Dear Fellow Revolutionaries: Let's Get Organized!

And let's be clear on the egalitarian purpose and manner of this organization

The anarchists in the FAI were organized, organized to make an egalitarian revolution in 1936-9..

Egalitarian Revolutionary Organizing, YES! The Other Kind of Organizing, NO!

One of my key articles, written back around 2016, is “How We CAN Remove the Rich from Power.” It starts off by showing that we really can remove the rich from power despite the proverbial 82nd Airborne Division, and if you doubt we can do so please read that article from the beginning. But today’s Substack post is about the importance—and purpose and manner!—of organizing, and on that point I hereby copy for your convenience the final paragraphs of my 2016 article, about revolutionary organizing:

The way we can remove the rich from power is to create the circumstances that will cause a critical mass of soldiers to a) refuse any orders they may get to attack people who want to remove the rich from power and b) use their weapons to help the egalitarian revolutionary movement defend itself against anybody who may attack it violently**. This is how the rich lose power! ​

The egalitarian revolutionary movement has means of defending itself from oppressive violence, including the use of violence in self defense, past examples of which I discuss in my article "Guns and the Working Class." Such means of self-defense can, however, only win reforms, not revolution, if a critical mass of members of the military forces fail to refuse to obey orders to attack the movement. But when a critical mass of members of the military forces do refuse to obey such orders, then (and likely only then) the revolutionary movement--using its own means of violence in self defense (such as a militia)--can indeed remove the rich from power and clear the way to creating an egalitarian society. 

In order to persuade substantial numbers of soldiers--a critical mass--to refuse to obey orders to attack the revolutionary movement we will need to persuade them that the egalitarian revolutionary movement is so large and determined that, if soldiers support it, it can actually win. If soldiers are not convinced of this then they will not refuse orders to attack the movement, even though most of them support the goal of the movement for the same reasons their civilian friends and neighbors and relatives support it. Why not? Because when a soldier refuses an order to attack "the enemy" he or she risks being severely punished--perhaps even executed--for mutiny or even treason. For substantial numbers of soldiers to take this risk they must be persuaded that the risk is relatively low because, with their support, the revolutionary movement has a good chance of winning, in which case soldiers who refuse to attack it won't be punished.

The key to removing the rich from power is, thus, to build a movement of hundreds of millions of Americans (and of people in other countries as well***) that can persuade lots of soldiers to support it because a) it aims not merely for some reform that leaves the rich in power and class inequality intact but for removing the rich from power and ending class inequality******; and b) it is large enough and determined enough to actually WIN. This is very possible, because it is already the case that most people would LOVE an egalitarian revolution, even if they presently think it can never happen.

The movement needs to be one that explicitly declares its goal to be egalitarian revolution (for the additional important reasons given below****). It needs to involve people in every walk of life in challenging the unequal and undemocratic status quo on the grounds that it violates the values of egalitarianism. And it needs to promote people standing in solidarity with each other for these values and in defense***** against those who attack them. Only this kind of movement--very large and very determined--will be able to gain the support of soldiers that is required to remove the rich from power.

The first step towards building this egalitarian revolutionary movement is for people to discover that the vast majority of people want an egalitarian revolution. Click here to see how you, personally, can do this. Click here to see how to persuade others to join you in this effort.

One important way to build such a movement is by people forming local assemblies of egalitarians in their communities, as discussed here. These local assemblies at first, when they have only a small number of participants, can inform others in the community about egalitarianism, what it is and why it is both very practical and much better than our status quo. These early assemblies can also explain that local assemblies of egalitarians open to all egalitarians in the community are the only bodies that ought to make laws people in the community must obey. (Click here to read why only local assemblies and click here to read why only egalitarians make the laws.) These assemblies can provide a place where people meet to figure out how to involve more and more people in advocating for egalitarianism, challenging the power of the rich, and creating relations of solidarity with other egalitarians near and far.

When lots of people are participating in their local assembly of egalitarians, and the assemblies are coordinating with each other by sending delegates to non-local assemblies to craft proposals for the local assemblies to implement if they agree, and when this voluntary federation of local assemblies involves tens or hundreds of millions of Americans, and when similar local and non-local assemblies of egalitarians are formed in workplaces, then something extremely important happens. Then, for the first time, there is an egalitarian government in place, with which egalitarians  have ALMOST everything they need to shape all of society by egalitarian values. This egalitarian government can begin doing some things to start making society egalitarian.

The crucial thing this egalitarian government lacks is the power to prevail against the violence of soldiers and police obeying anti-egalitarian orders. This is when a critical mass of soldiers, however, can realistically be expected to side with the revolutionary movement. This is how the rich lose power. Like the Czar. Like the Shah. But unlike in those previous revolutions, when the leaders of the revolution advocated anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian goals (read about the anti-democratic essence of Marxism here), this time it will be egalitarianism that replaces the dictatorship of the rich.

The main obstacle today in the United States that prevents people from acting together on a large scale to build an egalitarian revolutionary movement is that people feel it is hopeless to even try. Hopelessness comes, for most people, from believing that there is no better alternative to our current society based on class inequality. Even when people discover that there IS a much better alternative--egalitarianism--hopelessness continues to come from feeling virtually alone in having the revolutionary aspirations for an egalitarian society that are expressed in "This I Believe." 

THE OBSTACLE TO EGALITARIAN REVOLUTION IS NOT THAT MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT IT (THEY'D LOVE IT!); THE OBSTACLE IS THAT MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THAT MOST PEOPLE WANT IT.

But when most Americans know that most Americans agree with "This I Believe" and know that they are in the majority in wanting an egalitarian revolution, and also know (from seeing assemblies of egalitarians and other organizations explicitly advocating egalitarian revolution) that they are not alone in being determined to DO what it takes to make it happen, THEN they will have the confidence to start acting like the majority they actually are, by taking concrete steps to build a revolutionary movement with revolutionary organizations. And as we have seen, such a movement can indeed remove the rich from power.​

Please read here Hannah Arendt's fascinating account of how revolutionary federation spread rapidly (in days or weeks!) in Europe and Russia in the 20th century.

I have also written about the need to get organized in a more recent 2020 article titled, “Let’s Get Organized,” which focuses on what people can do right now; I invite you to read it also.

I have written even more recently here (and linked to it at the end of many of my Substack posts) an extremely here-and-now focused piece about how to organize the revolutionary egalitarian movement; please read it! It describes the very first thing to do with these words:

1. Decide to try to build the movement.

This may be the hardest tactic of all. If you think of it as a strategy, then here are some necessary tactics:

One needs to convince oneself that it makes sense to try building the movement. If hardly anybody else wants such a movement to exist, then it would be crazy to try to build it. One needs to discover, in other words, that there are LOTS of other people--the majority in fact--who would love an egalitarian revolution. Think of making this discovery as a strategy; then what are the tactics to accomplish it? I provide some examples here.

So How Come Some People Say I Am Opposed to Organizing?

Some people don’t like egalitarian revolutionary organizing and consider it to be not really organizing at all. Here’s the difference between egalitarian versus the other kind of organizing.

Egalitarian organizing

Egalitarian organizing is about enabling people to cooperate (on the basis of mutual agreements) to do what it takes to achieve a shared goal. For egalitarians, the shared goal determines the strategic purpose of the organizing, and the strategic purpose of the organizing, in turn, determines what tactics are appropriate, which tactics the organization makes it possible to carry out. Tactics and strategy are relative concepts in that a tactic (for implementing a strategy for achieving a major fundamental goal) is, in turn, the strategy that, in turn, determines other typically easier-to-do tactics that are used to implement it.

As readers of my earlier Substack posts know, I believe that in the current situation, the CHIEF strategy that egalitarian revolutionaries need to pursue is to persuade the vast majority of have-nots, who already would love to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor—i.e., make an egalitarian revolution—that, contrary to their current mistaken belief, they ARE the vast majority in having this egalitarian revolutionary aspiration and are not—as the ruling class works hard to make them believe—a tiny and thus hopelessly weak minority who cannot possibly make an egalitarian revolution and who would be idiotic even to try or even talk about trying. To the extent that this strategy is accomplished—and only to that extent!—the have-nots will gain the confidence to begin ORGANIZING around the strategy of making an egalitarian revolution and doing the kind of things I wrote about above for that purpose. I saw this kind of concrete organizing happen, but only after people learned they were the vast majority in their anti-establishment goal, in 1969 and wrote about it here. This kind of organizing is based on voluntary federation (read about it here) of local organizations, not on there being a central authority that all must obey. As I write about here, voluntary federation (of non-egalitarians, alas) today is used to achieve large scale, even on a global scale, order and it works wonderfully. (See below in the section “militia organizing” regarding militias and the need for military discipline when fighting the enemy militarily.)

The other kind of organizing

The other kind of organizing views organizing as creating a small central group of people—some call it the “vanguard” or “central committee”—that tells lots of other people what to do, and expects (demands) they will obey because of a (supposedly) persuasive argument that they ought to obey. With respect to this kind of organizing, the organizing I discuss at the top of today’s Substack post (extracted from my “How We CAN Remove the Rich from Power”) is just not really organizing at all.

I believe the root of the disagreement that proponents of “vanguard”-type organizing have with the egalitarian-type organizing is this. The “vanguard” approach is based on a very different view of ordinary people from that of egalitarians. Egalitarians correctly view ordinary people as (in the vast majority) motivated by a desire to have an egalitarian society based on egalitarian values as discussed here. “Vanguard”-type organizers view most ordinary people as NOT being motivated to have an egalitarian society based on egalitarian values but rather just motivated by self-interest; in this view it is absurd to expect ordinary people to self-organize to make an egalitarian society; they must be commanded to do so. This wrong view of ordinary people is elitist. I discuss how dangerous this view is in my article about the Left here. Marxism itself is actually based on this wrong elitist view of ordinary people, as I show, based on Marx’s own words, here.

Militia organizing

When the circumstances are such (which is not the case today but may be tomorrow) that it makes sense for egalitarian revolutionaries to form a militia, then there is an egalitarian way of organizing a militia, which is discussed here. An egalitarian militia’s organization is different from that of egalitarian voluntary federation. It is different because it does indeed have a central authority that commands others to obey because in a military battle every soldier’s life depends on every other soldier following orders that implement a coordinated plan. But an egalitarian militia is not the totality of an egalitarian society or of an egalitarian revolutionary movement (which is based on voluntary federation); it is only one part of it—a part that is dependent on and not in control of the larger whole.

My critics, who say I oppose organizing because I reject their “vanguard” idea of organizing with a central authority that all must obey, know that I advocate an egalitarian militia when circumstances are appropriate. They nonetheless dismiss my support for the idea of an egalitarian militia as not being TRULY in support of organizing. Why? Because they object to my advocating a central commanding authority ONLY for members of a militia; they say it should be for everybody.