Especifismo
*Started reading Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization as Especifismo is node club node this week.
Sounds really good so far. Seems very adjacent to Anarchist Cybernetics in it's push towards organisational structures within anarchism.
Sounds related to Platformism too.
born out of nearly 50 years of anarchist experiences in South America
– Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization
1. Three key points
- The need for specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis
- The use of the specifically anarchist organization to theorize and develop strategic political and organizing work.
- Active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular social movements, which is described as the process of "social insertion"
What does 'specifically anarchist' actually mean?
2. Specifically anarchist
Especifists inherently state their objection to the idea of a synthesis organization of revolutionaries or multiple currents of anarchists loosely united
– Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization
Interesting. What (specifically) is a synthesis organisation? Ah OK - Synthesis anarchism.
North American anarchists have also offered their experiences of synthesis organization as lacking any cohesiveness due to multiple, contradictory political tendencies
– Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization
the Especifists criticize these tendencies for being driven by spontaneity and individualism and for not leading to the serious, systematic work needed to build revolutionary movements
– Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization
A particular stress of the Especifismo praxis is the role of anarchist organization, formed on the basis of shared politics, as a space for the development of common strategy and reflection on the group’s organizing work
– Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization
All sounds a bit like some of the critiques of Occupy - in that it failed because there was no organisational structure. See e.g. Horizontalism vs verticalism, Anarchist Cybernetics.
On organization, the Especifists call for a far deeper basis of anarchist organization than the Platform’s “theoretical and tactical unity,” but a strategic program based on analysis that guides the actions of revolutionaries
– Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization
3. Social insertion
Especifismo’s conception of the relation of ideas to the popular movement is that they should not be imposed through a leadership, through “mass line,” or by intellectuals
– Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization
4. Elsewhere
4.1. In my garden
Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).