On Saturday, March 1st, the invited event - discussion "on the anarchist
organization in the here & now" as well as the presentation of ourpublication "The Platform of the General Union of Anarchists and the
dialogue on it" took place in Exarchia at the Self-Managed Perasma Club.
---- As we argued both in the following presentation and in the ensuing
dialogue, organization constitutes a movement and historical necessity
of the times, extremely burning and imperative for our movement to
acquire the required foundations, the required influence within the
social and class struggle, to contribute with the power of its action
and proposals to the creation of a revolutionary movement of overthrow
on the basis of its historical projects for another society.
The construction of the conditions for a pan-Hellenic anarchist
organization will be built step by step in practice, through the
militant collaborations that are necessary to exist in the everyday life
of our political struggle. It will be the result of the needs of the
struggle and will be its product. That is why, as we point out in the
presentation, it is crucial today for the collectives, the comrades and
comrades who share common militant concerns, to talk, to meet, to
cooperate, to form a new movement pole that will open new paths.
The following is our collective suggestion:
Tonight's event takes place one day after the magnificent mobilizations
for the state and capitalist crime of Tempi. This date was not targeted
from the beginning, to be honest. Nevertheless, we consider the
coincidence to be ideal since the current situation demands that the
issue of organization be raised again and even more dynamically. The
reason for making this connection is more than obvious.
We are in a socially and politically chaotic period, just 24 hours after
a popular uprising over a tragedy that bears the bloody signature of the
state, capital and all the memorandum governments. We are once again in
a period characterized by political instability, in a period of intense
social polarization, in a period that will undoubtedly signal rapid
rearrangements in political and social relationships. If we do not enter
dynamically into the prevailing social polarization, with our own
revolutionary and subversive position and proposal - which is already
overdue - it is more than obvious that the current ferment will be
nothing more than the precursor to capitalizing on the anger for a
subsequent change of government by the political entity or coalition of
parties that will promote the bourgeois political system to restore
"normality".
Besides, the "diagnosis" reached by a not insignificant number of
collectives and comrades/equals for the defeat and assimilation of the
struggles of the previous decade was that there was a lack of
organization and a clear revolutionary counter-proposal, which was
convincing and could compete with the management programs presented by
the bourgeois political forces and which ultimately managed to
capitalize on social anger on behalf of the change of government. This
is also our assessment, although we believe that things are more
complex. In other words, we agree with the finding that the defeat was
due to the absence of organization, goal and program, the "how" however
needs discussion. Because for a revolutionary counter-proposal to take
hold, for a Social Revolution to take place, additional parameters are
needed beyond the existence of agitation and organization, which we will
analyze later.
The issue, of course, is what we do today. In the "here and now" as the
title of tonight's event is. A "here" and a "now" that presents
similarities with the past decade, but the associations are more
negative, the revolutionary project is absent even at a general idea
level, the issues of the current rage are preliminarily integrated into
a systemic search for "justice", institutional "punishment" and an
agonizing effort to replace the "bastard Mitsotakis" with any bastard
who is found capable of succeeding him. How does our political space
stand, within this context?
We are very afraid that the otherwise correct analyses of the
inadequacies of the past decade have not served as a guide to action, a
guide to overcoming weaknesses and a guide to organizational and
political decisions for today and "from now on". This is made clear by
the fact that we have neither organized political power nor a broadly
formulated counter-proposal. In a new period of instability, the
anarchist movement is again unable to play a leading role, at a
political level. We even see in the public movement discourse that
counter-revolutionary illusions about the fall of the current government
(therefore, adoption of the perspective of an alternation of power) are
being reproduced, a fact that highlights the magnitude of the problem,
since these views, judging by the movement's informalist movements of
the period, seem to be receiving relative acceptance. What is certain is
that our movement continues to be fragmented, with contradictory
positions, moving without a compass.
It seems that lived experience is not utilized in political practice.
The abstract highlighting of "the limits of informalism" in texts that
only we read, the highlighting of "revolution" only in the final
preamble paragraphs of a strike call, etc., does not imply the
utilization of accumulated collective experience.
We have the feeling that we are still going blindly and that
developments will overtake us again. And this time there is no excuse.
In our opinion, there should be political and organizational
developments in our area, especially now, when a large political vacuum
is being created, which will sooner or later be occupied by aspiring
gladiators for political power.
After this introduction, we will enter the thematic center of this
event. This is not a discussion about the structure of an organization,
although we will make a relevant reference. In our opinion, the
discussion about the anarchist organization should begin with the issue
of the revolutionary counter-proposal or the issue of the program, as
well as the tasks that this organization is called upon to perform.
After all, the way in which the anarchist space is structured today is
precisely the result of the views that dominate within it and not the
application of a specific informalist proposal or an "informalist model"
that demonstrates its current form. The structure of a political
movement or an organization within it is created by the principles,
positions and goals, it is not a "technical" issue.
Let us begin, then, with the revolutionary program. That is, our
counter-proposal as anarchists against the existing.
A primary question that may seem childish, but it is necessary to answer
it, is this: do we need to have a counter-proposal? If anarchy is for us
an individual philosophy of life, a lifestyle or a general and vague
culture of reaction, no, it is not necessary. But it is not that, it may
be for some, but in our opinion they have distorted certain things.
Anarchism is first and foremost a revolutionary class worldview, so its
statutory purpose, historically, is to overthrow the existing and
contribute to the construction of a new society. Our counter-proposal,
then, is what this new society will be like, how it will function and
how we will arrive at it. Here the concept of the program is also posed,
that is, the codification of the proposal into a specific plan for the
organization of social and political life, for the organization of the
economy, production and distribution. The revolutionary program is the
concretization of our general projects, the material transformation of
our ideas into a specific, implementable and applicable proposal.
What does a workable revolutionary proposal mean? In our opinion, it is
not enough to simply talk about "socialization of the means of
production", "destruction of the state", "anarchy" and "libertarian
communism" without describing how they will be established and how they
can function in the present conditions. The general prescriptive
reference corresponds to the level at which our movement is today and is
indeed necessary to give the directions towards what we propose. But if
we want these prescriptives to take shape, if we want them to acquire
social and class foundations and if we want them to be implemented, they
must cease to be general prescriptive references but become part of a
program, a plan of overthrow.
Without a revolutionary program and without a revolutionary plan,
whatever we do is assimilable, no matter how right, how militant, how
great it may be. And unfortunately, it is doomed to be trapped either in
reformism, or in the less bad governmentism, or in alternance.
In our opinion, however, the creation of such a program does not
correspond to a group or a set of groups, that is, it does not
correspond to the kinetic situation in which we are now. The
revolutionary program is not a utopian text that speaks of an ideal
society by seducing the "faithful" of a political space. It is not a
religious text or messianism. Its existence does not consist in its
internal consumption and acceptance by its authors.
The revolutionary program, our proposal, to have meaning, should claim
to surpass both the administrative programs of the forces of bourgeois
power, and the others, the bankrupt programs of the Marxists, the
"communists", of the state socialist power. It follows that the
revolutionary program can only be the creation of an anarchist
organization, an anarchist political body. It is no coincidence that in
the history of our movement, we see such programs only from anarchist
organizations that played a catalytic revolutionary role in the class
struggle. The Bakuninist Alliance had a revolutionary program, the CNT
had a revolutionary program, in Russia and the Ukraine there was neither
an organization nor a program, which is why the anarchists were defeated
by the Bolsheviks and why DeloTruda published the "Platform", pointing
out precisely these deficiencies.
Certainly, the revolutionary programs of our ideological ancestors were
addressed to another era. The programs, of course, remain the same: the
system in which they were born was not "surpassed", the class struggle
did not cease to exist, the working class was not "institutionalized" or
assimilated by automation as many claim. But certainly, the times are
different. We do not live in rural semi-industrial societies, it is not
enough to simply take the land and the factories as our comrades
proposed a century ago. The socialization that must take place today is
broader, the issues that a revolution will be called upon to manage,
such as new technologies and energy, are more complex. We are therefore
talking about the need for a modern revolutionary program that will
contain viable answers to all of this.
We now enter into equally difficult questions. What paths should we take
so that the revolutionary program is realistic for more and more people
of the working class, the poor popular strata, etc.? How will it be
implemented and through what process?
We should clarify the following. Overthrowing the existing order of
things and replacing it with a new social organization of collective
life can only occur revolutionaryly. Revolution is not a process in the
sphere of the "spirit", an individual affair of each one "to make
ourselves better". To copy Bakunin's words, revolution means war. It is
that process, in which the new society that has been born within the
shell of the old one, clashes to succeed it. Therefore, by revolution we
do not mean the "structures of self-management", a moral transformation
of social relations, the creation of "islands" and "communities" of
freedom in which we will idealistically live anarchy in the here and
now. This conception of revolution, in our view, is a distortion of what
it means to build counter-paradigms and a "new society in the shell of
the old", as well as a distortion of what revolutions really are within
social and class history. In our view, this conception is not
revolutionary but the definition of alternation. In reality, this
conception proposes the creation of a parallel universe that coexists
with state and capitalist barbarity and does not aim to overthrow it,
but only to create deflating illusions, about the possibility of a
supposedly "unconventional" life within the existing.
In order to build a new society, to emancipate ourselves from the
shackles of the state and capital, the prerequisite is the breaking of
these shackles from which we will not be freed by the grace of state and
capitalist power. Therefore, it is necessary to crush the armed
mechanism of protection of our exploiters, to seize their strongholds,
to seize the decision-making centers. Without the destruction of the
state and capital, it is inconceivable to speak of revolution.
And if to some comrades this already seems close to the imaginary "night
of the occupation of the palaces", let us refute them right away.
Bakunin, whom we have cited, did not only say that revolution means war.
He also spoke out against revolution carried out by "decrees". All our
classics opposed the idea of a "political revolution" and proposed a
social revolution. In practice, this means that revolution is not only
the "moment" of the explosion, nor that revolution is carried out only
by organized fighters, a vanguard or an army of the revolutionary elite
on the model of the now outdated "Blancism".
So, we certainly do not believe in a revolution that is carried out
thanks to a political organization that comes from outside and pulls the
movements by the hand. That is why we do not believe that in 2010-12 an
opportunity for revolution was missed, but an opportunity for the
construction of a libertarian revolutionary movement which, if it had
been born then, things would be different today. In 2010-12, not only
was political organization, a program and a plan of action missing.
Class organization was also missing, class-revolutionary consciousness
was missing in the so-called "anti-memorandum movement", the structures
and organs of social self-management, the cells of the new society were
missing.
A political organization is not enough to bring about the revolution,
nor does a "political revolution" have any relation to what has been
proposed as a revolution by the anarchist tradition. Social revolution
is not only about revolutionaries "rushing into" a social upheaval.
However, as much as we disagree with an invocation of revolution that
only takes into account its armed version or its "political" part, we
disagree even more with the perception of revolution, generally and
vaguely, as a process of "building a new society on the shell of the
old" that does not take into account that without the conflict, without
the revolutionary outbreak, this "new society" will simply be
assimilated or suppressed by the "old" (the existing one).
We thus come to two key questions. First, who makes the revolution, or
in other words, the question of the revolutionary subject. The second is
the construction of "paradigms," the construction of structures-cells
that foreshadow the new society or what has historically been called
"the construction of the new society within the shell of the old." We
will briefly deal with both and if necessary, we will return to the
discussion, because if we develop exhaustive approaches, it will not
last us all evening.
First, the question of the revolutionary subject.
Who makes the revolution?
If we deny a political revolution, that is, if we deny that the
revolutionary subject is the political subject that "rises" (in the name
of the "people" or the working class), then who makes the revolution?
Society in general? The people? These concepts are by their very nature
interclass and encompass competing social interests if we take them as
universal without other qualifications. Then, do the "individual" and
all the "individuals" have "revolutionary consciousness"? But what
revolutionary consciousness can the detached "individuals" have and what
is "individual consciousness" if not the bourgeois ideology of the
individual in its various (always individualistic) versions? Can there
be revolutionary consciousness if there is no class consciousness? Our
opinion is that no, as we think that no is the answer to the question in
the entire anarchist tradition (except for its individualist and
lifestyle side, which anyway denies the hypothesis of revolution).
The revolutionary subject is a collective subject and not an
articulation of individuals and their "ideas". First of all, the
revolutionary subject is the class subject: it is the working class and
its allied strata, together with those who identify with and adopt its
interests, namely the cessation of the exploitation of man by man. The
anarchist movement is a product of the class struggle and the labor
movement of the 19th century. What it aims at is the class to which it
belongs, to rebel and not to rebel itself in its name, separately.
Anarchists rebel as part of the class revolutionary subject and not as a
detached political subject.
However, the revolution cannot happen by itself, spontaneously. If we
believed in such a thing, there would be no point in being anarchists,
the historical development itself would bring anarchy and a classless
society. If we are anarchists, it is because we believe that as part of
our class, we have a political and a revolutionary role to play for its
liberation and consequently for the liberation of the whole society.
Ideas - like ours, the anarchist ones - are necessary for the Social
Revolution. Without them, the world that the Revolution will build
cannot be projected. But we must never forget that ideas and
consciousness do not give birth to the revolutionary subject:
revolutionary ideas have as their basis the material objective
conditions of existence. These are what place the revolutionary subjects
in history, ideas equip them.
Here we also come to the issue of organizational dualism, an issue par
excellence that is linked to the views expressed by the DeloTruda
Platform. Organizational dualism or what we often define as
"distinguishing levels of organization" means the need to organize
ourselves both as anarchists (at the political level) and as part of our
class (at the class level). This "dualism" is what answers both the
issue of political or social revolution and the issue of the subject. If
we believed only in a political revolution, we would organize only as
anarchists, probably to seize political power and "give" it to the
people. If we believed that the development of the class struggle is
sufficient for revolution, we would consider that economic and class
organization is sufficient, as the anarcho-syndicalist comrades propose,
or that we should create many communities within the existing one that,
as they multiply, will simultaneously transform the core of social
relations. We do not believe in any of this.
Organizational dualism is important for two reasons. First, regarding
the political level, because as anarchists if we want our ideas and
projects to determine the social and class struggle, we should be united
around specific positions and around a specific program, which should be
expressed within a purely anarchist organization that propagates them
and fights for their wide dissemination and establishment. Second,
regarding the class level, because our class, both within the sphere of
work and at the social level (in the neighborhood, etc.), should be
organized independently and without guardianship. It is important to
participate in mass organizations not of course for reasons of
guardianship or only to propagate our positions and ideas, but precisely
because we too, first of all, are part of the exploited and must be part
of their independent and self-directed organization.
Finally, let us say a few words about the issue of the "paradigm", the
"structures", the "building of a new society on the shell of the old".
Indeed, if we want a new society, we must here, immediately, now, build
its foundations. When we say that a political organization is not enough
to make the revolution happen, we mean precisely that both the social
and the class organization are needed at the same time, which, starting
today, will begin to build the new society. The question is "how".
In what we call today "structures" or "anti-structures" we see many
positives and many negatives. In any case, we can only evaluate as
positive the action of social groups in the creation of medical
structures, collective kitchens or our practices such as the occupation
of buildings (although it is not a panacea, the issue of evaluation is
what you do within a building and not only the "ownership
relationship"). On the other hand, we do not see how exactly you create
a new society through cooperative enterprises or food distribution
actions with endless flashes falling on paper bags to later promote
political groups or what is the use of photographing homeless people who
have just received a portion of food. Nor do we believe that we will
overthrow the dominant urban education if we hold self-education courses
in our spaces or if we create a few cultural groups against commodified
consumer art. We are completely in favor of these projects, but we do
not see how they constitute the foundations of a new society.
In our opinion, we should put forward a plan that can connect a series
of structures and projects and can actually develop them to the level of
a prefiguration of a new society and do it seriously. And this plan
should be part of our revolutionary program or counter-proposal: it
should be the part of its immediate implementation. Indeed, we need
socialized buildings and lands, we need libertarian schools and social
centers, we need social clinics and structures of collective management
and mutual aid. Just as we also need grassroots workers' unions that
will tomorrow take over the management of production, just as we need
popular assemblies in every neighborhood, just as we need committees for
the socialization of parks, land, buildings and self-defense structures
that will guard them.
In order for all of the above to become a reality, we need organization,
a lot of work and a gathering of forces, we need a revolutionary plan
and program, as well as the understanding that only revolutionary a new
society can emerge. Otherwise, whatever we build, we can lose it
overnight and, even worse, we can protest against the evil government
that took it from us, as if the issue is simply to "exist" as a
microcosm on the fringes of society and the state "allows" us to exist.
Building a new society is the responsibility of the workers themselves
and all the exploited, and not islands that we will build as anarchists
for ourselves, to spend it "unconventionally" after 10 hours of wage
slavery. In any case, we must simply help in this direction of creating
structures, counter-paradigms and cells of the new society, but at the
same time with our political struggle and the effort to gain ground for
the revolutionary perspective as a necessity and as the only solution
and way out of the barbarity of capitalism and the state.
What kind of organization do we want?
We will conclude our presentation with our proposal on the issue of
anarchist organization. An organization that, as we have already said,
should be built around a revolutionary program, around a common method
of action and promotion, around specific and clear ideological
principles, and around a commonly agreed set of political positions and
militant, tactical, and strategic directions.
The anarchist organization that we propose has as its cell primary
nuclei of regions and not collectives and groups in the way we know them
in the anarchist space in Greece today. If we said in the previous
decade that the gap between groups and unorganized comrades is large,
now it is chaotic. There is neither a sufficient number of collectives
nor the level of agreements for a new federalization effort. Beyond
that, we do not agree with this model itself and if asked we will
explain it in the discussion that will follow.
We agree, however, on federalism and recognize it both as a pillar of an
organization in the present, and as a characteristic of the society for
which we are fighting. We do not believe in a centralized type of
organization. Therefore, the nuclei of regions and places, in which we
see the cells of a new anarchist organization, should be federalized: at
the suburban and regional level, at the city level and at the national
level.
To formalize it, each region and an anarchist nucleus and each suburb or
city, a federation of nuclei (e.g. organized in regions). In small
cities, towns and hopefully also in villages, there could be a nucleus
that unites peripherally with neighboring cities or forms a region on
its own (e.g. in small cities).
The nuclei of the organization will have autonomous action at the
regional and city levels and will be coordinated at a secondary level in
the suburbs and regions. Each nucleus will appoint cyclically recallable
and elected representatives at a third level, in a central unifying
political body (e.g. a political council or a coordinating committee).
The central pan-Hellenic body will be an expression of the nuclei, it
will be their point of union.
The organizational structure we describe ensures both the unifying
character of an anarchist organization, as well as its federalism and
anti-hierarchical characteristics. For it must be said that the usual
criticism according to which "organization brings hierarchies" is
perhaps one of the greatest movement myths. It is enough to see how an
"open assembly" works, in which a few decide (or the groups have decided
in advance the framework "that they will pass") and to imagine how an
anarchist organization would decide, whose decisions would be taken from
the bottom (from the nuclei) to the top (in the regions and the
coordinating body).
Let us also ask ourselves, the limits of action of an open assembly of
50 or 100 people who unite only on the basis of a current event, without
a real framework of goals and positions that unites them and without
commitments, and let us contrast it with the action of an organization
of hundreds and later thousands and what it can really do and achieve.
It is clear that informality cannot claim laurels of effectiveness. It
is simply the "easiest".
In any case, in order for this organizational model that we propose to
function "ideally", this organization must be based on solid agreements
and not be a synthetic organization of ideological inertia.
This is why, after all, we advocate the organization of the "trend" as
advocated by the anarchists of DeloTruda through the "Platform" and not
the multi-trend organization that is doomed to degenerate from
cannibalism, militant immobility due to contradictions in goals,
self-referentiality and ultimately hierarchies or dissolution.
Let us say, at this point, to go back to the "here and now", that if we
considered that there were conditions for the establishment of an
anarchist organization with the above characteristics, we would have
already taken relevant initiatives. The last thing we would like to do,
however, is to form a small-member organization-stamp. Organization is
not our ideological obsession, if it were we would already be moving
towards its formation, just to satisfy ourselves. In our opinion, it is
a historical necessity for the anarchist movement, the organization, we
are optimistic that the path towards it will open soon and the messages
we have been receiving recently are very positive. However, the
discussion should be opened wider, more comrades should be involved,
step by step more and more people should adopt this need for perspective.
The initiatives that must be taken immediately should be aimed at
rallying a dynamic around the organizational perspective, in order to be
able to "open" the organizational issue practically, at a national level.
For us, it is necessary to immediately form a new movement pole, made up
of collective groups and comrades who agree that organization is a
necessity. We should come into contact, talk, coordinate, create common
fighting formations with the great battles that must be fought in every
field of struggle of our times as the main focus. This pole should, in
our opinion, be formed regardless of whether we all agree precisely on
the issue of organization and whether we will all move towards it
together. The unification and cooperation of more and more comrades who
meet on the basis of common agreements will be an important step towards
shaping something healthier within the anarchist space, outside of
informal, disposable collaborations, heterogeneous formations,
opportunistic alliances for internal "bread and spectacles" and
ideological-political monstrosities that we have seen in recent years
under the signatures of "anarchists and communists."
We also consider it necessary to urge more and more comrades to
organize, even at a first level. To stop mobilizing as "individuals"
without political responsibilities. First of all, so that they
themselves can contribute to political developments, to be able to take
initiatives and not simply follow the calls of others. It is not
possible, on the one hand, to say as anarchists that we are against
entrusting our lives to others and on the other hand not to organize
ourselves and entrust others to pull the strings of our political space.
More specifically, regarding the organizational perspective, our view is
that those of us who have agreements should not simply state them on a
theoretical level or wait for the moment of an organizational call to
meet. We should immediately collaborate and through this collaboration
we should shape the conditions that will allow for the next step.
The anarchist movement internationally is at a critical historical
turning point. It has to choose between two paths. The first is that of
protest, of the unconventional lifestyle of individuals, of
alternativeism and sometimes of agitator behind movements in which it
constitutes nothing more than a noisy tail. This path leads to defeat
and shrinkage, both numerically and in terms of social and class
influence. If this is what we want, we do not need to change anything at
all. The second path is that of a leading militant contribution to the
social and class struggle, on the basis of a revolutionary plan of
overthrow. The end of this path is the triumph of the Social Revolution,
the triumph of our just, timely and historically imperative proposals.
If we want to walk the second path, it is certainly a rough one and has
terrible difficulties, but it is the only one that will win. It is in
our hands what kind of movement we will have and what kind of society we
will live in.
INITIATIVE OF ANARCHIST SAINTS OF ANARGYROS - KAMATEROS
https://anarchism.espivblogs.net/2025/03/03/eisigisi-stin-ekdilosi-syzitisi-i-anarchiki-organosi-sto-edo-amp-amp-tora-sto-aytodiacheirizomeno-steki-perasma/
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