A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion: What is class autonomy and how is it defended? By LIZA (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

Against the fetishization of personal autonomy, for a strategic class 
autonomy ---- In recent months, the debate on the question of autonomy, 
worker or class autonomy, and how it can be preserved and assured has 
returned with force. This debate is pertinent after the last political 
cycle, where all the social force and discontent that had accumulated a 
genuine crisis of legitimacy or organic crisis of the bourgeois 
capitalist system and the Pact of '77 was diverted by neo-reformist and 
populist projects toward a bourgeois restoration. It is also pertinent 
after a cycle of theoretical and analytical confusion and the 
abandonment of the socialist horizon by the majority of the left, 
completely lacking in strategy. Because we cannot only blame the 
reformist agents who capitalized on all that social force for their 
personal and political projects within the margins of capital. This task 
was only possible through the uncritical acceptance of the disappearance 
of the proletariat as a political subject and the vindication of the 
multitude and the citizenry in a development or degeneration of the idea 
of worker autonomy into social autonomy.

The debate over autonomy, one of the main issues in the labor movement 
and revolutionary projects, is much clearer if it is given a name. When 
we speak of worker autonomy or class autonomy, we are talking about 
strategic autonomy for the pursuit of class interests. That is, the 
consolidation of the conditions necessary for the construction of a 
political subject conscious of itself and its interests vis-à-vis other 
subjects. Historically, this debate has been at the heart of the 
problems revolutionaries must resolve because the real threat of 
deviation has always been present. It is a problem intimately linked to 
the construction of class consciousness and revolutionary hegemony, a 
question that is easier to state than to resolve.

Following the historic defeats and deviations first 
counterrevolutionary, later reformist, and then counterrevolutionary 
again of the main actors in the labor movement, the most conscious 
sectors of the working class began to seek solutions to the 
bureaucratization and diversion of emancipatory projects. Some of these 
attempts to overcome the political problems that had become evident 
sought answers in a radical critique of the organizational models they 
had seen degenerate. The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin and the 
Spartacists of Rosa Luxemburg pointed out the limits of the social 
democratic strategy advocated first by Bernstein and later by Kautsky. 
Similarly, the councilism of Pannekoek and Mattick reacted to the 
bureaucratizing and authoritarian drift of the Bolshevik Party by 
advocating a revolution without a party.

In anarchism, this problem was historically addressed in a much more 
primal and instinctive way, sounding the alarm at anything that smacked 
of unity . The way to ensure strategic class independence was to make 
impossible and label as anti-anarchist and authoritarian any political 
organization that intervened in mass movements, whatever it might be, 
while simultaneously defending the suitability of intervention at the 
mass level, individually or in small affinity groups. Without going into 
the profound contradiction that comes with understanding that it is more 
libertarian to act individually than in an organized manner, what we can 
affirm is that this way of intervening did not represent an advance in 
the defense of strategic class autonomy, but quite the opposite.

The reality is that neither councilism nor anarchist intervention at the 
mass level managed to overcome the intervention of deviant or 
authoritarian agents or bureaucratizations, many of which were led by 
anarchists themselves. In the first case, it was due to the voluntarism, 
since workers' councils cannot be created at will; they are an emergence 
from the development of the class struggle and cannot be invoked or 
constructed artificially. They arise when the conflict has developed to 
such an extent that large sectors of the dispossessed classes take 
direct charge of political and productive activity, constituting an 
embryonic form of popular power. In the second, it is because atomized 
participation was unable to confront well-trained and organized agents. 
Individual activity is always more erratic and weaker than that which an 
organization can carry out. Following the same logic, the activity of a 
large, well-articulated, and well-crafted organization has greater 
operational capacity than any temporary and loose affinity group.

Another problem inherent to anarchism stemmed from the lack of a fully 
developed revolutionary theory, to the point where it begins to hurt and 
inconvenience us because it takes us away from moral goodness . Lacking 
theory, at key moments, in the tests of fire that history placed us 
through, we ended up improvising and submitting to the strategy of 
others. Anarchism showed itself to lack strategic autonomy by lacking 
holistic strategic development. State anarchism and anti-fascist Popular 
Frontism are clear examples of this deficit.

The idea of strategic class independence began to blur and ceased to 
have a clear meaning. It was no longer simply a matter of the working 
class managing to build its own consciousness that would push it to 
fight for its interests, but rather that this had to be done free from 
any influence, as if this were possible. But this Manichean and 
simplistic understanding of political intervention was only attributed 
to organized militants. An anarchist militant in a political 
organization who attempted to contribute a political or strategic line 
to a mass organization could be accused of being a vanguardist or 
dirigiste. If this was done by a militant who was only answerable to 
themselves and their ego, we were faced with a gesture of complete 
freedom. The synthesis model we have so often criticized favored 
individual and individualist militancy. It is not an innocent and 
neutral form of organization; it responds to understandings more 
characteristic of the bourgeoisie than those of our own class and 
culture, which have always been cooperative and collective.

Time passed, and capitalism entered a long cycle of relative stability 
that reduced class struggle to a minimum. One of the tools capital used 
to disarm the working class was the implementation of parties and unions 
without a strategy of rupture, an expansion of the state, a strategy of 
usurping strategic autonomy favored by the authoritarian and 
bureaucratic drift of real socialism and libertarian egomaniacal 
personalisms. The labor movement logically reacted to the countless 
betrayals and attacks. Wherever the conflict intensified, autonomous 
nuclei emerged, fighting for their strategic autonomy. This phenomenon 
has been dubbed "workers' autonomy."

History is always a partial interpretation of what happened, and in 
certain quarters, this workers' autonomy has been idealized, 
characterized as a unity of workers without the influence of any 
political organization. The reality is more complex, and this workers' 
autonomy was actually made up of independent workers, anarchist or 
communist workers who intervened at the mass level, individually or in 
an organized manner, but also by smaller revolutionary organizations 
that championed a radical critique of pact-making social democracy, 
counterrevolutionary Stalinism, and individualism.

The long cycle of capitalist stability, which only ended with the 2008 
crisis, favored the bourgeois infiltration of the idea of the end of 
history into the labor movement, with the consequent extinction of the 
working class and the emergence of a citizenship that replaced it. 
Autonomy ceased to be strategic class autonomy because class ceased to 
exist; it became social autonomy. By conceptualizing the disappearance 
of classes, every political project became multiclass by definition, and 
most importantly, the most effective strategy that could be implemented 
was one that did not frighten the middle classes. In other words, a 
class coalition was generated that impeded the development of class 
consciousness and strategic autonomy.

From this perspective, what had to be defended and preserved was not a 
class that had ceased to exist, but a plural subject from the onslaught 
of the devices at the service of bourgeois democracy, that is, parties 
and unions. Obviously, such an extremely precarious understanding of 
reality soon led to a defense of individual autonomy over any type of 
organization. This proposal ended up degenerating, in the absence of 
in-depth debate, into personal autonomy, the atomization or 
sectoralization of struggles, and even less class autonomy. They became 
increasingly defenseless and lacked their own strategy, to the point 
that social movements believed their independence was threatened by 
libertarian organizations or anarcho-syndicates. If we have been 
defining the self-proclaimed autonomous movement as autonomist, it is 
because, given this situation, a fetishization of the political proposal 
of autonomy was produced, stripped of a systemic understanding and class 
antagonism.

Based on what criteria do these militants decide to distribute anarchist 
cards? Isn't their goal also to break with class society? Why is it so 
scary to try to organize based on formality and coherence? Perhaps the 
reason for this fear lies in the fact that confronting the conflict 
inherent in the system implies stepping down from the comforting 
armchair of amnesiac purism.

Now, if we accept that the real need of the working class is to possess 
strategic independence from those who exploit it, the debate should move 
beyond the absurdity of identity and fetishization to honestly and 
profoundly answer the question: How can we create space for strategic 
class independence and how do we defend it?

To answer this question, we must abandon essentialism and pseudo-radical 
positions. We must accept that the refusal to allow reformist or 
authoritarian agents to participate cannot be avoided with the tactics 
we have implemented. Furthermore, denying the participation of political 
organizations in broad spaces favors the activity of bureaucratic agents 
serving the status quo or their own egos. In the face of this, 
individual participation, and anti-organizational dogma, we propose 
mandatory open participation. Each participant must reveal their 
affiliation so that our entire class can easily engage in the exercise 
of linking each person, their practice, and their proposals. Let us make 
honesty an obligation and a tactic for exposing bureaucrats and 
reformist or authoritarian agents.

Furthermore, it is obvious that the libertarian revolutionary 
organization has a greater capacity to combat the aggressors of class 
independence than atomized agents. If four eyes see more than two, an 
organization will necessarily have a greater capacity to combat than 
individual militants due to its ability to share information, generate 
analysis, and implement measures.

Social autonomy, on the other hand, has amply revealed its limitations. 
Fortunately, the autonomous movement, which has degenerated into 
autonomism, is beginning to recognize this problem and understand that 
the citizen has not surpassed the working class, that the working class 
never disappeared because it can only be overcome by the liquidation of 
this system of exploitation. Now it's time to reverse the impact of this 
discourse, which for years has colonized common sense and, today, is the 
logic of social movements. To do so, we must be aware that the 
postulates of social autonomy were one of the main factors in the loss 
of strategic autonomy because they prevented people from understanding 
that its proposal was limited by being composed of individuals with 
conflicting interests, while also obscuring the possibility of 
discerning the political responsibility of each political subject.

This is clearly expressed in the incipient attempts to overcome the 
centrist tendencies that facilitated the neo-reformist deviation. Given 
this, it is not enough to use concepts like "fighting federation" or 
"People's Power" as empty signifiers. Autonomy is defended through deep 
and defined debate. The fact that the working class must develop its own 
strategy does not mean that it should spring forth like a flower in 
spring, but rather that it must be the conclusion of the political 
struggle within it. And of course, in addressing this task, erroneous or 
partial understandings of the class composition of spaces, assuming 
social class as a sociological reality rather than a political process, 
contribute nothing.

Strategic class autonomy versus socialist self-defense

We must recognize the Socialist Movement's (MS) ability to open key 
strategic debates. It's a shame that for our comrades, opening the 
debate simply means presenting a complete and complete statement-without 
giving space or time for the dialogue that the entire movement or its 
spaces must undertake-under penalty of being labeled social democrats. 
Although it's not the most honorable way to raise a discussion, we take 
the floor because the topic deserves it.

The MS's position on this issue is determined by its idea of a 
revolutionary party as a single mass party in the purest Stalinist 
style. For the comrades, the answer to all the vital questions for the 
proletariat's struggle-how to build its own strategy, how to defend 
itself, how to achieve hegemony, how to articulate and expand itself-is 
answered with a single key: The Party. And of course, its party. 
Although they call this model Bolshevik, and in its most degenerate 
expression it bears a similarity, the original formulation of these 
questions by Marxist and Leninist theory does not fit with this way of 
solving all problems by banging on the table.

But this isn't the place to discuss coherence and alignment with 
Bolshevik positions or the problems of such an understanding of the 
party. The task here is to point out that hegemony is not co-optation . 
If they believe they are right, let them convince us with words and 
deeds, let them win over the opposition. If they truly demonstrate that 
their proposal is the most appropriate for developing the processes of 
class struggle, the workers, who are not stupid, will adopt it as their 
own. Less paternalism and less self-referential pseudo-radicalism, and 
more example.

The reason is demonstrated in their own practice, and it doesn't seem 
like the comrades are following this path, even though intrigues, 
betrayals, coups, and outbursts have been much more common in their 
short history. Leadership, references, and guidance are obtained 
naturally in struggle; they cannot be forced. At the 2nd Catalan Housing 
Congress, it was once again evident that, instead of convincing through 
action, demonstrating with facts that the spaces led by their party have 
been able to make more progress than the rest-something that hasn't even 
come close to happening they have decided to prioritize building their 
red unions , condemned to political marginalization and sectarianism.

The slogan " nothing outside the party ," complemented by the slogan " 
everything within the party is socialism," pushes them toward an 
agonistic drift of fratricidal competition that dynamites or undermines 
all the spaces within their orbit. Some social movements understand this 
dynamic as an attack on their autonomy, again from a more 
individualistic than class-based perspective. This does nothing to 
foster further debate and, at best, materializes as a sympathetic 
conversation, albeit on Twitter.

Miguel Brea, Liza activist

https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/05/15/que-es-la-autonomia-de-clase-y-como-se-defiende/
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