Our strategy

Background

The purpose of this strategy is to chart a course forward for the association Allt åt alla. Through this strategy, we want to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of advancing the working class’s position here and now. For the strategy to be realized, prioritisation and focus are required. Therefore, we aim to devote at least half of our time in the organisation, for at least three years, to political work that is in line with the strategy.

The strategy includes analysis, direction, and tactics. The analysis identifies the most important problems. The direction formulates an overarching guideline for dealing with the problems. The tactics describe how the direction can be implemented.

Analysis

The working class as a collective political actor has been broken down over a long period of time, parallel to many socialist parties, trade unions, and organisations losing their roots in the class. We are characterized by atomisation: individualism, competition, and apathy. We sometimes win individual battles, but we lack class formation. By class formation, we mean a process in which collective action and collective identity brings together different segments of the working class in a political movement against capital and class society.

As a class, we create capital, in our role in production and reproduction. At the same time, capital separates us from what we create, and thus from everything we need to live. This means that, in theory, the working class has an interest in abolishing our existence as a class and democratizing our common life. In this way, the class is the only group with the potential to challenge and abolish capital. But it is only if we form ourselves as a class that we can realize that potential and build a collective power that can match the power of capital. Without class formation, we are powerless.

We cannot say exactly how class formation will unfold in the future, but concrete class struggle is the engine of class formation, and will remain so. An important part of class formation is all the everyday struggles over our living conditions. Another important part is when an everyday struggle escalates into a major conflict. This happens when, for example, a strike, occupation, blockade, or riot interrupts the regular process of capital and affects the everyday lives of other segments of the class. A third important part is mass protests, when the class struggle is no longer limited to a single conflict and spreads on a large scale in a short period of time. Mass protests are rarely predictable, but the collective experiences from everyday struggles and major conflicts set the framework for how they arise and develop.

Direction

We will contribute to a new class formation. We do this by organizing common solutions to common problems that the class faces in everyday life. These common solutions are most successful when they:

– bring people together who would not otherwise meet

– increase trust between people and in our organisation

– formulate common demands

– building capacity to push through demands from specific opponents

– politicize everyday problems

– unite people through collective identities, slogans, symbols, etc.

We aim to scale up these common solutions. This means, among other things, bringing more people together, demanding more, and expanding the capacity to push through demands. Everyday struggles often arise from roles created by capital, such as tenants or the unemployed. We should not strive to reinforce and represent these roles, but instead overcome them through new ways of uniting people.

We seek to use major conflicts and mass protests to develop and scale up the common solutions we are working on. To the extent of our capacity, we will support major conflicts and mass protests by organizing common solutions to common problems faced by their participants. This may mean, for example, raising money for a strike fund or spreading information about rights at a mass protest.

We focus on everyday conflicts where we have the greatest potential to contribute to class formation. This potential depends partly on where we as an organisation have knowledge and experience, and partly on where the conditions are best for organizing successful common solutions. We believe that the everyday conflicts with the greatest potential for us right now are our homes, the urban commons, and the cost-of-living crisis.

– Our homes: housing and our living environment.

– The urban commons: what is or should be shared where we live, such as public transport, parks, and other public places.

– The cost-of-living crisis: the rising prices of the things we need.

Tactics

Our common solutions have the greatest potential to contribute to class formation when they start with a specific group that shares problems in a specific context. This is called structure-based organizing. It could, for example, involve tenants in a residential area, employees at a hospital, or bus commuters in a region. This demarcation is necessary in order to be able to follow up on how our common solutions contribute to class formation and how they can be scaled up.

An important component of our common solutions, whatever their form, is physical meetings between people. We can achieve this through door-to-door canvassing, leafleting, discussion meetings, or social activities, for example. This sometimes requires us to have access to, or manage ourselves, physical meeting places in the city where we operate.

When we organize solutions to problems in residential areas, or other location-specific problems, we must have a regular and long-term presence in the area and build relations of trust with the people and actors who live or work there. In other words, we want to get rooted locally.

When we organize solutions to problems that are not tied to a specific location, we need to find other approaches. In such cases, it may be appropriate to offer a framework with some common denominators—for example, a demand and a tactic—that individuals and actors in our environment can participate in and spread without our direct involvement. The Don’t Pay campaign in the UK or our initiative against unfair moving bills are examples of such frameworks.

We will adjust the organisation to support these tactics. We need to develop methods for inquiry into our environment so that we can identify where our tactics have the greatest potential to contribute to class formation. We also need to develop our knowledge sharing between local groups so that we can spread successful tactics, refine them, and avoid pitfalls.

 

⸻

Förbundet Allt åt allas previous strategy for the years 2021-2025 is available to read as a PDF here (in Swedish)