A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #373 - International Contributions - Comparative Analysis: Platformism and Specificism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Below, we offer a translation of excerpts from a text by the Spanish 
libertarian communist organization Liza, which can be found in its 
entirety at Regeneracionlibertaria.org. --- In the contemporary debate 
on organized anarchism, two terms frequently recur, sometimes presented 
as opposing currents: platformism and specificism. More than two 
opposing worlds, they are two distinct responses-situated in different 
historical contexts-to the same problem.

Platformism and specificism did not emerge as rival currents. They arose 
in distinct eras, on different continents, and in profoundly different 
social contexts. Their similarities lie in the problem they attempted to 
solve-the need for political organization-while their differences 
largely stem from the historical conditions in which they developed. It 
is important to understand this to avoid a common mistake in the history 
of the left: transforming strategies into universal solutions.

Two different contexts
In the case of Liza, the adoption of the term "platformism" partly 
addresses this concern. On the one hand, we felt it was necessary to 
draw on the experience of the Diélo Trouda group and its critique of the 
disorganization of anarchism. On the other hand, it seemed problematic 
to adopt the term "specificism"-which originated in Latin America and is 
linked to a concrete tradition-without reflection and to transpose it 
directly into the European context.

One of the most obvious examples of these differences is found in the 
concept of popular power, central to much of Latin American specificism. 
Generally speaking, it refers to the construction of a social power 
alternative to that of capital and the state, based on the 
self-organization of exploited and oppressed sectors. In Latin America, 
this idea is often associated with the articulation of different social 
subjects: urban workers, peasantry, informal labor, Indigenous 
communities, residents of working-class neighborhoods, and other 
subaltern sectors. Under these conditions, the concept can serve as a 
strategic tool to guide popular organizing processes and build social 
blocs capable of challenging power.

The European context is different. In much of Western Europe, the social 
transformations of the last century led to a much greater homogenization 
of classes. The peasantry has practically disappeared as an autonomous 
political actor, Indigenous populations do not exist as a social 
category, and large segments of the population have been integrated into 
welfare state institutions for decades. In this context, the strategic 
problem is often different: reminding the working class that it remains 
the working class, even when it perceives itself as belonging to the 
"middle class."

Reconstructing a revolutionary subject
To this must be added another important factor. In Europe, many 
contemporary interpretations of the concept of "people's power" have 
been influenced by autonomous currents or by certain readings of 
intersectionality applied to social movements. This has often resulted 
in a proliferation of sectoral struggles, fragmented by themes or 
identities, frequently multi-class, and lacking a clear socialist 
horizon. In this context, the concept of people's power risks 
functioning not as a tool for building revolutionary hegemony, but as a 
justification for heterogeneous and politically indeterminate social fronts.

When the class question ceases to be central to the analysis, struggles 
tend to be limited to the agenda of the most integrated or privileged 
sectors within these movements. Thus, demands for the redistribution of 
the means of decision-making and production shift to the recognition of 
difference on the margins of the bourgeois system.

From this perspective, the re-evaluation of the Platform can take on 
particular significance in Europe today. This is not about reproducing 
word for word a document written almost a century ago, but about 
reconnecting with a political tradition that placed three fundamental 
questions at the center: organization, strategy and class struggle.

The critique that Diélo Trouda's activists leveled at the anarchism of 
their time-its organizational dispersion, its lack of strategic 
coherence, and its difficulty in sustaining a sustained intervention in 
the class struggle-remains surprisingly relevant. Revisiting this 
tradition also allows us to reframe the strategic problem in terms of 
class power: the construction of a revolutionary hegemony based on the 
self-organization of the working class and oriented toward an 
anti-capitalist and libertarian communist horizon.

Platformism and specificism ultimately share a fundamental intuition: 
without a specific political organization, no revolutionary strategy is 
possible. In the end, the strategic question remains the same as that 
posed by Diélo Trouda a century ago and later taken up by Latin American 
anarchists: how to build today a revolutionary force capable of 
intervening in the real struggles of our class.

Liza (Spanish State)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Analyse-comparee-Le-plateformisme-et-le-specifisme
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