Syndicalism

Syndicalism
Precursors Guild socialism Utopian socialism Revolutions of 1848 Orthodox Marxism
Variants Anarcho-syndicalism Syndical communism De Leonism National syndicalism Sorelianism
Economics Co-operative economics Corporatism Labour Labour rights Mass strike Workers' self-management Labour unionisation Mutual aid
Organisations Federación Obrera Regional Argentina Solidaridad Obrera Industrial Workers of the World Brazilian Workers Confederation Confederación Nacional del Trabajo Industrial Syndicalist Education League Syndicalist League of North America International Socialist League Norsk Syndikalistisk Forbund International Workers' Association National Libertarian Federation of Trade Unions Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union Confederación General del Trabajo Solidaridad Obrera Solidarity Federation Konfederatsiya Revolyutsionnikh Anarkho-Sindikalistov National Labor Secretariat
Leaders Daniel De Leon Victor Griffuelhes Hubert Lagardelle Juan García Oliver Rudolf Rocker Georges Sorel Fernand Pelloutier James Thompson Bain Mary Fitzgerald
Related subjects Criticism of capitalism Post-capitalism Criticism of copyright Libertarian socialism Criticism of wage labour Labour power Revisionism Copyleft Fascism Socialism Communism
Syndicalism Labour economics
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Syndicalism was a radical tendency in the labor movement, mainly in the early 20th century. Major syndicalist organizations included the General Confederation of Labor in France, the National Confederation of Labor in Spain, the Italian Syndicalist Union, the Free Workers' Union of Germany, and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. The Industrial Workers of the World, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, and the Canadian One Big Union, though they did not regard themselves as syndicalists, are considered by most historians to belong to the current. A number of syndicalist organizations were, and still are to this day, linked in the International Workers' Association.

Terminology[edit]

The term syndicalism has French origins; in French, a syndicat is a trade union, usually a local union. The corresponding words in Spanish and Portuguese, sindicato, and Italian, sindacato, are similar. By extension, the French syndicalisme refers to trade unionism in general,^[1] the concept syndicalisme révolutionnaire or revolutionary syndicalism emerged in French socialist journals in 1903^[2] and the French General Confederation of Labor (Confédération générale du travail in French, CGT) came to use the term to describe its brand of unionism. Revolutionary syndicalism, or more commonly syndicalism with the revolutionary implied, was then adapted to a number of languages by unionists following the French model.^{[3][note 1]}

Many scholars, including Darlington, Marcel van der Linden, and Wayne Thorpe, apply the term syndicalism to a number of organizations or currents within the labor movement that did not identify as syndicalist. They apply the label to one big unionists or industrial unionists in North America and Australia, Larkinists in Ireland, and groups that identify as revolutionary industrialists, revolutionary unionists, anarcho-syndicalists, or councilists. This includes the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the United States, for example, which claimed its industrial unionism was "a higher type of revolutionary labor organization than that proposed by the syndicalists". Van der Linden and Thorpe use syndicalism to refer to "all revolutionary, direct-actionist organizatons". Darlington proposes that syndicalism be defined as "revolutionary trade unionism",^{[note 2]} he and van der Linden argue that it is justified to group together such a wide range of organizations because their similar modes of action or practice outweigh their ideological differences.^[6]

Others, like Larry Peterson and Erik Olssen, disagree with this broad definition. According to Olssen, this understanding has a "tendency to blur the distinctions between industrial unionism, syndicalism, and revolutionary socialism".^[7] Peterson gives a much more restrictive definition of syndicalism based on five criteria:

1. a preference for federalism over centralism,
2. opposition to political parties,
3. seeing the general strike as the supreme revolutionary weapon,
4. favoring the replacement of the state by "a federal, economic organization of society",
5. and seeing unions as the basic building blocks of a post-capitalist society.

This definition excludes the IWW and the Canadian One Big Union (OBU). Peterson proposes the broader category revolutionary industrial unionism to encompass syndicalism, groups like the IWW and the OBU, and others. The defining commonality between these groups is that they sought to unite all workers in a general organization.^[8]

Emergence[edit]

The French CGT was the first self-avowed syndicalist organization, it was the model and inspiration for syndicalist groups throughout Europe and the world.^[9]

Syndicalism spread from France. CGT activists presented the Charter of Amiens and syndicalism as a higher form of anarchism at the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam in 1907. Discussions at the Congress led to the formation of the international syndicalist journal Bulletin international du mouvement syndicaliste. Syndicalist movements and organizations in a number of countries were established by activists who had spent time in France. Ervin Szabó visited Paris in 1904 and then established a Syndicalist Propaganda Group in his native Hungary in 1910. Several of the founders of the Spanish CNT had visited France. Alceste de Ambris and Armando Borghi, both leaders in Italy's USI, were in Paris for a few months from 1910 to 1911. French influence also spread through publications. Emile Pouget's pamphlets could be read in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, and Swedish translations. Journals and newspapers in a number of countries advocated French syndicalism, for example, L’Action directe, a journal mainly for miners in Charleroi, Belgium, urged its readers to follow "the example of our confederated friends of France". Soon, organizations in the CGT's mold were formed or previously extant unions adopted syndicalist principles and methods.^[10] By 1914, there were syndicalist national labor confederations in Peru,^[11] Brazil,^[12] Argentina,^[13] Mexico,^[14] the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and France, while Belgian syndicalists were in the process of forming one.^[15] There were also groups advocating syndicalism in Russia,^[16] Japan,^[17] Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, and Great Britain.^[18]

In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World were formed in the United States, although Wobblies insisted their union was a distinctly American form of labor organization and not an import of European syndicalism, the IWW was syndicalist in the broader sense of the word. According to Melvyn Dubofsky and most other IWW historians, the IWW's industrial unionism was the specifically American form of syndicalism,^[19] this form of unionism spread to other parts of the world. In 1907, Australia's Socialist Labor Party began establishing IWW clubs in that country. ^[20] In 1910, syndicalists in South Africa gained control of a union and renamed it IWW.^[21]

Principles and activities[edit]

Role of ideology[edit]

Syndicalism was not informed by theory or a systematically elaborated ideology the same way socialism was by Marxism. Émile Pouget, a CGT leader, maintained that: "What sets syndicalism apart from the various schools of socialism – and makes it superior – is its doctrinal sobriety. Inside the unions, there is little philosophising, they do better than that: they act!" Similarly, Andreu Nin of the Spanish CNT proclaimed in 1919: "I am a fanatic of action, of revolution. I believe in actions more than in remote ideologies and abstract questions." This was partly rooted in a distrust of bourgeois intellectuals and wanting to maintain workers' control over the movement. Syndicalist thinking was elaborated in pamphlets, leaflets, speeches, and articles and in the movement's own newspapers, these writings consisted mainly in calls to action and discussions of tactics in class struggle. Syndicalists did not, however, disavow education. Workers' education was important at least to committed activists. Classes were organized in the French bourses du travail, in IWW halls in the United States, and by the Plebs League and Labour Colleges in Britain.^[22]

The extent to which syndicalist positions reflected merely the views of leaders and to what extent those positions were shared by syndicalist organizations' rank-and-file a matter of dispute.

Syndicalism is used by some interchangeably with anarcho-syndicalism, reflecting the influence anarchists had in some syndicalist organizations.^[23] This term was first used in 1907, by socialists criticizing the political neutrality of the CGT, although it was rarely used until the early 1920s when communists used it disparagingly. Only from 1922 was it used by self-avowed anarcho-syndicalists,^[24] the extent of anarchist influence within syndicalism is a matter of debate.

Critique of capitalism and the state[edit]

The Pyramid of Capitalist System from 1911 illustrates the IWW's critique of capitalism.

Bill Haywood, a leading figure in the IWW, defined the union's purpose at its founding congress in 1905 as "the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism". Syndicalists held that society was divided into two great classes, the working class and the bourgeoisie, their interests being irreconcilable, they must be in a constant state of class struggle. Tom Mann, a British syndicalist, declared that "the object of the unions is to wage the Class War". This war, according to syndicalist doctrine, was aimed not just at gaining concessions such as higher wages or a shorter working day, but at the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.^[25]

Syndicalists agreed with Karl Marx's characterization of the state as the "executive committee of the ruling class", they held that a society's economic order determined its political order and concluded that the former could not be overthrown by changes to the latter. Nevertheless, a number of leading syndicalist figures worked in political parties and some ran for elected office. Jim Larkin, the leader of the Irish ITGWU, was active in the Labour Party, Haywood in the Socialist Party of America. Yet, they saw the economic sphere as the primary arena for revolutionary struggle, while involvement in politics could at best be an "echo" of industrial struggle, they were skeptical of parliamentary politics. According to Father Thomas Hagerty, a Catholic priest and IWW leader, "dropping pieces of paper into a hole in a box never did achieve emancipation for the working class, and to my thinking it will never achieve it". Syndicalist trade unions declared their political neutrality and autonomy from political parties. Political parties, syndicalists reasoned, grouped people according to their political views, uniting members of different classes. Unions, on the other, hand were to be purely working class organizations, uniting the entire class, and could therefore not be divided on political grounds, the French syndicalist Pouget explained: "The CGT embraces – outside of all the schools of politics – all workers cognisant of the struggle to be waged for the elimination of wage-slavery and the employer class." In practice, however, this neutrality was more ambiguous. The CGT, for example, worked with the Socialist Party in the struggle against the Three-Year Law, which extended conscription, during the Spanish Civil War the CNT, whose policy barred anyone who had been a candidate for political office or had participated in political endeavors from representing it, was intimately connected with the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Ibérica in Spanish, FAI).^[26]

Class struggle[edit]

In the syndicalist conception, unions played a dual role, they were organs of struggle within capitalism for better working conditions, but they were also to play a key role in the revolution to overthrow capitalism. Victor Griffuelhes expressed this at the CGT's 1906 congress in the following manner: "In its day-to-day demands, syndicalism seeks the co-ordination of workers' efforts, the increase of workers' well-being by the achievement of immediate improvements, such as the reduction of working hours, the increase of wages, etc. But this task is only one aspect of the work of syndicalism; it prepares for complete emancipation, which can be realised only by expropriating the capitalist class". For unions to fulfill this role, it was necessary to prevent bureaucrats – "whose sole purpose in life seems to be apologising for and defending the capitalist system of exploitation", according to Larkin – from inhibiting workers' militant zeal. Battling bureaucracy and reformism within the labor movement was a major theme for syndicalists. One expression of this was many syndicalists' rejection of collective bargaining agreements, which were thought to force labor peace upon workers and break their solidarity. The Wobblie Vincent St. John declared: "There is but one bargain that the Industrial Workers of the World will make with the employing class – complete surrender of the means of production." The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (Federación Obrera Regional Argentina in Spanish, FORA) and the OBU did, however, accept such deals and others began accepting them eventually. Similarly, syndicalist unions did not work to build large strike funds, for fear that they would create bureaucracy separate from the rank-and-file and instill in workers the expectation that the union rather than they would wage the class struggle.^[27]

Syndicalists disagreed on how to best form the unions they envisioned. Some, like the French radicals, worked within existing unions to infuse them with their revolutionary spirit; in the United Kingdom, ISEL pursued a similar strategy Some found the existing unions in their respective national contexts entirely unsuitable and built organizations of their own, a strategy that became known as dual unionism. American syndicalists formed the IWW, though William Z. Foster later abandoned the IWW after a trip to France and worked to gain influence in the established American Federation of Labor (AFL). In Ireland, the ITGWU broke away from a more moderate, and British-based, union; in Italy and Spain, syndicalists initially worked within the established union confederations before breaking away and forming USI and the CNT respectively. But even then, at the local level the unions within which they operated remained essentially the same;^[28] in Norway, there were both the Norwegian Trade Union Opposition (Norske Fagopposition in Norwegian, NFO), syndicalists working within the mainstream Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisasjonen i Norge in Norwegian, LO), and the Norwegian Syndicalist Federation (Norsk Syndikalistik Federation in Norwegian, NSF), an independent syndicalist organization set up by the Swedish SAC.^[29]

Syndicalists advocated direct action, including working to rule, passive resistance, sabotage, and strikes, particularly the general strike, as tactics in the class struggle, as opposed to indirect action such as parliamentary politics. The IWW engaged in around 30 mostly successful civil disobedience campaigns they deemed free speech fights. Wobblies would defy laws restricting public speeches, in order to clog up prisons and court systems as a result of hundreds of arrests, ultimately forcing public officials to rescind such laws. Sabotage ranged from slow or inefficient work to destruction of machinery and physical violence. French railway and postal workers cut telegraph and signal lines during strikes in 1909 and 1910; in Spain the CNT funded assassinations of employers to avenge killings by the state, though not all in the CNT approved and assassinations were not carried out by syndicalists anywhere outside of Spain. Syndicalists generally favored collective action.^[30]

The final step towards revolution, according to syndicalists, would be a general strike, it would be "the curtain drop on a tired old scene of several centuries, and the curtain raising on another which will offer a greater, more fertile field of human activity", according to Griffuelhes.^[31]

Syndicalists remained vague about the society they envisioned to replace capitalism, claiming that it was impossible to foresee in detail. Labor unions were seen as being the embryo of a new society in addition to being the means of struggle within the old. Syndicalists generally agreed that in a free society production would be managed by workers, the state apparatus would be replaced by the rule of workers' organizations. In such a society individuals would be liberated, both in the economic sphere but also in their private and social lives.^[32]

Gender, race, immigration[edit]

Syndicalist policies on gender issues were mixed, the CNT did not admit women as members until 1918. The CGT dismissed feminism as a bourgeois movement. Syndicalists were mostly indifferent to the question of women's suffrage. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an IWW organizer, insisted that women "find their power at the point of production where they work", rather than at the ballot box.^[33]

Heyday[edit]

Before World War I[edit]

A session of the First International Syndicalist Congress in 1913

There was no international syndicalist organization prior to World War I,^[34] the CGT was affiliated with the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers (ISNTUC), which brought together reformist socialist unions. Both the Dutch NAS and the British ISEL attempted to remedy the lack of a syndicalist counterpart to ISNTUC in 1913, simultaneously publishing calls for an international syndicalist congress in 1913, the CGT rejected the invitation. Its leaders feared that leaving ISNTUC, which it intended to revolutionize from within, would split the CGT and harm working class unity, the IWW also did not participate, as it considered itself an international in its own right.^[35] The First International Syndicalist Congress was held in London from September 27 to October 2. It was attended by 38 delegates from 65 organizations in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.^{[note 3]} Discussions were contentious and did not lead to the founding of a syndicalist international. Delegates did agree on a declaration of principles describing syndicalism's core tenets, they also decided to launch an International Syndicalist Information Bureau and to hold another congress in Amsterdam. This congress did not take place due to the outbreak of World War I.^[37]

World War I[edit]

Syndicalists had long opposed nationalism and militarism. Haywood held that "it is better to be a traitor to your country than to your class". French syndicalists viewed the Army as the primary defender of the capitalist order; in 1901, the CGT published a manual for soldiers encouraging desertion. Similarly, in 1911 British syndicalists distributed an "Open Letter to British Soldiers" imploring them not to shoot on striking workers, but to join the working class's struggle against capial. Patriotism, syndicalists argued, was a means of integrating workers into capitalist society by distracting them from their true class interest; in 1908, the CGT's congress invoked the slogan of the First International, proclaiming that the "workers have no fatherland".^[38]

When World War I broke out in July 1914, socialist parties and trade unions – both in neutral and belligerent countries^{[note 4]} – supported their respective nations' war efforts or national defense, despite previous pledges to do the opposite. Socialists agreed to put aside class conflict and vote for war credits. German socialists argued that war was necessary to defend against Russia's barbaric Tsarism, while their French counterparts pointed to the need to defend against Prussian militarism and the German "instinct of domination and of discipline", this collaboration between the socialist movement and the state was known as the union sacrée in France, the Burgfrieden in Germany, and godsvrede in the Netherlands.^[40] Moreover, a number of anarchists led by Peter Kropotkin, including the influential syndicalist Christiaan Cornelissen, issued the Manifesto of the Sixteen, supporting the Allied cause in the war.^[41] Most syndicalists, however, remained true to their internationalist and anti-militarist principles by opposing the war and their respective nation's participation in it.^[42]

The majority of the French CGT and a sizable minority in the Italian USI did not,^[43] the CGT had long had a moderate, reformist wing, which gained the upper hand. As a result, according to historians like Darlington or van der Linden and Thorpe, the CGT was no longer a revolutionary syndicalist organization after the start of World War I,^[44] it followed the French president's call for national unity by agreeing to a no-strike pledge and to resolve labor disputes through arbitration and by actively participating in the French war effort. Most of the its members of military age were conscripted without resistance and its ranks shrank from 350,000 in 1913 to 49,000 dues-paying members in 1915. CGT leaders defended this course by arguing that France's war against Germany was a war between democracy and republicanism on the one side and barbaric militarism on the other.^[45] Italy did not initially participate in World War I, which was deeply unpopular in the country, when it broke out, the Socialist Party and the reformist General Confederation of Labor opposed Italian intervention in the Great War. In June 1914, the shooting of three anti-war protesters sparked a series of riots, demonstrations, strikes and local uprisings that become known as the Red Week. Once Italy became a participant, the socialists refused to support the war effort, but also refrained from working against it, from the start of the war, even before Italy did so, a minority within USI, led by the most famous Italian syndicalist, Alceste De Ambris, called on the Italian state to take the Allies' side. The pro-war syndicalists saw Italian participation in the war as the completion of nationhood, the last step of Risorgimento, they also felt compelled to oppose the socialists' neutrality and therefore support the war. Finally, they gave similar arguments as the French, warning of the dangers posed by the "suffocating imperialism of Germany", and felt obliged to follow the CGT's lead.^[46]

USI's pro-war wing had the support of less than a third of the organization's members and it was forced out in September 1914, its anarchist wing, led by Armando Borghi, was firmly opposed to the war, deeming it incompatible with workers' internationalism and predicting that it would only serve elites and governments. Its opposition was met with government repression and Borghi and others were interned by the end of the war,^[47] the anti-war faction in the CGT, on the other hand, was a small minority. It was led by the likes of Pierre Monatte and Alphonse Merrheim, they would link up with anti-war socialists from around Europe at the 1915 Zimmerwald conference. They faced considerable difficulties putting up meaningful resistance against the war, the government called up militants to the Army, including Monatte. He considered refusing the order and being summarily executed, but decided this would be futile.^[48] Syndicalist organizations in other countries nearly unanimously opposed the war.^[49] "Let Germany win, let France win, it is all the same to the workers," José Negre of the CNT in neutral Spain declared. The CNT insisted that syndicalists could support neither side in an imperialist conflict.^[50] A wave of pro-British sentiment swept Ireland during the war, although the ITGWU and the rest of the Irish labor movement opposed it, and half of the ITGWU's membership enlisted in the British military, the ITGWU had also been significantly weakened in 1913 in the Dublin Lockout. After Jim Larkin left Ireland in 1914, James Connolly took over leadership of the union, because of the organization's weakness, Connolly allied it along with its paramilitary force, the Irish Citizen Army, with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Together, they instigated the Easter Rising, seeking to weaken the British Empire and hoping that the insurrection would spread throughout Europe, the uprising was quickly quelled by the British army and Connolly was executed.^[51] In Germany, the small FVdG opposed the socialists' Burgfrieden and Germany's involvement in the war, challenging the claim that the country was waging a defensive war, its journals were suppressed and a number of its members were arrested.^[52] The United States did not enter the war until the spring of 1917, the start of the war had induced an economic boom in the US, tightening the labor market and thereby strengthening workers' bargaining position. The IWW profited from this, more than doubling its membership between 1916 and 1917, at the same time, the Wobblies fervently denounced the war and mulled calling an anti-war general strike. Once America became a combatant, the IWW maintained its anti-war stance, while its bitter rival, the AFL, supported the war, it did not, however, launch an anti-war campaign, as it feared the government would crush it if it did and wanted to focus on its economic struggles.^[53] Syndicalists in the Netherlands and Sweden, both neutral countries, criticized the truce socialists entered with their governments in order to shore up national defense, the Dutch NAS disowned Cornelissen, one of its founders, for his support for the war.^[54]

Syndicalists from Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, and Cuba met at an anti-war congress in El Ferrol, Spain, in April 1915, the congress was poorly planned and prohibited by the Spanish authorities, but delegates managed to discuss resistance to the war and extending international cooperation between syndicalist groups.^[55] Argentine, Brazilian, Spanish, and Portuguese delegates later met in October in Rio de Janeiro to continue discussions and resolved to deepen cooperation between South American syndicalists.^[56] While syndicalists were only able to put up a rather limited practical struggle against World War I,^[57] they also looked to challenge the war on an ideological or cultural level.^[58] They pointed to the horrors of war and spurned efforts to legitimate it as something noble. German syndicalists drew attention to the death, injury, destruction, and misery that the war wrought.^[59] German, Swedish, Dutch, and Spanish syndicalists denounced nationalism with Tierra y Libertad, a syndicalist journal in Barcelona, calling it a "grotesque mentality", the Dutch newspaper De Arbeid criticized nationalism, because "it finds its embodiment in the state and is the denial of class antagonism between the haves and the have-nots". German and Spanish syndicalists went further still by putting into question the concept of nationhood itself and dismissing it as a mere social construct, the Germans pointed out that most inhabitants of the German Empire identified not as Germans, but in regional terms as Prussians or Bavarians and the like. Multilingual countries like Germany and Spain also could not claim a common language as a defining characteristic of the nation nor did members of the same nation share the same values or experiences, syndicalists in Spain and Germany argued.^[60] Syndicalists also argued against the notion that the war was a clash of different cultures or that it could be justified as a defense of civilization. Various cultures were not mutually hostile, they claimed, and the state should not be seen as the embodiment of culture, since culture was the product of the entire population, while the state acted in the interests of just a few. Moreover, they argued that if culture was to be understood as high culture, the very workers dying in the war were denied access to that culture by capitalist conditions.^[61] Finally, syndicalists railed against religious justifications for war, before the war, they had rejected religion as divisive at best, but support for the war by both Catholic and Protestant clergy revealed their hypocrisy and disgraced the principles Christianity claimed to uphold, they claimed.^[62]

As the war progressed, disaffection with worsening living conditions at home and a growing numbers of casualties at the front eroded the enthusiasm and patriotism the outbreak of war had aroused. Prices were one the rise, food was scarce, and it became increasingly clear that the war would not be short; in Germany, for example, food shortages led to demonstrations and riots in a number of cities in the summer of 1916. At the same time, anti-war demonstrations started. Strikes picked up from around 1916 or 1917 on across Europe and soldiers began to mutiny. Workers distrusted their socialist leaders who had joined the war effort. Thanks in part to their fidelity to internationalism, syndicalist organization profited from this development and expanded towards the end of the war.^[63]

Post-war turmoil and the Russian Revolution[edit]

Disaffection with the war culminated in the post-World War I revolutions that began with the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Volin, a Russian syndicalist involved in the revolution, in a later picture

In February 1917, strikes, riots, and troop mutinies broke out in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), forcing the Russian Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate on March 2 in favor of a provisional government. Immediately, anarchist, mostly anarchist-communist, groups emerged. Russian syndicalists organized around the journal Golos Truda (The Voice of Labor), which had a circulation of around 25,000, and the Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda.^{[64][note 5]} Anarchists found themselves agreeing with the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, who returned to Russia in April, as both sought to bring down the provisional government. Syndicalists were impressed with Lenin's April Theses and State and Revolution. Lenin abandoned the idea that capitalism is a necessary stage on Russia's path to communism; dismissed the establishment of a parliament, favoring that power be taken by soviets; and called for the abolition of the police, the army, the bureaucracy, and finally the state – all sentiments syndicalists shared.^[66] Although the syndicalists also welcomed the soviets, they were most enthusiastic about the factory committees and workers' councils that had emerged in all industrial centers in the course of strikes and demonstrations in the February Revolution. The committees fought for higher wages and shorter hours, but above all for workers' control over production, which both the syndicalists and Bolsheviks supported. When the provisional government attempted to subordinate the committees to the trade unions, syndicalists and Bolsheviks both fought back, the syndicalists viewed the factory committees as the true form of syndicalist organization, not unions.^{[note 6]} Because they were better organized, the Bolsheviks were able to gain more traction in the committees with six times as many delegates in a typical factory, despite the goals they had in common, syndicalists became anxious about the Bolsheviks' growing influence, especially after they won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets in September.^[68]

The Petrograd Soviet established the Military Revolutionary Committee consisting of 48 Bolsheviks, 14 Left Social Revolutionaries, and 4 anarchists, including the syndicalist Shatov. On October 25, it led the October Revolution;^{[note 7]} after taking control of the Winter Palace and key points in the capital with little resistance, it proclaimed a Soviet government. Anarchists were jubilant at the toppling of the provisional government, they were concerned about the proclamation of a new government, fearing a dictatorship of the proletariat, even more so after the Bolsheviks created the central Soviet of People's Commissars composed only of members of their party. They called for decentralization of power, but agreed with Lenin's labor program, which endorsed workers' control in all enterprises of a certain minimum size, the introduction of workers' control led to economic chaos.^[70] Having secured workers' loyalty to the new regime, Lenin turned to restoring discipline in the factories and order to the economy in December by putting the economy under state control, at a trade union congress in January, the syndicalists, who had paid little attention to the unions, only had 6 delegates, while the Bolsheviks had 273. No longer depending on their help in toppling the provisional government, the Bolsheviks were now in a position to ignore the syndicalists' opposition, they opted to disempower local committees by subordinating them to the trade unions, which in turn became organs of the state. The Bolsheviks argued that workers' control did not mean that workers controlled factories at the local level and that this control had to be centralized and put under a broader economic plan, the syndicalists did not as yet admit defeat.^{[71][note 8]} They criticized the Bolshevik regime bitterly, characterizing it as state capitalist, they denounced state control over the factories and agitated for decentralization of power in politics and the economy and "syndicalization" of industry.^[73] The Civil War against the White Army split anarchists, the syndicalists were criticized harshly, because most supported the Bolshevik regime in the war even as they excoriated Bolshevik policy. They reasoned that a White victory would be worse and that the Whites had to be defeated before a third revolution could topple the Bolsheviks.^{[74][note 9]} Yet, syndicalists were harassed and repeatedly arrested by the police, particularly the Cheka, from 1919 on, their demands had some sway with workers and dissidents within the Bolshevik party and the Bolshevik leadership viewed them as the most dangerous part of the libertarian movement.^[76] After the Civil War ended, workers and sailors, including both anarchists and Bolsheviks, rose up in 1921 in Kronstadt, a bastion of radicalism since 1905, against what they saw as the rule of a small number of bureaucrats. Anarchists hailed the rebellion as the start of the third revolution, the government reacted by having anarchists throughout the country arrested, including a number of syndicalist leaders. The Russian syndicalist movement was thereby defeated.^[77]

Syndicalists in the West, still coming to grips with the evolving ideology of the Bolsheviks, reacted in different ways to the October Revolution, those who opposed the World War I overwhelmingly reacted gushingly. De Borghi recalled: "We exulted in its victories. We trembled at its risks... We made a symbol and an altar of its name, its dead, its living and its heroes." Pro-war syndicalists in the CGT viewed the revolution as treason, because the Bolsheviks withdrew Russia from the war. Alceste De Ambris and the syndicalist supporters of war in Italy also denounced the upheaval as a challenge to nationalism.^[78]

1920s[edit]

The International Workers' Association, formed in 1922, is an international syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different countries. At its peak, it represented millions of workers and competed directly for the hearts and minds of the working class with social democratic unions and parties.

Decline[edit]

From the early 1920s, syndicalist movements in most countries began to decline, this decline was the result of a number of factors. In Russia, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, syndicalist movements were suppressed by authoritarian governments, the IWW in the United States and the Mexican House of the World Worker (Casa del Obrero Mundial in Spanish, COM) were weakened considerably by state repression. Syndicalist movements that were not suppressed also declined. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, this was the result of the "rise of the welfare state and the conditions of the long-term integration of labour in advanced capitalist economies". Faced with this decline, syndicalist organizations had three choices: They could stay true to their revolutionary principles and be marginalized, they could give up those principles in order to adapt to new conditions. Finally, they could disband or merge into non-syndicalist organizations, the IWW is an example of the first case. The French CGT, which according to van der Linden and Thorpe was no longer syndicalist after 1914, went the second route.^{[79][note 10]}

Fascism[edit]

Georges Sorel, a prominent revolutionary syndicalist of the era, played a role in shaping the views of Benito Mussolini and by extension the wider Italian fascist movement. In March 1921, Sorel wrote that Mussolini was "a man no less extraordinary than Lenin",^[81] after Sorel's death in 1922, Agostino Lanzillo, a one-time syndicalist leader who had become a fascist, wrote in the Italian fascist review Gerarchia, which was edited by Mussolini: "Perhaps fascism may have the good fortune to fulfill a mission that is the implicit aspiration of the whole oeuvre of the master of syndicalism: to tear away the proletariat from the domination of the Socialist party, to reconstitute it on the basis of spiritual liberty, and to animate it with the breath of creative violence. This would be the true revolution that would mold the forms of the Italy of tomorrow".^[82]

Spanish Civil War[edit]

The anarcho-syndicalist revolution during the Spanish Civil War resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly socialist organisational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to three years, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia and parts of the Levante. Much of Spain's economy was put under worker control—in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%.

Legacy[edit]

The CNT's eventual defeat and World War II led to the formerly prominent theory being repressed as the three nations where it had the most power were now under fascist control. Support for syndicalism never fully recovered to the height it enjoyed in the early 20th century.

See also[edit]

• Anarcho-syndicalism
• Council communism
• Georges Sorel
• Guild socialism
• Industrial democracy
• International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam (1907)
• National syndicalism
• Occupation of factories
• Sorelianism
• Soviet (council)
• Syndicalist Party
• Worker co-operative
• Workplace democracy

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Altena, Bert (2010). "Analysing Revolutionary Syndicalism: The Importance of Community". In Berry, David; Bantman, Constance. New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour, and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 180–220. 
• Avrich, Paul (1967). The Russian Anarchists. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 
• Bantman, Constance (2010). "From Trade Unionism to Syndicalisme Révolutionnaire to Syndicalism: The British Origins of French Syndicalism". In Berry, David; Bantman, Constance. New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour, and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 126–140. 
• Berry, David (2002). A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917–1945. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 
• Bock, Hans-Manfred (1993). Syndikalismus und Linkskommunismus von 1918 bis 1923: Ein Beitrag zur Sozial- und Ideengeschichte der frühen Weimarer Republik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. 
• Burgmann, Verity (1995). Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. 
• Crump, John (1993). Hatta Shûzô and Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan. New York: St. Martin's Press. 
• Darlington, Ralph (2006). "Revolutionary Syndicalist Opposition to the First World War: A Comparative Reassessment". Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire. 84 (4): 983–1003. 
• Darlington, Ralph (2008). Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism: An International Comparative Analysis. Aldershot: Ashgate. 
• Darlington, Ralph (2009). "Syndicalism and the Influence of Anarchism in France, Italy and Spain". Anarchist Studies. 17 (2): 29–54. 
• de Jong, Rudolf (1976). "Die Internationale Arbeiter-Assoziation (Anarcho-Syndikalisten) und der Faschismus". Arbeiterbewegung und Faschismus: der Februar 1934 in Österreich. Vienna: Europaverlag. pp. XXX–XXX. 
• Dubofsky, Melvyn (1969). We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. 
• Eley, Geoff (2002). Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. New York: Oxford University Press. 
• Gervasoni, Marco (2006). "L'invention du syndicalisme révolutionnaire en France (1903–1907)". Mil neuf cent: Revue d'histoire intellectuelle. 24: 57–71. 
• Hart, John M. (1990). "Revolutionary Syndicalism in Mexico". In van der Linden, Marcel; Thorpe, Wayne. Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective. Aldershot: Scolar Press. pp. 185–202. 
• Hirsch, Steven (2010). "Peruvian Anarcho-Syndicalism: Adapting Transnational Influences and Forging Counterhegemonic Practices, 1905–1930". In Hirsch, Steven; van der Walt, Lucien. Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution. Leiden/Boston: Brill. pp. 227–271. 
• Lehning, Arthur (1982). "Die Internationale Arbeiter-Assoziation (IAA): Ein Beitrag zur Theorie und Ideologie der anarchosyndikalistischen Internationale". Internationale Tagung der Historiker der Arbeiterbewegung: 16. Linzer Konferenz 1980. Vienna: Europaverlag. pp. 76–99. 
• Olssen, Erik (1992). "Review of Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective, edited by Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe". International Review of Social History. 37 (1): 107–109. 
• Persson, Lennart K. (1990). "Revolutionary Syndicalism in Sweden Before the Second World War". In van der Linden, Marcel; Thorpe, Wayne. Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective. Aldershot: Scolar Press. pp. 81–99. 
• Peterson, Larry (1981). "The One Big Union in International Perspective: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism 1900–1925". Labour/Le Travail. 7: 41–66. 
• Rosenthal, Anton (2011). "Radical Border Crossers: The Industrial Workers of the World and their Press in Latin America". Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe. 22 (2): 39–70. 
• Thompson, Ruth (1990). "Argentine Syndicalism: Reformism Before Revolution". In van der Linden, Marcel; Thorpe, Wayne. Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective. Aldershot: Scolar Press. pp. 167–183. 
• Thorpe, Wayne (1989). "The Workers Themselves": Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour, 1913–1923. Amsterdam: Kluwer. 
• Thorpe, Wayne (2001). "The European Syndicalists and War, 1914–1918". Contemporary European History. 10 (1): 1–24. 
• Thorpe, Wayne (2006). "El Ferrol, Rio de Janeiro, Zimmerwald, and Beyond: Syndicalist Internationalism, 1914–1918". Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire. 84 (4): 1005–1023. 
• Thorpe, Wayne (2010a). "Challenging the Cultural Legitimation of War: Internationalist Syndicalists in Europe 1914–18". Socialist History (37): 23–46. 
• Thorpe, Wayne (2010b). "Uneasy Family: Revolutionary Syndicalism in Europe from the Charte d'Amiens to World War I". In Berry, David; Bantman, Constance. New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour, and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 16–42. 
• Toledo, Edilene; Biondi, Luigi (2010). "Constructing Syndicalism and Anarchism Globally: The Transnational Making of the Syndicalist Movement in São Paulo, Brazil, 1895–1935". In Hirsch, Steven; van der Walt, Lucien. Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution. Leiden/Boston: Brill. pp. 363–393. 
• van der Linden, Marcel; Thorpe, Wayne (1990). "The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism". In van der Linden, Marcel; Thorpe, Wayne. Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective. Aldershot: Scolar Press. pp. 1–24. 
• van der Linden, Marcel (1998). "Second Thoughts on Revolutionary Syndicalism". Labour History Review. 63 (2): 182–196. 
• van der Walt, Lucien (2010). "Revolutionary Syndicalism, Communism and the National Question in South African Socialism, 1886–1928". In Hirsch, Steven; van der Walt, Lucien. Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution. Leiden/Boston: Brill. pp. 33–94. 

Further reading[edit]

• Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World, Quadrangle Books, 1969.
• William Z. Foster, "The Socialist and Syndicalist Movements in France," Industrial Worker, vol. 3, no. 1, whole 105 (March 23, 1911), pp. 1, 4.
• William Z. Foster, Syndicalism (with Earl Ford), Chicago, 1913.
• Lenny Flank (ed), IWW: A Documentary History, St Petersburg, Florida: Red and Black Publishers, 2007.
• Dan Jakopovich, Revolutionary Unionism: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, New Politics, vol. 11, no. 3 (2007).
• James Joll, The Anarchists, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980.
• Immanuel Ness, New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism, PM Press, 2014. ISBN 1604869569.
• James Oneal, Sabotage, or, Socialism vs. Syndicalism. St. Louis, Missouri: National Rip-Saw, 1913.
• David D. Robert, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism, University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
• Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice, London, 1938; AK Press, 2004.
• J. Salwyn Schapiro, Liberalism and The Challenge of Fascism, Social Forces in England and France (1815–1870),New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1949.
• Lucien van der Walt & Michael Schmidt, Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, AK Press, 2009.

External links[edit]

Wikisource has the text of the 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica article Syndicalism.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Syndicalism.

• The Association for Union Democracy.
• AnarchoSyndicalism.net.
• Rudolf Rocker. A major proponent of anarcho-syndicalism.
• General Strikes. Maps with locations where strikes have occurred; includes resource links.
• Small history of the UGT in Catalonia. Workers at the Center of Mataró and the 1888 Congress of the C/Talleres de Barcelona was born the UGT under the socialist ideals of people like Pablo Iglesias, Reoyo Toribio, Salvador Ferrer and many others in the problems that the workers had of that century.
• Syndicalism's lessons. Socialist Worker. April 22, 2015.