Carrying an Alternative Society Project
Utopia can have a decisive impact on social movements. By stimulating collective imagination, it fuels immediate struggles, both in their forms and in their objectives, and it can give strength and credibility to our struggles by exploring the possibilities of an alternative society. Imagination is necessary to transform realities.
We are revolutionaries, that is to say we are advocates of a radical transformation of society. Our political action is aimed at matching our society project with the means to achieve it : the record of social democracy has shown that capitalism cannot be fought effectively by conquering power through elections and gradually reforming it.
Nevertheless this does not imply waiting passively for an « inevitable » break : the future is not written anywhere, it will be what we make of it, and in every historical situation the field of possibilities is wide open. There is no reason for History to have reached its ultimate stage : capitalism will not be the last form of human society. Racist and patriarchal systems of domination are not inevitable.
But a self-managing socialism and egalitarian social relations will not arise mechanically at the end of a « final crisis » with only one possible outcome. They will arise from the conscious and determined action of the exploited masses. Materialists, and educated by historical experience, we know that a true popular movement is never « pure ». It can be composed of contradictory forces, both progressive and retrograde, each of which try to make their own political project prevail. Revolutionaries cannot be satisfied with dispensing good and bad points externally. It’s by direct implication in struggles that they can hope to influence events.
Against isolated armed action
As revolutionaries, we are not a priori in favour of a violent solution. What is essential in a transformation process is constructive work, which requires the self-defence of the population in order to preserve what has been achieved. But the degree of violence of a revolution is first chosen and imposed by the overthrown ruling classes. This violence may therefore be necessary. It is therefore necessary to remain wary of the excesses and dangers inherent to militarization, and to install safeguards against it.
Except in situations of dictatorship or military or colonial occupation, we are opposed to actions carried out by armed minority groups cut off from the population and the social movement. Armed actions carried out under these conditions leads to dangerous confrontation with the state, and leads to the strengthening of the state and the isolation of those who perform them.
Obviously, we are not confusing armed minority actions with the harsh forms taken by the struggles of the workers and the population in defence of their gains and struggles. The legitimacy of the action of revolutionaries is not fixed in terms of respect for what the State imposes as legal or not, but evolves according to the conscience of the masses.
Imagining to transform reality
A revolutionary project is necessary, an alternative to State Socialism and liberalism. A project that focuses on implementing libertarian communism on the scale of the whole society, on the economic level (socialization of the means of production and the products of collective work), on the political level (libertarian federalism as an alternative to any centralization of political power) and on the social level (social equality between individuals regardless of gender, sexual orientation, origin, physical or psychological capacities...). The elabouration of such a revolutionary project is based on the historical and contemporary experiences of struggles, taking into account the difficulties encountered. The revolutionary project therefore requires regular re-evaluation, integrating new social struggles and changes in society.
Utopia can have a decisive impact on social movements. By stimulating the collective imagination, it fuels immediate struggles, both in their forms and in their objectives, and it can give strength and credit to our struggles by exploring the possibilities of an alternative society. Imagination is necessary to transform realities.
If it seems to us necessary that our trend carries such a project, it does not have the hubris of predicting the future, nor to foresee everything, nor to be a set of promises, nor to be the ready- made recipe to build socialism as such.
It’s through their experiences that the workers will find their answers to many of society’s questions. But in this elabouration, our proposals can have the value of contributions and incentives, influencing the debate of ideas and practices in the most libertarian, self-managing possible way.
