hypothetically embodies. In light of these features, please answer the above questions...

    Organizational Description

    The organization, as some general priorities:


      • is anti capitalist, anti racist, anti sexist, and anti authoritarian and centrally addresses economics/class, politics, culture/race, kinship/gender, ecology, and international relations without privileging any one focus above the rest.
      • seeks to transcend 20th Century market and centrally planned socialism.
      • flexibly explores and advocates long term vision sufficiently to inspire and orient current activity, but without seeking detailed blueprints that transcend needs and knowledge.
      • sees social strategy as largely contingent on place and time and therefore continually seeks to revise shared views in light of new evidence, including regularly updating analysis, vision, and strategy.



    The organization seeks a new political system that:


      • facilitates all citizens deliberating sufficiently to arrive at well-considered views and participate in decision-making.
      • utilizes transparent mechanisms to carry out and evaluate decisions.
      • conveys to all citizens a self managing say in legislative decisions proportionate to effects on them whether via grassroots assemblies/councils or communes and by way of various forms of direct participation or representation and delegation and/or voting options such as majority rule, some other voting algorithm, or consensus, etc., as needed to attain self management.
      • offers maximum civil liberties to all, including freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and organizing political parties and other organizations and facilitates and protects dissent.
      • promotes diversity so individuals and groups can pursue their own goals consistent with not interfering with the same rights accorded to others.
      • builds solidarity among people and fairly, peacefully, and constructively adjudicates disputes and violations of social norms and laws, seeking both justice and rehabilitation.
      • supports all community members contributing to solving problems and exploring possibilities to ensure that there are no political hierarchies that privilege some citizens over others.



    The organization seeks a new economy such that:


      • no individuals or groups own the means of production (land, mines, factories, etc.) ensuring that ownership doesn’t impact anyone’s decision making influence or share of income.
      • payment for labor provides everyone morally fair shares of the social output and economically and socially effective incentives, including rejecting payment according to property, bargaining power, or the value of personal output, and instead establishing that workers who are able and who work longer at socially valued labor (including their own training) earn proportionately more for doing so; workers who work harder at socially valued labor earn proportionately more for doing so, and workers who work under more onerous conditions earn proportionately more for doing so, while those who are unable to work receive a full and fair share nonetheless.
      • there is no authoritarian workplace decision-making by any elite operating above the workforce and instead workers have a say in decisions to the extent possible, and over time, proportionate to effects on them, where this degree of say is sometimes best attained by majority rule, sometimes by consensus, or by other arrangements in accord with the characteristics of different types of decisions.
      • there is no corporate division of labor of the sort common to both capitalist and 20th century socialist economies in which roughly a fifth of the workforce do overwhelmingly empowering tasks and four fifths do overwhelmingly rote, repetitive, and, in any event, disempowering tasks - and, instead, each worker enjoys conditions of work suitable for him or her to be sufficiently confident, informed, and empowered to participate effectively in decision making, which includes having a socially average share of empowering tasks, whether this be accomplished by balanced job complexes or some other suitable new design of work.
      • allocation would not occur by market competition or top-down dictate, but instead by decentralized cooperative negotiation of inputs and outputs consistent with self-management, whether this be accomplished by participatory planning by workers and consumers councils, or by some other suitable methods for addressing both day to day outcomes and longer term investment choices, as well.




    The organization seeks gender and kin relations for a new society that:


      • seek to eliminate hierarchies of reward of influence based on gender or sexual preference
      • do not privilege certain types of family formation over others but instead actively support all types of families that are consistent with society’s other broad norms and practices.
      • promote children’s well-being and affirm society’s responsibility for all its children, at the same time as affirming the right of diverse types of families to have children and to provide them with love and a sense of rootedness and belonging.
      • minimize or eliminate the use of age-based designations, preferring non-arbitrary means for determining when an individual is old enough, or young enough, to participate in certain economic, political or other activities, or to receive certain benefits/privileges.
      • respect marriage and other lasting relations among adults as religious, cultural, or social practices, but reject the idea of legal marriage as a way to gain financial benefits or social status.
      • respect care giving as a socially valuable function including ensuring that it doesn’t disproportionately fall on women, including making care giving a part of every citizen’s social responsibilities or other worthy means to ensure equity.
      • affirm diverse expressions of sexual pleasure, personal identity, and mutual intimacy while ensuring that each person honors the autonomy, humanity, and rights of others.
      • provide diverse, empowering education about sex, as about all social relations including legal prohibitions against any kind of non-consensual sex.



    The organization seeks ecological relations that:


      • account for the full ecological (and social/personal) costs and benefits of both short and long term economic and social choices, so that future populations can make informed choices about levels of production and consumption, duration of work, self reliance, energy use and harvesting, husbandry, pollution, climate policies, conservation, consumption, and other aims and activities as part of their freely made decisions about future policies.
      • foster a consciousness of ecological connection and responsibility so that future citizens are well prepared to decide policies regarding animal rights, vegetarianism, or other policies that transcend sustainability and even husbandry, consistently with their ecological preferences and their broader agendas for other social and economic functions, as they freely decide for themselves in future settings.



    The organization seeks cultural and community relations that:


      • ensure that people can have multiple cultural and social identities, including providing the space and resources necessary for people to positively express their identities, while recognizing as well that which identity is most important to any particular person at any particular time will depend on that person’s situation and assessments.
      • explicitly recognize that rights and values exist regardless of cultural identity, so that all people deserve self management, equity, solidarity, and liberty, and so that while society protects all people’s right to affiliate freely and fosters diversity, its core values are universal.
      • guarantee free entry and exit to and from all cultural communities in society including affirming that communities that do have free entry and exit can be under the complete self determination of their members, so long as their policies and actions don't conflict with society's laws.



    The organization seeks international relations such that:


      • international institutions put an end to imperialism in all its forms including colonialism, neo colonialism, neo liberalism, etc.
      • international institutions are internationalist in that they diminish economic disparities in countries’ relative wealth while also protecting cultural and social patterns interior to each country from external violation and facilitating international entwinement and ties as people desire.



    The organization’s broad action agenda or program, while of course regularly updated and adapted, nonetheless always:


      • seeks to incorporate seeds of the future in its present projects at least regarding class, race, gender, sexual, age, and power relations, both in the ways members act as well as by actively building institutions that represent the values of the movement and which the organization can present as liberating alternatives to the status quo it combats.
      • seeks to constantly grow support and membership among the class, nationality, and gender constituencies it claims to aid.
      • seeks to learn from and seek unity with audiences far wider than its own membership, including emphasizing attracting younger generations and affirmatively empowering younger members and of course participating in, supporting, building, and aiding diverse social movements and struggles.
      • seeks changes in society both for citizens to enjoy immediately, and also to establish by the terms of its victories and even more so by the means used in its organizing, a likelihood that citizens will pursue and win more change in the future.
      • seeks to connect efforts, resources, and lessons across continents and from country to country, even as it also recognizes that strategies suitable to different places, and times will differ.
      • seeks short term changes by its own actions and programs and by support of larger movements and projects as its affected members decide, both internationally and by country and also locally, including addressing global warming, arms control, war and peace, the level and composition of economic output, agricultural relations, education, health care, income distribution, duration of work, gender roles, racial relations, media, law, legislation, etc., as its members choose.
      • seeks to develop mechanisms that provide financial, legal, employment, and emotional support to its members so that its members can be in a better position to participate as fully as they wish and negotiate the various challenges and sometimes negative effects of taking part in radical actions.
      • works to substantially improve the life situations of its members, including aiding their feelings of self worth, their knowledge, skills, and confidence, their mental, physical, sexual, and spiritual health, and even their social ties and engagements and leisure enjoyments.
      • sets up internal structures and defines its action agenda to facilitate everyone’s participation in the organization, including, when possible, offering childcare at meetings and events, finding ways to reach out to those who might be immersed in kinship duties, and aiding those with busy work schedules due to multiple jobs, monitoring and responding to sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia as they may be manifested internally, and having diverse roles in projects suitable to people with different situations.
      • seeks means to develop, debate, disseminate, and advocate truthful news, analysis, vision, and strategy among its members and also in the wider society, including developing and sustaining needed media and means of face to face communication.
      • uses diverse methods of agitation and struggle from educational efforts to rallies and marches, to demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, and direct actions, to win gains and build movements.
      • places a very high burden of proof on utilizing violence, including cultivating a decidedly non violent attitude.
      • assesses engaging in electoral politics case by case, including cultivating a very cautious electoral attitude.



    The organization’s structure and policy:


      • seeks to be internally classless and self-managing including structuring itself so that a minority who are initially disproportionately endowed with needed skills, information, and confidence do not form a formal or an informal decision-making hierarchy, leaving less prepared members to follow orders or perform only rote tasks.
      • strives to implement the self management norm that "each member has say proportional to the degree they are effected" in its decision-making structures.
      • guarantees groups of members rights to organize “currents” and guarantees these “currents” full rights of democratic debate.
      • welcomes and even celebrates internal debate and dissent, making room, as possible, for contrary views to exist and be tested alongside preferred views.
      • respects diversity, so that continental, national, regional, city, and local chapters can respond to their own circumstances and implement their own programs so long as their choices do not interfere with the shared goals and principles of the organization as a whole or with other local groups addressing their own situations.
      • provides extensive opportunities for people to participate in organizational decision making, including engaging in deliberation with others so as to arrive at the most well-considered decisions and also implementing mechanisms for carrying out collective decisions and for the membership to assure that the decisions have been carried out correctly.
      • strives to provide transparency regarding any actions by elected or delegated leaders with a high burden of proof for secreting any agenda to avoid repression or for any other reason.
      • provides the membership with a mechanism to recall any leaders or representatives who the members believe are not adequately representing them.
      • provides internal means for fairly, peacefully, constructively - and non destructively - resolving internal disputes.
      • apportions empowering and disempowering tasks among its members to ensure that no individuals control the organization by having a relative monopoly on information or position.
      • expects its members to participate in the life of the organization actively, including taking collective responsibility for it and presenting a unified voice in action.
      • incorporates its members in developing, debating, and deciding on proposals, and treats lack of participation as a serious problem to be addressed whenever it surfaces.