What Do Ethics Have to Do with Social Transformation

From

“Look out for Numero Uno”

To

“From each according to their ability. To each according to their need.”

WHAT DO ETHICS HAVE TO DO WITH SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION?

A Revolutionary Conversation with Dan Friedman

Ethics are what people consider good and bad, right and wrong, justifiable and unjustifiable. Societies construct their ethics based on their histories and within the context of their forces of production, their means of survival, and the social structures that emerge from and around them. 

This course is for organizers, activists, dreamers, and builders. Those of us interested in social transformation need to be aware of the ethics we have grown up in and critically examine the relation of these ethics to the status quo. Together, we’ll examine our society’s dominant ethics—competition, individualism, and self-interest—and begin to ask: What else is possible?

We’ll take as our starting point a radically different ethical commitment: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” This idea—central to both Marxist and anarchist traditions—offers a revolutionary alternative to the status quo.

We'll explore three powerful ethical concepts rooted in revolutionary struggle:

• Gemeinwesen – a deep, collective sense of species-being: I am you, you are me, and we are all together.
• Usufruct – the practice of shared use, care, and responsibility: access for all, regardless of ability to produce.
• Love – not as a feeling, but as a radical activity: the act of giving that resists the capitalist obsession with getting.

These starting points of a revolutionary ethics will be explored in relation to the ethics of democracy that emerged from bourgeois revolutions of the past, the countercultural values that flowered in the 1960s, and the long-suppressed ethical wisdom of Indigenous communities.

This is not a class in moral philosophy. It’s an invitation to reimagine how we live—and to create the ethical foundations for a world in which we all can thrive.

Zoom Sessions from 12pm-1:30pm Eastern US Time on the following dates:

• Sunday July 13th, 20th, 27th, August 3rd and 10th