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Title: Platform Author: Rochester Red and Black Date: Sept. 2011 Language: en Topics: platform, group, USA Source: Retrieved on August 20th, 2013 from http://rocredandblack.org/platform/ Notes: Basic position paper of Rochester Red and Black — produced by them as a group.
Fundamentally, we oppose capitalism and all forms of exploitation.
Capitalism is an imposed socially constructed system, not a product of
human nature. It is founded on exploitation, which extracts profits from
the labor of the workers. This creates an uneven class system, where
lower classes continue to be the source of profit for those on top.
Through this an entire matrix of inequality is initiated, creating
divisions and hierarchies between people based on race, sex, gender
orientation, and an array of other elements of identity. These
inequalities are inherent to capitalism’s drive to create competition
between people rather than cooperation, and therefore perpetuate
inequality. Capitalism drives all elements of social and natural life
into a form of commodity: resources, nature, individuals and even the
basic experiences of life. In an economic sense, capitalism’s brutal
class system requires institutionalized poverty at the bottom. This is
perpetuated with a series of myths, such as the idea that capitalism is
a natural form of human evolution and the concept of the necessary
nature of meritocracy, which says that the wealth people own comes from
their own merit.
Class society requires a mechanism to protect the interests of the
minority that control wealth and power. That mechanism is the state. The
state is not a neutral instrument that the working class can take
control of for its own interest. The state holds a monopoly on
“legitimate” violence within society, meant to ensure “order” despite
injustice and inequality. Whether dictatorships, “representational
democracies”, or state communism, all states act as defenders of that
inequality. When American capitalists have interests that extend beyond
the US borders, the state creates the illusion of a national interest to
create the legitimacy necessary to wage war. These wars are clearly in
service of the interests of the capitalist class and are ultimately not
in the interest of the working classes of either land. The tool by which
the state maintains its control either at home or abroad is coercion.
In an effort to preserve their legitimacy, and as a result of class
struggle, some states maintain programs with important positive social
impact like Social Security and Medicare. These programs are ultimately
unsustainable, as they are counter to the interests of the capitalists
that the state actually represents. Therefore these programs are
distorted and weakened over time to ensure that business interests are
satisfied. To organize a revolutionary society, we must have popular and
democratic institutions that replace the positive functions of the
state. We believe in community self-management of society and the
economy rather than state and capitalist control.
In place of the present capitalist system we seek to establish a society
of free producers, where the now-oppressed masses make all the
fundamental decisions of social life directly through organizations of
their own choice with which they identify themselves completely and can
exert control. This means a society run through popular, democratic
institutions, where all are able to participate in the decisions that
affect their lives. A free society, we contend, can only be based on the
notion of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to
their need,” since only under conditions of social and economic equality
can freedom – real freedom – truly develop. Likewise, a society based on
the ideas of liberty, equality and solidarity is the only social
arrangement where both the individual and collective elements of society
can be recognized and cherished without one subsuming the other- where
all human potential that is restrained by the present economic and
social order can be allowed to flourish. Such a society we call
Anarchist Communism.
While we hope for a future where all of humanity is united and working
towards common goals of justice and fulfillment for all, we recognize
that there are currently many barriers to that future. Humanity is not
one big happy family. We are divided primarily into two conflicting
classes, a working class that survives by selling its time and labor,
and a capitalist class that profits from the exploitation of the working
class. While a parasitic capitalist class lives in luxury through its
exploitation of the masses of people, a unified humanity remains
impossible.
In the process of building a class that can only survive through selling
its time and labor, capitalism locks some people out of the work force.
Some are held in near permanent unemployment and others, like
housewives, help to contribute to society’s wealth but aren’t paid for
it. Others, like farm workers in the United States, are not considered
workers legally. This is absurd, since the industrial and business
nature of agriculture today makes farm workers – just like housewives
and the unemployed – an integral part of the working class.
Not everyone who is in a class knows that they are in the class. There
is frequently a difference between the class that people perceive
themselves to be in and the class that they actually are in objectively.
In the United States, huge numbers of people believe themselves to be
part of the middle class. In terms of the relationship that they hold to
power and wealth, these same people are almost always a part of the
working class, but for a variety of reasons have begun to identify as a
“middle class” that sees itself as separate from the working class. When
we choose to identify as separate classes, we ultimately weaken the
ability of the broad working class to resist the deterioration of their
standard of living.
Different sectors of the working class are made to believe that their
interests are contrary to each other. Nothing can be further from the
truth. When one sector of workers faces a loss, a ripple effect will
ultimately impact others as the standard of living that the capitalist
class is expected to provide the working class declines. This is also
true when workers win. If wages and benefits in one sector rise, other
businesses are forced to raise their wages and benefits to compete and
attract workers.
We organize to build working class unity through struggle and build a
united working class movement for the abolition of classes altogether.
Because the working class creates all wealth in the world, they not only
have a right to that wealth, but also have the power to stop the
production of all wealth in the world. This ultimately means that the
working class has the power to rid itself of the ruling class which
survives on the profits created by the working class.
In the short term, this means that the working class has the power
through direct action and class struggle to create immediate change. In
a struggle for universal health care, there is great power in an
organized body of health care workers refusing to deny services. In a
struggle against the privatization of public utilities, there is great
power in organized utility workers refusing to turn off people’s power.
In the struggle against war, there is great power in dock workers
refusing to ship arms. Ultimately it is within the grasp of the unified
working class to bring the capitalist system of inequality and
exploitation to a grinding halt through mass class struggle.
In spite of its commitment to revolutionary values, anarchism has often
played only a minor role in the history of revolutions worldwide. Its
internal disconnection and lack of coordination have reduced its impact.
To remedy this situation, we seek to create an anarchist organization
that can bring local anarchists together to develop our ideas and
theories which can then be brought back into the social movements of
which we are a part. It is these social movements, not the anarchist
organization, which are the revolutionary actors. The role of the
anarchist organization is to draw from the ideas and experiences gained
from those social movements and to offer our own ideas to them. We
reject Leninist vanguardism and the idea of attempting to capture the
leadership of social movements in order to force our beliefs on those
involved. Where social movements do not exist, the role of organized
anarchists should be to catalyze them and attempt to move them in a more
radical militant direction.
Direct action simply means to act directly for yourself rather than
having an intermediate perform the task for you, such as in the
representative state. This will ultimately mean the expropriation of the
current capitalist forms of property and government, and restructuring
and redistributing resources based on the direct decision making of the
people. In the present moment, direct action can take the form of
boycotting, civil disobedience, disruption of ecological destruction,
eviction blockades, university or workplace occupations and active
resistance to unjust policy. We believe that direct action is the most
potent force for social change as it bypasses institutional barriers and
allows participants to take active control over their lives and
communities, which genuinely empowers people and foreshadows the way in
which a positive society will function. In this way we are opposed to
electoral politics in principle as they maintain convention and class
domination and do not inhabit the spirit of direct democracy.
Our position on direct action does not mean that we will not take on
other tactics, or be accountable to other groups with whom we are
working, but it does mean that we believe direct action is the most
effective form of action and fundamental to the transformation of
society and those involved.
We reject patriarchy: the system of male domination, heteronormity, and
gender oppression. Through our rejection of patriarchy we also reject
the gender binary as well as any biological or social basis for sexism.
We intend to fight sexism both when it takes economic and non-economic
form, such as through familial roles, rape culture, and unwaged labor
such as childcare. Systems of hierarchy reinforced through capitalism
and the state make gender liberation impossible, and therefore we see
issues of patriarchy as taking part in a larger system of socio-economic
oppression. Both institutions require strict adherence to prescribed
roles and inequality within those roles, and they include set gender,
sexual, and behavioral norms.
Through this we challenge heteronormity and the assumption of
standardized expressions of sexuality and gender, and support the free
development of people’s identity and relationships. Both queer and
women’s oppression are part of the same system of male dominance, and as
such we oppose the oppression of queer and transsexual people.
We know that race is a biological fiction for which there is no
scientific basis, but that racist oppression is a social reality.
American racism is not just made up of racist attitudes of individuals,
but also of massive systemic and institutional forces that reinforce and
reproduce the oppression of workers of color.
We know that white privilege is real and that it benefits so-called
white workers relative to workers of color in ways both big and small,
but because these privileges divide white workers against workers of
color (critically damaging the ability of the whole working class to
struggle for justice) it is contrary to the interest of white workers to
defend these privileges and in the interest of the entire working class
to dismantle them.
We believe that in order to fight for justice and win revolution the
working class must be truly united. In order to really unite and not
just brush aside the issues that divide the large and multiracial
working class, it is crucial that we build deep and genuine anti-racism
within the class. We also believe that the single best way to do this is
to grow real solidarity over the course of common struggle. We utterly
reject the idea that people are inherently racist, and we believe that
just as racism is socially learned, it can be socially unlearned. Within
our organizations, we should be actively working to break down the
barriers that racism has created.
As anarchists, we encourage all people to fight their oppression in ways
they think best, but we also specifically seek to build multiracial mass
movements of the working class because we think that only such movements
are truly capable of winning. We reject the idea that racism can be
destroyed by a cross-class alliance of all people of color. Racism can
best be smashed by an anti-racist working class revolution.
We oppose hierarchies and judgments of human worth based upon
differences in physical or mental ability, structure or functioning. We
reject the idea of a single “ideal” type of human, and oppose and
condemn the ideas of eugenics and social Darwinism. Everyone has the
right to be accepted and understood on their own terms, and should not
have to live with the labels imposed externally by others.
As capitalism only values those who can help create a profit, those who
cannot help make a profit due to physical or mental differences often
are stigmatized, locked out of the workforce, impoverished, denied care
and made homeless. We seek an Anarchist-Communist society where everyone
is fully materially supported and free to contribute to society in their
own way.
In relation to mental ability, we support the idea of mental diversity,
and strongly suspect that many individuals diagnosed with “mental
illnesses” are simply labeled such because an authoritarian society is
unable to tolerate diversity. However, we also recognize that many of
these differences can clearly cause significant impairment of life
functioning and are experienced as illness, and we support full
availability of mental health services (including early childhood
intervention) free of charge. These services should be able to be
provided without causing fear of stigma, which stems from the implicit
hierarchical models of ability and disability embedded in our culture.
To the extent that individuals or groups feel that the labels implicit
in mental health treatment are dehumanizing, disempowering, and
disrespectful of their autonomy, then the mental health profession
serves as an instrument of social control rather than as healing. We
seek a society in which those with special needs are cared for in a
manner which respects their dignity.
As “disability” and “ability” are often designations which can change
depending on social context, we strive to make Rochester Red and Black
and the other organizations with which we work maximally accessible for
all people. We work to avoid ableist language which privileges those
with certain kinds of health and ability by implicitly putting down
those who are different.
We oppose all forms of nationalism, which we define as movements based
on a common identity advocating separatism, supremacy, or the formation
of a nation or nation-state that enforces that identity on the
population. This can take the form of ethnic, religious, or cultural
separatism, whether used in terms of modern governmental bodies or
alternative groupings of peoples. We do support the necessity of the
full expression of the multiplicity of cultural identity, and believe
that this richness is inherent to diversity internationally. We do not
support national liberation movements that identify with the nation
state or employ class collaboration, but instead support
self-determination for oppressed peoples, the defeat of imperialism,
freedom from oppression for people on occupied lands, and solidarity
between the international working class. Through this we support the
elimination of all political borders, amnesty for “illegal” peoples
residing in countries that do not recognize their legal status, and an
internationalist tendency that sees the importance for working class
unity across the globe without divisions based on national identity.
Our view on the environment is biocentrism: the idea that our natural
world is more than just itemized resource extraction and that it has the
right and necessity to exist on its own. Humanity should not attempt to
dominate the environment, as the industrial capitalist mode of
production dictates, and it is not simply for our utility. Capitalism
alienates us from the natural world and how our institutions are
actively destroying it. This remains a crisis of capitalism, where its
principles of perpetual growth cannot be in line with sustainability and
a connection to the Earth. Just as with poverty and war, capitalism
requires environmental devastation to function. Within this system of
environmental attack, working class populations, indigenous groups, and
people of color experience a greater immediate impact from this
catastrophe because of their forced marginalization. We understand that
social transformation is crucial for moving toward a true ecological
balance, and this cannot be regulated purely toward any type of
lifestyle changes, technological innovation, or broad attacks on
technology.
We are committed to the organizational principles of federalism in that
we support the free association of individuals and organizations, as
well as the balance between autonomy and unity. This freedom to
associate between individuals and groups will also mean the freedom to
disassociate at will, allowing communities and organizations to
understand their own needs and meet these according to their own
character. This is different than organizations that use centralism,
where a centralized groups dictates for a range of regional organization
ideology and practices. We see this as unable to meet the needs of the
community or represent the diversity that those communities may hold,
and therefore centralism takes on authoritarian modes that we identify
with statist politics. Instead we support direct democracy and
decentralism in an effort to keep people as directly involved in the
decision making process both in the organization and the larger
socio-political landscape. Through this we work with other groups and
federations through commonalities, yet reserve our own distinctive group
dynamic.