In which Patti Cohen, Malcom King, Lydia Luxemburg, Bill Hampton, and Barbara Bethune discuss RPS second convention and shadow government.

[Author’s Note: This is the twelfth excerpt from a work titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution. This excerpt will also provide the substance for a forthcoming  RevolutionZ episode. The oral version will include spontaneous interjections made by the host on hearing the material aloud. The hope is the episode will help to make plausible the possibility of winning a new world and to simultaneously provoke those who hear it to contribute to discussions about vision and especially strategy for social change.]

The Second Convention

Patti Cohen, ex military, you became a writer-activist focused on understanding and relating constructively to working class and particularly military agendas. Relating strongly to other ex military, you got involved with peace movements and campaigns aimed at military and police structure and policy. At the first convention everyone agreed that decisions were temporary until there could be a second convention with greater participation. Can you tell us how that second convention came about, and what it was like?

At the first convention those attending and voting were self selected and attended as individuals. We liked RPS ideas, so we came. Organizers circulated materials beforehand, but despite their efforts, people who attended hadn’t all deliberated face to face in advance.

For the second convention the idea was that participants would all come from chapters. We waited over two years to have it and during that time established over 800 chapters. The average chapter had 40 members so we had roughly 32,000 active members.

32,000 people couldn’t attend a convention, but we did want to gain cross chapter solidarity by having folks from across the country, meet, hear others’ experiences, and share lessons. We would together ratify or perhaps reorient the basic RPS commitments and national campaigns.

We had to decide who would attend and how things would function. Our plan was simple. Each chapter would send five people. At least three women, at least two people of color, so about 4,000 people would attend. Chapters would choose who they sent using any method they favored. All chapter members would share costs however each chapter agreed. People coming from all the many chapters in each city would meet citywide at least twice before coming to the convention to get to know one another better and to discuss ideas they wished to bring. One statewide meeting of all delegates from all chapters in each state would precede the national convention as well. These meetings were, themselves, conventions of a sort. Finally, delegates from all over the U.S. would come to the national convention.

The national convention would last five days. Time would be set aside for presentations, discussion, debate, and for various elections and special events—including talks, social events, meals, and topical meetings.

Each chapter’s delegates would get time before major voting sessions to caucus with their full chapter memberships online. Chapters would receive reports and register their preferences with their delegates via these online sessions. Everything would be recorded and accessible, of course, after the gathering concluded.

Naturally this was only a way, not the way, to do this. But it was the way we did it.

How did the planning occur?

A year ahead, each chapter could optionally propose a person to work on a planning committee and serve as convention staff. Everyone knew this would be a big job, and also that the odds were good one wouldn’t get chosen to do this unless one was pretty well known.

Chapters proposed about 400 people. Descriptions of all these nominees were distributed to all chapters. Chapters couldn’t vote for their own nominee, and each chapter got four votes. Each chapter had to vote for two women and two men, and also had to vote for two people of color. Then, the 20 women with the most votes and the 20 men with the most votes were on the committee, as were the 20 people of color with the most votes. The committee therefore had to be at least 40 people and could conceivably be as many as 60 people. It turned out to be 48.

Those 48 became the planning committee and staff, responsible for getting a venue, preparing advance communications, developing an agenda, inviting guests, chairing sessions, and handling accommodations and food.

What from the first convention did the second convention change?

The program was updated, of course, but the basics of RPS had been conceived wisely and barely changed at all, at least that I can remember.

I guess the biggest innovation was implementing the Shadow Government idea. Various factors led to that, and for that matter, it certainly wasn’t original to RPS. The Green Party had done a Shadow Government during the second Obama administration, but at a much lesser scale than RPS undertook and with almost no impact. A precipitating factor of the RPS effort was that various RPS members had begun running for office and wanted an RPS project that those who did not win and their many supporters could plug into.

Tone and style changed dramatically. At the first convention, there was an undertone of worry that we would blow our opportunity. At the second convention confidence and a celebratory mood replaced worry. Almost everyone felt we were building a vehicle that was going to take society to a whole new place. Of course it wasn’t certain, but there was considerable confidence. There was revolution in the air. It wasn’t childish. It wasn’t wishful thinking. No one thought it was imminent. It was a quiet, calm assessment. RPS was growing and it wasn’t going away.

We had skits which poked fun at ourselves and even at particular prominent figures in RPS. Folks laughed. There was no defensiveness. People were serious, but there was a lightness to it all.

Discussions and the votes on program and for the Shadow Government meant a lot to us, but nonetheless we were relaxed. RPS’s emphasis on diversity and respect for minority positions served us well. Most votes were lopsided, yet the losing parties were always accommodated with means to explore their ideas further to be ready in case the winning ideas proved unsuccessful.

I am not saying we had no tense moments, particularly with close votes, but there was much less than at the first convention and, even more telling, when decisions were reached, I didn’t detect bad feelings. But the unity wasn’t an emergent hive mind. The reverse held. Since the first convention far more people broached and advocated richer and more varied ideas. People were gaining trust, confidence, and a sense of perspective.

People often consider only numbers of people relating and growth of militancy as signs of progress. But, while those familiar measures matter greatly, if you think about what would have to pertain in a peaceful, just, caring, self managing society, the kind of less easily described interpersonal progress I am pointing to was what kept the greater and steadily growing numbers of more militant participants functioning well together.

My apologies, I forgot to ask you how you became radicalized. Do you remember?

Dealing death and in time deciding to do so yourself was horribly wrong. One day—and this actually didn’t happen often—I saw someone I killed face to face. Next day, I watched a buddy of mine die. Other days, I killed, and saw death on my side, too, but it was nameless. After a time, it was all just death, like a palpable nasty cousin of life, uninvited but constantly showing up.

I was a product of military indoctrination and that is not easy to overcome. It had two main parts. Ideology was only a small aspect since the first paramount part, blindly obeying orders, took total control over having opinions at all. The second paramount part was contextually valid, at least to a point, but in the broader reality of social life, it was entirely insane. It was that we are a team, a family. Each of us is dependent on and needs to regard others as a lifeline to survival and as essential, if it comes to it, to save even at personal risk. But more, this family has borders and anyone outside those borders is an enemy. To the inside, we were taught, show respect and incredible solidarity. Limitless loyalty. To the outside, show nothing but unyielding strength and, if need be—and the tripwire for this was always set to snap easily—deliver violent aggression. Horrific hostility was our name.

Connections that formed on the battlefield were enduring. Both positive ones with friends and negative ones with nameless others ran deep. In battle, our military mentality fostered survival and winning, but in life our military mentality bred anti-social isolation.

My radicalization began when I began to jettison false beliefs and behaviors in Iraq. It deepened when I later urged and helped others to do likewise. I looked at individual’s views, but also at where the views came from and what alternatives existed. Before long I saw the link between imperialism and anti-sociality and between a life-denying system and its mentally tortured soldiers of fortune.  At that point, RPS provided me a natural home. It kept me on track and sane against my PTSD, and, I like to think, it made me effective in the struggle.

Shadow Government

Senator King, Malcolm, I think you ran for and won your first local election not long after the second convention. What was the attitude toward elections that emerged from the first and then the second convention? What impact did RPS have on your efforts then, and later too?

Yes, I did win my first election back then. The RPS attitude, which hasn’t changed all that much since, was that to run for office was potentially good, and to win was potentially good, but there were also serious pitfalls that could pervert good into bad.

The main benefits we liked were that running could facilitate outreach to new audiences, raise consciousness, and boost morale. Winning could gain access to resources to help win more gains in the future.

The main pitfalls were that candidates might fixate on winning votes and lose track of larger aims. We might worry more about vote tallies and fund-raising then about actual program. Having won an election, or even just done reasonably well, candidates might develop an elitist “better than thou” self perception. We might fall in love with holding office more than with achieving worthy aims.

As individuals, RPS members aided campaigns we favored, and we evan ran for office, but as an organization, to avoid getting sucked into electoral dynamics at the expense of our broader agenda, RPS opted against collective electoral participation. RPS members helped immeasurably with my campaigns and my work while in office as well. RPS members gave me a rooted sense of my role. They helped me arrive at my views and practices. They pushed me to be accountable. During my Senate run almost everyone centrally involved in my campaign was in RPS. Yet, as an organization, RPS never officially had anything to do with it.

Lydia, did the shadow government idea surface at that time? How did you get involved? What did the shadow government do, and what did you do in it?

The idea was floated back when Ralph Nader had run for President as a Green. And Greens actually had one during the Obama administration. When Sanders lost the nomination in 2016 the idea surfaced again, this time for him, but it didn’t happen. I remember wanting Nader to do it, and then Sanders, but feeling that without a prominent jump start, such a project would accomplish little. Years later, the idea resurfaced in RPS and became part of the agenda for the second convention.

I liked the idea and agitated for it even though I worried that without a well known national figure to generate excitement, it might not fly. The logic was to set up a group who would have the same official positions as their counterparts in real government. We would have a President, a Vice President, a whole cabinet, and various other positions as well, including Supreme Court judges, Senators, and other posts too.

Ironically, given my desire for someone really prominent to galvanize the idea and despite the fact that I wasn’t particularly prominent, I became the first President. But the key factor wasn’t me, or even my lack of prominence. It was the 32,000 RPS active members, and tens of thousands of other supporters who were not yet in chapters. They were what made the Shadow Government idea work. Members contributed on average $25 per month, which meant nearly $10 million in the first year, with the amount growing dramatically due to our growing membership each year thereafter. And members also helped generate policy and demands and agitated for them.

The idea was for our shadow government to operate in parallel to the real government. We would take stands on all major issues the real government addressed, butalso on critical though officially unaddressed issues. We would offer our views to display an alternative and to agitate for policies we favored. We also generated our own projects and programs and fought for progressive policies.

Patti, at the second convention, how did the first shadow government get formed?

It was partly an election for the President, Vice President, and Senators, and it was partly a process of appointments for Supreme Court Judges, Cabinet members, and others.

The shadow Senators were elected before the second national convention, by State conventions. The President and Vice President were elected at the second convention, with part of the convention being the candidates giving speeches. Nominations were conducted earlier, at the State conventions, and were whittled down to four for each office by a prior national online vote of all chapter members. The vote at the national convention was of the whole membership too, since each chapter got live reports from its delegates, saw the speeches online, and then held votes of its members at local gatherings. For the vote at the convention, chapter tallies were conveyed. It was surprisingly dramatic and exciting. Lydia became the first President, as you know, and Bert became the first Vice President. The Senators were all present, and a meeting of all of who had been elected began appointing Judges, White House staff, and the Shadow Cabinet. Then part of their time at the Convention went to the new government members setting up their subsequent online and live meeting schedules.

Did it all go smoothly, were there any serious problems?

There were hiccups, of course. Folks would argue about the merits of different candidates. No one knew precisely what the new jobs would entail. Sometimes communications got confused or failed for technical reasons. But in my memory, it was all so aggressively positive and optimistic that the good far outweighed any glitches.

Serious convention problems? Regrettably, yes, one dynamic arose and I was actually intimately involved. A group of ex-military made a collective proposal on behalf of arming so as to battle directly with police. They saw themselves as “true revolutionaries,” precisely because they identified their readiness to shoot it out with their “being revolutionary,” and they identified rejecting weaponry as being “phony” or even cowardly.

To the extent they had a case, it was that if those seeking change rejected the use of weapons, those defending the status quo would inevitably win by sheer force of arms and repression. It was a one step argument and they were correct that if it was true that we could not win fundamental change without overcoming state violence with movement violence, then anyone who said we should be non violent was conceding we could not win fundamental change.

If the “if” part was true, then the “then” part followed. But was the if part true? Well, of course we now know from experience it wasn’t, though some rambo-ish types are probably still holdouts. But really we knew it then too, and much earlier, as well.

What made this a problem wasn’t that such a view was offered, but the way it was offered. These guys marched in, armed with rifles, and took the stage. This, they felt, demonstrated the power of guns. They offered their effectively one line logic, and from then on their only stance was you are either with us, or you are with the state—where the state was everyone hell bent on maintaining the current system.

Still, why a problem? It was, in my view, because the people present didn’t want to take too strong a stance with these folks who had, after all, gone through war time conflict. That they had jaundiced views was considered a product of their history.

And your involvement?

I argued the counter view—that violence would not only distort our ability to think straight and function well, witness them, but that it would play into the hands of the powers that be. Violence was terrain where the state would inevitably win. Our task in confronting violence was to disarm it by making it ineffective such that more violence against us would mean more dissent from us.

I was a veteran of active duty, and a military organizer so I quickly gathered a group, unarmed, and we simply walked up on stage and said “now what? Are you going to shoot us? Or would shooting us do your agenda more harm than good? Surely you can see we aren’t on the side of the state. Surely you can see we aren’t cowards. So are you going to shoot us because we reject your argument? Shoot us, or let’s go talk further.”

And our act defused their formulation that anyone against them was for system preservation by comparing our own history of organizing and activism to theirs—which was nearly nil. We got them to leave the stage to talk further with us.

The ensuing talks were a bit cathartic for many. The truth was that rather than their history as it manifested in their thinking being a justification for their thinking, our time talking together revealed that their thinking was not carefully reasoned but something less.

The bigger point was different though. They did have an effect which reverberated for some time. The truth is both sides of the argument had some merit. Our side was about overall relations in the large. Movements thinking they can fight the state play into the hands of the state which itself wants nothing so much as to make politics into war, moving from our terrain of issues and aims to their terrain of pure power. In the small, however, the armed guys on the stage did reveal a parallel truth. In a group, one guy with a club is a problem. Five guys with guns are an even bigger problem.

We faced two issues. On the one hand, could we handle police and military violence in local demonstrations? The answer was yes, but only by way of creating a situation in which if the police or military used violence against us it would rebound to our benefit, not their’s.

The second issue was trickier. Could we handle personal violence from our own people—such as these vets—motivated by thuggery, lunacy, infiltration, or sincere belief? It would be hard if not impossible to make internal violence counter productive for them if those doing it were beyond reason much less if they were actively trying to damage RPS. We did okay with the guys on the stage at the convention. But they weren’t trying to harm RPS. What if they were?

And so emerged a feeling that RPS had to have a means to deal with internal or external craziness or sabotage. Discussions went on for some time. Could we address this threat yet not corrupt the style and modes of operation of RPS and distort people’s mindsets and views of one another? Could we prepare for such situations without our preparedness doing us more harm than the situations themselves?

A first thought was, well, how about if we have a few people, who have the training and experience for handling crazy violent interlopers, invisibly armed and prepared. There were two problems. First, the secrecy contradicted so much else we were doing. We decided the decision had to be taken by the organization as a whole, including that those empowered for security would not openly carry, or even be known. We decided to elect a group who would then secretly designate security folks.

But second, what if these security folks themselves became problematic? We decided the people picked shouldn’t be the most macho and military in bearing and training. Experienced folks should train the people picked as need be, but the people literally providing security should be mild mannered.

We also decided that while that set of steps made sense, we weren’t sure it was really needed. After all, we had now completed two conventions and we had been involved in all kinds of demonstrations and campaigns, including often running up against police and state power. So maybe paranoia about the likelihood of internal lunacy was a bigger problem for us than such lunacy itself. And it turned out that this cautiousness at undertaking the project was wise. We had the plan ready to propose, for a wide discussion and vote, but we decided to hold off until and unless practical evidence suggested it was needed. And, because of our huge growth, that time never came. On the other hand, I and various others around the country did quietly work with folks on how to deal with intruders, drunks, ideologically intractable folks, infiltrators, and the like non-violently but forcefully. And here we are, so I guess all was well.

Lydia, what was the hardest thing about doing the Shadow Government. And do you remember what you considered its first successes?

Well, truth be told it was a tremendous amount of work. After all, we were generating positions on an amazing array of issues and we needed to get the facts right even though we lacked the giant support bureaucracy the real government had. I was constantly meeting, discussing, and then holding press conferences and giving public talks. I was on the road 200-250 days a year for my four year term. It was exciting, and there was a sense of accomplishment and joy in the work, but it was also exhausting and, honestly, when repetitive, quite boring.

We didn’t have office holders traveling first class and doing only that which was engaging. No, office holders did our fair share of rote work. And the responsibility we felt was also difficult. But, as hard as the work was, and as tiring as the constant pressure to deliver was, I think the hardest part, was psychological. And this had two parts.

First, we formed our Shadow Government mimicking the U.S. Government’s structures and offices but everyone involved hated that set of institutions. It made each day strange. I hated the presidency and was shadow president.

We wanted what we created to resonate with the country. When I gave a speech it was as Shadow President. And the same would hold for the rest of us. That way, the media, and even the public would quickly understand the contrast between RPS and the actual government of the U.S. But shadowing the government precluded, at least at first, a contrast of operations and structure. The difference was only policies. To redress that, we decided to slowly alter our government structure, announcing organizational changes like other polices we advocated as things we thought ought to happen in the actual government. We changed various election laws, funding mechanics, and then added and deleted various positions, changed their mandates, and made other changes, too, even during my four year term.

The second hard thing was also psychological. Keeping my head on straight, and likewise for other folks. We didn’t require that everyone call me Madame President and otherwise pay homage, but many did. And I was constantly interviewed, questioned, and listened to as if I was some kind of oracle. So it would have been all too easy, and I suppose even natural, to get into bad habits. I worked to avoid that but I think what helped most was I appointed as my Press Secretary and Chief of Staff people who would keep me in line.

Assessing successes is not so easy. People usually think in terms of actually winning sought gains. But in truth that is not the earmark of success. You can win, and go home, and it doesn’t mean much for the long haul, even if there is some important benefit in the short run. You can lose a battle, a demand, whatever, but in the process establish new methods, or new organization or consciousness, that persists and leads to later gains. You can win, nominally, but lose. You can lose, nominally, but win.

I think the first significant success in both senses that we all celebrated was when, after just a few months, we countered mainstream government military policies, budgets, and interventionism, with our own foreign policy approach emphasizing disarmament, reallocation of funding, use of military forces for social good, retooling bases, withdrawing troops, and so on. Our proposals were so extensive, clear, and sensible and their immediate and long term benefits were so apparent, that the whole process gained tremendous credibility. From then on, Shadow presentations of policy were highly anticipated and taken very seriously by wide circuits of people.

Next, I would say our passing dramatically expanded social service policies, minimum wage policies, work week length laws, and so on was also a very effective step. We didn’t just contrast our desired policies and choices to the mainstream government’s actual policies and choices, though that was part of it. After all, we said to people see what you get with them—and see what you would get with us? We also went beyond that to the Shadow Government investing time, energy, and funds into outreach, organizing, and agitation. And in that way we started to win gains which was another massive achievement, that in turn spurred us to do more.

Shadow Society

Bill, the broad idea behind the RPS Shadow Government wasn’t limited to government. What was the general approach and how was it pursued?

The Shadow/Alternative idea was to create models for future institutions that were also worthy projects for the present. Being Shadow/Alternative meant these projects did functions that were in some degree done by existing institutions, but did them in parallel, and in new ways.

The “be worthy” aspect was that we should create projects whose operations would contribute to on going activism and people’s well being, or both. A media or organizing project would do mostly the former. A health clinic or day care center would do mostly the latter.

The “model” aspect was that we should create projects that evidenced how things would be different in a better future and that revealed—or discovered—new ways of operating that were suitable for future relations. You can see that the Shadow Government, steadily reconceiving itself, fit all the criteria.

Shadow/Alternative projects were initiated as you would imagine. Sometimes young people just getting out of school or otherwise entering adult life would look for a positive project to pursue and decide to create a media project, a clinic, a restaurant, a law firm, a food distribution center, or whatever else in accord with RPS values and commitments.

Another path was when older folks with a history in some field decided to move toward doing things in new ways, sometimes by transforming their old institution or sometimes by leaving their old project and creating a new one. Over time, we saw some health clinics, day care centers, restaurants, food stores, and a few law firms transform. We also saw various teachers, health workers, day care workers, and lawyers leave their existing establishments and group together to form alternatives.

One difference, maybe even a category difference, was whether a project was literally shadowing an institution in society, or whether it was simply functioning on its own as an alternative. Maybe only the former should be called “Shadow” and the latter should be called Alternative. So the Shadow Government was literally shadowing the real government—not only not operating in the same way but expressing views and advocating for them. In contrast, a health clinic, magazine, or day care center wasn’t shadowing a mainstream institution. It was doing similar functions but in its own alternative way. It was a fine line, though. For example, the shadow government was continually redefining itself to have alternative features.

Barbara, what impact did this approach have? How did it interact with more direct campaigns?

It had pretty much the intended effects, I think—though not every attempt panned out. Each successful shadow or alternative project educated those involved and also those who witnessed it or interacted with it about what a new society could entail and mean. As the efforts grew and diversified, they revealed and even tested potential features of new arrangements. Likewise, when a Shadow or Alternative institution was working well, it would benefit its consumers and workers, students and teachers, medical staff or patients, and so on, in the present, and its product might contribute to social change more broadly.

Why did some efforts work, and others, as you say, not pan out?

The recurring reasons were not so different than what plagues any start-up firms in a market system. Lack of resources and constant pressure of financial shortfalls hurt. Limited visibility rooted in the tendency of the mainstream to ignore or ridicule such efforts hurt. Pressures on participants deriving from lack of experience and confidence hurt, too.

The miracle is that so many of the efforts succeeded. It is one thing to establish equitable remuneration and balanced job complexes throughout an economy. It is quite another thing to do it in a small part of an economy which for the most part still worships personal material advance and offers options to get such gains, albeit options that deny others the same opportunities.

If you have training and skills and knowledge, you can get a job paying a lot and for which you have only tasks that are empowering. Or, you can take a job in a fragile start-up where you will earn a lot less and have to do disempowering as well as empowering work. Imagine you have family and friends who perpetually warn you that the alternative endeavor is insane. Sticking with doing it is a hard choice.

It is also very different to participate in an established, large, classless institution or in a quite small one. In the former, there will be plenty of people, and among them, plenty who you will like and take support from. Likewise, there will be a wide range of tasks so creating desirable balanced jobs will be pretty simple. In a small operation, in contrast, you may not have friends and jobs will be harder to define and more likely to contain elements you do not wish to do.

Finally, projects have to operate in the existing world, with markets constantly compelling behavioral choices contrary to what you hope to achieve.

All this is difficult rather than only fulfilling and delightful. Don’t get me wrong, there were many benefits to establishing a desirable workplace even in the earliest days, even with corrupting and constraining features all around you, but for doing so to be relatively stress free and secure required projects becoming more prevalent and larger. Now such firms are in high demand. Even folks who might fancy themselves so worthy that they should be paid more and allowed to avoid all disempowering tasks have considerable reason to compromise on those desires in order to enjoy a congenial workplace without class conflict.

There are other factors too. Suppose you have a big firm and two members get in a fight, or they have a relationship and it breaks up. Separate the folks involved and the fallout will dissipate. But if you have a small operation and the same thing happens, on-going awkwardness or outright hostility can be quite poisonous with separation impossible.

Ironically most critics think alternative institutions are easier, and even only possible, when they are small. But the exact opposite is true. So for all these reasons, the earliest projects were by far hardest, most vulnerable, most demanding, and most tense. It was the pioneers, often never acknowledged, who did the most difficult work, not those who unfurled banners of great victories much latter. There was nothing wrong with enjoying the latter, but it would be nice if somehow we could have more respect for the unknown trail blazers.

Lydia, it seems like there was a mentality that made all this much more real and powerful than it might have been, or even than similar efforts had been earlier. Can you try to convey what that difference was?

I am glad you asked that. I think it bears a lot of repeating, actually, because it is very easy to think of the answer as just hand waving, or cheer leading, but I happen to think it really was pivotal.

I think one way to describe it is we went from whining to winning.

Think of a professional athletic team. What distinguishes those who win from those who lose? Talent and training are part of it, of course. But let’s assume talent and training are essentially the same for some set of teams. Then what distinguishes them? Luck will be a factor, but I contend that people’s attitudes will often be most important.

Those who think they can win and who confidently approach even difficult challenges as obstacles to remove, to go around, or to climb over have a chance for a great season. Those who doubt that they can win and who despondently approach even modest challenges as immovable mountains that irremediably obstruct their way, have virtually no chance for a good season.

Imagine a successful professional football or soccer coach meeting with her team. Suppose they lost their most recent game. It’s time to talk about the next game or the rest of the season. Does the coach repeatedly bemoan the size and strength of upcoming opponents? Does she talk endlessly about how the schedule is horrible for her team? Does the coach list her team’s detriments and the opponent’s strengths as if they are unbridgeable impediments to success?

No, the coach respects reality but approaches each game highlighting what her team can best affect. How can the team alter its choices and behavior to win? If the coach spends each meeting endlessly listing the strengths of opponents without any clarification of how those strengths are to be overcome, she needs to get a new job and the team might as well go on vacation.

Now consider movements. We might not like the similarity, but we, too, have to try to win just like professional athletic teams do. That’s the ultimate criterion of success in social struggle. Just playing nicely at improving society isn’t enough. Winning ends wars, feeds the hungry, gives dignity to the exploited, and reduces hardships. Winning creates a new world without the need for continuing such struggles. On the other hand, just playing nicely or “fighting the good fight” without winning, or arguably without even trying to win, lays the seeds for further losses to come.

So does the left have a winning attitude? Can we have a good season, a good career with our current mindset? All too often in the past the answer has been no. All too often too many of us looked at a half-full or quarter-full glass and talked only about how much was missing in tones that suggested that our glass could never be more full. Indeed, we even saw leaks in our glass where they didn’t exist and imagined powers to deplete our glass’s contents that our opponents did not have.

Too few of us asked, how do we get more (members) into our glass, and how do we retain those we have rather than watching them leak away? Too often we went beyond sensibly analyzing the conditions that we encountered to fruitlessly whining about things we couldn’t influence. Too often we paid too little attention to things about our situation we could remove, end run, or climb over, much less to agendas for doing so.

Am I exaggerating our past condition? If so, I think not by too much. Our glass is our movements. The fact is, whether we are talking about matters of class, race, gender, political power, ecology, international relations, or whatever else, our movements weren’t, before RPS and also even in RPS’s early period, nearly as full of members as they needed to be for us to win sequences of short-run reforms much less long-run new institutions

But how many leftists back then wrote and spoke about what was wrong with society without accompanying the analysis with a strategic commentary about how to win better, so that (even against their intent) their words had more or less the impact of moaning about the size of next week’s opponent? In contrast, how many wrote and spoke about how our choices contributed to why our movement didn’t grow faster, or about how our choices contributed to why it lost the members who we did attract, and especially about what we could do to have better results?

How many of us wrote or spoke about the oppressiveness or power of the media, the state, or corporations, as compared to writing or speaking about the attributes needed in our movements to oppose the media’s, state’s, and corporations’ power and oppressiveness, and about the potential power of opposition and especially how it might be enhanced?

Extending the sports analogy, a team or coach that doesn’t know what it wants to achieve for a season will wind up wherever it is pushed by events, but not somewhere that it seeks to be, such as becoming a champion. Successful teams map out clear goals. If they are not ready to try to win the championship this year, then next year, or the next. They attune their daily, weekly, and seasonal agendas to their long-term goals.

Did the left used to do that, even individuals in it, much less as a whole? Did we have shared institutional goals for the economy, the polity, for families and kinship, for the culture, for international relations, for the ecology? Did we organize our thoughts about what to do today in light not only of our current strengths and weaknesses and of the immediate conditions we confronted and of our immediate aims, but also in light of how all this related to our long-term goals?

Most of the left quite rightly criticized professional sports commercialism, sexism, racism, and class relations. But it would have helped it we had also learned a little from them. Sports teams are the world’s foremost competitors and, like it or not, we are in a competition rooted in class, gender, race, and political relations. Sports reveals that if we despondently whine, we will lose. On the other hand, if we confidently strategize, we can win. Likewise, if we lack goals we will wind up somewhere we’d rather not be, but if we have goals, we may attain them.

This is all utterly obvious, really, it is, but it’s worth emphasizing because amidst pyrotechnic displays of mental virtuosity about contentious paradigms—as well as amidst serious and admirable projects and movements that suffer a lack of resources and serious time pressures—this truism is often the first thing to drop out of our consciousness.

So, trite as it may sound, I think it was our cultivating a mindset to win that was key to the Shadow Government working. We weren’t preening for the mirror. We weren’t taking selfies to celebrate our good looks. We weren’t padding our resumes. We weren’t whining. We were hell bent on increasing our numbers of participants, the effectivity of our infrastructure, the depth of our morale, and thus our power to win immediate reforms and to lay the groundwork for further gains in the future, all the way to a new society.

When Sanders had his millions of votes I thought, okay, come on, do a shadow government. But maybe it was just as well he didn’t. If he had, I think its composition and evolution would have been quite different than ours has been. He would have started way bigger, and with way more resources, but a shadow government he did would have been less grassroots and would have had fewer insights about developing in ways suited to winning a new society.

You can see how, I hope, if someone thinks that the left is not able to become a serious player in the future of our society, and thinks all that’s really possible is tweaking existing relations this way and that, then the mood and agenda of a shadow government would be very different than ours has been. And this applies not just to the Shadow Government project, but to the whole logic of a parallel or shadow society.

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