Introduction ---- The Platform at 100 Years: Voices of Organized Anarchists Around the World (Vol. 1) --- To mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Organizational Platform of Libertarian Communists (Draft), we are pleased to present the first in a two-volume series of interviews discussing the document's enduring legacy with anarchist organizations worldwide. --- The Platform, as it is often called in abbreviated form, was written by a group of exiled Russian and Ukrainian anarchists shortly after the Bolsheviks seized state power during the October Revolution of 1917. The document was intended as a correction to the prevailing anarchist orthodoxy of the time, which its authors-including Nestor Makhno and other active participants in the revolution-believed to be the cause of their defeat.
This first volume of interviews covers anarchist organizations in the Americas. This project is a collaboration between the External Training and International Relations Committees of Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN).
Link to the complete volume 1: https://www.blackrosefed.org/platform-100-interviews-vol-1/
Interview with OSL
1. OSL is a new organization, but it is composed of experienced militants from FARJ, OASL, RL, and COMPA. Within OSL, do these groups maintain their distinct identities or have they officially merged to become OSL nuclei? If so, what did this merger process involve?
OSL: OSL was formed precisely through an organizational merger process between these organizations and collectives. Our understanding was that, to advance in the construction of a national anarchist political organization, it was not enough to maintain only a coordination relationship between autonomous organizations and groups; it was necessary to build a common organizational structure, with a deeper ideological, theoretical, strategic, and tactical unity. In our view, this coordination of autonomous or relatively autonomous organizations/groups, which existed within the CAB (Brazilian Anarchist Coordination), was a factor that hindered the effective construction of a national anarchist organization.
For this reason, FARJ, OASL, RL, COMPA, and other individual activists decided to cease existing as separate political organizations to form a single national organization: the OSL. Naturally, we continue to recognize the different historical legacies, regional experiences, and political trajectories that each of these organizations/groups has built over the years. These legacies remain fundamental to the collective construction of the OSL.
However, organizationally, we no longer operate as a federation of autonomous groups, where each preserves its own lines. Our local and regional nuclei have become part of a single national structure, functioning under a common organizational framework, with unified bodies, shared political lines, and collective decision-making and accountability mechanisms.
This merger process involved several years of political and organizational convergence. Since at least 2021, our regional branch in what was then the CAB (Southeast/Central-West) had already been functioning, in practice, in a highly integrated manner, unifying internal processes, political coordination, formulations, and work fronts. This experience concretely demonstrated the advantages of moving from coordination to a unified political organization.
The general guidelines of the OSL were developed during the different stages of our first congress (I ConOSL), where we debated and decided on issues related to organizational structure, strategy, theory, program, and national expansion. We understand this process as part of an effort to mature Brazilian anarchism and to build a more homogeneous, coherent political tool capable of intervening consistently in the Brazilian class struggle.
2. Let's discuss organizational dualism. The groups that united to form the OSL are well known for their work in receiving, articulating, and transmitting the political-strategic concept of especifismo-the best-known example being the document "Social Anarchism and Organization" of the FARJ. We are conducting this interview on the centenary of the publication of the Platform by the Dielo Truda Group. Although both specifism and "platformism" are expressions of organizational dualism, questions often arise about the similarities or differences emphasized in each approach. Does OSL see these differences as purely artificial and aesthetic, or is there a substantive divergence between them?
OSL: We understand that especifism and platformism are distinct historical expressions of the same anarchist tradition: organizational dualism, whose origins date back to Bakunin and the experience of the Alliance. Both advocate the need for a specific anarchist organization with theoretical, ideological, strategic, and tactical unity, acting in a complementary way with popular and mass movements.
For us, the differences between especifism and platformism are not merely artificial, nor do they constitute irreconcilable divergences. They relate, above all, to the historical and regional conditions in which these experiences developed. Platformism emerged in the European context after the Russian Revolution, particularly from the experience of the Dielo Truda Group and the critical analysis of anarchist failure in the face of Bolshevism. Especifism, on the other hand, developed mainly in Latin America, led by the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU), incorporating reflections on imperialism, dependency, and strategies for social insertion in peripheral countries.
The OSL claims both traditions as legitimate heirs to the anarchist organizational dualism of alliance origin. We believe there are more convergences than divergences between them and seek precisely to synthesize their historical, organizational, and strategic contributions into a proposal suited to the contemporary Brazilian and Latin American reality.
3. How does the Platform inform the theory, practice, and/or organizational structure of the OSL?
OSL: The Dielo Truda Group's Platform holds fundamental historical importance for our current, especially because it clearly systematized organizational principles that were already present in previous experiences of revolutionary anarchism. Its defense of theoretical, tactical, and strategic unity, collective responsibility, and federalism directly contributes to our organizational conception.
The OSL understands the anarchist organization as a homogeneous and programmatic political organization. We understand that, without unity and organic coherence, anarchists tend towards dispersion and an inability to influence the real processes of class struggle.
We seek to articulate the Platform with the contributions of Latin American specifism, especially those of the FAU (Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism), which delved into issues related to social insertion, mass labor, and the need for the sustained construction of popular power in peripheral and dependent contexts.
Thus, the Platform influences our national organizational structure, our understanding of the role of the specific anarchist organization, and our defense of a revolutionary project based on self-management, federalism, and class struggle.
4. The OSL (Organization of Libertarian Socialism) proposes the concept of Libertarian Materialism as an alternative to both idealism/postmodernism and the classical conception of Dialectical Materialism. Could you briefly articulate the bases of this analysis?
OSL: Our conception of materialism-or libertarian realism-seeks to construct a libertarian social theory capable of interpreting contemporary reality without falling into the limitations of classical Marxism or the problems of postmodernism and poststructuralism.
On the one hand, we consider it necessary to overcome problematic aspects of Marxism, especially its economistic, deterministic, and statist tendencies, as well as the historical identification between socialization and statization (society and the State) that characterized much of the experience of so-called "real socialism." We also understand that certain formulations of "historical materialism" or "dialectical materialism" ended up crystallizing excessively rigid interpretations of social reality.
On the other hand, we reject the contemporary advance of postmodernism and progressive liberalism in broad sectors of the left. We consider problematic the fragmentation of social analyses, the denial of the centrality of class struggle, epistemological relativism, and the replacement of structural perspectives with exclusively discursive or identity-based approaches.
Our libertarian materialism seeks to affirm a critical science and reason, articulating class, race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and nationality within a structural and class-based perspective. We seek to build our own libertarian social theory, grounded in classic and contemporary anarchist authors, capable of strategically guiding our political practice and our revolutionary project.
5. Which areas of mass or grassroots organizing does the OSL prioritize or is currently involved in?
OSL: The OSL operates on several fronts of grassroots organizing and social work, seeking to strengthen the self-organization of the oppressed classes and build a popular power project of a socialist and libertarian character.
We are involved in labor, community, student, agrarian, and territorial movements, as well as initiatives related to the struggle for housing, organization in the peripheries, and various forms of popular mobilization. We understand that popular movements constitute the fundamental terrain of class struggle and that it is from them that real processes of social transformation can emerge.
Our work seeks to strengthen the practices of grassroots democracy, direct action, class independence, combativeness, and self-management. We also defend the need for long-term political and organizational accumulation, understanding that revolutionary transformation requires a prolonged process of building social power.
Furthermore, we are advancing in expanding the organizational reach of the OSL to different regions of Brazil, seeking to build a national organization effectively rooted in the concrete struggles of the oppressed classes.
6. The current of "organized anarchism" seems to be growing throughout the world, including in South America. To what do you attribute this?
OSL: First of all, it is important to note that the term "organized anarchism" can generate misunderstandings. This is because it has at least two meanings. On the one hand, it can refer only to the organizational wing of anarchism (which opposes anti-organizationalists) and, in this sense, anarcho-syndicalists, synthetists, and other currents would also be included, since they also advocate organization (although in different formats from ours). On the other hand, several organizations that draw from our tradition (allianceist, platformist, and specifist) use the term "organized anarchism" to refer to our current. In this case, organized anarchism and our current would be synonymous. It is always good to make this distinction, because we do not advocate "organization" in the abstract; we advocate a specific form of organization, which differs from others, such as anarcho-syndicalism and synthetism, for example.
In any case, we believe that this organizational growth of anarchism is related to several historical and political factors. First, there is a prolonged crisis of traditional forms of the left, especially social-democratic and Marxist-Leninist experiences, which in many cases have demonstrated profound limitations, both strategically and organizationally.
At the same time, the effects of the problems of state capitalism-the deepening of inequalities, the precarization of labor, the rise of authoritarianism, wars, environmental destruction, and the intensification of forms of domination-have brought the need for revolutionary alternatives back to the forefront.
We understand that this is still a modest process, given the magnitude of the challenges posed. However, we believe that this international strengthening of "organized anarchism" expresses an attempt to rebuild a socialist, revolutionary, and libertarian alternative rooted in the concrete struggles of the oppressed classes. Compared to other currents of socialism, our understanding is that there is a retreat of anarchism and all revolutionary socialist expressions. Internationally, alongside the rise of the far right, there is also a rise of highly centralized and authoritarian expressions of socialism. In Brazil, this is visible, and we still lack an in-depth analysis that explains this phenomenon. However, regarding anarchism and the revolutionary movement, we believe that organized anarchism has grown and positioned itself as an alternative libertarian socialist approach to the challenges of class struggle.
* "The Platform at 100 Years": OSL interviewed by Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation
https://socialismolibertario.net/a-plataforma-aos-100-anos-osl-entrevistada-pela-brrn/
_________________________________________
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten