I'm forwarding the following article by Michael Albert. It strikes me that in
these times any new idea about building a mass left organization is worth
considering. Any comments?
Organization to Liberate Society? (May issue of Z magazine)
By Michael Albert
How big is the choir? How many more people have left values and hopes though
they are not able to act on them? How many people with just a little
explanation and prodding would be in this camp and on the road to activism?
These are fair questions, it seems to me, to which no one has compelling
answers. I recently heard about a web site that wants to find out. It is called
Organization to Liberate Society or OLS for short (and you can find it at:
http://www.olsols.org). They want to tally the choir, and help grow and mobilize
it.
You enter the site and read: "Are you tired of the rich getting richer and
everyone else paying for it? Of the government being an appendage of the Fortune
500? Of not being able to have an effect on health care, education, your job,
the economy, laws, and our culture? Of so much hypocrisy, injustice and just
plain commercial rot? So are we. And as many as we are, as angry at injustice as
we are, and as good-hearted as we are, if we can just get together we can make
a big difference..."
The next thing you read is: "Imagine an organization with a million members
that grows at an accelerating rate. It has a program that stems from the needs
and insights of its membership and it pursues its goals with vigor,
creativity, and determination. It has an inclusive, participatory, democratic
structure evolving in accord with its agenda and principles. And, finally, it's
values and aims are congenial to anyone concerned about creating a truly
humane society. Would you rejoice that such an institution existed? Would you
lend it some of your energies? If you would join when it was large and
effective, would you join just a little earlier, to help create this type
organization?" OLS is for people who are "tired of national political
organizations that are forced by their conditions to spend nearly all their
time trying to determine or refine a program and structure, but which are too
small for these to actually matter much, and (b) tired of having no way to know
the size of the total community of people with broadly progressive values in
the U.S., much less to reach it in a timely and effective manner."
The OLS idea is to recruit, recruit, recruit until there are a million members,
and only then to settle on national program. "The defining features of
political organizations are generally their principles, structure, and
program," reports the OLS web site. "OLS has five defining principles which the
organization pledges to act on.… OLS begins with virtually no internal
structure -- only a membership list and this web site. What it becomes will be
up to the people who make it real. Existing members promote and otherwise
argue on behalf of OLS's principles and enlist new OLS members, creating local
organizations and local program as they choose, until we are one million
members strong. Then OLS will be large enough to decide on a more complex and
ambitious national program and to develop needed supporting organizational
structure."
The site includes ideas about how to recruit, how to form local chapters, etc.
and it has forms with which to sign up online. OLS’s principles as stated on
the site:
A society is more liberated to the extent that fewer people
are denied human rights or
opportunities or in any way oppressed due to race, religion,
ethnicity, gender, age, sexual
preference, property ownership, wealth, income, or statist
authoritarianism and exclusion.
Reducing and ultimately removing such hierarchies of reward,
circumstance, status, or
power would improve society.
A society is more liberated to the degree that it fosters
solidarity such that its citizens, by
the actions they must take to survive and fulfill themselves,
come to care about, promote,
and benefit from one another's well being, rather than getting
ahead only at one another's
expense.
A society is more liberated to the degree that its citizens
enjoy comparably rewarding and
demanding life experiences and equal incomes, assuming
comparable effort and sacrifice
on their parts to contribute to the social good.
A society is more liberated to the extent that its citizens
are able to democratically
influence decisions proportionately as they are affected by
those decisions and have the
circumstances, knowledge, and information required for this
level of participation.
A society is more liberated to the extent that diversity is
fostered and nourished in social
relations, in relations with nature, and in all dimensions of
life.
"In essence," the site tells us "a society will benefit to the extent we can
reduce oppression and increase solidarity, diversity, equity, and democratic
participation and influence. If you agree with the principles already, and you
would feel good about arguing on their behalf and telling other folks about OLS
so they might join, then please … add your name to our membership tally and
make our project yours too."
Would anybody who reads Z balk at these principles? Oh, we each might write them
a bit differently, sure, but couldn’t you sign on? I could, and I did. But who
else could? How big could the tally grow? My neighbor is an ex-marine. I think
he might sign on with a little consciousness raising. I am sure my mail carrier
would. Just in case those looking at the principles find them confusing, the
site explains them further: "As we understand the principles, and as we intend
their meaning, to disagree with the first principle suggests that:
You would favor changes in our society that create more
division of opportunity and
circumstance based on race or religion, or
You would welcome more difference in quality of life based on
people's gender or sexual
preference, or
You would favor more economic division due to wider
disparities in wealth and income, or
You would advocate more difference in political power.
"Or, for the rest of the principles, you might disagree because you think
that other things equal:
For our society to pit its members against one another to an
ever increasing degree would
improve things, and so you would advocate it, or
For our society to have less diversity would be a gain, and so
you would advocate it, or
For our society to have more people who cannot influence
events that impact them would
be positive, and so you would advocate it, or
For our society to have disparities of wealth and circumstance
even wider than now would
be good, and so you would advocate it."
The principles do a nice job of capturing what it means to be progressive or
left at the broadest values level. So it seems to me that a tally of folks
agreeing with these principles sufficiently to sign on as an "OLSer" could
indeed become an on-going tally of "the choir." And it also seems clear that
recruiting new people to the principles by raising consciousness wouldn’t be
preaching to the choir, but expanding it.
The site also has a bunch of questions and answers about OLS that are very
instructive concerning the logic of the project. Here are just a few of those,
to give an indication.
Question: "How come my priority -- militarism, AIDS, animal rights,
workplace democracy,
health care, police brutality... -- isn't an explicit part of the
principles?"
OLS answers: "To create an organization with a list of
principles specifically
naming everything anyone with a good heart and humane
orientation favors would
be unworkable. The aim with OLS, instead, was to assemble a
list of enough
positive values and aims to make for a meaningful commitment
-- no more, no less.
Consider your main, more detailed agenda items. Ask yourself
if you think a person
who agrees with and works for OLS's five principles would also
support your focus
or be open to doing so, at any rate. We bet the answer is yes.
"And there is another reason for the broad principles, as
well. When an
organization forms around a list of short term aims, it may
well be very well suited
to working on those. But, more often than not, when the aims
are accomplished, the
organization lacks purpose and dissolves. By organizing OLS
around a list of
principles, very broad in scope and focus, we orient ourselves
to an indefinite
future and to a continually altering and diversifying program,
not a fixed agenda
that ends at some fixed point in time."
Question: "A million people? Are you folks serious? How the hell are
we going to reach a
million members? Especially with no money and no organization and no
national agenda
beyond recruitment? No stars, no names, no nothing. You folks are
stark raving mad."
OLS answer: "Yes, a million members, and that is only as a
start. This is no joke.
Trying to make society a more fulfilling and just place for
humans to live and
interact is not easy and certainly serious. Envision lots of
periodicals and
grass-roots organizations and student groups and unions and
other institutions
becoming organizational supporters of OLS and urging people to
join. Imagine
many public speakers and radio personalities and performers
and writers in diverse
publications becoming OLS members and taking every sensible
opportunity to tell
folks about the five principles and urge their membership.
And, most important by
far, imagine you and other members each talking to friends,
neighbors, relatives,
school mates, and work mates about OLS and urging them to
join. This is
organizing. And it can work...
Question: "If I join an organization I want to have co-members who I
can talk with and get
support from. How does that happen with OLS?"
"OLS members put brief bios and contact information into the
membership
database and onto this public site. The member's comments and
info are even
organized by region. So it is no problem to meet in person
with (or interact online
with) other members and to organize whatever types of
interactive support
networks, discussion groups, or even social and other
activities together you
might seek. You can create local chapters and develop programs
to fight for, as
well.
"And for an OLS member who doesn't have a computer to see the
whole list, well
most likely they will know someone who does have a computer,
at work or at home,
and they need only borrow its use for a few moments, or,
better yet, organize that
person into OLS. And if they don't have access that way, what
better place to go to
hook up and to talk to others, than the public library's
computer room?"
Question: "Who are the hidden leaders of OLS? And why are they
hidden?"
OLS Answer: "There are no hidden leaders. In fact, there are
no leaders, period,
other than you and all other members. There are the people who
first had the idea,
and the people they talked with, and the people in the next
circle, and the people
who read about it and joined, and the ones who joined after
browsing to the site,
and so on and so forth. And every one of these people is in
the membership list
and listed here in the public site, at least once there are
100 others, as well.
"And no person anywhere in this group has any more say than
any other about
what is happening -- except with regard to maintaining this
web site. But the people
doing that function were chosen by the first group. So the
first members are the
temporary leadership, in that very very limited sense, of
making sure the web site
stays online, putting names on the membership list, entering
people's bios and
other data from the forms people fill out. Recruitment, the
key work of OLS until it
reaches a million members, is done by all, as each sees fit."
Question: "What about changing the Principles, or changing the
membership goal or the
decision to hold off on program until it is reached. Who would make
those decisions?"
Answer: "No one. That is, these are not available options. OLS
is founded on the
basis of supporting the five principles and recruiting members
until the one million
mark is reached. Everyone joining agrees to that. It is our
pledge to one another.
So, that is what OLS and its members will do. Only upon
reaching its first goal, a
million members supporting the five principles, does the
option of OLS having new
national goals as well as detailed national structure and
program, arise. Everyone
whose experience with OLS or conditions in their communities
or life leads them to
want OLS to change in some way, has a clear mandate. Build
OLS. Create local OLS
chapters and give them the qualities you favor. Along the way,
by all means talk
about innovative ideas for national program, structure, and
adapted principles."
So is OLS feasible? Well, I think there is tremendous sympathy for liberatory
values and beliefs nowadays, largely invisible due to the absence of any
vehicles of broad unity, particularly one that has some flash, some
originality, and none of the baggage that comes from too close identification
with too few people. Can OLS become such a vehicle? When I browsed the site, I
slowed down, read it, and was convinced it was worth a try. I will go back to
www.olsols.org in a month and without a doubt, if I see a few thousand names, I
for one am goin to get excited about it and work hard to make it succeed. So,
will your name be there?
