5pm – 7pm – Reclaiming the means of production and rethinking our eco-friendly alternatives
Round table discussion 📍Chapiteau Anne Sylvestre – Saturday, August 9
In the presence of local trade unionists, representatives from international territories such as Chiapas and Rojava, and testimonies from certain movements in France, we will examine the implications of the ambitious political project of reclaiming the means of production. How can we move towards this goal, and what has the experience been like for those who have already tried it at different levels?
Speakers:
- CGT refineries (not represented)
- Solidaires – for the Ecological and Social Alliance
- Ecology Commission of the Libertarian Communist Union
- Kurdish Women’s Movement in France
- Solidarity Committee with the Peoples of Chiapas in Struggle
- Juliette Duquesne
- Communalist Social Ecology “L’Adventice”
Below is a six-point description of the program, prepared and proposed by Hélène Assekour, independent journalist and moderator of this round table discussion
1. Why reclaim the means of production (Khalil, Floréal, Corentin) – 15 minutes
We will begin the discussion with the question of why we should reclaim production.
Khalil, Floréal Romero, and Corentin will discuss the reasons for reclaiming production, for democratic, ecological, and social reasons.
2. Some concrete experiences (Virginie, Khalil, Juliette) – 20 minutes
We will then continue by presenting specific examples to contextualize the conversation and understand what we are talking about. I think it’s important to give concrete accounts of the experiences in Chiapas (Virginie) and Rojava (Khalil), as well as some examples in France (Juliette Duquesne).
3. On what scale? (Juliette, Julie) – 10 minutes
Juliette’s examples will allow us to address the question of the scale of these experiences. These are indeed very small-scale experiences.
Conversely, we can then talk about Chapelle Darblay, where workers proposed a plan to convert their factory. This will allow us to discuss the difficulties, if not the impossibility, of reappropriating industrial means of production, which are very costly.
4. What role for the state? (Julie, Juliette, Floréal, Khalil) – 20 minutes
This will also link to the role of the state in these processes.
Julie Le Mazier, Juliette Duquesne, Floréal Romero, and Khalil will discuss relations with the state, between dependence and opposition, raise our contradictions, and perhaps how to overcome them. In particular, the question of nationalization of the means of production will be raised: is this a form of reappropriation? Is this a viable option or is it an illusion?
5. Leaving the market and capitalism? (Virginie, Corentin) – 15 minutes
Similarly, we will explore the difficulties these experiences may encounter in breaking out of the market. Virginie will talk about the example of the Chiapas cooperatives and their opportunities in Europe. Corentin will discuss other self-management experiences.
We will also raise questions about property status.
6. What strategy here and now? (Floréal, Corentin, Julie) – 20 minutes
To conclude, I think it is important to suggest some strategic courses of action for reclaiming the means of production. Floréal will talk about the strategy of libertarian municipalism, Julie will discuss union action and the demands that need to be made to get workers on board with the conversion of production, and Corentin will talk about the need to build bridges between different areas of struggle.
Below, we have transcribed Floréal’s three interventions corresponding to points 1, 4, and 6.
🎤 Intervention 1 – (point 1 – 5 minutes) – Why reclaim the means of production?
Hello everyone,
Based on my experience and knowledge, I would like to share and reflect with you on this important topic. As the son of a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, my thinking began early. In 1990, I became one of the founders and leaders of an ecovillage in Andalusia that lasted 17 years. Since 2007, I have been working with other farmers to provide a network of AMAPs (associations for the maintenance of small-scale farming) in France. I am currently involved in l’Atelier d’écologie sociale et communalisme (social ecology and communalism workshop), a member of l’Atelier Paysan (peasant workshop) and the author of two books.
Yes, it seems logical and desirable to reclaim the means of production, to self-manage them in order to control them and decide for ourselves what we produce. But first of all, how can we achieve this? What exactly are we talking about? Will we be able to control them without excessive specialization, without the authoritarian technologies that in turn control us? Should we reclaim nuclear power plants? Or should we rather think about how to take “the land back from the machines”? And who do these machines represent?
And what about production itself? Destined not to produce goods but only commodities. For this is the heart of the economy that is leading the world to ruin through the constraints of the market, that of “grow or die,” which forces us to produce ever more at ever lower costs in order to survive in its bloody arena. Where there will always be social exclusion and, for our natural environment, guaranteed disaster.
Reappropriating the current means of production remains illusory if we do not go back to the root of what underpins them, namely the economy, or in other words capitalism, that “automatic subject” that we ourselves have incorporated. By maintaining its constituent categories, it will rise from its ashes and stronger than ever, as history has shown. These categories are money, gender dissociation, private ownership of the means of production, abstract labor, the market, commodity fetishism, and the state.
Thus, our valiant struggles and alternatives that do not aim to overcome these categories are nothing but illusions and will be swallowed up by this Megamachine and digested for its growth. Thus, trade unionism, initially revolutionary, was overtaken by consumerism, feminism integrated patriarchal social norms, and environmentalism gave birth to green capitalism. Monetizable alternatives fueled new niches: “collective capitalism” cooperatives, organic labels, renewable energies, circular or social and solidarity economies, etc. As for the field of politics, like the economy, municipalism could well provide the state with an alternative through citizen adherence to its institutions at the closest level to the people. With technocratic management applied to production and politics, the cycle of instrumental rationalization would thus be complete, in the Chinese style, a goal coveted by the “non-commissioned officers” of Capital.
Already, Bookchin, lambasting the excesses of a movement preoccupied with transforming its lifestyle and rejecting all forms of revolutionary organizations and programs, warned:
“I can only agree with Emma Goldman when she says she doesn’t want a revolution where she can’t dance. But at the very least, she wanted a revolution—a social revolution—without which such aesthetic and psychological ends would benefit only a few.
And he went on to specify: “Revolution is not about managing what exists more equitably, but about transforming the nature of power, recreating a society based on direct participation and collective responsibility. “
And according to Öcalan:
”Freedom does not consist in becoming master of the means of production, but in creating the conditions for an autonomous society.”
Capitalism, through its inherent logic of commercial separation between production and consumption, between cities and the countryside, has shattered the social totality of the commons and transformed nature and human beings into objects. Communalism proposes to reverse this dynamic, beginning not with a blind reappropriation of the means of production, but with a gradual reappropriation of self-instituted political power, that is, the sovereignty of the political assembly over communal production units. Reappropriation comes first because it is this that will decide everything else: the choice of means of production, democratic techniques, etc., all of which determine our social relations and the latter in relation to our natural environment.
🎤 Intervention 2 – (point 4 – 5 minutes) – What place for the state?
Addressing the place of the state is an essential exercise: as soon as we talk about social transformation, the state enters the conversation as a virtually unavoidable solution.
Yes, the state can appear to be a practical tool, an immediate lever. We ask it to legislate, finance, and even nationalize key sectors. Some movements call for the nationalization of land, industry, and energy, which would enable a faster transition. And yet, we must question this logic because nothing could be further from the truth.
Historically, the state was born as the first authoritarian social technique invented by the ruling classes long before the invention of machines. Maintaining this structure requires the exploitation of both human beings and nature. This is especially true when it comes to empires described by Mumford as Megamachines.
In the 16th century, the state integrated the newly born rural capitalism, sealing private ownership of the means of production by law, first and foremost the land wrested from the peasantry in a bloody struggle, destroying their communities through “witch hunts.” Since then, having quelled all revolt and revolution, it has taken it upon itself to guarantee and reproduce this social matrix through the carrot and the stick. In advanced capitalism, the state and its party politics have succeeded in colonizing the politics that still resisted in the communes, thanks to representative democracy, an oxymoron designed to camouflage the abduction of collective power.
We can compare the latest invention that appears to oppose this to that of social democracy, which, in concert with Fordism, has merely perpetuated the system by incorporating popular demands into its dynamic of monetary valorization through legislation: wage increases, consumerism, access to property, etc. A whole citizenist movement claiming to be municipalist or even “communalist” would like to change the situation by collectively taking over municipalities with “citizen lists.” Admittedly, municipal institutions are not the nation-state, but they are the extremity of its skeleton, grasping the social body. These municipalities, under prefectural supervision, allow the state to enforce its orders, collect taxes, and administer and control the entire territory and its subjects. These terminal institutions have been patiently forged and perfected over the centuries so as not to fail in their mission as transmission belts. Serving the institutions of the state means serving capital and the ideology on which they depend entirely (private ownership of the means of production, fetishization of commodities, etc.) by stimulating the market. The market, in turn, finances the state, its army, and its institutions.
For these reasons, and also considering the commune as the place to anchor struggles and alternatives against all forms of domination, it is illusory to attempt to seize the reins of the institutions of the nation-state and divert them from their predetermined functions. As history has taught us a thousand times, it is, on the contrary, these state institutions that will divert us from our path to emancipation. Nestled in the belly of the economic Leviathan, they will eventually devour us, regardless of the economic and legal means they may offer us, and undoubtedly because of these enticements. We will inevitably have to bow to the demands of accumulation. The capitalist municipality, like any business, can operate with more partners and through self-management, but it must function, i.e., be profitable and competitive or depend on state subsidies. If successful, these citizen initiatives would merely be applying a managerial technique, that of consensual popular submission. Wouldn’t that be the worst kind of Orwellian dictatorship dreamed up by Elon Musk?
But their strategy for achieving this, which consists of putting one foot inside the municipality and the other outside, seems rather compromised, as the foot inside always seems to end up tripping up the foot outside, i.e., the popular assemblies outside the institution that are supposed to support them. A telling example is Barcelona, where municipalists who came to power ended up dismantling social movements and subsequently lost the elections.
Faced with this urgency, we must avoid failure, with the demoralization and setbacks that it entails. Let us choose to move slowly toward utopia in a coherent manner, using tried and tested methods such as those of the Zapatistas and other bearers of a new world.
🎤 Intervention 3 – (point 6 – 6 to 7 minutes) – What strategy here and now?
First, we need to “know our enemy and, above all, know ourselves,” because the current challenge is enormous, at a time when techno-science and digital technology are confusing, blinding, and controlling us to the point of making us accept the fatalism of a destruction programmed by the very dynamics of this system.
Awakening consciousness is vital if we are finally to decide to prepare ourselves to win this war. We must also understand that no revolutionary movement can develop by turning its back on its past. An African proverb says:
“If you don’t know where you’re going, look behind you.”
This humility takes us back to the Spanish Revolution of 1936, to the development of this libertarian movement and its unparalleled momentum, fueled by a dialectic between three inseparable elements: practice, theory, and dream. This was a strategy developed not by notorious intellectuals, but by a collective intelligence developed emotionally in the heat of action, in collective struggles and alternative achievements, linked by a close bond, toward a common goal: libertarian communism.
Another important element to take up from our Spanish ancestors, in the action of the here and now of a constituted movement: do not wait for the explosion of a revolution to make it happen. It is a matter of immediately establishing flexible but solid self-institutions as embryos of the world to come. In other words, a parallel society with self-institutions in tension with those of the state. It was this historical fact that fueled the essential political proposal of Bookchin’s communalism, which would determine the very essence of the communalist strategy:
“The tension between the confederations and the state must remain clear and uncompromising… communalism is formed in a struggle against the state; it is strengthened and even defined by this opposition.”
And so on until we achieve a balance of power that is favorable to us. In our current geopolitical context, the political and social question is inseparable from the ecological. It is already asserting itself on the margins, through practices, in territories, communes, and in all places where human groups are seeking to regain control of their lives (housing, peasant agriculture, health, production of energy and essential goods, artistic life, etc.). No alternative project will succeed without the development of a political movement capable of bringing together both the struggles against all domination and for dignity, and concrete alternatives. It is therefore necessary to increase dialogue and exchange between these spaces,
Equipped with this culture and communalist practice, the many ongoing experiences in social pedagogy, alternative education, popular education, shared housing and spaces, self-managed production, collective farms, anti-patriarchal struggles, struggles against digitalization, and active solidarity with migrants and ZADs can contribute to enriching this political dynamic, which, starting at the local level, will be able to federate within a territory and confederate beyond it, internationally. Three recent events provide us with fundamental elements for developing a concrete and relevant strategy. The first is the pandemic, which has allowed a large number of people to directly experience their dependence on global market-driven mass distribution for our food and healthcare. A glaring demonstration of our lack of food autonomy, it has allowed many people to see things more clearly.
Closer to home, the Earth Uprisings have shown us the determination of a movement to denounce the agro-industry’s monopolization of water and mobilize forces to achieve victories. Similarly, the mobilization of farmers across Europe has denounced the acceleration of the globalization of the agricultural market through free trade agreements, in this case Mercosur, which sacrifices small farmers and deprives us of all food autonomy. We are thus reaching a point where the process of enclosures is culminating, with the disappearance of peasants in both the North and the South, transforming the earth into an energy-intensive and polluting world/factory. This growing awareness that we are at the mercy of an increasingly fragile machinery when it comes to food resources shows us the way to unite once again, both in our struggles and in our alternatives.
Based on these social movements, we no longer want to delegate our political power, but to exercise it directly in our popular and decision-making assemblies. And as proposed by the Atelier Paysan in order to “take back the land from the machines”:
“These struggles, as well as our actions on the ground, must also allow us to experiment with and impose new forms of institutions as the old ones are dismantled.”
This is where this process lies, involving all the collectives in cities and rural areas that are fighting against capitalism, in order to create and consolidate our own communal self-institutions in tension with those of the state. The world of tomorrow is being built today. It is in these assemblies, in the complicity of common reflection and action toward a new world, with the help of empathy, that we will be able to determine together our real needs in terms of food, thinking of the most disadvantaged and in close collaboration and participation with small farmers, with the aim of repopulating the countryside emptied of its inhabitants. This is a joint creation of politics as a strong link within our local, regional, and global diversities, embedded in the natural environment.
It is up to all of us to develop this collective intelligence, through constant and determined dialogue, to create this emancipatory and unifying movement, a bearer of hope at the local, regional and beyond. This is what social ecology, in a nutshell, can bring to this desire to regain peasant and food autonomy, but also political autonomy, both of which are inseparable.