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Title: What is Anarcho-syndicalism?
Author: George Woodcock
Date: 1943
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-syndicalism, syndicalist, anarcho-syndicalist
Source: Retrieved on 4/4/2017 from http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/f4qs9m

George Woodcock

What is Anarcho-syndicalism?

Syndicalism is a method of industrial organisation which goes away from

all the traditional conceptions of authority and government, of

capitalism and the state. While communism in abolishing individual

capitalism, creates a worse monster in its place in the form of the

economic state, syndicalism leaves all the patterns of administration

which have in the past resulted only in the oppression and exploitation

of man by man, and sets out to build an organisational form based on the

natural needs of man rather than on the interests of ruling classes,

based not on the dictates of authority, but on the voluntary cooperation

of free and equal individuals in satisfying the economic needs of the

men who form society.

Syndicalism is the industrial manifestation of anarchism. Anarchism

itself is a doctrine which teaches the necessity of a society without

government… Anarchism advocates, instead of the governmental coercion of

the individual, which exists in the most democratic society that still

retains the state, a society based on the free co-operation of

individual men and women for the fulfilment of their social and economic

needs. Organisation on a voluntary basis is necessary for the operation

of the means of production and the desirable public services, but no

kind of superior body of authority, with its parliaments, police,

bureaucracies, codes of law, taxes, armies and secretive intrigues in

internal and foreign politics, has any place or value in a society based

on justice and reason. In anarchy a man, once he has fulfilled his

contractual economic functions, can live as he will, providing he does

not interfere with the freedom of his fellows.

Anarchists believe that the means of production should be the property

of society, held in common, and that only by such an arrangement will

the restricting influence of private property be removed and the

resources of nature and science be used to their full extent for the

benefit of humanity. In order that there may be no possibility of such

private interests arising, they advocate that, once the means of

production have been taken out of the hands of their usurping

controllers, they shall be run not by any authority or elite or leaders,

but by the people who are themselves concerned in production, i.e. by

the workers in each industry.

Syndicalism is, as I have already said, the method by which such control

by the workers would be organised. It is, moreover, the method by which

the workers under a property society would organise themselves for the

attainment of the free classless society.

The syndicate is a form of union which differs from the ordinary trade

union in that it aims, not only at the gaining of improvements in wages

and conditions under the present system, but also at the overthrow of

that system and its replacement by the free society by means of social

revolution based on the economic direct action of the workers. This is

not to say that it ignores the day to day struggle, but its members

recognise that only by a complete destruction of the structure of

property and authority can justice and security ever be attained for the

workers.

The syndicate differs also from the ordinary trade union in its method

of organisation. The ordinary trade union follows the pattern of

governmental society in that it has a centralised form, with authority

at the centre and a permanent bureaucracy, who, like any other

bureaucracy, rapidly gain privilege and power and rise into a class with

an economic position considerably higher than that of the workers who

pay them and whom they are supposed to serve. The syndicate, on the

other hand, is based on the organisation of workers by industry at the

place of work. The workers of each factory, or depot or farm are an

autonomous unit, who govern their own affairs and who make all the

decisions as to the work they will do. These units are joined federally

in a syndicate which serves to co-ordinate the actions of the workers in

each industry. The federal organisation has no authority over the

workers in any branch, and cannot impose a veto on action like a trade

union executive. It has no permanent bureaucracy, and the few privileged

officials are chosen on a short term basis, have no privileges which

raise their standard of living above that of the workers, and wield no

authority of any kind.

The syndicate being actually governed from below and being untainted by

the idea or the institution of authority, represents more truly than any

other type of organisation the will of the workers and the good of

society. Its lack of centralism and lack of bureaucracy, of any kind of

privilege or vested interest in the present order of society, give it a

flexibility of action and real solidarity which make it the ideal

instrument for canalising and influencing in the right way the

spontaneous revolutionary activity of the people.

In the social revolution the syndicates will play their part by

organising the economic direct action of the workers. On the railways

for instance, they will lead the workers in the expropriation of the

lines, stations and rolling stock, and their use only for the purposes

of the revolution and not for those of the dispossessed masters.

After the revolution the syndicate will form the framework on which the

first phase of the free society will be built. Anarchists do not make

any plans for the free society in its maturity, as they believe in the

free and continual growth of social institutions, and recognise that any

hard-and-fast plan of development will create only a sterile society.

Nevertheless they recognise that after the old society has been

abolished some kind of social structure must be built immediately to

take over the means of production and change the economic basis of

society from that of a class society to that most appropriate to a free

society. This means of organisation they find in the syndicate.

The organisation of industry, transport and farming under the syndicates

will follow exactly the same lines as that of the organisation of the

workers in the days before the end of the property society, except that

now, instead of organising for struggle, the workers will organise for

the construction of the economic basis necessary for the achievement and

maintenance of true freedom and justice.

Each working unit, a factory or a railway yard, will be run by the

workers who actually operate it. There will be no authority, no

management, and each worker will be jointly and equally responsible with

the rest for the proper functioning of the industrial unit in which he

works.

It should not be assumed that the syndicalist regards the operation of

industry as a simple matter. On the contrary, he knows from experience

its complexity, and regards a bureaucracy divorced from the actual work

as being incapable of operating to its maximum efficiency so involved an

organisation as that of a railway. The workers are the men who have the

knowledge of the actual operating of the railways, and if they were to

study the problems of operation and of the co-ordination of their

functions they would be able to work the railways far more efficiently

than the bureaucrats. The opportunity of gaining this knowledge is, of

course, kept from the ordinary railway workers. (Instead, the companies

prefer to work the other way round, by instituting classes to teach

bureaucrats in an academic manner the elements of train working or

signalling, usually with little success.) In this connection of course,

I am using the word ‘worker’ in a broad sense, to include technical

staff associated with civil engineering and locomotive construction, and

also the sections of the clerical staff concerned with co-ordinating

train operating, as these are both vitally necessary for the proper

working of the railways and upon their direct co-operation with their

fellow workers, eliminating the bureaucrats, will come a real workers

control of railways. It is therefore vitally necessary that such men

should be brought into any industrial movement along with the railway

men.

The various units will be joined in federations which will co-ordinate

their work throughout the country and make arrangements between the

sections to ensure that each industry is properly co-ordinated. The

industrial federations or syndicates will in turn be united in a

national federation of industry which will act as the means of

co-ordinating the activities of the various industries.

The old motives of profit and self-interest will cease to dominate

economic life. Instead the incentive will be the good of the members of

society, without distinction. In such circumstances there will be no

impediment to the exploitation of the resources of nature and science to

the full extent to which men desire it. Men will decide the standard of

life and will work to get it. It is hardly to be supposed that they will

be content with what they endure today, and the possibility of better

circumstances, together with man’s natural desire for work will ensure

that the workers left to themselves, will find the means to operate

industry a good deal more efficiently than has been the case under

capitalism… The methods of hierarchical management would cease. Instead,

the functions of administration would be vested in the workers

themselves and, wherever it was impossible for the workers all to take

part directly in administration, by delegates chosen directly from among

the workers who would administer the functioning of the various services

in accordance with the wishes of the workers. These delegates would have

no authority, nor would they make any decisions on questions of policy.

Their job would be merely to co-ordinate the work of the railwaymen,

which would be carried out entirely on a voluntary basis.

Such delegates would be in no way superior to their fellow workers in

power, privilege or position. Under anarchism the wages system, one of

the prime means by which the rulers coerce the workers, would be

abolished, and the workers, giving in labour what was necessary for the

carrying on of the function of society would in their turn receive the

goods which they found necessary for a happy life. No worker would get

more than his mate because tradition said that his craft was worth twice

as much a week, and there would be no railway directors to live in high

luxury while their lower paid employees starved on 60 shillings a week

or less. Men would get not according to their worth, for social worth

cannot be estimated, but according to their need, which is the only just

means of sharing the goods of society.