France, Alternative Libertair #219 - News of anti-state socialism (fr)

At its Second Congress in April 1993 in Montreuil, Alternative Libertarian leaning on the
issue of anti-statism contemporary. At the dawn of the 1990s, the RPR and the PS unleashed
the liberal offensive against public services and social security, these "anomalies
collectivist" society embedded in the market. AL operated while updating theory. The
challenge is to distinguish in the public sector which fell within the "public service"
and social utility, and which fell within the "service of the state" and the maintenance
of the capitalist order. Note the frequent use of the word "citizen" since fallen into
disuse in revolutionary circles, given its perversion by the Republican moralism. A longer
version of this excerpt from the Second Congress available on www.alternativelibertaire.org


We offer revolutionary to self-management, conduct combat anti-statist, simply because
genuine socialism is democracy, and that the State is the antithesis of democracy.
Democracy is the power exercised by the people. And state centralism is the power over the
people, from top to bottom. Or words have no meaning, or the word State means a machine
and hierarchical pyramid, which concentrates power at the top, and that gives all the
necessary coercive and violent for that centralized power is needed to run- es. Democratic
revolution remains to be done. She supersede state organization the power mode of actual
exercise of popular sovereignty. [...]

We carry an alternative project of self-management democracy. In the state, we oppose the
federation. That is to say, an alternative form of centralization / decentralization,
direct democracy articulating a delegative democracy, limited and controlled, in the
service of direct democracy, the major decisions being subject to the imperative mandate
of the population.

We are anti-statist because the state is still attached to class exploitation and
capitalist it is today. The state Republican sitting above classes is a fiction. The state
is the central body of capitalism, its primary function is to manage. [...] He became
himself a great capitalist enterprise, producing or sponsoring a considerable share of
services and goods, operating several million workers and generating headed by a
technocratic and bureaucratic class, the bourgeoisie secured and technocracy private.

Exercise governmental power is managing capitalism is melting, like it or not, the ruling
class. That is why we are radically opposed to any policy of government involvement, any
proposal to conduct an "other policy" this time "really left." There is no space left at
the top of the state, there is no choice but to manage. [...]

The contradictory nature of the modern state

[...] While holding the power of the ruling class, the state claims assume a social
welfare and public service, and a general coordination function in society and cohesion it
is obviously necessary to population.

The law protects the interests of the privileged classes, it imposes a moral and social
order necessary for the exercise of their domination. But contradictorily it presents
undeniable aspects of human liberties and public protection of individuals and
communities, the rights acquired by social strata dominated. [...] Capitalist society is
constantly traversed by this contradiction, and the state is at the heart of it. Tension
towards democracy and the class struggle act two centuries against the interests of the
ruling classes [...]. Struggles for democracy, women's suffrage, the struggles of the
labor movement, the struggles of immigrant populations imposed enlargements freedoms,
acquired legal, political, social. This is why we can not speak of freedom "formal", but
real freedoms, torn by strife or the momentum of the struggle, and at least partially
conflicting with statism and capitalism.

Institutions are the historical product of a compromise between the ruling classes and the
population. This compromise is necessary to capitalism: it provides a wide consensus. This
compromise is good for the ruling class: he recorded a balance of power that their
definition is favorable in this society. But like all compromises, it contains concessions
to pressure dominated their struggles: spaces and forms of expression legal and
institutional logics that are more or less united, egalitarian, democratic.

But this compromise is going through a deep crisis. The ruling classes seek, through the
"anti-statist" liberals and ultra-liberals, an alternative where the concessions made to
the dominated classes are challenged. The alternative of a new libertarian anti-statism is
more necessary.

The crisis of the state

The modern state is in crisis in all the major cities. This institutional crisis combines
closely with the social crisis. It has three parts: a crisis of representation, a crisis
of legitimacy, and a structural crisis tied to the increasing internationalization of
capitalism.

1. Crisis of representation of the state

The gap between what the media call "political class" citizens and is no longer disputed
by anyone. Delegation of authority and management function of capitalism led to a
professionalization of politicians and elected representatives that work in political
technocrats layer. The citizens reduced to the status of voters are not interested in
political matters even more that their opinions will not be heard. The politicians and
politicians do not express their opinions or not their concerns. [...] Hence the rise of
abstention, and that the protest vote.

The far right thrives on crisis. The National Front [...] questions parliamentarism while
using, and advocated the use of providential leader and strong state. [...].

This profound crisis of representation reinforces our criticism of parliamentarism. A gap
opened in the consensus. But the risk is great to see the far right always score more
points, against a backdrop of growing demobilization, if a new political practice does not
arise, and a mass scale, allowing citizens and citizens recognize themselves in values
justice and equality to start from the conquest of political and impose their
representation in society.

How libertarians can contribute to this remobilization policy?

Social struggles are necessary, but they will not suffice, even if we emphasize the
political dimension of these struggles. They do not provide alone means a comprehensive
representation in society. Defense of a project libertarian society can not agree more
alone. It can inspire proposals. But its realization is attached to a revolutionary break,
and it calls for a whole historical situation different from that of today.

It is here and now that the libertarian must demonstrate the relevance of their proposals.

This is why we need to develop and propose:

- A project truly democratic political representation;

- A practice against-power and conquest of policy by citizens themselves;

- The creation of a new form of social-political movement. This is what we call a broad
movement, capitalist and self-management [...].

2. Crisis of legitimacy of the state

The crisis of legitimacy crisis continues representativeness. [...] The State provides
more harm to all citizens and all minimum social solidarity and public service the value
of profits to continue in this crisis, calls for action overtly unequal. The crisis of the
model of social regulation, the establishment of a multi-tiered society, threaten
compromise, consensus built around the institutions. The economic crisis and the social
crisis therefore weigh the contradictions inherent in "democracy" and that's all
parliamentary system loses its legitimacy.

Outbreaks of violence in cities and districts excluding the United States and Europe are
the signs of movements permanent angry.

But if parliamentarism and finally liberal capitalism and the market economy gradually
lose their legitimacy, there will not necessarily opposite, rising auto mechanics, a
transformation project self-management. [...]

It is today, in terms of time, the libertarian must participate in movements and groupings
wide trying to bring hope. [...] Because the lens is facing the crisis of legitimacy of
the state, the project institutional and social forms become legitimate in the eyes of
workers, workers, youth, the basis of society . And for this we need political and social
mobilizations of magnitude.

Anti-statism: what has changed

It is no longer possible to defend any such anti-statism carried by currents
anarcho-syndicalists and revolutionary syndicalists of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, because the conditions in which their theories have emerged have since
been disrupted.

We could distinguish three sides of the anti-statism worker early twentieth century:

- Refusal to participate in the institutions, and the refusal to support the political
forces that wish to participate. [...];

- Refusal to intervene in public debates on issues relevant institutions. The question of
the state is sidelined for two reasons: "everything is done", the State does not meet
other functions as defense of capitalist interests and the real levers of power not found
in institutions but in production;

- Hence a strategy against union power, associations, mutualist. Workers build the
foundations of their own society within capitalist society, trade unions and mutuals are
intended to take care of the entire society at the time of social revolution.

This form of anti-statism worker was born in a time when the proletariat was physically
very small minority in society, and deliberately marginalized by a State that met his
demands by violent repression and shot in a society where forms Solidarity was supported
directly by the exploited.

Since then, a century has passed, and changes in the state apparatus are very important:

- The workforce has been widely proletarianized. The workers and the workers, employees,
and the layers are close in more than two thirds;

- The modern state [...] covers a whole range of functions solidarity and public service
that make it a challenge to fight and make it difficult to hear a disposal plan in full.

In contemporary society, a project of reclaiming the company would fall mainly or only in
and around the business class solidarity built from companies no longer meets the needs of
workers and employees. Because they do not live the same type of exclusion and
rnarginalisation, they carry suction citizenship in the world of work, and aspirational
out of it, in the space of the city . [...]

What State?

[...] At the illusion of a policy change from the top left downwards from Matignon and the
House will oppose the logic of conquest from bottom to top, from the municipalities and
regions, and from the struggles in enterprises and youth.

But because the "democratic" state is crossed by deep contradictions inherent in its
nature and is subject to a serious crisis, we do not forbid to be holders of alternative
proposals. [...] That is to say, we seek to identify and distinguish the activities
covered by the modern state contradictorily, that the social movement struggle, fight or
should we believe that this is the trace institutional and social struggles. [...]

This new anti-social statism leads us to:

- Defend the notion of public service, we oppose the development of business logic, and
privatization;

- Move towards an alternative project utility of social utility.

We can not be satisfied with a defensive approach and conservative. Opposition in the
state, the state federation is to defend a different view: public services fully oriented
logic of social utility, equality, and environmental protection. Utilities self, working
closely with survivors and users, emerged from the States Trust, reorganized around two
poles: the regions and Europe, and have sufficient means to escape the constraints of the
market.
Libertarian Alternative

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