I apologize for the overly long video this time, but I want to tell my own story about facing misogynyst violence and what we can do about it. The world is changing because of Kavanaugh, and we should make our organizing spaces ready for it.
Dr. Jared Ball’s IMixWhatILike website and web program is an important and useful resource for ideological development that merits serious attention. His video discussion of Cedric J. Robinson and his notion of the Black Radical Tradition is particularly informative and important.
Robin D.G. Kelley writes “Robinson took Marxism to task for its inability to comprehend the racial character of capitalism or radical movements outside of the West. He essentially re-wrote the history of the rise of the West from Ancient times to the mid-20th century, scrutinizing the very idea that capitalism could impose universal categories of class on the entire world. Tracing the roots of black radical thought to a shared epistemology among diverse African people, he shows that the first waves of African New World revolts were not governed by a critique structured by Western conceptions of freedom but a total rejection of enslavement and racism as it was experienced. Revolts, Robinson emphasized, which were often led by women. However, with the advent of formal colonialism and the incorporation of black labor into a more fully governed social structure, emerges the native bourgeoisie, more intimate with European life and thought, assigned to help rule. Their contradictory role as victims of racial domination and tools of empire, compelled some of these men and women to revolt, thus producing the radical black intelligentsia. And it is that intelligentsia which occupies the last section of the book. He reveals how W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright, by confronting Black mass movements, revised their positions on Western Marxism or broke with it altogether. The way they came to the Black Radical Tradition was more of an act of recognition than invention; they did not create the theory of black radicalism as much as found it in the movements of ‘ordinary’ Black people.”
It was in this work that Robinson elaborated upon his theory of racial capitalism and the spirit of opposition within the Black working class as the engine of liberation from it. Using the Hegelian dialectical triad of Du Bois, James, and Wright, he formulates a proposed praxis that can transcend the shortcomings of socialist movements in the Global North.
While Robinson’s views and works are not specifically endorsed or promoted by the Green Party of the United States or the Green Party Power Project per se, there are individual Greens who have derived a great deal of wisdom and insight from these works. They offer a serious, mature, and accessible critique of white supremacy, firmly grounded in historical materialism, that can offer solutions and guidance for practical challenges in the creation of viable Green Party locals. In a period when we find racial politics and the opposition to racial capitalism at heightened levels of public awareness, books discussion groups and clubs using these texts could help your Green local build power.
The guns at Sumter [that began the American Civil War], the marching armies, the fugitive slaves, the fugitives as “contrabands,” spies, servants and laborers; the Negro as soldier, as citizen, as voter—these steps came from 1861 to 1868 with regular beat that was almost rhythmic. It was the price of the disaster of war, and it was a price that few Americans at first dreamed of paying or wanted to pay. The North was not Abolitionist. It was overwhelmingly in favor of Negro slavery, so long as this did not interfere with Northern moneymaking. But, on the other hand, there was a minority of the North who hated slavery with perfect hatred; who wanted no union with slaveholders; who fought for freedom and treated Negroes as men. As the Abolition-democracy gained in prestige and in power, they appeared as prophets, and led by statesmen, they began to guide the nation out of the morass into which it had fallen. They and their black friends and the new freedmen became gradually the leaders of a Reconstruction of Democracy in the United States, while marching millions sang the noblest war-song of the ages to the tune of “John Brown’s Body”: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored/He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword/His Truth is marching on! -W.E.B. Du Bois
We…see the Negroes as foremost among those who will struggle against the crimes and barbarities of the capitalist system. The reason for this lies in the very nature of the Negro’s position in capitalist society. The most exploited, the most oppressed, the most discriminated against, Negroes are the ones who experience most acutely and most unbearably the overwhelming burdens which capitalism places upon the masses in every country. Negroes haven’t to read in books about the fraud of capitalist democracy. Karl Marx and Lenin have little to teach them about the fact.This conception of the role of the Negro has hitherto been obscured by the racial prejudices instilled into the different sections of the working class by American capitalism. The revolutionary party therefore is faced with the tremendous difficulty of overcoming this division. Yet difficult as this task is, it is a difficulty of tactics and not of strategy. The important question is not so much that of winning the Negroes for the revolution, but of instilling the Negro masses with the conviction that they can place their trust and confidence in a revolutionary party composed largely of white workers, as is inevitable in American society. -C.L.R. James
Why We Need a Reader
In any moment of heightened political contradictions, it proves necessary to develop a firm set of ideological coordinates from which praxis can materialize. This is particularly true in the matter of trying to build a mass-membership organization that goes outside the confines of the petit bourgeoisie and into the grassroots where the working class is to be found simultaneous with the growing alarmism around reborn fascist politics.
Table of Contents
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
The Communalist Project by Murray Bookchin
Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement by Murray Bookchin
Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience by Peter Staudenmaier and Janet Biehl
We currently are seeing in the mainstream and even psuedo-progressive left media a large-scale meta-narrative that promotes a definite and clear political agenda. With these contradictions creating such serious and confusing times, it is important for Greens to move outside the realm of petty electoralism and into the street. The Green Party can become a mass-membership movement that opposes imperialism, settler-colonist white supremacy, misogyny (including when it appears as corporate neoliberal feminism), and austerity while defending the commons.
These readings are not programmatic or agenda-based.
Such times require something much bolder.
We open this reader with an analysis of mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex by Angela Davis. This is the human rights issue of our epoch and It must be understood as a central location of struggle. It is impossible to subsume the matter under the heading of simplistic ecology or relegate it to a lower position on a roster of priorities. Rather, it is the true liberation politics of genuine socialism that can inform the struggle for livable ecology.
Murray Bookchin’s The Communalist Project is a vision of a Green future that goes well beyond Keynesian welfare state politics and into the realm of actual political democracy. He writes:
Communalism seeks to recapture the meaning of politics in its broadest, most emancipatory sense, indeed, to fulfill the historic potential of the municipality as the developmental arena of mind and discourse. It conceptualizes the municipality, potentially at least, as a transformative development beyond organic evolution into the domain of social evolution.
The city is the domain where the archaic blood-tie that was once limited to the unification of families and tribes, to the exclusion of outsiders, was – juridically, at least – dissolved. It became the domain where hierarchies based on parochial and sociobiological attributes of kinship, gender, and age could be eliminated and replaced by a free society based on a shared common humanity.
Potentially, it remains the domain where the once-feared stranger can be fully absorbed into the community – initially as a protected resident of a common territory and eventually as a citizen, engaged in making policy decisions in the public arena. It is above all the domain where institutions and values have their roots not in zoology but in civil human activity.
This is how Greens can show that another world is possible, one where every cook can govern.
From here, we include two further writings on the topic of fascism. For too long, Greens have been rebuked, sometimes rightfully so, for refusing to acknowledge their privilege and role within white supremacy. Many suburban Greens have awful politics on race, gender, sexuality, and the role of the welfare state in the lives of the working class. Participation in the Green Party is seen as a petit bourgeois hobby that fails to acknowledge the needs and wants of the working class, a kind of meek protest politics for white people who wish to ‘Green Keynes’ and little more.
However, it is from within the earliest writings of American Greens like Janet Biehl, Peter Staudenmaier, and Bookchin that we find a tradition of ecological anti-fascism that can provide useful praxis moving forward. These writings go beyond the realm of spontaneity and demonstrations to provide an ideological rebuke to a fascist current Americans can expect to see more and more of in the coming years. While Donald Trump may be a passing political actor, the politics he has tapped into will be with us for a long time and will require action that goes well beyond the consensus of even a retro New Dealer like Bernie Sanders.
It is our hope that this strand of the Green tradition, a socialist praxis rooted in values of liberté, égalité, fraternité and harkening back to the emancipatory ideals of the Haitian Revolution, might take root in our wider American Green Party and help build our base into a viable force for taking power.
An ongoing issue within the Green Party is the attempt to characterize differences of opinion as “factionalism.” This phenomenon is a posture some “old guard Greens” take when confronting change.
You may not realize that one of our core organizers, Dr. Margaret Flowers, is running for a seat on the Green Party of the United States’ national steering committee. In her campaign, she has had to face opposition that accuses her of “factionalism,” and in response, she wrote the following commentary to the GP National Committee. We’ve posted it here with her permission.
Dear Delegates,
Margaret Flowers protesting the Dominion Energy Cove Point Terminal in Maryland.
First, I want to thank all of you who are supporting my run for steering committee. I appreciate your positive comments on and off this list. I hope that I am elected and have the opportunity to serve in this time of great potential for transformative change.
I am writing to acknowledge the struggles that are going on within our party, and that have existed throughout the party’s history. Yes, while we are united as Greens in our support for our platform, there are differences in opinion about how we achieve our goals. This is to be expected in any organization and it ought to be welcomed as an opportunity for deliberation and debate and to grow stronger in our positions and resolve.
We are all Greens. We who support the Green Party platform are all Greens. Nobody, even if you were a Green from the beginning of the party, gets to claim that only they are Greens and that people who disagree with them are “the other.” That type of thinking will stifle and probably is stifling the party.
While some would degenerate into accusations of factionalism and calling some Greens “the opposition,” these differences in opinion are normal. We can disagree with each other, even publicly. However, what is not healthy is name calling, finger pointing and other immature behaviors. I hope we can strive for principled and constructive discussions rather than tearing each other down. Let’s model the world we are striving to create.
Margaret relaxes with family and friends. Her medical practice was as a pediatrician.
One of my areas of expertise is social movements (others are pediatrics, single payer health care and gardening). Like biological organisms, social movements (and parties) thrive when they are diverse.
The Green Party will also thrive if it is diverse, but only if we are ready to accept that diversity. We have work to do if we want to be a strong and diverse party because there are issues within the party of racism, white supremacy and patriarchy. Our societal structure is racist, white supremacist and patriarchal, so it is no surprise that it exists in the party. The good news is that our values are anti-racist, anti-white supremacist and anti-patriarchal. With some work, we can learn to recognize how these play out in society and in the party and change our behaviors, and if we do that, we will grow because we will stop losing people who come to the party and leave because they were offended.
As there have been questions on various Green Party lists about my positions and motivations, I would like to clarify them here on the national list where all can read and discuss them. I encourage other steering committee candidates to do the same.
Independence – I believe that in order to effect transformational change we need to be a party that challenges the duopoly parties. I work with people from the duopoly parties on specific issues, but a third party that effects change must challenge those parties because they work to maintain the status quo.
Broad social movement – I believe that we need to be a party that lives its full platform and connects to a broad range of social movements, rather than seeing ourselves as being restricted to being environmentalists. These issues are all deeply interconnected and we can’t actually solve any of them without solving all of them. Our base is the people who are directly impacted by injustice and oppression and we need to make stronger alliances with impacted communities, build trust with people, welcome new people and nurture new leaders.
Economic Democracy – As far as economic systems go, a capitalist economy is incompatible with the GP platform. But I’m not a purist. One of my mentors is Gar Alperovitz and he says that the new economy is still emerging. It will likely have features of both capitalism and socialism. I prefer the term Economic Democracy. We cover this in more depth on our project, It’s Our Economy. Read our core issues here. Kevin Zeese and I wrote a number of articles about this in 2013 for TruthOut.
I sincerely believe that the next decade is full of potential for real transformative changes as outlined in the GP platform and that achieving those transformative changes will require a movement of movements that understands how power works and how to be effective and a political party that represents the values and principles of that movement of movements.
To that end, we created Popular Resistance – to raise awareness of the social movements in the US and around the world, to provide tools, to run issue campaigns that connect movements and to educate people about strategy and social movement theory. That’s why we just completed our first online free school on “How Social Transformation Occurs.”
And I am involved in the Green Party because I believe we can be the major party of the rising social movements. I was a strong supporter during Jill Stein’s past two campaigns. I was asked to be her vice president both times, but I declined because I did not think I was the right person for the ticket. I helped to create the Green Shadow Cabinet in 2013. I am active in my local and state parties and we are having a lot of success in growing, running strong candidates and challenging the duopoly parties. I want to share what we are doing and what we have learned with others.
So, my basic points are:
Differences in position will always exist in the party.
We are all Greens.
Disagreements and debate are healthy when they are done in a principled way.
Let’s try to stop the infighting and work together.
We have a lot of work to do.
I hope we can focus on the work ahead and that I have the opportunity to share my experience, talents and wisdom on the GPUS steering committee.
Margaret Flowers
She/her
MD delegate
Candidate GPUS steering committee
In the 2000’s, the environmental movement faced an internal crisis. In some quarters, it had failed to maintain an explicit and open opposition to white supremacy, sex/gender/orientation oppression, and other forms of bigotry. As a result, the notorious white supremacist publisher and activist John Tanton infiltrated and co-opted the vocabulary and platform of struggle for livable ecology so to promote his own noxious brand of hatred towards our Latinx brothers and sisters. This video from the period detailed the matter (please note any shortcomings of its analysis should be acknowledged in part to its age as a documentary from a specific time period).
Tanton was not an aberration or one-off. Indeed, the Green movement in other countries has also encountered this.
In Germany, where the Green Party political movement originated in the 1970s, neo-Nazis began to enter the party in the 1980s, a matter documented and analyzed for American audiences by Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier in their 1992 volume Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience.
That challenge has remained on the periphery of environmentalist politics for decades. This is because there is a convergence of values between the Green philosophy in some quarters and Fascism as a historical socio-political project. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century and his Being and Time is ranked one of the most important philosophical texts in the Continental tradition. His high esteem for the natural world and rebuke of modern industrial society in the name of the natural, bucolic landscape does anticipate many of the themes that emerged when the environmental movement began to form in the 1960s and ’70s. However, Heidegger was also a convert to the Nazi Party and its high estimation of “blood and soil”, a development that scandalized his pupils and caused Hannah Arendt to break with her old professor and mentor.
The late Murray Bookchin saw the shadow of Heidegger within the coordinates of Deep Ecology, a philosophy that vied with his Social Ecology project for the ideological heart and soul of the environmental movement. He wrote in 1987
Deep ecology has parachuted into our midst quite recently from the Sunbelt’s bizarre mix of Hollywood and Disneyland, spiced with homilies from Taoism, Buddhism, spiritualism, reborn Christianity, and in some cases eco-fascism, while social ecology draws its inspiration from such outstanding radical decentralist thinkers as Peter Kropotkin, William Morris, and Paul Goodman, among many others who have advanced a serious challenge to the present society with its vast hierarchical, sexist, class-ruled, statist apparatus and militaristic history.
Let us face these differences bluntly: deep ecology, despite all its social rhetoric, has virtually no real sense that our ecological problems have their ultimate roots in society and in social problems. It preaches a gospel of a kind of “original sin” that accurses a vague species called humanity — as though people of color were equatable with whites, women with men, the Third World with the First, the poor with the rich, and the exploited with their exploiters. Deep ecologists see this vague and undifferentiated humanity essentially as an ugly “anthropocentric” thing…that is “overpopulating” the planet, “devouring” its resources, and destroying its wildlife and the biosphere… Deep ecology, formulated largely by privileged male white academics, has managed to bring sincere naturalists like Paul Shepard into the same company as patently antihumanist and macho mountain men like David Foreman of Earth First! who preach a gospel that humanity is some kind of cancer in the world of life.
It was out of this kind of crude eco-brutalism that Hitler, in the name of “population control,” with a racial orientation, fashioned theories of blood and soil that led to the transport of millions of people to murder camps like Auschwitz. The same eco-brutalism now reappears a half-century later among self-professed deep ecologists who believe that Third World peoples should be permitted to starve to death and that desperate Indian immigrants from Latin America should be exclude by the border cops from the United States lest they burden “our” ecological resources.
It is for these reasons that a Green Party local must explicitly and intentionally from the outset state its opposition to white supremacy, xenophobia, sex/gender/orientation oppression, and other forms of bigotry that can and do emerge among American voters. If we honestly desire to see the Green Party of the United States become a mass membership party of working class people, it must embrace a class-based intersectional feminism whose foundational coordinates are based in internal and external anti-oppression struggle. It must oppose bigotry both in our wider communities and amongst its own membership so to create the Beloved Community that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. promoted in his philosophy.
The great W.E.B. Du Bois proposed this explanation for the logic of white supremacy in his classic Black Reconstruction in America:
Most persons do not realize how far [building Black-white unity] failed to work in the South, and it failed to work because the theory of race was supplemented by a carefully planned and slowly evolved method, which drove such a wedge between the white and black workers that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.
It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.
Here is an interview taken from Black Agenda Radio featuring Jeffrey B. Perry, an independent activist/scholar whose work focuses upon fighting white supremacy within the ranks of workers in America by promoting the study of Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen. “This is a white supremacist capitalist country. White supremacy has been central to how the ruling class has maintained control since the 17th century.”
The preceding views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily imply explicitly or implicitly those of the wider Green Party Power Project membership.
