Faced with the dead ends of reformism and avant-garde authoritarian tendencies, Black Rose/Rosa Negra (BRRN) reaffirms in the United States the relevance of organized anarchism, rooted in the daily struggles of the exploited and oppressed. Heir to Bakunin, platformism, and specificism, the organization advocates a strategy that combines libertarian political intervention with the building of popular power capable of preparing the revolutionary transformation of society.
Black Rose/Rosa Negra is a national anarchist political organization with local groups (chapters) in cities and regions across the so-called United States. We are an organization rooted in the tradition of organizational dualism, which originates from the writings of Mikhail Bakunin during his participation in the First International.
Modern expressions of organizational dualism can be found both in platformism, referring to the recommendations set forth in the Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists, published in 1926 by the Diélo Trouda group, and in specificism, which draws similar lessons from the history and activities of the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (fAu).
Organization as a Weapon
Organizational dualism approaches the question of revolutionary strategy by invoking the necessity of two levels of organization. The level of popular organization brings together individuals based on their location within the social or economic structures where they are positioned, with the sole aim of generating pressure against capital and the state in order to extract concessions; the classic example of this level is the trade union.
BRRN's organizing work aims to build mass movements: tenants' unions, neighborhood assemblies, workplace campaigns, student organizations, prisoner mobilization, and advocacy for criminalized communities.
Credits: BRRN
The dualistic organizational understanding of popular organizing stems from the analysis that posits that capitalist and statist society-whose functioning and reproduction rely on exploitation and domination-generates conflicting class interests and, consequently, class struggle. This struggle is generally oriented toward defending small gains rather than toward a complete transformation of the fundamental relations and structures of society. In the case of unions, it is widely understood that almost all of them (particularly in the United States) aim to secure wage increases and better working conditions rather than the abolition of capitalism. There are many reasons for this economic stance, ranging from a lack of self-organization among activists to the often reactionary obstacles created by bureaucracy within grassroots organizations themselves.
Engaging in the Class Struggle
Despite these obstacles, revolutionary anarchists understand that social revolution can only be achieved with and within grassroots organizations. BRRN strategically prioritizes four "sectors" of activity within the social or grassroots movement: the world of work, tenants and the territorial question, the student question, and prisoners. Each of these sectors contains numerous organizations with different structures, goals, and strategies. We are looking for these grassroots organizations that build springboards to mobilize the dominated classes in each of these sectors. This consequently excludes organizations such as NGOs, which generally aim to address social problems on behalf of the oppressed classes. As we have already noted, popular organizations in themselves do not automatically embody our principles as revolutionary anarchists. What is important is that they succeed in organizing members of the oppressed classes, thus creating a potential for transformation into fighting organizations oriented toward the horizon of social revolution and self-management.
Toward People's Power
The political level of organization brings together activists based on shared ideological, strategic, and tactical commitment. For anarchists, this level refers to the political organization of revolutionary anarchists-BRRN or UCL in our respective cases. Activists within the revolutionary organization operate at the grassroots level, where we constitute an "active minority" whose goal is the adoption of our principles: direct action, class struggle, militant democracy, self-management, internationalism, and so on. Distancing itself from the Leninist conception of the vanguard, the libertarian active minority does not prioritize seizing power or the bureaucracy through grassroots organization in order to artificially impose our principles from above. Instead, the libertarian active minority aims to perpetuate itself at the grassroots level by encouraging, organizing, and catalyzing the struggles that our values set in motion.
Drawing inspiration from the work of anarchist thinkers such as José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton, Scott N. Nappalos, and Pablo Barbanegra Avendaño, BRRN attempts to adopt a third level-the so-called "intermediate" level-of analysis and activity. The grassroots level of action brings together actors based on their shared structural position, whereas the political level unites through convictions and a shared ideological vision. The intermediate level operates between the two, acknowledging that groups and networks develop through grassroots organizations or play a leading role in their creation where they do not yet exist.
Turning the Tide is a revolutionary program developed by Black Rose/Rosa Negra to analyze current social structures, define a strategy toward social revolution and libertarian socialism, while remaining open to revisions and critiques. Intermediate-level groups are primarily linked by a short-term strategy. This level can involve activists from a variety of divergent ideological perspectives but sharing the same immediate goals.
The analysis and strategic framework described above emerge as a distillation of the concrete activity undertaken by revolutionaries and organizations that preceded us, whether it be Bakunin's work within the International Workingmen's Association, the lessons learned from Nestor Makhno, Piotr Arshinov, and other exiled authors of the Platform through their experiences of the Russian and Ukrainian revolutions; or the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation and its engagement in mass movements, including during periods of dictatorship. While anarchist revolutionaries in the so-called United States-as everywhere-face challenges and contradictions unique to our context, BRRN firmly believes that the organizational dualism approach is suitable for our objective both practically and in terms of values.
Black Rose/Rosa Negra
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Black-Rose-Rosa-Negra-BRRN-De-l-utilite-du-dualisme-anarchiste
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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