A-Infos (en) Spaine, LISA, Regeneracion: Revolutionary Judo - Reflections on Understanding the Especifist Strategy, the Construction of Popular Power, and Revolutionary Gymnastics (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Warning: This text is NOT directed at the libertarian movement in its 
loosest sense. Those who have not made a deep and honest assessment or, 
after some analysis, have concluded that nothing in their strategy 
should be revised, WILL NOT FIND ANY MESSAGE FOR THEM HERE. ---- For 
those who profess such unwavering faith based on the most fundamentalist 
interpretations of The Idea, or for those whose "particular" experience 
has not brought them the bitter taste of another defeat and who feel 
complete, satiated, and confirmed by the impact of their political 
action, THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

Here I write for my comrades, those who question themselves to the core, 
those who feel that anarchism is committed to the most radical 
self-criticism and who wholeheartedly pursue it, eschewing imposture, 
because they want to change the world. I write for those I've been 
fortunate enough to meet, with whom I advance in the goal of building a 
strategic Anarchism for a mass socialist revolution.

Specifism and Platformism are part of a current of anarchism that, in 
its most basic expression, represents a significant advance in the 
libertarian tradition compared to other strategic currents. Refusing to 
accept the typical appeal to supposedly unequivocal and unquestionable 
libertarian principles, which is nothing more than the threat of a 
withdrawal of the "card," the comrades who gather around this tendency, 
which we will call revolutionary organized anarchism , have discussed 
several tendentious dogmas.

My comrades have refused to accept that the only libertarian militant 
practice compatible with anarchist values is that carried out 
individually and at the mass level. In response to this imposition, they 
have asserted that the creation of ideological organizations to 
intervene in social processes and build strategic and action unity is 
not only more practical and useful for a mass emancipatory project, but 
is also more consistent with libertarian principles because it 
facilitates processes of joint reflection and self-criticism.

What seems obvious, in the libertarian movement, represents a true leap 
forward. In my opinion, my comrades in Madrid, Catalonia, the rest of 
the Spanish regions, and internationally have been and are very brave to 
face their contradictions and pursue them to the end. When breaking with 
common sense and tradition, in its worst sense, means putting your 
social spaces and your closest environment at risk, the courage is doubled.

Now, once that first question has been established and it has been 
established that the Specific Organization and Dual Militancy are 
coherent and strategically more effective than other forms of militancy, 
it is time to begin answering the key question: What is the objective or 
task that such an organization seeks to accomplish? In other words: what 
do concepts such as Popular Power, Insurrectional General Strike , or 
the accumulation of social force really mean? These questions are 
essential because their answers determine both the way in which the 
specific organization is constructed and its relationship with the 
different spaces of tendencies and masses.

Obviously, we cannot and do not intend to answer all of these questions 
unequivocally in this article, but I will try to put in writing some 
questions that I think are important not to forget or put off for too long.

Revolutionary Specific Gymnastics?

The concept of "revolutionary gymnastics," attributed to García Oliver 
during the pistolero era, can be understood as the implementation of a 
tactic whose main objective is to generate different situations in which 
revolutionaries could learn, in and through practice, lessons that would 
serve them once a broader revolutionary process began.

The goal was to create groups capable of arming themselves, combating 
the enemy, fostering self-organization processes for the working class, 
and developing political developments. It should be noted that it was 
not only intended to serve as a training ground for the working class 
and its most militant members; it also sought to advance the 
construction of self-defense structures. As I will use this concept only 
for its illustrative potential, in the most explicit sense of the term, 
I apologize in advance for having simplified and summarized it in this way.

For the purpose of this article, we aim to consider what the 
Revolutionary Gymnastics of Especifista Organizations might be today and 
in our immediate context, and compare it with their objectives to 
determine whether or not they are fulfilling their function, or even 
whether their function is clear. My hypothesis, as will be revealed, is 
that there are disparate interpretations of key concepts and ideas given 
that the development of Especifista strategy is still, at least in 
Spain, very young. The organizational tactic, Especifismo, has taken 
center stage and, for the moment, has obscured the comprehensive 
development of a revolutionary mass strategy.

In many texts we have said, in various ways, that the tasks of Specific 
Organizations in mass movements and social struggles were to combat 
bureaucracies, strengthen spaces for class self-organization, provide 
strategic vision and systemic analysis or, in a much more poetic and 
also vaguer way, to accumulate Social Force , in a cumulative process 
that we call People's Power and that, hypothetically, would lead us to 
build the conditions that make it possible to confront the bourgeoisie 
in a process of Insurrectional General Strike , among others.

These interventions can be understood as an end in themselves, but we 
can and should undoubtedly also conceive them as part of a Revolutionary 
Gymnastics project that allows us to develop the necessary experiences 
to address an acute process of class struggle. We would be talking about 
two subjects who would be trained in these processes: the masses and the 
revolutionary militants of the Specific Organizations. We must reinforce 
and point out immediately that this "social intervention" has as one of 
its main objectives to serve the libertarian revolutionary organization 
and its militants as a space for training and growth. This connection 
with social reality, beyond all theorization and our ghettos, is what 
allows us to grow alongside the broader spaces of struggle.

Revolutionary fitness: the limits of stage-based and cumulative thinking

We have been saying that Specific Revolutionary Organizations intervene 
in social processes to promote the accumulation of social power in a 
project of People's Power . However, the problem is that this statement 
is highly ambiguous and can be understood in various ways or lead us to 
significant conceptual errors with disastrous political consequences.

The most basic and also most common way of thinking about the 
accumulation of social force ( represented in graph 1 ) is to think that 
through participation in different struggles, we can achieve a 
progressive growth in the strength of the working class as a whole, 
until we equal or surpass the forces of our class enemies: the 
bourgeoisie and its repressive forces.

This way of imagining the process of People's Power has several risks 
that I will address below:

The possibility of growth is directly related to the revolutionary or 
conciliatory character of the mass grouping.
The enemy will not allow a force whose objective is to confront and 
subdue it to grow. We have seen on a thousand and one occasions, and we 
will see it again if we do not take measures, that the projects allowed 
to develop and grow within this system are the harmless ones, and that 
any project with a certain capacity to challenge is quickly repressed or 
diverted. This does not mean in the least that we cannot and should not 
fight for the growth of mass organizations. What is firmly stated is 
that quantitative growth does not necessarily imply qualitative growth 
in terms of Social Strength or Popular Power .

Historically, we have clear examples of the growth of workers' 
organizations that were either permitted by the bourgeoisie due to their 
conciliatory and reformist nature, or that, at a crucial moment, lacking 
a developed plan, decided to try to conserve their accumulated strength. 
As we can see in Figure 2 , it's of no use to accumulate forces to build 
a unit that is unwilling to fight or doesn't know how to do so.

We must challenge the stage-based and evolutionary approaches. Simple 
cumulative thinking and growth metaphors can prevent us from 
constructing precise analyses and producing truly effective plans. 
Obviously, organizations lack a natural essence, and their 
projection-conservative, conciliatory, or revolutionary-will depend on 
their composition and internal balance of forces.

Growth is rarely cumulative in a unidirectional sense.
Anarchism has tended to be moved and deeply involved in various social 
struggles and protest movements, but an endemic lack of a strategic plan 
and an adequate Theory of Social Reproduction has led us to experience 
ebbs and flows as genuine personal tragedies and unexpected accidents. 
Militant depression and burnout are constant, and, as we see in Figure 
3, it's quite normal for a temporary rise to be followed by a decline. 
If we don't have a well-developed definition of our strategy, People's 
Power won't be able to save us from falling into the swamp of sadness 
when we see much of what we've built crumble and much of what we've 
mobilized go astray.

We must develop a holistic Revolutionary Theory that attempts to 
anticipate , as far as possible, all possible scenarios. This doesn't 
mean clinging to an unquestionable and rigid model, but rather equipping 
ourselves with tools for focus. In the heat of battle, profound 
reflection cannot be constructed, and history cannot find us once again 
disarmed of theory.

Not all social bodies are identical.
Lacking a well-developed Theory of Social Reproduction , it's easy to 
construct simplistic characterizations and be dominated by quantitative 
thinking. A revolutionary organization capable of detecting bureaucratic 
agents seeking to divert social power and authoritarian projects aiming 
to build a base of operations based on class conflicts must be able to 
differentiate between the different active subjects within the class as 
a whole. Who are the most revolutionary and combative? Who are the most 
involved? Who can we rely on and who should we rely on?

As we see in Figure 4, somewhat grotesquely, it is not about promoting 
generalized growth, but rather those parts of the working class that are 
most advanced, most involved, and have the greatest revolutionary potential.

We need to equip ourselves with the most developed Theory of Social 
Reproduction possible and activate a fractionalist filter . A 
paternalistic and prudish conception of society is as little useful to 
emancipatory goals as sectarianism and purism.

Factionalism should also be applied to oneself
If we truly believe that the Libertarian Revolutionary Organization is 
necessary to support and defend mass revolutionary processes, we must 
accept that its qualitative and quantitative growth is a priority. It 
should be at least as important as the growth of spaces for class 
self-organization and its most advanced fractions.

Let's break with our complexes and assume that times of low social 
conflict are the appropriate framework for developing Specific 
Organization, the Theory of Social Reproduction, and Revolutionary 
Theory. Around us, we have examples of organizations that confuse 
organizational growth with the growth of broader spaces and end up 
building themselves without unity and losing militants along the way, 
who abandon the organization to focus on broader spaces of struggle 
because they don't have this point clearly in mind.

As we see in graph 5 , if class spaces grow and the organization 
stagnates, its relative size becomes more acute, turning the Specific 
Organization into an insignificant force when acute processes of class 
struggle open up.

The enemy must be included in our analysis
I am concerned to see that many theoretical articulations of Popular 
Power are not supported by a Theory of Social Reproduction that places 
periods of capitalist crisis at the center of analysis . This is a 
mistake that can lead us to construct ourselves in an unstrategic way. 
Failing to consider the problem of the forces in conflict in a radically 
relational or dialectical way is one of the worst flaws a strategy that 
claims to be revolutionary can have. The possibility of attacking the 
enemy, as shown in Figure 6 , is not provided by the growth of our mass, 
but also, and primarily, by the weakening of rival forces.

From a Gramscian perspective, " organic crises " involve understanding 
the possibility of the working class's strength growing through the 
fragmentation of the bourgeoisie's forces. The loss of legitimacy of the 
capitalist system and bourgeois democracy, the inability to integrate 
broad masses of workers into a welfare system, and the impossibility of 
fulfilling the promises of the capitalist dream mean that thousands of 
people can abruptly change sides if the right intervention is made. This 
is where one of the fundamental tasks of any revolutionary project comes 
in: building class hegemony involves integrating the demands of the 
working classes into those of the class fractions that truly constitute 
us as a power.

The Theory of Social Reproduction we must adopt must be capable of 
producing the most accurate characterizations of social cycles possible 
. The terminology coined by Lazzarato, "terminal crisis," very much in 
vogue within the libertarian movement, has the major problem that it can 
lead us to believe that we will simply have to wait for capitalism to 
collapse on its own. On the contrary, concepts such as the "Era of 
Crisis, Wars, and Revolutions" help us understand that we may be 
entering a period where capitalist crises will become increasingly 
acute, affect larger sectors of the population, last longer, be more 
frequent, and prevent a full recovery of economic systems.

A linear and traditional temporal thought is a thought incapable of 
addressing revolutionary processes
All biographical accounts of revolutionaries and witnesses to major 
historical conflicts emphasize how time is distorted and accelerated 
during periods of social upheaval. Social time is a relative time 
conditioned by the density of social phenomena. In times of social 
peace, everything seems static, change seems so distant that it begins 
to seem utopian, history slows down, and prophets of defeat proclaim the 
end of history (and the consequent death of the proletariat). But when 
the first conflicts begin to occur, time changes, it accelerates, and 
the Mad Hatter enters the scene. So much happens in such a short time; 
there are so many inputs, so much life, so much energy, that the 
perception of time is logically altered. This necessarily implies three 
things:

Windows of opportunity: revolutionary processes open and close.
Thinking based on cumulative growth can lead to conservative attitudes.
Any revolutionary organization that does not include this issue in its 
Revolutionary Theory is doomed to be unable to react quickly when time 
accelerates .
In Figure 7, I attempt to illustrate these issues. The revolutionary 
organization (indicated in red) fails to seize the moment, especially if 
it lacks the strength and scale to be able to have an impact on the 
entire working class (represented in green). Meanwhile, comrades who 
pursue strategies with a unidirectional, cumulative vision (represented 
in black) tend to be conservative and try to halt or avoid the struggle 
because they fear that everything they have built will collapse if they 
are defeated. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie has time to regroup, and once 
it regains power, it will soon go on the offensive and dismantle any 
project of class organization.

Revolutionary Judo

At this point, it might seem that all these dangers pointed out in the 
approaches that place the growth of Social Force at the center of the 
revolutionary mass strategy can be counteracted by implementing a 
certain level of attention to possible deviations. If this has been 
understood, I have explained myself quite poorly. The Revolutionary 
Organization is built in a certain way, and in order to assume certain 
tasks, all "revolutionary gymnastics" must be aimed at preparing us for 
a specific type of situation. Long-distance athletes, gymnasts, and 
boxers do not train in the same way, because the activity they face is 
not the same.

I don't know if this is the best possible example, but to follow the 
metaphor to the end, I thought perhaps judo and its modern variants are 
the martial arts that best serve to explain the proposal we are 
defending here. This Japanese martial art and its various contemporary 
variations focus their training and development on a comprehensive 
understanding of the body (one's own and one's opponent's), strength, 
and timing . The inevitable contact between the two contenders has the 
main objective of detecting our opponent's intentions through the 
different pressure changes in the grips, with the goal of being able to 
take advantage of, enhance, and apply our own and the opponent's 
strength in a specific direction. Throws, locks, strikes, and 
strangulations are only possible through the precise application of 
force at specific times, in specific areas, and in specific directions. 
End of metaphor.

The Revolutionary Gymnastics of Libertarian Revolutionary Organizations 
that wish to play a productive role in supporting, developing, and 
defending revolutionary processes must be built to detect the slightest 
shifts in social forces and tensions and immediately redirect all their 
forces toward them. This approach is incompatible with a closed, 
cumulative idea of class-building processes.

As part of the social body of the working class, Specific Organizations 
must support processes of popular struggle and self-defense, 
self-management, and direct action, and enhance analytical and strategic 
capacities by supporting the most advanced sectors and confronting 
bureaucratic and authoritarian deviations. Strengthen the working class 
as a whole while strengthening the revolutionary organization without 
expecting the mechanical conclusion of victory from this process of 
accumulation of forces, but always keeping our eyes on the certainty 
that the constitution of a Dual Power , of a class power capable of 
confronting the power of the bourgeoisie, will inevitably open a 
conflict that cannot remain unresolved.

We must build ourselves to detect energy flows, tensions, and forces in 
growth or decline. We must work to be able to detect the accumulation of 
antagonistic capital, social tension, the growth of class consciousness, 
and the resulting acceleration of social time. We must prepare ourselves 
to be able to identify forces, characterize the different agents, and 
direct our own strength and that of the class as a whole toward actions 
that allow us to win. We must become aware of the changing rhythms and 
speeds inherent in social dynamics and be prepared to accelerate when 
our analyses suggest it and not be blocked when we need to go all out. 
We must educate ourselves and grow in the art of insurrection.

Miguel Brea, Liza activist

 https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/03/12/judo-revolucionario/
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