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Title: Syndicalism and Anarchism
Author: Errico Malatesta
Date: April-May 1925
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-syndicalism, anarchist organization, Labor Movement, strategy
Source: The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles 1924–1931, edited and introduced by Vernon Richards. Published by Freedom Press London 1995.

Errico Malatesta

Syndicalism and Anarchism

The relationship between the labour movement and the progressive parties

is an old and worn theme. But it is an ever topical one, and so it will

remain while there are, on one hand, a mass of people plagued by urgent

needs and driven by aspirations — at times passionate but always vague

and indeterminate — to a better life, and on the other, individuals and

parties who have a specific view of the future and of the means to

attain it, but whose plans and hopes are doomed to remain utopias ever

out of reach unless they can win over the masses. And the subject is all

the more important now that, after the catastrophes of war and of the

post-war period, all are preparing, if only mentally, for a resumption

of the activity which must follow upon the fall of the tyrannies that

still rant and rage [across Europe] but are beginning to tremble.

For this reason I shall try to clarify what, in my view, should be the

anarchists’ attitude to labour organisations.

Today, I believe, there is no-one, or almost no-one amongst us who would

deny the usefulness of and the need for the labour movement as a mass

means of material and moral advancement, as a fertile ground for

propaganda and as an indispensable force for the social transformation

that is our goal. There is no longer anyone who does not understand what

the workers’ organisation means, to us anarchists more than to anyone,

believing as we do that the new social organisation must not and cannot

be imposed by a new government by force but must result from the free

cooperation of all. Moreover, the labour movement is now an important

and universal institution. To oppose it would be to become the

oppressors’ accomplices; to ignore it would be to put us out of reach of

people’s everyday lives and condemn us to perpetual powerlessness.

Yet, while everyone, or almost everyone, is in agreement on the

usefulness and the need for the anarchists to take an active part in the

labour movement and to be its supporters and promoters, we often

disagree among ourselves on the methods, conditions and limitations of

such involvement.

Many comrades would like the labour movement and anarchist movement to

be one and the same thing and, where they are able — for instance, in

Spain and Argentina, and even to a certain extent in Italy, France,

Germany, etc. — try to confer on the workers’ organisations a clearly

anarchist programme. These comrades are known as ‘anarcho-syndicalists,’

or, if hey get mixed up wih others who really are not anarchists, call

themselves ‘revolutionary syndicalists’ .

There needs to be some explanation of the meaning of ‘syndicalism.’

If it is a question of what one wants from the future, if, that is, by

syndicalism is meant the form of social organisation hat should replace

capitalism and state organisation, then either it is the same thing as

anarchy and is therefore a word that serves only to confuse; or it is

something different from anarchy and cannot therefore be accepted by

anarchists. In fact, among the ideas and the proposals on the future

which some syndicalists have put forward, there are some that are

genuinely anarchist. But there are others which, under other names and

other forms, reproduce the authoritarian structure which underlies the

cause of the ills about which we are now protesting, and which,

therefore, have nothing to do with anarchy.

But it is not syndicalism as a social system which I mean to deal with,

because it is not this which can determine the current actions of the

anarchists with regard to the labour movement.

I am dealing here with the labour movement under a capitalist and state

regime and the name syndicalism includes all he workers’ organisations,

all the various unions set up to resist the oppression of the bosses and

to lessen or altogether wipe out the exploitation of human labour by the

owners of the raw materials and means of production.

Now I say that these organisations cannot be anarchist and that it does

no good to claim that they are, because if they were they would be

failing in their purpose and would not serve the ends that those

anarchists who are involved in them propose.

A Union is set up to defend the day to day interests of the workers and

to improve their conditions as much as possible before they can be in

any position to make the revolution and by it change today’s

wage-earners into free workers, freely associating for the benefit of

all.

For a union to serve its own ends and at the same time act as a means of

education and ground for propaganda aimed at radical social change, it

needs to gather together all workers — or at least those workers who

look to an improvement of their conditions — and to be able to put up

some resistance to the bosses. Can it possibly wait for all the workers

to become anarchists before inviting them to organise themselves and

before admitting them into the organisation, thereby reversing the

natural order of propaganda and psychological development and forming

the resistance organisation when there is no longer any need, since the

masses would already be capable of making the revolution? In such a case

the union would be a duplicate of the anarchist grouping and would be

powerless either to obtain improvements or to make revolution. Or would

it content itself with committing the anarchist programme to paper and

with formal, unthought-out support, and bringing together people who,

sheeplike, follow the organisers, only then to scatter and pass over to

the enemy on the first occasion they are called upon to show themselves

to be serious anarchists?

Syndicalism (by which I mean the practical variety and not the

theoretical sort, which everyone tailors to their own shape) is by

nature reformist. All that can be expected of it is that the reforms it

fights for and achieves are of a kind and obtained in such a way that

they serve revolutionary education and propaganda and leave the way open

for the making of ever greater demands.

Any fusion or confusion between the anarchist and revolutionary movement

and the syndicalist movement ends either by rendering the union helpless

as regards its specific aims or with toning down, falsifying and

extinguishing the anarchist spirit.

A union can spring up with a socialist, revolutionary or anarchist

programme and it is, indeed, with programmes of this sort that the

various workers’ programmes originate. But it is while they are weak and

impotent that they are faithful to the programme — while, that is, they

remain propaganda groups set up and by a few zealous and committed men,

rather than organisations ready for effective action. Later, as they

manage to attract the masses and acquire the strength to claim and

impose improvements, the original programme becomes an empty formula, to

which no-one pays any more attention. Tactics adapt to the needs of the

moment and the enthusiasts of the early days either themselves adapt or

cede their place to ‘practical’ men concerned with today, and with no

thought for tomorrow.

There are, of course, comrades who, though in the first ranks of the

union movement, remain sincerely and enthusiastically anarchist, as

there are workers’ groupings inspired by anarchist ideas. But it would

be too easy a work of criticism to seek out the thousands of cases in

which, in everyday practice, these men and these groupings contradict

anarchist ideas.

Hard necessity? I agree. Pure anarchism cannot be a practical solution

while people are forced to deal with bosses and with authority. The:

mass of the people cannot be left to their own devices when they refuse

to do so and ask for, demand, leaders. But why confuse anarchism with

what anarchism is not and take upon ourselves, as anarchists,

responsibility for the various transactions and agreements that need to

be made on the very grounds that the masses are not anarchist, even

where they belong to an organisation that has written an anarchist

programme into its constitution?

In my opinion the anarchists should not want the unions to be anarchist.

The anarchists must work among themselves for anarchist ends, as

individuals, groups and federations of groups. In the same way as there

are, or should be, study and discussion groups, groups for written or

spoken propaganda in public, cooperative groups, groups working within

factories and workshops, fields, barracks, schools, etc., so they should

form groups within the various organisations that wage class war.

Naturally the ideal would be for everyone to be anarchist and for all

organisations to work anarchically. But it is clear that if that were

the case, there would be no need to organise for the struggle against

the bosses, because the bosses would no longer exist. In present

circumstances, given the degree of development of the mass of the people

amongst which they work, the anarchist groups should not demand that

these organisations be anarchist, but try to draw them as close as

possible to anarchist tactics. If the survival of the organisation and

the needs and wishes of the organised make it really necessary to

compromise and enter into muddied negotiations with authority and the

employers, so be it. But let it be the responsibility of others, not the

anarchists, whose mission is to point to the inadequacy and fragility of

all improvements that are made within a capitalist society and to drive

the struggle on toward ever more radical solutions.

The anarchists within the unions should strive to ensure that they

remain open to all workers of whatever opinion or party on the sole

condition that there is solidarity in the struggle against the bosses.

They should oppose the corporatist spirit and any attempt to monopolise

labour or organisation. They should prevent the Unions from becoming the

tools of the politicians for electoral or other authoritarian ends; they

should preach and practice direct action, decentralisation, autonomy and

free initative. They should strive to help members learn how to

participate directly in the life of the organisation and to do without

leaders and permanent officials.

They must, in short, remain anarchists, remain always in close touch

with anarchists and remember that the workers’ organisation is not the

end but just one of the means, however important, of preparing the way

for the achievement of anarchism.