What role can I play in societal change?

A framework for confused individuals...

Power dynamics and social change represents the "meat" of my present interest and in systemic-thinking lays my preferred methodology.

But the subject is -alas! -  a very complex one ...and needs simplification. How to give to the confused idealist at least some guidance? (or to dazzle her even more)

Being a simple man, I believe plots with quadrants will do the job (they fit well on a piece of paper).

And here is one where the strategies to overcome capitalism are classified based on their goals and on their primary target.

Scroll down and have a quick look to the figure now (from [1])

To my understanding, the goal of "neutralizing harm" includes all actions that can be done within the current capitalist system not only to "stop destroying", but also to "start reviving". These are incremental changes with no or limited impact on the capitalist structure, but with the advantage of been more  immediate and tangible. Seen the current rate of destruction vs the state of the world such actions are absolutely essential.

The goal of "transcending structures" constitutes a direct attack to the structure of capitalism. It is more long-term systemic work to change the paradigm. Less linked to current urgent issues, but equally crucial because of the need to be ready when the collapse (which is on a steadily-accelerating pathway) reaches the point where it cannot be ignored anymore..

The targets of the strategies can be "macro-political" if  the target is the state and other institutions at the macro-level, or "micro-social"  if it addresses the economic activities of individuals, organizations, and communities at the micro-level.

Note that everything we citizens do exists in the "micro-social" sphere (we are not politicians or big industrialists), but the classification here refers to the target of our action. Therefore citizen groups to pressure politicians into implementing radical policies be considered "macro-political".

Another ambiguity to misspell is the association of "micro" and "social". There are some actions targeting civil society that reach a "macro", national scale! But they are generally not many, so I think the term "micro" still holds....even more if we consider that it conveys the beneficial connotation of something born out of local action (*)

My interpretation (as shown by the arrows) shows us how the quadrants can be connected to obtain the synergistic effects so desperately needed to transition out of capitalism and into a new socio-ecological system. By making these connections more explicit, I hope to help fellow anti-capitalists understand how to move on all fronts in a somewhat coordinated way.

Connection #1 (full arrows) : T**aming and eroding can lead to smashing**

Smashing capitalism means essentially seizing power and changing the rules. In my opinion seizing the State (not only creating co-existing counter-powers) is necessary because if the bad guys (Trump, the right, the mainstream left,  etc..) control the State they are gonna crush any positive change [3]. In places where the governments are more enlightened, seizing the State will be a "softer" exercise but still necessary, because at the moment every country in the world is in the hands of large fossil corporations ready to strike back. What is needed to smash capitalism straight-away, however, is a sort of (non-violent or violent) revolution...It simply cannot be achieved right now without substantial risks of authoritarianism (due to the lack of broad support) and proneness to counter-revolution.

Eroding consist in the formation of alternative narratives and participatory institutions. Eroding lays the groundwork for seizing the state. Alternative participative institutions will initially co-exist with official institutions, will gradually take on their role and subsequently replace them (turning into smashing). This is the only way capitalism can be obliterated without the substantial risks mentioned above.

Examples of taming are organized pressure groups to demand drastic political measures;  infiltration in current political parties to propose reforms;  mass civil disobedience acts to stop destruction from fossil fuel corporations... Taming, too, can be carried out in a way that has "structural implications" by asking the following questions [2] :

- Do fights for incremental changes necessarily contain, or even lead to, a critique of prevailing social and economic structures, or do they only redivide the same pie in other ways?

- Do organizations that engage in these fights - purportedly to alter the relations of power between the powerful and the dispossessed - build more just and equitable internal structures or do they merely replicate the patterns and culture of the larger society?

Connection # 2 (dashed arrows) : Escaping can help the taming and eroding

 Escaping is living in a sustainable way, to create a real living community, to experiment what we are trying to put in place, restore the environment via permaculture, lead a responsible low-carbon lifestyle. It therefore helps in weakening capitalism by making us less dependent from mainstream institutions. What's better than living first-hand the change we want to make happen?

 Creating communities and groups for larger actions (which can turn into taming) and  performing small group direct resistance actions belong to the escaping category, too. Small group actions of resistance , in particular, can be very effective in shaking public opinion by exposing climate issues and in this way prefigure political actions (of the taming type). [3]

 And so what...?  I hear you asking - isn't this just a pointless academic exercise?

We need collective coordinated action to push capitalism past its tipping point. If this schematic model is a good map of the reality of social change, then an approach consisting of:

(1) situating our strategy in the overall picture, then

(2) trying to maximize the links with other quadrants

maximizes the chances that all the separate actions of different groups will add up and reinforce each other!

To express it in a different way, the wanna-be revolutionaries should keep in mind that if we want effective and long lasting change we need to integrate process and objective [2]:  ecological resilience, democracy and community are both the means and the ends of social transformation.

Notes:

(*)A potential improvement in terminology would be to replace "macro/micro" with "top-down / bottom-up" ... but  probably the authors of the original graph [1] know their shit more than me...so let's stick to their terminology).

References:

[1] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-anticapitalism-democracy/

[2]: https://thenextsystem.org/community-democracy-mutual-aid

[3]: https://code-rood.org/speaker/andreas-malm/  (HIGHLY recommended)