The subject, the proletariat, anarchist organisation and other nostalgias

by Laura Vicente

It is quite possible that no one will pay much attention to this brief piece, but just in case, I will say in anticipation that my aim is modest and that I do not intend to be polemical, although I would not mind sharing arguments and thoughts, moving beyond the stereotypes we all hold that lead us to be obtuse and, at times, blind.

There are comrades who have been pondering the existence, or lack thereof, of the proletariat for some time, searching for the lost revolutionary subject, building “the” anarchist organization capable of developing “a” program, “a” strategy, and concrete tactics that will lead us down the path of revolution. I have not read all their writings, I am sorry to say, because I am exhausted by anarchism’s difficulty in imagining a way out of capitalism that does not involve returning to the past and to nostalgia, even melancholy. This is how two authors, Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson [who go under the pen name J. K. Gibson-Graham] perceive it in their book A Post-Capitalist Politics. They claim that a lack of imagination is a pathology of the left, something that reminds me of the “melancholy” of the left, applicable to anarchism, which Wendy Brown discusses in her essay on this topic. Leftist melancholy is a stance in which attachment to an identity or a political analysis of the past is stronger than interest in current possibilities for mobilisation, alliance, or transformation. The melancholic subject identifies with lost ideals and experiences their absence as feelings of desolation and dejection. This fixation on the past has a clear connection to the total paranoid theory that says nothing can happen. Fisher calls it a “severe Leninist superego”.[1]

The proletariat, the working class, was the subject of the revolution in another era of industrial development that ended in the mid-20th century, not because there were no other subjects, but because of the power of the narrative that championed the proletariat. When we speak of workers’ consciousness as the foundation of their “being a subject,” it seems we’re talking about something pre-existing that simply needs to be awakened, discovered. But consciousness-raising, in reality, is a practice of collective discussion that underscores the inequalities under which people collectively live. Consciousness does not pre-exist, it is not given, but rather it must be constructed from our place within a structure of inequality (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism). The way to construct it is with other people who share a similar material existence.

Class consciousness has receded because the idea that there is no alternative to capitalism has advanced; the narrative has fallen apart.

On the other hand, holding closed seminars, waiting for the right information, the advanced political and ideological discussion that shapes a well-defined strategy to “awaken” the revolutionary subject, bringing to the surface a situation capable of awakening action by the people or any other subject, does not fit with what I have learned in history, either today or yesterday. No theory has ever transformed reality.

I have not forgotten of the need to “organise anarchism” as if it were not already organized. It gives the impression that the real aim is to impose order on anarchist diversity and multiplicity, transforming these interconnected, horizontal, decentralised, and non-hierarchical networks into parts of a whole that must be “the” effective, hyper-organised anarchist organization with strong militancy, etc.[2]

I recently said in an anarchist space that this debate is a men’s debate. The reality is that, even with women involved, the writings I have seen are by men. Reflecting on this, I concluded that women, and those perceived as such, have long known that there are other revolutionary subjects (think of Mujeres Libres, creating their own revolution between 1936 and 1939 and being ignored by the world, which is why I want to highlight them).

The struggles and events of the feminist movement were able to mobilise social transformation on an unprecedented scale, without resorting to a vanguard party or any of the other “needs” we have associated with political organisation (strategy, tactics, ideological narratives, modelled revolutions, etc.). Non-bourgeois, trans-feminist, libertarian, horizontal, and decentralised feminisms focus on building embodied practices and a shared language, constructing, through on-site actions, an imaginary capable of reversing hegemonic tendencies within our situated and territorialised lives.

Struggles, not just feminist ones, always occur in specific places, and it is there that they disrupt the workings of domination. Organising always happens whenever there is a struggle, however humble it may seem, because it equips itself with the necessary tools, which will never be the same as those of other contemporary struggles or those produced in the past. They are valuable in themselves, in their singularity; they are not parts of a whole. It could be (or it may not) that they end up building a revolutionary subjectivity that conceives of the possibility of ending capitalism, patriarchy, and any form of domination.

Forgive me, the more orthodox among you, for ending with a non-anarchist, for ending with Mark Fisher when he said in Postcapitalist Desire that all leftist projects are inadequate, and all for the same reason: in the sense that they do not take seriously the desires of the capitalised. They reject it and continue to re-inscribe moralism, and in doing so, they continue to invoke the distinction between inside and outside, between imminence and transcendence, between the realm of capital and a realm outside of it, which would be pure and free from capital.

And another cruel gem from Fisher: One may ethically claim to live in a different world, but libidinally, at the level of desire, the commitment is to life in the current capitalist world. That is why it is important to ask the following question: Is there really a desire for something beyond any form of domination?

[1] Mark Fisher, Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures, Repeater Books, 2020.

[2] All of this is much more developed in an article I authored, published on various websites, including Redes Libertarias.

Source: Pensar en el margen, 13/09/2026; Redes Libertarias, 02/10/2026