In which Bert Dellinger, Reverend Stephen Du Bois, Lydia Luxemburg, and Peter Cabral discuss RPS vision.

[Author’s Note: This is the thirteenth 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.]

Vision Per Se

Bert, shared vision has always been a kind of central component of what it means for someone to be part of RPS. Why is that? And, well, what does “vision” even mean? What is a vision?

It is a particularly good question, Miguel, but also a hard one. It is good because, as you say, it mattered greatly to what RPS has undergone and become. Also because it matters greatly to how a movement functions, what it seeks, who is in it, and so on. It is hard, however, because it was controversial and only emerged as a shared view in RPS after some serious exploration and debate, and even now there is still much that comes up for regular reconsideration. But I don’t just mean specific visions, I mean vision per se—which is what I think you are asking about.

Yes, at the risk of getting a little abstract, that is exactly what I am asking about. What views about vision were there at the outset, with what logic, and what emerged over time?

The people who initiated RPS and early joiners had in common, I think, not to use too harsh a word, a kind of distaste—hell, even revulsion—for what they saw as prior examples of what they called sectarianism. They wanted to get beyond having regimented politics, closed up politics, lines, blueprints, and the like. They didn’t want dogma. And there were, and this is admittedly my take on it, three variants on this inclination.

The first variant was to gravitate toward the idea, even the slogan, “anything goes.” The notion was that a movement to create a better world ought to, well, it ought to create a world in which anything goes, a world in which there are not restraints on human creativity and desire. The second variant didn’t go quite that far. It said, we can and we should agree on centrally important values, but beyond those core values, we can and should work out what we want in the way of institutions only in practice, only based on experience and trial and error. We should not get specific about any of that in advance. We don’t know enough to do so and further, it isn’t our place to do so. At least it is not our place now, in advance. People should decide things when they emerge as practical problems based on their experiences experimenting with possibilities. The third approach which over time I guess would say proved itself most worthy and became the way RPS thinks about and tries to produce useful vision now, borrowed some form the first two, but also added and deviated from them.

[Narrator: I interject some readers may feel one or more of the above viewpoints not worthy of any support—well not the third, of course (he he) but the first two. The most celebrated and I think brilliant advocate of something like and that was taken by some to be the first was a philosopher of science Paul Federabend. The most celebrated and I think even more brilliant advocate of the second was Noam Chomsky. And for the third, there have been many as it became the view of RPS, itself.]

Bert continues:

Without going on too long, one way to perhaps summarize the thinking was that the second approach in essence said to the first, we like your leaning, your inclination, your spirit, but you go too far. To say everything is acceptable is to say nothing isn’t acceptable, and that nothing sought is for that matter any better than anything else. As a conceptual approach, it provides no helpful guidance. So we say instead, certain values like solidarity, say, or equity, and others too, are really worthy. They are what a good society needs to fulfill. So the second approach said we need to settle on shared values because doing so will provide our movements needed orientation. It will inform out choice what institutions to reject, the ones that violate our values, and what institutions to seek in their place, the ones we discover as we proceed that are able to facilitate society fulfilling our values.

Then the third approach said to the second, we like your emphasis on guiding values and we agree that vision can go too far. It can indeed go beyond what our knowledge and experience can justify. It can indeed specify details that are for future people to determine as they see fit. Worst, it can become so enamored of its own speculations that it closes off thoughts that diverge from them. But, at the same time, vision can go not far enough. Values alone are not enough to provide hope and direction. They are not enough to helpfully orient our choices in desired destinations so we can plant the seeds of the future in the present. To do that, we have to have something in mind for the future. And, perhaps mainly, they are not enough to convince people with legitimate and sincere doubts that our movement can replace what we reject in ways that make things better, much better, and not worse. We need to be able to answer peoples’ legitimate question, what do you want, not only with values that we want society to fulfill, and not even only with values and with explanations of why certain current core features don’t allow fulfilling those values so we should reject them, but also with compelling discussion of new features, new institutions, that will implement the values. Rebutting the idea that no other world is possible requires that much vision.

So we need values and also institutions, okay, but couldn’t the sectarian approaches of the past have claimed to be presenting just that, though their values and their institutions. And couldn’t we, seeking values and institutions become sectarian? What is different?

You are right, Miguel, and the advocates of the second view knew it, and pressed the point, sufficiently that the advocates of the third view got the message. One different thing, and this was crucial, was different values and different institutions. But that wasn’t the whole of it. What emerged beyond that was a view that a society, any particular society, has countless features. In fact, any two societies that we label as being the same type in some way—say capitalist or feudal, democratic of dictatorship, feminist or misogynist, racist or intercommunalist, or whatever—typically have countless differences—languages, histories, levels of technology, populations, products, art, cuisine, geography, really tons of things. So what makes two societies one type even just along any particular axis? It can only be that they share certain core features regarding that aspect even though they differ in countless other features. That holds for, say, two economies. If they share certain key features that are found to be essential to a type, we say they are both that type even if they have countless other differences including about the economy. And it is true again for polities, or for modes of kinship and culture. In fact, even inside a given society, or let’s say in an economy, suppose we consider two workplaces. They can differ in an incredible number of specifics, for example, in what they produce, how big they are, what their buildings are like, what tools they use, who works there, and on and on, and yet if they share certain key features, we say they are again, of the same type. Same for families, and so on.

It is pretty abstract…

Yes, it is. In fact it is true of other domains as well—things of one type typically have major differences beyond certain kay shared attributes that define the type. Think of the type person, or even chair. Things with countless differences go in each. But I think you are likely to get into more specifics soon enough and presenting the abstract case matters because the whole point is that it reveals a logic or way of thinking about vision per se, not about particular visions. So the third approach basically said we agree to avoid regimentation/sectarianism, and we agree on the need for shared values, but we think beyond that there are certain key institutional features that are essential to fulfill the values. So we reject institutions that violate the values, but we support certain key institutions that will fulfill the values…

Miguel asks, what about the criticism that approach two had that said we don’t know enough to settle on institutional judgments?

Well, Miguel, we decided that that was partly true but also partly wrong and we had to navigate that difference. First, it really severely understated the amount of experience we had available to assess to make judgments. After all, the effort to have a better society didn’t begin yesterday, much less tomorrow. We have centuries of history to look at. We have countless efforts. We know, also, a lot about people, about ourselves, and about social relations. We know enough, the third approach says, to confidently say various institutional choices are horribly flawed. We need to reject them. But we also know enough to identify some key, core features that will be able to fulfill our values, or that we even judge to be essential to do so. Call the type society we seek a Participatory Society. Variant three said, we know enough to say certain institutions cannot be part of a participatory society, because they would cause it to fail to fulfill its values. More, certain other institutions, or really institutional features, are essential. Without those, the Participatory Society would fail to fulfill its sought values. So those features are the ones, at least given our current knowledge, that we believe will characterize a society as a Participatory Society. Those are the features new have to have in mind to orient our actions. When we plant the seeds of the future in the presents, those are the features we are trying to foreshadow. We are open about it, of course. We know we will no doubt experiment and learn and alter views as we proceed. But, the third variant said, there are two forms of that, one that we think will occur a ton, and one that we think will be far less frequent, and perhaps not really occur at all.

The first is that participatory movements in different societies, even in different parts of a society, will come upon tons of different peripheral or contingent features. The kinds of features which can differ from society to society, or even within a society, and still the society is participatory. That a features is peripheral and contingent doesn’t at all mean it is unimportant. It just means such features can differ without disrupting fulfilling the type’s core values. We even tended, some of us anyhow, to call our core values plus our core institutional commitments a kind of scaffold on which different populations would add different contingent but nonetheless important features, often different from one another, and often chosen based on experimentation and valuation as they go along. So you can see, variant three took the concerns or worries of variants one and two very seriously, but added the very practical concern that vision needs, after all, to provide sufficient orientation, guidance, and confidence, to motivate support.

You know I am of course familiar with this stuff, but people who read our oral history, will they be? I don’t know. I suspect some of your explanations may not register, may feel too vague or abstract…

Yes, I agree that that is likely to be how some, maybe many, maybe even almost all who read the above will respond at first. Hell, RPS members took plenty of time, you and I took plenty of time, to get where we arrived. But I suspect you will go on in your questions to query about particular RPS visions, and I suspect if readers keep the above in mind, or return to it after hearing about specific RPS visions, it will start to make more sense. At any rate, I hope so. So, go ahead, get specific, but not too specific!

[Narrator: I interject, so which is it? Does the above from Bert seem obvious to you, how you already or how you should think about these matters, or is it just unfamiliar, or is it like a foreign language?]

Political Vision

Okay, Bert, you’re are right, let’s move on. In seeking an overview of values and ideas that formed and still form the foundation of RPS, and now with your convoluted hyper abstract discussion of vision per se, we have come to RPS vision itself, and though of course it has been written about and discussed and proclaimed and shared and pursued for over twenty years and is now very well known, maybe you can briefly describe the political vision of RPS and particularly how people came up with it.

Convoluted? Hyper abstract? Jeeeez. You asked for it. But okay, fair enough, so now political vision. RPS recognizes that political activity includes legislation of laws, adjudication of disputes, and collective implementation of shared programs. Given RPS values and concepts, we realized a new political system should accomplish these functions but also produce solidarity rather than anti-sociality and diversity rather than homogenized outcomes. It should produce just outcomes (equity applied to politics) and particularly self management. Of course it should produce these things not for some people, but for all people. 

[Narrator: I interject, without belaboring, I hope you can see that what Bert is really doing there is very succinctly laying out what they took to be the defining features to look at to agree on a type of polity…]

Bert continues

So we thought to ourselves, if we are part of a community, state, or country, how can we organize ourselves to attain such results? How can we interact so our decision making will advance each citizen via the advance of all citizens? How might we respect multiple paths forward and not enshrine one right mind or one right path? We knew polity should help generate fair outcomes, redress past imbalances, and prevent future ones, but how? It should produce collective self management for all. Again, how? What core features could constitute a participatory polity?

So that was having values and then asking what institutions can fulfill those values, for polity in particular?

Yes, right, and we didn’t want some all encompassing blueprint. We wanted core elements that we thought to be essential. Partly we had to think about it based on past experiences and history, and partly when that wasn’t enough, we had to honestly intuit or speculate and then try options to eliminate bad ones and improve good ones. We first felt that the kinds of grassroots mechanisms people tended to spontaneously form when they were highly active were a likely good starting place. We should try to employ nested councils where the primary-level councils include every adult in the society in their local councils. Then we thought some decisions are not really local, but more encompassing and so we figured some folks would likely need to be elected from the local ones to higher level ones covering larger areas, as well, for another layer, and another.

Practical experience experimenting with this in our chapters and organization taught RPS that the number of members in each council should be small enough to guarantee that people could be involved in face-to-face discussions, yet big enough for an adequate diversity of opinion while also ensuring that the number of levels of councils needed to accommodate the entire society was manageable. IT turned out, for example, that twenty members per council seemed to be a good choice—though certainly not the only possibility. With that size, remarkably, seven or eight layers would cover even the largest countries.

[Narrator: I interject, notice that this is an example of a very significant contingent feature. One participatory polity might opt for 20, but another perhaps for 15 or 25, who knows? Different aspects but still each participatory institutions because of the guiding logic, both small enough and big enough.]

Bert continues:

So the idea so far was that RPS recognizes that political activity includes legislating laws, adjudicating disputes, and implementing shared program, so that political institutions should generate fair outcomes and produce solidarity and that part of doing that for legislative functions would be to have every adult in society in a local neighborhood assembly, with every assembly electing a representative to a higher-level assembly, and then another layer, and another.

Then we thought about councils themselves and how they might best operate. Suppose within a council we are choosing between one person, one vote-majority rule and consensus for decisions in general or for a particular decision, or we are deciding the mandates of representatives and their responsibilities, or we are settling on procedures of debate and evaluation, or deciding means of voting and tallying. How should we arrive at a preference for using one approach over another at particular levels and for particular types of decisions?

The RPS answer was that we should seek self-management plus confidence in arriving at wise choices. We should protect and pursue diversity. We should maintain solidaritous feelings and practices. We should get things done without debilitating delays.

The values guiding, again.

Yes, in choosing contingent features. And reasonable people, we realized, would of course sometimes disagree about some issue or other. Some might see the facts of a matter, say abortion or a more local issue of land development, differently than others. Some might calculate incorrectly about the merits of some judicial mechanism while others calculate accurately. Some might even have different priorities, values, or intuitions than others about complex implications of something like a new law about space travel, or about animal rights, or just about a new pool in a neighborhood. We came to realize that the trick of successful legislative structure would be to have a system that allows self-managed choices in which everyone agrees that the choices are reached fairly for all and are either excellent or, in any event, flexibly subject to review even while alternative choices are still explored. This is what the nested council system, guided by commitments to self-management, solidarity, and diversity seeks to achieve.

Councils should be mutually supportive and protect and even promote dissent. That is what diversity dictates. They should get things done without debilitating delays—quality demands that— but recognizing all should have appropriate influence reflecting the degree they will be affected.Self management dictates that.

Okay, but surely there were complaints that if everyone influences decisions, we won’t elevate the best decision-makers.

You are right that of course many people thought exactly that, indeed perhaps we all worried about it until we realized that saying that people who are better decision makers don’t get more say doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be heard. They simply need to convince others of the validity of their views, not impose them. We don’t ignore expertise, but nor do we give it undue power.

I remember that to address this I used to ask critics, for example at early talks presenting the vision, okay, who is the world’s foremost expert in your desires? The critic might wonder a bit but then realized, well, that’s me, isn’t it? And I would reply, yes, of course, and that means that ensuring your influence when you are affected respects your expertise. More, a decision reached without the will of those affected being counted is not a good decision in any event. It is not only missing their expert insight, it is imposed, not supported. If democracy is better than autocracy, then collective self-management is better yet. On the other hand, if experts having disproportionate power is better than informed participation by all affected, then dictatorship by a genius is better than democracy for all.

I bet folks said you were exaggerating to make the choice go your way. Clever but not convincing,..

Perhaps I was, but my little provocation made a point. We have to pick a preferred logic and RPS prefers self-management and a legislative structure that allows everyone to agree that outcomes are reached fairly while of course attending to the evidence and logic offered by experts.

Were you assuming that everyone would abide every norm…

Some critics thought so, sure, but we knew that disputes and violations would occur, and to deal with that, RPS vision had to have means to deal with that. We knew judicial systems often address judicial review (are the laws themselves just?), criminal justice (have specific individuals violated the laws?), and civil adjudication (how are disputes between individuals resolved?). But we also knew we would need innovations in these areas, just like with legislation. So RPS said we need a significantly improved court system, plus community-controlled police with balanced job complexes and equitable remuneration…

And I bet a lot of people, at the outset, rebelled against that just like I did when I first heard it.

You are right, of course. RPS arrived at favoring a court system that would operate with hierarchical levels adjudicating disputes arising over council choices. Is this the best approach we can imagine? Can it be refined or transformed to further enhance self-management? Experimentation, much of which is under way or still to come, will tell. This is, to hark back, the issue of core features as compared to contextual contingent ones. What political features are essential to a participatory polity, as compared to really good, but not the only really good option. Sometimes there is one essential way to do some social function, say, nested councils or assemblies seemed and still seem like an example, even if it will have many contingent features, such as the number of people in each council, or all sorts of procedures each council might employ. Sometimes there isn’t even an essential core feature, an element of the defining scaffold bearing on some function.  

In any case, the real controversy was about criminal matters and to a lesser but still significant degree, also civil adjudication. In these cases too, diverse lawyers and legal advocates came up with and experimented with ideas and researched their implications and finally RPS proposed a court system somewhat different from what we have now, plus a police force with balanced job complexes and remuneration for effort and sacrifice. 

And yes, about the police changes in particular, there was a great deal of struggle. Back when RPS was first forming police departments were still being militarized, not humanized. That was the trend. Incarceration was still soaring and almost totally punitive. And police forces were still engaged in horribly racist and classist violations on a regular basis extending from harassment all the way up though unjust arrest, witness and evidence tampering, to outright murder. So there were mass struggles over all of that, with demonstrations, rallies, marches, occupations, and strikes. Indeed, prisoner strikes, which revived when RPS got moving and then accelerated greatly, were an important factor. So were actions by families of prisoners and by community members seeking lawful justice or really just lawfulness instead of repression for their neighborhoods. The upshot is that in RPS political vision the punitive aspect of law enforcement is largely gone. Rehabilitation is emphasized. Police function, methods, and control have been largely transformed—which was all critical I should say, not only to developing clarity about a new polity, but also for movement relations.

Why did the RPS view about police work inspire outrage in many leftists who desire a better society?

Imagine you had been raped and RPS was saying there is a place for suitably redefined rape in the new society we seek. Rejecting the idea that anything goes, including even rape, you would fight it and if you lost, you would justifiably decide RPS was not worth your support. I would too.

But in fact, RPS believes a vastly renovated police function is valid, and also that police, even now, with all their violent faults, are better approached as potential allies than inevitable enemies. In the future, violations of social norms are not all going to magically disappear and dealing with them most effectively and safely will require people with special training and job requirements, not least community involvement and balanced job complexes to enforce their community connections and civility. We wouldn’t say people should pilot airplanes without special training, responsibilities, and accountability. Similarly we shouldn’t say people should police communities without special training, responsibilities, and accountability. So are today’s police enemies who are beyond reason or are they potential allies who should be organized? Should we treat police like vicious animals, or should we attack the system that crushes their better instincts?

It isn’t so clear, is it?

Until we have a new society, Miguel, police often act in ways that hurt rather than help all but narrow elites. RPS and other activists had long encountered that reality, not least when police were used to repress us. This being so, many in RPS felt that in a new society we must entirely do away with police. Indeed, that was, I think, probably the most prevalent view about policing in the earliest days of RPS. If this formulation had said we must do away with many aspects of policing and incarceration as we now know them, the view would have been uncontroversial in RPS. But going from rejecting aspects of policing to rejecting all underlying functions and all possible institutional means of accomplishing those functions, was not fine.

[Narrator: I interject, it seems that these future revolutionaries morphed the defund the police and abolish prisons aims of their forebears into something more like transform the police (defund their militarization but fund their humanization) and replace punitive incarceration with restorative justice.]

Miguel continues:

Can you explain that point a bit more?

This broad type of dispute has come up repeatedly in the history of RPS and before RPS too, of course. Governments as we know them most often act to hurt rather than help all but narrow elites. Must we therefore get rid of all political/government functions?

Workplaces often spew pollution and subordinate most employees and, in doing so, hurt rather than help all but narrow elites. Must we get rid of all work in any structured institution at all?

Families today, cultures today, schools today, journalists today, doctors today, all typically adopt horribly restrictive and destructive habits and beliefs due to the institutions they inhabit. Must we get rid of all institutional structures for addressing nurturance, socialization, education, celebration, and communication?

This issue arises when some people move from rightfully rejecting some horrible contemporary means of accomplishing some functions to wrongly rejecting any institutional means at all of addressing even re-conceived versions of those functions.

A person urging rejection of police, polity, workplaces, or families typically claims that doing so will liberate the virtues of humanity. Yet ironically, the person is saying humanity is too flawed to create institutions to collectively accomplish various undeniably important social functions without unleashing debilitating effects. While holding up a banner that proclaims human perfection, the person assumes that human imperfection is so ubiquitous that it precludes our implementing institutions with desirable attributes.

But you are nevertheless right that this dispute was hard to resolve. Imagine saying we need an improved version of policing to people who had had their heads smashed by a cop, or who had a family member gunned down by one. Enormous passions interfered. Resolutions weren’t quick. At times people even left RPS, at least for a time, over this and other such matters. Even RPS willingness to retain exploration of ways of dealing with disputes and criminality that did not involve retaining a police function, in case the majority view that that function had to remain, albeit redefined drastically, was wrong, weren’t enough to keep some anti-police members involved.

Imagine, as I suggested earlier, that you were considering becoming an RPS member, and you had been raped and RPS was saying there is a place for rape, suitably redefined, in the new society we seek. You would be horrified, you would fight the insanity, and, if you lost, you would decide the new organization was not worth your support and involvement. I think some members who left over RPS retaining policing as part of a new society felt similarly and left with a similar level of disgust and anger. But what was admirable about RPS, I think, is that even in their absence we kept the exploration of alternatives going. That didn’t lead to eliminating policing per se, but it did lead to many improvements in our understanding of what police training and police functions ought to include.

At any rate, whatever one thinks about policing, RPS in time realized that it is not policing, but adjudication, legal advocacy, and legal decision making that are most difficult to dramatically improve in a better society. That is where issues still remain most vague and experimental.

Kinship Vision

Lydia, what does RPS say about kinship? What institutions will organize procreation, nurturance, and socialization? How will we accomplish upbringing and home life consistent with eliminating gender and sexual hierarchies?

Even in a wonderful society, I might love someone who did not love me. Previously strong ties could wither. Rape and other violent acts might still sometimes occur. Social change won’t eliminate the pain of losing friends and relatives to premature death. Adults will not all suddenly be equally adept at relating with children. But while it can’t eliminate all that, RPS says new kinship can reduce it all and at least end male domination.

RPS values implied that accomplishing kinship functions should enhance solidarity, preserve diversity, apportion benefits and responsibilities fairly, and convey self-managing influence—all as makes sense in this sphere of life. So with that set of desires, many questions arose for us.

Will families continue as we now know them? And whatever families we have, what else will exist? Will upbringing diverge greatly from what we now know? What about courting and sexual coupling? How will the old and young interact with adults and how will adults interact with the elderly and the young? 

To fulfill our values, of course we knew that new kinship relations would have to liberate women and men rather than causing the former to be subordinate to the latter, and similarly for other hierarchical or degrading relations based on sexuality or age, for example. But how?

In these matters we were talking about transforming a side of life where the gain would be removing the features that produce sexism, homophobia, and ageism, plus establishing an array of positive improvements that we could only guess at until we had more fully experimented with more complete proposals.

We thought new relations could eliminate the systematic violation of women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, children, and the elderly, but not every violation. We thought changes could eliminate the structural coercion of men and women, of hetero and homosexuals, and of adults and children into patterns that systematically violate solidarity, diversity, equity, and self-management, but not eliminate every conceivable violation.

How would the structural change happen? What would the institutions defining a vastly better kinship system look like? 

RPS knew contemporary societies consign women to less empowering and fulfilling options than men. We had to determine the defining core structures that we needed to profoundly alter to remove that systematic ordering.

We saw that sexism takes overt form in men having dominant and wealthier conditions. But we also knew it takes more subtle form via longstanding habits of communication and behavioral assumptions. We knew sexism is produced and reproduced by institutions that differentiate men and women, including coercively as in rape and battering, but also more subtly via what often seem to be mutually accepted role differences in home life, work, and celebration. And we were also aware of the cumulative impact of past sexist experiences on what people think, desire, and feel, and on what people habitually or even consciously do.

If we wanted to find the source of gender injustice, it stood to reason that we had to determine which social institutions—and which roles within those institutions—give men and women responsibilities, conditions, and circumstances that elevate men above women.

So we knew sexism is enforced by rape and battering but also by the cumulative impact of past sexist experiences on what men and women think, desire, feel, and do, as well as by role differences in home life and the boarder society, so we felt we needed to address all that. So what if we discovered that as mothers women produce daughters who, in turn, not only have mothering capacities but want to mother and not father? And what if we discovered that as fathers, men produce sons who not only have fathering capacities but who want to father and not mother? What do we then propose?

Decades earlier this was a focal point of some feminist discussion. Men father but women mother. That is 1960s and 1970s feminists had realized that men and women fulfill two quite dissimilar roles vis a vis the next generation. What if instead of women mothering and men fathering, women and men each related to children in the same fashion, with the same mix of responsibilities and behaviors called parenting, rather than one gender having almost all the nurturing as well as tending, cleaning, and other maintenance tasks called mothering, and the other gender having many more decision-based tasks called fathering, with one gender being more involved and the other more aloof? 

So they were saying we should have no mothering and fathering, just parenting?

Not all said that, Miguel, but some did, and why not? Instead of women doing all the nurturing, tending, and cleaning, called mothering, and men doing all the decision-based tasks called fathering, why shouldn’t both men and women do a mix of all the tasks, called parenting?

The argument behind this proposal followed right from the broad way of thinking that RPS employed. It was that mothering is a role that is overwhelmingly socially and only marginally biologically defined and that as mothers, women produce daughters who, in turn, not only have mothering capacities but want to mother.

How did such a challenging belief spread?

Well, when we thought about this we thought perhaps one feature of a vastly improved society vis a vis gender relations should indeed be that men and women should both parent. There would be no mothering versus fathering, just parenting.

So what happened next was mixed. Some said for us to change in such a way would put our children’s lives at stake. We would get no do-overs. Nonetheless, many young parents, and some older ones too, decided to test this out. You have to think about such a choice to realize the intensity of feelings and importance of the choices involved. You have a child. Throughout history, including in your own upbringing and all around you, virtually every household practices two different roles, mothering and fathering. Sometimes even gay couples with children preserve the distinction, though not always, and that may have been a significant factor in moving all folks toward change. At any rate, your child’s life is at stake, and you decide, no, we are going to break the old mold. We will each parent. This actually began occurring, piecemeal, just trying to make home life more fair, years earlier. But it was in RPS and by its efforts that the practice accelerated and became self conscious. Much of it was simply changing one’s own personal choices, but not all. For example, to have parenting not mothering and fathering required parental leave for new born care, not leave for only women, so that battle had to be waged as well.

[Narrator: I interject, this was just another example of the RPS understanding that what happens in one part of life, in this case families, involve consequences s for other parts of life, in this case workplaces, such that stable outcomes for either involve at least accommodation with the other.]

What about views of family? Just two parents and their kids?

Indeed, another typical structure that came into question for many feminists thinking about improved sex-gender relations was the isolationist character of the nuclear family. Long, long before RPS many feminists argued the nuclear family was a problem. Should child care rest on only one or two biological or even adoptive parents, or should it involve other relatives, friends, and even community members?

RPS doesn’t require such things…

Well, it seemed pretty certain to us that a good society wouldn’t have rules that required a few typical household organizations and family structures such that everyone must abide only those. So right from the outset RPS vision rejected legislating how people can choose to live vis a vis these matters but we do urge that patterns people choose should foster gender equity, broaden the care-taking that children enjoy, and enlarge children’s participation in decisions. Children should not only become capable and confident, but unconstrained by narrow feminine or masculine molds.

[Narrator: I interject, in current usage it seems like the complication or conundrum RPS was navigating was how to have personal freedom from “butting in” you might call it, but also the broad gain of the potential benefits of “butting in” to ensure good outcomes for all.]

Lydia continues: We wouldn’t expect adults would, by law, have to live alone, in pairs, or in groups in any one or even in any few patterns. The key point would likely be diversity and that whatever multiple and diverse patterns exist, each option should embody features that call forth gender equity rather than gender hierarchy. So people experimented with home life patterns aimed at broadening the care-taking and interaction children would enjoy, and at enlarging their participation in judgements, as well.

[Narrator: I interject, remember Bert’s abstract discussion of vision per se, and the anything goes version, the value guide version, and the values but also core institutions version. This seems like a situation embodying all the possibilities including vision constraining possibilities, or opening potentials, perhaps even simultaneously.]

Lydia continues:

We hope that people born, brought up, and who then themselves bear and bring up new generations will be full, capable, and confident, while also lacking differentiations that limit and confine the personality or the life trajectories of anyone in adverse ways—whether to some kind of narrow feminine or narrow masculine mold. But what is adverse and what isn’t, well that is not always so clear.

And we have similar hopes about sexuality and intergenerational relations. No one knows what fully liberated sexuality will be like in all its multitude of preferences and practices, or knows all the diverse forms of intergenerational relations adults and their children and elders will enter into. We know that no few patterns should be elevated above all others as mandatory, though all acceptable options should preclude purposely producing in people a proclivity to dominate or to rule or to subordinate or to obey based on biological sex, sexual orientation, age, or any other social or biological characteristic. 

We have only rough ideas what sex-gender patterns will emerge, multiply, and continually develop in a better future—for example, monogamous and not, hetero, homo, non binary, trans, and involving transformed care-giving institutions, families, schools, and perhaps other political and social spaces for children as well as for adults and the elderly—but we can guess with confidence that actors of all ages and genders will engage in non-oppressive consensual sexual relations, free from stigma.

There was lots of controversy and conflict about much of that…sometimes bitter, with recriminations, with hostile intent, even.

Of course there has been much internal dispute but the key thing, I think, has been the flexibility of the pronouncements and the continued study of implications and options right to the present. Still it was hard to avoid being polarized into aggressive defensiveness when people would accuse us of trying to entirely eliminate families or to wipe out love or short circuit childhood. But as with so many other issues, we learned to put a premium on being patient and respectful in such interchanges. And that has perhaps been the most admired stance of RPS, not our militance, or confidence, or even our wonderful rhetoric and debating. Rather our patience and respect for people with different views.

[Narrator: I interject, hmmm, interesting. She says respect for people with different vies, but not respect for different views per se. I wonder if that was calculated.]

Miguel continues:

What about bringing up children as a revolutionary?

Nowadays, with RPS ascendant, a young parent who favors RPS is typically just honest and open with children. We love and assist them, but also give them room to be what they choose, and children typically come to favor RPS. But earlier when one was revolutionary against the grain of virtually all of society and against the views of the child’s school and schoolmates, and often even of the child’s other relatives and culture, things were a lot harder.

How did people deal with that?

Some of us put our views upfront and actively tried to convey our hoped for values. Others deemphasized their views to avoid imposing on their children. Way back when I was young, for example, way before RPS, even in the most supportive families most kids knew almost nothing of their parents deepest desires and beliefs—often even nothing of what their parents’ work entailed and what their parents hopes were—and that stayed largely true until pretty recently. And kids unsurprisingly reciprocated, so parents and their kids very often had superficial communication in both directions. IT was aloof love, you might call it, I suppose. I think most people thought this was just life and life only. But it wasn’t. It was habit and habit only—developed in context of patriarchy. Even when well-intended it was just another dimension of life in developed capitalist, consumerist patriarchal society where what matters most is hidden and what matters least is made forefront. It made a mess of a great many families, and I suspect perhaps even of most or even nearly all families.

Community Vision

Peter, finally, what about issues of culture? How did RPS thinking proceed regarding vision for that?

We knew we would not be magically reborn in a desirable society, free of our past and unaware of our historical roots. On the contrary, we knew our historical memory, sensitivity to past and present social process, and understanding of our own and of our society’s history would all very likely enlarge during the process of reaching a desirable society. Rather than our diverse cultural roots becoming submerged on the road to a better world, we knew they would grow in prominence.

So we also knew that instead of homogenizing cultures into some presumed one right culture, the transition to a better world should elevate the historical contributions of different communities to be appreciated more than ever before. Different religions, races, ethnic groups, and regions, should enjoy greater rather than lesser means for their further development. Our task was to respect and celebrate diverse cultures, but also avoid destructive mutual hostilities.

Trying to erase the horrors of genocide, imperialism, racism, jingoism, ethnocentrism, colonialism, and religious persecution by attempting to integrate distinct historical communities into one cultural niche had earlier proved almost as destructive as the nightmares this approach sought to expunge. So we knew we had to reject that approach. Indeed, this insight was a main source of the RPS prioritization of diversity as a core value.

We also knew from history and our own life lessons that cultural homogenization—whether racist, fundamentalist, or even leftist—ignores the positive aspects of cultural differences that give people a sense of who they are and where they come from. We knew cultural homogenization offers few opportunities for variety, obstructs cultural self-management, and heightens exactly the community anxieties and antagonisms that sat its most humane it wants to overcome.

We also knew, however, and also not least from our own experiences, that in a competitive and otherwise mutually hostile environment, religious, racial, ethnic, and national communities often develop into sectarian camps, each concerned first and foremost with defending itself from real and imagined threats, even waging war on others to do so. 

But nonetheless we knew the presence of racial and other cultural hierarchies throughout society and history no more means we should eliminate cultural diversity than the existence of gender, sexual, economic, or political hierarchies means we should eliminate diversity in those realms. The task we faced was to implement change that would remove cultural oppression and achieve liberating conditions, but respect and preserve diversity.

Dominant community groups tend to rationalize their positions of privilege with myths about their own superiority and the presumed inferiority of those they oppress. Such psycho-socially motivated myths in time attain a life of their own in beliefs, habits, and commitments that can transcend immediate material relations. The effects can be brutal.

We knew, for example, that some sectors within oppressed communities internalize myths of their inferiority and attempt to imitate or at least accommodate dominant cultures. Survival promotes it. Others in oppressed communities defend the integrity of their own cultural traditions and combat as best they can the racist ideologies used to justify their oppression. Self respect promotes it.

So what was to be the solution?

RPS says we need to appreciate the historical contributions of different communities more than ever before. We know from history that cultural beliefs and habits give people a sense of who they are and where they come from. But we also know that in a competitive environment, religious, racial, ethnic, and national communities often fight one another. We – RPS, that is – concluded that cultural salvation lies in eliminating racist institutions, dispelling racist ideologies, and changing the environments within which historical communities interrelate. Perhaps the main change is communities should be able to maintain and celebrate difference without fear of subjugation.

So was the logic that that would guarantees every community being able to carry on its traditions and self-definitions?

Exactly. It meant to ensure that the interactions of our many cultures would enhance the characteristics of each and provide a richness that no single approach could ever attain. Absent fear of decline we would have mutual aid. We called it inter-communalism. So RPS concluded that cultural salvation does not lie in trying to obliterate the distinctions between communities. The only lasting solution lies in eliminating racist institutions, dispelling racist ideologies, and changing the environments within which historical communities relate to each other so that such communities can maintain and celebrate difference without violating solidarity and without fear of subjugation.

The RPS alternative to racism, ethnocentrism, religious bigotry and other forms of community oppression is called “inter-communalism” harking all the way back to the U.S. Black resistance movements of the late 1960s. It emphasizes respecting and preserving the multiplicity of community forms we are blessed with by guaranteeing each sufficient material and social resources to confidently reproduce itself. 

Not only does each cultural community possess particular wisdoms that are unique products of its own historical experience, but the interaction of different cultures via intercommunalist relations enhances the internal characteristics of each. The point is we must replace negative inter-community relations with positive ones. The key, RPS thinks, is we must eliminate any threat of cultural extinction that so many communities fear by guaranteeing that every community has the means necessary to freely carry on their traditions, languages, and self definitions. You may think to yourself that this approach heard the incredibly distorted worries of whites about being replaced as well as the far more warranted fears by other communities, and so it did, but it also noticed the strange circumstance of a community feeling some justified danger but then manifesting incredibly domineering choices toward others. I think the behavior of Israel toward Palestinians probably kickstarted that latter dimension into high resolution for many people. I suppose it was a bit like someone bullied or beaten as a youth, often by a father, then going on and acting similarly later.

At any rate, in accord with self-management, RPS realized that individuals should be free to choose the cultural communities they prefer rather than elders or others defining their choices for them, particularly on the basis of prejudice. RPS also realized that while those outside a community should be free to criticize cultural practices that in their opinion violate humane norms, external intervention that goes beyond criticism should not be permitted, except to guarantee that all members of every community have the right of dissent and to leave without incurring any material or broader social loss.

[Narrator: I interject, this seems like the problem of abiding “mind your business” feelings versus respecting the “hold on, that harms society not just yourself” feelings.]

Miguel perhaps similarly asks:

But is reaching that goal possible?

It will be difficult, for sure. We are talking about overcoming a horrific legacy. And that is why until a lengthy history of autonomy exercising solidarity overcomes suspicion forged by fear, we will need to make it incumbent on more powerful communities to unilaterally de-escalate disputes they have with less powerful communities.

What about violations of that instruction?

We will very likely need oversight by an inter-communal legal apparatus specializing in conflict resolution at least until a different historical legacy prevails. But on the road to that future harmony, RPS has to prioritize overcoming racist structures and habits. Communities must have free entry and exit. They must have guaranteed means of their own preservation. They must be freed from fear of assimilation or domination, and of course all communities must enjoy all the benefits of all other social, political, and economic opportunities.

And in our movements now, what does the vision say for today?

It says plant the seeds of that better future today, both in our own movements and projects and in what we demand for society now. Beyond our commitment to self management and diversity, perhaps the main thing is having caucuses for minority communities to ensure their freedom to develop their own priorities and preserve their own practices. But you know there is another aspect. We rightly strive and expect others to strive to have the attitudes and habits we want in a desired future, but we also understand that residual bad habits and beliefs, often deeply and reflexively and even unknowingly held, aren’t easily overcome. Certainly in dominant communities but also in dominated ones. We don’t expect to be perfect immediately. Partly we don’t always even know what is perfect. And partly, it can take time.

[Narrator: I interject, my father, a good liberal, used to like to say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks when criticized and I would be more or less outraged. OF course you can teach an old dog new tricks. I think what I now understand and I didn’t when I got mad at him for saying your couldn’t, is that you can’t do it overnight. So tolerance and patience do matter, for individuals, though not for institutions.]

Peter continues:

Intercommunalism of the sort envisioned, therefore, would make it incumbent on the more powerful community with less reason to fear domination to unilaterally begin the process of de-escalating disputes. This simple rule is obvious and reasonable, despite being seldom practiced. When need be, oversight and enforcement could occur by way of an intercommunal legal apparatus specializing in conflict resolution (of course itself including balanced job complexes and equitable remuneration, etc.).

The goal would be to create an environment in which no community would feel threatened so that each community would feel free to learn from and share with others. But given the historical legacy of negative intercommunity relations, RPS knew it would be delusional to believe this could be achieved overnight. Perhaps even more so than in other areas, intercommunalist relations would have to be constructed, step by step, until a different historical legacy and set of behavioral expectations is established. Nor would it always be easy to decide what constitutes the “necessary means” that communities should be guaranteed for cultural reproduction, and what development free from “unwarranted outside interference” means in particular situations.

But it seemed and still seems certain that every community should be guaranteed sufficient material and communication means to self-define and self-develop its own cultural traditions, and to represent its culture to all other communities in the context of limited aggregate means and equal rights to those means for all—just as all of its members, by virtue of participatory economic, political, and kin relations, should be equitably remunerated and comparably self-managing.

Was there a minority or dissenting view in RPS?

Yes, or perhaps I should say, sort of. The vision was so flexible and has always remained open to refinement and improvement to such an extent, that there really wasn’t a problem with it as a goal. Rather, the concern was, and it still exists, couldn’t this all become rhetorical but not actual? Couldn’t it even become cooptive without really dealing with the full dynamics of these types of oppression and division—racism, religious bigotry, and the like?

People who worried about this possibility said, look, with economics, for example, we propose specific institutions whose character is such that operating with them guarantees attaining the preferred values they are chosen to reach. If we win the institutions, we are going to reach the conditions we seek. But with community and race, this is so much less clear. There is nothing comparable to, say, balanced job complexes or participatory planning. We have only the injunction that folks should abide certain rules and norms, and that communities should be protected and provided means to persist. It sounds fine, but some would claim we already have that much, and it isn’t working. So we worry that we need more.

The reply was, okay, but what is the more we need? Surely you don’t want some kind of ghettoization of different communities, and, other than that, what features do you think we can and should add to the inter-communalist vision? So the upshot has been to agree on the broad vision, and to agree that its continual assessment for effectivity is essential and that, if it seems to fall short, we would have to find refinements or improvements to do better. This, of course, was the mindset in any case so that while these discussions were sometimes very passionate, there was never any real splitting or even internal hostility about it.

[Narrator: I interject, seems to me like with different visionary areas the three abstract approaches to vision get different weight in how RPS winds up taking stands. Do you agree?]

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