Presentation Letter of the Pró-Coletivo Anarquista Organizado de Joinville

“… true anarchy cannot exist outside of solidarity, outside of socialism.”
Errico Malatesta

“Idea and action are inseparable, if the idea has ascendancy over the individual; and without action the very idea atrophies.”
Piotr Kropotkin

“Sometimes it is better to fight and get beat up than to run away.”
George Orwell

“Equality before the law is a farce without social equality. We want opportunity for all, not to accumulate millions, but to have a perfectly human life, without inquietudes or freights concerning the future.”
Ricardo Flores Magón

The present document is the first public document of Pró-CAO (Pró – Coletivo Anarquista Organizado / Pro – Organized Anarchist Collective) of Joinville, Santa Catarina, in which we will try to present our project for the construction of an organized anarchist policy with an ideologically revolutionary program.

We insert ourselves in the reality of the global crisis of the capitalist system, where the arguments that grapple with this said reality do not point to the structure of the system; the States are the mechanisms to regulate and maintain the economic order and the supposed ways out for the crisis, while the working class both employed and unemployed pays with more exploration and suffering.

We think the global structure linked to Joinville’s reality, where the reflexes are perceived in the factories, with the increase in unemployment; meanwhile the unions do not know – or do not want to know – how to resist the dismissals, thus assuming the discourse of the entrepreneurs or putting the blame on the working class apathy.

The youngest strata of the population, everyday further from the reality of a future, has their dreams directed towards consumption, often to products harmful to themselves; federal, state and city public policies in this sense are merely trickeries and not a profound and radical view that could bring about a solution. We can perceive the State’s incapacity to deal with such problems through measures that difficult the free circulation of youth, as well as all the non-rich population, through increases in the public transportation fees, maintaining transport in the private perspective and curfew for youngsters with less than eighteen in central streets. Actually, it is in these situations that we perceive the State’s real function, of an oppressor and a watchdog for the owners of capital.

For these and many other reasons we believe that the present model of representative democracy, where those “elected by the people” increase their own salaries and benefits as much as they want, is not and will never be capable of acting for the economically lower strata of the population, i.e., the low economic power conducts the individual to a low political power according to the present representative logic, besides of course other prejudicial prerogatives that reduce the possibility to do politics, such as being a woman, of an ethnic minority, drug user or of diverse sexual orientations.

We propose the Organized Anarchism Collective as an alternative do “do politics” without necessarily being tied to institutional political parties that believe that politics is done only or solely in parliament. Denying this perspective, we affirm that true politics is the one that emanates directly from the people.

Discontentment with the social reality, with the perpetuation of the State, of the capitalist system and recognition of the impossibility of authoritarian domination and the exploitation of people by people, we look for a way towards an anarchist organization, trying to develop collectively a revolutionary anarchist political program for the reality in which we live and where we are exploited. At the same time, we look for an approximation with other organizations that have perspectives and aims that converge with ours in the Brazilian territory as well as on the rest of the globe, trying to establish an effective change of experiences in the class war for the suppression of capitalism and the State, promoting the popular organization, because only so can we defeat them.

Our vision is of an anarchism politically organized and of a social action inserted “to the bones” in social movements, popular organizations, student movements and entities always trying to build side by side, never directing as habitually does the traditional and institutionalized left in social fights, or having any vanguard attitudes, as would like some theorists.

Upon this vision – which we recognize that will have to be deepened – and understanding that humanity did not corrupt itself only in the economic direction, so that it would be a binary resolution to terminate the conflict employer/employee, we aim at the construction of an anarchy linked to: socialism, a class war beyond the economic class, federalism, freedom, organization, self-management and anti-statism.

Aiming always at the collective construction with other anarchists whose conviction is in accordance with this first document, we understand that for the construction of an organization capable of maintaining these proposals it is necessary time, work and experience, for we firmly believe it is very important to combine theory and practice with the social and political reality of our city. This is the purpose of pro-CAO (pro-OAC), to be the foundation for a future organization compromised with Libertarian Socialism.