Since September 10, 2025, a powerful movement of anger and social
mobilization has once again been unfolding in our country. Who can be
surprised? Revolt, even a fire, has been simmering for years, reigniting
at regular intervals and on all sorts of issues: movements against
Hollande's "labor law" in 2016 or against Macron's "ordinances" in 2017,
the Yellow Vests in 2018-2019, the large climate marches in those same
years, protests against the handling of Covid in 2020-2021, mobilization
against pension reform in 2023, farmers' demonstrations, urban riots,
actions against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and so on. What will
happen this time? How long will the simmering discontent last? What will
come of it? No one knows, and that's a good thing.
The main grievances and demands of the current movement-or rather,
"movements"-are now at the heart of public debate: no to the
dictatorship of financial markets and debt blackmail, abandonment of
unjust and austerity-driven budgets like those of Bayrou and his
associates, a Zucman tax on the ultra-wealthy and the recovery of the
hundreds of billions paid to large corporations, policies in favor of
public services (healthcare, education, etc.) and to address climate
change, increased pensions, wages, and social welfare benefits, repeal
of the pension reform and a return to the retirement age of 60 or 62,
citizens' initiative referendums (RIC), and so on. What is at stake
today is common morality, social cohesion, and even the dignity of
individuals.
However legitimate and essential these demands may be, they have one
major flaw: they are not revolutionary. Certainly, these demands
represent a break from the neoliberal policies that our leaders-those of
the State and Capital combined-have been pursuing for decades.
Certainly, if they were truly met (that is, with more than just
crumbs...), they would somewhat rebalance the distribution of wealth
between Capital and Labor, improve the working and living conditions
of-of a greater number?-people, contribute to progress on the
environmental front, and minimally reform the supposedly
"representative" democracy. But it is unlikely that they will allow us
to go any further, because they deliberately position themselves on the
adversary's ground and do not address the very economic or political
structures of capitalist society. They do not aim to change the
"framework," they only seek to soften it. And perhaps this is why, in
the end, almost every time, we lose and receive at best only crumbs...
It would therefore be welcome, if not crucial, to expand the list of
demands. A powerful word, the fruit of a long history and a symbol of a
transformative, revolutionary future: self-management. A rethought,
renewed self-management-that is to say, general, popular, and responsive
to the problems and conditions of the 21st century.
Let's briefly list its main principles:
1. Self-management means taking direct control of our affairs and no
longer allowing ourselves to be governed by the regime of bosses and
leaders, whether in the State or in business, who, in collusion, deprive
us of the power to govern our lives together.
2. Self-management must no longer be merely an "alternative island"
(worker cooperative, ZAD, third place, etc.) that inserts itself-for
better or for worse-into the larger capitalist society, but a political
principle, a principle of organization and of life, that limits property
rights and democratically refounds the whole of society and its
institutions. In this sense, self-management embodies the "alternative"
of alternatives and aims to overturn the established order-or rather,
disorder.
3. Self-management means all of us sharing, with full and equal rights,
the management of all forms of public or private institutions:
associations, unions, government agencies, local authorities and public
services, businesses, etc.
4. Self-management means the collective reappropriation of the means of
production to debate and decide, together and without hierarchical
dominance, on all matters of daily life or the future: defining public
policies, the size and strategic direction of the company, jobs, wages
and investments, financial, social, and environmental choices, the
implementation or rejection of technical and technological "progress," etc.
5. Self-management is the collective reappropriation of living spaces to
exercise, at the local level, the most direct democracy possible via,
for example, assemblies intended to determine what is produced, built,
eaten, exchanged, etc., how, with what means and for what purposes.
6. Self-management is the best way to end individual isolation and the
subordination of all, each and every one of us conquering, through
collective thought and action, the paths to our own emancipation and the
sources of a new dignity; self-management is thus the means of
extricating ourselves from the infantilism, guilt, and servitude in
which the State and Capital seek to keep us.
7. Self-management is a long and multifaceted tradition of
self-organization that runs from the Paris Commune to Chiapas and
Rojava, passing through the soviets, anti-Franco Spain, the workers'
councils of the Hungarian Revolution, and the Lip experiment. A "lost
treasure of revolutions," in the apt and beautiful phrase of the
philosopher Hannah Arendt, self-management continues to nourish our
imaginations and must return to the forefront of history.
8. This self-management obviously goes hand in hand with a broad and
sustained nationwide shutdown, which must be prepared for now by
creating the CGG, the general strike fund.
Collective for Popular Self-Management (CAP)
October 2, 2025
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4568
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
mobilization has once again been unfolding in our country. Who can be
surprised? Revolt, even a fire, has been simmering for years, reigniting
at regular intervals and on all sorts of issues: movements against
Hollande's "labor law" in 2016 or against Macron's "ordinances" in 2017,
the Yellow Vests in 2018-2019, the large climate marches in those same
years, protests against the handling of Covid in 2020-2021, mobilization
against pension reform in 2023, farmers' demonstrations, urban riots,
actions against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and so on. What will
happen this time? How long will the simmering discontent last? What will
come of it? No one knows, and that's a good thing.
The main grievances and demands of the current movement-or rather,
"movements"-are now at the heart of public debate: no to the
dictatorship of financial markets and debt blackmail, abandonment of
unjust and austerity-driven budgets like those of Bayrou and his
associates, a Zucman tax on the ultra-wealthy and the recovery of the
hundreds of billions paid to large corporations, policies in favor of
public services (healthcare, education, etc.) and to address climate
change, increased pensions, wages, and social welfare benefits, repeal
of the pension reform and a return to the retirement age of 60 or 62,
citizens' initiative referendums (RIC), and so on. What is at stake
today is common morality, social cohesion, and even the dignity of
individuals.
However legitimate and essential these demands may be, they have one
major flaw: they are not revolutionary. Certainly, these demands
represent a break from the neoliberal policies that our leaders-those of
the State and Capital combined-have been pursuing for decades.
Certainly, if they were truly met (that is, with more than just
crumbs...), they would somewhat rebalance the distribution of wealth
between Capital and Labor, improve the working and living conditions
of-of a greater number?-people, contribute to progress on the
environmental front, and minimally reform the supposedly
"representative" democracy. But it is unlikely that they will allow us
to go any further, because they deliberately position themselves on the
adversary's ground and do not address the very economic or political
structures of capitalist society. They do not aim to change the
"framework," they only seek to soften it. And perhaps this is why, in
the end, almost every time, we lose and receive at best only crumbs...
It would therefore be welcome, if not crucial, to expand the list of
demands. A powerful word, the fruit of a long history and a symbol of a
transformative, revolutionary future: self-management. A rethought,
renewed self-management-that is to say, general, popular, and responsive
to the problems and conditions of the 21st century.
Let's briefly list its main principles:
1. Self-management means taking direct control of our affairs and no
longer allowing ourselves to be governed by the regime of bosses and
leaders, whether in the State or in business, who, in collusion, deprive
us of the power to govern our lives together.
2. Self-management must no longer be merely an "alternative island"
(worker cooperative, ZAD, third place, etc.) that inserts itself-for
better or for worse-into the larger capitalist society, but a political
principle, a principle of organization and of life, that limits property
rights and democratically refounds the whole of society and its
institutions. In this sense, self-management embodies the "alternative"
of alternatives and aims to overturn the established order-or rather,
disorder.
3. Self-management means all of us sharing, with full and equal rights,
the management of all forms of public or private institutions:
associations, unions, government agencies, local authorities and public
services, businesses, etc.
4. Self-management means the collective reappropriation of the means of
production to debate and decide, together and without hierarchical
dominance, on all matters of daily life or the future: defining public
policies, the size and strategic direction of the company, jobs, wages
and investments, financial, social, and environmental choices, the
implementation or rejection of technical and technological "progress," etc.
5. Self-management is the collective reappropriation of living spaces to
exercise, at the local level, the most direct democracy possible via,
for example, assemblies intended to determine what is produced, built,
eaten, exchanged, etc., how, with what means and for what purposes.
6. Self-management is the best way to end individual isolation and the
subordination of all, each and every one of us conquering, through
collective thought and action, the paths to our own emancipation and the
sources of a new dignity; self-management is thus the means of
extricating ourselves from the infantilism, guilt, and servitude in
which the State and Capital seek to keep us.
7. Self-management is a long and multifaceted tradition of
self-organization that runs from the Paris Commune to Chiapas and
Rojava, passing through the soviets, anti-Franco Spain, the workers'
councils of the Hungarian Revolution, and the Lip experiment. A "lost
treasure of revolutions," in the apt and beautiful phrase of the
philosopher Hannah Arendt, self-management continues to nourish our
imaginations and must return to the forefront of history.
8. This self-management obviously goes hand in hand with a broad and
sustained nationwide shutdown, which must be prepared for now by
creating the CGG, the general strike fund.
Collective for Popular Self-Management (CAP)
October 2, 2025
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4568
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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