Self-managed forms of organizing are necessary but insufficient for any libertarian revolutionary process. Any revolutionary process has both form(s) and content(s). We should not fetishize either from the other and abstract form from content or content from form. All political/economic/social movement processes and contents have organizational forms of some kind that are part of their overall development. Such forms and contents can either be self-managed/horizontal/directly democratic/participatory, or otherwise. A notion of strategy without forms of organizing– or inversely formal structures without good contents, strategies and goals– leads to one-sided absurdity. And all organizational forms have some kind of content. It is not enough for revolution and socialism to just develop self-managed organizations– and yet self-managed organizations and the strategic prefiguration thereof are necessary prerequisites to any development of libertarian socialism. Such considerations about decision making processes and power and formal organizations are in fact essential features that separate libertarian attempts at socialism from authoritarian attempts at socialism.
A fundamental ethical dimension underpinning and within libetarian socialist theory is the principle of freedom and more holistically “freedom of each and all ” and the means thereof (which includes and requires equality and solidarity among other features). Such freedom does not emerge in reduction in a void but through the development of a gestalt of qualities (within institutions, relations, and otherwise)– as well as the overthrow and destruction of other qualities (such as class relations, hierarchy more broadly, and domination). Such freedom is constitutive of the overall flourishing of “wellbeing for all”.
“Freedom is not possible without equality, and real anarchy cannot exist without solidarity, without socialism.” -Malatesta
Prior to knowing a lot of the unique details of specific particular contexts we are adapting to, if we know that: A. hierarchical society exists and B. we are trying to develop libertarian socialism and C. that we are volitional/conscious/dependent/institutional beings capable of doing so, we know several things already based on the principles, practices, and ethics of (and that underpin) libertarian socialism.
For example:
That there must be a unity/consistency of means and ends (also referred to as prefiguration)
That the ends must be rooted in self-management (and so by extension the means as well)
That self-management of each and all on every scale entails communal and intercommunal forms of self-management (intercommunal forms of self-management referring to federations and co-federations of communal associations for mutual aid and direct action purposes).
And that such communal forms and intercommunal forms must be prefigured at some point for them to be developed.
Additionally we know that:
Common means of existence and means of production necessitate self-management structures
MERE workplace self management structures (not to be confused with workers’ self management as such) would defacto privatize common means of existence and production over and above communities compared to arrangements that also have robust communal self-management structures.
That common means of existence and production should be managed by those who need and utilize such commons.
Entire communities need and utilize common means of existence and production.
Therefore communal self-management and intercommunal self management are necessary for common means of existence and production to be fully self-managed by those who need and utilize the commons.
Self-managed commons are essential for a free society (That for self-management to extend into political and economic decision making and practices, the means of existence and production would have to be in common– with communal assemblies making policy and embedded participatory councils self-managing the implementation of communal policy).
Communal forms of freedom are essential features of a free society (both as an extension of self-management of each and all on every scale AND as needed for all those who interface with and need the commons to self-manage it).
Within the context of hierarchical and ruling class politics and economics:
Hierarchies develop, reproduce themselves, expand, and defend themselves through and with recourse to coercion.
That revolution and expropriation of class property are needed for a free society and for common means of existence and production to be developed (which is needed for a free society).
That in order to expropriate class property and overthrow hierarchical politics and economics there needs to be a sufficient capacity and popular power to seize and defend means of existence and production from hierarchical forces
That sufficient mutual aid and self-managed organizations and infrastructure are needed but not sufficient for the development of such an oppositional politics
That if such oppositional politics is organized hierarchically that it must reproduce the fundamental features of hierarchy and thus destroy the essential features of freedom.
That there are multiple kinds of groups able to meaningfully contribute to oppositional politics, reconstructive politics, and revolution via self-management.
Additionally:
There is the need for popular organizations and social movement groups to do oppositional and reconstructive politics.
That such popular organizations and social movements need to have liberatory forms/practices/processes of horizontality/direct democracy/free association, direct action, and mutual aid for such organizations to actuate their liberatory potential.
And that such popular organizations cannot require ideological specificity– for that will alienate such groups from those who do not share libertarian socialist ideology.
And that it is possible and good for such liberatory clusters of features (as briefly listed in point #2) to be instantiated in such groups through having such liberatory features as part of the form/practice orientation of groups
And that having a group that practices horizontal democracy, does direct action, and mutual aid to solve common problems through collective decisions does not require members to share a libertarian socialist ideology
Such liberatory features of popular organizations and social movement groups can be developed in part through ideologically and theoretically specific libertarian socialist groups via social insertion (as defined in depth by FARJ).
The above dimensions of an organizational, strategic, and goal orientation and what they entail (which are by no means exhaustively fleshed out above) can then be applied to particular contexts and developed overtime through various self-managed forms of oppositional politics and reconstructive politics: meeting needs, taking direct action against hierarchical power, and building the new world within the shell of the old. In such a revolutionary development, self-managed reconstructive and oppositional forms and processes fuel themselves and one another and can exist intensively within the very same organization.
Communal assemblies are one such group that can do both oppositional politics and reconstructive politics in rather intensive ways– and prefigure such communal forms of freedom, mutual aid, and common infrastructure in the process. Communal assemblies can engage in direct action including but not limited to: specific actions against landlords, bosses, capitalists, politicians, and specific institutions perpetuating specific unfreedoms/injustices, blockades, occupations, squats, expropriations, community self defense, assisting direct actions of other groups directly (through co-participating on joint actions) and indirectly (through providing communal infrastructure and mutual aid to other direct action groups). As Bookchin said in his book Post-Scarcity Anarchism, “Assembly and community must become “fighting words,” not distant panaceas. They must be created as modes of struggle against the existing society.” Such communal assemblies are organs of both direct action and mutual aid for various short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.
Radical labor unions and workplace committees (utilizing self-management and direct action) are groups that are specifically important for oppositional politics in the workplace. Such unions and workplace committees can fight for short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals: everything from wage increases to expropriation. However, they are not the only organs for class struggle as some might claim– as class struggle is possible outside of workplace organizing. Given libertarian goals, depending on the context one is in (and by extension a plurality of factors) syndicalist means should be more or less emphasized as part of an overall revolutionary strategy.
Outside of just communal assemblies and labor unions, student unions, tenant unions, and prisoner unions are other such fighting groups that are particularly suited towards their particular sites of struggle. When it comes to oppositional politics there are also issue-specific and function specific social movements and groups of various kinds (for example a movement for reproductive freedom or a medic-collective). Additionally there are affinity groups that can do various direct actions and oppositional functions (an endorsement thereof as one way of organizing a direct action group among others is not an endorsement of tendencies that overly-reduce organizing to such affinity groups or otherwise have a reckless/foolish strategy. Mere affinity groups are incapable of generating adequate social force– and they can suffer from disorganization and even having an anti-organizational orientation at times. Then again no form is sufficient to generating strategic content; For example, without good content, labor unions can fall into reformism and communal associations can fall into pejorative utopianism).
In order to actuate the means and ends of horizontality/direct democracy/mutual aid/direct action/co-federation/free association/etc. in the context of living in a hierarchical and class-based society, there must be self-managed oppositional politics and direct action to overthrow class relations and hierarchy more broadly. The content to fill such self-managed forms must be deliberated about and decided by various self-managed organizations and adapted to sufficiently relevant variables. Through such an adaptation and application of universal features of liberatory forms and practices and contents to specific contexts, there is an instantiation of such universal features in particular forms of struggle and forms of freedom (with a means/ends unity of self-management/horizontality/democracy/mutual aid/participatory action etc)– which can make such universals concretized in reality.
And yet, popular organizations and social movements are potentially susceptible to unstrategic content, bureaucratic forms, reformism (not to be confused with winning reforms through direct action and self-management), liberal cooptation, leninist co-optation, pejorative utopianism (mere reconstructive politics without oppositional politics), and unreflective actionism. Because of the above (and other reasons), it is important to develop ideologically and theoretically specific libertarian communist groups (distinct from popular organizations and social movement groups). Members of such ideologically and theoretically specific libertarian communist groups are able to create and interface with popular organizations and social movements to help such formations develop liberatory practices/processes of self-management, direct action, mutual aid, class struggle, etc. (while learning from social movements and participating in them in the process). Popular organizations and social movements are the main protagonists in struggle and revolution, but ideologically and theoretically specific groups can act as catalysts of liberatory qualities of such groups and movements through social insertion.
“What-should-be,” is anchored in a continuum that emerges from an objective potentiality, or “what-is… The “what-should-be” becomes an ethical criterion for judging the truth or validity of an objective “what-is.” Thus ethics is not merely a matter of personal taste and values; it is factually anchored in the world itself as an objective standard of self-realization.” -Bookchin
The principle of freedom of each and all (and the means thereof) has an objective content to it. It has universal necessary features. It refers to specific naturalistic/societal qualities that are rooted in objective conditions of what is possible. Such a principle of freedom requires and entails a gestalt of other features to be rounded out and existent (mutual aid, direct action, direct democracy, non-hierarchy, etc.), and concrete groups, processes, practices etc. are necessary to actualize and institutionalize such freedom of each and all. Such a principle of freedom for each and all and the means thereof is not merely abstract; it corresponds to the objective content of what is actually good for humans and the ecological world more broadly (for it is precisely through hierarchy and the destruction of freedom that the ecological world more broadly along with humans are instrumentalized for power-over others and profit).
“We are not open and flexible (“anti-dogmatic”) about our principles. Those who treat principles in this way fall into a pragmatism incapable of social change or transformation. Regarding the strategy, we can say that the general strategy is more fixed, followed by the time-restricted strategy, which is a little less fixed and more flexible, and finally, by the tactics, more flexible.” -Correa
The general strategy of developing such freedom and libertarian form/content is fixed in terms of some essential features– but more flexible than the principles themselves. And more flexible still are the sub-strategies within strategies, and even more flexible than such sub-strategies are the tactics within sub-strategies. The specific ways libertarian practices/forms/contents are applied and adapted to contexts (and the specific ways groups using such liberatory practices develop content and function) are more flexible than the universal features underpinning them.
There are multiple spheres of life to organize within– from community, union, student, and beyond. In different contexts, for various reasons, it makes sense for movements, groups, and persons to put more and less focus on specific spheres and specific kinds of projects and actions. In a particular communal assembly, it might make more sense to focus on a specific direct action campaign/goal/tactic compared to another, or to focus more/less or differently on reconstructive politics of some kind or another (based on needs of people and movements, capacity, willingness, what general and specific problems exist, terrain, balance of forces, existent or lack of federation with other groups or solidarity from other groups etc). In some time/space/group contexts it can, for example, make more sense for a person/group to focus more on radical union work of some kind or some other form of organization (which is not to say it is impossible for an ideologically specific group or a person to do both communal and workplace organizing– far from it, the goal should be to build popular power in community and union spheres and beyond). Despite and because of our view that at some point such communal forms of freedom should be prefigured (within and as part of and catalyzing a broader social movement ecosystem) and that such communal associations can and should play particularly important strategic and ethical roles in a revolutionary processes and a post-revolutionary societies, they are not necessarily the first/only/main kind of group that a person or ideologically specific libertarian socialist group should start or join or put emphasis on in every context. Effective ways to organize and practice social insertion within social movements will vary from context to context.
Such a libertarian process/goal orientation involves both universality (self managed forms of groups doing various kinds of oppositional and reconstructive politics) and particularity (specific ways groups function and are developed and adapted to context and relevant variables)– not either/or. There are both features that need to be developed to actuate the freedom of each and all, and particular ways for such qualities to be applied and adapted to context– not either/or.
Such universal principles and/or practices of freedom, once discovered, grasped, and agreed to, can anchor people in such principles and/or practices that inform means/ends tactics/sub-strategies/strategies/goals. Once grasped, such universal features of freedom and self-management and the means thereof (including a gestalt of multiple features) can functionally inform and qualify goal AND process orientation. They can inform strategy and goals and are related to strategy (and not a distraction from it). Even though specific universal features can inform both the struggle from here to there and what a good society consists of, they do not exhaustively tell us how to adapt and apply such universals to particular contexts– there are far too many relevant variables.
Summarizing many important features of our political views: We are in favor of organizing in multiple spheres of life (community, union, student, and beyond) while also putting an emphasis/focus on the means and ends of communal self-management. We are communalists in favor of an ecological, communist, and post-scarcity economy (who differ from Bookchin most significantly in regards to the electoral dimensions to his praxis). We favor communal assemblies as keystone organs of reconstructive politics and oppositional politics, and we also are in favor other self-managed forms of reconstructive and oppositional politics. We see both reconstructive and oppositional politics as essential for the development of a libertarian revolutionary process. We are in favor of syndicalism as A means as part of a movement ecosystem. And we are in favor of organizational dualism and social insertion (specifically influenced by especifismo and platformism).
Sources:
Post Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin: https://files.libcom.org/files/Post-Scarcity%20Anarchism%20-%20Murray%20Bookchin.pdf
Anarchy by Erico Malatesta: https://libcom.org/article/anarchy-errico-malatesta
Elements of Anarchist Theory and Strategy an Interview with Felipe Correa:https://www.redblacknotes.com/2022/04/26/elements-of-anarchist-theory-and-strategy-an-interview-with-felipe-correa/
Philosophy of Social Ecology by Murray Bookchin: https://libcom.org/article/philosophy-social-ecology-essays-dialectical-naturalism
Social Anarchism and Revolution by FARJ: https://libcom.org/article/social-anarchism-and-organisation-farj
Once you see how our income-based laborforce really works (the fact that high profits depend on low wages), then you’ll finally understand why a digital system matching people to jobs, resources to communities, and daily production, consumption, and waste management operations to personal and professional demands is actually more sustainable and ethical than today’s global political economy, mainly because, compared to scientific-capitalism, scientific-socialism is a lot more democratic; it values and views our very basic, very intuitive belief “universal protections for all” as both a human need and an environmental right.