International Union of Anarchists


The International Union of Anarchists is a group of international anarcho-communist organisations. The IAU has national organisations in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Latvia, Belarus and Spain, individual members in Germany and Sweden, and links to anarchists in Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, France, Tunisia and Syria.
The IUA's main objective is coordinating the efforts of various anarchist organizations to reorganize society according to the principles of federative self-governance.

Background

IUA was founded at a conference on 21 November 2011, attended by representatives from Ukraine, Israel, Germany, Latvia, and Russia. They agreed on a memorandum of association and cooperation, which was the basis upon which later programming, structure, and basic rules of activity were established.
Most of IUA’s members before November 2011 were part of RKAS and separated into autonomous structures because of differences in the goals and methods of anarchist organizations, such as the prefiguration of future free society.
Several months after the conference, a significant number of people joined the IUA. Locally elected councils were then formed. Local councils assign the duties of determining solutions to the problems of both temporary and permanent group coordination. All positions are not constant in the local councils. Therefore, at the local council level, there is a constant reshuffling of posts either by the Board, or upon the personal initiative of the party. At the beginning of 2012, organizations in Spain and Sweden requested and were granted entry into the IUA.

Approach and philosophy

The common goal of IUA members is the elimination of the state, hired labor, inequality, and private property, along with the widespread replacement of commodity-money relations with relations based upon principles of mutual equality and fraternity. This is to be achieved through the collaborative planning of self-managing teams of workers, tenants and consumers, along with the implementation of business activities in accordance with the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs in the economic empowerment of society...."
The IUA also strives toward the following: