Vision statement

Moving beyond capitalism—Now!

Howard Waitzkin and Firoze Manji

Moving beyond capitalism—Now! represents a collaboration between Daraja Press and Monthly Review magazine.

We are living in revolutionary times. The present contains tremendous dangers: nuclear war, global warming and other environmental catastrophes, the condemnation of vast sections of humanity into sacrifice zones, and the growing threat of fascism—a world based on deepening expropriation of nature, inequality, repression, and suffering. These dangers have also generated global resistance and social movements aiming to end the rapacious features of capitalism, to create a world based on harmony with nature, cooperative relationships of mutual aid, and decision-making by ordinary people about the directions our societies will take.

The aim is to publish and distribute, in some instances as a collaboration between Daraja Press and Monthly Review, brief, easy-to-understand publications that present concrete proposals/manifestos for revolutionary actions that will help us move beyond the global capitalist political-economic system. Our vision is to produce clear, simply written, and creative manifestos in article or pamphlet formats, in the style of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’s Communist Manifesto, and Peter Kropotkin’s An Appeal to the Young.

We will promote these publications through their networks and websites. The first publication, in the ongoing series entitled Moving Beyond Capitalism—Now!, is Howard Waitzkin’s Rinky-Dink Revolution: Moving Beyond Capitalism by Withholding Consent, Creative Constructions, and Creative Destructions. Some of the articles in this series, we hope, will address concretely how to move beyond capitalism in each problem area that is considered in the current pamphlet, such as environmental crisis, impoverishment and inequality, racism, sexism, militarism, health and mental health, incarceration, austerity, and related policies of neoliberalism. Other pamphlets may present approaches to the post-capitalist solidarity economy, media and communication, public services, and community organizing.

At the same time, Daraja Press plans to publish a series of pamphlets that are focused primarily on priority concerns for the global South as well as introductory texts on struggles of critical importance today, a series entitled Thinking Freedom. Not all such publications will be jointly published.

We invite you to consider submitting articles for the series. The length of each article, essay, pamphlet, or manifesto is flexible; in general we recommend no more than 12,000 words plus pertinent reference notes. Please use a style that is not academic and that ordinary folks can understand and find helpful for day-to-day decisions and actions.

If you would like to submit a piece for publication, please submit your proposal electronically, providing a title, synopsis, the primary readership to whom the pamphlet is aimed, and one paragraph on why this topic is important. Please also provide a half-page summary of your CV. Submit the materials at the same time to Monthly Review ([email protected]) and Daraja Press ([email protected]). If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions, please write to us at the same addresses.

Howard Waitzkin is the author of Rinky-Dink Revolution.

Firoze Manji is publisher of Daraja Press.

Showing all 12 results

  • Mudarse Màs Allá de la Agricultura Capitalista

    El COVID-19 es una enfermedad neoliberal y la agroecología que libera a la tierra y a la gente de la codicia y hacia la soberanía alimentaria es el camino para salir de este desastre.
    – Saulo Araujo, Amigos del Movimiento de los Sin Tierra de Estados Unidos

    Si quieres saber más sobre las conexiones entre el capitalismo racial, la agricultura industrial, la destrucción ambiental y las epidemias y pandemias, este es un excelente lugar para empezar.
    – Arturo Castillon, coautor, El significado revolucionario dellevantamiento de George Floyd

    Esta publicación defiende firmemente la agroecología como parte crucial de un futuro que pone a las personas por encima de las ganancias; un futuro que asegura la salud de las personas permitiendo el florecimiento de la salud planetaria. Aportará claridad a todos los que traten de entender cómo se puede evitar la próxima pandemia al tiempo que se construye un mundo más justo.
    – Vijoleta Gordeljević, Economista de la salud y experta en política sanitaria medioambiental, People’s Health Movement

    Los agentes patógenos surgen una y otra vez de un sistema agroalimentario global arraigado en la desigualdad, la explotación laboral y el extractivismo sin límites por el que se despoja a las comunidades de sus recursos naturales y sociales. Un sistema económico propenso a la crisis que prioriza la producción para obtener beneficios por encima de la satisfacción de las necesidades humanas y la preservación ecológica se organiza en torno a una intensa producción monocultural que, por el camino, permite la aparición de las enfermedades más mortíferas.

    La Investigación sobre la Pandemia para el Pueblo (PReP) se centra en cómo la agricultura podría ser reimaginada por el tipo de intervención a nivel de la comunidad que podría detener la aparición del coronavirus y otros patógenos en primer lugar. Abordamos cómo la ciencia convencional apoya los mismos sistemas políticos y económicos que ayudaron a producir la aparición del coronavirus y otros patógenos en primer lugar.

    Introducimos la agroecología, un ecologismo de los campesinos, los pobres y los indígenas, que existe desde hace mucho tiempo, y que trata la agricultura como una parte de la ecología de la que la humanidad cultiva sus alimentos. La agroecología -una ciencia, un movimiento y práctica- combina la ciencia ecológica, los conocimientos indígenas y campesinos y los movimientos sociales por la soberanía alimentaria y territorial para lograr sistemas alimentarios ambientalmente justos.

  • Black Anarchism and the Black Radical Tradition: Moving Beyond Racial Capitalism

    I am glad to see that there is a second wave of Black anarchists since 2015, arriving on the scene. I support the rights of all Black anarchists to build their movements, and I defend the rights of Anarkata. I don’t agree with everything in this book, but that is immaterial. This is an excellent book and well written. —  Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, activist and author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution and The Progressive Plantation. During his over 50 years as an anarchist, Ervin was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and Concerned Citizens for Justice. He founded the first Black anarchist federation in North America, Black Autonomy.

    This revolutionary book reveals the political power of “stretching” the classical anarchic tradition to critiques of racial capitalism. Bagby-Williams and Suekama deliver an accessible, thought-provoking analysis of two waves of Black American anarchism: that which arose from 20th-century politics of Black liberation and the later reanimation of anarchism triggered by 21st-century killings by American police. The authors layer deep class criticism with insightful case studies not just to retrace a history of Black Anarchism but to make a compelling argument about the diversity of thought that influences the radical tradition. With this book, the historical and continuing contributions of feminist thought, queer activism, and anti-colonial struggle to the movement are made clear. Readers will learn that Black Anarchism has not died due to “progress,” but rather proliferated in light of the American tragedy that is capitalism, imperialism and brutal, carceral control. This book has nuance. Read it now!” — S.M. Rodriguez, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Gender, Rights and Human Rights, London School of Economics, and author of The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda. www.smrodriguez.com

    A necessary and accessible historical analysis of the often overlooked Black anarchism. Bagby-Williams and Za Suekama demonstrate that any revolutionary movement truly committed to a post-capitalist world must constructively engage with this Black radical tradition. — Toni Harrison, Black Canadian writer, community organizer, and host of the podcast Actually Existing Socialism (https://podbay.fm/p/actually-existing-socialism).

    Thank you for sharing the pamphlet. Once we started reading it we could not put it down. It was refreshing to learn about the different texts, approaches and experiences of Black anarchism. What stood out the most for us was the inclusion of feminist and queer perspectives moving away from the ableist heteropatriarchy lens. The authors recognize the importance of pan-Africanism as one source of Black anarchism. They also emphasize the Black anarchist insight that all forms of oppression must be fought, to better address the challenges across all oppressed and Black bodies. In an era where movements are advocating for the abolition or reform of oppressive systems, this text helps reflect and reimagine what new inclusive systems may look like. It also makes an important analysis that highlights the complexity and diversity in Black anarchism, which is essential if we are to confront the white savior complex and complacency in addressing inequities and dismantling racial capitalism. —Tinashe Goronga, medical doctor and public health leader in Zimbabwe; coordinator of EqualHealth’s Global Campaign Against Racism affiliated with the international Social Medicine Consortium; and Mandela Washington Fellow for 2022; and Yeukai Chikwenhere, pharmacist and global health researcher in Zimbabwe, co-founder for the Centre for Health Equity, and community organizer for EqualHealth’s Global Campaign Against Racism.

    This geography of Black anarchism succeeds in outlining its tendencies, champions, and contradictions. It reminds us that the children of Maroons don’t need no lessons in liberation. That we’ve always used things that confine to redefine. We beat plowshares into swords. And then we rob gun stores, cause who uses swords anymore? —Ben Passmore, comics artist, political cartoonist, creator of the Daygloayhole Series, and author of My Black Friend, which in 2017 won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic.


    This work Is an important achievement in clarifying the history and current importance of Black anarchism. The information that the book presents will be new to many readers. For instance, one important component involves the explanations of how hierarchical principles within the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army helped generate the emergence of Black anarchism among key party members who later developed their ideas and strategies while in prison. Likewise, the book breaks new ground in demonstrating that Black anarchism has emerged not from the European/ North American anarchist traditions but rather from roots in Pan-Africanism, the Black radical tradition focusing on racial capitalism and the work of Cedric Robinson, and grassroots struggles partly in the U.S. South. An in-depth analysis of the somewhat different but complementary focuses within the two generations of Black anarchism also is very helpful. Finally, the book highlights concrete, contemporary implications for revolutionary strategy, including a perceptive analysis of the compatibilities between socialist and Black anarchist approaches to current transformative struggles. This publication will become widely known and used, because it brings enlightening new ways to understand and to act on the intertwined structures of racial capitalism and the capitalist state.

  • A Mutiny of Morning: Reclaiming the Black Body from Heart of Darkness

    Nikesha Breeze has taken pages from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, taken his words, and forced them to leave his colonized mind. She has made the words her own in poetic form. She illuminates the invisible Black voices inside, a radical, surgical, and unapologetic Black appropriation, at the same time as a careful birthing and spiritual road map. The resulting poems are sizzling purifications, violent restorations of integrity, pain, wound, bewilderment, rage, and, sometimes, luminous generosity.

    The violent, scathing white supremacy of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is traversed page by page and word by word in this brilliant prayer/poem—a work of reclamation, redemption, rescue, and repossession. — Wende Marshall, co-editor Insurrectionary Uprisings: A Reader in Revolutionary Nonviolence and Decolonization

     

  • El Significado Revolucionario de la Revuelta de George Floyd

    Si quieres poner la rebelión de George Floyd en su contexto político e histórico adecuado, esta es una de las obras con las que debes empezar. El Significado Revolucionario de la Revuelta de George Floyd plantea el caso incuestionable de que lo que presenciamos no fue solo una serie de eventos con el objetivo de reformar el imperio, como los medios burgueses quieren hacernos creer, sino un movimiento que en su corazón tenía y tiene como objetivo la erradicación del imperio y la construcción de un futuro nuevo e incierto. Este trabajo explica por qué y, además, aborda cómo puedes participar más profundamente.

    Kali Akuno, cofundador de Cooperation Jackson

    Hablando sobre la descolonización, Fanon dice que cuando tratamos de cambiar el orden del mundo, esto es “claramente una agenda para el desorden total.” Con esto quiere decir que es una demanda absoluta, que no puede ser mediada por modificaciones de política. Esta demanda absoluta regresa en las llamas del Tercer Recinto en Minneapolis, en el verano de 2020. Nadie se ha acercado más que Shemon y Arturo en capturar esta lucha, en nombrar el carácter extraordinario y contradictorio de la Revuelta de George Floyd—cómo escapa la misma historia que la produce, única e inevitable, una verdadera insurgencia, progenitora de un centenar de formaciones contrainsurgentes. Estos comunicados de la rebelión ofrecen claridad sobre las desesperadas y extraordinarias victorias de la lucha y las formas que tomará el enemigo. Este texto es portador de las posibilidades, propuestas y problemas del verano; No puedo imaginar un mejor destino para la escritura.

    Joshua Clover, autor de Riot.Strike.Riot: The New Era of Uprisings


    No hubo nada más que oscuridad en la primavera de 2020 cuando la pandemia de Covid-19 se enfureció y cerró la economía. Pero mientras que los manifestantes de derecha exigieron el fin del cierre de emergencia, un conflicto mucho más grande se estaba gestando bajo la superficie. Una rebelión exploto en Minneapolis en respuesta al asesinato policial de George Floyd, y durante la rebelion una estación de policía fue tomada y prendido fuego. Después de esto la revuelta se extendió rápidamente por todo los Estados Unidos. Los manifestantes saquearon los centros urbanos, lucharon contra la policía, quemaron coches de policía y destruyeron edificios de gobierno. El proletario negro lideró la carga, pero los proletarios blancos, latinos, asiáticos e indígenas también se unieron a la lucha, demostrando nuevas posibilidades para construir alianzas en esta sociedad segregada. Si bien las rebeliones contra la policía continuaron durante el verano y el otoño, el levantamiento retrocedió con el comienzo del invierno. Pero este conflicto está lejos de terminar.

    Preparándonos para las grandes luchas que vienen, El Significado Revolucionario de la Revuelta de George Floyd proporciona un análisis de lo que sucedió durante los disturbios de 2020 en los Estados Unidos, sus potenciales, límites internos, e implicaciones estratégicas.

    Esta es una traducción al español de The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising

  • Agroecología Abolicionista, Soberanía Alimentaria y Prevención de Pandemias

    Un sistema alimentario agroecológico no consiste más acerca de alimentos orgánicos que la abolición se refiere a abrir la puerta de una prisión. En este ensayo vital, Maywa Montenegro de Wit entrelaza ideas provenientes de las literaturas políticas y ecológicas más importantes de finales del siglo XX y comienzos del XXI. La pandemia proporciona un foco para estas dos fuentes de iluminación, pero la luz brillante que proviene de unir estas disciplinas brillará mucho después de que pase la sombra de la Covid-19. —Raj Patel, autor de Stuffed and Starved [Relleno y famélico].

    El folleto resuena con la pregunta: ¿reforma o transformación? Pregunta: ¿mitigaremos y adaptaremos o revisaremos y cambiaremos nuestros imaginarios? Se nos ha dado un andamio para abordar el bastión del colonialismo y la colonialidad y para reconstruir los sistemas que ya han empujado su rodilla sobre los sistemas alimentarios y socioeconómicos que ya se estaban sofocando. Es hora de librarse de una pesadilla construida deliberadamente. – Nnimmo Bassey, autor de To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa [El cocinar un Continente: Extracción Destructiva y Crisis Climática en África] y fundador de Health of Mother Earth Foundation [Fundación Salud de la Madre Tierra].

    La COVID-19 y otros brotes zoonóticos como el ébola son ilustrativos de las complejas interacciones entre la deforestación, la pérdida de biodiversidad, la destrucción del ecosistema y la salud y seguridad humanas. Estos cambios son impulsados ​​principalmente por la agricultura industrial y el sistema alimentario globalizados, respaldados por el ilógico y destructivo capitalismo racial. … Montenegro de Wit presenta argumentos convincentes a favor de cambios hacia sistemas agroecológicos diversificados que reconozcan las complejas  interconexiones  entre  la salud humana y animal, entre las plantas y nuestro medio ambiente y futuro compartidos. De hecho, abordar las pandemias de manera sistémica no puede desvincularse de la construcción de economías y sistemas alimentarios que se basan en las necesidades de las personas, en particular de los pequeños agricultores, y de los ecosistemas prósperos. Para lograrlo, debemos rechazar y prohibir rotundamente la ecocida ilógica de la mercantilización, la financialización y el extractivismo, como fuerzas impulsoras de las fortunas y los destinos humanos y ecológicos. … El fortalecimiento de los movimientos sociales a nivel local es indispensable para forzar la ruta de África hacia un liderazgo político eficaz y democrático. Se necesita una clara ruptura, dejando atrás intervenciones a favor de un desarrollo ahistórico y tecnicista, donde la tecnología y la productividad se plantean como problemas y soluciones, hacia un replanteamiento urgente y drástico para hacer frente a las crisis sistémicas convergentes que enfrentamos hoy.

    Mariam Mayet, directora ejecutiva del African Centre for Biodiversity [Centro Africano para la Biodiversidad]


    COVID-19 ha expuesto la naturaleza racializada de los sistemas alimentarios, pero también potencialmente otorga oportunidades para construir de nuevo. Maywa Montenegro explora una serie de averías, desde cadenas de suministro fracturadas hasta infecciones incontroladas entre trabajadores de alimentos esenciales, entre comunidades negras, marrones e indígenas atravesadas por el virus a lo largo de viejos surcos de opresión racial y de clase.

    Ella rastrea los orígenes probables de COVID-19 a los sitios de derrame forjados por la expansión agroindustrial en regiones boscosas donde los patógenos brotan libres e infectan a los humanos. La agricultura animal industrial impulsa estos cambios ecológicos que incuban futuros brotes. Las pandemias tienen sus raíces en la separación violenta de las comunidades de sus territorios, semillas, conocimiento y riqueza. El racismo permite tal robo como fundamental para la expansión capitalista.

    Para hacer frente a las pandemias y las injusticias alimentarias, Montenegro pide una agroecología abolicionista. Ninguna alternativa anticapitalista puede ignorar el racismo que es central para el sistema alimentario transnacional. Académicos como Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore y Mariame Kaba han argumentado que aunque la abolición se ve con frecuencia como una estrategia de oposición, para erradicar, por ejemplo, las prisiones y la policía, la abolición es igualmente proposicional. Una agroecología abolicionista abre múltiples posibilidades que responden a las exigencias de un planeta pandémico: no hay una “normalidad” a la que podamos regresar con seguridad.

    Esta es una traducción al español de Abolitionist Agroecology, Food Sovereignty and Pandemic Prevention 

  • Moving Beyond Capitalist Agriculture: Could Agroecology Prevent Further Pandemics?

     


    Moving Beyond Capitalist Agriculture is born out of the coordination between scholars and community organizers and it should be shared widely. The group behind it, the Pandemic Research for the People, is an expression of collective wisdom and necessary unease. In fact, organization and solidarity are two values to be cherished in this moment of multiple crises. COVID-19 is a neoliberal disease and agroecology that frees the land and people of greed and towards food sovereignty is the pathway out of this mess. — Saulo Araujo, US Friends of the Landless Workers Movement

    If you want to know more about the connections between racial capitalism, industrial agriculture, environmental destruction, and epidemics and pandemics, then this is a great place to start. But this pamphlet is more than just an analysis of the immense problems generated by capitalism. More importantly, this pamphlet represents an attempt to overcome this system and to develop revolutionary alternatives to it. Rather than falling into the tempting illusion of reform, the authors of these texts give invaluable insights into how we might support and develop revolutionary forms of agro-ecology that can sustain and reproduce life outside of the racial capitalist machine that is destroying it.” — Arturo Castillon, co-author, The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising

    Increasingly threatening climate disaster coinciding with a pandemic has tragically illustrated that the world doesn’t have the luxury of dealing with one crisis at a time – and capitalist agriculture is at the root of both. The authors show convincingly that there is a better way: one that’s based on self-determination and building on human cooperation, not competition. This publication makes a strong case for agroecology as a crucial part of a future that puts people above profit; a future that assures people`s health by allowing planetary health to flourish. It will bring clarity to everyone trying to understand how the next pandemic could be averted whilst building a more just world — Vijoleta Gordeljević, Health economist and environmental health policy expert, People’s Health Movement.


    Pathogens repeatedly are emerging from a global agrifood system rooted in inequality, labor exploitation, and unfettered extractivism by which communities are robbed of their natural and social resources. A crisis-prone economic system that prioritizes production for profit over meeting human needs and ecological preservation is organized around intense monocultural production that, along the way, allows the deadliest of diseases to emerge. The Pandemic Research for the People (PReP) focuses on how agriculture might be reimagined as the kind of community-wide intervention that could stop coronaviruses and other pathogens from emerging in the first place. We address how mainstream science supports the same political and economic systems that helped produce the pandemic. Then we introduce agroecology, an environmentalism of the peasantry, the poor, and indigenous, long in practice, that treats agriculture as a part of the ecology out of which humanity grows its food. Agroecology—a science, movement, and practice—combines ecological science, indigenous and peasant knowledges, and social movements for food and territorial sovereignty to achieve environmentally just food systems.

    Peasant- and indigenous-led agroecology is uniquely positioned to limit the spread of zoonotic viruses: Post-capitalist agroecology champions the indigenous and smallholders who protect agricultural biodiversity. A diverse agroecological matrix of farm plots, agroforestry, and grazing lands all embedded within a forest can conserve animal biodiversity in the landscape. Agricultural biodiversity can make it more difficult for zoonotic diseases to prevail. Such a mode of conservation also takes into account the economic and social conditions of people currently tending the land, rather than a conservation that uproots people to foster the private accumulation of capital.


    Contents: Introductory note / Globalized food systems, structural inequality, and COVID-19 / What is mutual aid? A COVID-19 Primer / Can agroecology stop COVID-21, -22, and -23? / Moving Beyond Capitalist Agriculture

  • Abolitionist Agroecology, Food Sovereignty and Pandemic Prevention

     


    COVID-19 has exposed the racialized nature of food systems, but also potentially grants opportunities to build anew. Maywa Montenegro explores a series of breakdowns, from fractured supply chains to uncontrolled infection among essential food workers, among Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities scythed through by the virus along old grooves of race and class oppression.

    She traces the likely origins of COVID-19 to spillover sites forged by agroindustrial expansion into forested regions where pathogens spring free and infect humans. Industrial animal agriculture drives these ecological changes that incubate future outbreaks. Pandemics have their roots in the violent separation of communities from their territories, seeds, knowledge and wealth. Racism enables such theft as fundamental to capitalist expansion.

    To tackle pandemics and food injustices, Montenegro calls for an abolitionist agroecology. No anti-capitalist alternative can ignore the racism that is central to transnational food system. Scholars including Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Mariame Kaba have argued that although abolition is frequently seen as an oppositional strategy — to eradicate, for example, prisons and police — abolition is equally propositional. An abolitionist agroecology cracks open multiple possibilities that respond to the exigencies of a pandemic planet — there is no ‘normal’ to which we can safely return.

  • The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising

    There was nothing but darkness in the spring of 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic raged and shut down the economy. But as right-wing protesters demanded an end to the lockdown, a much bigger social conflict was brewing under the surface. A rebellion exploded in Minneapolis in response to the brutal police murder of George Floyd in late May, during which a police station was overtaken and burned down. The uprising quickly spread across the United States as protesters looted downtown urban centers, set fire to cop cars, vandalized government buildings, and fought the police. The Black proletariat led the charge, but white, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous proletarians also joined the fight, demonstrating new possibilities for building alliances. While anti-police rebellions continued throughout the summer and fall, the uprising receded with the start of the winter. But this conflict is far from over.

    In an effort to think through the experience of the uprising and prepare for the great struggles that are coming, The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising provides an in-depth analysis of what exactly happened during the 2020 uprising, its potentials, internal limits, and strategic implications.

  • 소소한 혁명

    Suggested Price: USD $ 4.99

    소소한 혁명

    어떻게 자본주의를 넘어설 것인가라는 질문에 대한 답을, 지금 우리가 “감히” 찾아보려고 한다. 이 소책자를 통해, 자본주의를 벗어나 생태사회주의로 향하는 길을 찾는 우리의 노력이 뚜렷해지길 바란다.

    자본주의에 갇힌 우리는, 어떤 형태로든 행동 또는 비행동inaction에 관여하고 있다. 행동은, 자본주의를 직접 마주하기 보다는 자본주의가 초래하는 심각한 여러 문제를 개선하기 위한 투쟁에 참여하는 모습을 띈다. 즉, 우리의 행동은 원인이 아니라 결과에 초점을 맞추는 모순을 보인다.

    반면, 비행동은 동의를 의미하게 된다. 우리는 자본주의 경제 체계를 영속시키는 경제 활동에 문제 제기를 하거나 변화를 요구하는 행동을 하지 않음으로써 자본주의에 [암묵적으로] 동의하고 있다. 결과적으로 평범한 우리가 자본주의에 봉사하는 자본가 역할을 계속하고 있는 것이다.

    왜 자본주의 억압의 대상인 우리가 억압에 동의하는가? 그 이유가 단지 [외부의] 탄압 때문만은 아니라고, 이탈리아 파시즘 하의 감옥에서 그람시Antonio Gramci는 말했다. 즉, “헤게모니”를 장악하는 이념이 우리의 삶을 둘러싼 억압적인 환경을 설명하고 정당화하는 것이다.

    “소소한 혁명”은, 개개인의 삶 속에서, 쉽고 안전하게, 엄청 근사하지는 않지만 일상적이고 실천가능한 행동과 비행동을 얘기한다. 지금까지의 혁명사는, 혁명을 가능하게 했던 전체 민중보다는 소수의 혁명가에 주목했었지만, 자본주의에 맞서는 “우리는” 마르크스나 엥겔스가 떠올렸던 주인공들보다 훨씬 다양하고 규모가 커졌다. 자본주의를 수호하기 위해 싸우는 “그들은” 전 세계 인구의 극소수일 뿐이다.

    자본주의의 어떤 특징이 억압적이고 그래서 제거되어야 하는지, 또 반대로 어떤 사회경제구조의 특징이 억압적이지 않으며 그래서 남겨져야 하는지를 뚜렷이 설명하는 전략이 필요하다. 자본주의 이후 사회가 어떤 모습이어야 할지는 점점 명확해지고 있다. 소소한 혁명은, 자본주의의 영속과 발전에 필수적인 과정에 대한 우리의 동의를 거두는 데에서 시작하여, 수 백 만의 우리가, 여전히 적은 소수이긴 하지만, 건설적인 혹은 파괴적인 노력에 창의적으로 참여할 수 있는 방법 또한 포함한다.

    세상은 자본주의 그 이후로 이미 진행 중이다. 세계 곳곳에서 창의적인 모습의 공동체communal organization들이 생겨나 스스로 통치하고 구성원들의 생존과 안녕을 보장하기 위해 활동하고 있다.  복지 국가를 포함한 자본주의 국가를 넘어서는 것은 국가 자체를 넘어서는 결과로 이어진다. 연대 경제solidarity economy는 먼저, 소규모의 협동조합 성격을 띄는, 저렴하고 유쾌하고 편안한 주거 공간을 구성하는 방법을 모색하여, 착취적인 임대료, 빚, 세금, 보험에 대한 공동의 해결책을 제시한다. 또한 이러한 공동체는, 영양이 풍부한 먹거리를 지역에서 생산하여 유통하는 방법으로, 자본주의식 농업으로부터 독립을 꾀할 수 있다.

    창조적 파괴는, 허가를 받아 하는 대규모의 시위가 아니라 자본주의가 순조롭게 기능할 수 없게 멈추거나 둔화시키는 직접 행동으로 가능하게 된다. 우리가 투자나 세금으로 흘러가게 내버려 두는 돈의 흐름을 비자본주의적인 연대경제에 돌리는 것도 창조적 파괴의 한 방법이다.

    소소한 혁명은, 간단하고 안전하며, 자신의 삶을 조금이라도 바꾸고 싶은 의지가 있는 사람이라면 실천가능하다. 자본주의가 우리의 안녕과 행복을 파괴하는 체계라는 것을 알면서도, 부지불식간에 자본주의를 지지하고 동의하는 행동을 멈추는 즐거움을 누릴 수 있다. 놀랍게도 혁명을 위해 다치거나 죽지 않아도 되고, 심지어 큰 불편을 감수하지 않아도 된다. 우리가 해야 할 일은 단 하나. 어차피 하기 싫었던 여러 일들을 이제 정말 그만두는 것이다.

    Suggested Price: USD $ 4.99
  • Revolución Rinky-Dink: Yendo Más Allá del Capitalismo Negando Consentimiento, y Promoviendo Construcciones Creativas y Destrucciones Creativas

    Este panfleto aborda la pregunta: ¿cómo podemos pasar de A a B, del capitalismo al poscapitalismo? La revolución de Rinky-dink involucra acciones e inacciones que son fáciles, seguras, mundanas, sin glamour y factibles dentro de la vida de cada persona.

    Howard Waitzkin presenta una intervención clara y directa para el cambio revolucionario en el sistema económico capitalista global. Cubre mucho terreno, con sofisticación, mientras mantiene la discusión en tierra. Su enfoque en las formas de facilitar un desafío al capital y construir una mayor transformación revolucionaria es crucial en esta coyuntura histórica. Esta discusión sobre construcciones creativas y destrucciones creativas es particularmente útil.

    — Brett Clark, profesor de sociología de la Universidad de Utah y autor De El Robo De La Naturaleza: Capitalismo Y Grieta Ecológica, The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and Ecological Rift en inglés.

    El fin del capitalismo es posible. Waitzkin nos lleva un paso más allá en el proceso creativo para esta transformación. A través de ejemplos específicos de grupos organizados dentro de los Estados Unidos y en el extranjero, este trabajo constituye una guía práctica para todos. Waitzkin alienta nuestra creatividad para actos organizados y seguros además de omisiones para trascender el capitalismo.

    — Nylca J. Munoz Sosa, abogada, líder de salud pública y activista centrada en la justicia sanitaria y la descolonización en Puerto Rico.

    Suggested Price: USD $ 4.99
  • Rinky-Dink Revolution: Moving Beyond Capitalism by Withholding Consent, Creative Constructions, and Creative Destructions—English (Spanish and Korean editions also available)

    This pamphlet tackles the question: how do we get from A to B, capitalism to post-capitalism?

    It is critical reading to understand why:

    • Capitalist-oriented industrial agriculture and its destruction of habitat are the upstream causes that led to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other past and future pandemics of devastating, emerging viral pathogens. 
    • COVID-19 may trigger a collapse of the global capitalist system but it is not the cause.
    • Health-care and public-health systems organized around capitalist principles don’t do well in pandemics, compared to those not organized around capitalist principles. 
    • The current economic collapse, triggered by a pandemic, opens a door for revolutionary transformation.

    The pamphlet is available in Spanish and Korean.

    Rinky-dink Revolution involves actions and inactions that are easy, safe, mundane, unglamorous, and feasible within every person’s life.

    Howard Waitzkin’s Rinky-Dink Revolution … is small to be sure—light-weight, unimposing in appearance, and with an abbreviated wing-span of just 72 pages total, including 11 pages of fore-and-after-matter. A quick read. But rinky-dink? Quite the opposite. …

    Like the best revolutionaries in all times and places Howard Waitzkin is guided by a powerful sense of possibility as well as deep feelings of love. He’s pissed off to be sure, because he pays attention to the crimes of racial capitalism. But he also knows that “even anger at injustice makes the brow grow stern,” and that being pissed off will not take us where we need to go—only love and joy and generosity can do that. He illustrates over and over that the greatest weapon in the cause of liberation is our beating human hearts longing to be free.

    This book is bantam-weight, as I said—the perfect mini-manifesto to slip into your back pocket or your backpack, a worthy companion as we mount the next action or tend the community garden. — Bill Ayers.  Rinky-Dink billayers.org

    But what exactly does revolution look like? Is it putting on a beret, slinging an AK-47 over your shoulder, and trying for that far-away look in your eyes? Well, no, that’s called suicide by cop (and nobody is going to put your face on a T-shirt). In the short pamphlet/e-book/PDF/audiobook Rinky-Dink Revolution (available on a donation basis from Daraja Press and at Monthly Review), Waitzkin suggests instead that we engage in postcapitalist forms of social organization. He gives us examples such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the Rojava in northern Syria, Jackson, Mississippi, and Rustbelt collectives such as the Horizontal Stateline Autonomous Zone in Northern Illinois. … Waitzkin calls it a Rinky-Dink Revolution because it’s everyday stuff that you can do while you scour the thriftshops in search of that beret.— On Howard Waitzkin’s Rinky-Dink Revolution. Counterpunch.org

    Howard Waitzkin presents a clear, straightforward intervention for revolutionary change in the global capitalist economic system. He covers much ground, with sophistication, while keeping the argument grounded. His focus on ways to facilitate a challenge to capital and to build further revolutionary transformation is crucial at this historical juncture. The discussion of creative constructions and creative destructions is particularly useful. —Brett Clark, Professor of Sociology, University of Utah, and author of The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift

    The end of capitalism is possible. Waitzkin takes us a step further in the creative process for transformation. Through specific examples from organized groups within the United States and abroad, this work constitutes a practical guide for everyone. Waitzkin encourages our creativity for organized, safe acts and omissions to transcend capitalism. —Nylca J. Muñoz Sosa, lawyer, public health leader, and activist focusing on health justice and decolonization in Puerto Rico

    Waitzkin is among the expanding list of authors who openly reject the imperative of capitalism for infinite economic growth. He clearly understands that the world can provide better lives for all of humanity while reducing the total mass of capitalist production, which is overwhelmingly wasteful…. Rinky-Dink Revolution is a great contribution to probing how we can live our lives in ways that prepare us for the society we hope to bring into being. It is more than worth reading – it is something to think deeply about.

    Don Fitz. February 5, 2020 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal 

    Contents

    Moving beyond capitalism now 8

    Peculiar ways to struggle without confronting capitalism 12

    Rinky-dink revolution and revolutionaries 21

    Creative constructions 36

    Creative destructions 49

    The death of capitalism and the birth of something else 65

    About the author 68

    Acknowledgments 69

    Vision statement: Moving beyond capitalism—now! — Howard Waitzkin and Firoze Manji 70

    Audiobook

    You can listen to the audiobook here: