Coliberatory Socialism: MSP Vision for Change
Fighting for the future we want is more than just resisting a present we won’t accept.
MSP has been organizing and working in MI for over 5 years. In this time we’ve reflected on our work, and on the system in which we live, and have started to reach some conclusions about the needs of our movement. After years of local struggles, statewide campaigns, electoral organizing, it seems clear to us that “resistance” or “reform” will never address the structural issues at play in our state and our world. It is not enough for us to oppose what is happening in our world, or to seek to sand off the worst excesses of our society. The ruling political/economic system is dynamic and evolving: Opposing it at any single point or on any single issue at best results in fleeting breathing space. We will never build a new world until we identify the root causes of the current one, and break their power.
Michigan Student Power believes that our society is confronted by large scale structures of oppression, including racism, cishetero-sexism {cissexism}, and capitalism. We believe that the key systems of oppression that operate in our lives are all inextricably linked. These systems have been shaped by each other over time and cannot be broken up and defeated in isolation. We have to fight for a better world, we define this world by the term “Coliberatory Socialism.”
So what is Co-liberatory socialism?
Coliberatory Socialism is a theoretical framework that MSP members and organizers have developed over the past several years! It’s derived from two (probably obvious) key ideas:
Socialism: Socialism is an economic system where the ways of making money (factories, offices, etc.) are owned by a society as a whole, meaning the value made belongs to everyone in that society, instead of a small group of private owners (like in capitalism); and where these resources are democratically controlled by the people who work and depend upon them. Capitalism is the econUnder this definition of socialism, it cannot exist without the dismantling of capitalism.
Co-liberation : The idea that liberation is not a process that can happen to an individual or even a single group of people, but must be a collective and interconnected struggle. A strategy for ending oppression that honors intersecting marginalized identities. This strategy recognizes that the struggles against oppressive structures are interconnected. People who are coming from impacted communities must be centered in these strategies.
Coliberatory Socialism is the combination of these two ideas. We need to build a future that fundamentally transforms who controls the wealth and institutions in our society. We believe that the world we are trying to build will take the form of some kind of socialist society: where value is not defined by an individual’s profitability, where reparations are made for the centuries of oppression that have come before, where no private individual controls the lives of others through jobs or wealth, where we are able to labor to meet our needs and democratically control our future. This theory of change comes from a long tradition of Black, indigenous, POC, socialist, anarchist, and communist thinkers reaching back centuries, and seeks to build an understanding of past movements as we continue the work today.
Capitalism can’t liberate anyone
MSP sees the struggle for a socialist future as a critical part of our work because of the way that capitalism works within our society. While there have been tomes written on this subject that go into much deeper detail- at the most basic level capitalism creates the material conditions that oppress people. The defining characteristics of capitalism are private ownership of the means to produce wealth, and their application to produce a profit for their owners. In this system regular people (99% of us) are “free” to work for the wealthy, or to risk grinding poverty and death. Human beings are turned into instruments of labor, valued only for their ability to produce.
It is a system based around the extraction of surplus value from labor and the environment for the benefit of a few individuals. By reducing human interactions to those of the market, and building them upon the wealth derived from centuries of exploitation, capitalism incentivizes and concretizes the devaluation of people- in particular women, femmes and PoC. It replaces all human relationships and cultural institutions with a single relationship- the market. It shatters and distorts our communities and family relationships, forcing us to exploit the labor of our family members (especially women and femmes), and to live more selfish and individual lives. Within capitalism our society doesn’t ask the question, “What do we need?” it instead asks the question “What is profitable?” and more specifically “What is profitable for wealthy people?”
Within capitalism the accumulation of wealth over generations is a way to launder the benefits of all the inter-connected oppressive systems. White supremacy is carried on not just by mental attitudes of white people but by material wealth passed down through generations of people benefiting from their position in a racist society (Similarly with centuries of patriarchy, homophobia, and other systems of oppression). Furthermore, these systems are themselves manipulated by the powerful within capitalism, used to divide working people, devalue communities, justify wars and crush resistance of all kinds. Capitalism is intertwined with all other forms of oppression, giving them financial backing and incentive to maintain their dominance. To break their power, we must break capitalism.
It is possible to redistribute resources within capitalism, but these efforts will never change the exploitative and oppressive logics of the system as a while. Money that is redistributed without taking control of the means of producing wealth, will only be extracted once more by the wealthy and powerful. A universal basic income helps no one if your landlord can raise the rent, your boss can drop your wages, and your insurance can raise the rates. These temporary fixes may alleviate suffering in the short term, but they fail to challenge the power relationships that created and maintain oppression in our society.
This is a struggle not for wealth, but for power and self determination. It’s not just about getting some of the things. It’s about having the power to take and keep the things we all deserve.
Why we need to name what we want
Often when approaching political organizing we are met by many contradictory yet mutually depressing tendencies. There are many folks who spend their time obsessed with crafting a message that will appeal to a fictional mass of people, as defined by polling data. Their messages frequently come out as bland shadows of ideas, hoping to minimize offense and thereby minimizing impact. Simultaneously there are almost constant single issue movements- reacting to the crises of the moment. Everything is always a crisis, but few things are approached in a radical way that strikes at their source. There are “movements” with well funded appeals for “progressive change” and “holding politicians accountable” that never seem to get around to defining what either of those phrases mean; or that push past important relationship building in the name of their own importance, demanding communities follow after them, and using funding access to force others to listen. The spectacle of resistance replaces the struggle for radical change.
We see truth in many of these perspectives: our work has to stay grounded in the moment and what is possible, we have to constantly be meeting new people where they are at and responding to new crises that affect our community. However, if we do not begin to identify and fight for what we want, rather than just what is currently perceived as possible or popular, then we will never reach the liberated future our world so desperately needs. It is not enough to be anti-capitalist or anti-oppressive.
A socialist future that transforms our society will not happen by accident.
We have to be willing to name it and fight for it.
Further Resources:
These resources are meant to highlight organizations and political texts that have helped shape our political ideologies and contributed to our views on community building. These lists are inconclusive and ever growing. This list is non-exhaustive.
Black Socialists of America: https://blacksocialists.us
Manifesto of the Communist Party — Karl Marx and Fredrick Engles
Movement for Black Lives: https://policy.m4bl.org/reparations/
Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate the Climate Crisis
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements — Charlene Carruthers
