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“How can we get free? How can we free ourselves, our communities, our environments, our society? And what will this freedom look like? While the present moment holds incredible possibilities to organize for our collective liberation, there are powerful forces readily willing and able to summons all available weapons of repression to contain and suppress revolutionary movements....
“The question of freedom is central to all revolutionary movements. It is at the root of everyday struggles against white supremacist colonialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, the authoritarian state, and every other form of systemic oppression. But we have to ask, again, what will freedom look like? Often, the realities we each face constrain the ways we can answer this question, so we ask it in pieces: How do we provide for each other? How do we protect, nurture, care, love, and create? How do we liberate ourselves from the hardships of enclosure, exploitation, and dependency that are imposed on our minds, bodies, communities, and environments? How do we free our sense of freedom, so it is not a set of individual and extractive privileges, but is instead the grounding for a communal form of abundance?”
By laying bare the mechanisms of capitalism, imperialism, settler colonialism, climate catastrophe, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, exploitation and dispossesion, and a range of other oppressive structures and countering them with a historical account of revolutionary movements from around the world, Organizing for Autonomy offers a brazen and determined articulation of a world that centers community, love, and justice.
With an unparalleled breadth and by synthesizing innumerable sources of revolutionary thought and history, CounterPower presents the result of years of inquiry, struggle, and resistance. Bold, fearless, and radically original, Organizing for Autonomy imagines a decolonized, communist, alternative world order that is free from oppressive structures, state violence, and racial capitalism and helps us to get there.
"CounterPower offers a deeply thoughtful analysis that is rooted in people's everyday struggles to end oppression. At a time when the criminal failures of capitalism endager the entire planet, Organizing for Autonomy is rich with revolutionary possibility."
—Barbara Smith, cofounder of the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
“The old world is collapsing all around us, and communism is in the air. Organizing for Autonomy asks us to breathe deeply of that air, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our comrades, and to plot the way forward together. Its cohesive analysis and ambitious vision point toward the North Star and offer a militant strategy for how to get going. It is not a roadmap to the new world, but no matter. After all, communism is not the destination, it is the path itself.”
—Geo Maher (George Ciccariello-Maher), author of Building the Commune and Decolonizing Dialectics
"Capitalism got us into this mess. Organizing for Autonomy advances the conversation about how we can achieve a different—and better—way of living, in a world without bosses."
—Steve Wright, author of Storming Heaven
"In the new phase of history, and of struggles, which is opening up now, it's essential to keep alive the link with the history of the :eft, and to sum this up critically as a guide for future practice. Organizing for Autonomy is a great contribution to that task."
—Robert Biel, author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism
Praise for CounterPower
“Whenever I meet someone who is radicalizing, who is looking for a way to understand the world we live in and inspire hope that we can live in a fundamentally different and liberating society, [CounterPower’s] writing are some of the first pieces I share along with Wretched of the Earth, Sister Outsider, This Bridge Called My Back, and models of change from Mexico to Spain.”
—Uruj Sheikh, Campaign Manager, The Real News Network
“[A]n organization of organizers, a revolutionary organization involved in mass struggles…serious, smart…[with] no qualms about calling itself revolutionary”
—Todd Gitlin, author of Occupy Nation and a founding member of SDS.
“Sounds benign and non threatening; however a closer look reveals an organization that is bent on the destruction of America…Their beautifully written mission statement and other language on their web site, boiled down to basics, shows that the organization wants to replace our capitalist system with socialism at best.”
—Milton Reid, Retired Corporate Executive
CounterPoweris a revolutionary organization committed to building the power of working and oppressed people, from below and to the left. Drawing lessons from past and present movements, they offer an analysis, vision, and strategy to build for social revolution in the heart of empire. They organize to dismantle the imperialist world-system: a system based on the fusion of capitalism, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and the state. With branches throughout the United States, CounterPower has more than a decade of experience helping to build the collective power and autonomy of workers and the oppressed.
INTRODUCTION
The Specter That Haunts Us
Guerrilla Tektology
Building Counterpower for a Free Society
Outline of the Book
CHAPTER 1: POLITICS
1.1: Everything is Political!
Value
Standpoint
Composition
Inquiry
1.2: A Communist Politics
From Counterpower to Communism
CHAPTER 2: METHODS
2.1: Radical Social Science
Demystifying Reality and Illuminating Paths to Freedom
Against Reductionism
Historical-Geographical Materialism
An Itinerary for Radical Social Science
2.2: Conceptual Framework
Complementary Holism
The Human Center
Character Structures
Institutional Boundary
Spheres of Social Activity
Intra-Actions Among Spheres of Social Activity
Evolution and Revolution
2.3: Research from Below
Social Group Composition
The Multitude of Workers and Popular Social Groups
Cycles and Circuits of Struggle
Decoding the Hidden Transcript
Critical Assessment and Summation
Future Directions for Inquiry
CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS
3.1: The Imperialist World-System
Empire as a World-Producing Force
Center/Periphery Relations
A Geopolitics of Imperialism
The Ecological Rift
Imperialist Strategies of Domination
Imperialist Crisis and Decay
Resurgent Fascism
3.2: Revolutionary Situations
CHAPTER 4: VISION
4.1: Communist Alternatives
Territories of Freedom
Commons
Conviviality
Councils
Communes
Assembling Communist Alternatives
4.2: Kinship
Communism at Point Zero
Communities of Full Care
Free Love and Free Partnerships
Communal Habitations
Education for Autonomy
4.3: Economics
The Abolition of Class Society
Stewardship of the Commons and Collective Enterprises
Federated Councils of Workers and Consumers
Multidimensional Production
Social Provisioning, Remunerative Justice, and Factors of Consumption
Communal Participatory Planning
4.4: Polity
Negate the State
A Communal Participatory Polity
Conflict Resolution and Restorative Justice
Communal Defense and Security
4.5: Community
Decolonization
The Indigenist Perspective
Polyculturalism and Intercommunalism
A Psychedelic Transformation of Everyday Life
4.6: The World Commune
CHAPTER 5: STRATEGY
5.1: Levels of Political Praxis
5.2: Continuous Revolution
5.3: Organized Autonomy
Organs of Counterpower
Defending the Area of Autonomy
Create Two, Three, Many Parties of Autonomy!
From United Front to System of Counterpower
5.4: Protracted Revolutionary Struggle
A Path to Liberation
Phase 1: Laying the Groundwork
Phase 2: The Emergence of Territorial Counterpower
Phase 3: Insurrectionary Rupture
Phase 4: Direct Transition to Communism
CONCLUSION
SummationThe Question of Program