💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › towards-queer-syndicalism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:22:25. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Towards a Queer Syndicalism
Author: riotforliberty
Date: 19/11/2020
Language: en
Topics: queer, syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism, abolition, anti-authoritarianism
Source: https://riotforliberty.medium.com/towards-a-queer-syndicalism-1b2b34be2cd4

riotforliberty

Towards a Queer Syndicalism

Syndicalism has been the historical form of class consciousness. It

has been a worldwide phenomenon, an existing internationalism. While the

Party form has been implanted in working class mainly by external

influences (ie. years of governmental politics), Syndicalism came from

the working class itself. Indeed if Desire is a real productive force,

Syndicalism has been the product of the Desire of organised labour

struggles.

Syndicalism has both been an emancipatory movement, and a tool of

control, class collaboration, gender and sexual segregation, as well as

white supremacy.

Queer Syndicalism doesn’t look for a perfect, original, or authentic

Syndicalism. It doesn’t select Syndicalism as a Praxis out of an

idealized working class, nor does it believe that purely rejecting

unions is a pragmatic political move. Queer Syndicalism merely tries to

learn from a conflicted history of class struggles.

Queer Syndicalism learns from the continuous failures of Unions to

address class in a multidimensional way, misunderstanding how class and

work affect queer lives, but also the lives of women, BIPOC, the

disabled, the elderly, etc.

Queer Syndicalism is strongly opposed to the mainstreaming movements

of LGBT politics. The neoliberal integration of Gay lives, diversity

management, and the international politics of homonationalism and gay

hegemony are both an attack on indigenous sexual and gender diversities,

a matter of statecraft and a project of class control.

The Queer move has been to antagonize. The Queer (as a conscious

Praxis) emerged from antagonism inside the seemingly homogeneous Gay and

Lesbian movement. The Queer move is finding a certain political

productivity in internal antagonisms.

Queer antagonism is not open warfare against the rest of the

movement(s). Queer antagonism is a fractionalisation. Not an aimless

fractionalisation, but a fractionalisation that seeks to open ground for

new creative forms of alliances.

Queer Syndicalism, is the Queer move applied to Syndicalist forms and

strategies.

Contrary to the traditional IWW One Big Union, Queer Syndicalism wants

to let “a thousand unions bloom”. While not being opposed to more

traditional workplace organising, Queer Syndicalism, then, defends a

variety of tactics.

Queer Syndicalism can be at the same time, the Lesbians and Gays

supporting the British Miners, the Black cleaners striking all over the

hospitality sector, the women and queers organising a Women and Gender

Strike. It is the Human Strike, and the General Strike. The tenants

organising a rent strike, and the delivery drivers hacking their

reporting softwares. It is the transnational solidarity network of sex

workers, and the prison strike.

Of course all of those things are neither queer nor clearly

syndicalist in and of themselves. Nor are they “latently” queer

syndicalist. They are merely forms of struggles, political inspirations,

examples of the potential for a Queer Syndicalist political space.

Organisations or militants might, or might not, define themselves as

Queer Syndicalist, but Queer Syndicalism is not an identity nor a

political program. It is the conjunction of a set of historical

strategies (syndicalism) and a refusal of any rigid identities and

normative politics.

While it is not a program, it should be clear already that Queer

Syndicalism is abolitionist, feminist, anti-authoritarian and in general

aims at the integration of the largest array possible of working class

struggles towards the abolition of capitalism.

Finally, Queer Syndicalism is only abstract insofar as it can only

take form in our political struggles. It is up to all of us to make

something out of it, redefine it, forget it or embrace it.