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Title: Anarchosyndicalism against fascism
Author: Laure Akai
Date: 31 October 2015
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-syndicalism, fascism, Anti-fascism, a response
Source: Retrieved on 11th April 2021 from https://libcom.org/blog/anarchosyndicalism-against-fascism-response-recent-lnsinuations-31102015

Laure Akai

Anarchosyndicalism against fascism

The question of anarchosyndicalism’s theoretical stands against fascism,

as well as it’s long history of fighting against it, is certainly

deserving of a long, well-documented article. But that is not what this

is going to be. Rather, l would like to take on some recent

insinuations, published in relation to the Michael Schmidt case, that

there is some sort of inherent link between fascist ideology and

anarchosyndicalism. This idea, l find, is grossly incorrect, but one

which has been floating around for a while. However, as l come from a

region where anarchists have actually flirted with fascists and

sometimes ideas have intersected, l am interested in seeing how this can

happen, with a view towards eliminating racist, nationalist,

ethnopluralist and other ideas unworthy of an egalitarian anarchist

movement.

A few weeks ago, one anarchist was observed linking syndicalism to

fascism on the internet and now, in the 5^(th) part of the expose on

Michael Schmidt, Alexander Reid Ross and Joshua Stevens seem to posit

whether there is a positive correlation between national and anarchist

syndicalism. What they are saying is not exactly clear for me and l will

quote the passages to let readers contemplate what is being said.

„A clear example of this strategy appears in Schmidt’s understanding of

nationalism and anarchism in terms of syndicalist thought. “I don’t

think that there is any real correlation between anarchist syndicalism

and national syndicalism,” Schmidt told us in our interview — a strange

denial given that a number of origin voices within national syndicalism,

including Mussolini, Valois, and De Ambris, either had been or were

supporters of anarchism. However, Schmidt did admit, in a rather glaring

contradiction of his own stated views, “I do feel that there is the

possibility of purist syndicalism in the post-revolutionary period

approximate [to] national syndicalism[.]” In other words, as in the case

of the “proper Boerestaat,” a de facto white nationalist state in Africa

could function on the basis of syndicalism — i.e., there is not only a

correlation, but a positive correlation between national and anarchist

syndicalism.”

and

„Schmidt sought to forward white nationalism using an approximation of

anarchist syndicalism as leverage to reopen the colonial legacy of the

Afrikaner volkstaat. „

Due to somewhat ambiguous language, l could imagine that either the

authors are claiming Michael Schmidt sees a correlation between national

and anarchosyndicalism, or that they do. ln either case, the correlation

is posited in the article.

ln my opinion, anarchosyndicalism cannot have any correlation with

national syndicalism for exactly the same reason that anarchism cannot

have any correlation with national anarchism. Both anarchism and

anarchosyndicalism, are ideas which are supposed to be essentially

egalitarian, therefore, all other ideas which divide people or assign

them hierarchical roles in society are anathema to the beautiful idea

that l and many comrades hold in our hearts: a world where the divisive

and categorizing ideas of nationalists really have no place.

l really don’t think this should be hard to understand. National

anarchists exist, they call themselves anarchists, but for most

legitimate anarchists, they are people who have encroached on our idea

and perverted it. There is no shortage of anarchists screaming at the

top of their lungs that National Anarchism is not anarchism, just like

there is no shortage of anarchosyndicalists fighting against national

syndicalism and other ideas related to nationalism and fascism.

This should be painfully obvious. Therefore, anybody who argues that

there is some intrinsic correlation between anarchosyndicalism and

national syndicalism or fascism, in my opinion, is mostly tendaciously

showing their dislike of this anarchist tendency. Because why would

anyone give credibility to the anarchists denouncing National Anarchism,

but not to the anarchosyndicalists denouncing national syndicalism? Why

not say anarchism has a correlation with National Anarchism because some

nationalists wanna call themselves anarchists?

This, of course, does not mean that there is no problem for

anarchosyndicalism in relation to nationalism and other matters. But

simply this problem is similar to the problem faced by any other

anarchist: how to keep these ideas away and effectively fight their

growth. lt may come as a surprise to the ones insinuating otherwise, but

anarchosyndicalists, at least the legit ones, are no less antifascist

then they are.

Since l have been talking about the problems of nationalist ideas

encroaching on the anarchist movement for the last 25 years, l certainly

hope that none of the „syndicalism is close to fascism” people will

claim that l support a fascist ideology or something of the sort. l hope

rather that they will hear me out and stop making such insinuations that

are essentially untrue.

To deal with the issue itself, the encroachment of nationalist ideas has

been a problem in the places l lived, Russia and Poland, but it is

clearly not limited to these. For example, there are also some types of

nationalists in Spain. And if we talk about fascism, we can see that in

the US, for the last 40 or so years, there have been tendencies which

clearly were attractive to the far right. lf we put a microscope to it,

we would find that some post-left celebrities had considerable

interaction with essentially right-wing nuts and even came out in

defense of white secessionist militias (like Hakim Bey, who l debated

the issue with more than once).

This problem clearly is not something exclusive to anarchosyndicalism.

To say so is ingenuine. lt would be like saying that some ecological

anarchists went to the far-right, so there is a correlation between

ecology and fascism.

l am curious what Reid Ross will say about Russia. (There is a chapter

about it in his upcoming book.) There were quite serious problems there

and, what might be news for some, is that, quite sadly, the problem was

noticeable in certain circles of people calling themselves

„antifascist”. l wonder if Reid Ross also will expose the long

cooperation of some Russian „anti-fascists” with Russian nationalists?

ln case people are not aware, antifascism has a long tradition as an

official ideology, promoted by the state in some countries. ln these

places, a type of patriotic anti-fascism developed. There are also

traditions of patriotic leftism, such as the PPS in Poland. Currently,

with the situation in Ukraine, we saw a strong move of nationalist

antifascism, trying to pass itself off as something „anti-imperialist”

and gaining support amongst people in places like Spain, ltaly and

Greece. Some anarchists were among those supporting.

ln Russia, the organization Autonom, plus projects connected to it, had

many people who fell into the patriotic camp and eventually it had a

split, with nationalists and homophobes breaking off or forming their

own distinctive faction. The problems with their increasingly frequent

cooperation with nationalist elements and problems with discussion with

this had gone on for many years.

A rather long article would be needed to understand all the intricacies

of this, but maybe l could mention one case to illustrate how certain

ideas get legitimized in anarchist movements. National identity, as

people may know, has been a point of manipulation by the Soviet state

and then later by Russia. Patriotism has always been fueled by threats

from the outside. ln recent years, this has grown to include threats to

„unique Russianness”. The global world is seen as encroaching on Russian

culture. With these ideas, people who were nationalists were able to

pass themselves off in the anti-globalist movement with no problem. So

one of the main Eurasianists of Ukraine was active in the PGA for a bit

(and was their „infopoint”) and lndymedia chartered a right-wing nut in

Russia … This kind of thing was becoming rather common since many

leftists and some anarchists are focused anti-Westernism and

anti-Americanism and see it as some equivalent of their ideas.

Nationalists were able to go around in these movements, presenting their

ideas as some legitimate defense of their ethnicity. And many an

anarchist defended this as being distinctly different than nationalism.

ln the case of one person, who currently is one of the right-wing

„anarchists” and homophobes poisoning the scene in Russia, a huge amount

of debate was generated concerning his ideas. ln this case, we found

anarchosyndicalists in Russia presenting very coherent argument,

comparing his ideas to ethnopluralism and pointing out the problems for

anarchists. ln short, the ideas of this person mean that people of other

ethnicities inherently threaten pure ethnic identities, thus a king of

cultural separation must remain in place.

l wouldn’t like to get into all the details, arguments and

counterarguments of this case because l had enough of it already when it

was happening. But l would add that anarchists were threatening to beat

up one of the anarchosyndicalists making the anti-nationalist analyses.

Later, the mood of homophobia increased amongst self-professed

anarchists. Arguing shit like, LGBT issues divide or scare the working

class and are „secondary” (an argument we’ve heard numerous times in

Poland as well), some homophobic anarchist tendencies grew, threatening

LGBT activists who wanted to participate in some demonstrations. Then

actually there was a physical attack on another anarchosyndicalist for

their support of joint actions with feminist and LGBT activists.

Here, l specifically mention the positions of my anarchosyndicalist

comrades for a reason. lt was they who most consistently, over many

years, criticized the influx of not only national, discriminatory and

neo-fascist ideas into the anarchist scene and clearly said that we have

nothing in common with them. On the contrary, some anarchists took the

position that we should in fact find the common things and only that

attitude could result in the growth of the anarchist movement. The other

attitude, more critical, was usually labelled „sectarianism”.

(Now, when a few of their old comrades are more clearly close to

fascism, they create the narrative that they were „infiltrated” or that

people changed their views.)

This is important because l believe there is some kind of connection

with tendencies to water down anarchism to a minimum, seek out common

points with as many people as possible and to becoming the victim of

fascist and nationalist influence. l don’t want to make this into an

absolute correlation – because it isn’t. But l see this to be a tendency

where l live as well.

ln Poland there is a very long history of anarchist cooperation with the

right and the influx of right ideas. A careful study of our „secret

stash” in our library is very telling. The „secret stash” started years

ago when we decided that we couldn’t, in good conscious, sell certain

„anarchist” or anti-globalists publications that we kept getting from

people, so we put all that stuff in the refrigerator, where it could be

read rather by people who wanted to criticize it. The stash contained

lots of shit, like articles saying things like if the author doesn’t

like black people, it’s not anarchist to force him to be with them, or

booklets espousing something close to national syndicalism, discussing

Sorel’s and Pilsudski’s ideas. The anarchist movement, in short,

produced a lot of shit in their publications and continues to sell more,

in the name of „open-mindedness”. For, for example, if you go now to

Poznan, you can find a new right-wing book on Franco sold in the

anarchist bookstore. Since some of my comrades were involved with the

arguments on that, let’s just say that, in short, there are enough

anarchists who will argue that anarchist bookstores have some sort of

moral right to sell things like this and are not too concerned that they

are actually spreading dangerous ideas.

lf we dig deeper, we probably would find some more people around the

world whose idea of libertarian behaviour would legitimize the

distribution of books published by the far-right.

The difference of opinion on this issue has been sharply debated here

for at least the last 15 years. Most recently this has been a topic in

the anarchosyndicalist movement, so here l will add something to the

question of whether or not anarchosyndicalism can have any correlations

with national syndicalism.

Last year, during elections, at least two members of the organization

Workers’ lnitiative, which sometimes calls itself anarchosyndicalist

(although sometimes not), ran in elections with fascists or right-wing

nationalists. The more famous case was in my city (Warsaw) and the

member is a very prominent member of that union and long-time activist.

lt was famous enough that the mainstream press printed an article about

it as well. Again, l will not go through all the details and arguments

because it is simply sickening.

We never hid the fact that this happened (although we see plenty of

people trying not to see this, just like some people did not want to

come to terms with the fact that Schmidt is a sleazy racist and probably

worse). But we reject any notion that this proves that

anarchosyndicalists are close to fascists. Because for us, this is just

more proof that these people are not anarchosyndicalists. And just like

anarchists have a moral right to say that National Anarchists are not

anarchists, anarchosyndicalists also have the right to say that certain

people or tendencies are not anarchosyndicalist, no matter how they

might label themselves.

The justifications l heard for many weeks during the internet debates of

this topic showed that, despite all the references these people made to

anarchosyndicalism, they were quite far from these ideas. lt is

important to note that only many, many weeks after did the organization

respond, claiming that member simply did not know he was running in

elections with a few fascists. And the explanation that „we criticized

him”, was taken a sufficient for some organizations to declare the

problem solved. ln fact, most of the criticism instead went to

anarchosyndicalists who opposed this, who were attacked while defending

their members’ rights to do as they want. This has been argued for many

years as the definition of freedom and anarchism. Tellingly, the whole

incident did not result in any expulsion or similar process against that

person, who was back on the street at a demo with at least one of the

fascists shortly after.

l don’t think here l have to explain much why electoral escapades and

fascists have nothing to do with our anarchosyndicalist ideals. What is

more relevant is the way that they justify these things to themselves.

That is, by arguing, among other things, that a union cannot invigilate

in the politics of their individual members.

ln my opinion, this is not a question of invigilating or not; it is a

question of taking clear stands and consistantly incorporating this into

your organizational politics. Anarchosyndicalism, by definition, is

connected to the creation of anarchism and is more clearly interested in

anarchist means. Among other things, the organization must function

according to our non-hierarchical principles and must avoid certain

collaborationist and hierarchical models. Our ideas must clearly

demonstrate a rejection of nationalism, racism, sexism, homophobia and

other ideas which run counter to the idea of egalitarian society. This

has to be not only in theory, but in practice.

Anything else isn’t really anarchosyndicalism.

To come back to Michael Schmidt and the points made by the authors of

the expose or by some other people, it may be worth pointing out that

Michael Schmidt is not an anarchosyndicalist and never was one. That

said, he certainly spoke a lot about anarchosyndicalism and tried to

define it more to his liking. However, this does not prove any

correlation between anarchosyndicalism and national syndicalism. This

proves that Michael Schmidt, who had, at the very least, poor national

politics, tried to create a confused and revisionist vision which would

include the likes of Connolly in a „broad” tradition that he and Lucien

van de Walt tried to fashion.

One thing needs to be pointed out. Often in this or other discussions,

people use the terms „syndicalism” and „anarchosyndicalism”

interchangeably. This is quite annoying and shows that people are not

too clear about what they are talking about. For me, „syndicalism” is an

extremely broad term, meaning „unionism”, and with more implied

characteristics than expressed ones. Syndicalism in fact can be

nationalist, socialist or whatever. lt can also be anarchist. Because

syndicalism is not connected to anarchism, only to unionism.

So if you tell me syndicalism can be nationalist, l would say that is

true. But anarchosyndicalism, which is predicated on an egalitarian

society, cannot be.

ln some countries, this question is problematic, because some people use

the terms „syndicalism” and „anarchosyndicalism” interchangeably and

don’t see much of a difference. This makes a lot of confusion in my

opinion. Another issue is related to the conception of the organization.

There are some tendencies which might stress the economic and class

focus of a union and want to downplay other issues of egalitarianism.

This tendency is visible in the political thought of Michael Schmidt,

among others. My opinion is that this way of viewing anarchosyndicalism

threatens to make it not anarchist syndicalism, but some form of

syndicalism.

Many years ago, our forefathers and sisters (but mostly men), split with

the Marxist train of thought. The lWA was later born, refusing to

compromise on the issue of the Party and State, in the name of the class

struggle.

A century later, some anarchists and anarchosyndicalists, frightened

that they are too irrelevant, actively seek the cooperation of

authoritarian leftists in building a „mass movement”. Having problems

with „the mass”, some proponents of class anarchism, anarcho-communist

and anarcho-syndicalists, have resorted to „broadening” the tradition,

to focusing on class but downplaying other important issues of

egalitarianism. ln essence, they are approaching the Marxist position of

building an lnternational where everyone will fight agaist capitalism as

the most important thing and the issue of anti-statism or other specific

anarchist claims are put on the back burner. This is something that is

happening now and is a concrete threat to the anarchist character of

anarcho-syndicalism. lt is much more relevant than the threat of fascist

infiltration. However, for the organizations and movements which have

already moved to the „broad tradition”, infiltration can be an issue.

Anarchosyndicalism needs to be more relevant to people, this is for

sure. And it also needs to gain in strength. But it cannot compromise

its positions to do so.

lf anybody does not get the dilemna, they can look at our situation. For

anybody who is not aware, Poles just voted in a Parliament consisting of

6 right-wing parties, with a few fascists here and there. Without going

into a long explanation of how the right-wing got working class people

hooked, it is enough to say that it is easier to get working class

people by your side with nationalist slogans and by carefully avoiding

talking against the church, about womens’ rights, etc. The conclusion is

not hard to draw: if our main goal is to grow and show we are „mass”,

then the easiest way to achieve this is to turn a blind eye, be soft on

nationalism, etc.

At some point, Schmidt even suggests that anarchists should use

nationalism more, to get those people on their side.

For us, this would just be counterproductive. Using soft nationalism to

attract people to a movement which should be anti-nationalist is not

likely to get the effect you want.

Anarchosyndicalism, by its definition, must be antifascist. There is no

correlation between it and national syndicalism or fascism.

But any time that the anarchist aspect of syndicalism is drowned under

the issues of „pragmatism”, „massiveness”, and all other points that

seek to water it down, there is a risk of the organization simply losing

its anarchist character. This l think has already happened a few times.

This doesn’t mean that these organizations will be infiltrated by

fascists, but when people start sweeping incidents under the carpet,

this increases the chance that some really bad ideas can infect them.

Let’s not turn a blind eye to this issues. The Michael Schmidt case has,

l hope, because of his celebrity, drawn attention to potential problems

and how certain ideas could be smuggled into our movements. Let’s not

let this happen.