Strategy Notes

On 7 May 2019, I started sending very short weekly email notes on strategy for creating the society we deserve.

Here you can read the Strategy Notes I've already sent (some with small changes since the emailed version) and see some of the topics scheduled to come. Please recognize the list of not-yet-sent topics as tentative. I'll feel free to change them.

 

Broad Contents (most recent first)

I generally do a series of Strategy Notes on a topic. Those broad topics have included (listed with most recent first):

   

Broad Contents (oldest first)

I generally do a series of Strategy Notes on a topic. Those broad topics have included (listed with oldest first):

 

Detailed Contents

   

2019-05-07, Strategy Note 1:
What strengths do we have in the United States?

We people of the United States benefit from many strengths.

We have a large country with many kinds of land -- from semi-tropical in Florida to arctic in Alaska.

We have a large population with many kinds of people representing most of the ethnicities and cultures of the world.

We live in many ways -- from piled on top of each other in our coastal cities to scattered miles from each other on our interior plains.

Some of us descended from ancestors who originally settled this land thousands of years ago. Some of our people arrived more recently -- in many different conditions and from many homelands.

We have a wide range of attitudes and beliefs. Most of us have a capacity for cooperativeness and for orneriness.

In short, we have the strengths of humanity in general.

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2019-05-14, Strategy Note 2:
Four big problems face the United States

The people of the United States face many problems at the moment. Four of them seem the most dangerous.

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2019-05-21, Strategy Note 3:
Our four big problems violate widely held values

Our country's four biggest problems all violate widely held values, including teachings of most religions.

So given that these four problems violate deeply held values that most people share, why do they persist?

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2019-05-28, Strategy Note 4:
What causes our biggest problems?

Our biggest problems (climate change, oppression of certain groups, governments out of control of the people, inequality) result from the capitalist market.

Capitalism began a few hundred years ago in Europe. Its unsustainable need for growth spread it worldwide. Capitalism also pressures businesses to do four dangerous things:

Capitalist competition pressures businesses to do these things.

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2019-06-04, Strategy Note 5:
What can we do about capitalism?

Assuming we don't want to take our chances enduring it in whatever forms it mutates into, we have two options:

To regulate capitalism, we need to organize sufficient power to overcome the power of capital and maintain that power advantage while we wage an ongoing struggle to keep capital under democratic control.

To replace capitalism, we need to organize sufficient power to overcome the power of capital and maintain that power advantage while we wage a struggle through the transition period to a more humane economy.

I prefer replacement because I expect to like the results better and because it requires a shorter struggle (possibly only a generation or two instead of forever).

We don't have to choose between these two options immediately. In their early stages (organize sufficient power) both options have much in common.

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2019-06-11, Strategy Note 6:
What might regulating capitalism mean?

As we organize power to overcome capital's anti-democratic opposition to regulation, we might want policies like these:

These things theoretically could happen within regulated capitalism. They would require a continual struggle.

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2019-06-18, Strategy Note 7:
What might replacing capitalism mean?

We shouldn't think of our task as just replacing capitalism. Some replacements could have worse results than even capitalism does.

Instead, we have the goal of creating a healthy, humane society. That society won't have capitalist characteristics, but that freedom doesn't define the new society.

Most of us find it very difficult to imagine a society fundamentally different from the ones we have experienced. Capitalism doesn't encourage us to think outside its box.

The fact that we have trouble imagining the details of something doesn't make that something impossible. My grandparents could not have described how to build the Internet, but it exists.

Like any long-lasting human society, our new society must have ways to do certain things:

The current capitalist system produces enormous amounts of goods and services, allocates them in extremely unequal ways, matches supplies with desires incompletely, and totally fails on sustainability. So our new society doesn't need to offer perfection; it just needs to offer enough improvement to make the transition effort worthwhile.

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2019-06-25, Strategy Note 8:
How might our new economy function?

Those of us who can work and want to, do whatever work we want. We make the goods we produce and the services we offer freely available. We help ourselves to the freely available goods and services. We communicate widely to match supplies with desires and to recruit for multi-person tasks.

For work that we agree needs done but too few people want to do, we take turns. This practice likely will result in less efficient production in some cases. For example, if I annually work a three-hour turn collecting trash, I won't get as good at it as people who now do it 40 hours per week for years. I prefer that inefficiency to forcing people to spend large portions of their lives on unhealthy or unpleasant tasks.

We can afford such inefficiency because our new society will not need some of our largest current industries (advertising, financial institutions, real estate, insurance, militaries, most police and prisons, and much lawyering and accounting).

Replacing capitalism this way would create a bigger change than did the Industrial Revolution. It would approximate the scale of the invention of agriculture.

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2019-07-02, Strategy Note 9:
Can elections regulate or replace capitalism?

Capitalism has bipartisan support within our country's establishment. Let me restate that, in case you missed its implication. Both of the main political parties in this country support the cause of our biggest problems. (The minor parties generally do also, but the two major parties have arranged things to keep them insignificant.)

Big money (capital, to use a slightly technical term) has captured both major political parties in the United States, all three branches of the federal government, most state governments, and the minds of many of our people.

These facts mean we cannot realistically expect to save ourselves via elections. We certainly cannot solve our problems quickly via elections.

Elections still matter. We should accomplish as much as we can through them. In some places, local elections have valuable possibilities. At this point in our country's development, however, we cannot expect elections to make the major changes we require.

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2019-07-09, Strategy Note 10:
How we can move forward

What should we do when big money blocks progress through elections? Obviously, we turn to non-electoral methods of making change.

Nonviolent action campaigns --if waged smartly-- can build enough power to break through the barriers that big money has created. (For examples of how the Scandinavian countries used nonviolent action campaigns when the wealthy blocked progress in their countries in the last century, see George Lakey's book Viking Economics.)

By launching lots of nonviolent action campaigns each aimed at achieving some winnable goal that will attract the support of people who do not currently think of themselves as activists, we can greatly expand the active portion of our people and build our movement.

Nonviolent action campaigns can begin small. It probably will work best that way. Some will fail; some will win. Many small campaigns on a wide range of topics let many people from many parts of society get experience waging campaigns. This trains the pool of people who will lead the big upsurge.

To overcome big money in this country, we will need to develop much larger and more strategic campaigns than we have generally seen here.

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2019-07-16, Strategy Note 11:
To grow sufficient power, build a movement

Nonviolent action campaigns working in their locality can win real victories. We need to encourage many such local campaigns.

To create large-scale power, we will need (not immediately, but soon) to network those local campaigns into campaigns with much wider reach.

For example, in the 1970s proposed nuclear power plants faced local opposition. Those campaigns communicated and learned from each other (some more than others). Together, they defeated the nuclear industry's intention to build hundreds of new plants. The industry saw the persistent, widespread, growing power of these campaigns and stopped trying.

Anti-nuclear campaigns constituted one sector of a much larger movement. Other sectors include the Black freedom struggle, labor unions, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, disability access, environmental issues, peace activists, etc.

More cooperation (and sometimes competition) among organizations happens within a sector than across sectors. Both levels of cooperation strengthen our overall movement.

When efforts within a sector grow in strength it can multiply the strength of the whole sector. Multiple strong sectors help create strength movement-wide. We need this multiplying effect of broad cooperation to build the power to create a new foundation for society.

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2019-07-23, Strategy Note 12:
For our movement, we need infrastructure

Healthy, strong movements (and sectors of movements) do not just appear magically. People have to work intentionally to build them, much like people work to build organizations.

Sectors and movements generally develop best where they have good infrastructure organizations to strengthen them. Infrastructure organizations provide research, training, strategic advice, news media, catering, retreat centers, and such in the service of multiple organizations.

Infrastructure organizations can serve a particular sector, a few sectors, or the whole movement.

Infrastructure organizations can have formal relationships with (possibly even authority over) the organizations they serve (for example, the federation structures of the labor union sector). They can relate through short-term or long-term business contracts. They can take the form of coalitions. They can have highly informal relationships.

But however structured, infrastructure organizations and individual infrastructure workers provide many of the connections that facilitate cooperation among organizations. When they do that well, they help build a movement.

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2019-07-30, Strategy Note 13:
We can do this job

We have an enormous amount of work to do to turn this world toward something like what we need. Fortunately, we humans enjoy a good challenge. We can do this job. We also can enjoy doing it.

A time will come when people look back on today as a barbarous age. A time will come when everybody gets treated with respect. A time will come when we all have food, shelter, a healthy planet, and opportunities to learn anything we want. That time may come within the lifetimes of people alive today.

Such a time won't come just by happenstance or by electing better officials. It will come because we build a movement capable of creating that new society.

People love working together to accomplish shared goals. Step by step, we've made good progress. With loving determination, fierce patience, and a lot of fun, we can get this job done and celebrate together.

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2019-08-06, Strategy Note 14:
What must we in the United States do to correct the climate crisis? An outline

The next several Strategy Notes will offer details on the following summary.

Climate experts estimate that we must keep our planet from warming more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. To do that, we must stop emitting greenhouse gases by about 2030.

"Embedded in the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C is the opportunity for intentional societal transformation .... The form and process of transformation are varied and multifaceted ...." -- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (https://www.ipcc.ch), Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, section 1.4.3

To correct the climate crisis must we replace capitalism? In the long term, yes. We must do that by replacing exchange and property.

In the short term, we do not have to replace capitalism but we must severely regulate it to stop emitting greenhouse gases. Regulating capitalism sufficiently requires organizing almost as much power as replacing capitalism will, but does not require the full ideological and practical shifts needed for the long-term solution.

We must work simultaneously on the short-term (regulation) and the long-term (replacement) projects.

These efforts require a massive scale and a broad alliance. We must work with people with whom we agree about the climate even while disagreeing about other issues.

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2019-08-13, Strategy Note 15:
For correcting the climate crisis, how should we think about short-term and long-term work?

To correct the climate crisis, we must stop greenhouse gas emissions by about 2030.

This date does not mean we work on short-term goals until 2030 and on long-term goals starting in 2030. We must work on both simultaneously.

We who share the long-term goals outlined in these Strategy Notes have the interesting task of working with many people who do not yet share our long-term goals. Some of them vigorously oppose our long-term goals. Nevertheless, we must find ways to work together to win the short-term goals.

Without victory on the short-term goals, our species may not have a good long-term future. The short-term goals gain us the time needed to win our long-term goals.

Even when our short-term allies denounce our long-term goals, we must continue to work with them respectfully. We sometimes should debate long-term goals, but we must do it in ways that let us work together for our shared short-term goals.

We must build friendships with short-term allies with whom we disagree on long-term goals. We must make those friendships real. We must actually learn to like them. We must win their trust and friendship. Nothing less will sustain the necessary alliance.

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2019-08-20, Strategy Note 16:
To correct the climate crisis, what must we do in the short term?

To reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) on the scale needed by 2030 requires action by large governments (especially the United States government) and by large businesses.

We must win regulations to:

In the United States, we have two legislative proposals that could accomplish these goals:

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2019-08-27, Strategy Note 17:
We must also make the long-term change to replace capitalism

In addition to the short-term changes, we must also replace capitalism with an economy that has the possibility of long-term sustainability.

We must replace capitalism for at least three reasons:

These pressures (for growth, for pollution, against democracy) make capitalism unsustainable. In the long term we must not just regulate capitalism but must replace it with a better economy.

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2019-09-03, Strategy Note 18:
Do the emotional work about the climate necessary to think clearly

Noticing the degradation of our environment stirs up many difficult feelings: fear, anger, grief, loss, shame, numbness, etc.

These feelings can distract and confuse us. They can make it difficult to think clearly. They can cause timidity, rashness, self-righteousness, depression, assuming that officials will take care of the problem for us, and other non-helpful behaviors.

We need to think clearly and to act well. So we must acknowledge that we have these feelings and let ourselves feel and express them. Doing so lets our minds heal from the hurts of living in such a messed-up world. That healing helps us think and act more effectively.

However, we must not express these negative feelings unthinkingly. Doing so could add to the confusions (and possibly even the hurts) of others.

We can solve this dilemma by pairing up with each other and taking turns listening as we feel and express our feelings. The active listening skills that form such an important element of training for nonviolent people-power actions work very well for this paired healing work. Organizations working on correcting climate change will benefit from including such paired listening time in their regular activity.

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2019-09-10, Strategy Note 19:
How can we overcome fossil fuel wealth to win our short-term goals?

We must end the fossil fuel industry. Most of its wealthiest owners will oppose us. How can we develop sufficient power to overcome them?

Use officially approved methods ("inside game") to persuade government:

Use methods not officially approved ("outside game") to pressure government and businesses to act:

Back reforms that improve democracy:

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2019-09-17, Strategy Note 20:
To win our legislation, make climate a bridge issue, not a partisan issue

To pass legislation in the United States soon enough to meet our 2030 goal will require determined, realistic political work.

We have to win support from both Democratic and Republican members of Congress. We likely will need bipartisan support to overcome a presidential veto and to maintain the bill in future Congresses.

This means we must make protecting our climate a bridge issue, not a partisan issue.

We must strictly avoid letting any party claim this issue or blaming any party for inaction on this issue. Both of the two main parties have members of Congress who agree with us and members who oppose us. We must support or oppose them based on their actions on the issue, not on their party. We must seek, welcome, and praise helpful actions from all members of Congress. We must build support for the climate in all political parties.

We also must understand that some members of Congress (from both major parties) will speak as if they support our goals while working to dilute, delay, or defeat our bills. We should not pretend that such behavior qualifies as support.

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2019-09-24, Strategy Note 21:
Directly pressure businesses

Make visible the split in businesses over climate. Don't let polluters (such as the fossil fuel industry) claim to speak for business. Insurance companies, for example, seem like potential allies on our short-term goals.

We should consider at least the following methods to influence businesses:

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2019-10-01, Strategy Note 22:
Strengthen the organizations pushing these solutions

Support Citizens' Climate Lobby (https://citizensclimatelobby.org):

Support organizations advocating for a Green New Deal (GND) including Sunrise Movement (https://www.sunrisemovement.org):

As Extinction Rebellion (XR, https://extinctionrebellion.us) develops a presence in the United States, support it.

In all these groups, have one-to-one chats to raise our long-term goal as an additional step needed (additional, not replacing their focus).

Within groups working for the long-term solution we should:

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2019-10-08, Strategy Note 23:
Engage China (and the world) respectfully and cooperatively

The United States has emitted far more greenhouse gases per person than any other country. We must take more responsibility than other countries for correcting our planet's climate crisis.

Until the US cleans up our act, we cannot effectively call others to act. Yet humanity needs action widely.

When the US stops releasing greenhouse gases, that change will make an enormous contribution but will not by itself solve the problem. This problem requires engaging most of the world's people.

Every country currently releases greenhouse gases. Our climate crisis affects everybody. All people and countries have an interest in correcting it.

Because the current US government hinders climate progress, we must engage directly with our peers in other countries, especially China. We must approach those engagements with complete respect, a bit of humility, and a spirit of cooperation.

The people and government of the People's Republic of China will play a particularly important part in the world's climate struggle. Because of the size of their population, their position as the center of manufacturing, and their growing international influence, the choices they make matter more than most. The world will benefit immensely if they offer good leadership on the climate crisis.

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2019-10-15, Strategy Note 24:
When we replace capitalism, what might our long-term solution look like?

Strategy Note 17 explained why we must replace capitalism.

The new society likely will have the following characteristics:

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2019-10-22, Strategy Note 25:
How might we win the long-term changes?

It could happen that everybody wakes up one morning determined to not cooperate with property relationships or exchange relationships and instead to live on the basis of sharing and solidarity. That could happen. We should not assume it will happen just because the long-term livability of our planet would benefit.

Instead, we must carefully prepare our society's culture to encourage that determination.

We know smart, persistent work can make major changes in human cultures. Consider the changes in our country in the last 100 years on women's rights, race, and LGBTQ rights. These changes did not happen automatically. People worked diligently to create them. People still work to move them forward.

Some early steps in preparing our culture for the needed changes in our economic relationships might include:

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2019-10-29, Strategy Note 26:
Can we make these changes? Do we have a chance?

Yes, we have a chance.

No law of nature or of logic prevents any of these goals.

We have the possibility of achieving all of these goals.

We have no certainty of success. We have no certainty of failure.

The future --our future-- remains completely undetermined.

The goals outlined here will require some work to accomplish. The choices we make and the actions we take (together with the choices and actions of everyone else) will create the society in which we live.

We have choices to make. We have work to do. Let's get it done.

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2019-11-05, Strategy Note 27:
Let's create an economy good for working people. An invitation.

To create an economy good for working people and to keep it so, working people must make the economy's decisions together.

We need accurate information and the clarity of mind to choose correctly in our decisions. It may also help if we understand why previous economies harmed us.

We can learn about why the present economy harms us by participating in it as working people and especially by working together to try to make life better for us all within that old economy. However, participating in the old economy also tends to confuse and mislead us about the economy, about ourselves, and about other people.

Offering each other our ideas, guesses, and theories about why our current economy hurts us (and all working people) and considering each other's ideas and talking about those ideas should help us develop our understanding.

In these next several Strategy Notes, I offer my current thoughts about why our present economy hurts working people and how we can create an economy that will serve working people well. It should help my understanding if you consider my ideas and give me your thoughts on them. Please do.

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2019-11-12, Strategy Note 28:
What does "the economy" mean?

The word "economy" means the set of human creations (physical and mental creations) that affect production and distribution of goods and services. These creations include the relationships, institutions, customs, laws, habits, attitudes, beliefs, physical infrastructure, and anything else we humans create that pertains to how we do work, produce things, and decide who gets to use what.

This definition includes all work we do (not just paid work). It includes work we do for ourselves (brushing our own teeth, for example), the work we do without pay for our families (cooking, cleaning, caring for children, work still done mostly by women), and the volunteer work that sustains our many organizations.

This definition also includes all the ways we allocate goods and services (not just buying, selling, renting, and the like). It includes gifts, begging, sharing, gambling for things of value, loaning a tool to a neighbor, smuggling, piracy, theft, conquest by war, and picking up a lost coin on the sidewalk.

The transactions in economic relationships can range in scale from intimate ones (washing an infant's face) to vast mergers of transnational corporations.

So the task of creating an economy good for working people includes many components.

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2019-11-19, Strategy Note 29:
The old economy hurts and confuses us.

We currently have to participate in this old economy to survive. While participating as workers can help us learn about how it functions, this inhumane system also hurts workers and confuses everybody about the economy, about ourselves, and about other people.

According to the federal government (https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfoi1.htm), over a dozen people die each day in the United States from workplace injuries. In North Carolina, one of us dies roughly every other day.

We who (under the old economy) need to sell our labor also encounter demeaning messages. If we don't have a job, we get blamed -- even though the current economy doesn't create enough jobs to employ everyone. If we manage to get a job, we get told to show gratitude and to consider ourselves lucky to have found an employer willing to exploit us. If our job directly serves humans or involves any dirtiness, we get looked down on by people whose jobs isolate them from people.

Generations of such mistreatment and anti-worker propaganda can confuse us. It can cause us to almost believe the negative messages about us and about other workers. That internalized oppression hinders our progress. We must free our minds from such falsehoods.

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2019-11-26, Strategy Note 30:
We can heal our minds from the harms of oppression.

Bob Marley sang, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery! None but ourselves can free our minds."

Fortunately, just like our bodies have ways to heal physical injuries, our minds have ways to heal themselves. Given decent conditions, they work quite well.

To heal and clear up confusions, our minds need three basic things:

It also helps to have accurate information about our world, but given the three basics we can usually figure out how to get that.

When we have such conditions and take time to talk about whatever concerns us, our minds automatically use the opportunity to sort through old associations in our memory, heal old hurts, and clear up confusions. This process mostly happens without our awareness. In such a context, laughing, crying, and talking engagedly and non-repetitively show that our minds have found the internal path to healing.

We can pair up and take turns listening to each other to help each other do that healing work. We often will feel better afterwards, but --more importantly-- we will think more clearly and act more effectively.

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2019-12-03, Strategy Note 31:
The current economy has two realms. We can live with only one.

We can think of the current economy as consisting of two realms:

In the exchange realm, participants own things (including their ability to work) and trade them for things (such as money) other participants own. The exchange realm includes those activities that most mainstream economists think of as economic activity (buying, selling, hiring, renting, etc.).

In the free realm, participants provide goods and services without receiving anything in trade. This realm includes most of the work people do for themselves and for their households. It also includes uncompensated volunteer work. Much open-source software comes from this realm.

Without the free realm's work (mostly done by women) that raises children and gets adults ready for each workday, the exchange realm would have no workers. The exchange realm depends parasitically on a healthy free realm.

The relations humans require (self maintenance, love, care of children and the infirm) happen mostly in the free realm. Most of the harm to working people and our environment happens in the exchange realm.

We can --and, in the long term, must-- abandon exchange and base our economy entirely on the free realm.

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2019-12-10, Strategy Note 32:
We must (as soon as possible) free ourselves from exchange.

Any economy that includes exchange (ownership and trading the ownership of something for something else) creates relentless pressure in directions that harm working people.

Exchange pressures participants in its economy to:

Any economy that includes exchange will have these pressures. These pressures tend to create an undemocratic and unsustainable economy that exploits workers and the environment, an economy much like our current one.

To create an economy good for working people, we must free ourselves from the old habits of exchange. As we design our new economy, we should use as our model the free realm of the current economy and keep exchange from creeping into it.

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2019-12-17, Strategy Note 33:
How might our new economy function without exchange?

We who can and want to work will do the work we want to do. We'll make the fruits of our labor freely available. We'll help ourselves to the fruits of other people's labor.

We'll communicate widely and frequently about what work needs done. For work we agree needs done but too few people want to do, we'll take turns.

Taking turns may sometimes lower our productivity. If I work one shift collecting trash annually, I won't get as good at it as folks who currently do five shifts per week. I prefer that lower productivity to forcing people to spend their lives on unpleasant or dangerous work.

We can afford lower productivity in some areas because people doing work they want to do will achieve higher productivity in other areas. In addition, much work done in the old economy will become unnecessary. Vast industries will vanish: advertising, insurance, banking, real estate, finance, stock markets, much policing and prisons, and most military work.

With our freed resources, we can clean up our environment, provide everybody drinkable water and nutritious food, make workplaces safe, create universal health care and learning opportunities, and enjoy a flowering of the arts.

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2019-12-24, Strategy Note 34:
An important detail we will need to figure out.

Last week's Strategy Note likely did not answer all questions about our new free economy. I hope you didn't expect a detailed blueprint in under 200 words.

However, I should mention a big question that I have not yet answered: In our new free economy, how will we coordinate production and distribution on a humanity-wide scale?

The old exchange economy uses prices and the way profit-seekers supposedly respond to prices to coordinate production and distribution. It works somewhat, though unequally and inefficiently. Profit-seekers frequently waste resources because they mis-estimate future demand or future availability of inputs.

So our new free economy doesn't need to coordinate perfectly. It just needs to not do much worse.

Without exchange (and therefore without prices) how might we coordinate? How do we know where to send the trainload of bananas our crew just harvested?

Imagine an Internet-based system in which providers list what they have available and what they plan to produce in the future while consumers list what they want and when they want it. The system then matches for best efficiency. Easier imagined than done, but I expect we can figure it out.

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2019-12-31, Strategy Note 35:
Four questions about key relationships.

Four questions can help us understand how an economy affects working people:

In our current economy, the exchange realm and the free realm answer these questions differently. The completely free economy we need to build will offer even better answers.

The exchange realm answers these questions as part of a package of rights called "ownership". People (or organizations) that "own" the means of production also "own" the results of workers' work, decide what workers produce, and (to the extent workers allow) decide how workers work.

Some people (the owning class) "own" the means of production. Some people (the working class) do not own means of production and so (within an exchange economy) must sell our ability to work (to use the means of production) in order to earn the means to live.

Some people have mixed relationships to the means of production. Some workers also have some ownership. Some owners also do some work. Most people have predominately one relationship (selling their ability to work).

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2020-01-07, Strategy Note 36:
Three projects to replace the current economy with the better one.

To replace the current economy with the better one, we should work on three projects simultaneously:

These three Projects exist only conceptually. Many organizations will pursue activities in more than one Project. The boundaries between projects will blur.

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2020-01-14, Strategy Note 37:
Project 1: Organize!

To create the new economy, we must build new organizations and strengthen existing organizations.

Strengthening labor unions, while necessary, will not suffice to create an economy good for working people. Most current unions do not have that as a goal; they just try to improve working conditions and pay within the old economy.

Our next organizing tasks:

We cannot create our new economy by bargaining better union contracts or by electing better politicians. Bargaining and voting can only win better versions of the old economic relationships. Such victories matter. Alone, they will not get us the world we deserve.

Creating our new economy requires acting outside the norms of the old economy. We need nonviolent people-power action to build non-exchange relationships of production and distribution, to defend our new relationships, and to dismantle institutions that maintain property and exchange.

The nonviolent actions we organize to win workplace struggles, oppose discrimination, and correct climate change help spread the skills and build the trusted relationships we will need.

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2020-01-21, Strategy Note 38:
How to think about North Carolina's union density.

Tomorrow the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, https://www.bls.gov) will release estimates of 2019 union membership. You'll likely see news about the poor state of labor unions, especially in North Carolina, where we and South Carolina generally have the least union density.

A few suggestions to help make sense of the news:

In spite of the decline of US union density in recent decades (and fluctuating low density in North Carolina), labor unions remain the strongest sector of our broad movement, including in North Carolina. Our common enemies attack unions as a way to attack our whole movement. Unions should support and defend other sectors. Other sectors should support and defend unions.

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2020-01-28, Strategy Note 39:
Project 2: Regulate!

Regulating businesses will not create our new economy. Certain kinds of regulation, however, can help.

We should regulate to do a few urgent things:

Specifically, we should use our electoral power and lobbying influence to:

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2020-02-04, Strategy Note 40:
Project 3: Replace! (Part 1)

A few tasks --in the order they likely should begin-- in Project 3 (replacing the old economy with our new one):

Some tasks in this list (and in its continuation next week) may seem unrealistic now. The more modest early tasks will change the balance of power in society and make the bolder later tasks possible when their time comes.

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2020-02-11, Strategy Note 41:
Project 3: Replace! (Part 2)

Last week, Strategy Note 40 listed some early tasks in replacing the old economy with our free economy. Today's Strategy Note continues that list. This portion of the list may make more sense if you review the previous portion.

Remember, the early more modest tasks will change the balance of power in society and make the bolder later tasks completely realistic when their time comes.

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2020-02-18, Strategy Note 42:
The three Projects strengthen each other.

Only Project 3 can make the changes we need in a way that can last. However, Projects 1 and 2 do three necessary things:

At any moment, most people and organizations will specialize in some aspect of only one of these three Projects. Some will not even recognize the existence or the usefulness of the other two Projects. All these efforts can strengthen each other, however, if they treat each other as allies or at least avoid speaking ill of each other. We can hope that some will praise each other and seek ways to cooperate. Optimally they will inform their members about this three-project strategy, about their organization's role in that strategy, and about the valuable work their allies do in all three Projects.

Meanwhile, the strength we develop through the three Projects will help us defeat two short-term threats: rightwing authoritarianism and the climate crisis. These two threats (and the racism supporting them) need our immediate attention. We cannot permanently eliminate either threat within the old economy, but we can (if we move all three Projects forward simultaneously) develop enough strength to reduce their immediate danger.

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2020-02-25, Strategy Note 43:
What about non-workers? Do they have a place in our new economy?

First, we need to notice that almost everybody belongs to the working class. You don't have to hold a big wrench in greasy knuckles to count as a worker.

You belong to the working class if you work for a living, would if you could get a decent job, live on income from somebody else's job (like children depend on parents's jobs), depend on charity or public assistance, scratch your subsistence from land held in common by your village (as do some peasants), run a small business in which you do not employ anyone, or live on your past work (such as a pension). This includes the vast majority of today's humans.

The tiny owning class consists of those few people who own the means of production and hire other people to work for them. In our new free economy, no one will function as owners previously did.

Just as we treasure and support people who cannot work, we will also welcome former owners as they abandon claims of ownership and "come home to" the working class. Many of them will find useful work they want to do. Some will lack skills (or will have confusion or emotional problems). We will support them (as we support all people with disabilities) and help them develop to their fullest.

In the new free economy, we will value all people as people (and not just for their productivity).

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2020-03-03, Strategy Note 44:
We can create an economy good for all. Four things you can do now.

No law of nature or of logic prevents us from creating an economy good for everybody. It will require steady work, but we can do it.

Ready to help make it happen? Please try these four things:

This transformation in our economy will have bigger effects that did the industrial revolution. It will approach the scale of the development of agriculture. It will require a lot of work. But, as our history shows, we humans can make big changes.

We can do this. Let's get it done.

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2020-03-10, Strategy Note 45:
Let's end war! A practical plan.

Humans sometimes disagree. Our conflicts can result from different opinions, different perceived material interests, and mistaken interpretations of others.

Some human conflicts become so inflamed and recruit (willingly or unwillingly) so many participants that we call them wars. Wars make enormous profits for a few people, but affect most people quite negatively.

War harms so many people so extremely that most people have wished, hoped, prayed, or worked for a world without it.

Our technology developed to a level 75 years ago that gave war the possibility of exterminating our species. Developments since have multiplied such possibilities. Careful diplomacy, moments of relative rationality, and sheer luck have prevented our extermination so far. Good for us.

I think we can do better than that. I think we can actually achieve our ancient wish to eliminate war.

In the next several Strategy Notes I sketch an analysis of what causes war and of how we can free ourselves from it.

If such a project interests you, please consider these Strategy Notes carefully and tell me what you think of them. I look forward to your thoughts!

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2020-03-17, Strategy Note 46:
The cycle of fear that supports war

Consider the following cycle:

  1. The people of a country fear attack. The fear could result from false, exaggerated, or real dangers.
  2. The military claims to protect the country.
  3. Believing they have no better option, the people fund the military.
  4. With fluctuating competence, the military actually defends (in order of declining priority):
    1. Their own institutional interests.
    2. The interests served by their funders and superiors (in the United States, the interests served by Congress and the President).
    3. The dominant institutions of the country.
    4. The territory of the country.
    5. The people of the country. Institutionalized classism, racism, sexism, and regionalism may cause variation in how well the military protects specific portions of the people.
  5. To prepare for their task, the military must imagine new threats and design defenses against those imaginary threats. This leads to an arms race against imagined potential future threats. Only the people who profit from supplying those arms (and the military bosses) can win such a race.
  6. To justify the military budget, the military bosses and the interests who profit from military spending must keep the people in a state of fear.

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2020-03-24, Strategy Note 47:
Two tasks to end the military cycle of fear

The cycle described in last week's Strategy Note sounds like a scam, but crime does not drive that cycle. Profit does.

In the United States, companies that make big profits from military spending place their jobs in many Congressional districts to help maintain funding. Communities --and the capitalist portion of the national economy-- become dependent on military spending.

Until people see better protection, they will fund the military. Because the military likely does us more harm than it prevents, we have a good chance of developing a better defense. In a few weeks another Strategy Note will describe our better option.

Profit-seeking drives the cycle. It also strengthens the influence of managers and owners of businesses that sell to the military. To stop that, we must replace exchange with sharing. No matter what reforms we make, until we make that deeper change, we will face the threat of a return to dominance by the capitalist class and the resulting profit-driven pressure for war.

To end the military cycle of fear, we must simultaneously work on a short-term task (develop a more effective defense than the military) and a long-term task (replace exchange).

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2020-03-31, Strategy Note 48:
Imperialism causes many of today's wars

Because capitalism drives businesses to gain control of the government and to constantly expand, we get the growth of an international form of capitalism often called "imperialism". Such a system uses military and economic power to subordinate weaker countries (client states) to a stronger country (the imperial state).

Imperialism requires client states to provide the imperial state with cheap labor, cheap material resources, and an expanded consumer base. It transfers wealth from the poor to the rich. It requires force to maintain, ultimately in the form of war.

The way imperialism functions shifts over time. Imperial states rise and fall. Since about 1945, the United States has held a dominant position as the world's most powerful imperial state.

Empires generally face opposition. Other countries seek to grow in strength. Dominated people seek to depose their overlords. The United States began as a revolt against the imperial power of the 1700s. Now others revolt against it. Since about 1973, those revolts (some armed, some nonviolent) have gradually reduced the worldwide dominance of the US-centered empire.

As empires decline, they fight to maintain a failing system. The United States appears well into that phase.

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2020-04-07, Strategy Note 49:
What causes imperialism?

What causes imperialism? The same thing that causes capitalism: exchange.

When an economy rests on a foundation of property and exchange, all actors in that economy (individuals, businesses, corporations, governments) have a need to accumulate wealth so they can have something to trade for what they need. This need to accumulate leads to a desperate urge to grow and expand. A single country does not allow enough room for larger actors to grow. So businesses become international.

Businesses recruit their home government to smooth the way for their international projects. Imperial governments happily assist "their" businesses because doing so strengthens the imperial system.

Any economy that includes property and exchange will tend to develop capitalism, imperialism, and war.

Strategy Notes 24 and 33 outlined how a new exchange-free economy can function. Until we make that long-term change in our economy, we will face the threat of war.

In the shorter term, we need to spread non-military --even non-governmental-- methods of defense. As these methods become widely used and many people see their superiority, public support for war, the military, and governments that rely on them will decline. Then many possibilities will develop.

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2020-04-14, Strategy Note 50:
What should our defense methods do?

Let's examine defense logically. What do we want our defense methods to do? We want them to keep our people alive, healthy, and free from coercion. We also want them to maintain valuable institutions of our society.

As we saw in Strategy Note 46, the military does this (to the extent it does it at all) with different priorities than we want.

The military prepares to wage war and does so when ordered. Theoretically, we could use war to defeat attempts to kill or coerce us. In practice, war generally has other purposes.

Advocates for a strong military claim it deters threats against us: without it, marauders would overrun our country and subjugate us to their evil wishes; with it, potential marauders see they would fail and don't try. Perhaps, if potential marauders exist. Instead of arguing about that, let's just add it to what we want our defense to do, as an example of keeping us free from coercion.

So we should evaluate proposed methods of defense primarily by how well they keep our people alive, healthy, and free from coercion. Secondarily we'd like them to maintain valuable social institutions.

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2020-04-21, Strategy Note 51:
How should we defend ourselves?

How should we keep our people alive, healthy, and free from coercion?

Make sure everybody has good food, clean water and air, healthy shelter, exercise, opportunities to learn whatever they want to learn, easy ways to communicate widely with others of their choosing, work that suits them, and healthcare when needed. To fund these priorities, cut military funds and tax the rich. That should mostly keep people alive and healthy.

The third goal (freedom from coercion) requires sustained, collective, nonviolent people-power action. Early steps include:

Strong nonviolent action can defend from the coercion of exploitative relationships and defend our growing exchange-free relationships. If sustained, that can end war.

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2020-04-28, Strategy Note 52:
Reduce the military's influence.

Do any of these things that make sense for you:

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2020-05-05, Strategy Note 53:
Build an effective movement against war.

Join and support organizations working against war (even if they haven't yet adopted this strategy):

Win anti-war groups over to this strategy (instead of mere lobbying and protesting, which won't get the job done by themselves).

Read, subscribe to, help fund, and tell others about Waging Nonviolence https://wagingnonviolence.org/.

Learn and help others learn how to wage nonviolent people-power campaigns that win. Sign up for a training from Ready the Ground Training Team (readytheground@gmail.com). See some readings on nonviolent power in the book-review section of this website.

Support groups that train people for nonviolent people-power action like Ready the Ground Training Team (readytheground@gmail.com).

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2020-05-12, Strategy Note 54:
Wage nonviolent campaigns to transform society.

Wage nonviolent campaigns to transform society:

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2020-05-19, Strategy Note 55:
Can we actually end war?

Eliminating war seems impossible to many people, possibly even to you. I say we can do it.

"Impossible" means it cannot ever happen. Calling something "impossible" makes an extremely strong claim. Such claims need extremely strong evidence. Hunches, traditions, long-held expectations, and mere feelings don't prove the claim.

War does not result from any law of nature. Logic does not require it. We don't need it. Therefore, we can eliminate it.

That doesn't make the task easy.

The social forces that profit from war --or for other reasons desire it-- currently have overwhelming influence. Changing that fact will require building a massively strong social movement. We currently have only a tiny glimmering of such a force.

With good strategy and effective, sustained work, small beginnings can grow in power and influence.

The strategy outlined here approximates a good strategy. With experience using it, we can learn and improve it.

Now we need effective, sustained work. The worst hindrances to that come from hopelessness and discouragement induced or increased by our opponents' propaganda. Reject our opponents' propaganda. Reject hopelessness and discouragement.

Logic says we can do this. We want it. Let's make it happen.

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2020-05-26, Strategy Note 56:
First thoughts on our current pandemic

A few first thoughts on our current pandemic:

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2020-06-02, Strategy Note 57:
For strong organizations, chat!

Organizations --like gardens and friendships-- need tending. They especially need care in difficult times.

Organizations consist of numerous person-to-person relationships. Those relationships always need tending. They especially need care now.

In most organizations, most of the time, that care for relationships happens (to the extent it happens) without explicit notice. It happens off the official agenda, in informal chats, often initiated by women. Those chats share ideas, clarify misunderstandings, and maintain solidarity.

Experienced organizers learn that the most important talk happens after the meeting ends as people stand around and chat. With in-person meetings replaced by online communication, does your organization have a way for those essential chats to happen?

Most organizational leaders can't endure adding more videoconference or phone hours to our days right now. So don't add, replace! Cancel the least valuable half of your currently scheduled conference calls. Replace them with informal one-to-one phone and video calls.

Check in with key people. Ask how they feel. Listen. If they ask about you, answer honestly. Chat. Encourage them to make similar calls to people they care about in the organization.

Your organization needs many such chats.

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2020-06-09, Strategy Note 58:
Demonstrations? Strikes? General strike?

The need to avoid gathering in person to reduce the spread of the virus hinders the usual boring rallies and marches. Good. Perhaps we can think more creatively.

With so many businesses and public agencies (schools, etc.) closed, strikes do not look widely feasible. However, strikes look powerful in a few situations such as transport of goods and online sales such as Amazon. Strikers will need to carefully maintain essential services or make clear why they must interrupt service to protect their health. Strikes for pay may not get as much public support as strikes for safety measures and healthcare during this time.

The stay-at-home orders create a situation similar to a general strike (or general lockout) except workers don't take power and administer operations. Notice the difficulty of the exchange/capitalist economy when people withdraw their labor and purchases from it. If we had already built widespread exchange-free methods of production, distribution, and coordination, we'd have an excellent opportunity to advance toward the world we all deserve.

We haven't developed that strength yet. Other crises --including other pandemics-- will come. Make the gains we can from this crisis and prepare for future opportunities.

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2020-06-16, Strategy Note 59:
Whose death and suffering matters?

While the deaths and suffering from this pandemic demand attention, let's remember the completely preventable deaths and suffering in "normal" times from poverty, lack of food, lack of clean water, lack of healthy shelter, lack of healthcare, racism, sexism, militarism, homophobia, xenophobia, unsafe workplaces, and pollution.

Politicians, the media, and most of us don't treat the deaths and suffering from such "normal" causes as a crisis. Why?

Perhaps some people matter more than others. Perhaps people don't matter unless they have wealth or they produce wealth for the masters of our exchange-based economy.

But when the current pandemic threatens that fragile economy, we see action. The dramatic early actions of politicians in response to this current pandemic show what they can do when they want to.

Why do politicians address (at least partially) this current pandemic but not our climate crisis, poverty, starvation, lack of clean water, unsafe workplaces, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, militarism, homelessness, and lack of healthcare? Perhaps because this current pandemic threatens their fragile exchange-based economy while that miserable economy causes these "normal" harms.

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2020-06-23, Strategy Note 60:
What ideas do we need readily available?

In March, Carroll Webber wrote, "New human suffering is raised into view ... and a general determination to alleviate it. This presents us with a need and an opportunity for doing work without pay and receiving goods without paying for them. We might be able, in this crisis that's crushing normal economic modes, to take strides toward the ideal society.... Poor people have always helped each other."

Yes, poor people help each other on an individual-to-individual and small-group basis. Now we need to generalize that tendency from generosity within an exchange-based economy to a fundamental principle of relations within a worldwide exchange-free economy.

Milton Friedman wrote, "Only a crisis --actual or perceived-- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around." Friedman wanted a drastically different economy than I want, but this quote deserves thought.

I doubt the ideas of an exchange-free economy lie around sufficiently available yet for large numbers of people to take them up and make the full change we need. Key word in that sentence: yet. We will have other crises. Let's use this one to spread the needed ideas.

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2020-06-30, Strategy Note 61:
Help everyone understand this crisis.

We must win the struggle over how to understand this crisis. The lessons people draw from this time will make a big difference. A few key learnings to emphasize:

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2020-07-07, Strategy Note 62:
Build key organizations.

During the current pandemic and economic disruption, build organizations that prepare for future opportunities:

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2020-07-14, Strategy Note 63:
What might happen next?

At least four scenarios could result from this pandemic and its depression:

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2020-07-21, Strategy Note 64:
Ask key questions! Listen! Learn!

This current pandemic and its associated recession/depression will cause enormous suffering. They likely will accelerate capitalist accumulation, increasing inequality. They will not by themselves end capitalism or exchange.

This pandemic and depression could weaken capitalism and exchange if many people organize against capitalism and exchange or expand their exchange-free relationships.

Therefore, we have as our key strategic task starting discussions that help people correctly understand their experiences during these two linked crises. Those discussions will often fit well within efforts to organize for immediate needs.

Create opportunities to ask a few questions:

Ask such a question. Listen respectfully. Repeat with a different question or a different person. Notice how the people you listen to change their thinking. Try asking and listening slightly different ways. Notice what you learn. Keep doing it.

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2020-07-28, Strategy Note 65:
Build BLM. Defeat totalitarianism.

Today's Strategy Note takes a different form from usual. Instead of a short note with my thoughts, I offer you links to articles on two urgent strategic questions.

I know both authors, have learned a lot from them, and think highly of them as people and as strategists. One Black, one white, decades different in age, both have devoted their lives to building our broad movement. They likely have trained more activists in more countries than any other dozen movement trainers.

Please read and consider their recommendations in these two articles. Then share these suggestions with others.

The choices our movement makes on these topics may make an enormous difference. Let's get this correct!

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2020-08-04, Strategy Note 66:
Organize! (Why. Who. Whom. How. For what.)

This Strategy Note begins a series on organizing. The series will consider questions such as:

I base these Strategy Notes on more than 50 years of organizing in North Carolina. With others I have organized identity groups (for example, workers at my job), issue groups (environmental, anti-conscription, peace, anti-rape, etc.), and infrastructure groups (media, list enhancement, training). I have helped start, maintain, and disband coalitions of organizations. I have watched many other organizers and coached organizers in their efforts.

My experience in these contexts influences my thinking. Your context may differ in important ways from mine. My mistakes show I still do not fully understand organizing. Please consider these ideas, but trust your own thinking.

Please let me know which ideas you agree with, which you disagree with, your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing, and any questions you have. Discussing your feedback may help us both understand organizing better.

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2020-08-11, Strategy Note 67:
What does "organizing" mean?

Organizing simply means bringing people together and helping them cooperate to accomplish some shared goal. It can include building an ongoing organization in which people work together.

Organizing does not happen automatically or by magic. People learn how to do it. People organize by persistently practicing a small set of learnable skills.

Organizing (sometimes also called "leading") happens whenever people cooperate toward a shared goal. Somebody thinks about the people involved, their goal, and how to make progress toward their goal. It mostly happens informally. Most organizers/leaders don't have a title or formal recognition for what they do. With thoughtful practice, most people can get good at it.

Most organizations would benefit from helping everybody in the organization learn these skills. Hardly any organizations do so.

Some organizations hire people whom they call "organizers." They train these people poorly, if at all, and often don't let them do real organizing. Instead those "organizers" merely mobilize people to show up for events or to implore elected officials to do or not do something. Sometimes such mobilizing makes sense, but it doesn't qualify as organizing.

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2020-08-18, Strategy Note 68:
Why organize?

Social power comes from cooperation. If people don't cooperate (work together, whether gladly or reluctantly) they don't accomplish anything on a large scale.

Individuals matter to human societies, but they only influence society to the extent that others cooperate with them or with their ideas.

Cooperation --especially cooperation of more than a few people sustained longer than a few minutes-- requires organization.

Social power, therefore, requires organizing. To accomplish anything on a large scale, somebody must organize people to cooperate in doing it.

Organizing means helping people to:

Organizing multiplies strength and effectiveness. People working together can accomplish much more than the same people working singly. Organizing makes that cooperation possible.

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2020-08-25, Strategy Note 69:
What does it take to organize?

Organizers need to do several simple, normal, human tasks:

Almost everybody does some of these things, at least some of the time. Good organizers simply do most of these things most of the time.

Any human who can communicate both ways with another human has an opportunity to organize. Humans cooperate best when they all organize -- when they all think about their shared goals, think about the people involved, and help each other work together for their shared goals.

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2020-09-01, Strategy Note 70:
Whom should we organize?

Short answer: Organize everybody.

Slightly longer answer: Organize everybody. Start with the most powerful people -- workers who directly produce or transport essential goods and services.

A second answer: Organize everybody. Start with the people most discriminated against. In the United States today that means people of color (especially Black people), people of low wealth, immigrants without official permission, people with noticeable disabilities, women, young people, old people, LGBTQ people, non-christians (especially muslims and jews), and rural people.

A third answer: Organize everybody. Start with the people closest to you.

Best answer: Organize everybody. Start with the intersection of the three previous answers. Start with the direct production workers most discriminated against and closest to you.

Most people with wealth (including many people who consider themselves "middle class") don't know direct production workers. If you have little connection with these most powerful people and don't want to join them, start organizing wherever you meet people. Without direct production workers, you can't develop major power but you can still get some things done.

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2020-09-08, Strategy Note 71:
Why first organize direct production workers?

The people who directly produce or transport essential goods and services have the most power in any society, including in the United States today.

All societies depend on direct production workers. Individually these workers have only small amounts of power. When these workers (or any substantial portion of them) decide to combine their individual power, they collectively can redirect society however they wish. Exploitative economies systematically conceal this fact and weaken the confidence of direct production workers. If they didn't, they wouldn't last long.

The capitalist portion of our present economy has so weakened the confidence of direct production workers and weakened workers' organizations --especially unions-- that they currently have much more potential power than actual power. We have the task of building the confidence and organizational structures to turn that potential power into actual power.

We should organize workers before organizing non-workers in order to build organizations that working people will find welcoming. Organizations that start with other segments of society will generally have cultures that suit those segments better than they suit the most powerful people -- direct production workers.

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2020-09-15, Strategy Note 72:
Why first organize the most oppressed?

Strategy Note 70 recommended giving priority to organizing the people most discriminated against by society. Why?

Consider these reasons:

Organizing any segment of society happens best when done by people who belong to that segment. The second best organizers come from a segment of society that does not serve as their most visible oppressors. The most-discriminated-against people generally do not function as agents of society's oppression against many other segments. They can often serve as organizers for other segments. Organizing the most-discriminated-against people first produces the most widely effective organizers.

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2020-09-22, Strategy Note 73:
Why first organize the people closest to you?

Strategy Note 70 recommended giving priority to organizing the people closest to you. "Closest" here means geographically closest and/or most intimately related.

Why should we first organize our friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, co-worshipers, and other close associates?

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2020-09-29, Strategy Note 74:
Look for existing organizers

Wherever you start your organizing, you will get the quickest growth if you organize the organizers and lead the leaders. Any group of people already has informal (but highly respected) organizers and leaders within it. Find them. Organize them. Then they will organize the people they already lead.

These existing organizers/leaders usually do not have titles and usually will not put themselves forward as "leaders." They don't talk loudest, first, or most often. It takes listening and observing to find them. You want to find the people whom other people like and whose judgment they trust. We have such skewed images of leadership that people will generally not name these existing leaders first if you ask about leaders.

Likability and trustworthiness alone don't make a leader. Look for people who initiate cooperative actions that other people participate in. Remember the characteristics of good organizers listed in Strategy Note 69? Look for people who do such things, even on the smallest scale.

Everybody has the potential to lead and organize. But some people already do. We focus first on those people in order to build an organizing structure that later can help everybody do it.

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2020-10-06, Strategy Note 75:
Test your assessment of organizers

You will often have hunches about who functions as an existing organizer/leader. Value those hunches, but test them.

How do you test such a hunch? Ask the person to get other people to do something where you can see whether people did it. Usually pick something low-risk and easy, especially when you first test your hunch. In some contexts, getting signatures on a petition might work. If people do it because she or he asked them, then you guessed correctly. If not, then you guessed wrong or you chose a poor test.

Leadership and organizing ability fluctuate over time. Fairly frequently you must test your beliefs about who organizes and leads in order to keep your assessments current.

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2020-10-13, Strategy Note 76:
Strengthen existing organizers

When you think you have found an existing leader, help them strengthen their leadership/organizing ability.

Give them high priority for your time. Respond promptly to their calls, texts, and emails. Chat with them frequently. Get to know them and let them get to know you.

In one-to-one chats, ask each leader to help by doing a specific task. In one-to-one chats, debrief with them about how those tasks went. Ask what worked well. Ask what ideas they have for helping things go even better next time. Ask what felt difficult. Ask what they enjoyed. Listen and learn from their answers.

Point out specific things they did well. Praise at least two such specific things. If you can't think of two things they did well, you didn't listen carefully enough to their answers. Wake up and attend to what they say!

If you agree with their ideas for improving their work, ask how they will make those improvements. Listen attentively. Speak less than they do.

On rare occasions, offer a specific suggestion for improvement. Keep it brief. After they have acknowledged hearing the suggestion, praise a third specific thing they did well. Listen some more.

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2020-10-20, Strategy Note 77:
Organize organizers; make yourself unnecessary

Strategy Note 75 recommended testing your identification of existing leaders. When your hunch about an existing leader/organizer tests as correct, bring that person into an ongoing group of such people.

Make sure they see that group as useful! If you have done your job of asking questions and listening, you should know what matters to them. Use that knowledge as you design this group's first gatherings. Do not waste these people's time.

Design this group (and as soon as possible engage them in designing the group) to help strengthen their organizing ability and to help them develop their understanding of increasingly larger contexts of that organizing.

This team of organizers should (gradually at first, but as rapidly as possible) take over from you in guiding the organizing effort in their context. If you do a good job as an organizer, you rapidly become unnecessary.

When you become unnecessary and move on to organize elsewhere, maintain communication links with them. They will occasionally want to chat with you to think through a problem. You may want to ask them to help with something. You will find these informal organizer-to-organizer relationships extremely valuable. Keep them strong.

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2020-10-27, Strategy Note 78:
Avoid charismatic leaders

As last week's Strategy Note 77 explained, good organizers and good leaders seek to make themselves unnecessary.

In contrast, charismatic leaders weaken our movement. Their big performances cause many people to feel "I can't do that, so I can't lead." Their model undermines full participation and real democracy.

The ability to give a rousing speech can sometimes make a valuable contribution, but good speakers do not earn the right to make decisions for the organization.

Charismatic leaders who learned their leadership practices as clergy in religious organizations tend toward highly centralized, even autocratic decision-making practices. When they think of their movement work as a divine calling or as a moral requirement, they often think it necessary to make the organization's decisions themselves.

Centering decision-making in one person exposes an organization to serious risk of corruption and confusion of various kinds. Even without corruption, such organizations will not develop a widespread leadership capacity, will have difficulty surviving beyond the one person, and reinforce habits of submission among their members. That model can sometimes accomplish useful things in the short term. It does not, however, offer a path toward full liberation.

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2020-11-03, Strategy Note 79:
Organizing can feel difficult

Sometimes organizers feel ashamed or embarrassed about a problem they've encountered in organizing.

Recognizing a problem which you have not yet solved does not deserve shame. It deserves praise.

Working on an organizing problem without success does not make you a bad organizer. If no unsolved problems existed about how to organize a society good for everybody, we would have already done it. If you encounter such problems, good for you! If you never have problems, you've probably chosen goals too small or have ignored important facts.

I've claimed that organizing only requires normal human abilities and that anyone who can communicate can do it. I haven't claimed that it will always feel easy. Organizing sometimes feels difficult, even to skilled organizers.

Sometimes it helps to remember that our feelings do not reliably represent reality. Frequently and objectively evaluating our progress can help. Sometimes asking an experienced organizer for an outside view of our progress helps. Sometimes making time for a good cry or a loud rant with a trusted listener helps clear our mind. Sometimes we don't find anything that helps with the feelings and we have to just keep organizing anyway.

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2020-11-10, Strategy Note 80:
Consider the emotional dynamics

From time to time, events shock people at many places on the political spectrum. For example: Trump's 2016 election, the current pandemic, blatant racist murders by police. Such shocks can loosen old mental habits, at least for a moment. Emotional unsettledness generally does not last long. People will tend to settle into new mental habits, but may retain for some time a more-or-less-conscious awareness of the changeableness of society.

At the level of emotions, our opponents' messages depend on a foundation of fear, especially fear of difference (race, religion, worldview, class, nationality, sexuality, etc.). At the level of emotions, capitalism itself depends on fear, especially fear of scarcity. Any arousal of fear will tend to reinforce the inhumane tendencies of capitalism and other forms of oppression. Therefore, we must avoid appealing to people's fears, including fear of oppressive forces. Anger rests on a foundation of fear. Stoking anger stokes fear.

At the level of emotions, our politics rests on a foundation of love. Or at least can and at its best does. Love need not mean vague do-goodism. Love can motivate a fierce determination for fairness. Love can mean a determined insistence on respect for everybody.

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2020-11-17, Strategy Note 81:
Nine strategic questions

Organizing consists of helping people work together to accomplish some shared goal. An example: "Hey, I'm going for a 20-minute walk at the start of our lunch break. Wanna come?" "Sure." You've just organized two people to accomplish a shared goal.

Larger goals --for example, building a society good for everybody-- may need larger organizations that last longer. The principle, however, remains the same. If you can invite people to do something, you can organize. If you can notice what helps, notice what hinders, adjust your methods accordingly, and keep trying things, you can get good at it.

For those larger goals, nine questions can help:

  1. What do you want?
  2. Who else might want that?
  3. What can you do now to help y'all work together to get it?
  4. Does anybody oppose y'all getting it?
  5. If anybody does, who?
  6. Why do they oppose you?
  7. Where does your power come from?
  8. Where does your opponents' power come from?
  9. What can you do now with the resources you have now, to shift the future power balance in your direction?

Encourage your group to talk about these questions.

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2020-11-24, Strategy Note 82:
How should we think about goals?

Organizing works best as a goal-directed activity. Clarity about goals helps guide the work.

It often helps to have goals on a range of spatial scales (local, continental, global, universal) and time scales (short-term, intermediate, long-term). It especially helps to sequence these goals so the earlier ones help accomplish the later ones.

Never choose a goal that you think impossible. Difficult yes, long-term yes, impossible no.

Use methods compatible with your goals. For example, if you want a feminist society, you must not denounce opponents because of their womanhood.

Whenever possible, define your goals in terms of what you want, rather than in terms of what you reject.

It often makes sense to work with people who share some goals with us but do not currently share other of our goals. We don't have to agree on all goals in order to work together on the goals about which we do agree.

People who work with us on short-term goals may gradually come to agree with us on longer-term goals.

Can we win short-term, issue-based campaigns now? Some yes, some no. We discover which issues belong in which category by trying to win, just like always.

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2020-12-01, Strategy Note 83:
Questions about charismatic leaders

Strategy Note 78 on avoiding charismatic leaders prompted questions. In this and next week's Strategy Notes I'll reply to them.

How do I define a charismatic leader? Charismatic leaders center their leadership on their personality. They exhort people to join in achieving goals they specify rather than helping people discover collective goals. They seek publicity and use it to gather supporters. All leadership rests somewhat on personality, leaders often propose goals, and groups often recruit through publicity, so this definition becomes a matter of emphasis.

For example, contrast the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ella Baker. Baker avoided publicity while building NAACP branches across the South, staffing SCLC, fostering the creation of SNCC, and mentoring younger organizers. Most of her groups continued well after her leadership. King skillfully used publicity while building SCLC and his prominence. SCLC dwindled after his death.

The media with their simplistic understanding of organizations partly create charismatic leaders. Sexism selects men for such roles more often than women. Other forms of prejudice select people with formal education, wealth (or the ability to mobilize wealth from others), an urban location, tallness, and conventional good looks.

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2020-12-08, Strategy Note 84:
More questions about charismatic leaders

This Strategy Note continues last week's in responding to questions prompted by Strategy Note 78 on avoiding charismatic leaders.

Do I consider William J. Barber II a charismatic leader? During his Moral Mondays time, he fit that model. But anybody who sees Barber as unchanging --or as a mere imitator of King-- seriously underestimates his potential. In his current leadership of the Poor People's Campaign (PPC) he has a co-leader. PPC has also built local leadership teams that appear to have some decision-making ability.

Do I recommend leaderlessness? No. It doesn't exist. So-called "leaderless" groups (for example, Occupy) merely conceal or ignore the role of leaders, which hinders real democracy.

What do I recommend instead? Everybody can lead and should. Make leadership roles explicit, train many people for those roles, have people take turns serving in those roles, and collectively evaluate leaders to strengthen their skills.

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2020-12-15, Strategy Note 85:
For what goals should we organize?

Our movement must organize for multiple goals at multiple scales.

At the largest scale, I suggest we organize for a universe good for everyone, in which all sentient entities cooperate freely.

Most organizations and sectors of our movement will have smaller, nearer-term goals. Good! We must accomplish many intermediate goals before the big one.

Whatever your group's goals, make them compatible with these tasks:

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2020-12-22, Strategy Note 86:
Why must we replace exchange?

Last week's Strategy Note listed "Replace exchange with sharing" as a task our other goals must support. Why?

Exchange happens when an economic entity (person, business, country, etc.) "owns" something and trades ownership of it for ownership of something offered by some other entity. When a society bases its economy on exchange, it creates a pressure on economic entities to accumulate wealth so they will have things to exchange for what they need.

As entities accumulate wealth, they must defend it. This need to defend wealth creates nations and other forms of state power, including violent manifestations such as police, militaries, and covert enforcers.

Exchange requires violence. Violence hinders voluntary cooperation and democracy.

The pressure to accumulate creates a need for profit. The need for profit creates pressure to exploit workers, to cheat buyers, to unsustainably extract wealth from ecosystems and the planet, and to pollute by dumping wastes as cheaply as possible.

In a democracy, people could use laws to prevent the worst harms of exchange. That would hinder profits, so wealthy entities use some of their wealth to prevent democracy.

If we want democracy, a livable planet, or freedom from violence, we must eliminate exchange.

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2020-12-29, Strategy Note 87:
Can we eliminate exchange?

Last week's Strategy Note defined exchange as trading ownership and showed why we need to eliminate it. Does that look possible?

If we define an economy as a set of relationships and practices through which we produce and distribute goods and services, then we currently have two economies operating simultaneously. In the officially recognized exchange economy, economic actors buy, sell, trade, rent, hire, barter, etc. In our less-recognized exchange-free economy, economic actors produce goods and services and share them.

Our exchange-free economy forms the foundations of our lives. The loving relations on which we depend happen within it. Parents raise children. Children care for their elders. Neighbors help each other and share garden produce. Volunteer firefighters and open-source programmers do valuable work. Friends gather (in non-pandemic times) for meals, parties, and playing basketball. Much recreation, art, worship, food preparation, housekeeping, healthcare, and learning happens through our unpaid work.

The work (disproportionately done by women) that enables people to show up for jobs in the exchange economy mostly happens within our sharing economy. To a significant extent, the exchange economy depends parasitically on our sharing economy.

Parasites need hosts but hosts don't need parasites. Yes, we can eliminate exchange.

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2021-01-05, Strategy Note 88:
Two economies compete for our allegiance

Capitalists would put meters on our noses and charge us for breathing if they could. They constantly seek to replace normal sharing relations with paid exchange relations. They have moved much food preparation from exchange-free relations within households to exchange relationships via restaurants and prepared food in stores. Much childcare has moved from unpaid work by parents, siblings, and grandparents to paid work in businesses.

(The current pandemic has partly reversed these examples. A lesson about what to rely on.)

We have a contest between two economies for our allegiance. Driven by exchange's requirement for profit and accumulation, many exchange-oriented economic actors seek to take more production and distribution roles from our exchange-free economy.

This competition has existed only recently among humans, perhaps several thousand years. With the development of capitalism a few centuries ago, the exchange side accelerated its expansion. In recent decades, exchange globalized, financialized, and drastically increased its portion our relationships.

Because economic actors in our exchange-free economy lack constant pressure to expand, we have not generally sought to enlarge the sharing economy. We who value exchange-free relationships now must become intentional about waging our side of this contest. Otherwise exchange threatens us with extinction.

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2021-01-12, Strategy Note 89:
How does exchange attack sharing?

As part of thinking about what we organize for, last week's Strategy Note explained that exchange seeks to replace more and more of our healthy normal sharing relationships.

In those attacks, exchange generally uses a small set of methods, adapting them only slightly to fit conditions:

In our organizing, we need to develop the power to overcome these methods and steadily shift the balance from exchange toward sharing.

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2021-01-19, Strategy Note 90:
Strengthen sharing and weaken exchange

Strategy Note 88 explained that exchange and sharing compete for people's allegiance. Last week's Strategy Note listed ways the exchange economy wages that competition.

To help our exchange-free sharing economy in that struggle:

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2021-01-26, Strategy Note 91:
Relationships, adaptability, clarity

Strategy Note 82 said organizing works best as a goal-directed activity. Yes, and while we need to keep our eyes on the prize as the old song puts it, we also need flexibility in our strategy.

Loan Tran recently wrote "Strategy is 10% work plans and writing things; the rest is about relationships, adapting to change, and political clarity." I might put the written parts of strategy at 2%, but otherwise that seems about right.

It seems right if "political clarity" means knowing what you want (at least in general terms), who else might also want that, and having principles that guide how y'all work together to get what you want. In other words, having goals and a theory of change for accomplishing them, or having a way to at least tentatively answer the nine strategic questions of Strategy Note 81.

This kind of political clarity in a group requires persistently devoting time to many conversations (one-to-one and in groups). Those conversations also help build the necessary trust. Trusting relationships help organizations have the flexibility to adapt to change.

Relationships, adaptability, and political clarity should work together. Conversations --many, many conversations-- can help make it possible.

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2021-02-02, Strategy Note 92:
How might an exchange-free economy operate?

After we eliminate exchange, how will our economy operate?

The details of that better world will result from choices of people living then. Now we merely speculate and plan. Nevertheless, a few aspects of the new world seem likely:

Next week's Strategy Note continues this list.

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2021-02-09, Strategy Note 93:
How might an exchange-free economy work?

Last week's Strategy Note began listing what we can foresee about the future exchange-free society. That list continues:

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2021-02-16, Strategy Note 94:
How should we think about efficiency?

Advocates of exchange (and especially of capitalism) frequently claim it offers greater efficiency than other systems. When you encounter such claims, ask a few questions:

Efficiency matters. But we need to think carefully about how we apply that concept.

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2021-02-23, Strategy Note 95:
What causes apathy?

Apathy does not fall from the sky like rain. It does not arise from within us. Certain kinds of social relations create, teach, and reinforce apathy.

So if your organization has a problem that looks like apathy, ask what you do that creates or reinforces that problem.

In addition, many of the social relations that create apathy exist outside your organization. Undemocratic systems of power require and constantly reinforce apathy.

Apathy has a single cause: oppression. (Oppression takes many forms.) Apathy has a single solution: democracy. (Democracy takes many forms.)

When people understand that they collectively have actual power over something that matters to them, apathy doesn't exist. The more actual power people have, the more they will actively participate.

However, to overcome generations of oppression requires learning new ways. Organizers help people heal from oppression, understand their experiences, consider new possibilities, and learn new ways. It usually takes constant listening and slow, steady, gradual transformative work. Organizers need radical patience and persistence.

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2021-03-02, Strategy Note 96:
Developing leaders can reduce apathy

A few ideas that may help people in your organization take more active roles:

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2021-03-09, Strategy Note 97:
A tradeoff that affects apathy

Organizations face a tradeoff between doing their work correctly and consistently versus letting less experienced people do things so they can learn how. Most groups want both sides of this tradeoff, but efforts to strengthen either side weakens the other side.

Many organizations prioritize correctness and consistency. They seek to minimize risks and to avoid internal conflicts. But avoiding risks creates its own risks. And avoiding open conflict doesn't prevent conflict. It just causes people to wage conflicts invisibly -- which means undemocratically. This gives advantages to those whose preferences preserve (often unintentionally) dominant mainstream relations.

But organizations also need consistency and correctness in their work.

Finding the balance between consistency and leadership development that serves your organization well takes trial and error. Different organizations benefit from balancing this tradeoff in different ways. Organizations often benefit from different balance points at different times.

It often helps to discuss this tradeoff openly in the group and decide together what to try. That can also help develop new leaders.

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2021-03-16, Strategy Note 98:
Organize to prevent burnout

Our movement repeatedly loses people to feelings of discouragement, fatigue, hopelessness, illness, and inability to sustain the work. When this happens, we often say the person "burned out" as we might say of a failed lightbulb.

Unlike lightbulbs, humans have an inherent ability to heal and to completely recover from most difficulties, given the necessary time and resources.

To build the world we all deserve and then to function well in that new world, organizers, organizations, and individuals must sustain our work all our lives. We must, therefore, organize in ways that promote healing and avoid burnout.

Burnout results from organizational errors and from individual errors. The next few Strategy Notes outline how to avoid such errors.

External factors (random happenings, our opponents' propaganda and attacks, social oppression) also contribute to burnout. Our errors do not cause those factors. But to work in ways that do not account for those expected external factors constitutes an error. We should expect those factors as long as the old society continues. We must work in ways that overcome them.

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2021-03-23, Strategy Note 99:
Nobody (including you) ever deserves blame

I hesitated to write in last week's Strategy Note that burnout results from our errors. But we need an accurate diagnosis in order to find a cure.

It may help to remember that no one ever deserves blame (neither blame from others nor self-blame) for any error. Blame never helps; it just creates more confusion and hurt. Blame doesn't even deter future error. It prompts concealment, denial, and defensiveness. Blame hinders learning and tends to turn errors into habits. Don't ever blame anybody -- including yourself.

We can benefit from clarity about the causes of errors. Accurately tracing errors to their causes can help us avoid repeating them. The causes may include some person's actions. Saying a person's action contributed to an error does not by itself constitute blame. Blame results when we direct any punishment, disrespect, humiliation, or lessening of regard to them.

When people repeatedly make errors in a particular area of work, they may need help with it, they may benefit from a time away from that work, or the organization may benefit from re-assigning that work to someone else. Nobody will benefit from giving or receiving any blame.

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2021-03-30, Strategy Note 100:
How organizations can reduce burnout

To avoid burning out their people, organizations will find it helpful (and generally necessary) to:

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2021-04-06, Strategy Note 101:
How individuals avoid burnout

To avoid burnout, it helps individuals to:

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2021-04-13, Strategy Note 102:
Emphasize sustainability and resilience

Emphasize sustainability and resilience:

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2021-04-20, Strategy Note 103:
Think of organizations as tools

Think of organizations as tools. Design them to accomplish some purpose.

If you wanted a tool for sweeping your floor, you'd likely design some kind of broom. You wouldn't attach an anvil to it just because you had an anvil handy.

Likewise, in designing your organization, focus on its purpose. Don't add parts that don't help it accomplish its goals. Don't keep parts that no longer help.

For example, organizations that depend on grants sometimes get tempted toward projects likely to find favor with funders. Unless the new effort actually contributes to the organization's goals (and not just to its bank account), this practice can mislead the organization.

Sometimes organizations get attracted to the latest issue that the media cover. Seeking a way to look relevant to such topics can also lead an organization off course.

This also applies to people. Don't add people to an organization unless they look likely to help accomplish its goal. Don't keep people in an organization unless they currently help or likely will help. People have many aspects and therefore can benefit or hinder an organization in many ways. So think comprehensively about a person in evaluating their benefit to your organization.

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2021-04-27, Strategy Note 104:
What should we learn?

What should we learn to prepare for an exchange-free world?

We do not need perfection. We just need to shift the balance of our population in these directions. Even tiny progress helps.

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2021-05-04, Strategy Note 105:
Find your style of organizing

Try various ways of organizing to see what works well for you.

At least two different styles exist:

Both styles can succeed, in the sense that they can help people cooperate to achieve shared goals. The "up front" style tends to have its successes in working for short-term goals for which a large constituency already exists. "Quiet" organizers often do better at helping people adopt large goals and build cohesive organizations for long-term work.

Organizers rarely do both styles well. Perhaps a team of organizers could include people good at each style. If such a team valued both styles and decided together when to use each, they could have a powerful tool.

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2021-05-11, Strategy Note 106:
Engage people and help them learn

Engage people and help them learn:

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2021-05-18, Strategy Note 107:
Help people discuss the big picture

Organizers need to help people understand the overall context in which they live and work. Asking good questions, listening, and facilitating healthy discussion help people develop their understanding better than lecturing does.

What does our current context mean? Many things. Different people will focus on different aspects, depending on what makes sense to them.

Encourage people to listen respectfully to each other and take a turn to offer their own thoughts. Neither listening nor respect implies agreement.

Model listening and speaking respectfully. Listening to people helps them learn. Listening to people helps them then take a turn to listen.

When a group discusses the big picture, people sometimes ask organizers what they think. Prepare your answer in advance so you can say it briefly and quickly return to your role of listening and facilitating discussion.

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2021-05-25, Strategy Note 108:
How I describe our context

When I take a turn to describe our current context, I say something like the following as briefly as possible and then switch back to listening:

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2021-06-01, Strategy Note 109:
Maintain friendships with opponents

We each should maintain at least a few friendly relationships with people who currently oppose us. Such relationships help us in at least three ways:

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2021-06-08, Strategy Note 110:
Organizers make mistakes

You will make mistakes.

Effective organizers make many mistakes.

As organizers, our mistakes can have serious consequences. Because of our mistakes, people may suffer embarrassment, lose their income, go to prison, or die. Our mistakes can destroy organizations. Worse, people may lose hope because of our mistakes. Our mistakes can delay liberation.

Don't let your mistakes stop you.

Effective organizers spend a good bit of our time grieving. Because we love the people we work with, we grieve over their sufferings. We also grieve about the harm and hindrances to the work our mistakes cause.

We mustn't wallow in our grief, but we must take the necessary time to feel those feelings and release them so they don't hinder our judgment. To ignore our feelings or pretend they don't exist hinders a correct understanding of reality. Effective organizers need an accurate understanding of ourselves, of the people with whom we work, and of our context.

So get good at grieving and handling your mistakes. If your mistake hurt (or even merely inconvenienced) anyone, apologize. Correct your mistakes if possible.

Learn from your mistakes. Talk about them with colleagues. Make new mistakes.

You will make mistakes. Keep on organizing.

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2021-06-15, Strategy Note 111:
What organizers do

The main tasks of an organizer:

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2021-06-22, Strategy Note 112:
Remember our big goal

Exchange will threaten everything until we build a new society free of it. In your organizing, help everyone understand:

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2021-06-29, Strategy Note 113:
To learn more about organizing

You learn most about organizing by doing it.

You learn fastest if you organize as part of a team that talks about what y'all do, why you do it, and what results you observe.

Next best progress after that comes from having an experienced and successful organizer coach you (assuming she or he coaches in ways that work well for you).

However, for those who like to learn by reading, I recommend:

Please do not just read about organizing instead of actually organizing!

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2021-07-06, Strategy Note 114:
What to do with these ideas?

Most people find it easier to read (and write) suggestions like these than to actually do them consistently. Fortunately, we don't need perfection.

If any of these ideas on organizing seem correct to you, what should you do? Use them. Test them in your context.

If any of these ideas work well for you, make them your own. Offer them to others as your own ideas.

Why offer them as your ideas (instead of as mine)?

What should you do about any of these ideas with which you disagree? Easiest option: ignore them. More helpful option: let me know your reasons for disagreeing with them. Talking about them might help us both learn.

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2021-07-13, Strategy Note 115:
Arguments against ending exchange

Many thanks to those who have given me feedback on these Strategy Notes.

Your questions about this strategy and some people's arguments against ending exchange have prompted discussions, deepened my analysis, and revealed ways my explanations lacked clarity.

Those arguments and questions fit into eight categories:

In the next several Strategy Notes, I'll reply. I find some of these arguments more interesting than others, but I take them all seriously. I'll also add a few questions that I haven't heard yet.

Please keep offering me feedback. Let's find all the errors in this strategy and fix them.

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2021-07-20, Strategy Note 116:
To those who say "Too late"

A few dear people have claimed it too late for this strategy, that we should simply love our loved ones and ameliorate suffering as much as we can locally.

Yes, evidence suggests our climate crisis will worsen. If we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the levels already emitted will worsen our climate for a decade or more. Many people will suffer and die. However, the best-founded estimates I have seen suggest we still have a chance to reverse course. Difficult, dangerous, an intriguing task, not impossible.

Yes, capitalist forces currently dominate. But they have not obliterated people's desire for fairness and decent lives. While those desires continue, we have a basis for organizing. Difficult, dangerous, an intriguing task, not impossible.

If you believe this strategy hopeless or its goals impossible, do not use it. Never waste time on an impossibility. Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. If you try to do something you think impossible you will undermine your own efforts and those of people working with you.

But you might want to watch those of us working toward a goal you think impossible. We might make enough progress to cause you to revise your estimate.

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2021-07-27, Strategy Note 117:
To those who say "Too early"

A few dear people have claimed it too early for this strategy, that we cannot directly eliminate exchange and instead must first create a socialist world by seizing state power to transform our relations of production and thereby create the conditions necessary for later transcending exchange.

I think some forms of a socialist world would help develop a liberatory culture. Others merely swap one set of bosses for another. The details matter.

Whatever intermediate social forms we will need on the way to liberation, we have a better chance of success if we correctly understand the changes we ultimately need. My analysis says exchange creates constant pressure to shift toward exploitative, capitalist-like relations. Replacing a capitalist system based on exchange with a socialist system based on exchange merely gains a temporary respite from some harms of capitalism. I welcome even temporary respites from capitalism, but I want more than that.

If you think working for a socialist system based on exchange makes more sense than this strategy, please work for a socialist system based on exchange. Let's learn from watching and assisting each other's efforts. On many activities we can cooperate as allies.

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2021-08-03, Strategy Note 118:
Reply to "Eliminating exchange violates human nature"

A few dear people have raised objections or questions that suggest they believe human nature requires exchange. I think they have mistaken the behavior of humans socialized under generations of exchange for fundamental human nature.

After a few generations free of the corrupting influence of exchange, we will have a much more positive view of human nature. Exchange creates a pressure to accumulate wealth. That need to accumulate causes people to behave selfishly, cheat, and steal. Such unkind behavior causes us to fear each other. Exchange causes discouragement about ourselves and our fellow humans. After we end exchange, we can heal from those slanders about human nature.

One dear person claimed "Scarcity of time makes exchange-free cooperation difficult." Yes, but what causes scarcity of time? Exchange causes it. Exchange turns time into money, extracts it from the many, and concentrates it for the few. When we end exchange and no longer need to work for the wealthy, we'll have more time to relaxedly cooperate.

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2021-08-10, Strategy Note 119:
If you think exchange necessary

A few dear people believe exchange necessary. Some even believe that about capitalism, in spite of the fact that it has only existed a few hundred years. If you think exchange necessary, please devote your efforts to creating an exchange-based world that works well for everybody. I don't think it possible. Prove me wrong.

To emphasize the point, I offer you a much smaller challenge. Can you use exchange to provide healthy, sustainable housing to everybody in North Carolina? My analysis says exchange hinders that goal. Can you make exchange accomplish it?

In January 2020 North Carolina had an estimated 9,280 people experiencing homelessness on any given day. Our public schools estimate 28,903 students experienced homelessness during the 2017-2018 school year.

Habitat for Humanity adds their (partly exchange-based) drop to the empty bucket. In 2019, North Carolina affiliates of Habitat completed 771 home builds, repairs, and rehabs.

If you believe exchange can provide all North Carolinians good homes, please make it happen. We might all learn from a serious effort to do that. If you succeed, many people will thank you and praise your work. I predict exchange will prevent success.

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2021-08-17, Strategy Note 120:
Reply to "Instead, fix X"

Numerous dear people think we should work on some other problem (which I represent by the variable "X") instead of exchange. Sometimes they think correcting X will correct the problems I attribute to exchange. Sometimes they consider X so urgent that we should focus first on fixing it.

Examples of X: our climate crisis, racism, overpopulation, extractive economics, capitalism, statism, militarism, greed, male domination, settler societies, colonialism, inequality, monopoly capitalism (instead of allegedly "free, open, competitive" capitalism), hierarchy, threats of fascism, corporate personhood, big social media, pervasive surveillance.

For each X, exchange causes it, strongly contributes to it, or worsens it.

A variation of this objection shows up as "If everybody adopted Y religious belief/practice, exchange would work." Exchange, however, makes it difficult to practice the humane relationships recommended by most faiths.

If you have some X or Y that you want to work on, please work on it! I predict that we will need to end exchange to permanently solve these problems. But some --at least temporary-- progress seems possible while exchange continues. I welcome whatever progress you achieve and also work on several Xs myself. Might you also occasionally help work to eliminate exchange?

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2021-08-24, Strategy Note 121:
Reply to "How allocate resources without prices?"

If supply and demand determined prices, then prices could act as a rationing system to allocate resources (including work time). In practice, however, exchange-based economies include coercion in the mix of factors determining prices. As a result, prices allocate resources in ways that favor those who already have more resources.

Allocating resources democratically without prices should offer more fairness. We have only 24 hours per day per person and live in a finite world, so how we allocate resources matters.

Even within the exchange portion of our current economy, we don't strictly follow price signals. For example, many people could increase their income per hour by quitting their "professional" job and becoming an assistant to a plumber. That they don't suggests something matters more than that price signal.

Notice also that we already allocate resources such as work time in the exchange-free portion of our economy where we don't have a price signal. How do we do that? Perhaps we maximize use value? Do what seems most fun? Clearly we make those choices somehow.

Eliminating exchange will likely take a while. We have time to learn new ways to allocate resources.

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2021-08-31, Strategy Note 122:
Reply to "We need division of labor"

A few dear people say "We need division of labor and hierarchy to have a technologically advanced society."

"Division of labor" means people specialize in different tasks. Some skills require so much time to learn and maintain that a person can't get good at much else. So we will need some division of labor.

"Hierarchy" means some people specialize in telling other people what to do. We won't need much of that.

Hierarchy may make sense when some people help others learn something. It can also help when people cooperate on something envisioned by another, such as a large art project. Generally, we merely need leaders and organizers to help people coordinate their work through shared decisions. We don't generally need order-giving hierarchy.

For example, open-source software projects (such as Python and Linux) mostly coordinate through discussion and debate. However, some projects designate a "Benevolent Dictator for Life" or elect a steering committee to make ultimate decisions. While hierarchical, the voluntary nature of those relationships reduce opportunity for exploitation.

Preventing hierarchical relations from becoming permanent (or even hereditary) may need attention. See a fictional example in Ursula K. LeGuin's novel The Dispossessed.

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2021-09-07, Strategy Note 123:
How will an exchange-free society function?

At least one dear person asks "How will an exchange-free society function? Give me a detailed picture."

I can't conjure in your mind a detailed feel for a whole new world in a 200-word Strategy Note. Try the following:

Once we get past the transition period and have corrected climate change, most people will likely work much less than they do now. Only extremely rarely during serious emergencies might people work eight or more hours per day. A typical workday might include 2-3 hours on production or distribution and 2-3 hours on coordination (planning, administration, learning, teaching/mentoring). Those 4-6 hours per day will include many things we generally don't count as "work" today: housekeeping, raising children, politics, and art done for others.

Exchange-free economies can (and likely will) take many different forms. They will look and feel different in a nomadic herding society in the Sahel, in a settled agricultural society in Nebraska, and in low-gravity mining societies in hollowed-out asteroids.

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2021-09-14, Strategy Note 124:
How make this big change?

At least one dear person asks "The goal seems good in theory, but how do we make this big change?".

I can't answer that question comprehensively in a 200-word Strategy Note. The 123 previous Strategy Notes begin to answer that question. You might want to re-read them. Especially look at Strategy Notes 10, 11, 12, 19, 21, 25, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 44, 47, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 61, 62, 64, 90, 100, 101, 102, 104, 106, and 107.

I don't want to seem dismissive of that question, but we really can only answer it in detail while we make the change. Most of those decisions must happen in the contexts in which we need them, not in advance. Building a nonviolent revolution doesn't resemble building a house. We don't start with a detailed blueprint.

We do start with some plan, of course. We especially need clarity on our goals in advance. I hope these Strategy Notes help with that, at least. The next few will add some broad suggestions for how we make the big change.

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2021-09-21, Strategy Note 125:
How overcome ruthless economic powers?

At least one dear person asks "How will we overcome the vicious, ruthless old economic powers?"

Theoretically everybody could simultaneously realize that exchange hurts them and stop defending it. That possibility seems unlikely.

Therefore a contest exists between us and those who defend exchange.

Wealthy people have used violence (or, more often, had others use violence for them) when they felt it useful in maintaining their privileges. We should expect them to use violence against us.

We must develop the strength and skill to win.

We strive to do several things simultaneously:

Adhering to nonviolence helps us do what we must do while avoiding what we must avoid.

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2021-09-28, Strategy Note 126:
What about our corrupt electoral system?

The wealthy use the current money-dependent electoral system to block democracy.

Therefore we must not rely on an "inside game" of using officially-approved methods such as electoral campaigns. We should use inside-game methods when possible, of course, especially to show the system's disfunction and educate about the issues. Mainly, however, we will rely on our outside game.

The outside game does not primarily attempt to convert the powerholders. It exists to take away the power our society has given them and to build our power. Their power comes from people cooperating (willingly or unwillingly) with them. Our outside game organizes growing non-cooperation with the old exchange economy. We build exchange-free solidarity relationships to sustain our expanding new economy.

We must drive the contest with our initiatives. Make our opponents respond to us, not us respond to them. We may occasionally need defensive actions to protect our people and organizations from attacks, but that should happen rarely.

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2021-10-05, Strategy Note 127:
In crunchtime, four kinds of workers become key

When we increasingly refuse to cooperate with owners and instead re-direct the fruits of our work into our exchange-free economy, a few segments of workers become key:

Violence scares and repels people, especially working people who mostly suffer its effects. It cannot help us attract the widespread active (and passive!) support our struggle needs to win.

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2021-10-12, Strategy Note 128:
How avoid oppressive ways of ending exchange?

Consider three oppressive ways of eliminating exchange:

One of these --religious fundamentalism-- has strong advocates.

We live in a multi-sided contest:

Just as leftists have much variety (and disagreements) amongst our groups, so do the other two sides. Some agree with us on some issues. For example, some religious fundamentalists strongly oppose racism, the death penalty, and nuclear weapons. Some capitalists support LGBTQ rights, renewable energy, and climate action. Therefore some single-issue campaigns can have unusual alliances.

We need to keep our minds clear about our goals amidst these alliances with enemies. We also need to explain our goals clearly to help others understand the situation and decide where they belong in the multi-sided contest.

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2021-10-19, Strategy Note 129:
Let's create an economy good for working people.

Society can change noticeably in just a couple years. In November 2019, I began a series of Strategy Notes on creating an economy good for working people.

Today's Strategy Note launches a new series on that topic because:

To create an economy good for working people and to keep it so, working people must make the economy's decisions together.

We need accurate information and the clarity of mind to choose correctly in our decisions. It may also help if we understand why previous economies harmed us.

Offering each other our ideas about why our current economy hurts people should help us develop our understanding.

In this series of Strategy Notes, I offer my thoughts about why our present economy hurts working people and how we can create an economy that will serve working people well. Please help my understanding by giving me your thoughts.

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2021-10-26, Strategy Note 130:
What does "the economy" mean?

The word "economy" means the set of human creations (physical and mental creations) that affect production and distribution of goods and services. These creations include the relationships, institutions, customs, laws, habits, attitudes, beliefs, physical infrastructure, and anything else we humans create that pertains to how we work, produce things, and decide who gets to use what.

This definition includes all work we do (not just paid work). It includes work we do for ourselves (brushing our own teeth, for example), the work we do without pay for our families (cooking, cleaning, raising children, work still done mostly by women), and the volunteer work that sustains many organizations.

This definition also includes all the ways we allocate goods and services (not just buying, selling, renting, etc.). It includes gifts, begging, sharing, gambling for things of value, dealing drugs, loaning a tool to a neighbor, smuggling, piracy, theft, conquest by war, sharing tomatoes from our garden, and picking up a lost coin on the sidewalk.

The transactions in economic relationships can range in scale from intimate ones (washing an infant's face) to vast mergers of transnational corporations.

We have much to think about in designing an economy good for working people.

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2021-11-02, Strategy Note 131:
Who works?

Almost everybody does some work. Infants work at suckling and learning to coordinate their moveable parts. Even a pampered aristocrat might lift his or her own flute of champagne from table to lips.

In recent millennia, however, a peculiar practice developed around work. Our societies segregated people by the kind of work they do, by the quantity of work they do, and by who benefits from their work.

Most peculiarly, the people who do the smallest amount of work, the least necessary work, and the work that benefits the fewest people tended to get the most wealth.

These peculiar customs created a working class. Sometimes working people worked as slaves, sometimes as serfs, sometimes as employees. In all three cases, we did most of society's work, including essential work such as producing food and shelter.

In all three cases, working people (because we did essential work) had more potential power than any other segment of society. Fearing workers' potential power, the rulers of those societies segregated working people into a "lower" class which they tried to keep ignorant and divided. If they hadn't done that, those rulers wouldn't have kept their privileged positions for long.

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2021-11-09, Strategy Note 132:
We have two parallel economies. We can live with only one.

We currently have two economies operating simultaneously:

In the exchange economy, participants "own" things (including our ability to work) and trade them for things (such as money) other participants "own". The exchange economy includes those activities that most mainstream economists think of as economic activity (buying, selling, hiring, renting, etc.).

In the free economy, participants provide goods and services without receiving anything in trade. This economy includes most of the work people do for themselves and for their households. It also includes uncompensated volunteer work. Much open-source software comes from the free economy.

Without the free economy's work (mostly done by women) that raises children and gets adults ready for each workday, the exchange economy would have no workers. The exchange economy depends parasitically on a healthy free economy.

The relations humans require (self maintenance, love, care of children and the infirm) happen mostly in the free economy. Most of the harm to working people and our environment happens in the exchange economy.

We can --and, in the long term, must-- eliminate exchange and shift entirely to the free economy.

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2021-11-16, Strategy Note 133:
The exchange economy hurts and confuses us.

We currently have to participate in this exploitative exchange economy to survive. While participating as workers can help us learn about how it functions, this inhumane system also hurts workers and confuses everybody about economic relationships, about ourselves, and about other people.

According to the federal government, over a dozen people die each day in the United States from workplace injuries. In North Carolina, one of us dies roughly every other day.

We who (under the exchange economy) need to sell our labor also encounter demeaning messages. If we don't have a job, we get blamed -- even though the exchange economy doesn't create decent jobs for everyone. If we manage to get a job, we get told to consider ourselves lucky to have found an employer willing to exploit us. If our job directly serves people or involves any dirtiness, we get looked down on by those whose jobs isolate them from people.

Generations of such mistreatment and anti-worker propaganda can confuse us. It can cause us to almost believe the negative messages about us and about other workers. That internalized oppression hinders our progress. We must free our minds from such falsehoods.

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2021-11-23, Strategy Note 134:
Our minds can heal from oppression.

Bob Marley sang, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery! None but ourselves can free our minds."

Fortunately, just like our bodies have ways to heal physical injuries, our minds have ways to heal themselves. Given decent conditions, they work quite well.

To heal and clear up confusions, our minds need three basic things:

It also helps to have accurate information about our world, but given the three basics we can usually figure out how to get that.

When we have such conditions and take time to talk about whatever concerns us, our minds automatically use the opportunity to sort through old associations in our memory, heal old hurts, and clear up confusions. This process mostly happens without our awareness. In such a context, laughing, crying, and talking engagedly and non-repetitively show that our minds have found the internal path to healing.

We can pair up and take turns listening to each other to help each other do that healing work. We often will feel better afterwards, but --more importantly-- we will think more clearly and act more effectively.

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2021-11-30, Strategy Note 135:
Four questions about work relationships

Four questions can help us understand how an economy affects working people:

Currently the exchange economy and our free economy answer these questions differently. The completely free economy we need to build will offer even better answers.

The exchange economy answers these questions as part of a package of rights called "ownership". People (or organizations) that "own" the means of production also "own" the results of workers' work, decide what workers produce, and (to the extent workers allow) decide how workers work.

Some people (the owning class) "own" the means of production. Some people (the working class) do not own means of production and so (within the exchange economy) must sell our ability to work (to use the means of production) in order to earn the means to live.

Some people have mixed relationships to the means of production. Some workers also have some ownership. Some owners also do some work. Most people predominately sell their ability to work (or would if they could).

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2021-12-07, Strategy Note 136:
Why do many employers mistreat workers?

Many employers underpay, overwork, and endanger workers.

But why do they do those things? Many employers act decently in other areas of their lives.

They do it because they have to to stay in business.

But why do they have to do that to stay in business?

Because investors want the biggest and fastest possible returns and will penalize businesses that don't make money as fast as possible.

Why do investors want money fast?

Because they compete with each other. They fear that making money slower than their competitors means their competitors will overcome them and destroy their way to make money.

Why do they want money?

They need money (or some form of wealth) so they'll have something to trade for what they need or want.

Why do they need to trade for what they need or want?

Because we base our official economy on property and exchange. Governments tax us and pay militaries, police, courts, and prisons to punish people who don't obey the requirements of exchange.

Exchange pressures employers to cut costs. That includes underpaying, overworking, and not prioritizing safety.

Exchange hurts working people.

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2021-12-14, Strategy Note 137:
Keeping workers ignorant and divided

Strategy Note 131 said exchange economies try to keep working people ignorant and divided.

Keeping working people ignorant and divided, however, means they can only develop relatively low levels of productivity.

When an employer has more productive workers, that employer can get the same results for less work time than an employer with less productive workers.

To become more productive, workers need better health, education, equipment, and cooperation. We generally arrange such things for ourselves when we have the freedom to do so.

So a tension develops for employers between two approaches to maximizing profits: maximize productivity (the "high road") or minimize costs (the "low road").

When employers choose the high road, they invest (and encourage their government to invest) in health, education, equipment, communication, and organization. They allow workers more freedom so they can cooperate more easily. Low-road employers make opposite choices.

Basing production on employees constitutes a higher road than using slaves or serfs. Some employers choose a higher road than other employers. These differences matter. But even high-road employers still must limit the freedom of "their" workers. Otherwise they couldn't extract profits from "their" workers' work.

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2021-12-21, Strategy Note 138:
Exchange kills working people.

On 16 December 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, an United States government agency) reported that 4,764 people died in 2020 from job-related injuries. Divided by 365, that means on an average day 13 people died from their jobs in this country. In North Carolina, jobs killed 189 people, roughly one every two days.

On 3 November 2021, the BLS said that private industry employers reported 2.1 million non-fatal injuries in 2020 (over 5,753 per day). Public jobs also injure workers and employers don't report all injuries, so the total exceeds these numbers.

A job injury decades ago caused me years of painful recovery and left me only a slow way to type. Instead of using ten fingers, I type this Strategy Note to you by holding an eraser-tipped pencil in my hand and using the muscles of my arm to press the keys with the eraser. I don't consider workplace harm a distant abstraction.

Why do our jobs injure and kill so many of us?

Mostly because exchanged-based economic relationships pressure employers to avoid the costs of safety equipment, reasonable staffing levels, and healthy work paces.

Exchange injures and kills working people.

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2021-12-28, Strategy Note 139:
Ways people cope with exchange

Working people people have tried to cope with the problems of exchange through:

All these methods have sometimes helped. But all tend to lose effectiveness after a time. Why?

The constant pressures of exchange weaken them. For example:

These degradations result from the pressures of exchange. All the things we try will work only partially and temporarily until we eliminate exchange.

We already live without exchange in many relationships, including our most important ones:

We need to completely abandon exchange and expand our exchange-free relationships to cover all production and distribution.

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2022-01-04, Strategy Note 140:
We must free ourselves from exchange.

Any economy that includes exchange (ownership and trading the ownership of something for something else) creates relentless pressure in directions that harm working people.

Exchange pressures participants in its economy (especially owners) to:

Any economy that includes exchange will have these pressures. These pressures tend to create an undemocratic and unsustainable economy that exploits workers and the environment -- an economy much like our current exchange economy.

To create an economy good for working people, we must free ourselves from the habits of exchange. We should expand our free economy and completely eliminate exchange.

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2022-01-11, Strategy Note 141:
Exchange depends on our free economy.

Strategy Note 132 explained that we have two economies: an exchange economy and our free economy.

These two economies compete for our allegiance, at least in a one-sided way. Business people frequently try to replace elements of our free economy with exchange-based options. For example, they try to replace family-based child care with paid childcare, homecooked meals with restaurants and deliveries, and multi-generation homes with eldercare institutions.

In spite of these attempts, the exchange economy depends parasitically on the free economy. For example, our free economy (primarily through the work of women) produces new people, raises them to adulthood, and prepares them to go to work each morning. Without our free economy, the exchange economy wouldn't have workers or customers.

Our free economy sometimes uses products of the exchange economy but could (at least theoretically) provide those inputs itself. Exchange needs us; we don't need it.

To create an economy good for working people, we can and must eliminate exchange.

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2022-01-18, Strategy Note 142:
North Carolina's union density

On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, https://www.bls.gov) will release estimates of 2021 union membership. You may see reports about the poor state of labor unions, especially in North Carolina, where we often have lower union density than other states.

A few suggestions to help make sense of the news:

Labor unions remain the strongest sector of our broad movement, including in North Carolina. North Carolina unions have over 100,000 dues-paying members. No other sector has that level of popular support.

Our common enemies attack unions as a way to attack our whole movement. Unions should support and defend other sectors of our movement. Other sectors should support and defend unions.

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2022-01-25, Strategy Note 143:
How might our free economy function?

We who can work and want to work will do the work we want to do. We'll contribute the fruits of our labor to the general supply. We'll take what we want from the general supply.

We'll communicate widely and frequently about what work needs done. For work we agree needs done but too few people want to do, we'll take turns.

Taking turns may lower our productivity. If I work one shift collecting trash annually, I won't get as good at it as folks who currently do five shifts per week. I prefer that lower productivity to forcing people to spend their lives doing unpleasant or dangerous work.

We can afford lower productivity in some areas because people doing work they want to do will achieve higher productivity in other areas. In addition, much current exchange-based work will become unnecessary. Vast industries will vanish: advertising, insurance, banking, real estate, finance, stock markets, much policing and prisons, and most military work.

With those freed hours and resources, we can clean up our environment, provide everybody clean water and nutritious food, make workplaces safe, create universal health care and learning opportunities, and enjoy a flowering of the arts.

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2022-02-01, Strategy Note 144:
A detail we will figure out

Last week's Strategy Note 143 likely did not answer all questions about our new free economy. I hope you didn't expect a detailed blueprint in under 200 words.

However, I should mention a big question that I have not yet answered: In our expanded free economy, how will we coordinate production and distribution on a humanity-wide scale?

The old exchange economy uses prices and the way profit-seekers supposedly respond to prices to coordinate production and distribution. It works somewhat, though unequally and inefficiently. Profit-seekers frequently waste resources because they mis-estimate future demand or future availability of inputs.

So our new free economy doesn't need to coordinate perfectly. It just needs to not do much worse.

Without exchange (and therefore without prices) how might we coordinate? How do we know where to send the trainload of bananas our crew just harvested?

Imagine an internet-based system in which providers list what they have available and what they plan to produce in the future while consumers list what they want and when they want it. The system then matches for best efficiency. Easier imagined than done, but I expect we can figure it out.

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2022-02-08, Strategy Note 145:
What about non-workers?

Almost everybody works.

You belong to the working class if you work for a living, would if you could get a decent job, live on income from somebody else's job (like children depend on parents' jobs), depend on charity or public assistance, scratch your subsistence from land held in common by your village (as do some peasants), run a small business in which you do not employ anyone, or live on your past work (such as a pension). This includes most of today's humans.

The tiny owning class consists of those few people who own the means of production and hire other people to work for them. When we eliminate exchange, no one will function as owners previously did.

Just as we treasure and support people who cannot work, we will also welcome former owners as they abandon claims of ownership. Many of them will find useful work they want to do. Some will lack skills or will have emotional problems hindering them from working. We will support them (as we support all people with disabilities) and help them develop to their fullest.

We will value all people as people (and not just for their work).

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2022-02-15, Strategy Note 146:
How make this big change?

Eventually we need to stop devoting so much of the world's wealth to the wealthy and instead re-allocate it for everybody's use. But first we must create the necessary conditions for that change. Large numbers of people must:

Creating these conditions requires steady work and fierce, loving, revolutionary patience.

While doing the long-term work for that necessary transformation, we also need to work for what the Black Panther Party called "survival pending revolution". By organizing to provide each other with the means for decent lives now (especially through exchange-free relationships), we win helpful victories and develop the skills, understanding, relationships, and organizations we will need to win bigger victories.

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2022-02-22, Strategy Note 147:
Projects to win our free economy

To replace the exchange economy with our free economy, we should work on three projects simultaneously:

Many organizations will pursue activities in more than one Project. The boundaries between Projects will blur.

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2022-03-01, Strategy Note 148:
Project 1: Organize!

We must build new organizations and strengthen existing organizations.

Strengthening labor unions, while necessary, will not suffice to create an economy good for working people. Most current unions do not have that as a goal; they just try to improve working conditions and pay within the old exchange economy.

Our next organizing tasks:

We cannot eliminate exchange by bargaining better union contracts or by electing better politicians. Bargaining and voting can only win better versions of the old exchange relationships. Such victories matter. Alone, they will not create the world we deserve.

Replacing exchange with our free economy requires acting outside the norms of the exchange economy. We need nonviolent people-power action to build non-exchange relationships of production and distribution, to defend our new relationships, and to dismantle institutions that maintain exchange.

The nonviolent actions we organize to win workplace struggles, oppose discrimination, and correct climate change help spread the skills and build the trusted relationships we will need.

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2022-03-08, Strategy Note 149:
Project 2: Regulate!

Regulating exchange by itself cannot create an economy good for working people. We regulate to prevent exchange from destroying us before we replace it.

We regulate to:

Specifically, we should use our electoral power to:

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2022-03-15, Strategy Note 150:
Project 3: Replace! (Part 1)

A few tasks --in the order they likely should begin-- in Project 3 (replacing the exchange economy with our free economy):

Some tasks in this list (and in its continuation next week) may seem unrealistic now. The more modest early tasks will change the balance of power in society and make the bolder later tasks possible when their time comes.

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2022-03-22, Strategy Note 151:
Project 3: Replace! (Part 2)

Last week's Strategy Note listed some early tasks in replacing exchange with our free economy. Today's Strategy Note continues that list. This portion of the list may make more sense if you review the previous portion.

Remember, the early more modest tasks will change the balance of power in society and make the bolder later tasks realistic when their time comes.

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2022-03-29, Strategy Note 152:
Key ways we win

Strategy Notes 147-151 sketched three Projects (organize, regulate, replace) to make the economic transition we need.

In all three Projects, a handful of principles should guide our work:

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2022-04-05, Strategy Note 153:
The three Projects strengthen each other.

Only Project 3 can make the changes we need in a way that can last. However, Projects 1 and 2 do three necessary things:

Most organizations will specialize in some aspect of one of these three Projects. Some may not value the other Projects. However, they can strengthen each other if they treat each other as allies or at least avoid speaking ill of each other. We can hope some will praise each other and seek ways to cooperate. Optimally they will inform their members about this three-project strategy, about their organization's role in that strategy, and about the valuable work their allies do in all three Projects.

Meanwhile, the strength we develop using this strategy will help us reduce three short-term dangers: rightwing authoritarianism, nuclear weapons, and the climate crisis. These threats (and the racism supporting them) need our immediate attention. We probably cannot permanently eliminate these threats while exchange continues, but we can (if we move all three Projects forward) develop enough strength to reduce their danger.

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2022-04-12, Strategy Note 154:
Four things you can do now

No law of nature or of logic prevents us from creating an economy good for everybody, including working people. It will require steady work. We can do it. We will enjoy many parts of doing it. We will definitely enjoy the better world we create.

Ready to help make it happen? Please try these four things:

This transformation in our economy will have bigger effects that did the industrial revolution. It will approach the scale of the development of agriculture. It will require a lot of work. But, as our history shows, we humans can make big changes.

We can do this. Let's get it done.

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2022-04-19, Strategy Note 155:
Strategic principles

In thinking about our strategy for guiding society in the directions we prefer, it may help to describe key principles that we want to maintain as we devise and implement that strategy. Here I list some of mine:

In the next several Strategy Notes, I'll explain some of these principles. What would you add to or delete from this list?

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2022-04-26, Strategy Note 156:
Means create ends.

Trying to distinguish between means (the methods we use) and ends (what we want to achieve) frequently misleads people. For example, we often hear the claim that “the ends justify the means.” In other words, trying to accomplish some good goal justifies using methods that we would otherwise reject.

This idea has many problems. For one thing, we often cannot find any clear boundary between means and ends. Means tend to perpetuate themselves, to shape the end result in their own image, and to shift the judgment of people using them to increasingly justify them in more and more contexts.

In these ways, means tend to create ends that resemble the means. It does not work well to use undemocratic methods to build a democracy. It does not work well to use violence to create a nonviolent society. It does not work well to use patriarchal domination to promote feminist equality.

So we must choose our means carefully. Choose methods that we want to use in our goal society. That way, practice using our current methods helps to prepare us for the society we want to create.

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2022-05-03, Strategy Note 157:
Focus on reality; tell the truth.

Humans tell stories. Sometimes we tell stories that attempt to represent reality. Sometimes we tell stories that everybody understands as fiction. Sometimes people tell stories that pretend to represent reality but knowingly include falsehoods. Sometimes we have mixtures of these kinds of stories.

We have (I hope and assume) a better chance of creating the world we deserve the better we understand our current world, how it functions, and how it changes. For that kind of understanding, stories that accurately reflect reality help most.

Sometimes it may appear that exaggerating a claim or omitting an inconvenient fact might help move some piece of our organizing forward. In the short term, it might.

But we have a high-priority task of training ourselves and each other to understand our world correctly. Intentionally including an inaccuracy in our work hinders that understanding. It also trains us to lie and to tolerate lying.

Inaccuracies also often get discovered. When revealed as intentional, they make people less willing to trust --or even to interact with-- their source. Trusting our fellow humans provides one of the foundations of the better world we work to create. Deceit undermines that foundation.

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2022-05-10, Strategy Note 158:
Guide how society changes.

Societies change whether we want them to or not. We don't need to create change. We merely need to guide the directions in which our society changes.

Three factors influence the directions of social change:

Our substrate generally changes slowly, but it changes. Plate tectonics moves continents. Our climate currently warms. Soils develop or erode. We build and replace roads, buildings, and communications links. We discover and deplete sources of minerals, water, and fuels. We develop new technologies. We presumably don’t affect plate tectonics much, but our choices affect other aspects of our substrate.

Relationships determine whether and how we cooperate. In recent millennia, some relationships use exchange. Those transactional relationships include buying, selling, hiring, trading, etc. Exchange relationships depend on our exchange-free (non-transactional) relationships that bring new humans into the world and sustain our most essential elements of life.

Our assumptions and beliefs about our relationships influence what possibilities we imagine and how (even whether) we cooperate. We guide social change primarily by influencing attitudes and beliefs.

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2022-05-17, Strategy Note 159:
Influence attitudes and beliefs.

Last week's Strategy Note said we guide social change primarily by influencing attitudes and beliefs.

Some key attitudes and beliefs we need to strengthen:

Some ways we can strengthen helpful attitudes and beliefs:

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2022-05-24, Strategy Note 160:
Our revolution has begun.

People use the word "revolution" (like "love", "freedom", and "democracy") to mean many different things. So we need to take some care with that word.

Here I use "revolution" to mean foundational changes in society that fundamentally alter relations of power. Replacing one chief executive with another doesn't count as revolutionary (though such a change can often make a major difference in people's lives).

When I write "our revolution" I mean those social changes generally consistent with the goals of these Strategy Notes.

Some of us already work for those fundamental changes in society. Therefore, our revolution has begun.

When did our revolution begin? When the first human wanted a better society? Possibly.

We also can think of it as beginning at a different time for each of us. It begins for us when we decide we want it and take some action to help make it happen. Has it begun for you?

We can and should think of our movement for a better society as the early stages of that new world. While we still live amidst the old society, we work to increasingly live in new-society ways.

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2022-05-31, Strategy Note 161:
Our revolution never ends.

Sometimes activists talk or think about life "after the revolution". They might say "Well, after the revolution I'll rest" or "Well, after the revolution I'll take time to learn to play the banjo."

This tendency to postpone life until after some final victory that will magically make everything easy reveals a misunderstanding of revolution. For example:

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2022-06-07, Strategy Note 162:
Make movement work irresistible.

We must make movement work attractive --irresistibly attractive-- to a wide range of people.

To do this, many organizations will need to change their decision-making structures, communication styles, and work practices. Instead of ritualized drudgery, we need to work in ways that most people find effective, hopeful, healthy, and even fun.

In highly educated, white, middle-class organizations, saying we should have enjoyable work can seem heretical. Such groups often wonder why they have trouble growing and diversifying.

A few suggestions:

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2022-06-14, Strategy Note 163:
Create many entry points.

Until our movement grows to include almost everyone, we must give a high priority to growth. This means we need many, many ways for people to discover our movement and to get involved. We need many entry points.

It helps most when people become active in organizations that explicitly seek to build our broad movement. But even when they join a temporary, single-issue organization that ignores the rest of our movement, they often will discover the broader movement.

To help prompt such discoveries, people with knowledge of our broader movement can participate in many organizations and have conversations that expand perspectives. Such conversations work best when we welcome, thank, listen, and invite. We should carefully avoid pushing, nagging, and criticizing.

In addition to welcoming new people and helping them find movement roles that suit them, we also should welcome new organizations. Get to know their leaders and help them succeed.

We need many entry points. All entry points should lead to respectful relationships.

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2022-06-21, Strategy Note 164:
Develop people.

We must develop many, many people suitable both for our new society and for our current work to create it.

We must develop ourselves and others into people who:

We learn these skills and attitudes best as we work together in healthy, effective organizations. We need many people who will cooperate to build and maintain such organizations.

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2022-06-28, Strategy Note 165:
Develop organizations.

We must develop many organizations suitable both for our new society and for our current work to create it.

We need to build:

Strengthen cooperation among organizations. Work together across divisions (religious and non-religious, for example) whenever you can find a common interest. On the things about which you disagree, respectfully talk and listen or --if necessary-- avoid the topic.

For some time we will still need to operate within the realm of exchange. While operating within the old exchange economy, we should strengthen our organizations' independence of funding and strengthen their internal democracy. Constantly discuss how exchange interferes with what we really need. Constantly remind each other that we use property and exchange only temporarily until we can replace them.

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2022-07-05, Strategy Note 166:
Everybody philosophizes.

Philosophy (meaning our theories about how the world works, how to think well, and how to structure society) matters too much to leave it to a handful of people. Our philosophy needs everybody's thoughts.

Everybody already philosophizes, but most people don't get recognized for doing so. Draw out everybody's thinking and get everybody discussing together as we jointly examine our world, ideas about the society we want, and everybody's thinking about such topics.

Ask questions about what people think. Listen to their answers.

If somebody won't tell you what they think about philosophical questions, consider some possible reasons:

We need active philosophy and philosophical action. Our philosophy must have its roots in our activity. It must reflect our actions and the results we observe. Likewise, our actions must follow from an accurate philosophy.

Philosophy matters. Everybody philosophizes. Organize ways to philosophize together.

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2022-07-12, Strategy Note 167:
For livability, go beyond capital.

Capitalism began a few hundred years ago in Europe. Its unsustainable need for growth spread it worldwide.

Capitalism also pressures businesses to do four dangerous things:

Capitalist competition pressures businesses to do these things. Capitalist economies, therefore, cannot operate sustainably. We must replace capitalism.

How we replace capitalism matters. History suggests some ways don't work well.

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2022-07-19, Strategy Note 168:
To replace capital, go beyond exchange.

Since the 1920s, several countries have attempted to create non-capitalist economies. They have had varying degrees of success for varying lengths of time. Under enormous pressure, those attempts have all shifted toward capitalist relationships (some completely, some partially; some openly, some while claiming to remain anti-capitalist).

Those attempts happened in the context of a global capitalist system enforced by the wealthiest and most militaristic nation our planet has ever endured. In that context, the defeats of anti-capitalist attempts in less-wealthy nations should not surprise us.

Those attempts also suffered from a deeper problem: They tried to keep exchange (and merely regulate it to avoid capitalism's worst problems).

Exchange, however, means everyone must accumulate wealth so they can trade for what they need and want. This need to accumulate pressures economic relationships to move toward capitalism.

So we need a more thorough transformation than merely eliminating capital and its institutions. We must eliminate its source: exchange.

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2022-07-26, Strategy Note 169:
How might an exchange-free economy work?

We who can work and want to work will do the work we want to do. We'll contribute the fruits of our labor to the general supply. We'll take what we want from the general supply.

We'll communicate widely and frequently about what work needs done. For work we agree needs done but too few people want to do, we'll take turns.

Taking turns may lower our productivity. If I work one shift collecting trash annually, I won't get as good at it as folks who currently do five shifts per week. I prefer that lower productivity to forcing people to spend their lives doing unpleasant or dangerous work.

We can afford lower productivity in some areas because people doing work they want to do will achieve higher productivity in other areas. In addition, much current exchange-based work will become unnecessary. Vast industries will vanish: advertising, insurance, banking, real estate, finance, stock markets, much policing and prisons, and most military work.

With those freed hours and resources, we can clean up our environment, provide everybody clean water and nutritious food, make workplaces safe, create universal health care and learning opportunities, and enjoy a flowering of art and science.

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2022-08-02, Strategy Note 170:
What else about exchange-free societies?

People living in our future exchange-free world will decide its details. Now we merely speculate and plan. Nevertheless, a few aspects of the new world seem likely:

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2022-08-09, Strategy Note 171:
Voluntarily do unpleasant work?

In response to Strategy Note 168, an esteemed reader asked, "But, doesn't that model rely (considerably) on folks voluntarily doing unpleasant work (washing diapers and hauling garbage, for example)?”

Our exchange-free economy shouldn’t need much more unpleasant and dangerous work than the old economy does. Less in some areas (for example, less garbage because of less packaging because we won’t need advertising and theft-prevention stuff, less coal mining as we switch to cleaner energy) and more in other areas at least in the short term (dismantling weaponry, de-mining battlefields, cleaning up old pollution).

So, yes, it does rely on folks voluntarily doing unpleasant and dangerous work. Like folks already do! The people who washed most of history’s diapers didn’t get paid to do so. That happened only in the tiny strata of wealthy (relatively, on global and historical scales) people. Likewise hauling garbage — only the wealthy pay folks to do that; most folks haul their own garbage.

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2022-08-16, Strategy Note 172:
Always serve community?

The esteemed reader mentioned last week continued with this question: "Must we assume that there is and always will be some subset of folks who want only to serve the community?"

If we remove the word “only” from this question, that looks like a fact to me, not an assumption. Whenever humans live in community (in other words, almost always among humans) some people serve the community. They don’t only do that; they also serve themselves and goof off and do many other things. In fact, almost everybody serves their community. You have to seriously injure or constrain people to prevent such action. Among humans, evolution strongly selected for community-mindedness — it looks as essential to humanity as language.

That we so often get momentarily confused about such things demonstrates the pervasiveness and insidiousness of exchange’s relentless indoctrination. The system of exchange teaches us to think of ourselves and our neighbors as selfish thugs and to not notice that selfish or thuggish action happens only extremely rarely. After we eliminate exchange (and thereby its relentless indoctrination and motivation), selfish thuggery will become even more rare.

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2022-08-23, Strategy Note 173:
Many organizations, one movement.

Our broad movement includes many organizations. Much of our strength comes from this diversity.

We can think of our movement's organizations as clustered in sectors. For example, the labor movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement, and the immigrant-rights movement form important sectors of our broad movement.

We also can think of our organizations as issue organizations, identity organizations, and infrastructure organizations:

These three categories do not have sharp edges. My website offers one way to sort some North Carolina organizations into these categories.

Our organizations will develop more strength the more they think of themselves as cooperative components in our larger movement.

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2022-08-30, Strategy Note 174:
Cooperate whenever possible.

People and organizations often have similar goals for different motives. For example, they might support labor unions for economic motives (wanting better pay), religious motives (obeying scriptural commands to do justice), or ideological motives (building working-class power). Motives can overlap and they can conflict.

People and organizations can work together on shared goals when they have similar motives and when they have conflicting motives. Working together across differences (religious and non-religious motives, for example) happens easier when at least one person thinks about the relationship and takes initiative to help it go well. This usually means prompting respectful discussions and listening well.

Work together on the things about which you agree. On the things about which you disagree, respectfully listen and talk.

Sometimes, however, it works best to avoid a conflictual topic. Do not avoid a topic because you assume you disagree or even when discussion proves you disagree. Only avoid a topic when attempts to discuss it strongly interfere with cooperation on other topics.

Work together whenever possible.

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2022-09-06, Strategy Note 175:
Avoid perfection. Design for learning.

Perfection doesn't exist. So we don't need to waste time seeking it. We don’t need to do any of this perfectly; we just need to do it well enough.

The old exchange-based system certainly hasn't operated perfectly, even by its own exploitative criteria. Our new exchange-free system also doesn't need perfection. It just needs to function enough better than the old system to justify the inconveniences of the transition period.

We don't need perfection; we just need good-enough progress.

To guide these social changes well enough, we need to (at least occasionally) learn how to improve our work. What helps you, your colleagues, and your organizations learn? What hinders that learning?

We get to design our strategies to maximize our learning. When we have a choice to make about our work, let's choose the option that seems likely to help us learn the most (only rarely will some other consideration clearly outweigh this preference).

Seeking perfection doesn't work. We get to seek learning.

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2022-09-13, Strategy Note 176:
Let's get real about economics.

Economists say they study the production and distribution of goods and services. That bland definition, however, may distract us from some important details, including about our own lives.

First, "production and distribution" sounds rather vague and abstract. It overlooks the real people involved. People produce. People distribute. People live --or don't-- with the results.

Second, the word "distribution" probably makes most readers think of trucks, trains, ships, and planes. Transportation plays a big role in "distribution" but that bit of jargon includes far more. It includes how it gets decided who gets to use a particular good or service. "Distribution" includes who eats, who starves, and the ways our society justifies all that.

To help us look a bit below the abstract jargon and get real about economics, this series of Strategy Notes offers some questions about economics.

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2022-09-20, Strategy Note 177:
What about poverty and wealth?

Have you ever eaten food someone had thrown away? Why? Why not?

Have you ever lacked a good shelter in which to live? Why? Why not?

What causes poverty? Why do many people lack resources for a healthy, decent life?

What causes concentrated wealth? Why do some people have more than they need for a healthy, decent life?

Can people accumulate wealth without causing poverty for others? Why? Why not?

Can people stay wealthy without keeping others in poverty? Why? Why not?

Should some people have more wealth than others? Why? Why not? If yes, what seems like a good amount of difference in wealth? What should determine who has more, who has less, and the amount of the difference?

Should some jobs earn more per hour than others? Why? Why not? If yes, which jobs should earn more and which less? How much difference seems correct to you?

What assumptions, attitudes, customs, habits, laws, and public policies influence the mix of poverty and wealth in your society?

How closely does the current mix of wealth and poverty match what seems good to you? Why does your society do or not do what you prefer about poverty and wealth?

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2022-09-27, Strategy Note 178:
How do you get food?

From where does your food come? How much of your food do you forage, catch, or grow?

Through what kinds of relationships do you get food? Through what kinds of relationships do you provide food to others? Why do those relationships have their current characteristics? Who benefits from their current characteristics? Who suffers?

Who worked on your food before it got to you? How far away did that work happen? Why?

What kind of working conditions do the people working in your food supply chain have? How well do they live?

Which of that work happens within relationships based on exchange? Which within relationships free of exchange? What differences, if any, does the kind of relationship make? Why do these relationships have their present forms?

Does the topsoil on which your food supply depends get rebuilt faster or slower than it gets depleted? Why? If you don't know the answer to this question about topsoil, why? What relationships cause that?

What assumptions, habits, customs, laws, and public policies affect those relationships in your food supply chain? What, if anything, would you like to change about them? Who else might want such changes? Why? Who might oppose such changes? Why?

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2022-10-04, Strategy Note 179:
Live in a city? Wear clothes?

If you live in a city, what portion of your water, food, energy, clothing, and building material originates in that city? Do rural people currently support you? If so, why? Does their motivation come from solidarity, charity, exchange relationships, or what? How long could you live if rural people stopped supporting you?

Do you currently have clothes covering parts of your body? If not at the moment, have you recently worn clothes? Did you make them? Did you grow or manufacture the fibers in them? Where did they come from? Who made them? Why did they make them? How do you get to wear them? What do you like and dislike about those relationships that clothe you?

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2022-10-11, Strategy Note 180:
Have an employer? Employee?

Have you ever had an employer for whom you worked a job for pay? Why? Why not? What do or did you like about that relationship? Dislike?

Have you ever hired someone to work for you for pay? Why? Why not? What do or did you like about that relationship? Dislike?

Have you ever joined with other workers in a labor union? Why? Why not? What did you like about that membership? Dislike?

Have you ever had employees who had a labor union? Why? Why not? What did you like about having union-member employees? Dislike?

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2022-10-18, Strategy Note 181:
What do you own? Why?

Have you ever owned part of our planet's land surface? Why? Why not? What do or did you like about that ownership? Dislike?

Do you store money in a financial institution like a bank or credit union? Why? Why not? How much do you have? How did you accumulate that wealth? What do you like about that? Dislike?

If you added up the monetary value of everything you own and everything others owe you and subtracted everything you owe, what net wealth would you have?

How did you acquire that net wealth? What assumptions, attitudes, customs, habits, laws, and public policies helped that happen?

How do you keep your net wealth? What assumptions, attitudes, customs, habits, laws, and public policies help that happen?

Would you kill to keep your wealth? Would you imprison people to keep your wealth? Would you pay taxes to a government that kills and imprisons to protect wealth (including yours)?

How does your net wealth compare to the median net wealth in your country and to the median net wealth in our world?

What do you like about having your particular net wealth in your particular economic context? Dislike? Why?

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2022-10-25, Strategy Note 182:
How much do you spend? Why?

How much do you spend in a typical year? Does the amount you spend add up to more than you'd like? Less? Just the right amount for you now?

How does your annual expenditure compare to the median per person annual expenditure worldwide? What feelings or thoughts do you have about that comparison? Why?

If you don't know the answer to one or more of these questions, what causes that ignorance? Who benefits from it? Who suffers?

What assumptions, attitudes, customs, habits, laws, and public policies influence how much you spend and what you spend it on? What assumptions, attitudes, customs, habits, laws, and public policies influence how much thoughtful attention you give to how much you spend?

What forms of advertising do you encounter in a typical week? What do you like about the advertising you encounter? Dislike? In what directions does advertising attempt to influence you? What makes you more susceptible to the influence of advertising? What helps you resist the influence of advertising?

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2022-11-01, Strategy Note 183:
Gifts? Charity?

Have you ever depended on gifts or charity? Why? Why not? How do or did you feel about the relationships that resulted? What tended to make those relationships good for you? Bad for you?

Have you ever given gifts or charity? Why? Why not? How do or did you feel about the relationships that resulted? What tended to make those relationships good for you? Bad for you?

If you have given away money or other forms of wealth, how much do you give in a typical year? What percent of your income do you typically give? What percent of your net wealth do you typically give? Why do you give that amount?

If you have a religious faith, what does it teach about giving and receiving? What do you think about those teachings?

How do you decide about giving? Why do you decide that way? What assumptions, attitudes, customs, habits, laws, and public policies influence your giving or receiving? Do you prefer to give to individuals or to organizations? Why? How much, if at all, does getting a deduction for tax purposes affect your decisions? Why?

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2022-11-08, Strategy Note 184:
Nation states? War?

Why have nation states only existed for a small portion of human existence?

What percent of humans live in your country? What percent of the world's energy consumption happens in your country?

Why do nation states generally prepare for war? Who benefits from war and preparations for war? Who suffers? Why?

What portion of the budget of the nation state in which you live goes to pay for current and past war preparations? If you don't know, what causes that ignorance? Who benefits from it? Who suffers?

What do you like about the nation state in which you live? Dislike?

What do you like about having our world's land divided among competing nation states? Dislike?

What do you like about war? Dislike? Of the ways groups of humans have waged conflicts without killing, which do you like best? Worst? Why?

Of the ways humans have lived without nation states, which do you like best? Worst? If you don't know about ways humans have lived without nation states, what causes that ignorance? Who benefits from it? Who suffers? Might learning that history help you? How might you start learning that history?

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2022-11-15, Strategy Note 185:
How fund nation states?

Of the ways nation states have funded their operations (plunder, tribute, taxes, fees for services, profits from state-owned businesses, interest on state-held wealth, etc.), which does the nation state in which you live use? Who benefits from those choices? Who suffers? Why?

Does the nation state that includes your home mostly depend on taxes? Why? Why not?

What does it tax (adults, automobiles, beaver pelts, businesses, children, communication media, financial transactions, food, fuel, goods, inheritances, intangible wealth, land, livestock, mineral extraction, profits, religious institutions, rent, royalties, sales, salt, services, speculative investments, tobacco, unearned income, wages, weapons, whiskey, etc.)? Why those things? At what rates does it tax them? Why?

What services does the nation state that includes your home provide? Who benefits from those choices about taxes and services? Who suffers?

What do you think about those choices? If you rarely think about those choices, why? Does the nation state in which you live make it easy or difficult for you to think about those choices?

If you wanted to make it easy for many people to think about how nation states fund their operations, what would you do? To make it difficult, what would you do?

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2022-11-22, Strategy Note 186:
Exchange: Necessary? Parasitic?

Why do nation states enforce property and exchange?

Could property and exchange exist without an entity that enforces them? If yes, how? If no, why?

Do fundamental aspects of human nature (use of language, for example) require enforcement? If property and exchange require enforcement should we consider them "natural" and necessary for humans?

Why do parents generally not require their infant children to pay for the goods and services the parents provide? Where else do we often see exchange-free relationships?

If young children depend on exchange-free relationships with the people who raise them, does that mean humanity needs (at least some) exchange-free relationships to simply reproduce itself?

If humanity requires (at least some) exchange-free relationships while property and exchange cannot persist without enforcement, what should we conclude about the relative neccessity in human nature of exchange-free relationships and exchange-based relationships?

If exchange economies require people capable of making exchanges (especially workers whose labor creates more value than they need to survive) and we cannot raise people without (at least some) exchange-free relationships, should we think of exchange as a parasite that depends on the existence of exchange-free relationships? Why? Why not?

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2022-11-29, Strategy Note 187:
Could an exchange-free society exist?

Could a society exist in which no relationships involve exchange? How might that work?

In an exchange-free society, if we did the work we wanted to do, contributed the fruits of our labor to the general supply, and took from the general supply what we needed and wanted, what might happen? If we discussed what work needed to happen and took turns doing needed tasks that didn't have enough people who wanted to do them, what might happen?

Have you ever worked a shift collecting trash? Why? Why not? Why do some people currently collect trash several shifts per week?

If we had a society free of exchange, too few people volunteered to collect trash in your neighborhood, and the able-bodied adults in your neighborhood decided to each do one shift per year collecting trash, how would their efficiency compare to the efficiency of the people who currently collect trash for several shifts every week? Which way of collecting trash do you prefer? Why?

What do you think of the fictional exchange-free society depicted in Ursula K. Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed?

With whom do you currently have exchange-free relationships? Why them?

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2022-12-06, Strategy Note 188:
Do you have an exit plan?

Do you have an exit strategy from fossil fuels?

Living in a world divided among competing nation states, how do you plan to survive their violence?

How do you plan to survive while capitalism continues? As the capital system becomes increasingly unworkable, what will you do? When the masters of capital seek to maintain dominance of their failing system by force, how will you respond?

Does your plan rely on yourself as a sole actor? On individual hard work, frugality, good health, luck, and smart choices? On prayer and miracles? On suicide before your situation becomes intolerable? On numbing yourself with alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, or other drugs? On what does your plan rely?

Does your plan rely on more people than just yourself? On a nuclear family? On neighborhood and workplace organizations? On the centralized leader(s) of an organization always choosing wisely? On an organization that constantly trains all members to lead and makes its decisions collectively? On what does your plan rely?

What do you want? How do you want to live? What kind of economy and society makes sense to you? How do you plan to help create that world?

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2022-12-13, Strategy Note 189:
What makes these questions difficult?

If you have difficulty answering some of these questions about economics and the relationships that support you, what causes that difficulty?

If you have ignorance about some economic facts, what contributed to you not knowing those things? Who benefits from keeping you ignorant? Who suffers? How do you feel about not knowing these things? Who benefits from those feelings? Who suffers?

If you understand some things about economics, how much confidence do you have that you actually understand them correctly? How do you check your understanding? What sources of explanations of economics do you have readily available? Why those? Do you trust them? Why? Why not?

Why do things work that way in your context today? How long have they worked that way?

What, if anything, do you want to do to improve your understanding of these topics? With whom might you work together to improve your mutual understanding?

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2022-12-20, Strategy Note 190:
Do you talk about these questions?

With how many people do you talk about questions about economics like the ones in this series of Strategy Notes in a typical week?

Do you have any feelings of pride or shame associated with wealth, debt, or any of these topics? Why? Why not? If you have such feelings, what caused them? Who benefits from such feelings? Who suffers?

Do you treat economic topics such as these as public or as private? Why? Does that happen by your conscious choice, by unthinking habit, or some other way? Who benefits from that choice/habit/whatever? Who suffers?

If you wanted more people to keep quiet about topics like these, how might you encourage that? If you wanted more people to speak up about topics like these, how might you encourage that?

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2022-12-27, Strategy Note 191:
How do you make economic choices?

How do you decide what to spend, what paid jobs to take, whether to invest, what to save, what to give away, what taxes (if any) to pay, and other economic choices?

Do you make most such decisions alone? With a spouse or partner? As part of a religious congregation? As part of a non-religious collective of mutual reflection and accountability?

Does some other entity (for example, parent, spouse, partner, employer, prison, school, care facility, government) make some economic decisions for you?

What assumptions, attitudes, customs, habits, laws, and public policies influence how your choices happen?

Who benefits from the current way your economic choices happen? Who suffers?

What do you like about how your economic choices happen? Dislike?

Who might share some of your likes and dislikes about the current way economic decisions happen?

What changes, if any, do you want to make in how your economic decisions happen? Who might agree with you? Why? Disagree? Why?

What smallest next action might you take to improve how your economic decisions happen? When will you do it?

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2023-01-03, Strategy Note 192:
What relationship with the working class?

What relationship do you have with the working class?

Do you live in the working class?

Do you live in the owning class and exploit the working class?

Do you technically live in the working class but serve the owning class as a manager, teacher, technical expert, propagandist, or some other "middle class" role?

Do you have a mixture of relationships to the working class? If so, what does that mixture include?

What do you feel about your relationship(s) with the working class? Pride? Shame? Fear? Confusion? What else? What causes those feelings? Who benefits from them? Who suffers? Why?

In what class did you live when you turned 12 years old? If you haven't turned 12 yet, in what class do you currently live? How did/do the people around you talk about class? Did/do they ignore it? Why? How did/does that affect you?

If you live in the owning class, what would help you abandon ownership and join the working class?

If you live in the "middle class" what would help you serve working-class organizations instead of owners?

If you live in the working class, what would help you set the world right?

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2023-01-10, Strategy Note 193:
What economic changes do you want?

How closely does the economic system in which you live match what you want? Where does it match your desires and where does it not? Why does it vary from your desires in some areas?

Have you learned about anybody trying to change the benefits and suffering that result from economic relationships? What do you think about such struggles? How do your choices affect those struggles? Which side do you prefer to win?

How closely do your actions align with your preference? What helps you align your actions with your preference? What hinders?

Who might agree with your preferences about your society? What might help y'all work together to make society more like you want? What smallest next action might you take to help that happen? Will you do that smallest next action? When?

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2023-01-17, Strategy Note 194:
Make our strategy correctable.

Most strategies will need adjustment as we implement them. This happens for at least the following reasons:

So how should we design our strategy to make it correctable? Some suggestions:

The next few Strategy Notes will offer details on these suggestions.

As you consider these suggestions for correctability, notice how the current exchange-based system violates many of these suggestions. Those violations contribute to its fragility.

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2023-01-24, Strategy Note 195:
Use democracy.

Develop our strategy democratically, implement it democratically, and adjust it democratically:

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2023-01-31, Strategy Note 196:
What about counterproductive ideas?

We must replace some harmful practices that draw support from widely-believed counterproductive ideas. How we handle such ideas affects our strategy's correctability. What should we do about such ideas?

Completely counterproductive ideas appear rare. Humans generally do not maintain ideas that don't have some pro-human aspect or at least appear to.

Consider the ideas of exchange, property, capitalism, violence, religion, race, gender, nationalism, regionalism, any identity smaller than human, and self-righteousness. I consider these ideas counterproductive, but they each have, have in the past had, or sometimes can appear to have positive aspects. Because these ideas have (or appear to have) positive aspects, people reject them only reluctantly and slowly.

To reduce allegiance to such ideas, we must demonstrate complete respect for the people holding these ideas, acknowledge the positive aspects of these ideas, and respectfully point out problems with these ideas. Ask people how they would maximize the positive aspects while minimizing the negative aspects. Encourage them to implement such projects, to learn from them, and to make that learning widely available. Maximize their opportunities to think about such projects and the ideas behind them with respectful attention.

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2023-02-07, Strategy Note 197:
Maximize options. Avoid permanent losses.

Sometimes we need to make choices that eliminate some future options. Clear strategies help us make such choices smartly. Strategies fundamentally exist to provide such guidance.

We also make our work more correctable when we avoid eliminating future options. So smart strategies avoid eliminating future options unless doing so gains us something. Other things equal, seek to maximize future options.

Avoid permanent loss of irreplaceable things:

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2023-02-14, Strategy Note 198:
Model the society we want.

Model the society we work to create:

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2023-02-21, Strategy Note 199:
Monitor our progress. Facts matter.

Monitor our progress objectively:

Learn from facts and the best theories available. Judge theories against facts.

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2023-02-28, Strategy Note 200:
Relationships matter. Cherish people.

Comrades in struggle often develop a strong regard for each other. We can call it a form of love (usually non-sexual). That intimacy grown from sharing challenging work enables a deep level of trust and communication.

That kind of trust and understanding of each other helps immensely when we need to adjust our strategy. It also helps between such times of correction when we need to steadily implement our strategy.

On 19 February 2023 scores of comrades and acquaintances of organizer Ray Eurquhart gathered in Durham, North Carolina to celebrate his too-short life. We dedicated a tree, a plaque, and two outdoor benches in memory of him and told stories about him.

Speaker after speaker gave examples of "Brother Ray's" deliberate, persistent, constant relationship building. With everybody he encountered. Including people with whom he fiercely disagreed about important matters. One speaker testified that Ray wanted everybody to have a good life, including those who at the moment opposed him.

He practiced direct, clear confrontation when he thought it useful. He had a vigorous, assertive, loving respect that insisted everybody treat themselves and others well.

For an effective, correctable strategy, treasure people like Brother Ray did.

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2023-03-07, Strategy Note 201:
How correct our climate crisis?

Strategy Notes addressed climate in 2019. Since then, important conditions have changed. This Strategy Note begins a new series that revisits the topic and expands on this summary.

We want to keep our planet no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperature. To do that best, we must stop emitting greenhouse gases (GHG) by about 2030.

In the short term, we must regulate capitalism to stop GHG emissions. In the long term, we must replace capitalism. We must also replace exchange and property.

We need simultaneous progress on regulation and on replacement:

These efforts require a massive scale and a broad alliance. We must work with people with whom we agree about the climate even while disagreeing about other issues.

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2023-03-14, Strategy Note 202:
Emotional work helps thinking and acting.

Noticing the degradation of our environment stirs up many difficult feelings: fear, anger, grief, shame, discouragement, disappointment, numbness, etc.

These feelings can distract and confuse us. They can make it difficult to think clearly. They can cause timidity, rashness, self-righteousness, depression, assuming that officials will take care of the problem for us, and other non-helpful behaviors.

We need to think clearly and to act effectively. So we must acknowledge that we have these feelings and let ourselves feel and express them. Doing so lets our minds heal from the hurts of living in our currently-messed-up world. That healing helps us think and act more effectively.

However, we must not express these negative feelings unthinkingly. Doing so could add to the confusions (and possibly even the hurts) of others.

We can solve this dilemma by pairing up with each other and taking turns listening as we feel and express our feelings. The active listening skills that form such an important element of training for nonviolent people-power actions also work well for this paired healing work. Organizations working on correcting climate change will benefit from including such paired listening time in their regular activity.

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2023-03-21, Strategy Note 203:
Think about what you want.

Some people try to use the climate crisis exploitatively. Thinking clearly about what we want and what we oppose should help us avoid getting misled.

Please consider what you want and don't want. Compare your desires to what seems likely to result from any climate proposals, including proposals in these Strategy Notes. To help you make that comparison, I will explain my goals as clearly and completely as I can. You might want to ask the same of other proponents of climate plans.

I want a healthy planet suitable for humans and most other current forms of Terran life. I want pleasant, healthy, diverse human societies. I want diverse wild areas without much human influence.

I oppose addressing our climate crisis through authoritarian attempts to impose centralized "solutions" through state violence. We don't have many advocates for such foolishness currently, but we may if we let the crisis worsen without building an effective people-power movement to address it.

I strongly prefer real democracy and nonviolence. I think ordinary people --given a decent chance-- can and generally will choose ways good for us as a whole.

What do you want? What do you oppose? Why?

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2023-03-28, Strategy Note 204:
Short-term goals, design principles

On climate, we should prioritize four short-term goals:

As we design campaigns to accomplish these four short-term goals, we should:

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2023-04-04, Strategy Note 205:
Both short-term and long-term work

We want to end greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by about 2030.

This near date does not imply working on our short-term goal (regulating capitalism to end GHG emissions) until 2030 and on our long-term goal (replacing exchange) later. We work on both simultaneously.

Victory on our short-term goal (regulation) gains us the time needed to win our long-term goal (replacement). Until we win replacement, we will need to repeatedly re-win regulation.

Regulating sufficiently requires organizing almost as much power as replacement will, but does not require the full ideological and practical shifts needed for replacement.

We who share the long-term goal outlined in these Strategy Notes have the interesting task of working with many people to win the short-term goal, including with people who currently oppose our long-term goal.

Even when allies denounce our long-term goal, we must continue working with them respectfully. We sometimes should debate long-term goals, but any such debate must help us all cooperate for our shared short-term goal.

We must build friendships with allies even when we disagree on long-term goals. Such friendships sustain our necessary alliance.

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2023-04-11, Strategy Note 206:
We can't all do everything.

Our movement to correct climate change needs to do many pieces of work.

We need to help people suffering from climate disasters, lobby Congress for necessary changes, pressure institutional obstacles, educate, agitate, mobilize, organize, coordinate, recruit, envision, plan, propose, facilitate, stack the folding chairs after the meeting, mediate conflicts within our movement, picket, sit in, blockade, boycott, hand out leaflets, train, raise funds, donate, use media (ours and other), administer our organizations, keep records, document our work, convene discussions, build alliances, bring snacks, provide childcare at meetings, interpret for language justice, etc.

None of us can get good at all those tasks. None of us can even do all those tasks mediocrely. Four words show how to solve that problem: Specialize, share, cooperate, appreciate.

We can each specialize and get good at the part of the work that suits us best, share turns on many tasks to spread skills and equalize power, cooperate with others doing other parts, and openly appreciate everybody participating in any part of our whole movement. If many of us do those four things most of the time, our movement as a whole has a chance to do all that needs doing.

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2023-04-18, Strategy Note 207:
Strengthen all our climate organizations.

We don't have and shouldn't expect perfect organizations.

We don't have and shouldn't expect any organization that alone can win all we need.

We will win through a synergy of many efforts of many organizations.

We will win by building organizations that improve their effectiveness by helping their people learn.

We should encourage and strengthen many climate organizations:

In all climate groups, we who share the long-term goal of replacing exchange can (and, whenever it makes sense, should) have one-to-one chats to raise that long-term goal as an additional need (additional, not replacing the group's focus).

We working for the long-term solution should not speak ill of those working for short-term goals even if they oppose our long-term goals. They win the time needed for our long-term work.

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2023-04-25, Strategy Note 208:
Wage inside and outside games.

We must stop emitting greenhouse gases (GHG), especially methane. That requires drastically reducing --probably eliminating-- burning fossil fuels.

That destroys the profitability of the fossil fuel industry. Most of its wealthiest owners will oppose us. How can we win?

We need to simultaneously use two kinds of methods which we sometimes call the "inside game" and the "outside game."

Use officially approved methods ("inside game") to persuade government:

Use methods not officially approved ("outside game") to pressure government and businesses to act:

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2023-05-02, Strategy Note 209:
What must we do in the short term?

To reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) at the pace needed requires action by large governments (especially the United States government) and by large businesses.

Remember our four short-term goals:

A steadily increasing carbon fee and dividend (CF&D) could make GHG emissions unfeasible economically and protect the poorer 60-75% of the United States from carrying the cost of the transition. Winning a good CF&D would accomplish our first two short-term goals.

To win CF&D in the United States, we need to:

The escalating pressure of those "outside game" campaigns will make businesses join in lobbying for CF&D as a preferable option.

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2023-05-09, Strategy Note 210:
How wage our inside game?

For our inside game we should:

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2023-05-16, Strategy Note 211:
Make climate a bridge issue.

To pass legislation in the United States soon enough to avoid climate catastrophe requires determined, realistic political work.

We have to win support from both Democratic and Republican members of Congress. We likely will need bipartisan support to maintain the bill in future Congresses or to overcome a presidential veto.

This means we must make protecting our climate a bridge issue, not a partisan issue.

We must strictly avoid letting any party claim this issue or blaming any party for inaction on this issue. Both of the two main parties have members who agree with us (at least in part) and members who oppose us (at least in part). We must support or oppose them based on their actions on the issue, not on their party. We must seek, welcome, and praise helpful actions from all people, especially all members of Congress. We must build support for the climate in all political parties.

We also must understand that some members of Congress (from both major parties) will speak as if they support our goals while working to dilute, delay, or defeat our bills. We should not pretend that such behavior qualifies as support.

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2023-05-23, Strategy Note 212:
Congress won't help until...

We must stop burning fossil fuels. Doing so destroys the fossil fuels industry. It creates enormous “sunk costs” (investments that cannot get re-paid), lost profits, lost jobs, and short-term human suffering (if we make the change without protecting people).

For example, because plastics and asphalt currently rely on cheap by-products of the petroleum industry, eliminating fossil fuels will make asphalt and fossil-based plastic (most plastic currently) far more expensive. While eliminating asphalt and most plastic could improve human and ecological health, it will also cause economic disruption.

Congress will not destroy such a large and lucrative industry --business will not tolerate it-- until they believe they must do so to avoid something that looks worse to them.

Congress and businesses do not see climate catastrophes as worse than destroying the fossil fuel industry. Climate catastrophes will not look worse to them soon enough to avoid massive catastrophes.

Ending capitalism or exchange would look worse to them but it might take us too long to make either a credible threat. We need climate action quicker than that. What can become a big enough threat to them soon enough? Can it also help us end exchange?

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2023-05-30, Strategy Note 213:
To move Congress, pressure business.

We must pressure business --especially fossil fuel companies-- in addition to Congress. When business wants climate action (to avoid something worse for them), they’ll make Congress act.

We need a large-scale, escalating, nonviolent action movement that builds enough strength to threaten the business model of the fossil fuel industry. We cannot conjure such a force into existence instantly. We have to build it over time. We build it the same way we build muscle -- by steadily exercising the strength we already have.

We need to launch a campaign with these characteristics:

This first campaign:

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2023-06-06, Strategy Note 214:
Many ways to pressure business

Make visible the split in businesses over climate. Don't let polluters (especially the fossil fuel industry) claim to speak for business. Insurance companies, for example, could become potential allies on our short-term goals.

We should consider at least the following methods to influence businesses:

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2023-06-13, Strategy Note 215:
First target and demands

For our first campaign, let's target one large gasoline brand, such as ExxonMobil, BP, or Chevron.

We demand the target make four modest changes in their operations:

Each of the major fossil fuel companies can afford to agree to these modest demands and still remain profitable. They'll object fiercely, but they can do it.

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2023-06-20, Strategy Note 216:
How we make them do it

To win the demands in Strategy Note 215, we must:

This first campaign wins a reduction of the rate at which climate worsens, slightly shifts the balance of power between us and the company, and builds a network of local nonviolent campaign groups focused on climate.

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2023-06-27, Strategy Note 217:
After the first campaign?

What do we do after the first campaign? That depends on our assessment of possibilities then. We probably will need to soon pressure more than the fossil fuel industry.

We have many possible targets:

Repeated campaigns like these build a new power in the country -- a growing network of nonviolent campaign groups.

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2023-07-04, Strategy Note 218:
Engage China respectfully.

The United States has emitted more greenhouse gas per person than any other country. We must take more responsibility than others for correcting our climate crisis.

When the US stops releasing greenhouse gases, that change will help enormously but will not solve the problem. This problem requires engaging most of the world’s people.

Every country currently releases greenhouse gases. Our climate crisis affects everybody. All people and countries have an interest in correcting it.

We must engage people in other countries, especially China. We must approach those engagements with respect, humility, and a spirit of cooperation.

China can have a strongly positive influence. In early 2023, after nuclear sabre-rattling by Russia and the United States over Ukraine, China's Xi Jinping said no country should use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. Russia and the US stopped their nuclear threats. In March 2023, China facilitated improved relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

China will play an important role on climate. Because of the size of their population, their position as the center of manufacturing, and their international influence, the choices they make matter more than most. The world will benefit immensely if they offer good leadership on climate.

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2023-07-11, Strategy Note 219:
We must also replace exchange.

Besides the short-term changes, we must replace exchange with a sustainable economy.

Exchange means transactions of the form "I'll give you this if you give me that." It includes barter, buying, selling, renting, hiring, etc. Previous forms of exchange produced capitalism, exchange's currently dominant form.

We must replace exchange because:

These pressures (for growth, for pollution, against democracy) make exchange and capitalism unsustainable. In the long term we must create an exchange-free economy.

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2023-07-18, Strategy Note 220:
How will our long-term solution work?

Strategy Note 219 explained why we must replace exchange and capitalism.

Our new exchange-free society likely will have the following characteristics:

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2023-07-25, Strategy Note 221:
How win the long-term changes?

It could happen that everybody wakes up one morning determined to not cooperate with property relationships or exchange relationships and instead to live on the basis of sharing and solidarity. That could happen.

We should not assume it will happen just because the long-term livability of our planet would benefit.

Instead, we must carefully prepare our society's culture to encourage that determination.

We know smart, persistent work can make major changes in human cultures. Consider the changes in the United States on women's rights, race, and LGBTQ rights. These changes did not happen automatically. People worked diligently to create them. People still work to move them forward.

Some early actions in preparing our culture for the needed changes in our economic relationships might include:

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2023-08-01, Strategy Note 222:
What about scarcity?

Exchange (especially its dominant current form, capitalism) requires people to fear scarcity. It constantly creates scarcity, mostly temporary forms that will not long outlast exchange itself. Sometimes, however, it creates a permanent scarcity such as extinction of a species.

Capitalism concentrates wealth from many people to a few people. The wealthy hold excess land, dwellings, and other resources without using them fully. Removing these resources from use or circulation creates relative scarcity, a scarcity for everybody except those big owners.

When someone has more than one house, the extras they don't live in at any moment create a relative scarcity for people looking for homes.

Healthy humans respond to the losses and harms of scarcity (whether temporary or permanent, relative or real) with grief. We can express and heal our grief. Until we do, unhealed grief can confuse us. Capitalism exploits our confusion to create fear of scarcity as a motivation to work for capitalists.

People who live under capitalism risk impoverishment. Actual risk varies, but nobody has zero risk. The system pressures everybody to seek more wealth to protect themselves and their loved ones. Fear --especially of scarcity-- drives the system. We must avoid stimulating fear.

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2023-08-08, Strategy Note 223:
Escape the scarcity mindtrap.

None of the forms of scarcity mentioned in last week's Strategy Note need to continue. When we create an exchange-free society and share our wealth reasonably, we'll have enough for everybody. Instead of scarcity, we'll live in abundance.

That abundance will come from three sources:

We will have abundance not merely of material goods but also of time. The old system pressures us to overwork and to waste time in useless worry and avoidance of reality through entertainment and addictions. We'll still have 24 hours per day, but humane days of health and cooperation will feel far more abundant than now.

So we need to understand how the exchange system uses scarcity. We need to strengthen the exchange-free relationships that sustain us.

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2023-08-15, Strategy Note 224:
What instead of fear?

Strategy Note 222 said we should avoid stimulating fear. Why?

To create a cooperative, sustainable society free of exchange, we have to overcome fear. It has a counterproductive effect for us.

Anger rests on a foundation of fear. So we also need to avoid stoking anger.

Instead of fear and anger, what should we use to motivate people?

Love, hope, curiosity, and joy versus mere fear and anger. To which side of that contest do you want to contribute?

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2023-08-22, Strategy Note 225:
Why nonviolence?

Our campaigns for correcting the climate crisis will have more strength if they actively deny our opponents the cooperation they need through nonviolent methods, methods that do not physically harm human bodies or threaten to do so.

Contrary to some misunderstandings, nonviolence does not usually succeed by converting the opponent. Conversion happens only rarely (though likely more often than when using violent methods).

Instead of conversion, nonviolence has its effect by withdrawing cooperation from the opponent and instead organizing cooperation toward our goals.

The strikes of working people form an example of this nonviolent tactic. In essence, strikers say "Agree to our demands or we'll stop working for you and will persuade others to not work for you." Picket lines call for everyone to refuse cooperation with the strike's target.

We should use active nonviolence because it:

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2023-08-29, Strategy Note 226:
Learn. Cooperate. Enjoy. Win.

I hope these notes on strategy will help us learn. Help us learn to learn.

Us. Not just you, dear reader, but also me. Here I offer my current thinking about what might help achieve useful goals. But I don't actually know what will work. Nobody knows.

So don't try to implement these ideas by rote. That almost certainly won't work. Instead try something, see what results, adjust, repeat. That cycle has a chance of developing useful results.

Even better: talk things over with friends, together choose something and try it, talk over the results and what y'all want to adjust, make those adjustments, repeat. Work together. Help each other work together.

Celebrating together and enjoying our shared lives and work helps us work together.

Learn. Cooperate. Celebrate. Enjoy. Persist. Win.

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2023-09-05, Strategy Note 227:
We have a chance.

Can we make these changes to correct our climate crisis? Do we have a chance?

Yes, we have a chance.

No law of nature or of logic prevents any of these goals.

We have the possibility of achieving all of these goals.

We have no certainty of success. We have no certainty of failure.

The future --our future-- remains completely undetermined.

The goals outlined here require work to accomplish. The choices we make and the actions we take (together with the choices and actions of everyone else) will create the society in which we live.

We have choices to make. We have work to do.

Learn. Cooperate. Celebrate. Enjoy. Persist. Win.

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2023-09-12, Strategy Note 228:
A strong NC labor movement

Consider three facts:

I interpret these facts as meaning:

This Strategy Note begins a series on how to do that. Informed by interviews with union leaders across our state, this series will sketch what a seriously stronger labor movement might look like. It will account for our current strengths and weaknesses -- and how to use the former to correct the latter. It will apply theory to our daily practical organizing. It will explain why everybody wanting a better North Carolina should support strong, democratic labor unions.

Some of my recommendations may raise eyebrows. Buckle your seatbelt. We have some rough road ahead as we build a strong North Carolina labor movement.

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2023-09-19, Strategy Note 229:
How NC labor unions matter

Some people may wonder why we should care about unions. A few reasons:

We have serious union strength. We can grow far larger and stronger.

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2023-09-26, Strategy Note 230:
How many NC union members?

The federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates North Carolina had 125,000 union members in 2022. That ranked us 29th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Should we believe their estimate?

These BLS numbers come from a survey. They also write "The state section of this release preserves the long-time practice of highlighting the state union membership rates and levels regardless of their statistical significance."

BLS's data on NC's union membership from 2000 to 2022 suggest it fluctuated wildly between 76,000 and 145,000 with the low in 2014 and the high in 2017. I doubt our membership changed that fast. Looking at their graph, I suspect their numbers imprecisely fluctuate around a fairly steady actual membership. Their 118,000 average seems a reasonable estimate of that level. We should not put much confidence in any specific year's number.

Less formal estimates in recent years generally have landed in this same range. I consider the BLS number of NC union members a reasonable but very rough estimate and think the real current total (somewhere between 75,000 and 175,000) has held fairly steady in this century.

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2023-10-03, Strategy Note 231:
NC union density, relative power

Last week's Strategy Note suggested North Carolina's union membership has remained roughly level this century. NC's total employment, however, has grown -- yielding a declining union density (the number of union members in NC divided by the number of people employed in NC).

In the 2022 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, we rank ninth among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for the number of employed people, 29th for the number of union members, and 50th for union density.

As previously explained, we should treat the BLS estimate of NC union membership as very rough. Their estimate of our union density depends on that very rough estimate, making the union density estimate even rougher.

Both numbers matter. Our number of members matters because more members can do more. Membership numbers contribute to our potential power. Density (the portion of the workforce who have joined our unions) matters because it contributes to our power relative to other social forces -- such as bosses and the owners they serve.

We need both potential and relative power. In North Carolina, we have a good base of potential power. We need to use that base to strengthen our relative power.

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2023-10-10, Strategy Note 232:
Questions for NC labor strategy?

Any strategy should describe its beginning situation, specify its goal or goals, and sketch a plausible sequence of actions that lead from the starting situation to accomplishment of the goals.

However, as military theorists put it, no plan survives contact with the enemy. So beyond sketching a plausible sequence of action, a good strategy most importantly provides a way to think about the conflict that helps us improvise coherently and effectively amidst the confusion of actually waging the conflict.

This series of Strategy Notes has begun describing our current situation of North Carolina's labor movement and, I expect, will continue doing that before addressing the other tasks of a strategy. But today's Strategy Note interrupts that sequence to ask for your help:

What questions should a strategy for working people in North Carolina answer?

Please reply to this email with your thoughts. I'll give you the same anonymity I promise to the labor leaders I've begun interviewing. I won't quote you in a way that could identify you and won't even identify you as one of my sources.

I look forward to your questions. Thank you!

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2023-10-17, Strategy Note 233:
Measure union density to grow

Two weeks ago Strategy Note 231 explained that we can think of union density (the number of union members divided by the number of people with jobs) as an approximation of union power relative to other social forces.

Viewed that way, North Carolina's low union density (estimated as the lowest or next to lowest in the nation in recent decades) helps explain why our state has such anti-worker policies.

I haven't given the number for our estimated union density because that statewide estimate seems too unreliable for most purposes. However, putting a number to union density matters enormously for estimating union strength in a specific workplace (your Starbuck's, for example) or in a specific set of related workplaces (food and beverage retail outlets in your county, for example).

When measuring union density matters, we don't rely on estimates from survey samples. We count who pays their dues and divide that count by the number of people who work there. That calculation helps us monitor our progress.

Low statewide union density means we have plenty of opportunities to grow. Our unions should not try to poach members from other unions. Organize the unorganized!

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2023-10-24, Strategy Note 234:
Racism hinders union density

Union members from elsewhere may have found last week's Strategy Note puzzling. They might wonder, "Don't all union workplaces have 100% density?"

Not in states that prohibit union-only workplaces. In North Carolina's General Statutes that happens in Section 95-79(a), which passed in 1947. Many of our worst laws passed during the efforts to maintain racial segregation.

Just as racism explains many peculiarities of the United States, it helps explain low union density -- and not just in the South.

For example, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) specifically excludes farmworkers and "domestic" (household) workers from its meagre protections for union activity. When it passed in 1935 almost only Black workers held such jobs. Segregationist members of Congress refused to support the bill until it excluded those workers.

In addition to official racism, we also must face the fact that many unions explicitly practiced racist exclusion -- and not just in the South.

Beginning in the 1930s, however, some unions --including some in North Carolina-- opposed segregation (at least at work) and suffered harsh repression as a result. Racists openly shot and killed anti-racist labor organizers as recently as 1979 in North Carolina.

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2023-10-31, Strategy Note 235:
What does that jargon mean?

I hope defining some terms will help us have a shared understanding of this series of Strategy Notes. You may find these terms used slightly differently elsewhere, but here:

If you want something else explained, please reply to this email and let me know.

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2023-11-07, Strategy Note 236:
Hurray for more jargon!

"Work" means what humans do that produces and distributes goods and services. I do not limit this word to producing and distributing within exchange relationships. When a parent wipes the runny nose of their child, I count that action as work even though most parents don't charge their young for such service. Likewise, producing for our own use counts as work.

"Property" means the socially supported exclusive right to use and dispose of something. It usually relies on the existence of a power that enforces those rights, usually by violence and the threat of violence.

"Exchange" means trading ownership. Exchange often takes a form like "I'll give you this if you give me that". Exchange relies on transferable property rights.

Humans today have two parallel economies with only occasional connections between them:

Both economies depend on working people. The exchange economy depends parasitically on the sharing economy to produce workers.

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2023-11-14, Strategy Note 237:
Power

"Power" means the ability to cause things to happen. Individual power comes from what we each can do with our own muscles and mind. Social power comes from individuals cooperating to use their individual power together.

People can cooperate willingly or unwillingly but without cooperation nothing happens on a large scale among humans. Cooperation happens far more efficiently and effectively when we cooperate willingly.

"Leading" and "organizing" mean thinking about people (about people, not for them) and using that thinking to help people cooperate toward a goal. Leading/organizing help us wield social power. Without leadership nothing happens on a large scale among humans.

Many people assume leading and organizing mean giving speeches or orders. Leadership can happen through speeches and orders if they help people cooperate.

Many people incorrectly think of leaders and organizers as special kinds of people. Actually everybody leads except the extreme few who live in isolation. Everybody organizes. Everybody helps people cooperate. We also all follow; we benefit from others helping us cooperate. We can learn to lead well and to follow well. Cooperation happens best when everybody leads, organizes, follows, and learns to do it all well.

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2023-11-21, Strategy Note 238:
Faith in each other

Last week's Strategy Note mentioned that sometimes speeches can help people cooperate. In a speech on 13 September 2023, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain introduced their "Stand-Up Strike" plan. Read his speech or watch it.

A little past the middle of that speech, Fain says:

"Making bold demands and organizing to fight for them is an act of faith. It’s an act of faith in each other....

We fight not only for the good of our union or for the good of our members and our families. We fight for the good of the entire working class.

I believe that great things are possible, but only if we are able to shed our fear. Only if we stop letting the billionaire class define what is possible and what is realistic. They have spent decades convincing us that we are weak....

I’m here to tell you, those days are behind us and today we take the next step in leaving that past behind. But to do that, again, we must have faith in each other."

Let's organize, lead, and follow in ways that strengthen our faith in each other.

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2023-11-28, Strategy Note 239:
Sources of union power

The power of unions comes from two sources:

A large part of union power comes from the willingness and ability of members to strike -- to withhold their labor from their employer and prevent their employer from substituting other people's labor for theirs. Strikes succeed by imposing costs on the employer, usually by interrupting production. Strikes also create costs for the striking members, the union as a whole, and society at large.

The relative ability and willingness of affected entities (members, employer, public) to endure their costs determines who wins. Because society at large usually has more resources than the union or the employer, whichever side has the support of society at large has a big advantage. Therefore unions must organize not just in their workplaces but also in society at large.

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2023-12-05, Strategy Note 240:
We organize at multiple scales

People active in North Carolina's labor movement organize in at least four scales of population and work for at least four scales of goals.

The four scales of population:

The four scales of goals:

Work at all these scales potentially reinforce each other. We who work at any of these scales should value and support the work in all of these scales.

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2023-12-12, Strategy Note 241:
Attitudes and beliefs matter

Our attitudes and beliefs matter. They influence our choices and actions. Other factors also influence our choices and actions but they often do so by influencing our beliefs and attitudes.

We have a technical term for ideas, attitudes, and beliefs: ideology. We could also call it culture.

Cultures make some ideas easier to accept (or even to notice) than other ideas.

Attitudes, beliefs, ideology, and culture all constantly change. No person or society has a constant set of attitudes, beliefs, ideology, culture enduring in all details over a long period of time. People constantly learn and change.

Sometimes we notice our changes as they happen. Sometimes we intentionally choose our changes. Sometimes we change without noticing. People and societies constantly change.

Organizers don't need to cause change. Organizers merely need to guide the direction in which people and societies change.

Experiences guide us more than exhortations do. Everything that happens to someone changes them, at least temporarily. Everything anyone experiences affects their attitudes and beliefs.

We get to think about what attitudes and beliefs strengthen our labor movement and what experiences encourage those desired attitudes and beliefs. We can think about the experiences our everyday interactions create.

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2023-12-19, Strategy Note 242:
What attitudes and beliefs support labor?

Last week's Strategy Note implied something I should state explicitly: We can and should create experiences that increase attitudes and beliefs beneficial to a healthy, strong labor movement.

Our North Carolina labor movement --like any effort to achieve social goals-- benefits from correctly understanding our world. So we need accurate attitudes and beliefs. Key attitudes and beliefs include the following:

What experiences support these helpful attitudes and beliefs? Mainly the experience of good cooperation. We can tell people about the benefits of working well together but the best persuasion comes from actually experiencing it. Good organizing persuades far better than talking or writing.

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2023-12-26, Strategy Note 243:
Every 96 minutes

On 19 December 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, a federal government agency) reported on workplace deaths in the United States in 2022. Three facts from that report:

Most workplaces in the exchange-based portion of our economy (the only portion examined by the BLS) function as part of profit-seeking businesses or as cost-minimizing public agencies or nonprofits. Some investment in safety can increase profits or cut costs. However, most employers can meet their monetary goals easiest by avoiding the investments necessary to maximally protect workers.

The exchange-based portion of our economic system pressures employers to make those lethal choices. Employers don't usually sacrifice workers' lives maliciously. They sacrifice workers' lives economically.

Working people need to build strong unions with good safety teams to defend ourselves.

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2024-01-02, Strategy Note 244:
Workers don't die randomly

As mentioned in last week's Strategy Note, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (an agency of the United States government) reported recently on workplace deaths in this country in 2022.

Consider three quotes from that report:

Simplifying the last two quotes, Black workers and women workers died from work-related homicide at roughly twice the rate of workers in general.

If we encounter people who claim that racism and sexism don't have significant effects in United States workplaces we should ask them how they explain these non-random deaths.

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2024-01-09, Strategy Note 245:
Some ideas that hinder us

Strategy Note 241 discussed the importance of attitudes and beliefs. Strategy Note 242 mentioned attitudes and beliefs that support our labor movement.

Our labor movement in North Carolina in many ways has better attitudes and beliefs than the population at large. But we still have some attitudes and beliefs that reduce our strength. We might have them less than some other segments of North Carolina, but we need to overcome them completely.

Some of those counter-productive attitudes:

All of these attitudes mislead us. They teach falsehoods. They weaken our labor movement. We need to heal the misunderstandings and confusions that contribute to these false attitudes in ourselves, each other, our movement, and everybody.

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2024-01-16, Strategy Note 246:
Leaderism

Last week's Strategy Note mentioned "leaderism" as an attitude that weakens us. By "leaderism" I mean the tendency to leave decision-making and initiative to only a few "special" people.

Everybody can make good decisions when they have a decent opportunity. Our organizations generally make better decisions when more members participate in making them.

Anybody who can change a flat tire or a dirty diaper can likely learn to facilitate a meeting, balance an organization's budget, or set up a picket. Why do otherwise competent people doubt they can?

Because generations of propaganda says working people can only use our muscles and not our minds.

Anybody who raises a child or cooks a meal clearly uses their mind. But in spite of the evidence of our daily lives, the constant negativity about working people has an effect. It causes many of us to doubt ourselves. That we merely doubt after millennia of lies about us shows how loyally our good minds cling to reality.

What can we do about leaderism? This Strategy Note begins to diagnose it. Next week's Strategy Note explains one more cause and offers a cure.

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2024-01-23, Strategy Note 247:
How to cure leaderism

Last week's Strategy Note defined leaderism as the tendency to leave decision-making and initiative to only a few "special" people and described it as resulting from generations of anti-worker propaganda.

I should also mention one more cause of leaderism: Seeing leaders get attacked makes many of us reluctant to offer leadership.

Attacks on labor leaders come from the opponents of labor and sometimes from within our movement.

Vigorous debates about what our labor movement should do contribute to our effectiveness. Attacks differ from debates and disagreements. Attacks try to destroy instead of to convince.

We can learn to handle attacks just like we learn how to do so many other things. We can defend our leaders against attacks on them even when we disagree with them. We can protect our leaders (and everybody) from attacks.

To cure leaderism:

Easier written than done, but completely learnable, doable, and necessary.

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2024-01-30, Strategy Note 248:
Understanding BLS union survey data

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, a United States government agency) reported on 2023 United States union membership.

To understand the report, a few suggestions:

Those rankings look plausible. We have more working people than most states, so even our low density means we have many (125,000) union members.

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2024-02-06, Strategy Note 249:
Black Liberation History Month

We should think of all history as workers' history. Some king might sit in the palace but working people built the palace. If working people don't obey, the king doesn't rule. Working people create human history.

Likewise, United States history means the history of Native working people, Black working people, Spanish-speaking working people, female working people, and all the working people who built (voluntarily or involuntarily) this country.

So we can welcome February's Black History Month as a reminder to talk about a necessary (but too often suppressed) part of our true history. We need to tell true history all year -- not just in the shortest month.

Some of the Black leaders I most value refer to February not only as Black History Month but as Black Liberation History Month. That extra word emphasizes that Black history in this country means the history of a continuing struggle for recognition as human and for the vibrant lives that all humans deserve.

North Carolina's labor movement also struggles for recognition and for vibrant lives. We should celebrate the Black liberation movement as a key part of our broad liberation movement.

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2024-02-13, Strategy Note 250:
Organizations you need as allies

Last Tuesday's Strategy Note welcomed Black Liberation History Month and said we should treat all history as workers' history.

History didn't just happen long ago. Working people make history every day, including today.

North Carolina's labor movement benefits from many strong, well-led organizations. Three key organizations with strong Black leadership continue making liberation history here today: Black Workers For Justice (BWFJ), North Carolina Public Service Workers Union (UE150), and Southern Workers Assembly (SWA).

These organizations have had overlapping and highly principled leaders. "Principled" does not mean rigid; these leaders learn and change their policies when needed.

I don't always agree with them on every question of our broad liberation struggle. But we can debate the details on which we haven't yet found agreement while valuing each other as trusted allies.

You also need them as allies. Show up for their events. Invite them to your events. Hire BWFJ's singing group "The Fruit of Labor" to get the crowd fired up at your next rally. Perhaps invite UE150 and SWA to send observers to your union's convention. Look for ways to work together.

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2024-02-20, Strategy Note 251:
Workers' Bill of Rights

Last week's Strategy Note mentioned the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union (UE Local 150). UE150 and other unions have members in our state and local governments.

Because General Statute 95-98 prohibits collectively bargained contracts (but allows unions), union members working for state and local governments do not have union contracts.

Repealing GS95-98 will likely require a broad working-class-led grassroots political campaign that wins public opinion and engages voters to replace or shift anti-worker legislators. This may require non-gerrymandered redistricting. Many North Carolinians work for these goals.

Meanwhile, UE150 proposes a "Workers' Bill of Rights" (WBOR) for city and county governments to pass as local resolutions or ordinances. WBOR doesn't violate GS95-98. It recognizes modest basic rights (health and safety committees, workplace bulletin boards and the right to post on them, access to workplaces by organizers, quarterly meetings with management, input on budget and hiring, etc.)

UE150 has promises for three of the five votes needed for Raleigh's city council to pass WBOR. Unions, community organizations, and voters working together can win WBOR in Raleigh and elsewhere, improving life for local government employees and for all whom they serve.

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2024-02-27, Strategy Note 252:
Major work stoppages

On 21 February 2024 the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, an agency of the United States government) reported on "Major Work Stoppages" in 2023.

Most BLS data comes from surveys but this report actually counts major work stoppages in the United States based on media reports, government data, and direct communication with unions and employers. "Major" stoppages involve at least 1,000 workers for at least one full shift on a non-holiday weekday.

BLS writes, "Because of the complexity of most labor-management disputes, [this report] makes no attempt to distinguish between strikes and lockouts.... The workers involved ... may or may not be members of a union." Their website presents their data and methods.

Thirty three major work stoppages began in 2023, the largest number since 2000. In recent years the number fluctuated between five and 25, so 2023's increase --while obvious-- doesn't look drastic given this measure's volatility. (See Chart 1 in the report.)

This data suggests open conflict between workers and large employers has begun intensifying but hasn't yet seriously exceeded recent levels.

North Carolina workers engaged in one of 2023's major stoppages (the United Auto Workers' strike against Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis).

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2024-03-05, Strategy Note 253:
Current balance of power

We need to evaluate actions such as strikes primarily by whether they make us stronger or weaker. The particular details won or lost matter, but the overall change in the balance of power between workers and owners matters most. We need to constantly evaluate this balance of power.

This question of the balance of power applies to workplaces and to larger areas such as towns, states, nations, and the planet. The balance at each level influences the balances at other levels.

Potentially, workers always have the ultimate power. Without our work, nothing happens on a large scale. Practically, however, the balance currently favors owners. Because many workers do not yet understand our potential power and have not yet organized ways to collectively wield our full power, we currently have to settle for far less than everything.

Sometimes workers organize sufficiently to shift the local balance of power more favorably. Then they can often win laws or contracts that help preserve and even strengthen our balance of power.

We can think of the Workers' Bill of Rights mentioned two weeks ago as an example of capturing in local law a slightly more favorable balance of power.

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2024-03-12, Strategy Note 254:
Key balance-of-power factor

Strategy Note 253 said we should evaluate the balance of power between workers and owners at every level of society.

Many factors affect this balance, but one factor matters most: How much unity do working people have?

Owners (and their politicians and managers) understand that they cannot allow working people to unite in our own interests. So they exploit and intensify divisions among us.

Whenever we notice ourselves thinking negatively about ourselves or another working person --especially when we speak or act on such thoughts-- we hinder the unity we need.

We must bridge all divisions among working people (race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, education, economic role, religion, nationality, disability, immigration status, body shape, political party, sports loyalty, car brand, whatever).

We can overcome such divisions with respectful, one-to-one listening and telling our own stories. Getting to know each other one-to-one by listening and talking forms the foundation of our unity. Study groups, reading and discussion groups, social times, and trainings help, but the most progress happens in one-to-one listening and working together for shared goals.

Unions sing about solidarity. We must also build solidarity as an everyday way of life.

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2024-03-19, Strategy Note 255:
Data matters. Handle with care.

Strategy Note 252 discussed recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, an agency of the United States government) on major work stoppages.

Data matters because it can help us avoid misunderstandings caused by feelings like discouragement or enthusiasm.

How we collect and interpret data also matters. Sloppy interpretations (or, more rarely, deliberately skewed data) can mislead as easily as emotions can.

Having multiple data sources can help. For example, a team of researchers at Cornell University also reports work stoppage data. Unlike BLS, they don't limit their report to "major" stoppages.

Data can help us think clearly about our world, but first we need to think about the data. For example, in counts of work stoppages, should the United Automobile Workers' 2023 "Stand Up strike" count as one stoppage, as three (for the three companies struck), or a count for each workplace struck? These kinds of judgment calls often affect data.

We also must remember that data shows us the past. Reality may have already changed from the time of that data.

Data matters. Use it. Consider it in the context of everything you know (or think you know).

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2024-03-26, Strategy Note 256:
Celebrate May Day!

When International Workers' Day arrives on 1 May, let's celebrate!

On May Day celebrate working people: our strength, wisdom, and the loving care we practice for each other and for our world. Honor the workers (enslaved and "free") who built this society and won our far-too-limited freedoms.

May Day began in this country as part of the struggle for the eight-hour workday and in honor of those who died in that struggle. Let's reclaim that tradition.

Every May Day let's celebrate working people's power and discuss what we want. Let's gather for picnics to celebrate, play, and organize discussions: when working people re-organize human society, how do we want it to function?

Let's also discuss what we should demand on 1 May 2028. The United Auto Workers invited unions in this country to align our contracts to expire the day before that May Day so we can --if we have to-- strike together for a big shared demand. What should we use that coordinated power to achieve? What do we want?

It wouldn't hurt to also have such celebrations and discussions again four months later on Labor Day.

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2024-04-02, Strategy Note 257:
Contract pluses and minuses

Strategy Note 253 mentioned capturing in law or contract the then-current balance of power. Doing so has pluses and minuses.

On the plus side, it protects us (at least temporarily) from worsening conditions. On the minus side, it hinders us (at least temporarily) from gaining from upsurges in our strength.

Contracts have additional problems. For example, they generally prohibit strikes and other job actions for the duration of the contract.

Perhaps sometimes we will find it necessary to agree to not strike during a contract's term, but we need to weigh that loss of initiative very carefully. If we give up the right to strike, how will we keep our strike readiness strong for when we need it?

Perhaps a short contract term would help. Perhaps the contract could only prohibit strikes for a few limited issues. Perhaps steady training sessions and vigorous non-strike actions could suffice. Whatever the answer, members and officers need a good plan.

Let's also align our contract expiration dates. The United Auto Workers propose aligning contracts to expire 30 April 2028. Then we can have a big shared demand for which we strike --if necessary-- starting 1 May 2028.

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2024-04-09, Strategy Note 258:
What May Day 2028 demand?

Strategy Note 257 mentioned aligning our contracts to expire 30 April 2028. That would let us strike together --if we have to-- on 1 May 2028 in support of a big demand shared by many unions.

What should we use that coordinated union power to accomplish?

What we can expect to win in 2028 depends on the balance of power then. We might want to choose our shared demand closer to then. Now, while we build our power, we should have many discussions of what we want and what portion of that we should demand in 2028.

For example, should we demand one of these options?

What would you add to (or subtract from) that list? What do your co-workers say when you ask them?

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2024-04-16, Strategy Note 259:
More possible 2028 demands

Strategy Note 258 listed some ideas for what we might demand for May Day 2028.

Some more ideas:

What would you add to --or subtract from-- that list? What do your co-workers say when you ask them?

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2024-04-23, Strategy Note 260:
When choose our 2028 demand?

Strategy Note 258 said we should discuss what big shared demand to make for 1 May 2028. When should we choose that demand?

We should decide close enough to May Day 2028 to reasonably estimate our balance of power then. We also should decide early enough for the federal government (or whoever we target with our demand) to do it before May Day 2028.

Several possible demands in Strategy Note 258 and 259 require passing a federal law and appropriating funds for it. It often takes years to pass and fund a new federal project.

But the federal government can act quickly (for example, bank bailouts and pandemic response). If we have the strength, we may want to allow only a few weeks to meet our demand. Quick action reduces the opportunity for lobbyists to mistreat our bill.

Might this schedule work? In January 2027 we reduce our list of possible demands to three. That year we get those bills drafted and introduced. On 1 March 2028 we announce which of those bills must become law before 1 May 2028.

What do you think? What do your co-workers say when you ask them?

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2024-04-30, Strategy Note 261:
Discuss possible 2028 demands everywhere

Recent Strategy Notes have discussed what big shared demand we might make for 1 May 2028 and when to choose that demand.

But we do not currently have the power to demand much. The UAW alone cannot win the kinds of demands listed in Strategy Notes 258 and 259. Other unions have not yet joined in aligning contracts to expire 30 April 2028.

To get alignment, union members need to see what we might win.

So let's have many discussions of possible demands. In local meetings, we might list on a big sheet of paper all the possible demands people suggest. Then discuss the list in table-sized groups and in the whole meeting. Then everybody gets four stickers to allocate among the possible demands. A second round of discussions and stickers will likely produce a few clear favorites.

Have many such sessions at local, regional, and national levels. Report the results widely. Get many union and non-union organizations to join that process. Use this process repeatedly during 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Throughout these discussions, emphasize preparing to strike together on 1 May 2028 if we have to. That includes aligning contract expirations.

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2024-05-07, Strategy Note 262:
Choosing our shared 2028 demand

Recent Strategy Notes outlined possible big shared demands for May Day 2028, how to discuss possible demands widely, and when to choose our shared demand.

But how should we choose?

We want to choose in a way that maximizes support for our shared demand both within unions and throughout the people of our country.

How about choosing this way? In 2026 the UAW (or perhaps the AFL-CIO) invites everybody who wants to help choose the demand to register with them. In January 2027, they hold a nationwide mail-in ballot to rank the possible demands. In 2027 we get bills drafted and introduced in Congress for the top three or four demands.

In February 2028 a second mail-in vote selects one of those top possibilities. On 1 March 2028, we announce the result, demanding passage of our selected bill before 1 May 2028. We visibly prepare to strike on 1 May 2028 if we have to.

Once we win 2028's big shared demand, we can do it every year for a new demand. So let's either remove no-strike clauses from our contracts or give them all one-year terms expiring every 30 April.

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2024-05-14, Strategy Note 263:
Build support for 2028 demand

(For a downloadable PDF file of Strategy Note 263 for printing as flyers, please PDF opens in new window,150kbclick here! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

What should we do to build strong support throughout unions and the general public for our big shared May Day 2028 demand and for the widespread strike we will likely need to win it?

The discussions sketched in Strategy Note 261 and the broadly inclusive method of choosing the demand outlined in Strategy Note 262 will certainly help build that support. People more strongly support goals they have helped choose.

Along with those discussions, we could also:

What else do you think we should do?

What do you want to do in these transformational years? What will help you prepare? What do your co-workers say when you ask them?

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2024-05-21, Strategy Note 264:
Prepare for takeoff

(Please PDF opens in new window,150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 264 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

The recent data on work stoppages in 2023 mentioned in Strategy Notes 252 and 255 show a small increase from recent years. By itself, that data doesn't suggest much has changed in our balance of power.

But consider that data in the context of:

Taken together, these factors suggest that --while we have not yet reached takeoff-- we may have begun nudging in that direction. If so, energetic organizing now looks very useful. Such organizing should emphasize building strong foundations for rapid union growth.

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2024-05-28, Strategy Note 265:
Strong foundations for rapid growth

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 265 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Last week's Strategy Note said unions should build strong foundations for rapid union growth to get ready for our coming surge.

Strong foundations for rapid union growth should include:

We don't have to have all of these elements in place before takeoff. The more of them we have, the better we can grow rapidly and healthily.

How do you want to help do this work in these transformational years? What will help you do it? What do your co-workers say when you ask them?

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2024-06-04, Strategy Note 266:
"Billionaire class" and "corporate greed"

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 266 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Some excellent working class leaders like United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and valued allies like Senator Bernie Sanders speak and write about "the billionaire class" and "corporate greed."

By themselves, these terms oversimplify matters and have the potential to confuse.

Yes, billionaires generally have a harmful net influence. Yes, tax policy should prevent such wealth concentration.

But billionaires and corporations don't do harm because of greed or some other character flaw. They do harm because our current economic system pressures them to do so. We could tax billionaires out of existence --and should-- but that alone won't fix the problem.

Any economic system based on property and exchange --especially any with a capitalist structure-- will concentrate wealth, resist regulation, create inequality, and hinder democracy.

To escape this problem, we must replace property and exchange with solidarity and sharing. Smaller improvements will remain threatened until we make this big necessary change.

We can use "corporate greed" and "the billionaire class" as short terms for our immediate opponents. But we must also point out the reality of systemic harmful pressure and the need for a foundational economic change to end that pressure.

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2024-06-11, Strategy Note 267:
Appeal to emotion or reason?

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 267 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Last week's Strategy Note mentioned "corporate greed" and "the billionaire class" as terms that can mislead.

We often encounter oversimplified terms like these in speeches and writings designed to rile people up by appealing to their hatred of injustice.

We should, of course, despise injustice. But we also need to rationally understand the causes of injustice. Otherwise we have little chance of actually eliminating it.

We need to engage emotions and reason.

The exploiters of working people use emotion as they strive to divide and subordinate us. We need an accurate rational understanding of how this exploitative system functions to avoid getting misled by our opponents' appeal to emotions.

Appeals to negative emotions like fear (and its derivatives anger and hatred) especially tend to mislead. Fear tends to isolate us. Property, exchange, and capitalism thrive on fear. When engaging emotions, we should focus on positive emotions like love and hope.

We need appeals both to positive emotions and to reason. We humans don't make decisions just by reason. But we also shouldn't rely only on emotion. We need to engage whole people: our emotional minds and our rational minds.

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2024-06-18, Strategy Note 268:
We must break laws

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 268 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Strategy Notes 253 and 254 said we should improve the balance of power between working people and owners. We can sometimes win small improvements using legal methods.

Because owners largely control the government, their laws only allow us small wins. We cannot win big, lasting changes in the balance of power just by legal means.

Consider a few examples:

Because our opponents currently make the laws, we cannot treat laws as holy idols that we must not violate.

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2024-06-25, Strategy Note 269:
We have two parallel economies

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 269 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Strategy Note 266 said we must replace property and exchange with solidarity and sharing.

Mainstream economists only consider exchange-based relationships. Fortunately, human economies have much more happening than mere exchange.

We currently have two economies operating simultaneously: an exchange economy and a solidarity (exchange-free) economy.

In the exchange economy, we buy, sell, hire, get paid jobs, rent, barter, etc.

In our solidarity economy, however, nobody charges infants for food, care, and shelter. We just give them what they need to the best of our ability. Friends don't charge each other for playing together. Lovers don't count kisses to make sure they trade equally. Volunteers work without pay in our unions, worship congregations, and organizations for social change and service.

While our solidarity economy currently draws some resources from the exchange economy, we could replace those sources with solidarity-based ones. The exchange economy, however, depends fundamentally on our solidarity economy to produce and prepare people. Without our solidarity economy, the exchange economy wouldn't have workers, customers, or even owners.

The exchange economy needs our solidarity economy. Our solidarity economy does not need the oppressive exchange economy and would function better without it.

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2024-07-02, Strategy Note 270:
Why does exchange harm us?

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 270 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Last week's Strategy Note 269 said our solidarity economy would function better without the exchange economy. Why?

Under exchange, we need to own as much property (such as money) as possible so we have something to exchange for what we need. That pressure to accumulate causes much harm.

Exchange pressures us to accumulate. The need to accumulate creates pressure to profit. Needing to profit creates a need to cut costs. The pressure to reduce costs can create some social benefit if, for example, it prompts energy-saving innovation. But businesses often find it easier to cut costs by making others pay them. Polluting avoids the cost of cleaning up. Skimping on staffing and safety cuts costs while risking workplace injuries and deaths.

These harms come from exchange's pressure to accumulate, profit, and reduce costs. These pressures will exist in any economy that relies on property and exchange, especially in capitalist forms of exchange.

In a democracy, the many working people could outvote the wealthy few. So an exchange economy pressures owners to prevent democracy.

In the long run, if we want a healthy planet, safe work, and democracy, we must eliminate property and exchange.

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2024-07-09, Strategy Note 271:
We can thrive without exchange

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 271 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Last week's Strategy Note 270 said we need to eliminate exchange. How might an economy completely free from exchange operate?

Let's each do the work we want to do, contribute the fruits of our work to the general supply, and help ourselves to what we want from the general supply. For work we agree needs doing but too few people want to do it, we take turns.

In other words, we expand the set of people with whom we share exchange-free relationships to include everybody.

We'll still work but we'll make useful things and provide useful services instead of just making money. We can sloganize that as "Make use value, not exchange value!"

But won't some people take advantage of that arrangement? Yes, some will at first. Generations of oppressive exchange relationships have confused some people so much that they will grab and hoard.

That tendency will gradually disappear as people see the new arrangement working reliably. Most people will soon find it works better to pick up a few bananas from the supply whenever they want than to haul a case of bananas home under each arm every time a shipment of bananas arrive.

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2024-07-16, Strategy Note 272:
But what about efficiency?

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 272 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Last week's Strategy Note 271 sketched an economy free from exchange and said that --for work we agree needs doing but too few people want to do it-- we'll take turns.

Taking turns like that will create some inefficiency. If I do one shift per year collecting garbage, I'll never get as efficient as the skilled people who currently do five shifts per week.

I prefer that kind of inefficiency to forcing some people to spend their lives in dangerous or unpleasant jobs.

Our exchange-free economy can afford that limited relative inefficiency because we will no longer waste time and resources on some old activities. Vast industries will become obsolete: insurance, banking, finance, real estate, most advertising, most accounting, taxation, property laws and their enforcement, and most of our current military and spying expenses.

Stopping those wastes means we can afford to treat each other as treasured fellow humans and not abandon anyone to a life of drudgery. To get that change, I'll collect garbage occasionally. What about you?

Some people don't have the ability to collect garbage. We'll have many other kinds of work for which we'll need people to take turns.

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2024-07-23, Strategy Note 273:
How replace exchange with solidarity?

(Please PDF opens in new window, ~150kbdownload a PDF file of Strategy Note 273 for printing as flyers! Hand them out, post them on bulletin boards, etc.)

Strategy Note 270 said we need to eliminate exchange. How?

We don't need fundamentally new kinds of economic relationships. We just need to expand our solidarity relationships to include everybody. As that expansion happens, we will no longer need exchange relationships.

Replacing exchange with solidarity will create a big change. It will make more difference in our lives than did the industrial revolution or possibly our development of agriculture.

We humans make big changes in the way we live. We make big changes quite often in comparison with other species. Now we get to make another big change.

We have four tasks during this change:

We should not underestimate the difficulty of these tasks but we also shouldn't overestimate their difficulty. Nothing in logic or the laws of nature prevents them. The next Strategy Notes describe approaches to each task.

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2024-07-30, Strategy Note 274:
Renovate infrastructure for new relationships

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Strategy Note 273 said we need to renovate infrastructure to make it suit our exchange-free economy.

A few examples:

Use designs tailored to local conditions and local preferences. Every place will have its own distinct character.

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2024-08-06, Strategy Note 275:
Replace our exchange-based assumptions

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Strategy Note 273 said we need to replace our exchange-based assumptions with ones suiting our new relationships. How?

The experience of struggle changes us. We remake ourselves and our assumptions by waging the campaigns necessary to win the transition from exchange to solidarity.

So we mustn't win too quickly. We probably need at least a few years of transformational struggle, perhaps decades or generations. I see no current danger of winning too quickly.

We should win as quickly as we can. The resistance by exchange's lingering adherents will surely suffice to delay us enough and require enough struggle for our transformation to happen. In this way, their opposition helps us make the changes we need.

That transformational struggle has, of course, already begun.

By reading this Strategy Note, you help the transition happen. By talking about these ideas, you help it happen. By arguing against these ideas, you help it happen.

At the current stage of our transition, engaging with these ideas in any way --even in opposition-- helps them spread. People who oppose these ideas should completely ignore them for now. Which, of course, lets them spread quietly until opponents can no longer ignore them.

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2024-08-13, Strategy Note 276:
How coordinate without prices?

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Strategy Note 273 said we need to develop a coordinating system to replace "invisible hand" coordination via prices.

Suppose, for example, a crew harvests a truckload of apples. What do they do with them? Under exchange, they sell them to a distributor who sells them to stores that will find the final buyers. That system requires a complex network of standards, communication, negotiation, contracts, warehouses, etc.

Prices and a desire for profit motivate the many decisions along the supply chains of the exchange economy. Free from prices and profit, how might our solidarity economy make such decisions?

Imagine an internet-based system through which we allocate resources by matching supplies with needs and desires while minimizing transport and waste. When we lack supplies, we take turns. If we don't have enough bananas for every place that wants them, localities take turns getting bananas and we consider planting more bananas.

Our solidarity coordination doesn't need perfection. The exchange system certainly didn't offer perfection. We just need to not waste more than old system and to do less harm. That modest goal seems achievable.

Easier written than done, of course, but I expect we can solve that problem.

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2024-08-20, Strategy Note 277:
How defeat enforcement of exchange?

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The property-exchange regime causes fear of scarcity and interprets any reduction in wealth as a threat of starvation. Some current owners will fear our replacement of exchange with solidarity. Some will try to enforce exchange relationships.

Confusion caused by fear can cause people to act viciously. We must prepare to handle violent attacks while we replace exchange relationships with solidarity relationships.

We will handle attacks on two levels simultaneously:

Withdrawing cooperation works democratically. As long as some people want exchange relationships, they can use them. As more and more people agree with us, exchange's remaining adherents will find it difficult to require others to rely on the dwindling exchange economy.

Nonviolent noncooperation does not solve everything magically. Enforcers of exchange will likely kill many people. But they already do that. Withdrawing our cooperation from them and building our solidarity economy hastens the end of killing for exchange.

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2024-08-27, Strategy Note 278:
We won't need unions forever

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We organize labor unions as temporary tools to help us achieve certain goals.

As our short-term goal, we use unions to organize for immediate improvements within the existing exploitative system. This goal includes things like healthy and safe workplaces, decent pay, workers controlling their schedules, working people having a strong voice in government, etc.

As our mid-term goal, we use unions to organize to create the conditions necessary for the big long-term changes we need. Currently that means spreading good understanding of exchange, how it hurts us, and how we can eliminate it.

As our main, long-term goal, we use unions to organize for a world in which workers (not owners) control work and our lives. In that world, we will have eliminated property and exchange. Then we'll have no need for unions in their current form.

In the long term, we use unions to organize to make unions unnecessary.

We need to work on all these goals simultaneously. We can't leave some for later. We should frequently evaluate how well we make progress toward all these goals and revise our work accordingly.

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2024-09-03, Strategy Note 279:
How might union success look?

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In the short term (0-20 years), labor union success in North Carolina might mean:

In the middle term (5-50 years), labor union success might mean working people control government well enough to regulate exchange to protect ourselves from its extremes. It might mean we have built organizations for exchange-free production and distribution in preparation for eliminating exchange.

In the long term (20-200 years), labor union success means we will not need unions because we have built a world free of exchange and the necessity to work for pay.

While we need progress toward all these goals, many labor activists specialize. Some work toward shorter-term goals and some toward longer-term goals. Sensible work toward any of these goals helps all the goals. We should see each other as allies no matter which of these goals we work toward.

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2024-09-10, Strategy Note 280:
Organize locally and globally

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Some of North Carolina's employers --especially manufacturing employers-- moved here to flee unions elsewhere. That history suggests that North Carolina --like any other locality in the world-- cannot by itself create full success for working people. If we make much progress in that direction, some employers will move to where they can exploit workers more thoroughly than we allow. Or they will prompt governments they control to attack us. We must build a worldwide movement to create good conditions for working people everywhere.

Our labor movement should simultaneously work for long-term, middle-term, and short-term goals. Our movement should simultaneously work locally and globally. Only building a worldwide exchange-free society will succeed in the long term.

Our short-term and middle-term work makes our long-term work possible. They also create the conditions necessary for our long-term success.

Individuals and organizations should specialize in whatever portion of our movement's work attracts them. But our movement as a whole needs to move all these types of work forward together. All of us should value and encourage work of all these types.

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2024-09-17, Strategy Note 281:
Build union democracy

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Within our unions we need to build a vibrant culture of internal debate, study, and union democracy. For some existing unions, this will mean a big shift.

For real union democracy, we need to see internal caucuses as normal and welcome, not "divisive."

The strength of our unions depends on unity and solidarity. For real strength that can survive attacks from outside, we need the strong internal agreement than only comes from respectful, serious debate and internal struggle. If we allow a habit of wishy-washy, go-along-to-get-along "unity," our external opponents can easily break that. We need to struggle fiercely and respectfully within our organizations so we can struggle fiercely and successfully against our external opponents.

We union members call each other "brothers, sisters, and kin" for a reason. We can argue with each other and stand together against our shared opponents.

North Carolina's unions already do better at internal democracy than most other sectors of our broad movement, in which many nonprofit organizations have executive directors as dictatorial as profit-driven corporate CEOs. North Carolina's labor union members also need to continue strengthening our internal democracy.

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2024-09-24, Strategy Note 282:
Disagree with your union officers?

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If officers of your union local don't do what you want, what should you do?

First, talk with them. Say "I think we should do X and I'd like to help us do that. What do you think?" They'll likely welcome your help and support your effort.

Perhaps your idea doesn't make sense to them. They ought to explain why. You get to revise your idea, come up with a better idea, or help with some effort they do support.

If your local has officers who persistently don't act in ways you can support, you have a few options:

I recommend the last two options in that list. Active members and union democracy can fix most problems within a union.

If organizing within your union doesn't work, you have one more option: organize a new union that competes for members with the old one. Before starting that big task, consider carefully. Does any other way look possible?

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2024-10-01, Strategy Note 283:
Who guides your union?

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Many factors influence your union. Some important influencers in order from least to most influence on your local union:

Notice this list also appears in order of your increasing influence on them. So you have your greatest influence on the element with the most influence on your local union. What do you want to do with your influence?

You already guide your union. Even if you do nothing, your inaction influences your union. What do you want to do with your influence? In what direction do you want to lead your union?

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2024-10-08, Strategy Note 284:
Evaluating democracy in your union

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Questions to evaluate your union's democracy:

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2024-10-15, Strategy Note 285:
Evaluating democracy outside your union

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Last week's Strategy Note 284 offered questions for evaluating democracy in your union.

Most of those questions can also apply to other groups of people besides unions.

You likely will notice that your employer doesn't get many yes answers about those democracy questions.

What do the questions in Strategy Note 284 suggest about your political party, worship congregation, school, civic club, recreational group, family, and various levels of government?

Any changes you want to make in any of those settings? Might your fellow union members help make any of those changes?

Why do so many elements of our society do poorly on those questions about real democracy?

If we ever have a serious outbreak of real democracy, what might happen to the economic interests of the wealthiest people?

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2024-10-22, Strategy Note 286:
Whose interests should unions serve?

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Like any organization that intends to last longer than a few minutes, labor unions need to choose priorities among many goals and interests.

For unions, these choices include deciding how to serve the present and long-term interests of:

Here "interests" means interests broadly, not merely pay and working conditions. Interests may include having good neighborhoods and a healthy planet in which to live. They may include having a society that values and respects everyone.

While in principle no conflict exists among these interests, in practice our limited resources and limited imaginations often present us with choices.

Because we have a wide variety of interests among members, we need wide discussion of our union's priorities and how to do our union's work in ways that maximize our effectiveness. We need thorough discussion and debate to help us choose in ways that can get maximum support. Union leaders (both official and unofficial leaders) should give high priority to helping such discussions happen.

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2024-10-29, Strategy Note 287:
Help members choose priorities

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Strategy Note 286 said union leaders (official and unofficial) should help members discuss our union's priorities. How?

The discussions need to actually make a difference. We have experienced fake "democracy" often enough that some of us will doubt such discussions matter until we see consistent proof otherwise.

The leaders of decision-making discussions may state their views but must not unfairly influence the discussions toward or away from any result.

Just as building a car and baking a pie require the necessary ingredients and correctly sequencing their assembly, creating a good decision-making discussion also requires preparation.

Include the correct people in the discussion. That generally means the following people unless y'all have previously decided to omit them for some reason:

You can include people in the discussion with differing roles. For example, perhaps staff people take part in discussing but not in deciding, perhaps an expert answers questions but doesn't discuss or decide, perhaps visitors observe silently.

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2024-11-05, Strategy Note 288:
Decision-making methods and questions

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Last week's Strategy Note 287 began describing how to create democratic discussions, especially discussions leading toward decisions about priorities.

It helps to have a clear method for making the decision and a clear role for this discussion in that method. For example, "The Executive Board will decide. This discussion will decide what to recommend to the E-Board." Or "Today's meeting will start the discussion and we'll decide by Robert's Rules and majority vote at next month's regular meeting." Or "We'll decide this question by discussing it (in multiple meetings if necessary) until at least 90% of members support the decision and nobody blocks it."

State clearly and concretely the question that needs a decision. For example, "Do we believe in solidarity?" offers empty rhetoric without specific results. "Do we delegate Mary from our organizing staff to work for Organization X for the second half of this year?" offers a clear yes/no question about action. "How should we respond to Coalition Y's invitation to join?" offers a clear open-ended question about action.

Revise the question or set of questions as needed to get general agreement that it correctly presents the choice.

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2024-11-12, Strategy Note 289:
Good decisions need several things

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If the actions described in Strategy Notes 287 and 288 don't result in reasonably easy agreement, then help people get what they need for making more difficult decisions:

The more of these things available, the more democratic the discussion possible. Good discussions of big topics can require time, especially when they include many people.

Some union constitutions require making decisions by using Robert's Rules of Order. Those rules have some democratic measures but seek a mere majority-rule version of democracy. We often can make Robert's Rules a bit more democratic by first having discussions as described in these recent Strategy Notes.

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