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Might turn it into an essay so let me know if I should

Within BIPOC, Abolition & Decolonization movement spaces I've seen a turn to a type of anti-statism, anti-politics, horizontalism & cooperativism that claims to be radical but imo in its current iterations are libertarian or liberal.

It claims there is a way to operate outside of state & capitalist economic relations. It then proposes that are “community based approaches” but usually are still NPIC in some form & worst (usually in rejection of NPIC) individualizes solutions

usually in some form of voluntarism or a go fund me like voluntarism. This is what I mean by anti-statism falling into forms of libertarianism or liberalism.

It also claims that this approach is the singular & only genuine way to take down the state or practice radical politics. It forecloses the deliberative democratic consensus-building of the radical organizing axiom “diversity of tactics.”

More importantly, the state & capitalism especially in the global north operates as a totality. What does mean? There is no genuine space one can go outside of that isn’t conditioned by the state, capitalism, NPIC, corporations, banks, etc.

That is why workers have to organize unions, instead of just making their cooperative firm on their own. Even in moments where workers make their own cooperatives have to have a strategy changing the rules of the state & economy so that their firms have a chance to thrive.

We have to change the rules, laws & policies of the state & capitalist economy if we want to build power “outside” of the state & the capitalist economy in order to tear down the state.

The only way is through

So it's less about voting vs insurrection, democratic centralism vs horizontalism, anti-statism vs statism, community-based vs government based, etc

We should all be opposed to tearing down the current capitalist state. We should also use every tool at our disposal whether insurrectionary direct action, electoral politics, mutual aid, building cooperatives, etc.

Trying to pose ones approach to change as an alibi for capitalism isn’t helpful. All approaches are susceptible to cooption or demobilization.

Our challenge is how do we burn down police stations, militantly protest, elect politicians who are committed to passing socialist, abolitionist and decolonial policy and do mutual aid that disempowers the NPIC, etc.

How do we do it all, how do we do it big and how do we do it in a manner that democratically works through our meaningful differences when it comes to politics, analysis, strategy, and tactics.

This is what labor, the Black Freedom Movement, Abolition movements and anti-colonial liberation movements figured out when they were winning big.

In order to win we need all of these tools. We also need a theory, approach & vision to government & governance that is anti-statist, but still able to democratic in the Black Reconstruction sense & scale to meet billions of peoples basic needs & desire for agency

Here my distinction between state and government is: state is an entity that rules via the monopoly on violence, government is rule via the democratic consent of us, the people: this necessitates the abolition of the monopoly of violence I.e. An Abolition Democracy.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk
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