Index: ---- Essence and power ---- The question of political development
---- It is not the space, it is the moment ---- A transformativestrategy ---- We have started a new year and it is time to set goals and
plan what is to come. For activists, this means marking the calendar and
beginning preparations for a few unmissable events: May 1, March 8 or
November 25. One of these key dates is World LGBT Pride Day. For us, it
is Critical Pride Day, as a combative countermarch to the irruption and
contamination of social movements by neoliberalism.
We don't know if this June 28th "the attendees will be 20 or 25 thousand
people". What we do know is that the number is not going to change, it
is not going to increase, nor are their slogans going to be more
combative if we do not take up the challenge that Charlie Moya launched
at us last year in Why should the LGTBIQ+ movement dissolve? Against
the pacifying effect of the left . Later, he surprised us again with
Critical Pride, Comfortable Pride ", an even sharper text. With these
two articles, the author has opened some of the most controversial
debates that we find today in any of the social movements in the Spanish
state and that we will take for discussion. On the one hand, the problem
of the political subject and its composition, which in the field of
LGTBIQ+ struggles materializes in the distance between the movement and
the collective in a broader sense. On the other hand, the question of
the political program and the articulation between minimal demands and
revolutionary demands, in addition to suggesting a political proposal
that we dare to define as a queer autonomism with a class perspective .
We will take each of these keys by analyzing the author's words from our
own political positions.
However, we appreciate the courage with which Moya has taken on debates
that are normally limited to more limited spaces. We also thank Zona
Estrategia for its publication; we believe that the best way to
congratulate the colleagues of this magazine and Charlie Moya is by
generating a response that starts from honesty and respect. We hope that
with this, the strategic debate and political practice will advance in a
direction with greater emancipatory potential.
Essence vs. Potency
One of the central themes we believe Charlie develops is that the
LGTBIQ+ movement is made up mostly of middle classes who have no real
problems, which creates a reformist political space. Given this, he
seems to conclude that the composition of the groups must change.
The composition of social movements cannot be chosen, just as one cannot
choose which class one belongs to.
Before going into these issues, we want to point out that the definition
Moya uses for the middle class is, to say the least, controversial. The
term "middle class" is not sociological, nor even economic: it is
political. In fact, it is a depoliticizing effect that creates
deproletarianization and that we must combat and reverse. In the words
of Emmanuel Rodríguez: "the political character of the middle class is
doubly so: as a political intervention by the State and as a denial of
the fundamental division into social classes." That said, the
composition of social movements cannot be chosen, just as one cannot
choose which class one belongs to; it is what it is and varies depending
on the context in which it develops.
What Moya seems to suggest is that as long as the middle class (the
majority) - which does not suffer from a vital emergency or exclusion
situation - monopolizes the spaces of struggle and leaves aside the
demands of the working class - made up of the most precarious sectors
and in almost total exclusion with emergency situations - the spaces
will never overcome reformist and integrative positions. This way of
understanding the spaces ends up basing the classes and their fractions
on essences. Those who suffer want change and revolution, those who have
a certain comfort will fight for rather pact-based objectives. Assuming
that this were so, the solution would not be to expel people in a
situation of certain comfort, but to welcome the working class and
assume its demands. History has shown us that revolutionary
consciousness does not spring from the spaces most affected by
exploitation and domination; the emancipatory potential is the result of
a process of conscious struggle. In any case, for us, this dichotomy
between reformist middle class and revolutionary working class fails to
clarify the complex processes of awareness and political development,
because the problem is, in reality, a question of political action and
not of essence.
To claim that the most combative demands that go beyond partial
struggles come from the most precarious sectors is not close to reality.
The working class as a whole, both the disadvantaged and the integrated
sectors, has the potential to lead more or less radical struggles
depending on which political line becomes hegemonic. That is, depending
on the political position that prevails. Today, the task of
revolutionary militancy is to strengthen the most combative by
confronting the pact-making, generating a real accumulation of effective
force through the creation of organizations with political and strategic
independence that go beyond sectoralization -but this is another story-.
The key is the political and strategic line, not the composition.
Within the movements we must detect and combat with strategic debate the
petty bourgeois sectors that establish themselves as bureaucracies at
the service of themselves.
We have fallen into the trap of thinking that those people who are not
in a situation of total emergency have managed to escape from the
working class by uncritically accepting the parameters that they set out
for us. Within the movements we must detect and combat with strategic
debate the petty bourgeois sectors that establish themselves as
bureaucracies at the service of themselves, of their personal life
project. The fight is not one of sieves, but of political and strategic
struggle. Let us stop playing their game and reverse deproletarianization.
The question of political development
For Moya, using that annual boost of 20 thousand people to achieve the
assimilation and visibility of the LGTBIQ+ community is a waste of it.
Therefore, he proposes that the minimum demands be abandoned and that
this "revolutionary force" be used to achieve collective emancipation.
But would the same number of people come if the demands become
oppositely radical and ignore their real problems?
Trying to eliminate a claim for being integrative or partial nullifies a
broad space for action
First of all, the search for -and obtaining- basic or minimum rights is
not, by definition, something futile. We start from the basis that most
people do not start social struggles because of their potential to
radically transform reality. A large part of them join when a common
problem arises or when they have a specific need that is already being
addressed in social movements, for example, violence against people from
the LGTBIQ+ community. It is the most basic, the most vital, thing that
puts people in contact with social movements. Trying to eliminate any
demand because it is integrative or partial nullifies a broad space for
action. Furthermore, and to be honest, sometimes it is the small
victories that prevent strength and spirit from declining.
Secondly, the minimum demands should not be asking and waiting, they
should be demanding and conquering. Concessions are minimal benefits
that institutions have no problem offering, but conquests should be
demands that go a step further. The task is to overcome the struggle for
partiality and build a bridge with an anti-capitalist project, which
undoubtedly involves building models of self-organization with a class
perspective.
To overcome the lack of strategy, affiliation to a vertical party is
often proposed or the promise of a messianic leader is offered.
For several reasons, experience makes us distrust any subject who holds
a revolutionary flag with an inflated program without a route that takes
us to it. First, because it resembles more a pseudo-radicalism that is
more performative than real. Second, because to overcome this lack of
strategy, affiliation to a vertical party is usually proposed or the
promise of a messianic leader is offered -no more, thank you-. And the
third reason why we distrust is because of political responsibility;
without strategy we lose and reactions and refluxes occur. If we have
learned anything from this last political cycle, it is that we cannot
"do for the sake of doing."
For us, the crux of the matter here is the articulation of the minimum
and the maximum. It is the minimum demands that move a large part of the
population to participate in fighting environments and, in addition,
they give encouragement to those of us who are already within militant
spaces. From these, the task is to take these spaces to a higher level
of combativeness and self-organization. In this strategic struggle we
will show who are the revolutionary subjects who are for the working
class and against whom we must direct our forces. We will create spaces
for self-organization and experience and, with this, we will point out
the underlying problems that clearly mark the structures of oppression
and exploitation and the system as a whole, allowing us to think that
another world is possible. We defend the need to build revolutionary
organizations of a libertarian character with unity of analysis,
strategy and action that can confront the reformist, authoritarian
agents or the bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie and contribute everything
possible to the development of fighting movements.
It's not the space, it's the moment
Finally, we want to open the debate on Moya's political proposal. In
fact, we have addressed this discussion in different articles such as
this one , or this one , where we explain the limits of the strategy of
autonomy, whether or not it has a class perspective. Let us say in
advance that we do not deny the need for spaces where we can meet,
gather or develop militancy, but the obsession with space, with the
almost physical and fetishized idea of knitting, is leading us to fall
into the same errors that we have dragged along for decades. Freeing CSO
or athenaeums does not provide subjects with a revolutionary
consciousness, action and practice, but it does provide us with a
valuable tactic if it is subordinated to a developed strategy.
We have to be prepared, as the 15M movement taught us, for social
processes to ignore our spaces simply because they are not interesting
to them.
The autonomist strategy has shown that, in addition to revolutionary
limitations, struggles cannot be built through voluntarism and
quasi-obligatory and idealized participation. We must be prepared, as
the 15M movement taught us, for social processes to ignore our spaces
simply because they are not interesting for the development of their
struggles and, therefore, be determined to move to where they occur.
What can be developed are not the places, but the moments of rupture
through confrontation against deviations and co-optations that prevent
the construction of a broad and strong organization capable of embracing
a strategy for emancipation. As Walter Benjamin said: "in reality, there
is not a moment that does not bring with it its revolutionary
opportunity." The key to his reflection lies in the word "opportunity."
As is clear, we deeply disagree with the idea that "the revolution was
in the shadows." We do not deny its disruptive potential against the
obligatory heteronormative sense or the capacity to offer safe
environments where the needs of our comrades can be expressed free of
threats and aggression. But we wonder if giving so much importance to
spaces for experimentation and the supposed construction of alternative
subjectivities is not what has brought about the change of script
towards "identitarianism in social movements with a frightening lack of
class discourse" that Moya himself denounces.
A transformative strategy
When our organization carries out an analysis of political spaces and
social and fighting movements, it is not to detect their essence, but to
try to reveal their potential. We try to recognize the opportunity and
fight for it to become more combative and revolutionary, and 20 or 25
thousand people is a significant number that we should think of as
political potential.
These notes are valid for all social movements. The questions here would
be how to broaden their bases, how to articulate the demands in a
revolutionary strategy, how to overcome the bureaucratizing and
demobilizing agents, how to confront them and defeat those of us who
want to change everything. If we accept the challenge with all the risks
that it entails, it is because we know that, despite the differences
that we may find, Charlie Moya has exactly the same objectives and only
a deep and honest debate can bring us closer to achieving them. That is
why we take his word for it and hope that more comrades will join this
essential strategic debate if we really want to end any form of domination.
Carla Morato, Liza activist
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/03/04/potencias-del-movimiento-lgtbiq-por-una-estrategia-socialista-revolucionaria/
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