Communal assemblies are one such group that can do both oppositional politics and reconstructive politics in rather intensive ways– and prefigure such communal forms of freedom, mutual aid, and common infrastructure in the process. Communal assemblies can engage in direct action including but not limited to: specific actions against landlords, bosses, capitalists, politicians, and specific institutions perpetuating specific unfreedoms/injustices, blockades, occupations, squats, expropriations, community self defense, assisting direct actions of other groups directly (through co-participating on joint actions) and indirectly (through providing communal infrastructure and mutual aid to other direct action groups). As Bookchin said in his book Post-Scarcity Anarchism, “Assembly and community must become “fighting words,” not distant panaceas. They must be created as modes of struggle against the existing society.” Such communal assemblies are organs of both direct action and mutual aid for various short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.

Radical labor unions and workplace committees (utilizing self-management and direct action) are groups that are specifically important for oppositional politics in the workplace. Such unions and workplace committees can fight for short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals: everything from wage increases to expropriation. However, they are not the only organs for class struggle as some might claim– as class struggle is possible outside of workplace organizing. Given libertarian goals, depending on the context one is in (and by extension a plurality of factors) syndicalist means should be more or less emphasized as part of an overall revolutionary strategy. 

Outside of just communal assemblies and labor unions, student unions, tenant unions, and prisoner unions are other such fighting groups that are particularly suited towards their particular sites of struggle. When it comes to oppositional politics there are also issue-specific and function specific social movements and groups of various kinds (for example a movement for reproductive freedom or a medic-collective). Additionally there are affinity groups that can do various direct actions and oppositional functions (an endorsement thereof as one way of organizing a direct action group among others is not an endorsement of tendencies that overly-reduce organizing to such affinity groups or otherwise have a reckless/foolish strategy. Mere affinity groups are incapable of generating adequate social force– and they can suffer from disorganization and even having an anti-organizational orientation at times. Then again no form is sufficient to generating strategic content; For example, without good content, labor unions can fall into reformism and communal associations can fall into pejorative utopianism).

In order to actuate the means and ends of horizontality/direct democracy/mutual aid/direct action/co-federation/free association/etc. in the context of living in a hierarchical and class-based society, there must be self-managed oppositional politics and direct action to overthrow class relations and hierarchy more broadly. The content to fill such self-managed forms must be deliberated about and decided by various self-managed organizations and adapted to sufficiently relevant variables. Through such an adaptation and application of universal features of liberatory forms and practices and contents to specific contexts, there is an instantiation of such universal features in particular forms of struggle and forms of freedom (with a means/ends unity of self-management/horizontality/democracy/mutual aid/participatory action etc)– which can make such universals concretized in reality. 

And yet, popular organizations and social movements are potentially susceptible to unstrategic content, bureaucratic forms, reformism (not to be confused with winning reforms through direct action and self-management), liberal cooptation, leninist co-optation, pejorative utopianism (mere reconstructive politics without oppositional politics), and unreflective actionism. Because of the above (and other reasons), it is important to develop ideologically and theoretically specific libertarian communist groups (distinct from popular organizations and social movement groups). Members of such ideologically and theoretically specific libertarian communist groups are able to create and interface with popular organizations and social movements to help such formations develop liberatory practices/processes of self-management, direct action, mutual aid, class struggle, etc. (while learning from social movements and participating in them in the process). Popular organizations and social movements are the main protagonists in struggle and revolution, but ideologically and theoretically specific groups can act as catalysts of liberatory qualities of such groups and movements through social insertion. 

“What-should-be,” is anchored in a continuum that emerges from an objective potentiality, or “what-is… The “what-should-be” becomes an ethical criterion for judging the truth or validity of an objective “what-is.” Thus ethics is not merely a matter of personal taste and values; it is factually anchored in the world itself as an objective standard of self-realization.” -Bookchin

The principle of freedom of each and all (and the means thereof) has an objective content to it. It has universal necessary features. It refers to actually possible naturalistic/societal qualities that are rooted in objective conditions of what is possible. Such a principle of freedom requires and entails a gestalt of other features to be rounded out and existent (mutual aid, direct action, direct democracy, non-hierarchy, etc.), and concrete groups, processes, practices etc. are necessary to actualize and institutionalize such freedom of each and all. Such a principle of freedom for each and all and the means thereof is not merely abstract; it corresponds to the objective content of what is actually good for humans and the ecological world more broadly (for it is precisely through hierarchy and the destruction of freedom that the ecological world more broadly along with humans are instrumentalized for power-over others and profit). 

“We are not open and flexible (“anti-dogmatic”) about our principles. Those who treat principles in this way fall into a pragmatism incapable of social change or transformation. Regarding the strategy, we can say that the general strategy is more fixed, followed by the time-restricted strategy, which is a little less fixed and more flexible, and finally, by the tactics, more flexible.” -Correa

The general strategy of developing such freedom and libertarian form/content is fixed in terms of some essential features– but more flexible than the principles themselves. And more flexible still are the sub-strategies within strategies, and even more flexible than such sub-strategies are the tactics within sub-strategies. The specific ways libertarian practices/forms/contents are applied and adapted to contexts (and the specific ways groups using such liberatory practices develop content and function) are more flexible than the universal features underpinning them. 

There are multiple spheres of life to organize within– from community, union, student, and beyond. In different contexts, for various reasons, it makes sense for movements, groups, and persons to put more and less focus on specific spheres and specific kinds of projects and actions. In a particular communal assembly, it might make more sense to focus on a specific direct action campaign/goal/tactic compared to another, or to focus more/less or differently on reconstructive politics of some kind or another (based on needs of people and movements, capacity, willingness, what general and specific problems exist, terrain, balance of forces, existent or lack of federation with other groups or solidarity from other groups etc). In some time/space/group contexts it can, for example, make more sense for a person/group to focus more on radical union work of some kind or some other form of organization (which is not to say it is impossible for an ideologically specific group or a person to do both communal and workplace organizing– far from it, the goal should be to build popular power in community and union spheres and beyond). Despite and because of our view that at some point such communal forms of freedom should be prefigured (within and a part of and catalyzing a broader social movement ecosystem) and that such communal associations can and should play particularly important strategic and ethical roles in a revolutionary processes and a post-revolutionary societies, they are not necessarily the first/only/main kind of group that a person or ideologically specific libertarian socialist group should start or join or put emphasis on in every context. Effective ways to organize and practice social insertion within social movements will vary from context to context.

https://usufructcollective.substack.com/p/forms-of-freedom-forms-of-struggle

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