Note: The Hexbear People's Committee is an RPG/LARP and has no bearing on anything outside of being a "Model UN" style simulation of a political party.
Voting on HPC Resolution 001-1 isn't closed yet, but it looks like it will pass, so in the interest of "getting this show on the road" I'm going to open discussion on the initial topics from the "schedule" section of that resolution. If there is a last second wave of "Don't Pass" votes, this will all be deleted and the revolutionary cause will be dead.
It passed yay!
I think it's best to focus on roles over the resolution process, but the two are intertwined so there is discussion to be had on both. Hopefully we can get these section drafted into a Resolution as soon as tomorrow to be put for a vote.
A side-topic is to nominate names for the Party that we should start considering.
Of course, but there should be an added exception - if we suspect infiltration by non-Hexbear actors, there should be a process for identifying and eliminating these people. Maybe that can be properly worded later, with just a sentence noting the possibility for now.
Such as the possibility of the creation in the future of an Electoral Police, made itself of volunteers, of course, so as to prevent the creation of a potential subversive/oppressive authority.
Point 2 is taken.
I DISAGREE.
Anyone should be able to propose resolutions! The more power directly to the people, the better. Our task should be to come up with a proper procedure to streamline this process. Maybe there can be a Committee where people first propose potential resolutions. The Proposition Committee members collect and analyse the potential propositions and combine/merge them as is needed, maybe in a process that involves the original drafters.
Of course, the Party Chair is as important a position as the General Secretary of Hexbear and the Chief of the Army of Admins and Mods. The Party Chair should be someone appointed by them in addition to being approved by Party members/ Hexbear citizens.
This leads me to an additional point - currently the People’s Committee has few members, which isn’t the biggest issue. But upon the creation of the Hexbear People’s Party, the vanguard of Hexbear, I believe every Hexbear citizen should be automatically made a Party member.
A People’s Committee Secretary tasked with collecting and recording all Committee resolutions etc. would be a great idea.
Maybe there can be a Committee discussion on the merits of different voting systems.
No Confidence vote for leadership positions sounds good.
I read your post, and I would be interested to see how you would envision a set of roles and positions. Comrade @Grimble and I seem to agree that we should keep the set of titles pretty slim to start out with, but we could provision them early on and leave them unfilled until a certain point in the future. I do think that for our purposes simpler is going to be better. I think we want to keep Party business accessible to our comrades who want to drop in and participate in the occasional discussion, and too much bureaucracy and process could stifle that.
This seems broad, and I think we would need to define that more in depth. Is everyone with a Hexbear account granted citizenship AND membership status? Is it only true initially, or are future accounts granted citizenship and membership as well? Who will manage membership records and how?
i have my own thoughts on some of these, but I think that the logistics are what can really kill us.
Same here, comrade. The main reason this party is exciting to me is it feels like a chance to work through that in as many scenarios as possible. At the end of the day, in the real world, we do whatever works and it all comes back to which of our weaknesses the feds and other unfriendly parties decide to exploit.
We communists are often constantly on edge while working together, because history has made us hyper-aware that anything from an unnecessary meeting to an off-color comment can spiral into chaos, even violence, if exploited. But I'm confident that if everyone makes constant efforts to keep a clear head and resolve internal issues peacefully, the threat posed by fed/police infiltration is significantly dulled. Our real project ends with millions acting collectively, but it always starts within, through self-discipline and cooperation.
Another guideline to follow is always prioritizing meetings, referendums, or other group activities by importance to a movement's goals. We can make a point to save the least consequential decisions for last. That way instigators (lumping feds and difficult party members together here) struggle more to talk us into wasting time. I keep thinking back to that 1940s OSS manual for sabotaging this type of organization (if anyone knows + has it consider dropping a link!), and how many of the tactics listed are just ways to deliberately exaggerate or prey on the genuinely useful urge to carefully consider and fine-tune our actions.
That perspective has made me more confident about dealing with bullshit - COINTELPRO isn't some paradox or unsolvable riddle, it's just a fucking scam run by absurdly powerful scam artists. They can be caught off guard and outsmarted just like the poor bastards in those Scam Caller EXPOSED videos posted everywhere, just with more care and precision. The entire trick, played over and over, is just exploiting the flaws we are MOST AFRAID TO ACKNOWLEDGE, and the LEAST FLEXIBLE TO CHANGE. THAT is whats been tearing us apart this whole time. I'm far from the first to realize this, but I hope someone can learn something from hearing it stated. So in order to bypass that, we must be able to address ANYTHING calmly, carefully, and rationally. If the reader of this remembers one thing, make sure its that.
I definitely understand your mindset as we work through this, Comrade @Grimble, party infiltration and wrecking were things that Comrade @LiberalSocialist discussed in both of your most recent replies. From my perspective, I think it's worth taking a step back and examining the conditions under which the Party will exist:
In contrast to many of the movements of the past which might inspire us, our small online territory is nearly unanimously neutral or friendly to our cause. The Hexbearians (??) are relatively content to be under the leadership of the "benevolent council" (aka "admins"), and it seems to be working out so far. It is key to acknowledge that the rulers of our environment are not in opposition to our Party as they are in so many other places (whether historically, current, online or offline). How fortunate this is for us! I can only imagine that security forces of the BC (mods) would clear out explicit expressions of reactionary sentiment during a Party vote or discussion for us, would they not?
My inspiration for leading the effort to create this party is not that there are reactionary elements on Hexbear that must be defeated (certainly "quelled" to the extent that they may exist, but it's already a nominally communist website/territory). I think that it's time to give ourselves a voice! Let's experiment with the democratic process to bring our humble territory of Hexbear.net to something more than a simple shitposting corner of the internet!
That is a brilliant observation, comrade. I agree wholeheartedly. Let us let the Benevolent Council and their security enforcers deal with reactionary forces for the time being, while we gather allies and resources.
For roles and positions I think it makes sense to add them as necessary rather than creating a bunch that remain unfilled OR a few people having multiple positions. The first is bad for morale, the latter is authoritarian.
For the Hexbear v Party member:
IMO, the less division between the People and the Party the better. The way I envision it, we could make every citizen (represented by an Account) a member provided they meet certain criteria - the account is a week old, is not a throwaway, and the person isn’t a wrecker (which, I admit, is hard to judge). That way, all members (and essentially all true citizens) would have voting rights and be able to draft propositions.
For identifying Wreckers I’d suggested an “Electoral Police” whose mandate can include going through the (public) messages of accounts that have been brought up as “sus” to determine if we need to take away membership (before submitting the account to the Army of Admins and Mods to be dealt with in a proper manner).
For everyone else - A Proposition/Draft Committee can handle the task of hearing various proposals and combining/merging them as is needed to prepare them for a proper vote before all members of the Party.
I think this is a core point that the three of us involved in the discussion (so far, others please contribute) agree on. Everything else you said is relevant, but could be postponed for future discussions or resolutions. I think that we need to figure out what is absolutely necessary (perhaps even "no positions, only process") to get this started. If we can get something minimal bootstrapped, participation in the Party will likely increase. Maybe we should orient more toward process, and the roles (if any) will reveal themselves in that discussion.
I guess I have three questions for you, Comrade @Grimble , and any other participants in committee discussions (as a reminder, anyone with an account is welcome to participate) :
I am thinking that as long as the process allows for editing the process, everything will be ok once we get going. Both you and Comrade @Grimble appear to have understandable concerns about protecting the integrity of the process, which I will discuss in a reply below.
One thing I want to focus on is additional participation. I think the initial two posts (the idea and the first proposal) got higher participation is that they were in the biggest comm - r/chapotraphouse. But this thread was in c/ttrpg, which is basically dead. Literally all the comments are just us three, except for some people who wanted "in" on the discussions so they said "me too" to subscribing.
So, by continuing the discussions in this thread, no new people were exposed to this idea, nor were the people who showed interest updated whenever we responded to each other.
One idea I have is to make new posts in c/ttrpg periodically, tagging everyone who's shown interest. Maybe it can summarize the discussion so far and encourage people to comment.
Absolutely agree, I originated this concept myself, but I don't want to put it on rails toward anything in particular, so I wanted to see how this initial discussion thread would evolve. My feeling is that some people are less interested in these initial stages and we'll pick up some momentum once we incorporate the "Party", and start telling our story.
Part of this is a balance between spamming the site with our own niche activity (which will tick off the BC), and posting to generate activity. Hopefully the three of us can draft a Resolution that people can discuss. Easier for people to dogpile a draft Resolution that may have issues than it is to create one, which should generate some participation. I've been tied up with some offline stuff this week, but I may have time tonight or tomorrow morning to write something up that we can put to a vote, if reading this wants to do the same based on the comments in this discussion post, they're more than welcome (post it in this thread so we can review it before putting it to a vote).
I agree with this.
Do you mean strictly "referendum" here, as is understood to be "a general vote by the electorate on a single political question that has been referred to them for a direct decision."
Any person who wishes to put up a proposition/rule etc. for a referendum by the general Hexbear populace can appear before the Committee (via a post) and say "I wish to have a referendum on x topic." Then, we help them draft the proper question/proposal etc. and put it up to a vote (via a post).
I'd suggest a post, much like the original resolution .
Probably not, at this stage. As long as you, the Chairman, and the rest of the Committee members can help properly format the proposal, then that's all that's needed at this stage.
Sorry I crossed "Resolution" (which would be through internal party process) vs "Referendum" (like you said, an electorate driven process). I think there's a place for both processes to exist in parallel.
Like with many topics, we can start with a "Resolution" process, and later pass a Resolution that establishes a "Referendum" process.
The Committee will dissolve once the Party is incorporated, its only purpose is to create the Party. I am thinking that for a "Referendum" there is a petitioning process (a draft of the Referendum must get "x" upvotes to be put to a vote, but what is x?).
I'm in agreement with your last two responses. I do want to distinguish between "Chair of the Committee" (me) and "Chair of the Party" (voted on later, may be me, but I'd love to see it be someone else). I was leaning toward the role of the Chair to primarily be formatting Resolutions/Proposals and putting them up for a vote based on the decided process. The Chair has no veto power and is duty-bound to follow the democratic process, but then you get into the technical details about how to hold a vote of no-confidence outside of their purview. Maybe that's taking it a layer too deep.