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Title: Huerta Grande Author: Federación Anarquista Uruguaya Date: 1972 Language: en Topics: Especifismo, Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, Uruguay, Black Rose Anarchist Federation Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-12 from https://blackrosefed.org/huerta-grande/ Notes: Original English translation by Pedro Ribeiro (2009, Amanecer: For A Popular Anarchism, California), revisited translation by Gabriel Ascui (2018, SOL, Chile).
Huerta Grande, or “Large Orchard,” was written in 1972 as an internal
discussion document of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, after the
Tupamaros, a Guevarist group, had failed in their armed strategy of
foquismo and right before the brutal military coup of June, 1973. The
piece looks at the nature of theory and strategy asserts that an
essential aspect of revolutionary political organization was having a
deep understanding of material reality informed by practical theory and
political praxis. This may not seem new or novel but the implications of
this have since had a profound impact on Latin American anarchism and
become a seminal document of the Especifismo current.
The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, known as the FAU, was founded in
1956 and was the first organization to promote the organizational
concept of Especifismo (for more on Espeficismo see “Building a
Revolutionary Anarchism” and “Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of
Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization in South
America”). The FAU envisioned the purpose of their organization as the
coordination of militants towards strategic “social insertion,” which is
the mobilization of militants to work with a common strategy both within
and in building mass organizations. The intermediate goal being the
construction of popular power of mass organizations and ultimate being
the creation of a wide scale libertarian movement which could create a
rupture with the state. In the decade of the 1960s the organization was
crucial in the creation of the Uruguayan CNT, a national trade
confederation which united 90 percent of organized workers; the
Worker-Student Resistance or ROE, a federation of militant workplace and
student groups which numbered around 12,000 members; and the FAU’s armed
wing, the OPR-33. More recently in the last two decades the FAU has
aided in the creation of several similar anarchist organizations in
Brazil, Argentina, and Chile and has inspired other anarchist
organizations around the world.
Note: The use of the term “party” here is consistent with how the term
is used by Errico Malatesta as a synonym for political organization: “by
the word ‘party’ we mean all who are on the same side, that is, who
share the same general aspirations and who, in one way or another,
struggle for the same ends against common adversaries and enemies.”
To understand what is going on (the conjuncture), it is necessary to
think correctly. To think correctly means to order and adequately treat
the data that is produced about reality in huge bulks.
To think correctly is an indispensable condition to correctly analyze
what is going on in a country in a given moment of this or another
country’s history. This demands instruments. For our task, the
instruments are concepts and to think coherently, a series of concepts
coherently articulated between them is required. Thus, a system of
concepts, a theory, is required.
Without a theory one runs the risk of examining every problem
individually, in isolation, starting from points of views that can be
different in each case, or examining them based on subjectivity, guesses
or presentation, etc.
The party was able to avoid serious mistakes because we have been able
to think based on concepts that have an important level of coherence. It
has also made serious mistakes due to insufficient development of our
theoretical thinking as an organization.
To propose a program, we must know the economic, political and
ideological reality of our country. The same is necessary in order to
create a political line that is sufficiently clear and concrete. If we
have insufficient or incorrect knowledge, we will not have a program but
only a very general line, difficult to implement at all the places the
party is inserted. If there is no clear line, there is no efficient
political practice. The political will of the party then runs the risk
of getting diluted, “voluntarism” in action ends up becoming just doing
whatever comes up out of sheer good will, but does not determine the
outcome of events, based on its inaccurate previsualization. We are
determined by them [the events] and by them we act spontaneously.
Without a line for the theoretical work, an organization, no matter how
big it is, will be bewildered by circumstances that it cannot affect nor
comprehend. The political line requires a program, understood as the
goals to be achieved at each stage. The program indicates which forces
are favorable, which ones are the enemy and which ones are only
temporary allies. But in order to know this, we must know profoundly the
reality of the country. Therefore, to acquire this knowledge now is a
task of the highest priority. And in order to know, we need theory.
The party needs a clear picture in order to be able to think coherently
about the country and the region and the struggles of the international
workers movements throughout history. We must have an efficient
framework to organize and rank the growing mass of data regarding our
economic, political and ideological reality.
We must have a method to analyze this data, to see which is more
important, which ones must come first and which ones later, in order to
correctly marshal our forces in this insertion front. A conceptual
scheme that allows us to connect one thing to another in a systematic
and coherent order is vital to our goals as militants of our party. Such
a scheme must be able to draw examples of how to act using these
concepts for others that act in other realities.
But this work of knowing our country we must do it ourselves because
nobody is going to do it for us.
We are not proposing inventing theoretical schemes from scratch. We are
not going to create a new theory and all of its ramifications. The
reason for this is the general backwardness of the milieu and its
specialized institutions and our lack of availability to take on this
task.
Therefore, we must take theory as it is elaborated, critically analyzing
it. We cannot just accept any theory with blind eyes, without criticism,
as if it was a dogma.
We want to realize a complete transformation of our country and will not
adopt as a way of thinking theory created by the bourgeoisie. With
bourgeois conceptions, we will think as the bourgeoisie wants us to
think.
We want to study and think about Uruguay and the region as
revolutionaries. Therefore, amongst the elements that are part of the
different socialist currents, we will adopt always those elements that
aid us in doing exactly that: to think and analyze as revolutionaries,
the country, the region, and other regions and experiences.
We will not adopt a theory just because it is fashionable. To live
repeating “quotes” that others said in other places, in another time,
regarding other situations and problems is not theory. Only charlatans
use it like this.
Theory is an instrument, a tool, that serves a purpose. It exists to
produce the knowledge that we need to produce. The first thing that we
care about knowing is our country. If it is not capable to produce new
helpful knowledge for our political practice, theory is absolutely
useless, it is only a theme for idle babble, for sterile ideological
polemics.
Someone who buys a big modern machine instead of working on it, that
spends all day talking about it, is playing a bad role, is a charlatan.
Just like the one that, having the machine available and would rather do
it by hand, because “that’s how it was done before…”
It is important to point out a few differences between what has commonly
been called theory and ideology.
Theory aims for the elaboration of conceptual instruments used to think
rigorously and profoundly understand the concrete reality. It is in this
sense, that we can refer to theory as an equivalent to a science.
Ideology, on the other hand, is made up of elements of a non-scientific
nature, which contribute dynamism to action based on circumstance that,
although having something to do with the objective conditions, do not
strictly emerge from them. Ideology is conditioned by objective
conditions although not mechanically determined by them.
The profound and rigorous analysis of a concrete situation, in its real
and objective terms, is a theoretical analysis as scientific as
possible. The expression of motivations, the proposal of objectives, of
aspirations, of ideal goals – all of that belongs to the field of
ideology.
Theory refines and defines the conditioning elements of political
action, as ideology motivates, impulses, and configures its “ideal”
goals and style.
Between theory and ideology there is a very tight connection, as the
proposals of the second are founded and supported by the conclusions of
the theoretical analysis. The efficiency of an ideology as a motor for
political action is as much as it’s firmly based in the conclusions of
theory.
Theoretical work is always a work that is based and supported in the
real processes, in what goes on in the historical reality, in what
happens. Nevertheless, since it is work that is located completely in
the realm of thought, and therefore, there are no concepts there that
are more real than others.
It is important to point out two basic propositions:
real, historical processes and on the other hand the processes acquired
from knowledge and understanding of that reality. In other words, it is
necessary to affirm the difference between being and thought, between
reality as it is, and what we can know about it.
another words, the sequence of events is more important – it weighs more
as a determinant –in what actually happens in reality than what we think
or know about this reality.
Starting from these basic affirmations, it is important to understand
the precise reaches of theoretical work, that is, the effort of
knowledge guided by the purpose of acquiring rigorous, scientific
knowledge.
Theoretical work is always based in a pre-determined raw material.
[Theory] does not come out of the real concrete reality as such, but
comes out of information, data and notion of that reality. This primary
material is treated, in the process of the theoretical work, by certain
useful concepts and certain instruments of thought. The product of this
treatment is knowledge.
In other words, there are only real, concrete and singular objects
(determined by historical situations, determined societies, determined
times). The process of theoretical work seeks to know them.
Sometimes theoretical work aims towards abstract objects that do not
exist in reality, that only exist in thought, and however are
indispensable instruments, a pre-condition in order to know real objects
(for example the concept of social classes, etc.). In the production of
knowledge, raw material is transformed (superficial perception of
reality) into a product (a rigorous scientific knowledge about it).
The term “scientific knowledge” must be defined in its relationship with
the social reality. Applied to reality, it alludes to its comprehension
in rigorous terminology, the best approximation to reality as it is.
It must be said that this process of comprehending the social reality,
as with any other real object of study, is susceptible to an infinite
theoretical depth. As physics, chemistry and other sciences can
infinitely deepen their knowledge about the realities that constitute
their respective objects of study, in the same manner social science can
indefinitely deepen knowledge about social reality. Therefore, it is
inadequate to expect a “finished” knowledge of social reality in order
to start acting on it in order to change it. Nor less inadequate is
trying to change it without profoundly knowing it.
Rigorous scientific knowledge of social reality, of social structure, is
only achieved through working with information, statistics data, etc.,
through the means of more abstract conceptual instruments, given and
constituted in theory. Through practice of theoretical work we seek the
production of these conceptual instruments, each time more precise and
concrete, leading us to knowledge of the specific reality of our
surroundings.
Only through an adequate theoretical comprehension, profound and
scientific, can ideological elements be developed (aspirations, values,
ideals, etc.) that constitute adequate means for the transformation of
this social reality with coherence of principles and efficiency into
political practice.
An efficient political practice therefore demands: knowledge of reality
(theory), the harmonious postulation of it with the objective values of
transformation (ideology) and concrete political means for attaining
such transformation (political practice). The three elements are fused
in a dialectical unit that constitutes the effort for transformation
that the party aims for.
One may ask: Should we wait for a finished theoretical development in
order to start acting? No. Theoretical development is not an academic
problem, it does not start from zero. It is founded, motivated and
developed by the existence of ideological values and of a political
practice. More or less correct, more or less incorrect, these elements
exist historically before theory and motivate its development.
The class struggle has existed long before its theoretical
conceptualization. The struggle of the exploited did not wait for the
elaboration of a theoretical work. Its existence precedes knowledge
about it, it was there before being known about, before the theoretical
analysis of its existence.
Therefore, from this basic statement, it becomes fundamental and
essential to act, to have a political praxis. Only through [praxis],
through its concrete existence in the established conditions of its
development, can we elaborate a useful theoretical framework. A
framework that is not a worthless accumulation of abstract statements
with some coherence in its internal logic, but without any coherence
with the development of the real processes. To theorize efficiently, it
is precise to act.
Can we do away with theory with the excuse of practical urgency? No.
There may exist, shall we say, a political praxis founded solely in
ideological criteria, thus, unfounded or insufficiently founded in
adequate theoretical analysis. That is common in our environment.
Nobody can argue that, in our reality or the reality of our [Latin]
America region, an adequate theoretical analysis exists, that is a
sufficiently conceptualized comprehension, not even close. This
ascertainment also applies to the rest of our reality. Theory is only in
its initial stages. However, for decades and decades there have been
struggles, a confrontation. This understanding should not lead us to
disdain the fundamental importance of theoretical work.
To the question previously asked we must then answer: The priority is
praxis, but how effective this praxis is depends on a more rigorous
knowledge of reality.
In a reality like ours, in the social formation of our country,
theoretical development must start, as in everywhere, from a group of
efficient theoretical concepts, operating on data as massive as
possible, that will constitute the raw material for theoretical
development.
Data on its own, examined in isolation, without an adequate theoretical
conceptual treatment does not adequately represent reality. It simply
decorates and dissimulates the ideologies in which service this data is
functionalized.
The abstract concepts, in and of themselves, adequate background
information, do not give further knowledge of reality either.
The theoretical work that exist in our country usually fluctuates
between these two incorrect extremes.