This text was written from a debate that took place this summer at the
libertarian meetings organized by the OCL.--The territorial strugglesthat are multiplying in France are social struggles in the same way as
the more classic ones, carried out in the direct context of exploitation
in the workplace. ---- It is generally accepted that territorial
struggles began in the mid-1970s with the major mobilizations against
the Larzac military camp and the nuclear power plant project in Plogoff,
for the two most important. All those against the construction of power
plants will follow, from Golfech to Chooz or in Malville against
Superphénix. Or even against the Naussac dam in Lozère, to remain on...
French territory.
These struggles were born in a period when the social conflict resulting
from the general strike of May 68 was still high and leaning in favor of
the exploited, but began a slow and progressive decline leading, in
1981, to the arrival of the left in power with the turn of austerity and
a reversal of the balance of power in favor of the bourgeoisie. These
two characteristics gave the struggles contradictory aspects. On the one
hand, they were still penetrated by a persistent revolutionary
imagination that inscribed them in a set of conflicts led by workers:
they were not yet experienced separately from those of the Lip, against
the Sonacotra homes, or the kidnappings of company executives to name
but a few. They were part of a set that also included the high school
students' refusal of the Debré law, the mobilization in favor of the
right to abortion and the mobilizations against Francoism in Spain. But
the worm was in the fruit. Pompidou's sudden death and the elections
that followed allowed a new generation of ambitious apprentice
politicians riding the wave of 1968 to start a political career. They
felt that a new era was emerging in the name of a (post) modernism that
would consign the class struggle to the dustbin of history after
reducing May 1968 to a cultural movement. For them, it was a matter of
working to ensure that each specific movement would construct a specific
narrative that would separate it from a globally emancipatory whole that
characterized the world before. In the same way that the MLF had already
carried out its hold-up on the women's movement, Brice Lalonde's Friends
of the Earth seized on the ecological question to force it into an
electoral and institutional impasse. From then on, the habit was taken.
Territorial struggles will increasingly be described as ecological, or
worse, environmental, whereas in our eyes they are above all social
struggles enriched by the emergence, after 1968, of essential questions
but until then avoided by the traditional workers' movement.
It is therefore important, to paraphrase the Earth Uprisings in Première
Secous, to "bring ecology back down to earth" that is to say, in our
opinion, far from the Palais Bourbon, by returning it to what it should
never have ceased to be, an essential element of social movements and a
communist project (2), that is to say the class struggle.
The city is ours
Their territory and ours
But actually, what territory are we talking about?
Ours is not a geographical concept that would make it a space defined by
"objective" criteria such as "natural" borders, river and/or sea on one
side, mountain or valley on the other, climatic variations finally.
Nor is it a political-administrative entity defined by external or even
superior criteria and interests. This territory is always a question of
administering it, circumscribing it, exploiting it.
Moreover, the expression "land use planning" dates from the post-war
period. An official document For a national land use plan written in
1949 by the Minister of Reconstruction Eugène Claudius-Petit (1) will
serve as a guide to the policy pursued in this area during the following
decades. The Datar (delegation for land use planning and regional
attractiveness) dates from 1963. And finally it is this word territory
that will be imposed from 1980 in place of "space" deemed not rigorous
enough by planners who like to feign precision to the comma, a word that
itself had succeeded "regions" probably considered too old-fashioned and
not republican enough.
The territory that interests us here is immanent to the humans who live
there. It is a concept that exists only through the actions they take to
transform and defend it, and not through transcendent "objective" criteria.
It is a piece of terrestrial space that can only be defined by what
humans do with it to achieve their projects, which are often multiple
and contradictory. The territory is therefore a social concept in which
the class struggle is inscribed in the same way that the struggle for
territory is inscribed in each social struggle, as many episodes in the
history of the workers' movement show.
Exit the factory, rediscover the street
We must get away from the idea that territorial struggles are the
preserve of rural areas. All the struggles of the workers' movement
since its beginnings are imbued with it, either to defend a living space
or to create it. The factory is an example of an existing territory to
be conquered by transforming it. It is through this process that class
consciousness (class for itself and no longer sociologically in itself)
is constructed in a sociability that is that of the factory, often of
the neighborhood, sometimes of the city, often on the barricades, which
we know to what extent they played a role in the architectural planning
programmed by the bourgeoisie. It is on the factory floor and in the
mining villages that the working class identity was formed, and this is
changing. Let us compare May 68 and the Popular Front (that of 1936!)
from the point of view of the working class territory. In 1936, the
workers' fortress was their factory. They occupied it, guarded it, it
became a social place, a place of celebration. In 1968 the factories
were occupied again but the unions had difficulty finding, among the
strikers, enough volunteers to stay there day and night and guard it. It
is not that participation in the strike or determination is less than in
1936, it is that the social place of the struggle is shifting towards
the street to the detriment of the place of direct exploitation. It is
that the places of production are breaking up, subcontracting will
multiply, careers will be more and more chopped up. Despite the fact
that Renault Billancourt still has 38,000 employees in 1968, we are at
the beginning of the decline of a mode of production based on very large
concentrations of workers who have become "territories" that made sense
as an essential place to live, complementary to a limited "private life"
in a family with a possible opening to the world in an often restricted,
even unsanitary habitat. Since the "reconstruction" of the country,
workers' housing has improved and has become, if not pleasant, at least
acceptable spaces, working-class neighborhoods have become less
unsanitary and... television has entered homes, delivering the dream of
an opening to the world. Because of this fragmentation of production
sites, we find more workers in rural or peri-urban areas, city centers
have become bourgeois, there are fewer and fewer working-class areas in
the city.
We must digress here. The proponents of capitalism renamed liberalism
(or neo- according to the strategy adopted to crush the proletariat)
have relied on these observations to proclaim the disappearance of the
working class and a mythical development of the "middle classes. In
fact, what has been somewhat erased is the latter's capacity to exist as
a collective and to bring to life a more or less autonomous culture by
developing an awareness of itself, due to this dispersion in small and
medium-sized production units and the multiplication of service jobs
scattered throughout the territory. However, the working class as such
still exists! Cleaning workers, supermarket workers, personal care
workers, municipal employees are the working class in the same way as
the worker who went (and still goes!) to work with his bike and a cap on
his head.
Furthermore, and this is probably also a consequence of the above, from
1968 the relationship to work is also changing and is gradually becoming
a simple means of survival and not the accomplishment of a successful
human life. In the middle of the 19th century until the 1930s, the love
of work was the prerogative of craftsmanship, the working proletariat
experiencing it rather as a kind of slavery. It is in a certain way the
confiscation of the workers' movement by the Stalinists that has made
the worker a kind of national hero fulfilled in his work (when he had
one); but it is also the impregnation of a "petty bourgeois" mentality
in a part of the anarchist movement that has made the craftsman an
implicit model of liberation.
In short, for a part of the new generation of workers the workshop is
transformed into a space of alienation instead of being the place that
confers dignity and recognition thanks to the mastery of the work tool.
And when, following the student demonstrations of May 68, the street
suddenly became a joyful space, a place to meet comrades, prefiguring
other social relationships, part of this working class seized it as
another place where the working identity could be formed. It was the
salary that we wanted to keep, not necessarily the factory that was no
longer as attractive! The territorial struggle did not only take place
during demonstrations and the establishment of a barricade geography, it
irrigated the urban space day and night through endless meetings and
discussions. It is understandable that, if it was necessary to "keep"
the factory occupied, there was a great rush to go outside and see what
was happening! And since then, we have been able to observe the same
phenomenon, in 1995 during the railway workers' strike, during the Nuit
Debout movement or that of the Yellow Vests. Not to mention those
against the CPE or the labor law but who have not succeeded, however, in
bringing about a reappropriation of urban space outside of the protest
period.
In their own way, squatting movements are territorial struggles. Not
only for the defense of the few square meters occupied to live there but
because they pose the question of "living where, how and with whom?". We
can cite here the renovating occupants (3) in the 1980s who combined the
occupation of empty housing and the desire to redesign the urban
landscape of a neighborhood in terms of social criticism. It should also
be noted that at the beginning of the 2010s certain emblematic struggles
shaped the image of a working-class community anchored in a specific
territory. We spoke of THE New Fabris, THE Conti to designate those who
became a collective whole occupying and appropriating a place, their
factory.
Nor would it be a mistake to consider the revolts in the "neighborhoods"
from a territorial point of view, even if they are obviously structured
differently than in rural areas. It seems that taking this concept of
territory into account is one of the ways to ensure that these struggles
are considered not so different from each other. Not to mention that if
there is not - in both cases - a clearly emancipatory, social, communist
dimension, there is a great danger of seeing the extreme right treat it
from the angle of nationalist or simply community withdrawal.
To get out of France, we will cite the long strike of the English miners
who, together with all their supporters, left their mark on entire
portions of working-class territories in struggle in the mining regions
of the UK.
The factory is our territory
Considerations
Considering that the social struggles led by employees or the unemployed
throughout the history of the workers' movement against the
monopolization of the means of production for the benefit of the class
in power have always had a territorial dimension;
that the current territorial struggles against major unnecessary works,
against basins, a motorway or a tunnel, a waste disposal site or a wind
farm are also social struggles and an expression of the class struggle
that runs through them at a given time and place, in the same way as
those against pension reform, against undocumented immigrants, for the
right to housing, against the Yellow Vests, etc.; obliges us to move
away from a narrowly ecological vision that would only make them
mobilizations led by citizens of all classes united and conscious,
concerned only with the future of the planet and the well-being of some
of its inhabitants. As the Soulèvements de la terre still say in
Premières secousses p. 15: bringing ecology back down to earth means
"giving up on saving the planet... The earth does not need us... It
preceded us, it will survive us...". What for us means diving back into
the reality of a society divided into antagonistic social classes and
talking about humans with common interests as environmentalists
understand it does not make much sense.
Therefore, the relationships we maintain with these movements must be of
the same wood as those we should have classically in struggles described
as social:
Support all initiatives that can numerically expand the movement, but
also in the sense of strengthening the balance of power against the
"enemy". And in this respect, the autonomy of struggles is a central
element.
By autonomy of struggles, we mean that they are not subordinated to
strategies that engage them in institutional politics external to their
own dynamics: those of parties and unions which, thanks to the permanent
negotiation between capital and labor, have as their goal a place in the
parliamentary game.
And it must be noted that the polarization made towards the question of
the fascisation of society and the rise of the RN is an instrument used
to direct any mobilization towards electoral objectives that we reject
not by ideology or morality, but because they are, ultimately,
ineffective and harmful when it comes to building a truly
anti-capitalist balance of power and unfavorable, even temporarily, to
the ruling class. And this regardless of the term with which we adorn
this orientation: republican arc for some or anti-fascist front for the
most radical, which ultimately amounts to the same thing.
What then arises is the question of alliances. As much as it is natural
to fight shoulder to shoulder for a specific objective with anyone who
shares it, whatever their political preferences otherwise, it is
illusory to think that the addition of this or that signature of parties
that play the card of integration into the system is of any use. An
example of the harm of subordination to electoral interests is the
reluctance encountered in the movement against the basins to associate
it with an anti-nuclear dimension that touches on the question of water
use in a very similar way. However, the vast majority of demonstrators
against the basins are anti-nuclear. This is because the manipulations
around the climate issue have made it possible to endorse nuclear power
as a clean energy and it is no longer possible to oppose it if we
ultimately aim to manage the system without disrupting it. Some parties,
such as EELV, have thus become pro-nuclear, by conviction or by
strategy. The fact of having imposed that a debate be held on this
question at the water days this summer in Melle, despite the
procrastination and obstacles encountered, is a sign that it is possible
to pose some strategic problems there... provided that the anti-nuclear
people take care not to become useful idiots within the movement. But
the autonomy of struggles also means defending the autonomy of the basic
structures that animate and structure them by ensuring that decisions
are not taken in the name of the entire movement but strictly in that of
those who carry them. And here, it must be said that the practice of
Uprisings does not always go in this direction. Many of us have noticed
here and there that the so-called basic assemblies too often serve to
record decisions already taken by organizing a kind of mass that serves
to convey the meaning, the vocabulary and to galvanize the troops. Of
course, this can only happen if these same troops resign themselves to
entrusting the strategic work... to strategists and to confine
themselves to the work of stewardship. We believe that for the movement
to strengthen and continue, this trend must be reversed and, as is the
case in other struggles, politically combating the emergence of
tendencies and parties that want to hold the reins and behave as an
enlightened vanguard becomes obvious. The Penn Sardin block the city
For example, the Uprisings (or rather the Appellists) are right to say
that the general assembly structure is far from being the sacrosanct
recipe for democratic decision-making that everyone praises. That
manipulations are present there, that powers are hidden there, that
unacknowledged power relations come into play, etc. They are right to
say it. But should we replace them with large masses where a structured
and revealed speech comes to deliver to the crowd projects that are
well-crafted in their form and in the strategic objectives determined in
advance, without real debate, but which you will have, in the
implementation, the impression of playing an important role and
remaining autonomous? Certainly not. In both cases, manipulation is
present and its degree depends on the ability of the grassroots
activists to remain actors.
Winning
For a movement to continue and strengthen, it is imperative that it wins
something even if this something is not the end of the old world; and
this is true regardless of the type of movement. The government
understood this well, which, after the withdrawal of the airport project
at NDDL, launched into a repressive frenzy to prevent this from
happening again. Let us not forget that a real victory is not only
having won a claim but above all, it is temporarily emerging from the
conflict by being strengthened and better armed so as not to have this
victory stolen from us and to bounce back stronger in future battles.
It must be kept in mind that a territorial struggle can only win if it
is led by people who actually live in that territory, even if it can be
strengthened by the arrival of outsiders in support... but never
instead. Militant tourism can certainly sometimes help to bring about a
revolt, but we must still be wary of it and ensure that it does not
become a lasting strategy.
So, large window gatherings from time to time, but always the
multiplication of local grassroots committees for a collective
reappropriation of space against large, useless projects.
JPD
Notes
1. a former anarcho-syndicalist member of the CGTU who became Minister
of Reconstruction after the Second World War.
2. We understand communist in the sense that it should never have ceased
to have, that is to say, a social organization based on collective
ownership of the means of production outside of any state and
centralizing form of management. Nothing to do therefore with the Soviet
"experiment" which is more a matter of totalitarianism than any form of
socialization.
3. The Occupants-Rénovateurs is a Parisian group which, in the 80s,
intended to design squats as a place to fight against the gentrification
of working-class neighborhoods. The OCL was a stakeholder.
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4273
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