A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #354 - What do we want? Popular self-management, here, now, everywhere! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Since September 10, 2025, a powerful movement of anger and social 
mobilization has once again been unfolding in our country. Who can be 
surprised? Revolt, even a fire, has been simmering for years, reigniting 
at regular intervals and on all sorts of issues: movements against 
Hollande's "labor law" in 2016 or against Macron's "ordinances" in 2017, 
the Yellow Vests in 2018-2019, the large climate marches in those same 
years, protests against the handling of Covid in 2020-2021, mobilization 
against pension reform in 2023, farmers' demonstrations, urban riots, 
actions against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and so on. What will 
happen this time? How long will the simmering discontent last? What will 
come of it? No one knows, and that's a good thing.

The main grievances and demands of the current movement-or rather, 
"movements"-are now at the heart of public debate: no to the 
dictatorship of financial markets and debt blackmail, abandonment of 
unjust and austerity-driven budgets like those of Bayrou and his 
associates, a Zucman tax on the ultra-wealthy and the recovery of the 
hundreds of billions paid to large corporations, policies in favor of 
public services (healthcare, education, etc.) and to address climate 
change, increased pensions, wages, and social welfare benefits, repeal 
of the pension reform and a return to the retirement age of 60 or 62, 
citizens' initiative referendums (RIC), and so on. What is at stake 
today is common morality, social cohesion, and even the dignity of 
individuals.

However legitimate and essential these demands may be, they have one 
major flaw: they are not revolutionary. Certainly, these demands 
represent a break from the neoliberal policies that our leaders-those of 
the State and Capital combined-have been pursuing for decades. 
Certainly, if they were truly met (that is, with more than just 
crumbs...), they would somewhat rebalance the distribution of wealth 
between Capital and Labor, improve the working and living conditions 
of-of a greater number?-people, contribute to progress on the 
environmental front, and minimally reform the supposedly 
"representative" democracy. But it is unlikely that they will allow us 
to go any further, because they deliberately position themselves on the 
adversary's ground and do not address the very economic or political 
structures of capitalist society. They do not aim to change the 
"framework," they only seek to soften it. And perhaps this is why, in 
the end, almost every time, we lose and receive at best only crumbs...

It would therefore be welcome, if not crucial, to expand the list of 
demands. A powerful word, the fruit of a long history and a symbol of a 
transformative, revolutionary future: self-management. A rethought, 
renewed self-management-that is to say, general, popular, and responsive 
to the problems and conditions of the 21st century.
Let's briefly list its main principles:

1. Self-management means taking direct control of our affairs and no 
longer allowing ourselves to be governed by the regime of bosses and 
leaders, whether in the State or in business, who, in collusion, deprive 
us of the power to govern our lives together.

2. Self-management must no longer be merely an "alternative island" 
(worker cooperative, ZAD, third place, etc.) that inserts itself-for 
better or for worse-into the larger capitalist society, but a political 
principle, a principle of organization and of life, that limits property 
rights and democratically refounds the whole of society and its 
institutions. In this sense, self-management embodies the "alternative" 
of alternatives and aims to overturn the established order-or rather, 
disorder.

3. Self-management means all of us sharing, with full and equal rights, 
the management of all forms of public or private institutions: 
associations, unions, government agencies, local authorities and public 
services, businesses, etc.

4. Self-management means the collective reappropriation of the means of 
production to debate and decide, together and without hierarchical 
dominance, on all matters of daily life or the future: defining public 
policies, the size and strategic direction of the company, jobs, wages 
and investments, financial, social, and environmental choices, the 
implementation or rejection of technical and technological "progress," etc.

5. Self-management is the collective reappropriation of living spaces to 
exercise, at the local level, the most direct democracy possible via, 
for example, assemblies intended to determine what is produced, built, 
eaten, exchanged, etc., how, with what means and for what purposes.

6. Self-management is the best way to end individual isolation and the 
subordination of all, each and every one of us conquering, through 
collective thought and action, the paths to our own emancipation and the 
sources of a new dignity; self-management is thus the means of 
extricating ourselves from the infantilism, guilt, and servitude in 
which the State and Capital seek to keep us.

7. Self-management is a long and multifaceted tradition of 
self-organization that runs from the Paris Commune to Chiapas and 
Rojava, passing through the soviets, anti-Franco Spain, the workers' 
councils of the Hungarian Revolution, and the Lip experiment. A "lost 
treasure of revolutions," in the apt and beautiful phrase of the 
philosopher Hannah Arendt, self-management continues to nourish our 
imaginations and must return to the forefront of history.

8. This self-management obviously goes hand in hand with a broad and 
sustained nationwide shutdown, which must be prepared for now by 
creating the CGG, the general strike fund.

Collective for Popular Self-Management (CAP)
October 2, 2025

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4568
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