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In Volume 1 and Volume 2 I covered two key concepts of this interpretation, Firstly that the SFP Constitution is a guide and not a sacred text. And secondly, the concept of ‘Special Sections’. In Volume 3 I will cover first, the arguments that lead up to the current version of the SFP constitution and who made them. Then I will introduce the concept of ‘Regular Sections’ so that we have a way of referring to the different sections of the constitution by their usages in-game and in a binary way that can be represented graphically. This part of my interpretation will require 2 parts and will extend into Volume 4

(Regular Sections are those sections of the SFP Constitution that are meant to be used regularly and that outline basic procedure. These include: “Part II: General Membership and Revolutionary Committee”, “Titles, Departments, and Programs”, and “Part III: Voting and Nominations”)







here's a timeline of the arguments:

Sun Dec 17, 2017 10:52 pm

http://sfp-erep.forumotion.com/t1328-discuss-proposal-to-change-constitutional-section-6

-Leon Gutierrez posts: “[Discuss] Proposal to change Constitutional Section 6" on the SFP Forum seeking to bring back the removed portions of the constitutions that detailed what the RC is expected to do once they are elected. The wording looked like this:

“Section 6: Roles and Projects


1. All Party members can play a role as a Volunteer on any Party program, campaign or task.

2. It is the responsibility of the Revolutionary Committee to ensure that the Party is actively engaged in eRep affairs. This does not mean that only RC members can play a leading role, nor that only RC members must carry out all tasks.

3. It is the responsibility of the Chair of the RC to ensure that the Party has at least one active project or campaign in each of the following general areas of interest: Domestic Policy, International Policy and Economics.

4. At least one member of the RC, or other Volunteer, should have responsibility for directing one or more activities in each of these areas.

5. Each member of the RC, or other Volunteer, should have responsibility for a particular task or effort, whether it is a short-term goal or part of a longer-term campaign or project.

6. The following are suggestions or guides as to what would define the Domestic, International Policy and Economics but are not required to be nor limited to be as follows:

6a. RC Members and Volunteers with responsibility for Domestic work propose and lead work with respect to recruitment and mentoring, elections to Congress, participation in the Executive, relations with other eUSA parties and militias, and domestic media and public relations.

6b. RC Members and Volunteers with responsibility for International policy should propose and lead work with respect to participation in the Internationale and the International Brigades, relations with parties and militias outside of the eUSA, the Party's militia participation in wars and battles, sending Party members abroad to work with other groups, and international public relations.

6c. RC Members and Volunteers with responsibility for Economic policy should propose and lead work with respect to managing and directing the SFP Commune co-ops and communes, recommending economic policy initiatives to SFP Congress members, developing and promoting ideas for an anarcho-socialist political economy, promoting collaboration between communes and co-ops domestically and internationally, and generally promoting social well-being and economic security.”



Wed Dec 20, 2017 3:19 pm

http://sfp-erep.forumotion.com/t1332-discussion-constitutional-amendments

-Jimmy Cincinnati posts: “Discussion of Constitutional Amendments” on the SFP Forum suggesting the power of the Party President be decreased by only allowing the Party President three nominations to the revolutionary committee



Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:37 am

http://sfp-erep.forumotion.com/t1330-vote-section-6-changes-with-respect-to-the-rc

-Leon Gutierrez Posts: “[Vote] Section 6 changes with respect to the RC” in which 11 active members voted unanimously to enact the minor rewording of section 6.



Sun Dec 24, 2017 6:44 am

http://sfp-erep.forumotion.com/t1336-ratification-for-amendment-of-section-6

-I ratify the amendment to Section 6 proposed by Leon Gutierrez and that was unanimously enacted by 11 active members of the party.



Mon Jun 04, 2018 1:28 am

http://sfp-erep.forumotion.com/t1399-proposed-changes-to-the-sfp-constitution

-Jude Connors posts: “Proposed Changes to the SFP Constitution” in which he proposed striking out references to Bear Cavalry as they were out of date, and also suggested we allow minor rewordings by a vote of the Revolutionary Committee.



Sun Jul 22, 2018 12:09 am

http://sfp-erep.forumotion.com/t1415-proposed-new-constitution-of-the-socialist-freedom-party

-RF Williams posts: “Proposed New Constitution of the Socialist Freedom Party” centralizing the debate and posting regular updates on his progress of officially rewriting the text.

(In this thread the majority of the active members of the party debated the updates and proposed changes, there were 21 replies so I won’t be outlining everything here, feel free to scroll through though as I may reference some of this material in later volumes of this interpretation.)



Sun Oct 07, 2018 3:16 am

http://sfp-erep.forumotion.com/t1426-votenew-constitution

-Centomax post: “[Vote] New Constitution in which 7 active members voted to enact the new constitution. This was a contested vote and so the vote was proposed again in a ratification.



Fri Jan 04, 2019 7:58 am

-I post: “[Poll] Confirmation of Change to the New Constitution” in which after much deliberation for several months, 17 active members of the party voted to enact. This became the second largest vote on a constitutional change in SFP history and was widely accepted by the membership.


And that's how we got the current version of the SFP Constitution.





Now I will discuss ‘Regular Sections’ of the constitution which was defined in the beginning of this article. Regular Sections are very important as they lay out the day to day procedure of the party and outline the duties of the membership from term to term.

We will be starting from the top down, with “Part II General Membership and Revolutionary Committee”.



“SELF-MANAGEMENT
1. The Party manages itself using democratic and syndicalist methods to maximize participation while guarding against hostile take-overs and other annoying shenanigans.
2. The Party promotes and recommends the anarcho-syndicalist way of self-organizing as a fun and useful way to engage with the eRepublik community, both nationally and internationally.”


Anarcho-Syndicalism is a branch of political philosophy that promotes the formation of syndicates, from leftist revolutionary unions that empower the working class to combat capitalist society.

This has been adopted by the party to fight against PTOs, as well as an inherently capitalist game model and to promote a lively political meta-game for the party membership



“GENERAL MEMBERSHIP
The Party is founded on the concept of an active, self-governing General Membership. Party members are encouraged to bring a socialist-freedom spirit and practice to all aspects of game life.
3. The unique rights of Socialist Freedom Party members are:
a. To actively participate in all Party-sponsored programs and initiatives.
b. To vote in internal party primary poll for Country President endorsement.
c. To vote in party primary poll for ranking of Congressional candidates.
d. To vote in party elections for 6 at-large voting members of the Revolutionary Committee.
e. To participate in an internal preference poll for Chair of the Revolutionary Committee /President of the SFP.”



This section lays out your “rights” as a member of the party. This is very straightforward and needs little interpretation.



“RESPONSIBILITIES OF MEMBERS

4. It is the responsibility of Party members to embody in their game play the free and open social ecology of the Socialist Freedom Party. Power to the people! Live free or die! Stick it to the man!

This means playing the game with a free spirit, encouraging honest and open dialogue, lending a hand, helping other players to do well, playing honorably, and bringing a revolutionary sense of humor into this mess. Such a style of play celebrates having a diverse community of players, tends towards opposing toxic masculinity and narrow nationalism, and offers a bright, playful resistance to the nastiest kind of fun-smashing e-Nazi-psycho-trolls and other assorted right-wing wing-nuts, bonzos, bampots, and fart-boxing cumsplat numpties. In short, it means doing your level best to craft a rich attitude of critical thinking and fun game play that expresses a liberationist aesthetic, without falling into bossiness, boorishness and banality”



This section explains the responsibilities of the membership which to me appear to be: Keep an open and democratic social system, Play honorably, Be a revolutionary and be humorous; and Oppose toxic masculinity, nationalism, and ePsycho Nazi Trolls.



“MEMBERSHIP DISCIPLINE

"Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment." -- Bill S.

5. No special tasks are required for being a member of the Socialist Freedom Party. Members are free to participate as fully or in as limited a way in Party activities as they like. However, certain privileges can be temporarily lost.

a. If six members of the Revolutionary Committee agree to recommend censuring a Party member, then they can put forward the case and an open poll is taken of the General Membership. If a majority vote "Aye" on the censure motion, then voting and participation rights of the censured individual are revoked for a period of no more than 4 weeks.

b. Basic censure means no participation in Party-sponsored activities including no voting in internal Party polls. A censure motion may include recommendations for additional measures, such as being blocked from discussion or forum threads.

c. A censure motion needs to identify specific ways in which the individual has consistently broken the rules of the game or damaged the reputation or cohesion of the community around the SFP. A censure proceeding should be a good lesson for the entire party, not simply an act of punishment. In all cases, dialog is preferred over censure. Censure is not for just smacking someone upside the head for making a single mistake.

d. There is no such thing as permanent censure. Censure is intended mainly to help resolve contradictions amongst the people, to advance the revolutionary cause, not to eliminate dissent or eliminate enemies.

e. Speaking of which. Egregious and constant attacks against the SFP by enemy agents should be handled by sending the exposed anti-people element, after a swift trial that exposes their crimes, to an e-forced-re-education mental hospitality suite and then a reform-through-labor summer camp until such time as their defective bourgeois-imperialist thinking has been thoroughly repaired. Summary execution is also an option in terminal cases. Though it is not quite clear just yet how this would work in an eRepublikan context, the revolutionary players will no doubt find creative ways to express it should the need arise. (See PART IV on INTERPRETATION.)”



This section explains that there are no special tasks required of the membership but that privileges can be taken away. This is done by vote to censure from the revolutionary committee and it outlines what is required to do so. Later it explains that if the party is repeatedly attacked it should enact counter measures to expose and destroy those who attempt to take us down. I will offer four different praxes for how to deal with these awful people.



1. Mass media flood of anti-whatever-the-f-his/her/zir’s-name-is articles to flush them out and to expose their dishonest and dangerous works to the public, such as in the manner the party dealt with Phil Harmony or Chickensguys

2. Counter-PTO if it’s an attack on the SFP by another party. This is rare and impractical for us as we lack the required membership these days to go through with it, however it’s something we should consider if possible.

3. Bash them over the head with the SFP Constitution until they just can’t take it anymore and they leave to go find a commie-hating group to go be apart of.

4. Use the protections laid out by the SFP Constitution





END OF VOLUME 3


~SFP Councilor Max Planck