Anarchisms at the crossroads

From Autonomies  by Tomás Ibáñez | translated by Julius Gavroche | introduction by José Luis Carretero

Redes Libertarias (06/06/2026)

Tomás Ibáñez’s essay, “Anarchism at the crossroads”, is an intervention in a debate in the Spanish anarchist milieu, but the controversy is neither uniquely Spanish nor novel.

What kind of organisation does anarchist politics call for? Must it have strategic or tactical goals, or both? How is it to be structured “internally”? What relationships should it have, if any, with other political organisations that share common ambitions, with people who have no organisational affiliation? Should the organisation in some way prefigure the “goals” of anarchism? Should such an organisation be bound to a particular “vision” of anarchism, should it heed to a binding ideology? Is a single anarchist organisation even desirable?

The questions, explicit and tacit, raised in the debate Ibáñez addresses are at the very heart of anarchism (and we could add, of the “socialist” tradition more broadly), and while he may not close it – he does not pretend to -, his intervention is important, perhaps even in ways that he has not expressed.

On this matter, we make our own the words of Herman Melville.

Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,—in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:—through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.

Moby Dick, 1851

Or in a language closer to “the movement”:

There is no, nor can there be, a theoretical “magic wand” that solves all the problems of current practice. There are no “scripts” of the movement that offer certainty, nor has there ever been a “science of workers’ organisation,” despite the fact that some have tried to elevate themselves as its high priests. There are attempts, trials, experiments, situated analyses, and concrete hypotheses.

José Luis Carretero, Transversales, nº 64, 2023

Anarchisms at the crossroads
by Tomás Ibáñez

I admit it, I am offended [cabreado], terribly offended, and that explains my abrupt reaction to some platformist texts, or “especifismo” texts[1], as they are preferentially referred to, and why I have used such aggressive language as calling them “caveman-like, retrograde, and reactionary anarchists.”[2]

I am affronted because I have always found it despicable that in controversies, people “attack” their opponent personally, attributing certain traits or characteristics to them in order to discredit their positions and arguments, and that is precisely what happens in writings like those of Miguel Brea, from the Madrid-based “especifista” collective Liza.[3]

In the eagerness to explain that certain positions are due to situations or personal traits, a certain degree of prudence should not be abandoned, if we do not want to descend into indecency. I am criticised, for example, for not being present at grassroots protests against evictions and other unbearable injustices. I acknowledge that at 82 years of age, I am no longer able to be an activist 24 hours a day as I was for a long time in my youth, and continued to be so with diminishing intensity for many more years after.

It vexes me that people try to suggest my positions stem from being an armchair intellectual, without any militant connection to reality, and it annoys me to have to counter that idea with some facts about my grassroots activism, recalling, for example, that before I was even of legal age I was already in court for anti-Franco anarchist activities, or that in January 1966 I joined the Comisión de Relaciones de la FIJL [Relations Committee of the FIJL] (outlawed in France for its ties to Defensa Interior), or that I suffered an expulsion order from France for my participation in the May ’68 uprising, not to mention my intense involvement in the reconstruction of the CNT, and so on up to the present day, doing the best I can to fight for my values.

Incidentally, when it’s suggested that my writing aims to be published in indexed journals, it should be noted that I have not only consistently rejected this practice, but one of my academic battles was precisely to denounce this criterion as an indicator of research excellence.

I am chafed because the tactic of discrediting someone to undermine their arguments has led me to mention a few fragments of my life and career before addressing the substantive issues, which are what truly matter.

And last but not least, I am also angry because I feel that the especifista current, represented primarily by Liza in Madrid and Embat in Catalonia, is almost unintentionally and perhaps even mimicking, a broader phenomenon known in [Spanish] Marxist circles as the Socialist Movement, originating in the Basque Country, and as Horitzó Socialista in the Catalan Countries.

In the case of anarchism, the aim of focusing struggles on proletarian social revolution, and of rebuilding the fragmented libertarian fabric by uniting it into a large and powerful organisation, seems to me to drag anarchist struggles toward political and social ineffectiveness, distancing them from the reality of the contemporary world.

I hope that in giving free rein to my anger has had a sufficient cathartic effect on me so that I can now address, without excessive acrimony, the controversy with the especificista tendency regarding three main issues:

The revolution, the revolutionary programme, and the desire for revolution

Contrary to what is argued from a especificista perspective, it is not the critique of the old revolutionary ideals that discourages the combative fervour of those who reject the current system and yearn for another way of life, but rather the very act of fostering belief in the validity of that imaginary. Indeed, encouraging people to fight today for a social revolution inspired by the concept of revolution inherent in socialist and anarchist ideologies forged in the 19th century is bound to create, sooner or later, inevitable frustration, not only because the conditions that would make it possible are not emerging in the short or medium term, but also because of the scant enthusiasm, and even the complete lack of interest, that the prospect of an “old-fashioned” revolution arouses in the population.

This lack of credibility and a lack of interest can discourage those who, driven by the best intentions, pour their energies into “advancing” toward achieving revolution, refining strategies, developing programmes, and outlining elaborate revolutionary projects, which in no case produce perceptible progress in that direction.

Criticising the conception of revolution forged in the 19th and 20th centuries does not mean denying that the current system is completely unacceptable, nor does it mean questioning the need to fight fiercely against it. It is not about abandoning the essential need to radically transform the system, and it is quite clear that any anarchism devoid of an intense desire for revolution would hardly deserve the label. It is not about renouncing revolution, but about redefining its concept. And that is precisely what is being done among those who keep the desire for revolution alive, but that develop their practices in the contemporary world and not in the phantom of a world that has long since become obsolete.

Among these latter, revolution is not a more or less distant goal toward which one would advance through “the correct development of the correct strategy,” but rather, far removed from any eschatological perspective, it is embedded in the present. Revolution, redefined in current terms, is not located in the future, but rather occurs in every space and in every process that is wrested from the system. It is not what our struggles attempt to bring us toward, but what these struggles produce in the course of their own development. In other words, revolution is not the goal of our struggles, but is inherent to them. There is no revolution properly understood as it was understood in the past, but rather there are activities that are revolutionary insofar as they exemplify resistance against the system, contradict it, and undermine it in the course of their own practice. Revolution is made in day-to-day struggles, without waiting for any final explosion that would constitute the reward for our efforts. The reward lies nowhere else but within those very acts.

And lest it be said that this conception is a product of the prevailing neoliberal ideology since the last third of the 20th century, it suffices to recall that we already find it prefigured in 19th-century writings, such as those of Max Stirner. Anecdotally, before the end of 1964, I had already published a text entitled in French: “Daddy’s revolution is dead”.[4] Abandoning that kind of revolution seemed to me, then, the best way to remain a revolutionary.

The working class, its consideration as a revolutionary subject, and contemporary capitalism

The weight of the productive sector to which those categorised as members of the working class belonged has steadily declined, both in absolute and relative terms.

Beyond the classic Marxist distinction between class in itself and class for itself, it is obvious that only an improper process of reification allows us to assert the existence of something like the working class (or any other class). Class is a sociological concept, a category, an abstraction, lacking a material referent. When this conceptual entity is hypostatised, not only is an inferential error committed, but the foundations are laid for constructing narratives that attempt to disguise their fantastical nature behind technical language. This ultimately distorts our representation of reality and steers our political analyses, as well as the activities derived from them, toward misguided paths and erroneous conclusions.

The decline in the importance of the so-called working class is not an ideological bias induced by neoliberalism, but a fact that is trivial because it is so obvious. Questioning the tendency to hypostatise it does not diminish the undeniable fact of capitalist exploitation, nor the very real existence of multitudes of people who, in order to survive, are forced to sell their time, their health, their skills, and their energy in exchange for economic compensation that is always less than the surplus value generated, as demanded by the iron law of capitalism.

To claim that the working class is “the revolutionary subject” is a double fallacy. First, because if a working class does not exist, it is impossible for it to be the subject of anything. Second, because if we insist on calling the entities that produce revolutions the revolutionary subject, it turns out that these subjects are multiple. There is not one revolutionary subject, but many. And these are not usually defined mechanically by a specific insertion into the productive fabric, but rather correspond to the reactions and resistances against the various mechanisms of domination that make up the social fabric and that permeate it with discriminatory practices. Beyond the eventual revolutionary potential of the exploited and/or discriminated groups to which individuals belong, those who are truly revolutionary are driven by a conscious and radical rejection of submission and by an intense desire for revolution that leads them to develop revolutionary activities aimed at resisting the various forms of domination inherent in the current system.

It is obvious that the system in which we have lived for the last few centuries is an utterly execrable capitalist system, which Marx, but not only he, helped to analyse. However, the supposedly rigorous language used by especifista texts, as well as other pro-Marxist texts, reflects an inability to break free from the most hackneyed tropes of Marxism. The mantra that has been repeated for over a century is that capitalism is entering its final phase and is about to succumb to its insurmountable contradictions. There is talk of terminal capitalism, of unhinged capitalism, of a systemic and chronic crisis of neoliberal capitalism, of the irreversible degenerative dynamic of accumulation, of capitalism entering a phase of structural turbulence, and so on. Not all of these expressions appear literally in especificista writings, but they do fit into their tireless mantra of proclaiming that capitalism is on its deathbed due to its own internal contradictions. This injects a sense of deferred victory into a militancy frustrated by the fact that moribund capitalism continues to resist their relentless onslaught.

The unfortunate thing is that this type of analysis does not help us understand the current characteristics of capitalism, and especially those of this 4th industrial revolution, or revolution 4.0, which we have been experiencing since the dawn of the 21st century.

Inseparable from the computer revolution that kicked off the third industrial revolution in the 1970s, it is now about the integration of digital technologies into all areas of society, and the strict dependence on digital resources in which all these areas find themselves: medicine, education, communication, research, even wars and, of course, the economic sphere, which is shaping a digital capitalism or techno-capitalism that, among other characteristics, manages to produce surplus value from the enormous pools of data exploited by powerful algorithms.

AI, robotics, genetic engineering, nanotechnologies, connected devices, satellites, quantum computers… etc.: all of this fosters, on the one hand, the emergence of a new type of totalitarianism[5] that is beginning to shape society, and, on the other hand, the entry into a regime of vertiginous acceleration of change in all areas, creating, among other things, a context of uncertainty and a feeling of uncontrollability regarding both the present and the future.

This is the context in which our current struggles are situated, and it is quite difficult to discern how the working class, as a revolutionary subject, fits within the framework of Capitalism 4.0.

The especificista organisation

Obviously, the crux of the matter is not whether or not organisation is necessary. Having to organise is an inherent requirement of any anarchist activity as soon as it involves more than one person. Therefore, when organised anarchism is championed, what is being done is implicitly excluding from that category a good part of the anarchist activities that also require organisation, but which take place outside of a specific type of organisation. Thus, the expression “organised anarchism” is reserved to designate anarchism that is specifically framed within a particular type of organisation.

For example, it would be patently wrong to argue that anarchist groups operating within occupied and self-managed social centres, or addressing local issues, or in small autonomous collectives, or in the struggle against specific forms of discrimination, lack organisation. However, the very act of excluding them from organised anarchism conveys the idea that if these types of anarchism do not deserve the label of organised anarchism, it’s not because they lack organisation, but because they constitute a diverse, fragmented, and disconnected mosaic, lacking a strategic perspective to guide their struggles.

This hegemonic appropriation of the attribute “organised” seeks to falsely convert the quality of organised or not into a differentiating criterion between two types of anarchism, and reveals the desire to consider only the anarchism of certain organisations—among which, of course, are the especificista organisations—as organised anarchism.

A modicum of political honesty would require that, instead of speaking generically of organised anarchism, those who do so clarify that they are referring to anarchism organised according to one conception of organisation, but that other conceptions exist and, therefore, other varieties of organised anarchism also exist. This would shift the debate toward a comparison between diverse forms of organisation, allowing us to assess, among other things, which are best suited to the characteristics of contemporary society and most effective for transforming it.

It could be, for example, that current reality demands network-based organisational models, much more flexible and fluid than those of traditional organisations; models which are guided by the simple coordination of goals to carry out specific, concrete tasks, within a merely tactical perspectives.

It is possible that the temptation to break down this fragmentation and organisational fluidity could condemn the anarchist movement to another eclipse after the recent period in which it managed to influence a series of subversive movements outside the realm of identity anarchism, and where it proliferated in the interstices of society.

In any case, the fascination with building a solid anarchist organisation articulated around a coherent revolutionary programme and strategic perspectives capable of effectively sustaining anti-capitalist struggles, should encourage the militant activity of those who identify with this situation, without them having to nurture the deceptive hope that the difficulties plaguing current struggles are mainly due to the absence of a large libertarian organisation, and that these difficulties will disappear as soon as such an organisation emerges.

Despite my misgivings about organisations that, more or less explicitly depending on the case, are part of the platformist tradition—that is, the tradition within anarchism that most closely resembles the “Party form” characteristic of the various Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyist ideologies—I would not be so bothered by the intense proselytising of its supporters if the efforts of those who yearn for a large anarchist organisation were focused on developing it, gaining new ground and new members, instead of seizing upon what already exists—that is, a segment of currently active anarchism—to restructure it, without realising that by homogenising and unifying it, they risk destroying it.

Indeed, it seems as if a takeover bid is being launched on occupied social centres and autonomous anarchist collectives so that their members can swell the ranks of the “unitary” especificismo. A bit like what happened in Catalonia during the so-called “Process” when the national-independence CUPs launched a takeover bid of the anarchist militancy scattered throughout the social fabric of Catalonia and managed to attract a good part of it towards national-independence activity.

The fact that especifismo calls for strengthening popular power and empowering the people reinforces its affinity with revolutionary Marxist organisations, thereby accentuating the rampant Leninist undercurrent emanating from especifismo. It is not surprising that, given this proximity, a certain attraction to the reactionary concept of a “vanguard” is manifested, albeit with attempts to reformulate and disguise it to make it less off-putting within anarchist circles.[6]

As a provisional conclusion, it is obvious that, considering only the discrepancies surrounding these three issues, strongly divergent orientations emerge, not to mention abysmal differences.[7] However, since no one can be entirely certain that their viewpoint is the most accurate, I think it is perfectly fine that those who gather in organisations like Liza, Embat, and other similar groups develop their proposals and activities without our hindrance, provided they also refrain from hindering other anarchist proposals.

Convinced of the necessary plurality of anarchist perspectives, I simply want to wish them luck in their endeavours, but this does not imply abandoning the analysis, evaluation, and critique of their principles and actions.

It is this same luck, only even greater due to my own orientation within anarchism, which I wish for those who organise outside of these organisations in autonomous anarchist collectives that strive to resist, and who, in doing so, are contributing to anarchising the world in the present and to the greatest extent possible.

[1] [T.N. English language platformist and especifismo texts, along with critical reflections on these two currents within anarchism, both past and present, can be found at following: “The Platform at 100: Voices of Organized Anarchists Around the Globe (Vol. 1)”, The Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, 23/06/2026; “Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization”, The Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, 26/06/2026; “Tag: Especifismo”, The Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation; “Tag: Platformism”, libcom.org; “Tag: Especifismo”, libcom.org; “Platformism”, The Anarchist Library; “Especifismo”, The Anarchist Library; Ilan Shalif, “Platform centenary: Two readings”, Freedom News, 30/06/2026.]

[2] https://redeslibertarias.com/2025/10/10/anarquismos-cavernicolas-retrog…

[3] https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/12/03/anarquismo-no-fundacional…

[4] Tomás Ibáñez “La révolution de papa est morte”. Bulletin des Jeunes Libertaires nº 48, 1964.

[5] See the addendum to the question in my book, Anarquismo no fundacional. Afrontando la dominación en el siglo XXI, Barcelona Gedisa, 2024.

[6] T. Morago, “Recomponer la vanguardia”, Regeneración libertaria, June 2026 .

[7] A. Apilánez, https://kaosenlared.net/el-anarquismo-en-su-laberinto/