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Title: Riffraff in the libertarian milieu Author: Argelaga Date: June 20, 2015 Language: en Topics: platformism, Left Electoralism, critique of leftism, Spain Source: Retrieved on 10th December 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/riffraff-libertarian-milieu-argelaga Notes: Translated from the Spanish source: https://argelaga.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/de-la-caspa-en-el-medio-libertario/
“Break out of the ghetto” is a refrain often heard in libertarian
milieus, which—in view of the confused and murky situation in which
social struggles are unfolding, struggles which are themselves
marginal—only means that those who are singing this tune are ready to
turn their backs on the truth about reality for the sake of an overdose
of activism. While it is true that enclosing oneself in a short-sighted
veganism, a merely verbal feminism, reading Foucault or involvement in
the punk scene is just an innocuous way to adjust to a miserable
reality, blind voluntarism or organic militancy is no better. It leads
nowhere; it is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow. These are times
of decomposition with hardly any movements, without lucid, angry
majorities, and all we can do is to try to correctly analyze the present
by highlighting the contradictions that might enlarge the cracks in the
system and nourish revolt. The crisis follows its own rhythm, slow and
frustrating, susceptible to the rise of all kinds of false illusions,
the only kind of ideas around which majorities can presently rally. To
close one’s eyes to past experiences and accept the consequences of
flagrant nonsense in order to break out of one’s isolation and enjoy a
substitute for real action does not solve the problem, but only makes it
worse. Common sense is mistaken on this point: just because there are
lots of us does not mean that we will get the last laugh.
We sincerely believe that the presence of refractory anarchists in
social movements contributes to the radicalization of those movements.
If, in addition, these anarchists are organized in affinity groups and
federate with each other with more or less formal bonds, so much the
better. They are the continuators of a historical tradition that was
once fruitful. Self-managed spaces, cooperatives without
shareholder-members or wage workers, and neighborhood assemblies are
necessary instruments of struggle. But, unfortunately, if Teruel exists,
so, too, does right-wing anarchism. It must be admitted that the results
of the municipal elections of May 24, 2015 restored faith in government
institutions among broad sectors of the population, which were more
disillusioned in politics during the 15M movement. The more edifying
variety of anarchism has ceased to be fashionable in certain alternative
milieus. A considerable number of politically correct libertarians have
been little less than traumatized at seeing their natural environment,
the pauperized and computer-literate middle class, students and local
bureaucrats, migrate to other pastures. Their reaction was not long in
coming: in a multitude of meetings, those who were envious of the
success of non-anarchist tendencies denounced “blinkered, short-term
perspectives” [“cortoplacismo”]; generals without an army called for an
“organized social anarchism” with “majority appeal”, and, finally, the
most original of their comrades felt the burning need for “a major
social initiative” that would lead us to the “conquest of a real
democracy”. Such is the case with the authors of the manifesto entitled,
“Construct a Strong Pueblo[1] to Make Another World Possible”, a
veritable pastiche of civil society ideas which has bedazzled the
hundreds of supporters who signed it.
With regard to questions of imagination and craft, there is not much
that can be said about this manifesto’s authors; only that, in the last
analysis, in the era of liquid modernity, what matters is skill in
composing text messages and using apps, rather than knowing how to write
sentences more than one line long. And the manifesto’s title alludes to
the slogan, “another world is possible”, made famous by the
anti-globalization movement; we must recall, however, that the latter
was referring to yet another kind of globalization, to another kind of
capitalism, not to a “break-away model” with which “we can reconstruct
ourselves as a free and sovereign society” by way of a “libertarian
democracy of people, not of markets”. The manifesto’s analysis of the
“transition” is as simplistic as the “once upon a time” of fairy tales:
it could not be further removed from a sober assessment. “Democracy” is
a word that is repeated ad nauseum, a patent concession to the
indignados of 15M, in close conjunction with “our rights” and “the
defense of our liberties and common goods” against an “elite” that “does
not represent us”. What liberties, and what goods? Words such as
“bourgeoisie”, “proletariat”, “class consciousness”, “ruling class”,
“exploitation”, “misery”, “revolution”, “anarchy” and “self-management”
are completely absent, which is normal if we recall that the manifesto
is aimed at the lumpen-bourgeoisie and is written in the latter’s
language, and that part of this lumpen-bourgeoisie has preferred to vote
for “comrades” who “are opting for the institutional path”. What we have
here is an attempt to manufacture an anarchist “brand” that appeals to
the middle classes, and that is why the language used in this manifesto
has been purged of terms that would seem disturbing and violent to them.
The flashy anarchism of our liquid times does not arise as a theoretical
expression of class struggle, urban revolt or territorial defense, but
as the ideology of peaceful confrontation “in the streets and squares”
between abstract entities like the “people”, “society” or “the majority”
(which their political comrades call the “citizens”) and the evil
“elite” or “the one percent”. It is a far-reaching civil society
concept, and in no way contradicts its counterpart propagated by the
civil society movement, since it is only trying to “instigate popular
independence”, that is, it claims that it is trying to occupy the space
that it abandoned in order to plunge into the electoral jungle.
OK. Since we have spoken enough about the stew, now we will speak of the
cooks, for they are not exactly what you would call virgins when it
comes to involvement in the libertarian scene. The authors of Mutual
Aid’s manifesto are militants from various backgrounds, as are those who
signed it. Mutual Aid is the Spanish version of Platformism, the most
retrograde current of anarchism, characterized above all by
organizational fetishism, the holy grail of the “program” and the
utterly limitless opportunism of its practice. Despite having laid claim
to a genealogy that goes all the way back to Bakunin himself, this
carnival sideshow was born in Chile some fifteen years ago, dusting off
the shopworn theme of the centralized, hierarchical and disciplined
“anarchist party” with a single program. An “executive committee” was
supposed to be responsible for “awakening” the masses from the outside
so that they would unleash forms of “people’s power”, thanks to a
“correct” leadership that would not hesitate to become entangled in
political adventures. It is a leftism of Leninist reminiscences, which
needs high levels of sectarianism and hallucinations to reinterpret, in
a bureaucratic-vanguardist key, a reality that is very far removed from
the authoritarian fantasies of the platformists. It is therefore a
product of the cultural, political, economic and social disintegration
of capitalism, truly hostile to the egalitarian dream, a spinner of tall
tales, the natural offscouring of the fragments of the class associated
with management that the system has jettisoned in its flight forward.
Platformism is the only current in anarchism that speaks of “power” and
justifies without any qualifications the iron necessity of a mediating
bureaucracy. The Spanish version is more “lite” and postmodern, as its
trendy and upbeat lexicon demonstrates, and its vanguardism is more
effectively dissimulated in a “network of militants” and a flexible
“roadmap”. Just like its mentors, however, Mutual Aid views
disorganization to be the greatest evil and the spontaneists as its
greatest enemies. Ignoring all other considerations, all of the earth’s
misfortunes are caused by a lack of organization, and, which is even
worse, they are due to the absence of a “common program”, an absence
that prevents “joint action”. According to Mutual Aid, we have to “put
an end to organizational dispersion” and, thanks to an ingenious
distinction between partial goals and final goals, we must “develop
strategies and tactics that are thought to be practicable”, which will
be translated into reformist militantism of the trade union,
municipalist, NGO or para-institutional type. In accordance with the
prevailing fashion, Mutual Aid postulates the need for a ruling
bureaucracy which it calls the “organized people” that will administer
“people’s power”. Its members have very good teachers in the anarchist
figureheads who betrayed the revolution during the civil war; that is
why they have to be in favor of the rehabilitation of the libertarian
caste that renounced everything except the victory of their
renunciations, engaging in a historiographical revisionism that is
necessary for bolstering the image of a mythological past with its
miserable features so carefully safeguarded: the party of truth
transformed into the truth of the party. The manifesto sends a very
clear message: the libertarian social democracy of good intentions has
come to stay; the disoriented inhabitants of the ghetto and the
riffraff[2] who criticize organizational fundamentalism [lo organico]
had better get used to it. Nothing outside the “organization”,
everything for the organization! Down with libertarian communism! Long
live “economic and political democracy”!
---
See, for reference, Mark Bray, “Beyond the Ballot Box: Apoyo Mutual in
Spain”, ROAR Magazine, May 22, 2015. A sympathetic article about the
Mutual Aid group and its Manifesto, including an interview with one of
the group’s spokespersons, available online (as of June 2015) at:
.
[1] The Spanish word pueblo, depending on the context, may mean “town”
or “village”, or “people” as in the “Iberian people”, or “the working
people” or “humble folk” as opposed to the rich [American translator’s
note].
[2] “Riffraff” is an attempt to translate the Spanish word, “caspa”,
which can mean “dandruff”, but also something along the lines of
“lowlife, scum, trash” [American translator’s note].