EcoSocialism from Below Encounter Videos
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Cooperation Jackson, the People’s Network for Land and Liberation, the Institute for Social Ecology and the Symbiosis Network hosted a work-study encounter in Marshfield, Vermont from Friday, July 29th - Friday, August 5th, 2022. The video’s assembled here capture some significant portions of the encounter that we would like to share with the world to engage, study, learn from and build upon. Enjoy!
Context
The start of the 21st century has been a critical period of regroupment for the broad array of forces on the left, not just in the United States, but globally. The left, in all of its iterations, is still reeling from the many crushing defeats, premature starts, political reversals, and heartbreaking betrayals of the 20th century.
Experimentation is clearly the name of the game in the early decades of the 21st century. In recent years, we have seen a range of political experiments with varying degrees of continuity with the 20th century left, including various attempts to resurrect variants of social democracy in Latin America, Europe and North America; the flowering of autonomist movements in Latin America and Asia; the development of left-leaning social movement electoral experiments in Europe, Africa, and Latin America; countless radical municipalist movements throughout the globe; the rise of Indigenist movements throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania; a number of ongoing armed insurrectionary movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; and a growing number of national liberation and secessionist movements in every region of the world.
The most promising and original developments on the 21st century left are clustered around anarchists, libertarian socialists, non-statist communists, social ecologists, and Indigenous perspectives and orientations. What makes these movements unique, in comparison to their 20th century counterparts, is how textured they are by deep intersections with questions of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and ecology. Where these movements are challenged is in their understandings of class and their organic connections with the working class, as well as their adoption of various aspects of neoliberalism and postmodernism that fracture their understanding of social solidarity and the necessity of collective action.
Outline
In order to address the deepening political, economic, and ecological crisis of the 21st century, we have to recognize that we all have something to learn from all of these movements and orientations, with all of their strengths and weaknesses. Building Ecosocialism from Below is an effort to bring elements of all of the aforementioned movements and tendencies together for a work-study encounter. Over the course of a week, we’ll start the process of developing political alignment and shared practices to better meet the challenges confronting us, particularly the imminent threat of the neo-confederalist and neo-fascist upsurge in the US.
The Building Ecosocialism from Below Work-Study Encounter is built in part around the “Build and Fight Formula” advanced by Cooperation Jackson since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This formula centers around productive/reproductive activities and social relations that millions of people in the United States (and around the world) are currently engaged in, though they remain loosely connected at best. Our theory is that IF these activities were directly connected, federated and coordinated through democratic methods and institutions, they could facilitate the process of building ecosocialism from below. This work-study encounter seeks to explore the viability of this idea in the context of building a greater degree of shared strategy and practice amongst key sectors of the left.
Please note that the program will only explore the 5 of the first 6 practices associated with the Build and Fight Formula, which we call the “practices of position”, using a Gramscian framework. Together these practices could potentially structure a new set of social and productive relations, repositioning the working class and oppressed and marginalized people as the central actors in the construction of economic democracy from below. The other 5 practices, the “practices of maneuver” (aside from self-defense) will only be briefly discussed, as they are conditional upon the widespread and successful enactment of the practices of position.
Grounding Materials
Statement of Principles and Norms
Building Ecosocialism from Below is designed and intended to be a multi-tendency, multi-paradigm space of dialogue, debate and principled struggle. Our aim is to bring the various tendencies of the left together to be in constructive dialogue about our collective productive practices. We are not trying to absolve our differences, to be clear, but to use our historic differences and the knowledge(s) gained from them to help anchor us in the construction of new practices and paradigms that will help us meet the challenges of our times.
In order for us to have a constructive meeting, we are asking everyone to adhere to these basic principles and norms of engagement and struggle. These are preliminary principles and norms. We will be looking to clarify and expand upon these point
Be Present. Please try and engage with as much of your full capacity as possible. We want you to be in a space to share and to learn, and be mindful enough to enable everyone to be present and share at their full capacity.
Be Direct. Try to get to the heart of the matter and address the issues and the questions being raised
Employ inclusive language. Challenges and pushes are welcome, but they should be as constructive as possible. Be mindful of not castigating people intentionally, or unintentionally by using language that excludes or demeans people on account of their race, sex, gender, or abilities.
Challenge peoples statements and actions, not their character, personality, or identities.
Step Up, Step Back. Be mindful of your positionality and how you are employing it. Allow others time to process, engage, and debate so that everyone can learn and be present as much on their own terms and modalities as possible. Listening more than you speak is a good general practice.
Key Assumptions Statement
Building Ecosocialism from Below is based, in part, on some key assumptions. This statement seeks to surface some of these assumptions to help provide a grounding for participants, and to provide some context for what this gathering is intending to pursue and why.
That all participants are committed to a radical restructuring of society. A restructuring premised on deconstructing and eliminating the various systems of oppression, some of which include capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, xenophobia, ableism, and speciesism. And are actively committed and involved in organizations, institutions, and practices that are striving to deconstruct these systems and the relations and practices that enable them.
That all of the participants are committed to the radical transformation of the state, either towards its “withering” through the reintegration of the economy into a democratic society, or its more immediate abolition through deep, democratic transformations.
That all of the participants are actively engaged in organizing and/or supporting power building initiatives a) amongst workers at the point of production and/or service provision, in class struggle consciousness raising and positioning within unions, in union organizing drives, or worker-driven cooperative transitions, or b) in base building initiatives in working class and oppressed communities, or c) cooperative and solidarity economy institutional development initiatives, or d) the development of autonomous or liberated zones in radicalized municipalities and/or contested zones.
That all of the participants are seeking to build autonomous and independent political formations that are not aligned with or dependent upon either of the two-parties of imperialism.
That all of the participants recognize that the existing systems are already beginning to collapse, and that we have to get real about how to meet folks' concrete, material needs even as we engage in political education to help folks prepare to defeat fascism without accepting bourgeois democracy as the limits to what is possible.
Statement of Proposed Outcomes
These are but a few distilled outcomes we, the hosts of the Building Ecosocialism from Below encounter, will be working towards over the course of the week we are going to be sharing together. We will be looking to clarify and expand upon these points together starting on Friday, July 29th and throughout the duration of our building time together.
To develop a set of shared political and material practices amongst the diverse forces of the left, to help enable the fashioning of new social relationships that could provide us with the means to overcome the threats of fascism and ecocide on the one hand, and build a new regenerative society premised on the elimination of various forms of exploitation, oppression and hierarchy.
To develop a set of relationships that can help us fashion the necessary responses to the pending threats of economic and ecological collapse, and the ever escalating threat of fascism on a national and international scale.
To develop a more shared narrative and articulation of the just and regenerative society we are collectively struggling to build.
To develop a more collective assessment of the current historic moment to enable the development of a comprehensive program to meet the challenges of our time.
