‌‌Dialogues are group discussions that are fluid, never final. Sometimes we post them here to encourage more open dialogue.

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."

-Ursula K. Le Guin

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We believe the role of socialists in this moment include:

1. Education: Revolutionaries who have been able to study Anarchist/communist theory/history can share it with those who don’t have the time/inclination/access to study as we have. We can pose the problem of hierarchy, of command-control, of exploitation, in ways others can’t.
2. Agitation: We can participate in movements and combat hierarchy, the impulse to dominate and rule, and help water the seeds of self-management, human connection, and liberation from capitalism and the state. We can say what only communists and anarchists can say.
3. Relationships: Capital is a social relation, not a physical thing. We can pose the problem and ask, "how do we refuse this relationship?” We can draw on the experiences of our comrades and engage in workers' inquiry to help expose the historical/contingent nature of it.
4. Connection: We can bring people together, within our workplaces, communities, & homes. We can build spaces that allow working people to talk about how their lives are made worse by capitalism. We can use social insertion to join in these movements as members, not leaders.
5. Vanguard Function, Not Vanguard Parties: We can challenge the concept of people who can speak “for” the workers, & emphasize that the vanguard function is something that is itself relational. We are in the vanguard only when we lead the fight against capital/the state.
6. Mutual Aid: We can build networks of care and collective action that empowers, that prefigures a world we wish to see. We can build mutual aid that empowers our struggle, & reaffirms that communism is the material human community. We can build intentional fighting solidarity.
7. Consciousness Raising: We can help people see themselves in the web of relationships of capital, to see themselves as workers. To help our neighbors & peers see themselves as part of a web of exploitation that we CAN do something to fight.

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These are all functions that the revolutionary radicals can do together to advance the class struggle without substituting themselves for the workers, without trying to imagine themselves as the generals of some grand struggle.

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From here, one of our members formulated four concrete planks, jumping off points for revolutionary anarchists & communists trying to orient themselves in their organizing:

1. Capitalism is a form of social relationships: We need to replace them with new relationships. Form social relationships through tactics like workers' inquiry, one-to-one conversations, talking to neighbors, etc. They may develop into formal organizations, or they may not.
2. Social interaction, not entryism: Participate in struggles in good faith as a member of the community but as an open anti-capitalist. Participate in the struggle while providing insight against capitalist social relations and hierarchy. Show concrete contradictions.
3. Mutual aid networks: In a revolutionary moment, people need to be fed, housed, and cared for. That begins by doing the prefigurative work now in mutual aid and connecting the work.
4. Police and prison abolition: We need a system of care, not punishment. Police and prison abolition questions the role of the capitalist state and gives us an opportunity to start to squint and envision a new society with new social relations that replace the capitalist state.

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These are four basic tenets of organizing that all revolutionaries who believe that the working class IS capable of taking control of the means of production can agree on. These are basic points that anyone who believes in a stateless, classless society should be able to agree on.‌‌‌‌Thank you so much to all those who participated in the study circle over the last two years. It is such a privilege & honor to get to learn with you. We are so excited to keep it going and to explore more concrete questions and group writing together.

Another world is possible, and it is through the revolutionary power of the human capacity for creativity that we will build it together. All power to the councils!

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