This (quite long), article continued the sequence that excerpts from the seven author book Liberating Theory, published forty years ago. This time the excerpted material addresses concepts for understanding society’s polity and also society as a whole after prior articles on kinship/gender, culture/community, and economy/class. The trajectory is to next address how history unfolds and then finally derivative vision and strategy. The goal is to inspire efforts to arrive at revamped shareable theory, vision, and strategy suited to winning another, better world. This excerpt begins:

Politics involves the creation of ideology; the setting of societal priorities, policies, laws and regulations; and the conferring of power, whether with or without majority participation and ratification. The political sphere includes the State with its military, judiciary, police, legislature, and public works, political parties, lobbying and public interest organizations, etc. Depending on the specific character of the political sphere of life, people may be hierarchically arrayed by elected or appointed office, bureaucratic tenure, military rank, party position, or unofficial “backroom” influence, as well as by economic, gender, and cultural factors rooted in other spheres as discussed in prior articles in this series.

People fall into different political hierarchies corresponding to different governing forms—monarchy, parliamentary or U.S.-style representative democracy, military junta, one-party dictatorship, one person dictatorship—and variations within these governing forms. Representative democracies may differ according to such factors as size and entrenchment of the state bureaucracy, voting frequency and procedures, extent of enfranchisement, number and nature of competing political parties, and access to and control over mass media. Whatever form the State takes, political relations not only effect the distribution of governmental decision-making power, but also the consciousness which people bring to the economic, kinship and community spheres, and the freedom (or lack of freedom) that affects their ability to explore possibilities in all four spheres. Political relations greatly affect the ways in which social institutions and structures mediate the dissemination of historical or contemporary information (and misinformation), perceive the “truth” and the “common good,” and influence the

parameters of public debate and individual thought itself.

Politics isn’t merely a reflection of other hierarchies within a dependent unifying state. You can’t understand authoritarianism in institutions and consciousness simply by extrapolating from class, gender, and community hierarchies. If the state is parliamentary, there will be one situation, but if it is dictatorial there will be another—whatever other defining features society may have. The political sphere, while it entwines with other defining spheres and feels their effects, also has a history and set of dynamic attributes of its own that exert defining influences back upon the rest of society. 

For example, if the political sphere of a particular society acts to continually repress dissent or to structurally coopt it then this certainly will have an immense impact on dynamic relations and possibilities for change in all other spheres of social life, whatever their own intrinsic attributes and contradictions may be. Would anyone who denies this see no difference between living in a society with parliamentary democracy and one with a military dictatorship, all other social forms being otherwise fundamentally “equal”? 

Indeed, even given that two societies have formally the same type of state, would anyone deny that great differences in the types of political movements and parties that vie for power in that society could also have dramatic impact on its citizens’ quality and character of life? To understand any society, therefore, no single adjective describing a single sphere suffices.

Politics arises from the need to balance and regulate disparate aims to attain collective ends. It deals with the organization of order, and attaining order often involves the attribution of authority either to individuals or impersonal bureaucracies. But when authority is vested in unyielding, unresponsive, or irresponsible hierarchy it yields the political oppression we call “authoritarianism” by giving relatively few people excessive power at the expense of the many.

Different types of authoritarian systems impose different restraints, oppressions, and opportunities on their citizens. Authoritarian regimes need not be dictatorships. They can incorporate procedural democracy as well. Authoritarianism is rationalized in a variety of ways: ordained by God, ethnicity, gender or racial superiority, paternalism, electoral mandate, national salvation, economic efficiency, elite competence, etc.

A primary characteristic of authoritarian political relations is a drive to find a single

“correct” policy or line for any particular circumstance. A plurality of proposals may be debated. But, regarding any particular problem invariably only one proposal will be given authoritative sanction as either the “divine wisdom” of a few rulers or a compromise of larger elites. The notion of the “correct line” or “common good” is an essential tool for legitimating authoritarian rule.

For example, in a U.S.-style representative democracy, decision makers gain legitimacy by asserting the need for efficiently centralizing decision-making tasks in a central authority, while promoting elected leadership as the most democratic way of balancing competing “special interests” and discerning the “national interest.” Elite rhetoric focuses on the “free choice” involved in voting while obscuring the separation of all actual decision-making from the populace’s will, oversight, or even awareness. There is no attention given to the fact that voters have little say in who runs for office and no power over what they do once they win office—even when elected officials ignore all campaign promises and platforms. Few would question the notion that the United States is a democracy, even though the U.S. government often does the opposite of what a majority of citizens demand; for example, a majority of U.S. citizens have been found to support the nuclear weapons freeze, national health insurance, extended environmental protection, and full employment.

I interject, please keep in mind throughout that Liberating Theory was published forty years ago.

The chapter continues: In contrast, in a single party, “Soviet-style,” bureaucratic dictatorship, the party claims to represent popular sentiment and to distill it through the combined wisdom of society’s most intelligent and committed leaders, its Communist Party cadre. The elite party members owe their position to their coercive power and to their claim to represent the combined “scientific” wisdom of all proletarians. They tolerate criticism no more than a doctor tolerates patients criticizing a prescription.

In a dictatorship the single correct “truth” prevails because no other thought can be broached publicly without risk of repression. In a military regime or repressive party dictatorship, people are generally allowed to form only those institutions of information exchange and social debate, unions, women’s organizations, and other organizations that are sanctioned by the state. Where opposition organizations exist they are subject to continual harassment and periodic wholesale repression. Voting is perfunctory or, where opposition candidates take part, fraud is used to manipulate the outcome. The media is censored directly, or indirectly through a climate of fear. Subversive thoughts can and certainly will exist, but short of revolutionary upheavals they will be kept effectively silent through fear of repression.

In countries with legal rights of freedom of speech, press, etc., and the election of political representatives, the correct line is enforced differently. Indeed, the more “democratic” governing forms a political system has, the more its channels of communication and debate must operate within parameters which reinforce the assumptions of elites. Since there is little control over public expression of ideas (though there is plenty of control over the resources with which to communicate those ideas e.g. access to television, university tenure, etc.), the formulation of the ideas themselves must be constrained. In other words, what is thinkable must be controlled so that when people manifest their rights of expression they will rarely express thoughts subversive to defining social relations. Dissidents are “red baited” or ridiculed out of the “responsible” arena of debate and policy making. Whatever their disgust with conditions in the U.S., people are more frightened of alternative images as filtered through the mass media and educational system. The definition of allowed alternatives is the supreme pivot of power.

In the Soviet Union news commentators can and no doubt sometimes do draw the personal conclusion that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is wrong and patriotic Soviet citizens should oppose the war and support the rebels. Moreover, such a commentator might even decide to say this over public media—as indeed, one had—but, he or she would then be quickly dispatched to an asylum providing a healthy warning to others that they should keep their disturbing thoughts to themselves. In the U.S., however, although public news commentators could say almost anything on the air, risking only being fired and most often not even that, none who have large audiences and have therefore risen through the ranks of conforming pressures can even manage to think a disturbing thought. Free to speak, they have little of import to say. For example, during the period of the Vietnam War it was beyond their mental reach for any U.S. press or mainstream T.V. commentator to even think that the U.S. was the aggressor in Vietnam and that the war should not only be opposed as a mistake, but American patriots should support the Vietnamese resistance.

It follows that political systems incorporate democracy to roughly the degree that governing and other social authorities can be confident that it will be used as a form of social control—to legitimate rather than undermine their interests. Stripped of genuine participation and dissent, democracy becomes a very worthwhile system for society’s elites. It allows them to argue through their disagreements about how best to pursue their own interests and to simultaneously gauge popular reactions to alternative proposals they must judge. The subversive character of democracy is diminished as subordinate groups are disenfranchised and prevented from gaining access to information and means of developing and sharing alternative ideas and programs; both these conditions operate magnificently in the U.S. And, whenever popular forces do begin to emerge in ways that can translate and transmit information and ideas widely and serve as vehicles for dominated groups to develop subversive programs, a “crisis of democracy” ensues, and there is a turn toward repression to control the situation by destroying such forms and re-engendering a passive citizenry. Keepers of the flame of democratic principle successfully reclaim their power from those who would “destroy democracy” by actually using it (or by constructing fascism in its place.)

The clearest statement of the utilitarian purpose of limited or “moderate” democracy and the threat of “an excess of democracy” is found in the Trilateral Commission report, The Crisis of Democracy. The section on the United States was written by Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist and sometime government official who praised the Vietnam War’s “forced urbanization” program (designed to rid the national liberation forces of a base of popular support in the countryside). Huntington writes: “The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups…In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic but it is also one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively.” 

Of course, by “some individuals and groups” Huntington means most. The “crisis of democracy,” ensued in the sixties and seventies when: “Previously passive or unorganized groups in the population, blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students, and women now embarked on concerted efforts to establish their claim to opportunities, positions, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled [sic] before.” 

I interject: readers in 2026 will hopefully see that the current Trumpian and fascist trends simultaneously embody and display both types of control, authoritarian and “democratic,” as the emerging fascist orientations try to replace the threatened “democratic” forms. This should evidence how these trends are, in their way, trying to fundamentally restructure society. And while the effort is most apparent in the political sphere, once attuned to the possibility, we can see its reach into cultural, kinship, and economic domains. 

The chapter continues: As with previous periods of mass protest in the U.S., the “crisis of democracy” in the sixties and seventies was answered with a mixed program of political repression (e.g. the COINTELPRO programs) and cooptation (e.g. the anti-poverty programs). The media played a crucial role in reimposing apathy, with a constant drumbeat about the “Me Decade” of the later 1970s; a time, of course, when the antinuclear and gay liberation movements were, among others, on the ascent.

Anarchism is the name given the broad movement of people who oppose authoritarianism in all its forms. Anarchists focus their attention firstly on hierarchies directly rooted in the structure and dynamics of the state but then also extrapolate their concern for these political hierarchies to a derivative concern for other oppressions such as economic exploitation, racism, or sexism, understanding each to be a manifestation of authoritarian hierarchy in another sector of daily life. For anarchists, “hierarchy” becomes an organizing concept for all analysis as it permeates outward from the government to corrupt all aspects of life.

As a goal, some anarchists elevate the idea of individualism, extolling the ultimate freedom and isolated integrity of each separate person in society. Others favor sociality, extolling the integrity and freedom of each individual only as all are part of an integrated social whole and socially responsible for one another’s circumstances and well-being. But all anarchists rightly argue that the political sphere projects forces which pervade all corners of society. The state-rooted division of society doesn’t stop at the executive, legislative, or judiciary door, since the role-ingrained presuppositions of people in different positions in society’s political hierarchies, whatever their exact form may be, permeate all other spheres of social life. State-based hierarchies tend to reproduce all other social hierarchies by imposing them and also embodying their qualities. In Soviet-style societies, for example, the political bureaucrat, party member, and average citizen confront different circumstances and options in all society’s institutions, not solely within the state. To rid society of any oppressions, state oppression must be overcome. Yet, as valuable as these anarchist insights are, regrettably some anarchists overextend their valid recognitions beyond their real range of influence. They label politics the sole defining sphere of social life.

Implicitly, at least, they essentially call the state’s hierarchy society’s base, the rest its superstructure. All oppressions become variants on state-based authoritarianism. They analyze racism, sexism, and classism first in terms of analyses of states and their functions, in particular power and hierarchy, not first in terms of concepts rooted in the specific dynamics of each of these other spheres. They may ignore other spheres entirely, or, alternatively, they may understand them, but only in the ways that they manifest specifically authoritarian relations, not in their own intricate and unique qualities. They see a hierarchy between men and women, blacks and whites, workers and bosses, and though they may understand many of the emotive and material implications of such hierarchies, they fail to see all dimensions of the importance of and positive side of sexual interrelations, cultural definitions, and economic forms. They oppose marriage, religion, and complex large scale industry as necessarily statist without understanding the more complex relations associated with each of these non-government forms or the positive needs for security, continuity, spirituality and material wellbeing they speak to which must also be addressed in any desirable future. The liberating thrust of anarchism, therefore, sometimes succumbs to a monist narrowness which forecloses fully understanding and effectively opposing all the forms of oppression which most anarchists, in fact, do wish to overcome.

Change within the political sphere is most often evolutionary. Leaders come and go by election, appointment, or death. A new department of government is created. The military budget grows or shrinks. Yet, sometimes changes can grow to rupture old definitions and establish new ones. A sub-elite rises to prominence and redefines governing relationships. A military coup throws out one state elite only to install another, equally oppressive perhaps, but fundamentally different in its modes of operation.

The impetus for evolutionary and revolutionary state change can arise from within the state, owing to changes in decision-making perceptions or to conflicts between political groups, or from “without,” owing to economic, kinship, or community pressures on political forms that cause their slight alteration or dissolution and redefinition. But we can only conceptualize these matters more fully in context of a broader discussion of society and history in coming chapters.

I interject: That ended the fifth chapter proper of Liberating Theory, and we continue, here, as with excerpting prior chapters, with the associated dialogue. But, in the article, we are going to excerpt two chapters and their associated dialogues, so there will be more to come, after this immediate one. 

I further interject from 2026: For those readers who are familiar with the work of the seven authors of Liberating Theory—myself, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent, and Holly Sklar—it may prove interesting to consider how we all managed to write and edit the various parts of our joint book into existence. Each of us had primary areas of personal focus and yet also over-arching holistic inclinations. This would cause me to predict, looking back but not remembering, that one or another author would have more or less to say about different parts of the whole. Just as might be the case for different people encountering the whole, now, in 2026. At any rate, here is the dialogue that was prepared back then, for the polity/anarchism chapter. The dialogues were the most controversial part for the authors, some concerned, for example, that they might give false impressions. But, we finally included them.

To get things started, Coho, our complementary holistic, ie. our Liberating Theory participant in the dialogues, said: Depending on the character of the political sphere, people will be hierarchically arrayed accordingly. Whatever form the state takes, political relations influence not only the distribution of governmental decision-making power but the consciousness which people bring to the economic, kinship, and community spheres. And political relations greatly affect the ways social institutions mediate and disseminate information and misinformation…

Marlen. our Marxist Leninist participant, a little daunted from the economy conversation but still eager to begin as usual, interrupted: The absence of any economic analysis renders anarchist concepts practically useless. In addition, they are so obsessed with hierarchies that many anarchists oppose all forms of organization, including democratic states, unions, and political parties.

Sofie, our socialist feminist participant, friendly but concerned, reacted: I have to agree with Marlen’s criticism of your lack of economic analysis, Ana. But also, I find that anarchism does not provide a way of understanding how state structures vary according to patriarchal influences. And while most anarchists oppose hierarchical relations between men and women, adults and children, they don’t understand the bases of these hierarchies as they stem from kinship relations or why these hierarchies persist.

Radfem, our radical feminist participant, friendly but also concerned, added: I, too, have found much to admire in the often passionate and eloquent writings and actions of anarchists against authoritarianism. But I have to admit, Ana, that while individual anarchists personally oppose homophobia and sexual repression, their opposition seems to be based more on opposition to state intervention than a real understanding of the issues involved. Or to a commitment to a non-heterosexually dominated society.

Nat, our nationalist participant, dubious but also friendly, added: I find your concern for minority rights and concerns even less impressive than Marlen’s, Sofie’s, and Radfem’s. Your analysis doesn’t look at the complexity of racial oppression, or how state structures vary depending on splits in community spheres.

Coho replied: That’s certainly true. Like marxists, anarchists tend to see only the ways that community forms support the oppression they want to eliminate, not how they meet human needs…

Ana, our anarchist participant interrupted in a friendly fashion: We anarchists are often free and open to new concepts so I have no trouble, unlike some of you, admitting that I’m starting to like Coho’s approach quite a bit. Particularly its criticism of Marxism.

Plury, our pluralist participant, added: Something’s wrong here. This is all too friendly. 

Ana: But…

Plury: I spoke too soon…

Ana: Let me remind each of you, in the spirit of comradeship, mind you, of a few things. First, Marlen, you don’t criticize state power or workplace hierarchies. Is that because you believe in them? Have you carved a place for yourself at the top of one of them? And Sofie, while I appreciate your supportive comments and the application of anarchist tenets by the women’s movement, I have also found that many women’s organizations and individual feminists stop criticizing other’s power once the have gained a little themselves. Nor have I seen incredible efforts by the women’s movement to criticize state power. I have seen more efforts to have equal access to that power. And Radfem, your theory simply posits a new authority—that of women over men, homosexuality over heterosexuality. And Nat, while the civil rights movement was infused with the spirit if not the practice of democracy, the black power movements were the most hierarchical I’ve seen. Or is this a white construct? And Neopop…well, you get the idea. Each one of your spheres has not dealt adequately with questions of power.

Coho: Well put. And to a point, I agree. But Ana, I think anarchists themselves could be criticized for the very same thing. I don’t think that anarchists suffer only from overemphasizing political hierarchies as the cause of all others, or only for failing to recognize kinship, community and economic spheres. Anarchists also fail to adequately describe the state itself. You identify intrinsic power dynamics but too often you don’t then go on to understand the intricacies of bureaucracy or the means of information and communication control tied in with varying types of state relations. In short, your analysis is often over-simplified.

Ana, friendly to the end, replied: So the theory is often better than the practice. I am already willing to broaden my framework. But at the risk of seeming monist, Coho, how can we weave all these spheres together into one holistic cloth that avoids new forms of dominance and subsumption?

Cyn, our cynical participant leaning forward in the chair in the corner: I can answer that. You can’t.

Ana, with a supreme effort at friendliness, replies: We appreciate your constructive comments,

Cyn…

Coho interrupts, rustling papers over the hostile mutterings destroying the friendly atmosphere:

Now, let’s continue on to society. 

I interject, Liberating Theory continues with chapter six, excerpted here:

In chapters two to five we have shown how four spheres of social life help form the basis for important facets of daily life. To use the concepts presented in those chapters to now formulate a monist theory we would next have to demonstrate that one of the four spheres is more dominant than the others. For example, we might argue like cultural nationalists that community must exert a disproportionate influence over the forces of social stability and change because everything depends on how we culturally relate to things. Or, instead, like anarchists we might emphasize politics on the basis that the state dominates all decision making and power hierarchies clarify all oppressions. But while to be monist we would have to highlight one sphere, as these orientations do, we could nonetheless propose any of many possible forms of asymmetry between our favored sphere and others. For example, we might argue for economic priority but urge that the economic sphere is only “determinant in the last instance” rather than always dominant. Or we could recognize the “relative autonomy of the state” vs. highlighted cultural differences, and so on.

Alternatively, to formulate our same concepts into a pluralist theory, we would need to analyze each sphere separately using “its own” concepts and then sum the results, much as many marxist feminists do for the economy and kinship. Our key assumption would then be that the most basic defining features in each sphere are not significantly contoured by dynamics impeding from “outside.”

But in contrast to monist and pluralist approaches, if we choose a complementary holist approach we must anticipate the possibility of more complex interconnections between spheres even as we deny that these will always necessarily form a fixed hierarchy of influences. This approach (like socialist feminism for only two spheres) denies both the logic of elevating one sphere above others and the logic of trying to simply sum separate abstract analyses into a whole. Holism asserts that any hierarchy of influence of spheres in a particular society is something that must be empirically demonstrated in particular historical situations. It doubts that all societies even have hierarchies of influences, and it denies that the existence of a fixed hierarchy in one society demonstrates or implies the existence of the same hierarchy in another. Indeed, holism leads us to anticipate that with more exacting theories of particular societies, we will often find that all four spheres operate centrally; and this claim is based not on some kind of assumed logical or historical necessity, but on our knowledge of conceptual possibilities plus our empirical awareness.

Holism is also distinguishable from pluralism by its insistence on employing concepts from other spheres when analyzing dynamics within any particular sphere. The “summing” we advocate recognizes a greater degree of connectivity between social factors and highlights the degree to which one sphere’s determining influences often help define even central characteristics of another sphere, so that spheres do not really exist separately, but always in the context of a whole that helps define them all. Treating spheres as “networks” and “processes” that extend throughout the space of societies and the time of history is one technique for recognizing this connectivity.

In preceding chapters we discussed community, kinship, economic, and political dynamics as if each operated in isolation. At the same time, we have emphasized that all human activity affects all four of these aspects of human existence. For example, we call our activity in a factory “economic” whenever the transformation of material objects and services is its most important aspect for the purpose at hand. But this economic activity also has kinship, community, and political “moments.” 

Moreover, any activity that combines material, social, and human ingredients to create material, social, and human products with new attributes is economic. But doesn’t this imply that every activity has an “economic moment”? When we clean house, play, go to school, watch T.V., or attend a concert or sporting event don’t we consume and produce material, human, and social factors? And, vice versa, don’t work activities also socialize, create culture, and affect political options? This recognition of the multidimensionality and essential unity of diverse activities extends to the level of the different spheres of society as well. For example, the economic sphere includes all institutions which involve production, consumption and allocation of material objects as part of their social roles. By this definition, factories, marketplaces, and banks are obviously economic institutions. But elementary schools, which we usually think of as kinship institutions because of their socialization function, also involve production and consumption of material objects, as do theaters, households, senates, churches, and ball parks. In fact, if we extend the economic sphere to its fullest dimensions, we discover that it encompasses all of society and that every institution resides within the economic institutional network. Indeed, it is this reality which makes effective theories of the economy powerful tools for understanding at least some things about all sides of social life.

But the same reasoning applies to the community, kinship, and governing spheres. Every institution has a socialization aspect, cultural aspect, and decision-making aspect as well as an economic aspect. Families historically have acted as the central kinship institution, but socialization takes place in factories, offices, and marketplaces as well. The state is the principal focus of political activity, but it also produces and consumes material objects and reproduces and transforms cultural attitudes and relations. And, as with economics, the fact that the extension of the kinship, community, and political spheres of life each encompass all of society is what makes compelling theories of each of these spheres powerful tools for understanding at least certain things about all social relationships.

The four spheres share the same space and time even though they have different central institutions and focus on different social functions. It is as if societies have four centers from which four different force fields emerge, mingle, and finally merge. Each of the four force fields not only affects their own options and activities throughout society, they all also affect one another, a complication that makes it difficult to comprehend the full character even of society’s individual spheres. If we only study the characteristics of each field in isolation, we not only have no guide as to how to combine the results, we also mis-specify the dynamics within each field because we do not see how they are influenced by forces emerging from the other three.

We have said that we can think of any social act in terms of four “moments” related to the four defining types of social interaction. It is a little like the way we learned how to graphically track projectiles in high school. If we imagine a ball flying through the air we can track its path by noting at each instant how high it is, how far it has gone along our line of sight, and how far it has gone perpendicular to the line of sight. We study the forces pushing or impeding it in each of these three directions. If we want to study the ball being thrown across a field, we should choose a vertical axis in line with gravity and two horizontal axes measuring off the field in a grid along the line the wind is blowing and/or in the direction we will throw the ball. If we’re tracking an airplane, we’ll use longitude, latitude, and altitude. If we’re tracking a spaceship, we may choose more complex “curvilinear coordinates” because in this instance they will be easiest to use. But what if we want to track “social trajectories”? We have proposed conceptualizing society by carving it into components of four types of social relations. Yet, unlike spatial directions, these social dimensions are not linear and they do not operate independently of one another. Influences relating to each have effects on the three others. In the throwing example, gravity acting along up-down direction doesn’t significantly change the wind effect along the horizontal direction. Nor does our energy of throwing across the field affect gravity’s influence perpendicular to it. But in societies, changes in “forces” acting primarily along the kinship dimension influence not only gender but also economic, community, and political phenomena. In societies, everything is mutually interactive, and this severely complicates matters.

Yet, despite this critical complication, we choose our “social dimensions” for the same reason a physicist chooses a particular spatial conceptualization or any analyst chooses a particular way of organizing his or her concepts: to provide the most effective framework for understanding chosen subject matter in ways relevant to particular ends being sought.

In choosing four social spheres, we seek enough axes to span all the social dynamics we are interested in, but, at the same time, we do not want any more axes than necessary. Moreover, for utility we want our social axes to provide maximum ease of use to activist analysts.

But what precisely do we mean by a “social moment”? Every social interaction—whether assembling cars or struggling for rent control—has aspects that can be most effectively understood through each of the four spheres we have discussed. We call these its economic, kinship, community, and political “moments” of definition. In real life, of course, these characteristics intertwine, so the four chosen social moments do not manifest themselves separately any more than a ball simultaneously moves along all the infinity of spatial axes we can conceptualize. Yet gravity and wind do operate along specific spatial axes and so too do specific forces within society operate along specific “social dimensions.” If we choose our social dimensions as those via which the most important forces most often operate, specific “social moments” will help us easily perceive the action of critically important forces and their interconnections.

I interject, listeners may be feeling the discussion has a what is nowadays called an intersectional feel to it, and so it does. But Liberating Theory was prior to that stance emerging, and also, I believe, different in some quite important respects. 

The chapter continues: What possible kinds of relations can exist between the four spheres and their fields of force? People aren’t economically-affected in one part of their lives and gender-affected in another; state-influenced one day of the week and community-influenced some other day. Instead, they simultaneously experience economic, kinship, governance, and community involvements, and this guarantees that spheres interact. At a particular time class may have more influence on molding a person’s consciousness and behavior than gender, or vice-versa. But these influences must co-exist.

Societies consist of diverse relations combined in complex ways. If the different relations became completely estranged, society itself would become impossible. Different parts of our lives would produce such profoundly contradictory thought and behavior patterns that we would become hopelessly disoriented. In stable societies, there is a constant interplay of mechanisms to reconcile contradictory dynamics before they get out of hand. Profound schisms which cannot be reconciled characterize unstable societies ripe for social revolutions. Conservative “functionalist” social theories assume that in all societies sufficient mechanisms exist to reconcile all contradictory role requirements and socialize people to accept those roles without questioning the humanity of this “fit.” Radicals, on the other hand, tend to underestimate the influence of stabilizing, ameliorating mechanisms.

For example, with no interconnections, our kinship life might socialize us to become non-acquisitive and anti-competitive, while our economic life might require opposite traits. Or our community life might produce mutual respect for different cultures, while our political institutions require instrumentalist, elitist, authoritarian attitudes. If one part of society says we should have a particular quality, and another part says we should have the opposite quality, where the quality in question is one that will help define our personality and structure our life prospects, social instability arises. With no way to alleviate the resulting tensions, not only would social cohesion disintegrate as people clashed with each other, but each person’s internal psychology would tend to “disintegrate” due to confused self-definition. Society would be terminally schizoid. Something would “have to give” but theory would not tell us in advance of analyzing specific circumstances what that something would be. Theory without investigation, that is, could not tell us that one of the tendencies would always dominate another. Nor could theory allow us to predict, without seeking evidence, whether the unstable situation would revert back to a former stable status quo or move on to a new social formation not characterized by dynamics that produce both qualities and their opposites. But it is precisely our theoretical knowledge of the existence of diverse types of interactive dynamics between spheres and fields coupled with detailed surveys of the conditions of actual societal relations that can together help us predict how instabilities are likely to resolve to recreate workable social orders of one kind or another. In workable social orders it follows that there will be intricate interconnections between defining spheres of social activity. In our effort to understand societies as they appear at a given moment what remains is to ask what forms these expected interconnections can take.

We call one kind of interaction between spheres that is consistent with stability accommodation. Critical features of each sphere accommodate to requirements of other spheres. For example, the assignment of people to economic roles may accommodate with a society’s sexist gender and racist community hierarchies so that economic activity places men in positions above women and whites in positions above blacks. Similarly, if there are accommodation relations between the kinship and political spheres, the family will socialize children in ways consistent with the state-related roles they will play as adults and political activity will produce traits that comply with the family roles men and women are to play. In the journey from the simplest pluralism to complementary holism, recognizing “accommodation” between spheres is the first tentative step.

But another more deeply “connective” type of relationship consistent with social stability is what we call co-definition: the different spheres “co-define” one another’s internal roles and relations. For example, instead of economic roles being determined entirely by class divisions and bargaining relationships and individuals’ assignments to various economic roles merely accommodating to non-economic, external hierarchies, the very definition of economic roles in the first place could reflect influences from kinship, political, or community spheres. Work roles in the corporation might incorporate a sexual division of labor inexplicable in solely economic terms, yet easily understood as a manifestation of a sexist field of force. Nurturing roles in the family might vary depending upon community affiliations thereby showing defining characteristics inexplicable in solely kinship terms yet easily understood as a manifestation of a cultural field of force. It would not be enough to theorize the economy and then note—via the principle of accommodation—that since men and women are differentiated by kinship relations outside the economy, they will be treated differently within the economy as well. Instead, even in theorizing the most basic elements of the economy we would have to determine the defining impact of kinship forces. And likewise for theorizing kinship and incorporating community recognitions. Recognizing this necessity is the critical step from even the most complex pluralism to complementary holism. It corresponds to the difference between those who pluralistically join orientations, like marxist-feminists, and those who holistically develop a more encompassing framework, like socialist feminists, or, to take all four spheres into account, complementary holists. There is nothing inherent in capitalist economic relations that requires the activity of coffee-making to be assigned to the role of secretary. There is no purely economic reason why in the U.S., women are ghettoized into so-called “pink collar” jobs: clerical work, nursing, domestic work, restaurant and food service, retail sales, elementary school teaching, etc. There is nothing about economics that requires that in addition to different levels of compensation, women’s and men’s activities must or even should involve different degrees of oversight and mobility. Purely economic dynamics cannot explain such profound gender differentiations. In this sense, then, not only do economic relations accommodate kinship hierarchies, by placing women in the lowest “economically-defined” positions, but patriarchy “co-defines” basic economic relations.

In the very definition of economic roles if only class factors can be at play—in which case, low-level, but genderless jobs will, by accommodation, go to women and others at the bottom of non-class hierarchies—or, alternatively, co-defining kinship forces can also operate so as to generate subordinate “feminine” gender-defined jobs, such as being a secretary whose responsibilities include maternal services such as coffee-making, gift purchasing and birthday reminding.

Whenever gender dynamics co-define economic relations, not only will men and women be assigned to different economic roles, but those roles themselves will have characteristics in part determined by kinship dynamics. Similarly, whenever community forces co-define kinship relations, cultural differences will permeate gender roles, so families whose members belong to different communities will have different role structures. The roles of mother and father may differ significantly in Afro-American, Chicano, and Anglo-American families. The logic carries from sphere to sphere. When we look at societies via any monist theory, most dimensions of differences among people are reduced to peripheral concern. When we switch to pluralism, we see each type of difference, but not how they contour one another. When we choose complementary holism we have the potential of developing a comprehensive picture. Indeed, an especially critical consequence of co-definition that only a holist approach fully highlights is that “class consciousness” will vary depending on gender, political, and community allegiances; “womens’ consciousness” will differ for women of different classes, political allegiances, and communities; “Afro-American, Latino, or Native-American consciousness” will differ depending on gender, political, and class allegiances; and “political consciousness” will vary depending upon gender, community, and class allegiances.

In short, “complementary holism” highlights all the critical kinds of possible interconnections in human societies. First, society is viewed as a whole, a single system of people and institutions inextricably bound together. Only then, and only for specific purposes, do we abstract four different component parts, or social spheres, for separate analysis. But the characteristics of each sphere are viewed as multiply determined by one another, and the specific ways in which the spheres accommodate to and co-define one another are a primary subject of examination. Still, even this array of concepts leaves us feeling insufficiently prepared. It would be nice to also focus specifically on general relations between people and what we often call “the system.”

Within Marxism the concepts “base” and “superstructure” play an important role. Since Marxists see the economy as more important than other spheres, it is only sensible for them to carve up society according to a materialist economic hierarchy. Economic relations form the base, everything else is more or less lumped together in a dependent superstructure. Different Marxists use this ordering in different ways, some allowing the superstructure to have more influence on the base and some less. For instance, the Maoist theory of the “Cultural Revolution” grants greater influence to “superstructural” phenomena. Feminists, nationalists, and anarchists could all also employ the “base/superstructure” terminology, although the composition of the base would shift for each.

In contrast, having located not only economics but also politics, community, and kinship in society’s core, we do not want to impose a “productivist” or otherwise sphere-centering hierarchy on our method. Similarly, after having argued that material, social, and ideological relations operate interactively in each type of activity and social sphere, again we would be foolish to assert an always operative material or ideological dominance. So while no “base/superstructure” hierarchy is compatible with a complementary holist approach, it does make sense for us to distinguish between the people in any society—with all their individual and group traits—or what we call the “human center,” and the social roles, institutions, and institutional relations in that society, or what we call the “institutional boundary.” 

The allusion to architecture in these labels has a purpose. The institutional “boundary” of a society textures possibilities by imposing systemic or structural limits on people’s behavior “from without.” Within any society the boundary includes the intricate array of role offerings that constitute the society’s many institutions. The roles “surround” us and restrict our choices. To gain whatever benefits society has to offer—as workers, parents, voters, neighbors, etc.—we must fit ourselves into these role structures or risk being ostracized socially and penalized economically and politically.

The “human center,” on the other hand, embraces human feeling, need, thought, skill, consciousness, desire, creative expression, and personality. The ideas and actions of individuals and groups within the center “radiate outward” in turn influencing the boundary and even transcending successive generations. The idea of one realm surrounding another is only a graphic approximation of the dynamic between the two realms—it is not a literal description. In fact, the center and boundary occupy the same time and space as one another and are therefore really a single whole, just as the four spheres are. And, again like the four spheres, the center and boundary also intersect, overlap, accommodate, and co-define in a complementary way.

But while the spheres distinguish between different kinds of activities while lumping together the people and institutions that determine these activities, the concepts of societal center and boundary distinguish between people and institutions while lumping together different kinds of activity. Indeed, each sphere has a center element and a boundary element—people and institutional roles. Moreover, society’s center and boundary each have aspects of all four spheres. The conceptual carvings are simply two compatible overlapping ways of looking at things.

The introduction of this new set of concepts is not a matter of “different strokes for different folks,” but different conceptual tools for different analytical tasks. And the next addition to our tool kit, for the task of focusing on critical defining aspects of social life, is the concept, “core characteristic.” We define a core characteristic as a defining feature of a society which centrally influences life options by significantly affecting the character of both the human center and institutional boundary. Core characteristics usually begin as defining characteristics of the activity of a particular social sphere, and then, through accommodation and co-definition, come to affect the quality of life throughout the rest of society as well.

For example, in “class societies,” class relations certainly help define all economic role structures and texture all economic possibilities. Yet, in addition, beyond the economy, class hierarchies usually impose themselves on the character of governing, kinship, and community relations as well. Indeed, it is because “class” frequently permeates all social definitions and textures all aspects of lived experience that the marxist label “class society” truly does have meaning beyond the economic sphere. In such situations a specific class structure will become a core characteristic affecting all of social life. In the United States, for example, capitalist exploitation is a core characteristic. But in the United States the same holds true for sexism (flowing from the kinship sphere), racism (flowing from the community sphere), and a particular type of authoritarianism (flowing from the political sphere). In other words, not only is capitalist exploitation a core characteristic of U.S. society, but so are racism, sexism, and authoritarianism. 

While we believe this to be true for the United States, we are not arguing that in all societies at all times each sphere of social activity must generate a feature that becomes a core characteristic. Whether or not this occurs depends on the nature of the social activity in different social spheres and the nature of the interconnections between those spheres in each particular society. The important point is that multiple core characteristics are a possibility deserving serious investigation. Unfortunately, this is rarely contemplated as a possibility by most social theoreticians.

At this point, we want to address a question that is likely disturbing at least a few of our readers. We know society can be conceptualized in many different ways. We agree that the task is to formulate those conceptualizations that will most effectively meet our needs as students and agents of social change. But why choose exactly four spheres for our conceptual framework?

“Carving” societies into our four chosen spheres is only one of countless possible options. We cannot possibly maintain it provides the only effective, right, or revealing way to view things. Our argument in favor of choosing these four particular spheres to ground our theory of social stability and change rests on the validity of the following claims: 1) Each activity necessarily exists in any society. 2) Each activity is carried out through elaborate social relationships that define a significant portion of people’s life prospects. 3) None of the four types of activity reduces to or is subsumed by any of the others. 4) All of the activities and spheres influence one another and all social outcomes. So, 5) if our priority is understanding society in order to change it, not highlighting any of these spheres would cause us to run a grave risk of incompletely theorizing our circumstances. And 6) if we seek the most manageable framework for developing analyses, vision, and strategy, adding additional spheres would simply complicate matters at no great gain in facilitating understanding. Of course we cannot deny the possibility that some other type of activity will meet the first four criteria so that points “5” and “6” will apply only to an expanded set of five or more spheres, but, so far, we have not found this to be the case.

Economic, political, kinship, and community relations will always exist, though their influence in different societies may vary greatly. Wherever movements seek to overcome forms of domination, we can safety bet that conceptualizing along these particular social dimensions will significantly inform their efforts. To be sure, in different times and societies, different spheres may have greater or lesser influence in defining oppressions and eliciting social movements. But lack of conscious social movement along a particular axis does not diminish the theoretical usefulness of that axis; instead, the lack of social movement itself requires explanation using the theoretical tools pertaining to the particular sphere and to others as well.

To “abstract” means to pull a part out from the whole for separate analysis. When we discuss a society’s economy without paying attention to its culture, for example, we abstract out the economy from the whole. Sometimes abstractions lead to the definition of concepts and angles of focus that provide exceptional insights, not only pedagogically—by making our thought simpler because unessential complexities have been left out—but also practically, by yielding results which seem fully applicable in real societies and which would not have been seen but for making the abstraction in the first place. Other times, however, we separately conceptualize and analyze some part of a whole at great length, only to find that in real world interactions few of our abstract results remain valid.

The real world is characterized by interconnectedness. Everything exists in one whole, defined by and defining everything else. Yet within this whole, we can distinguish parts which exhibit modeled abstract dynamics which differ little from their real dynamics in complex environs. Their interconnectedness or “connectivity” with other relations doesn’t intrude on the features we focus on when we consider them abstractly, isolated from interactions, at least to the degree of description we are pursuing.

The effects of quantum dynamics within falling apples on their gravitational attraction to the earth are so minute that if we are only concerned about the apple’s rate of fall we can ignore them. In contrast, Marxist, feminist, nationalist, and anarchist theories, which are generally developed by abstracting economic, gender, community, and state relations from all others, end up suggesting effects which are so modified by the process of abstracting that when we take into account factors ignored in the abstract analyses, we see that those analyses are no longer reliable guides to real relations.

The point of our complementary holist framework is to provide an over-arching conceptual “carving” that can simultaneously give us an encompassing view and also refine each particular angle of conceptualization so it does not suffer from being too abstracted from all other angles of conceptualization. So, regarding the possible demarcation of a fifth sphere, at the conceptual level we must ask whether it clarifies or obscures our analytical vision. Radical activists must ask whether adding an additional sphere highlighting another dimension, currently subsumed in one or more or our four, would allow us to more easily see important relations for issues of social change and strategy that might otherwise have been overlooked or misunderstood. If yes, then as activists we should take this extra conceptual step. If not, it would complicate matters unnecessarily.

For example, the kinship sphere is the primary site of what we have termed kinship-sexual-child rearing activity and the principal source of divisions along “gender” lines. We have argued that division by sexual preference forms an integral part of the dynamic of kinship activity, and that just as sexism emerges from the dynamics of kinship, so does heterosexism and homophobia. Seeing things this way, we would discuss questions of sexuality and sexual preference as one complex part of the whole range of phenomena associated with kinship. This is not, however, the only approach we could take. Instead of four defining spheres, we might choose to demarcate five. We could argue, for example, that sexuality itself is the locus of a sphere of human activity which can project defining social characteristics as autonomously as any other defining activity can. We could argue further that a basic, oppressive dynamic associated with this additional sphere of social life is “erotophobia” (the fear and hatred of sexuality) whose primary manifestation is homophobia. The choice between these alternative frameworks depends largely on an assessment of the value of the alternative ways of conceptualizing in light of our goal of promoting social change. In a homophobic/erotophobic society, will a fourfold division that subsumes complex issues of sexuality within a sphere primarily concerned with gender produce an understanding of sexuality sufficient to our needs? Or, alternatively, just as we find it necessary to break out politics from economics, for example, must we break out sexuality from kinship—disentangling sexuality to permit a closer, potentially more insightful reading of society?

It seems evident that like economic, political, cultural, and gender activity, sexual activity has historical universality. Moreover, sexual activity often has the effect of demarcating important social divisions. But this isn’t enough, since one could say the same thing about subparts of the economic sphere arguing the need to separate production from consumption and allocation, but be rebutted because this step is unwarranted due to the fact that production, consumption, and allocation are just different phases of one process that produces a seamless web of effects. Does the same hold for sexuality as an element of kinship relations? Or, with sexuality, as opposed to matters of gender definition and child rearing, do we need to employ two conceptual structures and locuses of focus to achieve full understanding?

Following a similar tack an argument could be made for dividing race and religion off from ethnicity or even for including entirely new spheres of different sorts having to do, for example, with cognition/psychology. What is to prevent this? Are there times when it would be important to undertake such a step?

In chapter one we suggested a utilitarian norm for governing how we define concepts. The issue is not a matter of “abstract theoretical power” but one of “use value” in finding truths we need to understand. The point of our presenting provocative examples for possible fifth spheres has been to show that the conceptualizations elaborated in this book in no sense constitute a closed and inviolable system. But for now we think we can manage with four main conceptual angles not because we think issues such as sexuality are relatively unimportant, but because we think that like many other important dynamics, they can be effectively handled within a fourfold orientation. Whether this choice is optimal will depend on how powerful our emerging theory proves to be as we proceed to discussions of whole societies and history, vision and strategy.

A holistic analysis of a society’s school system, to take one example, would look at not only how the schools socialize children to become adults, but also how the schools pass on cultural awareness, teach necessary economic skills, and carry out political functions. A holistic analysis would identify the aspects of the socialization process in schools that reproduce society’s defining kinship norms—say sexism and heterosexism—but would also identify ways in which school activities were incompatible with established kinship norms—equal budgets for male and female athletic programs or boys taking home economics classes and girls taking shop. A holistic analysis would also look for reproductive and destabilizing effects of schools on racial, religious, class, and political relations. Are children segregated and “tracked” by race, or is integration through busing or other means challenging racist norms? Are children being tracked in ways that teach conceptual skills to a few future coordinators and rote vocational skills to many, or are more children of working class parents receiving pre-college and college education than will be able to find “thinking” jobs in the economy? Are children getting a sanitized, anglicized version of American history or are they taking Social Studies courses that study the genocidal treatment of Native Americans and approach the Vietnam War from a critical perspective?

But as powerful as this orientation may be, the complementary holist approach as described so far is still incomplete. Not only have we left the fundamental issues of social stability and change to the next chapter, but, in addition we have left out all reference to the ecology and paid little attention to a world system of many societies.

The “natural ecology” includes the flora, fauna, resources, and general habitat of the non-human-created environment. It operates as an immensely complicated system in which intricate interconnections between the life cycles of different species, the climate, and the physical environment determine over-arching characteristics. A “society” includes the human created network of social relations we have spent this chapter conceptualizing. A “social ecology,” however, is the combination of a natural ecology and a society which, once again, form a single complementary whole.

We can view the natural ecology and society in much the same way we have viewed different spheres within any particular society. Each shapes and is shaped by the other. Looked at from one perspective they weave a single, seamless whole. Looked at from another perspective, they act as two different systems accommodating or co-defining one another. Each perspective is useful for particular purposes and together they comprise the complementary holist view we have developed throughout this book.

For some purposes we can therefore usefully treat a society as a separate system. For other purposes, we do so at risk. For example, as the ecologists have tried to teach us, if we wish to create a world in which we can live safely for longer than another half century we can leave out ecological considerations only at our own peril. Murray Bookchin conveys this lesson, for example, when he urges that we should not allow ourselves to succumb to a heavy-handed dualism that separates the natural from the social, or to fall into a reductionism that dissolves the one in the other since committing either of these errors cripples our ability to think out the real issues involved.

Similarly, we feel that an ecological perspective needs to become part of our guiding philosophy of life. In this book we have so far included chapters on four spheres of social life and in this chapter we have argued for a conceptual approach to amalgamating the four sets of critical concepts into a holistic view of society. In addition, however, a fully complementary holist view of social ecologies sufficient to the needs of activists concerned with creating a better world also requires ecological concepts that can operate on their own and be integrated into the overall approach as well.

Yet not all ecological perspectives are equally likely to contribute to improving social or even ecological relations. For example, traditional western mainstream ecologists apply instrumentalist approaches common in modern hierarchical societies to the problem of manipulating and taming nature. These “technocratic ecologists” treat nature as another tool particular human elites can manipulate for their own ends. This view calls itself ecological, but it has nothing in common with the complementary holist approach we have celebrated. Instead this attitude toward nature co-reproduces tendencies that emerge from contemporary social forms characterized by domination and exploitation. We need to incorporate an ecological perspective that will co-reproduce a liberatory world-view. We are confident complementary holist methodology will complement an ecologically sound attitude to the natural ecology. With Bookchin we believe that this approach can sensitize us to the intricate connection between human and non-human relationships, “neither mechanically reducing them to a false undifferentiated oneness, nor totally breaking the bonds between them to wrongly imply they are unconnected.” We have no doubt many “ecological concepts” will be needed in addition to the “social concepts” presented in this volume, and though we cannot discuss specific ecological concepts here, we believe they can be integrated effectively into a holist framework.

Every society interacts not only with nature but also with other societies. Throughout history, varying forms of imperialism, national chauvinism, and strategic alliances have existed as critical factors, shaping not only the history of the world but the development of individual societies as well. Colonialism has dramatically shaped the societies of the colonial powers as well as the colonies, with the latter, of course, suffering far more damaging consequences. Countries with highly valued resources such as oil have seen their national incomes rise to dwarf countries with no such resources. Almost all societies divert enormous resources to military establishments in the face of real or exaggerated external threats. Countries perceived to have pivotal roles in geostrategic superpower competition are subject to far more consistent external pressure than less “important” countries. Intervention clearly constrains and threatens liberatory developments in countries such as Nicaragua or El Salvador. We should never forget that intervention to destroy progressive movements and governments is the rule not the exception, and that historically most of these interventions have succeeded. Where revolutions have survived, they have been distorted. Imagine how different national and world history would be only over the last three decades if the people of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic and Brazil and Chile and Jamaica and Grenada and Cuba and Nicaragua and El Salvador and Vietnam and Cambodia and South Korea and Ireland and Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Iran and Angola and Mozambique and Zimbabwe…were able to have made and keep making their own history without intervention by the United States or the Soviet Union. (If the list of countries tormented by the U.S. is longer, it’s because in fact it is longer.)

We have not attempted to offer a detailed treatment of international dynamics. But, we feel the holist approach is well suited to doing so. Imperialism is one of the subjects most conducive to a holist analysis since imperialism so clearly manifests all four “moments” of causation. In our opinion, much that has been lacking in various theories of international relations stems from ignoring one or more moments—for example, the influence of patriarchy has been almost universally overlooked until recently—or from assuming that one or another moment must always be dominant. Marxist-Leninist theories of imperialism defined solely as the monopoly stage of capitalism (an economic system) are a prime example of the latter point.

Applying a holist approach to relations between countries should give us a better understanding of the impact of community dynamics of race and religion, for example (e.g. in the U.S. occupation of Grenada or British-occupied Northern Ireland or the Israeli-occupied West Bank). It would help us understand the exploitation of women by multinational corporations or military institutions (e.g. the use of rape in warfare and the cultivation of prostitution around U.S. military bases) and the role these play both in structuring the form of international relations and their motivations. Likewise this approach should help explicate the meaning of “cultural imperialism” (e.g. the Westernization/Americanization of consumption and definitions of beauty) and the role this plays.

If it turns out we need additional concepts specially suited to the macro context of inter-society connections to get an analysis comprehensive enough for our activist needs, (as we likely need additional ecological concepts, for example), this should not be a problem for the holist framework. If these additions cause us to have to return to our society-level concepts to adapt their basic definitions in light of the defining impact of world-level “fields of force,” a degree of alteration we do not expect to have to undertake, that too would be a workable step for our methodology though it might lead to significant alterations to the results obtained so far in this volume.

So ended chapter six, proper. And below we include its associated dialogue. But first, I interject from 2026: As I read this material to convey it in this episode I have had many thoughts, and would like to convey two. First, Liberating Theory was itself a kind of holistic project. None of the authors, alone, would have come up with the chapters, neither their substance or their style. This really was, I can tell not only from vague memories of doing it with the others, but from knowing each participant’s own work and seeing how this whole differs from and is even greater than the sum of its parts. Second, I can imagine some people reading or hearing this material and feeling like, jeez, it is way too much. It is too complicated. I can also imagine others feeling like, wonderful, there are so many new elements, we can now dig into it at our desks, going this way and that way, endlessly. I would like to suggest both reactions would miss the point. 

Yes, complementary holism has lots of focuses and ideas—concepts that are added to activists’ proposed toolboxes. But if you give it a little time it turns out that the additions aren’t obscure. They aren’t so vague that you can imprint anything you want on them. And their point isn’t to complexify but instead to simplify. Not shorten the list of concepts, but simplify the task of using them. They mean to propose manageable methods and concepts for activists to use to address real circumstances. They mean to be complex enough to capture what we need, but not more. They mean to be flexible enough to alter, yet with a little effort, clear and complete enough to provide unifying awareness. 

But, I have to admit, that wasn’t the outcome forty years ago. And as I read this chapter to you now, and I bet it will hold for the next two as well, I honestly wonder why it didn’t generate unifying awareness? What was wrong, or missing, or poorly conveyed, or flawed about the work? Hopefully, if there are such problems, they will now get addressed. And if, instead, the obstacles to a new Liberating Theory were instead somehow contingently embedded in all of us, back then, they too will be overcome. That, at least, was and is my reason for offering the material again in this sequence of articles. 

But now, to return to the material, here is the dialogue that addressed the issues of society writ large.

It started with Coho warming to her task in a summing up of the strengths of complementary holism as a method for better understanding societies. She said: And so holism emphasizes that all human activity affects all four spheres of human existence. Once more it asserts that any hierarchy of influence in a particular society must be empirically demonstrated. Holism recognizes the connectivity of spheres so that spheres exist always in the context of a whole that defines them all…

Marlen interrupts with renewed vigor: It still seems suicidal to me to throw out an already existing powerful materialist theory. Your complementary holist approach is all concepts and no theory. Why not build carefully from an economic theory that is universal?

Nat, not giving up: Still at it, Marlen? Why not take the community sphere and build off that?

Radfem, also not giving up: The kinship sphere.

Ana, reminding them: The political sphere.

Coho: But it’s true that we still need to apply complementary holist concepts to generate specific theories of particular societies…

Marlen, challenging: What does your framework help you to understand about the Soviet Union, for instance, that I would ignore?

Coho: You look at the Soviet Union and see a deformed socialist society. The economy to you has socialist forms, the state is a bureaucracy. You proceed to blame these details on poverty, capitalist encirclement, Stalinism, problems located within the state, prior history, or other countries. You analyze in detail the intricate problems of the Soviet planning system, bemoaning its centralization and subordination to the Party, but you never see the forest for the trees. The Soviet Union has neither a capitalist nor a socialist mode of production…

C.C., our council communist chimes in: And as I understand it, Coho, your complementary holist approach, correct me if I’m wrong, would give a completely different view. You would describe a coordinator economic sphere in which planners, managers, and other conceptual workers occupy positions of ruling economic status. And you would see a bureaucratic dictatorial state which still in part administers the economy because in the early days there weren’t enough coordinators to do the job—and because workers self-management was anathema to Leninists.

Nat: And, have I got this right, Coho, wouldn’t your approach allow you to see a complex community sphere in the Soviet Union in which minority cultural communities struggle for dignity against forces that seek to reduce cultural variety to dominant Russian norms? Assimilation with respect, you might call it, or more aptly, cultural homogenization.

Marlen: You are so obsessed with maintaining your heritage, Nat, that you fail to appreciate the struggle to create a new socialist culture.

Nat: New cultural forms that trample spiritual life and whose aesthetics emphasize socialist realism; this is not a culture I would fight to create.

Sofie: And, add to this Coho if I leave something out, wouldn’t your approach see a patriarchal kinship sphere in the Soviet Union in which women suffer domination at the hands of sexist men. And while institutional structures differ from those in the U.S., they are patriarchal nonetheless.

Radfem: And, if I’ve understood Coho correctly, the entire question of sexuality, sexual preference, subtle and not so subtle gender divisions throughout society would only be peripherally considered by a Marxist analysis.

Marlen, holding fast: I am not convinced that an expanded monist approach isn’t the most useful for our purposes.

Ana: But, if I may explain what Coho’s getting at here. An enlightened monism in the hands of a clever marxist simply expands a narrow economic focus. Factory work as first-cause gives way to production in general, which becomes all economic activity which gives way to a concept that emphasizes not only production and consumption but reproduction in the factory and the family, which grows to encompass production and reproduction of ideas, people, and culture.

C.C.: Even the definition of class, am I right, Coho, expands to encompass features rooted in sexual, political, and cultural divisions of labor. But it is all based on economic/material features…

Sophie: And so it is too narrow. For example, when economic concepts are extended to incorporate kinship relations, they only address kinship attributes insofar as they are analogous to production and consumption…

Radfem: To see income differentials more than sexual norms of teenagers; job structures more than courtship practices and marriage vows; divisions of labor in the home rather than violence against women. No expansion of economy-based concepts will enlighten anyone about erotophobia.

Nat: What’s more, even the most enlightened monist theories scare off activists. I must admit, white workers don’t coalesce around black nationalist ideology and certainly black nationalists won’t support class demands that appear to apply to whites only.

Plury: But you’ve very neatly argued for my pluralist approach—all these oppressions exist and it’s simply a question of picking the right tool for the job.

Sofie: If I may, Coho? The difference between pluralism and Coho’s approach is that the latter stresses the fact that we all simultaneously identify as members of classes, genders, communities, and political hierarchies. And this holistic experience of society determines how we each relate to our surroundings and what we expect from life.

Ana: For instance, Radfem asks questions about gender and sexuality, Marlen asks questions about forces and relations of production and class struggle, Nat asks questions about culture and spirituality, I ask about politics and hierarchies. But Coho proposes an approach that makes it easier to ask more encompassing questions and to see important relationships—not just using one sphere here, one sphere there.

Plury: I still don’t see the difference. I think Coho’s just obscuring the issue unnecessarily.

Coho: Take the Soviet example again. The complementary holist approach helps us look at struggles within the Soviet coordinator class over the relative importance of market and planning forms; between workers and coordinators over management prerogatives; between coordinators and political bureaucrats over cultural definitions and rights; and among genders over divisions in role structures from the earliest days of the Soviet revolution.

C.C.: Yes, I think we’re all beginning to see the possibilities.

Coho: But what you’re not seeing, I think, is…

Plury: I knew there’d be something.

Coho: Those involved in each particular sphere must be able to understand not only the concerns and dynamics of other spheres but the interactive effects of trends within spheres on other spheres.

Plury: This is so confusing…

Coho: And to see the implications of these interactions on visions and strategies for change. To see the impossibility of building a liberatory theory, strategy and vision when separate conceptualizations and their movements are “out of sync”; when their relationship is not complementary but antagonistic.

Radfem: You know, Coho, the more you argue with us, the more you attack Marien, in particular, the more I begin to see the same dynamics that made me opt for movement separatism. It all begins to sound so “holier than thou.”

Coho: Perhaps I do get a little carried away.

Sofie: I must admit that I cringe every time your scientific analogies become almost a basis for “proving” the correctness of your concepts.

Coho: I do get excited over my charts and spheres, but I don’t mean my analogies as proofs…

C.C.: After all, Coho, what prevents the very inclusiveness and flexibility of your system from becoming as dogmatic as you describe ours to be—particularly Marlen’s?

Coho: I was just trying to…

Plury: And, as I said earlier, what keeps your system from being so abstract, so intellectual that only you and a few others can constructively apply it?

Neopop: On the contrary, I think the weakness of Coho’s system is that she says too little about who would administer it. Who would take leadership?

Nat: It’s true that while I find myself developing a real affinity for Coho’s approach and it’s potential I still can’t picture myself involved in organizing for voter registration by talking about “social moments.”

Ana: There seems to be something wrong with creating a tight intellectual system and calling it a theory of society or history. It still requires the arguing for and imposition of one system over another. Our interpersonal dynamics are centered around one person trouncing another, bludgeoning another.

Radfem: Instead of being more marxist than thou, more feminist than thou, more theoretical than thou…

Marlen: We can be more cohoist than thou.

Coho: Are you arguing that there is no difference between a system which argues for the exclusion of others, as each of yours does, and a system which argues for the inclusion of others, as complementary holism does? Between a system which argues for the elitist power of its adherents and a system that argues against elitism? Certainly there is something grandiose about trying to enunciate a theory of history when we know so little. It’s time to organize around a theory that recognizes its limitations, that attempts to generate a democratic movement around shared ways of thinking about the world and a better future.

Plury: Sounds like a step forward from sectarian isolation, organizing around stars and leaders, with temporary slogans and fears, and with no shared coherent intellectual framework.

Coho: Exactly. Regardless of the dangers, we have to embrace a theory and vision. We’d better make sure that the concepts we choose are as useful, creative, and anti-sectarian as possible.

(a pause, then a familiar voice from the corner)

Cyn: No one wants that more than I. Historically it’s never been done.

Coho, over the ensuing groans: Since you mention it, Cyn, let’s take a look at what history shows. (gloom begins to settle as they eye Coho happily rustling through her papers)

---