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Title: Anarcho-syndicalism
Author: Tom Wetzel
Date: October 2002
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-syndicalism
Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2020 from https://libcom.org/library/anarcho-syndicalism-tom-wetzel

Tom Wetzel

Anarcho-syndicalism

I’m going to talk a bit about the theoretical presuppositions of

anarchosyndicalism, and I’m going to make some comparisons with Marxism

since both political perspectives claim to base themselves on the class

struggle.

Actually they aren’t exactly comparable because Marxism purports to be a

complete worldview whereas I would argue that anarchosyndicalism is best

understood as merely a revolutionary strategy, or strategic orientation.

The basic idea of anarchosyndicalism is that by developing mass

organizations that are self-managed by their participants, particularly

organizations rooted in the struggle at the point of production, the

working class develops the self-activity, self-confidence, unity, and

self-organization that would enable it to emancipate itself from

subjugation to an exploiting class. The self-management of the movement

itself foreshadows and prefigures self-management of production by the

workforce, which is the movement’s revolutionary aim. I think that is

sort of a nutshell summary of anarcho-syndicalism.

1. Minimal Materialism

There is one commonality between Marxism and anarchosyndicalism that I

want to take a look at. This is what I call “minimal materialism”.

“Minimal materialism” is the idea that class structure, based on power

relations between groups of people in social production, is the most

fundamental or basic structuring in society. The class structure is the

basic structure of control over social production, the basic economic

structure, according to minimal materialism. This structure is supposed

to be the background against which everything else about society is to

be explained or understood.

Two arguments for it being fundamental:

Production is necessary to human life.[1]

People spend a huge amount of their waking time at work, and their

prospects in life are very much dependent on their relationship to

social production.[2]

To explain what I mean by “structure” I’m going to use an analogy. Let’s

say I pull out a match and strike it on the sole of my shoe and the

match bursts into flame. The end result is a burning match. The stimulus

event was me striking the match. But the stimulus by itself isn’t

sufficient to explain what happened. What if the match head was wet?

What if it was a fake plastic match? What if the match stick was so

rubbery I couldn’t get any traction? So, to explain why the match burst

into flame we need to bring in these more stable factors that we take

for granted — the chemical composition of the match, its dryness, the

rigidity of the matchstick, and so on.

Okay, those are what I’d call “structural” factors in the explanation.

They are part of the more or less stable background in which the causal

process of getting the match to light happened. Well, the idea of

“minimal materialism” is that the class division in capitalism is a

background “structure” like this, it is something you have to look at if

you want to get a complete and accurate picture of why things happen the

way they do.

The idea is that the class structure is like a causal force field that

shapes everything that happens in society.

2. The Doctrine of the Class Struggle

One thing that follows from minimal materialism is the doctrine of the

class struggle, that this is how society changes over time. The idea is

that class struggle is the central factor in the evolution of human

social formations.

Marx said that one of his most important ideas was the distinction

between labor and labor-power. Within capitalism the ability to work is

what the proletarian sells to the employer.

She sells her ability to work to a firm to use for a certain period. She

can’t tell her labor power to go to work and stay at home in bed; she

has to drag herself into work with her labor power. There is then

inevitably a fight between the employer and the worker over exactly how

the worker’s ability to do work is going to be used. Advanced capitalism

developed a very elaborate hierarchy of bosses and their professional

advisory groups precisely to try to control workers, to protect the

interests of the owners in maximizing profit over the long run.

So, this generates an ongoing class struggle, the fight against the

power that the bosses have over us in social production.

Minimal materialism by itself does not entail any commitment to economic

determinism or any idea of there being any inevitable direction to

history. It just says that the class structure, and the conflict it

generates, is very central to understanding what happens in society.

Historically the anti-authoritarian left has rejected the idea of an

inevitable collapse of capitalism, and has been sceptical about Marx’s

crisis theory. The anti-authoritarian left — both councilist Marxists

and anarchists — have emphasized the positive role of worker

self-activity, personal development, solidarity and self-organization in

the process of self-emancipation.

3. Is Minimal Materialism Class Reductionist?

As minimal as it is, minimal materialism has been subject to a certain

criticism in recent decades, namely, that it is “class reductionist.”

The complaint goes something like the following. Because the materialist

says that class is the only fundamental structural element of

contemporary American society, it can’t do justice to the oppression and

conflict on lines of gender and race and political authoritianism. That

is, we can’t reduce the struggle against gender oppression, against

racism, against political authoritarianism to just the class struggle.

This criticism became increasingly salient over the past half century,

with the struggles of the civil rights movement, the women’s movement,

the gay and lesbian movement having a big impact on how people perceive

faultlines in society.

To activists of color, racism seems just as fundamental a faultline;

feminists are likely to see things in terms of the struggle around

gender inequality.

For example, some feminists will argue that the “family wage” system in

the USA in the 19^(th) century, which helped to cement the subordination

of women as a gender caste, was a kind of deal between workers and

capitalists, to control the labor of women, with male workers gaining

control over women in the home. Thus for some feminists, gender is the

most basic structure and the conflict between male workers and male

bosses was just a conflict internal to the ruling group.

Now, I think one possible line of reply would be to acknowledge that

racism and patriarchy and authoritarian hierarchies can each generate

its own dynamic, that affects other things, including the class struggle

itself. For example, the authoritarian hierarchy in AFL-CIO unions

creates its own problem for the class struggle.

4. The Four-Forces Theory

Some people will take this to the conclusion that the underlying

structure of contemporary American society really has four distint

facets or structures — patriarchy, racism, class, and political

authoritarianism. Each is equally fundamental, they will say, with each

acting as a distinct influence on everything else. This is what I call

the “Four Forces Theory.” For example, you’ll find this theory worked

out in the book “Unorthodox Marxism” by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel.

Since socialist-feminists in the ‘70s had convinced me that gender was

equally basic as class, I’m not going to try to defend “minimal

materialism” nor am I going to try to answer the question of whether the

Four Forces Theory is the best way to understand contemporary American

society. I’m going to leave that as an exercise for you to figure out.

I do want to make one point however. What I want to claim is that

anarchosyndicalism is just as compatible with the Four Forces Theory as

it was with Minimal Materialism or the views of the socialist-feminists.

The reason is simple. All of these theories acknowledge that class is

basic. They are all thus implicitly committed to the inevitability and

importance of the class struggle. They are all consistent with the idea

that it is through a movement developed directly by workers that class

oppression can be overthrown and workers control over production

created.

5. Critique of the Marxist Theory of Class

I’ve talked about class structure, but What is class?

What I want to argue is that Marxism has a mistaken theory about class.

Marxism historically has assumed that there are only two major classes

in capitalism, namely, labor and capital. Marxism assumes that it is

ownership that is the key relation that defines class. The investor

class, who own the means of production, are thereby the ruling class.

Everyone else must seek work as hired labor.

The problem with this theory is that it leaves out a class. There are in

fact three major classes in advanced capitalism, not just two.

Ownership may be the most important basis for power over social

production in advanced capitalism but it is not the only such basis.

There is also another class of people, who I call the techno-managerial

class. Their role is that of controlling the labor of the working class.

This is the class that includes the management hierarchy and the

professional consultants and advisors central to their system of control

— as lawyers, key engineers and accountants, and so on.

The point is that it is power relations in social production that

creates a class stratification, and there are different ways that people

can have power over others in production; ownership of productive assets

is just one such basis.

Historically the techno-managerial class developed as capitalism

reorganized the nature of work, diminishing the dependence of employers

on the skill and intellectual ability of workers to coordinate their own

work, and vesting this increasingly in a layer of expert intellectual

cadre. The redesign of work processes, to break up work into pieces and

minimize the reliance on skills in the workforce aimed at changing the

balance of power against the workers and making the whole process more

dependent on management coordination.

The members of the techno-managerial class may have some small capital

holdings, either via things like stock options or small investments or

ownership of their houses or other small property. But that is not what

their livelihood and way of life is based on. Rather, they have their

class position because of their relative monopolization over knowledge,

sklls, and connections. This what enables them to gain access to the

positions they have in the corporate and goverment hierarchies. They

share in common with the working class that they are hired labor.

It’s true that there are relative differences in power and privilege

within this class, but this is true of all classes — there are huge

differences in the wealth and power of different capitalists, and among

different groups of workers there are big differences in wage rates and

conditions of work or autonomy in work.

Another thing to note about the techno-managerial class is that it is

capable of being a ruling class. This is in fact the true historical

meaning of the Soviet Union and the other socalled Communist countries.

They are in fact systems that empower the techno-managerial class.

What is interesting is that the failure to see or appreciate the

significance of this class is a central blindspot in Marxism. This is

one of the things that enables Marxists to fail to see aspects of

Marxism that programmatically lead to techno-managerial class dominance.

6. Partyism versus Syndicalism

One of the techno-managerial aspects of Marxism is its partyism. By

partyism I mean the following idea. Marxists will often argue that

struggles of this or that union or this or that group of the population

are partial struggles. A particular union or other group will focus

their attention on demands or aims that are partial, not a complete

class-wide program. A key tenet of Marxism is that the development of a

class-wide program, a program that can represent and advance the

interests of the working class as a whole, is developed by coalescing

forces behind a labor or socialist political party. Marxism is

strategically partyist, that is, its strategy for change is that of a

political party leadership gaining control of a state.

The traditional anti-authoritarian critique of partyism is that it is

substitutionist, it substitutes the party for the class. The

anarchosyndicalist or councilist alternative is that it is the class as

a whole, through mass organizations like workers councils, that is to

gain power, not a party leadership through a state.

Partyism will tend to elevate to leadership and control those who have

the most education, who are the most articulate, the best speakers, the

intellectuals and policy wonks of the movement. Bakunin pointed out that

Marx’s partyism is a strategy for the empowerment of the intelligentsia,

the people who monopolize scientific knowledge.

Nonetheless, anarchists have never really developed that insight.

Despite the fact that anarchists often say that class is based on

top-down hierarchy in production, anarchists have never really developed

fully a theory of the techno-managerial class, as a distinct economic

class in virtue of its position in a hierarchy in social production.

Nonetheless, the theory of the techno-managerial class is consistent

with anarchist insights.

It’s true that often worker struggles are partial, are over demands or

goals limited to a particular sector. How do we answer the Marxist

argument that the coalescing of the movement into a party is the

solution to this? I think we can say that there is an alternative way of

envisioning how unity and class-wide program might emerge, in a more

grassroots, horizontal way. I think we could conceive of a movement

developing where self-managed unions are getting together horizontally

for mutual support and develop a program that addresses a worker’s whole

life, issues that affect us all like housing and health care and so on,

and that they involve other grassroots mass organizations in the

community as part of this process, such as tenant groups, community

organizations of various kinds. I call this idea a “people’s alliance.”

Some people have talked about the idea of “alternative central labor

councils” as a way of developing a more militant horizontal solidarity.

This is another example of how a horizontal development of a class-wide

program could emerge.

So, I would counter this idea of a horizontal, grassroots people’s

alliance to the partyist strategy. That is, we can conceive of this

being the way that power of numbers and solidarity is developed,

independently of the state and political parties.

7. Critique of Spontaneist Theory of Organization

Lastly, I want to address a key problem that faces us in developing a

movement that is genuinely self-managing, and does not contain within it

the seeds of new hierarchies emerging.

The IWW has an old slogan, that “We Are All Leaders.” As an ideal, as

what we aim for, I think that is right. But the question is, How do we

make sure our practice approximates to that ideal?

The existing society is divided by all kinds of inequalities,

inequalties of access to education and knowledge and opportunities to

develop skills. Inequalities along lines of class, education, gender and

race will be reflected in these differences in people in these ways.

Some people have more knowledge about how things work, a more

“theoretical” understanding, some have more formal education than

others, some are more self-confident that others, some have had

opportunities that have enabled them to develop skills at public

speaking or articulating ideas. Others may have the latent ability to

develop such skills but they’ve just not had the opportunity to develop

them through practice.

This tells us that any movement that organizes itself in a purely

“spontaneous” way will “spontaneously” tend to replicate within itself

these inequalities that have been shaped by the larger capitalist

society.

This means a genuinely egalitarian movement cannot be created in a

purely spontaneous fashion. We need to consciously be aware of

differences in skill development and consciously work to bring out in

people their latent abilities, to play a positive role in the movement.

There are a variety of things that can be done in this direction. Things

like encouraging people to speak, to participate in debates, study

groups and activist schools to develop knowledge and the ability to

“theorize” one’s experience, and to develop critical thinking skills so

that people can think for themselves.

Through a conscious and collective practice of developing skills in

people, we can ensure that people are better able to play an active role

in the movement.

[1] But this argument doesn’t work. There other other things that are

equally essential to human life — for example, sexual reproduction and

consumption.

[2] I think this is a better argument.