Critique and Proposed Amendments to the Hawkins-Nelson Draft

7/28/2019 Critique and Proposed Amendments to the Hawkins-Nelson Draft

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Critique and Proposed Amendments to theHawkins-Nelson Draftby members of the Northern Vermont Greens

Dear Left Greens:As Left Greens, it is our challenge to advocate a new politics. We do not view politicsin the narrow sense of parliamentarianism and we must create a program that clearlydistinguishes us from the old national politics of party-building. To this end, the Hawkins-Nelsondraft is an excellent beginning, and it is a great improvement upon the earlier draft proposed

through the Left Green Notes. Still, we of the Northern Vermont Greens find that it has aconfusing structure and many inconsistencies which are primarily carry overs from the firstdraft. In what follows, we present a friendly critique of the Hawkins-Nelson proposal as aprogram that occasionally blurs our new politics with old party politics. And to clarify thiscritique, we offer an outline of how we think the program should be restructured and refined.The Left Green's unique approach to politics is defined and defended through ourPrinciples of Unity. We should continually remind ourselves of what has brought us together.Our uniqueness, particularly within the Left, lies in our focus on building a decentralized yetconfederated movement based upon an ecological-utopian sensibility. In delineating thesedifferences from other political groups, we maintain both a moral as well as a strategicstrength. With every step we take, we must self-consciously ensure that we do not slip into"business as usual," blurring our political identity with the old politics of party building, socialdemocratic reform or single-issue lobbying. In keeping with our Principles of Unity, we believeour Left Green Program must be oriented around the following coordinates that distinguish ourpolitics from others:Unity in Diversity Our program must reflect our bottom-up strategy and principle. Itshould explore and guide a decentralized yet coordinated struggle from below, revolving aroundour Principles of Unity. The program can help provide a short-, medium-, and long-term visionof how change can occur. But we need to balance our Left Green Program with a healthyrespect for the diversity of municipalities - from Manhattan to Main Street - as well aspeople and issues. The detailed programmatic work must evolve organically from thegrassroots up. In other words, a continental program should facilitate a program based onshared Principles of Unity while encouraging local affinity and political groups to think throughtheir particular stands on issues affecting their municipalities via more detailed position papersand Utopian city plans/platforms.


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Most social and ecological crises require institutional-structural changes and not justpolicy changes. Integrating our political and economic programs with our policy programs ofchange will allow us to fully elaborate our proposed municipalist solutions to racism, sexism,heterosexism, ecological destruction, and other "social and ecological policy" issues. We haveto clearly show how the building of municipalist counter-institutions is the best response to thespecific types of violence that different groups face. And further, while we as Left Greensmay focus on issues such as ecological destruction, captialist growth and local democracy, wehave to show other radicals - ones that organize local crisis institutions to respond tobattering, for instance - that they could be contributing to a larger movement for fundamentalradical change and not just to specialized band-aid measures. We need a program that drawsthese radicals into active participation in the larger movement of radicalized, confederatedcounter-institutions of direct democracy.

Second, the proposed program occasionally slips into the vagaries of a socialdemocratic, national perspective instead of remaining consistently focused on a municipalistperspective. There are many examples of this, from a nuancing of word choice to more explicitprogram suggestions.(a) For example, page 18 of the document lists several immediate economic measures.Few are described from a municipal-grassroots perspective. Most make no sense from theperspective of our new politics. What does a guaranteed annual income or a $10/hour minimalwage or a 30-hour work week mean from our perspective? Very little. These are short-termgoals for a nation-state party program, not immediate demands of our new politics. What Wereally want is to remove people's dependence upon the market, and to increasingly produce anddistribute products and services outside of the market through municipal institutions. We don'twant to make dependence on the market and wage-slavery more bearable.

(b) So, too, most of the section on "International Reconstruction through PeaceConversion" is just as incomprehensible from the perspective of our new politics. What does itmean from a municipalist perspective to dismantle the secret national security state apparatusor to cut the pentagon budget by 95% or to cancel Third World and East European debt? is thisin our power to do so? No! We want to establish counter-institutions to these. We want todestroy them not by reforming them but by removing our dependence upon them - throughdigging underneath them, and uprooting their basis of support and action in our own municipalcommunities and neighborhoods. We don't want to "call upon the US government" to do this butto call upon ordinary people on the municipal and confederal level.

(c) There is also a general tone underlying the document that offers overly-specificdemands rather than concrete coordinates from which to orient a municipal and confederalmovement. The overall tone of the draft slips here and there into that of a national partyoffering plank after plank to win as much support as possible from a voting but passiveconstituency. We don't want rallying points in our program. We want a program that will.identify a general unity of movement while encouraging a diversity of application in the manydifferent towns and cities of this continent.

Third, the draft does not adequately recognize the variety and multitude ofcommunity-based institutions that already exist in many municipalities. Food coops, producercollectives, shelters, community gardens and the like can be radicalized, confederated, andwoven into a municipalist governance. They can be brought into a municipalist counter-powermovement. We should be fostering these grassroots institutions as a diverse and importantbase which will support the increased power of community assemblies. In addition, we cannotoverlook the importance of day-to-day empowerment and participation in a socialinfrastructure that prefigures a new politics and a new society.

As written, we therefore think that the Hawkins-Nelson draft program requiresserious reworking. While it has given us a springboard from which to clarify the type of


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program we want, ultimately, it doesn't emphasize and clarify our new politics either forourselves or for others. To rewrite it will take substantial reorganizing, rewording, removalof certain sections and the addition of several other sections (see attached outline).We thus propose that (1) a detailed outline be passed at this conference, (2) acommittee be delegated to write the actual document after the conference, (3) that we

distribute the new draft to all individuals and groups during the rest of the year to critique andto use in our communities, and (4) that we ratify it during our next continental conference.We feel ratifying a program at our next conference will allow us ample time to considerthe program in detail. It will strategically provide us with a campaign throughout the upcoming

year to build toward the next conference, encouraging peripheral Left Greens and new membersto join and participate more fully. We must carefully outline and refine our program. Tofurther aid this process, we present an outline below that we find best clarifies our Principlesof Unity and our Left Green politics.

Digger FairPaul FleckensteinCindy MilsteinJuly 1, 1991Burlington, Vermont


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Proposed Outline of Left Green ProgramI. AnalysisCurrent CircumstancesThe City and the CommunityReform versus Social RevolutionII. Long-term Program: a vision of an ecological societyLibertarian Municipalism

Municipalized Welfare EconomyVoluntary AssociationLiberating ValuesIII. Short-term ProgramLeft Green MovementMovement Toward Municipal Counter-powerIV. Medium-term ProgramMunicipal PowerConfederal Power

I. AnalysisCurrent Circumstances

The Hawkins-Nelson document provides a very good draft to start with here -especially if we condense all the analysis scattered through that draft into thisbeginning section. However, an analysis of racism and male supremacy should beintegrated into this.The Citv and the CommunityAn important section of analysis is missing in the Hawkins-Nelson draft. This is ananalysis of society and nature from the perspective of the municipality andcommunity. This is critical in order to articulate our new politics. For example, thissection could review such issues as urbanization, gentrification, the city's role inadvanced capitalism, rationalized planning, federal cut-backs on funding to cities andmunicipal based institutions, and other examples of the growing tension betweenmunicipalites and the state and market.Reform versus Social RevolutionThe Hawkins-Nelson draft presents good material on this, but it misses one importantpoint that will again clarify our new politics. While-the "path of least resistance" isgood because it stresses the importance of not fixating on one particular group, it doesnot stress the need to focus on the general interest of a humanity in harmony withnature. This general interest is consolidated in the notion of citizenship within acommunity or municipality. As Hawkins himself explains in Regeneration 1, "It is notthe working class, but the municipality still surviving despite the massive growth ofthe state that is the potential time-bomb that could explode and shake state capitalismbeyond recuperation."


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II. Long-term Program: a vision of an ecological societyWe should not hesitate to provide people with concrete images to think over - peopleneed these to begin to imagine a world without institutional oppression, like capitalism and thenation-state. As ecological radicals, we must constantly bring our arguments back to a Utopian

image and standard of a humanity balanced with nature. We must spark people's imagination,and help free them to consider the incredible potentials of eco-technologies, of a world freefrom want and scarcity, of human solidarity, and of individual creativity. So what follows areexamples that will spark the imagination about what is possible rather than strict institutionsthat all communitie must develop.Libertar ian Municipal ismlegislature

-community popular assemblies-all policy decisions made at this leveladministration-compulsory rotation of all public officials with delegated power-election and sortition/lot-neighborhood executive council-delegated commissions and neighborhood cooperativeslimited worker's democracy-delegated confederal councils to coordinate community policiesparticipatory indicative (non-imperative) planning-bioregional integrationjudiciary-independence of judiciary branch-jury by peers chosen by sortition/lot-appeal to assembly or to confederal councils-civil liberties and human rights

Municipalized Welfare Economycommon ownership of means of life-principle of substantive equality and irreducible minimumproduction for use-from each according to their ability-voluntary labor-labor saving and comprehensible eco-technologies allow forartisan creativity and frequent rotation of workdistribution-to each according to their need-need, or welfare, defined morally; politically and locally determined-e.g., free distribution of and access to:housing, food, health care, education, security, transportation,energy, sanitation, parks, public art, etc.

Voluntary Associat ion-social realm of voluntary, particular and experimental associations-desire (vs. need) freed from direct municipal definition and controle.g., family and civil society of love, play, hobbies, art,and development of expertise

-open municipal workshops to allow individuals and groups produce what theydesire


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Liberating Values-ecological sensibility and wisdom-redefined and enhanced ethnicity -- diversified and decentralized-balance of values of reproduction with values of productionbalance of cooperation and mutual aid with ambition and creativitybalance of community with individual-respect for difference and diversity

III. Short-term ProgramThere is no Left to speak of within the boundaries of this continent today. Most peoplecannot imagine what the world would be like free from capitalism, nation-states or other formsof oppression; the majority feels no presence of a movement that would challenge them toenvision such a world. Instead, the word "Left" elicits images of terrorists, fanatics and socialmisfits. Therefore, one immediate and primary task of ours is to wage a tireless educational

campaign both through word and example.First, we have to reclaim the ideals and potentials of the Left and, within it, we have topresent our own ecological perspective. We have to define an ecological Left for the publicagain and again as a coherent and principled movement that is dedicated to replacing capitalism,nation-states and all hierarchy by a creative, enlightened and participatory society that isinfused with an ecological sensibility. We must seek to become an active presence in ourcommunities and in political debates generally. We have to reclaim our rightful place in politicsas that of Utopians, idealists and humanists that refuse to be "realistic" or to compromise withthe market or state, as liberals, social democrats and single-issue campaigns inevitably do.This is an immediate goal of building a Left Green Movement. Therefore, to be adequate for us,our program must offer concrete strategies to this end.In addition, in order to establish our new politics in each of our communities andmunicipalities, we must begin radicalizing and creating local institutions themselves.Strategically, we must realize that municipal institutions and local cooperatives are most opento radicalization since they are already peripheral to the presently immovable institutions ofcapitalism and the nation-state. And principally speaking, local institutions are best toconcentrate on since our movement is fundamentally grassroots and participatory. In thisprogrammatic framework, we can then outline and become involved in self-empoweringmunicipal solutions to immediate crises such as: battering, rape, incest, homelessness, streetviolence, intolerance, drugs, mis-education, lack of child care, non-holistic and elitist healthcare, restrictions on reproductive freedom, a de-cultured entertainment industry, meaninglesswork, gentrification, capitalist growth and ecological degradation and contamination.Creating and radicalizing this municipalist movement must be a clearly describedimmediate goal of Left Greens. It will sow the seeds for a future direct struggle againstcapitalism, the nation-state and all other hierarchies. But to be effective, this trans-classmunicipal movement must be kept from parochialism, bureaucratic lethargy and single-issuemyopia. Against this weakness, the Left Green program can play a crucial role in tyingtogether these different local struggles into a powerfully unified movement to create anemerging counter-power to the market and state.Left Green Movement1. Building a Left Green MovementAgain, this should not be taken for granted but must be explained for others who want to getinvolved yet don't know how.

-political/affinity groups -- This is particularly important to stress. In the

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past, much of our organizing has been around direct action campaignsto mobilize people, such as the Wall Street Action. We consequently havenot paid enough attention to the building of local groups that will continuebeyond specific issues,-public forums-municipal election campaigns-issue and referenda campaigns - focus on growth, democracy and ecologicalissues. While other issues may be more pressing, we should focus onthese issues as long as we have to set such priorities. They best reveal ourecological, democratic and anti-capitalist politics,-direct action

-Utopian and ecological city plans and position papers-confederal network of groups-Left Green Network principles of unity-Left Green Network program-conferences-periodicals2, New Enlightenment

Another uniqueness of our politics is our appreciation of theory and our recognition that noinstitutional reconstruction can occur without a parallel enlightenment of our sensibilities andreasoning. We do not believe in an inevitable downfall of capitalism that will be replaced bycommunism. We believe that only by the citizenry's participation in change and by a generalheightening of consciousness will reconstruction be possible. And, as social ecologists, we turnto the study and appreciation of nature to specifically encourage this general enlightenment andinterest. We do this not through academia, but through creating our own study groups, publicforums and radical schools.Movement Toward Municipal Counter-Power1. Municipal regulation of market and corporationsThis is far different from organizing around state and national regulation. Local regulationreform are reforms that move toward direct challenge to capitalist and state power; theyshould be organized around the explicit context of moving beyond short-term reforms.-rent control

-municipal progressive tax-luxury growth moratorium-zoning and planning ordinances that curb destructive development-home rule-community control over education policyaffirmative action-equal pay-anti-discrimination-free speech2. Political Democratization and Radicalization

This is the challenge to decentralize large urban areas, and to create and increasinglystrengthen neighborhood popular assemblies.-creation of new commissions and citizen bodiesenvironmental commission

transportation commissionwomen's council-neighborhood assembly election of commissions and councils-neighborhood assembly mandate and recall of public officials-rotation and limited termsof elected officials-radicalization of city council and commissions

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3. Communitv-based Institutions:Progressive Decomodification and Municipal Control of Social InfrastructureLocally controlled institutions should be brought into the counter-power framework. They cancome to institutionally cooperate and confederate with each other, gradually developing towarda municipal economic and social infrastructure. Where appropriate, they should be madeaccountable to citizen bodies to transform private coops into municipal coops and to extend thepower of neighborhood assemblies and city councils.-producer and consumer cooperatives-neighborhood gardens and farmer markets-recycling centers-credit unions

-public access media-alternative currencies for informal economy-health clinics-schools and literacy campaigns-public transport-day care-land trusts-cafe and artist collectives. -cultural centers-etc.4. Communitv-based Crisis Institutions

These crisis organizations would cooperate with each other at all levels. They should challengemunicipalities to support them and increasingly look for aid on this level rather than on nationaland private funding; and, in general, they should challenge their communities to be responsiblefor the violence that occurs in their community. Where appropriate (such as in radicalizedcommunities), they should seek to be accountable to neighborhood assemblies and city councilsto further strengthen both.-shelters for battered women

-rape crisis centers-homeless shelters-food shelves-women's health/reproductive centers-drug clinics5. Related Goals-democratization of colleges and universities-democratization, radicalization and expansion of labor unions-formation and support of issue and interest groups that transcendthe municipal sphere, e.g., AIDS research

IV. Medium-term ProgramOnce the Left Greens establish an active presence in communities and municipalmovements, then the struggle for power can formally begin:On the municipal level, we must seek, for example, to get local Left Greens elected to

municipal councils around the continent. We will strive to expand peripheral municipalinstitutions that have become radicalized, and we must begin to advance a municipalizedeconomy further into the center of our communities. Citizens will then achieve an increasingindependence from the market for their daily goods and services; and they will increasinglyturn to their local popular assemblies to seek change there rather than depending on nation-state demagogues to solve problems for them.


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On the regional and continental level, this municipalist movement will be strong enoughto actively exert pressure on the market. By consolidating in confederacies, it can pressurebusinesses and corporations to municipalize and to meet the true needs of people as they definethem. In addition, this confederated movement can provide needed aid to other communitiesthat will suffer from capital flight, imperialism and conservative reaction, and that will needoutside help.Gradually in some communities, and more quickly in others, this community- andmunicipal-based restructuring will increasingly become a counter-power to the market andstate. And, in turn, it will become increasingly realistic to conceive of, as well as act in, aworld free from institutional oppression.This sketch of the path from "here to there" is, of course, imperfect. In some places,it might be easier to confederate radical cooperative before they become integral to theirdifferent communities. Or in other municipalities, it might be best to depend more on anelectoral campaign first, before developing a rooted movement on which to base the campaign.The place of the Left Green Program is not to determine a rigid path for all locals to follow. Itmust seek instead to provide examples and coordinates for each local group to activelytranslate and fill out according to the peculiarities and potentials of their circumstances. Butwhile encouraging this diversity in our movement, we must clearly present a workable vision

of how we believe we can get from a "here to there."Munic ipa l PowerEventually, this municipal movement will be able to escalate beyond peripheral institutions thatexist side by side with corporate and state institutions. It will then extend into the center ofpeople's lives and into popular institutions generally, and will increasingly crowd out themarket and state. We will move from reforms at the local level to reconstructive, communitycontrolled, institutional alternatives.-from rent control and shelters to municipal housing-from farmers markets and food shelves to freely-distributed food through communityfood warehouses, organic agriculture and municipal farms-from credit unions to municipal banksfrom progressive taxation to public collectives and to expropriation without

compensation-from environmental ordinances to municipally initiated projects of ecologicalreconstruction, e.g., eco-technologies, ecologically integrated planning andecological public transportation-from energy efficient ordinances to public power and renewable energy-from neighborhood watches to citizens militia

Confederal PowerVery important in responding to the counter-offensives of the state and market will be popularconfederal planning which will continue the process of delinking from the capitalist worldmarket and nation-states.

-boycotts of corporations-tax strikes against nation-state-coordination of citizens militias and nonviolent social defence-bioregional restoration of ecology-indicative planning in terms of the distribution of scarce goods-aid to needy municipalities that require:immediate products

eco-technologies and infrastructural developmentprotection of minority persecution from reactionary majorityprotection of municipality from state-world confederation of municipalities

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Maximal Program:Libertarian Municipalism: participatory democracyinformal: community centers (ie cafe agora) to discuss city and world affairs

legislature: neighborhood popular assembliesadministration: neighborhood executive council choosen by lotdelegated commissions and neighborhood cooperativesdelegated confederal councils to coordinate neighborhood policiesjudiciary: jury by peers choosen by lotappeal to assembly or to confederal councils

Municipalized Welfare Economy: principle of substantive equality and irreducible minimumproduction: from each according to their abilityall adults daily participating in community through a part-time neighborhood joblabor saving and comprehensible eco-technologies will allow forartisan creativity and frequent rotation of workdistribution: to each according to their needneed, or welfare, defined morally; politically and locally determined

e.g. free distribution of and access to:housing, food, health care, education, security, transportation, energy,sanitation, parks, museums, etc.Voluntary Economy: social realm of voluntary, particular and experimental associationsdesire (vs. need) freed from direct municipal definition and control

e.g. family, and civil society of love, play, hobbies, art and development of expertiseTo this end, all our actions are based upon the following strategic principles:-seek for change from below not above-hollow out market and state institutions-create a municipalist counter-power to the state and market

-accentuate conflict between municipalities and the state and market-strive for a coherence of means with endsChanges from above such as nation-state legislation or Fortune 500 corportatedecisions will fluctuate between reaction and progress, but these changes should not be ourdirect concern as they are for democrats, social democrats, and single-issue pressure groups.Most other groups, regardless of their ends or their rhetoric, focus on change from above. Our

uniqueness lies in our focus on truly decentralized and confederated change as well as oneducation. We should not blurr this identity, for example, through running in gubernatorialcampaigns, in advocating certain nationalist legislation, or in shifting from one direct actioncampaign to another. Nor should we blurr the antagonism between municipal and nationalpower. We should instead accentuate our identity and this fundamental political antagonism.A comprehensive program is thought of today as one that can nail as many planks aspossible onto a single platform. This is the strategy of republican, democratic and socialdemocratic programs; they opportunistically try to please everyone. Instead, we should seek tocreate a comprehensive program through offering a coherent politics. Our politics are that ofparticipatory democracy, and every action we engage in must reflect this. In accentuating ourdifference and vision, we will maintain both a moral as well as strategic strength.For several years now, we've slowly developed and refined this municipalist programin practice. What is outlined here is nothing other that what we've advocated in scatteredcampaigns and leaflets. It has come time now to articulate this politics -- confidently, clearly,self-consciously and coherently.


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Minimal Program:No power; only moral-utopian highgroundNew Enlightenment that nurtures an ecological-utopian sensibility

s t u d y g r o u p s a n d p u b l i c f o r u m s ( v s . a n t i - i n t e l l e c t u a l i s m )journals and books and community arts (vs. entertainment industry)radica l munic ipa l schools and cafe cu l ture (vs . pr ivate academia)Principled Left: radicalize the democracyaffinity groups - organized and meeting regularly (vs. action-faction politics)m u n i c i p a l e l e c t i o n c a m p a i g n s ( v s . n a t i o n - s t a t e p a r t y b u i l d i n g )Utopian plans of one's city and other position papersnetwork of affinity groupsconferences and periodicalsnon-violent municipal disobedience (vs. single-issue or nationalistic direct actions)to reveal most essential contradictions

analysis of issues without attempting to offer solutions within present contextespecially planning-development and ecological issues (vs. single-issuism)municipalization of radical cooperatives (vs. privatism or particularism)through neighborhood fundingthrough neighborhood delegation to coops board of directorse.g. shelters for battered women, rape crisis hot linesradical health and drug clinicshomeless shelters

day care centersfood coopsradicalization of city council, commissions and departmentsi.e. police, school, energy, transportation, planning and zoningradicalization of agenda and ideasradicalization of process - substantive equality: affirmitive action,equal pay, respect and participation

confederation with radical municipalitiese.g. Native American and Third World municipalitiesMunicipal Movement : democratize the republicincreasing reliance on informal (ie outside of the market) economydecent ra l i za t ion and ^d ivers ifica t ion o f e thn ic i t y (vs . na t iona l i sm)creation of neighborhood assemblies that increasingly extend their powers through:

-neighborhood delegation of major commissioners-creation of new commissions and neighborhood-funded workto oversee ecological relationsto municipalize day careto mun i c i pa l i ze hea l t h c l i n i c s ( v s . na t i ona l i zed hea l t hca re )to administer land trusts and municipalized housing (vs. commodified housing)to municipalize banking and fund municipal projectsto increase use of farmers market and food shelves (vs. supermarkets)home rule and other confederal campaigns

Transitional Program:Real contest of power - revolutionary counter-powerContinual education, radicalization, democratization and decommodificationMajoritarian revolution, no insurrection


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Critique and Proposed Amendments to the Hawkins-Nelson Draft

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