Alternative libertaire is a French anarchist

Anarchism in France

Thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. French anarchism reached its height in the late 19th century...

 organization formed in 1991 which publishes a monthly magazine, actively participates in a variety of social movements, and is a participant in the Anarkismo.net

Anarkismo.net

Anarkismo.net is an international anarchist-communist, platformist and especifista news and discussion website. Its news service is one of the select publishers included in the Google News aggregator...

 project. It was also a member of the International Libertarian Solidarity

International Libertarian Solidarity

International Libertarian Solidarity was an international anarchist network with over 20 participating organizations from North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa....

 network.

Alternative Libertaire identifies with various tendencies within the libertarian socialist current of anarchism including anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...

.

Ideology

The organization identifies with the revolutionary workers' movement drawn from the split in the First International (the International Workingmens' Association) in 1872. This was in opposition to the Marxists, whom Mikhail Bakunin regarded as authoritarian.

Alternative Libertaire's practical and ideological background has been summed up by the organisation as continuing from the following groups:

• Bakunin and his supporters within the First International.
• The revolutionary syndicalists of the French CGT
  Confédération générale du travail
  The General Confederation of Labour is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.It is the largest in terms of votes , and second largest in terms of membership numbers.Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995-96 The General...
  
   before 1914.
• The Makhnovists
  Makhnovism
  Makhnovism refers to various related political and economic theories elaborated by anarchist revolutionary leader Nestor Makhno, and by other theorists who claim to be carrying on Makhno's work. Makhnovism builds upon and elaborates the ideas of Peter Kropotkin, and serves as the philosophical...
  
  , and the Organizational Platform
  Platformism
  Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement originally theorised by Nestor Makhno and is mainly based on his concept of anarchism and the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists ...
  
   proposed by the exiled Russian anarchists.
• Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, the Spanish Revolution
  Spanish Revolution
  The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
  
   1936 and in particular the actions of the Friends of Durruti group.
• The Libertarian Communist Federation (FCL) and the Libertarian Communist Manifesto by Georges Fontenis in 1954.
• The Union des travailleurs communistes libertaires (Libertarian Communist Workers’ Union, UTCL), the works of Daniel Guérin
  Daniel Guérin
  Daniel Guérin was a French libertarian and author, best known for his work Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, as well as his collection No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism in which he collected writings on the idea and movement it inspired, from the first writings of Max Stirner in the...
  
  and the Libertarian Communist Project of 1986.

Activity

Today Alternative Libertaire is developing its political action on two fronts:

• The building of an alliance of social movements, to give political weight to the politics of the people against the institutionalised left.
• The building of a libertarian communist current which fuels and is fuelled by the activities of the social movements.

AL militants are particularly involved in struggles in the workplace and in the unions, in the CGT or in SUD (sometimes in the CNT), in the fight against unemployment, for the right to housing, in the environmental movement and in the fight against patriarchy. Alternative Libertaire endeavours to link these conflicts in today’s society with the perspective of a break with capitalism and the state.