The following article continues a sequence taken from a book, Liberating Theory, which seven writer/activists collectively co-wrote. The seven authors were myself, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent, and Holly Sklar. After participating in the New Left we not only knew each other, we had a lot in common, including feeling that a successful left in the U.S. needed what some of us called a shared conceptual toolbox to use in conceiving, judging, and enacting strategy and vision suitable to winning fundamental change in our future. So we got together to try to offer a liberated theory—liberated from past problems, that is. This article in the sequence excerpts chapter two which addressed race and community more broadly. It began:

In our framework [from forty years ago], “communities” were groups of people who shared a common sense of historical identity or heritage. Usually this shared identity derived from a common culture, language or lifestyle developed while the original members of the community lived in geographical proximity. A nation, for example, is a particular type of community comprised of an organized society of people, with a common territory and government. In turn, within nations, we find additional distinct types of communities and sub-communities based on ethnicity, cultural heritage, race, locale, etc. These may in turn conform with or cut across class and sex lines. We claim that identification with one or more communities has important social implications for people’s needs, desires, responsibilities, manners of ritual and celebration, and ways of accommodating to diverse institutional requirements.

The universality of many communities makes their existence appear more biological than historical. And, indeed, it is also true that when, where and by whom we are born does tend to predispose us to become members of particular communities. Nonetheless, closer attention to the phenomenon of becoming a community member reveals that we develop our community identifications, not biologically, but by adopting particular cultural beliefs and behaviors and that communities evolve through a combination of internal and external social relations. Social relations, not genes, define community allegiances.

We know that national communities develop their sense of a shared history owing to geographical constancy and common language and culture, as in France, for example. In contrast, we also know that religious communities can be defined by common spiritual beliefs and customs as for practitioners of Zen Buddhism, or by the religion of their mother, as for Jews. Ethnic communities in turn identify through shared origin in some geographically defined community, like Poland, while specifically racial communities, we will argue, are defined more by the character of their relations with other communities than by internal characteristics, as Blacks in the U.S. or Chinese in Vietnam.

Within the borders of the United States, we know that there are numerous Indian nations, struggling to see their sovereign rights to land and self-determination realized. We also know that Blacks, Latins and Asian Americans form racial communities, themselves made up of distinct sub-communities rooted in nationality: AfroAmericans, Haitians, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos. In turn, Italian, Irish and Polish Americans are among the many different white ethnic communities while Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and Jews make up different religious communities, and New Englanders, Southerners, Mid-Westerners and Westerners form different regional communities. South Boston, East Boston and Boston’s “North End” represent different neighborhood communities. Other kinds of cultural communities are WASP, Yuppy, Punk, Hip-Hop, etc. And finally, we also know that these far from homogeneous communities exert widely divergent, changing influences on people and society.

It follows from all this common knowledge that we need a concept of the community sphere of life because in human societies people–whatever their economic, gender or political affiliations—also develop important beliefs, needs, desires and behavior patterns corresponding to particular community roles. Moreover, people bring these community traits to all their life activities. What we mean by the “community sphere” is thus the network of all these communities and their intra- and interrelations.

Clearly, any society will vary greatly depending on whether its members share a single religious affiliation, ethnic identification, or racial heritage or, instead, belong to many religious, ethnic, and racial communities. Similarly, life in a particular society will vary dramatically depending on the nature of its community relations with other societies. Moreover, these types of variations can be as critical to social possibilities as other kinds deriving from class, gender or governance. It follows that to characterize a society’s state, economic or kinship institutions, or even all three, without characterizing its community institutions, will not yield a comprehensive picture.

Moreover, there are important differences between the cultures of different religions, ethnic groups, regions, and nations. Different communities have different interpretations of history, philosophies of life and death, and values relating to material wealth, personal relationships, scientific knowledge, nature, and family. 

Communities with different cultural attitudes toward property, will likely develop different economic spheres even if they share many defining forms. Contrast the economic role of land in Indian and capitalist non-Indian economies. Communities that place different cultural values on family relations will likely develop different kinship spheres, even though they may share basic patriarchal gender structures. Consider variations in family roles between whites and blacks in the U.S.

But community differences arise both from differences in internally elaborated characteristics and also from the interface between communities. All too often, for example, one community may fear a threatened invasion by another, or two communities may have different beliefs and customs, and each may worry that the other will impose its values and entice away community members. But whatever the real or imagined causes, hostility across community boundaries can have profound effects, including wars, followed by the assimilation or annihilation of one community by another. Or, short of such intense conflict, the internal evolution of community/cultural forms can nonetheless be disfigured by the cultural products of an outward facing hostility. For example, how communities view each other can affect how each views itself. We need only think of the history of some of the world’s most troubled communities—such as Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, or Northern Irish Catholics and Northern Irish Protestants—for examples of this powerful dynamic.

In coming chapters we will argue that the consciousness and needs of members of different genders and classes can be conditioned by their struggles with one another over values, roles, and wealth. In this chapter we see that the same can be true of communities. They too may form in opposition to one another and develop self-identities in part determined by the character of the struggles between them. So it is that we need to pay special attention to “community” and the “community sphere” in our efforts to understand society and history. For this sphere is critically important in determining how we live and how our societies change over time.

People form communities because community activity is central to the process of human social definition. Humans must learn what social roles to play since, unlike bees, for example, our genes do not make some of us “queens” and others “drones” or “workers.” Bees and humans both satisfy needs through elaborate social activity, yet the manner in which bees and people create their sociality differs profoundly. Groups of bees have no need to generate a sense of their particular historical identity to carry out their activities as a hive. Groups of people, however, do need to generate a sense of their historical continuity and identity through cultural activity.

Although inter-community relations can make people insular, hostile to one another and racist, and although intra-community relations can organize cultural activity, such as religion, in a sexist, close-minded, or otherwise hierarchical way, the ongoing activity of forming communities also often meets many positive human needs. Indeed, historically we form communities precisely as a means to attain cultural and emotional continuity in a conscious, profoundly human, emphatically social way. Community is certainly not intrinsically bad. And to fully understand any facet of the critical causes and consequences of cultural activity, we must surely work to understand the positive as well as the negative. For often, even the most negative inter- and intracommunity relations are linked to people’s struggles to cope with fundamental questions of life and death, and search for social solidarity.

Most people think of race as a biological differentiation. You are what you are by virtue of birth. Yet, the purely genetic differences between members of different groups of people who are traditionally labeled “races”—as measured by averages over the groups—proves to be less by chemical composition and type, by a large margin, than the genetic differences among diverse members of a particular race. That is, the differences between two randomly selected white people are likely to be greater than the differences between the average genetic characteristics—if they are discernible at all—for blacks and whites, Native Americans and Asians, and so on.

The division of the human species into races is biologically—though not socially—arbitrary. We could differentiate humans along countless axes, such as height, weight and other physical features. If we assigned racial categories to groups of humans with different heights—for example, for every foot of height from four feet up determines a new race—we would be more biologically precise than the usual racial designation by skin color. For no fixed biological boundary exists between Asian and Caucasian, black and Indian, whereas a fixed boundary does exist between those who are shorter than five feet and those who are between five and six feet. Races are simply cultural communities which have historically come to be identified by physical ascriptions. Racism is the ordering of these communities in a hierarchy in which those “above” deem those “below” genetically inferior.

The fact that relations between two communities always influence both and that communities ultimately exist for natural and positive reasons should not lead us to a false conclusion of symmetry or to a false optimism that community dynamics will always be positive. Communities can adopt oppressive norms internally and, moreover, whenever one community dominates another not only will the symmetry between their social positions break down, so will the symmetry of internal effects.

Regarding colonialism, for example, one of the most oppressive community relationships, Frantz Fanon writes in The Wretched of the Earth: “Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: ‘In reality, who am I?’” [1] In Fanon’s Algeria, as with every colonial situation, the struggle for liberation is a struggle against internalized oppression as well as against the colonial oppressor. From the perspective of the subjugated community, the choice is either submission, with all its physical and psychological pain, or resistance”.

Paulo Freire writes, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized. The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting him; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors; between speaking out or being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world.” [2]

In the relationship between oppressor and oppressed, it is the oppressed who must overcome the dehumanization of both. The oppressors must continue to oppress the subjugated community if they are to maintain their economic, political and cultural power and privilege. The oppressors cannot renounce their power and privilege within a racist relationship; they must abandon that relationship. And while there are inspiring cases of individuals abandoning their racist heritage—the South African whites, for example, who work with the liberation struggle—there is no historical example of genuine, peaceful abdication of racist supremacy by the whole ruling group. Freire writes: “Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human… This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.” [3] Community activity defines a sphere of social life that causes the formation of groups who share common aims and desires, who sometimes oppress others, rebel, and/or attain liberation. It must be a focus of radical attention. But with what priority and methodology?

Nationalists focus on the community sphere as the site of critical causal influence in history and rightfully argue that cultural identifications cause people to have different values and ways of thinking that help delimit how we live. Nationalists also rightfully argue that cultural attitudes permeate not just community, but all social spheres—economic, political, and kinship. It is nationalists, for example, who most emphatically show how racism and apartheid differentially redefine many capitalist and patriarchal norms in both South Africa and the U.S.

However, having developed these powerful insights, the temptation arises for nationalists to over-extend their recognitions to arrive at the erroneous conclusion that community relations alone define social life. “Community is base, the rest superstructure.” “Sexism is a cultural disease confined to white communities.” “Class differentiations arise out of community exploitation.” There is a temptation to leap from seeing a centrally defining relation—which evidence supports—to identifying the primary relation exercising an asymmetrical influence on all other social relations—which evidence denies. And, understandably, nationalists are even more tempted to take this leap when they so often encounter Eurocentric social theories which haughtily refuse to grant cultures status even as one centrally defining relation among many.

Still, this ideal “culturalism” is myopic. It over-exaggerates community activity, and, in turn, underestimates the effect of other spheres on community relations themselves. Practitioners tend not to fully realize the importance of phenomena associated with sexism and class oppressions and to overlook the many class, gender, and political schisms that can divide members of communities against one another. To get beyond these weaknesses without denying the integrity of cultural forces and losing the insights nationalism offers is the goal liberated concepts must attain. It is necessary, therefore, for us to elaborate community concepts which are able to recognize that communities always embody economic, gender, and state functions and to reflect the influence of forces arising from these spheres on communities as well as vice versa.

Every human society generates a sense of its particular historical heritage through cultural activity. This highly social interaction in turn creates distinct communities whose inter-relations have included some of the most powerful dominance relations in human history. Community relations critically affect our lives, but it is wrong to think different racial, religious, or national communities are homogeneous in the sense that each member faces essentially identical life prospects simply by virtue of being Black, Protestant or Irish. Communities fracture internally along gender and class lines, just as genders and classes fracture internally along community lines. What’s more, communities also internally fracture along community lines. For example, though the label “Catholic” defines a community for some purposes, it is not only true that people experience Catholicism differently if they are male or female, but also if they are Black or white. Ultimately, we must carefully examine the internal characteristics of each community and also the nature of the interfaces between communities and with gender, economic, and political spheres to successfully develop a thorough understanding of any society.

The community sphere is certainly institutionally diffuse containing a variety of religious, ethnic, and geographical elements. Nevertheless, community activity is essential to life and irreducible to any other kind of activity. Community dynamics both affect and are affected by kinship, economic and political dynamics in ways we will understand more fully as we proceed to address these other spheres and the social and historical relations among them. But for now, we should at least note that our concepts make no a priori assumptions about any particular pattern of dominance to these interrelations because, as we will see in coming chapters, in any particular society at any particular time, community dynamics may be more, less or equally important to social stability and change than any of the other kinds of activity.

Community activity can reproduce the core community relationships that already exist in a society. Or, alternatively, community activity can lead to the redefinition of core community relations, thus changing the defining character of community life. In the first case we have social stability allowing at most evolutionary changes in community characteristics. In the second case, however, we have a social revolution in community relations. Community stability or change can result from cultural processes within communities, from interactions between communities, or from impositions on community relations deriving from either kinship, economic or political dynamics. But even if economic, kinship and state relations are little changed by a social process that fundamentally transforms community relations—as in national independence struggles which overturn settler colonies but result in “neocolonial” economic and political orders—a social revolution has occurred. In any event, all these matters will be taken up further as we proceed in coming chapters to address other spheres of social life, societal interrelations between various spheres of social life, and the entwined historical dynamics of all of them together.

I interject from 2026: That was the end of the second chapter. But for this episode I am adding to it the dialogue that addresses its content that was, in the book, located after all the chapters. The dialogues intentionally included a number of imagined participants with different activist, ideological, backgrounds informally talking about the issues. Please note, again, that Liberating Theory was written forty years ago. Offered then were its concepts and methods an advance? More important, would they still be an advance if adapted, where necessary, to our current circumstances? That is the central question this Liberating Theory sequence of excerpts from the work of seven Sixties activists raises.

This dialogue, like the others seeks to provide the book some informal exchange and even a touch of personality and humor. To begin, Coho (the complementary holist participant) recounts her arguments for the community sphere. 

Coho says: Every human society, then, generates a sense of its particular historical heritage through complexes of cultural activity. This social interaction in turn creates distinct communities whose interrelations have included some of the most powerful dominance relations in human history. But it is wrong to think that different communities are homogeneous, or that they are not fractured along gender and class lines.

Then Marlen, our Marxist Leninist participant, speaking first, as usual, responds: Are you through, Coho? Because there are so many holes in your holistic concepts of community that it will take me some time to refute them all. Now…

Nat, our nationalist participant, suspicions confirmed about these white folks, interrupts: As I suspected, no matter what they claim, in the opportunism of the moment, white leftists have never taken the culture of the black community seriously.

Marlen, with a reasonable tone, replies: And you are confirming my own theoretical suspicions, Nat. Your commitment to nationalism, or as Coho puts it, your monist concerns, have made you unable to analyze objectively. Marxists are principled anti-racists, with a long history of respect for black civil rights.

Nat, with exaggerated politeness: You’re not hearing me, as usual. Your concern is opportunist. You hang your principles on your sleeve when black people’s economic concerns coincide with yours, and that’s nice. You respect my economic and political rights, you oppose racism but you don’t respect my culture.

Marlen, correcting Nat: You’re missing the point. We’re talking about theoretical concepts here and my theoretical concepts can bring about the economic changes necessary for your liberation.

Nat, with controlled anger: Oh really? I’ve never quite understood that. Try as I can, when I look at so-called Socialist countries I find a varied history of attempts to eliminate ethnic distinctions in favor of a model socialist culture. To use the earlier “stew” analogy (a reference to the prior first chapter’s dialogue)—let’s not overlook the fact that when you put everyone in the pot together, the result is one thing—your stew. Subsuming my culture, assimilating it, is actually the ultimate racism. My history disappears.

Sofie, our socialist feminist participant, getting pissed, adds: But, Nat, I, for one, am sympathetic to your concerns. I think the women’s movement has made some attempts to address racism in society and in the very tenets of feminist theory. But it’s difficult to feel solidarity with black movements who make no attempts to address sexism. Your earlier response that sexism is a white cultural phenomenon indicates to me that you care less about my issue than I do about yours.

Radfem, our radical feminist participant, getting equally pissed, adds: I could point out many examples of communities whose cultures engage in grotesque sexist practices. In Africa, in India, in the Middle East. The failings of the women’s movement around racism pale compared to what’s been done to women in the name of culture and religion.

Ana, our anarchist participant, eager to critique, says: And, let me add, little attention has been paid within the community sphere to hierarchies and grotesque forms of authoritarianism.

Nat, on his feet: Once again you’ve confirmed all my suspicions. Is it really sexism and authoritarianism that angers you or fear of losing  your own “superior” white cultural heritage? Are your racial biases so ingrained that you too fear, like the biggest bigot on the block, that we will take over, marry your sons and daughters, and steal your culture from you?

Neopop, our populist participant replies, as usual, hoping to move the discussion along: Well, there’s just no point in continuing if you’re going to take the attitude that all whites are racist no matter what their politics or their best intentions.

Plury, our pluralist participant, trying to make peace: It does your concerns no good, Nat, to alienate your potential allies. A more reasoned approach would serve you better.

Nat: ‘A more reasoned approach’? (exchanging looks with Sofie and Radfem) I’ve heard that before.

Sofie, sympathetically: So have I.

Radfem, wearily: Often.

Coho: If I may?

Nat, sarcastically: The voice of reason.

Coho, confidently: Correct me if I’m wrong but I would bet that before we began these conversations none of you had a way of incorporating cultural concepts into your particular theories. Racism was just something you felt you were against. But as far as recognizing the importance of cultural communities, I would imagine my presentation was largely new. For example, Marlen, you feel…

Marlen, eager to clarify, interrupts: I feel that introducing this concept of community obscures the priority of class and economic issues.

Coho, countering briskly: Which means you underplay the impact of culture. And Radfem, your response is…

Radfem, interrupts firmly: that the issue is still basically gender.

Coho, countering equally briskly: Which means that racism will not be of primary concern to you either. And Sofie your response is…

Sofie, interrupting thoughtfully: that I must admit I’ve focused primarily on class and gender in my theoretical constructs but I like this new approach around community.

Ana, adds, interested: I like it too but mostly for the insights it gives me into cultural hierarchies which I admit had been a little weak in my own mind.

C.C., our Council Communist participant, adds: I agree. I had always been critical of “socialist” societies for their tendency to seek cultural homogeneity. But I can’t go along with Coho’s formulations about religion and spirituality.

Nat: Well, Coho, I think that about sums it up.

Marlen, interrupting and eager to find a lever to pry Coho loose, adds: There are other reasons I am opposed to your community concept, Coho. I have a great deal to say on the topic of religion. You criticize me for opportunism, but your opportunism knows no bounds. If there were an Iranian fundamentalist in the room, I suppose you would call religion a liberatory force in history and we would all be required to bow to Khomeini as a wise prophet and a revolutionary leader. This is what happens when you lack a solid economic analysis and lose track of the real revolutionary force—the working class.

Coho, amazed, asks: Where in my entire presentation have I argued for Khomeini as a force for revolution? The man is a despot. So was Stalin. And he’s yours, Marlen.

C.C., confident on this issue, responds: But he’s not mine. And I think I agree with Marlen on this topic of religion. I respect people’s rights to believe as they choose, but you will never convince me that religion has any positive attributes. And I will continue to criticize it.

Ana, with certainty: I agree. What could possibly be liberatory about irrational beliefs in a supreme authority or authoritarian structures that promote complete submission of the individual will, often in service of the state.

Radfem, adds: And what about the role of religion in repressing sexuality and women?

Nat: Just as I thought. By denying any need for religions or spiritual life, you deny my entire culture and then expect me to join up…

Coho interrupts: But I don’t Nat. I believe spirituality is an important part of life. I think all community cultures must be given the freedom to persist, religions included. While I don’t admire everyone’s culture and I don’t like the idea of shrines and some other religious artifacts, I think cultures with shrines should be defended. Of course, my right to criticize them should be preserved as well.

Nat: Sure, you support cultural diversity but also argue that those you don’t like will have to change. Very progressive.

Coho: I argue for change, but I would never suggest coercing it. But I do expect that as other spheres change, community cultures will change as well. Yet, I also believe that cultures must be protected from outside interference unless they harm members who are unable to leave. Cultures that practice infanticide, for example, would provoke opposition from without. But I don’t think such practices will persist in light of changed kinship forms and their effects on communities. All cultures that don’t engage in barbaric denials of their members must be guaranteed the resources to ensure their reproduction even when outsiders don’t like them.

Nat: I think you’re glossing over real differences between us.

Coho, perhaps: I personally hate religion based on renunciation, guilt, or authoritarianism. Irrational beliefs administered by Holy Books and authority figures who interpret doctrine to suit their own ends disgust me. Yet I will defend their right to exist even as I also defend my right to criticize these practices’ distortions of real spirituality.

C.C.: You interpret God and religion so broadly that all the content disappears. Then you say you respect what’s left. Your rhetoric can’t hide the fact that you are really anti-religion.

Coho: It’s true I’m not the most religious person in the world but that doesn’t make me anti-religion. I seek cultural diversity not homogeneity. I would not only defend religious practices I dislike, I personally believe there is a place for awe and spirituality in a fulfilling life. What’s rhetorical about including this under the label “religion.”

Nat: But you do, despite these good intentions, finally argue us all into one inevitable culture. You say that blacks and Jews and Irish are defined as such only by the existence and extent of white or anti-semitic or anti-Irish hatred. Since race is only a social construct, then in the end you must think we only need one culture.

Coho: I don’t remember saying I was for assimilation. Sure I think racism is social and that races per se won’t exist in a desirable future. However, the black community will exist with it’s own culture but it’s membership will depend on a complex of cultural habits, heritages, attitudes and beliefs, not on one’s skin. People you call “oreo’s” will not be members of your community.

Nat: I just can’t see culture as only one among many important elements. To me, cultures are the foundation for whatever else we do with our lives. They arise from people’s most basic strivings—customs, language, folkways, tradition—how we deal with questions of life and death, celebration and communication.

Coho: I’ve already agreed on culture’s importance. But your view prevents criticism of your own community because you reduce all criticisms to white racist cultural attitudes. And, as others have mentioned you overlook authoritarianism in many black religions, and sexism and homophobia in some of your cultural practices.

Nat: I’m willing to consider limitations in my monist focus but, and here’s my final point, I don’t think that any of you realize there is more to overcoming racism than most whites think. Most whites have more to learn from people of color than they imagine and it is precisely because they have not grasped the complex dynamics involved in what Coho calls the community sphere and what I call nations. What whites don’t realize is that blacks just don’t want to be around them because of the ways that racism invades broader white mentalities and behaviors. You can analyze and philosophize your marxist concepts ’til you’re blue in the face; you can tell us that racism divides the working class; that community divisions only play into the hands of the power structure and we’re still rarely going to sit with you in high school, college, or workplace cafeterias.

Radfem: I know what you mean. That’s not much different from the way women feel in a predominantly male culture. Men’s general behavior is permeated with sexist distortions and we just don’t like it, even when overt sexism is absent.

Ana: I would say the same for a hierarchical community. How many of us can’t stand to be around people whose behavior in general is influenced by being bosses?

Marlen: Or capitalists.

Nat: It’s not that we think whites are genetically racist but they do pay a price for being an oppressor community and for rationalizing it. The issue to me is still white people. When it comes down to it, do you support black power? I suspect not.

Coho: I do support black power. Do you support feminism? Will your community based movements be able to unite with movements rooted in factories?

Cyn, our cynical participant, stirring in the corner chair, adds: Excuse me.

Radfem, losing patience: Who is that person, I forget?

Sofie, frowning: I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.

Nat, angrily: What’s your problem?

Cyn, long suffering, answers: Human nature. That’s my problem. Once again, you’ve each reinforced my feeling that it all comes down to personalities and human interactions. You are your own worst enemies.

Ana, pleasant but with an edge, as always: The only human nature in this room that’s becoming a serious problem is yours.

Coho: Shall I continue? Or is the task ahead too difficult for everyone?

Nat: You must be kidding. We were just starting to get along.

Marlen: Nothing is too difficult.

Ana. Nothing is impossible.

Plury: Everything is possible.

Coho, rustling through her papers: That brings me then to the kinship sphere.

Radfem and Sofie: At last.

I interject from 2026: Remember, please, what is going on here. Seven writers tried to propose concepts and connections that could together better inform and orient and guide activist practice than time-honored more familiar alternatives. First they offered some method. Then took a new look at some areas of society starting with community and race. Then moved on to other core defining areas, which we’ll see in coming chapters. Next, they offered concepts for addressing the ties among the different areas, concepts suited to seeing the areas change with each area affecting the others to create history. Finally they offered concepts for arriving at shared vision and strategy.

They felt that to join with others to change the world requires shared insights, aims, and methods. They thought that then existing viewpoints and ideologies didn’t serve that purpose sufficiently well so that activists needed to revise, correct, and create new theory, vision, and strategy to do better with our efforts. Do the same issues arise today? How might we improve our conceptual toolbox now? Did the work of these seven writers provide anything useful for us to work with in these current times? If not, what problems did their proposals have? If there are benefits lurking in their concepts, what might we do about that now? Put differently, should we cleave tob Marxism Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, radical feminism, nationalism, and anarchism, or should we seek new Liberating Theory, Vision, and Strategies?

Notes

1. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York, Grove Press, 1968.
2. Paulo Freire, Pedogogy of the Oppressed, New York, Herter and Herter, 1971.
3. Ibid.

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