WHO ARE WE?
Autonomous Action is a community of people for whom "freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality" (Mikhail Bakunin). We believe that the most important things in life are not the consumption of commodities, careerism, political power, and money, but creativity, genuine human relationships, and personal liberty. All of us — workers and the unemployed, retirees, students, pupils, employees, and those on the margins of the society — are bound by one fundamental purpose: to protest against any power of human over human, the state, capitalism, and officially promoted bourgeois "culture"; a shared refusal to be an obedient cog in the machinery of the System, a desire to resist it collectively, and a need for free self-becoming.
OUR IDEALS AND OUR AIM
Autonomous Action stands against all forms of domination and discrimination, both in society at large and within our own organization. The current system of domination is a tightly interwoven web of the repressive state apparatus, industrial and post-industrial capitalist economy, and authoritarian, hierarchical relations between people. We hold that every state is an instrument for the oppression and exploitation of the working majority for the benefit of a privileged minority. The power of state and capital is the suppression of individuality and the creative energy of all. Therefore, we view libertarian (free, stateless, self-governing) communism — a society free of domination — as a necessary social structure.
Autonomous Action lays the foundation and tradition for a new humanist culture, grassroots self-organization, and radical resistance to capitalism, fascism, militarism, sexism, ageism, and all other forms of discrimination. We recognize all forms of resistance to various modes of oppression as equally valid. Each member of Autonomous Action is free to choose their own priority in struggle.
HOW WE ARE ORGANIZED
Our goals can only be achieved if our means are consistent with our ends. For this reason, our organization has a federative structure that excludes leadership and hierarchy, rejecting inequality among participants, centralism, and rigid divisions of function that crush initiative, destroy autonomy, and suppress individuality. Our ideological and organizational principles are broad enough to keep us from becoming a sect, yet concrete enough to enable coordinated action, shared tactics, common goals, and the effective resolution of the tasks we set for ourselves.
HOW WE TAKE ACTION
Members of Autonomous Action practice direct action. To achieve our goals, we do not participate in the struggle for state power, parliamentary seats, or bureaucratic posts. Instead, we realize our goals directly through a wide spectrum of extra-parliamentary and cultural action — revolutionary in form and content whenever necessary. Autonomous Action is a united front whose branches, each operating in their own sphere and participating in various social movements, carry out an assault on repressive relations across all domains of public and private life — building new relations free from domination and submission right here and now. Autonomous Action recognizes the right of individuals and society to self-defense and resistance against oppression.
THE PATH TO OUR GOAL
We recognize a multitude of paths toward our goals. The path may take the form of a revolutionary insurrection self-organized by the working masses, a general expropriating strike, or a gradual displacement of the institutions of power and capital by the self-governing structures of an alternative, stateless civil society. Life itself will reveal which methods are most effective and timely. However, a society without domination can never be achieved through reforms, parliamentary legislation, government acts, or initiatives driven by transnational corporations, international institutions, or representatives of the ruling and privileged classes. Our strategy is REVOLUTIONARY in the sense that it originates from below — starting from the base structures of society without relying on the mechanisms and resources of the system — demanding not incremental tweaks within the system, but its complete destruction and replacement.
OUR ALTERNATIVE
The centralized bureaucratic machine, national and global capital, and the consumerist mass culture they generate constitute the system suppressing us. It is not only immoral and unjust, but is actively steering human society toward an ecological, military, and cultural catastrophe. Radical change has become an urgent necessity. Therefore, we propose a Radical Alternative to the existing order — an alternative based on Humanism, Freedom, and Equality.
Our alternative is not about "establishing a heaven on Earth"; it simply opens the door to real social development. In such a society, some current problems may persist and new ones may arise, but it will nevertheless be vastly more just, humane, and free than today's world. Under certain circumstances, it represents the only alternative to approaching disaster.
At the same time, our alternative is not merely a distant goal for which we fight, but a society we are actively creating here and now through everyday resistance. This alternative is outlined by the following ideological principles and lines of action, which every member of Autonomous Action pursues according to their own will, aligning their actions with the goals of Autonomous Action without contradicting this manifesto.
IDEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES AND DIRECTIONS OF ACTION
ANTI-AUTHORITARIANISM
Against all forms of dictatorship, leadership, authoritarianism, centralized bureaucratic apparatus, and police brutality. For the right to participate in making decisions on all matters affecting our lives. For minimizing vertical ties and maximizing horizontal relationships within society. For the decentralization of management, local autonomy, direct grassroots democracy, and federalism. For a free federation of self-governing, interconnected individuals, groups, communes, and regions, where coordinating bodies, when needed, consist of independent Councils or other self-management institutions formed from below by general assemblies based on principles of delegation and imperative mandates — with the right to immediate recall of delegates — rather than representative democracy.
FOR THE COMPLETE LIBERATION OF EACH AND EVERYONE! YOUR FREEDOM IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT THE FREEDOM OF OTHERS!
ANTI-CAPITALISM
Humanity, fundamentally united in its natural state, has been divided into the masters and an exploited, powerless majority. We stand for the abolition of class society, wage labor, oppression, and the exploitation of humans by humans, as well as the elimination of the power of money and commodity production. Against human dependence on volatile "market forces." Products should not rule people; on the contrary, people should use products wisely and responsibly. Society must overcome the catastrophic logic of capitalist production.
We stand against state imperialism and the growing power of transnational corporations and global financial structures. For workers' self-management and workplace control. Society’s wealth and resources must be accessible to all, not just a ruling elite. For popular, solidarity-based self-governance without capitalists or bureaucrats.
Economic life must be organized and integrated according to the principle: from each according to their individual abilities, to each according to their individual needs — accounting for evolving needs, society's productive capacities, and the preservation of natural balance and biodiversity.
Capitalism — a system of endless war, profit-driven greed, and oppression — offers only one historical outcome: the destruction of humanity in a global ecological catastrophe, or, at best, a collapse into "civilized" barbarism. It cannot be reformed.
ANTI-FASCISM & ANTI-NATIONALISM
Nationalism, racism, and fascism are tools used by the bourgeoisie and bureaucracy to pit people against one another along arbitrary lines, masking their own rule, securing profits, and maintaining power over society. We are internationalists. Only by organizing internationally can working people not only counter state power, capital, and reactionary political trends, but deliver a decisive defeat to them.
The world should be multi-colored, not brown! For a world without borders and nation-states, united in its diversity of cultures and traditions. For a world reflecting a diversity of individuals, collectives, communities, and regions — not a dismal world of national and religious hatred, racial prejudice, chauvinism, xenophobia, and homogeneous, insular "national cultures." For the protection of national and cultural minorities against discrimination and fascist terror. For an uncompromising counter-attack against Neo-Nazi and national-patriotic ideologies and organizations.
ANTI-BOLSHEVISM
The negative legacy of "real socialism" in countries like the USSR, China, Cuba, and others in no way discredits the ideas of libertarian communism. A free and solidarity-based society cannot emerge through an inherently authoritarian party structure, the seizure of state power, or the dictatorship of any party apparatus or self-appointed "vanguard."
We reject Bolshevik organizational principles in favor of structures built on libertarian values of mutual respect, equality, and solidarity. Our organizational form must prefigure the society we seek to build. We regard the regimes in so-called "socialist countries" as nothing more than a crude expression of a global trend toward state capitalism — a system that preserved capitalist economic relations, wage labor, and bourgeois psychology, with the sole difference that capital was held by a single, collective owner: the ruling party elite. The only distinction between "socialist" capitalism and "Western" capitalism lay in the mechanism of capital accumulation.
The libertarian experience of the Makhnovist movement, the Spanish Revolution, Tolstoyan movement, the independent labor movement, and similar initiatives demonstrates the zeal with which Bolsheviks sought to eradicate any anti-authoritarian, genuinely communist movement. We reject any ideological or organizational unity with Leninists (Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyists, etc.). However, we stand for close cooperation with non-authoritarian socialists, anti-party left communists, and libertarian Marxists.
SELF-GOVERNANCE
Forms of self-governance may include:
- Production facilities reclaimed as public property by workers' collectives and operated on a libertarian basis;
- Libertarian communes;
- Other self-governing institutions organized along territorial, functional, or other grassroots lines.
These forms of self-governance serve as an effective means of building a foundational social alternative to the dominant order.
ANTI-MILITARISM
State armies are systems of violence, instruments of control for ruling elites, and mechanisms for indoctrinating young people into the patriarchal, authoritarian, and hierarchical structures of the system of domination. We are unconditionally opposed to compulsory military service. We refuse to defend a state and government that exist solely to oppress us.
We advocate for the general arming of working people and a militia-based defense model free from drill, blind obedience, degradation, and prison-like discipline. For complete societal oversight over military specialists.
PEACE TO THE WORLD! FREE PEOPLE HAVE NOTHING TO DIVIDE!
ECOLOGISM
We oppose the reckless exploitation of the environment for the profits of a few. We oppose the industrial system of organization and the rule of technocrats. We stand for the widespread development and implementation of renewable energy, the establishment of eco-villages, and the harmonization of human relations with nature. For decentralized, human-centered, balanced production that serves the people, protects nature for future generations, and gradually transcends industrial technologies. We actively support social ecologists in their struggles and participate in environmental campaigns and direct actions.
Not more, but better! Quality over quantity! To be, not to have!
FEMINISM
We stand against sexism — oppression, violence, and discrimination based on sex or gender. We oppose patriarchy — the authoritarian structure of class society in which power in key domains is concentrated primarily among male property-owners, the "female" is subordinated to the "male," and the family operates as a mechanism for reproducing and socializing labor power.
We oppose sexist stereotypes, family despotism, homophobia, transphobia, and ageism. We stand for the active participation of women in social life, the right of individuals to control their own bodies (including reproductive autonomy), and the freedom to define one's own sexual and gender identity. Every individual is equally valuable in their unique social and gender expression.
NEW HUMANIST CULTURE
Against the hypocrisy and repressiveness of official mass culture, the commercialization of creativity, and the dominance of show business and the "entertainment industry." Against all forms of mental and behavioral manipulation. Against cultural elitism and hierarchical institutions.
We champion non-commercial creativity, experimental art, alternative pedagogy, and initiatives by people seeking to live by non-authoritarian principles today. Such initiatives are vital not as an escape from reality, but to build real-world experience in free, rational relationships. We support the creation of squats, housing cooperatives, artistic and musical communes, autonomous cultural and information spaces, and alternative culture festivals.
CULTURE SHOULD NOT IMPOVERISH OUR LIFE – LIFE MUST BECOME GREATER THAN IT IS!
ANTI-CLERICALISM
We fully support complete spiritual freedom and every individual's right to freely explore faith and worldview. However, we must resist — without resorting to state mechanisms — any ideological system that fosters hatred, xenophobia, and nationalism, or shapes an authoritarian, patriarchal, and dogmatic personality. Many religious doctrines are deeply embedded in such systems.
Even more decisively, we oppose hierarchical church organizations whose authoritarian structures cannot serve the cause of human liberation. Such churches exist solely to enslave individuals both spiritually and physically. A prime example in Russia is the Russian Orthodox Church, which long ago transformed into a powerful capitalist and bureaucratic corporation backed by state financial and ideological privileges. We oppose exploiting human spiritual needs for profit and power.
ANTI-COLONIALISM
We oppose the colonial exploitation of the "periphery" by the "center," as well as the imposition of imperial standards in the interests of powerful state or commercial institutions. We advocate for the equality and diversity of all cultures and national languages. Colonial practices persist within modern Russia and must be dismantled. At the same time, anti-colonial struggles must not lead to self-isolation within ethnic national states. Instead, we propose a federation of free communes with open, transparent borders.
HOW TO START RESISTANCE
Do not wait — take action yourselves. Focus your efforts on any direction that inspires you or aligns with your values. Find like-minded people among your friends, colleagues, or classmates.
Start small, focusing on real, tangible tasks, such as:
- Participating in strikes, anti-fascist struggles, or cooking meals for the homeless (Food Not Bombs);
- Organizing film screenings, letter-writing events for political prisoners, rallies, or benefit concerts;
- Establishing an anarchist cooperative, squat, or residential commune;
- Running an anarchist media channel on social networks;
- Publishing and educational work (books, zines, newspapers, lectures);
- Organizing an independent labor union;
- Planning and executing direct actions.
The key is to act independently of and against the state and capital.
Establish connections with other groups and initiatives, maintaining informational and organizational ties with comrades across the country and internationally. This will build confidence and strength.
Send reports and materials about your actions to Autonomous Action. Through our website and social channels, we cover struggles across both the Russian-speaking and global libertarian movement.
BE COURAGEOUS! LIVE FULLY, FREELY, AND BRIGHTLY!
RESIST! REMEMBER: A HANDFUL OF FIGHTERS CAN START AN AVALANCHE!
Добавить комментарий