"Revolutions without theory do not progress. We, the "Friends of
Durruti", have outlined our thinking, which can be modified as needed inthe great social upheavals, but which revolves around two essential
points that cannot be avoided. A program and rifles"[1]. ---- The
anarchist organizations that subscribe to the Especifist strategy have
held our first Meeting of Especifist Anarchism. This has been the next
step in the journey of self-criticism and reformulation that we began
some time ago, separately but within the same context, and that led us
to affirm Especifism as the framework that leads to the revolution we
pursue. Given the occasion, we want, as militants, to put on the table
the qualitative contributions that the Especifist strategy provides to
the whole of the class struggle. This is equivalent to explaining the
reasons that lead us to organize ourselves in this way and not another,
since we have a militant commitment to our class that leads us to desire
its abolition, as part of the abolition of the class system, in the most
certain way.
The text is divided into four parts plus this introduction. We will
begin by explaining that, as revolutionaries, our actions are due to the
balance of previous experiences. We will continue by explaining the
concept of dual militancy, a fundamental part of especifismo. In the
third episode we develop the concept of especifist organization and,
finally, we conclude with the relationship of especifist organization
with strategy.
Before beginning the article, we believe it is appropriate to explain
that when we speak of the working class, we understand it in its
relationship, as a class, not as individuals, to the system that orders
the production and reproduction of our way of life, in its entirety.
That is to say, the working class cannot be understood without
understanding the totality of the concrete forms of oppression
experienced in matters such as gender, ethnic origin, etc. All of this
leads us to scientifically analyze reality in order to find the material
basis that generates the particular conditions in which racist,
misogynistic, etc. oppression manifests itself.
1. Balance as a touchstone
We begin the article by reaffirming that we do not adhere to the
especifist strategy by chance, the attraction to an aesthetic or the
circumstances that surround us, but that we promote it by maintaining
that "the balance of one's own experience is the mark of accreditation
of a revolutionary movement", as set out in Senda[2]. If we adopt the
especifist strategy and not another, it is because of the balance of the
previous political cycle, which we intend to overcome so as not to make
the same mistakes and, thus, be able to leave behind the burdens that
our ways of organizing ourselves carried. With the last cycle we refer
specifically to the cycle of struggles that began around 2008 with the
bursting of the real estate bubble, acquired a mass character with the
15M and began to run out after the Marches of Dignity in 2014 and the
Procés in 2017, already showing itself to be very weakened after the
confinement due to COVID in 2020.
Specifically and in summary, this balance is given in three areas: in
particular in our organizational experience, in the specific moment of
the class struggle in the territory of the Spanish state, and in general
in the class struggle at an international level[3].
In the first case, the specificist organization is adopted to overcome
the limitations of the insurrectional, autonomist and synthesis
organizational forms in anarchism[4]. At the same time and in a sincere
way, we position anarchism as the germ of the revolution and the
abolition of class society.
In the second case, we adopt especifism to reject the interclass
strategy of the movements born under the wing of the 15-M and the
national liberation movements in grassroots organizations. That is, we
organize ourselves in the especifist organization and in the movements
that bring together our class to fight for the political independence of
the working class.
We understand the political independence of the working class (or class
independence) as the ability of the working class to maintain its own
strategy in the class struggle, without being led by the programs drawn
up by its enemy or acting in its favor. We contrast the concept of class
independence with that of interclassism, which is the declared strategy
of class collaboration for the accumulation of forces, and which is also
the current that has dominated the struggle of the last political cycle.
The affirmation of class independence is inseparable from what we
anarchists intend to express when we apply the unity between means and ends.
In the third case, the historical analysis of the class struggle at an
international level leads us to affirm the need for a specific
organization, an organization with a marked political character that
specifically organizes anarchists who share a certain collectively
agreed program. This affirmation is not given by a mechanical transfer
of the self-criticisms born after the revolutionary defeats of the Paris
Commune, the Liberated Territory of Ukraine, Spain in 1936, the FAU in
the 1970s, etc., but by an overall analysis of their experiences. This
historical, contextualized analysis allows us to extract valuable
lessons applicable to the current situation. For this reason, due to our
material conditions, we do not uncritically adopt texts such as The
Organizational Platform for a General Union of Anarchists, COPEI[5], or
the publications of Friends of Durruti in Amigo del Pueblo. An example
of this balance, especially in the area of historical cataloging through
the correlation between theory and practice of the anarchist movement at
a global level, is seen in Black Flag , by Felipe Corrêa.
This report is being published in our publication, Regeneración
Libertaria. Regeneración is also born from the reflection, integrated in
the report, on the need for an organ that allows us to have our own
voice in the debates that take place within our class and its militant
organizations. We recognize, therefore, that the proletariat with
revolutionary aspirations is not organized exclusively in a single
organic structure and a good part of the revolutionary impulse comes
from the dialogue, invalidation and accreditation of the multiple
revolutionary theses deployed by the proletariat organized in their
respective organizations.
2. Dual militancy
As a result of the historical balance we are talking about, we
understand that the specific organization must be in constant contact
with mass organizations, spontaneous forms and potential organizations
of the working class. The relationship must be one of empowerment, once
again, within a strategic sense.
The need for this relationship comes mainly from the need to empirically
corroborate hypotheses about the revolution, seeing which forms of
organization are useful, which are not, which needs are widely felt by
broad layers of the working class, etc.
This leads us to adopt, at the organizational level, a dual militancy,
on the one hand militancy within the specific organization and, on the
other hand, militancy on the multiple fronts arising from the
contradictions of capitalism[6].
In the first instance, dual militancy gives us the assurance that we are
promoting a front in a positive way, without co-opting it. Dual
militancy ensures that the especifist organization is an organization of
militant cadres, who will work to make their front as useful as possible
for the general interest of the class struggle. In their militancy, in
the especifist organization, the militants of the fronts seek to put the
particularity of their struggle at the service of a total strategy,
overcoming isolation in their own field.
This connection is not a tactic that comes out of nowhere or that
attempts to dogmatically replicate other periods of struggle, but is the
response to the independence and "autonomy for autonomy"[7]that has been
given between the different organizations and sectors of the workers'
struggle. It attempts to overcome the variety of forms of coordination
of the struggles of the past cycle, which have fostered, in part,
compromises, renunciations and internal conflicts, leading them to serve
the petty-bourgeois program[8].
3. The specificist organization
We can say that, unlike the "usual" partisan organizations, the
especifist organization gives priority to the advancement of the fronts
of struggle in the most concrete struggle, posing as a tool for them.
But this is not the distinctive element of the especifist organization.
The distinctive element of the especifist organization is the capacity
to generate a total strategy, participating and extracting lessons and
wisdom from all the fronts of struggle of our class, to address
capitalism as a whole.
As part of this overall strategy that we want to build, we do not
unthinkingly accept the form that the current class struggle takes,
which we will call the front-form. It is organized around fronts, de
facto unconnected to each other, reflecting the current fragmentation of
the working class and the bourgeois conception of reality as watertight
compartments. If we organize ourselves as anarchists on these fronts
and, consequently, shape the especifist organization also based on these
fronts, it is because reality is given to us and, since we want it to be
different, we have to influence it to change it and adapt our tools in
the best possible way with the aim of transforming it.
Consequently, and based on our materialist analysis, today we seek to
bring together and organize in the especifist organization those people
who share the political positions that we have shared publicly in this
medium and, in order to build social strength, our militancy in broader
spaces is not necessarily where there are more people for a specific
problem, but rather, adhering to developing the especifist strategy, we
participate in spaces whose qualitative characteristics are conducive to
accumulating sufficient strength under a class program that generates a
structure with democratic bases. In this way, we seek to avoid the
reproduction of the prevailing discourse resulting from bourgeois
ideology in the spaces in which we participate.
Through the specificist organization we want to overcome the current
front-form, moving towards a unification of the struggles that
prefigures the organic unity of the working class. This organic unity,
as an organization of the entire class, appears to be possible in
different forms, but it is the balance of militant experience, the
current situation and the needs of the struggle that will determine what
form it takes.
Regardless of this, we consider the content of this organic unity to be
more important than the form, understanding that form and content are
inseparable. The most powerful organizational form is inadequate to its
final objective of abolishing class society if its content is not that
of the revolutionary struggle of the working class. For this reason, we
intervene in the current struggle fronts in order to, above partisan
struggles, win and defend the political independence of our class.
Following the doctrine of the unity of means and ends, only by providing
the struggle fronts with a class program will they be able to achieve an
organic unity of the working class that goes beyond their current form.
Although the proletariat, by number, has been the protagonist of the
struggles waged since the beginning of this century, it has not been so
in terms of the interests it defended. Once again, it is evident that
even if a social group is the main protagonist of a movement,
organization, etc., it does not have to defend those positions that
benefit it. That is to say, in this case, the class itself does not
intrinsically carry its own program for emancipation, and we have to
recognize that under the form of struggle framed in the "autonomous"
social struggle, some advances have been achieved that improve the
quality of life of our class, the working class. But, in order to
improve ourselves as a class, the next struggles that we wage must
necessarily develop towards the horizon of libertarian communism. To do
so, our main task as a specificist movement is the hegemony of class
discourse and the revolutionary program. This revolutionary program will
be the result of the collective effort of the class, of the dialogue
between multiple sectors of the class and of the necessary organic
debate that ends with the taking of democratic decisions and only
reopens in the light of new scientific advances that call into question
the agreed positions.
4. A strategy for revolution
The especifist organization is a catalyst for unifying the working class
in a revolutionary theory. The cornerstone that supports the functions
of the especifist organization mentioned above is the capacity of the
especifist organization to be a center of discourse and strategy
creation for the entire working class. This means that, with dual
militancy and social insertion[9], the especifist organization allows
the working class to take stock of its position, its experiences of
struggle and its enemies, and to apply it to continue advancing on its
path towards its own abolition.
"We propose that, instead of being directed by common sense, the
revolutionary working class, at each moment of the class struggle, has
decided its direction in a rational and scientific way, that is, at each
moment it has assessed its position, its possibilities, the information
and knowledge it had available and has acted accordingly"[10].
One of the objectives of the specificist organization is, then, to be a
conscious organ of the revolutionary working class.
As explained in Senda, the lack of a strategy of its own has been one of
the factors in the victory of interclassism within the working class,
and the Especifist organization was born in response to this defeat for
our class. It is logical, then, that the Especifist organization wants
to be an organization that orders its actions through revolutionary
strategy.
We believe that the specificist organization provides a coherent and
total response to the need for revolutionary organization in our time,
capable of assuming, promoting and developing within itself all the
fronts with revolutionary potential where our class can intervene. We
maintain that this scheme of action can accumulate forces in a
qualitative and quantitative way within a revolutionary theory,
initiating the path that makes revolution possible. It is our militant
responsibility to continue forward, advancing the proletarian cause
until class society is abolished.
In short, we understand especifismo as a theoretical framework, with its
concepts defined on the basis of practice and the result of a balance.
This framework is adaptable and the concrete way of organizing ourselves
will respond to the concrete situation in which we find ourselves. With
social insertion, carried out through dual militancy, we can contribute
to the advancement of the class struggle, going beyond the concrete and
elevating it to the totality of the political struggle of the
proletariat for the abolition of class society and thus of all oppression.
T. Morago and Malfainer
[1]Balius, J. (n.d.). A revolutionary theory. The Friend of the People ,
5.
https://www.grupgerminal.org/?q=system/files/Unateoriarevolucionaria-Balius-julio37.pdf
[2]https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/02/26/senda-balance-militante-de-la-experiencia-de-la-federacion-estudiantil-libertaria/
[3]To learn more about the concept of "balance", see
https://serhistorico.net/2023/06/06/la-historia-es-un-campo-de-batalla-mas-de-la-guerra-de-clases-en-curso/
[4]For an introduction to the critiques of autonomist and synthetic
forms, read
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/05/29/poder-popular-y-anarquismo-especifista
or https://blackrosefed.org/especifismo-la-praxis-anarquista/ . For an
introduction to the critique of the insurrectional conception of
anarchism, see
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2014/10/28/las-razones-del-anarquismo-social/
or
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2014/06/11/can-we-come-with-poder-popular-o-insurreccionalismo/
.
[5]Internal strategy documents of the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation.
Available at
http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/copei-1a-parte-documentos-de-fau-1972/
and
http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/copei-2a-parte-documentos-de-fau-1972/
. Vía Libre, our sister organization in Colombia, expands on these
documents at
https://grupovialibre.org/2010/11/02/sesion-no-15-reflexiones-sobre-los-textos-copei-iy-ii-de-la-federacion-anarquista-uruguaya-fau/
[6]https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2023/12/05/el-anarquismo-ante-el-nuevo-ciclo-politico
[7]"By "autonomy for autonomy" we mean the consecration of the freedom
of each assembly, nucleus or headquarters of a movement to decide
theory, strategy, discourse, positions, etc." This has been the norm in
the previous cycle. We oppose this autonomy with the discursive,
tactical and strategic unity built from honest and effective debate:
"[The effects of autonomy for autonomy]generate an organization
incapable of exercising its mandate: to multiply the anarchist forces
that form it, to make the whole more than the sum of its parts. The will
to be a general organization is not enough: mechanisms are needed to
unify positions, to make adequate analyses and to resolve conflicts."
Quotes taken from Senda, cited above.
[8]We do not attribute these renunciations and compromises on the fronts
to autonomy for autonomy's sake or to the fact that a diversity of
agents intervene in the spaces, but to the renunciation of class
independence and the lack of a total and revolutionary strategic
program, symptoms that favor the emergence of reformism. Since our class
did not have a clear vanguard reference in this period capable of
answering and questioning the hegemonic ideology, the proclamations that
arose for the improvement of living conditions took shape within this
scheme of petty-bourgeois thought with shades of redistributive social
democracy but which, by denying the existence of the proletariat, we do
not consider social democratic.
[9]For an introduction to the concept of social insertion and other key
concepts of the specific anarchist organization, see "Fundamental
Concepts of the Specific Anarchist Organization" (
https://mega.nz/file/9XBUHCBR#Ac_HvBd_MVf_q3SF2DX5wVcfv8YUoxse5P190VSDy4M
) translation of
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tommy-lawson-foundational-concepts-of-the-specific-anarchist-organisation
[10]https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/06/04/el-programatismo-y-el-abolicionismo-en-el-recorrido-de-la-lucha-de-clases/
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/09/30/anarquia-y-cabeza-fria-el-especifismo-como-punta-de-lanza/
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