From Black Rose Anarchist Federation
We present here a translation of an article which appeared on July 7, 2024 in the recently revived Spanish anarchist journal Regeneración Libertaria. The journal describes itself as “a portal for the revolutionary anarchist tendency, concretely of the especifista current, adapted to the Iberian Peninsula”.
Despite its original theoretical texts appearing in Spanish, the anarchist strategy of especifismo has only recently begun to make an impact on anarchism in Spain and Catalonia, places where the movement has historically found its expression through anarcho-syndicalist labor unions such as the CNT and CGT. This context becomes relevant to the article as the authors, CNT militants, aim to address the tension between especifismo’s commitment to organizational dualism and the revolutionary syndicalist view which sees no need for political organizations outside of the union.
The recent introduction of especifismo to the Iberian Peninsula can be attributed largely to the work of organizations such as Embat and LiZA, whose militants have been producing articles, participating in social struggles, and holding seminars in Spain, Catalonia, and Portugal.
We are encouraged to see our European comrades taking up these ideas, debating them, and seeking to adapt them to their own context.
Article in the original Spanish: ‘El especifismo ante sus críticos’. Minor changes have been made in the course of translation for the purposes of clarity.
Translation by Cameron Pádraig.
Especifist anarchism advocates the need for a theoretical, strategic, and tactical organization—bound together with a program—under the banner of libertarian socialism. This is the ‘specifically anarchist’ organization, hence the term especifismo. It is a meeting point between affinities of social and organized anarchism, the aim of which is to influence social movements or ‘mass organizations’. In this way especifismo embraces ‘organizational dualism’, because the anarchist organization is not meaningful unless it is oriented towards the various popular struggles. The specific organization aims to plant, within social movements, a revolutionary seed which can provide consistency through the ups and downs of social conflict and the political cycle.
Most of the criticisms of especfiismo accuse it of promoting ‘entryism’, vanguardism, or of aiming to create a secretly coordinated minority who hope to manipulate social movements for their own purposes. These are suspicions that we understand to be legitimate but that, we believe, if they are made from a place of honesty and real concern, arise from a misunderstanding of the basic elements of the strategy.
Especifista anarchism advocates the idea of popular power. This notion maintains that social revolution will come about only through the organized masses themselves. It rests on the firm belief that the popular classes must be the protagonists and subjects of the social revolution. Proponents of popular power are committed to the principle that social struggles must be self-managed by the popular classes, struggles wherein popular structures are built based on the active participation of a broad majority and on democratic decision-making mechanisms. The concrete practice of especifismo is to make these mass organizations and social movements sites of genuine learning and popular participation.
Therefore, if we espsecifistas are truly committed to our principles, it would not make sense for us to seek executive control over social movements which possess the features that we are seeking to create. Moreover, the specific organization is not an end in itself. In other words, the strategy of especifismo is not concerned with growing a permanent vanguard party, but instead with the construction and orientation of mass movements toward a social revolutionary horizon. Especifismo shuns the vanguardist thesis and instead affirms that the libertarian communist militant must insert themselves within popular struggles, standing shoulder to shoulder with the people—not acting above them or ‘from the shadows’.
We know that not everyone is an anarchist, in fact even within anarchism itself there is no broad consensus on political action. In this way the specific organization is a space of unity for those of us who recognize that a shared strategy, analysis of the conjuncture, and training to be indispensable. We recognize ourselves to be heirs to the socialist tradition, and as such we understand that together we will think better. We reject ‘anarchist’ individualism, which we believe to be a liberal deviation of recent decades.
Returning to the idea of popular power, much of the aim of especifista anarchism, through concrete praxis, is to build mass organizations and social movements that are participatory and democratic. Part of its task is to identify the presence of other political groups and organizations within these mass movements, to understand their strategy, and occasionally to confront them. Our aim in these mass movements is to equip participants within them with effective tools for self-organization and action. We aim to prevent these mass movements from being co-opted, deactivated or controlled by institutional and/or vanguardist tendencies. That is to say, especifismo seeks the opposite of co-optation or entryism. It instead seeks to organize and radicalize the popular masses under their own will and desire for liberation.
One of the fundamental principles of anarchism is a commitment to ‘prefiguration’. This posits that the modes of organization and tactics carried out must accurately reflect the future society being sought. This commitment runs through our modes of organization, of action and our militant code of ethics. In each case we do not recognize a division between means and ends. We believe that the tactics we deploy are loaded with meaning and we do not want to build a new world which smuggles in the endemic evils of the current one. That is why especifismo has a clear ethical code. Transparency, clarity, and honesty in the communication of our intentions are paramount. The strategies of entryism or co-optation are usually marked by unethical stratagems such as the control of certain working groups by a minority organized from outside, the taking of formal and informal power, and/or the use of ambiguous language that conceals intent. These elements are reflective of vanguardism, a revolutionary strategy which engenders a future class society directed by a bureaucratic-intellectual elite. Especifista anarchists see the antidote to such an arrangement to be the popular participation of the mass of people in a society via the frameworks of federalism and socialized control of production. We argue that this mode of social organization generates a broad institutionality that cannot easily be taken over by a privileged minority or intellectuals.
Turning now toward revolutionary syndicalism, there is a quite understandable debate in this context regarding the existence of the specific anarchist organization. This emerges from the understanding within revolutionary syndicalism of the syndicate (the revolutionary labor union) as the structure that synthesizes political organization and mass organization. In this vision, the syndicate is the organization that will replace the State as the administrator of society until the emergence of total communism. We formally support this political commitment and its strategy, however, it does not seem contradictory to us to maintain the existence of a specific anarchist organization where anarcho-syndicalist militants meet to establish a strategic coherence, to share experiences of struggle and to have theoretical debates beyond the trade union spaces.
Revolutionary syndicalism is the popular materialization of the working class constituted in trade unions. It is that which orients itself mainly towards seizing control of society’s productive means. The problem is that, often, it is difficult to attract young militants to anarcho-syndicalism because they do not find within it a space relevant to them. A variety of factors cause this difficulty: theoretical underdevelopment, material circumstances, and/or the demands that union work implies. We contend that the anarchist organization can be a space to form and develop the anarcho-syndicalist militants of the future, to arm them with the capacity to conduct analytical, strategic, and tactical work effectively. As stated above, it can be a place that serves as a political school for many politically disoriented people.
In a context where we might confuse the trees for the forest, the anarchist political organization should be the mountain we can climb to survey the wider landscape. A place that generates the solid revolutionary base for different mass movements, that interconnects them and that energizes anarcho-syndicalism with pragmatic and trained militants. We understand that there are reasons for doubt and we celebrate these organizational debates. They show that the libertarian space is coming back to life after many years of theoretical stagnation, sectarianism, disorganization and purely aesthetic activism. The task ahead is still quite big, but no less exciting for that.
Comments
"We reject ‘anarchist’
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 08:10
"We reject ‘anarchist’ individualism, which we believe to be a liberal deviation of recent decades."
^ this gives the game away, no? everyone that questions is "liberal"?
Both the "deviation" and the
humanispherian Mon, 07/22/2024 - 18:48
In reply to "We reject ‘anarchist’ by lumpy (not verified)
Both the "deviation" and the dismissal as "liberal" hardly date from "recent decades." As part of an exclusive claim to a complex inheritance, this is not terribly convincing stuff.
Also pretty sure anh kind of
anon (not verified) Thu, 07/25/2024 - 09:16
In reply to "We reject ‘anarchist’ by lumpy (not verified)
Also pretty sure anh kind of contemporary liberalism is heaviky-rooted in intense collectivism. These guys just fail to look at themselcss from the outside to notice how alike they are to *other*, more.mainstream liberals...
Especifismo and BRRN have
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 08:21
Especifismo and BRRN have sucked and been black and red authoritarians for decades. Fuck these little Marxoids right in their industrial nightmare anuses.
calm down, weirdo
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 17:13
In reply to Especifismo and BRRN have by anon (not verified)
calm down, weirdo
And everyone who isn't an
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 09:38
And everyone who isn't an individualist is an authoritarian little marxoid?
Hmm I think that's gives a lot away...
Who you talkin' to, pal? Can
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 10:23
In reply to And everyone who isn't an by anon (not verified)
Who you talkin' to, pal? Can't figure out how to thread your replies on a simple-ass website and you think you're in a position to give life advice? COME ON, BROW!
To you both.
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 10:27
In reply to Who you talkin' to, pal? Can by anon (not verified)
To you both.
If you can't figure it out....
"There is only one anon on
TranslationMarxoid (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 10:51
In reply to To you both. by anon (not verified)
"There is only one anon on Anews"
Since the 1970s, various
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 15:58
Since the 1970s, various groups or federations have emerged and faded in the US and Canada that have attempted to generate a kind of class struggle or broader social-struggle focused anarchism that is not just subculture scenesters reproducing a scene. Black Rose Anarchist Federation is the most recent version of this, and they deserve some credit for trying to situate what they claim to be about outside of the safe spaces of a subculture. But in this BRAF repeatedly generates acres of empty verbiage without ever making a transparently clear case for why what they are about is more useful or far-going than what's found with left-wing of capital fringe leftists of the Stalinist or Trotskyist stripe. What tools does this brand of anarchism offer that are uniquely clear-sighted and of more use to combative members of the wage-earning class than what's found with, say, Marx and Engels, the early 20th century German and Dutch ultra-left, the Situationist International or Italian Autonomist Marxism? Please make a persuasive case here. In the glorious words of comrades Strunk and White, prefer the specific to the general.
Tellingly there are no accounts in these articles detailing any efforts where BRAF has actually attempted to apply what should be distinct about their interpretation of anarchism in any real world social conflicts between proles and Capital. Are the people in BRAF just people who share an intense personal enthusiasm for the words anarchism and anarchist and, proceeding from this, endlessly attempt to pump oxygen into a historically defunct dogma?
The references to anarcho-syndicalism glaringly make absolutely no reference to the greatest actual lived experience and catastrophic failure of this in the Spanish Revolution and Civil War -- that's quite an oversight, comrades. As with all efforts along these lines since the Spanish Civil War, this looks like an effort to roll into the future on a 19th century horse-drawn buggy with square wheels -- propelled by the desiccated corpse of a horse in the traces that died in Barcelona in May 1937.
If you have a profound emotional commitment to calling yourselves anarchists there is no reason that you can't continue doing this while stealing in the best way from smarter, more useful, more clear-sighted and more threatening to capitalist social relations conceptual frameworks, like the ones mentioned above. No one on earth will hold this against you, among other reasons because at this point no one on earth has any reason to pay attention to what you've come up with so far.
unfortunately i've been
lumpy (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 17:10
In reply to Since the 1970s, various by anon (not verified)
unfortunately i've been paying attention and there's some tell-alls that have been published with a more behind-the-curtain look at this org. unfortunately i'm also located on earth ... SIGH no need to salt that wound too!
have you seen this yet?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/thistle-writing-collective-ever…
"... the fact that the
anon (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 20:46
"... the fact that the organization has had very little success in coming to collective positions and, moreover, has rarely even tried."
All such formations in the US and Canada have failed in this core requirement, going back to the 'Anarchist Communist Federation' of the late 1970s. In terms of an intelligible understanding of how this society functions distinct from other fringe leftist formations there is never any there there.
I'm in no position to judge the validity of what the authors describe in 'Every Rose Has its Thorns.' Evidence suggests that if what they write is accurate and the problems they described were adequately examined, acknowledged and remedied the politics of this effort would continue to be invisible to more than 340 million people in the United States. If the underlying politics are valid and this large of a percentage of the former members have left the group there's nothing stopping many or most of them from banding together on different terms and pressing forward with them. I suspect that the real problem lies elsewhere:
" Whether it is the fight for indigenous sovereignty, against white supremacy, for the right to dignified labor, housing, and healthcare, or against capitalism itself, people oppressed by patriarchy are on the front line."
There is nothing in this sentence that anyone slightly to the left of Rachel Maddow would object to.
A call for "...the right to dignified labor..." is particularly cretinous and nausea-inducing. As more clear-sighted ones said more than a hundred years ago, "Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,' we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage system.' " Opposition to wage labor is the basis of an opposition to capitalism and there's no trace of that here.
"Now more than ever, the US revolutionary Left needs to rethink its political priorities and strategic orientation."
There is no such thing as a "US revolutionary Left." This is a product of ideological hothouse thinking akin to what U.S. fringe leftists of the 1970s engaged in. There is no readily visible, credible anti-wage labor/anti-commodity relations/anti-state politics among the vast majority of those of us who must sell our labor power for wages and have nothing to lose but our pains. At present there are only fringe leftists and their hothouse melodramas and their belly-button-lint-fingering sessions, and given where things are going in this rapidly declining shit society this lack of a visible credible real world opposition is exasperating and disturbing in the extreme.
It's also piss-poor security culture to give specific numbers of people involved in a group, or who have left a group.
agree w the commenter who
anon (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 05:20
agree w the commenter who pointed out anarchist individualism & renunciations of it aren't new at all here https://anarchistnews.org/comment/71223#comment-71223
"every rose has its thorn" is def relevant for BRRN (not "BRAF") but shouldn't be read as a denunciation of especifismo in general which originates in southern abya yala, not in yankistan or from yankee anarchists. no idea how much it's influenced recent useful things BRRN has done like the Fauda interview.
"Turning now toward revolutionary syndicalism, there is a quite understandable debate in this context regarding the existence of the specific anarchist organization. This emerges from the understanding within revolutionary syndicalism of the syndicate (the revolutionary labor union) as the structure that synthesizes political organization and mass organization. In this vision, the syndicate is the organization that will replace the State as the administrator of society until the emergence of total communism. We formally support this political commitment and its strategy, however, it does not seem contradictory to us to maintain the existence of a specific anarchist organization where anarcho-syndicalist militants meet to establish a strategic coherence, to share experiences of struggle and to have theoretical debates beyond the trade union spaces."
while syndicalists can do good things not a fan of this analysis. plenty of revolutionary ancoms have criticized syndicalists, we have written & organizational testaments to this in bonanno, malatesta, magón, makhno...in general it seems like especifistas could be way more friendly to insurrectionaries & take a less managerial view of revolutionary organization. affinity groups & "base nuclei" could easily function as "specific anarchist organizations." the most revolutionary aspects of the spanish experience weren't all managed by labor syndicates. on these points:
https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2022/12/17/intro-to-insurrectionary-a…
https://libcom.org/article/breaking-out-subcultures-need-organisation-a…
https://itsgoingdown.org/mark-bray-on-the-anarchist-revolution-in-spain…
https://anarchistnews.org/content/revisiting-social-revolution-aftermat…
"We also discuss the betrayal
anon (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 08:09
"We also discuss the betrayal of both the revolution and the antifascist resistance to Franco, not only by the major world powers in the face of a fascist coup by general Franco which was supported by Hitler and Mussolini, but also by the Stalinist forces who destroyed the revolution and literally attacked the anarchists."
Remembering everything and learning nothing, these are the Bourbon Kings of a historically obsolete ideology: 85 years go by and apologists for the failure of the anarchist movement in the Spanish Civil War are still pouting about global Capital and the Stalinist counter-revolutionaries "betrayal" of the revolutionary movement, as if the ruling classes of capitalist France and Britain and the Stalinists, who were openly committed to preserving the capitalist state, capitalist social relations and the class power of the bourgeoisie, somehow simultaneously owed some loyalty to an anti-capitalist social revolution. This isn't even remotely an adequate mindset for the making of a revolution.
The CNT and the FAI could have "gone for it all" as Juan Garcia Oliver proposed in the weeks before Franco's coup. Instead they gave up from a position of initially overwhelming strength, became the junior partners in a fragile capitalist state during a period of mass revolutionary upheaval, and fed combative proletarians into the mass slaughter of a capitalist war.
Also, can people who make the argument that insurrectionary anarchism is a credible anti-capitalist phenomenon point out some actual social struggles where insurrectionism played a significant positive role? Thanks.
"Also, can people who make
lumpy (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 09:20
In reply to "We also discuss the betrayal by anon (not verified)
"Also, can people who make the argument that insurrectionary anarchism is a credible anti-capitalist phenomenon point out some actual social struggles where insurrectionism played a significant positive role? Thanks."
insurrectionary anarchism was often considered a credible threat by the pigs and intelligence services, if not you. i mostly experienced its rhetoric as the main opposition to the suffocating and totally a-historical liberal pacifism that was dominating most visible political activity in the english speaking world, back in the 90s when i started paying attention
Yeah, that's definitely not
anon (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 09:53
In reply to "Also, can people who make by lumpy (not verified)
Yeah, that's definitely not what I am talking about. Although I can see why this would have an appeal to the vicarious living crowd.
...had to push back against
lumpy (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 11:42
In reply to Yeah, that's definitely not by anon (not verified)
...had to push back against that liberal pacifism for anything else to happen tho!
Saying that someone excels in
anon (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 10:01
Saying that someone excels in drawing the attention of the police and the intelligence services doesn't say anything about whether what they are about is worthy of the attention of wage-earners in a credible everyday life social struggle context. In fact it tends to argue strongly against it.
^false dichotomy: being seen
lumpy (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 11:45
In reply to Saying that someone excels in by anon (not verified)
^false dichotomy: being seen as a credible threat to the established order might indicate useful influence or it might not
if you're trying to flatten out that complexity with your rhetoric, that only makes me suspicious that you might be too comfortable in your own armchair ;)
"worthy of the attention of
anon (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 12:01
In reply to Saying that someone excels in by anon (not verified)
"worthy of the attention of wage-earners in a credible everyday life"
G-d
Fucking
Damnit.
This is an anarchist website.
The beginning, middle and end
anon (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 12:03
The beginning, middle and end of the credibility of something that its advocates claim to be a threat to the social order is whether or not this certain something is useful to exploited people in a collective public fight against the conditions of our exploitation. If it isn't this, it isn't anything.
If it isn't this, it's almost certainly vicarious living.
The credibility of suicide
GotchaBot (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 12:34
In reply to The beginning, middle and end by anon (not verified)
The credibility of suicide bombing is useful to exploited people in a collective public fight against the conditions of their exploitation. It is this. It is everything.
The credibility of nerve gas
AumBot (not verified) Tue, 07/23/2024 - 12:40
In reply to The beginning, middle and end by anon (not verified)
The credibility of nerve gas attacks on city centers is useful to exploited people in a collective fight against the conditions of their exploitation. It is this. It is everything.
It's reassuring to see the
anon (not verified) Wed, 07/24/2024 - 13:41
It's reassuring to see the invisible anarchist authority of online censorship guaranteeing that this exchange can end on a characteristically puerile and inarticulate note.
This is the ONLY time I side
anon (not verified) Wed, 07/24/2024 - 14:19
In reply to It's reassuring to see the by anon (not verified)
This is the ONLY time I side with the t.h.i.n-s.k.i.n.n.e.d authoritarian peepee.poopoo seething.ressentimentismo moderators in their heavy-handed moderation powertrip because it's FUNNY! Kudos, mods.
One's gonna be such an out-of
GEF (not verified) Thu, 07/25/2024 - 09:28
One's gonna be such an out-of-touch bougie kid to.be seeing the Workers as any sort of hope in today's world. Just go work in some kitchen, construction job, call center, etc. Sooner or later you:ll realize the Workers are better, more effective enemies than the bosses. And that becomes especially true within union jobs, where unions are turned exclusively at the bosses as externality.
The rat race is the thing to abolish. The struggle for every little bit of power within our pathetic hypogea.
I don't sympathize with bosses tho unlike with our usual treacherous, devious, deceitful co-workers, they are the "Devil you know"... i.e. you know what to expect of them.
Read some Sartre and Vaneigem, among others, you false critics.
For 09:28
anon (not verified) Thu, 07/25/2024 - 11:27
For 09:28
Your perspective is clearly hard-won wisdom from actual lived experiences of real world class conflicts. Why don't you enlighten us further on this score and go into a little more detail about your track record of engagement with the world outside of your comfort zone? It must have been overwhelming and intense to leave you holding opinions whose core features are the same as those the vast majority of everybody else in the contemporary United States.
In 'Murika we all have the God-given red white and blue right to have expert opinions about stuff we obviously know nothing about.
I haven't read the occasional apologist for Stalinism Sartre yet. Maybe I will one of these days. Vaneigem and some of his retinue were crashing in the same apartment as I on Rambla del Poblenou in Barcelona in the spring of 2014. He was a nice old gent. His ideas are weak hippie shit: hedonism might have seemed subversive to the social order back when even Maoists wore buttoned down white shirts, suit coats and ties on leaving their apartments in the morning but that's a long, long time ago. Hedonism was irrevocably annexed by consumer society a long, long time ago -- it is a wholly harmless and self-indulgent to outright counter-subversive impulse which goes far in explaining the enthusiasm of its reception in a place as putrid as the US. Utterly unlike Vaneigem, the Hegelian Marxist tendency in the S.I. like Debord, Vienet and Reisel are the ones who offer much that is of use.
Fuck off Keating
anon (not verified) Thu, 07/25/2024 - 11:29
In reply to For 09:28 by anon (not verified)
Fuck off Keating
Jet Set BCN Anarchy right there!
anon (not verified) Thu, 07/25/2024 - 19:25
In reply to For 09:28 by anon (not verified)
I think you did the same analytical mistake of confusing an actualized form of Epicurianism with Hedonism. So I guess you didn't deserve to meet Vaneigem?
If you want a brain-helper... the hedonist is an addict. Continuously dominated by their quest to satisfy their mere desires, at all costs, regardless the morals implied.
The Epicurian seeks pleasure within their own condition, without the need to look "further", to look for the conditions that would bring them enjoyment ("jouissance") . It is amor fati.
To19:25
anon (not verified) Thu, 07/25/2024 - 23:09
To19:25
What you're about is found in a more forthright form on the rack at a fast fashion chain like Mango or Forever 21, minus the Nietzsche stuff.
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