Draft for Discusssion at LGN Conrl Conf.

, July 3-7,1991

Program of the Left Green Network

2nd Draft by Howard Hawkins and Lowell Nelson Introduction: The Coordinating Committee of the Left Green Network agreed to a process for writing a Program of the Left Green Network to be worked on and adopted at our next Continental Conference. The Program has two basic purposes: 1) to provide a succinct, readable document that can introduce readers to the Left Greens' vision of an alternative society and how we propose to get theresomething more concrete than the Principles of the Left Green Network, yet something much shorterand more readable than the laundry sts of some programs that take a position on all the minutia of public portcy. 2) to provide the LGN with a framework of policies we advocate that can serve as a guide for endorsements, literature, action campaigns, public statements, and the tike by the Coordinating Committee, the Clearinghouse Committee, our working groups and representatives to conferences and the press, and so forth. The following points of analysis, strategy, and program are advocated by the Left Greens. We believe they provide basic guideposts for the road to a Green alternative based on ecological sustainabllity, grassroots democracy, social justice, peace, and human freedom. We will work for these goals inside and outside of the electoral arena. "Green" has become a metaphor throughout the world for a new movement for an ecological society that is neither statist nor capitalist. We call the alternative we seek Green, although we don't presume to speak for all organizations and individuals who cad themselves Green. We speak for the Left Green Network, a North American organization with members in Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the U.S., although we believe much of what we say applies in general terms throughout the world.

As we approach the year 2000, contemporary society ishaunted by a striking paradox. Technological prowess today potentially affords us the power to create an ecological society completely free from material want and every form of domination. But actually its power to destroy is harnessed to systems of domination that are degrading human life and the environment to the point where our very survival as a species is imperiled. Behind the conventional wisdom that rationalizes the structures of domination ideologically, and beneath the internalized motivations that fetter our unconscious desires and bind us to this oppressive system psychologically, lies a contradiction that is pregnant with the potential to unleash revolutionary upheavalan explosive tension between what-is and what-could-be, between the potentiality for a post-scarcity society and the actuality of an enforced system of scarcity, between the possibility of realizing our most Utopian visions of freedom and community and the reality of a system built around privilege and competition and heading toward oblivion in nuclear war and ecological disaster. We are fully capable today of creating free society based on the maxim "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." We have harnessed resources and energies that were totally unknown to previous generations. Potentially we can now sift through this technological legacy and design and assemble an array of ecotechnologies that can provide not only food, clothing, and shelter, but a broad spectrum of cultural needs and luxuries to every person alivewithout consuming the precious time of humanity in mindless toil, without undermining the ecological conditions that sustain human and all other life-forms. But we are socially, culturally, and psychologically mired in a dehumanizing legacy of hierarchical domination and clasj exploitation that prevents a socially and ecologically rational application of technology. This legacy of domination has divided humanity against itself on the basis of gender, generation, occupation, class, nationality, ethnicity, and other socially-constructed status hierarchies. It has divided each of us against ourselves, socializing us to police ourselves, to internalize our own oppression, and to unconsciously restrict the binal desires for freedom and pleasure that can only nd conscious expression and fulllment in a radical reconstruction of society. And it has divided humanity as a whole against the natural world, bringing us today to the edge of ecological breakdown and human misery of unprecedented proportions. We thus stand at a new point of departure in human history where it is. now possible to mobilize humanity

Analysis

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Con Conf., July 3-7,1991 around general human interests in opposition to the prevailing social order. The potential for abundance enables us to transcend the particularistic interests of oppressed generations, genders, ethnic groups, classes, and nationalities by raising a general human interest in a free, ecological, post-scarcity society. The tension between what-is and what-could-be is universalizing the issues. It is pulling individuals from all strata of society into opposition to the prevailing order. Spiritual impoverishment is bringing people from relatively privileged strata into opposition to the system around such issues as peace, ecology, and the search of meaningful lifestyles as much as material impoverishment is bringing the underprivileged into opposition around the system's failure to provide decent incomes, housing, and health care. To be sure, this emergent general interest of the people in freedom, material security, and ecological sustainability still stands at odds with the particularistic interests of the ruling class in prot, power, and privilege. But this emergent general interest broadens the scope of potentially revolutionary social forces far beyond that of the traditional radical movements based on sectoral interests that applied to a single class, race, or nationality, even to the point of drawing many individuals, and particularly youth, away from the ranks of the elite groups. Reinforcing this universalization of the issues and generalization of the human interest is the ecological crisis. The ecological crisis is a general human problem, not a sectoral problem that oppresses a single class, race, or nationality. Moreover, it is a problem that we must resolve within the lifetimes of today's children or there will not be future generations. Thus, not only are we at a new point of departure in human history, but we are also at a decisive juncture. The ecological crisis connects with social degradation at their common roots in social domination. Our society's attempt to dominate nature stems from the very real domination of human by humanof women by men, of people of color by whites, of workers by bosses, of one nation by another, and of ordinary people in all walks of life who are weighed down, however subtiey, by the institutions and traditions of hierarchical society. The notion that other people can be objects for domination is carried over ideologically into our regard for nature. The institutions, values, and sensibilities that rationalize and justify the misuse and abuse of nature are the same ones that rationalize and justify the misuse and abuse of people. In order to reharmonize our society with nature, we must reharmonize human with human. As Greens, as social ecotogists, we therefore struggle against the social roots of ecological destruction. We embrace the liberation of women, youth, people of color, workers, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. We work in solidarity with peoples struggling against foreign domination and for self-determination. We stand with every effort to promote the self-development of people of all age, gender, and ethnic groups through cooperative lifestyles and personal fulllment as human beings. We see these struggles for human liberation as part of the struggle for environmental sanity. The various forms of hierarchy and domination that permeate our society are integrated and ultimately enforced by two over-arching institutions today: the capitalist economy and the nation-state. If we are to have an ecological society, capitalism and the nation-state must be uprooted and replaced by new decentralized forms of grassroots political and economy democracy. Capitalism is based on a competitive struggle to exploit people and nature for prots and growth. This creates a dynamic of endless growth which cannot be reconciled with ecological sustainability. Capitalism is to the biosphere what cancer is to an organismit grows and grows without any sense of balance or reciprocity to the life systems that sustains it until it destroys that life-basis. Furthermore, capitalism does not "deliver the goods" to hundreds of millions around the world who are impoverished and marginalized by capitalist development as a relative few are obscenely enriched. The market does not register our "collective consumption" needs such as public transportation and clean air and water. In short, the btind, amoral forces of market prices and prot motives as the regulatory mechanism of the economy must be replaced by cooperative and democratic institutions that enable us to create a moral economy where we can make conscious, ethical choices about how to to meet people's basic needs in an ecologically sustainable manner. The nation-state is no vehicle for an alternative. The collapse of the statist ("Communist") political-economic systems of the East bloc demonstrate this reality, as does the retreat of Social Democracy from even ameliorative reforms in the face of the heightened international competition due to the increased mobility of transnational capital. The nation-state is too big, too hierarchical, too militaristic, and too inclined toward bureaucratic aggrandizement of ever greater power at the expense of people's liberties. At the same time, it is too weak to take on global corporations. Only confederal institutions of grassroots popular power that enable millions to participate directly in shaping their social destiny can counter global capitalism. Achieving human freedom and restoring ecological balance requires that we replace the competitive system

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Con Conf., July 3-7,1991 of centralized corporate and state power with a cooperative system of grassroots political and economic democracy. Genuine, participatory democracy requires a nonhierarchical and well as classless society in which all forms of hierarchical domination have been eliminated. The continued functioning of the capitalist economic system and the international state system is ecologically incompatible with human survival. Social degradation and ecological destruction will not end until we uproot both prot-oriented capitalism and power-oriented statism. Capitaism and statism are interlocking structures that function together with varying mixes of market competition and state controls in the economy throughout the world East bloc, West bloc, Third World. All are variants of state capitalism. The competitive struggle of corporations and states for prots, growth, and accumulation and for the capacity for militarization and centralized power that comes with accumulated wealth is destroying the ecology of the planet and the freedom of humanity. Therefore, in place of the competitive struggle for prots, growth, and centralized power, we must call for a new cooperative system of grassroots political and economic democracy so that people have the democratic power to meet their needs in harmony with nature. We must call for a new, third way modeled after neither the Eastern nor Western variants of state capitalism. We ve in tumultuous times. The East bloc military alliance has collapsed. The Soviet and Yugoslavian states are olsintegrating. Such classically capitalist Western countries as Canada and Mexico seem to be caught in the inftlal throes of a similar centrifugal forces as well. The U.S. state may be "standing tall" militarily, but it is rotting nancially, socially, and ecologically at its core. With its nuclear arsenal and willingness to bomb, bum, and slaughter in a desperate attempt to hold on to its superpower status despite its economic competitiveness, the U.S. state poses a threat to all of humanity. Situated in the belly of this beast, North American Greens have the awesome responsibility of doing all in their power to undermine the U.S. nation-state and replace it with new institutions of grassroots political and economic democracy. As we approach the year 2000, we are the heir to some 1000 human generations. Only the last 200 or so generations have lived in societies with institutionalized hierarchies. Thus social hierarchy is not inherent in human nature. It has only been during last 40 or so generations that nation-states and the capitalist world-economy have grown to encompass the whole world. But ft is in only in the last few generations that the majority of the people on the planet have been incorporated into the cash nexus and centralized power of state capitalism. Thus neither is the predatory, aqulstive ethos of capitalism based on human nature. The sun could sustain our biosphere for another 200,000,000 generations before ft bums out But it is with the generations now living, and at most one or two more to come, that the future of humanity depends. Either our generations will revolutionize society, abolish hierarchy in all Its forms, replace capitalist valures and institutions with cooperative values and institutions, harmonize society with nature, and create free ecocommunities of creative beings, each the master of their own destiny. Or our generations will experience a nuclear or ecological holocaust that will deny future generations their very opportunity to live. Our strategy and program for social and ecological reconstruction flow from these points of analysis against hierarchy and domination, against the nation-state, against capitalism, for new institutions of grassroots political and economic democracy, for ecotechnologies, for ecocommunities.

Strategy
Social Revolution We understand that there is a lot more to the power structure than the elected ofces of the state. There is capital's private veto it's ability to go on strike, disinvest and move elsewhere, wreck the economy, and blame the reformers. There is the unelected bureaucracy which can tie up reforms in red tape and the unelected military which can crush popular reform movements violently. And there is the corporate and state media, advertising, and entertainment industry that propogate the prevailing ideology day in and day out, hour after hour. It is therefore obvious that this system cannot be changed through elections and state legislation. A century of reform socialist and now Green parties has demonstrated this conclusively. Our role is not to get into the existing power structure, but to build a movement to restructure the power. The only thing that can counter the extrapariiamentary powers of the corporations and the state is extrapariiamentary direct action by a majority of the people in short, a social revolution. Paths of Least Resistance Who will be the social agent of this revolution? The workers? People of color? Youth? Women? A populist

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf., July 3-7,1991

alliance of "The People"?

In recent decades, we have seen popular insurgent movements catalyzed by a variety of social groupings. In the U.S., we have witnessed the African-American struggle for civil rights and social equality start from a rejection of racial oppression and become generalized in the many movements of the1960s and 1970s that began to resist domination in all its forms, ft was students who catalyzed May-June 1968 revolt in France. Soldiers instigated the Portuguese revolution in 1974. Workers in an alliance with a committee of intellectuals were the backbone of the Polish Solidarity movement. In East Germany, it was environmentalists in the vanguard of the oppositional movement that grew until the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. In both Iran and the Philippines, women played pivotal roles in the massive nonviolent revolts that won over the rank-and-le of the armed forces and toppled the terroristic dictators of those two countries. Thus we do not presuppose that any particular section of the popular strata of society will be in the vanguard of change. State capitalism is antagonizing people from virtually all strata of society, ft produces not only material poverty for the underprivileged, but spiritual poverty for the privileged. We face this situation without any preconceived notions about priorities. Instead, we follow the paths of least resistance and distribute our efforts proportionally to those sectors of our communities who are most suseptible to radteatization at any given timebe they factory workers, office workers, soldiers, farmers, professionals, or even mid-level bureaucrats and small proprietors; be they people of African, Asian, European, Latin, or Native descent, street youth or university students, women or men; be the living issues of the moment about peace, justice, ecology, or democracy. ft goes without saying that there can be no successful social revolution in North America without the signicant participation and initiative by each exploited and oppressed group. Workers, people of color, women, and the young (from whom the state recruits the rank-and-le of its armed forces) are ail necessary for a successful revolution. An active minority may catalyze a broad revolutionary movement. But consent from the immense majority, minimally expressed as a refusal to defend the old order, will be absolutely necessary aiven the armed terror at the disposal of the state. While we work for a libertarian, egalitarian, and pluralist society that appreciates and indeed fosters a colorful diffentiation of regional and ethnic subcultures, we seek a unity in diversity that binds us all together around common commitments to mutual aid and mutual respect. To focus our organizing around any particular sectional interests or identities, to foster a class, race, national, gender, or sub-cultural consciousness because it claims an intrinsic vanguard or hegomonic role in social change, would be to mire us in the old dnrisions of humanity against itself. It would reinforce the fragmentary and self-defeating dynamic we see today of oppressed groups competing with each other as serf-interest groups. A concentration on sectional interests and identities would fail raise a general interest that can unite the dominated as a wholeall of the dominated strata, subcultures, classes, sexes, ages, and ethnic groups. Instead, we organize around general human Interests to foster a revolutionary consciousness about the nonhierarchical, participatory-democratic ecological society of the future. Thus we anticipate not a hegemonic vanguard based on any particular sector but a growing straturm of revolutionaries drawn from all strata of society who nd a common resolution to their' parftcular interests by raising the general interest of "The People" In a populist alliance against the common social enemythe domineering and atomizing structures of capitalism and statism. Thisgeneral interest does not speak for all interests in society, ft is implacably opposed to the particularistic prot, power, and privilege interests of the ruling class. But ft does broaden the scope of the potentially revolutionary social forces far beyond traditional radical theories based on the particular interests of a single oppressed class race or n a t i o n a l i t y. ' A Transitional System of Goals The problem we face today a prepatory period of education, agitation, and organization is bridging the gap between the objective need for basic change and the subjective consciousness of the people, ft is a problem of colonizing the present with the future, of reaching past people's consciously held rationalizations for domination, competition, toil, and self-denial and touching their unconscious desires for freedom community, self-fulllment, and pleasure. A revolutionary program is therefore not simply a matter of proclaiming the ultimate goal. Obviously, we should not remain indifferent to the immediate needs of the people, the problems of survival. We will not win people's condence and support for a revolutionary program without participating in their day-to-day struggles around the whole range of social, economic, environmental, and international issues. The issues of the day must be occasions for action as well as comment by Left Greens.

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf., July 3-7,1991

But neither can we postpone the qualitative problems of fife of self-fulfillment in creative work, meaningful community, and beauty and pleasure in our natural and built environments in order to limit our focus to the immediate quantitative problems of survival. For one thing, the ecological crisis will not wait life has become a precondition for survival today; revolution, not amelioration, is needed to uncouple state capitalism's cancerous growth dynamic. But equally crucial, the struggle to change consciousness is also a struggle for the unconscious, a struggle to bring to conscious expression the liberatory desires that have been unconsciously restricted by repressive socialization into hierarchical society, ft is precisely the qualitative problems of life that can agitate people's unconscious desires and ultimately unleash them as a conscious desires that can only be expressed and fullled by a radical reconstruction of society. A transitional system of goals must therefore inltrate the problems of survival with the problems of fe, the present with the future, ft requires that we raise demands and organize campaigns that not only build and intensify popular education and practical struggle, but also live and exemplify as much as possible in our forms of organization and personal interactions the free society of the future, ft is in this way that "the personal is political," that many of our most personal problems and desires can only be adequately addressed by participation in radical politics and resolved by fundamental social change. We thus need a transitional system of goals that raise an escalating series of objectives and develop forms of action and counterpower that progressively create the conditions in which revolutionary action becomes possible. These conditions are both subjective, a growing release of unconscous liberatory desires into a popular revolutionary consciousness, and objective, a growing tension between the old centralized powers and the new counterinsfrtutions of popular power. The system of goals stems from both today's consciousness and conditions and the future's Utopian possibilities, ft moves us toward popular revolution by linking today's problems of survival with the future's problems of life. Taken in isolation, someof the goals may be quite easily accommodated by the system. But linked in their totality, they undermine both the external powers of capital and the state and the internal psychic fetters that restrict our liberatory desires. The transitional system of goals should orient us toward an escalating movement that starts from the immediate needs of the people, builds rapidly upon victories around immediate demands to raise intermediate goals that begin to impinge upon the powers of capital and the state, and ultimately provokes a struggle by the people to take power from the elite few and democratize ft in the hands of a. The Program of the Left Green Network therefore raises three sorts of programmatic goals: Immediate ProgramImmediate goals stem from the immediate needs and concerns of the people the defense and extension of civil liberties and democratic rights, the defense and improvement of people's standard of living and quality of fe, the defense and restoration of the environment, the resistance to war and militarism. Struggles for these goals are intended to educate people through their own experiences about the nature of the system, instill in them condence and a sense of their own power, and provide experience in participatory democratic organization. Practical experience in struggles can demonstrate far more indelibly than abstract theoretical tracts the need for structural change that democratizes power, rather than merely new policies from the existing power structure and its elites. Victories around these demands will improve the social terrain from which new struggles can be launched. They will serve as a platformin terms of increasing confidence, material security, and grassroots institutional strengthfor winning transitional objectives that begin to restructure power in the larger social order. Transitional ProgramTransitional goals serve as a bridge between present consciousness and revolutionary consciousness, between immediate felt needs and the unconscious desires that can only nd fulllment in the achievement of the maximum program. They call for anti-capitalist and anti-statist structural changes that are not intended to improve capitalism and the state, but to impinge upon their logic and powers by creating new centers of democratic counterpower which begin to pregure the new society. These goasl and demands are formulated such that their implementation must be controlled by the popular movements that struggle for them, thus restricting the powers of the state and capital by decentralizing social decision-making power. These goals and corresponding forms of action and organization aim to shake the system, upset its equilibrium, and create forms of popular power that become a dual power in society contending with the old centralized structures for popular allegiance. Sooner or later, the old power structre will attempt to crush the growing grassroots counterpower that is created by the implementation of the program of immediate and transitional goals, thus provoking a revolutionary crisis and opening the door to a revolutionary struggle to replace by direct action and once and for all the old centralized and alienated structures with new decentralized and participatory structures of grassroots political and economic democracy.

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf., July 3-7,1991 Maximum ProgramLeft Greens never keep their maximum program a "hidden agenda," to be revealed only later "when the people are ready for It." To the contrary, the Left Greens keep their Utopian vision of a free, ecological society in the foreground at all times, ft is the alternative social model in the maximum program that serves as a unifying mediation for the various partial immediate and transitonal goals that the Left Greens support. Without the maximum program as a frame of reference in the course of struggles for immediate and transitional goals, these intermediate objectives could be partially incorporated as a means of reformation, rather than transformation, of capitalism and the state. But raising the visions of the maximum program, the tensions are heightened between what-is and what-could-be, between the conscious rationalizations for the present and the unconscious desires which could be fullled through social revolution. Reforms, Not Reformism The system of immediate and transitional goals is not a program for gradualism. The objective is to mobilize people around immediate demands, but when these goats begin to be won, they are not resting points, but points at which to immediately escalate the struggle to transitional goals that begin to restructure power before the powers that be can regroup and raise a counteroff ensive to dilute and reverse the gains. When goals begin to be won, they will upset the prot system and state centralization, ft is at this time that demands must escalate rapidly toward a fundamental transformation of the system while momentum is on the movement's side and before capital ight, bureaucratic inertia, violent repression, and the media of the corporate state can be organized by the power elites to dilute or discredit the initial reforms and co-opt or suppress movement activists. There is always the risk that partial objectives and the people that struggled for them will be reabsorbed by the system. The risk always exists, but coopation is not inevitable. In any case, the risk must be taken, for there is no viable alternative to a transitional program of escalating reforms. To limit ourselves to propoganda and simply proclaiming the maximum program from outside people's dally struggles for democracy, justice, peace, and environmental protection is to isolate the revolutionary current from potentially revolutionary social forces. To wait for state capitalism's own irrationality to produce social crisis that creates revolutionary conditions before acting reduces the revolutionary current to the posture of a tiny monastic sect waiting for the second coming. To sit by and expect that "things have to get worse before they can get better is to aid and abet the ruling elites. People are more likely to be internally demoralized and divided by their failure to defend their elementary rights, their economic security, and their environment than they are to be radicalized and condent they can now take on the powers that be. The difference between reformism and a revolutionary approach that builds upon struggles for reforms lies not so much In the content of the reforms as in the means by which they are won and the intent behind the struggle. Reformism restricts its goals to "the left wing of the possible," to what the existing rulers and parties in the state might be reasonably expected to concede in a compromise. Reformists are willing to take a share of the executive state power and responsibility for upholding the existing system in return for some concessions on ameliorative reforms. Reformism naively expects that a gradual accumulation of progressive reforms will ultimately culminate in fundamental transformation without extra-parliamentary and indeed violent countermeasures by the ruling class. The problem with the reformist approach is that rights and reforms won under state capitalism are of tenuous value and are often turned into their opposite. For example: Free speech is vitiated by the fact that the state and corporate owners of the major means of communication drown out dissenting voices. An inheritance tax is passed to limit wealth, but non-profit foundations controlled by the rich are set up to get around the tax. Workers win the right to organize industrial unions, but then these unions are bureaucratized and co-opted by the large corporations as a way to regulate and discipline labor. Regulatory agencies are set up to protect the public interest from private industrial greed, but the capitalists' dominaton of campaign nancing leads to politicians paying back their benefactors by appointing regulatory boards that serve corporate interests against the public interest. Many cities have municipalized their electric utilities, but they are captive to the transnational energy conglomerates for fuel, the banking and nance oligopolies for credit, and the private regional utftty giants for grid power sharing. What reformists falsely assume is that every tittle victory is a permanent platform for the next struggle. But in actuality there is a struggle between popular forces and ruling elites before, during, and after a reform is

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Conf! Conf., July 3-7,1991

instituted. Unless the popular movement immediately builds upon victories toward fundamental structural + change, limited reforms will be reworked into buttresses for the system. A revolutionary struggle for reforms starts from what should be. Rather than limiting itself to "the left wing of the psossfoie," ft aims to change what is possible, ft starts from what ordinary people regard as reasonable and just, not from what "realistic" political elites regard as immediatery practicable under the existing system, ft takes an oppositional stance, asking not only which reforms will make people's lives better, but also which reforms challenge the way the system works and which reforms give people more power and thus lay the basis for further changes. In a revolutionary struggle for reforms, it matters how the reforms are won. It rejects brokering and compromise by elite representatives acting on behatfof ordinary people. Instead, ft relies on grassroots organization, popular mobilization, and direct action by ordinary people acting on their own behalf to impose changes on the system. Reforms won from below by independent popular power give participants a sense of their own power and experience in democratic organization, thus laying the basis for a stronger, smarter movement for further change. Even more than the objective structures of society that are changed, what really counts is the subjective changes in the movement fostered by struggles for reformsits organization, its experience, its education, its spirit. These subjective transformations cannot come from education and propaganda alone. They have to also come out of practical activities. Finally, we must be clear that there is not a strict sequence of three stages in time implied by the immediate, transitional, and maximum programs. The three programs are not stages in time but steps in a process of transformation where the nal phase is already implict in the rst phase. Whether to raise immediate or transitional goals to build issue-oriented campaigns in any particular situation cannot be answered by any simple formula, ft depends on the Immediate situation. Sometimes it will only be possible to start mobilizing people around Immediate demands to defend immediate interests, with the transitional goats that project anti-capitalist and anti-statist structural reforms being raised by revolutionaries for educational purposes. But In many cases, ft will be possible to build movements around both immediate and transitional goals simultaneously, struggles that start with a defense of immediate interests and understand that the only way to secure those immediate interests is to go on the offensive and push for structural change. The maximum program speaks to the Utopian possibilities that can be realized once power has been taken from the ruling elites and people govern themselves through new institutions of grassroots political and economic democracy. A revolutionary movement that builds on reform struggles keeps these visions before the movement, even though they cannot be realized before fundamental structural change is achieved. While struggling to defend immediate interests and achieve transitional structural reforms, revolutionaries educate about the need for revolutionary change and about the Utopian possibilities ft would open up. Forms of Organization and Action In practical terms, our strategy is built around following forms activity and organization: 1. EducationA revolutionary Left Green strategy presupposes, before all else, the formation of a highly committed and well educated Left Green movement. Without the development of a fully conscious network of Left Green revolutionaries, before all else, direct action will degenerate into merely a militant form of pressure politics or lobbying and independent politics into reformism. Left Greens therefore devote themselves in the present prepatory period primarily to education, both internal and public. Internally, we encourage the formation of Left Green study groups which jointly read about and discuss the whole range of issues concerning the theory and practice of Left Green politics. Publicly, the Left Greens take advantage of the whole range of avenues of public discussionfrom their own journals and educational institutions to focal public forms, conferences, community arts, the press and media, schools and universities, leaf leting, and issue-oriented campaignsto raise their perspectives and recruit new Left Greens. In particular, public education is oriented toward politically active, radicalizing sectors of the population, with a view toward encouraging ongoing evaluation of movement work, putting immediate struggles in historical perspective of past experience and future Utopian possibilities, and struggling against capitalist values and domineering behaviors by practicing democratic and egalitarian relationships within our movements. 2. Grassroots Organization Education is about more than developing programmatic unity. It also has an emotional, psychological side. Revolutionaries have not only the responsiblity of helping others become revolutionaries, but also of remaking themselves, of uprooting the internalized oppressions and domineering sensibilities that are socialized into us by hierarchical society virtually from birth. This process cannot take place in personal isolation. Left Greens therefore organize themselves in local afnity groups

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf.. July 3-7,1991 which are bases for liberatory lifestyles and mutual support as well as study and action groups. They are groups of caring brothers and sisters, not merely ideological comrades. The development of the revolutionary movement is a process of seeding society with such afnity groups, which confederate to pool resources, share experience and ideas, and coordinate joint action. It is the molecular movement from below, not the commands of all-knowing leaderships, that prepares the conditions for popular revolutionary action. The Left Greens do not aspire to be a "mass organization," which can only be buBt in a non-revolutionary situation by diluting the program, acquiring support from people for the wrong reasons, and ultimately being shaped by people thus recruited and their commitments to prevailing consciousness, rather than the recruits being transformed by the revolutionary movement. The role of the Left Greens is to be catalysts in communfties and social movements across the land, to advance the consciousness and struggles of broader communities and movements, not assume positions of command. The main task of Left Green afnity groups is to patiently educate. In social movements, Left Greens advance the demands and goals which take into account the needs of the people as a whole and challenge the logic and power of the system. In a revolutionary situation, the Left Greens try to formulate concretely the next immediate tasks to advance the revolutionary process. And nally they are capable of dissolving as a separate social interest into the directly democratic forms created by the social revolution. Direct Action Every major reform won by popular movements In the U.S. has been imposed on the establishment by direct action movements from belowfrom the labor sit-downs of the 30s to the civil rights and anti-war sit-ins of the 60s. Liberal reformers in the state have merely ratied what popular power in the streets had already won. The best way to advance our programmatic goals in the short term is to build oppositional direct action movements based on public education, demonstrations, civil disobedience, counter-institutions, and our own press and media. Independent PoliticsBy giving our direct action movements electoral expression independent of the Democrats and Republicans, we will force the establishment parties to adopt some of our reforms without ourselves having to take executive power within the state capitalist system. Instead, we should be a "fundamental opposition"in the streets, on the ballot, and in the legislative branch, primarily at the focal municipal and county levelposing basic alternatives, building popular counterpower outside the state, and refusing to take responsiblity in the executive branch for the impossible task of making an irrational system rational. By entering the electoral arena, we have a public forum in which to nk issues and constituencies around a common program of structural change. We will run primarily on the focal level (municipal and county) with a program of transforming local political institutions into direct action in its highest form: direct democracy. Campaigns for state or federal ofce might be used selectively, primarily for educational purposes, so long as ft is clear that the program is to take power from state institutions and vest it in community assemblies. Civil DemocracyThe "democracy" offered by the capitalist state is severely limited. Not only are there no means by which electors can control their representatives between elections. Not only are the legislatures powerless to effectively control the state executive and bureaucracy, the military, or the corporations. But almost every other important institution in society is run on the same authoritarian principles of appointment from above and top down command: families, schools, workplaces, hospitals, universities, churches, non-prot organizations, state bureaucracies, the courts, the police, the military, the mass media, even most reform and so-called radical organizations and movement coalitions. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of domination further compromise democratic aspirations. We therefore will struggle in every institution in which we participate against racism, sexism, homophobia, and all forms of domination. We will struggle to democratize the institutions of civil society and create alternative institutions at the community level to meet the needs that the state or social agencies have failed to fulll. These struggles for workplace democracy, democratic families, community control of schools, hospitals, housing development, and the police, producer and consumer cooperatives, and so forth will create the nuclei of dual power structures as wed as liberated areas in which we can practice direct democracy and social equality. By constantly expanding these dual power structures and liberated areas in the community, we will be providing the grassroots foundation of consciousness and counterinstitutions needed for a revolutionary struggle for popular power. Revolutionary Dual Power based on Municipal Confederalism Democracy in civil society is not yet the democratic public sphere that can replace the state with a participatory politics and genuine self-government. In addition to democratizing the various sectional spheres of civil society, we need to create a public sphere where all citizens can participate. We need an institution where the different,

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sometimes conicting, functional interests in civil society can be dealt with directly by all the people who have to live with the decisions. The community assembly meets these needs, ft is the point of convergence for the different movements for democracy in civil society where the common interest in an alternative to capitalism and the state can be solidied and the joint power to replace them can be exercised. We therefore need to orient our education, grassroots organization, direct action, independent politics, and civil democracy toward the creation of confederations of community assemblies as the focus which ties these different aspects of our work together and as the forms which give the people their voice and power against the old system. The common aim of these insurgent municipal movements will be to take over city and county governments, restructure them as grassroots democratic confederations of community assemblies, begin democratizing and socializing the economy under municipal public and cooperative control, link the radicalized municipalities in confederal networks of mutual support, and counterpose this confederal grassroots democracy as a popular counterpower that can resist and ultimately overthrow and replace the nation-state and global corporations.

Below are the institutional changes and public policies that Left Greens advocate. Institutional changes In the polity and economy are presented rst as they involve structural institutional changes. These are followed by policies for social, ecological, and international reconstruction. On the foundations of grassroots political and economic democracy, people will have the power to carry through the measures for social, ecological, and international reconstruction. But the struggle for the policy reforms does not wait for structural changes in political and economic institutions; ft is part of the process of building a movement capable of democratizing our political and economic institutions. The program is oriented toward building these reforms from below, toward implementing them under grassroots control through municipalities and municipal confederations. If state and national policies along these lines are initiated, we will work for restructuring them under community control. The overall program can be summarized in the following outline: The alternative we seek involves Green structure/alternatives in order to empower grassroots people to carry through Green policy alternatives. Green Structural Alternatives Confederal Grassroots Democracynew political institutions of self-government based on confederations of community assemblies that cooperate and coordinate with each other through mandated, recallable, and rotating delegates to every level of confederation Cooperative Economic Democracyan economy coordinated by the grassroots political democracy Green Policy Alternatives: Social Reconstruction to Extend Democratic Liberties and Meet Basic Needs Defend abortion rights Community control of the police Free health care and child care under community control Reduce work time with no toss in pay Expand provision of housing, education, and environmental restoration. Workers' Superfund Ecological Reconstruction through Industrial Conversion to Eco-Technologies Replace technologies based on toxic nuclear processes and synthetic petrochemicals with ecotechnologies based on non-toxic, recyclable, and biodegradable materials, including: Solar-based renewable energy sources Non-toxic materials Full recycling Organic agriculture Industrial decentralization Ecocommunnities that integrate industry and agriculture

Summary

Program

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Cont'l Conf., July 3-7,1991

International Reconstruction through Peace Conversion Cut military spending on the order of 90-95% Devote the "peace dividend" to increasing the living standards in the poorer regions of the world Replace standing armies with popular militias and nonviolent social defense Replace nuclear and foreign-based military with a non-provocative, home-based, non-nuclear conventional defense

Politics Confederal Grassroots Democracy

We envision a world in which nation-states have been replaced by bioregional confederations of self-governing communities. Confederal grassroots democracy will be based on the following principles: Direct Democracy in Community Assemblies Direct participatory democracy is the foundation for genuine self-government at larger scales of association. Community assemblies, general meetings of the whole community, in every neighborhood, town, and village, will be the source of and nal authority over public policy for all levels of confederal coordination through the right to mandate and recall their delegates to larger scales of self-government. Community assemblies will address regional, national, and international as well as focal issues. These focal face-to-face assemblies will bring the people directly into the political process and give people the power over the decisions that affect their lives. Confederal CoordinationThe community assemblies will confederate at the municipal, regional, and on up to global levels in order to develop and coordinate common polices to deal with common problems. The lower levels will control the higher levels of association, reversing the present pre-emptive powers of the centralized state hierarchy. Representation with Imperative Mandates and Immediate Recall Delegates from community assemblies to coordinating councils at every level of confederation will be instructed by the assemblies they represent on how they want to deal with any issue. The representatives may be given imperative mandates (binding instructions) that commit them to certain positions and they can be recalled at any time for failing to carry out the mandates of the grassroots. Representatives win be selected by election and/or sortition (selection by lot). Compusory Rotation in All Public Officials with Delegated PowersAH public officals with delegatd powers will be rotated frequently to preclude a professionazation of politics. Instead of professional politicians who govern us and are largely on their own once elected, the people will have the nal say on policy and govern themselves. Every citizen will have the opportunity to participate in the coordination and administration of public affairs. Election and Sortition of Judiciary and Administrative PositionsThere will be a much wider use of elections and sortition to select people for positions in public adminstration and the judiciary. Under our current system, all legislators are elected, but only the chief officer in the executivethe mayor, governor, and presidentis elected. This gives too much power to chief executives based on their appointment of executive and judicial ofcers. Legislative Authority over Administrative Branch The legislative branch will be the people organized in their community assemblies and their confederal coordinating councils. The executive branch will be limited to implementing policy formulated by the legislative branch, that is, by the people. Means to insure executive accountablity to the legislative branch will include, in addition to a wider use of elections and selection by lot, imperative mandates, the right of immediate recall of executive branch ofcials, frequent rotation of ofcials, and open proceedings and records for adminstrative branch activities. Independence of Judiciary BranchThe courts' independence from the executive branch will be strengthened by popular election instead of executive appointment of judges, by protecting the jury system of selection of random citizens by tot, and by informing jurors of their right to judge the law itself, according to their conscience, as well as the facts of a case. In order begin laying the basis for bioregional municipal confederations, we will build Green municipalist movements that will work inside and outside the electoral arena to rewrite municipal charters and restructure political institutions around the principles of confederal grassroots democracy. 1 0

Principles of Confederal Grassroots Democracy

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contt Conf.. July 3-7,1991 The immediate program aims to build Green movements to democratize local political institutions The tr^tona'Pr09,ram Ca,te ,orthe forma,ion of ""^W confederations to create a dual pWthaicTn comend nfilS 2S fiffk3^ 9,0bal Thefull maximum program calls for the complete replacement of national states and global^'Porations. corporations with confederaJ grassroots derrwcracy.

Immediate Political Program

Green Municipal Movements Organize Green municipal and county political organizations oriented toward building a movement to democratize our cities and rural districts. These political organizations would engage in a wide range of activities, from internal and public education to alternative institutions, direct action, and electoral campaigns. Independent Green Municipal Electoral Campaigns Run Green candidates for municipal and county ofces on our program of political and economic democracy and social, ecological, and international reconstruction. Green candidates must be active members of the Green political organization and accountable to the election campaign program and the membership through imperative mandates These electoral campaigns may grow out of a movement that is already forming community assemblies or rriay be the an initial means of prorogating the idea of community assemblies. Different rfrcumstancwes will call for different emphases. In general, Greens will rst seek ofce in the legislative councils where they can raise alternatives without taking responsibtity for administering the existing system. Races for mayoral posftions afford more media exposure and thus educational opportunities, but we should avoid executive responsibiity before a majority is ready to restructure the political institutions ans subordinate the executive branch to the legislative branch. In the some of theglant cities, ft may not be effective to run for existing municipal ofce and the emphasis will need to be on organizing neighborhood assemblies and confederating them as a counterpower to the municipal and county governments. On the other hand in some of the smaller and more democraticany structured of states and provinces, ft may be appropriateto run candidates for these intermediate level ofces on a municipal confederalist program, for educational purposes and because it might be possible to rework their political institutions from the inside into municipal confederations. Campaigns for national ofce, however, even if conceived as strictly educational campaigns,do not lend themselves to municipal confederalist goals because they give the implicit impression that radical democratic change can come through state power rather than popular power and because activity in this arena could easily degenerate into conventional parliamentarism. Community AssembliesOrganize community assemblies that will begin to address public affairs whether or not they legally recognized by municipal charters and state law. Call for charter changes to sanction and institutionalize community assemblies as the basic policy-making bodies in our cities and rural districts. District Election and Sortition of Municipal Councils Replace at-large elections to muncfral councils with districted elections and sortitions corresponding to the territories of face-to-face community assemblies. Encourage experimentation on the ratio of elected to sorted council members. Mandation and Recall of Public OfficialsChange city and county charters to subject ail public ofcials to imperative mandates from and immediate recall by the community assemblies. Rotation and Limited Terms for Elected and Sorted OfficialsChange city and county charters to make atl public ofcais subject to compulsory rotation after a limited term of ofce. Oppose the lengthening of existing terms of ofce between elections and propose more frequent elections (e.g., every two years instead of every four years) where appropriate. Average Workers' Pay for All Public Officials Pay public officials no more than the average workers' income in order to political careerism and professionalization. Greens elected to public ofce before this measure is adopted will give any pay they recieve over an average workers' pay to the Green political organization. Open ProceedingsAll citizens should have access to ail public business, records, and meetings. Fully Informed Juries Require that the courts inform juries of their right to judge the law as well as defendantstheir right to find defendants innocent even if review of the evidence strictly interms of the law would indicate a guilty verdict. Juries should be able to exercise this right when they believe that justice would be better serve by a not guilty verdict because no harm was actually caused, or becauce they believe the law itself to be unjust, or because a guilty verdict would otherwise violate their sense of right and wrong. The right of citizen jurors to judge the law will protect our individual liberties and freedom from pollitteal
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Draft for Discusssion at LGN Cont'l Conf., July 3-7,1991

repression and caprctous intrusion into our lives by government. Election of Judges Replace executive appointment of judges with direct election to limited terms. Environmental Home Rule Demand that the state/provincial and national governments pass environmental home rule laws establishing the absolute right of focal communities to bar disposal or transhipment of hazardous materials and to reject tthe location of hazardous industrial project in thier communities. Municipal Home RuleDemand that higher jurisdictions of the state amend laws to allow municipalities and counties to revise their charters without requiring the approval of higher jurisdictions. Community Funding Option on Income Taxes Demand that people be permitted to give up to 75% of their federal income tax to community assemblies. Fiscal FederalismDemand that federal revenue sharing be distributed as block grants to community assemblies rather than the states and provinces according to formulas that equalize revenues among communities. Community Control of Schools, Police, Zoning, and other Public Services Establish or extend community control of municipal services through the election of citizen commissions to exercise or oversee these public functions. Progressive Municipalization of the EconomyBegin municipalizing the economy as resources permit and priority needs dictate. Municipalized health care, child care, electric utftlities, banks, insurance, cable TV, housing, public transportation, land, retail outlets, manufacturing, and fanning are all possbties depending on circumstances. See the economic program below for more discussion. Parallel Legislatures of Delegates of Community AssembliesDemocratized communities should form their own mandated and recallable councils as a parallel legislature to those of the statea local council of community assembly delegates parallel to the city council or county legislature, a regional "third house" of community assembly delegates parallel to the state and provincial representative and senatorial houses, and ultimately a "continental congress" of community assembly delegates parallel to the national legislatures. These shadow councils of mandated and recallable community delegates would track the legislative agendas of the ofcial legislatures, add their own agendas, vote their own decisions on these questions, act as a moral force upon the existing legislatures, and pregure the ultimate goal of replacing statism with conf ederatism. Municipal ConfederationsConfederate municipalities and counties that have democratized internally in order to address common problems, share resouces, and constitute a dual power in society in opposition to the state and corporations.

Transitional Political Program

As municipalities and counties begin to democratize internally and assert their powers often in opposition to policies set by the central state we can expect that the central state, with the backing of corporate and military elites, will attempt to pre-empt local powers and even try to abolish local policy-making political institutions, as Britain did in the early 1980's in response to an emerging municipal socialist movement At this point, the municipal confederations must be prepared to assert their rights against the central state in a trial of strength. They must be prepared to appeal to the people to take direct action to assert their rights of self-government by replacing statism with municipal confederatism. Among the steps to be taken at this turning point are: Citizens Militias and Nonviolent Social Defense Organize citizen militias under community control, with elected ofcers and majority votes on basic operational plans. Organize the citizenry to resist outside interference through disciplined nonviolent social defense. Appeal to the rank-and-le of the aimed forces of the state to switch their allegiance to the municipal confederations. Tax Strikes Call upon the citizenry to stop all tax payments to the central state and instead send those payments to the confederated municipalities. Expropriation without Compensation Declare all remaining non-municipalized means of production to be social usufruct and expropriated without compensation. Call upon the workers to take possession of their factories, farms, and ofces, to reorganize productive units under the day-to-day control of factory and ofce committees and coordination by elected workers' councils, and integrate these productive units into the municipally-controlled economy. Assure small farmers, artisans, and retailors of their continued usufruct rights to their serf-employed means of production and distribution and appeal to them to join with the revolution against the state and corporations that parasitized their efforts in the past. 1 2

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Cont'l Conf., July 3-7,1991

Maximum Political Program

Once the state and capitalism have been replaced, society will have the pleasant task of repairing the social and ecological wounds created by thousands of years of hierarchial society by reconstructing along ethical and ecological lines. Conventions of the Free Municipalities Convene conventions of the free municipalities at the regional and continental levels to draw up confederal agreements to unite society on the basis of free agreement in place of central state sovereignty. Ecocommunities Progressively decentralize the physical infrastructure of production and distribution to correspond to the social decentralization of policy-making by community assemblies. Progressively reintegrate town and country, industry and agriculture, mental and manual work into humanly-scaled ecocommunities. Bioregionatlsm Redraw territorial districts to replace existing county, state/provincial, and national boudaries with bioregional districts that best express common environmental, economic, social, and cultural Interactions. World Confederation of Free Municipalities Spread the municipalist revolution worldwide. A munictpast revolution in North America will never be secure as long as the predatory systems of capitalist economy and the international states suruvle in other regions of the world. Free municipal confederations anywhere should must be internationalists and support libertarian municipalist movements everywhere until there is a worldwide confederation of free municipalities.

Economics Cooperative Economic Democracy

The forms of grassroots political democracy are empty shells without the grassroots power that comes with community control of the economy. We therefore seek to replace capitalist and statist economic forms with grassroots-democratic forms. The economy must be brought under the administration of the grassroots democracy. A fully democratic decision-making structure in society is essential for uprooting the expansionary dynamics of prot-oriented capitalism and power-oriented statism. The Principles of Cooperative Economic Democracy laid out below explain the framework of our full vision a marketless, moneyless, wageless, classless, and stateless economy based on the ethic of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." The Immediate Economic Program calls for progressive municipalization of the economy. It begins by addressing people immediate needs for material security, a reduction of work time and expansion of free time, and an expansion of collective consumption (free health care, education, public transportation, and so forth). Its measures escalate to begin forming "the structure of new society within the shell of the old" through anti-capitalist and anti-statist reforms that attack economic inequality, workplace hierarchy, and the social division of labor and that expand the free distribution of basic personal and collective consumption items and socialize and democratically plan key industries and services. The Transitional Economic Program responds to the counteroffensive against progressive municipalization of the economy that will inevitably come, sooner or later, from capital and the state, ft calls for a direct action program to expropriate without compensation the remaining non-municipalized sectorsof the economy, to democratically plan the economy through confederal associations of community and workplace assemblies and circumvent economic sabotage by capital and the state, and to delink economically to a large degree from regions still under the domination of state capitalism. The Maximum Economic Program would complete democratization of the economy once the state and capital have been defeated by muncipal confederations, ft calls for internationalizing the muncipalist revolution because the freedom of the self-governing municipalities and their confederations is not secure as long as predatory state capitalism survives anywhere in the world. It calls for completing the process of decommodication, elimination of the wage system, emancipating labor as free creative activity, the normalization of consumption and the end of growth, and economic decentralization to reintegrate industry and agriculture, town and country, and production and consumption in ecocommunities and bioregions that harmonize the human economy with its ecological context.

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Draft for Discusssion at LGN Con Con!., July 3-7,1991

A fully democratic economy will be based on the maxim: from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, ft will be organized around the following principles: 1. Common Ownership of the Means to Life Common ownership means that all people will freely have access to the Earth and its natural and industrial resources and products, ft means that no section of the population no individual, no corporation, no statewill be able to exclude others from using the means to life or from enjoying the fruits of production. It means that the whole concept of legal property rights, whether private or state, over the means of production will disappear and be replaced by democratically decided rules and procedures governing their use. 2. Democratic Coordination A deliberative, decentralized, and democratic system of coordination wi replace the coercion of both market forces and hierarchic command. The focal community win be the basic unit of the economy. People will elect a community council to coordinate and administer the details of focal affairs that the community assembly, the general meeting of the whole community, chooses to delegate to the community council. The community will also elect mandated and recallable delegates to a regional counil for matters concerning a wider area and so on up to a world council for matters that could best be dealt with on a world scale (such as the supply and distribution of certain rare minerals and the distrfoution of wealth to equalize the well-being of all the regions of the world). The details of what to produce and how to produce ft will be decided locally. The responslblfty of regional and global councils will be limited to three. First, they will provide statistical services which would allow production to be coordinated from below. Second, they will handle the transport of products. Third, they will assure that products which localities need but cannot produce locally are supplied to those localities. By limiting the functions of regional and global councils to these three activities (and not, for example, providing them with militaries), they will not assume the role of a state imposing policy from above. Common policies on coordinating the economy will be arrived at by agreement from below. 3. Production for Use What to produce and how much will be decided by people's freely expressed desires for articles of individual and social consumption, for creative work, and for a healthy environment Production will be geared directly toward the satisfaction of real needs in a f lexfole and self-regulating way without the intervention of money and buying and selling. The means will be simple and straightforward. The community will survey its needs and prioritize them, it will also survey Its resources: productive facilities, natural resources, skills among the population. Then by means of discussion in community assemblies, assisted by studies that present alternative plans, the community will match its priority needs to its available resources. The same basic process wl take place between communities at the regional on up to the global scale. Society will dispense with the armies of functionaries needed to keep commercial society afloat the clerks, secretaries, accountants, police, personnel managers, tax collectors insurance salesmen, advertisers, stock brokers, and all the other boring, unproductive work needed to keep track of money and protect property. An enormous amount of labor will be freed up for useful production and the enormous mountains of paper, computer chips, and other resources that go into the record keeping will be freed up for recycling into useful products. 4. Distribution According to Need People will be free to take whatever articles of individual consumption they need from shops without cash registers. People will freely make use of social facilities such as theaters, schools, libraries, public transportation, parks, athletic facilities, and the like without buying tickets or paying fees. Signals to the network of productive units as to what to produce will come from what people actually choose to take from common stores under conditions of free acess Production to directly supply needs will thus be essentially serf-regulating, responding the real needs much better than ft does under monetary demand on the market, because demand will not be distorted by how monetery demand expresses the preferences of the rich and disregards the needs of the poor. Together with community surveys, discussion of priorites, and planning, the demand expressed in actual consumption wl give communities and their productive units the information they need to produce what is needed in a exible and self-regulating manner, without the coercive intervention of market forces or hierarchic commands. The insatiable greed and extravagent consumption that permeate the spirit of capitalist and statist societies will recede as circumstances that have motivated such behavior disappear. First, greed and conspicuous consumption are reactions to scarcity which will recede as everyone begins to have free access to an abundant supply of all that is required for a comfortable and satisfying life. Second, there will 14

Principles of Cooperative Economic Democracy

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Cont'l Conf., July 3-7,1991

^SS^J^SSL? bafIC "ecessrtjes a" because "* willand be rationally expressed (undistorted by the mediation of marketfor or bureaucratic irrationalities) because production will be oriented directly toward meeting those needs instead of the wasteful accounting, selling, and policing efforts ofcapitalist andI statist societies. Third, in a society based on cooperation instead of competition, an ndrviduars sense of solidarity as well as social disapproval of hoarding, aquisftive behavior will set an ethical standard that people will naturally and normally adhere to as part of belonging to the community Fourth, for those consumption items that are scarce, a democratically agreed upon means of rationing scarce items will share scarce items equitably without recreating a system of privilege where one sector of society has access to things another does not. But most of all, the deliberative democratic process of planning production to meet needs will subject needs themselves to a rational critique and develop a normalized mode of consumption. This deliberative, democratic process wl itself be transformative for people as they participate in gearing production to needs. Vital, btotogical needs are of their nature limited. Growth in material production beyond the point of satiation is pointless. Beyond basic animal needs is the cultural standard of living which comprises the most essential aspects of a good life a pleasant and stimulating environment,' both cultivated and natural, a healthy lifestyle, esthetic pleasure, creative endeavor, and socializing. These cultural needs are of their nature enhanced not so much by greater quantitative material production as by qualitative cultivation of our own capacities and by qualitative crafting of the products we create. The deliberative democratic process of determining our real needs and planning production to meet them will lead toward the establishment of a normalized mode of consumption, a democratically determined material and cultural standard of living that we agree everyone should have free access to as part of the human family. A normalized standard of consumption will serve as the basis for a rational, stabilized mode of production, one that is ecologically sustainable because ft is in a steady-state equilibrium with the environment. 5. Voluntary Labor Work will be voluntary, not imposed on people by means of a coercive wage system. The work process itself will be under the democratic control of those working in various productive units. People will rotate among workplaces and the various types of work (mental/manual, conceptual/rote, manufacture/agricufture/service, and so forth) will be grouped into balanced and equalized job complexes so that every indiviudal has the opportunity to develop and express the full range of their creative powers. Everyone will have the right to consume according to their needs irrespective of whether or not they are engaged in productive activity. But freed from its dehumanizing alienated form as wage labor, work will become a creative, enjoyable, and rewarding experience. Voluntary labor will enable people to engage in a diverse variety of productive pursuits, instead of being tied to one narrow monotonous task in the extreme division of labor under capitalism and statism. People will participate in productive work as naturally as a form of self-expression, self-realization, and socializing as they speak a language to others in their other social interactions. Creative, productive endeavors will become a basic need, as biologically necessary as eating, breathing, and sex, of which ft is painful to be deprived. 6. Decentralized Economic Regionalism, or Bioregionalism Localities will seek a substantial measure of economic self-reliance in order to make the economic and ecological interactions transparent to all and thus amenable to democratic self-administration. This human scale will enable people to consciously harmonize their local economies to a symbiotic relationship with their regional ecology, their bioregion. But complete autarky will not be the goal. While the overall economic weight of society will still rest with the community, the sharing of resources, production facilities, and nished products across regions and the planet will promote solidarity between communities, it will provide the sinews of confederal cooperation, binding communities to each other on the baste of common material needs that reinforce their common spiritual and cultural commitments.

Immediate Economic Program

Key Issues The Immediate Economic Program speaks to the following key issues that are being produced by the state capitalist economy today. In the course of raising our Immediate Economic Program, we raise the following points of analysis. 1. Ecological Crisis State capitalism's dynamic of endless growth is consuming the biological "capital"
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Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf., July 3-7,1991 on which human economy and society is based. As long as competition for prots, growth, and power is the regulatory mechanism of the poitical economy, competition will force corporations and states, as a matter of protability and military-industrial conquest, to grow or die and externalize production costs as much as possible onto the environment. To the ecological crisis produced by this blind dynamic of limitless growth we must counterpose the notion of an ecological economy that based on ecocommunities and bioregions that consciously and democratically gear their volume and forms of resource and energy utilization to the integirty and reproductive capacities of the natural ecosystems. The construction of an ecological economy begins with resistance to environmentally destructive industries and development and escalates to demands for increasing democratic control over the directio of economic development. 2. Human Misery Needless poverty amidst plenty reveals the utterly Immoral and irrational nature of state capitalism. To this we must counterpose the notion of a moral economy that meets people's basic needs irregardtess of their productive contribution. The construction of a moral economy begins with the defense and improvement of living standards and escalates to demands for increased free public provision of basic needs including income, food, housing, education, health care, and pubic transportation. To the extent we win measures to meet basic needs and reduce economic inequality, we lay the basis of social solidarity needed for full economic democratization. 3. Underfunded Social Consumption Needless poverty amidst plenty in the contrast between the paucity of provisions for collective consumption items and the abundance of consumer goods and expeciatly luxury items for the afuent. By their very nature these common-economic needs (health care, education, public transport, urban infrastructure, housing, paries, community service and recreational facilities, and the 19(e) cannot be met by commodity production. The monetary demands of the rich not only overwhelm the capacity of the poor to express their needs in monetarily to direct production, but the atomized nature of buying a selling on the market cannot express our collective consumption needs. To this form of poverty amidst plenty we must counterpose the demand for the complete socialization of the v^ costs of satisfying these social consumption needs. A State-Guaranteed Private Profits and Socialized LossesThe reality of the state guaranteeing the cost-plus prots of defense contractors, electric utilities, and the giant nancial houses that nance public debt stands in at contradiction of the free enterprise" myth of prot as a reward for risk. The baa-outs of Lockheed, Continental Illinois, Chrysler, and many other coroprate giants, not to mention the many Savings-and-Loan swindlers, socialize losses while keeping prots private. The subsidies granted to the nuclear industory and coroprate agribusiness, among others, socialize risks while keeping prots private. We must agitate around these contradictions between ofcial myths and the glaring realities These contradictions bring into radical question the conventional wisdom that rationalizes private ownership of the means of production. We should raise the demand that minimally, if the public is going to insure against fosses, then there must be an abolition of business secrets and the publication of corporate accounts so the people are not being riped off. And then, If the public has to pay for ft in bail-outs, the public should own it and begin to run it democratically on a non-prot basis. A Internationalization of the CapitalTaking advantage of new technologies of transporation and communication, capital has unprecented mobility. Global corporations shift money and production virtually instantaneously to outank people In one part of the world when they organize to assert their rights. This situation is pitting the people of each country, each region, and each community against all others as they compete for corporate Investment by offering tax holidays, anti-union measures, and the abatement of environmental controls. To this situation we must counterpose focal and regional self-reliance based on munjcipazation of the economy and mutual aid through municipal confederations. .K Automation and the Dual EconomyWe are in the midst of a technological revolution based on ?. microelectronkarKl biotechnology, with increasing automatfon and cybemaifon of material production, ft is replacing the complex of large Industrial mass-production facilities with a new technolgical complex based smaller, Increasingly automated production runs, radically increased productivity and production ft is decreasing the amounts of labor required. This technological revolution has both promise and perils for the prospects for a just and ecological society. Without fundamental reforms in the distribution of work and income opportunities, this technological revolution will take us toward a society with a dual society marked by an increasingly deep and bitter division between an afuent relative few who are permanently employed and growing numbers of marginalized poor people who are underemployed. To this emerging dual economy we must counterpose the notion of a Workers Superfund that 16

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guarantees everyone a fair share of work and income. We should attmept to unite the securely employed middle reaches o society with the marginalized at the bottom around a system where everyone works less so everyone can live better and earn their living by working if they so desire. This requires reducing the standard work week guaranteeing everyone the right to a good job, and paying the difference between 40 hours work and the shortened work week out of public fund paid for by variable taxation on automated production. This tax will prevent the falling relative prices of those goods and services whose production can be automated most rapidly, but whose endlessly rising consumption is not socially useful or ecologically ^^^.fr^^J?^10^ Cfuses "^ prlces t0 become neS9ible and threatens market prices with SSSt^SS- *JS? fe t0 a?pt a System of pomcai *** <tnrou9n * variate nation on au^nated procfoc^f^^ ardecotojgical balance, ft can be a democratic means for internalizing social and ecological costs in A Control Over Investment The official myth is that capitalists invest their savings and are due an deductions to pension funds and government funds such as workers' compensation, unemptoymem 2S528? ' ^f60^: ^ot on,y b our mon^ coined by unaccountable corporate boards T2Z?* ST*!?*.1? H fe belnlnvested a9alnst our lnterests ln everything from the financing^f runaway shops in cheap labor havens abroad to speculative real estate ventrues that are ruing the urban and natural environment. And ail too often, corporations are using mergers, bankruptcy proceedir^and 2U? ^W on earnings P608 must and be banafit plans. Popular indignation at these n>offs^nd misuse TOueve*t0 of our own deferred focused around demands for democratic controlof investment. Demands would start with control over our own deferred savings - democratic union control of pension fund investments, elected community investment boards to direct local bank savings to investments that meet community needs, and democratization and socialization of the various corporate and state Insurance programs. The socialization of investment in these areasand the necessary conjesponding public presentation of the social options and priorities to choose - will counter the logic of capital (investment owing from one sector to another based on prot) with one based on democratically HS"^iTe?S^TneseIrneaures .would tf an economy in the process of notion municipalization determinei the directions of community development and will legftmate the of complete a key lever in democratization of Investment decisions. Anti-Capitalist Logic of Immediate Measures tormPl 0!ls,:t<!wa"? ec?Pom]c democracy are presented below in a roughly escalating orderfor in terms o !!J!m8di5e their anti-capitalist logic. They start with measures to meet the immediate needs of nopto economic security and build toward anti-statist and anti-cap&alist measures the give people and communities nwrearKJnwrerjowerovermeirewnomicdestinies. They will not be achieved in a day. Their achievement will be a sustained process of transforming popular consciousness and expanding the economic control of municipalises and municipal confederations. But we have to begin from where we are and start 22n0,?S^ES?%* terms tne means and PossMMes of economic however circumscribed they w.l be at rst by the larger capitalist economy and state controls. democracy, We need to involve people now in the practical possibilities of economic democracy or otherwise ft will remain a visonary dream We need to project astene?16 , een the present and our future vlslon sucn tnat beginning to make changes is seen anti-capitalist logic of this approach municipal programs for full employment, guaranteed income, tax reform,etc -> corporations raise prices -> ination municipal programs for price controls, planning --> corporate sabotage: investment strikes, disinvestment, capital ight, etc. municipal socialization of corporations -> repression by corporate state muncipalist revolution: expropriation, participatory planning by community & workplace assemblies people s militia & nonviolent social defense In general, prot system wont generate investment and growth nest to grwoing socialized, planned
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Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf., July 3-7,1991

sector -> corporations disinvest if they fear expropriation, or capitalism will counter by making sure socialized sector is lemon socialism" socialized losses and subsidized private prots. That's why we must not pause at a "mixed economy." Immediate Economic Measures Guaranteed Right to a Job through Public Job Banks Public job banks should be established so that people who cannot nd decent work in the private sector can take a good publicly-funded job that fullls community-dened needs. Guaranteed Annual Income at 125% of the Poverty LineBuild into a simple progressive income tax a guaranteed annual income adequate to meet peoples' basic needs. Progressive TaxationTo secure funds for public functions and redistribute wealth and income to create more egalitarian society, we support progressive taxation of income, wealth, and inheritance. Variable Taxation of Automated ProductionThis tax will fund the Workers Superfund. It will be varied like a value-added tax according to the social and ecological prioirftes we choose. We advocate a system of "true cost" pricing to democratically internalize social and ecological costs In production in a way that reects our democratic choices about individual and collective consumption and ecological balance. $107Hour Minimum Wage The current minimum wage yields an income well below the poverty line. A $10/hour minimum wage, indexed to the cost of living, will raise demand for basic necessities (an anti-recessionary stimulus), reduce inequality, and lift millions of the working poor wout of poverty. 30 Hour Work Week with No Loss In IncomeWe should equitably distribute income earning opportunities so that technologically induced structural changes in the economy do not create a bitter schism between afuent securely-employed production workers and marginalized under-employed service workers. Immediately introduce a 30 hour work week with income tost from fewer hours made up by a "second check" from a Workers Superfund. Then progressively reduce the standard work week with no toss of income by steps in accordance with overall social productivity gains. This "second check" would be a "social dividend," a workers' fair share of socially created wealth. Workers SuperfundA Workers Superfund should be established to provide income, education, and retraining to workers displaced by bankruptcies, the shut down of corporate branch plants that leave for cheap labor markets abroad, by the technological conversion of industry from military and hazardous to civilian and ecological forms of production, and by the reduced amounts of labor that are required as technologically-based productivity gains are introduced. The Workers Superfund would: provide income, education, and retraining grants to atl workers diplaced by economic and social change: pay a "second check" or "social dividend" to all workers representing their share of socially created wealth, paid at their normal salary for the hours they no longer work as the standard work week is reduced in keeping with productivity gains; be funded by a variable tax on automated production. Support Democratic Trade Unions Repeal the sections of the Taft-Hartley Act that hinder workers from organizing democratic unions. Support efforts of workers to organize democratic unions and rank-and-le movements in existing unions for union democracy. Equal Employment Opportunity Comparable Worth The Greens will work to reform pay scales so that women receive comparable worth equal pay for work of equal value. Specifically, we call for recategorization of jobs where needed to protect women's rights to equality and comparable worthfor example, if a woman is a manager, she sho8uld be called a manager and paid accordingly, rather than called an executive secretary and paid much less raising salaries for traditional women's work such as secretarial work,, nursing, social work, waitressing, elemetary school teaching, and domestic work supporting unionization of workforces that are predominantly women taking afirmative action to train and increase the number of women qualified for all jobs enforcing existing laws protecting women from job discrimination Solidarity WagesWorkers and unions should pursue solidarity wage bargaining that seeks to raise lower wage rates more rapidly than higher wage rates. Convert Capitalist Firms to Workers CooperativesExploiting labor is morally wrong. Private sector rms in the market sector should be collectively owned and controlled by their employees on the
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Draft for Discusssion at LGN Con Conf., July 3-7,1991

Workers Contra) of ftwE^E?* fWV*? 00nvert capttalia fBms t0 cooperatives.

Equal Job Complexes Rotation Among Workplaces New Distribution of Work Time and Study Time Democratic Control of Money Debt Cancellation " S5Ci!ai^n?rBhi2 and TratIc Control of *** Industries - The question is not whether we autocratically or the people democratically? We need a democratic plannina svstem bas**^rLfaH*. expanded public sector. In those sectors of the economy where private industrv has failed to mH*L Healthcare Banking and Insurance Energy Transportation Chemicals War Industries Communlclatlons, Including Telephones, Cable TV, Print Media Production, and Computers and Computer Networks Land Land banking Food Processing and Marketing * ^l!S^t^lndIcaJlv0wP,ann,nfl " CororounHy assemblies and workplace assemblies will associate in consumption proposals and workplaces would formulate production proposals. By an ftermivebroMssthev would come to agreement on supply and demand. Planning boards eleSed & to ESXES^ V workplace assemblies would facilitate this process by formulating planning optonV Si rorkets support public policy goals. Among the charges to the planning system would be to survey needs, productive capacities, and ecological foundations ' SJS2?^T"1^Wies ou!of 9eneral reven"es to encourage the matching of productive capacities to social needs in an ecologically sustainable manner, puuw.ve to regulate prices In oligopolistic and monopolistic markets, to establish a system of social/ecological accounting and auditing, to internalize social and environmental costs through variable taxation on production to plan for peace and ecological converison of military and toxic Industries, to encourage balanced ecological community and regional development ' to encourage democratic public and cooperative forms of ownerhsip and control of enterprises social Consumption and Progressive Decommodlflcatton Progressively, more and more * 2S^a/^ ^^L9^ ** remove?from the """^ ""no* (decommodified) and distributed free of HZ fc^"^?" P"* roads are ** untnme *rny * not atoseparate sphere from lifeaT1USe2?0* Itself and people contribute according to their abilities and use according theirneeds.

Transitional Economic Program

The achievement of the immediate measures presented above add up in their combination to a

2S2n^?^^^f^ *!"" * *9afitarian than state capitalism, but still point exists In uneasy tension with ft. it "** is not yet fulland economic democracy and must not be seen as an end but a phase in a
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Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf.. July 3-7.1991

process of full transformation into economic democracy. Its elements can be partially won through counterinstautions and radical policy Initiatives, particularly at the municipal level, ft is a program for economic democratization that we can struggle for now. As we begin to achieve elements of ft. we can demonstrate in fe the practical potential of economic democratization. These immediate measures build toward a transitional economy whose characteristics of ownership coordination, distribution, and work can be described as follows: Ownership The program calls for an economy with three basic sectors: 1. Public Sector Socler/s common wealth - the land, natural resources, investment funds In banks and insurance companies, and the basks material infrastructure of social productionis the creation of nature's evolution and the labor of minions, not the ruling elites that now control most of tl. As our common heritge, this social wealth will be held in common and used cooperatively for the common mod HSS^^S^"9 (^"^"afeations) centralized global corporations and centralized state 2^1 be progressively taken over by eminent domain, broken up, and brought under mEEELSTTP f* wo*6*' sen-management. This public sector win encompass basic industries0WJMJ,sniP and services such as banking and insurance, energy, transportation, health can? && TELS* manu,aurin9 s****wtli creatfthe f^meS STa decentralized political economy based on Municipalization community ownership and control, combined with ZSttZZS "" ^ froV,din9 eCOnomic C0OKlinaon *" "alow at still wider geographical scales ELSE^^ abUt commo" needs an""* produaton and distribution^ be rnadebya VESSZl P|a"ni"9 P?688- Thn>uflh the confederal associations of community assemblies tto^SSr (n0t bureaucra8c command "m * characterize the planlg^rowsVin' 2' ^U01"0"8 ?ector ~ ** basfc needs ^l" to be securely provided by a decentralized oublich/ owned economic sector, people will be freer to produce personalized goods andEMlvtar their own use at the household and community level. With free accesTto^ctoanvlwr^wS^ S Z M Z * a b , 9 , t f , h e l r s W , , s a n d p r o d u c e - * ^ ^ h a Ta ^ k f f l ^ c ^ S B * HZ?J 5? directly 2.1?UCh p,easure in *community "^'"O ln u*> o goods.mass SurtnSmm. production for personal or local use* will begin to these supVisedethe 2EE22Z goods marketed for profit, often with planned obsolence butt ta to SSmd P * SSP2?'Ve SeCtor 7 mm fnore 0( our needs beg'nnh'O o (MMtynhfe and autonomous production, many goods and services will sfl of necessity be provided onth.opemarket To^Mto and don*'atton of <>ers. a cooperateT sector Zed^n ^oS'rate^ v^a^J,8^h0,d 8?l,-e'nP,0^8n, h place of ^P"8"8* * be encouragedStC. new n^ ""' conve!?ions * exlsn8 Private capitalist enterprises cooperatives encourage cooperatives through education, tax and creditInto policies, and me PuMc^oofev l3 framwortd wM m 2rEXJ?"S'and h0US6i,0,d produce,s <fanne'8-**. craftspeople^n^S SSL A !?.? enc?uraged to form cooperative associations to eruWWeiTecoriomfcsSr 5J publ,c pol,cv can b9 chan9d- h cement can take direct 22X to R Coordination community and workplace assembllies coordinate from below K'S!0ry PJlnnln9 fe fnKJative * imperative - planning of market framework tnus linking petty commodity (cooperative and self-employed) to public sector market remains in most consumer goods tfUrff!?^" of.!nvestment according social priorities suppressing capital markets participatory planning replacing market for capital goods in muncipalized sector but autonomy of public enterprises subordinated to community needs autonomous production pregures full economic democracy Distribution increasingly socialized mode of production but old mode of distribution still dominate
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S^^^,CrUni,ieLShan'n8 0Wn9,8hip of certain te*e-8c*te "* regtoSny ami wSh

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf., July 3-7,1991

to each according to work, but generous minimum guarantees old miserly support for social consumption replaced with generous expansion progressively, more goods and services moved to free sector: to each according to needs Work attack on workplace hierachy: toward equality of remuneration, equal job complexes, rotation among workplaces; new distribution of work time, study time ,a nd free time acorss one's lifetime

Beyond the Transitional Economy: Against a "Mixed Economy" or "Market Socialism" If somehow this process of municipalization of the economy where to reach the point of a fully owered transitional democratic economy without sabotage and a counter-offensive by the state and capital, would it be desirable in itself? It is fashionable today, particularly as Eastern statism collapses under the weight of the profound irrationalities of centralized commond planning, to can for a mixed economy. In Europe, it is usually called "market socialism". In the U.S., "workplace democracy" is often the code word, usually meaning a combination of worker cooperatives and selective public enterprise, both forms being prot-oriented in a market economy. The transitional economy just presented, with its strong cooperative sector, could t into this category if it were presented as a maximum program rather than a transitional phase. But "market socialism" is not a viable Third Way. To the contrary, it is an unstable hybrid system. Based on public planning of a regulatory framework for market forces to which publicly-owned enterprises, worker cooperatives, individual/household enterprises, anoVor traditional capitalist private rms then respond in pursuit of prot, "market socialism" uses the same policy instruments that the capitalist state now uses fiscal and monetary policy, foreign trade and exchange rate policy, state-guaranteed loans state-subsidies to infrastructural and R&D enterprises, price and incomes policy, and so forth. These policies have not been able to overcome instability and inequality in the capitalist West, nor in Yugoslavia. Hungary or China where "market socialism" has been most fully introduced. From the ecological point of view the prom-motivated growth imperative remains structurally institutionalized under "market socialism". Moreover, the predatory ethos of the prot motive gives "market socialism" a dynamic that pushes it toward the right, toward a more unadulterated capitalism based on fully privatized enterprise. State guidance of market forces is theoretically supposed to counter prot's self-interested motivation in order to protect public interests. But such planning in a complex economy of far-ung market networks becomes captive to those profit-oriented vested interests be they publicly, cooperatively, or privately owned who can successfully use their accumulated resources to lobby the state for preferential treatment. The resulting inefciencies and injustices of preferential treatment can fuel a revolt against public regulation and for full privatization and an unfettered market. The Thatcherite reaction to British social democracy, the ReaganHe reaction to American liberalism, and the neo-liberal reaction to East European market socialisms are cases in point. In order to take care of specialized needs and idiosyncratic tastes, perhaps a residual market should be retained under economic democracy. Market socialists often argue that only the atomized market decisions can respond effectively to this kind of demand. But much of this need can be met autonomously by individuals, households, and communities through hand-crafts and machine-crafts where all community members have access to community workshops and through personal services provided by caring family or community members. In any case, whether a residual market is required for such needs is something that could be worked out in practice. But if ft is retained, it needs to be morally and institutionally circumscribed to a strictly subordinate role In the overall economy. Otherwise, the market will corrode and undermine the social cooperation, mutual aid, and solidarity upon which economic democracy is based and it will open the door for a restoration of capitalism. As for the transitional economy just presented, it is important to see it as just thattransitional. If ft is taken as the end goal, rather than as steps toward that goal, ft will leave in place a coercive, competitive, prot-motivated market alongside the freer, cooperative, need-motivated forms of economic democracy'. And prot's predatory ethos will seek to restore the democratized sectors of the economy to its own domain in order to feed its insatiable appetite for aimless, endless growth. Winning achievement of the transitional economy creates a system that remains unstable. It could be a temporary period of moderation of capitalism's selsh spirit, or ft could be a practical step toward full economic democracy. The point is to keep pushing beyond the transitional economy toward full economic democracy. 2 1

Draft for Discusssion at LGN Contl Conf.. July 3-7,1991 Transitional Economic Measures come into play when capital and the state attempt to take back economic and political power from the municipalities, provoking a revolutionary crisis Expropriation Without Compensation Popular Planning Against State Capitalist Sabotage Delink from Capitalist World Market

Maximum Economic Program

Internationalization of Anti-Capitalist Measures Completion of Decommodication Abolition of Wage System Abolition of Social Division of Labor Emancipation of Labor Normalization of Mode of Consumption and the End of Growth Decentralization of the Economy reintegrate industry/agriculture, town/country production/consumption in ecocommunities and bioregions '

Social Reconstruction to Extend Democratic Rights and Meet Basic Needs

Community Service Centerssocial services, recreational facilities, and meeting halls for community assemblies Quality Public Education increase and equalize funding for public schools end tracking systems in public schools extend free public education to college and graduate studies at public institutions incorporate into work schedules paid leaves of absence with no loss of seniority for continuing education for adults Public Child CareChild care should be provided free, as part of the public school system Child care workers salaries should be increased. Public Health Service Health care should be provided free under democratic public ownership and control and funded by progressive taxation. A Public Health Service would replace control by Insurance companies, hospital boards of directors, and medical associations with democratic control through elected representatives on local, regional, and continental Health Service Boards. The Health Service would emphasize preventive care and employ salaried health workers who would serve the public on the basis of need, not prom. Reproductive RightsThe Greens will work for the following basic body rights: the right to gree and complete birth control information for all men and women and for all adolescents with or without parental consent the right to free abortion the right to complete maternity care the right to free counseling and support for pregnant women the right to be free from involuntary sterilization Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Liberation prohibit discrimination in hiring and promotion and housing on account of sexual preference grant equal legal sanction for relationships between heterosexual and homosexual couples grant full parental and adoption rights for gays and lesbians recognize and celebrate all democratic personal froms ov love wheterh hetero-, homo-, or bi-sexual Anti-Racism AIDS Policy Decriminalize Drug Use and Fund Drug Treatment Programs

Community Corrections
Eco-CommunitiesWe call for public funding for experimental eco-communities that are humanly scaled and tailored to their bioregions. They would research, develop, and test ecological technologies and cooperative economic and living arrangements (such as the rotation of all jobs so as to realize all of our

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Draft for Discusssion at LGN Cont'l Conf., July 3-7,1991

creative human capacities and distribute more and less desirable jobs equitably, and decommodied communities based on "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need").

Ecological Reconstruction Industrial Conversion to Eco-Technologies

Renewable Energy A publicly-owned, democratically-controlled energy system (including electric utilities and fuel suppliers such as Exxon, Mobil, Arco, and Socal) should implement the following policies: an immediate and permanent shut down of all nuclear power plants a rapid phase-out of fossil fuel use a rapid phase-in of energy conservation and solar-based renewable energy sources a major pubTrcirrvestrnert to develop so Ecological Public TransportationA publicly-owned, democratically-controlled public transportation system should implement the following policies: de-emphasize private automobile and trucking and emphasize rebuilding a convenient network of railroads and inner-city trolleys (light raits) work with community planners to redesign human settlements to increase local production for local use and reduce transportation needs work with community planners to redesign human settlements to increase mixed use areas (residences, organic agriculature, ecological industry) linked by convenient networks of bike and pedestrian paths and trolleys Nontoxic Chemicals and MaterialsA publicly-owned, democraticaliy-controlled public chemicals and materials industry should implement the following policies: research, develop, and progressively substitute safe substitutes for toxic chemicals and materials moving from synthetic hydrocarbons to natural carbohydrates assist communities increase reliance on local resources for local use Waste Management and Recycling Organic AgricultureProvide public funding and technical assistance ton a phase out of chemicalized corporate agriculture and a phase in of organic family and cooperative farming land reform to redistribute land from corporate holdings to municipal holdings, ecological land trusts, and Individual cooperative plots and to give new farmers access to land Sustainable Forestry Restoration Ecology transfer to public holding large tracts of land in all of the representative biomes of the continent, with coridors connecting them, to be returned to their natural states and protected for the use by native plants and animals undisturbed by human settlement fund expansion of public seed banks and germ-plasm banks and genetic preserves, with an emphasis on banking native indigenous seeds and germ-plasm

International Reconstruction through Peace Conversion

With the collapse of the Cold War system, the U.S. has emerged as the sole military superpower, ft now feels little constraint on its use of military intervention to keep the world safe for exploitation by global corporations. The United States' imperialistic foreign and military policy is rooted in its domestic social structure of competitive, accumulative capitalism regulated by a centralized nation-state. The most effective anti-imperialist action we can undertake, the most effective international solidarity we can exercise, is to build a radical movement in North America that can uproot the domestic structure that underlies U.S. imperialism and can replace it with decentralized, grassroots-democratic institutions that enable us relate to other peoples through cooperative mutual aid rather than with domination and exploitation in mind. North America is a microcosm of the world a mix of Native American, African, European, and Asian-Pacific peoples not an ethnically homogeneous nation. With nationalist and racist chauvinisms running rampant througout the world today, North Americans have a unique opportunity and responsibility to show how people of diverse ethnic heritages can live together with equality and mutual respect. A revolution in North America that both honors our diverse heritages and binds us together around a common sense of humanity and a common committment to grassroots political and economic democracy would set a powerful example throughout the world. In terms of immediate goals for peace and international solidarity, we will build a movement in the streets and
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on the ballot calling on the U.S. government to: Institute a Policy of Non-Nuclear, Non-Provocative, Home-Based Military Defense Unilaterally Disarm and Destroy All Atomic, Biological, and Chemical Weapons Dismantle the Secret National Security State Apparatusincluding abolition of the CIA and all covert operations agencies End All Secret Diplomacy Replace Standing Annies with Popular Militias Bring All U.S. Troops Stationed Abroad Home Including those In Saudi Arabia, Korea, the Phiiplnes, and Europe Cut the Pentagon Budget by 95%Only 3.5% of the Pentagon's budget goes to the defense of U.S. territory by conventional means. 96.5% is devoted to foreign intervention and nuclear blackmail to make the world safe for exploitation of global corporations. The $15-20 billion left after the cuts is more than enough to defend the U.S. by conventional means from all reasonable threats Plan for Peace ConversionSet up alternative use plans for existing military facilities and industries and provide income and education grants to help military personnel and defense workers make the transition to a civilian peace economy. Establish a Nonviolent Civilian Defense System as an adjunct and eventually a substitute for military defense. Respond to Agressive Wars with Social Revolution Replace United Nations with World Confederation of Free Municipalities Distribute Wealth to Equalize Regions of the World Cancel Third World and East European Debts Middle East Solidarity Southern Africa Solidarity Central America Solidarity

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