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Title: Anarchosyndicalism Author: Jesse Cohn Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: anarcho-syndicalism Source: Retrieved on 22nd November 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0080 Notes: Published in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest.
Anarchosyndicalism is the term for the anarchist labor union movement (a
labor union is called a syndicat in French, or a sindicato in Spanish).
Powerful anarchosyndicalist organizations included the FederaciĂłn Obrera
Regional Argentina (founded 1901), the Industrial Workers of the World
(founded 1905), the Confédération Générale du Travail (founded 1906),
and the ConfederaciĂłn Nacional del Trabajo (founded 1910). These unions
were distinguished from their conventional counterparts not only by
their radical goals – the abolition of capitalism and the state in favor
of a system of generalized self-management – but also by their
decentralized structure and willingness to engage in direct action,
including extralegal tactics such as sabotage.
While anarchists had always placed great emphasis on the
self-organization of workers at the point of production and on what
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) called “the political capacity of the
working classes” as agents of revolutionary change, their attitudes
toward unions as vehicles for collective bargaining and toward strikes
as a tactic had been more ambivalent for a number of reasons. Proudhon,
indeed, saw strikes as futile. Moreover, since trade unions lacked full
legality under most governments during the early period of the anarchist
movement, their utility was limited. With the legalization of unions, a
number of anarchists saw a viable alternative to “propaganda by the
deed” (sporadic acts of armed rebellion that failed to gain mass
support) as well as to confining themselves to propaganda activities
until the people became ready for revolution; by forming revolutionary
labor unions, anarchists could survive within the capitalist and
state-dominated order while maintaining and expanding their capacity to
oppose it – managing, as Emile Pouget (1860–1931) put it, to “live in
the present with all possible combativity, sacrificing neither the
present to the future, nor the future to the present.” Moreover, in the
words of the IWW’s “Preamble,” by adopting an internally democratic and
federative structure, the anarchosyndicalist union would prefigure a
post-capitalist and post-statist order, “forming the structure of the
new society within the shell of the old” – a conception not unlike that
of council communists such as Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919). The function
of the union was often closely bound up with projects of political
education, and each particular strike was to be seen as a rehearsal for
the general strike that would topple the reigning system.
In practice, there have been tensions between the anarchist and
syndicalist aspects of anarchosyndicalism, as unions found themselves
pulled toward a politically neutral “pure syndicalism,” designed to
maximize workers’ self-interest under capitalism, and an explicitly
politicized, anti-capitalist “pure anarchism” that might alienate
workers of the diverse political tendencies represented in union
membership. Indeed, even within unions such as the CGT and IWW,
anarchism was just one element in a mixture of ideologies, including
Marxism and even Nietzschean philosophy, which sometimes went by the
name of “revolutionary syndicalism.” Potential contradictions also
existed between the particular interests of workers and the general
interests of communities. Relations with anarchists of other tendencies
(e.g., anarchocommunism, eco-anarchism) and priorities (e.g., gender
equality, sexual freedom) have sometimes been fraught, despite attempts
to bridge them. Finally, anarchosyndicalists past and present have met
with opposition within the anarchist movement from
“anti-organizationalists” who reject unions as new forms of discipline
in embryo. Some labor historians have argued that the CNT behaved in
just such a manner during the Spanish Civil War, albeit under the banner
of “workers’ control.” Others have emphasized the degree to which
anarchosyndicalism gave play to some of the most unruly and creative
proletarian impulses.
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REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Ackelsberg, M. A. (2005) Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle
for the Emancipation of Women. Oakland: AK Press.
Galleani, L. (1927) [2006] The Principle of Organization in the Light of
Anarchism. Cascadia: Pirate Press Portland.
Pouget, E. (1910) [2003] Direct Action. London: Kate Sharpley Library.
Rocker, R. (1947) [1989] Anarchosyndicalism. London: Pluto Press.
Rosemont, F. (2003) Joe Hill and the Making of a Revolutionary
Workingclass Counterculture. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr.
Seidman, M. (1991) Workers Against Work: Labor in Paris and Barcelona
During the Popular Fronts. Berkeley: University of California Press.