A Self-managed Activist organization
UCL is a self-managed federation, placed under the collective responsibility of all of its activists. Without denying the necessity and importance of the organization’s coordination and leadership activities, we seek to establish a horizontal and decentralized framework for debate and intervention.
The Libertarian Communist Union is not a party : it does not have the vocation of seeking the votes of the electorate. The essential activity of the organization is the development and self-organization of struggles against all systems of domination : by its politics and propaganda, by its collective reflection, by training, by the help it provides, by the action of its members.
It works for the emergence of a counter-power from the grassroots of society and for a break with the capitalist, patriarchal and racist order.
Solidarity, struggles, self-management
We also want to make the UCL a privileged space for solidarity and mutual aid, especially in the face of repression.
The organization is based, until the members decide otherwise, on the present Manifesto. Neither a historical program nor an immutable declaration of principle, this Manifesto is in fact only a moment in a theoretical, practical and organizational process, which itself contains a potential dynamic of overcoming.
A statutory contract sets the rules for the functioning of the organization and binds all freely associated members. The strategic orientations of the organization, its positions and decisions are subject to debate, collective decision-making and voting by the entire organization. The organization thus constitutes a field of experimentation for self-managing and federalist democracy, in coherence with the libertarian communist project : we want an egalitarian society, without leaders, and we strive to make it live within the UCL.
This alternative in act allows the activists to have a real self-management experience and practice. It gives them the possibility to instil these practices more easily and confidently within the struggles and social movements, in the collectives, unions and associations in which they are active.
A functioning in coherence with our goals
The organization is therefore a self-managed federation, placed under the collective responsibility of all its activists. By reversing the traditional image of the hierarchical party, but without denying the necessity and importance of the organization’s coordination and animation activities, we seek to establish a framework for horizontal and decentralized debate and intervention.
Mandatement as an organizational and delegational tool allows members to reconcile collective elabouration and efficiency ; mandates are defined, controlled by the members of the organization who can, if necessary, dismiss the mandated persons. The organization is a plural place where, against a common political background, a great diversity of opinions can be freely expressed. While it is natural that it democratically gives itself a majority orientation, it nevertheless scrupulously guarantees the rights of minorities and local groups to express themselves. This applies to the internal debate of course, but also to the organization’s press, according to the terms established by the statutory contract.
The organization seeks the convergence of the actions of its members with an obvious concern for efficiency. Activists are bound by their mandate when it comes to speaking or acting on behalf of the organization, but outside of this, each member can act according to his or her personal choices.
The organization refuses any leadership or substitute relationship in the direction of the struggles of workers and the population. It can participate in the organization of initiatives and mobilizations. The activists of our current can take their full place in these struggles. But the leadership of social struggles must remain under the collective control of those who make them happen. Our struggle is international as is the structuring of the current that we will build.
