[We present here our English translation of an exceptional text from our comrades in Proletarios Hartos De Serlo (a.k.a Proletarios Revolucionarios). The original can be found on their website in Spanish.]
The aim of this text, which, from a communist perspective, criticises both syndicalism and charitable “anarchist” activism, is not to polemicise for the sake of polemicising or to be right, because we are not in competition with anyone. We reject this logic and dynamic of competition between left and ultra-left organisations and individuals, which only reproduces capitalist relations within and between them. That is why we do not and will not participate in such competition.
The aim of this text is simply to invite collective reflection, discussion and action among those who are interested in doing so, by way of an overcoming (self-)critique to strike at Capital and the State where it really hurts them: in the production of value and profit; mercantile and exploitative relations… more clearly: the capitalist social imposition of having to work to pay and pay to live.
How? By tending to practice new social relations between individuals, as an exploited and dominated class struggling to cease being exploited: relations of solidarity, mutual support, free cooperation, free distribution, self-organisation and horizontality. By being a real and powerful germ of communism and anarchy, in the heat and only in the heat of class antagonism… to abolish class society.
Organised Hatred against the Employer, the State… and the Unions!
Class hatred is legitimate and necessary for the proletarian struggle. Yes: in the face of actions such as the increase of VAT (value-added tax) to 15%, the hourly contract, and declarations such as those of bourgeois president Daniel Noboa to “work hard to afford several plates of food”, in the midst of high rates of precarious work and the terrorism of the so-called “narco-State”; that is, in the face of capitalist exploitation and oppression, class hatred is legitimate and necessary for the proletarian struggle.[1] But it is not enough. It must be transformed into collective action and antagonist self-organisation.
So, despite the state of emergency, we hope that these government measures emanating from the bosses’ class will cause proletarian anger to build up and new working class struggles to break out in the Ecuadorian region. Struggles without intermediaries or union representatives, whose sole function is to negotiate crumbs with the bosses. Because the unions are not part of the solution, but part of the problem: the reproduction of exploitation or of the labour/capital relation, with their typical marches and processions, respectful of bourgeois legality, from the Social Security Fund to the Historical Centre and their “tripartite negotiating tables”.
The solution is rather in the autonomous and “wildcat” struggles inside and outside the workplaces, where our best weapon is class solidarity together with self-organisation and direct action, and, at the same time, where the limits of the struggles for demands demonstrate, once again, that in order to really improve our material conditions of existence (e.g., to abolish job insecurity and precarity) we have to take over production and radically transform it.
Why? Because today capitalism—including the state and the trade unions—is no longer capable of improving the conditions of existence of the workers, but quite the opposite: it produces more and more unemployment, misery and social decomposition. The crisis of the labour/capital relation is the core of the crisis of capitalism today.
Hence, today the struggles for demands end up demonstrating both their limits and that the only way to overcome these limits is to fight for a new society, which means abolishing private property, wage exploitation, market relations and social classes; not only the bourgeoisie and its state, but abolishing the proletariat itself, regardless of gender, “races”, nationalities, ages, etc., to appropriate the means of production for the direct satisfaction of collective needs, and to attempt communist social reproduction. It means Communising life in its totality. That is, to leap from scarcity and class hatred to abundance and love of a real human community.
Of course, there are still many struggles to go before we reach this breaking point, but in this epoch, there is no other revolutionary dynamic and no other revolutionary horizon for the class struggle. Everything else is capitalist counter-revolution, even if it is disguised as the opposite.
Class Solidarity is our Best Weapon! And Solidarity is not Activist Charity!
Proletarians: let us practice solidarity in the struggle for daily survival and in the class struggle and not charity, no matter how activist and “anti-systemic” or “anarchist” it may claim to be. Because outside a context of class antagonism, solidarity degenerates into charity. The historical and social context is the determining factor. And the present context, here and all over the world, is counter-revolutionary. Not only do the business class and its state administer society “from above”, but the different organisations and personalisms of the left and ultra-left also reproduce it and are its symptom “from below”.
Specifically, we are referring to charitable “anarchist” activism where, on an occasional basis, free food is made and distributed to homeless people. In reality, doing this does not build “anti-capitalist solidarity fabrics” or subvert power relations, but rather reproduces the logic of public, private, non-governmental and even religious charity, only it does this with a supposedly “radical” or “anti-systemic” discourse and aesthetic. What is more, it does so with ideologies and slogans that have nothing to do with the revolutionary class struggle to abolish capitalism, the state and national borders, but have their roots in the post-modern middle-class left.
We understand that this activism is a groping for struggle and community against this system of alienation, exploitation and death. In fact, we ourselves have participated in it on some occasions, putting our bodies into it or getting our hands dirty, as they say. That is why we speak from self-criticism and invite collective self-critical reflection from those who are interested in doing so. In the revolutionary struggle, we must not only fight the system that is “outside” us, but also the system that we ourselves reproduce in our social, political and personal practices and relations.
Thus, contrary to charitable activism, class solidarity is antagonistic, combative, insurgent solidarity. For example: the common cooking pots in the context of the mass revolts and the National Strikes of October 2019 and July 2022.[2] And, contrary to charity, which is vertical, solidarity is horizontal or between equals. Therefore, class solidarity is inseparable from mass self-organisation into Communes, in the heat of class antagonism, else it is not class solidarity. This is something we have also been able to prove through our own experience.
Obviously, such a context does not exist in the Ecuadorian region at the moment. But it is possible that the ongoing terrorism of the bosses’ class and its state will produce new protests against it and perhaps also another revolt, i.e., a new context of class antagonism. Until then, both trade unionism and charitable “anarchist” activism will continue to reproduce capitalist relations, despite what their adherents believe or say to the contrary.
What, then, is our practical “proposal” or “solution” as revolutionary proletarians? Only the real class struggle, of which we are and will be just a few more particles, will give a concrete answer to such a question. For the time being, this invitation we are making to collective reflection, discussion and action in order to break through and overcome all that has been (self-)criticised here, is already one way among others of opening up a revolutionary perspective towards the communisation of life.
Proletarios Revolucionarios (Ecuador)
8 April 2024
(1) See our recent short publication: Hate and Class struggle against the Exploiter Noboa (March 2024).
(2) On communal cooking pots as part of the repertoire of self-organised communities of struggle and the rehearsal of communist social reproduction during periods of prolonged insurgency, we recommend reading and discussing the section “Around the Communal Cooking Pot” in the article “Communising Care” by M.E. O’Brien (October 2019).
League of Internationalist Communists 