Reclaim Oneonta is one small part of a libertarian communist movement that is slowly reviving and converging around more solid positions in the class struggle. For us libertarian communism describes the two elements of the social movement we adhere to.

By “communist”, we mean that our interest is in the upending of capitalism and class society as a whole. Communism does not refer to the bureaucratic, state capitalist monstrosities of the Soviet Union or modern China. Communism is to us the movement through which the working class overthrows the capitalist class and dissolves the state. Instead of the capitalist logic of production for the sake of profit and the accumulation of private property, there will be a new order based on production for the sake of need and personal fulfillment, along with the common ownership of the means of production in a world without rulers or subjects. In such a society, the free association of free producers would be the basis on which life is organized. Communism is not a local or national movement, but the movement of the working class around the entire world converging around the need for a revolution. 

By “libertarian” we mean that such a transformation of society can only come from below, through the base organizations of the workers engaged in the class struggle. No party, politician, government, or union bureaucrat can carry out this attack on the capitalist system as the “representative” of the working class. Only the immense majority of the working class themselves engaging in direct struggle with the capitalist class and state can overcome capitalism. This process of class struggle, facilitated through the base level organizations of the working class in their workplaces and neighborhoods, is the basic means through which the workers will prepare their final assault on capitalist rule. Such a revolution will be kicked off by an insurrectionary general strike culminating in the smashing of the state and the expropriation of the capitalist class. Securing the means of production once taken from them, the working class, through their base level organizations, will administer society following a completely new ethos. This is the social revolution, the object of the libertarian communists. The social revolution, as a product of the self activity and organization of the working class prefigures the development of a society based on communist relations. This is the unity between means and ends.

While only the mass of the working class can actually carry out a social revolution, only a fraction of the class already sees the need for a one today, a fact which will remain true until the revolutionary process really begins. This fraction is defined by drawing together the lessons of the historic class struggle in flat rejection of capitalist propaganda. Rather than passively waiting for the rest of the working class to come to their position, the revolutionary minority must intervene consciously in the day to day struggles of the wider class, consistently driving towards greater class unity, a revolutionary perspective, and the use of libertarian methods of struggle. The revolutionary minority acts within all the various fronts of the class war as a unified political force, attempting to overcome the fragmentation of the class struggle at all times. This minority, dispersed all around the world, recognizing the commonality of their positions, converges around a shared program for revolution. This is the basis of a revolutionary organization or party.

This revolutionary organization cannot represent the wider class, or substitute itself for mass action by the workers in carrying out the social revolution. Its role is to work as the revolutionary fraction of the whole class movement, acting to win over the wider class to the next stage in the struggle. It acts as the permanent voice of a social revolutionary perspective within the class struggle. The development of such an organization will not be based on the simple expansion or duplication of any currently existing organization. It will instead be the product of a convergence by different organizations that currently possess a genuinely libertarian communist perspective around a coherent political program. Reclaim Oneonta sees itself as one of these organizations working towards such a convergence.

Reclaim Oneonta’s political influences can be traced back through the revolutionary worker’s movement. Starting with Bakunin and Marx, who respectively developed a libertarian understanding of a collectivist social revolution and a robust critique of the capitalist mode of production. It also draws on the evolution of Bakunin’s collectivism into libertarian communism as conceived by the likes of Carlo Cafiero and Kropotkin. From Malatesta, we also draw an understanding of the need for anarchists to organize both into their own revolutionary political party and as workers within the wider class movement. Drawing on the height of the class struggle in the 20th century, we align ourselves with the programmatic concept of such an anarchist party in platformism and especifismo. 

Reclaim Oneonta has two immediate goals as a result of its understanding of the libertarian communist movement. Those are, on one level, the active participation in the convergence of the revolutionary movement through linking up with other libertarian communist groups aiming towards an internationalist horizon. On the other level, we seek the deepening of the class struggle in Oneonta by promoting the self organization of the working class to press for its immediate demands against the capitalist class. Particularly in Oneonta, the struggle against rent is a priority. 

If you’re in or around Oneonta and interested in learning more about our politics, reach out, and we’ll find time to have you go through our political education program ‘liberation school’, which explains the politics of our organization in greater depth.