the state for funds and legitimation, instead of actually serving the people. It makes people careerists: Tick off some boxes, add some lines to your resume, then you move on to the next organization. And when the next crisis rolls around even the small victories achieved with this kind of social policy get taken away from us. We have to figure out how to mobilize the people themselves to serve the people, rather than relying only on career specialists, and to do this with lesser and lesser reliance on the state and on the rich.

In the past, groups like the Black Panther Party have combined the serve the people approach with the political question of overthrowing capitalism. The Panthers were one of the largest revolutionary organizations in theof people—but unity is about working through differences to build a political programme. We need this kind of unity, one that doesn’t ignore power differences amongst subordinated groups, but respects them and works through them, to build new ways of organizing production, distribution, and living in general.

An example is the work of the Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist (CPN-M), which I had a couple of opportunities to look at up close. There are different revolutionary organizations of students, of women, of workers, of peasants, of indigenous peoples, of ethnic and religious groups, and so on, each of which carry out political work in their respective fields. The Maoists also have a cultural organization and an armed wing. These different groups are coordinated by the CPN-M so that