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Title: Misunderstanding syndicalism Author: Tom Wetzel Date: December 6, 2016 Language: en Topics: syndicalism, debate, a response Source: Retrieved on 14th October 2021 from http://www.anarkismo.net/article/29819 Notes: Published in socialistworker.org
TIM GOULET’S review of Ralph Darlington’s Radical Unionism
(“Syndicalism’s lessons”) makes a number of mistaken claims about
revolutionary syndicalism, based on fundamental inadequacies in
Darlington’s book.
The claim that “syndicalist unions broke off from mainstream federations
to form ‘purely revolutionary’ unions, cutting themselves off from the
mass of workers” doesn’t hold up, though it does conform to the Leninist
orthodoxy of “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. There were
many countries where the syndicalist unions were the majority--such as
Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Brazil. Syndicalist unions
in South Africa, such as the Industrial Workers of Africa (modeled on
the Industrial Workers of the World), were the only unions that
organized native African workers, who were excluded from the white craft
unions.
At the time of the mass occupation of the factories in Italy in
September 1920, the USI (Italian Syndicalist Union) was claiming 800,000
members, and the factory councils formed throughout Italy in those
events were mostly organized by the USI. Moreover, it was the
anarcho-syndicalists who initiated a militia movement (“arditti del
popolo”) to fight Mussolini’s fascist squads. But the Communists didn’t
cooperate, and the Socialist Party capitulated to fascism.
Darlington makes the usual mistake of supposing the IWW went into
decline with government repression in 1917. Actually the IWW continued
to grow in the early 1920s, reaching its peak in 1923. The IWW mass
unions were in industries where there either was no American Federation
of Labor (AFL) union or a competing AFL union that was no larger than
the IWW union. Moreover, in industries where IWW was a minority they
often worked as a “dual card” pressure group within the AFL unions.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
MOREOVER, THE claim that revolutionary syndicalism “rejects politics”
contradicts the criticism that syndicalists have an unrealistic ideal of
a highly politicized unionism that can play a revolutionary role. You
need to make up your mind which criticism you want to make: Did
syndicalists advocate a narrow focus on merely economic issues
(“economism”) or did they have unrealistic expectations of the political
role unionism could play? These two traditional Leninist criticisms are
logically inconsistent with each other.
In Spain at present, the two syndicalist unions, the CGT and CNT, often
work to develop alliances with social movements (women’s groups,
ecologists, housing squatters) as in general strike mobilizations. The
CGT has separate encuentros (meetings) for its women members to develop
campaigns--as for example their current campaign for free abortion on
demand, against the right-wing government’s efforts to criminalize
abortion. These are examples of how the unions do develop political
strategy and focus.
Moreover, it was Marxism that historically proposed a division of labor,
with “politics” being reserved for the party and the union relegated to
“the economic sphere.” In practice, this has always been used as an
excuse by union leaders to avoid mass action around larger political
questions. They will tell workers they need to vote for the party. This
was the role the Communist Party played in demobilizing the population
in France after the mass general strike in 1968.
The claim that syndicalists over-emphasize “spontaneity” is also at odds
with the syndicalist emphasis on preparation and building the capacity
of militants, as with the many dozens of worker schools and cultural
centers organized throughout working-class neighborhoods of Barcelona
and Valencia in Spain in the 1930s.
There is also a mistaken conception offered of the revolutionary general
strike. As Lucy Parsons said in her remarks to the founding convention
of the IWW, the syndicalist conception is an “inside” strike--a
generalized takeover of the means of production and all the capitalists’
assets.
The syndicalist idea is that having a grassroots worker mass movement in
the workplaces provides a movement with the skills and position to carry
out this generalized lockout of the bosses, and to carry on production
to ensure that people’s needs are met. We have a vivid example of an
expropriating general strike in the mass seizure of industry and
farmland by the syndicalist unions in Spain in 1936. More than 18,000
companies and 14 million acres of farmland were expropriated, according
to UPI reporter Burnet Bolleten.
The CNT movement of 1936--the majority labor organization in the
country--also smashed up the army in many parts of the country and built
its own proletarian army of about 100,000 to fight the fascists. This is
clearly a demonstration of the possibility of a union movement playing a
revolutionary role.
As Marx put it: “If the trades unions are required for the guerilla
fights between capital and labor, they are still more important as
organized agencies for superseding the very system of wages labor and
capital rule.”