T. Morago, Malfainer – Anarchy and a Cool Head

“Revolutions without theory do not progress. We, the ‘Friends of Durruti,’ have outlined our thinking, which may be modified as necessary during major social upheavals, but which revolves around two essential and unavoidable points: a program and rifles.”[1]

Anarchist organizations adhering to the especifista strategy have held our first Especifista Anarchism Encounter. This has been the next step in a journey of self-criticism and reformulation that we began some time ago, separated but within the same context, leading us to affirm especifismo as the framework guiding the revolution we pursue. On this occasion, we want, as militants, to highlight the qualitative contributions that the especifista strategy offers to the broader class struggle. This means explaining the reasons why we organize in this way and not another, as we have a militant commitment to our class that drives us to seek its abolition, as part of the broader abolition of the class system.

The text is divided into four parts plus this introduction. We will begin by explaining that, as revolutionaries, our actions are guided by the assessment of past experiences. We will then explain the concept of dual militancy, a fundamental part of especifismo. In the third section, we develop the concept of especifista organization, and finally, we conclude with the relationship between the especifista organization and strategy.

Before beginning the article, we find it useful to explain that when we speak of the working class, we understand it in its relationship, as a class and not as individuals, to the system that organizes the production and reproduction of our way of life in its entirety. In other words, the working class cannot be understood without comprehending the totality of concrete forms of oppression experienced in terms of gender, ethnicity, etc. This leads us to scientifically analyze reality to uncover the material basis generating the specific conditions in which racist, misogynistic, etc., oppression manifests.

We begin by reaffirming that we adhere to the especifista strategy not out of chance, aesthetic attraction, or surrounding circumstances, but because we believe that “the assessment of one’s own experience is the hallmark of a revolutionary movement,” as stated in Senda[2]. If we adopt the especifista strategy and not another, it is due to our assessment of the previous political cycle, which we aim to surpass to avoid repeating the same mistakes and to overcome the burdens of our previous organizational methods. This past cycle refers specifically to the cycle of struggles that began around 2008 with the bursting of the housing bubble, gained mass character with the 15M movement, and began to wane after the 2014 Dignity Marches and the 2017 Catalan independence process, becoming very weakened after the 2020 COVID lockdown.

This assessment is made in three areas: our specific organizational experience, the current state of class struggle within the Spanish state, and the general state of international class struggle[3].

First, we adopt the especifista organization to overcome the limitations of insurrectionary, autonomist, and synthesist forms within anarchism[4]. At the same time, we position anarchism as the seed of revolution and the abolition of class society.

Second, we adopt especifismo to reject the cross-class strategy of grassroots organizations born from the 15M and national liberation movements. That is, we organize within the especifista organization and movements of our class to fight for the political independence of the working class.

We understand the political independence of the working class (or class independence) as its ability to maintain its own strategy in the class struggle, without being directed by or acting in favor of its enemy’s programs. We oppose class independence to cross-classism, which is the declared strategy of class collaboration for strength accumulation and has dominated the last political cycle. The assertion of class independence is inseparable from what anarchists mean by the unity of means and ends.

Third, historical analysis of the international class struggle leads us to affirm the necessity of a specific organization — a politically defined organization of anarchists sharing a collectively agreed program. This affirmation does not come from mechanically copying the self-critiques that followed revolutionary defeats like the Paris Commune, the Free Territory of Ukraine, Spain in 1936, or the FAU in the 1970s, but from a contextual analysis of their experiences. This allows us to draw valuable lessons applicable to the present. Therefore, we do not uncritically adopt texts like The Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists, COPEI[5], or Friends of Durruti publications in Amigo del Pueblo. An example of this assessment, especially in historical cataloging through theory-practice correlation in global anarchist movements, is Bandera Negra by Felipe Corrêa.

…