Who are we?
Plan C is an anti-authoritarian communist organisation, building movement autonomy and organising against capital and state power. We have over a decade of uninterrupted activity.
We are an organisation of militants. Plan C offers us a place to collaborate and a non-dogmatic environment to be nurtured and supported in. Through campaign work, direct action, political education and coalition building, we aim to unmask and unleash the revolutionary potentials that exist around us.
Plan C exists to organise in, beyond, and against capital. We think this requires the development of ideas and practices that are able to cohere together whilst at the same time being dynamic enough to adapt to changes in our lives and our work.
What describes our form
We are non-rivalrous
Plan C is not the organisation of the working classes nor do we see a necessity for one. We think that for the struggle against and beyond capital to remain dynamic, there needs to be continual cross-pollination between groups and communities whose experience of it has had different emphases and who have organised themselves differently. We hope to be one radical anti-capitalist organisation amongst many. Members are also entirely welcome to be dual cardholders with other left groups.
Power is decentralised or diffuse
We don't have a leadership, a central committee, or a steering committee. The sovereign decision-making bodies at the national level are the General Assembly of Members and the National Gatherings.
We are internally pluralist
We don't require members to toe the line. Minority groups within Plan C are welcome to pursue courses of action under the Plan C name that the majority isn't into. A diversity of approaches makes for a much stronger organisation. However, we attempt to move continually towards shared strategic orientations to enhance the intellectual and logistical coordination within (and outside) the organisation rather than a centrally determined line or course of action.
We are experimental and non-dogmatic
It's great to be right but it's even better to be exploratory. The structures and conventions of the old left are becoming less and less effective. Developing new ones means trying things out, getting them wrong, trying other things out. We are wary of models of social change developed in very different social and historical contexts. We acknowledge our precursors, build on our influences, and try to minimise unnecessary reinvention but we are attempting to organise on a new and ever-changing terrain.
Building a movement is prioritised over building an organisation
Plan C is a tool or a resource for the development of social movements. As such it can be seen as a pocket in those movements or a resting point for when they're dispersed or temporarily unrecognisable. It is not a movement in itself and it has no desire to seize control of any such movements. It is an organisation that we feel to be useful in the present historical moment and will continue only until this usefulness subsides.
Get involved
Like the sound of all this?
Everyone joins as a Friend. Take the first step and become part of Plan C.
Where did Plan C come from?
Good question! Some of our members in Leeds were interviewed by the Interventionist Left in 2012 about Plan C's origins and practice. The politics of Plan C is always evolving but it provides a useful overview of the origins of our organisation.
01Plan C is quite an unusual name for a leftist organisation. What does it stand for?
The 'C' is deliberately ambiguous. The assumption tends to be that it stands for 'Commons' or 'Communism'. Either of these is acceptable but people should feel free to interpret it differently if they wish. More importantly, it's a play on the flurry of discourse around 'Plan A' and 'Plan B' that emerged in the UK once the crisis had dug its heels in after 2007.
At the end of 2009, the prime minister's spokesperson told us ministers hadn't asked for advice on a 'plan B' because they were very clear that the plan they had was the right plan. This plan, Plan A, involved massive cuts to public spending, tripling of university fees, and tax breaks for the wealthy. In short, a neo-liberal plan focused on making Britain more 'business-friendly'. Of course, just because ministers hadn't gone looking for a plan B doesn't mean no one else did.
There are numerous Plan B's, all hovering in the vicinity of some form of neokeynesianism. We don't want to unhelpfully dismiss these out of hand. However, it is crucially important to note the absence of the same social and material conditions that ushered in the golden age of social democracy in the past. So, we suggest Plan C — perhaps centred on commons. We have no desire to present this plan as a prognosis; one of the problems with plan B is its inability to meet the dynamism and flux of everyday life under capitalism. We need plans that can change, rapidly if need be.
02What was the motivation for founding Plan C?
Plan C began at a gathering of a couple of hundred people in Manchester called 'Network X'. It was called on the back of the volcanic arrival of a new generation of student activists whose occupation of the Conservative Party headquarters at Milbank had taken everybody by surprise. However, the organisers had mistakenly assumed that all that was required was to introduce this new generation to a tried and tested organisational model from the past.
When it came to the Network X meeting not only did a new network fail to materialise, but many of the weaknesses of horizontal organising were usefully exemplified over two days: interminable arguments about consensus processes, cataclysmic eleventh-hour derailments of discussions, and unofficial hierarchies taking accidental control. It was like a whistle-stop tour of why we couldn't simply transplant the structures of a previous cycle of struggle.
In the run up to this gathering, a group of comrades from Leeds ran a workshop entitled 'What if there was a movement and we weren't invited?' The idea was to call into question the assumption that our forms of organising were somehow eternal. The workshop was so productive they reran it in Leeds with an even bigger turnout. Comrades from London, Manchester, and Nottingham ran similar discussions. It was the organisers and participants of these discussions who met over a weekend a month or so later at the first gathering of what would later be named Plan C.