A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion - Work to live or live to be militant? -- Only a militancy that takes care of itself can last. And only one that lasts can transform By Xesta Organización Anarquista Galega (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

1. Militancy as work: a necessary political commitment ---- There is an 
idea that runs through a good part of contemporary militant practices 
and that is rarely formulated explicitly: militancy is not work. It is 
presented as a vocation, as an ethical commitment, as personal 
dedication, as a sacrifice. Something that is done "because it has to", 
because there is no moral alternative, because the cause deserves it, 
because we have free time... That way of naming it is not innocent. It 
serves to separate militancy from the field of work and, with it, to 
exclude it from the fundamental questions that feminism has been 
formulating for decades: who supports it, under what conditions, at what 
costs, with what recognition and with what right to stop.

Table of Contents
1. Activism as Work: A Necessary Political Commitment
2. The Division Between Productive and Reproductive Work: A Political 
Construction
3. Reproducing Socially: Activism, Sustainment, and Political Infrastructure
4. Activism, Gender, and Power
6. The Costs of Not Recognizing Activism as Work
7. Towards a Feminist Ethics of Activism in Social Times of Retrogression

This article is based on a clear political goal: militancy is work, and 
more specifically it is reproductive work. This is because it does not 
produce markets or directly realizable value in the market, but it does 
produce something essential: political communities, social ties, 
collective consciousness, organizational continuity, loita capacity, power.

Naming militancy as reproductive work does not imply denying it or its 
transformative nature. On the contrary. A common mistake is to oppose 
reproduction and transformation, as reproductive thinking is always 
conservative and political, by definition, disruptive. From Marxist 
theories we know that the reproduction of social life is not a neutral 
or automatic process: it is an area of central conflict. Reproducing 
does not mean repeating itself, but rather making it possible for 
something to exist and continue. Militancy reproduces - or should 
reproduce - political subjects, collective practices and ways of life 
that, precisely, question the existing order. That sex is involved, 
conscious and oriented towards change, but not less reproductive; faina 
unha form of counter-hexemonic social reproduction.

The difficulty in recognizing this has to do with a deeply rooted 
cleavage in capitalist modernity: the separation between work and all 
that remains outside of paid employment . O work, understood in the 
strict sense, appears as productive, salaried, measurable and socially 
recognized. Instead, militancy was placed in a moral register: 
vocational, heroic, sacrificial. It's not like work, you feel in spite 
of the work, spending time on rest, on life, on the things you've had. 
This split does not describe reality; produce. By removing militancy 
from the field of work, it is impossible to think about its material 
conditions of achievement.

Feminist economics takes time to warn of the consequences of this logic: 
what is not called work does not count. It doesn't count in analyses, it 
doesn't count in statistics, it doesn't count when it comes to 
distributing burdens or responsibilities. Invisibilized work is not 
measured, is not organized collectively, is not taken. And, above all, 
it is not distributed.

This invisibility does not affect all people equally. As is the case 
with other reproductive works, they are mainly men and dissidents who 
assume less visible but more constant tasks: organizing, building links, 
resolving conflicts, maintaining continuity when the epic runs out. It 
is not a coincidence that, when certain forms of militancy acquire 
political centrality, prestige or real decision-making capacity, 
depravation occurs. When reproductive work becomes key to the exercise 
of power, those who are supporting it are masculinized, professionalized 
and expelled.

This pattern is not new. It is historically repeated every time an area 
previously considered secondary becomes strategic. Or what is 
interesting here to highlight is that militancy does not escape this 
logic. Think of it as reproductive work is not an academic exercise, but 
rather a political tool to dispute its meaning, its times and its forms. 
Because only what is recognized as work can be reorganized from feminist 
criteria: justice, distribution and sustainability of life.

2. The division between productive and reproductive work: a political 
construction
To affirm that militancy is work - and, moreover, that it is 
reproductive work - we must first dismantle one of the most naturalized 
ideas of capitalist modernity: the supposed neutrality of the category 
"work." What counts as work, what activities fall within that definition 
and which ones are left out, is not a technical or descriptive question. 
It is a political, historical and deeply situated decision.

From the classical Marxist tradition, productive work is defined as 
that which produces value, that is, value capable of being realized 
non-market through the production of markets. Productive labor is, thus, 
salaried labor inserted directly into the process of capital 
accumulation. This definition does not describe all existing social 
work, but only that which is directly functional to capitalist logic. 
The rest - everything or necessary for this productive work to exist - 
remains outside the field of vision.

This is the "fora" where the so-called reproductive work is located. A 
broad set of activities related to production would be impossible: food, 
feeding, educating, accompanying, supporting daily life, maintaining 
bodies and links in conditions of continuing to exist. Historically, 
this work was presented as natural, private, linked to the domestic 
sphere and the "own" capabilities of women. Without appearing as a 
producer of direct value, it was made invisible, depoliticized and 
excluded from dominant economic analyses.

The theory of social reproduction developed and expanded by authors such 
as Lise Vogel, Tithi Bhattacharya or Silvia Federici breaks with this 
split. Its fundamental meaning is sinxela and forceful: without the 
reproduction of life there is no production possible. Due to hard work, 
it does not appear spontaneously every morning; It is produced and 
reproduced through a complex set of social relations, tempos, affects 
and coidades. The capital depends structurally on this work, even if it 
does not pay anything or recognition.

From this perspective, reproductive work is not a complement nor a 
secondary sphere. It is socially essential. Its unpaid or invisible 
character does not reduce its centrality; On the contrary, it reveals a 
relationship of appropriation. Or capitalism resolves its own limit by 
externalizing the costs of reproduction of life, offloading them on 
certain bodies and subjects. What does not enter the results list 
appears as "natural", "private" or "vocational".

This logic is closely linked to a Western-capitalist vision that 
artificially separates life, politics and economics. The economy is 
presented as an autonomous space, governed by its own laws, while life 
appears as an inexhaustible fund that can be exploited with 
consequences. Politics, for its part, is conceived as an elevated, 
abstract sphere, detached from material conditions as far as possible. 
This triple separation allows the support of the community - material, 
emotional and relational - to be expelled from politics and assigned to 
men and dissidents as an implicit responsibility.

This is where militancy must be reined in. Structurally, militancy 
encompasses no reproductive work. It does not produce markets or 
exchange value, but it produces something fundamental: the conditions of 
possibility of politics itself. It produces collective tempo, it 
produces trust, it produces learning, it produces continuity. In short, 
it produces subjects capable of acting politically in a sustained 
manner. Produces power. Like all other reproductive work, it tends to be 
invisible when it works and only becomes evident when it fails.

Thinking about militancy from the point of view of social reproduction 
allows us to shift the perspective: from heroic achievement to 
continuous process, from epic to infrastructure, from individual 
sacrifice to collective support. It is not about reducing the management 
of life to politics, but assuming that there is no politics in life that 
sustains it, and that this life, whether natural or neutral, is socially 
organized - or disorganized - work based on very concrete power relations.

3. Reproduce socially: militancy, support and political infrastructure
Failure of social reproduction is failure of everything that makes it 
possible for a society - or a political community - to exist in time. It 
is not just about reproducing bodies, but about reproducing 
relationships, knowledge, norms, affections and capacities. Social 
reproduction includes material and emotional inputs, the transmission of 
knowledge, the processes of socialization and common organization. It is 
the set of practices that allow life, and also collective action, not to 
be an isolated event, but to be something sustained and shared.

In this sense, militancy is a reproductive practice in itself. Not only 
because it consumes time and energy, but because it produces and 
reproduces the social conditions of politics. Militancy does not begin 
or end in visible action, in specific mobilization or in open conflict. 
It begins very early, in the patient construction of links, and 
continues afterward, without taking care of the people and the 
structures that are able to act again.

Reproducing socially implies coidating: two people, two bodies, two 
emotions and also two tempos. It involves transmitting knowledge, both 
technical and political: how to organize, how to make collective 
decisions, how to resist, how to negotiate, how to coidate without 
disarming. It implies political socialization, that is, ensuring that 
new people can enter a common space, understand their codes, participate 
without being excluded. And it implies organizing or common: 
distributing tasks, managing resources, maintaining spaces, assuming 
responsibilities that are not individual but collective.

All of these dimensions are at the heart of militancy, even though they 
are rarely recognized as such. Militancy produces political community: 
it does not simply add individual wills, but rather builds a "we" 
capable of acting within or in common. Maintain relationship networks 
that are not reduced to ideological unity, but that incorporate 
affection, trust and shared memory. Limited to organizational 
continuity, something especially fragile in contexts of precariousness 
and wear and tear. Resolve internal conflicts, avoid unnecessary 
breakups, support moments of crisis. It forms politically, not only 
through speeches, but through daily practice.

Therefore, not all militancy occupies the same political imaginary 
place. There is a persistent difference between what is considered 
"visible" militancy and what remains invisible. At first it is 
associated with or led, with public speech, with direct confrontation 
with an adversary, with external representation. It is militancy that is 
recognized as political because it fits into the traditional codes of 
established power. The second - invisible militancy - is what it 
supports: what it organizes, mediates, cooks, teaches, accompanies, 
making it possible that the conflict does not destroy the very community 
that it promotes. This division is neither casual nor neutral. It 
reproduces, not within two movements, the same logic that separates 
production and reproduction in capitalist society.

Thinking about militancy as infrastructure helps to understand this 
relationship. Infrastructure is not what you see, it means what allows 
something to work. It's not spectacular, but it's essential. 
Reproductive militancy is political infrastructure: it supports or 
collective building, distributes loads, absorbs impacts, allows 
continuity. Like all infrastructure, it is only visible when it fails. 
And as is the case with other infrastructures, they must remain free 
from recognition and decision-making power.

4. Militancy, gender and power
If militancy is reproductive work, and if reproductive work was 
historically feminized and made invisible, it is worth asking why so 
many forms of militancy appear today deeply masculinized. The answer 
cannot be psychological or accidental. These are not personal styles nor 
"individual excesses", but rather structural logic: the masculinization 
of militancy accompanies its conversion into a source of recognized 
political power.

The militancy that we carry is presented with very concrete lines. It is 
heroic, not a sense of being built around outstanding figures, proper 
names, memorable characters. It is sacrificial, because it is measured 
by the ability to endure more, to renounce personal life, to take on 
limitless risks. In total, it is an absolute availability that does not 
admit interruptions or dependencies. And it appears, furthermore, as 
separate from life: as something that occurs on a plane other than two 
things, from everyday relationships or from material needs.

All these traits are historically associated with modern political 
masculinity. Not a biological masculinity, but a model of abstract, 
autonomous, unburdened political existence, capable of acting as if it 
had no body or ties. This model is not neutral: it is built on the basis 
of someone else being in charge of supporting what he can ignore. Heroic 
militancy is possible because there is infrastructural militancy that is 
not called as such.

This pattern is not new. It repeats itself, with variations, throughout 
history. The forms of intra-community politics are especially evident. 
For centuries, in contexts of crisis and scarcity, groups of men 
organized bread riots, subsistence protests, and collective actions to 
guarantee the survival of the community. These practices implied 
organization, risk, confrontation with power and capacity for 
mobilization. They were, dubiously, political. However, they were rarely 
recognized as such. "Real" politics were reserved for more foreign wars, 
more formal negotiations, more institutions (hexemonic or 
counter-hexemonic), spaces led mostly by men and associated with the 
exercise and explicit dispute of power.

Daily politics, that which ensures that life continues, was 
systematically depoliticized. Not because he lacked conflict, but 
because he did not fit into the masculine codes of politics.

A similar process can be observed in the realm of both things and 
knowledge. Curandeiras and healers have been central figures in 
communities for centuries. They had a situated knowledge, transmitted 
collectively, linked to experience, to the territory and to the 
coexistence of two bodies. That knowledge conferred them authority and 
prestige. When health began to institutionalize and become a field of 
power and social recognition, it produced a radical transformation: 
knowledge was professionalized, regulated, masculinized.

This same movement can be observed today in militancy. Without wanting 
to fall into gender binaries, but following the socio-educational 
reality that influences and builds us, we see how men and women tend to 
occupy the spaces of organization, support and care: they coordinate 
tasks, keep the group united, accompany processes, absorb conflicts, 
guarantee continuity. Meanwhile, the most masculinized figures, by their 
side, appear more frequently in the public sphere, leading us visibly, 
in the accumulation of symbolic capital. Not because some are more 
capable than others, but because the codes of political recognition 
privilege certain forms of presence and devalue others.

Naming this dynamic does not imply idealizing a past or essentializing 
its successes. It is about understanding how power relations operate, 
also not within two movements that claim to be emancipatory. As long as 
militancy continues to measure itself according to heroic, sacrificial 
and separate parameters of life, it will continue to reproduce a sexual 
division of work that contradicts the very feminist values that it often 
proclaims.

Recognizing militancy as reproductive work allows, precisely, to 
deactivate this logic. It allows us to question who decides, who 
appears, who wears out, and who politically capitalizes on that wear and 
tear. It opens the possibility of disputing not only the objectives of 
the thing, but also the very ways of doing politics.

6. Be careful not to recognize militancy as a job
It is not just a conceptual problem, but a logical one with very 
concrete material, political and affective consequences. The denial of 
militancy as work operates as a technology of power: it allows work to 
be extracted without materiality, to excise delivery without offering 
rights and to normalize or wear down as proof of commitment. As is the 
case with other reproductive jobs, these costs are not distributed 
equally, but rather they fall unequally on certain bodies. One of the 
two most obvious effects is feminized overload: when militancy is not 
thought of as work, the tasks necessary to support the collective appear 
as something that "someone will do," and that someone has a specific 
face. Organizing meetings, managing times, monitoring conflicts, 
maintaining contact, making agreements or attending to discomfort is 
naturalized as a personal disposition - character, commitment or ability 
to cooperate - and not as a collective political responsibility.

Linked to this, he appears as a militant queima. The epic of sacrifice 
transforms the exhaustion into a virtue and resistance to the limit into 
a criterion of political legitimacy. Those who last longer without 
falling, those who give up more things, those who endure more pressure 
appear more committed. This logic is not only unsustainable; It is 
deeply selective and ableist. It penalizes tired bodies, lives marked by 
lack of food, precariousness, illness or dependency. What is presented 
as equality of delivery is, in reality, inequality of conditions.

The result is the systematic exclusion of those who cannot "give it 
their all". Militancy conceived as a whole leaves room for people with 
children, older dependents, mental or physical health problems, long 
working days or simply limits that they are not willing to cross. This 
exclusion is rarely formulated explicitly. It occurs silently, through 
the accumulation of existences, the lack of adaptation to two rhythms, 
the guilt of what is not happening. The militant space presents itself 
as open, but it is only practicable so that it can assume its hidden costs.

These dynamics have a deeper consequence: the reproduction of ableist 
and patriarchal logics not within spaces that are considered 
emancipatory. The discourse may be feminist, anti-capitalist or 
anti-authoritarian, but the practice organizes or power in a familiar way.

This is a growing gap between declared feminist values and real militant 
practices. It is agreed, but the times and responsibilities are not 
reorganized. It is defended equally, but it is not questioned who fails, 
who decides and who disappears. Militancy thus becomes a space of 
permanent contradiction: what is fought face to face is reproduced face 
to face within, eroding the political credibility and transformative 
capacity of two movements.

Recognizing militancy as work does not automatically solve these 
problems, but it is a necessary condition to confront them. Only when it 
is named or worked is it possible to distribute it, limit the times, 
make it compatible with life and subject it to criteria of justice. As 
long as militancy continues to be located outside the field of work, it 
will continue to be a space where political value is extracted at the 
expense of the lives of those who support it.


Consuelo Meitín and La Corales (Mapoulas Libertarias) in 1949.
7. Face to a feminist ethics of militancy in social times of regression
We accept that militancy is work, and more specifically reproductive 
work, we cannot continue organizing as it is an activity around the 
questions that feminism has been asking for decades about the support of 
life. Name it as such, it is not a theoretical or symbolic phenomenon, 
but rather a political operation necessary to make visible or support 
collective action and to dispute how it is supported. It is not about 
introducing the "coidados" as a moral fallacy or softening the political 
conflict, but rather assuming a radical consequence: militancy must be 
organized under criteria of fairness, collective responsibility and 
sustainable coexistence.

This implies, first of all, assuming that militancy must be shared. The 
work supported by a collective cannot systematically fall on the same 
bodies nor be delegated to informal and invisible functions. 
Distributing is not just rotating visible tasks or formal positions, but 
collectively assuming those that tend to remain in the shadows: or 
following two processes, mediating conflicts, addressing discomfort, 
organizational memory, or providing continuity. As long as this work is 
not recognized or distributed, political equality will remain purely formal.

It also implies that militancy must be coidated. Coidar does not mean 
protecting the harshness of conflict or avoiding confrontation, but 
rather creating conditions so that this confrontation does not destroy 
the collective capacity to sustain everything in time. Coidar and attend 
to the rhythms, recognize the limits, allow pauses, entrances and exits 
without political penalty. A militancy built on constant exhaustion is 
neither more radical nor more committed; It is more fragile, more 
selective and more exclusive.

Likewise, a feminist ethic of militancy must set limits. The logic of 
"always more" - more hours, more presence, more availability - 
reproduces internally two movements with the same expansive and 
utilitarian rationality that characterizes capitalism. Setting limits is 
not an individual concession nor a problem of personal attitudes, but 
rather a collective political decision. It means recognizing that life 
is not an inexhaustible resource and that social transformation requires 
duration, not accelerated consumption of people.

All of this leads to a fundamental premise: militancy must be compatible 
with life. Break the idea that militancy is that which is imposed on 
everything or too much and is a condition for expanding, and not 
reducing, the subjects capable of supporting it. A policy that excludes 
those who have to eat, work, rest or simply survive is neither more 
effective nor more coherent with its own principles. Making militancy 
and life compatible does not subtract strength from loita; é or that fai 
possible no tempo.

These orientations translate into a different conception of power and 
political organization. A feminist ethics of militancy questions the 
idea of militancy as an individual trajectory of symbolic accumulation - 
recognition, authority, leadership - and understands power as a 
collective capacity to sustain and act. What matters is not that you 
appear more or that you speak louder, unless the community is not 
broken, that more people can participate, remain and play politics 
without being exhausted or expelled. In no militancy like this, we are 
all necessary and none of us is essential.

It conceives as socially necessary work that strengthens, and does not 
weaken, militant commitment, because it places militancy outside of 
collective responsibility and not of moral voluntarism. Discipline 
ceases to be based on individual sacrifice and begins to be based on 
mutual agreements, common tempos, and collective work. When militancy is 
understood as work, fulfillment, achievement and support, it is not time 
to become a shared political obriga, not an exceptional heroic achievement.

The dilemma is clear. Our militancy is thought of from the reproduction 
of life - from the coexistence, the limits, the redistribution of work 
and power - or it will continue to reproduce not within the capitalist 
and patriarchal logic that separates politics and life, heroism and 
support, visibility and work. Recovering militancy for life is not a 
concession nor a setback: it is on condition that social transformation 
is not built on its own destruction. Because only militancy that is done 
can last. It is only the one that lasts that can transform.

Inés Kropo, Xesta activist

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/03/12/traballar-para-vivir-ou-vivir-para-militar/
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