Street roots
July 6, 2012
What is to be done, and are we ready to do it?
A nyone who still thinks ruling elites
ZA and the major political parties are
«Z. A g o in g to solve the worsening
Robin Hahnel
Robin Hahnel is a
political activist and
visiting professor of
economics at
Portland State
University. He is a
co-creator o f the post
capitalist economic
model known as
participatory
economics, along with
Z Magazine editor
Michael Albert. He is
also Professor
Emeritus at
American University
in Washington, D .C .
economic and ecological crises must not be
paying attention. Ruling elites in Europe
and North America are doing nothing to
solve the two great crises of our time, and
much to aggravate them. So we better stop
waiting for someone else to solve our
problems and begin to figure out what we
can do to save ourselves and the planet. We,
the people, need to make progress on four
fronts.
1. First and foremost we need to build
bigger and stronger progressive reform
movements. Old reform movements like the
labor, civil rights, student, and
environmental movements must be
revitalized. New movements like Occupy
and the anti-foreclosure movement, led by a
new generation of activists, pioneering new
tactics, must grow stronger. Otherwise we
will never build majority support for change.
We must also build a granddaddy of all
movements to launch a “Green New Deal.”
Scientists warn us that unless global
greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by at
least 80 percent before mid-century we run
an unacceptable risk of triggering
irreversible, cataclysmic climate change.
Replacing fossil fuels with renewables,
transforming not only transportation but
industry and agriculture as well to be much
more energy efficient, and rebuilding our
entire built environment to conserve energy
will be an immense, historic undertaking.
What is needed if we are to avoid
unacceptable climate change is the greatest
technological “reboot” in economic history.
If we do not put hundreds of millions of
people to work over the next few decades
transforming Fossil-fuel-estan into Renew-
conserve-estan we will literally broil
ourselves to death at some point in the
century ahead. If we fail to create tens of
millions of new jobs a year turning Fossil-
fuel-estan into Renew-conserve-estan the
Great Recession will persist indefinitely and
the young generation will face a jobless
future. Two problems. One solution. A
massive Green New Deal.
2. We also need to create more
experiments in participatory, equitable
cooperation, allowing more people to treat
one another in ways that “prefigure” the
new society. Without palpable proof that
participatory, equitable cooperation is not
only possible, but works better than
competition and greed for people who
embrace it, we will never convince people to
support the kind of fundamental system
change that will ultimately be necessary. In
short, we need to build the beginnings of a
“new economy” in the rotting carcass of an
economy that has abandoned the 99%. We
need to create more worker and consumer
owned cooperatives. We need more
community supported, sustainable
agriculture. We need to turn community
development corporations into real vehicles
for achieving community economic
development - prioritizing job creation for
disadvantaged residents rather than
privileged outsiders, prioritizing renovation
and affordable housing rather than
gentrification, and empowering civic
organizations rather than local kingpins. We
need to launch campaigns for “participatory
budgeting” where neighborhood assemblies
decide ho\y they want to spend a portion of
their taxes. We need more egalitarian and
sustainable living communities in urban as
well as rural areas.
Reform work and building new
institutions are both necessary, but neither
strategy is effective by itself. Only in
combination do they protect us from the
predictable pit falls of each approach.
Reforms alone cannot achieve equitable
cooperation because as long as the
institutions of private enterprise and
markets are left in place to reinforce anti
social behavior based on greed and fear,
progress toward equitable cooperation will
be limited, and the danger of retrogression
will be ever present. On the other hand,
concentrating exclusively on organizing
alternative institutions within capitalist
economies also cannot be successful
because it isolates us from too many who
cannot become involved in our experiments,
and because market forces constantly
pressure non-capitalist institutions to
abandon cooperative principles in favor of
commercial success. Fortunately, working
on reform campaigns helps overcome the
danger of isolation inherent in building
prefigurative projects, while continuing to
improve our understanding of how equitable
cooperation can work helps prevent people
involved in reform work from “settling” for a
slightly improved system based on
competition and greed.
3. The left needs an electoral strategy.
We cannot simply turn up our noses at
“traditional politics” and stand aloof from
electoral campaigns. We can complain about
it, but the fact is a high percentage of
people we must mobilize pay attention to
politics primarily during election season.
Abandoning the field whenever people come
out to play the game is hardly a strategy for
winning! Nor can we forever participate in
elections only by running “protest”
candidates who seek to expose the
hypocrisy of traditional political parties and
raise issues mainstream candidates and
media avoid, but who have no chance of
winning. Candidates with no chance of
winning command too little attention not
only from the media but from the public as
well.
I am not suggesting we subordinate other
areas of Left activism to focus more on
electing officials who sing a more
progressive tune than their opponents
during election season only to betray
progressives who campaigned and voted for
them once in office. Unfortunately, far from
being the “beacon of democracy” tinhorn
patriots claim, the U .S . Constitution - and a
Supreme Court which abuses its power to
interpret the Constitution to promote a
conservative agenda — have become
straitjackets preventing the popular will
from manifesting itself through elections. At
this point the odds against electing
progressive politicians and holding them
accountable to their campaign rhetoric in
the U .S. are becoming prohibitive. We live
in a two-party duopoly where both parties
are increasingly beholden to corporations
and wealthy donors. So progressives who
prioritize electoral work in the U .S . must
first and foremost wage major campaigns to
win campaign finance reform and
proportional representation before there is
any hope of imitating the kind of success
left political parties like Syriza had recently
in Greece. This is a monumental, but
necessary task. Since we in the U .S . need to
build our own Syriza we must come up with
a successful strategy to fix an electoral
system that is rigged to make this
impossible.
4. We will also need a strategy to defend
popular victories from anti-democratic
forces. There is no reason to believe ruling
elites will abide by the results of fair
elections, or shrink from destroying activist
organizations and alternative experiments
that challenge their ideology, power, and
privilege. We must not only have a strategy
to build but a strategy to defend what we
build as well. The age of revolutionaries
picking up the gun is over. If twenty-first
century politics gives way to warfare we will
lose. Therefore, our defense strategy — and
we will need one — must be centered on
organizing for massive resistance and non-
compliance since no elite, no matter how
well armed, can rule unless we, the people,
carry out their orders.
While all these activities are necessary,
not everyone must participate in every kind
of activity. The most productive mixture will
be different in different places and times,
and political groups with different ideologies
will prioritize one form of activity over
another. But since we need to make a great
deal of progress in all four areas there is
little need to waste time now squabbling
over which area is more strategic than
others.
The good news is that here in Portland
there are already more activists and
organizations working productively on all
four tasks than elsewhere in the country.
It’s time for more Portlanders to find an
activity and organization to their liking and
sign up! It is time to stop waiting for Godot.
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