Getting Free: Creating an Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods

The main purpose of this book is to try to persuade revolutionaries to

shift the sites of the anticapitalist struggle and to select new battlefields.

I identify three strategic sites for fighting - neighborhoods, workplaces,

and households - that I believe will not only enable us to defeat capitalists

but also to build a new society in the process. The advantage of this shift

is that it offers an offensive strategy, not merely a defensive one. That is,

it is not merely about resisting what they are doing to us, but rather about

defending what we are doing to them through our new social creations. It

means that we would begin to take the initiative to build the life we want,

and then fight to defend this life from attacks by the ruling class.

In listing all the strategies that have failed, I merely mean to argue that

these forms of resistance, although they have accomplished a lot, haven't

gotten us very far toward our ultimate goal of destroying capitalism.

Some of them - like the leninist vanguard party, social democracy,

dropping out, and guerrilla warfare - should be abandoned completely.

The others should be subordinated to the main task of building free

associations in neighborhoods, workplaces, and households. Strategies like

strikes, civil disobedience, or insurrections are not wrong in themselves,

but they are not enough, and by themselves cannot defeat capitalists.

To win we must add another whole dimension.

James Herod joined the struggle against capitalists, politicians, and priests (or--to use the abstractions--capital, state, and god) during the social upheavals of 1968 and has remained in it ever since.