A-Infos (en) Britain, Organise! #65 - congress document - IAF and its role in the international anarchist and libertarian movement

The Congress of the IAF, meeting today in Besançon, confirms that
anarchism is the relevant response to the problems in the global situation.
Anarchism, if it wants to be involved in its environment, must not forget
that it evolves constantly in relation to the social reality and it must define
its practices and its strategies for action in relation to these same realities.
Oppression and exploitation knows no borders, and anarchism will not be
achieved except at the world level. It is for this reason that organised
anarchists have created an appropriate tool- the IAF. We are unanimous
in considering that the IAF cannot be an end in itself. Rather, it is an
instrument to co-ordinate international struggles and for this reason should
contribute to organising federally the
international anarchist movement. The
increase in membership of the IAF, as well
as the emergence of new groups that look
with interest towards the IAF project, are a
sign of the vitality of organised social
anarchism.
The IAF is a federal organization, which
exists through its local sections. The
autonomous development of these local
federations is a guarantee of their freedom
and their capacity to effectively struggle
within their own territory. It is inside actual
political and social situations in which they
find themselves that each federation
chooses its own path which it judges to be
the most appropriate at any given moment
of the development of anarchism.
The momentum given to anarchism in the
new social and cultural struggles has
produced a growth, not only in numbers,
but also in the capacity to organise anar-
chist actions. However, these do not always
translate into clear objectives and libertar-
ian practices. On the one hand, there is the
persistence of nihilist groups without
political and social perspectives, and on the
other hand, there is the temptation to adopt
reformist practices and to collaborate with
ruling class institutions and organisations.
We think that anarchist organisations must
pre-figure the future society. We cannot
help but reject the principle that the
majority can impose their policies on the
entire organisation as well as the logic of
electoralism that comes from this. This
critique constitutes the basis of anarchism
as it was expressed at the St. Imier Con-
gress of 1872.
It is in reinforcing our links, in exchanging
information and co-operating with multi-
faceted anarchist organisations, in the
framework of the associative pact of our
International, that we can construct social
anarchism relevant to the contemporary
world. We reaffirm the importance of the
development of practices, which are non-
hierarchical and based on self-organisation.
These are far from vanguardist practices,
which are foreign to organised social
anarchism.
The emancipation of the workers will be the
work of the workers themselves. The
coherence between the means and the end is
not only an ethical issue, but a distinctive
feature of a libertarian social and political
organisation. This observation leads the
IAF to adopt an open and constructive
attitude with regards to the components of
the anarchist movements in the world.
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