[Dialogue] Visionary Organizing

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

Thank you for sharing this, Jim. Really revolutionary, it seems to me. Is  
anyone you know going to Detroit in July? What an opportunity for young(er)  
facilitators.
 
Jann
 
 
In a message dated 6/5/2012 8:04:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
jfwiegel at yahoo.com writes:

Visionary or protest organizing?

Living by the Clock of the  World: Grace Lee Boggs’ Call for Visionary 
Organizing

By: Matthew  Birkhold

Date Published: 

April 17, 2012

In response to a  question regarding advice for young activists, 96 year 
old movement veteran  Grace Lee Boggs recently told Hyphen Magazine that 
activists should turn our  backs on protest organizing because it “leads you more 
and more to defensive  operations” and “Do visionary organizing” because 
it “gives you the  opportunity to encourage the creative capacity in people 
and it’s very  fulfilling.” This quote made its way around facebook, 
twitter, and tumblr, as  fans of Grace reposted it like it was common sense while 
others thought the  quote bordered on conservatism.

To better understand Grace’s call, we  need to understand the historical 
perspective in which it’s rooted.  We  also need to understand how visionary 
organizing differs from protest  organizing, how Grace understands 
revolution, and that the way history  develops means that ideas that were progressive 
or even revolutionary in one  era, can become mental roadblocks to progress 
in another era. Although I  largely agree with Grace, I write this to 
clarify her position, not merely  endorse it. My hope is that we can debate these 
ideas in ways that contribute  to the theoretical, reflective, and practical 
work that movement building  requires.

Rebellion, Revolution & the Clock of the World

For  Grace—as well as for her late husband James Boggs—the present is the  
culmination of thousands of years of human responses to structural  
conditions.  These responses include consent to state policies, rebellion  against 
them, and revolutions.  In the development of human history, the  Boggses 
believed rebellions were important because, contrary to consent, they  
represented moments when oppressed people stood up to assert their humanity by  
protesting what society has done to them. They argued that rebelling masses  “
see themselves as victims and call on others to see them as victims and the  
other side as villains.  They do not yet see themselves responsible for  
reorganizing society, which is what revolutionary social forces must  do.”  
While rebellions disrupt society—questioning the legitimacy of  existing 
institutions—they cannot lead to the reorganization of  society.

In contrast to rebellions, revolutions create new societies  because they 
begin with “projecting the notion of a more human human being”  whose 
development has been limited by structural conditions.  Revolutions  are not 
significant simply because they involve seizing state power but  because they 
create societies more conducive to human development. A  revolution is not for 
the purpose of resolving past injustice.  Rather,  “the only justification 
for revolution is that it advances the evolution of  man/woman.” 
Understanding revolution as “a phase in the long evolutionary  process of man/woman,” 
that “initiates a new plateau, a new threshold on which  human beings can 
develop,” the Boggses saw revolution as a period when human  beings rapidly 
advanced.

In 1974’s Revolution and Evolution in the  Twentieth Century, Grace and 
James asked, “What time is it on the clock of the  world?”  They answered by 
visualizing 3,000 years of human history on a  clock where every minute 
represented fifty years and argued that the age of  revolutions was only four or 
five minutes old. Scientific revolutionary  thinking, as represented by Marx 
and Engels, was just two minutes old, and the  epoch of global revolution 
represented by the anticolonial struggles of the  1950s-60s was a mere thirty 
seconds old.  In 1974, the US Civil Rights  Movement began merely 15 
seconds ago.

The Boggses stressed this long  view of history because it’s necessary for 
thinking  dialectically—understanding that things are always changing.  
Because  conditions change, if progressive ideas don’t change in ways that 
correspond  to changing reality, they become limitations on human development.  
As  history develops, what was revolutionary in one period may not be  
revolutionary in another. From the American Revolution through the present,  this 
premise was central to how the Boggses understood history and the  changing 
nature of revolution.

American Contradictions, American  Revolution

By analyzing history dialectically the Boggses concluded  that every 
movement in the history of this country has been incorporated into  the capitalist 
system because they have all ended up internalizing capitalist  values. 
While progressive, the American revolution also initiated a  contradiction 
between economic development and political  underdevelopment.  By eliminating 
slavery from the constitution for the  sake of national unity, the founding 
fathers pursued economic development at  the expense of black humanity.

Similarly, while Northern industrialists  and abolitionists were 
progressive for their position on slavery, their  actions also furthered the 
contradiction initiated by the founding  fathers.  After the Civil War, Southern 
forces agreed to support Northern  capitalist presidential candidate Rutherford 
Hayes if Northern politicians  agreed to recognize “state’s rights.”  This 
1877 compromise dismantled  the Freedman’s Bureau and led to the creation of 
Jim Crow.  Placing  economic interests first, black humanity was again 
forsaken and the  contradiction between economic development and human 
underdevelopment became a  rewritten law.

In the 1930s-40s it appeared as though a strong,  integrated labor movement 
might be able to resolve this contradiction, but its  consistent 
willingness to compromise shopfloor conditions and the rights of  black people for 
wage increases simply furthered it. Seeing a historical  pattern, James Boggs 
concluded, “all organizations that spring up in a  capitalist society and do 
not take absolute power, but rather fight only on  one tangential or 
essential aspect of that society are eventually incorporated  into capitalist 
society.”

The labor movement’s ability to secure wage  increases was related to 
international factors.  Following WWII the  United States was the world’s sole 
hegemonic power which allowed US  transnational corporations to keep wages 
outside the US lower than in the  US.  Using profits made abroad, US firms were 
able to subsidize annual  wage increases for US workers. Because others 
were paid less, US workers  became the highest paid workers in the world.

A raising standard of  living in the US was also made possible by 
industrial automation. While before  the war, food, clothing, and shelter were 
scarce, after the war, automation  developed manufacturing capacities to a very 
advanced stage. Not only were  human needs being met, but there was such an 
abundance of products that  particular brands developed varying prestige. For 
the first time in history,  working people were able to derive status and 
identity from the consumer  products they bought.

Rise of the Welfare State

With global  economic growth following WWII, the tax base governments drew 
upon to provide  services also grew.  Thus, when social movements emerged to 
press for  more access to benefits, states had the means to meet those 
demands and  welfare states took hold throughout the industrialized world.  As 
global  economic growth continued, new jobs were created, higher wages were 
paid, and  both the working and middle classes enjoyed vast increases in 
their standard  of living.  Because this economic growth provided the basis for 
the state  sponsored poverty programs of the 1960s and 70s, many activists 
working on  these issues developed an unintentional economic stake in 
maintaining US  hegemony.

In the midst of such abundance and global economic factors,  the Boggses 
concluded that revolution had to be rethought. While third world  
revolutionaries could organize around basic needs, American revolutionaries  had to “
discover the purpose of a socialist revolution in an advanced country  like the 
United Sates where material abundance and technological advancement  
already exist, where more is stolen in the ghettoes everyday than is produced  in 
most African countries during an entire year, and where many of the  
oppressed have a higher standard of living than the middle classes in most  
countries.” The Boggses decided that socialism in the US meant putting  political 
and social responsibility in command of economics.

Because  the Black movement almost universally prioritized the question of 
what it  meant to be a human being over economic demands in the 50s and 60s, 
it looked  as though it would resolve the contradiction between economic 
development and  human underdevelopment.  However, according to James Boggs, 
after the  urban rebellions from 1965-1968, when concessions were granted to 
blacks and  crime increased in black communities, the black movement became 
incorporated  into the capitalist system because leaders “made no serious 
effort to  repudiate the bourgeois method of thought on which U.S. capitalism 
is based,  which involves each individual or group just getting more for 
itself.”   Refusing to acknowledge “that blacks are an integral part of the 5 
percent of  the world’s population living in the United States and using up 
40 percent of  the world’s energy resources for their big cars and their new 
appliances, just  as whites are doing,” Boggs argued that the black 
movement stopped thinking  about projecting a vision of new man/woman and began 
fighting for a bigger  slice of the American pie.

Decline

As the Black movement shifted  its focus, a global economic crisis emerged 
and the welfare state began  unraveling.  Unable to keep increasing wages, 
US based firms laid off  thousands of US workers to deal with increased 
competition from British and  Japanese based Transnational Corporations.  A 
domestic backlash calling  for drastically smaller government and lower taxes 
also emerged, fueled by  white resentment towards African Americans and other 
oppressed groups who had  been engaged in very successful sustained protests. 
With increased  unemployment creating a smaller tax base than what existed 
before 1968-1974  and with an increasing number of tax expenditure 
limitations passed at the  state level after 1974, the economic base of the welfare 
state in the United  States crumbled.

In the midst of this crisis the Boggses saw that US  based exploitation of 
the global South had created such abundance that even  the most oppressed 
people in the US were able to advance themselves  economically at the expense 
of the rest of the world.  Accordingly, they  concluded that the fundamental 
contradiction in the US lay between its  economic/technology 
overdevelopment and human/political underdevelopment.  While racism, sexism, and poverty 
are important contradictions, they can be  explained as a consequence of the 
tendency of Americans to prioritize economic  development and individual 
gain over political and social responsibility.  Having become more politically 
inhumane the more technology advances,  Americans have become “a people who 
have been psychologically and morally  damaged by the unlimited 
opportunities to pursue material happiness provided  by the cancerous growth of the 
productive forces.”

Because these  technological and economic advances have become a danger to 
the physical  survival of the rest of the world, demanding more things—
regardless of who  demands them—has become a fetter on developing a revolutionary 
movement.  Therefore, the Boggses argued, “the revolution to be made in the 
United States  will be the first revolution in history to require the 
masses to make material  sacrifices rather than to acquire more things.”

Because it would be  incredibly difficult to organize protests whose aim is 
material sacrifice,  Grace believes organizing and joining “massive 
protests and demanding new  policies fail to sufficiently address the crisis we 
face.  They may  demonstrate that we are on the right side politically, but 
they are not  transformative enough.  They do not change the cultural images or 
the  symbols that play such a pivotal role in molding us into who we are.”  
 Visionary organizing can play this role.

A Radical Revolution of  Values

It is within this understanding of historical development and  revolution 
that Grace has called on young activists to “do visionary  organizing,” and 
to “turn your backs on protest organizing.” Visionary  organizing demands 
not only “repudiating the bourgeois method of thought on  which U.S. 
capitalism is based, which involves each individual or group just  getting more for 
itself,” but also developing alternative institutions and  communities that 
facilitate doing “the work of re-imagining our selves,” and  helping us “
think beyond capitalist categories.”  Because we have all  internalized the 
values of this racist, sexist, capitalist system to some  extent, we must all 
transform ourselves by undergoing what Martin Luther King  called “a radical 
revolution of values” allowing us to become person, rather  than thing 
oriented, if we are to participate in a revolution that makes  material 
sacrifices.  Rather than relying on protest to achieve this  personal 
transformation, visionary organizing facilitates this transformation  by re-imagining 
institutions that can facilitate new cultural images and  symbols, molding us 
into new kinds of people.

Because capitalism is a  system that flourishes when people think they can’
t live without it,  capitalist institutions work to convince human beings we 
can’t create  alternatives. Having consented to this coercion, most of us 
have not developed  the creative capacities necessary to project alternatives 
to the capitalist  world.  Instead, we make demands that corporations and 
the government fix  things they’ve broken.  Alternatively, by placing an 
emphasis on creating  re-imagined spaces and institutions in which healthy 
relationships with  people, nature, and our selves can be built—by creating 
beloved  communities—visionary organizing heals us from capitalist dehumanization 
and  restores an awareness of people’s innate ability to create.

Beloved  communities should not be seen as a means to build unity so that 
we may better  build a protest movement.  As communities in which King’s “
concept of  love as the readiness to go to any length to restore community” is 
primary,  beloved communities are spaces where people can be nurtured and 
heal the  damage our racist, sexist, capitalist world has done, giving us a 
foundation  to develop identities outside of capitalist categories and 
consumption, while  creating a base for political power stemming from the creation 
of alternative  institutions, or dual power structures.  Beloved 
communities thus serve  as a transmission belt for the radical revolution of values 
needed for a  revolution in which we have to sacrifice material things.

Turning Our  Backs or Understanding Limitations?

The current time on the clock of  the world is incredibly complex.  We in 
the United Sates are experiencing  a crisis in our standard of living, 
something the Wisconsin labor protests,  the movement to defend education, and the 
occupy movements have all emerged in  response to. Yet, little of this 
organizing reflects an understanding that the  US empire supported welfare state 
made that higher standard of living possible  in the first place. Despite 
this, because rebellious protests have combined  with the current economic 
crisis to bring the legitimacy of existing  institutions into question, people 
in the United States are more willing to  envision what new men and women 
should look like than at any point in my  lifetime. These conditions lend 
themselves to the possibility of building a  revolutionary movement based on 
what men and women could be. Thus, Grace  believes relying solely on protest 
is a fetter on creating a revolutionary  movement.

Because we are a nation of people who have been damaged by  the way we’ve 
endlessly consumed, in order to take advantage of this crisis we  must heal. 
We must wage what James Boggs called a “Two-Pronged Struggle,” and  combine 
the struggle against the internal enemy with the struggle against the  
external enemy. As unemployment rises, homes get foreclosed, education and  
health care get cut, and state sanctioned violence against all people who are  
not straight white men continues, people have immediate needs that must be 
met  and traditional protest movements can help meet some of these immediate  
needs.  We must recognize that there is a difference between meeting the  
immediate needs of human beings in a society that is destroying the world and  
meeting needs that will allow people to create a new society with a vastly  
more human relationship to the world. These are two different sets of needs 
 and building the next American revolution requires we put the satisfaction 
of  our immediate needs in the service of satisfying the needs that allow 
us to  create a new world.

Resolving the complex dilemmas of the current  moment requires immense 
creativity and imagination.  While we must  absolutely stop home foreclosures, 
we must also understand that home  ownership, as it currently exists, cannot 
be separated from global finance and  the destruction of the global South.  
This means we can’t only stop  foreclosures but have to also re-imagine 
housing.  Rising unemployment  and individual states’ inability to extend 
unemployment insurance means people  have to find ways to survive. Because the 
current jobs economy is so closely  interconnected with the exploitation of the 
global South, simply protesting to  demand more jobs will continue 
destroying the world.  Accordingly, we  need to create and utilize neighborhood time 
banks and skill shares as a way  to meet some of our immediate needs 
without money.  We also need to  create businesses that reflect the values of 
beloved communities.   Protesting various laws that create barriers to business 
creation might be  useful here.

These dilemmas pose incredible challenges. We are lucky to  have two 
upcoming events that might help us better learn how to do this.   From July 1-15 
2012, the Boggs Center is organizing a gathering called  “Detroit 2012: 
Re-imagine the World, Transform Ourselves, Fight for the  Future,” where 
delegates from all over the US can come to Detroit for two  weeks and be trained in 
visionary organizing while sharing their work with  people in Detroit.  If 
you can’t make it to Detroit, in New York the  Foundry Theatre is organizing 
a weekend-long event featuring Grace Lee Boggs  on the opening night, April 
20, in Cooper Union’s Great Hall.  The entire  gathering, titled “This Is 
How We Do It: A festival of Dialogues About Another  World Under Construction,
” is in many ways inspired by Grace’s concept of  visionary organizing and 
features innovative practitioners from throughout the  US as well as from 
South Africa, Argentina and Brazil. For those unable to  make it to New York, 
the event will be live streaming at:  www.thefoundrytheatre.org

Matt Birkhold is a Brooklyn based writer,  visionary organizer, and 
co-founder of Growing Roots, a work group dedicated  to re-imagining ourselves, 
building new economies, and creating new  communities.  He is currently writing 
a book on the evolution of  visionary organizing in Detroit and can be 
reached at  Birkhold





Jim Wiegel
Jfwiegel at yahoo.com

I  can't say as I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.  
 Daniel  Boone

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