Experiment: a test made to demonstrate a known truth or to examine the validity of a hypothesis; the process of learning through observation.
BEGINNING THE EXPERIMENT
"The greatest difficulty confronting groups that seek to create a new type of revolutionary organization is that of establishing new types of human relationships within the organization itself. The forces of the society exert an omnipresent pressure against such an effort. But unless this is accomplished, by methods yet to be experimented with, we will never be able to escape from specialized politics. People's creativity and participation can only be awakened by a collective project explicitly concerned with all aspects of lived experience. The only way to 'arouse the masses' is to expose the appalling contrast between the possible constructions of life and its present poverty." - SI
We can just begin anew. Certainly there is plenty we can learn from past struggles, and we have every intention to plant our feet firmly in history, but there is no way of truly knowing what will be most successful and what will fail today. This is why our work is an experiment. We will put into action what we've learned, and be taught by the consequences of our acts.
Some proposals about where to go from here:
Creating Liberating Contexts:
It is not possible, at this time, to create truly liberated spaces. We currently cannot, for example, eat without some participation in capitalist modes of production and distribution. And, on top of the material barriers to full liberation, any grouping of human beings will, presently, be tainted by oppressive thought patterns and behaviors such as racism, sexism and class privilege. However, it is possible to partially re-shape the behavior of human beings by creating different contexts for them to operate in, and these spaces already exist, all throughout the world.
However brief or single-issue they might be, the following can all be liberating contexts to some extent: food co-ops, housing collectives, radical/queer/Black bookshops, high school "anarchy clubs," farms, Earth First! "free states," independent media centers, free schools, worker's strikes, political workshops, identity-based support groups and caucuses, cultural centers, community gardens, underground or "militant" cells, small/cooperative businesses and even monastic orders.
We propose a thorough and critical evaluation of all of these different models, so that we can support, enhance and enlarge these tendencies. Any thing that either currently exists, or that we will create, will address well certain issues and not be able to adequately deal with other problems. For example, Earth First! is healthily and tangibly fostering uncompromising resistance to eco-cide, but the movement is greatly plagued by it's own whiteness and drunkenness. Within each institution, tensions such as this will always exist. It is our choice as to what we prioritize and what we sacrifice towards that end, so we ought to choose with care.
Some possible priorities are:
Education:
Trapped between the coercion and indoctrination of public schools and the market
driven, privilege-ridden universities, young people desperately need more wholesome,
useful, and radical educational opportunities. Likewise, working people are
systematically disempowered and perpetually made to feel stupid in our society.
Alternative educational opportunities exist for both groups, but they tend to
be, in one way or another, fettered to the old world (such as training Latinos
to be more "employable," or the re-creation of adult dominated, anti-creative
schools for young people). The creation of a multi-faceted, autonomous and revolutionary
school (or study group, or popular education center) is an excellent hypothesis
to experiment with.
Labor:
In a money economy, dignified labor is both vital and virtually impossible to
find. Both the privileged and the under-privileged individual are tracked into
a lifetime of de-skilled and alienated labor. And, both non-profit organizations
and capitalist unions survive off of the continuation of the very system that
we oppose, and thus can never truly address our need for meaningful work. it
would be tremendously inspiring to see the birth of independent, cooperative
work opportunities that provide both decent wages and skills to all involved.
Housing:
Many of us learned the largest portion of what we currently understand about
how to be hateful, nasty, addicted, selfish, violent, victimized fuckers from
our childhood homes. The home is one of the most intimate forums for either
fostering or destroying oppressive behaviors. By struggling to create radical
housing initiatives, we can begin to define the conditions for healthful boundaries,
sexuality, solidarity, communication, commitment, power-sharing, trust, eating,
and so forth. And these struggles exist, both within the home, and in relation
to the larger neighborhood, city and state. Currently, there are very low standards
put on "collective" living. For the most part, if certain mediocre requirements
are met, a house is deemed "cooperative." Working to rise above this insulting
self-definition would be a brilliant and intriguing experiment.