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Title: Especifismo Author: Gaucho Anarchist Federation Date: 2000 Language: en Topics: Brazil, especifismo, platformism Source: *Anarchism, A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume Three, The New Anarchism, 1974–2012* edited by Robert Graham.
Editor’s note: The Gaucho Anarchist Federation (FAG) is a Brazilian
anarchist group that identifies itself with the Platformist tradition in
anarchist theory and practice (Volume One, Selection 115; and this
Volume, Selection 69). The FAG advocates a political practice that has
come to be known as “especifismo,” the idea that anarchists should work
within popular organizations not only in order to become part of popular
struggles but to encourage the self-organization of the people into
their own autonomous organizations. The following excerpts, translated
by Paul Sharkey, are taken from the Federation’s Statement of
Principles.
---
Anarchism’s legitimacy resides in its participation in the struggle and
organization of the oppressed classes and its ability to contribute
towards the deepening of these. Which is why anarchist organization
should not at all be a sectarian club for the pure-of-thought or some
centre for abstract philosophical reflection, but rather a tool serving
the needs of a revolutionary process that places popular organizations
at the heart of its ventures. To this day-to-day effort we contribute
grassroots work that prizes the independence of the class and its
organized expressions—be they trade unions, associations, campaign
committees, self-managing cooperatives, etc.—over any partisan line...
That anarchism should make an impact through organized political
practice is one of the central priorities of the FAG [Gaucho Anarchist
Federation]. As we see it, there is no “struggle for the people” and no
“struggle through the people”: either we fight alongside the people, as
militants pursuing a class option and having some profile among the
people, or else no libertarian struggle is possible. This is because
nothing can take the place of the organized people. Only the
self-organized people can create people’s power, increasing the level
and intensity of the struggle as the political awareness spreads that
revolution is feasible and necessary. In the meantime, within the
popular struggle the social revolution is incubated and propagated as an
alternative, holding out the prospect of a worthwhile, free existence...
Our approach is not geared merely to furtherance of the development of
the FAG and its particular political line, but makes anarchist political
organization a means of overseeing the sustained spread of popular
struggles, successfully providing a forum for discussion and action in
which these struggles, and that “province,” can overcome their own
shortcomings. Overcoming means, say, a social struggle based upon a
specific demand becoming sensible of the need to involve itself in
matters outside its purview and to coordinate with other experiments and
struggles in progress, eventually discovering that their own particular
conflict is yet another facet of their class status and awakening to the
need to endow their specific struggle with a more global character.
We feel that the level at which workers’ movements and popular bodies
organize and operate should not be dictated by politico-ideological
outlook, nor manipulated by schemes devised in quarters far removed from
the sharp end of those struggles. The independence of the class and of
its social organizations is a prerequisite for the sort of political
practice that is crucial to breaking with the old elitist model of
vanguards.
The wedding of the political with the social lies at the heart of what
we understand by people’s power, a process that amalgamates the two
approaches into a single corpus, built upon a strategy that looks to
invest the social with a structure so organized and alert that it lays
the groundwork for the ground-up development of a capacity that looks
beyond the limits on participation laid down by state-employer hegemony,
shatters their dominion and lays down markers for the development of
society’s new life.
In Latin America, there are lots of revolutionary organizations and
popular movements which will fight and do fight for liberation... an
idea and a goal also covered by our own anarchist revolutionary plans.
It is our understanding that the liberation of our class is only going
to be possible through organized popular struggle and the building of a
long term revolutionary process. In this continent-wide struggle, the
best contribution we can make is to go out every day and plant the seeds
of the fruits we hope to harvest. Which means that we do not believe
that a new social system founded upon equality, justice and freedom can
be conjured out of the natural evolutionary trends of the capitalist
system and by means of a peaceful transition. Instead, the capitalist
system has furnished plentiful proof of its ability to adapt to a number
of historical phases so as to keep its underlying structures of
domination intact. According to the anarchist view, if there is going to
be a break with the capitalist system and a start is to be made on the
building of people’s power, the tools devised by the system itself must
be discarded, having clearly been devised to keep that system in place
rather than to hold out the prospect of it being destroyed.
Then again, it is obvious that mere determination alone is not enough to
trigger a revolutionary process. Previous revolutionary experiences must
be put critically to use but without claiming to import recipes from
previous ages and countries not our own. We need to take note of the
peculiarities of the present point in time and space in which we are
living. We need to see how these are reflected in our class, in its
organizations and in its imagination. The times in which we are living
today are very different from what they were thirty years ago. We need
to devise strategies that take these peculiarities into account.
We see the breakthrough as being triggered by the people, which implies
the widest possible participation by the people through its own
organizations, with the confrontation with the ruling class being
organized along direct action lines throughout...
The construction of a genuinely socialist and libertarian society is
effected by means of the socialization of the economy—which is not the
same as mere State take-over of the means of production—as well as by
comprehensive socialization of decision-making powers.
Such socialization will have to be implemented by the grassroots
organizations of the workers and the people and ought to include the
means of production, distribution, credit and exchange, political power,
education, the administration of justice, defence organizations, and
knowledge and information sources. All of which presupposes the
elimination of any ruling class and private ownership.
Taking as axiomatic the eradication of all forms of repression, our aims
include the eradication of oppression on the basis of gender, ethnicity,
sexual preference, etc. Oppression can be found at the politico-economic
level as well as the cultural. And obviously they cannot be decreed out
of existence, any more than the entire apparatus of domination can, but
must be abolished through a thoroughgoing process of destruction and
construction of other modes of organization and new values.
As we see it, the social revolution only comes about when the people
hold central stage. Otherwise, the domination of one class over another
is going to persist. Such centrality calls for a strategy for the
building of people’s power. But that power must not be confused with
government.
Faced with a strategy from the established authorities designed to
perpetuate government, we must counter with a strategy from the
oppressed classes destined to build up people’s power. The achievement
of people’s power requires the preparation of class organizations called
upon to wield it and the strengthening of such organizations with the
assignment of appropriate tasks to them, so the building of people’s
power does not mean that the constituent parts of power are hijacked by
a new ruling class supposedly representative of workers’ interests.
Historical experience would seem to rule out that authoritarian option.
It is not a question of hanging the label “people’s power” on familiar
old models of political action and representation that exclude the
people from every level of basic decision-making. However, it is not
merely a matter of wresting the current, centralized political power
from the ruling classes either: it is a matter of diffusing it and
devolving it to popular agencies and turning it into something quite
different... a new socio-political structure.
Taking power means taking power in the factories, fields, mines,
offices, schools, hospitals, power stations, media and universities, and
power belongs to the workers and the people when there are
comprehensively democratic, participatory bodies controlled by them that
take over the supervisory functions performed by the State. Which is why
a people’s power strategy should have the building of such bodies as its
essential premise and central political task which, even now, is playing
a primary role in determining whether the future revolution is going to
be socialist and libertarian or will not take place at all. So the
defeat of the capitalist, authoritarian order and the construction of
genuine people’s power is proceeding on a daily basis, depending on how
our political and social efforts are directed and implemented.
Creating or re-creating, strengthening and consolidating workers’ and
people’ organizations and championing their centrality amounts to a
step-by-step nurturing of the only feasible socialism: a socialism with
freedom, where all of the advances familiar to us today are placed in
the service of an improved, more humane operation of society that brings
benefits to... the people as a whole...
As we understand it, the class struggle may have economic, political,
ideological, cultural or other motives: it can be spearheaded by a wide
range of oppressed persons—farm-workers and urban workers, the
unemployed, students; it may assume the profile of a gender, ethnic,
ecological struggle and so on. Which means that we do not think that
there is any specific social group historically predestined to make the
revolution, as certain strands of the left believe, especially in
relation to the working class.
In order to assist our analysis of reality, we need to look upon a wide
spectrum of the oppressed (prompted by different motives into combating
the machinery of domination) as protagonists of class struggle.
If we are to make progress in the direction of people’s power, we need
to unite and marshal these struggles through ties of solidarity and
organizational links...
Thus, for every specific struggle, the largest possible number of
grassroots bodies should be brought together. For instance, we should
try to ensure that the demands of the workers in public schools and of
the students are converted in the medium term into a struggle for
popular education. The class would be represented by those two sectors,
as well as local communities, the mothers and fathers of pupils not just
squabbling over grants, but also about the community-school council,
curriculum content and teaching methods. And the same goes for all
concrete struggles such as housing, employment, health, hygiene, the
land, black liberation, women and other sectors.
The umbrella groups of the people’s organizations and movements should
make a contribution here. But, as has been stated already, there is not
going to be any protagonism as long as such coordination is vested in
political parties and political organizations, and dependent upon
whether their politics are class-based or not, or conciliatory or not.
Unless we have the people waking up to its own experience... we will
have some party line handed down for as long as the members of the
oppressed class are not cast in the leading role...
Destruction of the State (taking the State to be the current
legal-political form of class society and current social relationships)
is not a single act but a persistent, ongoing process of destruction and
at the same time of construction of a new social relationship, rather
than a necessarily uniform and linear process...
[I]t is inconceivable that anarchists are going to make the revolution
all on their own. Likewise, it is unthinkable that we will carry out the
reconstruction on our own. For that would suggest a form of dictatorship
that would not allow the expression of dissent or alternative
suggestions. Even were we to find ourselves in the majority, we would be
facing competition and coming to accommodations. This is the basic law
of politics. A society with just one ideological doctrine and a single
political organization is far from what we have in mind. The valid
doctrine of freedom is closely connected with whatever a given society
can achieve along these lines.
There is no guessing who and how the principal actors in times of
revolution will turn out to be. But we must concede that we are unlikely
to be the majority element. In which case, and this depends on our
political development, we may still end up being a force to be reckoned
with in some revolutionary process. Which implies our being clear about
everything we need to challenge and agree on...
A society wherein every stratum is free to pursue its interests, with
participation by all, would have no need of a separate political agency.
But what is expected of a comprehensively libertarian society is also
carried over into the present and into the period of transition...
Anarchism needs to demonstrate that a libertarian society can dispense
with the over-arching agency in the form of the politician.