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Title: Gramsci and syndicalism Author: Tom Wetzel Date: Summer 1989 Language: en Topics: Antonio Gramsci, council communism, anarcho-syndicalism, workers councils, Italy Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2020 from https://libcom.org/library/gramsci-syndicalism-tom-wetzel Notes: This article originally appeared in Ideas & Action #11
In a polemic against the syndicalists, Antonio Gramsci argued that the
syndicalists were wrong in maintaining that unions were capable of being
organs of workers’ revolution. He said this confused a marketing
organization of labor within capitalism — the trade unions — with an
organization for running production in a socialized economy — the
workers councils. Because the function of a union is to affect the terms
and conditions of the sale of labor to the employers, he argued, it is
an organization specific to a capitalist society.
However, if we look at the actual functions of the Turin shop councils,
as described in the Shop Stewards’ Program, we find that much of their
actual function is the organization of the struggle with the employers
over the “terms and conditions” of labor within capitalism. For example,
the shop stewards were called upon to “exercize surveillance” over the
enforcement of the existing labor contracts and “resolve disputes that
may arise between the workforce and management.” In other words, the
shop stewards movement was inevitably a shopfloor unionist force
precisely because it expressed the desire of the workforce for a more
effective organization in the struggles within the current capitalist
system as well as expressing their aspirations for complete control.
Since any mass workers movement of this sort arises initially within the
capitalist system, this “dual” function seems inevitable.
Moreover, Gramsci’s real argument against the possibility of
“revolutionary unionism” was based on the institutionalized,
bureaucratic character of the official CGL trade unions. And, by the
same token, his argument for the revolutionary potential of the shop
councils, was not their complete non-involvement in present-day unionist
struggles, but, rather, their independent, non-hierarchical character.
Gramsci sees that unions develop a top-down regime once they become
institutionalized in bargaining with the employers because this enables
the emergent leadership to ensure that the workforce does not violate
its part of the bargain with management:
“[As it develops,] the union concentrates and generalizes its scope so
that the power and discipline of the movement are focused in a central
office. This office detaches itself from the masses it regiments,
removing itself from the fickle eddy of moods and currents that are
typical of the great tumultuous masses. The union thus acquires the
ability to sign agreements and take on responsibilities, obliging the
entrepreneur to accept a certain legality in his relations with the
workers. This legality is conditional on the trust the entrepreneur has
in the solvency of the union and its ability to ensure that the working
masses respect their contractual obligations.”
But it is precisely this bureaucratic structure of institutionalized
trade unionism that makes it impossible for it to be an instrument of
revolution, since these structures exist to “perpetuate and
universalize” the “industrial legality” developed in the accumulated
compromises with the employers. The union “represents legality, and must
aim to make it respected by its members.”
On the other hand, the shop councils are seen as potentially
revolutionary, according to Gramsci, precisely because they are not
subject to a bureaucracy external to the workforce:
“The factory council is the negation of industrial legality. It tends at
every moment to destroy it....By its revolutionary spontaneity, the
factory council tends to unleash the class war at any moment; by its
bureaucratic form, the trade union tends to prevent the class war ever
being unleashed.”
But once we understand what Gramsci means by “union” — that is,
institutionalized, bureaucratized trade unions — then we can see that
anarcho-syndicalists would agree with Gramsci’s views on the limits of
trade unions since they agree that the bureaucratized trade unions tend
to constrain workers action within the limits of what is acceptable to
the employing class. Such top-down structures are, thus, not capable of
being organs of revolution.
However, anarcho-syndicalists would point out that when they advocate
“revolutionary unionism,” they are using the term “union” in a different
sense. There is another sense of the term “union,” referring to
association of the workers themselves in opposition to the employers:
the workers “in union” with each other. And, in this sense, the shop
council movement was also a form of unionism. Moreover, Gramsci
sometimes uses the word “union” in this other sense, as when he says
that the Turin shop council movement is a form of “industrial unionism,”
uniting the workforce across divisions of craft and ideology.
Moreover, if it is the non-bureaucratic, mass autonomous character of
the Turin shop councils that gives them a revolutionary potential, as
Gramsci had argued, then USI activists could argue that Gramsci must
concede that the “unions” advocated by the anarcho-syndicalists have a
revolutionary potential also since they have the same character and
structure as the Turin shop councils.
One lesson of the Italian revolution of 1919–20 is that the supposed
opposition between “councilism” and “syndicalism” is more myth than
reality. The main body of Italian syndicalism — the USI — adopted the
methods and organizational forms of the Turin shop council movement. At
the same time, the anarcho-syndicalists in Turin were slow to build an
USI organization there because the independent, democratic organization
of the Turin councils and their orientation to direct action and workers
control made them a living approximation of anarcho-syndicalist ideals.