The time has come for all principled Marxists to engage directly with the student movement and aid it in its self-organization. The student movement  must now adapt and advance to address the new needs it has called forth. The state is using  a two-pronged assault on the movement: the first prong is the use of the legal repressive apparatus — the courts, the police, deportation — and the second prong is the use of the civil institutions acting  as state agents (in this case the universities) which are expelling, suspending, and revoking the degrees of student radicals.

As repression intensifies, it becomes clearer and clearer that we Marxists have not learned the correct lessons from the initial attacks on the movement (see our prior article, “Join the Student Movement!”). The movement must become organized to a high degree. Organization must develop in a particular direction and particular fashion to address the attacks the movement is now suffering.

That means the movement must develop to address:

• Organizational safety from the university system’s discipline;
• Physical safety from federal and state agents of repression (police, ICE, etc.) as well as paramilitary responses from private citizens;
• Anonymity of the leadership cadre and opacity of plans of action;
• Open lines of retreat after actions, and cessation of all action that results in identification or arrest.

To the purpose of addressing these issues, we have put together the following plans that Marxists involved in the movement should pursue. As always, we encourage to the strongest degree that any Marxists involved form separate, Marxist-Leninist organizations that are not directly integrated into the student movement and that can guide and coordinate the actions of the individual Marxists involved.

Organizational Defense Against the Universities

The universities are the second rank of defense for the state against the advent of student radicalism. In particular, elite universities like Columbia serve as the center of social reproduction for the ruling class, and thus are very concerned with the needs and demands of that class. These universities obviously have a class-character and a class-standpoint; their faculty are overwhelmingly high petit-bourgeois or bourgeois and their class standpoint is direct adherence to the haute bourgeois imperialists.

Despite the fact that they are “private” institutions, the university system is very malleable to the wishes of the government (and thus, the ruling class through its government agents). They have traditionally been the seat of reproduction for the reactionary vanguard, the CIA, and have always acted hand-in-glove with the state itself. Thus, we should not view the university system as separate from the state, but rather an extension of the state’s power into the social life of society. The university is the agent of the state. In this way, they act as machines of repression like the courts and prisons.

Columbia in particular has increased its repressive activities against student radicals: they have fired the leader of a student-worker union, issued expulsions, suspensions, demanded in-class attendance despite the threat of federal agents prowling the campus to deport radicals, private hearings with students, etc.

Defense against these tactics cannot arise spontaneously; it must be coordinated. The universities, as de facto agencies of the state, are too large and powerful to bend to pressure unless that pressure is exerted on a mass scale. Even the student population itself may be too small to draw the necessary concessions. Thus, the defense against the universities requires the utmost in organizational advancement and will also require the development of direct ties between the student-radicals and the masses of workers in their immediate area. Luckily, even the petit-bourgeoisie is likely to be outraged at the encroachment of the universities on the traditional “liberties” (as liberals understand them) of the students, particularly those who are members of the petit-bourgeois or bourgeois ranks of society. This represents a contradiction which must be exploited, a wedge which must be leveraged against the universities to the greatest degree possible.

1. Internal Solidification and Resilience

Resiliency is the order of the day. Withstanding legal or quasi-legal pressure requires resilience, specifically the organizational resources to ensure that everyone involved in the radical project stands in solidarity with one another. There are several components to a resilience of this type. The first is organization.

Organized groups are more resistant to repression. By organization, we mean a determined set of relationships and rules by which decisions are made and authority is delegated. The student-radical groups must be democratic, they must have defined membership, and they must have defined leadership and delegated channels of authority. This is the first step toward resisting the quasi-legal pressure being brought to bear by the universities.

This organization should then proceed to hold meetings with all involved and ensure that everyone understands the necessity of absolute solidarity. These meetings can boost morale, bring everyone on the same page as to strategy, and collect reports of issues being faced by the student-radicals.

The second component of this resilience is support. Once an organization is functioning, it must begin to garner material support for the radicals being targeted by the administration. This works in concert with component III of this proposal, the existence of Safehouses. In essence, those targeted by the administration should be assured of 1) housing, 2) income or essentials, and, where possible, 3) paid work. In order to achieve this, the organization should pool the resources of its individual members and solicit resources from outside in an effort to prepare for the necessity of material support. This should be done before it is necessary to draw on these resources, but that moment may be behind us.

2. Aggressive Legal Defense

The student-radical organizations must also prepare to strike back in the bourgeois courts with an aggressive legal strategy. The maneuvers currently being undertaken by the administrations are quasi-legal at best, and are subject to challenge. They can be slowed by entangling them in preliminary injunctions and litigation, particularly in federal courts where the local federal judiciary may be seeking to prove its independence from the central government.

This arm of the strategy should be carried out by trained movement lawyers who understand the necessity of militancy in the face of the current repression. We would recommend speaking with the National Lawyers Guild in detail about the potential for pro bono representation.

3. Prepare Plans for Tuition and Labor Strikes

The prior two stages should prepare student-radical organizations for the next stage of escalation: tuition and labor strikes. Unlike regular capitalist businesses, the universities have a flow of income that is independent from their labor-force. This often comes through the state apparatus itself (witness Washington’s attempts to interfere with Columbia’s internal operations by threatening to withdraw funding). However, there is a reliance upon both tuition and student labor in the allocation of university resources.

Tuition and labor strikes must be highly coordinated to be effective, and a large minority of student-workers and tuition-paying students must be prepared to expose themselves to the potential repercussions before they can be successfully carried out. However, given a high degree of organization, they can be extremely effective in bringing the administration to the bargaining table and forcing concessions. 

4. Connect with Unionized Workers on Campus

Other workers on the campus — faculty and staff — should be brought into the movement. Any student-radicals that are not yet in deep dialogues with the unionized workers on their grounds are cut off from the wider pool of labor solidarity and the above-listed labor strikes under C will be far less effective. The survival of the student movement relies on it connecting with the broader struggle of working people and uniting both of those struggles together.

At this stage, with many imperialist unions disclaiming Palestine solidarity, it is important that the student-radicals carefully assess whether the union leadership on their campus is friendly. If they are not, the radicals must bypass union leadership and instead establish connections directly with rank-and-file union members. They should be prepared to explain the manner in which the struggle of the student intifada is connected to the struggle of the unionized workers.

Student Self-Defense

In order to preserve their physical safety from state agents, the student-radicals must adopt modes of self-defense. We propose four steps or stages of heightening intensity to the student self-defense efforts:

1. Identifying the most vulnerable student-radicals;
2. Establishing a phone tree and lines of communication and warning;
3. Designating an on-call schedule for phone contacts; and finally,
4. Forming on-call defense brigades for physical confrontations.

1. Identifying the most vulnerable

The radical organizations, once fully formed, should reflect carefully on who is the most vulnerable to state action. Foreign nationals or anyone who could presumably be deported with a minimum of legal fiction should take precedence over others. Those who are being monitored by the state for any reason — plea bargains, court programs to get rid of cases, etc. — should also be considered. The organizations should privately draw up secret lists of those who must have the highest level of security.

2. Establishing the phone tree

An emergency phone tree must be established. Everyone in the organization should provide two phone numbers and at least one email address. The organization should then establish the call protocol in the case of any threat to an individual or group of student-radicals. Each person should have at minimum two other individuals to contact when an emergency begins. Once someone is contacted, they should immediately contact their listed “downstream” individuals. In this way, the entire organization can be alerted in very short order.

3. Designate an on-call schedule for the phone tree

Optimally, there will be one or two points of contact for the phone tree at any given time who make certain they are available. Anyone experiencing the threat of physical repression should call the on-call numbers; the on-call members may then communicate with the organization’s sitting body for self-defense to determine what actions are appropriate and then begin activating the phone tree. In most cases, physically assembling at the site of the emergency should be considered first.

4. Forming on-call defense brigades

Once the organization reaches a certain degree of development, the decentralized phone tree method should be transitioned to the formation and training of on-call defense brigades who can be called up to respond to emergencies. These defense brigades should be armed with some hand-held striking weapon (bats are a perennial favorite) and trained in defensive tactics. They will be called to rapidly assemble to sites where individuals find their safety threatened.

Safehouses/Underground

The student movement has called forth the need for a functioning underground. Those exposed leaders who now stand subject to vigilante threats or state action must have somewhere safe to retreat to until the crisis subsides. The construction of an underground now will provide the infrastructure for underground actions in the future and will heighten the degree of development of any student-radical organization.

We propose the following phases or schedule of establishing an underground:

1. Establish the network of safe locations available for long-term occupation;
2. Establish safe practices for moving between locations;
3. Prepare retreat plans for people who have been identified under II(1) above;
4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning.

1. Establish a network

This requires drawing up the names and addresses of everyone with space that can be used to hide people moving into the underground. A network of 5+ locations is required for this to be effective. These people must be trustworthy and developed, and must realize that they may be seriously inconvenienced for an extended period.

2. Establish safe practices for moving

The organization must establish a protocol for the safe transfer of radicals from safehouse to safehouse. This includes communication between safehouses (to be done in person at pre-arranged locations) as well as what physical routes will be taken and measures taken to obscure the identity of the people being ferried between safehouses.

3. Prepare retreat plans for those identified as most vulnerable

Everyone on the high vulnerability section of the organization’s vulnerability chart should have immediate emergency plans in place should they feel their safety is compromised, with predetermined signals and safehouses to arrive at.

4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning

No actions should be planned on any electronic media. All actions should be planned face to face and in person. Communication by digital media should be minimized as much as possible.

This is the Hour

We do not have much time. The student movement is under threat and must radicalize or it will be excised from the universities. Trained Marxists should endeavor to teach themselves the skills necessary to perform the tasks outlined above and should integrate themselves and offer their services to the student movement immediately. If you have resources or access to spaces that could be used as safehouses, you should make that known and contact student-radicals with that information immediately.

A luta continua!

When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc. is their first end. But, at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need — the need for society — and what appears as a means becomes an end.

Karl Marx

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

One of the most destructive trends encouraged by capitalism is the ideology of “rugged individualism.” Under the dominion of Capital, each person is forced to act as a discrete economic unit, fighting with other discrete economic units (you know, what we regularly call “people”) for a slice of a pie that isn’t big enough to go around. “It’s us,” says the logic of Capital, “against the world.” This economic war of all-against-all has inspired a whole library of apologetics. Bourgeois philosophers make their excuses for the brutality of the system they support by telling us that if only everyone looked out for themself and pulled hard on their bootstraps, there would be prosperity enough for all. They tell us to look after our neighbors by looking after ourselves. Then, when looking out for number one turns out to be insufficient to overcome the economic walls built up by the owners, when it doesn’t bear fruit, they tell us “It’s because you didn’t work hard enough, it has nothing to do with systemic oppression and marginalization.” 

In reality, it is impossible for a person to live without or “against” society; it is only through our relationship to society that we are able to understand ourselves as individuals at all. Any emancipatory project must encompass the fundamentally social nature of the human person as both the source and culmination of liberation.

But we are entering a period of dawning class consciousness. One of the best ways to feed the hunger for answers that accompanies this new awakening is through the study of historical revolutionaries and revolutionary projects.By studying the words of those who once engaged in the same struggle for liberation, we can root our activity in the rich soil of the historic class struggle.

So, we read, and we learn. Perhaps at first, we do so alone, but at a certain point theory must meet practice. Solidarity — the act of standing up for someone, of standing with someone, not because of any personal relationship but based solely on their need as a person — is the ethos of the revolutionary movement. But solidarity that remains a theoretical ideal is not solidarity at all; it is a kind of mock-solidarity, a cold simulacrum, a lifeless statue. To move from theory, from study, to practice, to action, we must make the intermediary step: theory-as-act. The study group, socialized study, is the next step in that journey. Working together through a dense political or philosophical text strengthens our understanding, and it strengthens the social bonds that capitalist society  attacks through alienation, individuation, and atomization for the purposes of extracting profit.  

In his collection of teachings, Only Don’t Know, Zen Master Seung Sahn speaks of the liberatory power of “together-action”:

Together-action is like washing potatoes. When people wash potatoes in Korea, instead of washing them one at a time, they put them all in a tub full of water. Then someone puts a stick in the tub and pushes it up and down, up and down. This makes the potatoes rub against each other; as they bump into each other, the hard crusty dirt falls off. If you wash potatoes one at a time, it takes a long time to clean each one, and only one potato gets clean at a time. If they are all together, the potatoes clean each other.

In the study group we help each other to shed the hard crusty dirt of capitalist ideology more effectively than any of us could alone. 

The form and structure of the study group provide fertile ground for cultivating the growth of a radical political movement. In a society that is so hostile to revolutionary politics, the study group is a venue for making connections with other people who are working for the same end. The connective power of the internet is fantastic and is particularly important for comrades who have circumstances that preclude them from participating in-person. However, it is also important to physically come together with people in a local community, reaching out to break down the walls of isolation that capital so implacably builds.

Building or finding a study group may seem like an intimidating task. Luckily many radical texts and resources are available online for free. Sites like marxists.org are an excellent resource for accessing classic texts from Marx, Engels, Lenin and more. Additionally, you can use the resources on unity-struggle-unity.com. Your group is welcome to read and discuss the articles posted at the Red Clarion or as a source for material to help with local outreach. Our Guide to Study Groups is a fantastic resource to start out with. You can also correspond with us — many of our Pressworkers have experience forming study groups, and can suggest starting points for delving into these expansive resources. 

It can sometimes feel daunting and isolating living in a society dominated by people who not only don’t care about anyone but themselves, but teach us that we should do the same, that we should shrug off our basic humanity. Worse, they tell us that this cruelty is what makes us human. We cannot give in; we cannot allow ourselves to believe the lie that we are each alone, that we stand against the world on our own two feet. A radical political project must make clear from the start that we are in and for the world. It is only by relying on each other that we have a chance at saving the world. A study group is an excellent place to start. 

The great merit of the book is its faithful defense of economic planning against the resilient mold of free-market ideology — a defense that is so greatly needed as neoliberalism has, for decades, corroded what little “opposition” “left” intellectuals ever managed to muster. Unfortunately, however, the authors are not Marxists, so the book  is simultaneously undermined by their infantile politics — not to mention their occasionally cringeworthy prose. Especially in the first couple of chapters, I was left with the impression that the authors are insecure about their subject matter, remarking with belabored “self-awareness” in various places that it is “old,” “musty,” “not sexy,” and as interesting as “an airport business book.” Their self-deprecating tone, meant to ingratiate the authors with an audience they assume will be hostile to, or uninterested in, what they have to say, only insults the reader’s intelligence. Wherever they constrain themselves to discussing the operation of capitalist firms or advancements in information technology, it is my opinion that the authors achieve grace, wit, and humor. Wherever they attempt to interject their own sophomoric social and political commentary, however, the book becomes an unrewarding chore to read. Ultimately, the book’s central thesis — that economic planning not only could work, but, in many ways, is already at work, and working well — can be salvaged from this smoldering wreckage, but it must be coupled with a correct analysis of democracy and social revolution. For developing Marxists with an interest in economic planning, you are in luck. While I provide here a criticism of the text, a mysterious, sexy rogue has uploaded an abridged version of the book freed from its liberal tumors – though you should only download it if you’ve already purchased a copy of the book

The political collapse and economic liberalization of the Eastern Bloc in the late 80s and early 90s, coupled with the rise of neoliberalism throughout the West and its colonies, effectively destroyed the public’s faith in the possibility of economic planning. Left and right opportunists alike continue to join hands with bourgeois economics professors and other ideologists in denouncing Soviet central planning as a failure on the grounds that economies are too complex to plan, and that market prices are indispensable for efficient resource allocation. “New Left” academics like Richard Wolff and Slavoj Žižek, armed with the anti-Soviet intellectual tradition they’ve inherited from their fascist professors, set out on ill-fated quests to discover new “mixed economy” and “market socialist” models, yearning after these impossible “syntheses,” like the alchemists’ misguided search for the philosopher’s stone. It is in this light that People’s Republic of Walmart is so refreshing. With highly accessible style, the authors gracefully defend their thesis that the market system is building the conditions for its own replacement by a system of social planning — by socialism.

One of the book’s more novel contributions is the idea that, contrary to that commonly held cliche, planning works in practice even if it doesn’t work in theory. Setting aside hypothetical and scholastic debates about the “economic calculation problem,” the authors plant their case firmly in reality by asserting that, actually, our advanced capitalist economy has been making use of planning for almost a century. It’s true that the capitalist economy at large isn’t planned, nor could it be — the only way for separate, competing firms to engage with each other is, of course, through market mechanisms. But, within the firm itself (that economic unit so often treated as a black box by bourgeois economists), planning dominates production. Furthermore, two critical developments have come about in the era of finance-capital. The first is that monopolization reigns supreme. Wherever monopolization reaches its highest pitch, whole industries effectively begin to be internally planned, even while externally subservient to the demands of the market. Secondly, finance-capital — capital controlled by banks but employed by industrialists — becomes a mechanism for rational planning of production on the part of the financial–industrial cartels. As Lenin correctly observed over a century ago, the methods of accounting and management developed by the big capitalist banks could be converted to manage production under socialism. Hence, the socialist planned economy is already in embryo within the shell of the modern world; the technology and methods of economic planning have already been developed within the market economy — and eventually this shell must crack, and give way to the more advanced social form growing within it.

The authors provide several compelling and concrete examples of their thesis in action. First, they mention that planning is not new, and that, in fact, certain ancient economies utilized primitive forms of economic planning to great effect. Second, they refer to the public sector, primarily the military, which utilizes planned production for all sorts of things — penicillin, satellites, radios, the internet, cellphones, rockets — all these and more were products of “planned capitalist production.” Most compelling, however, is the book’s comparisons of three unequivocally private firms: Walmart, Amazon, and Sears. 

On the question of what made Soviet central planning inefficient — that is, inefficient with regards to delivering consumer goods — the authors identify data throughput as the essential bottleneck. “Old school” central planning relied on manual reporting by managers and advanced calculations had to be done, and redone, by hand. Besides requiring a small team of highly skilled bureaucrats to form plans in batches based on months or even years old information, this system was also susceptible to inaccurate reporting by managers who were frequently unwilling to report failures to meet quotas. By the time distributed communications networks arrived on the scene, the bureaucratic rot of the post-Stalin Soviet system prevented adoption of these new technologies that could have streamlined planning. Cybernetic planning, by contrast, could have distributed the collection and production of data related to supply and demand while allowing real-time coordination of production and distribution. Unfortunately, the first experiment in cybernetic planning, Chile’s revolutionary Cybersyn system, was quickly dismantled by the fascist Pinochet regime. The great irony is that the closest any efforts have come to replicating Cybersyn since then have come from that infamous capitalist super-giant: Walmart.

I said earlier that separate competing firms can only interact with one another through market mechanisms — and until quite recently, this has (mostly) been true. Essential information about production, supply, and demand has been treated as invaluable proprietary data, locked up deep within each individual firm, creating a “fog of war.” But every firm is reliant on another for its supplies. Without the means to see through this fog, each firm must do its best to predict and prepare for deviations in supply and demand, requiring storage buffers. For each link in the supply chain between raw resource extraction and retailers, the storage needed to compensate for these deviations grows exponentially larger, such that small changes to demand at the end of the supply chain create huge shocks at the front. This phenomenon is known as the bull-whip effect. Walmart, the authors explain, has devised a novel way of compensating for it: complete data transparency with its partners and cross-supply chain coordination. As the authors state: “While there are indeed financial transactions within the supply chain, resource allocation among Walmart’s vast network of global suppliers, warehouses, and retail stores… [behaves] like a single firm.” Walmart was thus able to beat its competitors in the market with superior cooperation and superior planning. Amazon, another titan of modern retailing, followed suit with its “Vendor Flex” program, which allows Amazon to co-manage production of the items it stocks and to set its own quotas based on data it collects on consumers — data which would have otherwise been unavailable to Amazon’s suppliers. This horizontal integration between production and distribution cuts out the uncertainty that normally accumulates between suppliers in the market, minimizing inventory, transportation, and logistics costs. Not altogether unlike Cybersyn, the free distribution of information along sectors of production, combined with the monumental collection of consumer data, allows for efficient planning without relying on price signals to coordinate supply and demand. The authors go into much greater detail, but the bottom line is that economic planning is already here — and it works!

The unfortunate irony, and the source of many of my criticisms, is that these authors are heirs of the same “New Left” tendency that is guilty for perpetuating this free-market revival. Consequently, the book suffers whenever it veers off course from its central topic, crashing head first like Wile E. Coyote into a painted tunnel depicting an illusory “anti-Marxist socialism.” It would be difficult to completely enumerate every error the authors make without writing a book at least as long. As far as the historical sections are concerned, the problem primarily consists in a one sided screed against “Stalinism,” in which the authors desperately beg their imagined audience not to associate them — or the concept of economic planning in general — with any of the 20th century experiments in Communism. If I had to summarize the authors’ biggest theoretical failures, two particular areas come to mind: their horrendously distorted understanding of democracy and distribution.

In the first place, they make the same mistake as the 20th century socialist Karl Kautsky, who Lenin once described as a “renegade” for taking a one-sided view of democracy, never bothering to ask, “democracy, but for which class?” That is to say, they see representational institutions in capitalist society and take for granted that the working class therefore has real, representational power within the bourgeois state. Phillips and Rozworski never seem to notice that all substantive policy decisions are made behind closed doors by the personified avatars of Capital. They therefore repudiate the necessity of revolution in establishing the proletarian democracy that would be necessary for the working class to have real power over the planning of production: “In such volatile times, it cannot be ruled out that a socialist candidate or party might soon form a government in the capitalist heartlands.” It cannot be “ruled out” (despite any positive precedent to the contrary) that a socialist candidate “might” form “a government” — what grand strategic vision! Again, the problem the authors identify is that planning already exists, but it isn’t run democratically; yet they never approach the question of proletarian democracy, and therefore the necessity of dictatorship over, and liquidation of, the exploiting class. They take for granted that the existing bourgeois constitutional republic is a suitable form so long as “our guy” is at its head. The last century unequivocally proved what happens when any socialist gets close to being elected into power in a bourgeois democracy: they are assassinated, or their new government is violently couped, or they do nothing to abolish capitalism, or the bourgeoisie side with fascists to burn the precious republic to the ground, just to keep it out of the hands of the socialists. The vision of a gradual, reformist road to socialism is a facile, utopian fantasy which can only end in failure and greater bloodshed. The successful revolutions of the last century demonstrated that we cannot suffice to take hold of the ready made state machinery. We must smash it, and make our own that will serve as the basis of power for the proletariat in its mission to end class society.

Secondly, the authors follow in the footsteps of another great colossus of revisionism, Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle attempted to abstract the question of distribution from production, as though these two were separable, independent things. That is to say, Phillips and Rozworski seem to mistake socialism itself for merely a different kind of distribution: “Inequality is, in the end, a question of unfair allocation… When we ask whether another world is possible, we are also asking: Is there an alternative method to allocate things?” They begin with the question of distribution, from which every other piece of their analysis flows downstream, as if distribution were a software plugin that could be swapped in and out of the same kind of economic hardware. To be fair, the authors pay some lip service to the question of production, but they don’t really seem to understand it. For example, they further refer to nationalization as synonymous with decommodification (“Nationalization decommodifies, but does it democratize?”), as though wage laborers producing goods for the market are not producing commodities if the industry is owned by the national bourgeoisie collectively. If only they could understand the class character of the state! Most egregiously, the authors maintain that the source of inequality under capitalism is not the extraction of surplus value from the wage laborer, but rather “disparities in the distribution of income” caused by “the market,” which is only “a method of allocation.” The solution to inequality, therefore, is only a matter of a different method of distribution. They are correct that competition in the market causes concentration of wealth by ruining other capitalists, by proletarianising their competition, but this is not the source of disparity between the workers and the capitalists.  Marx proved two urgent facts that these gentlemen miss: firstly, surplus value does not come from the circulation of commodities, nor from exchanges within the market (which are, after all, equal exchanges), it comes from production. That is to say, inequality is decidedly not a question of unfair distribution, but a question of exploitation by those with power over the means of production and subsistence. Once again, the authors pay some minor lip service to this very point, but they don’t actually understand it — it is not reflected within their thesis or analysis. Secondly, the domination of the market is contingent on the dominance of commodity production, which, in turn, is contingent on the social division of labor. The social division of labor, therefore, is the basis for generalized commodity (capitalist) production. For the authors, distribution is the whole problem, the primary issue with capitalism, and hence they are unable to really explain how socialism would be established or how income inequality would be overcome.The consequence of all these errors is a vision of socialism which is, in reality, little more than a utopian vision of a more completely, “democratically” planned capitalism. Like some kind of conservative’s parody of a socialist, these daring radicals and dissidents dare to ask, “what if the entire economy was like the NHS?” By correctly educating against these grave mistakes, we can successfully rescue economic planning from revision and reaction. This book at least demonstrates that capitalists have already prepared for us the technology to plan the economy. Once the workers have seized power and overthrown the exploiters, we need “only” to expand the domain of planning to the entire economy. Of course, we should be clear: proletarian democracy and planned production are not the only two factors necessary for socialist construction. Simultaneously, we must also abolish wage labor, the social division of labor, and commodity production, replacing production for exchange with production for use. We will not merely use computers to slightly improve distribution, calculate “shadow prices,” or replace the money-form of value with the “labor-time” form of value; we seek the abolition of value.

School is the singular place in American society where all manner of social reproduction is expected and taken for granted. Schools shelter, feed, and sometimes clothe their students. Educators are expected to assume the roles of teacher, mentor, counselor, and even friend and parent. Professionally, there are too many hats for one person to wear, boundaries that are pushed, and generally too many responsibilities for one person to bear. Tragically, it’s at the discretion of each individual educator as to how much they will give of themselves to their job.

Such is the case for nearly all aspects of education. How many school events will you volunteer your already scarce time and energy at? How will you configure your classroom furniture to be open and inviting to all students? How will you implement accommodations to keep vulnerable kids from falling through the cracks? How frequently are you contacting home? How often are you meeting one-on-one with your students? Are you advising a club? How are you conveying to your students that you are a safe person while not alerting the reactionary students and parents? Are you interrupting bigotry and implementing restorative practices?

The list of questions is endless, and all answers are ultimately for each individual teacher to decide. 

As more and more aspects of social life are privatized and made inaccessible to the poor, public schools have become a final bastion of public life that can help many families meet some of their most basic needs. But, of course, public schools are themselves under threat from privatization, with charter schools and traditional private schools in addition to a steady increase in homeschooling — all of which ultimately steal funds away from public schools. We are called to do more with less, and the demands and scarcity of resources are increasing daily.

This is not to mention the societal threats that plague our schools. American fascism in crisis has resulted in the constant barrage of attacks from the far-right against educators, championing a delusional conspiracy theory that educators are “grooming” their children and making them gay or “woke” (anti-racist) — or worse yet, both! These attacks are not only launched online; the threat of violence is all too real: angry mobs instigating fights, such as the incident in Glendale, California, where a teacher was put on leave for speaking out against transphobia at a School Board meeting; or school shooters whose manifestos clearly lay out their bigotry, such as the May 2, 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. Educators have lost their jobs, have been severely injured, or even been killed for their conviction to create a more just and equitable world.

Educators are exhausted. For our sacrifice to public service, we are called upon to give even more while the mass media demonizes us and our profession. The problem isn’t that educators care too much or that educators don’t actually believe in the social justice we try to implement in our classrooms — to the contrary! It is precisely because of our dedication to service, social justice, and the youth that so many of us chose this profession in the first place! But, it’s also the reason our deteriorating society can exploit us so. 

This is not to say we should abandon our shared beliefs and morals or our students’ and families’ needs. We would never abandon them. Educators deeply understand the enormous magnitude of the task that stands before us, and we know the necessity of taking on that challenge. So many of our students face struggles that could be easily solved with proper funding, and so, the “solutions” often presented are unsustainable and, regrettably, sometimes the only option available. At our lowest points, when we are overwhelmed by a system designed to work against us, this necessary task seems insurmountable. 

But we will not give in; we will not falter; and we will not cave to fascist reaction. We will win! The future we desire is within our grasp — we need only reach out and seize it. How will we achieve this victory? Only through a stalwart and unified labor movement — through our unions. The cure to the plague of fascist reaction is solidarity. We must unite and work together to achieve our goals!

Traditionally, most will think of the union simply as a negotiating body to get a better contract — an increase in pay. This is true, but a union can also accomplish so much more. We understand just how much work needs to be done inside our schools, but in order to begin that work in earnest, we need to relieve some of the pressure and return most of the social services our schools provide to the broader public sphere. Educators must fight for more than just a better contract for ourselves — solidarity is the key! 

We are not alone in this struggle. In the fight for educator needs and the welfare of the families we serve, we are also fighting for worker rights more broadly, as well as the rights of children. In linking our struggle with our fellow workers, we can win and create a more sustainable and democratic society in the process. For this, we can look at the history of the Chicago Teachers Union. Since the 19th century, educators in Chicago have organized and fought for the needs of the people. In his article, “A People’s History of the Chicago Teachers Union,” Rethinking Schools editor, Jesse Hagopian, illustrates the necessity of courageous and unswerving union organization. It is in this history of those who came before us, and those who carry on their legacy today, we can find not only the lessons of how to tackle the tasks at hand, but the strength to continue the struggle.

Learning from these examples, our immediate goals become more evident. Who stands with us? And who of those that are in opposition could become an ally? What can we do to support our community? To this question, there are infinite answers, but some examples: rallying against an anti-work bill, raising funds for an organization that helps the unhoused, collecting and distributing meals to families during the summer, rallying to support our worker-siblings who are on strike, etc. Our unions must unite the workers it represents and the families and communities we serve. 

Our struggles are all so deeply intertwined, and it is the process of atomization and alienation that created these horrible conditions we yearn to rid ourselves of. Only through solidarity and unity of action can we successfully fight back and win!