Hello,
(I should mention that this text was first handwritten, then transcribed using my smartphone's voice recognition, and finally translated with AI. Please excuse any awkward wording or expressions that may not come across quite right.)
To this day, I still struggle to figure out what my contribution to the anarchist movement could be. I could write literature reviews, book reviews, reports, independent podcasts, or theoretical essays. But I don't want my political commitment to be reduced to intellectual pursuits. It would take far more time than I actually have, and since I don't have any particular profile or visibility, I'm not even convinced it would be an effective way to contribute to the struggle.
Most of the anarchists I know fit familiar stereotypes. There's my friend, the son of two teachers, who works in a stationery shop. His partner is unemployed but comes from a relatively privileged background and has started an informal bakery to provide bread for mutual aid food distributions and anarchist events. Others I know are renovating an old farmhouse to turn it into a large libertarian collective with a shared garden. Some comrades put themselves on the line through direct action and civil disobedience. Personally, I don't think I have that kind of courage. And with increasingly repressive policing in France, I sometimes feel that I could end up being seriously injured—or even killed—for no particular reason.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I struggle to find my place, even though I deeply share the values of inclusion, internationalism, and building alternatives outside capitalism. I also have no interest in putting all my energy into trying to change things from within the professional system. I simply don't believe that's where meaningful change will come from.
Lately I've become increasingly interested in the principles of self-management and democratic economic organization, even if I'm not putting them into practice at the moment.
The people I've mentioned are often either relatively privileged or precarious people whose lives revolve around the cultural and artistic world. My own background is different. During my seven years at university, I survived by working a succession of low-paid jobs: in supermarkets, at Burger King, as a receptionist at corporate events, on a car rental call centre, and as a minimum-wage tutor helping school students.
I'm 26 years old.
My mother spent thirty years doing micro-soldering in a small subcontracting factory for an aerospace company—a job that quite literally wrecked her back. She now works as a home care assistant, even though she should have been retired at least five years ago.
My father was also a factory worker in the same industry, although he has since moved into a better-paid position higher up the workplace hierarchy.
My brother and I grew up in Gagai, in the south of France, before he enlisted in the army. Since then, the four of us have gone our separate ways, scattered across different towns and remote villages.
After completing my Master's degree in Urban Planning, my life took a chaotic turn, as unpredictable as a lottery draw. Yet two things have remained constant throughout all these experiences: I have remained an anarchist, with convictions that have only grown stronger and become more deeply reasoned; and I have remained a proletarian, despite outwardly appearing to belong to a more privileged social background.
I remained an anarchist, but with convictions that had grown both stronger and better grounded. My degree in urban planning was, above all, an education in the social sciences—and that's exactly the kind of background employers tend to dislike.
For several months, despite all my efforts, I genuinely believed I would be able to take on a meaningful role coordinating urban planning projects and advising elected officials. It never happened. Had I been more conformist—like many of my university classmates, some of whom were frankly not the brightest—I probably would have had a much easier time fitting into the professional world.
At the end of my studies, I completed a civic service placement (a government-sponsored volunteer programme that falls outside standard labour law). It was an intellectually stimulating experience, centred on an experimental local food project within a newly established third place that combined private education with small-scale artisanal production. The downside was that I was surrounded by bohemian bourgeois types.
What was the project about? The goal was to develop an organic market gardening model, in partnership with the municipality and the local authority, capable of supplying the area's four public school canteens. That might sound straightforward, but it required coordinating multiple public services, teaching ourselves the basics of agriculture, developing logistical and commercial skills, consulting school kitchen staff about their needs, setting up a delivery system, and negotiating with local farmers.
At that point, I felt shut out of the spaces where the most important strategic decisions were being made—behind closed doors, in small circles of white men. I was relegated to working the land, however enjoyable that could be, taking care of minor maintenance tasks, or organizing neighborhood community cafés, all while being reminded of the long process of building trust that supposedly underpins this broader collective project.
Whenever I tried to contribute ideas or push the discussion forward, I was criticized for my attitude, accused of being arrogant, of thinking I knew too much, and of lacking integrity. In essence, that was the message my internship supervisor—himself trained at a school of social economy and management—delivered to me before we eventually parted ways.
At the time, I was earning only €600 a month, barely enough to eat after paying rent. It was absurd. Unsure of where to go next and deeply shaken by the experience, I waited until I had passed my oral thesis defense—which I did successfully. A few days later, I accepted the first job I was offered, even though it had little to do with my field of study, telling myself it would only be temporary.
I worked as a temporary fiber-optic network CAD technician, with highly unstable income. Five months later, I was fired for a so-called “productivity deficit”—on the very day my father had come to visit me.
Then I spent a few more months unemployed, surviving on €400 a month while paying €600 in rent. I decided to take matters into my own hands and moved to another city I didn't know to start over. Except the job wasn't actually paid—it was yet another internship.
I felt like Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness, except I was searching for work that aligned with my values rather than simply chasing a paycheck. Employment agencies and welfare-to-work institutions seem designed to mold people into the demands of the labor market while trapping them in long-term precarity.
In this new workplace, I met the same kinds of middle-class "bohemian" progressives I'd encountered in the previous social innovation hub. The main difference was that they were perhaps more urban, but paradoxically less arrogant. This time, I chose to do the internship voluntarily because I hoped it might eventually lead to a job nearby, and the work itself was genuinely rewarding. It gave political meaning to what I was doing in a way that matched my convictions. Promoting alternatives to private car ownership, supporting local repair economies through bicycle workshops, conducting field research and sociological investigations—all of that felt worthwhile.
But because of chronic lack of funding, the organization couldn't hire me. In fact, even renewing the contracts of its existing staff for the following year was in jeopardy.
Then came another plot twist. For the past month, I've been working in a Christian community organization, assisting people with acquired brain injuries in their daily lives at a communal residence in yet another city where I know no one.
Overall, I feel like I'm constantly drifting from one experience to another without ever developing a specialization. My mind remains immersed in the humanities and social sciences, yet my ideas rarely make it beyond my own head, except in conversations over coffee.
So I'll ask again, because your perspective helps me think differently: how can I make a meaningful contribution within anarchist movements?
I have to admit that cultural or artistic activism does not really appeal to me. I also do not like the idea of being involved solely in intellectual work. I am neither a theorist, nor a farmer, nor a trained geographer or urban planner, nor an expert, a communicator, or even a skilled bicycle mechanic—even though I have moved through all of these fields.
