A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion: When History Accelerates: Maricarmen's Eviction -- On political time and the need for revolutionary organization - By LIZA (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"Revolutions have their own time, paced by accelerations and 
decelerations. They also have their own geometry, in which the straight 
line breaks at history's forks and sharp turns." - Daniel Bensaïd, 
*Politics as Strategic Art*
Table of Contents
1. The event and accumulation
2. Organizing when time accelerates
3. Organization as strategic mediation
4. From the specific struggle to the revolutionary cadre
5. Not all acceleration is revolutionary
6. Organizing before the acceleration arrives
There is a fundamental difference between chronological time and 
political time. The former unfolds in an apparently uniform manner: days 
follow one another, and development is linear. The latter, 
however-governed by the dialectical logic of a contradictory reality-is 
very different: there are historical periods in which months or even 
years seem to contain very few substantial transformations, while there 
are moments when political reality can be radically transformed in a 
matter of days.

This means that political time cannot be understood simply as the 
succession of events on the calendar. It is, above all, the pace at 
which the relationships between social forces, institutions, 
organizations, and the possibilities for political action change. There 
are specific events that, based on the accumulation of internal 
contradictions, appear as turning points, making possible, in 
qualitative terms, what until recently was unthinkable.

A society can remain seemingly stable for years and yet be accumulating 
contradictions. These contradictions don't necessarily manifest 
themselves immediately. They can remain separate, partially invisible, 
or even appear unconnected. An economic crisis, a labor dispute, a 
housing crisis, a particular police action, a popular mobilization, or 
an institutional crisis may seem, individually, like isolated phenomena. 
However, they can establish connections between them: each event 
modifies the conditions under which the next ones occur, and each new 
conflict can amplify, accelerate, or transform the previous ones. It is 
at this point that the acceleration of political time appears, the 
concrete expression of latent contradictions.

It is not that an isolated event creates a revolutionary situation out 
of thin air. Rather, it happens that a prior accumulation of 
contradictions finds certain events capable of condensing them and 
making them politically visible. The event then acts as a catalyst for 
processes that were already developing in society.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; 
they do not make it under self-chosen circumstances, but under 
circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the 
past." Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

The history of the Paris Commune can serve to illustrate this point. The 
Commune did not simply emerge as a consequence of a single event on 
March 18, 1871. Prior to this, there had been an extraordinary 
accumulation of conflicts: the Franco-Prussian War, the French defeat, 
the fall of the Second Empire, the Siege of Paris, the organization and 
arming of the National Guard, the growing tension between the government 
in Versailles and the Parisian population, and the political 
radicalization of certain sectors of the city. For months, elements had 
been building that altered the situation.

But there comes a point when this buildup changes pace. The government's 
attempt to withdraw the National Guard's cannons from Montmartre on 
March 18 triggers a rupture. Within days, what might have seemed like 
just another political crisis transforms into a completely different 
situation: the government loses effective control of Paris, the National 
Guard assumes a central role, and on March 26, elections are held for 
the Commune , which will be proclaimed two days later.

The important thing to understand is that no one could have foreseen how 
it would all end. For Kropotkin, the existence of the Commune began to 
create possibilities that previously couldn't even be formulated in the 
same way. According to him, the idea of the Commune wasn't conceived 
suddenly by an individual; he presents it as something born of 
collective intelligence. Therefore, we don't want to claim that the 
Commune was inevitable. It wasn't. The important thing is to understand 
that a series of processes that had been developing for months were able 
to crystallize into a qualitative transformation in an extraordinarily 
short period .

In January 1917, Lenin, in exile in Zurich, did not consider the Russian 
Revolution imminent. He spoke of it as a coming revolution that perhaps 
his own generation would not live to witness. In his own words: "We of 
the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this 
revolution." However, he did not doubt the historical possibility of a 
new revolutionary wave. Just a few weeks later, the fall of Tsarism 
radically transformed the horizon of what was possible. What in January 
had appeared as an indeterminate historical prospect had become by March 
a concrete political situation that required intervention.

This allows us to understand something fundamental: the acceleration of 
political time does not mean that suddenly everything is possible. It 
means that the boundary of possibility can shift rapidly. What yesterday 
seemed politically unfeasible may become a concrete possibility 
tomorrow. And, likewise, a possibility that seemed open may quickly close.

That is why political acceleration is also a strategic problem.

The event and the accumulation
We can apply this reflection to a much more immediate scale. Let's 
consider an eviction like Maricarmen's. The eviction, viewed in 
isolation, might seem like a specific conflict between an individual and 
a vulture fund, a legal matter, or a particular housing claim. But 
certain conditions may already exist surrounding this event: organized 
groups, solidarity networks, prior experiences of struggle, social 
unrest, conflicts with institutions, and a shared awareness of a broader 
problem. The eviction can then become something more than the specific 
case that triggered it. In the words of a colleague, fires are 
unpredictable, but it is our duty to stockpile flammable material for 
when one appears .

It is not about denying the particularity of each conflict, but about 
understanding how it can relate to other conflicts and how it can 
contribute to building a collective force and, of course, one capable of 
exceeding the predictable.

A concentration of power can produce a primary network of affinities. 
This network can enable further mobilization. The institutional response 
can generate outrage. Outrage can increase participation. Participation 
can lead to a convergence of forces. Organization can connect the 
conflict with other conflicts. And these conflicts, in turn, can modify 
other sectors' perceptions of their own possibilities for action. In 
this process, feedback occurs: an acceleration of conditions and 
conflicts, an intensification of repression, and a primary awakening of 
consciousness among much broader segments of the population. There is 
not necessarily a straight line between the initial event and the final 
outcome. It is a concatenation of events that interact dialectically. 
One struggle modifies the conditions of another; a partial victory can 
generate confidence for a subsequent struggle; a defeat can produce 
demoralization or, conversely, new forms of organization; a repressive 
response can contain a movement or provoke a broadening of solidarity. 
In short, a regime of acceleration in which each event ceases to be 
merely an event and begins to modify the conditions of subsequent events.

And that is precisely where the organizational problem arises.

Getting organized when time speeds up
During periods of stability, the need for a revolutionary political 
organization may seem abstract . If struggles develop slowly, are 
subject to inertial bureaucracies, conflicts are absorbed by 
institutional mechanisms, and demands appear isolated from one another, 
it may seem sufficient to intervene in each specific conflict.

But when the political clock speeds up, a different question arises:

What do we do with the strength we've managed to accumulate? How do we 
make the fire spread?

"Because mobilizing is not the same as organizing" (Jane McAlevey). And 
winning a specific demand does not necessarily mean having built a 
political force capable of transforming the social relations that 
produce that demand.

Every struggle also generates different possible directions. A 
mobilization can be channeled toward institutional negotiation, it can 
be limited to resolving the specific problem that originated it, it can 
become a broader organizational experience, or it can connect with other 
conflicts and produce a new form of collective power. Events can shift 
from being quantitative to being qualitative.

Deactivating or diverting the struggle doesn't require imagining a 
permanent conspiracy by institutions or union bureaucracies. It's about 
recognizing that in every struggle there are actors with different 
interests, positions, and strategies . Some will seek to resolve the 
conflict quickly; others will try to broaden its scope; others will seek 
to institutionalize it; others will try to keep it within certain limits 
acceptable to barbarity.

Therefore, a struggle does not have a predetermined political direction. 
Acceleration opens up possibilities, but it does not, in itself, 
determine where they will develop. However, this statement requires a 
fundamental caveat: intervening in a struggle does not mean 
appropriating it.

This issue was especially important for anarchist thought and, in 
particular, for Malatesta and Fontenis. Faced with the false dichotomy 
between absolute spontaneity and top-down direction, they defended the 
need for revolutionary organizations capable of intervening in social 
movements, but without turning that intervention into a replacement for 
those leading the struggles.

A revolutionary organization can contribute analysis, coordination, 
experience, strategy, and a broader perspective; it can try to connect 
specific conflicts and help a struggle develop its full political 
potential. But there is a fundamental difference between intervening to 
strengthen the autonomy of a struggle and intervening to turn it into an 
instrument of an external organization .

The revolutionary should not position themselves above the struggle to 
dictate from the outside what it should do. Nor should they merely 
observe it passively in the name of spontaneity, as if there were no 
interests within the conflict itself seeking to co-opt or channel 
discontent. Their task is to deploy political action within it , 
contributing whatever can increase its class independence and 
organizational capacity, without replacing the subject who leads it.

In this sense, the revolutionary organization would be a mediator 
between the spontaneity of the struggle and the conscious construction 
of a political strategy. A strategic operator for emancipation.

The organization as strategic mediation
The role of an organization is not to artificially accelerate history or 
to replace those who are leading a struggle. Nor is it simply to wait 
passively from the couch for a revolutionary situation to arise so it 
can intervene. During periods of relative stability, the organization 
must build the necessary capacities to take political action when the 
situation changes. It must pivot constantly between objective and 
subjective conditions, between social reality and a revolutionary program.

In other words: the revolutionary organization establishes itself in 
periods of calm in order to develop its strategy before political time 
moves too quickly.

When acceleration arrives, there is no longer enough time to build a 
strategy, relationships, activist cadres, a political culture, 
coordination mechanisms, and the capacity for intervention from scratch. 
Everything that hasn't been built beforehand will have to be improvised 
when conditions become more difficult.

The organization is, therefore, a form of political accumulation, of 
antagonistic capital.

But this accumulation should not aim to build a structure separate from 
society that would later seek to govern it. Its function should be to 
build capacities that can be placed at the service of broader collective 
processes. To move from being committed militants to revolutionary 
cadres. In the words of Fontenis: "The class before the party."

Therefore, we can perhaps formulate the relationship between 
organization and movement in the following way:

It is not about directing the struggle from the outside, but about 
increasing from within its capacity to organize, understand itself and 
defend itself against deviations.

In fact, the false dichotomy between organization and mass front is too 
often presented, when it is actually a dialectical relationship: 
organizations contribute to the fronts, political action within the 
fronts contributes to the development of activists within the 
organizations, organizations base their programs on the fact that the 
fronts perceive or feel the progress is coherent, and the spaces improve 
qualitatively through constant theoretical and practical development. 
This is always done with honesty and activist ethics.

Organization provides memory when the movement is subject to the urgency 
of the event. It provides perspective when the conflict threatens to be 
reduced to its immediate dimension. It provides coordination when the 
struggles appear fragmented. And it provides strategy when a situation 
arises in which decisions made in days can have consequences for years.

From individual struggle to revolutionary cadre
There is a fundamental question here: to identify the political 
potential inherent in a given struggle. A specific demand may contain a 
much broader contradiction.

Defending a home can open a discussion about property ownership.
Defending a job can open a discussion about who makes the decisions in 
production.
A fight against a particular institutional measure can open a discussion 
about who has the effective capacity to decide on the living conditions 
of the majority.
The organization can help make that connection, but it cannot impose it 
mechanically. It has to start from concrete reality, from existing 
relationships, from the level of consciousness, and from the current 
state of the class struggle.

In this sense, the revolutionary program should not be understood as a 
list of slogans applied externally to any conflict. It must be a tool 
for interpreting existing contradictions and guiding intervention toward 
transformations that expand collective capacity. From this arises 
another role of the revolutionary organization, mentioned earlier only 
superficially: that of creating revolutionary cadres -individuals 
capable of applying revolutionary theory and translating it to the 
concrete context where the struggle is unfolding. Revolutionary 
politics, then, does not consist of mechanically applying a 
pre-constructed program to any situation. It consists of maintaining a 
permanent, focused yet flexible relationship between program, 
organization, movement, and reality.

The notion of a revolutionary cadre is not a label for "enlightened" 
militants, but rather the idea that selfless and committed militancy 
alone is not enough, that the task is immense and, for that reason, no 
less inspiring. It is time to develop a program and build strategic 
unity. A unity founded on fraternal debate and the political will to 
move forward.

Not all acceleration is revolutionary
This also helps us understand why not all political acceleration is 
necessarily revolutionary.

A crisis can produce radicalization, but also fear or reaction. It can 
generate organization, but also retreat. It can broaden the struggle or 
create the very conditions for its eradication. It can open the 
possibility of a rupture or strengthen existing structures. In fact, we 
are at a moment in which the intensification of contradictions within 
capitalism can cause an overlap of events that accelerates the course of 
history in one direction or another. History neither warns nor asks 
permission.

Acceleration does not determine the outcome: what it does is reduce the 
time available to intervene in a field of possibilities that is still open.

For years, what seems impossible remains outside the political horizon. 
Until an accumulation of contradictions, an unexpected event, and a 
particular balance of power produce a qualitative transformation. Then, 
the question ceases to be whether it is possible. The question becomes 
which actors exist and what direction they want to give to the 
situation. Politics leaves no vacuum, and if we are not there, others 
will be.

We have certain sectors, after the moment of social outrage following 
Maricarmen's eviction, clamoring for a new 15M movement. These sectors, 
with their reformist leanings, are simply seeking an accumulation of 
indignation that will crystallize into yet another parliamentary 
alternative. This will only fuel the reactionary forces due to their 
real inability to impose any real change on our conditions. The 15M 
movement was an acceleration process that caught us, at best, in a 
cobweb-filled basement. We lacked the effective capacity to steer that 
process toward more revolutionary positions. Reformist bureaucracies, 
the media apparatus, and the movement's internal contradictions 
dissolved any possibility of change. The revolutionary obligation is to 
be prepared for the opportunities that history will open for us.

Get organized before the acceleration arrives
Therefore, a revolutionary organization cannot be conceived solely as a 
structure intended for moments of crisis. It is precisely in moments 
when seemingly "nothing is happening" that the possibilities for 
intervention are built when everything starts to happen. It accumulates 
experiences, relationships, knowledge, tools, trust, and collective 
capacities that can acquire a completely different value when the 
situation changes.

And when political time imposes a new pace upon us, those unprepared for 
this acceleration may discover that, while they are still trying to 
grasp that the situation has changed, others are already intervening. 
Revolutionary organization is, ultimately, the conscious construction of 
a political capacity to intervene at that moment when history ceases to 
unfold according to the calendar and thus ushers in historical cycles.

What would happen if Maricarmen's eviction, as a concrete event, opened 
up previously unimaginable opportunities? What position would that put 
us revolutionaries in to contest the path these mobilizations would 
take? Do we have enough strength to stand up to the bureaucracies and 
reformist sectors? The answers, if given honestly, are bleak.

Our task is to prepare ourselves, not to replace those who make history, 
but to help, to the best of our ability, to clarify the interests of our 
class.

We can help accelerate history; events don't happen by chance. There are 
always actors and subjects involved. Be that as it may, we must take 
sides. To navigate the waves of history, to write its lines.

Liza, Anarchist Platform

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/09/27/el-desahucio-de-maricarmen/
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