Howard Switzer, Just Money Campaigner, Lays out Program.
Green Liberty Caucus advocates for a liberation coalition of progressive and populist forces to advance an egalitarian society. A liberation coalition is necessarily a transitional project to move us from where we are in society right now, to where we want to go. This Restorative Justice Campaign deserves attention. Read here: https://howardswitzer.substack.com/p/a-restorative-justice-campaign-for
Below is a comment I posted at Howard’s substack, and Howard’s replies follows.
Wow Howard. This is an amazing document; largely pragmatic, non-ideological, transcends partisanship, and can be accomplished immediately if we can just get a majority in the Congress, or a super majority to bypass a presidential veto.
What would Steven Bloom, a Green Party Marxist say to this? I assume he would say it doesn’t prescribe a workers’ socialist revolution that takes control of the means of production and control the production of commodities, so your ideas would be doomed to failure? I know you have endured years of circular argument from him that has made your experience in the Green Party US frustrating. Your proposal requires workers to get on board for sure, but the approach to taking power from plutocrats is not a Marxist model, that is for sure.
Pure anarchists might argue to abandon money and establish sovereign assemblies of egalitarians, which your road map actually encourages, but this approach doesn’t solve the immediate problem of transitioning from where we are now to where I think we all want to be, in a sane society.
You make argument for change based on using provisions within the Constitution to make key changes (Congress’ capacity to control money, and the Postal System), which I consider pragmatic approaches that don’t require complete change of the governmental structure and enables the change movement to access systems of power that otherwise, if totally abandoned, leaves a lot up for grabs in terms of power, access to resources, control of state, etc.
Your essay is long, but not too long for sure. People have to read this, discuss and debate it, and start reaching out to all people in society to imagine a society that repairs the earth, empowers the people and liberates from a profoundly irresponsible ruling class.
Chuck,
Thank you for this thoughtful response. You’ve clearly read the framework! I appreciate you taking the time to engage with it.
Your reading is exactly right on several points:
- This is not a Marxist model. You’re correct that the framework does not prescribe a workers’ socialist revolution that seizes control of the means of production. That is intentional. The Marxist approach, whatever its analytical power, has consistently failed to achieve its stated goals in the United States, not because its critique is wrong, but because its strategy is ill-suited to the conditions we actually face. A revolutionary vanguard that cannot command a majority is a sect, not a movement. I have spent years in the Green Party US watching circular arguments with precisely this dynamic, as you know. The framework is designed to build a majority, not to purify a minority.
- This is not an anarchist model either. Pure anarchists might argue to abandon money altogether and establish sovereign assemblies of egalitarians. I have deep respect for the anarchist critique of hierarchy and the anarchist commitment to direct democracy. In fact, the framework’s citizen assembly model draws directly from that tradition. But abandoning money entirely does not solve the immediate problem of transitioning from where we are now to where we all want to be. We have to work with the institutions we have while building the institutions we need. The framework is a transitional strategy, not a utopian blueprint.
- The Constitutional approach is pragmatic by design. You noted that the framework uses provisions within the Constitution, Congress’s power to coin money and regulate its value (Article I, Section 8), and the Postal Clause, to make key changes. This is intentional. It does not require a complete overhaul of governmental structure. It works within the system to change the system. This is not reformism for its own sake; it is strategic entryism at the structural level. It enables the movement to access systems of power that, if totally abandoned, would remain entirely in the hands of the plutocracy. Abandoning the state to the elites while we build parallel institutions is a recipe for being crushed. We need to do both: build the new while taking control of the old.
- The “Bloom objection” is predictable and should be addressed head-on. Steven Bloom, as a Green Party Marxist, would likely say that the framework does not prescribe a workers’ socialist revolution that takes control of the means of production and the production of commodities, and therefore it is doomed to failure. My response to that is simple: The Marxist strategy has had over a century to demonstrate its viability in the United States, and it has not. The conditions for a classic proletarian revolution simply do not exist here, and they may never exist. The working class is too manipulated, too fragmented, too diverse, and too integrated into the global economy to unite under a single revolutionary banner in the way Marx imagined. That is not a judgment; it is an observation.
What does exist is a broad, multi-class, multi-racial, multi-generational consensus that the system is rigged. The framework speaks to that consensus. It does not require workers to become Marxists. It requires them to recognize that they are being robbed and that there is a constitutional, democratic, non-violent path to stopping it. - The framework is not “doomed to failure” because it is not Marxist. It is designed to succeed because it is majoritarian. It asks people to support what they already believe: that the banks have too much power, that war is a racket, that healthcare should be a right, that the planet should not be destroyed for profit, and that the government should serve the people, not the donor class. Monetary reform is the enabling condition for all of that. It makes the desirable financially feasible. It removes the banker’s veto over public policy. That is not a small thing. It is everything.
- The citizen assembly model is the anarchist and Marxist critique built into the framework. You noted that the framework “encourages” sovereign assemblies of egalitarians. It does more than encourage them, it institutionalizes them as a check on representative government. The citizen assembly model is designed to defeat Michels’ Iron Law, the tendency of organizations to become oligarchic, by building self-limiting, transparent, and temporary institutions that can override the legislature on matters of fundamental importance, including the allocation of public money. This is not a replacement for representative government; it is a check upon it. It is the structural expression of the anarchist commitment to direct democracy and the Marxist commitment to working-class power, translated into constitutional terms.
- You are right that people have to read this, discuss it, and debate it. That is exactly why I published it. The framework is not a finished product; it is an invitation. It is meant to be argued about, amended, improved, and ultimately adopted by a movement large enough to make it real.
- Thank you for seeing what it actually is. You called it “largely pragmatic, non-ideological, transcends partisanship, and can be accomplished immediately if we can just get a majority in the Congress.” That is exactly what I intended. It is a bridge between Left and Right, between reform and revolution, between the world we have and the world we need. It is not a compromise of principles; it is a strategy for realizing them.
I would welcome the chance to discuss this further with you, and with Bloom, if he is willing to engage the framework on its own terms rather than dismissing it for not being what it never claimed to be.
The work ahead is enormous. But the framework is, I believe, a credible path forward. Let’s keep building.
Warmly,
Howard