[This article ends the sequence from the seven author book Liberating Theory—by myself, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent, and Holly Sklar—published in 1986. This time the collective discussed vision and strategy. We here excerpt two chapters and their dialogues.]

So far, four sources of definition for society, not one or even two. A human center and institutional boundary, not an economic base and social superstructure. Accommodation, co-definition, and even co-reproduction between components all within an encompassing ecology and international relations. Social stability and/or social transformation. Three potential ruling classes, not two. Is all that and more just academic complex-ification or does it have simplifying implications for actual, worthy, workable vision and strategy? 

Definitive evidence about the worth of these new concepts can only come from applying them to three critical questions: What features and dynamics characterize our society now? What is our vision of a more desirable future society? How do we expect to get from “here” to “there”? 

Much has been written about the first question. While we hope that our holist principles will inform further analyses of contemporary conditions, we now focus our attention on the latter two questions.

Having argued so strenuously that societies are rarely if ever predominately determined by the characteristics of but one sphere, it follows that we should not limit our goals by visualizing a desirable future embracing less than all four spheres. Moreover, we should not label our vision for all of society with a concept that historically resonates with an emphasis on only one sphere. 

“Socialism,” “feminism,” “intercommunalism,” and “participatory democracy” are appropriate names for different aspects of a desirable future society, but why use an economic concept to describe all of society unless one is economistic? And why use a kinship concept to describe all of society unless one is “kinshipist”? People justifiably distrust labels that reduce any of their priorities to peripheral concern. Thus, we will use the familiar labels as names for desirable ways of organizing particular spheres of social activity but we will use the more encompassing term—“humanist”—to describe the overall society we envision.

I interject from 2026: Names weren’t a strong suit for Liberating Theory. If you prefer, for the whole new society, perhaps the label “participatory society” would be better? Or maybe the name picked forty years ago will resonate? In any case it is the substance behind names that mainly matters.

The chapter continues: How does one elaborate a humanist vision? First, we need to decide what core characteristics we want in both the human center and institutional boundary. Second, we need to develop a vision of how social activity could be organized in each sphere so that our favored core characteristics would be generated. For example, what major governing institutions and decision-making systems could be expected to generate the core characteristics we desire? What community institutions and rules for community inter-relations would generate these desirable core characteristics? Third, we need to refine our vision of all spheres in light of an analysis of how the dynamics of each will affect the dynamics and characteristics of all the others. Here, we only outline approaches that will hopefully serve as a basis for further work by ourselves and others.

How does one justify the superiority of one set of core characteristics compared to another? Where do humanist values come from? What core characteristics embody humanist values? We know that human potentials are sufficiently broad that a number of different reasonably stable societal alternatives to our own are feasible. Moreover, since the behavior patterns, desires, and values of citizens in any society are in large part formed by the core characteristics of the institutional structures they encounter, we know that reproductive dynamics between any society’s center and boundary will promote values in their citizens that will tend to justify whatever core characteristics they daily encounter. It follows that if we ask merely whether people get what they seek in some society we will get a yes answer in many cases where the society is, nonetheless, oppressive. To have confidence in our evaluations we must ask, instead, in what society will people seek and attain the most. Unlike philosophical nihilists who reject value statements or moral judgments and wonder only whether citizens in a society support the society, we have to wonder whether citizens also maximally develop and fulfill themselves. Thus, while many different social core characteristics are possible, not all equally fulfill human potentials. And while all sets of core characteristics fulfill at least some aspects of human potential, not all sets equally promote all aspects or foster all forms of human development. 

For example, while a competitive, authoritarian system may display a degree of stability, indicating that human beings can adapt even to these conditions, this does not mean that there are no aspects of human potential that are denied by such circumstances. If needs for social solidarity and self-management cannot be fully satisfied for large numbers of people under competitive, authoritarian systems, such systems contradict these needs even if people are not loudly proclaiming them. Other systems with different core characteristics that do as well by human fulfillment and development on other counts and better on this count, are superior.

To argue for the desirability of a particular set of core characteristics it follows that we must show that they are compatible with the full expression of all important aspects of human potential and that they do not thwart meeting any justifiable human needs for some groups because of how efforts to meet the needs of other groups are organized. That is, we should determine which core characteristics allow for the fullest development of all important human potentials for all of society’s citizens, and which core characteristics provide for the greatest fulfillment of all important human needs for all. As we see it, therefore, a general understanding of basic human needs and potentials combined with a more specific understanding of how these historically develop can justify those core characteristics that best promote all people’s human fulfillment and development. We also believe that no other logic can fulfill this kind of “ethical imperative.” Most simply, a humanist must ask: What characteristics must a society have for all people to freely develop to their fullest potentials?

Of course, no one can fully answer this question. No one knows enough about human nature or the ways it manifests itself in social circumstances to give a comprehensive answer reaching into all sides of moral, spiritual, intellectual, and material life. The best we can do—without additional knowledge gained through the experience of actually building humanist alternatives—is to summarize the collective lessons of radical movements to date in order to elaborate a few straightforward aims so profound that they can provide at least the rough contours of a humanist vision.

We reject prejudiced notions which go against all that is known about human genetics to assert that all people are innately anti-social, or that men are misogynist, women passive, non-whites witless, some people born to lead and most to follow, etc. Needs we focus on instead are: 1) social solidarity, 2) diversity of life options and outcomes, and 3) collective self-management that allows each person to partake in decisions in proportion to the degree she or he is affected by the outcome. We believe these aims promote human potentials, reflect lessons from radical historical experience, and include many other more specific goals that different humanists might wish to promote: peace, equity, trust, respect, material well-being, democracy, etc.

How can equity, self-management, solidarity, and diversity become the characteristics that permeate every sphere of social life? What institutions have furthered these aims in the past and how might we alter old forms to enhance their ability to do so in the future? What entirely new institutions are needed? Our vision must inform as well as inspire.

Socialist Economy

We know economic forms are required to allow for production, consumption, and allocation, and we know that in most past societies these functions have been accomplished in ways that divided people into conflicting classes causing great inequalities and hierarchies. To define a humanist alternative we need to examine existing economic forms—markets, central planning, private and public ownership, and hierarchical divisions of labor—to see how they preclude solidarity, diversity, and collective self-management. In light of these lessons, we need to elaborate alternative economic forms better suited to organizing production, consumption, and allocation in ways consistent with humanist goals.

In earlier chapters we made many claims regarding the ways capitalist and coordinator forms elevate either capitalists or coordinators, but not workers, to ruling economic status, by compelling competition and destroying solidarity, and by centralizing decision making instead of allowing workers and consumers to self-manage their own economic activities.

A humanist alternative requires collective self-management which organizes production to involve all workers in jobs that empower them equally in decision-making, develop their potentials freely and fully, and allocate difficult and dangerous tasks equitably. Decision-making by producers and consumers must be participatory as well as democratic.

To these ends, we will also have to overcome the division of work roles so it no longer holds that some people primarily conceive tasks others perform, while other people primarily execute tasks they do not conceive. Job descriptions need to be flexible, maximizing creative opportunities while simultaneously and equitably minimizing the monotonous, unhealthy and dangerous work everyone has to do. A primary role of automation under these circumstances must be to constantly eliminate monotonous and dangerous production tasks, though jobs people want to do could be preserved. While no one would be discouraged from specializing in any area of work (whether health care, teaching, woodworking, or whatever) the economy would be fluid enough to allow people to change jobs and develop new and varied skills. Whatever the focus of people’s labors, a critical point is that they will have job complexes such that the range of tasks they do will be comparable in its combination of empowering and rote, conceptual and executionary skills to those of other workers.

Second, workplace dynamics must promote solidarity by helping workers make decisions not only in light of their own needs and capacities, but in light of those of other workers and consumers. By the same token, consumers must evolve their preferences not only according to their personal needs but also in light of implications for other consumers and for workers who produce what they consume. Allocation mechanisms must not centralize decision-making in the hands of capitalists, managers, technocrats, or a handful of central planners. Nor can allocation be carried out via a system that competitively divides economic actors, pitting each against all others. Not only private ownership of the means of production, but both markets and central planning will be ruled out as destructive of humanist goals. Some type of participatory planning will have to be developed and perfected.

Third, since unequal income distribution sustains class divisions, income will have to be allocated equitably even though individuals consume different goods and work at different job complexes according to different time schedules. The economy would provide equitable balanced job complexes for all who want work; a shorter standard work week; comparable income for all; and free comprehensive human services.

Though the task will be difficult, why aim for less than humanist institutional forms designed to allow society to effectively produce, allocate, and consume goods and services in ways fostering solidarity, diversity, and collective participatory self-management?

I interject: the seven authors obviously settled on a quite succinct summary of participatory economics as the book’s economic vision. I wish I could remember and convey how that occurred, but forty years is a long time and I cannot. The vision has deepened and refined over the years to clarify essential aspects and why they are together worthy and would be viable, but the essence is present here, albeit very loosely. I was particularly surprised that there seems to have been some squeamishness about addressing income or remuneration, but that no doubt reflected author differences about that matter. At any rate, the chapter continues: 

Feminist Kinship

Kinship institutions are necessary for people to fulfill their sexual and emotional needs and raise new generations of children. But most societies have elevated men above women and children, oppressed homosexuals, and warped human sexual and emotional potentials. In a humanist society we will have to eliminate socially-imposed gender definitions so that individuals can freely pursue their lives as they choose whatever their biological sex, sexuality, and (within reason) chronological age. But how?

In earlier discussions we attributed the maintenance of patriarchy to several causes including (but not limited to) the division of childrearing roles along male-female, mother-father, axes. Reproductive freedom—the right to have children without fear of sterilization, economic oppression, or other injustices and the right not to have children through unhindered access to birth control and abortion—is a fundamental precondition of equality between women and men. But more is necessary.

First, a critical characteristic of feminist kinship will be childrearing roles that do not divide tasks by sex. There must be support for single parents, couples, and multiple parenting arrangements, including lesbian and gay parenting. Parents must have easy access to diverse child-care options including high-quality personalized day care, afterschool programs, workplace day-care, flexible work hours and parental leave options. But the point is not to free parents by turning over the next generation to uncaring agencies. Instead, sustained highly personalized and rich interaction between children and adults must be enhanced while distributing the responsibilities for these interactions as equitably as possible.

Second, though there will continue to be great variations in how people organize their time and see themselves at different periods of their lives, ageism would have no place in a humanist society. Adults will certainly exert guiding influence over vulnerable children, since to be a child means, in part, to be incapable of completely governing one’s life. But even while protected and taught, children will also be respected and encouraged to voice their perspectives which they will have freedom to develop with their peers and without undue interference. Likewise, seniors will be encouraged to maintain an active life, with full or partial retirement from work guided by personal considerations and abilities, not economic dictates. The interface of perspectives molded in different times as seniors, the middle aged, and children encounter each other will become one more vehicle for each to learn from the different experiences of others.

Third, a humanist vision will embrace a liberated sexuality which respects people’s (often changing) choices and inclinations, whether homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual; monogamous or nonmonogamous. Moreover, beyond respecting rights, the exercise and exploration of different forms of sexuality by consenting partners provides a variety of experiences that can benefit all. In a humanist society without oppressive hierarchies, sex will presumably be pursued for emotional, physical, and spiritual pleasure and development. Experimentation to these ends is not something merely to be tolerated, but to be appreciated.

In general, to offer a viable attractive vision, feminists and humanists will have to elaborate liberatory visions of primary living groups, child rearing, and sexuality. But while such a vision will have to be comprehensive enough to provide compelling images and attractive possibilities, it should also leave room for experimentation and growth as we move into a new kind of future.

I interject: I am surprised the kinship vision we offered, back then, didn’t explicitly address mothering and fathering even if by implication it did make clear that parenting should not be predicated on sex or procreation only. I am guessing again, as with economics, that among the seven authors there were differences on this issue. The chapter continues:

Intercommunalism

We know that community forms give people a sense of who they are and where they fit in society and history. However, most community forms have also imposed the heavy prices of genocide, racism, jingoism, religious persecution, and ethnocentrism. The seemingly simplest alternative to the existence of many communities which confront one another with racial, national, religious, and ethnic hostility might be to integrate everyone into one comprehensive community group. Likewise, the simplest solution to communities having internal attributes destructive of solidarity, diversity, and collective self-management, would seemingly be to redefine the culture of this one large community to make it satisfactory. But reacting to the negative interaction of diverse historical communities by attempting to eliminate those communities and their cultures through cultural homogenization is a disastrous policy. It is not only internally inconsistent, since it heightens exactly the community antagonisms it seeks to overcome, but even if it could be implemented such a vision offers little variety and cultural self-

management. In fact cultural homogenization is an Orwellian nightmare.

What then is a truly humanist alternative? First, promoting diversity requires that a humanist approach to community relations emphasizes the need to respect the multiplicity of community forms by guaranteeing each sufficient material and social resources to reproduce itself indefinitely. Reversing the homogenist agenda, humanist community policies will identify cultural subgroups and help them preserve and develop their own particular solutions to life’s quandaries, not by imposing on them, but by ensuring their access to means of expression and the opportunity for free development.

Second, a humanist approach to community will emphasize that communities are not genetic or biological, but social and historical. Their forms will be diverse and memberships variable depending upon people’s commitments, not on skin color or parentage. This is not to say that there will not be Italian, black, or Jewish communities. It merely clarifies that such communities will be cultural forms whose members belong by virtue of their beliefs and practices, not their “lineage.” Of course being from Italy, or having had an Italian upbringing, or having immersed oneself in things Italian are the practices that give one an Italian culture and Italian community membership. But this is not due to genes; it is due to choice. And the same will hold for religious, ethnic, and racial community affiliation. To be black implies having been immersed in black culture. Someone whose skin is black but who has never experienced black culture is not necessarily a member of the black community. Nor will having black skin elicit a presumption about one’s culture (or hostility) from nonblacks. Moreover, someone whose skin is white but who was brought up in and has adopted the cultural allegiances of the black community could be a member of that community. These recognitions will greatly facilitate the potential for mutual respect and for mutual learning among communities.

Third, at the same time that a humanist approach to community will recognize and preserve the integrity of diverse community definitions, a humanist approach will also be sensitive to the need for community definitions to be internally humane and supportive of individual and group freedoms. People will be free to enter and leave cultural communities in accord with their own best understandings and desires. Moreover, cultures could be subject to criticism (but not intervention) from without, though the right of their members to dissent and leave will be socially protected. Spirituality will likely flourish though in many new forms as a result of changes both in our approaches to religion and in the character of the society in which our communities will be embedded. But atheists will retain their right to criticize religious believers and vice versa, though neither atheists nor the religious will be able to deny the others’ cultural rights. But if a religious community denied a member the opportunity to leave and practice atheism, or vice versa, there would be intervention to protect that individual’s right of cultural dissent and choice. 

In short, under humanist intercommunalism different cultural and spiritual institutions will be preserved and the right for them to persist will be respected. Each will alter, no doubt, owing to changing understandings of the role and character of culture that evolve from liberatory internal dynamics, as well as influences from other social spheres which help erode sexist, classist, and authoritarian definitions. At the international level, as a direct extension, intercommunalism will mean respect for self-determination and commitment to nonintervention.

Participatory Democracy

We know that the political sphere is a necessary means of providing overall social coherence and mediating social disagreements. But we also know that most governments to date have created hierarchies, imposed regimentation, repressed freedom, and inflicted harsh crimes against their citizens. When we think about a humanist alternative we must think in terms of new institutions which not only respect democratic advances that have occurred to date, but expand upon this base to promote a still higher degree of social participation in decision-making. We must go beyond electoral forms in which participation is brief and episodic to conceive of structures in which popular oversight and participation is continuous.

Further, we have to think not only in terms of a pluralism of contesting options, but also in terms of a pluralism of chosen outcomes. Expanding democracy means recognizing that there is no single right way to conduct social life since various alternatives can all embody valid goals and whenever possible diverse options should be implemented. We will not always automatically presume a single best way to do every imaginable task, but will instead experiment with diverse options.

We will also have to pay attention to the obvious but often neglected fact that participatory democratic decision-making forms are useless unless all citizens have access to information and means of voicing, arguing for, and organizing around their ideas and social proposals. Democratic decision-making is impossible if what people can propose is determined by a few who control access to information and ideas thereby molding even what it is possible for people to think about. We must develop rich means for information dissemination, popular debate, and sharing of new ideas.

To discover how best to attain such ends, we must analyze the dynamics of information flow and debate as well as related structures of decision-making to see how existing forms of each impede (and propel) true democracy. We must then develop alternative forms which overcome traditional obstacles to greater participation while getting the decision-making job done in an effective fashion.

A humanist vision of governing forms must therefore incorporate many dimensions of institutional life if it is not to risk undermining itself by ignoring the full array of variables that affect whether people can really manifest their wills in social decision-making.

I interject: I believe, reading all this visionary material, that the authors were in sum being quite cautious to not over-propose details which could be perceived as over-prescribing a vision that needs to largely emerge from collective practice. On the one hand, we didn’t then nor does anyone now know nearly enough to propose a full blueprint which, in any event, can’t even exist because so much of a future revolutionized society will differ from country to country, time to time, and preference to preference. On the other hand, even if it was possible, it was not the place of actors then, or now, to arrive at detailed decisions instead of future people developing and deciding their own diverse circumstances. The visionary task, instead, was and remains to propose core institutions that would not prevent and would instead facilitate people self managing their own future circumstances. After forty years, I would now want to add some commentary about how to refine the offered core features sufficiently to usefully guide practice able to arrive where participants intend—but not more. The chapter continues:

A Program For Developing A Humanist Vision

If we take all these insights simultaneously, we have a kind of research program for developing a humanist vision. First, develop detailed images of possible economic, kinship, community, and core governing forms which escape the classist, sexist, racist, and authoritarian norms of the past to accomplish their essential social functions in ways that instead promote social diversity, human solidarity, and collective self-management. We have discussed some means of accomplishing this much already.

Second, refine these separate images into a whole social picture in which the parts overlap in a consistent and mutually reinforcing fashion. The idea here is a bit more subtle. In contemporary U.S. life we know that each sphere creates a core characteristic which then helps define relations in other spheres as well. The same can occur in any future U.S. society. Spheres necessarily accommodate and can certainly co-define and co-reproduce. If men and women are treated equally by future kinship relations, for stability they must also be treated equally in the economic, political, and community spheres. And we can insure this for our vision by simply incorporating that each sphere accommodate to the conditions of equity and participation that other spheres establish. But, additionally, each sphere in our future society will contribute to producing the skills, dispositions, and personality attributes we develop. If one sphere promotes attributes that contradict another sphere’s operations, or if one sphere requires people with certain inclinations though other spheres impede the expression of these inclinations, conditions

will be unstable. So if we want to use our concepts to create a workable societal vision [of core components] we must be sure that humanized economic, community, kinship, and political spheres promote dispositions, talents, inclinations, and/or preferences that mutually reinforce one another. And, to assure this, we have urged that each sphere in a humanist society should co-reproduce the core characteristics every other sphere produces: solidarity, diversity, and collective self-management. Thus, we incorporate a high level of harmony into our vision precisely by our choice to have each sphere promote the same basic values.

Third, recognize that though a vision developed in this fashion will provide a degree of clarity about what we seek to attain—an essential prerequisite to trying to develop strategy—it will nonetheless need to grow and alter as we learn more from our experiences. Our tools are powerful, but they can only give us insights when coupled with knowledge of human potentials and needs. These we must continually elaborate through our efforts at attaining change and then at working and living together in new ways.

Alright, so far so good. But what about strategy. How do we attain our aims. 

I interject: Remember, Liberating Theory was published in 1986. I hope, however, that what we find in its discussion of generally applicable strategy at least mostly feels like it could have been written today, in 2026, forty years later.

The chapter continues: “Tactics” are ways of behaving that can be used, with slight variations, in many different situations and circumstances. “Programs” include sequences of tactical steps combined into patterns suitable for attaining more complex goals. “Strategies” are combinations of programs entwined into complete scenarios for attaining desired ends. Tactics, programs, and strategy can vary in focus, structure, breadth, and intent. How do we arrive at them starting only with theory and information about our surroundings?

Activists seek social change against forces and actors working to preserve existing core characteristics. As a result, they need strategies that account not only for complex circumstances and many means of acting, but also for opponents with opposed aims. This may lead social activists to consider the general problem of “winning” via developing effective “competitive” strategies. There is both an advantage and a price for thinking about revolutionizing society in this way. We’ll consider useful lessons first.

Consider tic tac toe. Each player in turn marks an ‘x’ or an ‘o’ in any of nine boxes arrayed in a three by three square. The first to get three marks in a straight line wins. In any turn you have a variety of precisely enumerative choices; the first time you go, nine, then seven, and so on. The “initial conditions” are simple: two players, one using ‘x’s and the other ‘o’s, and an empty nine by nine array. At each move we reach a new “state” of the game marked by the presence of another ‘x’ or ‘o’ in the array. Any good player follows a strategy that includes a step by step description of everything that should be done no matter what specific “state” the game enters. Indeed, it is because every encounterable state of the game can be analyzed that the situation is simple.

Now consider chess. Each player has a set of sixteen pieces of six different types–eight of one type, the pawns; two of three types, the bishops, knights, and rooks; and a king and queen. The players take turns moving according to unchanging rules on an eight by eight array of sixty four squares. Winning can only occur by capturing the opponent’s king, though draws can occur in various ways. Compared to tic tac toe, the initial conditions and rules of chess have been significantly enriched. Now sixteen pieces are placed on a much larger board and have far more complex ways of interrelating. Unlike for tic tac toe, and despite libraries of strategic volumes, no chess player  (until AI arrived) is able to never lose much less always win.

In chess there are so many possible paths for the struggle to follow that it is impossible to enumerate what to do in every conceivable situation. We can describe various types of opening or endgame or special structures where the king is in certain particular positions, and we can present various patterns of moves for dealing with each—the tactics of chess. Moreover, at any time during a game we can plan to accomplish some strategic aim by stringing together a few tactical forays to hopefully attain a new state of the game more favorable to our intentions. We might try to improve our pawn position, for example, or to “open files” for our rooks, or to trade the opponent’s good mobile bishop for our own hemmed in knight. But we cannot confidently preplan the whole trajectory of a game.

Over the board one is always looking for a path toward an improved position. Seeing a possibility of gain, one tries to envision a sequence of tactical maneuvers to accomplish that gain a step at a time. In turn, a sequence of gains accomplished by a few such plans will hopefully yield a position from which one can pursue a final victory.

We can make chess more complicated by imagining a multi-game match between two opponents in which the first combatant to win more games is victor. Now, many additional factors having to do not only with board positions but with psychological dynamics of momentum, exhaustion, emotions, and the spirit of the opponent and skill of his/her advisors affect calculations. The state of the game at any time includes the current score—I have won three, my opponent two, and there have been six draws—as well as the changing moods of the players, their changing attention span, attitudes toward one another, and health. Should I work hard to salvage a difficult position to gain a draw, or should I conserve strength for the next game? Should I try for a problematic win that I may lose, or should I settle for a draw and anticipate that my opponent will grow weaker in succeeding games? Can I mix up my opening tactical choices to put my opponent off guard many games from now? In other words, in addition to the playing rules, now the complexities of an opponent’s long term moods, strengths, and weaknesses bear on the match. With this enrichment, the analogy to the complexity of social strategizing becomes stronger, though far from exact.

If we now switch our attention to basketball and put ourselves in the position of a coach, the situation becomes still more complex. As for chess, any one basketball game has far too many possible trajectories to chart them all in advance. Now, however, there is the added problem that an effort to enact a certain tactic, for example slowing the pace of the game by employing a certain defensive set, might not come off. Your players might fumble their assignments—unlike a chess knight which will never fall to go where its “coach” tells it to. Now it isn’t only the coach who can tire, but also the players. Nothing in the basketball game is certain because the players are now human and the playing board social.

Strategies become exceptionally complex requiring attention to changing states of the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own team and each of its members, of the opponents’ team and each of its members, the clock, the changing score, the score in games if it is a series, momentum, bench strength, how players should be rotated and matched up with opponents, and even how hometown and opposing fans will react and the effect their enthusiasm will have on play. There can be tactical alignments, defensive and offensive strategies, and well-planned programs for special portions of the game. Even the dynamics of transportation between cities, the treatment of player ailments, and the effect of the moods and skills of referees can be pivotal.

As a last leap, now imagine coaching a super basketball game with millions of participants, playing rules that can constantly alter, multiple goals that are themselves flexible, opponents who can become allies and vice versa, referees who are often members of competing teams, fans and players who can join or leave the action at will, and thousands of playing fields with complex rules for how results on each affect action on others. This approaches the complexity of trying to be strategic about attaining specific social changes in the real world.

I interject: I can well imagine some readers thinking, come on already, enough of this “game talk.” I think, but again I don’t remember, the authors wanted to make clear that strategy isn’t a simple matter, easy to do precisely and on the fly as many at that time thought. Are the insights relevant now. One way to judge, I guess, is to consider how much clear strategic explanation you read, hear, experience for contemporary political choices. 

The chapter continues: From the exact science of tic tac toe, to the complex analytics of chess, to the immense difficulties of the human equations of “super basketball,” we come to the herculean complications of historical struggle. At best, we can make probable assessments. The initial conditions themselves are more complex than the whole of any other type of game. The changing states of social struggle involve endless permutations of multiply entwined factors. The array of possible tactical choices stretches without limit so understanding even just the major effects of each possible choice on different possible states of the game is exceptionally difficult. Often even agreeing on what a victory is can be a matter of great debate. The link between theory and strategy is complex indeed. Yet the art of creating strategies for social change will be conducted with more or less intelligence depending on whether or not one has an effective means to think about relevant particulars and their interrelations. We can play a move at a time, ignorantly, or we can play with a plan conceived in light of the best analyses we can render. Our strategic artistry can be informed, and it had better be if we are to succeed.

Understanding the importance of developing program and strategy, learning to account for complex circumstances and opposing forces, and becoming facile at combining tactics into programs consistent with over-arching strategic aims are all positive lessons we can take from our “gaming” analogy. But there is a down-side of this analogy that we have to be aware of as well.

I interject: This aspect, too, I do remember, was on peoples’ minds back then, and I think it is now as well.

The chapter continues: Conceptualizing strategy in terms of winning and losing—as in chess, basketball, war, etc.—tends to harmonize with macho, authoritarian, instrumentalist, and reductionist approaches common to oppressive norms in our societies. Promoting this theme we run the risk of reproducing the very psychological and behavioral traits that we are, in fact, trying to undo. The solution cannot be, as some suggest, denying that we have hostile differences with people who oppose change, or minimizing the degree of conflict necessary to attain a better world. But a self-conscious approach that recognizes that attaining a new future involves ways of thinking and acting that won’t be valued within the new future so attained, is salutary. It can help us guard against problems that arise from incorporating our opponent, or at least the psychology of our opponent, within ourselves. But there is also a more positive step we can take. It is important to learn the lessons of strategy to participate equally and effectively in defining the direction of our movements. But, having become proficient strategists, we need no longer use only competitive analogies. We can, for example, begin to think in terms of “building a new future” in a complex context where sometimes there are shortages of means, where project participants don’t always get along, where there are factors that oppose our progress, and so on. Instead of “competition,” which served to graphically reveal many skills, “creation” can become our central metaphor. The trick is to attain this more positive thematic mindset while retaining the skills of strategic thinking and the abstract methods needed to develop good strategies. In this way we can preserve the positive lessons to be had from thinking carefully about competitive strategies, while jettisoning the elements of their “personality” that contradict our broader values.

To become strategic about social change, we must envision a trajectory of change from what exists to what is desired and develop a flexible agenda of tactical and programmatic steps that seem likely to help propel history down that particular path. Furthermore, we must update our strategies regularly in light of changing states of the struggle and new lessons learned about “tactics,” the “board,” the “players,” and the “goal.” Activists must:

1. Identify potential allies and identify obstacles which will hinder progress toward humanist aims.
2. Analyze available forms of organization and tactical options in light of effects in different circumstances.
3. Continually update evaluative surveys of their own and their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.
4. Envision a sequence of general steps from the present through a variety ofintermediate states to a final goal, and describe how tactics and programs can help propel desired changes at each stage.

The image of society as is and as desired comes from theory and so too does the analysis of likely effects of tactics that can be employed and organizational forms that can be used in different contexts. And, to be sure, different theories yield different bases for further strategic thought. Variables considered, tactics used, and plans undertaken depend tremendously on the type of conceptual framework brought to the problem of understanding and positing intermediate goals. The power of having even a simple broad strategy as compared to functioning step by step, guided only by immediate reactions, can’t possibly be over-emphasized.

Yet nothing in this says that one’s style has to be stark, joyless, and automated. The U.S. Marines needn’t be our model, and can’t be if we want to retain the integrity of our values and maintain sight of our goals. The mindless solidarity of thousands of hands and feet moving in unison to a drill master’s chants would subvert the kind of harmony we seek.

Having the discipline to create and implement strategies doesn’t preclude trying to

incorporate joy, sharing, solidarity, and even playing directly into the process of creating a new society. Quite the contrary, given the kinds of personalities we need to foster if we are to be able to define and enjoy these new societies, these “tactics” will have to be part of our effort. Perhaps for some, the analogy to building a complex structure in harsh circumstances, as a team, and with camaraderie and aesthetic balance, can dispel the aura of militarism that being strategic and trying to win tend to raise. Or, for others, maybe highly planned out clever teamwork, such as was exemplified in the movie The Sting, can provide an alternative model. But whatever one’s taste, the need to be strategic and to simultaneously retain and even expand our humanity is paramount.

The steps for developing a specifically humanist strategic orientation are considerably more complex than those a marxist, anarchist, feminist, or nationalist employs. For the humanist must deal with four spheres, not one. And not only must a path be envisioned from contemporary to future relations in each sphere, but the methods of pursuing liberation in each must be harmonized so they reinforce one another.

On the one hand, the primary goal in struggle related to each sphere is overcoming the basic defining causes of that sphere’s own centrally oppressive forms and developing alternative humanist structures in their place. In the economy we want to replace capitalist forms with socialist ones. In community relations we want to replace racism and other oppressions with intercommunalism. In addition, however, humanists focusing their work in a particular sphere must also overcome oppressive manifestations that pervert that sphere from without, including the sphere’s own tendencies to reproduce the domination characteristics of other spheres and vice versa. We cannot have strategies regarding community that contradict strategies regarding kinship, which in turn contradict those relating to the economy or the state. We cannot aim to overcome the roots of racism in community interfaces while ignoring factors capable of reproducing racism that emanate from the economy, kinship, or state spheres. Partial struggles must combine into a comprehensive strategy to transform all society.

So, a humanist activist operating principally in the economy must assess the different kinds of economics-related consciousnesses of participants depending on their class and also community, gender, and state-related affiliations. What kinds of consciousness tend to reproduce oppressive economic relations–what kinds tend to disrupt economic norms and engender humanist alternatives? What forms of activity and modes of organization will impede the former and propel the latter? What types of demands, if won, will yield new states of the workplace, consumer, and allocation struggle conducive to winning still further victories because seekers of change will be stronger owing to better knowledge, clearer commitments, or possession of better organizational vehicles or material means with which to win further gains?

Having developed answers to these questions activists can then envision a trajectory of demands, means of struggle, and organizational forms that would lead toward, for example, worker self-management through council control over workplaces, consumer councils governing consumption choices especially for collective goods, and participatory planning for allocation. But, in addition, activists will also have to determine the likely affects of choices made within economic struggle on struggles in other spheres and mediate their choices to accord with the goal of moving forward on all fronts, not just one.

Similarly, regarding community, kinship, or the state, given the goal of intercommunalism, an end to patriarchy, or establishing participatory democracy, activists must ask what kinds of organizing will promote consciousnesses and commitments and alignments able to foster their immediate goals. For example, what kinds of organizing and what demands, if won, will strengthen community, gender, or political identification, yet simultaneously diminish the forces of racism, sexism, or authoritarianism?

The humanist activist thus has to envision a scenario of unfolding events which progressively increases the numbers of people who wish to transform society and their access to means for doing so—along all four axes at once. Concentrated efforts to win reforms—such as wage increases, improved day-care, affirmative action, shopfloor council control over health and safety, community-based economic development, rent control, gay rights legislation, voter registration, and childrearing leaves for men as well as women—must be formulated to enhance the consciousnesses of potential change agents, weaken opponents of change and strengthen the position from which movements will confront status quo forces in the future.

Similarly, forms of organization and methods of struggle-autonomous community movements, electoral parties and campaigns, projects around single issues like freezing nuclear weapons or to create battered women’s shelters and abortion clinics, organize affinity groups, or use petitions, teach-ins, sit-ins, or other forms of civil disobedience—must all be formulated and reformulated to strengthen the means activists have to introduce forward-looking reforms and to clarify and enhance their long-range programs, maximize liberatory consciousness, open up possibilities for those who are not yet working for change, and negate oppressive forms tied to old ways of being both in the movement and outside it.

I interject: Most activists, I think, will say, okay, sure. Obviously. But the hard part is to actually keep it in mind and not forget that each step needs doing.

The chapter continues: To outline the main contours of a humanist strategy we need to address each of the four spheres in turn and then discuss the ways movements and programs relevant to each can combine to form a comprehensive strategic approach.

The defining mode of domination in the community sphere in the U.S. is racism. The defining humanist goal is intercommunalism which includes preserving and enriching diverse communities, guaranteeing intercommunity rights, and fostering learning between communities. The potential creators of liberatory change regarding community relations include everyone oppressed by racism, ethnocentrism, and the denial of spirituality, but principally those communities who are the direct targets of racist domination: Blacks, Latinos, Indians, Asians, etc. Whites who transcend their cultures to develop a hatred for racism and a love for cultural diversity will be strong supporters of intercommunalism. Whites who prefer to defend their community advantages will be opponents.

Obstacles to creating intercommunalism include the racism and ethnocentrism of currently dominant communities, internalized feelings of inferiority and inter-community hostility of many currently dominated communities, and the pervasive biases of not only community and cultural, but also of kinship, economic, and state institutions all in favor of exacerbating community oppressions.

One facet of community strategy must be the formation of autonomous community movements organized to advance the dignity of their respective cultures and also to refine their cultures by rejecting oppressive sexist, authoritarian, and classist elements they may contain. This will involve programs to diminish and finally remove racist structures in society, to challenge and finally undo racism-reproducing attitudes in oppressor and oppressed communities, and to develop procedures to ensure the perpetuation and enrichment of diverse cultures in ways promoting humanist and not racist, sexist, classist or authoritarian values.

The “Black Power” movements of the Sixties were archetypes that can teach us much, though by humanist standards they also had faults. They rightly sought to understand, respect, and elevate community cultural forms, and, at their best, to refine community cultures to overcome at least some internal oppressive weaknesses. They did little, however, to increase modes of inter-community discourse and learning. In the future, at the same time as communities reform and strengthen inwardly via techniques similar to those used by predecessor Black Power movements, they must also pursue programs that will build positive relations between communities. Autonomous community movements formed to help communities develop their own cultures, visions, and programs in relative freedom from outside forces, must additionally diminish hostilities between communities instead of exacerbating them. It will not be argued that the responsibility for promoting good inter-community relations lies only with racist communities who usually impede such relations. For though the justice of such a view is obvious, the strategic logic is not.

Just as culture will be celebrated inwardly, it will also be respectfully urged outwards toward other communities and, in particular, from organized movements of oppressed communities toward one another and also toward the white oppressor community beyond. Communities will make overtures to learn from others and not to denigrate them. Racism will be criticized and attacked, but not communities themselves. In this, as in all things, humanist activists will want to progress toward humanist aims, not simply to be “right,” or to exact a “justified retribution” that leads nowhere.

To develop a community-focused strategy we will have to develop a rich understanding of the kinds of consciousnesses that tend to reproduce racist inter-community relations in both their oppressor and oppressed forms. Then we will need to assess how different ways of expressing demands and insights, speaking, writing, organizing, and structuring our movements affect these forms of consciousness in different situations and for different constituencies. In light of this, we can assess tactics for how movements can improve the balance of forces favoring intercommunalism as compared to those favoring the maintenance of racism, ethnocentrism, religious persecution, and cultural denial.

All sorts of tactics and programs including revitalization of traditional cultural practices, demands for genuine affirmative action, enhancement and enforcement of civil rights legislation, formation of community groups and caucuses inside organizations, demands for media access, movements against police brutality, institutionalization of Black Studies and other community studies programs, demands for media access by oppressed communities, marches, teach-ins, civil disobedience, and proposals for inter-community celebrations, and meetings to share cultural traditions will be combined into agendas of change aiming to create “states of the struggle” closer to anti-racist, pro-intercommunalist possibilities. It will not be the case, as it always has in the past, that the onus for “smooth communication” between different communities will rest solely on those who are oppressed. There will be efforts by Black, Latino, and other oppressed communities to communicate in ways that whites can better perceive but the more urgent priority will be the reverse: an effort by oppressing communities to learn enough about other cultures to be able to understand their modes of expression or at least to know when they are not understanding and how to ask for clarification without leaping to defensive conclusions. The aim will be a steady strengthening of autonomous community movements tied to one another by steadily maturing networks of inter-community communication and respectful sharing of one another’s cultures. Milestones along the way to intercommunalism may include creating specific community movements, winning community control over certain media resources, elaborating ties between different community movements,

enforcing affirmative action legislation, elaborating forms of cultural interchange and celebration between and among different communities and creating a larger inter- communal “rainbow” coalition.

One additional critical point is that beyond working to insure that community sphere programs and organizational forms impede racism and promote intercommunalism, it will also be critical to ensure that minimally they do nothing to reproduce sexism, classism, and authoritarianism, and maximally that they help counter these other forms of oppression. Community movements cannot be organized around authoritarian hierarchies, in ways elevating members of dominant classes to community leadership, or in ways promoting sexist patterns of male dominance or female submission or homophobia in the movement, without sacrificing both humanist extra-community and community aims as well. But to attain these ends, activists with a community priority will also have to have a holist orientation and allegiance. We will discuss the organizational means to promote this integration of movements after addressing all four focuses themselves.

The aim of kinship strategy is to overcome sexism in all its forms throughout society and to promote an alternative feminist vision of gender relations, sexuality, and child-rearing as a part of the encompassing project of creating a humanist society in all spheres of social life. Accomplishing these ends will certainly involve building an autonomous women’s movement, gay and lesbian movements, and young people’s and older people’s movements. In turn, each of these will struggle against sexism, homophobia, and ageism and for an alternative feminist vision of kinship relations. Each will function in part autonomously from other social actors to escape the influence of oppressive behaviors common to men, heterosexuals, and adults and to freely discover their own identities and liberating alternatives to domination relations. Moreover, as each of these movements fights against specifically kinship-centered oppressions, each will also struggle to undermine the means by which kinship relations reproduce other forms of social domination and vice versa.

Strategies will include demands for reforms like the ERA, affirmative action, legislation protecting children, the elderly, and freedom of sexual preference, and reproductive rights as well as efforts to confront and overcome male sexist behavior and existing sexist structural relations in primary living groups and throughout society. But, additionally, positive programs elaborating new conceptions of gender roles, new definitions of sexuality, and new ideas regarding how people can conduct the functions of primary living groups—nurturance, child rearing, the sharing of love and affection, and preparation for death—will also be proposed. Demands for access to media and educational institutions to criticize old forms and to project new visions will be important as will efforts to oppose the crimes of rape, battering, child-molesting, “gay-bashing,” and other sexist physical abuse.

In general, movements focused primarily around overcoming patriarchy and fostering positive feminist alternatives will also have to deal with overcoming classist, racist, and authoritarian forms that exist within kinship institutions. Moreover, as kinship centered movements elaborate demands and propose strategies for moving the “state of the kinship struggle” closer to humanist ends, they will have to recognize that women, old, and young people all come from different classes and communities and that even their kinship concerns must be addressed differently.

The women’s and gay liberation movements of the late sixties and seventies offer a clear image of many of the facets of behavior that will be combined in humanist/feminist movements of the future. The major change will be a growing recognition of the connections between kinship-focused work and work in other spheres, and thus a growing theoretical and organizational sensitivity to the need for kinship focused organizing to also address issues of race, class, and authority in ways respecting the independent character of their causes in other spheres and the importance of their effects on kinship relations themselves. Unlike some gender focused movements of the past, however, humanist feminist movements certainly won’t celebrate biological differences between genders or people with different sexual preferences, nor work to advance primarily white middle class women. As with the community strategic orientation discussed above, the target will be sexism, homophobia, and ageism—much of male behavior and ideology, heterosexual behavior and ideology, and parental and elders’ behavior and ideology—but not all men, heterosexuals, parents, and adults. Again, creating a better society, not the desire to be right or to exact retribution, will be the watchword of strategic planning.

A kinship-centered strategy will involve combining a host of different kinds of programs related to strengthening the self-images of women, gay men and lesbians and countering sexism, homophobia, and ageism among men, heterosexuals, and adults. Along the way demands will be adopted, tactics employed, and means of organizing and of organization chosen on grounds of their strengthening feminist consciousness and style, countering opponents of kinship change, and opposing racism, classism, and authoritarianism.

Some milestones along the way toward creating liberatory kinship relations may include, for example, the elaboration of self-conscious humanist/feminist women’s, young people’s, gay, and elderly people’s movements and their unification into a grand anti-patriarchal coalition; the parallel development of men’s groups for fighting sexism and promoting male participation in mothering; the establishment of women’s centers, rape centers, sex clinics, and sex education centers for children; the winning of ERA-like legislation and of workplace demands concerned with accommodating women and men with children, and winning of comprehensive affirmative action programs.

An additional critical point is that beyond working to insure that kinship sphere programs and organizational forms impede sexism and promote feminism, it will also be critical to ensure that minimally they do nothing to reproduce racism, classism, authoritarianism, and maximally that they help counter these other forms of oppression. Kinship movements cannot be organized around authoritarian hierarchies, in wavs elevating members of dominant classes to kinship leadership, or in ways promoting racist patterns in the movement, without sacrificing both humanist extra-kinship and kinship aims as well. But to attain these ends, activists with a feminist priority will have to also have a holist orientation and allegiance. As mentioned earlier, we’ll discuss the organizational means’ to promote this integration after addressing all four focuses themselves.

The contemporary U.S. economy is capitalist and the humanist economic goal is participatory socialism. To accomplish its aims a new workers’ movement will therefore have to find ways to struggle for collective self-management of production and consumption and for participatory allocation that constantly furthers all other dimensions of humanist struggle as well.

The movement would draw on the full gamut of consciousness-raising techniques, publications, rallies, teach-ins, petitions, boycotts, work stoppages, strikes, marches, sit-ins, and civil disobedience all used in subtle combinations to strengthen working class solidarity and win reforms that improve the position from which workers are able to seek further gains in the future.

Immediate focuses of economic activist attention will certainly include wages, rents, and prices, but also quality of goods, allocation of resources and monies for investments, levels of employment and inflation, workplace and consumer health and safety, and self determination of job definitions for all workers. In addition, however, class-focused movements will also have to recognize that workers come from different gender, race, and political backgrounds so that economic programs, outreach, and workplace organizational forms must take account of these differences and counter not only classism, but also racism, sexism, and authoritarianism.

To promote socialist economic attitudes, struggles to increase income will begin to be linked to efforts to demand that owners hold down prices and improve goods and services in the interest of consumers. Struggles for expanded and secure employment will be linked to struggles for a guaranteed income, democratic control of social services and investments, and conversion of plants away from military production. Workplace organizing will extend from efforts to improve work conditions and safety standards to struggles over the definition of job complexes, the quality of products, the rate and volume of production, the division of labor by class, race, sex, and age, control over pension funds and employee stock, and worker management and ownership. Networks of neighborhood councils will raise demands about local investments and tax, housing, and employment patterns, which will connect with workers’ struggles and vice versa. These sorts of linkages will provide a solid basis for consumer-worker-community coalitions. The forms workers will use to allow themselves to communicate their ideas to one

another, strengthen their commitments, develop solidarity, and propose and fight for their programs will include unions—reformed by struggles to make them steadily more democratic, anti-sexist,. and anti-racist—and egalitarian workplace and community councils.

One important dimension of economic strategizing will be recognizing that being anti- capitalist is not enough. A positive stance must be adopted not only for the humanist movement to attract adherents, but also for it to avoid adopting a non-socialist approach which can wrongly win workers’ allegiances if careful attention isn’t paid to coordinator class machinations and how they manifest themselves in economic struggles. All sorts of middle level employees and intermediate strata and, at times, even coordinators, will be welcomed to humanist movements. But it will be critical to ensure that humanist movements and their union and council organizations have working class aims as their constant priority, even as they also oppose racism, sexism, and authoritarianism.

The elitism common to coordinator programs and technocratic visions will have to be identified and combatted just as the exploitation and alienation common to capitalist forms are. One important focus of humanist-socialist activism will be the definition of work and of divisions of labor in contemporary society and the alternative definitions we seek in the future. Humanist economic movements will have to propose and pursue these aims in ways countering the current information and skill monopolies of coordinator and middle strata workers, even as humanists also seek to attract people in these positions into opposition to capitalism and support for socialism.

And, of course, one additional critical point is that beyond working to insure that economic programs and organizational forms impede class rule and promote participatory socialism, it will also be critical to ensure that minimally they do nothing to reproduce sexism, racism, and authoritarianism, and maximally that they help counter these other forms of oppression. Economic movements cannot be organized around authoritarian hierarchies, in ways elevating members of dominant communities to economic leadership, or in ways promoting sexist patterns of male dominance or female submission or homophobia, without sacrificing both humanist extra-economic and economic aims as well. To attain these ends, activists with an economic priority will also have to have a holist orientation and allegiance. We will discuss the organizational means to promote this integration after addressing the last of our four strategic areas.

The defining mode of domination in the U.S. political sphere is authoritarianism. A U.S. humanist movement will seek to replace it with participatory democracy. Accomplishing this will require the careful combination of short and long term programs progressively increasing people’s abilities to develop their own policy attitudes and means for participation in decision-making, as well as increasing the range of policy alternatives and promoting power sharing among diverse constituencies.

An anti-authoritarian, pro-participatory democracy movement will have its own electoral and non-electoral tactics and organizational forms emphasizing new visions and new means of developing, debating, and implementing policy alternatives, and of struggling to gain adherents. At the same time, however, the efforts of governing-focused movements to win reforms of existing state relations and develop ever more widely shared and deeply rooted anti- authoritarian attitudes will occur in the context of parallel efforts to insure that political forms don’t reproduce race, sex, or class hierarchies.

Landmarks along the way might include making the judiciary more representative;

establishing universal voter registration; guaranteeing public campaign funds and free media access to all political parties; abolition of the death penalty, overhaul of sentencing procedures, and massive prison reform and alternatives to prison; divorcing military spending from the profit motive and cutting and reprogramming the military budget to serve strictly defensive, non-interventionist objectives; overhauling the currently racist and restrictive immigration law and respecting sanctuary for political refugees; strengthening Freedom of Information legislation; decentralizing political control at all levels; and establishing the principle of power sharing, whereby minority views can also be implemented where possible. And, predictably, an additional critical point is that beyond working to insure that political sphere programs and organizational forms impede authoritarianism and promote participatory democracy, it will also be critical to ensure that minimally they do nothing to reproduce sexism, classism, and racism, and maximally that they help counter these other forms of oppression. Political movements cannot be organized around racist hierarchies, in ways elevating members of dominant classes to political leadership, or in ways promoting sexist patterns of male dominance or female submission or homophobia, without sacrificing both humanist extra-political and political aims as well. To attain these ends, activists with a state priority will have to have a holist orientation and allegiances. We’ll discuss the varied organizational means to promote this integration of movements in the following section. But first, note that in each of the four spheres the same kinds of considerations will guide us as we conceive and later refine strategies. First, we identify constituencies and seek to determine how their views support or oppose progressive change in their sphere and in society as a whole. Second, we assess our means including tactics, forms of organization, and styles of organizing. Third, we propose programs for organizing advocates of humanist transformation and improving their knowledge, skills, commitment, and numbers; and for winning reforms that will improve their abilities to act in ways leading toward radical change.

Along the way, we continually re-examine tactics like participating in elections, doing civil disobedience, or struggling to win particular workplace or household demands to see whether pursuing them will lead us to a new situation with a still better balance of forces for further advance. We thus pay special attention to how alternative courses of action may affect the strength of our institutions, the number of people supporting change, the strength of our opponents’ institutions, and the social field of action on which we must all operate. Yet, as hard as strategizing in any one sphere is, the real problem, as we have repeatedly noted, turns out to be effectively accommodating the strategies in each sphere to one another in ways propelling them all toward shared success.

There are good reasons why advocates of strategic agendas who emphasize change in one particular sphere of social life rarely trust one another. History in the U.S. is laced with examples of “class analysis” meaning the analysis of the situation of white working men, “gender analysis” meaning the analysis of the situation of white middle class women with children, and so on. There have been many different struggles for social change in the U.S. and for the most part communication between progressive forces at work on these have been sparse and hostile. Many factors have helped cause this lack of solidarity, some of which are obvious and many of which can be easily extrapolated from earlier discussions and from the dialogues associated with each chapter. Here we would like to discuss possible ways forward.

Movements that are primarily focused on oppressions rooted in different spheres of social life can align with one another for at least four reasons. First, one might feel that members of another movement can be won over, if only overtures are made. This is opportunist; unity in this instance has no purpose other than to siphon off activists from one movement (a community movement, for example) to another (an organized economically focused Leninist party, perhaps). Second, movements can feel that alone they cannot succeed but in coalition their strength will be sufficient to deal with first one movement’s concerns, then the other’s. This is tactical; it involves a borrowing of one another’s troops on a fifty/fifty basis as when women’s movements and black civil rights movements align first on voting rights, then on the ERA, or when disarmament activists help anti-nuclear ecologists and vice versa. The problem is, all to often the vice versa never happens and unity is transitory and shallow in any case. Third, movements can recognize that they have a common enemy so that by assisting one another’s efforts their own efforts will be aided as well, as when anti-interventionists make overtures to groups fighting racism, or when those opposing chemical warfare try to ally with those opposing toxic waste dumping. This is strategic; an alignment develops on the basis of deep motivational ties and though this has many virtues the basis of alignment is usually so immediate that only the most blatant sorts of connections are accounted for. Finally, fourth, movements can align not only because they can benefit from one another’s victories since they share a common enemy, but because they recognize that they themselves are essentially different facets of one still larger movement all of whose parts must relate positively to one another if the whole and any of the parts will succeed—not only in defeating a shared enemy, but in gaining interdependent aims and creating a new liberatory society. This is principled and holist.

Historically, these four types of allegiance escalate in power as one moves from the first to the fourth, though the fourth has rarely if ever been widely operative in social life. Yet, the fourth autonomy-within-solidarity type of alignment is the most important and also the reason for being of the conceptual approach proposed in this volume. Complementary holist concepts propel, justify, and inform a strategic approach of the fourth type. Monist alternatives promote alliances of types one and two and, occasionally, allow alliances of type three.

The complementary holist humanist strategist must not only develop strategies relevant to each sphere but also an understanding of how these partial strategies interrelate. We have already suggested that within each sphere there will be autonomous movements, coalitions, specific forms of organization, specific demands, diverse tactical options, complex programs, and strategic agendas. Now, we need only add that each perspective  will need to be aligned with one another at a higher level.

Of course, activists with their own priority focus in each separate struggle will also involve themselves in organizations and events centered in other focuses. Feminists will not only confront primary kinship relations, but also sexism in the economy, community, and state spheres. And they will do this not only from the vantage point of their own kinship focused organizations and movements, but also because they will be members of women’s caucuses in plant and neighborhood councils, for example, fighting not only for economic gains but also against sexism. And, similarly, workers primarily concerned with matters of workplace democracy will also relate to community struggles not only directly through their means of economic expression, but also since they will be members of communities and community movements themselves. Likewise, blacks organized to promote intercommunalism will fight racism not only in their cultural work, but also in the kinship sphere because they will be members of community caucuses in women’s, gay, elderly peoples’, and youth organizations and coalitions. The idea will be to promote autonomy in the context of solidarity. Movements will retain their integrity and manage their own destinies regarding their priority oppressions. Yet, they will also function in the context of one another, crossing lines to battle residues of oppression within the left and also providing aid to one another whenever needed. Within each movement there will be caucuses to allow members of other movements to readily influence policy to insure strategic connections. Moreover, the fact that many activists will be members of many movements will create further linkages and lines of communication and shared lessons. Finally, movements with different priority focuses will all be part of larger encompassing forms that will respect their autonomy even as respective strategies and needs are assessed to promote the simultaneous advance of each. The encompassing holistic conceptualization of society and change will support these organizational steps and also evidence the need for people with different personal priorities to learn from one another and support one another for tactical and strategic reasons and to promote collective advance. Moreover, since we all have community, economic, political, and kinship lives—even though one or another may affect us more pressingly due to our specific situation or background—we will all begin to have an interest in each facet of struggle and especially in the ways they interconnect due to the ways spheres of social life co-reproduce.

The meshing of strategies into encompassing plans for the development of the whole left will occur at every level—n movements, organizations, campaigns, educational activities, outreach through the left media, etc. It is precisely this linking of insights and their connection within holistic perspectives that will become the highest priority of these types of interchange, even while the integrity of each perspective remains an equally first-rank concern.

This is not the place to discuss the details of organizational forms-for example, the types of blocs that will align specific movements into larger holist networks—nor for hazarding guesses about timetables of progress. The work of developing a viable strategy remains. Our immediate point is that the complementary holist framework is the only one that can produce flexible analyses capable of meeting the agendas of each autonomous movement and to developing and sustaining their unity. It is a place to start as we retain our separate identities, yet struggle to attain a new society that is liberating for all.

So ended the Vision/Strategy chapters of Liberating Theory. There followed the associated dialogues.

Coho, our complimentary holist participant, has just finished describing her thoughts on vision and strategy. As the others are busy making notes, gathering their own thoughts together, Cyn, our cynical participant, takes the momentary lull as an opportunity to set Coho straight on the question of human nature…

Cyn: (rising to stand near the window): No one regrets more than I having to say these things. My entire life has been wrapped up in social change. For years I’ve read, written, and organized in the area of international relations. I’ve seen radicals become fascists; I’ve seen comrades become apolitical bourgeois intellectuals; I’ve participated in meetings and events where the internal debates destroyed the spirit of almost all the participants. I appreciate your efforts, Coho, particularly your sketching of such comprehensive guidelines for developing visions of a new society and strategies to pursue. But I had visions once too. So did many others. I believed fervently in the possibility of a liberating society. I fought for it. Now I look at countries I supported, like China, and it just seems hopeless.

Coho: But the Chinese never created a humanist society, or even just a socialist economy.

Cyn: But they tried.

Coho: So did the Russians. You don’t seem as bothered by their failures.

Cyn: So I’m a slow learner.

Coho: Perhaps. Or perhaps you were able to see that the Leninist failures were no more proof of the impossibility of a liberatory society than was the failure to create one in the U.S. after our revolution. Or in France after theirs.

Cyn: The U.S. revolution wasn’t aimed at creating socialism.

Coho: The Russian revolution wasn’t aimed at creating socialist economic relations or humanist relations in all four social spheres. It sought an authoritarian state, a coordinator economy, a homogenized community sphere, and a patriarchal kinship sphere. The leaders, at least, got what they sought. So did the leaders in China.

Cyn: That’s nonsense. Soviet activists believed in a better world as much as we do. They gave their lives trying to win it.

Coho: Of course, I don’t deny the integrity of the activists. They did desire equity, but their leaders actually instituted social forms which had contrary implications.

Cyn: Maybe there was no alternative. In China the Maoists certainly sought democracy.

Coho: Perhaps, in the end, but for too many years they used centrist organizations which reproduced domination relations. Their challenges to sexism, state authoritarianism, and class oppression were minimal. Their myopic cultural politics corrupted their community life as well as their attempts at democracy.

Cyn: That’s not entirely true. During the years after the revolution many struggled to understand and create alternatives to coordinator dominance. But they failed…

Marlen, our Marxist Leninist participant interrupts: You wear your pessimism like a crown of thorns. Look at what existed in China before their revolution—starvation, violence, degradation, deprivation. Their achievements were immense, unparalleled in history…

Nat, our nationalist participant adds: And what about Cuba? Some of the African nations? There have been profound changes that have improved the quality of life in countries around the world. And in the U.S. too.

Coho: In any event, why should the failure of the Chinese and other revolutions to meet goals they never intended to meet, goals that we think they should have met, dissuade us from the possibility of a revolution that creates what we want?

Cyn: In spite of what you say, it still seems that no matter what we do, we will never get what we want. The final outcome is always corrupted. Either human nature insures that some will always rule and others obey, or unknown forces preserve domination even though they let us alter the forms that domination will take.

Coho: So your hypothesis is that people are innately evil in ways that preclude creating a humane society?

Cyn: It makes sense to me that explanations to our problems may lie with human nature.

Nat: Is it Darwin’s theory that makes you believe that, or history?

Cyn: Both.

Coho: But there is nothing in biological understandings of how evolution contours

organisms to suggest that a species would “wire in” a trait that runs counter to its own perpetuation. People might have capacities for aggression, since these could have been useful during our evolution. But it’s hard to see why they would come to innately turn these aggressive tendencies against one another.

It’s infinitely more likely for evolution to have given us dispositions to seek to live

peacefully in search of friendship, solidarity, continuity, assistance, and defense against other species. Greed against other species might make sense, but sociability within a species would be more conducive to genetic success than in-fighting.

Sofie, our socialist feminist participant reacts: But even Coho talks of the survival of the fittest.

Ana, our anarchist participate adds: True. But survival of the fittest doesn’t mean everyone kills off everyone else. In fact, it usually insures that within a species there will be a disposition toward mutual aid. An appeal to evolution doesn’t give us evidence for a genetically evil human nature.

Cyn: Then look at the evidence from history.

Coho: Yes, if we assume innately evil people, we can certainly explain Hitler. We can explain exploitation, concentration camps, lynching, slavery, rape, and saturation bombing. But can we explain the good that people do?

Cyn: Circumstances sometimes stifle our anti-social inclinations or even cause our greed to produce sharing.

Coho: So people do good things because institutions and environments select sociability over innate greed? From what we have said about society’s institutions they would be more likely to exaggerate our dispositions to…

Nat: Burn.

Marlen: Loot.

Radfem, our radical feminist participant adds: Rape.

Ana, our anarchist participants adds: Rule.

Coho: I think your innate anti-social genes thesis makes it very difficult—almost impossible—to see why there is any good at all in the world. Your view of human nature leads to a world of unrestrained evil.

Cyn: But if people are instead innately social, inquisitive and creative, as you hypothesize, then how do you explain exploitation, genocide, race hatred, imperialism?

Coho: That’s what theories of history reveal by showing that what happens throughout history depends on interrelations between “innately good people,” complex environments, and social institutions. Evil is not inevitable in all times and places. It is produced and can be replaced. 

Cyn: Suppose I could accept your argument that there is no compelling evidence for believing that human beings are basically so anti-social that a humane society is biologically impossible, it still wouldn’t increase my hopes. Dominating ways are so entrenched that every effort to eradicate them only transforms them into new forms.

Plury, our pluralist participant commiserates: It’s sad, Cyn, that your belief in the inevitability of injustice has become such a bedrock faith, almost part of your personality.

Cyn: Perhaps your optimism is just blind faith, and my pessimism is based on reality.

Coho: No. I think many people are cynical about human nature or social possibilities because a cynical viewpoint serves them well, not because they have lots of good arguments and evidence on their side.

Cyn: But there is historical evidence in favor of the view that we can’t create a good society. No one ever has. And now maybe we’ve been on the wrong road too long to get off.

Coho: People said we couldn’t fly, but now they take it for granted. But you are right that no one can prove we can win a better world short of doing it, but I have good arguments for why it hasn’t been done yet that can give us hope. The fact that you don’t want to hear them, that you choose a pessimistic option, is a rationalization.

Cyn: For what? I’m miserable this way.

Coho: People who believe in a better way of life know that the way we live now is criminal. Denial of freedoms, death by starvation and exploitation, denigration of people’s capabilities are everywhere. If you see that these outcomes are socially produced, then you understand that every person who dies as a result was effectively murdered. Once you accept the possibility of attaining a humanist alternative, you have to be a terrible hypocrite, coward or cynic to live passively with the contrast between what is and what could be.

Cyn: I don’t get the point of this.

Coho: If you only know enough to think that people are evil, or if you convince yourself of that no matter the contrary evidence at your disposal, then these daily murders are horrible but inevitable. You have no responsibility, no complicity.

Cyn: So we should all sing the Internationale and believe in the goodness of human

nature triumphing over evil? That’s so pathetic.

Coho: I’m not suggesting it. It isn’t that people should leap to believe in the goodness of human nature. It would be masochistic for people to wallow in guilt over complicity in crimes against humanity unless you felt you could do something about it. If you don’t see any way forward, then as a strategy for getting by it is probably most sensible to interpret the injustices as the flip side of progress and make the best of things.

Sofie: I know people who will be moved to tears by the profound humanity of certain characters in novels, or movies, or by people in history, even people they know. Then they’ll read about some atrocity and proceed to denigrate all humanity as greedy monsters.

Coho: Illogical but not crazy.

Cyn: But that’s not me. I’ve actively supported movements for social change. I want to act but I can’t anymore. I don’t think we can succeed.

Coho: But why rationalize this inability by calling people innately evil or by appealing to inevitability?

Cyn: You tell me.

Coho: Well, some people rationalize due to wanting to operate in mainstream society—to make money, or whatever—by denying the efficacy of being radical. Ordinarily the one-time leftist turning to journalism, or running for office, or otherwise trying to be comfortable in the midst of humanity’s crimes will denigrate her or his past as utopian childishness. Trying to make it in society is rationalized as a new found maturity about what’s possible.

Cyn: Once again, that’s not me. I have no desire to work in mainstream society to prove that I am a mature person.

Plury: But you argue that it proves you are a realistic person.

Cyn: Yes, because it does.

Coho: Perhaps, but maybe there is something about the tasks required to be effective activists that you don’t want to admit are needed. Or that you don’t want to do.

Cyn: Perhaps I don’t want to spend my time on earth in a losing battle, constantly looking at pain and suffering that I cannot put a stop to.

Coho: First, as a feeling person who has had the opportunity to learn what is really going on, can you find sustenance in maintaining injustice and degradation, or in looking the other way? Would you have felt better watching the Vietnam War on the six o’clock news? Could you have said to yourself, “since I can’t know positively that any action I take will stop the war, I won’t act at all even though I know how evil it is?” Or “since evil will always dominate, why bother? There will be another war, and another and another.” After all, no group of people in the U.S. had ever previously stopped the government from waging a war it wanted to wage. It seems to me that even if the odds were against stopping the Vietnam War, that it was better to take a shot at it, than give up. But, second, we did help end the war. You did have an impact. And there is no compelling reason to think we can’t have an effect again and again, not only on individual horrible policies, but once the great mass of people are involved, also on their underlying causes.

Cyn: Abstractly, I suppose I can agree that maybe the roots of my cynicism lies in rationalization rather than hard evidence. But that still doesn’t make me want to rush back to the barricades…In fact, I feel paralyzed into inaction, pained and depressed by both choices.

Coho: But opposing oppression doesn’t have to mean a lifetime of suffering. How can we persuade others to work for a better world if we live lives of pain and suffering, isolation and boredom. We don’t have to ignore culture, music, personal relationships, food, beauty, humor, and sports, even interesting work. In fact, involvement, community, purpose, and a sense of humor can enhance our abilities immeasurably.

Neopop: our new populist participant who finds Cyn a lost cause and has had enough, says: Speaking of abilities, and while I appreciate your efforts to lift Cyn’s spirits, I really do have to get back to my work at which I am indispensible.

Marlen, eager to discuss Coho’s presentations on vision and strategy: Speaking of interesting work, your discussion of participatory planning raises many points which I would like to discuss at length.

Radfem, rustling through papers to find visions chapter: Speaking of personal relationships, your notion of extended families could be enhanced if we…

Nat, waving papers interrupts: Speaking of art, I was impressed by your arguments for diversity, although your hopes for…

Sofie, arranging charts on the floor, interrupts:  While I would like to consign your notion of fields of force to the dustbin of a Hollywood Star Wars cutting room, I do like this business about codefinition and coreproduction. We should apply it even more generally.

C.C., our council communist participant, rising and stretching, says: I think this economy vision with the concept of equitable job complexes is very good. But how…

Radfem, rereading the kinship visions section urges: On the question of sexuality, you clearly aren’t familiar with issues of erotophobia which…

Nat, on the edge of his seat, interrupts: When it comes to religion, you have a way to go. Clearly you’ve never had a religious day in your life. But if we elaborate…

Marlen, taking a few volumes out of the bag he happened to bring along, pronounces: Mind you, Coho, I don’t agree with your methods but I think I could assist you in enriching your analysis to provide a deeper and more comprehensive vision… 

Sofie, frowning, adds: This label complementary holism? It’s all wrong. It’s…

Nat: White.

Radfem: Male.

Marlen: Middle class.

Ana: Religious-sounding.

Plury: A mouthful.

Neopop: Inefficient.

C.C.: Strange.

Sofie: Dumb.

(Comments are beginning to fly fast and furiously as the group gets involved in the vision and strategy sections. Then a familiar voice from the corner quiets them down.)

Cyn, tentatively, still holding on to the cloak of cynicism that has become a security blanket: Excuse me. I just wanted to say, without being too negative, that this vision chapter is somewhat naive and utopian. While I had been planning to leave for an appointment, I could stay a few minutes more to help provide a more realistic look at the possibilities.

Ana: Minutes? This is going to take longer than that. I have quite a bit to contribute to Coho’s limited vision around hierarchies and decentralizing political forms which she obviously has little experience in…

Cyn, on the verge of sliding back into the depths:  I guess I could stay another hour.

Sofie, only beginning her critique: Hours? We’re talking about days.

Nat: Weeks.

Radfem: Months.

Cyn, aghast: Months?

Plury: A year maybe.

Nat: In fact, we need another book. This one is too long already.

Cyn, getting frantic: Another book?

Sofie: As a matter of fact, I have a few friends who would enjoy participating in further discussions of vision and particularly strategy and who could provide insights into the kinship arrangements. 

Radfem: Since I am outnumbered around questions of sexuality,i know some people who could enlighten the discussion around…

Cyn, worried: More people?

Nat: Exactly my thoughts with regard to racism and the discussion of the community.

Ana: My thinking also around hierarchies. I know some people who could really assist in the…

Cyn, fighting off a returning cynicism: More people? Are you kidding? I can see it now, a hundred people in this room all arguing. 

Sofie: Not a hundred. More like twenty-five.

Marlen, eager to get on with it: Now that we’ve agreed that we need more people and another book, and let me say I can contribute in that department, I want to say a few words, Coho, in our remaining time together, about the reductive nature of your strategy discussion where you equate strategies for economic revolution with a game of tic tac toe.

C.C.: Well said, Marlen. I really must object to the notion of strategizing a working class revolution around a chess board.

Plury: And basketball? Am I supposed to organize my people into sports leagues and then explain how each offensive play is really a plan for revolution? It’s so…

Ana: Opportunist. Not to mention the competitive win/lose mentality it suggests. I really want to discuss this entire notion of strategy as you’ve presented it, Coho.

Coho, who couldn’t be happier: Glad to, Ana. Clearly this is a stumbling block for many of you. You are equating analogies with actual practice. Since I think strategy is extremely important, and I am hoping we can refine it in the next book you have been talking about, I do think that we need to understand what I am getting at in my sports/games analogy. If I may demonstrate?

Cyn: Demonstrate? Surely you don’t expect us to play …

Coho, drawing on a large pad of paper: Now as I said in my presentation, there are

simple strategies (draws tic tac toe) and there are complex strategies (draws basketball play board) Now let’s say that Nat, Radfem, and Sofie are the offense and Plury, Neopop, and Marlen are the defense…

(the group gathers around, clearing chairs and making notes on the backs of pages)

Coho: In a basketball strategy we are working with…

Nat: Yes, we got that part.

Radfem: Tie in the analogy with some actual political strategies, Coho.

Ana: Let’s have examples.

Cyn, still in the corner chair, speaking without conviction, almost as a question: This isn’t going to work…

Coho: Oh, but it is.

(We continue on with the discussion and we anticipate many more as our arguments develop and Coho’s strategy board becomes increasingly complex.)

So ends our last excerpt from the book Liberating Theory. I have to say, I hope you enjoyed hearing it as much as I enjoyed reading forty years after having helped to write it. On the one hand, I found the dialogues provocative, and I admit, in the case of this last one in particular, quite humorous. That may be more true for me than others, because I recognize Lydia’s deft and caring editorial hand all over the exchanges. But humor aside, as I read this, I was trying to get the points, but also, to simultaneously consider whether recent decades bear them out or disprove them. I feel it has been the former. 

About ten years ago I began work on a book now titled The Wind Cries Freedom. It has eighteen future revolutionary activists and one interviewer who convey their experiences in the next American Revolution. So the book is me sort of conveying, almost like channeling, that content so that folks can assess it from eighteen future interviewees instead of seven past authors.

I mention this here because as I now read chapters from Liberating Theory I wonder could those future revolutionaries have been acting on shared vision and strategy that emerged from refinements and extensions of Liberating Theory? In fact, when the new book was initially written ten years ago and then re-written intermittently over the past few years, I hadn’t looked back at the joint work by myself, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Holly Sklar, and Lydia Sargent and yet, at least to my eyes the lessons from the future revolutionaries, though they went further and included much more personal content, seem to me rather natural extensions and applications of the earlier views. That has been eye-opening.

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