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Library:Tenant Spring

2026-06-04T00:35:06Z

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{{Library work|title=Tenant Spring|author=The All-Chicago Tenants Alliance|written in=|published_date=2025|type=Pamphlet|pdf=https://chicagotenants.com/tenantspring/}}{{Book TOC
|level1=2
|item1=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Preface|Preface]]
|level2=2
|item2=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Capitalism|Capitalism]]
|level3=2
|item3=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Imperialism and Internationalism|Imperialism and Internationalism]]
|level4=2
|item4=[[Library:Tenant Spring/The Rent Strike|The Rent Strike]]
|level5=2
|item5=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|Tenant Unions in the Revolution]]
|level6=2
|item6=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Segregation|Segregation]]
|level7=2
|item7=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|Centralism]]
|level8=2
|item8=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy|Expansion and Democracy]]
|level9=2
|item9=[[Library:Tenant Spring/Battalion and Army|Battalion and Army]]
}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Preface}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Capitalism}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Imperialism and Internationalism}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/The Rent Strike}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Segregation}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy}}

{{Library:Tenant Spring/Battalion and Army}}

Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy

2026-06-04T00:21:25Z

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== Chapter Seven: Expansion and Democracy ==

==== ''ACTA “does not have the material forces to organize in Rogers Park.” What are its forces and which neighborhood are they in? How do these develop, and how can we call ourselves the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance if we are not in every neighborhood?'' ====
ACTA’s most basic practical activity is what we call mass work. Mass work is when our organizers go into the neighborhoods and build links with tenants. Mass work is a process of investigation. We have done mass work in a number of ways, but the most consistent and reliable way to begin, in our experience so far, is door-knocking. Door-knocking is therefore the most fundamental practice in ACTA’s operation, it is what all other forms of mass work are built upon. It is the most simple activity that puts the organizer face to face with the tenant. Just as it is any given tenant’s first exposure to ACTA, mass work is also the typical method to introduce ACTA members to external work. At one and the same time, mass work involves going out (the organization into society) and pulling in (society into the organization). It is the most basic element of centralization. Centralization is this ''real activity in its process.''

At the time of publication, ACTA reliably sends out 12 to 20 organizers every Saturday to do mass work. These forces are not sent out randomly, they are divided up and deployed according to a plan which is developed each Saturday morning. This plan is always specific to the day and utilizes the number of available organizers who have shown up, but it follows the development of mass work week-to-week, month-to-month, because the purpose of mass work is to learn what is going on with people, form relationships and establish preconditions for recurring meetings in the effort to create tenant unions. From the initial contact, ACTA members tend to the unions, guiding them to the level of self leadership and ideological maturity required by the overall struggle. Therefore, successful mass work results in “Units” of organizers who have found organizing prospects and make strategies for developing them into unions until they stand on their own two feet.

It can be seen how mass work is the nutrient that feeds ACTA’s system. Just as nutrients are taken into the body and are destroyed by their conversion into energy, ACTA’s organizers enter the system by mass work but soon develop beyond this early phase of the cycle by establishing or joining organizing units engaged in constructing specific tenant unions. This process is by no means one-directional. Frequently, unsuccessful organizing units dissolve and the individuals are released back into Saturday mass work.

But for every durable, medium to long-term organizing unit that forms, an equivalent number of members are pulled out of mass work. If we are to continue expanding our activity to meet the sheer volume of landlord terror, a relatively continuous stream of organizers need to be entering the organization. Currently this supply of organizers is drawn in from the outside, but it is our hope that the unions will act as a method of transmission for the most developed tenants into the ranks of general organizers.

On any given Saturday, a handful of our organizers are door-knocking, while others are in the early stages of union-formation (i.e. returning to prospective buildings) and others are in later stages of union-formation (i.e. planning regular meetings with tenants in prospect buildings). The planning necessary for directing this kind of operation requires a headquarters for a weekly strategy meeting to take place, i.e a ''center''. Our center is where ACTA’s strategy (i.e. its theory) and the efforts to realize it (i.e. its practice) begin. It is also where we re-incorporate the results of our practice into our strategy (i.e. critique). Therefore, it is not correct to visualize the center as “the head” or central intellect of the organization, while the organizers are the workers and the body. It is better to conceive of the center as the loom where all the many theoretical and practical threads of ACTA are woven together into a unified cloth. Although the physical center is currently the location where we create this unity, physical proximity is not sufficient to overcome the tendency of theory and practice to drift apart. The real unity between our theory and practice is a result of the rotational character of ACTA’s structure, which does not confine our leadership to ideological, theoretical, and strategic work without organizing buildings and does not limit general members to organizing buildings without participating in developing the ideology, theory and strategy of the organization.<ref>More in [[Library:Tenant Spring/Battalion and Army|Chapter 8]].</ref> All the multifaceted activity of ACTA must be coordinated and linked concretely.

ACTA’s operational center is currently located on the southern edge of Humboldt Park. This leaves us in a good position to organize in Chicago’s West Side because we can easily get our forces from our HQ to the apartment buildings and back with short car, bus or bike rides. Because of this, the major share of our activity has been focused in “K-Town” and the surrounding neighborhoods, e.g. Garfield Park, North Lawndale and Austin, etc. This area is currently a soft geographic limit. The number of organizers available and their distribution between mass work, union-formation and unit work are the components of a second limit. There are also more infrastructural limits, such as the physical size of our center relative to the number of people who need to meet there at a single time, the volume of propaganda and organizing literature we can effectively produce, etc. The effective combination of our forces against their various limits is the essence of strategy and, to repeat, this strategic endeavor rests on its center. ''The center is essential.''

ACTA cannot expand beyond these limits without making changes to the existing structure of the organization. The class struggle between tenants and landlords is latent wherever housing is in control of the dictatorship of landlords and, unlike our organization, the extent of landlord domination does not remain within neighborhood limits. Landlord hegemony exists all across Chicago and therefore we need an all-Chicago strategic assault.

The city-wide reach of landlord terror poses a problem to the organization. Tenants who are spontaneously prepared to join the struggle do not appear in a series of neat, concentric circles moving out from our center. Landlord portfolios span neighborhoods and eager organizers come into the movement regardless of neighborhood. Nevertheless we are limited by geographic distance. The natural tendency is for disconnected centers to spring up in different parts of the city, each following its own isolated goals and strategy. If we take what has been said above seriously, then this must be understood as the most pressing problem for the tenant movement as a whole, and therefore for our organization. How to expand without losing the connection to a strategic center is the major concern of ACTA today.

As we have seen, coalitionism is one of the go-to means that organizations use to “expand” their sphere of activity in Chicago. We reject this on principle, for reasons we have started to describe above. The center is the crux of ACTA’s organizing practices. Actual centralization should not be misunderstood as something literal or merely physical, ''per se''. It does not mean that ACTA cannot establish multiple organizing ''centers'' across the city. It does mean that these centers must be established in a manner that proceeds dialectically from the principle and practice of centralization.<ref>The Los Angeles Tenants Union might be organized as an assemblage of locals, but this does not confirm or deny the presence of centralization in their organization. That has to be judged on the basis of other things, mainly how the strategy is transmitted between the different outposts of their group and the hierarchy of authority. ACTA has no insight into LATU’s structure at this level, the example is only to show that outward appearance cannot be taken as essence and that it is certainly possible that LATU might be centralized with multiple “centers.”</ref> The theoretical and practical processes of these distal centers must be carefully interwoven with ACTA’s current processes if we want to ensure the same strategic unity. A process of expansion that sacrifices or attempts to “leap over” our ''real centralization in practice'' is an artificial one, and one that is doomed to fail.

An approximate example of this type of attempt can be seen in one of the schemes of the now defunct Chicago Tenant Movement. After forming, CTM’s main activity was gradually dragged toward the operation of an eviction hotline. At one point, they attempted to overcome this and organize the city into regional sections where building-level organization could be carried out, but the theory was preemptive and abstract. There was little to no building-level organization to speak of in the first place. No rich organizational life had been consolidated ''at the center'' of their organization that could be expanded. This example only partly illustrates a mistake we are at risk of making. In CTM's case, the organization made a leap from its abstract principles of a citywide movement to a strategy, ''rather than starting from the real, actual life of the organization and expanding to reach concrete strategic objectives''. If they had done the latter, CTM would have discovered an extensive series of concrete steps to take in order to develop itself from its existence as a crisis response organization into its desired existence as a multi-neighborhood, tenant union organization.

What distinguishes ACTA at our present stage from CTM then is that our activity is consolidated around mass work (as described above), and we have two dozen organizers all quite trained or currently training in the work of building-level organization. Our activity is at a stage where expansion is a real possibility, created by an influx of organizers from other parts of the city. Of course, the potential work in each area greatly exceeds the capabilities of the youthful movement, but we cannot simply assume the rest of the city will supply the manpower to organize the west side right now. The struggle will need to mature before the potential work can be realized to absorb our available organizing power. In the meantime, potential forces from other parts of the city are eager to join the movement, but ACTA must be capable of integrating them. The task of establishing centers in other parts of the city is something we always knew we would have to address at some point. Now it has become feasible because people from other parts of the city have become involved. We still face limits to our geographic reach and our current forces, but these two limits are no longer objective limits.<ref>Objective limits are imposed by conditions outside of our immediate control. We do not treat these as impossible limits to overcome, they simply mean that we must work consciously elsewhere to develop either our own capabilities or the objective situation. In this example, concerted work within our geographical limit created the notoriety required to attract organizers in other parts of the city.</ref> The development of the struggle has transformed these from objective problems into theoretical problems to be solved. We are now in a position to restructure our organization and advance beyond our previous limits. The distant strategic problem of establishing additional physical centers of our organization and integrating them with the actual center has become an immediate problem for us to solve.

But just because the possibility exists doesn’t mean we can leap out into every other part of the city recklessly to justify our claim to being the ''All-Chicago'' Tenant Alliance. We ''are'' the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, we understand the contradictory identity of ''being'' with ''becoming.'' ACTA is not an organization, it is a unity of real active processes. We can’t roll out a map of the city on the table and begin walling off organizing boundaries with our pens, writing the names of organizers into the zones. We have to walk the real earth, encounter boundaries as real boundaries and overcome them in our real activity, which, as we have already seen, is built on the elemental unity of strategy, implementation, critique. i.e. of centralization. This activity is the soul of ACTA and it is also the flesh. These can only be artificially separated in thought ''because they can’t be separated in reality''.<ref>A body with a dead brain inside it is a dead body. And from where does a brain in a glass jar receive its blood apart from the system of the flesh? Which of the two brains mentioned has the power of abstract thought?</ref> God was able to create Adam’s body ''before'' giving it a soul because he is God, and we all know what happened to Adam. We are not gods, we are humans and therefore we know that it is walking that makes the road.

Expansion can only be done by building carefully in a way that begins with the real facts of our central practice and continues to preserve and develop our center by transmitting it through every step, until it transforms itself organically from what it is now—all-Chicago in principle—to what it wants to become, all-Chicago in fact. There are any number of possibilities for how a centralized organization can be built, as long as each link in the chain is connected to the one before it, so that the center analyzed above—the most basic organizational unit of ACTA—is carried through to every nook and cranny of the organization, no matter the physical (geographic) arrangement or ''design of the transmission'' at every scale.

It should be self-evident that centralization cannot occur without a simultaneous link to the periphery of the organization. A central core without a clear and effective connection to its branches is not actually a center at all. A spiderweb is more than its capture spiral, it is also its radial threads. In ACTA centralism is a democratic principle. We do not see democracy and centralism as contradictory forces within the organization. The rank and file do not act as a check or balance opposite to the leadership. Instead, they act as co-creators of the organization. The leadership provides the rank and file with strategic continuity and opportunities to take leadership in the organization and in turn, the membership extends the actual reach of the organization, stepping into the position of leadership themselves. This reciprocal connection between the leadership and the rank and file of the organization imbues the organization with vitality and fuels purposeful growth.

It is common for democracy to be treated as synonymous with elections and representatives, a view which treats democracy as an abstract ideal rather than living, breathing participation in an organization. Practices such as elections or rigid parliamentary procedure should not be mistaken for democracy, especially when they so often become anti-democratic. Only true participation and activity in the organization by its members should be considered true democracy. ACTA seeks democracy as an actuality and this means sober reflection on every facet of the organization. If an organizational practice empowers members to deepen their organizational activity we may call it democratic.

The opposite of actual democracy is not leadership or formalization. The true opposite of democracy in an organization is inactivity and impotence. If the organization cannot develop, expand, and pursue its aims, then any supposedly democratic structures will only lead to an illusion of democracy. Opportunities for creative participation in the organization and positions which provide members with ownership over particular aspects of the struggle are necessarily democratic, in that they provide deeper popular control over the organization. For example, ACTA’s general membership are encouraged to take on leadership projects designed around pressing organizational problems of the moment. These projects offer general members opportunities to transform the organization in significant ways, from taking on leadership of a union to implementing new practices or even additional organizational divisions. Only the development and expansion of the organization can reliably provide these types of opportunities. Trying to institute formal democratic processes without corresponding developments in the organization’s activity can only lead to stagnation and over-bureaucratization.

We have seen organized tenants mistake formal democratic processes for actual democracy. An emblematic case of this recently occurred, in fact. Under ACTA’s influence, a group of tenants organized a group chat and began arranging meetings. This union-to-be formed in response to the sale of their building to an investor who immediately informed them he’d be throwing them out in order to renovate their units and raise the rents. At the meetings, the tenants began to formulate demands for the new landlord. The building was naturally split between those who participated a lot, those who participated inconsistently, and those who did not participate at all. Rather than building a strong core to push the organization forward, the tenants who did meet put all decisions to a building-wide vote, subsuming all of their activity under the requirements of soliciting the input of every unit, including those who had not attended a single meeting.

As a result, the tenants became bogged down delivering letters to every door requesting votes from the members and the union was unable to take a single step towards its true interests. These tenants believed they were being democratic, but in actuality there was no real activity to speak of—democratic or otherwise. Instead of power, only impotence was “democratized.” Needless to say, if the active tenants had seriously pursued the tasks required of them, many of the inactive tenants would have seen the organization as something worth getting involved in.

This anecdote also gives us a look at another side of the problem of democracy. These tenants prioritized absolute and universal democratic procedures for everyone in the building rather than limiting them to those engaged with the union. As a result, they spent time soliciting votes from tenants with ''no intention to carry forward or be bound by the results of the vote.'' The tenants had not taken the time to determine who should participate in each vote and ended up with democratic stagnation. Healthy democracy cannot take the question of who is eligible to participate in elections and votes for granted. An overly broad vote where every disinterested party chooses according to personal whims can be just as undemocratic as an overly narrow vote where only a few make decisions for the many.

It is clear to us that democracy cannot be distinguished from an organization’s activity or formally grafted onto an existing organization from the outside. The idea of “democratizing” an existing organization without transforming it from inside out is absurd. This is because living democracy hinges upon actual participation in the organization. If leadership is not to be a symbol, representing the interests of the organization, the organization must integrate these interests in concrete ways. Votes and decision making must be tied to the process of participation in the organization. It would be absurd to let someone who simply signed their name on a contact sheet make major organizational decisions, but this also extends to the series of increasingly central votes that are necessarily tied to ever smaller circles of membership. The guiding principle for establishing these circles must be based on the extent of the responsibilities and commitment of these members.

In the same vein, it would be absurd to require the leadership of the organization to vote on particular decisions such as which building to hold a tenant meeting in. ACTA’s unit structure divides not only the labor, but also the power and responsibility, allowing others to take charge of organizational work. The difference between the inductee, the general member, and the leadership is their level of integration into organizational life. No member’s power should outstrip their responsibility to the organization. From this perspective, the process of building a democratic, city-wide organization is not about connecting various organizations under a single formal democratic process, it is about connecting the actual practices and life of each organization into a strategically unified, living process.

Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism

2026-06-04T00:21:00Z

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== Chapter Six: Centralism ==

==== ''Instead of using coalitions, ACTA wants to fight a city-wide, “strategically centralized war of attrition against landlords.” Why?'' ====
This follows the revolutionary line. A revolution that eliminates private property is the minimum condition for soberly addressing the housing question for the entire population. But revolution is not something which occurs in a single decisive moment; it is a process. An organization can only make concrete steps toward what it views as the climax of the class struggle according to its ''own'' concrete analysis of the concrete situation.

Some working definitions are in order for this chapter. What we mean by ‘tenant organization’ is any group like ACTA: these

organizations attempt to organize tenants ''specifically and exclusively into unions.'' What we mean by ‘housing justice organization’ is any group like One Northside or Pilsen Alliance: these organizations might work to improve the material conditions of tenants occasionally but they might also work in defense of the interests of homeowners and they typically also include other broader initiatives around things like education, youth empowerment and violence prevention. What we mean by ‘coalition’ is any group like Lift The Ban or its chief carrier, the Chicago Housing Justice Coalition: These are organizations of organizations, so to speak; they are ''assemblies'' of the two types of groups listed above. Coalitions can also include individual politicians, like aldermen.

An organization or a coalition that has as an ''ultimate'' objective something shy of the socialist revolution, for example Lift The Ban (LTB), is a reformist project ''from our perspective as revolutionary socialists.'' Our intention is not to make a point about the legitimacy of the effort to lift the ban on rent control in and of itself—we are making a point about the ''disorganization of the movement.'' Under such conditions of disorganization, the timeless debate between reform and revolution as two commensurable paths which we must choose between is right at home. It is no surprise that these conditions lead organizers to elevate a particular method or even individual tactics to the level of the total struggle. The final aim of LTB is stated in its name. Its objectives are pursued independently of the movement as a whole, and therefore all other organizations which are also strategically independent can do nothing but react according to whether LTB’s plans at any given time contradict or harmonize with theirs. This purely external connection is similar to that kind of anarchy that prevails in the market.

Consequently, activity of individuals in their effort to lift the ban on rent control has no organic existence ''inside'' of the movement. Because it is imposed on the revolution by organizers from without, it cannot assume its proper place in the strategy of the revolution. Once again, let this not be misunderstood. This is not a preposterous claim that ACTA is somehow ''actually'' in the revolution, while everyone else is not. We do believe we are actually in the revolution, but if we were to flip the perspective, the organizers central to LTB might be saying the same things about themselves that we do (as unlikely as that seems). If so, they might well say the same things about ACTA that we’re saying about them. This is to say that they do not know our plans and cannot plan for the actions we take. Each group simply reacts to the other’s maneuvers as best they can according to the degree to which their objectives align.

Our claim here is simply that the revolution is disorganized to all hell. We can’t properly evaluate the sum total activity of the “housing justice movement” from the perspective of the revolution. The best we can do is evaluate ourselves and make speculations about others. Our point of view about ourselves, of course, is that our activity is revolutionary. We can’t say anything with confidence about others. On top of this disorganization arises the notion of ''reformism'' which has a real, distinct existence opposite the revolutionary process. This reform or that reform ''may'' support or it ''may'' hinder our revolutionary process—it is a dice roll. Whether the contradictions have been heightened or not can only be conclusively analyzed ''after'' the fact. And these considerations, ultimately, can be made from our point of view alone. All activity that happens ''to'' us, from the outside, can only be evaluated for its impact ''on'' us, i.e. the organization we believe is revolutionary. Such is the fate of a city organized like ours.

Let us imagine for a change a situation where the effort to lift the ban on rent control was a strategic consideration of the revolutionary movement in advance of the fact. In this situation, the self-identified movement would weigh the decision to lift the ban on rent control for its totalizing effects: ''How many organizers are necessary to pursue this? How much money will it cost to pursue? Could our effort be directed better elsewhere? What are the prospects of success? What kind of sacrifices and concessions will we have to make with aldermen and the real estate industry? Will it force our other types of activity to be suppressed or toned down? In the event of a victory, do we anticipate this will leave the working class satisfied and peaceful, or does it bring them to a higher level of organization with a stronger appetite for fighting? Will it provide them with new opportunities to satisfy that appetite?''<ref>None of this, technically speaking, requires LTB and ACTA (to use an absurd example) to merge. The very minimum requirement for these considerations to be plausible would be that LTB and ACTA have created a practical link of activity wherein we were not planning or taking action without the input of the other. However, we believe that if an arrangement like this were actually possible between the present organizations in Chicago, it would likely exist already. If this is how the coalitionists perceive the relationships between their own member organizations to be, we would welcome the news.</ref>

In other words, reforms as opposed to revolution will remain just that—a hostile dichotomy—unless all tactics under analysis are brought into the unity of the same strategic and practical point of view. ''This idea is severely misunderstood.'' The true connection between reforms and revolution does not compare them side by side as equivalent options. Putting them at the same level in this way, like adding tenths to hundredths without a common denominator, leads inevitably into error. Considered dialectically, a given reform may take on a broader strategic significance. But this dialectic between reforms and revolutionary tactics ''can only be'' animated<ref>The imagery of the dialectic you should imagine here is that of Frankenstein’s monster at the moment a bolt of electricity jolts him upright off the table when the terminals on his neck close the circuit. Without this system, the monster is only an ‘artificial product of the dissecting room,’ an assemblage of body parts from different corpses; such is the city “organized” under the principles of coalition-building.</ref> when it belongs to a unified revolutionary system. Without this strategic unity, there is no basis to investigate the relation of one tactic with another and therefore no proper basis to speak on either. Without the unifying system, pursuit of reform frequently becomes an end in itself while the opposing rejection of reform remains at the level of dogmatism.

Put more plainly, all efforts to lift the ban on rent control should be taken into consideration by the leadership of ''one'' revolutionary tenant movement and pursued (or not pursued) on this basis alone. Tenant Organization A should not have to consider whether or not to “join the coalition” with Housing Justice Organization B, one it has no share of control over, where there are no common principles or systems of accountability. All there can be with a coalition, at best, is an accidental and temporary coincidence of interests between two or more organizations which otherwise do not cooperate.

A coalition therefore appears other than what it actually is. Take another coalition, the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance Coalition (JCEO), as a different example of the disorganization inherent to this manner of organizing.

JCEO’s stated objective is to pass legislation that establishes seven legally valid reasons for which a landlord can end a rental agreement. This effort is being pursued as a response to the current situation in Chicago that allows landlords to evict tenants for any reason, or for no reason at all. At the time of publication, JCEO is made up of over 100 (!) distinct organizations.<ref>According to their website: https://www.justcausechicago.org/supporters.html</ref> Evidently, these organizations are in agreement, whatever that might mean, with the stated objectives of the coalition. And by virtue of the sheer number of these member organizations, JCEO appears as an example of strong, quality organization which grounds a compelling and vital objective.

But if JCEO’s objective is so vital and if the effort to achieve it is strongly organized, what is preventing its 25 member organizations from formally merging into one and the same organization and pursuing it with complete ideological unity on the basis of their combined and coordinated material forces? In other words, why a coalition instead of an organization proper?

The reason is because the individual member organizations pursue contradictory objectives outside the coalition and that is where their passions and material power to organize lie. Not only do they act contradictorily toward other member organizations, their actions also contradict the coalition’s own objectives and principles. For example, take one of the JCEO member organizations, Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). On November 17, 2020, they published a paper called ''Green Stormwater Infrastructure Impact on Property Values.''<ref>https://cnt.org/publications/green-stormwater-infrastructure-impact-on-property-values</ref> This article champions certain ecologically-minded technological innovations in home construction ''for their ability to raise the selling prices of houses.''

It seems certain that a positive assessment of rising home prices would conflict with the outlook of the Democratic Socialists of America, another member organization in JCEO. Meanwhile, on the websites of JCEO and a handful of their member organizations, statements like these are abundant: “As of 2018, almost half of all Chicago renters were rent burdened which means they spent more than 30% of their income on rent, yet low-income households represent the largest share of Cook County renter households. The supply of affordable rental units has been dropping at an increased rate in Chicago since 2012.”

So which is it? Do we want expensive houses or cheap houses? According to CHJC, we want them cheap. According to CNT, we want them to be expensive. Coalitionism as a general organizing principle is precisely what allows this nonsense to prevail and, ultimately, it is the working class who suffers because the self-appointed leaders of the different fronts of the war are either unable or unwilling to conceive their objectives as one part of a unified whole and have no obligation to make their principles clear.

We could say here that it is likely unimaginable to the directors of JCEO that raising the value of houses corresponds to a rise in the power of landlords and in turn weakens the tenants’ ability to resist eviction. But this ideological malaise is not what is at issue. What is at issue is that, independently of what the directors of CNT and the other member organizations ''think'', there is obviously no instrument through which they can criticize or influence one another using the criteria of their shared principles and objectives. A coalition can only pass over into organization if it sheds its temporary and incidental character and all members subordinate themselves to a permanent internal unity.<ref>An outcome which seems impossible as long as, among many other reasons, each of these distinct groups have their own paid organizers.</ref>

Coalitionism is the opposite of organization, it is ''disorganization''. Another variation of coalitionism which is similarly disorganized occurs when two or more ''tenant organizations'' coexist in Chicago but they remain divided for one reason or another. Experience has shown us that typically the reason used to justify these divisions is geography. It’s said that the city is too big and too segregated and this is reflected in diverse objective organizing conditions from one neighborhood to the next. For example, neighborhood X is all two-flat greystone buildings of English-speaking black tenants, while Neighborhood Y is all multifamily buildings with corporate landlords and Mexican tenants.

This attitude, again, is a sign of disorganization. “Geography” and “conditions” are used to mask the fact that what really cements the division of two or more organizations—which indeed might be geographically divided—are their principles and organizational practices. This is not meant to provoke. It’s just the fact. Take a real example: because Chicago Union of Tenants (CUT) is up north and ACTA is out west means that interested onlookers can dismiss our division as one of a “turf war.” This is an embarrassing consequence of our ''disorganization''. There is not a turf war between ACTA and CUT, there is a political battle occurring over leadership in the tenant movement.

ACTA is up to the task of solving the geography riddle. We believe that geography is a problem that must be addressed by our organization. To reach across neighborhood lines and shake hands with the organization over there is not solving the problem, it is avoiding it.<ref>This is not a claim whatsoever about the legitimacy of making connections, agreements, and collaborative alliances. ACTA engages in this kind of activity. The practice can only be judged in the context of the concrete problems encountered by one organization adhering to one and the same strategy. There will always remain groups with contradictory and antithetical ends and it may even be necessary to temporarily work with such organizations. It is the ''spirit'' of coalitionism, which does not seek to understand these boundaries and creeps into the relation between groups who really do share the same ends, which we are criticizing. In the latter case, coalitionism is nothing more than an excuse to avoid coming to consensus on the pressing tactical problems facing the movement.</ref> It says “Ok, you all take care of that, we’ll take care of this, hopefully it will all work out. Nevermind finding out what one another thinks of the fundamental questions of strategy or the analysis of the situation.” This does nothing but reinforce geographic division. ACTA stays out of Rogers Park not because it is CUT’s “turf” but because we do not have the material forces to organize there. If we did, CUT would not deter us. What would be excellent is if CUT and ACTA could fuse and become the material forces of one another, but again, disorganization currently deters this. Disorganization in this instance materializes as disagreement over the very question at hand: ''coalition or organization?''

The positions around the question can be summarized as follows. On one hand, there is the view that the city ''should'' be organized on the basis of geographically and ideologically divided coalitions. This is the apparent view of CUT, Autonomous Tenants Union, Tenants United, Southside Together, i.e. the tenant organizations and housing justice organizations. Needless to say it is also the view of the non-profit coalitionists. It is in so many words, ''The Chicago Way.'' This perspective on the question holds that the fragmented state of the movement is actually a strength. There is no need to speculate about whether or not this is accurate. This is the default condition of the movement and it has been for decades. Disorganization is the status quo.

On the other hand, there is the view the the housing movement in this city should be centralized on the basis of one revolutionary tenant organization, i.e. it should be brought into one strategic system. Each and every tactic regarding the war against capitalist landlords must be evaluated on this basis. This is the view of ACTA. Do we stand alone?

The Chicago tenant organization closest in ideology to ACTA is CUT. To their credit, they see the significance of creating tenant unions as a means for the working class to realize the power granted by its economic position within the capitalist system. CUT also contains dedicated and smart organizers, people we call our comrades. They are at least sympathetic toward socialism. But, CUT disagrees with the principle of centralization even internally. They are coalition building, so to speak, in their own organization. What else can you call a horizontalist structure? Is it not an appropriate way to describe a coalition? In CUT, individual members play the role of individual member organizations in coalitions, they operate autonomously except insofar as their interests vaguely coincide on the abstract principle of—in CUT’s case—“tenant organizing.”

It follows from this abstract organizational principle that merely organizing tenant unions at the building level—''no matter where or with what kind of relation to the whole''—is a sufficient approach to the war on landlords. We disagree.

Library:Tenant Spring/Segregation

2026-06-04T00:20:13Z

Sansserifseraphim: Fixed title

== Chapter Five: Segregation ==

==== ''If “there still remains a racist and segregated division of labor,” it follows that there is a racist and segregated distribution of housing. How does ACTA account for this?'' ====

===== ''“In this world one thing alone retains its links with reality and is thus able to transmit the changes in reality and provide the ballast of a concrete element to this delusory system. This one thing is wages.”'' =====
Though now in decline, the United States has been the leading empire in the world since the end of World War Two. As such, most corners of the earth have felt the wrath of our capitalists and their military. Here inside the empire, we have all reaped the benefits, although the distribution of the rewards of imperialism is not equal. ACTA’s horizon is not to redistribute these rewards within our borders, we aim to tear out the root of imperialism. Nevertheless, the unequal effects of imperialism are concrete and influence the conditions of our struggle.

enjoyed by our workers are not arbitrary, they are concessions won by class struggle ''waged in the context of the international division'' of labor. Because all productive activity is connected materially and socially yet at the same time privately owned, it appears that there ''could be'' no other outcome from the US working class’ demands for higher wages than for the owners of the means of production to simply shift their sources of profit from one locale in the division of labor to another, avoiding any significant or catastrophic decline in their profits.

However, because our labor unions have been stripped of their revolutionary orientation, the glow of cheap devices illuminates the satisfied faces of our narrow-minded “organized” workers. This has taken the pressure off capital. A once worthy opponent has bowed out of the ring. Put very simply, the workers could be using their key weapon, strikes, to force the hand of capitalists to do just about anything they can imagine. For example, US and Canadian workers could struggle to close copper mines in Panamá. The workers could struggle to raise wages in African countries. It is a stomach-turning fact that what is happening in Palestine as we write this would not be happening if workers throughout the western countries belonged to revolutionary rather than reactionary unions.<ref>This should not be conflated with that myopic notion of those socialists who lament the absence of an “israeli workers movement” bolstering the left wing in an apartheid, oppressor state while upholding that state’s legitimacy. We should also not be mistaken for exaggerating the role that our revolutionary workers movement could play, nor are we suggesting it could or should replace the guerrilla war as the center of resistance. Our regret is not that the “workers movement” of the west can’t replace this armed struggle, but that our workers are not prepared to offer their weapon of true solidarity with the Palestinian guerrillas to augment the efforts to free Palestine.</ref> Instead, our bourgeois trade union leaders gave away the workers’ legal power to strike as soon as the capitalists flashed cash bribes in their faces.

All of these facts notwithstanding, this is not a well-rounded or acceptable perspective. It has to be recognized that the capitalists organize and wage class struggle in ways that go beyond the undue powers that accompany their ownership of the means of production and thus give them dictatorial reign over, for example, the organization of the productive process in factories and offices. They are not indifferent obstacles to working class power. They attack worker organizations in the struggle over the workers’ demands on their own oppressive terms. The history of capitalism is chock full of

the most brutal and violent examples of repression against strikes, slow downs, walk outs, sabotage, factory occupations and every other kind of tactic the working masses have employed in the fight. Because the capitalists are also wedded with the state, they have the police, the national guard, the CIA, the FBI and the military more or less at their disposal. Not to mention the fact that their wealth allows them to contract and command private armed militias to surveil and suppress worker rebellions.<ref>See the Pinkertons.</ref> This has undoubtedly played a significant role in the dimming of the workers’ revolutionary light. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that whatever concessions the bosses have made to the workers in the form of wage increases have been made because they amounted to less money than the costs of suppressing the workers’ organizations.

Wages move in tango with the costs of living; at bottom, high wages are not the product of an abstract desire. The essential conditions of capitalism were rapidly established on American soil as soon as Europeans settled and colonized this place, and this meant the presence of both people who owned the means of production and people who owned<ref>Technically speaking, slaves did not own even their own labor-power. Their body possessed it, but their master owned it as his private property. This point belongs above the level of analysis that is occurring here, but we felt it was important to mention.</ref> nothing but their power to work. The ones who possessed nothing else were forced—by direct and legal violence in the case of slavery or by the supposedly neutral conditions of “free” society in the case of proletarians—to offer their labor-power to the people who owned the means of production at a price<ref>There is a common confusion around the question of whether or not the labor-power of southern slaves was paid for by the slavocracy. Without a bare minimum level of subsistence, no one can live, let alone work. Slaves were given their subsistence directly by their masters, however meager and in whatever form. Concretely, occasionally slaves kept their own small plot on the plantation for producing their own subsistence, whereas wage workers are given money to buy the same things. In any case, both the slave-driver and the boss provide subsistence to the worker from the pool of labor (or value) they have accumulated in the course of exploiting workers. Workers are always paid with the product of their own labor or, what amounts to the same thing, the labor of another exploited worker and, in this sense, no boss has ever paid a worker.</ref> that is always conditioned by the relative negotiating power of the workers and owners, but with a bottom limit determined by the absolute minimum consumption necessary for the workers to survive. This reality is the original source of ''all'' working class organization. The struggle for higher wages originates from this original condition of labor, the split between the owners of the plantations, factories, tools, and material, and those who have no tools but their own bodies.

''Wages'' are the value of labor-power, expressed in price over time; i.e. “$15 per hour.” ''The standard of living'' is the collection of raw materials that are used by the laborer in the process of reproducing their labor-power, i.e. housing, food, clothing, education etc. Wages are determined by the values (and prices) of these standards of living. Wherever money mediates the relation between individuals and the products of their labor, wages and the standard of living form an inseparable unity.<ref>This unity renders absurd those silly questions economists are always asking, such as, “Do high prices cause higher wages, or do high wages cause the inflation of prices?” Does inhaling come before or after exhaling?</ref>

To return to the question at hand, the observant reader will see in this unity the essential inseparability of the question of wages from the question of rent. If we examine the division of labor and ''hence the division of wages'', we find that different wages can imply nothing else but a different standard of living. It is obvious that a person’s standard of living is ''predicated'' on the condition of their dwelling. High wage workers live in good houses in good neighborhoods, low wage workers live in slums. From houses and slums we arrive at the question of rent without difficulty, and of course we find our friend, the tenant, who just one moment ago was the worker.

Our interpretation of exploitation in capitalism is fundamentally Marxist. Exploitation corresponds with the amount of work a person is forced to do over and above the amount that would be necessary to provide for himself. To make a simplified explanation, say that if a person’s wages are $15 per hour, and he works for 8 hours every day, then he ostensibly requires $120 per day to live. In order to have a reason to employ him, his boss must be able to sell the product of his labor for at least $120. In this scenario, assuming normal conditions of the market, the boss would break even and the worker would have produced no surplus labor, no surplus value, and thus would not be ''exploited''. But say the boss was able to sell the product of the worker’s day of labor for $130, pocketing $10 for himself. That $10, we call surplus value and the amount of time the worker spent that corresponds to the production of that value we call surplus labor. This is exploitation, simplified, in the Marxist sense.

It follows from this that whatever can be done to decrease the worker’s wages relative to the amount of work that he does increases the degree of his exploitation. Obviously, if the worker’s rent is low his wages can stay low. Low wages do not necessarily result in high rates of exploitation (because a low wage worker may be employed in a low productivity occupation), but exploitation is much more prolific among low wage workers precisely because it sets such a low threshold for his labor time to pass over from necessary to surplus labor time. There is therefore a natural correlation between low rents and high exploitation. What is being argued here is that low rents are the basis of low wages.<ref>Obviously, our answer to this is not that we should struggle to raise the rents in order to raise the price of labor power! No thank you. We’d like to imagine a ''real transformation'' for a change, and no longer preoccupy ourselves with wages, rent—value. We do not want to raise wages, we want to bring our nation’s ''qualitative'' standards of living into decency, which means, to us, into harmony with all of the people of the world. That entails different things for different American people. People of European descent will need to lower their standards, while people of African and Latin American descent can raise theirs, generally speaking. Beyond this, it is then only a question about free time. In other words, it is a net good that the monetary and material costs of reproducing ourselves are kept low because this opens the door for mankind to pass its spare time in the pursuit of different experiences. But as long as the means of production are owned privately rather than socially, the surplus time of the masses of earth will be squandered in the production of more value.

Concomitantly, this condition establishes a (unequally distributed) perpetual rise in standards of living—''as measured by consumption, not free time.'' This feedback loop compels the working classes to fight to keep themselves in chains, to the delight of capitalists everywhere.

Put in slightly different terms, if exploitation is the difference between work that is necessary for society and work that is surplus, that gap can be closed by a decrease in the duration of working time just as well as it can be done by an increase in the worker’s level of consumption, as is typically the approach. This means nothing shy of eliminating the capitalist class in all its manifestations because surplus labor is performed under the dictatorship of capital and entrenched by a workers movement that has accepted high levels of consumption rather than free time as the measure of freedom.</ref> Not, as is more commonly implied in orthodox economics, that low (or high) wages cause low (or high) rents.

However, what is experienced by the tenants of African and Latin American origin who pay relatively low rents is not what is experienced when other types of commodities are bought for low prices. The typical reason that prices fall (outside of market aberrations, including big swings in supply relative to demand) is from a systemic lowering in the costs of production. The typical pattern for achieving this revolves around some combination of increased productivity and/or an increase in the exploitation of labor via technological innovations or a prolongation of the working day by producers in competition. What a landlord sells for low rents is an adulterated product, not a product made with “improved” techniques. Adulteration is how a slumlord lowers his costs of production. A slum is an adulterated house.<ref>“In London there are two sorts of bakers, the “full priced,” who sell bread at its full value, and the “undersellers,” who sell it under its value. The latter class comprises more than three-fourths of the total number of bakers...The undersellers, almost without exception, sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl ashes, chalk, Derbyshire stone-dust, and such like agreeable nourishing and wholesome ingredients...Sir John Gordon stated before the committee of 1855, that “in consequence of these adulterations, the poor man, who lives on two pounds of bread a day, does not now get one fourth part of nourishing matter, let alone the deleterious effects on his health.” Tremenheere states...as the reason, why a very large part of the working class, although well aware of this adulteration, nevertheless accept the alum, stone-dust, etc, as part of their purchase: that it is for them “a matter of necessity to take from their baker or from the chandler’s shop, such bread as they choose to supply.” (''Marx, Capital, Vol. 1'')</ref>

Let us shed our ambiguity: in our present conditions, low rents are desirable. What is not desirable are houses left in ruin, where rats crawl through baby cribs and piss leaks through collapsing ceilings onto the heads of poor tenants.<ref>When we talk about housing conditions, we are talking about the oppression, degradation, and brutalization of the working class, not exploitation in the sense defined above. Insofar as we might struggle to leave rents untouched or even lower them, the value of labor power will follow, and thus the tenant union struggle does not directly combat exploitation. It is up to the workers organizations to similarly enforce a system-breaking strategy: to rip apart wages from the value of labor power while at the same time struggling to mandate that the capitalists do not make up the difference by the further exploitation, oppression, degradation and brutalization of the working classes elsewhere.</ref> In capitalism, low rent and slum quality housing are two sides of the same reality. Revolutionary tenant-unions will be in the position to enforce the ‘artificial’ collapse of the link between rent (exchange value) and quality (use-value). A tenant union can pull a landlord down contradictory paths, like execution by quartering. It can demand the repair of a building at the same time as it can demand that the rent goes untouched. Specifically in the case of tenants organized in slums, it is exactly this kind of tampering with the ‘logic’ of capitalism that should be the focus of our strategy.<ref>In the case of tenants in affluent neighborhoods, strategy based on system-breaking is also the order of the day. But different conditions require a different approach. Rents are high in these neighborhoods and this is reflected in the quality of the housing (certainly not without exception!). The white tenants should struggle to lower the rents while demanding that their conditions remain well-kept. The point is not to make a general strategy. The point is to indicate the general tendency that the struggle needs to follow to crush the dictatorship of landlords. Tenant unions are the only instruments capable of carrying out any strategy.

It goes without saying that tenants in the slums should fight to lower rents, too, because, while the prices they pay are relatively low, as a rule, rent composes a larger share of their wages in absolute terms than it does of the wages of tenants in fancy neighborhoods. In popular jargon, despite their lower rents, poor tenants are more “rent burdened” more prolifically than their well-to-do counterparts. For example, in West Garfield Park, 4 out of every 10 tenants give more than 50% of their wages to their landlord. In Logan Square, only 1 in 10 do such a thing. (American Community Survey, US Census). This is despite the fact that rent is $1.42 a ft. in Garfield Park and $2.19 a ft. in Logan Square. There is a division in the composition of labor-power that corresponds to the division of labor. Strategy needs to be specific to these divisions.</ref> This is the kind of strategy that will drive small-scale capital out of the sector and throw the “housing crisis” back in the faces of the state and the monopolies. It is also the kind of strategy that hinges upon the expansion of the struggle, requiring a leadership that maintains class-struggle as its infinite horizon, not “peace.”

The inseparable wage-rent unity described above can only lead us to the perspective that the tenant struggle is the worker struggle. It is no different in essence than the trade union struggle. It is only different in form. The wage-rent unity, the connection between standard of living and labor-power is revealed in this. The extremity of the blunder made by the working-class movement by narrowing its focus to wages without recognizing their unity with the ''composition of labor-power'', i.e. the factors necessary to restore the worker each day, is enormous. In effect the historical movement has brought wages and rent into contradiction by allowing wage gains to be captured by landlords under the banner of “market forces” without providing any leadership or instrument of struggle at the workers’ homes. This short-sightedness is exemplary of the workers movement’s disinterest in keeping the entire slate of broader revolutionary political demands out of its range of vision.

As stated in the previous chapter, an obvious consequence of this trend is the housing crisis itself, born from the impotence of workers without the totalizing perspective that recognizes wages and the standard of living as ''one''—not two opposite “relational” sides. If we want to remedy this impotence we must restore—or perhaps establish for the first time—an organized, practical movement (a struggle!) which understands ''the composition of labor-power'' in its proper place as an identity with ''wages''. Labor-power, that weapon which workers sell to the capitalists is composed of ''something'', gains its use-value from ''something'', replenishes itself and emerges renewed each day from ''something''—the given standards of living—accorded to the worker by his place in society. None play so great a role in this rejuvenation of human potential than the conditions of his dwelling,<ref>The sheer volume of scientific research that shows the intimate connection between the conditions of housing and a person’s health could fill a small library. The conclusions are indisputable.</ref> where his health is restored and replenished, where his sanity is maintained and his life is kept on track, all in order to continue working and living—to continue fighting. Housing is labor-power. The tenant struggle is the worker’s struggle for himself.

The prospects of struggle for the oppressed nations in the US, i.e. ''African''-Americans, ''Latin''-Americans, etc., are also based on the continued exploitation of the world. But imperialist exploitation is not automatic or static, nor is it enforced by the capitalist class without interference: ''it is conditioned by the class struggle.'' ''The US working class bears responsibility in the imperialist set-up.'' It must be self-conscious of this in its struggle to break that set-up. For example, if the African nation within the US is to develop and rise to political equality with the Europeans, as measured by the standard of living, this does not theoretically have to be subsidized by the further brutalization of the workers of Continental Africa or El Salvador. It can be subsidized by the landlords and, of course, the high wage workers in the US. It goes without saying that this could occur only on the condition that our working class leaves behind its narrow-mindedness and adopts a revolutionary point of view.

It is self-evident that the international division of labor and the consequent divergence of wage scales and standards of living do not start at our nation’s borders and extend outward to the rest of the world from our working class as a homogenous block. The divergence penetrates inward, shattering our own workers as well. From this perspective, revolutionary tenant organization is a crucial struggle for the national liberation movements within and without our country.<ref>Historically speaking, there have been two periods of concentrated tenant organization in Chicago, both focused on the racially discriminatory nature of housing provision. The first period was during the Great Depression, when the Communist Party USA was highly focused on reversing evictions in the southside slums. Their unemployment councils can be thought of as historical antecedents to the modern tenant union. The second period was in the 60’s during the frenzy of activity which surrounded MLK Jr.’s Freedom Movement when it came north, emblematic of this was the campaign known as the ''Movement To End Slums.''

Needless to say, neither of these efforts ended the slums. It is not a coincidence, in our opinion, that for different reasons both movements did not center tenants in the struggle based on their economic relation to capital, though the Communists came closer. In the case of MLK, the freedom movement treated ''housing'' too abstractly. This allowed them to mix the tenant struggle with the struggle for black homeownership/landlordism against redlining while ignoring the concrete ways through which the interests of homeowners and tenants come into opposition in society dominated by ''value.''

MLK was also focused on neighborhood integration to the exclusion of a concrete analysis capable of apprehending the laws of motion specific to property values in the context of segregation. Arghiri Emmanuel refers to this bluntly: “There are pleasant districts where whites live and unpleasant districts where blacks live. And yet everyone is free to live wherever he likes. What happens then? As soon as some blacks settle in a district, the whites leave it and go off to find somewhere else to live. As there is plenty of room elsewhere, whatever blacks may do, there will always be pleasant and unpleasant districts. It would be pointless to advise blacks to go and live in the pleasant districts. These were not chosen by whites because they are pleasant, they are pleasant because whites live there. If the blacks moved in they would cease to be pleasant!” (Emmanuel, ''Unequal Exchange'')</ref> Racist segregation is the local product of our empire’s organization and management of the labor process on a global scale.

Segregation has always been studied primarily from the perspective of jobs and housing. The material basis of these paired intuitions (which are certainly correct) have previously gone unaccounted for and therefore their necessary innerconnection has remained unexamined. Our perspective corrects this. Jobs, housing, wages, rent, division of labor, standard of living, etc.—the individual categories of past research into segregation all slot into an order when we begin from the Marxist position that socialized production is based on private property and proceed to uncover all of the consequences determined by this fact.

Segregation is a direct legacy of the colonization of Africa, the export of African labor-power to the American plantations and the crisis that was created within the class-struggle by the attempts to integrate the mass of ex-slaves into the division of labor beyond the confines of the agricultural South. There is no space here to recall the enormous wave of terror that has been inflicted on the black masses since their arrival in the cities at the hands of both white capital and white labor organized under self-interested leadership. Unfortunately, this terror wave has not ebbed much. Look no further than the division of Chicago into distinct white and black metropoles. We could talk similarly about the conditions of migrants from Latin America, especially Mexico.

To state the obvious, tenant unions need to be built to oppose landlord terror where it is most despotic and oppressive—specifically ''racist'', i.e. in the slums—and the only thing standing in our way is our own disorganization.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|chapter 6]].</ref> But ACTA has every intention of rectifying this. The tenant movement is in its spring. It is a blank slate, free from the aristocracy of “organized” workers and their leaders dictating to anyone what the dreams of the working class may be. The field is wide open for revolutionary leadership and ACTA wants to earn it.

One of our guiding principles in these early days of the tenant union movement must be to combat the tendency—already apparent in numerous US tenant unions<ref>See the Connecticut Tenants Union for the exemplary case.</ref>—to build our struggle by copying and pasting the models given to us from the labor movement. This is a grave error, one that will be potentially impossible to reverse. Tenant unions do not combat exploitation directly because they do not manipulate the relationship between necessary and surplus labor time. But tenant unions are able to condition the boundaries of exploitation by fighting back against the degradation and oppression of workers and enforcing changes of the wage level by interceding in the determination of rent. It is up to the trade unions to go beyond their current limits, adopt a revolutionary point of view and to fuse their strategic scope with the organization of workers in their home life, i.e. as tenants. If we can manipulate the price of rent toward the destruction of landlords, it will be up to the workers organizations to make use of the simultaneous devaluation of labor power to press the attack on the bosses rather than allowing them to enact a corresponding decrease of wages. If rents increase in the course of the battle—as a consequence of struggling to improve the conditions of slum housing, for instance—the labor organizations must also ensure that the effects of this crush down on the shoulders of the capitalists rather than on our brothers and sisters in the international working class. Revolutionary leadership in combination with the weapon of the strike is indispensable on both sides of the struggle. Unless they are happy with their current trajectory toward the sewer of history, western trade unions are going to need to join us in the recognition that success in the tenant struggle will revitalize the field of battle for all the ''workers'' of the world.

Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution

2026-06-04T00:19:42Z

Sansserifseraphim: fixed title

== Chapter Four: Tenant Unions in the Revolution ==

==== ''How can tenant organizing directly contribute to the revolution?'' ====

===== ''"a Marxist bases himself on the class struggle, and not on social peace."'' =====
It is said that a revolution requires the right conditions. Conditions have to be revolutionary in an objective way. This means that the economic conditions have to be ripe for a change, like a prepared fruit, as a consequence of the contradictions inherent to the economic system ''in combination with the class struggle.'' On the other hand, conditions need to be right in a subjective way. This means that the strugglers need to be conscious of the need and possibility for a change, organized ''self-consciously'' and prepared to seize the opportunities to both grow the fruit and pick the fruit.

Objectively, by the simple act of fighting a landlord, to some degree a tenant union disables the landlord’s way of making money ''easily''. A tenant union that makes economic struggle their priority not only makes profit harder to come by, ''it makes the profit margin smaller.'' In other words, pitted against a tenant union that prioritizes economic struggle, landlords have to work harder for less. ACTA’s objective is to raise the number of tenant unions fighting landlords on the principle of economic struggle. In other words, we want 10 tenant unions fighting 10 landlords today. Tomorrow we want 30 tenant unions fighting 15 landlords. As we have argued above, it should not be possible to bring capital into the branch of real estate without having to contend with a tenant union driving down the rate of return.

These are the conditions that will objectively transform real estate from a safe branch of capital investment into one with constantly growing risks. As the expected rate of profit falls, capitalists will be turned away from real estate in increasing numbers. Private investment has been the state’s go-to method for managing the housing problem since the earliest days of the nation, but it will begin to fail, and the people’s need for housing will press on the state with increasing urgency. The old method will dissipate like smoke in the eyes of the legislators.

If capital flight ensues in the real estate industry, the first thing to expect is the centralization of capital. In other words larger landlords will begin monopolizing the rental market. The largest and most powerful investment firms will be the only ones heavy duty enough to tolerate the precarious conditions of the money market. Worried sick about lending to landlords whose promises to pay are continually broken, banks will hike interest rates, further driving down the profitability of the sector. These are all tendencies of the free market, but here they are manipulated by the cooperation of masses of ''organized'' tenants. All of the familiar powers of price-fixing<ref>Price-fixing is when companies in monopoly positions in their market make agreements to set prices, rather than compete with one another. Theoretically, the removal of competition should mean that prices stay idle, rather than move. The implication is that competition should work to move prices lower, benefiting consumers. In reality, there’s no reason cartels can’t raise prices. By fixing prices, one or several companies are exercising their dictatorship over the means of production and society.

In the early years of this century, for example, a cartel of tech companies such as Hitachi, Samsung, Sharp, Epson and others were caught fixing the prices on LCD screens for televisions and computers. From the sentencing memorandum filed in the California courts: “...The conspiracy’s breadth and its pernicious effect can hardly be overstated. The conspirators sold $71.9 billion in price-fixed panels worldwide. Even conservatively estimated, the conspirators sold $23.5 billion—AUO [AU Optronics Corp.] alone sold $2.34 billion—in price-fixed panels destined for the United States. The conspiracy particularly targeted the United States and its high-tech companies...But the harm extended beyond these pillars of America’s high-tech economy. The conspiracy affected every family, school, business, charity, and government agency that paid more to purchase notebook computers, computer monitors, and LCD televisions...” The lawsuit resulted in about $900 million worth of fines leveled against the companies by the US government using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 as their legal basis. History is riddled with examples of capitalist cartels engaged in these kinds of games. The LCD screen cartel should have known better, if there is one thing this country will not tolerate it is expensive televisions.

In passing, it is worth pondering why it is that landlords are free to compete but, alas, the rent just keeps going up. It is also worth conceptualizing trade union activity when it comes to collective bargaining, for instance, as price-fixing of the price of labor-power, or tenant union activity of the same character as price-fixing of the price of rent. If the capitalists are happy to collude and conspire to the detriment of the consumers of their products, we should be happy to collude and conspire to the detriment of the consumers of ours.</ref> will affect the price of rent in the medium-term, but tenants will no longer be defenceless against landlord extortion. A unified tenant organization capable of reaching this point will be ready to force a political crisis between the masses of tenants, the landlord monopolies, and the state.<ref>We take it for granted that a movement isolated in one city has significant limitations from the perspective described here. Obviously, capital is not local, it is international. We have already discussed our efforts on the international plane (Chapter 2). There are also national organizations in development that are attempting to link the North American cities, most familiar are the Autonomous Tenant Union Network (ATUN) and the Tenant Union Federation (TUF). ACTA does not presently belong to either organization.</ref>

It should go without saying that this is only the most general shape of the movement to come. In reality, there will be no such clean progression of conditions. The movement will go in erratic bursts, steps forward, steps backward and to the side. These events represent a practical possibility worthy of pursuing strategically—a clear end which can be appraised over the course of actual events. As we will argue, navigating this type of zig-zagging is precisely the type of concrete activity that necessitates a single, centralized organization.

By expanding in a centralized way, we will move beyond the limits of spontaneous and isolated ''defensive'' battles between landlords and tenants. This type of struggle arises constantly due to a landlord’s negligence or abuses of power that oppresses the tenants and violates their rights. In response, tenants attempt merely to reassert their rights. Decades of this lullaby have rocked the tenant movement to sleep. The economic weapon must wake it up. Without it these legalistic scraps and squabbles will always end—usually in defeat for the tenants—and “peace” will return until somewhere else in the city a conflict arises again under circumstances that haven’t changed. When tenants do win some sort of codified victory, the following period of peace and quiet serves only to lower our guard, freeing landlords to erode the victory and sharpen their methods of oppression.<ref>The nationwide movement in the 80s to introduce a Tenant Bill of Rights in cities across America was fought tooth and nail by landlords and realtor associations. In Chicago the convergence of electoral and tenant forces reached its zenith when Alderman David Orr passed the Residential Landlord-Tenant Ordinance (RLTO). When the storm clouds dissipated, landlords set to work making up their lost ground. Today the most “revolutionary” parts of the legislation, the rights to repair and deduct, rent withholding, and non-retaliation are widely understood to exist only on paper. The section which entitles tenants to interest on their security deposit has caused the most headache for absentminded landlords. As a result, landlords now charge “one-time move in fees”. Today, the most “pro-tenant legislation in America” weighs far heavier on tenants than landlords.</ref>

This cycle of disjointed peace-followed-by-skirmish-followed-by-peace must be broken and replaced with a continuously expanding but strategically centralized war of attrition against landlords. This is to say that the struggle of the working class against capitalists must be fought with the understanding that victory in this war is the only way to definitively solve the puzzle of the “housing crisis.” As long as capital continues to find a working class that becomes stupid with affection toward the brilliance of “democracy” every time they get handed a new right to housing, this crisis will be inevitable and permanent.<ref>A brief word of contempt is owed to that variety of leftist who has proudly put on the hat of “Left-NIMBY” and has allowed themselves to be consumed by back and forth pissing and moaning with their ideological opponents. The individuals on both sides of these arguments amount to the same thing, people who have very special ideas about policy. The socialists among them can be credited for recognizing the simplicity of the fact that the housing crisis has nothing to do with supply and demand and has everything to do with class society, but it is an indictment of the working-class movement that these people are tied up with their debate hobbies and not singularly focused on training tenants in the art of war. Do they forget that their policies are only as good as the power they have to enforce them?</ref> That magical fountain of profit—a working class with pacifist tendencies—will never stop producing its opposite: an easy war that makes landlords out of enterprising capitalists as if it were an assembly line. Against this, ACTA understands its double task described in the previous chapter to be rooted in the principle of raising the ''general'' level of ''class'' conflict between tenants (the workers) and landlords (the capitalists). In other words, we need to prevent peace and deepen the state of war between tenants and landlords.

This principle can be summarized like this: ''ACTA aims to raise the general level of class conflict (capitalist landlords vs. working class tenants) toits apex.''

At first glance it might appear needlessly provocative to read about our desire for “war,” but what we mean by war needs only to be understood in its context. We are talking about class struggle in that old familiar way. Perhaps it goes without saying that for everything written above to develop, a certain type of revolutionary consciousness will need to develop in tenants as well. ACTA believes that this consciousness can only form in the process of organizing the class struggle itself. The objective conditions of that struggle will not advance if organizations of the working class watch the struggle from the sidelines, or even worse, fail to form altogether. But neither will the enthusiastic participation of the working class occur automatically without the influence of clear, accountable, revolutionary leadership. Labor unions are a useful comparison here. In the long history of

labor unions, capitalists have done everything they can to secure “labor peace.” This so-called peace is always defined from their point of view because they are the class that rules over the means of production and, therefore, over society. Peace means offering concessions to the workers’ unions in such a way as to pacify them and keep them working without apocalyptically disturbing the bosses’ ability to make profits. Over time, the trade union leaders took these concessions and progressively dismantled the working class’ power and drive to fight. Most consequentially, when they haven’t completely forfeited it, the unions have consistently mutilated their ability to go on strike.<ref>A canonical example of trade unions relinquishing the legal right to strike is the infamous “Treaty Of Detroit,” a contract negotiated in 1950 between General Motors and the United Auto Workers under the leadership of Walter Reuther. This contract signed away the right of the workers to even bargain over certain issues.</ref>

The consequences have been disastrous. Here are some examples of working class oppression that the labor unions nearly unanimously have no apparent interest in confronting, because they have accepted the capitalists’ vision of “peace”:

• While the wage-scale has gone up for some sections of the working class, there still remains a racist and segregated division of labor that confines black and latino workers to a lower wage scale than white workers, keeping them in the most menial, degrading, precarious and dangerous types of jobs, if not unemployed outright.

• Automation is eliminating jobs and making the labor process increasingly dull and dehumanizing for the ones who are spared.

• The classic manufacturing industries and the new tech industries continue to pollute and poison the planet, changing the climate in a way that is killing more and more people, animals and plants each day, gravely threatening the future of our children.

• Huge capitalist companies continue to exploit and oppress the people of Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America, keeping dozens of nations in these regions poor and underdeveloped. The American military continues to wage hot and cold wars in every corner of the globe to ensure that this remains possible indefinitely.

We can add to this, coincidentally, that the cost of living continues to rise, in general. Most emblematic of this is the price of securing housing.<ref>Although the Consumer Price Index used to measure inflation strategically omits housing prices, it is evident to every tenant that rent is a constantly increasing burden. In fact, every rise in “property values” leads inevitably to an increase in rent. At the same time, rent increases signify more potential profit and drive the property values even higher. Tenants pay the price when homeowners and landlords see their investments grow. It is in the name of homeowners and landlords that rents are constantly pushed higher.</ref> The weakness of the workers movement and its failure to decisively defeat capitalist profiteers has brought us to this point. If you’re asking yourself, “Does ACTA blame the ‘housing crisis’ on the workers movement?” Our answer is unequivocal: yes! It has done so by conceding to what the capitalist class means by “peace,” taking bribes to weaken the fighting power of the working class.

The working class has the power to change all of this ''as organized workers'', but the way workers are currently organized—if we can even call it that—deters it. The vigor and consciousness of the North American worker has atrophied as a consequence of years of enfeebling “peace”. We have become passive, self-interested, individualistic, politically uneducated, incurious, uncreative and frail in the face of adversity. Workers rarely engage in extended strikes anymore. The ratio of organized workers to workers without union has fallen in absolute terms. This reality betrays a broken understanding of the basic structure of capitalist society among the leadership of the once powerful unions. They neglect the central historical problem that constrains the working people in monotony and suffering. ''The seizure of the means of production''—the means of life itself—no longer factors into the strategy of union leadership who instead focus on advancing their own careers providing palliative care for the decrepit workers movement.

''As tenants'', our organized power cannot strike those capitalists at the center of production as directly as workers once could. Nevertheless, there are other advantages to be found in striking at the other critical organ of capitalism. In order to summon every potential reserve of power at our disposal, ACTA intends to avoid the mistakes of the workers organizations. The greatest of those mistakes can be preempted by establishing a tenant organization on different foundations, that is, on permanently revolutionary foundations. These foundations ''cannot'' be laid by, first, making an abstract analysis of the history of the trade union movement and, once that is completed, attempting to prescribe alternative principles for our movement based on their mistakes.

But this is counterintuitive. Didn’t we just say we wanted to “learn from their mistakes?”

All the specific tasks of our organization arise from a single, general aim. This aim is to retain our revolutionary orientation all the way to the revolution. History teaches us nothing definitive about how to accomplish this. In fact, it is the reverse: our efforts toward building the revolution teach us about our history. For example, we have no abstractly valid basis to say that the trade unions forfeiting striking power was a mistake. It is our present ''concrete activity'' that has shown to us the actual and potential power of the strike. With this experience, we produce concrete analysis of our conditions and a war strategy that prioritizes economic struggle centralized around the strike. Looking to the past and seeing all of the defeats that occurred in the absence of deploying the strike, we make our conclusions about history. It is mysticism to then turn around and say that it is history which teaches the principle of the strike. History has only provided us the material to understand the workings of the strike. Only our own practice teaches us the true significance of this weapon. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Under no circumstances will we find ourselves in the conditions of the past. Just as soon as we yell out ''deja vu'', we will discover that the past which appears to have reproduced itself before our eyes lacks exactly this—the cry of ''deja vu''. The conditions determining what is possible do not repeat themselves and, therefore, the risk of making the exact same mistakes is a phantom of our imaginations. Our conditions are our own. Our problems will be ''our own'' to solve. We are standing in a river, the question is not whether we are standing in the same river a second time—it is whether we can navigate our own river safely to the other side. ACTA aspires to become an organization capable of navigating these difficulties and it measures itself as being up to the task.

We take the attitude of being active creators of our world and therefore instruments of its change. This calls for an organization capable of surviving drastic changes without losing focus on our general aim of revolution. As part of the world, we simultaneously change ourselves through our own activity. The strict division in thought between the categories of objectivity and subjectivity collapses into a dialectical spiral. Bringing the objective conditions of revolution into being will not be a smooth or steady process, as we have already alluded to, and much of the pain that may come with this experience will be the pain of bringing ourselves into existence again and again.<ref>Paulo Freire has repeatedly emphasized the necessity of recreating the self, an often painful process. "Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one. The man or woman who emerges is a new person." (Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed)</ref>

Subjectively, ACTA must ''learn'' to adapt its activity to the criterion of revolutionary struggle, ''hasta la victoria de la revolución siempre''. This necessarily means to repeatedly cast our past-selves into the fires of self-criticism. No achievement is exempt from the requirement of self-criticism. We can never rest on our laurels or grow complacent when we could be pushing forwards towards our ultimate aim. It is crucial that we keep in check our satisfaction with our own achievements at every stage. This is all we mean when we talk about the necessary rejection of “peace.” We have every intention to keep the struggle directly in front of us; never avoiding it, never attempting to “leap over” or go around it. ''Toward the struggle, always.''

Concretely, this revolutionary orientation is made in two ways. The first and the most important is the constant construction of the central organization, which, as we have said, enables the ongoing escalation of building struggles beyond individual conflicts. The second is by way of a dogged politicization of that activity as it occurs. We begin to talk about revolution and socialism with tenants as soon as it is prudent. But we also know that this kind of abstract jargoneering is useless and can even be detrimental to short- and long-term ambitions without an intricate and ''specific'' kind of education that takes seriously the task of bringing individuals from point A (non-revolutionary) to point Z (revolutionary).

For example, one of the aforementioned unions that is on rent strike at the time of writing this is entirely Mexican. We noticed right away that the unionists speak with clear pride in their national history and identity. So we looked for ways to explore how their own activity might belong to a lineage that they had already embraced. Initially, we made the obvious comparison with the land struggles during the revolutionary period in Mexico because there were familiar classes in conflict; peasants (which we associated with tenants), landlords, capitalists, etc. At our weekly meetings, we set time aside for political education, and we consistently attempted to bring this content into the learning, in one way or another. After a couple months of this, we began to see the unionists making these associations independently with one another, without us prompting them.

In the union’s chat, for example, one day, a tenant shared an image of a brigade of ''soldaderas'' and encouraged her neighbors to remember what they are made of and where they come from. While this was very motivating to see, it would not be terribly remarkable in and of itself. For us, however, the event revealed a new level at which education could now be focused. We recognize that an appreciation for history is one thing, but the application of revolutionary ideas into our actual behavior is another. At the following meeting, we decided to focus on Emiliano Zapata, while also wanting to draw the focus out to a higher level by linking the Mexican Revolution to an explicitly socialist revolution, in order to move beyond what might be understood as a primarily nationalist struggle toward something that specifically used concepts like the workers’ organization of society, division of labor, exploitation, proletarians, the bourgeoisie, etc. We also anticipate a near future where the basic organizational problems of running their union will need to be met with increasing seriousness, and we suspect that we can use Lenin to help with some of this.

All of the above was made possible as material for education by the historical fact that Lenin wrote favorably of the prospects of the Mexican Revolution and Zapata had written enthusiastically about the similarities between the Russian and Mexican revolutions. We used these writings to enter into a small “curriculum” that we created ''specifically'' for the tenants in the union to investigate the concepts above. These are not surface level connections or disconnected history lessons. History is always examined in order to elevate the significance of the present struggle, as it presents itself concretely. The ongoing strike, an immediate instance of class struggle, both provided the opportunity to reflect on history, make judgements about it and imbue it with a living significance. The tenants are able to see their own struggle as part of a larger picture. It should go without saying that the work of politicization is never complete, and the present ideological level at any given time is nothing but a limit to go beyond.

These are the subjective conditions of the revolution we aim to create. These are the conditions of ''the development'' of more class-conscious, more revolutionary fighters who are organized ever more impeccably—the conditions of all of this ''in motion.'' The present members of ACTA recognize the need to continue rising indefinitely to this aspiration. As organizers with this outlook, we need to earn the mantle of leadership. Experience shows us every day that this forward march towards revolution will continue as long as we join tenants ''authentically'' in the mutually humanizing act of becoming organized, self-conscious participants in the class-struggle; fighters who believe that what is at stake is nothing less than the future of humankind.

Library:Tenant Spring/The Rent Strike

2026-06-04T00:19:17Z

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== Chapter Three: The Rent Strike ==

==== ''ACTA organizes tenants because they are "in an economic relation with the capitalists that can be turned an leveraged against them." But how?'' ====
There is one central weapon available to tenants—the rent strike. All other fighting tactics and strategies without exception are centered around this tactic. This follows from all that was laid down in Chapter One. Landlording is a method of capital accumulation. What is the source of the landlord’s money? Obviously, it is the tenants’ rent, money which he can only rely upon on the condition that the tenants do not have a pot to piss in. As long as our society allows the private acquisition of property, as long as it allows “the market” to solve the housing question rather than the self-conscious masses of people governing their own relations, there can be no chance of the tenants pissing in their own pots.

At a certain level, the most significant problem that revolutionaries face today is how to contend with a market that has proven time and time again that it is capable of reworking every human relation in its own image.<ref>Land rent, for example, predates the dawn of capitalism by centuries, yet today the relationship between tenant and landlord has been warped into something distinct from its past incarnations. Tenants no longer “belong” to superiors appointed by some higher power and instead are pushed around by the whims of capitalist landlords looking for the highest return on investment. This transformation is a direct result of that rift between use and exchange engendered by capitalism, which allows landlords to almost entirely neglect the long term maintenance of his possessions in the name of short term profit—after all, the property’s second existence as a thing of pure monetary value allows the landlord to liquidate and transform his holdings into something more immediately desirable much more easily than he would be able to the old fashioned way.</ref> Every problem presented to humanity becomes integrated and solved by the market in such a manner that market relations, that is, capitalist relations of production and circulation, prevail. Like overgrown honeysuckle, the only way to stop the expansion of this invasive overgrowth is to uproot it, but first we must cut away the chaotic thicket. The market operates at a level of abstraction above any given individual, but it does not exist on its own. There are still methods of overturning these relations before the moment of a clean break with capitalism arrives.

A strike, whether it involves labor or rent, is one such method. On the one hand, it is consistent with capital’s fundamental laws, arising as a strategy only because market relations have so thoroughly permeated society. The internal logic of the strike is entirely contained within the domain of values and profits, and, taken as an isolated activity, does not break from the economic processes that occur within capitalism. On the other hand, it directly threatens those processes which sustain the expansion of the market, weakening them from within. Because of the strike’s consistency with the rules of the game, strikes alone will never achieve the final break from capital, but this same consistency is what makes them possible at all. A revolutionary tenant organization is one that is capable of using the rent strike as part of a larger strategy to weaken capitalism at the economic level and prepare for confrontation on a higher, political level.

In accordance with this thesis, our task is to cause the so-called market to “decide” that it will no longer participate in solving the housing question. The rent strike achieves this by making capital accumulation from rent impossible. The rent strike is the direct stoppage of the accumulation process.<ref>The accumulation process is not limited to rent-seeking and therefore while we describe rent-seeking as a process of accumulation, we should not be misunderstood as saying that it is the process of accumulation. Rent-seeking is only one method among others for capitalists to plunder the working class. All methods, however, rest on the premise that we’ve described: the dispossession of the majority from the means of production and means of life and the corresponding “dark side” of this reality—the concentration of wealth in the hands of a minority circle of capitalists, the masters of society.</ref> It is the only tactic available to the inchoate movement that cuts at the rent relation itself, the relation which forms the basis of all landlord power. That is why we believe a socialist organization focused on tenants cannot justify any other type of war strategy without forfeiting its revolutionary character.

Despite its importance to the tenant movement, we have found that the rent strike is profoundly mystified and misunderstood. Allow us to clarify.

As all of the landlords, their journalists, their judges and lawyers and lobbyists (and some of our comrades, regretfully) love to remind us, the rent strike is not a legally protected act in Chicago. This means that striking can result in legal action against tenants on behalf of the landlord. The ultimate consequence which can be brought against tenants on strike is eviction. In modern times this penalty has taken on new significance. In addition to the violent removal of tenants from their home, evictions now appear on publicly accessible records of tenants, causing them increased difficulty in securing housing later.<ref>It should be remembered that this difficulty stems, always, from the fact that the guardians standing at the doors of our houses are landlords, whose property rights arbitrarily pupate into the power to take away the right of others to use it.</ref>

But this risk is not a static data point in the calculations we make as tenants weighing the dangers of going on strike, though it is often approached as such by organizers. Rent strikes are not risky in themselves. In reality, they carry ''a degree'' of risk and the risk of being evicted corresponds to the amount of economic leverage a tenant union has ''in proportion to their landlord’s total available capital.'' Take as an example a landlord who has access to $100 cash after deductions are made from his income due to rent held back in the strike. If it will cost him $101 to pay a lawyer to evict the tenants, can he evict the tenants? Obviously he can’t. He will have to come to the negotiating table or walk away from the building by force (seizure) or choice (sale or neglect). This theoretical demonstration shows a case where the rent strike is actually the opposite of dangerous, it is maximally safe from the perspective of the tenants’ objectives, which are at the very least to stay in their homes. We conclude from this that the danger of the rent strike is not entirely determined by factors that are external to us, but also by factors that we can set in motion ourselves.

The problem then is that in practice there are few situations wherein a landlord’s portfolio is of a vulnerable size relative to the size of the tenant union’s capabilities to hold rent. If the landlord is large, like so many landlords are in Chicago, the union must also be large. In fact, as the size of the landlord’s portfolio increases, the relative proportion of the union should also increase because as a capitalist accumulates, his resources tend to multiply and diversify. This means that his profits in rent can not only be reinvested into new apartments, they can go into other types of investments that provide him income which the rent strike cannot leverage. These incomes can ultimately serve him as a war chest and fund his assault on the tenant union.

Large landlords must be fought by large unions. Unfortunately the inverse is not necessarily true. Small landlords might be multimillionaires in other industries and merely dabble in real estate for a little spending money. It is generally easier to leverage a greater number of units relative to the small landlord’s entire portfolio, but this does not necessarily mean that those forces will be strong ''relative to his total capital.'' In this instance, the petty real estate portfolio of the small landlord is only the sheep’s wool disguising the wolf, who can wage war without much personal difficulty strengthened by capital hidden from our view.

While economic proportions can theoretically be determined with mathematical precision, there is a crucial gap between what is possible to determine and what can be determined realistically. The landlord’s financial standing can at best only be approximated. This is all to say that although the particular risk taken by any striking union against their landlord ''can'' be estimated, and although the risk always varies with the proportion of units represented by the union relative to the total units in the landlord’s possession, achieving favorable proportions with any consistency is rare at this stage in the tenant union movement. Therefore, rent strikes are, generally speaking, a risky endeavor right now.

But, to stop the analysis of the rent strike here, at the level of immediate tactical questions would leave us with only a surface level understanding of the rent strike’s significance. For ACTA the technical considerations of landlord-tenant conflict are only one side of a revolutionary strategy. A more complete strategy requires understanding the process by which capital reproduces itself, that is, via cycles of accumulation. This understanding is cultivated with an eye toward derailing this reproductive process.

The object of our strategic investigations, capitalism, remains an abstraction. “The capitalist system” is not a thing which can be poked and prodded except in the confines of our imagination. We cannot take hold of it, much less smash it as we could a glass tumbler.

All that can be smashed ''in fact'' are individual capitals that rest on the private ownership of ''specific'' property. This property will have ''concrete'' ties to a source of exploitation that give rise to a ''concrete'' accumulation of capital in the hands of a real owner. The specific “cycle” of accumulation (i.e. the capitalist’s investment-return-investment+ process) in turn contributes to the average profitability of that particular branch of industry. Every branch of industry is related to all others through this average profitability of capital investment. A decrease in the profitability of one sector causes new investment to flow towards the more profitable branches. As a result, a change in the average profitability of a branch regulates not only the concentration of an individual’s capital (i.e. his decision to continually reinvest his profits back into the same branch or not), but also the entry and exit of competitors and their sums of capital to and from this branch. Competition establishes the basis for the possibility of centralization of capital in a given branch. In our case, we are dealing with the real estate sector.

A revolutionary tenant organization should strive to destabilize the conditions of profitability in real estate. As we saw in chapter one, by making lesser profit harder to come by in a competitive environment, it will progressively corrode the possibility for, first, small scale landlords (the “mom and pops”) and, next, the medium sized landlords to survive, eventually forcing their exit from the field, either by ruin or by the search for greener pastures. Their properties will be destined for centralization under the control of larger, more heavily armored investors. At the same time as housing centralizes and approaches conditions of monopoly, the tenant-unions will be centralizing as their own opposing force,<ref>See Chapters [[Library:Tenant Spring/Segregation|6]], [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|7]], [[Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy|8]]</ref> setting the stage for a much simplified and direct showdown: the masses of tenants on one side and the landlord giants on the other. At this point, the state will have no choice but to intervene in the crisis, and our struggle will increasingly take on a more political character.

Our strategy has to be devised at this level but this does not mean that our strategy should turn its back on any isolated landlord-tenant conflicts and cast its eyes on the abstract concept of the real estate industry and capital in general. Our strategy needs to engage with these real movements in order to tie the concrete but isolated landlord-tenant fights together. The individual fights must be conducted in a way that always sharpens the broader movement against its counterpart, the broader movement of capital. What does this mean for our strategy today, practically speaking? In proverbial terms, “You’ve got to pay some agony for the ecstasy.” We are going to lose battles in the course of trying to win the war. To put that into its properly dialectical terms: lost rent strikes will chip the armor of capital and begin the process of corroding the profitability of the real estate sector.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy|Chapter 8]] for more on the connection between battles and the war.</ref>

Plainly, any rent strike which ACTA can manage to organize today faces great odds. But properly executed, each strike will come at non-trivial cost to any landlord who has the misfortune of running into us. For example, the landlord’s lost rent (even if he recuperates some or all of it in the end through negotiations with the union<ref>On the other hand, if this is all bullshit, and the landlords are making things up, it is clear that the preaching of money-dealers is very influential on the simple mind of the landlord and leads them to the conclusion that time lost without rent, even if it is all recovered in the end, has cost them. That is to say, it shouldn’t be taken for granted that the time value of money is relevant as a force in a rent strike. But in the case that it’s not, if nothing else, the fetishism about money as a thing that can magically increase or decrease in quantity is one of the landlord’s superstitions that provides the rent strikers convenient ideological leverage.</ref>), combined with his legal fees and all of the various expenses accrued on account of the extra work necessary to manage a tenant rebellion, will objectively lower his profitability below what it otherwise would have been. This is true even if the struggle ultimately results in the tenants’ displacement. At the same time every strike, win or lose, has the potential to raise the general level of struggle in the movement, acting as a school for tenants.

But it is not enough to mechanically assume that all organizing experience leads to a development of consciousness or an intensified will to fight, much less a social movement incorporating those individuals. If this were true, the disconnected, isolated face-offs between tenants and landlords would have compounded into a flood of activity long ago. In addition to the fighting itself, the other necessary component for the struggle to act as a school is some structure to ensure connection and continuity. If the strike is successful, there must be a guiding force to direct energy to the other battles occurring in the city. If the strike is defeated, there must be some organization to both protect the tenants and offer them an alternative to despair. A defeat can be instructive to an organization with a definite strategy, but to an isolated union of tenants it is, more often than not, fatal. The more those tenants are integrated into the larger organizational momentum, the more likely their setback does not spell the end. “Losing the battle but winning the war” is only possible if there is a broader war to speak of—and an organization to conduct it.

As we have seen above, a proportional increase in the number of tenants organized as the working class establishes the conditions which improve the odds for fighting tenants and thus the conditions under which we can expect to regularly win rent strikes. The number of organized tenants can grow by no other means than by regularly incorporating new tenants into the struggle. At present, ACTA’s cardinal tasks are two.

The first is to start hacking at and clearing away the first layer of this “chaotic thicket,” i.e. those landlords who are estimated confidently to be of a scale that puts our organization—''understood at its current level of power to organize tenant unions''—in favorable, proportional conditions. Local petty landlords, “mom and pops,” owners with 3-5 properties or 100-200 total units, etc.

The second is to find and develop tenants who are lean, mean, fighting machines.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy|Chapter 8]].</ref> Tenant soldiers, who are not afraid of the high levels of risk that are characteristic of the tenant movement during this early stage. It is in these dawning days of the war, when our forces are still small and inexperienced that the fighting is most dangerous. The good news is the task of recruitment is made much easier for us by the objective conditions of the class struggle today, which send tenants by the dozens into our field of activity. This is a consequence of the current intensity of landlord terror. At the time of writing, two tenant unions are on rent strike against great odds because they simply had no other options.

ACTA’s role can be none other than to “prepare to lose, fight to win.” This requires our emphasis to be on ideological development. The school of the rent strike needs its teachers. To the graduates of this school, defeat is only a temporary break before they “redeploy”, willing and eager to continue the fight. This level of commitment requires ACTA to establish deep levels of trust and respect with every tenant we come into contact with. If we are successful in our role, the process of organizing their struggle will teach them that all isolated skirmishes are only tiny scenes belonging to a great worldwide drama which we are writing together.

We’ve got to pay some agony for the ecstasy. The rent strikes that lose but chip away at landlord power belong to the period of tenant spring. The struggle will only mature into tenant summer, the season which will see rent strikes that win and blow away landlordism entirely, when certain conditions arise, which we will now describe in more detail.

Library:Tenant Spring/Imperialism and Internationalism

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== Chapter Two: Imperialism and Internationalism ==

==== ''Isn’t capitalism international? How is a small tenant organization in Chicago connected to such a global struggle?'' ====

''“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”''

''“Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”'

There is strictly speaking, no tenant movement that encompasses the entire world. Housing is provisioned in different ways in different countries. The rent relation that binds landlords and tenants is common throughout the core imperialist countries, i.e. Europe and North America in particular. This similarity has already led to efforts to connect the various movements. For example, ACTA is a member and actively involved in the constitution of the Tenant International (TI). Though still in its infancy, TI is attempting to link up every front in the war on landlords around the world but is currently composed almost exclusively of European and North American organizations. This is not a result of eurocentrism, but a reflection of the way housing is provisioned differently in the so-called ‘advanced’ countries versus the underdeveloped ones.

Nevertheless, renting houses does appear within limits in most countries in the world—as a rule, concentrated in cities—and there is reason to believe that the rent relation will increase globally, wherever capitalist development reworks nations in the image of the advanced countries. In the meantime, if the tenants’ struggle is to adopt a more geographically comprehensive orientation right away, it would have to consider itself less specifically as a part of the housing struggle. This brings it closer in principle to the most enduring form of struggle in history: land struggle.

In any case, ACTA is certain that the dwellings of the international working class, no matter their form or content, are one of the centers of a bitter war around the working class’ principal and most precious possession: their labor-power.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|Chapter 5]]</ref> The tenant struggle is a particular expression of this war that has emerged with the development of capitalism in the core and semi-peripheral countries. For examples of housing/land struggles that are not quite tenant struggles, we point to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Brazil, the squatters movements throughout Africa, in particular Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa.

ACTA believes that it is advisable to be specific, because revolutions require revolutionary strategies and revolutionary strategies must be concrete. Therefore, we are happy to embrace the tenant struggle as our home, however, we will never turn away from the fact that we are internationalist in orientation and ambition, an orientation which derives from our commitment to revolutionary socialism.

How is this internationalism expressed then, if not directly through the tenant organizing?

To preface this, we’d like to say that the popular slogan about all struggles being interconnected is a one-sided truth. What is true is that all oppression and exploitation is interconnected. This is precisely due to imperialism, which has created the international division of labor and made a truly universal connective tissue out of the productive activity of men.

These connections do exist in various material processes of imperialism. For example, there are real political connections between the IDF and American police forces and economic connections between American corporations and the exploitation of South America. But when it comes to the links between our activity in Chicago and the broader struggle, we cannot be satisfied with substituting these existing connections outside our reach, considered abstractly, for the real connections which must be created between our activity and the world. For this, we must be capable of making a concrete analysis of these conditions of imperialism in relation to specific objectives. It is the second part which goes so misunderstood. It is not going to cut it to assert that Chicago is connected to, for example, Palestine, unless we can first, show how the links actually function and grasp their development. Second, do this from the standpoint of the real fact of our political activity—in other words, our practice; e.g. reconstruct the Palestinian struggle to include the connections that we and our organized comrades are capable of intervening in objectively. Third, in the course of doing that, discover the limits of our current practice and develop it to a higher stage where we can intervene in the connections which lie beyond our limits.

If we take this challenge seriously, we’re afraid that we will find that while the imperialists have made the connection between Chicago and the world system in reality, present anti-imperialists have by-and-large only made this connection in theory. This is a big problem. To seriously combat the vast links of oppression made by the imperialist system, we certainly must theorize them, but we cannot forget to attempt to prove the reality of these hypothesized connections with the test of organized, practical fighting. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Among other things, ACTA believes we must make material connections between organizations here and there and begin to organize together. The precondition of such connections is our own organization’s capability to forge and maintain these real, practical links; and this shows us the way to a first link in the chain of connections: build an organization capable of creating and maintaining such connections. This is the only basis on which our organized resistance can connect to other struggles in reality.

But this remains quite an abstract conclusion, although internationalism is at some level about having revolutionary principles. We uphold the view that it does not ultimately matter what we think or say about ourselves, it matters what our total activity amounts to. ACTA accepts the point of view that the abstract is a one-sided category while the concrete is the unity of the many determinations. In shorthand, we could say that thinking abstractly is to simplify, while thinking concretely is to complexify. But the latter is not reducible to compiling a bunch of information willy-nilly, it is about arranging lots of information in a way that leaves us with a guide to action. Therefore we will give a brief example of the role played by concrete analysis in ACTA and at the same time show how “internationalism” materializes in our organization.

At the most general level, it is certainly true that Burkina Faso and the USA are concretely connected by chains of debt and trade which flow through the IMF, and these connections impose themselves

upon the actual people living in each country, changing their behavior. This is an abstract depiction of the interconnections and, more importantly, it vaguely describes the connections of imperialism, and says nothing about the interconnections of struggle let alone anything concrete.

“Burkina Faso” is an abstraction if we do not consider the social classes within it. If we split Burkina into the industrial working class, the agrarian class, and the bourgeoisie, just to name a few examples of classes present in Burkinabé society, we complicate our conception of Burkina Faso, but we also introduce connections which begin to bring us towards the level of the concrete. Forces begin to take shape and the trajectory of the country becomes clearer even as the overall picture becomes more complex. But if we were simply to conclude at this point that the national bourgeoisie must have an upper hand (because, for example, the analyst is satisfied to copy over his understanding of the class structure in the United States), we would have stopped before reconstructing a concrete conception of the country. We must continue our reconstruction of the totality by restoring additional elements until we have brought the picture into focus.

In the case of Burkina Faso, the analyst should go on to review the influence of France, the US, Russia, the other African powers, the complicated relation between the Islamic insurgents of the north and Ukrainian and NATO forces, the supposedly “disinterested” parties such as Germany, and of course the Fulani and Tuareg. This list could go on indefinitely, bringing us closer to a concrete conception. We should also recognize the ideological distinctions within the Burkinabé classes, for example, between those who support the ambitions of the national bourgeoisie with less qualification and those who hold a more revolutionary socialist vantage point—in the specific case of Burkina Faso, we have the vestiges of Thomas Sankara’s influence which still motivates certain strata of the people.

For brevity, we will pause our example here with the hope that it has done a part to concretize what we mean by concrete analysis itself.<ref>We suggest reviewing the work of Amílcar Cabral for examples of concrete analysis in a different African context. In particular, The Struggle In Guinea. The Facts About Portugal’s African Colonies is also exemplary, it is written under the pseudonym Abel Djassi.</ref>

But, what is the point of this type of detailed study of an African nation? What is concrete analysis for? As US revolutionaries we do not undertake this task in order to arrive at the “correct line” on the Traoré government to argue online and make slogans. We do not discourage general study and curiosity, but the type of analysis which produces real practical knowledge and leads us towards revolution is always oriented towards particular problems. Abstract knowledge may be useful one day, but it is no substitute for the cultivation of concrete knowledge on the part of the organization as a whole. The example of Burkina Faso is concrete for ACTA because we have made connections with organizations in Burkina Faso who are actually navigating the present conditions of the class struggle. By understanding these forces concretely, we can, firstly, know the real interconnections imperialism has given. In other words, we can locate ourselves in relation to Burkina and understand the limits of this relation.<ref>An example of one such limit is that ACTA currently has no concrete way to stop the US military if it wanted to intervene in Burkina’s current trajectory. A more immediate limit is that ACTA members have yet to visit Ouagadougou and learn from the everyday activity in Burkina Faso. Nevertheless, these limits, once explored, conceal the path to strengthening the actual relationship that exists. On the other hand, no amount of theoretical elaboration of a purely theoretical connection to Burkina Faso will make the leap to an actual connection.</ref>

Secondly and much more consequentially, with an understanding of our relation and its limits, we can attempt to transform these relations by overcoming these limits. We are revolutionary socialists and we desire to act in ways which strengthen the oppressed, the international working class. In this case, that is through its subsections in both the US and Burkina Faso. As far as we’re concerned, figuring out how to do this—always concretely—is the essential purpose of political organization as such.

Our connection is with a small school in the capital city, Ouagadougou, called the Centre Thomas Sankara. The organizers of the school are the teachers, they are called sofas, and they work with kids of elementary, middle and high school ages. The sofas are pan-African socialists and so they are engaged primarily in raising and spreading revolutionary consciousness among the young generation of Burkinabé. So the Centre is a place where kids can go to learn about revolutionary history in Africa and throughout the colonized world, as well as study directly the writing and speeches of Thomas Sankara, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and Samora Machel, etc. Most significantly, they are in the early stages of reviving Sankara’s Young Pioneer program.

ACTA’s role in this is through the assistance with curriculum and learning materials at the Centre. Several of our members belong to an international organization called Cat’s Cradle Tiger’s Eye (CCTE), an organization of comrades who specialize in pedagogy and develop our practice by making links between different communist or pan-Africanist fighters around the world and helping them with their political education.

In Chicago, CCTE’s emphasis on pedagogy is at the very center of ACTA, as well. Like the sofas in Ouagadougou, we believe that fortifying a revolutionary movement means raising up the next generation of fighters. Therefore, there is a special division in ACTA made of four members who are beginning to organize a youth wing called the Young Questioneers. They focus entirely on developing youth education. The mechanism for this education is completely specific to the ACTA infrastructure and relies on the effective operation of ACTA as a whole.

For example, ACTA’s main activity is mass work and it is focused (currently) in the West Side of Chicago.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|Chapter 7]]</ref> Extensive direct experience has revealed that the tenants inside of the apartment buildings throughout these areas include thousands of children and young people whose parents have extremely limited resources. Door after door, parents tell us that more than anything else they want better for their kids. Better houses, of course, but also better futures, better ways to spend their time, better ways to learn and stay active and safe. On the other hand, poverty traps them, it is hard for them to travel to other parts of town and violence drives a common fear of spending excessive amounts of time outdoors.

In short, the YQ group’s central objective is to learn the conditions. They use the reports from ACTA’s mass work for this, including their own direct investigation at mass work themselves. Then, they attempt to develop education that is appropriate for the specific, concrete situation. Currently, this takes the shape of monthly packages that get delivered (also by ACTA’s forces) directly to the doors of families in the apartment buildings. Each month, the learning materials are themed around problems discovered by talking to the families. For example, a recent theme was around young people’s attitudes toward making mistakes.

Each theme is also given a specific international emphasis, so learning always introduces kids to revolutionary movements in other parts of the world; India, Palestine, Cuba, and of course Burkina Faso. Because we are simultaneously helping organize education in Ouagadougou, this has allowed us to join efforts. We send material that is made with the kids here to Ouagadougou. Materials produced by the Young Pioneers at the Centre are shared with the kids here.

We can see in this example, how ACTA’s basis of organization is a dynamic foundation on which new forms and frontiers of the

struggle can be built, including international ones. It is the material basis that permits the young people in slums of the West Side to know the young people in the capital of Burkina Faso. Of course, this basis of organization greatly improves our ability to organize more traditional types of international solidarity, too; arranging fundraisers that address our comrades’ direct needs, helping them promote their own efforts to a wider audience, raising awareness of their struggle, etc. It is self-evident that our link with Burkina Faso is very small and still insignificant in the grand scheme. We are not delusional about our level of influence on the development of the present Burkinabé revolution nor about their current interest in ours.

But, these examples should illustrate that ACTA is dead serious about being an internationalist organization<ref>We have similar links under development with an organization in Panamá City, Panamá.</ref> and would never flatter itself for making slogans and releasing statements that profess “our line” on this or that movement in some other part of the world. We recognize that if there is ever going to be a real interconnection of struggle, it has to begin like this. Our dream is for the Centre in Ouagadougou to grow and gain influence, and we aim to help it however we can.

At the same time, we want ACTA’s influence and power to grow until at some point both of our organizations are powerful and linked in ways that go beyond our current limits of youth education and raising consciousness, and take us into the realm of revolutionary strategy. Our tasks will always be to break through the limits concretely and rise to a higher stage of fighting. If this is possible—and we are certain it is—our organizations here and there (ACTA, CTS, CCTE) cannot be given up or allowed to fall into ruin, or else the interconnection of imperialism will remain unbreakable. It is our organization which provides the motive force for acting upon all the conclusions of our analysis. No matter the precision and critical integrity of such analyses, the weapon of criticism must pass over into the criticism of our weapons or else theory remains a dead letter.

As our comrades الحوت and B.S.Ph have written succinctly, ''“The lack of clear and precise political analysis gives excuses to the people in the belly of the beast to evade their responsibility to humanity by seriously engaging in the struggle to destroy the imperialist system.”''

Library:Tenant Spring/Capitalism

2026-06-04T00:18:11Z

Sansserifseraphim: fixed title

== Chapter One: Capitalism ==

==== ''Why does ACTA, a tenant organization, find it so important to consider itself a “revolutionary socialist” organization?'' ====
The landlord-tenant relation only exists because it is a part of a larger system, the system of capitalism. Capitalism creates both the preconditions for the landlord-tenant relationship and the drive for it to grow and expand. The precondition which has led us to the present housing relations is the private as opposed to social ownership of the means of production, land, and resources. Until private property is replaced by social ownership, the increasing power of landlords to rule over tenants cannot be permanently destroyed and all reforms will be temporary half-measures.

The abolition of landlords and the self-abolition of tenants is our target, nothing less. If houses were the property of society collectively, there would be no landlords to demand rent and therefore no tenants forced to pay it. That is why we are a revolutionary organization first, tenant organization second.

Capitalism makes it possible for landlords to prioritize profit over the usefulness of housing because an economy based on private property provides owners with a legal and political dictatorship over their possessions. If these houses were owned socially, we would all have to determine the best way to use them. Under the system of capitalism, however, they are private property, which means that the state protects the right of a small minority to determine how these houses are used. As a result, property owners have the state-given “right” to “use” their property to make money, if they wish.

This right is rooted in common sense. We have the right to our possessions. Throughout history people have struggled to build political systems where the objects they use in everyday life cannot be taken away from them just because someone more powerful desires them. Capitalism is premised on this abstract right to property, but under capitalism, this historical need of humanity is transformed into its opposite as ownership of property is abstracted from use of property. Landlords who buy property with no intention of ever using it in any real sense are granted the absolute authority to rip it away from those who do use it, and in fact depend on it. As time goes on this perverse sense of “ownership” becomes an increasingly central part of the economic structure of society. Today, as a rule, owners purchase excess houses for the purpose of renting them out to tenants.

Capitalism not only sets the stage for an intensification of landlord dominance, it incentivises it. Under capitalism, productive activity is done with the goal of accumulation, rather than the goal of directly satisfying people’s needs. In other words, useful things are only created if they have exchange value. Only needs that are profitable are met.

Accumulation, as the accumulation of capital, has this contradiction embedded in it as well. By accumulation, we mean the increase of the mass of the means of production as private property in the hands of the owners. In other words, accumulation refers to the accumulation of capital itself: the means of production and their value. In plain talk, these things are the basis of an individual’s wealth and are referred to, in headlines for example, as one’s “net worth.” Accumulation of capital—in short, profit—is the general condition of the capitalist class and the objective of all individuals providing goods and services for sale in the market.

Producers aim to produce for the general needs of society, but there is no central coordinating body to determine this need. Instead, the general need of society is reported to the producers in the form of a quantitative valuation. As a result, no firm or enterprise surveys every possible consumer in order to determine the quantity of products needed to satisfy all needs. Instead, they base their appraisal of the general need on rates of return. In theory, a high rate of return should indicate a high need for a particular product. By maximizing their own profits, capitalist producers meet the general needs of society. In reality, profit is determined by its own set of complicated rules, rules distinct from any rational distribution of resources.<ref>It is commonly argued by economists and political pundits that the market tends towards an “efficient” distribution of resources. This argument is always circular. Efficient distribution is only justified in relation to the actual tendencies of the market, in effect comparing the market to itself.</ref>

This contradiction between usefulness and exchangeability is at the core of our economic system. It exists within the basic material elements of our society, the commodities we trade and use. On one hand, capitalist production is a process of collectively creating useful things in order to meet real needs, on the other hand this process is carried out by individual producers only under conditions ripe for capital accumulation.

These individual producers enter the market as competitors. Profitability is the general condition of capitalist production, but specific producers achieve specific rates of profit under conditions of competition with one another. Competition is felt most directly between producers in the same branch of industry, for example Samsung competes with Apple in the production of phones. It drives a progressively more cutthroat condition of survival and, in the process, skews the odds toward those firms which are larger in terms of their material forces of production and their corresponding scale of accumulated capital as money. This competition results in the triumph of some enterprises, and the collapse of others. The winners consume the losers as spoils of war and accumulation takes the form of acts of centralization in the direction of monopoly power. We can see in this process how the competition of many transforms into the domination of a few.<ref>Recall how at the beginning of the cell phone era, the list of competitors was extensive; Motorola, Nokia, LG, Blackberry, Samsung, Apple will be memorable to those of us in the United States. Only two of these now dominate half of the world market; while a handful of firms fight over the scraps. Forgotten are the hundreds of international companies who have tried to blast into the market only to disappear in a flash like shooting stars. In reality, their accomplishments were absorbed by their competitors and now form a part of their mass.</ref>

interests of the landlord and the tenant are diametrically opposed to one another. We can generalize this contradiction as the basic condition of housing in the United States today: there is a controller who does not use (the capitalist landlord) vs. a user who does not control (the tenant).

The landlord and the tenant’s interests are diametrically opposed because their relationship is an economic one. Think about it this way: the tenant’s interests are in the usefulness of the house. If the heat breaks down in the winter and leaves him freezing, he does not have the legal or political right to fix the heat himself because he does not own the house as his private property. He has to ask the proper owner to do it, the landlord, who always treats these impositions like the burden of the cross. “And to think,” he says with a smug grin, “You people want to crucify me!”

But the landlord’s interests are not in the usefulness of the house, they are in the profitability of the house. Fixing the heat will cost him money and therefore it will work against his interests. The tenant's gain is necessarily the landlord’s loss, and vice versa.<ref>In the long run, these repairs may maintain the sale price of the home. Some use this to argue that the interests of landlord and tenant coincide. This argument is easily dissolved by the reality of the situation, where landlords fight even the most important repairs tooth and nail. The truth of the matter is that the incremental maintenance of a building cuts into profits, and so most landlords put it off, hoping to sell the building just before the small issues grow into a massive necessary cost. The unlucky landlord who loses this game of hot potato almost never pays the repair costs incurred by the pillage of the building carried out by his progenitors. Instead, he appeals to the state for funding, diverting even more of the people’s money into landlord pockets. The fact that only a miniscule percentage of the dutifully paid rents over those decades of decay went towards the building itself is lost on all. The landlord gets subsidized and the tenants who actually use the homes pay the price.</ref>

That is as simple as it can be stated and it should illustrate that, even in the case that a tenant has a “good landlord,” the landlord’s enthusiasm for maintaining the usefulness of the apartment will last only as long as the broader economic conditions of capitalist society leave him with enough of a financial cushion to do so profitably. But such conditions never last. Seemingly every decade a life-changing economic crisis paralyzes the world system. Not to mention those more localized, yearly crises that pop up in different corners of the globe, tearing life apart for everyone except the richest of the capitalists and the lucky ones in the middle class.<ref>The list of economic crises in the capitalist system is too long to even make an appropriately evocative set of references to here because they are so frequent. However, to get a picture of the problem in broad strokes, search “list of economic crises” in Wikipedia.</ref>

For example, when the financial crisis of 2008 occurred and the Great Recession followed, millions of properties were foreclosed. “Mom and pop” landlords either couldn’t afford to pay their banks or sold their surplus properties in a desperate attempt to squeeze out whatever remaining cash they could in the panic. In either case, it meant tenants were evicted by the hundreds of thousands. The personality of the landlord is always irrelevant during hard times, and hard times will always come until the capitalist system is revolutionized and thrown away.

The landlord and tenant’s contradictory interests concerning housing are not independent of one another or arbitrary. The landlord’s money comes directly from the tenant, the former depends on the latter. In other words, while it is popularly understood in this order—the working class would have no place to live if housing providers didn’t exist—in reality, the situation proceeds in this order: landlords would have no money and no ability to make it from housing if a huge proportion of the masses were not dispossessed of the basic and necessary means of living.

The constant dispossession of the masses of their basic means of life and the concentration of those into the hands of an increasingly small and exclusive circle of capitalists is a precondition of landlordism and is the basis of the capitalist system. In fact, as a consequence of the 2008 crisis, houses that formerly belonged to millions of homeowners went on the market at low prices and were scooped up by the only people who still had any money to invest—small and big capitalist real estate speculators. At the same time, the existing rental housing stock now had to absorb mass tenantization—millions of homeowners converted into tenants in one sweep. The thrust of demand against the supply of rental stock could do nothing else but kickstart an increase in the price of rent,<ref>Disequilibrium between supply and demand is the inevitable scapegoat for the so-called housing crisis, but it has nothing to do with it—except in the way that salt has something to do with making the pain of a wound more acute.</ref> which has carried through to the unbelievable levels we are facing today—all destined for the vaults of the rich!

The fundamental contradiction driving the landlord-tenant relationship, that contradiction between usefulness and profitability, is a contradiction that cannot be resolved without revolutionizing the system of private property. By replacing the system of private property with a system of social, collective ownership of the means of production we will put ourselves in the only viable position to orient production towards the satisfaction of the general needs of society, that is, socialism. This revolution has to be undertaken by the working class—the class to which tenants belong—against the capitalist class because the working class is the group that is in an economic relation with the capitalists that can be turned and leveraged against them. That’s why ACTA is a revolutionary organization of the working class that believes in socialism. Going forward, if the reader has questions about why ACTA believes this or that, it’s always worth revisiting this first point. We are revolutionary socialists.

Library:Tenant Spring/Battalion and Army

2026-06-04T00:17:30Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter 8 of tenant spring

== Chapter 8: Battalion and Army ==

==== ''ACTA wants to create tenant unions in buildings everywhere in Chicago, but not without simultaneously creating a system of linking them into a strategic center. What does this imply for tenants in buildings?'' ====
In addition to its leadership, i.e. organizers who specialize in educating, agitating and training tenants in organizing tenant unions, once established, the tenant unions themselves make up a share of ACTA’s forces. Naturally, ACTA’s objective is to build durable tenant unions far and wide. But it would not be enough to build tenant unions far and wide ''without at the same time building up a system of linking these unions together and bringing them under a single, unified strategic center.'' This is a reiteration of the point made in Chapter 6 but this time from the perspective of the building-level organizations, i.e. the tenants and their unions.

Tenant-unions at the building level are battalions, they are not the army itself. ACTA is the army as a whole. Imagine, for analogy, if in the US Civil War the 54th Massachusetts Infantry was not linked through a larger chain of command to the entire Union army? Could it (or would it) have taken Fort Wagner? On the other hand, could the survivors of the 2nd and 6th Infantries have continued fighting if they were not absorbed as reinforcements into the other companies of the Iron Brigade?

This analogy should make the problem clear enough. On one hand, we need to build up battalions. On the other hand, we need to develop the army. The concrete tasks necessary for each of these two sides are different and therefore will require that ACTA be filled with people who carry out different work, but this doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will specialize in this or that type of work permanently. Just as in a real army, the soldiers move through the ranks, so too in ACTA. The tenants, pulled out of their building fights, must make their way into the leadership of the organization. The leadership of the organization at one time or another must have their hands in the building-level organization and the ongoing fighting. There is no other way to ensure that as many members as possible become well-rounded and all-seeing strugglers in ACTA, something that will be critical for the durability and tenacity of our organization over the long term. Centralized structure; decentralized personification.

The necessity of the distinction between the tenant unions and the tenant organization stems from the reality that in every army there are battalions that win and battalions that lose. It is the army itself—i.e. ACTA—that prevents losses at the battalion level from being absolute by considering them from the point of view of the army and the context of the war at large. That these fighting units belong to a higher organization with a higher purpose than any given local battle is what allows the systematic evaluation of “losses” and “wins”. It is what will prevent us from falling into the traps and ambushes associated with chasing down small and easy victories on one hand, and going to extremes to avoid small losses on the other.

However, this distinction also recognizes the reality that organized tenants who make up the battalions are the ones in the “immediate” lines of fire. They are the practical forces. It is their rent which hammers the landlord in a rent strike. And it is the roof over ''their'' head which is at stake in any given building level struggle. They are the direct, physical targets of landlord terror. It follows from this that the organized tenants of ACTA are required to have a certain type of consciousness, which is basically the psychology of a soldier. Put frankly, the organized tenants of ACTA have to want to fight and have to develop a passion for fighting. Following what has been laid out above,<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|Chapter 4]].</ref> ACTA seeks out conflict. Therefore, our organization needs to raise a military of tenants who ''understand'' this point of view as one that is strategically and theoretically legitimate and furthermore, are in a position to adopt the correct attitude for carrying it out.

The attitude is summarized and expressed well in the words of one of our present tenant-unionists, Comrade Anay, who aspires to lead her children by example: ''“You see your mother always fight. You need to be the same way.”''

This is not cavalier, it would be cavalier if we were promoting the idea that conflict is good in and of itself and not in relation to our principle of class struggle.<ref>See Chapters [[Library:Tenant Spring/Capitalism|1]], [[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|4]].</ref> For example, it would be cavalier if we were suggesting that tenants should randomly vandalize and destroy their buildings simply because they know they belong to the landlord, rather than suggesting that they should assess that tactic as one potential link in the chain their organization forges to connect its line, strategy and objectives to its concrete tasks of realizing them.

ACTA tenant unions need to lure the reaction of the landlord according to the degree in which they are organized to defend themselves against and survive that reaction. More importantly, they must do this ''because'' they have learned and internalized the principle that these reactions are the materialization of his diminished monetary profit which is the key to ending the capitalists’ dictatorship over our housing. All of this follows ''directly'' from our fundamental line.<ref>See Chapter [[Library:Tenant Spring/The Rent Strike|3]], [[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|4]].</ref>

This is why the organizers of ACTA must understand ACTA’s line, we need huge improvement in this regard. It is also why the organizational structure of ACTA—especially at the point where the organizers and tenants interact directly, i.e. in our organizing units—must practically carry ACTA’s strategy from its center, teach it and spread it, and then return to the center with its problems and experience for reflection. Another area where dramatic improvement is required in our organization.

From the point of view of tenants in unions, this is why the importance of ACTA’s organizers—the organizational side—cannot be downgraded, sidelined or bemoaned for their unique role and why it can never be an accepted attitude among the organized tenants that, because the organizers are not in the “immediate” line of fire, that they are therefore “outside organizers.”<ref>This view is narrow on multiple counts. First of all, ACTA’s leadership are tenants, in buildings, with landlords. Secondly, it is demonstrably false that “outside organizers” do not have anything personal at stake by participating in fights at buildings in which they do not live. Believing otherwise is indicative of inexperience and a misapprehension of the scale and power of the enemy’s force! ACTA is currently in the crosshairs of the lawyer of one landlord against which they’re helping tenants organize a fight. No doubt, if action is pursued in court, the names of ACTA’s leaders will be revealed, they will be targeted and the organized dictatorship of landlords will conspire against these individuals indefinitely in similar ways that they will retaliate against the tenants in the ‘immediate’ line of fire. It is also certain that the attacks on the central organization of ACTA will only increase as ACTA’s activity becomes more effective. The position of organizer or leader is only safe until the organization becomes a serious threat to capitalist hegemony. ACTA seeks to become such a threat.</ref> We are in one organization: ACTA. The cadres and organizers of ACTA are not “outside” fighters, just like no one—privates, lieutenants, generals, majors, sergeants, colonels, etc.—are “outside” of the military. No individual part is less “inside” than any other. All make up a single, integrated organism.

The war on landlords requires a division of labor to prevail. For an organization of the working class to be worthy of its position in this war, it must rise to this necessity. Most importantly, the individuals in ACTA must move through and between that division of labor in the pursuit of the all-around development of our fighters.

''“La pelea es peleando.”''

''Victoriano Lorenzo''

Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy

2026-06-04T00:05:06Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter seven of tenant spring

== Expansion and Democracy ==

==== ''ACTA “does not have the material forces to organize in Rogers Park.” What are its forces and which neighborhood are they in? How do these develop, and how can we call ourselves the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance if we are not in every neighborhood?'' ====
ACTA’s most basic practical activity is what we call mass work. Mass work is when our organizers go into the neighborhoods and build links with tenants. Mass work is a process of investigation. We have done mass work in a number of ways, but the most consistent and reliable way to begin, in our experience so far, is door-knocking. Door-knocking is therefore the most fundamental practice in ACTA’s operation, it is what all other forms of mass work are built upon. It is the most simple activity that puts the organizer face to face with the tenant. Just as it is any given tenant’s first exposure to ACTA, mass work is also the typical method to introduce ACTA members to external work. At one and the same time, mass work involves going out (the organization into society) and pulling in (society into the organization). It is the most basic element of centralization. Centralization is this ''real activity in its process.''

At the time of publication, ACTA reliably sends out 12 to 20 organizers every Saturday to do mass work. These forces are not sent out randomly, they are divided up and deployed according to a plan which is developed each Saturday morning. This plan is always specific to the day and utilizes the number of available organizers who have shown up, but it follows the development of mass work week-to-week, month-to-month, because the purpose of mass work is to learn what is going on with people, form relationships and establish preconditions for recurring meetings in the effort to create tenant unions. From the initial contact, ACTA members tend to the unions, guiding them to the level of self leadership and ideological maturity required by the overall struggle. Therefore, successful mass work results in “Units” of organizers who have found organizing prospects and make strategies for developing them into unions until they stand on their own two feet.

It can be seen how mass work is the nutrient that feeds ACTA’s system. Just as nutrients are taken into the body and are destroyed by their conversion into energy, ACTA’s organizers enter the system by mass work but soon develop beyond this early phase of the cycle by establishing or joining organizing units engaged in constructing specific tenant unions. This process is by no means one-directional. Frequently, unsuccessful organizing units dissolve and the individuals are released back into Saturday mass work.

But for every durable, medium to long-term organizing unit that forms, an equivalent number of members are pulled out of mass work. If we are to continue expanding our activity to meet the sheer volume of landlord terror, a relatively continuous stream of organizers need to be entering the organization. Currently this supply of organizers is drawn in from the outside, but it is our hope that the unions will act as a method of transmission for the most developed tenants into the ranks of general organizers.

On any given Saturday, a handful of our organizers are door-knocking, while others are in the early stages of union-formation (i.e. returning to prospective buildings) and others are in later stages of union-formation (i.e. planning regular meetings with tenants in prospect buildings). The planning necessary for directing this kind of operation requires a headquarters for a weekly strategy meeting to take place, i.e a ''center''. Our center is where ACTA’s strategy (i.e. its theory) and the efforts to realize it (i.e. its practice) begin. It is also where we re-incorporate the results of our practice into our strategy (i.e. critique). Therefore, it is not correct to visualize the center as “the head” or central intellect of the organization, while the organizers are the workers and the body. It is better to conceive of the center as the loom where all the many theoretical and practical threads of ACTA are woven together into a unified cloth. Although the physical center is currently the location where we create this unity, physical proximity is not sufficient to overcome the tendency of theory and practice to drift apart. The real unity between our theory and practice is a result of the rotational character of ACTA’s structure, which does not confine our leadership to ideological, theoretical, and strategic work without organizing buildings and does not limit general members to organizing buildings without participating in developing the ideology, theory and strategy of the organization.<ref>More in [[Library:Tenant Spring/Battalion and Army|Chapter 8]].</ref> All the multifaceted activity of ACTA must be coordinated and linked concretely.

ACTA’s operational center is currently located on the southern edge of Humboldt Park. This leaves us in a good position to organize in Chicago’s West Side because we can easily get our forces from our HQ to the apartment buildings and back with short car, bus or bike rides. Because of this, the major share of our activity has been focused in “K-Town” and the surrounding neighborhoods, e.g. Garfield Park, North Lawndale and Austin, etc. This area is currently a soft geographic limit. The number of organizers available and their distribution between mass work, union-formation and unit work are the components of a second limit. There are also more infrastructural limits, such as the physical size of our center relative to the number of people who need to meet there at a single time, the volume of propaganda and organizing literature we can effectively produce, etc. The effective combination of our forces against their various limits is the essence of strategy and, to repeat, this strategic endeavor rests on its center. ''The center is essential.''

ACTA cannot expand beyond these limits without making changes to the existing structure of the organization. The class struggle between tenants and landlords is latent wherever housing is in control of the dictatorship of landlords and, unlike our organization, the extent of landlord domination does not remain within neighborhood limits. Landlord hegemony exists all across Chicago and therefore we need an all-Chicago strategic assault.

The city-wide reach of landlord terror poses a problem to the organization. Tenants who are spontaneously prepared to join the struggle do not appear in a series of neat, concentric circles moving out from our center. Landlord portfolios span neighborhoods and eager organizers come into the movement regardless of neighborhood. Nevertheless we are limited by geographic distance. The natural tendency is for disconnected centers to spring up in different parts of the city, each following its own isolated goals and strategy. If we take what has been said above seriously, then this must be understood as the most pressing problem for the tenant movement as a whole, and therefore for our organization. How to expand without losing the connection to a strategic center is the major concern of ACTA today.

As we have seen, coalitionism is one of the go-to means that organizations use to “expand” their sphere of activity in Chicago. We reject this on principle, for reasons we have started to describe above. The center is the crux of ACTA’s organizing practices. Actual centralization should not be misunderstood as something literal or merely physical, ''per se''. It does not mean that ACTA cannot establish multiple organizing ''centers'' across the city. It does mean that these centers must be established in a manner that proceeds dialectically from the principle and practice of centralization.<ref>The Los Angeles Tenants Union might be organized as an assemblage of locals, but this does not confirm or deny the presence of centralization in their organization. That has to be judged on the basis of other things, mainly how the strategy is transmitted between the different outposts of their group and the hierarchy of authority. ACTA has no insight into LATU’s structure at this level, the example is only to show that outward appearance cannot be taken as essence and that it is certainly possible that LATU might be centralized with multiple “centers.”</ref> The theoretical and practical processes of these distal centers must be carefully interwoven with ACTA’s current processes if we want to ensure the same strategic unity. A process of expansion that sacrifices or attempts to “leap over” our ''real centralization in practice'' is an artificial one, and one that is doomed to fail.

An approximate example of this type of attempt can be seen in one of the schemes of the now defunct Chicago Tenant Movement. After forming, CTM’s main activity was gradually dragged toward the operation of an eviction hotline. At one point, they attempted to overcome this and organize the city into regional sections where building-level organization could be carried out, but the theory was preemptive and abstract. There was little to no building-level organization to speak of in the first place. No rich organizational life had been consolidated ''at the center'' of their organization that could be expanded. This example only partly illustrates a mistake we are at risk of making. In CTM's case, the organization made a leap from its abstract principles of a citywide movement to a strategy, ''rather than starting from the real, actual life of the organization and expanding to reach concrete strategic objectives''. If they had done the latter, CTM would have discovered an extensive series of concrete steps to take in order to develop itself from its existence as a crisis response organization into its desired existence as a multi-neighborhood, tenant union organization.

What distinguishes ACTA at our present stage from CTM then is that our activity is consolidated around mass work (as described above), and we have two dozen organizers all quite trained or currently training in the work of building-level organization. Our activity is at a stage where expansion is a real possibility, created by an influx of organizers from other parts of the city. Of course, the potential work in each area greatly exceeds the capabilities of the youthful movement, but we cannot simply assume the rest of the city will supply the manpower to organize the west side right now. The struggle will need to mature before the potential work can be realized to absorb our available organizing power. In the meantime, potential forces from other parts of the city are eager to join the movement, but ACTA must be capable of integrating them. The task of establishing centers in other parts of the city is something we always knew we would have to address at some point. Now it has become feasible because people from other parts of the city have become involved. We still face limits to our geographic reach and our current forces, but these two limits are no longer objective limits.<ref>Objective limits are imposed by conditions outside of our immediate control. We do not treat these as impossible limits to overcome, they simply mean that we must work consciously elsewhere to develop either our own capabilities or the objective situation. In this example, concerted work within our geographical limit created the notoriety required to attract organizers in other parts of the city.</ref> The development of the struggle has transformed these from objective problems into theoretical problems to be solved. We are now in a position to restructure our organization and advance beyond our previous limits. The distant strategic problem of establishing additional physical centers of our organization and integrating them with the actual center has become an immediate problem for us to solve.

But just because the possibility exists doesn’t mean we can leap out into every other part of the city recklessly to justify our claim to being the ''All-Chicago'' Tenant Alliance. We ''are'' the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, we understand the contradictory identity of ''being'' with ''becoming.'' ACTA is not an organization, it is a unity of real active processes. We can’t roll out a map of the city on the table and begin walling off organizing boundaries with our pens, writing the names of organizers into the zones. We have to walk the real earth, encounter boundaries as real boundaries and overcome them in our real activity, which, as we have already seen, is built on the elemental unity of strategy, implementation, critique. i.e. of centralization. This activity is the soul of ACTA and it is also the flesh. These can only be artificially separated in thought ''because they can’t be separated in reality''.<ref>A body with a dead brain inside it is a dead body. And from where does a brain in a glass jar receive its blood apart from the system of the flesh? Which of the two brains mentioned has the power of abstract thought?</ref> God was able to create Adam’s body ''before'' giving it a soul because he is God, and we all know what happened to Adam. We are not gods, we are humans and therefore we know that it is walking that makes the road.

Expansion can only be done by building carefully in a way that begins with the real facts of our central practice and continues to preserve and develop our center by transmitting it through every step, until it transforms itself organically from what it is now—all-Chicago in principle—to what it wants to become, all-Chicago in fact. There are any number of possibilities for how a centralized organization can be built, as long as each link in the chain is connected to the one before it, so that the center analyzed above—the most basic organizational unit of ACTA—is carried through to every nook and cranny of the organization, no matter the physical (geographic) arrangement or ''design of the transmission'' at every scale.

It should be self-evident that centralization cannot occur without a simultaneous link to the periphery of the organization. A central core without a clear and effective connection to its branches is not actually a center at all. A spiderweb is more than its capture spiral, it is also its radial threads. In ACTA centralism is a democratic principle. We do not see democracy and centralism as contradictory forces within the organization. The rank and file do not act as a check or balance opposite to the leadership. Instead, they act as co-creators of the organization. The leadership provides the rank and file with strategic continuity and opportunities to take leadership in the organization and in turn, the membership extends the actual reach of the organization, stepping into the position of leadership themselves. This reciprocal connection between the leadership and the rank and file of the organization imbues the organization with vitality and fuels purposeful growth.

It is common for democracy to be treated as synonymous with elections and representatives, a view which treats democracy as an abstract ideal rather than living, breathing participation in an organization. Practices such as elections or rigid parliamentary procedure should not be mistaken for democracy, especially when they so often become anti-democratic. Only true participation and activity in the organization by its members should be considered true democracy. ACTA seeks democracy as an actuality and this means sober reflection on every facet of the organization. If an organizational practice empowers members to deepen their organizational activity we may call it democratic.

The opposite of actual democracy is not leadership or formalization. The true opposite of democracy in an organization is inactivity and impotence. If the organization cannot develop, expand, and pursue its aims, then any supposedly democratic structures will only lead to an illusion of democracy. Opportunities for creative participation in the organization and positions which provide members with ownership over particular aspects of the struggle are necessarily democratic, in that they provide deeper popular control over the organization. For example, ACTA’s general membership are encouraged to take on leadership projects designed around pressing organizational problems of the moment. These projects offer general members opportunities to transform the organization in significant ways, from taking on leadership of a union to implementing new practices or even additional organizational divisions. Only the development and expansion of the organization can reliably provide these types of opportunities. Trying to institute formal democratic processes without corresponding developments in the organization’s activity can only lead to stagnation and over-bureaucratization.

We have seen organized tenants mistake formal democratic processes for actual democracy. An emblematic case of this recently occurred, in fact. Under ACTA’s influence, a group of tenants organized a group chat and began arranging meetings. This union-to-be formed in response to the sale of their building to an investor who immediately informed them he’d be throwing them out in order to renovate their units and raise the rents. At the meetings, the tenants began to formulate demands for the new landlord. The building was naturally split between those who participated a lot, those who participated inconsistently, and those who did not participate at all. Rather than building a strong core to push the organization forward, the tenants who did meet put all decisions to a building-wide vote, subsuming all of their activity under the requirements of soliciting the input of every unit, including those who had not attended a single meeting.

As a result, the tenants became bogged down delivering letters to every door requesting votes from the members and the union was unable to take a single step towards its true interests. These tenants believed they were being democratic, but in actuality there was no real activity to speak of—democratic or otherwise. Instead of power, only impotence was “democratized.” Needless to say, if the active tenants had seriously pursued the tasks required of them, many of the inactive tenants would have seen the organization as something worth getting involved in.

This anecdote also gives us a look at another side of the problem of democracy. These tenants prioritized absolute and universal democratic procedures for everyone in the building rather than limiting them to those engaged with the union. As a result, they spent time soliciting votes from tenants with ''no intention to carry forward or be bound by the results of the vote.'' The tenants had not taken the time to determine who should participate in each vote and ended up with democratic stagnation. Healthy democracy cannot take the question of who is eligible to participate in elections and votes for granted. An overly broad vote where every disinterested party chooses according to personal whims can be just as undemocratic as an overly narrow vote where only a few make decisions for the many.

It is clear to us that democracy cannot be distinguished from an organization’s activity or formally grafted onto an existing organization from the outside. The idea of “democratizing” an existing organization without transforming it from inside out is absurd. This is because living democracy hinges upon actual participation in the organization. If leadership is not to be a symbol, representing the interests of the organization, the organization must integrate these interests in concrete ways. Votes and decision making must be tied to the process of participation in the organization. It would be absurd to let someone who simply signed their name on a contact sheet make major organizational decisions, but this also extends to the series of increasingly central votes that are necessarily tied to ever smaller circles of membership. The guiding principle for establishing these circles must be based on the extent of the responsibilities and commitment of these members.

In the same vein, it would be absurd to require the leadership of the organization to vote on particular decisions such as which building to hold a tenant meeting in. ACTA’s unit structure divides not only the labor, but also the power and responsibility, allowing others to take charge of organizational work. The difference between the inductee, the general member, and the leadership is their level of integration into organizational life. No member’s power should outstrip their responsibility to the organization. From this perspective, the process of building a democratic, city-wide organization is not about connecting various organizations under a single formal democratic process, it is about connecting the actual practices and life of each organization into a strategically unified, living process.

Library:Tenant Spring/Battalion and Army

2026-06-03T23:47:00Z

Sansserifseraphim: added titled

== Chapter 8: Battalion and Army ==

Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism

2026-06-03T23:41:52Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter six of tenant spring

== Centralism ==

==== ''Instead of using coalitions, ACTA wants to fight a city-wide, “strategically centralized war of attrition against landlords.” Why?'' ====
This follows the revolutionary line. A revolution that eliminates private property is the minimum condition for soberly addressing the housing question for the entire population. But revolution is not something which occurs in a single decisive moment; it is a process. An organization can only make concrete steps toward what it views as the climax of the class struggle according to its ''own'' concrete analysis of the concrete situation.

Some working definitions are in order for this chapter. What we mean by ‘tenant organization’ is any group like ACTA: these

organizations attempt to organize tenants ''specifically and exclusively into unions.'' What we mean by ‘housing justice organization’ is any group like One Northside or Pilsen Alliance: these organizations might work to improve the material conditions of tenants occasionally but they might also work in defense of the interests of homeowners and they typically also include other broader initiatives around things like education, youth empowerment and violence prevention. What we mean by ‘coalition’ is any group like Lift The Ban or its chief carrier, the Chicago Housing Justice Coalition: These are organizations of organizations, so to speak; they are ''assemblies'' of the two types of groups listed above. Coalitions can also include individual politicians, like aldermen.

An organization or a coalition that has as an ''ultimate'' objective something shy of the socialist revolution, for example Lift The Ban (LTB), is a reformist project ''from our perspective as revolutionary socialists.'' Our intention is not to make a point about the legitimacy of the effort to lift the ban on rent control in and of itself—we are making a point about the ''disorganization of the movement.'' Under such conditions of disorganization, the timeless debate between reform and revolution as two commensurable paths which we must choose between is right at home. It is no surprise that these conditions lead organizers to elevate a particular method or even individual tactics to the level of the total struggle. The final aim of LTB is stated in its name. Its objectives are pursued independently of the movement as a whole, and therefore all other organizations which are also strategically independent can do nothing but react according to whether LTB’s plans at any given time contradict or harmonize with theirs. This purely external connection is similar to that kind of anarchy that prevails in the market.

Consequently, activity of individuals in their effort to lift the ban on rent control has no organic existence ''inside'' of the movement. Because it is imposed on the revolution by organizers from without, it cannot assume its proper place in the strategy of the revolution. Once again, let this not be misunderstood. This is not a preposterous claim that ACTA is somehow ''actually'' in the revolution, while everyone else is not. We do believe we are actually in the revolution, but if we were to flip the perspective, the organizers central to LTB might be saying the same things about themselves that we do (as unlikely as that seems). If so, they might well say the same things about ACTA that we’re saying about them. This is to say that they do not know our plans and cannot plan for the actions we take. Each group simply reacts to the other’s maneuvers as best they can according to the degree to which their objectives align.

Our claim here is simply that the revolution is disorganized to all hell. We can’t properly evaluate the sum total activity of the “housing justice movement” from the perspective of the revolution. The best we can do is evaluate ourselves and make speculations about others. Our point of view about ourselves, of course, is that our activity is revolutionary. We can’t say anything with confidence about others. On top of this disorganization arises the notion of ''reformism'' which has a real, distinct existence opposite the revolutionary process. This reform or that reform ''may'' support or it ''may'' hinder our revolutionary process—it is a dice roll. Whether the contradictions have been heightened or not can only be conclusively analyzed ''after'' the fact. And these considerations, ultimately, can be made from our point of view alone. All activity that happens ''to'' us, from the outside, can only be evaluated for its impact ''on'' us, i.e. the organization we believe is revolutionary. Such is the fate of a city organized like ours.

Let us imagine for a change a situation where the effort to lift the ban on rent control was a strategic consideration of the revolutionary movement in advance of the fact. In this situation, the self-identified movement would weigh the decision to lift the ban on rent control for its totalizing effects: ''How many organizers are necessary to pursue this? How much money will it cost to pursue? Could our effort be directed better elsewhere? What are the prospects of success? What kind of sacrifices and concessions will we have to make with aldermen and the real estate industry? Will it force our other types of activity to be suppressed or toned down? In the event of a victory, do we anticipate this will leave the working class satisfied and peaceful, or does it bring them to a higher level of organization with a stronger appetite for fighting? Will it provide them with new opportunities to satisfy that appetite?''<ref>None of this, technically speaking, requires LTB and ACTA (to use an absurd example) to merge. The very minimum requirement for these considerations to be plausible would be that LTB and ACTA have created a practical link of activity wherein we were not planning or taking action without the input of the other. However, we believe that if an arrangement like this were actually possible between the present organizations in Chicago, it would likely exist already. If this is how the coalitionists perceive the relationships between their own member organizations to be, we would welcome the news.</ref>

In other words, reforms as opposed to revolution will remain just that—a hostile dichotomy—unless all tactics under analysis are brought into the unity of the same strategic and practical point of view. ''This idea is severely misunderstood.'' The true connection between reforms and revolution does not compare them side by side as equivalent options. Putting them at the same level in this way, like adding tenths to hundredths without a common denominator, leads inevitably into error. Considered dialectically, a given reform may take on a broader strategic significance. But this dialectic between reforms and revolutionary tactics ''can only be'' animated<ref>The imagery of the dialectic you should imagine here is that of Frankenstein’s monster at the moment a bolt of electricity jolts him upright off the table when the terminals on his neck close the circuit. Without this system, the monster is only an ‘artificial product of the dissecting room,’ an assemblage of body parts from different corpses; such is the city “organized” under the principles of coalition-building.</ref> when it belongs to a unified revolutionary system. Without this strategic unity, there is no basis to investigate the relation of one tactic with another and therefore no proper basis to speak on either. Without the unifying system, pursuit of reform frequently becomes an end in itself while the opposing rejection of reform remains at the level of dogmatism.

Put more plainly, all efforts to lift the ban on rent control should be taken into consideration by the leadership of ''one'' revolutionary tenant movement and pursued (or not pursued) on this basis alone. Tenant Organization A should not have to consider whether or not to “join the coalition” with Housing Justice Organization B, one it has no share of control over, where there are no common principles or systems of accountability. All there can be with a coalition, at best, is an accidental and temporary coincidence of interests between two or more organizations which otherwise do not cooperate.

A coalition therefore appears other than what it actually is. Take another coalition, the Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance Coalition (JCEO), as a different example of the disorganization inherent to this manner of organizing.

JCEO’s stated objective is to pass legislation that establishes seven legally valid reasons for which a landlord can end a rental agreement. This effort is being pursued as a response to the current situation in Chicago that allows landlords to evict tenants for any reason, or for no reason at all. At the time of publication, JCEO is made up of over 100 (!) distinct organizations.<ref>According to their website: https://www.justcausechicago.org/supporters.html</ref> Evidently, these organizations are in agreement, whatever that might mean, with the stated objectives of the coalition. And by virtue of the sheer number of these member organizations, JCEO appears as an example of strong, quality organization which grounds a compelling and vital objective.

But if JCEO’s objective is so vital and if the effort to achieve it is strongly organized, what is preventing its 25 member organizations from formally merging into one and the same organization and pursuing it with complete ideological unity on the basis of their combined and coordinated material forces? In other words, why a coalition instead of an organization proper?

The reason is because the individual member organizations pursue contradictory objectives outside the coalition and that is where their passions and material power to organize lie. Not only do they act contradictorily toward other member organizations, their actions also contradict the coalition’s own objectives and principles. For example, take one of the JCEO member organizations, Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). On November 17, 2020, they published a paper called ''Green Stormwater Infrastructure Impact on Property Values.''<ref>https://cnt.org/publications/green-stormwater-infrastructure-impact-on-property-values</ref> This article champions certain ecologically-minded technological innovations in home construction ''for their ability to raise the selling prices of houses.''

It seems certain that a positive assessment of rising home prices would conflict with the outlook of the Democratic Socialists of America, another member organization in JCEO. Meanwhile, on the websites of JCEO and a handful of their member organizations, statements like these are abundant: “As of 2018, almost half of all Chicago renters were rent burdened which means they spent more than 30% of their income on rent, yet low-income households represent the largest share of Cook County renter households. The supply of affordable rental units has been dropping at an increased rate in Chicago since 2012.”

So which is it? Do we want expensive houses or cheap houses? According to CHJC, we want them cheap. According to CNT, we want them to be expensive. Coalitionism as a general organizing principle is precisely what allows this nonsense to prevail and, ultimately, it is the working class who suffers because the self-appointed leaders of the different fronts of the war are either unable or unwilling to conceive their objectives as one part of a unified whole and have no obligation to make their principles clear.

We could say here that it is likely unimaginable to the directors of JCEO that raising the value of houses corresponds to a rise in the power of landlords and in turn weakens the tenants’ ability to resist eviction. But this ideological malaise is not what is at issue. What is at issue is that, independently of what the directors of CNT and the other member organizations ''think'', there is obviously no instrument through which they can criticize or influence one another using the criteria of their shared principles and objectives. A coalition can only pass over into organization if it sheds its temporary and incidental character and all members subordinate themselves to a permanent internal unity.<ref>An outcome which seems impossible as long as, among many other reasons, each of these distinct groups have their own paid organizers.</ref>

Coalitionism is the opposite of organization, it is ''disorganization''. Another variation of coalitionism which is similarly disorganized occurs when two or more ''tenant organizations'' coexist in Chicago but they remain divided for one reason or another. Experience has shown us that typically the reason used to justify these divisions is geography. It’s said that the city is too big and too segregated and this is reflected in diverse objective organizing conditions from one neighborhood to the next. For example, neighborhood X is all two-flat greystone buildings of English-speaking black tenants, while Neighborhood Y is all multifamily buildings with corporate landlords and Mexican tenants.

This attitude, again, is a sign of disorganization. “Geography” and “conditions” are used to mask the fact that what really cements the division of two or more organizations—which indeed might be geographically divided—are their principles and organizational practices. This is not meant to provoke. It’s just the fact. Take a real example: because Chicago Union of Tenants (CUT) is up north and ACTA is out west means that interested onlookers can dismiss our division as one of a “turf war.” This is an embarrassing consequence of our ''disorganization''. There is not a turf war between ACTA and CUT, there is a political battle occurring over leadership in the tenant movement.

ACTA is up to the task of solving the geography riddle. We believe that geography is a problem that must be addressed by our organization. To reach across neighborhood lines and shake hands with the organization over there is not solving the problem, it is avoiding it.<ref>This is not a claim whatsoever about the legitimacy of making connections, agreements, and collaborative alliances. ACTA engages in this kind of activity. The practice can only be judged in the context of the concrete problems encountered by one organization adhering to one and the same strategy. There will always remain groups with contradictory and antithetical ends and it may even be necessary to temporarily work with such organizations. It is the ''spirit'' of coalitionism, which does not seek to understand these boundaries and creeps into the relation between groups who really do share the same ends, which we are criticizing. In the latter case, coalitionism is nothing more than an excuse to avoid coming to consensus on the pressing tactical problems facing the movement.</ref> It says “Ok, you all take care of that, we’ll take care of this, hopefully it will all work out. Nevermind finding out what one another thinks of the fundamental questions of strategy or the analysis of the situation.” This does nothing but reinforce geographic division. ACTA stays out of Rogers Park not because it is CUT’s “turf” but because we do not have the material forces to organize there. If we did, CUT would not deter us. What would be excellent is if CUT and ACTA could fuse and become the material forces of one another, but again, disorganization currently deters this. Disorganization in this instance materializes as disagreement over the very question at hand: ''coalition or organization?''

The positions around the question can be summarized as follows. On one hand, there is the view that the city ''should'' be organized on the basis of geographically and ideologically divided coalitions. This is the apparent view of CUT, Autonomous Tenants Union, Tenants United, Southside Together, i.e. the tenant organizations and housing justice organizations. Needless to say it is also the view of the non-profit coalitionists. It is in so many words, ''The Chicago Way.'' This perspective on the question holds that the fragmented state of the movement is actually a strength. There is no need to speculate about whether or not this is accurate. This is the default condition of the movement and it has been for decades. Disorganization is the status quo.

On the other hand, there is the view the the housing movement in this city should be centralized on the basis of one revolutionary tenant organization, i.e. it should be brought into one strategic system. Each and every tactic regarding the war against capitalist landlords must be evaluated on this basis. This is the view of ACTA. Do we stand alone?

The Chicago tenant organization closest in ideology to ACTA is CUT. To their credit, they see the significance of creating tenant unions as a means for the working class to realize the power granted by its economic position within the capitalist system. CUT also contains dedicated and smart organizers, people we call our comrades. They are at least sympathetic toward socialism. But, CUT disagrees with the principle of centralization even internally. They are coalition building, so to speak, in their own organization. What else can you call a horizontalist structure? Is it not an appropriate way to describe a coalition? In CUT, individual members play the role of individual member organizations in coalitions, they operate autonomously except insofar as their interests vaguely coincide on the abstract principle of—in CUT’s case—“tenant organizing.”

It follows from this abstract organizational principle that merely organizing tenant unions at the building level—''no matter where or with what kind of relation to the whole''—is a sufficient approach to the war on landlords. We disagree.

Library:Tenant Spring/Segregation

2026-06-03T23:17:35Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter five of tenant spring

== Segregation ==

==== ''If “there still remains a racist and segregated division of labor,” it follows that there is a racist and segregated distribution of housing. How does ACTA account for this?'' ====

===== ''“In this world one thing alone retains its links with reality and is thus able to transmit the changes in reality and provide the ballast of a concrete element to this delusory system. This one thing is wages.”'' =====
Though now in decline, the United States has been the leading empire in the world since the end of World War Two. As such, most corners of the earth have felt the wrath of our capitalists and their military. Here inside the empire, we have all reaped the benefits, although the distribution of the rewards of imperialism is not equal. ACTA’s horizon is not to redistribute these rewards within our borders, we aim to tear out the root of imperialism. Nevertheless, the unequal effects of imperialism are concrete and influence the conditions of our struggle.

enjoyed by our workers are not arbitrary, they are concessions won by class struggle ''waged in the context of the international division'' of labor. Because all productive activity is connected materially and socially yet at the same time privately owned, it appears that there ''could be'' no other outcome from the US working class’ demands for higher wages than for the owners of the means of production to simply shift their sources of profit from one locale in the division of labor to another, avoiding any significant or catastrophic decline in their profits.

However, because our labor unions have been stripped of their revolutionary orientation, the glow of cheap devices illuminates the satisfied faces of our narrow-minded “organized” workers. This has taken the pressure off capital. A once worthy opponent has bowed out of the ring. Put very simply, the workers could be using their key weapon, strikes, to force the hand of capitalists to do just about anything they can imagine. For example, US and Canadian workers could struggle to close copper mines in Panamá. The workers could struggle to raise wages in African countries. It is a stomach-turning fact that what is happening in Palestine as we write this would not be happening if workers throughout the western countries belonged to revolutionary rather than reactionary unions.<ref>This should not be conflated with that myopic notion of those socialists who lament the absence of an “israeli workers movement” bolstering the left wing in an apartheid, oppressor state while upholding that state’s legitimacy. We should also not be mistaken for exaggerating the role that our revolutionary workers movement could play, nor are we suggesting it could or should replace the guerrilla war as the center of resistance. Our regret is not that the “workers movement” of the west can’t replace this armed struggle, but that our workers are not prepared to offer their weapon of true solidarity with the Palestinian guerrillas to augment the efforts to free Palestine.</ref> Instead, our bourgeois trade union leaders gave away the workers’ legal power to strike as soon as the capitalists flashed cash bribes in their faces.

All of these facts notwithstanding, this is not a well-rounded or acceptable perspective. It has to be recognized that the capitalists organize and wage class struggle in ways that go beyond the undue powers that accompany their ownership of the means of production and thus give them dictatorial reign over, for example, the organization of the productive process in factories and offices. They are not indifferent obstacles to working class power. They attack worker organizations in the struggle over the workers’ demands on their own oppressive terms. The history of capitalism is chock full of

the most brutal and violent examples of repression against strikes, slow downs, walk outs, sabotage, factory occupations and every other kind of tactic the working masses have employed in the fight. Because the capitalists are also wedded with the state, they have the police, the national guard, the CIA, the FBI and the military more or less at their disposal. Not to mention the fact that their wealth allows them to contract and command private armed militias to surveil and suppress worker rebellions.<ref>See the Pinkertons.</ref> This has undoubtedly played a significant role in the dimming of the workers’ revolutionary light. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that whatever concessions the bosses have made to the workers in the form of wage increases have been made because they amounted to less money than the costs of suppressing the workers’ organizations.

Wages move in tango with the costs of living; at bottom, high wages are not the product of an abstract desire. The essential conditions of capitalism were rapidly established on American soil as soon as Europeans settled and colonized this place, and this meant the presence of both people who owned the means of production and people who owned<ref>Technically speaking, slaves did not own even their own labor-power. Their body possessed it, but their master owned it as his private property. This point belongs above the level of analysis that is occurring here, but we felt it was important to mention.</ref> nothing but their power to work. The ones who possessed nothing else were forced—by direct and legal violence in the case of slavery or by the supposedly neutral conditions of “free” society in the case of proletarians—to offer their labor-power to the people who owned the means of production at a price<ref>There is a common confusion around the question of whether or not the labor-power of southern slaves was paid for by the slavocracy. Without a bare minimum level of subsistence, no one can live, let alone work. Slaves were given their subsistence directly by their masters, however meager and in whatever form. Concretely, occasionally slaves kept their own small plot on the plantation for producing their own subsistence, whereas wage workers are given money to buy the same things. In any case, both the slave-driver and the boss provide subsistence to the worker from the pool of labor (or value) they have accumulated in the course of exploiting workers. Workers are always paid with the product of their own labor or, what amounts to the same thing, the labor of another exploited worker and, in this sense, no boss has ever paid a worker.</ref> that is always conditioned by the relative negotiating power of the workers and owners, but with a bottom limit determined by the absolute minimum consumption necessary for the workers to survive. This reality is the original source of ''all'' working class organization. The struggle for higher wages originates from this original condition of labor, the split between the owners of the plantations, factories, tools, and material, and those who have no tools but their own bodies.

''Wages'' are the value of labor-power, expressed in price over time; i.e. “$15 per hour.” ''The standard of living'' is the collection of raw materials that are used by the laborer in the process of reproducing their labor-power, i.e. housing, food, clothing, education etc. Wages are determined by the values (and prices) of these standards of living. Wherever money mediates the relation between individuals and the products of their labor, wages and the standard of living form an inseparable unity.<ref>This unity renders absurd those silly questions economists are always asking, such as, “Do high prices cause higher wages, or do high wages cause the inflation of prices?” Does inhaling come before or after exhaling?</ref>

To return to the question at hand, the observant reader will see in this unity the essential inseparability of the question of wages from the question of rent. If we examine the division of labor and ''hence the division of wages'', we find that different wages can imply nothing else but a different standard of living. It is obvious that a person’s standard of living is ''predicated'' on the condition of their dwelling. High wage workers live in good houses in good neighborhoods, low wage workers live in slums. From houses and slums we arrive at the question of rent without difficulty, and of course we find our friend, the tenant, who just one moment ago was the worker.

Our interpretation of exploitation in capitalism is fundamentally Marxist. Exploitation corresponds with the amount of work a person is forced to do over and above the amount that would be necessary to provide for himself. To make a simplified explanation, say that if a person’s wages are $15 per hour, and he works for 8 hours every day, then he ostensibly requires $120 per day to live. In order to have a reason to employ him, his boss must be able to sell the product of his labor for at least $120. In this scenario, assuming normal conditions of the market, the boss would break even and the worker would have produced no surplus labor, no surplus value, and thus would not be ''exploited''. But say the boss was able to sell the product of the worker’s day of labor for $130, pocketing $10 for himself. That $10, we call surplus value and the amount of time the worker spent that corresponds to the production of that value we call surplus labor. This is exploitation, simplified, in the Marxist sense.

It follows from this that whatever can be done to decrease the worker’s wages relative to the amount of work that he does increases the degree of his exploitation. Obviously, if the worker’s rent is low his wages can stay low. Low wages do not necessarily result in high rates of exploitation (because a low wage worker may be employed in a low productivity occupation), but exploitation is much more prolific among low wage workers precisely because it sets such a low threshold for his labor time to pass over from necessary to surplus labor time. There is therefore a natural correlation between low rents and high exploitation. What is being argued here is that low rents are the basis of low wages.<ref>Obviously, our answer to this is not that we should struggle to raise the rents in order to raise the price of labor power! No thank you. We’d like to imagine a ''real transformation'' for a change, and no longer preoccupy ourselves with wages, rent—value. We do not want to raise wages, we want to bring our nation’s ''qualitative'' standards of living into decency, which means, to us, into harmony with all of the people of the world. That entails different things for different American people. People of European descent will need to lower their standards, while people of African and Latin American descent can raise theirs, generally speaking. Beyond this, it is then only a question about free time. In other words, it is a net good that the monetary and material costs of reproducing ourselves are kept low because this opens the door for mankind to pass its spare time in the pursuit of different experiences. But as long as the means of production are owned privately rather than socially, the surplus time of the masses of earth will be squandered in the production of more value.

Concomitantly, this condition establishes a (unequally distributed) perpetual rise in standards of living—''as measured by consumption, not free time.'' This feedback loop compels the working classes to fight to keep themselves in chains, to the delight of capitalists everywhere.

Put in slightly different terms, if exploitation is the difference between work that is necessary for society and work that is surplus, that gap can be closed by a decrease in the duration of working time just as well as it can be done by an increase in the worker’s level of consumption, as is typically the approach. This means nothing shy of eliminating the capitalist class in all its manifestations because surplus labor is performed under the dictatorship of capital and entrenched by a workers movement that has accepted high levels of consumption rather than free time as the measure of freedom.</ref> Not, as is more commonly implied in orthodox economics, that low (or high) wages cause low (or high) rents.

However, what is experienced by the tenants of African and Latin American origin who pay relatively low rents is not what is experienced when other types of commodities are bought for low prices. The typical reason that prices fall (outside of market aberrations, including big swings in supply relative to demand) is from a systemic lowering in the costs of production. The typical pattern for achieving this revolves around some combination of increased productivity and/or an increase in the exploitation of labor via technological innovations or a prolongation of the working day by producers in competition. What a landlord sells for low rents is an adulterated product, not a product made with “improved” techniques. Adulteration is how a slumlord lowers his costs of production. A slum is an adulterated house.<ref>“In London there are two sorts of bakers, the “full priced,” who sell bread at its full value, and the “undersellers,” who sell it under its value. The latter class comprises more than three-fourths of the total number of bakers...The undersellers, almost without exception, sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl ashes, chalk, Derbyshire stone-dust, and such like agreeable nourishing and wholesome ingredients...Sir John Gordon stated before the committee of 1855, that “in consequence of these adulterations, the poor man, who lives on two pounds of bread a day, does not now get one fourth part of nourishing matter, let alone the deleterious effects on his health.” Tremenheere states...as the reason, why a very large part of the working class, although well aware of this adulteration, nevertheless accept the alum, stone-dust, etc, as part of their purchase: that it is for them “a matter of necessity to take from their baker or from the chandler’s shop, such bread as they choose to supply.” (''Marx, Capital, Vol. 1'')</ref>

Let us shed our ambiguity: in our present conditions, low rents are desirable. What is not desirable are houses left in ruin, where rats crawl through baby cribs and piss leaks through collapsing ceilings onto the heads of poor tenants.<ref>When we talk about housing conditions, we are talking about the oppression, degradation, and brutalization of the working class, not exploitation in the sense defined above. Insofar as we might struggle to leave rents untouched or even lower them, the value of labor power will follow, and thus the tenant union struggle does not directly combat exploitation. It is up to the workers organizations to similarly enforce a system-breaking strategy: to rip apart wages from the value of labor power while at the same time struggling to mandate that the capitalists do not make up the difference by the further exploitation, oppression, degradation and brutalization of the working classes elsewhere.</ref> In capitalism, low rent and slum quality housing are two sides of the same reality. Revolutionary tenant-unions will be in the position to enforce the ‘artificial’ collapse of the link between rent (exchange value) and quality (use-value). A tenant union can pull a landlord down contradictory paths, like execution by quartering. It can demand the repair of a building at the same time as it can demand that the rent goes untouched. Specifically in the case of tenants organized in slums, it is exactly this kind of tampering with the ‘logic’ of capitalism that should be the focus of our strategy.<ref>In the case of tenants in affluent neighborhoods, strategy based on system-breaking is also the order of the day. But different conditions require a different approach. Rents are high in these neighborhoods and this is reflected in the quality of the housing (certainly not without exception!). The white tenants should struggle to lower the rents while demanding that their conditions remain well-kept. The point is not to make a general strategy. The point is to indicate the general tendency that the struggle needs to follow to crush the dictatorship of landlords. Tenant unions are the only instruments capable of carrying out any strategy.

It goes without saying that tenants in the slums should fight to lower rents, too, because, while the prices they pay are relatively low, as a rule, rent composes a larger share of their wages in absolute terms than it does of the wages of tenants in fancy neighborhoods. In popular jargon, despite their lower rents, poor tenants are more “rent burdened” more prolifically than their well-to-do counterparts. For example, in West Garfield Park, 4 out of every 10 tenants give more than 50% of their wages to their landlord. In Logan Square, only 1 in 10 do such a thing. (American Community Survey, US Census). This is despite the fact that rent is $1.42 a ft. in Garfield Park and $2.19 a ft. in Logan Square. There is a division in the composition of labor-power that corresponds to the division of labor. Strategy needs to be specific to these divisions.</ref> This is the kind of strategy that will drive small-scale capital out of the sector and throw the “housing crisis” back in the faces of the state and the monopolies. It is also the kind of strategy that hinges upon the expansion of the struggle, requiring a leadership that maintains class-struggle as its infinite horizon, not “peace.”

The inseparable wage-rent unity described above can only lead us to the perspective that the tenant struggle is the worker struggle. It is no different in essence than the trade union struggle. It is only different in form. The wage-rent unity, the connection between standard of living and labor-power is revealed in this. The extremity of the blunder made by the working-class movement by narrowing its focus to wages without recognizing their unity with the ''composition of labor-power'', i.e. the factors necessary to restore the worker each day, is enormous. In effect the historical movement has brought wages and rent into contradiction by allowing wage gains to be captured by landlords under the banner of “market forces” without providing any leadership or instrument of struggle at the workers’ homes. This short-sightedness is exemplary of the workers movement’s disinterest in keeping the entire slate of broader revolutionary political demands out of its range of vision.

As stated in the previous chapter, an obvious consequence of this trend is the housing crisis itself, born from the impotence of workers without the totalizing perspective that recognizes wages and the standard of living as ''one''—not two opposite “relational” sides. If we want to remedy this impotence we must restore—or perhaps establish for the first time—an organized, practical movement (a struggle!) which understands ''the composition of labor-power'' in its proper place as an identity with ''wages''. Labor-power, that weapon which workers sell to the capitalists is composed of ''something'', gains its use-value from ''something'', replenishes itself and emerges renewed each day from ''something''—the given standards of living—accorded to the worker by his place in society. None play so great a role in this rejuvenation of human potential than the conditions of his dwelling,<ref>The sheer volume of scientific research that shows the intimate connection between the conditions of housing and a person’s health could fill a small library. The conclusions are indisputable.</ref> where his health is restored and replenished, where his sanity is maintained and his life is kept on track, all in order to continue working and living—to continue fighting. Housing is labor-power. The tenant struggle is the worker’s struggle for himself.

The prospects of struggle for the oppressed nations in the US, i.e. ''African''-Americans, ''Latin''-Americans, etc., are also based on the continued exploitation of the world. But imperialist exploitation is not automatic or static, nor is it enforced by the capitalist class without interference: ''it is conditioned by the class struggle.'' ''The US working class bears responsibility in the imperialist set-up.'' It must be self-conscious of this in its struggle to break that set-up. For example, if the African nation within the US is to develop and rise to political equality with the Europeans, as measured by the standard of living, this does not theoretically have to be subsidized by the further brutalization of the workers of Continental Africa or El Salvador. It can be subsidized by the landlords and, of course, the high wage workers in the US. It goes without saying that this could occur only on the condition that our working class leaves behind its narrow-mindedness and adopts a revolutionary point of view.

It is self-evident that the international division of labor and the consequent divergence of wage scales and standards of living do not start at our nation’s borders and extend outward to the rest of the world from our working class as a homogenous block. The divergence penetrates inward, shattering our own workers as well. From this perspective, revolutionary tenant organization is a crucial struggle for the national liberation movements within and without our country.<ref>Historically speaking, there have been two periods of concentrated tenant organization in Chicago, both focused on the racially discriminatory nature of housing provision. The first period was during the Great Depression, when the Communist Party USA was highly focused on reversing evictions in the southside slums. Their unemployment councils can be thought of as historical antecedents to the modern tenant union. The second period was in the 60’s during the frenzy of activity which surrounded MLK Jr.’s Freedom Movement when it came north, emblematic of this was the campaign known as the ''Movement To End Slums.''

Needless to say, neither of these efforts ended the slums. It is not a coincidence, in our opinion, that for different reasons both movements did not center tenants in the struggle based on their economic relation to capital, though the Communists came closer. In the case of MLK, the freedom movement treated ''housing'' too abstractly. This allowed them to mix the tenant struggle with the struggle for black homeownership/landlordism against redlining while ignoring the concrete ways through which the interests of homeowners and tenants come into opposition in society dominated by ''value.''

MLK was also focused on neighborhood integration to the exclusion of a concrete analysis capable of apprehending the laws of motion specific to property values in the context of segregation. Arghiri Emmanuel refers to this bluntly: “There are pleasant districts where whites live and unpleasant districts where blacks live. And yet everyone is free to live wherever he likes. What happens then? As soon as some blacks settle in a district, the whites leave it and go off to find somewhere else to live. As there is plenty of room elsewhere, whatever blacks may do, there will always be pleasant and unpleasant districts. It would be pointless to advise blacks to go and live in the pleasant districts. These were not chosen by whites because they are pleasant, they are pleasant because whites live there. If the blacks moved in they would cease to be pleasant!” (Emmanuel, ''Unequal Exchange'')</ref> Racist segregation is the local product of our empire’s organization and management of the labor process on a global scale.

Segregation has always been studied primarily from the perspective of jobs and housing. The material basis of these paired intuitions (which are certainly correct) have previously gone unaccounted for and therefore their necessary innerconnection has remained unexamined. Our perspective corrects this. Jobs, housing, wages, rent, division of labor, standard of living, etc.—the individual categories of past research into segregation all slot into an order when we begin from the Marxist position that socialized production is based on private property and proceed to uncover all of the consequences determined by this fact.

Segregation is a direct legacy of the colonization of Africa, the export of African labor-power to the American plantations and the crisis that was created within the class-struggle by the attempts to integrate the mass of ex-slaves into the division of labor beyond the confines of the agricultural South. There is no space here to recall the enormous wave of terror that has been inflicted on the black masses since their arrival in the cities at the hands of both white capital and white labor organized under self-interested leadership. Unfortunately, this terror wave has not ebbed much. Look no further than the division of Chicago into distinct white and black metropoles. We could talk similarly about the conditions of migrants from Latin America, especially Mexico.

To state the obvious, tenant unions need to be built to oppose landlord terror where it is most despotic and oppressive—specifically ''racist'', i.e. in the slums—and the only thing standing in our way is our own disorganization.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|chapter 6]].</ref> But ACTA has every intention of rectifying this. The tenant movement is in its spring. It is a blank slate, free from the aristocracy of “organized” workers and their leaders dictating to anyone what the dreams of the working class may be. The field is wide open for revolutionary leadership and ACTA wants to earn it.

One of our guiding principles in these early days of the tenant union movement must be to combat the tendency—already apparent in numerous US tenant unions<ref>See the Connecticut Tenants Union for the exemplary case.</ref>—to build our struggle by copying and pasting the models given to us from the labor movement. This is a grave error, one that will be potentially impossible to reverse. Tenant unions do not combat exploitation directly because they do not manipulate the relationship between necessary and surplus labor time. But tenant unions are able to condition the boundaries of exploitation by fighting back against the degradation and oppression of workers and enforcing changes of the wage level by interceding in the determination of rent. It is up to the trade unions to go beyond their current limits, adopt a revolutionary point of view and to fuse their strategic scope with the organization of workers in their home life, i.e. as tenants. If we can manipulate the price of rent toward the destruction of landlords, it will be up to the workers organizations to make use of the simultaneous devaluation of labor power to press the attack on the bosses rather than allowing them to enact a corresponding decrease of wages. If rents increase in the course of the battle—as a consequence of struggling to improve the conditions of slum housing, for instance—the labor organizations must also ensure that the effects of this crush down on the shoulders of the capitalists rather than on our brothers and sisters in the international working class. Revolutionary leadership in combination with the weapon of the strike is indispensable on both sides of the struggle. Unless they are happy with their current trajectory toward the sewer of history, western trade unions are going to need to join us in the recognition that success in the tenant struggle will revitalize the field of battle for all the ''workers'' of the world.

Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution

2026-06-03T22:42:31Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter four of Tenant Spring

== Tenant Unions in the Revolution ==

==== ''How can tenant organizing directly contribute to the revolution?'' ====

===== ''"a Marxist bases himself on the class struggle, and not on social peace."'' =====
It is said that a revolution requires the right conditions. Conditions have to be revolutionary in an objective way. This means that the economic conditions have to be ripe for a change, like a prepared fruit, as a consequence of the contradictions inherent to the economic system ''in combination with the class struggle.'' On the other hand, conditions need to be right in a subjective way. This means that the strugglers need to be conscious of the need and possibility for a change, organized ''self-consciously'' and prepared to seize the opportunities to both grow the fruit and pick the fruit.

Objectively, by the simple act of fighting a landlord, to some degree a tenant union disables the landlord’s way of making money ''easily''. A tenant union that makes economic struggle their priority not only makes profit harder to come by, ''it makes the profit margin smaller.'' In other words, pitted against a tenant union that prioritizes economic struggle, landlords have to work harder for less. ACTA’s objective is to raise the number of tenant unions fighting landlords on the principle of economic struggle. In other words, we want 10 tenant unions fighting 10 landlords today. Tomorrow we want 30 tenant unions fighting 15 landlords. As we have argued above, it should not be possible to bring capital into the branch of real estate without having to contend with a tenant union driving down the rate of return.

These are the conditions that will objectively transform real estate from a safe branch of capital investment into one with constantly growing risks. As the expected rate of profit falls, capitalists will be turned away from real estate in increasing numbers. Private investment has been the state’s go-to method for managing the housing problem since the earliest days of the nation, but it will begin to fail, and the people’s need for housing will press on the state with increasing urgency. The old method will dissipate like smoke in the eyes of the legislators.

If capital flight ensues in the real estate industry, the first thing to expect is the centralization of capital. In other words larger landlords will begin monopolizing the rental market. The largest and most powerful investment firms will be the only ones heavy duty enough to tolerate the precarious conditions of the money market. Worried sick about lending to landlords whose promises to pay are continually broken, banks will hike interest rates, further driving down the profitability of the sector. These are all tendencies of the free market, but here they are manipulated by the cooperation of masses of ''organized'' tenants. All of the familiar powers of price-fixing<ref>Price-fixing is when companies in monopoly positions in their market make agreements to set prices, rather than compete with one another. Theoretically, the removal of competition should mean that prices stay idle, rather than move. The implication is that competition should work to move prices lower, benefiting consumers. In reality, there’s no reason cartels can’t raise prices. By fixing prices, one or several companies are exercising their dictatorship over the means of production and society.

In the early years of this century, for example, a cartel of tech companies such as Hitachi, Samsung, Sharp, Epson and others were caught fixing the prices on LCD screens for televisions and computers. From the sentencing memorandum filed in the California courts: “...The conspiracy’s breadth and its pernicious effect can hardly be overstated. The conspirators sold $71.9 billion in price-fixed panels worldwide. Even conservatively estimated, the conspirators sold $23.5 billion—AUO [AU Optronics Corp.] alone sold $2.34 billion—in price-fixed panels destined for the United States. The conspiracy particularly targeted the United States and its high-tech companies...But the harm extended beyond these pillars of America’s high-tech economy. The conspiracy affected every family, school, business, charity, and government agency that paid more to purchase notebook computers, computer monitors, and LCD televisions...” The lawsuit resulted in about $900 million worth of fines leveled against the companies by the US government using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 as their legal basis. History is riddled with examples of capitalist cartels engaged in these kinds of games. The LCD screen cartel should have known better, if there is one thing this country will not tolerate it is expensive televisions.

In passing, it is worth pondering why it is that landlords are free to compete but, alas, the rent just keeps going up. It is also worth conceptualizing trade union activity when it comes to collective bargaining, for instance, as price-fixing of the price of labor-power, or tenant union activity of the same character as price-fixing of the price of rent. If the capitalists are happy to collude and conspire to the detriment of the consumers of their products, we should be happy to collude and conspire to the detriment of the consumers of ours.</ref> will affect the price of rent in the medium-term, but tenants will no longer be defenceless against landlord extortion. A unified tenant organization capable of reaching this point will be ready to force a political crisis between the masses of tenants, the landlord monopolies, and the state.<ref>We take it for granted that a movement isolated in one city has significant limitations from the perspective described here. Obviously, capital is not local, it is international. We have already discussed our efforts on the international plane (Chapter 2). There are also national organizations in development that are attempting to link the North American cities, most familiar are the Autonomous Tenant Union Network (ATUN) and the Tenant Union Federation (TUF). ACTA does not presently belong to either organization.</ref>

It should go without saying that this is only the most general shape of the movement to come. In reality, there will be no such clean progression of conditions. The movement will go in erratic bursts, steps forward, steps backward and to the side. These events represent a practical possibility worthy of pursuing strategically—a clear end which can be appraised over the course of actual events. As we will argue, navigating this type of zig-zagging is precisely the type of concrete activity that necessitates a single, centralized organization.

By expanding in a centralized way, we will move beyond the limits of spontaneous and isolated ''defensive'' battles between landlords and tenants. This type of struggle arises constantly due to a landlord’s negligence or abuses of power that oppresses the tenants and violates their rights. In response, tenants attempt merely to reassert their rights. Decades of this lullaby have rocked the tenant movement to sleep. The economic weapon must wake it up. Without it these legalistic scraps and squabbles will always end—usually in defeat for the tenants—and “peace” will return until somewhere else in the city a conflict arises again under circumstances that haven’t changed. When tenants do win some sort of codified victory, the following period of peace and quiet serves only to lower our guard, freeing landlords to erode the victory and sharpen their methods of oppression.<ref>The nationwide movement in the 80s to introduce a Tenant Bill of Rights in cities across America was fought tooth and nail by landlords and realtor associations. In Chicago the convergence of electoral and tenant forces reached its zenith when Alderman David Orr passed the Residential Landlord-Tenant Ordinance (RLTO). When the storm clouds dissipated, landlords set to work making up their lost ground. Today the most “revolutionary” parts of the legislation, the rights to repair and deduct, rent withholding, and non-retaliation are widely understood to exist only on paper. The section which entitles tenants to interest on their security deposit has caused the most headache for absentminded landlords. As a result, landlords now charge “one-time move in fees”. Today, the most “pro-tenant legislation in America” weighs far heavier on tenants than landlords.</ref>

This cycle of disjointed peace-followed-by-skirmish-followed-by-peace must be broken and replaced with a continuously expanding but strategically centralized war of attrition against landlords. This is to say that the struggle of the working class against capitalists must be fought with the understanding that victory in this war is the only way to definitively solve the puzzle of the “housing crisis.” As long as capital continues to find a working class that becomes stupid with affection toward the brilliance of “democracy” every time they get handed a new right to housing, this crisis will be inevitable and permanent.<ref>A brief word of contempt is owed to that variety of leftist who has proudly put on the hat of “Left-NIMBY” and has allowed themselves to be consumed by back and forth pissing and moaning with their ideological opponents. The individuals on both sides of these arguments amount to the same thing, people who have very special ideas about policy. The socialists among them can be credited for recognizing the simplicity of the fact that the housing crisis has nothing to do with supply and demand and has everything to do with class society, but it is an indictment of the working-class movement that these people are tied up with their debate hobbies and not singularly focused on training tenants in the art of war. Do they forget that their policies are only as good as the power they have to enforce them?</ref> That magical fountain of profit—a working class with pacifist tendencies—will never stop producing its opposite: an easy war that makes landlords out of enterprising capitalists as if it were an assembly line. Against this, ACTA understands its double task described in the previous chapter to be rooted in the principle of raising the ''general'' level of ''class'' conflict between tenants (the workers) and landlords (the capitalists). In other words, we need to prevent peace and deepen the state of war between tenants and landlords.

This principle can be summarized like this: ''ACTA aims to raise the general level of class conflict (capitalist landlords vs. working class tenants) toits apex.''

At first glance it might appear needlessly provocative to read about our desire for “war,” but what we mean by war needs only to be understood in its context. We are talking about class struggle in that old familiar way. Perhaps it goes without saying that for everything written above to develop, a certain type of revolutionary consciousness will need to develop in tenants as well. ACTA believes that this consciousness can only form in the process of organizing the class struggle itself. The objective conditions of that struggle will not advance if organizations of the working class watch the struggle from the sidelines, or even worse, fail to form altogether. But neither will the enthusiastic participation of the working class occur automatically without the influence of clear, accountable, revolutionary leadership. Labor unions are a useful comparison here. In the long history of

labor unions, capitalists have done everything they can to secure “labor peace.” This so-called peace is always defined from their point of view because they are the class that rules over the means of production and, therefore, over society. Peace means offering concessions to the workers’ unions in such a way as to pacify them and keep them working without apocalyptically disturbing the bosses’ ability to make profits. Over time, the trade union leaders took these concessions and progressively dismantled the working class’ power and drive to fight. Most consequentially, when they haven’t completely forfeited it, the unions have consistently mutilated their ability to go on strike.<ref>A canonical example of trade unions relinquishing the legal right to strike is the infamous “Treaty Of Detroit,” a contract negotiated in 1950 between General Motors and the United Auto Workers under the leadership of Walter Reuther. This contract signed away the right of the workers to even bargain over certain issues.</ref>

The consequences have been disastrous. Here are some examples of working class oppression that the labor unions nearly unanimously have no apparent interest in confronting, because they have accepted the capitalists’ vision of “peace”:

• While the wage-scale has gone up for some sections of the working class, there still remains a racist and segregated division of labor that confines black and latino workers to a lower wage scale than white workers, keeping them in the most menial, degrading, precarious and dangerous types of jobs, if not unemployed outright.

• Automation is eliminating jobs and making the labor process increasingly dull and dehumanizing for the ones who are spared.

• The classic manufacturing industries and the new tech industries continue to pollute and poison the planet, changing the climate in a way that is killing more and more people, animals and plants each day, gravely threatening the future of our children.

• Huge capitalist companies continue to exploit and oppress the people of Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America, keeping dozens of nations in these regions poor and underdeveloped. The American military continues to wage hot and cold wars in every corner of the globe to ensure that this remains possible indefinitely.

We can add to this, coincidentally, that the cost of living continues to rise, in general. Most emblematic of this is the price of securing housing.<ref>Although the Consumer Price Index used to measure inflation strategically omits housing prices, it is evident to every tenant that rent is a constantly increasing burden. In fact, every rise in “property values” leads inevitably to an increase in rent. At the same time, rent increases signify more potential profit and drive the property values even higher. Tenants pay the price when homeowners and landlords see their investments grow. It is in the name of homeowners and landlords that rents are constantly pushed higher.</ref> The weakness of the workers movement and its failure to decisively defeat capitalist profiteers has brought us to this point. If you’re asking yourself, “Does ACTA blame the ‘housing crisis’ on the workers movement?” Our answer is unequivocal: yes! It has done so by conceding to what the capitalist class means by “peace,” taking bribes to weaken the fighting power of the working class.

The working class has the power to change all of this ''as organized workers'', but the way workers are currently organized—if we can even call it that—deters it. The vigor and consciousness of the North American worker has atrophied as a consequence of years of enfeebling “peace”. We have become passive, self-interested, individualistic, politically uneducated, incurious, uncreative and frail in the face of adversity. Workers rarely engage in extended strikes anymore. The ratio of organized workers to workers without union has fallen in absolute terms. This reality betrays a broken understanding of the basic structure of capitalist society among the leadership of the once powerful unions. They neglect the central historical problem that constrains the working people in monotony and suffering. ''The seizure of the means of production''—the means of life itself—no longer factors into the strategy of union leadership who instead focus on advancing their own careers providing palliative care for the decrepit workers movement.

''As tenants'', our organized power cannot strike those capitalists at the center of production as directly as workers once could. Nevertheless, there are other advantages to be found in striking at the other critical organ of capitalism. In order to summon every potential reserve of power at our disposal, ACTA intends to avoid the mistakes of the workers organizations. The greatest of those mistakes can be preempted by establishing a tenant organization on different foundations, that is, on permanently revolutionary foundations. These foundations ''cannot'' be laid by, first, making an abstract analysis of the history of the trade union movement and, once that is completed, attempting to prescribe alternative principles for our movement based on their mistakes.

But this is counterintuitive. Didn’t we just say we wanted to “learn from their mistakes?”

All the specific tasks of our organization arise from a single, general aim. This aim is to retain our revolutionary orientation all the way to the revolution. History teaches us nothing definitive about how to accomplish this. In fact, it is the reverse: our efforts toward building the revolution teach us about our history. For example, we have no abstractly valid basis to say that the trade unions forfeiting striking power was a mistake. It is our present ''concrete activity'' that has shown to us the actual and potential power of the strike. With this experience, we produce concrete analysis of our conditions and a war strategy that prioritizes economic struggle centralized around the strike. Looking to the past and seeing all of the defeats that occurred in the absence of deploying the strike, we make our conclusions about history. It is mysticism to then turn around and say that it is history which teaches the principle of the strike. History has only provided us the material to understand the workings of the strike. Only our own practice teaches us the true significance of this weapon. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Under no circumstances will we find ourselves in the conditions of the past. Just as soon as we yell out ''deja vu'', we will discover that the past which appears to have reproduced itself before our eyes lacks exactly this—the cry of ''deja vu''. The conditions determining what is possible do not repeat themselves and, therefore, the risk of making the exact same mistakes is a phantom of our imaginations. Our conditions are our own. Our problems will be ''our own'' to solve. We are standing in a river, the question is not whether we are standing in the same river a second time—it is whether we can navigate our own river safely to the other side. ACTA aspires to become an organization capable of navigating these difficulties and it measures itself as being up to the task.

We take the attitude of being active creators of our world and therefore instruments of its change. This calls for an organization capable of surviving drastic changes without losing focus on our general aim of revolution. As part of the world, we simultaneously change ourselves through our own activity. The strict division in thought between the categories of objectivity and subjectivity collapses into a dialectical spiral. Bringing the objective conditions of revolution into being will not be a smooth or steady process, as we have already alluded to, and much of the pain that may come with this experience will be the pain of bringing ourselves into existence again and again.<ref>Paulo Freire has repeatedly emphasized the necessity of recreating the self, an often painful process. "Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one. The man or woman who emerges is a new person." (Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed)</ref>

Subjectively, ACTA must ''learn'' to adapt its activity to the criterion of revolutionary struggle, ''hasta la victoria de la revolución siempre''. This necessarily means to repeatedly cast our past-selves into the fires of self-criticism. No achievement is exempt from the requirement of self-criticism. We can never rest on our laurels or grow complacent when we could be pushing forwards towards our ultimate aim. It is crucial that we keep in check our satisfaction with our own achievements at every stage. This is all we mean when we talk about the necessary rejection of “peace.” We have every intention to keep the struggle directly in front of us; never avoiding it, never attempting to “leap over” or go around it. ''Toward the struggle, always.''

Concretely, this revolutionary orientation is made in two ways. The first and the most important is the constant construction of the central organization, which, as we have said, enables the ongoing escalation of building struggles beyond individual conflicts. The second is by way of a dogged politicization of that activity as it occurs. We begin to talk about revolution and socialism with tenants as soon as it is prudent. But we also know that this kind of abstract jargoneering is useless and can even be detrimental to short- and long-term ambitions without an intricate and ''specific'' kind of education that takes seriously the task of bringing individuals from point A (non-revolutionary) to point Z (revolutionary).

For example, one of the aforementioned unions that is on rent strike at the time of writing this is entirely Mexican. We noticed right away that the unionists speak with clear pride in their national history and identity. So we looked for ways to explore how their own activity might belong to a lineage that they had already embraced. Initially, we made the obvious comparison with the land struggles during the revolutionary period in Mexico because there were familiar classes in conflict; peasants (which we associated with tenants), landlords, capitalists, etc. At our weekly meetings, we set time aside for political education, and we consistently attempted to bring this content into the learning, in one way or another. After a couple months of this, we began to see the unionists making these associations independently with one another, without us prompting them.

In the union’s chat, for example, one day, a tenant shared an image of a brigade of ''soldaderas'' and encouraged her neighbors to remember what they are made of and where they come from. While this was very motivating to see, it would not be terribly remarkable in and of itself. For us, however, the event revealed a new level at which education could now be focused. We recognize that an appreciation for history is one thing, but the application of revolutionary ideas into our actual behavior is another. At the following meeting, we decided to focus on Emiliano Zapata, while also wanting to draw the focus out to a higher level by linking the Mexican Revolution to an explicitly socialist revolution, in order to move beyond what might be understood as a primarily nationalist struggle toward something that specifically used concepts like the workers’ organization of society, division of labor, exploitation, proletarians, the bourgeoisie, etc. We also anticipate a near future where the basic organizational problems of running their union will need to be met with increasing seriousness, and we suspect that we can use Lenin to help with some of this.

All of the above was made possible as material for education by the historical fact that Lenin wrote favorably of the prospects of the Mexican Revolution and Zapata had written enthusiastically about the similarities between the Russian and Mexican revolutions. We used these writings to enter into a small “curriculum” that we created ''specifically'' for the tenants in the union to investigate the concepts above. These are not surface level connections or disconnected history lessons. History is always examined in order to elevate the significance of the present struggle, as it presents itself concretely. The ongoing strike, an immediate instance of class struggle, both provided the opportunity to reflect on history, make judgements about it and imbue it with a living significance. The tenants are able to see their own struggle as part of a larger picture. It should go without saying that the work of politicization is never complete, and the present ideological level at any given time is nothing but a limit to go beyond.

These are the subjective conditions of the revolution we aim to create. These are the conditions of ''the development'' of more class-conscious, more revolutionary fighters who are organized ever more impeccably—the conditions of all of this ''in motion.'' The present members of ACTA recognize the need to continue rising indefinitely to this aspiration. As organizers with this outlook, we need to earn the mantle of leadership. Experience shows us every day that this forward march towards revolution will continue as long as we join tenants ''authentically'' in the mutually humanizing act of becoming organized, self-conscious participants in the class-struggle; fighters who believe that what is at stake is nothing less than the future of humankind.

Library:Tenant Spring

2026-06-03T22:15:13Z

Sansserifseraphim: added URL to text

Library:Tenant Spring/Imperialism and Internationalism

2026-06-03T22:14:14Z

Sansserifseraphim:

== Chapter Two ==

==== ''Isn’t capitalism international? How is a small tenant organization in Chicago connected to such a global struggle?'' ====

''“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”''

''“Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”'

There is strictly speaking, no tenant movement that encompasses the entire world. Housing is provisioned in different ways in different countries. The rent relation that binds landlords and tenants is common throughout the core imperialist countries, i.e. Europe and North America in particular. This similarity has already led to efforts to connect the various movements. For example, ACTA is a member and actively involved in the constitution of the Tenant International (TI). Though still in its infancy, TI is attempting to link up every front in the war on landlords around the world but is currently composed almost exclusively of European and North American organizations. This is not a result of eurocentrism, but a reflection of the way housing is provisioned differently in the so-called ‘advanced’ countries versus the underdeveloped ones.

Nevertheless, renting houses does appear within limits in most countries in the world—as a rule, concentrated in cities—and there is reason to believe that the rent relation will increase globally, wherever capitalist development reworks nations in the image of the advanced countries. In the meantime, if the tenants’ struggle is to adopt a more geographically comprehensive orientation right away, it would have to consider itself less specifically as a part of the housing struggle. This brings it closer in principle to the most enduring form of struggle in history: land struggle.

In any case, ACTA is certain that the dwellings of the international working class, no matter their form or content, are one of the centers of a bitter war around the working class’ principal and most precious possession: their labor-power.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|Chapter 5]]</ref> The tenant struggle is a particular expression of this war that has emerged with the development of capitalism in the core and semi-peripheral countries. For examples of housing/land struggles that are not quite tenant struggles, we point to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Brazil, the squatters movements throughout Africa, in particular Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa.

ACTA believes that it is advisable to be specific, because revolutions require revolutionary strategies and revolutionary strategies must be concrete. Therefore, we are happy to embrace the tenant struggle as our home, however, we will never turn away from the fact that we are internationalist in orientation and ambition, an orientation which derives from our commitment to revolutionary socialism.

How is this internationalism expressed then, if not directly through the tenant organizing?

To preface this, we’d like to say that the popular slogan about all struggles being interconnected is a one-sided truth. What is true is that all oppression and exploitation is interconnected. This is precisely due to imperialism, which has created the international division of labor and made a truly universal connective tissue out of the productive activity of men.

These connections do exist in various material processes of imperialism. For example, there are real political connections between the IDF and American police forces and economic connections between American corporations and the exploitation of South America. But when it comes to the links between our activity in Chicago and the broader struggle, we cannot be satisfied with substituting these existing connections outside our reach, considered abstractly, for the real connections which must be created between our activity and the world. For this, we must be capable of making a concrete analysis of these conditions of imperialism in relation to specific objectives. It is the second part which goes so misunderstood. It is not going to cut it to assert that Chicago is connected to, for example, Palestine, unless we can first, show how the links actually function and grasp their development. Second, do this from the standpoint of the real fact of our political activity—in other words, our practice; e.g. reconstruct the Palestinian struggle to include the connections that we and our organized comrades are capable of intervening in objectively. Third, in the course of doing that, discover the limits of our current practice and develop it to a higher stage where we can intervene in the connections which lie beyond our limits.

If we take this challenge seriously, we’re afraid that we will find that while the imperialists have made the connection between Chicago and the world system in reality, present anti-imperialists have by-and-large only made this connection in theory. This is a big problem. To seriously combat the vast links of oppression made by the imperialist system, we certainly must theorize them, but we cannot forget to attempt to prove the reality of these hypothesized connections with the test of organized, practical fighting. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Among other things, ACTA believes we must make material connections between organizations here and there and begin to organize together. The precondition of such connections is our own organization’s capability to forge and maintain these real, practical links; and this shows us the way to a first link in the chain of connections: build an organization capable of creating and maintaining such connections. This is the only basis on which our organized resistance can connect to other struggles in reality.

But this remains quite an abstract conclusion, although internationalism is at some level about having revolutionary principles. We uphold the view that it does not ultimately matter what we think or say about ourselves, it matters what our total activity amounts to. ACTA accepts the point of view that the abstract is a one-sided category while the concrete is the unity of the many determinations. In shorthand, we could say that thinking abstractly is to simplify, while thinking concretely is to complexify. But the latter is not reducible to compiling a bunch of information willy-nilly, it is about arranging lots of information in a way that leaves us with a guide to action. Therefore we will give a brief example of the role played by concrete analysis in ACTA and at the same time show how “internationalism” materializes in our organization.

At the most general level, it is certainly true that Burkina Faso and the USA are concretely connected by chains of debt and trade which flow through the IMF, and these connections impose themselves

upon the actual people living in each country, changing their behavior. This is an abstract depiction of the interconnections and, more importantly, it vaguely describes the connections of imperialism, and says nothing about the interconnections of struggle let alone anything concrete.

“Burkina Faso” is an abstraction if we do not consider the social classes within it. If we split Burkina into the industrial working class, the agrarian class, and the bourgeoisie, just to name a few examples of classes present in Burkinabé society, we complicate our conception of Burkina Faso, but we also introduce connections which begin to bring us towards the level of the concrete. Forces begin to take shape and the trajectory of the country becomes clearer even as the overall picture becomes more complex. But if we were simply to conclude at this point that the national bourgeoisie must have an upper hand (because, for example, the analyst is satisfied to copy over his understanding of the class structure in the United States), we would have stopped before reconstructing a concrete conception of the country. We must continue our reconstruction of the totality by restoring additional elements until we have brought the picture into focus.

In the case of Burkina Faso, the analyst should go on to review the influence of France, the US, Russia, the other African powers, the complicated relation between the Islamic insurgents of the north and Ukrainian and NATO forces, the supposedly “disinterested” parties such as Germany, and of course the Fulani and Tuareg. This list could go on indefinitely, bringing us closer to a concrete conception. We should also recognize the ideological distinctions within the Burkinabé classes, for example, between those who support the ambitions of the national bourgeoisie with less qualification and those who hold a more revolutionary socialist vantage point—in the specific case of Burkina Faso, we have the vestiges of Thomas Sankara’s influence which still motivates certain strata of the people.

For brevity, we will pause our example here with the hope that it has done a part to concretize what we mean by concrete analysis itself.<ref>We suggest reviewing the work of Amílcar Cabral for examples of concrete analysis in a different African context. In particular, The Struggle In Guinea. The Facts About Portugal’s African Colonies is also exemplary, it is written under the pseudonym Abel Djassi.</ref>

But, what is the point of this type of detailed study of an African nation? What is concrete analysis for? As US revolutionaries we do not undertake this task in order to arrive at the “correct line” on the Traoré government to argue online and make slogans. We do not discourage general study and curiosity, but the type of analysis which produces real practical knowledge and leads us towards revolution is always oriented towards particular problems. Abstract knowledge may be useful one day, but it is no substitute for the cultivation of concrete knowledge on the part of the organization as a whole. The example of Burkina Faso is concrete for ACTA because we have made connections with organizations in Burkina Faso who are actually navigating the present conditions of the class struggle. By understanding these forces concretely, we can, firstly, know the real interconnections imperialism has given. In other words, we can locate ourselves in relation to Burkina and understand the limits of this relation.<ref>An example of one such limit is that ACTA currently has no concrete way to stop the US military if it wanted to intervene in Burkina’s current trajectory. A more immediate limit is that ACTA members have yet to visit Ouagadougou and learn from the everyday activity in Burkina Faso. Nevertheless, these limits, once explored, conceal the path to strengthening the actual relationship that exists. On the other hand, no amount of theoretical elaboration of a purely theoretical connection to Burkina Faso will make the leap to an actual connection.</ref>

Secondly and much more consequentially, with an understanding of our relation and its limits, we can attempt to transform these relations by overcoming these limits. We are revolutionary socialists and we desire to act in ways which strengthen the oppressed, the international working class. In this case, that is through its subsections in both the US and Burkina Faso. As far as we’re concerned, figuring out how to do this—always concretely—is the essential purpose of political organization as such.

Our connection is with a small school in the capital city, Ouagadougou, called the Centre Thomas Sankara. The organizers of the school are the teachers, they are called sofas, and they work with kids of elementary, middle and high school ages. The sofas are pan-African socialists and so they are engaged primarily in raising and spreading revolutionary consciousness among the young generation of Burkinabé. So the Centre is a place where kids can go to learn about revolutionary history in Africa and throughout the colonized world, as well as study directly the writing and speeches of Thomas Sankara, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and Samora Machel, etc. Most significantly, they are in the early stages of reviving Sankara’s Young Pioneer program.

ACTA’s role in this is through the assistance with curriculum and learning materials at the Centre. Several of our members belong to an international organization called Cat’s Cradle Tiger’s Eye (CCTE), an organization of comrades who specialize in pedagogy and develop our practice by making links between different communist or pan-Africanist fighters around the world and helping them with their political education.

In Chicago, CCTE’s emphasis on pedagogy is at the very center of ACTA, as well. Like the sofas in Ouagadougou, we believe that fortifying a revolutionary movement means raising up the next generation of fighters. Therefore, there is a special division in ACTA made of four members who are beginning to organize a youth wing called the Young Questioneers. They focus entirely on developing youth education. The mechanism for this education is completely specific to the ACTA infrastructure and relies on the effective operation of ACTA as a whole.

For example, ACTA’s main activity is mass work and it is focused (currently) in the West Side of Chicago.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|Chapter 7]]</ref> Extensive direct experience has revealed that the tenants inside of the apartment buildings throughout these areas include thousands of children and young people whose parents have extremely limited resources. Door after door, parents tell us that more than anything else they want better for their kids. Better houses, of course, but also better futures, better ways to spend their time, better ways to learn and stay active and safe. On the other hand, poverty traps them, it is hard for them to travel to other parts of town and violence drives a common fear of spending excessive amounts of time outdoors.

In short, the YQ group’s central objective is to learn the conditions. They use the reports from ACTA’s mass work for this, including their own direct investigation at mass work themselves. Then, they attempt to develop education that is appropriate for the specific, concrete situation. Currently, this takes the shape of monthly packages that get delivered (also by ACTA’s forces) directly to the doors of families in the apartment buildings. Each month, the learning materials are themed around problems discovered by talking to the families. For example, a recent theme was around young people’s attitudes toward making mistakes.

Each theme is also given a specific international emphasis, so learning always introduces kids to revolutionary movements in other parts of the world; India, Palestine, Cuba, and of course Burkina Faso. Because we are simultaneously helping organize education in Ouagadougou, this has allowed us to join efforts. We send material that is made with the kids here to Ouagadougou. Materials produced by the Young Pioneers at the Centre are shared with the kids here.

We can see in this example, how ACTA’s basis of organization is a dynamic foundation on which new forms and frontiers of the

struggle can be built, including international ones. It is the material basis that permits the young people in slums of the West Side to know the young people in the capital of Burkina Faso. Of course, this basis of organization greatly improves our ability to organize more traditional types of international solidarity, too; arranging fundraisers that address our comrades’ direct needs, helping them promote their own efforts to a wider audience, raising awareness of their struggle, etc. It is self-evident that our link with Burkina Faso is very small and still insignificant in the grand scheme. We are not delusional about our level of influence on the development of the present Burkinabé revolution nor about their current interest in ours.

But, these examples should illustrate that ACTA is dead serious about being an internationalist organization<ref>We have similar links under development with an organization in Panamá City, Panamá.</ref> and would never flatter itself for making slogans and releasing statements that profess “our line” on this or that movement in some other part of the world. We recognize that if there is ever going to be a real interconnection of struggle, it has to begin like this. Our dream is for the Centre in Ouagadougou to grow and gain influence, and we aim to help it however we can.

At the same time, we want ACTA’s influence and power to grow until at some point both of our organizations are powerful and linked in ways that go beyond our current limits of youth education and raising consciousness, and take us into the realm of revolutionary strategy. Our tasks will always be to break through the limits concretely and rise to a higher stage of fighting. If this is possible—and we are certain it is—our organizations here and there (ACTA, CTS, CCTE) cannot be given up or allowed to fall into ruin, or else the interconnection of imperialism will remain unbreakable. It is our organization which provides the motive force for acting upon all the conclusions of our analysis. No matter the precision and critical integrity of such analyses, the weapon of criticism must pass over into the criticism of our weapons or else theory remains a dead letter.

As our comrades الحوت and B.S.Ph have written succinctly, ''“The lack of clear and precise political analysis gives excuses to the people in the belly of the beast to evade their responsibility to humanity by seriously engaging in the struggle to destroy the imperialist system.”''

Library:Tenant Spring/The Rent Strike

2026-06-03T22:05:36Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter 3 of tenant spring

== The Rent Strike ==

==== ''ACTA organizes tenants because they are "in an economic relation with the capitalists that can be turned an leveraged against them." But how?'' ====
There is one central weapon available to tenants—the rent strike. All other fighting tactics and strategies without exception are centered around this tactic. This follows from all that was laid down in Chapter One. Landlording is a method of capital accumulation. What is the source of the landlord’s money? Obviously, it is the tenants’ rent, money which he can only rely upon on the condition that the tenants do not have a pot to piss in. As long as our society allows the private acquisition of property, as long as it allows “the market” to solve the housing question rather than the self-conscious masses of people governing their own relations, there can be no chance of the tenants pissing in their own pots.

At a certain level, the most significant problem that revolutionaries face today is how to contend with a market that has proven time and time again that it is capable of reworking every human relation in its own image.<ref>Land rent, for example, predates the dawn of capitalism by centuries, yet today the relationship between tenant and landlord has been warped into something distinct from its past incarnations. Tenants no longer “belong” to superiors appointed by some higher power and instead are pushed around by the whims of capitalist landlords looking for the highest return on investment. This transformation is a direct result of that rift between use and exchange engendered by capitalism, which allows landlords to almost entirely neglect the long term maintenance of his possessions in the name of short term profit—after all, the property’s second existence as a thing of pure monetary value allows the landlord to liquidate and transform his holdings into something more immediately desirable much more easily than he would be able to the old fashioned way.</ref> Every problem presented to humanity becomes integrated and solved by the market in such a manner that market relations, that is, capitalist relations of production and circulation, prevail. Like overgrown honeysuckle, the only way to stop the expansion of this invasive overgrowth is to uproot it, but first we must cut away the chaotic thicket. The market operates at a level of abstraction above any given individual, but it does not exist on its own. There are still methods of overturning these relations before the moment of a clean break with capitalism arrives.

A strike, whether it involves labor or rent, is one such method. On the one hand, it is consistent with capital’s fundamental laws, arising as a strategy only because market relations have so thoroughly permeated society. The internal logic of the strike is entirely contained within the domain of values and profits, and, taken as an isolated activity, does not break from the economic processes that occur within capitalism. On the other hand, it directly threatens those processes which sustain the expansion of the market, weakening them from within. Because of the strike’s consistency with the rules of the game, strikes alone will never achieve the final break from capital, but this same consistency is what makes them possible at all. A revolutionary tenant organization is one that is capable of using the rent strike as part of a larger strategy to weaken capitalism at the economic level and prepare for confrontation on a higher, political level.

In accordance with this thesis, our task is to cause the so-called market to “decide” that it will no longer participate in solving the housing question. The rent strike achieves this by making capital accumulation from rent impossible. The rent strike is the direct stoppage of the accumulation process.<ref>The accumulation process is not limited to rent-seeking and therefore while we describe rent-seeking as a process of accumulation, we should not be misunderstood as saying that it is the process of accumulation. Rent-seeking is only one method among others for capitalists to plunder the working class. All methods, however, rest on the premise that we’ve described: the dispossession of the majority from the means of production and means of life and the corresponding “dark side” of this reality—the concentration of wealth in the hands of a minority circle of capitalists, the masters of society.</ref> It is the only tactic available to the inchoate movement that cuts at the rent relation itself, the relation which forms the basis of all landlord power. That is why we believe a socialist organization focused on tenants cannot justify any other type of war strategy without forfeiting its revolutionary character.

Despite its importance to the tenant movement, we have found that the rent strike is profoundly mystified and misunderstood. Allow us to clarify.

As all of the landlords, their journalists, their judges and lawyers and lobbyists (and some of our comrades, regretfully) love to remind us, the rent strike is not a legally protected act in Chicago. This means that striking can result in legal action against tenants on behalf of the landlord. The ultimate consequence which can be brought against tenants on strike is eviction. In modern times this penalty has taken on new significance. In addition to the violent removal of tenants from their home, evictions now appear on publicly accessible records of tenants, causing them increased difficulty in securing housing later.<ref>It should be remembered that this difficulty stems, always, from the fact that the guardians standing at the doors of our houses are landlords, whose property rights arbitrarily pupate into the power to take away the right of others to use it.</ref>

But this risk is not a static data point in the calculations we make as tenants weighing the dangers of going on strike, though it is often approached as such by organizers. Rent strikes are not risky in themselves. In reality, they carry ''a degree'' of risk and the risk of being evicted corresponds to the amount of economic leverage a tenant union has ''in proportion to their landlord’s total available capital.'' Take as an example a landlord who has access to $100 cash after deductions are made from his income due to rent held back in the strike. If it will cost him $101 to pay a lawyer to evict the tenants, can he evict the tenants? Obviously he can’t. He will have to come to the negotiating table or walk away from the building by force (seizure) or choice (sale or neglect). This theoretical demonstration shows a case where the rent strike is actually the opposite of dangerous, it is maximally safe from the perspective of the tenants’ objectives, which are at the very least to stay in their homes. We conclude from this that the danger of the rent strike is not entirely determined by factors that are external to us, but also by factors that we can set in motion ourselves.

The problem then is that in practice there are few situations wherein a landlord’s portfolio is of a vulnerable size relative to the size of the tenant union’s capabilities to hold rent. If the landlord is large, like so many landlords are in Chicago, the union must also be large. In fact, as the size of the landlord’s portfolio increases, the relative proportion of the union should also increase because as a capitalist accumulates, his resources tend to multiply and diversify. This means that his profits in rent can not only be reinvested into new apartments, they can go into other types of investments that provide him income which the rent strike cannot leverage. These incomes can ultimately serve him as a war chest and fund his assault on the tenant union.

Large landlords must be fought by large unions. Unfortunately the inverse is not necessarily true. Small landlords might be multimillionaires in other industries and merely dabble in real estate for a little spending money. It is generally easier to leverage a greater number of units relative to the small landlord’s entire portfolio, but this does not necessarily mean that those forces will be strong ''relative to his total capital.'' In this instance, the petty real estate portfolio of the small landlord is only the sheep’s wool disguising the wolf, who can wage war without much personal difficulty strengthened by capital hidden from our view.

While economic proportions can theoretically be determined with mathematical precision, there is a crucial gap between what is possible to determine and what can be determined realistically. The landlord’s financial standing can at best only be approximated. This is all to say that although the particular risk taken by any striking union against their landlord ''can'' be estimated, and although the risk always varies with the proportion of units represented by the union relative to the total units in the landlord’s possession, achieving favorable proportions with any consistency is rare at this stage in the tenant union movement. Therefore, rent strikes are, generally speaking, a risky endeavor right now.

But, to stop the analysis of the rent strike here, at the level of immediate tactical questions would leave us with only a surface level understanding of the rent strike’s significance. For ACTA the technical considerations of landlord-tenant conflict are only one side of a revolutionary strategy. A more complete strategy requires understanding the process by which capital reproduces itself, that is, via cycles of accumulation. This understanding is cultivated with an eye toward derailing this reproductive process.

The object of our strategic investigations, capitalism, remains an abstraction. “The capitalist system” is not a thing which can be poked and prodded except in the confines of our imagination. We cannot take hold of it, much less smash it as we could a glass tumbler.

All that can be smashed ''in fact'' are individual capitals that rest on the private ownership of ''specific'' property. This property will have ''concrete'' ties to a source of exploitation that give rise to a ''concrete'' accumulation of capital in the hands of a real owner. The specific “cycle” of accumulation (i.e. the capitalist’s investment-return-investment+ process) in turn contributes to the average profitability of that particular branch of industry. Every branch of industry is related to all others through this average profitability of capital investment. A decrease in the profitability of one sector causes new investment to flow towards the more profitable branches. As a result, a change in the average profitability of a branch regulates not only the concentration of an individual’s capital (i.e. his decision to continually reinvest his profits back into the same branch or not), but also the entry and exit of competitors and their sums of capital to and from this branch. Competition establishes the basis for the possibility of centralization of capital in a given branch. In our case, we are dealing with the real estate sector.

A revolutionary tenant organization should strive to destabilize the conditions of profitability in real estate. As we saw in chapter one, by making lesser profit harder to come by in a competitive environment, it will progressively corrode the possibility for, first, small scale landlords (the “mom and pops”) and, next, the medium sized landlords to survive, eventually forcing their exit from the field, either by ruin or by the search for greener pastures. Their properties will be destined for centralization under the control of larger, more heavily armored investors. At the same time as housing centralizes and approaches conditions of monopoly, the tenant-unions will be centralizing as their own opposing force,<ref>See Chapters [[Library:Tenant Spring/Segregation|6]], [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|7]], [[Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy|8]]</ref> setting the stage for a much simplified and direct showdown: the masses of tenants on one side and the landlord giants on the other. At this point, the state will have no choice but to intervene in the crisis, and our struggle will increasingly take on a more political character.

Our strategy has to be devised at this level but this does not mean that our strategy should turn its back on any isolated landlord-tenant conflicts and cast its eyes on the abstract concept of the real estate industry and capital in general. Our strategy needs to engage with these real movements in order to tie the concrete but isolated landlord-tenant fights together. The individual fights must be conducted in a way that always sharpens the broader movement against its counterpart, the broader movement of capital. What does this mean for our strategy today, practically speaking? In proverbial terms, “You’ve got to pay some agony for the ecstasy.” We are going to lose battles in the course of trying to win the war. To put that into its properly dialectical terms: lost rent strikes will chip the armor of capital and begin the process of corroding the profitability of the real estate sector.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy|Chapter 8]] for more on the connection between battles and the war.</ref>

Plainly, any rent strike which ACTA can manage to organize today faces great odds. But properly executed, each strike will come at non-trivial cost to any landlord who has the misfortune of running into us. For example, the landlord’s lost rent (even if he recuperates some or all of it in the end through negotiations with the union<ref>On the other hand, if this is all bullshit, and the landlords are making things up, it is clear that the preaching of money-dealers is very influential on the simple mind of the landlord and leads them to the conclusion that time lost without rent, even if it is all recovered in the end, has cost them. That is to say, it shouldn’t be taken for granted that the time value of money is relevant as a force in a rent strike. But in the case that it’s not, if nothing else, the fetishism about money as a thing that can magically increase or decrease in quantity is one of the landlord’s superstitions that provides the rent strikers convenient ideological leverage.</ref>), combined with his legal fees and all of the various expenses accrued on account of the extra work necessary to manage a tenant rebellion, will objectively lower his profitability below what it otherwise would have been. This is true even if the struggle ultimately results in the tenants’ displacement. At the same time every strike, win or lose, has the potential to raise the general level of struggle in the movement, acting as a school for tenants.

But it is not enough to mechanically assume that all organizing experience leads to a development of consciousness or an intensified will to fight, much less a social movement incorporating those individuals. If this were true, the disconnected, isolated face-offs between tenants and landlords would have compounded into a flood of activity long ago. In addition to the fighting itself, the other necessary component for the struggle to act as a school is some structure to ensure connection and continuity. If the strike is successful, there must be a guiding force to direct energy to the other battles occurring in the city. If the strike is defeated, there must be some organization to both protect the tenants and offer them an alternative to despair. A defeat can be instructive to an organization with a definite strategy, but to an isolated union of tenants it is, more often than not, fatal. The more those tenants are integrated into the larger organizational momentum, the more likely their setback does not spell the end. “Losing the battle but winning the war” is only possible if there is a broader war to speak of—and an organization to conduct it.

As we have seen above, a proportional increase in the number of tenants organized as the working class establishes the conditions which improve the odds for fighting tenants and thus the conditions under which we can expect to regularly win rent strikes. The number of organized tenants can grow by no other means than by regularly incorporating new tenants into the struggle. At present, ACTA’s cardinal tasks are two.

The first is to start hacking at and clearing away the first layer of this “chaotic thicket,” i.e. those landlords who are estimated confidently to be of a scale that puts our organization—''understood at its current level of power to organize tenant unions''—in favorable, proportional conditions. Local petty landlords, “mom and pops,” owners with 3-5 properties or 100-200 total units, etc.

The second is to find and develop tenants who are lean, mean, fighting machines.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy|Chapter 8]].</ref> Tenant soldiers, who are not afraid of the high levels of risk that are characteristic of the tenant movement during this early stage. It is in these dawning days of the war, when our forces are still small and inexperienced that the fighting is most dangerous. The good news is the task of recruitment is made much easier for us by the objective conditions of the class struggle today, which send tenants by the dozens into our field of activity. This is a consequence of the current intensity of landlord terror. At the time of writing, two tenant unions are on rent strike against great odds because they simply had no other options.

ACTA’s role can be none other than to “prepare to lose, fight to win.” This requires our emphasis to be on ideological development. The school of the rent strike needs its teachers. To the graduates of this school, defeat is only a temporary break before they “redeploy”, willing and eager to continue the fight. This level of commitment requires ACTA to establish deep levels of trust and respect with every tenant we come into contact with. If we are successful in our role, the process of organizing their struggle will teach them that all isolated skirmishes are only tiny scenes belonging to a great worldwide drama which we are writing together.

We’ve got to pay some agony for the ecstasy. The rent strikes that lose but chip away at landlord power belong to the period of tenant spring. The struggle will only mature into tenant summer, the season which will see rent strikes that win and blow away landlordism entirely, when certain conditions arise, which we will now describe in more detail.

Library:Tenant Spring/Expansion and Democracy

2026-06-03T21:44:27Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter 8 of tenant spring

== Expansion and Democracy ==

Library:Tenant Spring/Segregation

2026-06-03T21:42:38Z

Sansserifseraphim: chapter six of tenant spring

== Segregation ==

Library:Tenant Spring/Imperialism and Internationalism

2026-06-03T21:34:28Z

Sansserifseraphim: removed TOC

== Chapter Two ==

==== ''Isn’t capitalism international? How is a small tenant organization in Chicago connected to such a global struggle?'' ====

''“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”''

''“Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”'

There is strictly speaking, no tenant movement that encompasses the entire world. Housing is provisioned in different ways in different countries. The rent relation that binds landlords and tenants is common throughout the core imperialist countries, i.e. Europe and North America in particular. This similarity has already led to efforts to connect the various movements. For example, ACTA is a member and actively involved in the constitution of the Tenant International (TI). Though still in its infancy, TI is attempting to link up every front in the war on landlords around the world but is currently composed almost exclusively of European and North American organizations. This is not a result of eurocentrism, but a reflection of the way housing is provisioned differently in the so-called ‘advanced’ countries versus the underdeveloped ones.

Nevertheless, renting houses does appear within limits in most countries in the world—as a rule, concentrated in cities—and there is reason to believe that the rent relation will increase globally, wherever capitalist development reworks nations in the image of the advanced countries. In the meantime, if the tenants’ struggle is to adopt a more geographically comprehensive orientation right away, it would have to consider itself less specifically as a part of the housing struggle. This brings it closer in principle to the most enduring form of struggle in history: land struggle.

In any case, ACTA is certain that the dwellings of the international working class, no matter their form or content, are one of the centers of a bitter war around the working class’ principal and most precious possession: their labor-power.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|Chapter 5]]</ref> The tenant struggle is a particular expression of this war that has emerged with the development of capitalism in the core and semi-peripheral countries. For examples of housing/land struggles that are not quite tenant struggles, we point to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Brazil, the squatters movements throughout Africa, in particular Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa.

ACTA believes that it is advisable to be specific, because revolutions require revolutionary strategies and revolutionary strategies must be concrete. Therefore, we are happy to embrace the tenant struggle as our home, however, we will never turn away from the fact that we are internationalist in orientation and ambition, an orientation which derives from our commitment to revolutionary socialism.

How is this internationalism expressed then, if not directly through the tenant organizing?

To preface this, we’d like to say that the popular slogan about all struggles being interconnected is a one-sided truth. What is true is that all oppression and exploitation is interconnected. This is precisely due to imperialism, which has created the international division of labor and made a truly universal connective tissue out of the productive activity of men.

These connections do exist in various material processes of imperialism. For example, there are real political connections between the IDF and American police forces and economic connections between American corporations and the exploitation of South America. But when it comes to the links between our activity in Chicago and the broader struggle, we cannot be satisfied with substituting these existing connections outside our reach, considered abstractly, for the real connections which must be created between our activity and the world. For this, we must be capable of making a concrete analysis of these conditions of imperialism in relation to specific objectives. It is the second part which goes so misunderstood. It is not going to cut it to assert that Chicago is connected to, for example, Palestine, unless we can first, show how the links actually function and grasp their development. Second, do this from the standpoint of the real fact of our political activity—in other words, our practice; e.g. reconstruct the Palestinian struggle to include the connections that we and our organized comrades are capable of intervening in objectively. Third, in the course of doing that, discover the limits of our current practice and develop it to a higher stage where we can intervene in the connections which lie beyond our limits.

If we take this challenge seriously, we’re afraid that we will find that while the imperialists have made the connection between Chicago and the world system in reality, present anti-imperialists have by-and-large only made this connection in theory. This is a big problem. To seriously combat the vast links of oppression made by the imperialist system, we certainly must theorize them, but we cannot forget to attempt to prove the reality of these hypothesized connections with the test of organized, practical fighting. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Among other things, ACTA believes we must make material connections between organizations here and there and begin to organize together. The precondition of such connections is our own organization’s capability to forge and maintain these real, practical links; and this shows us the way to a first link in the chain of connections: build an organization capable of creating and maintaining such connections. This is the only basis on which our organized resistance can connect to other struggles in reality.

But this remains quite an abstract conclusion, although internationalism is at some level about having revolutionary principles. We uphold the view that it does not ultimately matter what we think or say about ourselves, it matters what our total activity amounts to. ACTA accepts the point of view that the abstract is a one-sided category while the concrete is the unity of the many determinations. In shorthand, we could say that thinking abstractly is to simplify, while thinking concretely is to complexify. But the latter is not reducible to compiling a bunch of information willy-nilly, it is about arranging lots of information in a way that leaves us with a guide to action. Therefore we will give a brief example of the role played by concrete analysis in ACTA and at the same time show how “internationalism” materializes in our organization.

At the most general level, it is certainly true that Burkina Faso and the USA are concretely connected by chains of debt and trade which flow through the IMF, and these connections impose themselves

upon the actual people living in each country, changing their behavior. This is an abstract depiction of the interconnections and, more importantly, it vaguely describes the connections of imperialism, and says nothing about the interconnections of struggle let alone anything concrete.

“Burkina Faso” is an abstraction if we do not consider the social classes within it. If we split Burkina into the industrial working class, the agrarian class, and the bourgeoisie, just to name a few examples of classes present in Burkinabé society, we complicate our conception of Burkina Faso, but we also introduce connections which begin to bring us towards the level of the concrete. Forces begin to take shape and the trajectory of the country becomes clearer even as the overall picture becomes more complex. But if we were simply to conclude at this point that the national bourgeoisie must have an upper hand (because, for example, the analyst is satisfied to copy over his understanding of the class structure in the United States), we would have stopped before reconstructing a concrete conception of the country. We must continue our reconstruction of the totality by restoring additional elements until we have brought the picture into focus.

In the case of Burkina Faso, the analyst should go on to review the influence of France, the US, Russia, the other African powers, the complicated relation between the Islamic insurgents of the north and Ukrainian and NATO forces, the supposedly “disinterested” parties such as Germany, and of course the Fulani and Tuareg. This list could go on indefinitely, bringing us closer to a concrete conception. We should also recognize the ideological distinctions within the Burkinabé classes, for example, between those who support the ambitions of the national bourgeoisie with less qualification and those who hold a more revolutionary socialist vantage point—in the specific case of Burkina Faso, we have the vestiges of Thomas Sankara’s influence which still motivates certain strata of the people.

For brevity, we will pause our example here with the hope that it has done a part to concretize what we mean by concrete analysis itself.<ref>We suggest reviewing the work of Amílcar Cabral for examples of concrete analysis in a different African context. In particular, The Struggle In Guinea. The Facts About Portugal’s African Colonies is also exemplary, it is written under the pseudonym Abel Djassi.</ref>

But, what is the point of this type of detailed study of an African nation? What is concrete analysis for? As US revolutionaries we do not undertake this task in order to arrive at the “correct line” on the Traoré government to argue online and make slogans. We do not discourage general study and curiosity, but the type of analysis which produces real practical knowledge and leads us towards revolution is always oriented towards particular problems. Abstract knowledge may be useful one day, but it is no substitute for the cultivation of concrete knowledge on the part of the organization as a whole. The example of Burkina Faso is concrete for ACTA because we have made connections with organizations in Burkina Faso who are actually navigating the present conditions of the class struggle. By understanding these forces concretely, we can, firstly, know the real interconnections imperialism has given. In other words, we can locate ourselves in relation to Burkina and understand the limits of this relation.<ref>An example of one such limit is that ACTA currently has no concrete way to stop the US military if it wanted to intervene in Burkina’s current trajectory. A more immediate limit is that ACTA members have yet to visit Ouagadougou and learn from the everyday activity in Burkina Faso. Nevertheless, these limits, once explored, conceal the path to strengthening the actual relationship that exists. On the other hand, no amount of theoretical elaboration of a purely theoretical connection to Burkina Faso will make the leap to an actual connection.</ref>

Secondly and much more consequentially, with an understanding of our relation and its limits, we can attempt to transform these relations by overcoming these limits. We are revolutionary socialists and we desire to act in ways which strengthen the oppressed, the international working class. In this case, that is through its subsections in both the US and Burkina Faso. As far as we’re concerned, figuring out how to do this—always concretely—is the essential purpose of political organization as such.

Our connection is with a small school in the capital city, Ouagadougou, called the Centre Thomas Sankara. The organizers of the school are the teachers, they are called sofas, and they work with kids of elementary, middle and high school ages. The sofas are pan-African socialists and so they are engaged primarily in raising and spreading revolutionary consciousness among the young generation of Burkinabé. So the Centre is a place where kids can go to learn about revolutionary history in Africa and throughout the colonized world, as well as study directly the writing and speeches of Thomas Sankara, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and Samora Machel, etc. Most significantly, they are in the early stages of reviving Sankara’s Young Pioneer program.

ACTA’s role in this is through the assistance with curriculum and learning materials at the Centre. Several of our members belong to an international organization called Cat’s Cradle Tiger’s Eye (CCTE), an organization of comrades who specialize in pedagogy and develop our practice by making links between different communist or pan-Africanist fighters around the world and helping them with their political education.

In Chicago, CCTE’s emphasis on pedagogy is at the very center of ACTA, as well. Like the sofas in Ouagadougou, we believe that fortifying a revolutionary movement means raising up the next generation of fighters. Therefore, there is a special division in ACTA made of four members who are beginning to organize a youth wing called the Young Questioneers. They focus entirely on developing youth education. The mechanism for this education is completely specific to the ACTA infrastructure and relies on the effective operation of ACTA as a whole.

For example, ACTA’s main activity is mass work and it is focused (currently) in the West Side of Chicago.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|Chapter 7]]</ref> Extensive direct experience has revealed that the tenants inside of the apartment buildings throughout these areas include thousands of children and young people whose parents have extremely limited resources. Door after door, parents tell us that more than anything else they want better for their kids. Better houses, of course, but also better futures, better ways to spend their time, better ways to learn and stay active and safe. On the other hand, poverty traps them, it is hard for them to travel to other parts of town and violence drives a common fear of spending excessive amounts of time outdoors.

In short, the YQ group’s central objective is to learn the conditions. They use the reports from ACTA’s mass work for this, including their own direct investigation at mass work themselves. Then, they attempt to develop education that is appropriate for the specific, concrete situation. Currently, this takes the shape of monthly packages that get delivered (also by ACTA’s forces) directly to the doors of families in the apartment buildings. Each month, the learning materials are themed around problems discovered by talking to the families. For example, a recent theme was around young people’s attitudes toward making mistakes.

Each theme is also given a specific international emphasis, so learning always introduces kids to revolutionary movements in other parts of the world; India, Palestine, Cuba, and of course Burkina Faso. Because we are simultaneously helping organize education in Ouagadougou, this has allowed us to join efforts. We send material that is made with the kids here to Ouagadougou. Materials produced by the Young Pioneers at the Centre are shared with the kids here.

We can see in this example, how ACTA’s basis of organization is a dynamic foundation on which new forms and frontiers of the

struggle can be built, including international ones. It is the material basis that permits the young people in slums of the West Side to know the young people in the capital of Burkina Faso. Of course, this basis of organization greatly improves our ability to organize more traditional types of international solidarity, too; arranging fundraisers that address our comrades’ direct needs, helping them promote their own efforts to a wider audience, raising awareness of their struggle, etc. It is self-evident that our link with Burkina Faso is very small and still insignificant in the grand scheme. We are not delusional about our level of influence on the development of the present Burkinabé revolution nor about their current interest in ours.

But, these examples should illustrate that ACTA is dead serious about being an internationalist organization<ref>We have similar links under development with an organization in Panamá City, Panamá.</ref> and would never flatter itself for making slogans and releasing statements that profess “our line” on this or that movement in some other part of the world. We recognize that if there is ever going to be a real interconnection of struggle, it has to begin like this. Our dream is for the Centre in Ouagadougou to grow and gain influence, and we aim to help it however we can.

At the same time, we want ACTA’s influence and power to grow until at some point both of our organizations are powerful and linked in ways that go beyond our current limits of youth education and raising consciousness, and take us into the realm of revolutionary strategy. Our tasks will always be to break through the limits concretely and rise to a higher stage of fighting. If this is possible—and we are certain it is—our organizations here and there (ACTA, CTS, CCTE) cannot be given up or allowed to fall into ruin, or else the interconnection of imperialism will remain unbreakable. It is our organization which provides the motive force for acting upon all the conclusions of our analysis. No matter the precision and critical integrity of such analyses, the weapon of criticism must pass over into the criticism of our weapons or else theory remains a dead letter.

As our comrades - and B.S.Ph have written succinctly, ''“The lack of clear and precise political analysis gives excuses to the people in the belly of the beast to evade their responsibility to humanity by seriously engaging in the struggle to destroy the imperialist system.”''

Library:Tenant Spring/Imperialism and Internationalism

2026-06-03T21:33:01Z

Sansserifseraphim: Chapter two of Tenant Spring

== Chapter Two ==

==== ''Isn’t capitalism international? How is a small tenant organization in Chicago connected to such a global struggle?'' ====

===== ''“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”'' =====

===== ''“Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”'' =====
There is strictly speaking, no tenant movement that encompasses the entire world. Housing is provisioned in different ways in different countries. The rent relation that binds landlords and tenants is common throughout the core imperialist countries, i.e. Europe and North America in particular. This similarity has already led to efforts to connect the various movements. For example, ACTA is a member and actively involved in the constitution of the Tenant International (TI). Though still in its infancy, TI is attempting to link up every front in the war on landlords around the world but is currently composed almost exclusively of European and North American organizations. This is not a result of eurocentrism, but a reflection of the way housing is provisioned differently in the so-called ‘advanced’ countries versus the underdeveloped ones.

Nevertheless, renting houses does appear within limits in most countries in the world—as a rule, concentrated in cities—and there is reason to believe that the rent relation will increase globally, wherever capitalist development reworks nations in the image of the advanced countries. In the meantime, if the tenants’ struggle is to adopt a more geographically comprehensive orientation right away, it would have to consider itself less specifically as a part of the housing struggle. This brings it closer in principle to the most enduring form of struggle in history: land struggle.

In any case, ACTA is certain that the dwellings of the international working class, no matter their form or content, are one of the centers of a bitter war around the working class’ principal and most precious possession: their labor-power.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution|Chapter 5]]</ref> The tenant struggle is a particular expression of this war that has emerged with the development of capitalism in the core and semi-peripheral countries. For examples of housing/land struggles that are not quite tenant struggles, we point to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Brazil, the squatters movements throughout Africa, in particular Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa.

ACTA believes that it is advisable to be specific, because revolutions require revolutionary strategies and revolutionary strategies must be concrete. Therefore, we are happy to embrace the tenant struggle as our home, however, we will never turn away from the fact that we are internationalist in orientation and ambition, an orientation which derives from our commitment to revolutionary socialism.

How is this internationalism expressed then, if not directly through the tenant organizing?

To preface this, we’d like to say that the popular slogan about all struggles being interconnected is a one-sided truth. What is true is that all oppression and exploitation is interconnected. This is precisely due to imperialism, which has created the international division of labor and made a truly universal connective tissue out of the productive activity of men.

These connections do exist in various material processes of imperialism. For example, there are real political connections between the IDF and American police forces and economic connections between American corporations and the exploitation of South America. But when it comes to the links between our activity in Chicago and the broader struggle, we cannot be satisfied with substituting these existing connections outside our reach, considered abstractly, for the real connections which must be created between our activity and the world. For this, we must be capable of making a concrete analysis of these conditions of imperialism in relation to specific objectives. It is the second part which goes so misunderstood. It is not going to cut it to assert that Chicago is connected to, for example, Palestine, unless we can first, show how the links actually function and grasp their development. Second, do this from the standpoint of the real fact of our political activity—in other words, our practice; e.g. reconstruct the Palestinian struggle to include the connections that we and our organized comrades are capable of intervening in objectively. Third, in the course of doing that, discover the limits of our current practice and develop it to a higher stage where we can intervene in the connections which lie beyond our limits.

If we take this challenge seriously, we’re afraid that we will find that while the imperialists have made the connection between Chicago and the world system in reality, present anti-imperialists have by-and-large only made this connection in theory. This is a big problem. To seriously combat the vast links of oppression made by the imperialist system, we certainly must theorize them, but we cannot forget to attempt to prove the reality of these hypothesized connections with the test of organized, practical fighting. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Among other things, ACTA believes we must make material connections between organizations here and there and begin to organize together. The precondition of such connections is our own organization’s capability to forge and maintain these real, practical links; and this shows us the way to a first link in the chain of connections: build an organization capable of creating and maintaining such connections. This is the only basis on which our organized resistance can connect to other struggles in reality.

But this remains quite an abstract conclusion, although internationalism is at some level about having revolutionary principles. We uphold the view that it does not ultimately matter what we think or say about ourselves, it matters what our total activity amounts to. ACTA accepts the point of view that the abstract is a one-sided category while the concrete is the unity of the many determinations. In shorthand, we could say that thinking abstractly is to simplify, while thinking concretely is to complexify. But the latter is not reducible to compiling a bunch of information willy-nilly, it is about arranging lots of information in a way that leaves us with a guide to action. Therefore we will give a brief example of the role played by concrete analysis in ACTA and at the same time show how “internationalism” materializes in our organization.

At the most general level, it is certainly true that Burkina Faso and the USA are concretely connected by chains of debt and trade which flow through the IMF, and these connections impose themselves

upon the actual people living in each country, changing their behavior. This is an abstract depiction of the interconnections and, more importantly, it vaguely describes the connections of imperialism, and says nothing about the interconnections of struggle let alone anything concrete.

“Burkina Faso” is an abstraction if we do not consider the social classes within it. If we split Burkina into the industrial working class, the agrarian class, and the bourgeoisie, just to name a few examples of classes present in Burkinabé society, we complicate our conception of Burkina Faso, but we also introduce connections which begin to bring us towards the level of the concrete. Forces begin to take shape and the trajectory of the country becomes clearer even as the overall picture becomes more complex. But if we were simply to conclude at this point that the national bourgeoisie must have an upper hand (because, for example, the analyst is satisfied to copy over his understanding of the class structure in the United States), we would have stopped before reconstructing a concrete conception of the country. We must continue our reconstruction of the totality by restoring additional elements until we have brought the picture into focus.

In the case of Burkina Faso, the analyst should go on to review the influence of France, the US, Russia, the other African powers, the complicated relation between the Islamic insurgents of the north and Ukrainian and NATO forces, the supposedly “disinterested” parties such as Germany, and of course the Fulani and Tuareg. This list could go on indefinitely, bringing us closer to a concrete conception. We should also recognize the ideological distinctions within the Burkinabé classes, for example, between those who support the ambitions of the national bourgeoisie with less qualification and those who hold a more revolutionary socialist vantage point—in the specific case of Burkina Faso, we have the vestiges of Thomas Sankara’s influence which still motivates certain strata of the people.

For brevity, we will pause our example here with the hope that it has done a part to concretize what we mean by concrete analysis itself.<ref>We suggest reviewing the work of Amílcar Cabral for examples of concrete analysis in a different African context. In particular, The Struggle In Guinea. The Facts About Portugal’s African Colonies is also exemplary, it is written under the pseudonym Abel Djassi.</ref>

But, what is the point of this type of detailed study of an African nation? What is concrete analysis for? As US revolutionaries we do not undertake this task in order to arrive at the “correct line” on the Traoré government to argue online and make slogans. We do not discourage general study and curiosity, but the type of analysis which produces real practical knowledge and leads us towards revolution is always oriented towards particular problems. Abstract knowledge may be useful one day, but it is no substitute for the cultivation of concrete knowledge on the part of the organization as a whole. The example of Burkina Faso is concrete for ACTA because we have made connections with organizations in Burkina Faso who are actually navigating the present conditions of the class struggle. By understanding these forces concretely, we can, firstly, know the real interconnections imperialism has given. In other words, we can locate ourselves in relation to Burkina and understand the limits of this relation.<ref>An example of one such limit is that ACTA currently has no concrete way to stop the US military if it wanted to intervene in Burkina’s current trajectory. A more immediate limit is that ACTA members have yet to visit Ouagadougou and learn from the everyday activity in Burkina Faso. Nevertheless, these limits, once explored, conceal the path to strengthening the actual relationship that exists. On the other hand, no amount of theoretical elaboration of a purely theoretical connection to Burkina Faso will make the leap to an actual connection.</ref>

Secondly and much more consequentially, with an understanding of our relation and its limits, we can attempt to transform these relations by overcoming these limits. We are revolutionary socialists and we desire to act in ways which strengthen the oppressed, the international working class. In this case, that is through its subsections in both the US and Burkina Faso. As far as we’re concerned, figuring out how to do this—always concretely—is the essential purpose of political organization as such.

Our connection is with a small school in the capital city, Ouagadougou, called the Centre Thomas Sankara. The organizers of the school are the teachers, they are called sofas, and they work with kids of elementary, middle and high school ages. The sofas are pan-African socialists and so they are engaged primarily in raising and spreading revolutionary consciousness among the young generation of Burkinabé. So the Centre is a place where kids can go to learn about revolutionary history in Africa and throughout the colonized world, as well as study directly the writing and speeches of Thomas Sankara, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and Samora Machel, etc. Most significantly, they are in the early stages of reviving Sankara’s Young Pioneer program.

ACTA’s role in this is through the assistance with curriculum and learning materials at the Centre. Several of our members belong to an international organization called Cat’s Cradle Tiger’s Eye (CCTE), an organization of comrades who specialize in pedagogy and develop our practice by making links between different communist or pan-Africanist fighters around the world and helping them with their political education.

In Chicago, CCTE’s emphasis on pedagogy is at the very center of ACTA, as well. Like the sofas in Ouagadougou, we believe that fortifying a revolutionary movement means raising up the next generation of fighters. Therefore, there is a special division in ACTA made of four members who are beginning to organize a youth wing called the Young Questioneers. They focus entirely on developing youth education. The mechanism for this education is completely specific to the ACTA infrastructure and relies on the effective operation of ACTA as a whole.

For example, ACTA’s main activity is mass work and it is focused (currently) in the West Side of Chicago.<ref>See [[Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism|Chapter 7]]</ref> Extensive direct experience has revealed that the tenants inside of the apartment buildings throughout these areas include thousands of children and young people whose parents have extremely limited resources. Door after door, parents tell us that more than anything else they want better for their kids. Better houses, of course, but also better futures, better ways to spend their time, better ways to learn and stay active and safe. On the other hand, poverty traps them, it is hard for them to travel to other parts of town and violence drives a common fear of spending excessive amounts of time outdoors.

In short, the YQ group’s central objective is to learn the conditions. They use the reports from ACTA’s mass work for this, including their own direct investigation at mass work themselves. Then, they attempt to develop education that is appropriate for the specific, concrete situation. Currently, this takes the shape of monthly packages that get delivered (also by ACTA’s forces) directly to the doors of families in the apartment buildings. Each month, the learning materials are themed around problems discovered by talking to the families. For example, a recent theme was around young people’s attitudes toward making mistakes.

Each theme is also given a specific international emphasis, so learning always introduces kids to revolutionary movements in other parts of the world; India, Palestine, Cuba, and of course Burkina Faso. Because we are simultaneously helping organize education in Ouagadougou, this has allowed us to join efforts. We send material that is made with the kids here to Ouagadougou. Materials produced by the Young Pioneers at the Centre are shared with the kids here.

We can see in this example, how ACTA’s basis of organization is a dynamic foundation on which new forms and frontiers of the

struggle can be built, including international ones. It is the material basis that permits the young people in slums of the West Side to know the young people in the capital of Burkina Faso. Of course, this basis of organization greatly improves our ability to organize more traditional types of international solidarity, too; arranging fundraisers that address our comrades’ direct needs, helping them promote their own efforts to a wider audience, raising awareness of their struggle, etc. It is self-evident that our link with Burkina Faso is very small and still insignificant in the grand scheme. We are not delusional about our level of influence on the development of the present Burkinabé revolution nor about their current interest in ours.

But, these examples should illustrate that ACTA is dead serious about being an internationalist organization<ref>We have similar links under development with an organization in Panamá City, Panamá.</ref> and would never flatter itself for making slogans and releasing statements that profess “our line” on this or that movement in some other part of the world. We recognize that if there is ever going to be a real interconnection of struggle, it has to begin like this. Our dream is for the Centre in Ouagadougou to grow and gain influence, and we aim to help it however we can.

At the same time, we want ACTA’s influence and power to grow until at some point both of our organizations are powerful and linked in ways that go beyond our current limits of youth education and raising consciousness, and take us into the realm of revolutionary strategy. Our tasks will always be to break through the limits concretely and rise to a higher stage of fighting. If this is possible—and we are certain it is—our organizations here and there (ACTA, CTS, CCTE) cannot be given up or allowed to fall into ruin, or else the interconnection of imperialism will remain unbreakable. It is our organization which provides the motive force for acting upon all the conclusions of our analysis. No matter the precision and critical integrity of such analyses, the weapon of criticism must pass over into the criticism of our weapons or else theory remains a dead letter.

As our comrades - and B.S.Ph have written succinctly, ''“The lack of clear and precise political analysis gives excuses to the people in the belly of the beast to evade their responsibility to humanity by seriously engaging in the struggle to destroy the imperialist system.”''

Library:Tenant Spring/Centralism

2026-06-03T20:59:37Z

Sansserifseraphim: added heading

== Centralism ==

Library:Tenant Spring/Tenant Unions in the Revolution

2026-06-03T20:49:36Z

Sansserifseraphim: add the title

== Tenant Unions in the Revolution ==

Library:Tenant Spring/Capitalism

2026-06-03T20:41:22Z

Sansserifseraphim: Chapter two of Tenant Spring

== Chapter One ==

==== ''Why does ACTA, a tenant organization, find it so important to consider itself a “revolutionary socialist” organization?'' ====
The landlord-tenant relation only exists because it is a part of a larger system, the system of capitalism. Capitalism creates both the preconditions for the landlord-tenant relationship and the drive for it to grow and expand. The precondition which has led us to the present housing relations is the private as opposed to social ownership of the means of production, land, and resources. Until private property is replaced by social ownership, the increasing power of landlords to rule over tenants cannot be permanently destroyed and all reforms will be temporary half-measures.

The abolition of landlords and the self-abolition of tenants is our target, nothing less. If houses were the property of society collectively, there would be no landlords to demand rent and therefore no tenants forced to pay it. That is why we are a revolutionary organization first, tenant organization second.

Capitalism makes it possible for landlords to prioritize profit over the usefulness of housing because an economy based on private property provides owners with a legal and political dictatorship over their possessions. If these houses were owned socially, we would all have to determine the best way to use them. Under the system of capitalism, however, they are private property, which means that the state protects the right of a small minority to determine how these houses are used. As a result, property owners have the state-given “right” to “use” their property to make money, if they wish.

This right is rooted in common sense. We have the right to our possessions. Throughout history people have struggled to build political systems where the objects they use in everyday life cannot be taken away from them just because someone more powerful desires them. Capitalism is premised on this abstract right to property, but under capitalism, this historical need of humanity is transformed into its opposite as ownership of property is abstracted from use of property. Landlords who buy property with no intention of ever using it in any real sense are granted the absolute authority to rip it away from those who do use it, and in fact depend on it. As time goes on this perverse sense of “ownership” becomes an increasingly central part of the economic structure of society. Today, as a rule, owners purchase excess houses for the purpose of renting them out to tenants.

Capitalism not only sets the stage for an intensification of landlord dominance, it incentivises it. Under capitalism, productive activity is done with the goal of accumulation, rather than the goal of directly satisfying people’s needs. In other words, useful things are only created if they have exchange value. Only needs that are profitable are met.

Accumulation, as the accumulation of capital, has this contradiction embedded in it as well. By accumulation, we mean the increase of the mass of the means of production as private property in the hands of the owners. In other words, accumulation refers to the accumulation of capital itself: the means of production and their value. In plain talk, these things are the basis of an individual’s wealth and are referred to, in headlines for example, as one’s “net worth.” Accumulation of capital—in short, profit—is the general condition of the capitalist class and the objective of all individuals providing goods and services for sale in the market.

Producers aim to produce for the general needs of society, but there is no central coordinating body to determine this need. Instead, the general need of society is reported to the producers in the form of a quantitative valuation. As a result, no firm or enterprise surveys every possible consumer in order to determine the quantity of products needed to satisfy all needs. Instead, they base their appraisal of the general need on rates of return. In theory, a high rate of return should indicate a high need for a particular product. By maximizing their own profits, capitalist producers meet the general needs of society. In reality, profit is determined by its own set of complicated rules, rules distinct from any rational distribution of resources.<ref>It is commonly argued by economists and political pundits that the market tends towards an “efficient” distribution of resources. This argument is always circular. Efficient distribution is only justified in relation to the actual tendencies of the market, in effect comparing the market to itself.</ref>

This contradiction between usefulness and exchangeability is at the core of our economic system. It exists within the basic material elements of our society, the commodities we trade and use. On one hand, capitalist production is a process of collectively creating useful things in order to meet real needs, on the other hand this process is carried out by individual producers only under conditions ripe for capital accumulation.

These individual producers enter the market as competitors. Profitability is the general condition of capitalist production, but specific producers achieve specific rates of profit under conditions of competition with one another. Competition is felt most directly between producers in the same branch of industry, for example Samsung competes with Apple in the production of phones. It drives a progressively more cutthroat condition of survival and, in the process, skews the odds toward those firms which are larger in terms of their material forces of production and their corresponding scale of accumulated capital as money. This competition results in the triumph of some enterprises, and the collapse of others. The winners consume the losers as spoils of war and accumulation takes the form of acts of centralization in the direction of monopoly power. We can see in this process how the competition of many transforms into the domination of a few.<ref>Recall how at the beginning of the cell phone era, the list of competitors was extensive; Motorola, Nokia, LG, Blackberry, Samsung, Apple will be memorable to those of us in the United States. Only two of these now dominate half of the world market; while a handful of firms fight over the scraps. Forgotten are the hundreds of international companies who have tried to blast into the market only to disappear in a flash like shooting stars. In reality, their accomplishments were absorbed by their competitors and now form a part of their mass.</ref>

interests of the landlord and the tenant are diametrically opposed to one another. We can generalize this contradiction as the basic condition of housing in the United States today: there is a controller who does not use (the capitalist landlord) vs. a user who does not control (the tenant).

The landlord and the tenant’s interests are diametrically opposed because their relationship is an economic one. Think about it this way: the tenant’s interests are in the usefulness of the house. If the heat breaks down in the winter and leaves him freezing, he does not have the legal or political right to fix the heat himself because he does not own the house as his private property. He has to ask the proper owner to do it, the landlord, who always treats these impositions like the burden of the cross. “And to think,” he says with a smug grin, “You people want to crucify me!”

But the landlord’s interests are not in the usefulness of the house, they are in the profitability of the house. Fixing the heat will cost him money and therefore it will work against his interests. The tenant's gain is necessarily the landlord’s loss, and vice versa.<ref>In the long run, these repairs may maintain the sale price of the home. Some use this to argue that the interests of landlord and tenant coincide. This argument is easily dissolved by the reality of the situation, where landlords fight even the most important repairs tooth and nail. The truth of the matter is that the incremental maintenance of a building cuts into profits, and so most landlords put it off, hoping to sell the building just before the small issues grow into a massive necessary cost. The unlucky landlord who loses this game of hot potato almost never pays the repair costs incurred by the pillage of the building carried out by his progenitors. Instead, he appeals to the state for funding, diverting even more of the people’s money into landlord pockets. The fact that only a miniscule percentage of the dutifully paid rents over those decades of decay went towards the building itself is lost on all. The landlord gets subsidized and the tenants who actually use the homes pay the price.</ref>

That is as simple as it can be stated and it should illustrate that, even in the case that a tenant has a “good landlord,” the landlord’s enthusiasm for maintaining the usefulness of the apartment will last only as long as the broader economic conditions of capitalist society leave him with enough of a financial cushion to do so profitably. But such conditions never last. Seemingly every decade a life-changing economic crisis paralyzes the world system. Not to mention those more localized, yearly crises that pop up in different corners of the globe, tearing life apart for everyone except the richest of the capitalists and the lucky ones in the middle class.<ref>The list of economic crises in the capitalist system is too long to even make an appropriately evocative set of references to here because they are so frequent. However, to get a picture of the problem in broad strokes, search “list of economic crises” in Wikipedia.</ref>

For example, when the financial crisis of 2008 occurred and the Great Recession followed, millions of properties were foreclosed. “Mom and pop” landlords either couldn’t afford to pay their banks or sold their surplus properties in a desperate attempt to squeeze out whatever remaining cash they could in the panic. In either case, it meant tenants were evicted by the hundreds of thousands. The personality of the landlord is always irrelevant during hard times, and hard times will always come until the capitalist system is revolutionized and thrown away.

The landlord and tenant’s contradictory interests concerning housing are not independent of one another or arbitrary. The landlord’s money comes directly from the tenant, the former depends on the latter. In other words, while it is popularly understood in this order—the working class would have no place to live if housing providers didn’t exist—in reality, the situation proceeds in this order: landlords would have no money and no ability to make it from housing if a huge proportion of the masses were not dispossessed of the basic and necessary means of living.

The constant dispossession of the masses of their basic means of life and the concentration of those into the hands of an increasingly small and exclusive circle of capitalists is a precondition of landlordism and is the basis of the capitalist system. In fact, as a consequence of the 2008 crisis, houses that formerly belonged to millions of homeowners went on the market at low prices and were scooped up by the only people who still had any money to invest—small and big capitalist real estate speculators. At the same time, the existing rental housing stock now had to absorb mass tenantization—millions of homeowners converted into tenants in one sweep. The thrust of demand against the supply of rental stock could do nothing else but kickstart an increase in the price of rent,<ref>Disequilibrium between supply and demand is the inevitable scapegoat for the so-called housing crisis, but it has nothing to do with it—except in the way that salt has something to do with making the pain of a wound more acute.</ref> which has carried through to the unbelievable levels we are facing today—all destined for the vaults of the rich!

The fundamental contradiction driving the landlord-tenant relationship, that contradiction between usefulness and profitability, is a contradiction that cannot be resolved without revolutionizing the system of private property. By replacing the system of private property with a system of social, collective ownership of the means of production we will put ourselves in the only viable position to orient production towards the satisfaction of the general needs of society, that is, socialism. This revolution has to be undertaken by the working class—the class to which tenants belong—against the capitalist class because the working class is the group that is in an economic relation with the capitalists that can be turned and leveraged against them. That’s why ACTA is a revolutionary organization of the working class that believes in socialism. Going forward, if the reader has questions about why ACTA believes this or that, it’s always worth revisiting this first point. We are revolutionary socialists.

Library:Tenant Spring

2026-06-03T20:26:19Z

Sansserifseraphim: update info box

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Library:Tenant Spring/Preface

2026-06-03T20:24:14Z

Sansserifseraphim: Preface to Tenant Spring

== Preface ==
At last, Chicago’s tenants are waking up from their long, crazy nightmare about “tenants rights” and are replacing that dream with something real: tenant unions. Amid the excitement of the current period and encouraged by the signs of life, some have proclaimed that Chicago is on the verge of a “tenant summer.” No doubt, we share their enthusiasm.

It has to be admitted, however, that our tenants are quite late to this fight. In many of the major and mid-sized cities in our country, the tenant union movement seems to have already taken root. The same appears true in Europe. But here in Chicago, it is still in its infancy. On the other hand, our organization, the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, has just begun its sixth year of life. During the period that separates our birth from the present day, we have learned hard lessons and transformed our work dramatically trying to bring this moment into existence. While certainly not mature, our organization is no tyke, either. With respect to the certain trends and peculiarities that have arisen from our organizing conditions, we have been hardened against some, and made sympathetic to others. Our time in the struggle has been adequate enough to provide us this, if nothing else.

Therefore, we hope it is easy to understand how half a decade spent in the process of organizational construction under Chicago’s particular conditions could have resulted in the strongly-felt ideas which now loom over our activity like huge nimbostratus clouds. As a frenzy of fresh seeds are being planted in the ground, we hope our urgency to release some of these ideas from the atmosphere above the so-called housing justice movement appears seasonable and maybe even precipitates stronger growth. In any case, we aim to help break up the skies that badly cloud our movement

This little book is addressed to both left-wing activists in general, anti-imperialists, those in the housing-centric social justice organizations, and, of course, those who are veterans of or are just entering the tenant union movement, including our own membership. It responds to numerous questions that have been posed to us over the years and offers a positive vision of where our struggle is at, where we believe it should go, and why. Although we would never suggest that our organization could look exactly like one in another place, we know from experience that tenant organizations in other locations have similar problems and similar questions. We hope therefore that comrades in the tenant movement in different parts of the world might also find this book helpful or at least stimulating.

We also recognize that it is likely unavoidable that this circulates beyond our intended audience and for this we want to warn the reader that it is very specific to our context and is based directly on the concrete problems that our organization is facing at the time of writing. We are aware that it is different from other works recently made available on tenant unionism, and may not carry the same appeal. We attribute this to its specificity and its function as an organizational document.

The development of a cloud into rain waters the earth just as it clears the sky, making way for the warm light of the sun. If we fail to break up the clouds over the movement, without a period of transition and growth, the summer will never come. With that in mind, we want to contest the idea of the tenant summer with another—that of the tenant spring.

''- ACTA, Spring 2025''

Library:Tenant Spring

2026-06-03T20:20:12Z

Sansserifseraphim: fixed TOC added info box

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Library:Tenant Spring

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Library:Tenant Spring

2026-06-03T20:12:12Z

Sansserifseraphim: add table of contents for Tenant Spring

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Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/The struggle for gay rights in Germany

2026-05-27T04:47:04Z

Sansserifseraphim: article from In the Spirit of Stonewall

== The Struggle for Gay Rights in Germany ==

==== Reporter contrasts East and West ====

==== December 17, 1976 ====
In recent years gay women and men here, tired of years of oppression, have joined together to demand the rights that they have so long been denied. With pride and determination the gay movement has pointed out that people should have the right to choose who they wish to love, free from state or church interference. Gay people have stood firm and demonstrated against police and right-wing brutality against the gay community. They have fought discrimination in housing and on the job based on their homosexual preference. Yet, despite this movement, interference in the live of gay people, to the point of persecution and oppression, continues to be the norm rather than the exception here for homosexually orientated people. Some recent developments internationally, however, give grounds for real optimism that gay oppression can be ended.

Jim Steakley is a Canadian gay activist and author of The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, a book containing important information on the homosexual rights movement that existed in Germany previous to the Nazi period. Steakley recently returned from a seven-month stay in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany-GDR) and has presented his observations and research on the status of gay people in the GDR both at a public meeting in New York City and in an article entitled "Gays Under Socialism" in December 1976 issue of Body Politic, a gay newspaper based in Toronto

=== Homosexuality Not Illegal in GDR ===
In the first place, Steakley points out, homosexual acts are not illegal in the GDR. "Overall, the de-Nazification program carried out in the Soviet-occupied Zone was far more aggressive and thorough than those in the Western zones," he says. "The immediate benefit for gay people came with the repeal of Paragraph 175a, the Nazi law which led to the arrest and imprisonment of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of homosexuals. This law was struck down by the Superior State Court of Halle in 1948. By contrast, it remained in effect West Germany until 1969."

Although the pre-Nazi anti-homosexual law, Paragraph 175, was not eliminated until 1968 in the GDR (it has never been eliminated in West Germany!), it ceased to be enforced after 1957, "...except in cases involving assault, coercion, or minors," Steakley explains. Furthermore, "A number court decisions handed down during these years reveal that the government was actually inclined to dismiss cases involving minors if the defendant could demonstrate that he was having a beneficial and educative influence upon the younger male." According to Steakley, homosexuals have even been granted the right of adoption in some cases of gay orphans and gay wayward minors.

Of the period 1949 to 1961 Steakley observes, "West Germany was scarcely a haven for homosexuals during these years... the federal government was adamantly opposed to law reform which might improve the situation of gay people and local authorities were extremely intolerant of the gay subculture. Police entrapment and raids on bars and baths, unheard of in the GDR, were common in the West." Commenting on the current situation, Steakley suggests that gay relationships in the GDR tend to be more stable than in the West, and he cites the fact that one-third of all East Germans who move to the West return to the GDR within one year. With regard to gay people, it seems clear that GDR gays are totally unprepared for the intense sexual exploitation and general dog-eat-dog struggle for survival in the capitalist West.

Commenting on the housing situation in the GDR, Steakley notes that single people, gay and straight, are seldom able to obtain more than a studio apartment due to the serious housing shortage. He adds, however, that the government has an on-going high-priority construction program which gives every indication of being able to remedy the housing problem soon. Also, there is a law in the GDR which makes it illegal for rent to exceend ten percent of a person's income. "In the area of employment, homosexuals are occasionally fired by a homophobic superior." Steakley reports. "But gays have successfully argued their cases in special GDR workers' courts and had their jobs restored with back pay. In a country with the right to work and a serious labor shortage job performance has become the sole criterion for hiring and firing."

Within the GDR Socialist Unity (Communist) Party, "... the degree of tolerance [of gay comrades] varied from one cadre to the next. Gays in the cultural sector, for example, have brought their lovers to social functions without any repercussions, while factory workers are more reluctant to so indicate their homosexuality. Party members who are involved in the gay liberation movement... have experienced no difficulties with their cadres." Steakley notes that the gay movement in the GDR is made up largely of workers and professional people rather than students and that there is a strong likelihood that in the near future the government will officially recognize the movement, opening the door to government funding and access to substantial facilities and media resources.

=== Bolshevik Party Supported Gay Right ===
Certainly the treatment of gay people in the socialist countries is very much on the minds of progressive gays in the capitalist world. It is still far from being common knowledge that the Bolshevik Party in the early years of the revolution took positive action in support of gay rights and that the German Communist Party previous to the Nazi takeover provided aid and political support to the early gay rights movement in Germany. But that heritage is today being rediscovered and enriched by a growing number of working class parties in various countries.

Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia have all eliminated the sodomy laws which most western capitalist nations use to persecute and intimidate gay people. In what hopefully signals a positive turn in policy, reports from Cuba indicated that workers' courts there are making rulings similar to those of the GDR on the issue of job rights for gays. And workers' parties in a number of capitalist countries have begun to seriously reevaluate their previous anti-gay positions. These developments are, of course, only initial steps. It will take substantial efforts on the part of all the world revolutionary forces to finally and completely eradicate the centuries-old heritage of prejudice against and persecution of homosexually-inclined people. But the first step is being taken. And the overthrow of world imperialism, led by the billionaire class of the U.S., will remove the principal source and the only beneficiary of gay oppression, as well as racism, male chauvinism, national chauvinism, and all the other age-old prejudices of class society.

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Union leaders promise support for gay workers

2026-05-25T17:31:35Z

Sansserifseraphim: article from In the Spirit of Stonewall

== Union Leaders Promise Support for Gay Workers ==

==== San Francisco, October 19, 1976 ====
More than 20 of San Francisco's top labor leaders announced their support for employment protection for gay workers at a press conference called today by Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL).

The labor leaders pledged to work for the inclusion of "sexual orientation" in the non-discrimination clause in their contracts.

Representative Howard Wallace voiced BAGL's opposition to eight anti-labor propositions on the local ballot and vowed to campaign against them in the gay community. The propositions-B, D, E, J, M, and O-are aimed at destroying collective bargaining and the right to strike for city workers.

=== Culmination of Two Years' Work ===
The press conference represented the culmination of almost two years of work by BAGL's Labor Committee. The committee has actively promoted the Gallo wine and Coors beer boycotts in the gay community, supported several strikes including a recent one by city craft workers here. The committee had already convinced a number of unions to add "sexual orientation" to their contracts.

Wallace said the press conference represented "a historic breakthrough" for the gay movement because "the leaders of a few hundred thousand workers pledged their support for the rights gay and working people."

Jack Crowley, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council, said, "We do have a lot of people of this determination in our unions and we seek to give them just as a equal representation as we do the balance of our workers." He said that although rank-and-file reaction would be mixed, the majority of union members would support gay job protection. This statement was bolstered by Chris Perry, a BAGL Labor Committee representative who told of his success in getting 240 out of 269 of his co-workers at Kaiser Hospital to sign a petition asking their union to include "sexual orientation" in their next contract.

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall

2026-05-11T20:33:32Z

Sansserifseraphim: fixed entry 5 in table of contents

{{Library work|title=In the Spirit of Stonewall|author=Workers World Newspaper, Workers World Party|written in=1972-1979|publisher=World View Publishers|published_date=1979|published_source=Workers World|published_location=Atlanta, Chicago, New York|type=Book|isbn=0-89567-033-X|pdf=https://reader.z-library.sk/read/09675da8b19cd60d2b7d9c1dd8ba9a2f048b49c5640681f60a8f6c004bd6c20b/book/Y5jJNMd0jp/in-the-spirit-of-stonewall.html?client_key=1fFLi67gBrNRP1j1iPy1&extension=pdf&signature=3d0e3e70e45163fce3ace4afabcddf56ae964302ff70c3a43a924343dab3d060&download_location=https%3A%2F%2Fz-library.sk%2Fdl%2FG0wEY0oEwz&file_access_token=eyJleHAiOjE3Nzg3MDUwMzMsInZlciI6IjEuMCIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCIsImFsZyI6IkhTMjU2In0.eyJzdWIiOiJmaWxlX2FjY2VzcyIsImZpbGVfc2hhMjU2IjoiMDk2NzVkYThiMTljZDYwZDJiN2Q5YzFkZDhiYTlhMmYwNDhiNDljNTY0MDY4MWY2MGE4ZjZjMDA0YmQ2YzIwYiIsImFjY2Vzc19sZXZlbCI6ImZ1bGwiLCJpc19wdWJsaWMiOmZhbHNlLCJsaW5rX293bmVyIjo0NDU3NTc4Nn0.KxPj_QQNAXN2nvx67sDw4aMGzyVIc7aicEOaafMmSXE}}

{{Book_TOC
|collapsed=
|level1=1
|item1=Part One
|level2=2
|item2=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Introduction|Introduction]]
|level3=2
|item3=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay people fight back!|Gay people fight back!]]
|level4=2
|item4=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Supreme Court attacks gays, not pornography|Supreme Court attacks gays, not pornography]]
|level5=2
|item5=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay victory teaches importance of struggle|Gay victory teaches importance of struggle]]
|level6=2
|item6=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/The right-wing offensive: Supreme Court vs. gay rights|The right-wing offensive:Supreme Court vs. gay rights]]
|level7=2
|item7=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay mothers fight to keep children|Gay mothers fight to keep children]]
|level8=2
|item8=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Heavy police repression in Saxe trial|Heavy police repression in Saxe trial]]
|level9=2
|item9=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Union leaders promise support for gay workers|Union leaders promise support for gay workers]]
|level10=2
|item10=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/The struggle for gay rights in Germany|The struggle for gay rights in Germany]]
|level11=2
|item11=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Florida right wing mobilized against gay rights|Florida right wing mobilized against gay rights]]
|level12=2
|item12=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Situation of gay prisoners is pretty bad'|Situation of gay prisoners is pretty bad']]
|level13=2
|item13=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay rights and the Dade County referendum|Gay rights and the Dade County referendum]]
|level14=1
|item14=Part Two: Thousands nationwide march to "Stop Anita Bryant Now!"
|level15=2
|item15=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/California gays react with nightly marches|California gays react with nightly marches]]
|level16=2
|item16=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Anita's day without sunshine|Anita's day without sunshine]]
|level17=2
|item17=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/New Orleans-3,000|New Orleans-3,000]]
|level18=2
|item18=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Houston-10,000|Houston-10,000]]
|level19=2
|item19=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Hundreds of thousands march for gay rights|Hundreds of thousands march for gay rights]]
|level20=2
|item20=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Mississippi gays, NAACP unite against police harassment|Mississippi gays, NAACP unite against police harassment]]
|level21=2
|item21=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Anti-gay bigotry: who profits from it, how to fight it|Anti-gay bigotry: who profits from it, how to fight it]]
|level22=2
|item22=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Call for unity against lesbian oppression at Houston IWY Conference|Call for unity against lesbian oppression at Houston IWY Conference]]
|level23=2
|item23=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/March for gay rights in Spain|March for gay rights in Spain]]
|level24=2
|item24=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Native, gay prisoners unite for basic rights|Native, gay prisoners unite for basic rights]]
|level25=2
|item25=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Racist Denver cops murder another transsexual|Racist Denver cops murder another transsexual]]
|level26=2
|item26=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/'Say no to Briggs initiative!'|'Say no to Briggs initiative!']]
|level27=2
|item27=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Thousands take to streets for gay rights|Thousands take to streets for gay rights]]
|level28=2
|item28=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay newspaper under attack|Gay newspaper under attack]]
|level29=2
|item29=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Lesbian mother wins child custody|Lesbian mother wins child custody]]
|level30=2
|item30=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Black transvestite man crippled by cop|Black transvestite man crippled by cop]]
|level31=2
|item31=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Last straw for lesbian and gay community|Last straw for lesbian and gay community]]
|level32=2
|item32=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/All out for first national march set for October 14|All out for first national march set for October 14]]
|level33=2
|item33=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Lesbians and gays fight back|Lesbians and gays fight back]]
|level34=2
|item34=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Class society: root of oppression|Class society: root of oppression]]
}}

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Heavy police repression in Saxe trial

2026-05-11T20:32:05Z

Sansserifseraphim: article from In the Spirit of Stonewall

== Heavy police repression in Saxe trial ==

===== Boston, September 21, 1976 =====
Ten jurors have been selected so far as the Boston trial of Susan Saxe moves into its second week. Saxe, who has been held since August under tight security in the Suffolk County courthouse, is transported to the courtroom each day under heavy guard.

The State has been building its case against Saxe by using the full force of the media to present this courageous woman as a criminal, to demean her anti-war commitment, and to slander her feminist politics and lesbian identity.

She faces charges stemming from a 1970 bank robbery in which a policeman was killed. Although accused only of participation in the robbery, under the Massachusetts felony murder law, she is charged with first degree murder, which could result in an automatic life sentence if she is convicted.

Millions of dollars have been spent so far on the barrage of negative publicity and on so-called security measure, which include building special plywood tunnels leading straight into the courtroom, as well as sealing off the entire floor of the courtroom where the trial is taking place.

Saxe has been kept in special quarters, isolated from other prisoners, forbidden even to talk to her guards.

Nevertheless, Saxe remains strong, and support for her case continues to grow. Over 75 demonstrators, mostly women wearing "Free Susan Saxe" T-shirts, formed a picketline outside the courtroom on September 15, the first day of her trial. Sheriff's deputies tried to expel the women from the area on the pretext that their shirts violated a "state law prohibiting posters or picket signs in front of a courthouse."

Supporters and members of the press were searched in the first floor of the courthouse and again on the ninth floor, where extra court officers, locked doors, and an airport metal detector were in operation.

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay mothers fight to keep children

2026-05-10T03:18:28Z

Sansserifseraphim: article from In the Spirit of Stonewall

== Gay mothers fight to keep children ==

==== New York, June, 26, 1976 ====
Somewhere in New York State lives a woman whose child has been taken away from her because she is a lesbian. The court ruled that she may only visit the child during the day, unaccompanied by her lover - who lived with her and the child for over two years - or any other friend.

In a final act of cruelty, the judge presiding over the case ruled that if she attempted to in any way publicize her case, she would lose even these severely restricted visiting rights.

This woman is only one of many lesbian mothers who have lost their rights to their children. In a society where mothers are almost automatically awarded custody of their children, lesbian mothers (and gay fathers) often lose even the right to see their children. In some cases, women have been allowed to keep their children only if they stopped living with their lovers.

What relationship do these judges see between sexual preference and the ability to raise a child? They speak of exposure to an environment "which may be deleterious" and "immoral atmosphere" and "detrimental effects," but no judge has ever been able to offer proof that these vague. insidious suggestion have any validity.

And while lesbians fighting to keep their children have brought into court psychiatrists, clergymen, family members, and even ex-employers to testify as to their fitness to take care of their children, they have lost their cases.

Nor has the decision to award custody of a child to its heterosexual rather than its homosexual parent been based on any other "virtue" than that of heterosexuality. In western Massachusetts, a father was award custody of his daughter even though she clearly expressed her desire to live with her mother, In a case in Ohio, the court, having ruled the father not a suitable parent, awarded custody of the children to the father's mother, a 65-year-old blind woman.

And what made an elderly blind woman a more suitable guardian for the children than their mother? In the words of the presiding judge: "I would think for the sake of the children, a lesbian would abandon the practice ['''of homosexuality''']. Orgasm means more to them than children or anything else."

This is no more than the old malicious myth invoked to prevent gay people from being teachers or being in any job which involves children - or, for that matter, any responsible position - i.e that gay people are subject to such rampant, uncontrollable sexuality that they are rapists, child molesters, and worse.

Through such lies, the bourgeoisie seeks to isolate gay people from the rest of the working class, by declaring homosexuality a sickness and perversion - with the emphasis on the latter. In so doing, they pretend they are sincerely concerned about the welfare of the children.

=== '''WHO REALLY CARES?''' ===
We have all seen the fruits of the ruling class's great concern for children: closed-down daycare centers, reduction of medical facilities, over-crowded and inadequate schools. In particular, we have seen the special attention the bourgeoisie gives to children of oppressed people. Countless Black and Latin children are taken from their parents and put into foster homes or institutions. Some 25-35 percent of Native children are taken from their families. Last year when south Viet Nam was liberated, thousands of Vietnamese children were kidnapped from their families and their native land by the U.S. ruling class.

What is clear is that all of these children, be their parents Black, Latin, Native, Vietnamese, or gay, are only pawns in the war of the bourgeoisie against oppressed people. In essence, the ruling class is saying. "If you persist in struggling for your rights, we will take everything away from you, even your children." But as conditions worsen for all our children, we are learning who is really responsible. We are teaching these lessons to our children, so that they, too, will be able to fight for a world in which the well-being of all children is a universal concern and a living reality.

Robert Trivers

2026-05-09T00:42:49Z

Sansserifseraphim: added heading to references

{{Infobox person|name=Robert L. Trivers|nationality=Statesian|birth_date=19 February 1943|death_date=March 12 2026|field=Evolutionary Biology|image=Robert trivers.jpg}}

'''Robert L. Trivers''' (February 19, 1943 – March 12, 2026) was an Statesian evolutionary biologist known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology Despite his early intellectual influence, Trivers’s legacy is severely compromised by a long record of voluntary association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, public defense of child sexual abuse, and virulent transphobia, and a controversial academic career marred with misconduct<ref>{{Web citation|author=Steven Pinker|newspaper=Quillette|title=The Many Roots of Our Suffering: Reflections on Robert Trivers (1943–2026)|date=2026-03-25|url=https://quillette.com/2026/03/25/the-many-roots-of-our-suffering-reflections-on-robert-trivers-1943-2026/}}</ref> documented in the Epstein files.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Institut du Travail Social Pierre Bourdieu|title=Robert Trivers, Revolutionary Evolutionary Biologist, Dies at 83 After Controversial Career|date=2026-03-28|url=https://www.its-pau.fr/page/formulaire-de-reservation-de-salle-s-its-pierre-bourdieu?live-news-1220824-2026-03-28-advertisementskip-advertisement-robert-trivers-a-visionary-eccentric-and-volatil}}</ref>

== Scientific work ==
Between 1971 and 1975, Trivers published a series of papers that helped shape evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. His 1971 paper “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism” used game theory to explain why unrelated individuals help each other, arguing that cooperation can evolve if cheaters are punished and emotions such as gratitude, guilt and moralistic outrage serve as behavioral policing tools.<ref>{{Citation|last=Trivers|first=Robert|author=Robert Trivers|year=1972|title=The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism|title-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230818222_The_Evolution_of_Reciprocal_Altruism|publisher=Quarterly Review of Biology|doi=10.1086/406755}}</ref> His 1972 paper “Parental Investment and Sexual Selection” proposed that the sex that invests more energy in offspring becomes the choosier mate, while the lower‑investing sex competes for access. His 1974 paper “Parent‑Offspring Conflict” challenged the then‑prevailing view of harmony between parents and children, arguing that genetic asymmetries (parents are equally related to all offspring, while each child is more related to itself) produce inevitable conflict.<ref>{{Citation|last=Trivers|first=Robert|author=Robert Trivers|year=1974|title=Parent-Offspring Conflict|title-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223995721_Parent-Offspring_Conflict|publisher=American Zoologist}}</ref>

Trivers’s theoretical work remains cited, but the evidentiary foundation for his core claims has been severely weakened. His parental investment theory has been largely disproven; as biologist Joan Roughgarden documented in ''Evolution’s Rainbow'' (2004), sexual selection and parenting strategies are far more diverse than Trivers’s binary model allowed.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ev Nichols|newspaper=Queer Science Lab|title=How The Pseudoscience is Made: From Dark Money to an Academic Journal|date=2026-02-03|url=https://queersciencelab.beehiiv.com/p/how-the-pseudoscience-is-made-from-dark-money-to-an-academic-journal}}</ref>

== Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein ==
Trivers had a close, long‑term financial and personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, lasting at least from 2009 until Epstein’s death in 2019. Epstein emails to Trivers were released in Febuary 2026 as part of the Epstein Files. In a 2009 email Epstein invited Trivers to Florida to “discuss what you are doing” and offered to pay for his travel and accommodations. In 2015 Epstein described himself as Trivers’s “major funder,” and Trivers acknowledged receiving $40,000 from Epstein "to study knee symmetry and sprinting ability." When Rutgers University suspended Trivers in 2014 Epstein wrote to Noam Chomsky that he was Trivers’s primary supporter and that Trivers had been “thrown out of rutgers [sic] for good this time.” <ref>{{Web citation|author=James Factora|newspaper=Them|title=Emails Reveal Epstein Encourage Controversial Scientist to Study "Transgender Biology"|date=2026-02-06|url=https://www.them.us/story/jeffrey-epstein-robert-trivers-transgender-research-emails}}</ref>

Throughout the relationship, Trivers not only accepted Epstein’s money but actively defended Epstein’s character. In a 2015 Reuters interview, Trivers called Epstein “a person of integrity” who deserved credit for serving time (Epstein only served 13 months of an 18‑month sentence, and was granted extensive work‑release privileges). Trivers also stated that he believed “girls mature faster now than they did years ago” and that “by the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.”<ref>{{Web citation|author=Cecilia Levine|newspaper=Daily Voice|title=Brand-New Epstein Email With MIT Professor Links Him To Rutgers Biologist|date=2026-02-02|url=https://dailyvoice.com/ma/essex-manchester-by-the-sea/brand-new-epstein-email-with-mit-professor-links-him-to-rutgers-biologist/}}</ref>

In the DOJ’s Epstein file releases (2025‑2026), additional correspondence surfaced showing the depth of their collaboration. Epstein encouraged Trivers to focus on “transgender biology” instead of his other research, which Epstein dismissed as having “little public interest.” Trivers complied, and the resulting emails reveal systematic anti‑trans agitation.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Jamaica Gleaner|title=Emails show Jeffrey Epstein corresponded with scientist about genetic research on elite Jamaican sprinters|date=2026-02-02|url=https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20260202/emails-show-jeffrey-epstein-corresponded-scientist-about-genetic-research}}</ref>

== Transphobia ==
The Epstein‑Trivers emails contain some of the most explicitly dehumanizing statements about transgender people found in the Epstein records. In a 2018 email Trivers wrote extensive sexual comparisons between Trans men and women, objectifying Trans women and expressing disgust towards Trans men. Trivers claimed that trans women “easily make money” through sex work and concluded the email by arguing that medical transition is being pushed onto young children.

Trivers also repeated the debunked claim that three‑year‑olds receive hormone treatments, a lie that has been used to justify healthcare bans.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ev Nichols|newspaper=Queer Science Lab|title=How the Pseudoscience is Made: From Dark Money to an Academic Journal|date=2026-02-03|url=https://queersciencelab.beehiiv.com/p/how-the-pseudoscience-is-made-from-dark-money-to-an-academic-journal}}</ref> As one academic review of the emails noted, Trivers demonstrated the “triple crown of transphobia” in a single message: dehumanizing language, misrepresentation of medical care, and sexual commodification of trans bodies. Epstein explicitly pushed Trivers toward anti‑trans research, and Trivers willingly complied, accepting funds and using his academic prestige to lend credibility to reactionary gender ideology.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The National|title=Jeffrey Epstein's Malign Influence Went Far Beyond Sex Offending|date=2026|url=https://www.thenational.scot/community/25826861.jeffrey-epsteins-malign-influence-went-far-beyond-sex-offending/}}</ref>

Trivers’s public self‑image as a radical (he joined the Black Panthers, though he was later kicked out<ref>{{Web citation|author=Michael S. Rosenwald|newspaper=The New York Times|title=Robert Trivers, Eccentric Scientist Who Probed Human Nature, Dies at 83|date=2026-03-27|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/science/robert-trivers-dead.html}}</ref>, and styled himself an anti‑establishment figure) is fundamentally incompatible with his decades‑long financial and personal alliance with Epstein – the embodiment of elite impunity and sexual predation. His purported materialism (grounding social behavior in evolutionary biology) collapses into the same biological determinism used to justify racism, sexism and transphobia. In a 2015 interview, Trivers was a virulent Epstein apologist describing his multiple legal proceedings as “settled civil lawsuits brought by women who said they were abused,” while also acknowledging that Epstein “did get locked up” and that “compared to what you or I would get” the deal was indeed easy.<ref>Cecilia Levine (2026-02-02). [https://dailyvoice.com/ma/essex-manchester-by-the-sea/brand-new-epstein-email-with-mit-professor-links-him-to-rutgers-biologist/ "Brand-New Epstein Email With MIT Professor Links Him To Rutgers Biologist"] ''Daily Voice''.</ref>

== Later life and death ==
Trivers spent his final decades at Rutgers University, from which he was suspended in 2014. He remained largely unproductive after his work. Following the release of the Epstein files, his transphobic statements became widely known in leftist and Marxist circles. Trivers died on March 12, 2026, at age 83.

== References ==

Robert Trivers

2026-05-09T00:39:11Z

Sansserifseraphim: added photo to infobox

Gender abolitionism

2026-05-09T00:38:32Z

Sansserifseraphim: added two reference fixed references to match correct sentence

'''Gender abolitionism''' is a movement that advocates for the eventual elimination of [[gender]], and by extension, gender roles, gender identity, and gender expression, and even sexual orientation. Originating within the [[Radical feminism|radical feminist]] framework, the belief has also been embraced by certain [[Marxism|Marxist]] theorists who believe gender differentiation to be the basis of class. Proponents of gender abolitionism argue that gender, rather than [[Social class|class]], constitutes the primary [[contradiction]] in society contributing to the oppression of [[women]].

== Origins ==
Shulamith Firestone's ''The Dialectic of Sex'' (1970) is widely cited as an early exposition of gender abolition. Firestone traced women's oppression to the biological fact of childbearing and proposed technological solutions – artificial wombs – to break the link between reproduction and sex roles. She believed that ending the "sex class" system would make gender itself obsolete.<ref>{{Citation|last=Firestone|first=Shulamith|author=Shulamith Firestone|year=1970|title=The Dialectic of Sex}}</ref>

== Core Claims of Gender Abolitionism ==
Gender abolitionists generally argue that:

First, gender is understood as a social construct that maintains patriarchy and that the binary division of humanity into men and women is artificial and oppressive; removing it would free individuals from predetermined social roles.

Second, class society cannot be fully overthrown unless gender is also abolished. Gender abolitionist argue that gender is the primary contradiction or a co-primary contradiction to class. Some consider gender to be independent from and equal to class.

Third, transgender and non‑binary identities are seen as products of gender oppression. Under a gender‑free society, the argument goes, such identities would no longer be necessary. A similar logic is sometimes applied to sexual orientation. Trans exclusionary gender abolitionists argue that Transgender people do not exist at all and that Transgender identity strengthens gender oppression, some going as far as to describe Trans women as a patriarchal project<ref>{{Citation|last=Raymond|first=Janice|author=Janice Raymond|year=1979|title=The Transsexual Empire|title-url=https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019-03-20_5c91a4ba712fd_document26.pdf|quote=Transsexualism is thus the ultimate, and we might even say the logical, conclusion of male possession of women in a patriarchal society. Literally, men here possess women.}}</ref>

Marxist gender abolitionists – particularly those in the socialist feminist tradition – also claim that the sexual division of labor is the historical foundation of class society. Abolishing that division, they argue, would cause gender to disappear naturally.

== Criticism ==

In their book ''[[Library:Transgender Warriors|Transgender Warriors]]'', which offers "a fresh look at sex and gender in history and the interrelationships of class, nationality, race, and sexuality", [[Leslie Feinberg]] responds to the gender abolitionist position, noting how proponents tend to believe [[LGBT+]] are a product of oppression and they will cease to exist once society is liberated. Feinberg finds this idea unhelpful to LGBT+, as it "renders all our trans identities meaningless", and argues instead that passing is a product of oppression,<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Today, although the authentic stories of their lives have been lost to us, many people speculate about those individuals, and why they chose to pass. My life is subject to the same conjecture.

"No wonder you've passed as a man! This is such an anti-woman society," a lesbian friend told me. To her, females passing as males are simply trying to escape women's oppression—period. She believes that once true equality is achieved in society, humankind will be genderless. I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't predict human behavior in a distant future. But I know what she's thinking—if we can build a more just society, people like me will cease to exist. She assumes that I am simply a product of oppression. Gee, thanks so much.

[...]

I have lived as a man because I could not survive openly as a transgendered person. Yes, I am oppressed in this society, but I am not merely a product of oppression. That is a phrase that renders all our trans identities meaningless. Passing means having to hide your identity in fear, in order to live. Being forced to pass is a recent historical development.

It is passing that is a product of oppression. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> which was imposed by the [[Catholicism|Catholic Church]] as part of the rise of [[capitalism]] and [[settler colonialism]], and served to erase diverse gender expression in order to weaken communal ties and subdue communities to the private property interests of the Church.<ref name=":1">{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Several of these saints paid dearly for their renunciation of their birth sex, and all of them had to keep their change of sex secret. In cooperative societies, transgender, transsexual, and intersexual people lived openly, with honor. But in a class-divided society like medieval Western Europe, the Church's legends of the female-to-male saints introduced the concept of "passing"—being forced to hide a trans identity. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Up until the fifteenth century, a great majority of the world's population lived in communal, matrilineal societies. This was true throughout Africa, large parts of Asia, the Pacific islands, Australia, and the Americas. If all of human history were shrunk to the scale of one year, over 360 days of historical time belong to cooperative, matrilineal societies. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

Feinberg also says that gender expression cannot be caused exclusively by biology nor by culture.<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=I don't take a view that an individual's gender expression is exclusively a product of either biology or culture. If gender is solely biologically determined, why do rural women, for example, tend to be more "masculine" than urban women? On the other hand, if gender expression is simply something we are taught, why has such a huge trans segment of the population not learned it? If two sexes are an immutable biological fact, why have so many societies recognized more than two? Yet while biology is not destiny, there are some biological markers on the human anatomical spectrum. So is sex a social construct, or is the rigid categorization of sexes the cultural component? Clearly there must be a complex interaction between individuals and their societies.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> Feinberg documents many examples of cultures around the world recognizing more than two genders unrelated to physical sex and that these genders are not a product of gendered divisions of [[Labour|labor]],<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=What stunned me was that such ancient and diverse cultures allowed people to choose more sex/gender paths, and this diversity of human expression was honored as sacred. I had to chart the complex geography of sex and gender with a compass needle that only pointed to north or south.

So I combed through books, periodicals, and news clippings devoted to the history of Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. I searched for the earliest written records of any forms of trans expression. Much to my surprise, I found a lot of information.

[...]

But did these cooperative societies only have room for two sexes, fixed at birth? It has become common for social scientists to conclude that the earliest human division of labor between women and men in communal societies formed the basis for modern sex and gender boundaries. But the more I studied, the more I believed that the assumption that every society, in every corner of the world, in every period of human history, recognized only men and women as two immutable social categories is a modern Western conclusion. It's time to take another look at what we've long believed was an ancient division of labor between only two sexes.

Our earliest ancestors do not appear to have been biological determinists. There are societies all over the world that allowed for more than two sexes, as well as respecting the right of individuals to reassign their sex. And transsexuality, transgender, intersexuality, and bigender appear as themes in creation stories, legends, parables, and oral history. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> and the notion of only two genders founded on two biological sexes is a historically recent one even in northwestern [[Europe]] where in the 18th century there were still third and fourth genders.<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=When I try to discuss sex and gender, people can only imagine woman or man, feminine or masculine. We've been taught that nothing else exists in nature. Yet, as I've shown, this has not been true in all cultures or in all historical periods. In fact, Western law took centuries to neatly partition the sexes into only two categories and mandate two corresponding gender expressions.

"The paradigm that there are two genders founded on two biological sexes began to predominate in western culture only in the early eighteenth century," historian Randolph Trumbach notes in his essay, "London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making ofModern Culture."1 Trumbach explains that as late as the eighteenth century, in northwestern Europe, feminine men and masculine women—known as mollies and tommies respectively—were thought of as third and fourth genders. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

The documented existence of more than two gender roles existing fluidly (for example, based on dreams) in [[primitive communism]] also challenges the notion of gender roles as a cause of oppression and [[class society]] (instead of their forcedness based on two sexes assigned at birth).<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Two historic developments helped me to hear the voices of modern Native warriors who lived the sacred Two-Spirit tradition: the founding of Gav American Indians in 1975 by Randy Burns (Northern Paiute) and Barbara Cameron (Lakota Sioux), and the publication in 1988 of Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Randy Burns noted that the History Project of Gay American Indians "has documented these alternative gender roles in over 135 North American tribes."
[...]
The whole concept of gender is more fluid in traditional life. Those paths are not necessarily aligned with your sex, although they may be. People might choose their gender according to their dreams, for example. So even the idea that your gender is something you dream about is not even a concept in Western culture—which posits you are born a certain biological sex and therefore there's a role you must step into and follow pretty rigidly for the rest of your life. That's how we got the concept of queer. Anyone who doesn't follow their assigned gender role is queer; all kinds of people are lumped together under that word. Does being Two-Spirit determine your sexuality? I asked Chrystos. "In traditional life a Two-Spirit person can be heterosexual or what we would call homosexual," she replied. "You could also be a person who doesn't have sex with anyone and lives with the spirits. The gender fluidity is part of a larger concept, which I guess the most accurate English word for is 'tolerance.' It's a whole different way of conceiving how to be in the world with other people. We think about the world in terms of relationship, so each person is always in a matrix, rather than being seen only as an individual—which is a very different way of looking at things." |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

Since gender identity and gender expression are unrelated to a sexual division of labor, and the gendered divisions of labor have not been based on two sexes for most of human existence until the dominance of class society, abolishing the sexual division of labor cannot result in the abolition of gender identity, nor of divisions of labor in general, but only the division of labor based on two sexes assigned at birth. Since more than two genders have been a part of human existence since the beginning, abolishing gender cannot result in liberation, nor the end of class society. Essentially, the evidence shows how a gender abolitionist position assumes false causality and is ahistorical. Feinberg's research demonstrates the importance of not forcing passing onto trans people.

The work of Marxist Feminist Eleanor Leacock also challenges the idea that gender originates from class oppression in her book ''Myths of Male Dominance'' she argues not only that an egalitarian gender system predated class societies but that gender oppression in the Americas was a result of economic changes imposed by colonialism.<ref>{{Citation|last=Leacock|first=Eleanor|author=Eleanor Leacock|year=1922|title=Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women Cross-Culturally|title-url=https://archive.org/details/mythsofmaledomin00leac/page/n5/mode/2up}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Essay:Gender Abolitionism is Inherently Transphobic|Gender Abolitionism is Inherently Transphobic]], essay by [[ProleWiki|Prolewiki]] editor, [[Comrade:Annamarx|Annamarx]]

== References ==
[[Category:LGBT+]]
[[Category:Social issues]]

File:Robert trivers.jpg

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== Summary ==
picture of Robert L. Trivers

Robert Trivers

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Sansserifseraphim: added infobox

{{Infobox person|name=Robert L. Trivers|nationality=Statesian|birth_date=19 February 1943|death_date=March 12 2026|field=Evolutionary Biology}}

'''Robert L. Trivers''' (February 19, 1943 – March 12, 2026) was an Statesian evolutionary biologist known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology Despite his early intellectual influence, Trivers’s legacy is severely compromised by a long record of voluntary association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, public defense of child sexual abuse, and virulent transphobia, and a controversial academic career marred with misconduct<ref>{{Web citation|author=Steven Pinker|newspaper=Quillette|title=The Many Roots of Our Suffering: Reflections on Robert Trivers (1943–2026)|date=2026-03-25|url=https://quillette.com/2026/03/25/the-many-roots-of-our-suffering-reflections-on-robert-trivers-1943-2026/}}</ref> documented in the Epstein files.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Institut du Travail Social Pierre Bourdieu|title=Robert Trivers, Revolutionary Evolutionary Biologist, Dies at 83 After Controversial Career|date=2026-03-28|url=https://www.its-pau.fr/page/formulaire-de-reservation-de-salle-s-its-pierre-bourdieu?live-news-1220824-2026-03-28-advertisementskip-advertisement-robert-trivers-a-visionary-eccentric-and-volatil}}</ref>

== Scientific work ==
Between 1971 and 1975, Trivers published a series of papers that helped shape evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. His 1971 paper “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism” used game theory to explain why unrelated individuals help each other, arguing that cooperation can evolve if cheaters are punished and emotions such as gratitude, guilt and moralistic outrage serve as behavioral policing tools.<ref>{{Citation|last=Trivers|first=Robert|author=Robert Trivers|year=1972|title=The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism|title-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230818222_The_Evolution_of_Reciprocal_Altruism|publisher=Quarterly Review of Biology|doi=10.1086/406755}}</ref> His 1972 paper “Parental Investment and Sexual Selection” proposed that the sex that invests more energy in offspring becomes the choosier mate, while the lower‑investing sex competes for access. His 1974 paper “Parent‑Offspring Conflict” challenged the then‑prevailing view of harmony between parents and children, arguing that genetic asymmetries (parents are equally related to all offspring, while each child is more related to itself) produce inevitable conflict.<ref>{{Citation|last=Trivers|first=Robert|author=Robert Trivers|year=1974|title=Parent-Offspring Conflict|title-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223995721_Parent-Offspring_Conflict|publisher=American Zoologist}}</ref>

Trivers’s theoretical work remains cited, but the evidentiary foundation for his core claims has been severely weakened. His parental investment theory has been largely disproven; as biologist Joan Roughgarden documented in ''Evolution’s Rainbow'' (2004), sexual selection and parenting strategies are far more diverse than Trivers’s binary model allowed.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ev Nichols|newspaper=Queer Science Lab|title=How The Pseudoscience is Made: From Dark Money to an Academic Journal|date=2026-02-03|url=https://queersciencelab.beehiiv.com/p/how-the-pseudoscience-is-made-from-dark-money-to-an-academic-journal}}</ref>

== Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein ==
Trivers had a close, long‑term financial and personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, lasting at least from 2009 until Epstein’s death in 2019. Epstein emails to Trivers were released in Febuary 2026 as part of the Epstein Files. In a 2009 email Epstein invited Trivers to Florida to “discuss what you are doing” and offered to pay for his travel and accommodations. In 2015 Epstein described himself as Trivers’s “major funder,” and Trivers acknowledged receiving $40,000 from Epstein "to study knee symmetry and sprinting ability." When Rutgers University suspended Trivers in 2014 Epstein wrote to Noam Chomsky that he was Trivers’s primary supporter and that Trivers had been “thrown out of rutgers [sic] for good this time.” <ref>{{Web citation|author=James Factora|newspaper=Them|title=Emails Reveal Epstein Encourage Controversial Scientist to Study "Transgender Biology"|date=2026-02-06|url=https://www.them.us/story/jeffrey-epstein-robert-trivers-transgender-research-emails}}</ref>

Throughout the relationship, Trivers not only accepted Epstein’s money but actively defended Epstein’s character. In a 2015 Reuters interview, Trivers called Epstein “a person of integrity” who deserved credit for serving time (Epstein only served 13 months of an 18‑month sentence, and was granted extensive work‑release privileges). Trivers also stated that he believed “girls mature faster now than they did years ago” and that “by the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.”<ref>{{Web citation|author=Cecilia Levine|newspaper=Daily Voice|title=Brand-New Epstein Email With MIT Professor Links Him To Rutgers Biologist|date=2026-02-02|url=https://dailyvoice.com/ma/essex-manchester-by-the-sea/brand-new-epstein-email-with-mit-professor-links-him-to-rutgers-biologist/}}</ref>

In the DOJ’s Epstein file releases (2025‑2026), additional correspondence surfaced showing the depth of their collaboration. Epstein encouraged Trivers to focus on “transgender biology” instead of his other research, which Epstein dismissed as having “little public interest.” Trivers complied, and the resulting emails reveal systematic anti‑trans agitation.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Jamaica Gleaner|title=Emails show Jeffrey Epstein corresponded with scientist about genetic research on elite Jamaican sprinters|date=2026-02-02|url=https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20260202/emails-show-jeffrey-epstein-corresponded-scientist-about-genetic-research}}</ref>

== Transphobia ==
The Epstein‑Trivers emails contain some of the most explicitly dehumanizing statements about transgender people found in the Epstein records. In a 2018 email Trivers wrote extensive sexual comparisons between Trans men and women, objectifying Trans women and expressing disgust towards Trans men. Trivers claimed that trans women “easily make money” through sex work and concluded the email by arguing that medical transition is being pushed onto young children.

Trivers also repeated the debunked claim that three‑year‑olds receive hormone treatments, a lie that has been used to justify healthcare bans.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ev Nichols|newspaper=Queer Science Lab|title=How the Pseudoscience is Made: From Dark Money to an Academic Journal|date=2026-02-03|url=https://queersciencelab.beehiiv.com/p/how-the-pseudoscience-is-made-from-dark-money-to-an-academic-journal}}</ref> As one academic review of the emails noted, Trivers demonstrated the “triple crown of transphobia” in a single message: dehumanizing language, misrepresentation of medical care, and sexual commodification of trans bodies. Epstein explicitly pushed Trivers toward anti‑trans research, and Trivers willingly complied, accepting funds and using his academic prestige to lend credibility to reactionary gender ideology.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The National|title=Jeffrey Epstein's Malign Influence Went Far Beyond Sex Offending|date=2026|url=https://www.thenational.scot/community/25826861.jeffrey-epsteins-malign-influence-went-far-beyond-sex-offending/}}</ref>

Trivers’s public self‑image as a radical (he joined the Black Panthers, though he was later kicked out<ref>{{Web citation|author=Michael S. Rosenwald|newspaper=The New York Times|title=Robert Trivers, Eccentric Scientist Who Probed Human Nature, Dies at 83|date=2026-03-27|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/science/robert-trivers-dead.html}}</ref>, and styled himself an anti‑establishment figure) is fundamentally incompatible with his decades‑long financial and personal alliance with Epstein – the embodiment of elite impunity and sexual predation. His purported materialism (grounding social behavior in evolutionary biology) collapses into the same biological determinism used to justify racism, sexism and transphobia. In a 2015 interview, Trivers was a virulent Epstein apologist describing his multiple legal proceedings as “settled civil lawsuits brought by women who said they were abused,” while also acknowledging that Epstein “did get locked up” and that “compared to what you or I would get” the deal was indeed easy.<ref>Cecilia Levine (2026-02-02). [https://dailyvoice.com/ma/essex-manchester-by-the-sea/brand-new-epstein-email-with-mit-professor-links-him-to-rutgers-biologist/ "Brand-New Epstein Email With MIT Professor Links Him To Rutgers Biologist"] ''Daily Voice''.</ref>

== Later life and death ==
Trivers spent his final decades at Rutgers University, from which he was suspended in 2014. He remained largely unproductive after his work. Following the release of the Epstein files, his transphobic statements became widely known in leftist and Marxist circles. Trivers died on March 12, 2026, at age 83.

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/The right-wing offensive: Supreme Court vs. gay rights

2026-05-08T16:59:53Z

Sansserifseraphim: article from In the Spirit of Stonewall

== The right-wing offensive: Supreme Court vs. gay rights ==

==== March 29, 1976 ====
During the period when Earl Warren was its Chief Justice, the U.S. Supreme Court gained in some quarters an undeserved reputation as a guardian of liberty. It is now apparent that the Warren interlude (which was never as progressive as its enthusiasts claimed) was merely a brief detour from the court's well-beaten path of judicial repression, and that today the majority of the nine judges are solidly in the camp of the extreme right. Their recent decision upholding a Virginia law making homosexual relations between consenting adults in private punishable by five years in prison and a $1,000 fine is a case in point.

Accepting the Virginia court's twisted reasoning (based in large part on Biblical sanctions preached in Leviticus!), the Supreme Court didn't even permit a legal argument but found against gay people's rights summarily. By thus slandering homosexuals as criminals, this handful of begowned bigots has upheld the anti-gay laws that exist in 36 states and has given the green light for further discrimination against gay people in housing, jobs, and a host of other areas.

This assault on gay men and women is part of a broad reactionary drive organized by this country's wealth rulers. The Supreme Court has been allotted the task of breaking down some of the progress made by Black people, women, and gays during the progressive resurgence of the 1960s. This "Nixon" court has over the last few months undercut the voting rights bill that was supposed to guarantee Black and Brown Americans equality at the polls; has undermined important provisions of abortion laws won for the protection of women and has stuck down the heart of the famous Miranda decision, and earlier court ruling banning police torture of prisoners in their custody.

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall

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{{Book_TOC
|collapsed=
|level1=1
|item1=Part One
|level2=2
|item2=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Introduction|Introduction]]
|level3=2
|item3=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay people fight back!|Gay people fight back!]]
|level4=2
|item4=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Supreme Court attacks gays, not pornography|Supreme Court attacks gays, not pornography]]
|level5=2
|item5=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay victory teaches importance of struggle|Gay victory teaches importance of struggle]]
|level6=2
|item6=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/The right-wing offensive:Supreme Court vs. gay rights|The right-wing offensive:Supreme Court vs. gay rights]]
|level7=2
|item7=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay mothers fight to keep children|Gay mothers fight to keep children]]
|level8=2
|item8=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Heavy police repression in Saxe trial|Heavy police repression in Saxe trial]]
|level9=2
|item9=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Union leaders promise support for gay workers|Union leaders promise support for gay workers]]
|level10=2
|item10=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/The struggle for gay rights in Germany|The struggle for gay rights in Germany]]
|level11=2
|item11=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Florida right wing mobilized against gay rights|Florida right wing mobilized against gay rights]]
|level12=2
|item12=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Situation of gay prisoners is pretty bad'|Situation of gay prisoners is pretty bad']]
|level13=2
|item13=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay rights and the Dade County referendum|Gay rights and the Dade County referendum]]
|level14=1
|item14=Part Two: Thousands nationwide march to "Stop Anita Bryant Now!"
|level15=2
|item15=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/California gays react with nightly marches|California gays react with nightly marches]]
|level16=2
|item16=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Anita's day without sunshine|Anita's day without sunshine]]
|level17=2
|item17=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/New Orleans-3,000|New Orleans-3,000]]
|level18=2
|item18=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Houston-10,000|Houston-10,000]]
|level19=2
|item19=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Hundreds of thousands march for gay rights|Hundreds of thousands march for gay rights]]
|level20=2
|item20=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Mississippi gays, NAACP unite against police harassment|Mississippi gays, NAACP unite against police harassment]]
|level21=2
|item21=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Anti-gay bigotry: who profits from it, how to fight it|Anti-gay bigotry: who profits from it, how to fight it]]
|level22=2
|item22=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Call for unity against lesbian oppression at Houston IWY Conference|Call for unity against lesbian oppression at Houston IWY Conference]]
|level23=2
|item23=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/March for gay rights in Spain|March for gay rights in Spain]]
|level24=2
|item24=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Native, gay prisoners unite for basic rights|Native, gay prisoners unite for basic rights]]
|level25=2
|item25=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Racist Denver cops murder another transsexual|Racist Denver cops murder another transsexual]]
|level26=2
|item26=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/'Say no to Briggs initiative!'|'Say no to Briggs initiative!']]
|level27=2
|item27=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Thousands take to streets for gay rights|Thousands take to streets for gay rights]]
|level28=2
|item28=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay newspaper under attack|Gay newspaper under attack]]
|level29=2
|item29=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Lesbian mother wins child custody|Lesbian mother wins child custody]]
|level30=2
|item30=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Black transvestite man crippled by cop|Black transvestite man crippled by cop]]
|level31=2
|item31=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Last straw for lesbian and gay community|Last straw for lesbian and gay community]]
|level32=2
|item32=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/All out for first national march set for October 14|All out for first national march set for October 14]]
|level33=2
|item33=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Lesbians and gays fight back|Lesbians and gays fight back]]
|level34=2
|item34=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Class society: root of oppression|Class society: root of oppression]]
}}

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay victory teaches importance of struggle

2026-05-08T16:40:08Z

Sansserifseraphim: article from In the Spirit of Stonewall

==== Gay victory teaches importance of Struggle ====

==== April 19, 1974 ====

====== New position of Psychiatric Assn. ======
In May 1970, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) held its annual convention in San Francisco. The gay liberation movement, at this time only about a year old, was nevertheless well known in San Francisco. There were several gay organizations in the city. There had been a number of demonstrations: against police harassment and brutality, and to protest the firing of gays who had refused to keep their homosexuality hidden on the job.

This reporter was working at that time as a clerk in the psychiatry department of one of the major hospitals in San Francisco. Each afternoon during the APA convention, reports were brought back to the hospital on what was happening there.

We found out the first day that not all the people attending the convention were psychiatrists. At least 16 gay militants showed up and, with the power of a growing movement behind them, denounced the psychiatrists, demanding that the psychiatric profession end it persecution of gay people. They argued that the use by professionals of such terms as "sick" and "perverted" when speaking of homosexuals was not only insulting and harmful to the self-images of gay people, but that these words, and the theories behind them were used to justify all kinds of discrimination against gays, and tended to sanction the treatment of gay people as criminals.

Each day, as reports of the disruption occurring at the APA convention were brought back to the hospital, I listened without visible emotion, but inside I was cheering. Then, on about the third day of the convention, something even more exciting happened. One of the young psychiatrist trainees attached to the hospital made it known that he was a homosexual and proceeded to join the other gays in their protests at the conventions. It was as though a bomb had dropped. Word of it spread through the whole hospital in a matter of minutes.

The "nonprofessionals," that is, the workers, responded in a variety of ways: some with cruel jokes, some with interest and sympathy. But among the psychiatrists and other professionals, the same cold, disdainful response could be observed in almost all of them. They all agreed, without saying it out loud, that the young homosexual intern had just wrecked his promising career. And you could see that it infuriated them that they had somehow let a "pervert" into their prestigious training program.

Last week, by a polling of its membership, the APA confirmed the decision its board of trustees had announced last winter: homosexuality is not a mental illness. This decree was no revelation to those millions of homosexuals who have managed to lead productive and healthy lives for years despite the former position of the APA and the prejudice and persecution which that position encouraged.

But how did the change come about? Were there perhaps major new studies on the question, or had a new revolutionary psychological theory been advanced? No, it was nothing like that. Scientific evidence would never have brought about the change in the APAs position for the simple reason that the position was not based on scientific investigation in the first place. It was, rather, based on bourgeois morality and plain, old-fashioned bigotry

In reality, it was the cumulative effect of actions like the one at the APA convention in San Francisco and hundred of other demonstrations around the country that forced the APA to change its stand. And this is particularly important to understand since the struggle against gay oppression is still so far from its goals. The lesson of the APA victory is, as the militants in the anti-war movement used to put it: '''"Stay in the streets!"''' It should be remembered that the APA statement will not, of itself, put an end to job and housing discrimination, police brutality, entrapment, prison behavior-modification programs, and all the other injustices which are inflicted against gays in this country. The public outcries against these practices must continue.

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Supreme Court attacks gays, not pornography

2026-05-08T16:12:56Z

Sansserifseraphim: article from In the Spirit of Stonewall

== Supreme Court attacks gays, not pornography ==

==== Chicago, September 28, 1973 ====
In June of this year, the Supreme Court gave local jurisdictions broad powers to determine and control obscenity, holding that juries may consider state or local rather than national standards to determine what is pornographic.

The history of the U.S. Supreme Court has shown it to be a tool of big business interests. So we can't seriously believe that this ruling is directed against multi-million dollar pornography empires such as Playboy, Penthouse, or film studios that daily grind out films which exploit and degrade women as mindless sex objects for white businessmen.

Who then is to bear the brunt of this ruling? Arch-racist priest and Chicago alderman, Francis X. Lawlor, gave us a key when he claimed that the "phenomenal increase in the number of homosexual was directly traceable to pornography." He also claimed that. "The Supreme Court has come through and now it is up to grassroots America to stand on its feet and say: 'We're here; we want to be recognized.'"

In view of the recent wave of attacks against gay people, from the murder by fire of 32 gays in New Orleans, to bomb threats against the Chicago Gay Alliance; from the "mysterious" explosion in a gay bar in Springfield, Massachusetts, to the beatings of gays by cops in Los Angeles, the Supreme Court decision can only be seen as official sanction for these heinous crimes.

Until recently, gay literature could only be purchased in pornographic book stores. Not because it was obscene, but because homosexuals were considered obscene. Gay prisoners are still denied the right to receive gay newspapers and books. Homosexuals are also part of grassroots America and we are also standing up to be recognized. The Gay Caucus of Youth Against War & Fascism realizes that to do this we must fight back against homophobic attacks, whether they come from newspapers columnists, racist priests, fascists, cops, or the Supreme Court.

We are not obscene or pornographic, but gay and proud and fighting back against the ruling class of this country and the restrictions it places on our lives, It is this, and not Hugh Hefner, that scares the Supreme Court.

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay people fight back!

2026-05-07T04:09:57Z

Sansserifseraphim: 1st article from In the Spirit of Stonewall by Workers World Party

== Gay people fight back! ==

==== April 20, 1972 ====
The U.S Supreme Court, that most prestigious of judicial bodies, decided recently to let stand a lower court ruling which condones the firing of an openly homosexual librarian in Minnesota. The justices wanted their decision clearly understood. They were not against gay people having jobs. What disturbed them was that the librarian made no effort to hide the fact of his "reprehensible" sexual orientation. Under these conditions, they reasoned. his firing was completely justified. Several days later the New York Daily News, not wanting to be outdone by the Supreme Court, ran an editorial entitles "Any Old Jobs For Homos." Their thorough misrepresentation of the facts was predictable; their sexist attitude was a direct challenge to New York City's large gay community.

On Monday, April 10, several hundred demonstrators, organized by the New York Gay Activists Alliance, converged on the Daily News Building to demand a retraction. Inside the building, other gays spoke to the workers, requesting their support against the editorial. These organizers later reported that about 90 percent of the workers they spoke with supported the rights of gay people and opposed the newspaper's reactionary policy. On one floor, several workers offered to start a petition campaign against the offensive editorial.

In a related development, 800 gay people from all over New York State converged on Albany on Saturday, April 15, to demand passage, during this session of the state legislature, of gay rights bills that were defeated last year. The Gay Caucus of Youth Against War & Fascism participated in the spirited march and rally with a banner reading "End Gay Oppression Equal Rights Now!"

On Saturday evening, about 20 participants in the afternoon march went to a banquet of bourgeois press and media officials at the New York Hilton Hotel. Their purpose was to protest the perpetual ban on news relevant to the gay community, As they began passing out leaflets inside the hotel, the sisters and brothers were attacked and beaten by silk-suited thugs reportedly including the New York City Fire Commissioner. This new attack on gay activists will not go unchallenged.

It becomes increasingly evident, as repression follows repression, that the billionaire rulers of this society have no intention of ending the Viet Nam War and no intention of meeting the desperate needs of the masses of American people. The idea of freedom for people who refuse to submit to the rigid stereotypes of "male" and "female" is a very real challenge to the sexual oppression of class society. The rulers would like nothing better than to force us back into hiding. But the existence of homosexuality has been demonstrated in almost all human societies. We will no longer submit to the hypocrisy of non-existence. No more closets for out love!

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall

2026-05-07T02:03:42Z

Sansserifseraphim: changed authors to the organization which wrote the book

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Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall

2026-05-07T01:59:27Z

Sansserifseraphim: Added tables of contents and library work templates

{{Library work|title=In the Spirit of Stonewall|author=Gary Ames, Sharon Ayling, Joan Butler, Kathi Dennis, Leslie Feinberg, Jim Harlow, Connie Harris, Debra Bender, Donna Lazarus, Jean McAllister, Bob McCubbin Jim McMahon, Philip Renard, Gloria Rodriguez, Bruce Smith, Preston Wood, Mary Jo Wuetrich, and others.|written in=1972-1979|publisher=World view Publishers|published_date=1979|published_source=Workers World|published_location=Atlanta, Chicago, New York|type=Book|isbn=0-89567-033-X|pdf=https://reader.z-library.sk/read/09675da8b19cd60d2b7d9c1dd8ba9a2f048b49c5640681f60a8f6c004bd6c20b/book/Y5jJNMd0jp/in-the-spirit-of-stonewall.html?client_key=1fFLi67gBrNRP1j1iPy1&extension=pdf&signature=3d0e3e70e45163fce3ace4afabcddf56ae964302ff70c3a43a924343dab3d060&download_location=https%3A%2F%2Fz-library.sk%2Fdl%2FG0wEY0oEwz&file_access_token=eyJleHAiOjE3Nzg3MDUwMzMsInZlciI6IjEuMCIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCIsImFsZyI6IkhTMjU2In0.eyJzdWIiOiJmaWxlX2FjY2VzcyIsImZpbGVfc2hhMjU2IjoiMDk2NzVkYThiMTljZDYwZDJiN2Q5YzFkZDhiYTlhMmYwNDhiNDljNTY0MDY4MWY2MGE4ZjZjMDA0YmQ2YzIwYiIsImFjY2Vzc19sZXZlbCI6ImZ1bGwiLCJpc19wdWJsaWMiOmZhbHNlLCJsaW5rX293bmVyIjo0NDU3NTc4Nn0.KxPj_QQNAXN2nvx67sDw4aMGzyVIc7aicEOaafMmSXE}}

{{Book_TOC
|collapsed=
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|item1=Part One
|level2=2
|item2=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Introduction|Introduction]]
|level3=2
|item3=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay people fight back!|Gay people fight back!]]
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|level8=2
|item8=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Heavy police repression in Saxe trial|Heavy police repression in Saxe trial]]
|level9=2
|item9=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Union leaders promise support for gay workers|Union leaders promise support for gay workers]]
|level10=2
|item10=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/The struggle for gay rights in Germany|The struggle for gay rights in Germany]]
|level11=2
|item11=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Florida right wing mobilized against gay rights|Florida right wing mobilized against gay rights]]
|level12=2
|item12=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Situation of gay prisoners is pretty bad'|Situation of gay prisoners is pretty bad']]
|level13=2
|item13=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay rights and the Dade County referendum|Gay rights and the Dade County referendum]]
|level14=1
|item14=Part Two: Thousands nationwide march to "Stop Anita Bryant Now!"
|level15=2
|item15=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/California gays react with nightly marches|California gays react with nightly marches]]
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|item16=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Anita's day without sunshine|Anita's day without sunshine]]
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|item17=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/New Orleans-3,000|New Orleans-3,000]]
|level18=2
|item18=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Houston-10,000|Houston-10,000]]
|level19=2
|item19=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Hundreds of thousands march for gay rights|Hundreds of thousands march for gay rights]]
|level20=2
|item20=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Mississippi gays, NAACP unite against police harassment|Mississippi gays, NAACP unite against police harassment]]
|level21=2
|item21=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Anti-gay bigotry: who profits from it, how to fight it|Anti-gay bigotry: who profits from it, how to fight it]]
|level22=2
|item22=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Call for unity against lesbian oppression at Houston IWY Conference|Call for unity against lesbian oppression at Houston IWY Conference]]
|level23=2
|item23=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/March for gay rights in Spain|March for gay rights in Spain]]
|level24=2
|item24=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Native, gay prisoners unite for basic rights|Native, gay prisoners unite for basic rights]]
|level25=2
|item25=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Racist Denver cops murder another transsexual|Racist Denver cops murder another transsexual]]
|level26=2
|item26=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/'Say no to Briggs initiative!'|'Say no to Briggs initiative!']]
|level27=2
|item27=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Thousands take to streets for gay rights|Thousands take to streets for gay rights]]
|level28=2
|item28=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Gay newspaper under attack|Gay newspaper under attack]]
|level29=2
|item29=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Lesbian mother wins child custody|Lesbian mother wins child custody]]
|level30=2
|item30=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Black transvestite man crippled by cop|Black transvestite man crippled by cop]]
|level31=2
|item31=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Last straw for lesbian and gay community|Last straw for lesbian and gay community]]
|level32=2
|item32=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/All out for first national march set for October 14|All out for first national march set for October 14]]
|level33=2
|item33=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Lesbians and gays fight back|Lesbians and gays fight back]]
|level34=2
|item34=[[Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Class society: root of oppression|Class society: root of oppression]]
}}

Library:In the Spirit of Stonewall/Introduction

2026-05-07T01:58:39Z

Sansserifseraphim: introduction to In the Spirit of Stonewall a compilation of newspaper articles from the Workers World Party

== Introduction ==
'''In the Spirit of Stonewall''' is a compilation of articles commemorating the struggle of lesbians and gay men since the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City in 1969, when a "routine" police raid of a gay bar sparked three nights of heroic street fighting in protest of harassment and oppression. Since the articles in this pamphlet are reprinted from '''Workers World''' newspaper, a word is in order about the two organizations, Workers World Party and Youth Against War & Fascism, whose political viewpoint is expressed here. The Gay Caucus of Youth Against War & Fascism (YAWF), formed in 1971, has actively participated in the many struggles of the lesbian and gay movement. Even before the formation of the Gay Caucus, YAWF defended lesbians and gays from attack and welcomed lesbian and gay members into the organization. An example of support was YAWF's participation in a 1970 demonstration at the Tombs, a prison in New York City, in support of Richard Harris, a gay member of the Inmates Liberation Front of the Young Lords Party. In the ensuing years Workers World Party and YAWF have affirmed their support of the struggle of lesbians and gay people at countless demonstrations. Since 1972, YAWF has had a large and militant contingent on Gay Pride marches both in New York City and other cities. Members of Workers World Party, both gay and straight, have played leading roles in fighting back against the oppression of lesbian and gay workers on the job, and in introducing clauses in union contracts forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. In the radical movement, it has been Workers World Party, often alone, which has challenged other parties and tendencies to support the lesbian and gay struggle. '''Workers World''' newspaper has devoted extensive space to coverage and analysis of the lesbian and gay movement. This pamphlet represents a fraction of these articles, a representative sampling of the many articles which have appeared in '''Workers World'''. A further explanation of Workers World Party's position on lesbian and gay liberation is '''The Gay Question: A Marxist Appraisal''', a pamphlet published in 1976. This pioneering work traces the history of lesbian and gay oppression and how it originated with the rise of private property, and describes and analyzes this oppression as it evolved through successive forms of class society.

Robert Trivers

2026-05-06T00:59:18Z

Sansserifseraphim: created page for biologist Robert Trivers including his work, relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and transphobia

'''Robert L. Trivers''' (February 19, 1943 – March 12, 2026) was an Statesian evolutionary biologist known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology Despite his early intellectual influence, Trivers’s legacy is severely compromised by a long record of voluntary association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, public defense of child sexual abuse, and virulent transphobia, and a controversial academic career marred with misconduct<ref>{{Web citation|author=Steven Pinker|newspaper=Quillette|title=The Many Roots of Our Suffering: Reflections on Robert Trivers (1943–2026)|date=2026-03-25|url=https://quillette.com/2026/03/25/the-many-roots-of-our-suffering-reflections-on-robert-trivers-1943-2026/}}</ref> documented in the Epstein files.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Institut du Travail Social Pierre Bourdieu|title=Robert Trivers, Revolutionary Evolutionary Biologist, Dies at 83 After Controversial Career|date=2026-03-28|url=https://www.its-pau.fr/page/formulaire-de-reservation-de-salle-s-its-pierre-bourdieu?live-news-1220824-2026-03-28-advertisementskip-advertisement-robert-trivers-a-visionary-eccentric-and-volatil}}</ref>

== Scientific work ==
Between 1971 and 1975, Trivers published a series of papers that helped shape evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. His 1971 paper “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism” used game theory to explain why unrelated individuals help each other, arguing that cooperation can evolve if cheaters are punished and emotions such as gratitude, guilt and moralistic outrage serve as behavioral policing tools.<ref>{{Citation|last=Trivers|first=Robert|author=Robert Trivers|year=1972|title=The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism|title-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230818222_The_Evolution_of_Reciprocal_Altruism|publisher=Quarterly Review of Biology|doi=10.1086/406755}}</ref> His 1972 paper “Parental Investment and Sexual Selection” proposed that the sex that invests more energy in offspring becomes the choosier mate, while the lower‑investing sex competes for access. His 1974 paper “Parent‑Offspring Conflict” challenged the then‑prevailing view of harmony between parents and children, arguing that genetic asymmetries (parents are equally related to all offspring, while each child is more related to itself) produce inevitable conflict.<ref>{{Citation|last=Trivers|first=Robert|author=Robert Trivers|year=1974|title=Parent-Offspring Conflict|title-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223995721_Parent-Offspring_Conflict|publisher=American Zoologist}}</ref>

Trivers’s theoretical work remains cited, but the evidentiary foundation for his core claims has been severely weakened. His parental investment theory has been largely disproven; as biologist Joan Roughgarden documented in ''Evolution’s Rainbow'' (2004), sexual selection and parenting strategies are far more diverse than Trivers’s binary model allowed.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ev Nichols|newspaper=Queer Science Lab|title=How The Pseudoscience is Made: From Dark Money to an Academic Journal|date=2026-02-03|url=https://queersciencelab.beehiiv.com/p/how-the-pseudoscience-is-made-from-dark-money-to-an-academic-journal}}</ref>

== Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein ==
Trivers had a close, long‑term financial and personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, lasting at least from 2009 until Epstein’s death in 2019. Epstein emails to Trivers were released in Febuary 2026 as part of the Epstein Files. In a 2009 email Epstein invited Trivers to Florida to “discuss what you are doing” and offered to pay for his travel and accommodations. In 2015 Epstein described himself as Trivers’s “major funder,” and Trivers acknowledged receiving $40,000 from Epstein "to study knee symmetry and sprinting ability." When Rutgers University suspended Trivers in 2014 Epstein wrote to Noam Chomsky that he was Trivers’s primary supporter and that Trivers had been “thrown out of rutgers [sic] for good this time.” <ref>{{Web citation|author=James Factora|newspaper=Them|title=Emails Reveal Epstein Encourage Controversial Scientist to Study "Transgender Biology"|date=2026-02-06|url=https://www.them.us/story/jeffrey-epstein-robert-trivers-transgender-research-emails}}</ref>

Throughout the relationship, Trivers not only accepted Epstein’s money but actively defended Epstein’s character. In a 2015 Reuters interview, Trivers called Epstein “a person of integrity” who deserved credit for serving time (Epstein only served 13 months of an 18‑month sentence, and was granted extensive work‑release privileges). Trivers also stated that he believed “girls mature faster now than they did years ago” and that “by the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.”<ref>{{Web citation|author=Cecilia Levine|newspaper=Daily Voice|title=Brand-New Epstein Email With MIT Professor Links Him To Rutgers Biologist|date=2026-02-02|url=https://dailyvoice.com/ma/essex-manchester-by-the-sea/brand-new-epstein-email-with-mit-professor-links-him-to-rutgers-biologist/}}</ref>

In the DOJ’s Epstein file releases (2025‑2026), additional correspondence surfaced showing the depth of their collaboration. Epstein encouraged Trivers to focus on “transgender biology” instead of his other research, which Epstein dismissed as having “little public interest.” Trivers complied, and the resulting emails reveal systematic anti‑trans agitation.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Jamaica Gleaner|title=Emails show Jeffrey Epstein corresponded with scientist about genetic research on elite Jamaican sprinters|date=2026-02-02|url=https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20260202/emails-show-jeffrey-epstein-corresponded-scientist-about-genetic-research}}</ref>

== Transphobia ==
The Epstein‑Trivers emails contain some of the most explicitly dehumanizing statements about transgender people found in the Epstein records. In a 2018 email Trivers wrote extensive sexual comparisons between Trans men and women, objectifying Trans women and expressing disgust towards Trans men. Trivers claimed that trans women “easily make money” through sex work and concluded the email by arguing that medical transition is being pushed onto young children.

Trivers also repeated the debunked claim that three‑year‑olds receive hormone treatments, a lie that has been used to justify healthcare bans.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ev Nichols|newspaper=Queer Science Lab|title=How the Pseudoscience is Made: From Dark Money to an Academic Journal|date=2026-02-03|url=https://queersciencelab.beehiiv.com/p/how-the-pseudoscience-is-made-from-dark-money-to-an-academic-journal}}</ref> As one academic review of the emails noted, Trivers demonstrated the “triple crown of transphobia” in a single message: dehumanizing language, misrepresentation of medical care, and sexual commodification of trans bodies. Epstein explicitly pushed Trivers toward anti‑trans research, and Trivers willingly complied, accepting funds and using his academic prestige to lend credibility to reactionary gender ideology.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The National|title=Jeffrey Epstein's Malign Influence Went Far Beyond Sex Offending|date=2026|url=https://www.thenational.scot/community/25826861.jeffrey-epsteins-malign-influence-went-far-beyond-sex-offending/}}</ref>

Trivers’s public self‑image as a radical (he joined the Black Panthers, though he was later kicked out<ref>{{Web citation|author=Michael S. Rosenwald|newspaper=The New York Times|title=Robert Trivers, Eccentric Scientist Who Probed Human Nature, Dies at 83|date=2026-03-27|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/science/robert-trivers-dead.html}}</ref>, and styled himself an anti‑establishment figure) is fundamentally incompatible with his decades‑long financial and personal alliance with Epstein – the embodiment of elite impunity and sexual predation. His purported materialism (grounding social behavior in evolutionary biology) collapses into the same biological determinism used to justify racism, sexism and transphobia. In a 2015 interview, Trivers was a virulent Epstein apologist describing his multiple legal proceedings as “settled civil lawsuits brought by women who said they were abused,” while also acknowledging that Epstein “did get locked up” and that “compared to what you or I would get” the deal was indeed easy.<ref>Cecilia Levine (2026-02-02). [https://dailyvoice.com/ma/essex-manchester-by-the-sea/brand-new-epstein-email-with-mit-professor-links-him-to-rutgers-biologist/ "Brand-New Epstein Email With MIT Professor Links Him To Rutgers Biologist"] ''Daily Voice''.</ref>

== Later life and death ==
Trivers spent his final decades at Rutgers University, from which he was suspended in 2014. He remained largely unproductive after his work. Following the release of the Epstein files, his transphobic statements became widely known in leftist and Marxist circles. Trivers died on March 12, 2026, at age 83.

Gender abolitionism

2026-05-04T23:53:27Z

Sansserifseraphim: added origins and core claims of gender abolitionism, some writing generated by deepseek

'''Gender abolitionism''' is a movement that advocates for the eventual elimination of [[gender]], and by extension, gender roles, gender identity, and gender expression, and even sexual orientation. Originating within the [[Radical feminism|radical feminist]] framework, the belief has also been embraced by certain [[Marxism|Marxist]] theorists who believe gender differentiation to be the basis of class. Proponents of gender abolitionism argue that gender, rather than [[Social class|class]], constitutes the primary [[contradiction]] in society contributing to the oppression of [[women]].

== Origins ==
Shulamith Firestone's ''The Dialectic of Sex'' (1970) is widely cited as an early exposition of gender abolition. Firestone traced women's oppression to the biological fact of childbearing and proposed technological solutions – artificial wombs – to break the link between reproduction and sex roles. She believed that ending the "sex class" system would make gender itself obsolete.<ref name=":0" />

== Core Claims of Gender Abolitionism ==
Gender abolitionists generally argue that:

First, gender is understood as a social construct that maintains patriarchy and that the binary division of humanity into men and women is artificial and oppressive; removing it would free individuals from predetermined social roles.

Second, class society cannot be fully overthrown unless gender is also abolished. Gender abolitionist argue that gender is the primary contradiction or a co-primary contradiction to class. Some consider gender to be independent from and equal to class.

Third, transgender and non‑binary identities are seen as products of gender oppression. Under a gender‑free society, the argument goes, such identities would no longer be necessary. A similar logic is sometimes applied to sexual orientation. Trans exclusionary gender abolitionists argue that Transgender people do not exist at all and that Transgender identity strengthens gender oppression, some going as far as to describe Trans women as a patriarchal project<ref name=":1" />

Marxist gender abolitionists – particularly those in the socialist feminist tradition – also claim that the sexual division of labor is the historical foundation of class society. Abolishing that division, they argue, would cause gender to disappear naturally.

== Criticism ==

In their book ''[[Library:Transgender Warriors|Transgender Warriors]]'', which offers "a fresh look at sex and gender in history and the interrelationships of class, nationality, race, and sexuality", [[Leslie Feinberg]] responds to the gender abolitionist position, noting how proponents tend to believe [[LGBT+]] are a product of oppression and they will cease to exist once society is liberated. Feinberg finds this idea unhelpful to LGBT+, as it "renders all our trans identities meaningless", and argues instead that passing is a product of oppression,<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Today, although the authentic stories of their lives have been lost to us, many people speculate about those individuals, and why they chose to pass. My life is subject to the same conjecture.

"No wonder you've passed as a man! This is such an anti-woman society," a lesbian friend told me. To her, females passing as males are simply trying to escape women's oppression—period. She believes that once true equality is achieved in society, humankind will be genderless. I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't predict human behavior in a distant future. But I know what she's thinking—if we can build a more just society, people like me will cease to exist. She assumes that I am simply a product of oppression. Gee, thanks so much.

[...]

I have lived as a man because I could not survive openly as a transgendered person. Yes, I am oppressed in this society, but I am not merely a product of oppression. That is a phrase that renders all our trans identities meaningless. Passing means having to hide your identity in fear, in order to live. Being forced to pass is a recent historical development.

It is passing that is a product of oppression. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> which was imposed by the [[Catholicism|Catholic Church]] as part of the rise of [[capitalism]] and [[settler colonialism]], and served to erase diverse gender expression in order to weaken communal ties and subdue communities to the private property interests of the Church.<ref name=":1">{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Several of these saints paid dearly for their renunciation of their birth sex, and all of them had to keep their change of sex secret. In cooperative societies, transgender, transsexual, and intersexual people lived openly, with honor. But in a class-divided society like medieval Western Europe, the Church's legends of the female-to-male saints introduced the concept of "passing"—being forced to hide a trans identity. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Up until the fifteenth century, a great majority of the world's population lived in communal, matrilineal societies. This was true throughout Africa, large parts of Asia, the Pacific islands, Australia, and the Americas. If all of human history were shrunk to the scale of one year, over 360 days of historical time belong to cooperative, matrilineal societies. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

Feinberg also says that gender expression cannot be caused exclusively by biology nor by culture.<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=I don't take a view that an individual's gender expression is exclusively a product of either biology or culture. If gender is solely biologically determined, why do rural women, for example, tend to be more "masculine" than urban women? On the other hand, if gender expression is simply something we are taught, why has such a huge trans segment of the population not learned it? If two sexes are an immutable biological fact, why have so many societies recognized more than two? Yet while biology is not destiny, there are some biological markers on the human anatomical spectrum. So is sex a social construct, or is the rigid categorization of sexes the cultural component? Clearly there must be a complex interaction between individuals and their societies.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> Feinberg documents many examples of cultures around the world recognizing more than two genders unrelated to physical sex and that these genders are not a product of gendered divisions of [[Labour|labor]],<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=What stunned me was that such ancient and diverse cultures allowed people to choose more sex/gender paths, and this diversity of human expression was honored as sacred. I had to chart the complex geography of sex and gender with a compass needle that only pointed to north or south.

So I combed through books, periodicals, and news clippings devoted to the history of Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. I searched for the earliest written records of any forms of trans expression. Much to my surprise, I found a lot of information.

[...]

But did these cooperative societies only have room for two sexes, fixed at birth? It has become common for social scientists to conclude that the earliest human division of labor between women and men in communal societies formed the basis for modern sex and gender boundaries. But the more I studied, the more I believed that the assumption that every society, in every corner of the world, in every period of human history, recognized only men and women as two immutable social categories is a modern Western conclusion. It's time to take another look at what we've long believed was an ancient division of labor between only two sexes.

Our earliest ancestors do not appear to have been biological determinists. There are societies all over the world that allowed for more than two sexes, as well as respecting the right of individuals to reassign their sex. And transsexuality, transgender, intersexuality, and bigender appear as themes in creation stories, legends, parables, and oral history. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> and the notion of only two genders founded on two biological sexes is a historically recent one even in northwestern [[Europe]] where in the 18th century there were still third and fourth genders.<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=When I try to discuss sex and gender, people can only imagine woman or man, feminine or masculine. We've been taught that nothing else exists in nature. Yet, as I've shown, this has not been true in all cultures or in all historical periods. In fact, Western law took centuries to neatly partition the sexes into only two categories and mandate two corresponding gender expressions.

"The paradigm that there are two genders founded on two biological sexes began to predominate in western culture only in the early eighteenth century," historian Randolph Trumbach notes in his essay, "London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making ofModern Culture."1 Trumbach explains that as late as the eighteenth century, in northwestern Europe, feminine men and masculine women—known as mollies and tommies respectively—were thought of as third and fourth genders. |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

The documented existence of more than two gender roles existing fluidly (for example, based on dreams) in [[primitive communism]] also challenges the notion of gender roles as a cause of oppression and [[class society]] (instead of their forcedness based on two sexes assigned at birth).<ref>{{Citation|author=Leslie Feinberg|year=1996|title=Transgender Warriors|chapter=|section=|page=|quote=Two historic developments helped me to hear the voices of modern Native warriors who lived the sacred Two-Spirit tradition: the founding of Gav American Indians in 1975 by Randy Burns (Northern Paiute) and Barbara Cameron (Lakota Sioux), and the publication in 1988 of Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Randy Burns noted that the History Project of Gay American Indians "has documented these alternative gender roles in over 135 North American tribes."
[...]
The whole concept of gender is more fluid in traditional life. Those paths are not necessarily aligned with your sex, although they may be. People might choose their gender according to their dreams, for example. So even the idea that your gender is something you dream about is not even a concept in Western culture—which posits you are born a certain biological sex and therefore there's a role you must step into and follow pretty rigidly for the rest of your life. That's how we got the concept of queer. Anyone who doesn't follow their assigned gender role is queer; all kinds of people are lumped together under that word. Does being Two-Spirit determine your sexuality? I asked Chrystos. "In traditional life a Two-Spirit person can be heterosexual or what we would call homosexual," she replied. "You could also be a person who doesn't have sex with anyone and lives with the spirits. The gender fluidity is part of a larger concept, which I guess the most accurate English word for is 'tolerance.' It's a whole different way of conceiving how to be in the world with other people. We think about the world in terms of relationship, so each person is always in a matrix, rather than being seen only as an individual—which is a very different way of looking at things." |pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Transgender_Warriors|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

Since gender identity and gender expression are unrelated to a sexual division of labor, and the gendered divisions of labor have not been based on two sexes for most of human existence until the dominance of class society, abolishing the sexual division of labor cannot result in the abolition of gender identity, nor of divisions of labor in general, but only the division of labor based on two sexes assigned at birth. Since more than two genders have been a part of human existence since the beginning, abolishing gender cannot result in liberation, nor the end of class society. Essentially, the evidence shows how a gender abolitionist position assumes false causality and is ahistorical. Feinberg's research demonstrates the importance of not forcing passing onto trans people.

The work of Marxist Feminist Eleanor Leacock also challenges the idea that gender originates from class oppression in her book ''Myths of Male Dominance'' she argues not only that an egalitarian gender system predated class societies but that gender oppression in the Americas was a result of economic changes imposed by colonialism.<ref>{{Citation|last=Leacock|first=Eleanor|author=Eleanor Leacock|year=1922|title=Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women Cross-Culturally|title-url=https://archive.org/details/mythsofmaledomin00leac/page/n5/mode/2up}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Essay:Gender Abolitionism is Inherently Transphobic|Gender Abolitionism is Inherently Transphobic]], essay by [[ProleWiki|Prolewiki]] editor, [[Comrade:Annamarx|Annamarx]]

== References ==
[[Category:LGBT+]]
[[Category:Social issues]]