Among the Platform's central principles, that of tactical unity defends the idea that activists should act with one voice, broadly coordinating their methods of action. This proposition has been a subject of ongoing debate among anarchists for a century. --- But what if tactical unity-one of the Platform's principles-drifts us away from the complexity of social struggles and the local dynamics that develop within them? This was certainly the analysis of the Coordination of Anarchist Groups (CGA), an organization that merged with Alternative Libertaire to form UCL in 2019. Why these reservations, especially since the CGA's desire to intervene and exert coordinated influence on the social sphere placed it far from the synthesist current and closer to platformist organizations?
Adapting to Fight Better
Within the CGA, tactical unity was perceived as an organizational principle whose rigidity could prevent activists from developing the necessary flexibility to analyze situations accurately and intervene appropriately in the struggles. An example to illustrate this perception is the struggles surrounding undocumented people between 2007 and 2012. This was a period when, after a period of strong momentum, the struggles around collective applications for regularization began to wane without disappearing, and the first strikes by undocumented people emerged. It was also a time when struggles against the deportation of parents of school-aged children arose through the Education Without Borders Network (RESF), and when opposition to detention centers and the first No Borders movements emerged. The various CGA groups were involved in these diverse spaces according to their realities and local roots.
Strategy defines the overall political objective and the long-term direction of the struggle, while tactics refer to the concrete means employed in the short term to advance toward this objective.
Niya (UCL Paris Nord-Est)
Far from being a weakness, this was a strength. After taking the time to discuss these diverse realities, the activists, despite this heterogeneity, worked everywhere to increase the balance of power, to unite these different struggles, to put forward unifying demands such as legal status for all, and to articulate immediate and specific demands with a global discourse against laws restricting the rights of foreigners and for the abolition of borders. This was, moreover, an observable approach in many libertarian organizations active on this issue at the time, and their influence was not negligible. The compass of "tactical unity" could have, in a quest for efficiency, led to the position of "we are all committed to RESF" or to any other type of front. It would have been a mistake, disconnected from the diverse dynamics on the ground, and ultimately certainly less fruitful and effective.
Revolutionary unity?
Another example, this one concerning the necessary caution regarding tactical unity as a revolutionary model. Comparing the policies of the Bolsheviks and the libertarians toward the peasantry during the revolutions in Russia and Spain, whose stated common goal was the collectivization of land, is highly instructive. On the one hand, the actors of the Spanish Revolution implemented agrarian policies moving toward collectivization, but with very different approaches depending on the level of support and aspirations of the landworkers, the balance of power with landowners, and so on.
Thus, depending on the geographical area, the outcomes varied: from total collectivization to partial socialization, to formulas where those who wished to continue working their land alone (with a prohibition against exploiting anyone else) were tolerated. The Bolsheviks, for their part, imposed the various agricultural policies decided by the Party at breakneck speed and uniformly, with the well-known consequences. Certainly, tactical unity paid off, since the agreed-upon agricultural policies were indeed implemented, but at what cost, and with what efficiency in the end?
Paradoxically, because it can be seen as a method to be applied everywhere without nuance, tactical unity can hinder participation in social struggles and ultimately prove less effective. It is for these reasons that the CGA did not identify as a platformist. Moreover, the CGA had made its integration into the international Anarkismo network conditional on the recognition and consideration of its objections to tactical unity.
It was undoubtedly similar concerns that led the Union of Libertarian Communist Workers (UTCL) to quickly move beyond the Platform, whose spirit it retained more fully, and that led Alternative Libertaire to position itself within this continuity. The UCL, for the time being, even though it works with organizations that declare themselves platformist, has never formally debated its position on the Platform.
Activist Dialectic
In any case, there is no magic formula for organizational models that simply need to be applied. While reflection and development are necessary, libertarian activists must first have real, sustained, and lasting grassroots social practices on which to exchange and compare them. This is an essential step for building common strategies and, if appropriate, common tactics, which must always be re-examined without ever losing sight of the evolving and complex reality.
Gil (UCL Montpellier)
Absolutely not a Synthetist, but not entirely a Platformist either: the experience of the Coordination of Anarchist Groups
The Coordination of Anarchist Groups (CGA), along with Alternative Libertaire (AL), is one of the two organizations that led to the creation of UCL. Less well-known than AL, it defined itself as a unique organizational experiment, distinct from the two traditional models that underpin the culture of most specific anarchist organizations: the Platform and the Synthesis.
The CGA was created in September 2002 by groups from the Southwest Regional Union (URSO) of the Anarchist Federation (FA), joined a few weeks later by the Montpellier group of the FA. While their reasons for leaving were not exactly the same, they shared a common analysis. For the departing members, the FA, by virtue of its structure and history, cannot be an organizational tool enabling social anarchists to intervene collectively in the field of social struggles and to coordinate their efforts. Furthermore, the FA's operations, a source of inertia, generate practices contrary to libertarian ethics, which contribute to delegitimizing the libertarian project. These departures occurred after several years of attempts to internally modify the FA's operations to make it a functioning organizational tool.
The CGA's modest membership and the observation of a very hostile national and international political situation, marked by social regression and the strengthening of reactionary currents, led CGA activists to debate the relevance of their organization. The question of closer ties with other libertarian groups then arose. The Lyon congress at the end of 2017 acknowledged this and decided to contact Alternative Libertaire, with whom there were shared common ground. We know what happened next...
Gaël Béquils (UCL Montpellier)
Epigraph: A hindrance to integration in social struggles
Icon: DE 2026 - Debates - Tactics.jpeg Credits:
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Depasser-la-Plateforme-L-unite-tactique-en-question
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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