James Herod

This book outlines a strategy for gutting and shuffling off capitalism and the state and replacing them with workplace (project), communal household, and neighborhood assemblies. These assemblies will tap into the naturally anarchist power of collective decision-making and real social function. The simplicity of the model is elegant.

What I found most interesting about the book was imagining what this post-revolutionary world would look like. Will we be able, after exercising our collective decision-making muscles, to make decisions on a massive scale that emphasize direct democracy, face-to-face contact, and discussion? If meeting halls are the altars of the new era, constructed like the cathedrals of the middle ages and the banks and skyscrapers of today, they will be even more beautiful because they will have the input from an entire free community, not just the whims of some experts. They will have to be specially designed with break-out rooms, and other architectural elements that elicit the most participation out of the most amount of people.

This book fails where it doesn't bother to venture. This seems like a weird statement: of course it doesn't cover what it doesn't cover, that's idiotic. But no, I mean that it gives very superficial attention to some details that will undoubtedly need to be worked out in a systematic and thorough way: white supremacy, for example, and xenophobia. Uprooting these systems will be crucial to avoiding isolated, ghettoized neighborhoods, and the solution to this problem is the solution to white supremacy in any political/economic structure: rigorous anti-racist work and organizing across racial lines.

That said, the effects of white supremacy and xenophobia within communities will be mitigated by the lack of hierarchy within neighborhood associations. Also, neighborhood assemblies will be more likely to let the people in a community address the unique issues of that community, even (under the worst case scenario) survival in isolation, far more than capitalism, given capitalism's foundation: the theft of the commons from the working class, the genocide of a continent of Native Americans to steal raw resources, and the enslavement or execution of hundreds of millions of Africans for hundreds of years of free labor.

Further, the author doesn't do a very good job enumerating how one might defend these assemblies, other than that self defense is something we should look into.… (altro)

Book Review: "Getting Free: Creating an Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhood Associations" by James Herod

Review by James Generic

There's lots of different theories on how to change the world, or to make a world that's a better place. Many times, there aren't many real road maps of how to get to those places except "organize" or "be allies" or "raise awareness" and other vague terms. Too often, you have to wade through what people are saying, or ask others to translate it into speak able terms for you, like a professor or a group of peers. In "Getting Free: Creating an Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods" in very plain English terms, proposes a plan of action for people who want that better world.



The book is a very nice read, and some parts where he outlines how this future society might work, Getting Free almost reads like Peter Kropotkin's classic "Conquest of Bread". There's no abstract stuff here, only thoughts on how to achieve this world. The book is broken down into sections. He lays out what he's against, something that's always easy. He says what he's for, a direct democratic society where people run their own neighborhoods and their own work. After this, he explores what hasn't worked (which is most things, according to him, though they have brought changes, they haven't brought the whole enchilada down.) He then goes into his main thesis, which is that radical organizers and politically active people should take their fight into building new democratic organizations in neighborhoods, workplaces, and households (by which he means the places where many families will live).



Herod suggests that people set up employee associations, involving no larger unions, in the fight in the workplace. In the fight for the neighborhood, neighborhood associations should be formed to bring control back to the neighbors away from the government. In the household, several families should pool their resources together to get a larger place that they can all share. Herod then goes into many suggestions in basic things people can do to make this better world, like setting a meeting hall, organizing worker-owned businesses, try to get jobs in the neighborhoods, set up local currency, growing food locally, setting up neighborhood warehouse for goods, slowing down work at jobs, turning off television, recovering language away from academia, ending cooperation with the police, putting your money in local cooperative banks, breaking away from the school system, as well as rejecting a host of other things like recycling, marriage by church or state, suits, and voting, and saying not to be come a boss, bureaucrat, or a cop.



All of these steps sound pretty good, and the author argues them pretty well. I like most of the stuff in here and I defiantly like how he avoids abstractions whenever possible like "capitalism, the state, etc" and in general you don't need a dictionary to get exactly what he means. I do have a few small problems with the theory though. He's against involving unions in workplace struggles, instead going for just worker organizations, which sounds nice and pure because it avoids the union buearacracy that often chokes the labor movement, however, I would be concerned about what exactly to do when facing inevitable backlash from the bosses. Sometimes you really can't beat the resources a larger union offers, in fighting the union-busting law-firms, government forces, and intimidation from management. I'm also a little hazy on what he wants to do in general once government or right-wing thugs try to roll back the gains he's talking about. You also do have to look at stuff like race and gender and sexuality in dealing with all this because it's such a deep part of our culture. Capitalists are very resourceful and do not hesitate to adapt to situations, with "speak softly and carry a big stick" tactics.



Besides those small disagreements, I really think that "Getting Free" is very well thought out. Sometimes it's a little pie-in-the-sky, but most theories are, and the best thing is to take what you can use out of theories and disregard what you can't. If you're looking for some great present-day anarchist theories on practical things on what to do, pick this one up. You'll be very glad you did, because it's wonderfully written, funny, to the point, and you get the feeling you're reading the work of a very quick-witted person.

On a side note: Another great reason to pick it up is because it's put out by the Lucy Parsons Center, one of the older infoshops on the Eastern seaboard up in Boston.… (altro)