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Title: A New Syndicalism?
Author: Flint Jones
Date: 2001
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-syndicalism, syndicalism, Northeastern Anarchist
Source: Retrieved on 15th October 2021 from http://nefac.net/node/51
Notes: By Flint Jones (Roundhouse Collective, NEFAC Baltimore). Published in The Northeastern Anarchist #2, Summer 2001.

Flint Jones

A New Syndicalism?

Anarcho-syndicalism has changed a lot from it’s origin in workers’

movements of the late 19^(th) century. It saw many of its practices

adopted by reformist institutions, and other practices rendered illegal

by the repressive hand of the state. Criticisms have grown outside of

workplace related issues, and failures have been revisited time and

again. I’d like to constructively address some of those criticisms to

develop a revolutionary strategy for tactical intervention with the

economic struggles of our class. Organizing around economic means is not

enough, there are more struggles than class warfare, but any revolution

that doesn’t abolish class isn’t a revolution (1). We need to not try to

resurrect old models of anarcho-syndicalism, but reincarnate the ideals

for a new life in our changing world.

A criticism common these days is the claim that anarcho-syndicalism is

dominated by a positivist productionalist idea. Indeed, at one time

there were many syndicalists that emphasized the parasitism of the rich,

and encouraged that science and syndicalism could create a more

productive and efficient system. This idea, however, co-existed with the

opposition to long work hours, celebrated the free existence of the

migrant worker, and shopfloor battles against the deskilling and

taylorization of crafts. Much worker resistance is not just a resistance

to capitalism, but a resistance of work in general, particularly when

labor is alienated through domination and exploitation.

It is not simply a question of production, but of the kind of production

we are involved in. Increasing the amount of junk we have is not

beneficial. Having all of our needs and a good number of our desires met

with miminal effort and ecological cost, is close to an economic utopia.

Quality of life issues like a reduction in working hours and safety

protections are old anarcho-syndicalist issues. However, some of the

important environmental issues can not relegated to only what workers do

at work, or to the wanton demands of consumers, but also whether there

is going to be a toxic waste dump in your backyard (or toxix waste at

all!) or to build a dam. Bio-regional, libertarian municipalist(2) or

other communal approaches might offer us a direction to look for

additions to workers’ and consumers’ councils.

Another criticism of anarcho-syndicalism is that it has generally been

viewed as primarily being concerned with organizing workers as a labor

union (3). This focus on only organizing with workers at the place of

confrontation with their employer limited anarcho-syndicalists to

fighting isolated, defensive battles. The old utopian economic solution

of “workers’ control” through a union “administration of things” or

workers’ councils is very limiting since the interests of workers and

consumers can be different. Everyone participating in an economic social

relationship is a consumer; though everyone is not a worker. As human

beings, we are so much more than these economic roles, but we are these

things as well; and in fact, it is these roles that are the only ones

capitalism addresses.

The problem of workers’ councils having a monopoly of economic

decision-making is addressed in Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel’s work

on participatory economics. Parecon basically advocates federation of

workers’ councils based in the workplaces and consumers’ councils based

in the neighborhood. Parecon lacks a revolutionary praxis; they have no

way to get there proposed federation. I think there is a way... and that

is a worker and consumer syndicalism. We need to organize not only at

the point of production, but also along the lines of transportation and

communication, as well as at the point of consumption.

Consumers, like workers, need to organize for their own interests, and

while more difficult to organize than workers, organizing one can

greatly support the other. There are many similarities between

organizing a labor union, and organizing a tennants’ union(4) or a bus

riders’ union. Workers and consumers have more in common with each other

than they do with the capitalists and bosses.

Syndicalism should be thought of as the practice of organizing along

principles of direct action and direct democracy by the exploited for

economic action against their exploiters. It’s primary weapon being

refusal — refusal to work, and refusal to buy. From slow down on the

job, to sabotage, from putting your rent in escrow until the leak is

fixed, to a mass rent revolt until rent is lowered. As struggle

increases, we move from refusal to occupation and expropriation.

Probably the most useful criticism coming from council communist

influenced groups like the Anarchist (Communist) Federation is that

unions are defined by their mediation between workers and capitalism.

The union bureacracy becomes separated from the interests of workers as

the professional staff acts as mediators and negotiators between workers

and employers. The union comes to exist as a permanent economic

organization with interests separate from the rank and file. The union

bureacracy attempts to control the workforce through discipline to

fullfill contracts, as much as it confronts the employers for a better

contract. The union must deliver a docile and stable workforce to the

boss or lose its power to bargain; and to do so it must work to reduce

the militancy of spontaneous worker struggle against the employer. The

union is your pimp.

While some of this needs to be taken with a grain of salt since many

unions do not behave this way,(5) and many of these problems point to a

lack of democracy in current unions, or show the difficulty of staying

within labor law during struggle, I do think they make an important

point. Unions alone can not be the vehicle for revolution. They are

designed as confrontational organizations within a hierarchial economy.

They might be good tools for surviving in this environment, but that

doesn’t mean they are the best tools for destroying capitalism.

Some neo-council communists forget, going so far as to oppose any kind

of political organization or even any form of activism, that many of

those workers who particpated in the spontaneous formation of workers’

councils also participated in unions and political factions before

struggles became large enough to form councils. Anarcho-syndicalists

believe that the unions can be schools for revolution. It gives workers

confidence, resources and time so that they can prepare for a

revolution. It develops a web of solidarity, mutual aid, and trust that

can be developed no other way than through participating collectively

with our class in struggles that are reducing the rate of exploitation.

Unfortunately, until there is a revolution, there is always going to be

some degree of negotiation between the exploited and the exploiters. If

our class organizations refuse to negotiate an eventual return to a rate

of exploitation, then the bosses and state will construct an

organization with whom they they can negotiate. Eventually they will

find enough scabs or break the struggle forcing us to accept the deal

negotiated by a fake union. If we deny ourselves the ability to have at

the very least a democratic control over the negotiation process, then

we are sure to get fucked by it. (5)

It’s a common myth that if we all belonged to the best revolutionary

organization, we would gain the critical mass that is in agreement on

the correct theoertical and tactical unity and we would then have a

revolution! The debate becomes, which revolutionary organization is

best, and thus which organizations aren’t then revolutionary at all. It

doesn’t take long to see where this will go. It would create a horde of

rival sectarian organizations sqabbling over whether the Confederacion

Nacional Trabajo (CNT) was revolutionary in 1936, before, afterwards, or

not at all.

The idea of “One Big Union”(OBU) here is taken out of context. The

appeal to OBU is a notion of solidarity in action, not a monopoly of

revolutionary activity by one body of organized labor. The Industrial

Workers of the World(IWW) was very critical of “union scabbing” at the

time where one union would continue work (and even increase work with

overtime and job loading) while another union was on strike. The idea

was that all workers in an industry should strike together. That was the

intent of OBU. Workers would support each others’ strikes regardless of

craft, political party, union affiliation, race, ethnicity, etc...

I think we witnessed this during the general strikes in which the IWW

agitated and participated. The IWW contest for the membership of workers

with the American Federation of Labor obscured this point. In some ways

this is uniquely a phenomenon of the United States labor law which only

allows one union to represent workers. This method of election for

official recognition by the government of one body of workers’

representatives, certainly did much to weaken radical labor unions while

giving advantages to reformist and business unions.

Unions vary. They vary alot. Even in the U.S. you have a spectrum of

unions that include: hierarchical, state-collaborationist,

mafia-controlled, corporate, pro-capitalist, sexist, racist, and

nationalist unions, some are moderate social-democratic reformers, some

are radical anti-capitalist democratic direct action unions, and even

others are small formal anarcho-syndicalist groups. All unions are not

the same, whether they are offically recognized by the government or

not. Whether the government recognizes a body of organized workers isn’t

really up to us, but rather the government and the employers. When

you’ve got a successful strike, the bosses are desperate to negotiate

and grant recognition. Unions, though, are made by the collective

actions of the workers, not the paper endorsement of the state or the

permission of the capitalists.

If all unions are not the same, then some are better than others. We

should do everything we can to encourage better unions. In the better

unions we should encourage the support of revolutionary struggle, even

if the revolution means the destruction of the organizations (or at

least its role as negotiator with the bosses).

In most places, a majority of the workers are not organized into any but

the most informal of work resistance organizations. There is plenty of

space for a radical union that operates according to anarcho-syndicalist

principles to grow without ever having to challenge the officaldom of

the business unions. Perhaps the IWW can today be a banner in which

similar efforts can gather.

For those workers who already have a “union” at work, they have to

figure out their own strategy. Does it make more sense to try and reform

the union toward a revolutionary goal, or does it make more sense to

form an alternative and challenge the business union’s role? One problem

for us from a class perspective is that many vital industries are

already in the domain of business unions. Those industries would be

essential for the creation of general strikes and revolution. However,

the onslaught of neo-liberalism has launched its war against even

reformist unions, breaking the decades of “cooperation” between labor

unions and capitalists. The AFL-CIO is changing under the strain of

assault from the capitalists, increasingly wild-catting workers, local

autonomy, rank & file democratic movements. Other strains include

radicals involved as organizers for those portions of the unions that

are growing; the class collaboration of some union bosses more

interested in acting as pimps; and the fragmentation being created by

the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and the withdraw of local unions

from central labor councils to setup their own progressive labor

councils. As much as we have an opportunity to organize with the

unorganized, we also have opportunities for radicalization in the

reformist unions.

We need specifically anarchist groups which spread syndicalist ideals

among our class and can provide a perspective, history and theory for

our fellow workers to consider. This is to be a leadership of ideas, not

a vanguard. These probably need to be no larger than a successful

publication group, such as Anarcho-Syndicalist Review; though undoubtly

if they are confederated with similar organizations they can increase

their reach and ability to intevene.

We need solidarity organizations that build support for workers across

lines of industry, craft, locality, nationality; and where the need is

across racial, tribal and gender lines. These organizations need to be

open to anyone as long as they are willing to working in a directly

democratic matter taking direct action in the interests of supporting

workers in struggle. A good example here would be the New York City

based Direct Action Network Labor group. It’s groups like these that

will probably do much of the work in spreading the solidarity that will

be needed for successful general strikes.

We need workplace organization. I’m talking about on the ground bread &

butter organizations that help workers survive day-to-day. The kinds of

organizations that get us coffee breaks or a pay raise. Sometimes, it

will mean negotiation with the State and the Bosses; which means a

contract even if all it is is a verbal understanding. Ideally, these

would be direct action, directly democratic orgnizations of workers.

We need organizations pushing for the radicalization of reformist and

business unions. These can be networks of rebel workers in the

construction trades plotting a wild cat strike, or the activities of

militants with a newsletter and alternate slate for the next elections,

with a proposal to change the union’s constitution to allow more

democracy. Hopefully, they will either succeed in changing the union, or

in gaining enough supporters to break away and form a rival union that

is a better model of workplace organization than the business union.

We need a seed for a new society. For that space we manage to carve out

for ourselves through alternative economic organizations, communes and

cooperatives, we need to encourage those to grow as an economic rival to

capitalism. Much like unions, they are not the revolution unto

themselves for they have not escaped the market economy completely, only

mitigated it. They do provide important models and can provide

employment for the black listed, and cost effective services for our

class that objectively improve their income and resources. Workers

cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, mutual insurance, credit unions and

people’s banks are all examples of these kind of alternative economic

orgnizations. They must become confederated with each other, and support

each other and the revolutionary movement in general or they will be

isolated and destroyed by the competiveness of capitalist exploitation

or the repression of the state. Cooperatives can also learn much from

the directly democratic nature of the radical labor and consumer

movement — many cooperatives have failed in being cooperative by

centralizing decision-making or trying to “compete” in the global

market.

By using a multi-organizational economic approach, we can confront the

existing power structure and builds an alternative through dual power.

We can advance from isolated class struggles to a revolutionary movement

united in action and solidarity.

While focusing on our class organizations is a good thing, we should

always keep in mind that the revolution is not just the organization of

unions and their activities. When revolution comes, it is going to be

much more spontaneous, chaotic and massive than any of the formal

organizational forms in which we participate. Will we be ready?

The lead editorial by Nicholas Phebus in this issue on revolutionary

strategy.

There are some deep criticism of the local electoral strategy of some

libertarian muncipalists, but the idea of organizing directly

democratically in municipalties to build dual power is a valid one.

Perhaps a revolutionary strategy involving neighborhood committees like

the Popular Commitee Saint Jean-Baptiste in Quebec City can be

developed? It would be interesting to see if popular committees could

develop in the United States.

Anarcho-syndicalism in practice often had a communal aspect. But

increasingly anarcho-syndicalism is thought of only in terms of

workplace organizing. This has been one of the anarcho-communist

criticisms of syndicalism from the very beginning.

Becky (?) has an article on tennants’ organizing in this issue.

The Industrial Workers of the World often refused to sign contracts.

The some CNT locals struck only for libertarian communism and not for

any negotiation in modifying the rate of exploitation.

An excellent example of the union bureacracy selling-out the

membership is the recent struggle at Jeffboat ship-building yard along

the Ohio River. The Teamster local president tried to sign a sweet heart

deal with the boss, ignoring the voted opposition to the contract from

the rank & file, as a result the workers (including a group of IWW

members) held a short wildcat strike. In the case of Jeffboat, the

wildcat strike gained support from the Teamster international. The

international forced the corrupt local president out office, calling for

a new election and putting all future contracts to be decided by vote of

the membership.