💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › petr-kropotkin-syndicalism-and-anarchism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:23:17. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Syndicalism and Anarchism Author: PĂ«tr Kropotkin Date: 1908 Language: en Topics: anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalist, syndicalist, syndicalism, class struggle Source: Retrieved on May 22, 2017 from https://libcom.org/library/syndicalism-anarchism-peter-kropotkin][LibCom.org]]. Proofread version retrieved on October 4th, 2019, from [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3313.
The following is, as far as we know, the first English translation of
this article, based on the German reprint published in June 1977 by “Die
Anarchistische Vereinigung Norddeutschland” (Anarchist Union of North
Germany) which was a direct reprint of the article from Der Syndicalist
(Berlin) in 1908, originally from Les Temps Nouveaux. It was translated
by J. Goddard and proofread by L. Guenther in 1994. We are publishing it
because, although dated, it still has many relevant points for today.
From all sides, people are always asking us, “What is Syndicalism and
what is its relationship to Anarchism?”. Here we will do our best to
answer these questions.
Syndicalism is only a new name for an old tactic in which the workers of
Great Britain have taken successful refuge for a long time: the tactic
of Direct Action, and the fight against Capital in the economic sphere.
This tactic, in fact, was their favourite weapon. Not possessing the
right to vote, British workers in the first half of the nineteenth
century won important economic gains and created a strong trade union
organisation through use of this weapon alone, and even forced the
ruling classes to acknowledge their demands with legislation (including
an extension of the franchise).
Direct Action has proved itself, both in achieving economic results and
in extracting political concessions, to be a significant weapon in the
economic arena.
In Britain, the influence of this idea was so strong that in the years
1830 to 1831 Robert Owen attempted to found one big national union, and
an international workers organisation, which using direct action would
struggle against Capital. Early fears of persecution by the British
government forced him to abandon this idea.
This was followed by the Chartist movement, which used the powerful,
widespread and partly secret worker's organisations of the time in order
to gain considerable political concessions. At this point British
workers received their first lesson in politics: very soon they realised
that although they backed political agitation with all means at their
disposal, this agitation won them no economic advantages other than
those they themselves forced the employers and lawgivers to concede
through strikes and revolts. They realised how pointless it was to
expect serious improvements to their conditions of life to come from
parliament.
French workers came to exactly the same conclusion: the revolution of
1848 which had given France a Republic convinced them of the complete
fruitlessness of political agitation and even of political victories;
the only fundamental changes to workers' conditions of life are those
which the ruling classes are forced to concede by Direct Action.
The revolution gave the French another lesson. They saw how completely
helpless were their intellectual leaders when it came to finding out
about new forms of production which would secure for the workers their
share and bring about the end of their exploitation by Capital. They saw
this helplessness both in the Luxembourg Commission, which met between
April and June 1848, and in the special Chamber chosen to study this
question in 1849, on which over 100 Social Democratic Deputies sat. From
this, they realised that workers themselves had to work out the main
lines of the social revolution, on which they must travel if they are to
be successful.
The use of direct action by Labour against Capital, and the necessity
for workers themselves to work out the forms of economic organisation
with which to eliminate capitalist exploitation: these were the two main
lessons received by the workers, especially in the two countries with
the most developed industry.
When, then, in the years 1864-66 the old idea of Robert Owen was
realised and an international worker's organisation was set up, this new
organisation adopted both of the above fundamental principles. As the
International Workers Association (IWA) had been brought into being by
representatives of the British trade unions and French workers (mainly
followers of Proudhon), who had attended the second World Exhibition in
Paris, it proclaimed that the emancipation of the workers must be the
task of the workers themselves and that from then on the capitalists
would have to be fought with mass strikes, supported internationally.
Following on from this, the first two acts of the International were two
such mass strikes, causing enormous agitation in Europe and a salutary
fright for the middle class: a strike in Paris, supported by the British
trade unions, the other in the Genoese building trade, supported by
French and British workers.
In addition, congresses of the International workers no longer bothered
with discussing nonsense with which nations were entertained by their
rulers in parliamentary institutions. They discussed the fundamental
question of the revolutionary reconstruction of society and set in
motion the idea which since then has proved so fruitful; the idea of the
General Strike. As to what political form society would take after the
social revolution, the federations of the Latin countries openly stood
against the idea of centralised states. They emphatically declared
themselves in favour of an organisation based on a federation of free
communes and farming regions, who in this way would free themselves from
capitalist exploitation and on this basis, on the basis of federal
combination, form larger territorial and national units.
Both basic principles of modern Syndicalism, of direct action and the
careful working out of new forms of social life, are based on trade
union federations: from the beggining, both were the leading principles
of the IWA.
Even them within the Association, however, there were two differing
currents of opinion concerning political activity which divided the
workers of different nations: Latin, and German.
The French within the International were mainly supporters of Proudhon,
whose leading idea was as follows: The removal of the existing bourgeois
state apparatus, to be replaced by the workers own organisation of trade
unions, which will regulate and organise everything essential to
society. It is the workers who have to organise the production of life's
necessities, the fair and impartial exchange of all products of human
labour, and their distribution and consumption. And if they do that, we
will see that there will be very little left for the state to do.
Production of everything needed, and a more equitable exchange and
consumption of products, are problems which only the workers can solve.
If they can do all this, what remains to be done by existing governments
and their hierarchy of officials? Nothing that workers can't organise
themselves.
But among the French founders of the International there were those who
had fought for the Republic and for the Commune. They were insistent
that political activity should not be ignored and that it is not
unimportant for the proletarian whether they live under a monarchy, a
Republic, or a commune. They knew from their own experience that the
triumph of conservatives or of imperialists meant repression in all
directions, and an enormous weakening of the power of workers to combat
the aggressive politics of the capitalists. They were not indifferent to
politics, but they refused to see an instrument for the liberation of
the working class in electoral politics or successes, or in the whole
to-ing and fro-ing of political parties. Accordingly, the French,
Spanish, and Italian workers agreed to insert the following words into
the statutes of the International: “Every political activity must be
secondary to the economic.”
Among British workers there were a number of Chartists who supported
political struggle. And the Germans, unlike the French, did not yet have
the experience of two republics. They believed in the coming parliament
of the German Reich. Even Lasalle – as is now known – had some faith in
a socialist Kaiser of the united Germany he saw rising.
Because of this, neither the British nor the Germans wanted to rule out
parliamentary action, which they still believed in, and in the English
and German texts of the same statutes inserted: “As a means, every
political activity must be secondary to the economic.”
Thus was resurrected the old idea of trust in a bourgeois parliament.
After Germany had triumphed over France in the war of 1870-71 and 35,000
proletarians, the cream of the French working class, were murdered after
the fall of the Commune by the armies of the bourgeoisie, and when the
IWA had been banned in France, Marx and Engels and their supporters
tried to reintroduce political activity into the International, in the
form of workers candidates.
As a result, a split occurred in the International, which up to then had
raised such high hopes among proletarians and caused such fright among
the rich.
The federations of the Latin countries, of Italy, Spain, the Jura and
East Belgium (and a small group of refugees from France) rejected the
new course. They formed their own separated unions and since this time
have developed more and more in the direction of revolutionary
Syndicalism and Anarchism, while Germany took the lead in the
development of the Social Democratic Party, all the more so after
Bismarck introduced the universal right to vote in parliamentary
elections following the victory in war of the newly established German
Reich.
Forty years have now passed since this division in the International and
we can judge the result. Later, we will analyse things in more detail
but even now we can point to the complete lack of success during these
40 years of those who placed their faith in what they called the
conquest of political power within the existing bourgeois state.
Instead of conquering this state, as they believed, they have been
conquered by it. They are its tools, helping to maintain the power of
the upper and middle class over the workers. They are the loyal tools of
the Church, State, Capital and the monopoly economy.
But all across Europe and America we are seeing a new movement among the
masses, a new force in the worker's movement, one which turns to the old
principles of the International, of direct action and the direct
struggle of the workers against capital, and workers are realising that
they alone must free themselves – not parliament.
Obviously, this is still not Anarchism. We go further. We maintain that
the workers will only achieve their liberation when they rid themselves
of the perception of centralisation and hierarchy, and of the deception
of State-appointed officials who maintain law and order – law made by
the rich directed against the poor, and order meaning the submission of
the poor before rich. Until such fantasies and delusions have been
thrown overboard, the emancipation of the workers will not be achieved.
But during theses 40 years anarchists, together with these workers who
have taken their liberation into their own hands, making use of Direct
Action as the preparatory means for the final battle of exploited Labour
against – up to the present day – triumphant Capital, have fought
against those who entertained the workers with fruitless electoral
campaigns. All this time they have been busy among the working masses,
to awaken in them the desire for working out the principles for the
seizure of the docks, railways, mines, factories, fields and warehouses,
by the unions, to be run no longer in the interests of a few capitalists
but in the interest of the whole of society.
It has been shown how in England since the years 1820-30, and in France
following the unsuccessful political revolution of 1848, the efforts of
an important section of the workers were directed at fighting Capital
using Direct Action, and with creating the necessary worker's
organisations for this.
It has also been shown how, between 1866 and 1870, this idea was the
most important within the newly established International Workers
Association but also how, following the defeat of France by Germany in
1871 and the fall of the Paris Commune, political elements took the
upper hand within the International through this collapse of its
revolutionary forces and temporarily became the decisive factor in the
worker's movement.
Since this time both currents have steadily developed in the direction
of their own programmes. Worker's parties were organised in all
constitutional states and did everything in their power to increase the
number of their parliamentary representatives as quickly as possible.
From the very beginning it could be seen how, with representatives who
chased after votes, the economic programme would increasingly become
less important; in the end being limited to complete the trivial
limitations on the rights of employers, thereby giving the capitalist
system new strength and helping to prolong the old order. At the same
time, those socialist politicians who competed with the representatives
of bourgeois radicalism for the capture of worker's votes helped, if
against their intentions, to smooth the way for a victorious reaction
across Europe.
Their whole ideology, the ideas and ideals which they spread among the
masses, were focused on the one aim. They were convinced supporters of
state centralisation, opposed local autonomy and the independence of
small nations and devised a philosophy of history to support their
conclusions. They poured cold water on the hopes of the masses while
preaching to them, in the name of “historical materialism”, that no
fundamental change in a socialist direction would be possible if the
number of capitalists did not decrease through mutual competition.
Completely outside their observations lay the fact which is so obvious
in all industrialised countries today: that British, French, Belgian and
other capitalists, by means of the ease with which they exploit
countries which themselves have no developed industry, today control the
labour of hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe, Asia, and
Africa. The result is that the number of those people in the leading
industrialised countries of Europe who live off the work of others
doesn't gradually decrease at all. Far from it. In fact, it increases at
a constant and alarming rate. And with the growth of this number, the
number of people with an interest in the capitulation of the capitalist
state system also increases. Finally, those who speak loudest of
political agitation for the conquest of power in the existing states
fiercely oppose anything which could damage their chances of achieving
political power. Anyone who dared to criticise their parliamentary
tactics was expelled from international socialist congresses. They
disapproved of strikes and later, when the idea of the General Strike
penetrated even their own congresses, they fought the idea fiercely with
all means at their disposal.
Such tactics have been pursued for a full 40 years, but only today has
it become clear to everyone that workers throughout Europe have had
enough. With disgust, many workers have come to reject them. This is the
reason we are now hearing so much about “Syndicalism”.
However, during these 40 years the other current, that which advocates
the direct struggle of the working class against Capital, has also grown
and developed; it has developed despite government persecution from all
directions and in spite of denunciation by capitalist politicians. It
would be interesting to plot the steady development of this current and
to analyse its intellectual as well as personal connections with the
social democratic parties on the one hand, and with the anarchists on
the other. But now is not the time for publication of such work, all
things given it is perhaps better that it has not yet been written.
Attention would be turned to the influence of personalities, when it is
to the influence of the major currents of modern thought and the growth
of self-confidence among the workers of America and Europe, a
self-confidence gained independently of intellectual leaders, to which
special attention has to be directed in order to be able to write a real
history of Syndicalism.
All that we now have to say about it is the bare facts that completely
independently of the teachings of Socialists, where working masses were
gathered together in the main industrial centres, that these masses
maintained the tradition of their trade organisations from former times,
organising both openly and secretly, while all the time growing in
strength, to curb the increasing exploitation and arrogance of the
employers. At the same time that the organised working masses grew
larger and stronger, becoming aware of the main struggle which since the
time of the great French revolution has been the true purpose of life of
civilised peoples, their anti-capitalist tendencies became clearer and
more certain.
During the last 40 years, years in which political leaders in different
countries have used the widest possible means to try to prevent all
worker's revolts and to suppress any of a threatening character, we have
seen workers' revolts extend even further, becoming ever more powerful,
and workers' aims expressed more and more clearly. Ever increasingly,
they have lost the character of mere acts of despair; whenever we have
contact with the workers, more and more we hear the prevailing opinion
expressed, which can be summarised in the following few words: “Make
room, gentlemen of industry! If you can't manage to run the industries
so that we can scrape a living and find in them a secure existence, then
away with you! Away, if you are so short sighted and incapable of coming
to a sensible understanding with one another over each new turn of
production which promises you the greatest instant profit, that you must
attack without regarding the harmfulness or usefulness of its products
like a flock of sheep! Away with you, if you are incapable of building
up your wealth other than with the preparation of endless wars, wasting
a third of all goods produced by each nation in armaments useful only
for robbing other robbers! Away! If from all the wonderful discoveries
of modern science you have not learnt to gain your riches other than
from the poverty to which a third of the population of the big towns and
cities of our exceptionally rich countries are condemned! Away, if that
is the only way you can run industry and trade! We workers will know
better how to organise production, if only first we succeed in
eradicating this capitalist pest!”
These were the ideas fought over and discussed in workers' households
throughout the entire civilised world; they provided the fertile ground
for the tremendous workers' revolts we have seen year after year in
Europe and in the United States, in the form of strikes by dockers, rail
workers, miners and mill workers, etc., until finally taking the form of
the General Strike – soon growing into major struggles comparable with
the powerful cycles of the force of nature, and next to which small
battles in parliaments appear as a children's game.
While the Germans celebrated their ever-growing electoral success with
red flags and torchlit possessions, the experienced Western peoples
quietly set to work on a much more serious task: that of the internal
organisation of the workers. The ideas with which these last peoples
occupied themselves were of a much more important nature. They asked
themselves, “What will be the result of the inevitable worldwide
conflict between Labour and Capital?”, “What new forms of industrial
life and social organisation will this conflict create?”
And that is the true origin of the Syndicalist movement, which today's
ignorant politicians have just discovered as something new to them.
To us anarchists this movement is nothing new. We welcomed the
recognition of syndicalist trends in the programme of the International
Workers Association. We defended it, when it was attacked within the
International by the German political revolutionaries who saw in this
movement an obstacle to the capture of political power. We advised the
workers of all nations to follow the example of the Spanish who had kept
their trade union organisations in close contact with the sections of
the International. Since this time we have followed all phases of the
worker's movement with interest and know that whatever the coming
clashes between Labour and Capital will be like, it will fall to the
syndicalist movement to open the eyes of society towards the tasks owing
to the producers of all wealth. It is the only movement which will show
to thinking people a way out of the cul-de-sac into which the present
development of capitalism has given our generation.
It goes without saying that anarchists have never imagined that it was
they who had provided the syndicalist movement with its understanding of
its tasks with regard to the reorganisation of society. Never have they
absurdly claimed to be the leaders of a great intellectual movement
leading humanity in the direction of its progressive evolution. But what
we can claim is to have recognised right from the beginning the immense
importance of those ideas which today constitute the main aims of
Syndicalism, ideas which in Britain have been developed by Godwin,
Hodgkin, Grey and their successors, and in France by Proudhon: The idea
that workers' organisations for production, distribution, and exchange,
must take the place of existing capitalist exploitation and the state.
And that it is the duty and the task of the workers' organisations to
work out the new form of society.
Neither of these two fundamental ideas are our invention; nor anyone
else's. Life itself has dictated them to nineteenth century
civilisation. It is now our duty to put them into reality. But we are
proud that we understood and defended them in those dark years when
social democratic politicians and pseudo-philosophies trampled them
underfoot, and we are proud that we stand true to them, today as then.