Origin
The Revolutionary Alliance for May 1st was constitued on the basis of the experiment of the demonstration for May 1st 2017, aiming to organise future May 1st demonstrations and other unitary demonstrations.
Unity
The Alliance is composed of groups and collectives representing or linked to several currents of the revolutionary left (anarchist, communist, libertarian communist,…) who have as a base of unity:
- to undertake and defend the legacy and characters of their current;
- to have a self-critical look on this legacy;
- to estimate that new circumstances (such as the fragmentation and casualisation of the class, the de-industrialisation of the metropolises, the development of Information Technologies, the capitalist globalisation, etc.) call for new methods of struggle and organisation;
- to base themselves on class analysis and positioning;
- to set the political-organisationnal efficiency as a means and not as an end towards the struggle for direct democracy, to point out the class of exploited -and not bureaucracy or State- as the real political subject;
- to link class struggle, anti-patriarchy struggle and anti-racism struggle;
- to undertake a clear break with the system of exploitation and its institutions, which implies the reject of electoralism and legalism.
- to be aware that the revolutionary process requires the destruction of the apparatus of the State, the police, the justice, etc.;
- to estimate it is necessary to recompose the revolutionary left by aiming for unity on the basis of the previous points.
Those characters are not only those of the constituent groups: they are those of the Alliance itself.
The demonstration of the Revolutionary May 1st.
The demonstration of the Revolutionary May 1st is the primary and central activity of the Alliance. The goals of this demonstration are:
- to make the revolutionary left visible in a dynamic and offensive way. To make that visibility a factor of strength. To make the awareness of this strength a developing factor of our forces.
- to promote in practice the principles of unity of the Alliance.
Who are invited to this demo: the militants, sympathizers, organised forces of the revolutionary left but also the progressive, unionist, antifascist, migrants, feminist, antiracist, anti-imperialist and in general the anticapitalist forces. Whatever their means of struggle might be (from unionist work to direct action to squatting), as far as they understand and respect the unitary dynamics that the demonstration symbolizes.
Who Are NOT invited:
- groups that consider other groups as rivals to compete, marginalize, infiltrate;
- groups that despise the demonstration itself and consider it as a human mass;
- groups that despise the manifestation itself and consider it only as a human mass from which direct actions can be taken;
- sexist, racist, chauvinist and homophobic groups.
It is not requested to adhere to the unitary approach but to respect it. For example to be tactfull in the slogans and banners toward other currents, to abstain to display or chant elements that could provoke the hostility of other participants to the demonstration. The success of the demonstration of May 1st 2018 showed the validity and productivity of those principles.
