Below, we offer a translation of excerpts from a text by the Spanish libertarian communist organization Liza, which can be found in its entirety at Regeneracionlibertaria.org. --- In the contemporary debate on organized anarchism, two terms frequently recur, sometimes presented as opposing currents: platformism and specificism. More than two opposing worlds, they are two distinct responses-situated in different historical contexts-to the same problem.
Platformism and specificism did not emerge as rival currents. They arose in distinct eras, on different continents, and in profoundly different social contexts. Their similarities lie in the problem they attempted to solve-the need for political organization-while their differences largely stem from the historical conditions in which they developed. It is important to understand this to avoid a common mistake in the history of the left: transforming strategies into universal solutions.
Two different contexts
In the case of Liza, the adoption of the term "platformism" partly addresses this concern. On the one hand, we felt it was necessary to draw on the experience of the Diélo Trouda group and its critique of the disorganization of anarchism. On the other hand, it seemed problematic to adopt the term "specificism"-which originated in Latin America and is linked to a concrete tradition-without reflection and to transpose it directly into the European context.
One of the most obvious examples of these differences is found in the concept of popular power, central to much of Latin American specificism. Generally speaking, it refers to the construction of a social power alternative to that of capital and the state, based on the self-organization of exploited and oppressed sectors. In Latin America, this idea is often associated with the articulation of different social subjects: urban workers, peasantry, informal labor, Indigenous communities, residents of working-class neighborhoods, and other subaltern sectors. Under these conditions, the concept can serve as a strategic tool to guide popular organizing processes and build social blocs capable of challenging power.
The European context is different. In much of Western Europe, the social transformations of the last century led to a much greater homogenization of classes. The peasantry has practically disappeared as an autonomous political actor, Indigenous populations do not exist as a social category, and large segments of the population have been integrated into welfare state institutions for decades. In this context, the strategic problem is often different: reminding the working class that it remains the working class, even when it perceives itself as belonging to the "middle class."
Reconstructing a revolutionary subject
To this must be added another important factor. In Europe, many contemporary interpretations of the concept of "people's power" have been influenced by autonomous currents or by certain readings of intersectionality applied to social movements. This has often resulted in a proliferation of sectoral struggles, fragmented by themes or identities, frequently multi-class, and lacking a clear socialist horizon. In this context, the concept of people's power risks functioning not as a tool for building revolutionary hegemony, but as a justification for heterogeneous and politically indeterminate social fronts.
When the class question ceases to be central to the analysis, struggles tend to be limited to the agenda of the most integrated or privileged sectors within these movements. Thus, demands for the redistribution of the means of decision-making and production shift to the recognition of difference on the margins of the bourgeois system.
From this perspective, the re-evaluation of the Platform can take on particular significance in Europe today. This is not about reproducing word for word a document written almost a century ago, but about reconnecting with a political tradition that placed three fundamental questions at the center: organization, strategy and class struggle.
The critique that Diélo Trouda's activists leveled at the anarchism of their time-its organizational dispersion, its lack of strategic coherence, and its difficulty in sustaining a sustained intervention in the class struggle-remains surprisingly relevant. Revisiting this tradition also allows us to reframe the strategic problem in terms of class power: the construction of a revolutionary hegemony based on the self-organization of the working class and oriented toward an anti-capitalist and libertarian communist horizon.
Platformism and specificism ultimately share a fundamental intuition: without a specific political organization, no revolutionary strategy is possible. In the end, the strategic question remains the same as that posed by Diélo Trouda a century ago and later taken up by Latin American anarchists: how to build today a revolutionary force capable of intervening in the real struggles of our class.
Liza (Spanish State)
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Analyse-comparee-Le-plateformisme-et-le-specifisme
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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