§1. Throughout All In, we argue for the construction of movement-as-party.

Our endgame with this approach is to (i) hold the plurality of experiences and (ii) the diverse strategies responding to these experiences, while at the same time (iii) creating strategic coherency with (iv) a shared direction.

For this to work, we give some examples of outputs of movement-level strategizing. (See §5.2. Planning the Future, if you have the book with you.) This strategizing process would result in what we can call “movement-level interventions”. These are not strategies of an organization. They are strategically intelligent interventions we do to the movement ecosystem as a whole that pushes the entire ecosystem closer to or directly into victory.

This short note is a rewriting of the paragraph §5.2.2. of All In just to make it a bit more concrete.

§2. A movement-level intervention can be various things.

§2.1. We can decide to create a new organization.

This can be smart if nobody is covering a specific social base or a specific topic that has high strategic potential. A textbook example is the Freedom Riders in the civil rights movement in the US, which was designed to activate the allies in the Northern states to take direct action in the segregated South.

Here is a hypothetical example: We expect floodings to hit a specific region soon but nobody is organizing the communities there. If we create an organization dedicated to empowering and politicizing them, then we have a higher chance of setting up mutual support as well as influence the public narrative when the floodings arrive.

§2.2. We can create a new platform or campaign.

We would do this if a mix of groups could unleash new strengths through a specific topic or opportunity.

A textbook example is Ende Gelände in Germany, that not only managed to get thousands of people to take direct action together but also put the coal phase-out in the public agenda in a way that was impossible through the efforts of existing groups. There are of course thousands of examples of this, not worth listing here.

§2.3. We can change the nature of an existing organization so that it does something else.

This might sound like entryism, but in fact it could well be initiated by the core organizers themselves. The example closest to me is how Rising Up!, an insignificant action group in the UK, transformed itself to become Extinction Rebellion, a mass organization with branches in thousands of cities in dozens of countries that had a major impact in the climate justice movement in the Global North.

Such an intervention happens when the core organizers acknowledge the limits the organization reached and are open to experimentation. A crucial aspect is that the core organizers would be fully aware of their strengths and weaknesses that, in a reconfiguration, could combine to give better results than the current state of things.

This is not just self-reflection. An organization can be invited or challenged by its allies to transform itself. For instance, if we expect an escalated imperialist aggression to a specific country and if we identify a specific organization that could become the epicenter of resistence, we can ask them to transform their current practice to be able to lead the anti-imperialist mobilizations. The rationale of this request could be something like “If you continue your current work, it is hard to articulate an international movement and my organization would be limited to performative solidarity. If you restructure yourself and invest in transnational strategizing, then we would follow your leadership and we can also activate our networks to come on board.”.

§2.4. We can make a new connection.

This can be two groups start talking to each other or have joint action. It can also be a specific group joining a specific network or platform. Here the analysis would be that activating a particular complementarity will enable new strengths in the movement.

A simple example is if a civil disobedience group needs a trust relationship with an association of lawyers supporting social movements, in order to sustain its momentum.

Another simple example is when a trade union starts conversations with migrant organizations who focus on precarious workers. This could strengthen a campaign against deregulatory labor reforms and might also create the conditions for a more effective general strike.

Let me entertain a more far-reaching example related to my current context. A forest regeneration network is discussing which public policies they want to defend together. The entire conversation is about environmental legislation. Somebody raises a hand and says: “A lot of forest regeneration happens in the rural areas with dispersed populations, which means that any project relies on organizers and workers moving between districts. This means transportation costs. We are in a cost-of-living crisis that makes our work much harder. There is already a campaign for price controls. Let’s talk to the campaign organizers. We should not only include their demands in ours, we should also consult them about our endogenous demands to check if they are well-formulated to take the cost-of-living crisis into consideration.”

§2.5. We can invest in an existing organization in its own terms because it could seize an emerging opportunity if supported.

The example most present to me nowadays is what we did about the anti-militarization moment in Europe.

More hypothetically, we could go to an organization and say something like “I think you could ramp up your Working Group on feminism and call for mass mobilizations when the anti-abortion law comes to parliament. I can bring in a few comrades with me who share this concern and who trust you. Someone has to do this and your organization is the best-positioned. How can we help you do this?”

What matters here is that the need to invest in an existing organization becomes visible when we look at the movement as a whole and analyze future scenarios with this image in mind. Many times, when we are not sufficiently movement-aware, we tend to conclude that our own group should act on all emergent topics. This is inefficient. We lose focus, our resources gets dispersed, and the movement as a whole doesn’t get the most results out of the new situation. Movement-level thinking solves this problem that annoyed us all at least at some point in our activism.

§3. All of the above examples are valid. The criterion is always the same: whether, in a given context, they push the movement ecosystem as a whole closer to or directly into victory.

We all live in competitive organizational cultures (direct consequence of internalized partiarchy). We all believe, to some extent, that our group is the best one available (otherwise why would I dedicate dozens of hours of my week for its activities?). A mechanical corollary is that others are not as good as us. This corollary is illogical. Even in a one-dimensional space, a curve can have several points where it reaches the maximum.

To be sure: Many groups may actually be crappy, useless, or detrimental. Simultaneously, a lot of organizations can be best all at once. They might be best for different scenarios. Recognizing their contribution in tandem with our contribution is what helps us optimize our efforts.

Movement-level thinking divorces us from the cultural codes and specific organizational cultures (we can remain good friends with them without the marriage) because the focus changes. We use movement-level thinking because we are outcome-driven. In our case, the desired outcome is the task described in All In: dismantling capitalism in the short-term.