Beyond Community Agreements
Questions towards transformation
Sam Allison-Natale (Lawrence, KS)
Folks in DSA do a good job of recognizing that Capitalism is broken. But we are less good at realizing how Capitalism has broken us. Just as children re-create the often dysfunctional dynamics of their parents, we all struggle with the inheritance of our abusive “democracy.” Whether or not we realize it, we have internalized norms of competition, aggression, and dishonesty, and recreate within our culture the dynamics of loyalty, hierarchy, and domination that earn success in our broader broken culture. These dynamics contribute to burnout and attrition.
When Assata Shakur said “It is our duty to fight for freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other.” she expressed a key truth—being kind and loving with each other is an indispensable part of our work for liberation. Addressing hostile dynamics is not an accessory to our work, but a fundamental priority for the organization. As socialists, we must take this problem seriously.
When deliberating a toxic discourse culture in DSA, some people want to approach the problem as a question of behavior—simply stop “being mean.” Not only is this approach ineffective, but it also rests on a faulty analysis that the problem we face is a kind of incivility. Just as abuse in our broader world is not often achieved through incivility or even direct meanness, but of a variety of other kinds of abuse, so too with our internal culture. Narrowly focusing on civility or anger overlooks these other kinds of abuse.
Those in positions of authority frequently respond to criticism in ways that mirror the condescension, dismissiveness, or aggression through which white supremacy and patriarchy are upheld, even if they would never consciously seek to uphold these oppressive systems. We may act instinctively in defense of our friends, even when they are wrong, because we live in a society of such alienation that the bonds of true comradeship are scarce and so we are defensive of those bonds. None of these scenarios are a failure of “civility.”
Likewise, those outside of elected leadership reflexively view our socialist leadership structures, even if reasonably open and democratic, as illegitimate because our only experience with institutions is through the illegitimate, abusive, and undemocratic ones that govern our current world.
If the dynamics of our internal culture are also affected by traumas from our external world, then solutions that focus solely on individual attitudes aren’t going to lead to change. What is needed is a change in the collective habits of mind that lead up to a moment of choice, not just different choices. What is needed is therapy. But individual therapy won’t solve a collective problem, and so I suggest therapy for DSA in a broader sense: a set of practices or norms not to shape our behavior in any given situation, but to shape our perceptions and habits of thinking.
There is no way to move past our flaws and weaknesses except through hard internal work. Nor is there any way to have a political organization where conflicts with one another about political decisions are avoided. As democratic socialist and Frankfurt School psychologist Erich Fromm notes in The Art of Being, “There is a widespread belief that life should not offer any conflicts, agonizing choices, painful decisions. Such situations are considered more or less abnormal or pathological, and not a necessary part of ordinary living.” This widespread desire to avoid conflict is liberalism. Rather than seek a solution (or a form of the organization) that discourages people from having to engage in political conflict, I propose that we—collectively and individually—engage in the intentional practice of having these conflicts productively, and without harming each other.
There's an analog to this kind of transformative approach in the field of ethics. Certain ethical philosophies try to find the rules that will allow people to be ethical as they are now. But the approach of “virtue ethics” such as the kind put forth by Aristotle, Iris Murdoch, and Alasdair MacIntyre, ask for the guidelines, habits, and practices that will allow us to develop into better people (and, in this case, better organizers). A transformative approach to ethics recognizes that there is a human potential beyond our current nature that we will have to develop into through conscious practice, and a change in our perspectives and habits.
Rather than figuring out a set of rules that create a good democratic environment right now (which is how we often think of community agreements), we should be asking “what kinds of rules and norms will transform us so as to create the permanent democratic culture of the future?” What kind of experiences or habits can help change the way we interact with one another in democratic discourse?”
This raises the question “transforming into what? Transforming for what?” The answer which must guide our thinking in this process of transformation is “to transform into the kind of people who can practice a healthy democracy; into the kind of people who can achieve a revolution.” These rules are not metaphysical, timeless, or moral, but material necessities guided by specific collective goals. This is part of what differentiates a socialist approach to collective transformation from bourgeois liberal calls for civility. Liberals seek civility to keep things as they are. We seek collective transformation as a necessary precondition for the transformation of our world.
It is crucial that transformative norms and practices, whatever we find them to be, are codified into collective agreed-upon practice, and not just optional suggestions for individuals. This is the difference between a community agreement that suggests folks step up/step back, and an agreement that “none of us will speak twice until everyone has spoken once (or affirmatively volunteered not to speak).” Such agreements normalize habits of mind that can develop into a culture of beneficial cooperation. Sharing these broadly gives members a shared vocabulary to describe their experiences in ways that are mutually understandable. Members who make a commitment to these may come to rely on their comrades to do the same, creating a culture of trust.
This raises the specter of “discipline,” but that term should be destigmatized as a core part of comradeship. As Jodi Dean eloquently expressed:
“For some on the contemporary left, discipline has a bad name. Not only do they see discipline as a threat to individual freedom, but they are skeptical of intense political belonging of any sort. Viewing comradely discipline only as constraint and not as a decision to build collective capacity, they substitute the fantasy that politics can be individual for the actuality of political struggle. This substitution evades the fact that comradeship is a choice — both for the one joining and for the Party joined. It also ignores the liberating quality of discipline. For when we have comrades, we are freed from the obligation to be and know and do everything on our own; instead, there is a larger collective with a line, program, and set of tasks and goals that all of us shoulder together. We are freed from the cynicism that parades as maturity because of the practical optimism that faithful work engenders. Discipline provides the support that frees us to make mistakes, learn, and grow. When we err — and each of us will — our comrades will be there to catch us, dust us off, and set us right. We aren’t abandoned to go it alone.”
Some chapters have already taken the values of this approach to heart. For instance, in Chicago DSA, Solidarity's Rules of Feminist Process have been codified into the Chapter's bylaws by a democratic vote, and they are read aloud before each meeting. In reading the Rules of Feminist Process, we may reflect on how we can carry their principles beyond just our meetings, but also into our online spaces and interpersonal interactions with each other.
To a similar end, the Socialist Majority Caucus has adopted a “Code of Conduct” for all members of our caucus. These rules commit us to behave in certain ways, and in particular, how and where we engage in conduct. For instance, when approaching a conflict, we must schedule an in-person or phone conversation with the other person as our first step, not blow them up on twitter. This is the suggestion of Sarah Schulman in Conflict is not Abuse, noting that the distance of online interactions encourages us to dehumanize our opponents, and exaggerate the degree of disagreement. A face to face or at least, real-time communication allows for a greater depth of vulnerability, openness and attention to each other. These norms are crucial to developing the kind of organization we want to be in. SMC members, myself included, have failed to live up to them many times in the lead-up to convention last year. But we should re-commit ourselves to them now, and aim for their full realization as the horizon to which we orient.
Mijente, in their Points of Unity, expresses this idea best. “We acknowledge and value that part of the work is to recover, unlearn, and remember.” As a caucus and as a socialist organization, we should study practices like these and incorporate their best elements into our own organization, at the same time that we learn and unlearn through our own ongoing work and experience. In the coming articles, we would like to present some promising areas of thought for where we may start looking for ways to transform our organizational culture.