MEDIA:

THE VALUE OF WIKILEAKS:

It's a new and strange world we live in. In years past international empires could arrange an early and unpleasant end for those who released their secrets to the public. It was the old "poisoned umbrella" trick. But the action was more often than not simple revenge and terrorism to deter others (yes boys and girls, governments are the oldest, most experienced, most prolific and most noted practitioners of the fine art of 'terror' throughout human history, despite their strenuous propaganda to the contrary). In the new age in which we live all the secrets are not dumped at once. there is always an 'insurance policy' in reserve. To top it off the shear weight of the secrets that come to light are like nothing that existed in the pre-internet age. Never mind a few technical details. Now the public can be privy to full details of huge numbers of matters that empires would rather keep secret.

The recent controversy over the revelations of Wikileaks is a case in point. Lacking the good old option of 'executive action' empires are now reduced to the option of "counter-links" like the amazing appearing/disappearing accusation of rape against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. This operation bears all the labels of the usual psy-ops action, intended to target a given audience with hot buttons related to their presumed ideology. The problem was that however well conceived it was in terms of psychology it was a miserable failure in terms of background preparation, and the Swedish warrant was withdrawn in less than 24 hours ad the fragility of the charges became clear. It all goes to show that no 'intelligent' intelligence agency should depend on the pseudo-science of "psychology' as one of its main props. it actually has to be backed up with proper planning.

One is left with the question of why the USA doesn't simply carry out a cyber attack on Wikileaks. They do, no doubt, employ perhaps hundreds of skilled hackers amongst others who have been caught and who have bought their freedom by selling their services to the Empire. No doubt this is the future, but for now the horse is out of the barn. It would do the Empire little good to strike back now. Look for this in the fullness of time.

Will the revelations about imperial actions in Afghanistan have any perceptible effect on public opinion ? That is also a question for the fullness of time. For now here is an opinion from Z Communications which says they will and which celebrates the value of Wikileaks.

WLWLWLWLWL
Why Wikileaks Must Be Protected

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By John Pilger
Thursday, August 19, 2010
On 26 July, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. Wikileaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.

There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is “hunted down” and “rendered”. In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defence Department official and asked, “Can you give a guarantee that the editors of Wikileaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?” He replied, “It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything”. He referred me to the “ongoing criminal investigation” of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalise” Wikileaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.

On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanapour interviewed Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the ABC network. She invited Gates to describe to her viewers his “anger” at Wikileaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that “this leak has blood on its hands”, thereby cueing Gates to find Wikileaks “guilty” of “moral culpability”. Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq – as its own files make clear – is apparently not for journalistic enquiry. This is hardly surprising now that a new and fearless form of public accountability, which Wikileaks represents, threatens not only the war-makers but their apologists.

Their current propaganda is that Wikileaks is “irresponsible”. Earlier this year, before it released the cockpit video of an American Apache gunship killing 19 civilians in Iraq, including journalists and children, Wikileaks sent people to Baghdad to find the families of the victims in order to prepare them. Prior to the release of last month’s Afghan War Logs, Wikileaks wrote to the White House asking that it identify names that might draw reprisals. There was no reply. More than 15,000 files were withheld and these, says Assange, will not be released until they have been scrutinised “line by line” so that names of those at risk can be deleted.

The pressure on Assange himself seems unrelenting. In his homeland, Australia, the shadow foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said that if her right-wing coalition wins the general election on 21 August, “appropriate action” will be taken “if an Australian citizen has deliberately undertake an activity that could put at risk the lives of Australian forces in Afghanistan or undermine our operations in any way”. The Australian role in Afghanistan, effectively mercenary in the service of Washington, has produced two striking results: the massacre of five children in a village in Oruzgan province and the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of Australians.

Last May, following the release of the Apache footage, Assange had his Australian passport temporarily confiscated when he returned home. The Labor government in Canberra denies it has received requests from Washington to detain him and spy on the Wikileaks network. The Cameron government also denies this. They would, wouldn’t they? Assange, who came to London last month to work on exposing the war logs, has had to leave Britain hastily for, as puts it, “safer climes”.

On 16 August, the Guardian, citing Daniel Ellsberg, described the great Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as “the pre-eminent hero of the nuclear age”. Vanunu, who alerted the world to Israel’s secret nuclear weapons, was kidnapped by the Israelis and incarcerated for 18 years after he was left unprotected by the London Sunday Times, which had published the documents he supplied. In 1983, another heroic whistleblower, Sarah Tisdall, a Foreign Office clerical officer, sent documents to the Guardian that disclosed how the Thatcher government planned to spin the arrival of American cruise missiles in Britain. The Guardian complied with a court order to hand over the documents, and Tisdall went to prison.

In one sense, the Wikileaks revelations shame the dominant section of journalism devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism. Look on the Wikileaks site and read a Ministry of Defence document that describes the “threat” of real journalism. And so it should be a threat. Having published skilfully the Wikileaks expose of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Julian Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime.

I like Julian Assange’s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish secret information in Britain, he replied, “When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents we see that they state it is offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome we have is to publish the information.”

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS-VENEZUELA:

A FIFTH INTERNATIONAL????:

A little while ago the Peron-wannabe dictator of Venezuela offered up to the world his idea of a "Fifth International" whereby everyone who opposed to the US Empire would unite in some sort of new socialist international. it has been many decades since the last 'International' was founded. The anarchosyndicalist international, a collection of unions, traces its origin back to 1923. The Second International of social democratic parties still exists in a bureaucratic never-never land. This international is nothing more than a collection of social democratic political parties. Maybe they are good, or maybe they are bad, but that is what they are.

Chavez of Venezuela, true to his own megalomania, however proposes yet another "international". In terms of "voting rights" one wonders is his good friends in the North Korean government will be allowed to "vote" as per their communist party membership and if starving peasants will be allowed to vote-secretly. Similarly one wonders how the votes of Chavez's good friend Iran will be allocated. Will any votes be allocated to people who have a different vision of Islam and who are in opposition to the present regime or will the voting be according to government appointees in Iran.

Let's lay it out as plainly as we can. Z Communications is very much an attempt to recover libertarian initiatives for traditional leftism. This traditional leftism is what has led Z Communications to be apologists for the regime in Venezuela. All their great intellectual power, which I will admit, floundered on a moral shoal of apologetics for dictatorship. If I were to sum it up I would say that that the theory of the "coordinator class" that Parecon has borrowed without acknowledgement from other socialists and anarchists hasn't yet penetrated to the core of their practical proposals. Whether it is "critical support" ala a Trotskyist formula for voting for the Democratic party or tailing third world dictatorships the people around Z-Net have made their choices very clear., via much more morally degenerate choices ala Venezuela.

Quite frankly I am not annoyed with the opinions of Z-Net. As a Canadian I have been very much acquainted with left social democratic proposals, and I can easily situate same in my own political culture, as "radical" as this may seem in the USA. What I am appalled by is the attempt, perhaps only possible in the USA, to say that a "vague leftism" is equivalent to anarchism. To be fair the people around Z-Net have never styled themselves as as 'anarchists", and thus it is not unexpected that they, as good vague leftists, would think that the proposals of the would-be dictator of Venezuela deserve notice. The way that Z-net gravitates to this dictatorial proposal is the same way that left social democrats would gravitate to such a thing in my experience.

In my opinion this sort of thing is both futile and immoral, especial;y as it tends to bury real socialism under a layer of bureaucratic socialist "bullshit". OK, judge for yourself. Here's the item from Z-Net. As an ex-social democrat I am very aware of what social democracy is, both in its good and its bad aspects. To say the least this sort of thing is one of the bad aspects of the left wing of social democracy. But, I'll let you judge for yourself. Here's the article from Z-Net.

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Fifth International?!

By Michael Albert

To be a contender, "21st Century Socialist" vision needs elaboration, advocacy, and a 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

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(Uh- can I say that bureaucratic "socialists" in power are a far greater threat than "egos", whatever the American point of view-Molly )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( leaving aside the way that the "left" has al;ways tried to govern other peoples' lives of course which is not an "ism"-Molly).

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(anything else you want to throw into the stew-Molly).

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.

Which, "of course"!, is about one of the best statements of vague leftism in a North American context that I have ever seen-Molly. Whether this right or wrong or, more importantly, the basis for a political movement I will leave to the readers' judgement.
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. (And most importantly vice versa without disguise-Molly)

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? (Uh, can I suggest that they won't and can't-Molly)

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(Molly warning-leftist buzzword expressed here) "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( oh yeah, I'm sure that a "Bolibougeois" making money from the present government of Venezuela would be "agreeable" to anything but fashion statements from others outside of the country ), 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(as if any government doesn't have such-Molly) 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?

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Whatever the utopian planning of the above it is undercut by the apparent agreement of the author that it can be initiated by an authoritarian government ie that of Venezuela, and carried through with the asgreement of both them and their friends. To say the least this is a rather ornate example of "leftist illusion". It is particularily stunning coming from one of those who has taken up the idea of a "managerial class" (they call it the "coordinator class") and who has, at least in this instance decided to abandon all discussion of the influence of said class in favour of a "united front" of absolutely irreconsilable parts. To say the least no real socialist should be willing to touch such a thing with aten foot pole. It's a frecipe for statist manipulation if I ever have seen one. Albert, of course, is of another opinion, and he has had the vast majority of the space here. What I can say is that flocking to this sort of scam would be an equal betrayal of anarchism as that when anarchists became Communits after the so-called success of the Russuian Revolution. I doubt that the consequences would be as brutal to the ordinary people as communist mass murder, but the consequences to anarchism would be equally disasterous.

PEOPLE:

MALALAI JOYA:

The following is an interesting mini-bio of that most rare of all breeds, a politician who actually stands on principle. Here, from Z Communications (originally published in The Independent) is the story of the Afghani woman Malalai Joya.

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Joya: The Woman Who Will Not Be Silenced:

By Johann Hari

Source: The Independent

Johann Hari's ZSpace Page
I am not sure how many more days I will be alive," Malalai Joya says quietly. The warlords who make up the new "democratic" government in Afghanistan have been sending bullets and bombs to kill this tiny 30-year-old from the refugee camps for years - and they seem to be getting closer with every attempt. Her enemies call her a "dead woman walking". "But I don't fear death, I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice," she says plainly. "I am young and I want to live. But I say to those who would eliminate my voice: 'I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.'"

The story of Malalai Joya turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out. In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and - when they were toppled - cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists.

But she says: "Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. (That is) what your soldiers are dying for." Instead of being liberated, she is on the brink of being killed.

The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan - the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda.
"We are our sisters' keepers"
I meet Joya in a London apartment where she is staying with a supporter for a week, to talk about her memoir - but even here, her movements have to be kept secret, as she flits from one safe house to another. I am told not to mention her location to anyone. She is standing in the corridor, small and slim, with her hair flowing freely, and she greets me with a solid handshake. But, when our photographer snaps her, she begins to giggle girlishly: the grief etched on to her sallow face melts away, and she laughs in joyous little squeaks. "I can never get used to this!" she says.

Then, as I sit her down to talk through her life-story, the pain soaks into her face once more. Her body tightens into a tense coil, and her fists close.

Joya was four days old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On that day, her father dropped out of his studies to fight the invading Communist army, and vanished into the mountains. She says: "Since then, all we have known is war."

Her earliest memory is of clinging to her mother's legs while policemen ransacked their house looking for evidence of where her father was hiding. Her illiterate mother tried to keep her family of 10 children alive as best she could. When the police became too aggressive, she took her kids to refugee camps across the border in Iran. In these filthy tent-cities lying on the old Silk Road, Afghans huddled together and were treated as second-class citizens by Iran. At night, wild animals could wander into the tents and attack children. There, word reached the family that Joya's father had been blown up by a landmine - but he was alive, after losing a leg.

There were no schools in the Iranian camps, and Joya's mother was determined her daughters would receive the education she never had. So they fled again, to camps in western Pakistan. There, Joya began to read - and was transformed. "Tell me what you read and I shall tell you what you are," she says. Starting in her early teens, she inhaled all the literature she could - from Persian poetry to the plays of Bertolt Brecht to the speeches of Martin Luther King. She began to teach her new-found literacy to the older women in the camps, including her own mother.

She soon discovered that she loved to teach - and, when she turned 16, a charity called the Organization for Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC) made a bold suggestion: go to Afghanistan, and set up a secret school for girls, under the noses of the Taliban tyranny.

So she gathered her few clothes and books and was smuggled across the border - and "the best days of my life" began. She loathed being forced to wear a burka, being harassed on the streets by the omnipresent "vice and virtue" police, and being under constant threat of being discovered and executed. But she says it was worth it for the little girls. "Every time a new girl joined the class, it was a triumph," she says, beaming. "There is no better feeling."

She only just avoided being caught, again and again. One time she was teaching a class of girls in a family's basement when the mother of the house yelled down suddenly: "Taliban! Taliban!" Joya says: "I told my students to lie down on the floor and stay totally silent. We heard footsteps above us and waited a long time." On many occasions, ordinary men and women - anonymous strangers - helped her out by sending the police charging off in the wrong direction. She adds: "Every day in Afghanistan, even now, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women act out these small gestures of solidarity with each other. We are our sisters' keepers."

The charity was so impressed with her they appointed her their director. Joya decided to set up a clinic for poor women just before the 9/11 attacks. When the American invasion began, the Taliban fled her province, but the bombs kept falling. "Many lives were needlessly lost, just like during the September 11 tragedy," she says. "The noise was terrifying, and children covered their ears and screamed and cried. Smoke and dust rose and lingered in the air with every bomb dropped."

As soon as the Taliban retreated, they were replaced - by the warlords who had ruled Afghanistan immediately before. Joya says that, at this point, "I realized women's rights had been sold out completely... Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban - and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters."

The warlords "have ruled Afghanistan ever since," she adds. While a "showcase parliament has been created for the benefit of the U.S. in Kabul", the real power "is with these fundamentalists who rule everywhere outside Kabul". As an example, she names the former governor of Herat, Ismail Khan. He set up his own "vice and virtue" squads which terrorized women and smashed up video and music cassettes. He had his own "private militias, private jails". The constitution of Afghanistan is irrelevant in these private fiefdoms.

Joya discovered just what this meant when she started to set up the clinic - and a local warlord announced that it would not be allowed, since she was a woman, and a critic of fundamentalism. She did it anyway, and decided to fight this fundamentalist by running in the election for the Loya jirga ("meeting of the elders") to draw up the new Afghan constitution. There was a great swelling of support for this girl who wanted to build a clinic - and she was elected. "It turned out my mission," she says, "would be to expose the true nature of the jirga from within."
"I would never again be safe"
As she stepped past the world's television cameras into the Loya jirga, the first thing Joya saw was "a long row with some of the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever known - warlords and war criminals and fascists".

She could see the men who invited Osama bin Laden into the country, the men who introduced the misogynist laws later followed by the Taliban, the men who had massacred Afghan civilians. Some had got there by intimidating the electorate, others by vote-rigging, and yet more were simply appointed by Hamid Karzai, the former oilman installed by the U.S. army to run the country. She thought of an old Afghan saying: "It's the same donkey, with a new saddle."

For a moment, as these old killers started to give long speeches congratulating themselves on the transition to democracy, Joya felt nervous. But then, she says, "I remembered the oppression we face as women in my country, and my nervousness evaporated, replaced by anger."

When her turn came, she stood, looked around at the blood-soaked warlords on every side, and began to speak. "Why are we allowing criminals to be present here? They are responsible for our situation now... It is they who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars. They are the most anti-women elements in our society who have brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again... They should instead be prosecuted in the national and international courts."

These warlords - who brag about being hard men - could not cope with a slender young woman speaking the truth. They began to shriek and howl, calling her a "prostitute" and "infidel", and throwing bottles at her. One man tried to punch her in the face. Her microphone was cut off and the jirga descended into a riot.

"From that moment on," Joya says, "I would never again be safe... For fundamentalists, a women is half a human, meant only to fulfil a man's every wish and lust, and to produce children and toil in the home. They could not believe that a young woman was tearing off their masks in front of the eyes of the Afghan people."

A fundamentalist mob turned up a few hours later at her accommodation, announcing they had come to rape and lynch her. She had to be placed under immediate armed guard - but she refused to be protected by American troops, insisting on Afghan officers.

Her speech was broadcast all over the world - and cheered in Afghanistan. She was flooded with support from the people of her country, delighted that somebody had finally spoken out. One dirt-poor village pooled its cash to send a delegate hundreds of miles across the country to explain how pleased they were.

An extremely old woman was brought to her in a rickety wheelbarrow, and she explained she had lost two sons - one to the Soviets, one to the fundamentalists. She told Joya: "I am almost 100 years old, and I am dying. When I heard about you and what you said, I knew that I had to meet you. God must protect you, my dear."

She handed over her gold ring, her only valuable possession, and said: "You must take it! I have suffered so much in my life, and my last wish is that you accept this gift from me."

But the U.S. and NATO occupiers instructed Joya that she must show "politeness and respect" for the other delegates. When Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Ambassador, said this, she replied: "If these criminals raped your mother or your daughter or your grandmother, or killed seven of your sons, let alone destroyed all the moral and material treasure of your country, what words would you use against such criminals that will be inside the framework of politeness and respect?"

She leans forward and quotes Brecht: "He says, 'He who does not know the truth is only a fool. He who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal.'"

The attempts to murder her began then with a sniper - and have not stopped since. But she says plainly, with her fist clenched: "I wanted the warlords to know I was not afraid of them."�
So she ran for parliament - and won in a landslide. "I would return again to face those who had ruined my country," she explains, "and I was determined that I would stand straight and never bow again to their threats."
"In every corner is a killer"
Joya looked out across the new Afghan parliament on her first day and thought: "In every corner is a killer, a puppet, a criminal, a drug lord, a fascist. This is not democracy. I am one of the very few people here who has been genuinely elected." She started her maiden speech by saying: "My condolences to the people of Afghanistan..."

Before she could continue, the warlords began to shout that they would rape and kill her. One warlord, Abdul Sayyaf, yelled a threat at her. Joya looked him straight in the eye and said: "We are not in [the area he rules by force] here, so control yourself."

I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. "I am never frightened when I tell the truth." She is speaking fast now: "I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me."

She says there is no difference for ordinary Afghans between the Taliban and the equally fundamentalist warlords. "Which groups are labeled 'terrorist' or 'fundamentalist' depends on how useful they are to the goals of the U.S.," she says. "You have two sides who terrorize women, but the anti-American side are 'terrorists' and the pro-American side are 'heroes'."

Karzai rules only with the permission of the warlords. He is "a shameless puppet" who will win next month's presidential elections because "he hasn't yet stopped working for his masters, the U.S. and the warlords ... At this point in our history, the only people who get to serve as president are those selected by the U.S. government and the mafia that holds power in our country."

Whenever she would despair in parliament, she would meet yet more ordinary Afghan women - and get back in the fight. She tells me about a 16-year-old constituent of hers, Rahella, who ran away to an orphanage Joya had helped to set up in her constituency. "Her uncle had decided to marry her off to his son, who was a drug addict. She was terrified. So of course we took her in, educated her, helped her." One day, her uncle turned up and apologized, saying he had learnt the error of his ways. He asked if she could come home for a weekend to visit her family. Joya agreed - and when she got back to her village, Rahella was forced into marriage and spirited away to another part of Afghanistan. They heard six months later that she had doused herself in petrol and burned herself alive.

There has been an epidemic of self-immolation by women across the "new" Afghanistan in the past five years. "The hundreds of Afghan women who set themselves ablaze are not only committing suicide to escape their misery," she says, "they are crying out for justice."

But she was not allowed to raise these issues in the supposedly democratic parliament. The fundamentalist warlords who couldn't beat Joya at the ballot box or kill her chanced upon a new way to silence her. The more she spoke, the angrier they got. She called for secularism in Afghanistan, saying: "Religion is a private issue, unrelated to political issues and the government... Real Muslims do not require political leaders to guide them to Islam." She condemned the new law that declared an amnesty for all war crimes committed in Afghanistan over the past 30 years, saying "You criminals are simply giving yourselves a get-out-of-jail free card." So the MPs simply voted to kick her out of parliament.

It was illegal and undemocratic - but the President, Hamid Karzai, supported the ban. "Now the warlord criminals are unchallenged in parliament," she says. "Is that democracy?"

We in the West have been fed "a pack of lies" about what Afghanistan looks like today. "The media are 'free' only if they do not try to criticize warlords and officials," she says in her book, Raising My Voice. As an example, she names a specific warlord: "If you write anything about him, the next day you will be tortured or killed by the Northern Alliance warlords." It is "a myth" to say girls can now go to school outside Kabul. "Only five per cent of girls, according to the UN, can follow their education to the 12th grade."

And it is "false" to say Afghan culture is inherently misogynistic. "By the 1950s, there was a growing women's movement in Afghanistan, demonstrating and fighting for their rights," she says. "I have a story here" - she rifles through her notes - "from The New York Times in 1959. Here! The headline is 'Afghanistan's women lift the veil'. We were developing an open culture for women - and then the foreign wars and invasions crushed it all. If we can regain our independence, we can start this struggle again."

Many of her friends urge her to leave the country, before one of her wannabe-assassins gets lucky. But, she says, "I can never leave when all the poor people that I love are living in danger and poverty. I am not going to search for a better and safer place, and leave them in a burning hell." Apologizing for her English - which is, in fact, excellent - she quotes Brecht again: "Those who do struggle often fail, but those who do not struggle have already failed."

Today, she fights for democracy outside parliament. But, she says, any Afghan democrat today is "trapped between two enemies. There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns." She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between, who are opposed to both. "With the withdrawal of one enemy, the occupation forces, it (will be) easier to fight against these internal fundamentalist enemies."

If she were president of Afghanistan, she would begin by referring all the country's war criminals to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. "Anybody who has murdered my sisters and brothers should be punished," she says, "from the Taliban, to the warlords, to George W Bush." Then she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. "What about the civil war now? Today, people are being killed - many, many war crimes. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people."

The Afghan public, she adds, are on her side, pointing to a recent opinion poll showing 60 percent of Afghans want an immediate NATO withdrawal. Many people in Afghanistan were hopeful, she says, about Barack Obama - "but he is actually intensifying the policy of George Bush ... I know his election has great symbolic value in terms of the struggle of African-Americans for equal rights, and this struggle is one I admire and respect. But what is important for the world is not whether the president is black or white, but his actions. You can't eat symbolism."

U.S. policy is driven by geopolitics, she says, not personalities. "Afghanistan is in the heart of Asia, so it's a very important place to have military bases - so they can control trade very easily with other Asian powers such as China, Russia, Iran and so on.

"But it can be changed by Americans," she adds. She is passionate now, her voice rising. "I say to Obama - in my area, 150 people were blown up by U.S. troops in one incident this year. If your family had been there, would you send even more troops and even more bombs? Your government is spending $18m (�11m) to make another Guantanamo jail in Bagram. If your daughter might be detained there, would you be building it? I say to Obama - change course, or otherwise tomorrow people will call you another Bush."
"It's hard to be strong all the time"
"It's not good to show my enemies any weakness, (but) it's hard to be strong all the time," Joya says with a sigh, as she runs her hands through her hair. She has been speaking so insistently - with such preternatural courage- that it's easy to forget she was just a girl when she was thrust into fighting fundamentalism. She was never allowed an adolescence. The fierce concentration on her face melts away, and she looks a little lost. "Yes, my mother is proud of me," she says, "but you know how mothers are - they worry. Whenever I speak to her on the phone, the first sentence and the last sentence are always 'Take care'."

Two years ago, she got married in secret. She can't name her husband publicly, because he would be killed. Her wedding flowers had to be checked for bombs. She will only say that they met at a press conference, "and he supports everything I do". She has not seen him "for two months", she says. "We meet in the safe houses of supporters. I cannot sleep in the same house two nights running. It is a different home every evening."

Where does this courage come from? She acts as if the answer is obvious - anyone would do it, she claims. But they don't. Perhaps it comes from her belief that the struggle is long and our individual lives are short, so we can only advance our chosen cause by inches, knowing others will pick up our baton. "When I die, others will come. I am sure of that," she says.

She certainly has a strong sense of belonging to a long history of Afghans who fought for freedom. "My parents chose my first name after Malalai of Maiwand. She was a young woman who, in 1880, went to the front line of the second Anglo-Afghan war to tend the wounded. When the fighters were close to collapse, she picked up the Afghan flag and led the men into battle herself. She was struck down - but the British suffered a landmark defeat, and, in the end, they were driven out."

When she ran for office, she had to choose a surname for herself, to protect her family's identity. "I named myself after Sarwar Joya, the Afghan poet and constitutionalist. He spent 24 years in jails, and was finally killed because he wouldn't compromise his democratic principles ... In Afghanistan we have a saying: the truth is like the sun. When it comes up, nobody can block it out or hide it."

Malalai Joya knows she could be killed any day now, in our newly liberated Warlord-istan. She hugs me goodbye and says, "We must keep in touch." But I find myself bleakly wondering if we will ever meet again. Perhaps she senses this, because she suddenly urges me to look again at the last paragraph of her memoir, Raising My Voice. "It really is how I feel," she says. It reads: "If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice." I look up into her face, and she is giving me the bravest smile I have ever seen.

'Raising My Voice' by Malalai Joya is published by Rider. All profits will go to supporting the cause of women's rights in Afghanistan.

ANARCHIST THEORY:

CITIES AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION:

As it says below this talk was recently presented at a forum organized by Greek anarchists, a forum dedicated to finding a way forward after recent events in Greece revealed both the incredible creativity of modern anarchism and also its inherent limitations in its present form. The following text is from the Z Communications site, the primary exponents of one version of libertarian socialism- participatory economics-Parecon. Yup, I know it's, to say the least 'longish', but I personally find much of value here, even if I do not agree with all of it.

Participatory Society: Urban Space & Freedom:

By Chris Spannos
[This talk was delivered yesterday, Friday, May 29th at the B-Fest in Athens, Greece. The gathering is an international anti-authoritarian festival hosted by the Babylonia newspaper, at the University of Fine Arts in Athens, from May 27-31. The purpose of the gathering is to explore vision and strategy after last December's social uprising there.]

Hello, today's track is called "Land & Freedom" and I've been asked to talk on the subject of "Participatory Society: Urban Space and Freedom."



Before I begin, however, I would like to thank you for inviting me here today and for hosting this conference. This is the first time I've been to Greece and it is an honor to be here under such circumstances.



Greece knows all too well the barbarism of U.S. imperialism and as Greeks struggle to change their society today so too do we struggle in the U.S. against oppressive forces there. We in the U.S. need to catch up in our political consciousness, organization, and concern for vision. This conference is exemplary in its mission to look at the past and present to strategize for the future. While here I hope to learn from you to see what I can take back home. The overarching goal that should unite everyone everywhere, ultimately, is a hope and effort to overcome today's systemic problems while developing shared vision of a fundamentally new society and the struggle for its realization. That is what we are working towards here today.
�
Today's cities are far from offering equitable conditions and opportunities to their inhabitants.
The majority of the urban population is deprived or limited - in virtue of their economic, social, cultural, ethnic, gender or age characteristics - in the satisfaction of their most elemental needs and rights. Public policies that contribute to this by ignoring the contributions of the popular inhabiting processes to the construction of the city and citizenship, are only detrimental to urban life. The grave consequences of this situation include massive evictions, segregation, and resulting deterioration of social coexistence.- World Charter for the Right to the City
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Over the last few days here in Greece I've been told that almost half the population live here in Athens and also that more than half are located in urban areas throughout the country. So, you may be interested to hear that today, for the first time in history, 3.3 billion people, half of humanity, live in cities. Over one third of this population does not share in the benefits that cities have to offer. It is estimated that within two decades 60 percent of the earth's population will live in urban areas and, if we continue on the current trajectory, by 2050 the urban population of the developing world will be 5.3 billion (UN projections), primarily in Asia and Africa. Because of these trends this century has been called the "Century of the City" (State of the Worlds Cities 2008 / 2009, UN Habitat).




This rapid urbanization has happened on a pace and scale unprecedented and has set in motion long-term and in some cases irreversible, social, material, and environmental damage. Migration to and between urban centers, natural growth (births outpacing deaths), urban sprawl, increasing fuel and food prices, the need for work, mass use of private transportation, and the convenience of urban lifestyles all contribute to consumption of large amounts of energy and production of excessive amounts of waste. These patterns make today's cities primary sources of pollution. Increasing growth of urban areas means increasing risk of climate change where the underprivileged and disempowered suffer most.





Between and within cities high concentrations of wealth, power, and privilege make spatial and social disparities more, not less, pronounced. Urban inequality directly impacts all aspects of societal life, including health, nutrition, gender and race equality, education, and mortality. Everywhere where this spatial, social, and material inequality reins lack of popular decision-making control reduces people's participation and integration into society.
Based on the above I recognize three major problems:
Rapid Urbanization is assisted by lack of popular decision-making control over society's institutions and our very own lives, making cities locations where obscene concentrations of wealth and power coexist with mass dispossession of at least half the earth's population with trends forecasting more into the near future.





The logic of city planning and urban development is driven by the interests of capital and top-down decision making by local, regional, and national governments where the objectives of the rulers over the ruled are contrary to the interests of the rest of us. The system of capitalism, a system defined by private ownership of productive assets, markets with roles for buyers and sellers, and corporate divisions of labor in workplaces has contributed to the misinformed use of human and natural resources where the benefits of city life are made available only for the few while the high costs of urban growth and convenience are socialized for the many.





UN Habitat reports that in the decade between 1990 and 2000 urbanization in developing regions was characterized by the entry of new cities that did not exist as such in 1990. The report states, "This constellation of 694 new cities started out as rural towns and became urban areas by virtue of changes in their administrative status, natural growth or in-migration." (PDF) The problem is not the number of cities but rather the structures within and between them, and also possibly their size and current rate of growth.
But where did they come from?
These cities did not appear magically, nor were they the product of divine intervention or an evolutionary outcome hardwired into history. Rather, they are human-made creations. Similarly, so are the vast disparities of wealth and power that exist within and between these cities. The maintenance of urban inequality is made possible through human-made hierarchical institutions that serve elite interests. Therefore, our hope lies in the self-conscious ability of people to carry out their own social and material objectives for the improvement of their own lives and their ability to exercise decision-making control over their own destinies. To accomplish this, and successfully overthrow counter-revolutionary forces (outlined below), we will need shared vision of a society organized around an institutional framework that delivers self-management, classlessness, solidarity, and diversity.
�
The society I advocate is called a Participatory Society and has consequences for how we orient ourselves to the problems mentioned above. I will now focus on these consequences and along the way outline a new institutional vision as a proposed solution.
Urban Crisis & Social Control
The urban center is not only defined by relations to rural or suburban peripheries---by space, place, territory or geography---but also by a set of social and material relations that embody all societies. Every society has defining institutions which embody interpersonal roles and relations, as well as generalized patterns of behavior and outcomes consistent with our expectations that those institutions will produce and re-produce. These outcomes can be more or less desirable. They can be more or less classist; more or less racist; more or less sexist; and allow more or less control over our daily lives.





Societies where people have very little decision-making capacity, where people have little or no say over when and where they work or live, how they work or live, or what they produce or consume, suffer alienation and isolation that hides shared social and material relations, causing people in the same workplace, neighborhood, or city, to be socially and culturally separated from one another and to not interact. All this can lead to mass anti-social behavior such as loneliness, drug and alcohol abuse, crime and violence, abuse of public property, and affect many social indicators such as stress, mental and physical health, education, and mortality. Empathy for the repercussions of anti-social outcomes is minimized while attitudes of disinterest and disaffection, and even cynicism towards human suffering, are elevated. These patterns warp and accumulate as they embed themselves into the very fabric of the everyday roles and relationships defining our lives. They oppressively pressure every moment.





Today's urban centers are home to extreme disparities where dense concentrations of wealth and power live side by side with squalor and desperation. One of the most forceful proposals I can think of to curb this pattern and its negative consequences is for people to assume self-managed decision-making control over their lives.





The principle of self-management includes, but is not limited to, human rights and access to society's material resources and social space. However, access and rights to the city are not the same as self-administration and autonomous control of society's institutions. Self-management goes beyond those who think they are free from false consciousness and believe they know what is in the people's best interest and so seek to exercise decision-making power on behalf of everyone else. It means simply that people make decisions themselves, to the degree that they and others are affected, about how to administer their own lives and society's institutions. They become arbiters of their own destinies.





For everyone everywhere to wield this kind of self-managed control over their lives society's institutions will need to be fundamentally transformed, in every sphere of life, enabling decision-making control in proportion to how one is affected. This kind of society is called a Participatory Society---it is a self-managing society, a classless society, a solidarity society, a sustainable society, and a diverse society.
In the construction of a new participatory society:
Class hierarchies will be abolished for new classless divisions of labor, remuneration of work for onerousness and intensity will be the norm, and decentralized producer and consumer controlled councils will negotiate allocation of the material means of life.





Racial and community hierarchies will be un-done for full racial diversity and ethnic equality.
Gender and sex hierarchies will be overturned to harvest non-sexist socialization and care-giving.





Political authoritarianism will be made null for new participatory forms of nested council self-governance.
�
A participatory society, where people have self-managed decision-making say over the things that affect them, will require new consciousness, skills, and capacities for everyone. Society's participatory institutions will convey compassion, understanding, and solidarity; equal opportunity to realize our own material fates with classless outcomes; and diverse lifestyles choices and living arrangements for all to choose from.





Better urban or town planning by leaders over the led will generate outcomes consistent with hierarchical institutions and relations---a society for them rather than for the rest of us. A democratically planned city is, of course, likely to be more livable than one that is developed by random greed while placing decision-making control in people's hands will help face both the institutional damages already done and those ahead in the coming century.
Urban vs. Rural Space
Growth in urban space causes cities to expand outward and upward placing new demands on infrastructure, resources, and transportation. Escaping the city for life closer to nature in the suburbs, where these suburbs are often highly developed themselves, means further transportation and infrastructure demands to and from the suburban periphery and urban center. Other possibilities consist of connecting smaller cities that encircle larger ones while connecting all centers to one another using shared resource and transportation planning. In discussing these problems of urban space and development I would like to propose that our vision of a participatory society suggests a new orientation for how we approach the balance between urban and rural development and the issue of size, scale and relations of our societal endeavors.
There are two notable classical Left approaches to these issues.
In 1887, Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward: 2000-1887. Bellamy imagined a socialist Boston city (U.S.) in the year 2000 which was technologically advanced and where consumer goods were in abundance:





"At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by trees and lined by fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous blocks but set in larger or smaller enclosures, stretched in every direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architectural grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately piles on every side."
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In oppositional response to the large scale urban vision offered by Bellamy, 19th Century British socialist, romantic, and architect William Morris wrote his classic text News From Nowhere. This book envisioned a city that abandon urban and large scale industrialization in favor of a smaller, village level, scale and design. Morris imagined an existence where the division between art, life, and work had been abolished. He proposed that artistic and handicraft design be incorporated into our built environment:





"I lingered a little behind the others to have a stare at this house, which, as I have told you, stood on the site of my old dwelling.





It was a longish building with its gable ends turned away from the road, and long traceried windows coming rather low down set in the wall that faced us. It was very handsomely built of red brick with a lead roof; and high up above the windows there ran a frieze of figure subjects in baked clay, very well executed, and designed with a force and directness which I had never noticed in modern work before. The subjects I recognized at once, and indeed was very particularly familiar with them.





However, all this I took in in a minute; for we were presently within doors, and standing in a hall with a floor of marble mosaic and an open timber roof. There were no windows on the side opposite to the river, but arches below leading into chambers, one of which showed a glimpse of a garden beyond, and above them a long space of wall gaily painted (in fresco, I thought) with similar subjects to those of the frieze outside; everything about the place was handsome and generously solid as to material; and though it was not very large (...), one felt in it that exhilarating sense of space and freedom which satisfactory architecture always gives... "





These two classic examples provide contrasting visions of the balance between urban and rural development, the scale or our productive endeavors, what buildings may look like, or even as Morris does, after the transformation of an old society into a new, which formerly elite spaces we may use to store manure in.





The vision of a participatory society does not have any preconceived assumptions about which of the above is more desirable than the other in size or scale but instead provides an institutional context that enables those most affected by these decisions to decide what is best for themselves in a self-managing and classless way.





A participatory society's economic relations deliver classlessness through balanced job complexes, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, nested worker and consumer councils, and decentralized participatory planning and so, consequentially, regardless of whether someone lives in an urban or rural area, or a society is smaller or larger, everyone will have comparably empowering circumstances and the same classless position. Extreme disparities in wealth and power will be a thing of the past.





When it comes to what daily life details in this urban or rural vision may actually look like, I hope it will suffice to say that people will be able to negotiate the re-organization of social space to meet their everyday lifestyle needs and choices. In Redesigning the American Dream (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002) Feminist, and Professor of Architecture and Urbanism Dolores Hayden explores the Feminist critique of single family homes as "enclosures" on women's lives. In a participatory society one can imagine much of the heavy burden of "women's work" and "household labor," being lifted by classlessness, but still, change to avoid male privilege will be needed as well. After revolutionizing gender relations---in child-rearing, socialization, and care-giving---people may even also decide to re-organize the distance between work and home or choose from among various possibilities for their mutual integration. For example, the socialization of care-giving might mean the placement of daycare centers and elderly homes into communities and workplaces. Or, shared communal eating and cleaning spaces might also emerge as possible solutions to lessen the workload of individual families. Likewise we can envision how accommodation and reproduction of diverse cultural and community relations in the economy may also take shape. However, trying to imagine in detail today the distance between work and daycare (or the aesthetics) of society's institutions tomorrow is placing the "buggy before the horse." Just as with the balance between urban and rural space a participatory society should provide an institutional context allowing populations to choose whatever details they prefer consistent with self-management and classlessness. Then we can all see those details when the future arrives.
The Sustainable City & The Class Connection
In response to the problem of cities being major sources of carbon dioxide emissions and climate change some suggest we need societies not so large, affluent, or convenient. The proposed solution would be to cut-back on consumption and production, move away from non-renewable resources, private transportation, and recycle more, all in an effort to downsize our ecological footprint. Others suggest that the problem is not even cities, per say, that are responsible for the output of greenhouse gasses but, rather, per capita consumption patterns---that is, the amount of consumption per head for those that live in cities (State of the Worlds Cities 2008 / 2009, UN Habitat). Some cities have even tried to reduce their per capita energy consumption through more efficient use of transportation and infrastructure.





However, the real source of the problem is the lack of popular decision-making control over what is consumed, how it is produced, and the volume of both. Inputs for production and consumption should be guided by concern for the social costs and benefits of their use, and what is socially valuable, rather than by elite planning and mismanagement guided by random greed. These are problems that the economy of a participatory society (parecon) addresses by providing institutional solutions via classless and self-managed worker and consumer councils.
In every society that hosts disparities in wealth, power, and privilege so too are there disparities in affluence, comfort, and convenience. In societies such as the U.S., where the top 10 percent collectively enjoy almost as much wealth as the bottom 150 million (half the population), asking those of us in the bottom 60-70 percent to cut back on the comfort and convenience that we already have very little of is tantamount to asking people to give up even more control over what little we have left to enjoy of our dispossessed lives.





The question is not if we should cut-back on overall affluence and reduce our collective environmental footprint, as most would agree, but how we can redistribute decision-making power and control so that those currently at the top have the same consumption ceiling as the rest of us. Decisions about who should cut-back on their consumption levels today and how to reduce carbon levels for an environmentally sustainable future tomorrow should be made by all according to how they are affected---self-management.





The overall purpose, however, should be how to reorient life, cities, and social relations, so that great social and material benefits accrue from less, and even more to the point, less ecologically destructive production and consumption. For example, we need to replace many private goods, such as cars for transportation, with far more efficient public forms---in a myriad of ways.
Sustainability & The Need for Revolution
Some have argued that "We need to stop consuming fossil fuels and defeat global warming over the next twenty to thirty years," and they are right. However, not only will doing so take at least as much coordination of energy and resources as transforming society's defining institutions, specifically, moving toward a post-capitalist economy, but as long as capitalism's defining features of private ownership of productive assets, markets, and corporate hierarchies exist, any progress made towards "greening society" will always be threatened by market pressures pushing for production and consumption of private goods and services over public ones, hiding the true social and material costs of economic activity, and using resources where the guiding ruling class interests are profits and power over people and the environment. Consequentially, our efforts for a sustainable society will be rolled back and undercut if we don't address the roots of the problem, and aim for their transformation.
Strategies for Self-Management: 3 Orientations
We have, I think, a real need right now to democratize decisions as to how a city shall be and what it should be about, so that we can actually have, if you like, a collective project about reshaping urban—the urban world. I mean, here in this city [New York], effectively, the right to the city has been held by the mayor and the Development Office and the developers and the financiers. Most of us don't really have a very strong say. I mean, there are kind of community organizations and so on. So I think the democratization of the city, of city decision-making, is crucial. And I think we want to reclaim the right to the city for all of us, so that we can all actually not only have access to what exists in the city, but also be able to reshape the city in a different image, in a different way, which is more socially just, more environmentally sustainable and so on.- David Harvey





Today there are urban and rural movements on every continent seeking access and rights to resources and social space. These and other movements could be building blocks towards a participatory society where people exercise self-managed decision-making control over their lives and over society's institutions. I want to highlight three strategic orientations, the problems we face, and institutional forces working against us. I believe all three orientations are necessary and interdependent for the final goal of realizing a new society.
Orientation 1: Reforms
The first orientation I want to discuss is reforms. Reforms are a way to improve poor social and material conditions today in the hope that things will be better tomorrow. Today, on all continents, there are many groups working to improve the conditions that dispossess them.
For example, in South Africa, the Shack dweller's movement (Abahlali baseMjondolo, "ABM"), Landless People's Movement, the Rural Network, and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, are all part of a Poor People's Alliance for radical social justice. In Kwazulu-Natal the Shack dweller's (ABM) have been engaged in a fight against the province's "Slums Act" by using both legal means and direct action. It has been estimated that 10 percent of South Africans "still live in shanty-style developments, which were first set up on the outskirts of major towns and cities during white minority rule." (BBC / ABM site) The South African government plans on displacing thousands of shack dweller's to make room for the 2010 Soccer World Cup. "The government has made plans to develop 'World Class Cities' by eliminating the 'slums' which are home to millions" says ABM partner organization War on Want. The Act is expected to lead to the eviction of large numbers of shack dwellers from their homes and into temporary housing in so-called "transit camps" that are often located far from vital services and job opportunities and lack decent water and sanitation facilities. As of today ABM and others are still trying to contest the constitutionality of the Slums Act and ensure a place for shack dwellers in the city and with dignity.





Similarly, in Brazil there is the exemplary Landless Workers' Movement (MST), the largest social movement of its kind. In a 25 year period the MST has taken over 35 million acres from large land owners, an amount "larger than the country of Uruguay" (Stedile). The MST has settled thousands of families and built hundreds of schools and homes. This strategy obviously aims, and has succeeded to a large extent, in the redistribution of rural land. In Brazil's urban centers, another movement---Movimiento de los Trabajadores Sin Techo (MTST) has emerged in the past years. Taking on MST's tactics, they occupy urban spaces for living areas.





Where I am from, in the U.S., regionally and across major cities nationally, there is a Right to the City movement. Its overview page states:
"Right to the City was born out of desire and need by organizers and allies around the country to have a stronger movement for urban justice. But it was also born out of the power of an idea of a new kind of urban politics that asserts that everyone, particularly the disenfranchised, not only has a right to the city, but as inhabitants, have a right to shape it, design it, and operationalize an urban human rights agenda."





The Right to the City Alliance was established in 2007 and includes more than 40 member organizations spanning 7 states and more than a dozen local jurisdictions. Regional networks include Boston / Providence, DC / North Virginia, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, and San Francisco / Oakland. The movement engages in campaigns for civic engagement, public and subsidized housing, tenant's rights, and provides resource, technical, and legal support and advocacy services.





In Boston, the city I live closest to, City Life/Vida Urbana is a member organization of the Right to the City Alliance. In 2008 alone there have been over 1200 home foreclosures, and about 2400 threatened evictions, affecting perhaps 4-5000 people. City Life has stopped or delayed more than 300 evictions.





While the above examples are all exemplary movements, one can see that the South African and Brazilian examples, representing millions of members, are much further ahead in their organizing engagements than those of us in the U.S. However, our movements can humorously boast that we have more websites than many of our organizations have members!
Orientation 2: Revolt
Following shortly on the heels of your own uprising last December, and consistent with some of the tactics I read about taking place here, students at the New School University in New York occupied some of their own faculty buildings. This was sparked by a vote of no confidence in the university's President and Vice President and because they were acting out of interests contradictory to the interests of students, staff, and faculty. The students used occupation as tactic to raise demands and get them met. Some of their demands were:
**resignation of the New School president, and others on the Board of Trustees
**abolition of the grading system
**student and faculty cooperatively plan curriculum
**have the administration be elected and recallable by students, staff, and faculty
**to have social justice curriculum
**have the university serve community interests and needs
**disclosure of university investments to ensure the university is not funding war, torture, labor, social, or environmental injustice.
**implementation of a socially responsible investment committee (comprised of students, staff, and faculty).
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There were many other demands, and they have won some, and they are still fighting for others. However, this occupation was a tactic employed around part of a much larger long-term vision of broader society, as exemplified by one of their slogans, "Occupy Everything!" As New School Radical Student Union organizer Meaghan Linick-Loughley said, "All this is trying to push the university into the direction of a self-managed university, even though these are only small steps." (See video interview)





Other examples of occupation tactics in the U.S. include the sit-down strikes in the auto industry of the 1930's Depression-era where workers used occupations to get demands met, however did not try to run the factories themselves as newly re-organized workplaces. More recently, last December 5th the famous Chicago Republic Windows and Doors factory gained international attention when 260 workers occupied their plant for 6 days. Workers there used factory occupation as their tactic of choice bringing back Depression-era tactics in the U.S. Weeks after taking $25 billion dollars in public bailout money Bank of America cut off its line of credit to the factory causing the company to halt operations and terminate its workers with only three days notice and without severance packages. Adopting the slogan "You got bailed out, we got sold out!" the workers occupation struggle earned them a victory settlement totaling $1.75 million dollars covering eight weeks of pay, two months of continued health coverage, and pay for all accrued and unused vacation. United Electrical Director of Organization Bob Kingsley described the outcome as "an historic victory for America's labor movement." Today the plant is re-opening under new ownership with all the workers hired back at their old wages. This was an inspiring example of occupation as a reform tactic to improve the conditions of workers today.
The most recent example of the occupation tactic being employed in the U.S., also in Chicago and paralleling the Windows and Doors story, is the worker's struggle at the 122 year-old Hartmarx business suit factory. This is the company that outfitted now U.S. President Barack Obama in the navy blue suit he wore on his inauguration night.
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Hartmarx is in bankruptcy and its biggest creditor is Wells Fargo which, like Bank of America, also received $25 billion dollars public bailout money. There are offers to buy the company but Wells Fargo wants to liquidate it. On Monday, May 11, 650 workers voted to occupy their factory if the bank decides to liquidate. The struggle of the Hartmarx worker's is still unfolding.
There are of course excellent examples of occupations and takeovers around the world, where many lessons can be learned, from France, the U.K., Canada, and even your own country. However, one significant example outside the U.S. that you may be aware of is Argentina. In Buenos Aires, Argentine workers have adopted the MST strategy of "Occupy, Resist, Produce" to take over and administer their own factories. These takeovers erupted during and after Argentina's 2001 economic crisis and social rebellion with wide spread occupations of work places and community spaces for autonomous organizing and implementation of self-managed social relations.





In the student and worker examples above, the lesson I draw from occupation as a tactic, and I hope to hear and learn more about yours here---as I understand that you have a very deliberate occupations' movement that has been organizing for years---is the difference between occupations as a tactic to get demands met, or occupations as social centers for activism and organizing---which are both very positive and exemplary things---and the use of occupations consistent with our ultimate objectives of redefining social and material relations away from oppressive and hierarchical ones, and towards classless and self-managing ones---for the administration of all society's institutions by ourselves and for ourselves. This should include all economic institutions for the production, consumption, and allocation of the material means of life, political institutions for adjudication, legislation, and for the creation of self-governing law, as well as all media, educational and cultural apparatus'---culminating in the total self-management of society.
Orientation 3: Revolution
I want to propose that orientations toward reform (improving our lives today), and revolt (uprising and rebellion) should lead, ultimately, to the conscious transformation of society's defining institutions and the totality of social and material relations---Revolution. We do this with a grander vision in mind and to always do so in such a way that leaves us more empowered, more in control, and closer to winning the new society. If we pursue reform or revolt for their own sake, without our eyes on the prize of winning society wide revolution, we will always run the risk of having society's institutions roll back our struggles for the forward looking change we hoped for.





This entails orienting our reform and uprising strategies towards a final conclusion: the reorganization of society's institutions for egalitarian relations between sexes; balanced divisions of economic labor for classlessness; for decentralized and participatory self-managed decision-making; for cultural fairness and diversity; and for environmental stability.





Ultimately, we seek to win a participatory society and the empowerment of all to have decision-making say over their own social and material lives.
Problems for all 3 Orientations: The (Counter) Revolution of Everyday Life
However, the orientations above are not without their problems. History has ample evidence showing that when Left movements unite and become a force to be reckoned with---meaning we threaten the balance of power that favors the rulers over the ruled---elites respond with counter-revolutionary subversion and brutality in defense of their interests. However, and I say this as a non-pacifist, history also has examples of societies transforming peacefully and non-violently when the majority of the population is organized and conscious about its desires for a new society. These examples show that in the contestation for a new society the real problem is not between state violence vs. an armed resistance. To paraphrase last century's anarcho-syndicalist theoretician Rudolph Rocker, "The state has a monopoly on violence," meaning that when it comes to guns, torture, tanks, planes, and bombs, the odds for the state's brutal and successful suppression of an armed resistance are in the state's favor.





However, when the majority of people rise up against elements of the population and the institutions that elevate them, those defined as the ruling class over the rest of us, as in the aftermath of the Argentine financial crisis of 2001, where people shouted "Que se vayan todos!," or "Away with them all!" and ousted successive presidents in a matter of days; and again in April 2002 when Venezuelans peacefully rose up against the U.S. backed coup attempt to overthrow president Hugo Chavez, rolling back U.S. imperial aggression and achieving Chavez' reinstatement; it demonstrates that it is possible for governments and imperialist aggression to be checked by popular power. The lesson here is that when enough people are organized---even if it takes decades---once a critical mass is reached, elites can be toppled instantly.





These examples point to an obstacle to overcome in societies where the balance of forces are not being contested or have recently stabilized. The goal then should be to organize as much as possible those receptive sectors of the population---working people, women, minorities and everyone else who wishes real self-management for all.





But more, another deeper problem exists. Whether in our patient day to day organizing efforts or in those moments where popular rebellion erupts and societal transformation begins to take root, there are more subtle counter-revolutionary forces at work than the state, elite, or media---even though these are very important. Whether in Paris '68, Argentina 2001, or December in Greece there are pressures to "return to normal" and in every society something similar is at work attempting to rollback each new uprising. Every rebellion is challenged by not having sufficient institutional backing and shared strategic vision capable of carrying forward the momentum and objectives of the uprising towards transformation of society.





Counter-revolutionary forces are embedded in the very fabric of our struggle and these same forces emanate from society's defining and oppressive institutions. Pre-existing social behaviors and material outcomes, such as mass apathy and self-interest, generated by the market, state, and old corporate divisions of labor (and sexism and racism) work against our desired changes and which we must constantly seek to not replicate ourselves.





In other words, remnants of the old society are so prevalent during times of upheaval, and for long afterward too, that they work to exhaust, restrain, and eventually roll back our efforts for the new society. These forces can often cause us to do more damage to ourselves and others in our movements than the state or any elite. So I think that, to the extent that our own movement organizations and institutions replicate pre-existing and dominant institutions, it makes it all the harder to escape the old society. That goes without saying for mainstream party's or organizations, but I believe this is also the case for hierarchically organized Left parties, trade unions, or media and cultural groups, whose internal structures and roles are compatible with the dominant oppressive ones.





The solution to this problem is, I believe,---in addition and in complement to organizing a sympathetic populace---widely shared consciousness about the kind of society we want. This does not mean general proclamations or simply spouting values. It means understanding and sharing a belief in the benefits of classless divisions of labor and remuneration, along with self-managed workers' and consumers' councils over other hierarchical, centralized, or otherwise vague proposals. We should be clear in our desire for a society which is organized around institutions that can deliver solidarity, self-management, classlessness, and diversity, and we should know what those institutions look like. We need this not only to build a mass movement among ourselves allied around a vision that includes all aspects of society. But also to provide hope for all others who wish to control their own social and material fates. Our efforts wont' be perfect but having a shared and conscious understanding means that together we can evaluate mistakes made and obstacles to overcome and plot our course closer towards the final victory.
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[I want to thank Michael Albert, Andy Dunn, Mandisi Majavu, Steve Shalom, Marie Trigona, and Cynthia Peters for their input and suggestions on the presentation above. They are responsible for adding much strength and only I am responsible for any weakness.]
Chris Spannos is Staff with Z and editor of the book Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century (AK Press, 2008).