Syndicalism: a Critical Analysis, Part 1 of 3

Continued with: Part 2 & Part 3

 The ACF has never, despite what some of our critics may have suggested, made our criticisms of syndicalism, including its anarcho variety, a "distinguishing characteristic" (see Black Flag Issue 211) of our politics. In a world-wide ‘labour movement’ dominated by social democratic ideas and practice and thoroughly integrated into capitalism, our focus of attack has not been on the relatively tiny syndicalist and ‘alternative’ union structures which exist. Rather, our arguments have been against trade unionism and for working class self-organised struggle.

However, anarcho-syndicalism remains the majority current within class struggle anarchism and is, despite various splits and feuds within its international organisations, in a state of resurgence. Now, therefore, is a good time to present a critical analysis of the theory and practice of syndicalism.

Rather than separate theory and practice we will attempt to show how the behaviour of various syndicalist movements has been informed by its theoretical foundations and the political influences acting upon it. Syndicalism has been accused of ‘apoliticism’ and, indeed, a certain anti-politicicism has been a central feature of many syndicalist organisations. This is only half the story, however, and fails to take into consideration the fact that syndicalism has come under the influence of many political currents, not least anarchism, and that it should not be forgotten that these have included reformist socialism (particularly the French CGT), nationalism (notably the Italian UIL) and even monarchism (monarcho-syndicalism in turn of the century France)!

First we must look at the origins of syndicalism. "Syndicalism" is simply the French word for "unionism". It was the mass syndicat (or union) in France, the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), founded in 1895, which gave "syndicalism" the meaning it has today. The CGT was militant, de-centralised, initially sceptical of parliamentary participation and considered the workplace as the front-line of the class war. When such tactics developed in other countries, militants consciously used the term syndicalism to differentiate themselves from the openly reformist, social democratic Trade Unions. Syndicalist unions began to become a significant factor in the decade before the First World War, as both a reflection of the ongoing class struggle and as the result of the efforts of consciously ‘political’ minorities critical of ‘socialist’ parliamentarism. The early syndicalist movement was far from homogenous, politically or organisationally. In many countries the syndicalist movement developed through deliberate attempts to organise those workers who had been ignored by the established social democratic unions, particularly the unskilled and immigrant workforces (the experience of the Industrial Workers of the World is a good example of this), whilst in other countries, syndicalist unions were craft or trade based and organised highly skilled artisans (e.g. the CGT in France).

Amongst the political minorities attracted to the syndicalist method were the anarchists. Indeed, anarchists were amongst the earliest syndicalist organisers in many countries, notably in France, Spain and Argentina. The syndicalist movement was certainly attractive to many anarchists who, having seen their influence wane following the period of "propaganda by the deed" (the 1890s), saw in syndicalism’s combativity and distrust of parliamentary methods a ‘natural’ home for their politics. In some countries syndicalist unions were led by ideological anarchists and everywhere anarchist militants joined syndicalist organisations. Some anarchists, however, were uneasy about the identification of anarchism with unionism. Others questioned the syndicalist method itself. In Spain, where anarchism was to become closely identified with the syndicalist Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), often furious polemics ensued throughout the 1890s and 1910s between those anarchists, such as the anarchist communists grouped around the Tierra y Libertad journal, who felt the syndicalist methods were inherently reformist and a step backwards and those who believed that syndicalism offered anarchism a vehicle for reaching the masses.

Amongst the clearest critics of the identification of anarchism with syndicalism was the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta. In 1907, when syndicalism was drawing ever larger numbers of workers, including anarchist workers, to its ranks, Malatesta argued that, "Syndicalism, in spite of the declarations of its most ardent partisans, contains, by the very nature of its constitution, all the elements of degeneration which have corrupted the workers’ movement in the past. In fact, being a movement which proposes to defend the present interests of the workers, it must necessarily adapt itself to the living conditions of the present" (Les Temps Nouveaux, 1907).

Other anarchist militants held strong reservations about the syndicalist method. The French anarchist metalworker Benoit Liothier expressed the fear, held by many, that syndicalism would tend to economism and therefore to reformism. "Syndicalism cannot be revolutionary if it cannot be political...whether we like it or not the economic struggle is tied to the political struggle." (Archives Departmentales de la Loire, 1914). Like many anarchists of his generation, however, Liothier eventually became a militant of the CGT.

That anarchists identified with syndicalism and were often at the forefront of syndicalist organisation is of little surprise. Emergent syndicalism appeared to offer tactics which related libertarian, direct-action orientated ideas to the every day struggle of the workers. Anarchist workers wanted to be where the conflict with the bosses (and, therefore, the state) was at its most acute and for anarchists to have dismissed syndicalism at this historical point would undoubtedly have marginalised them further. For many anarchists the solution to any perceived problems within syndicalism could be solved by encouraging its tendency towards anti-politicism and its combatitive spirit. This meant a total engagement with syndicalist unionism and the birth of anarcho-syndicalism. Many of these people were dismissive of the idea of creating separate anarchist organisations and saw in the union the means and the end of the anarchist revolution.

Against this ‘fusion’ some anarchists argued for the maintenance of separate anarchist organisations which would be active both inside and outside the unions. Malatesta, amongst others, advocated such a tactic, as did the anarchists who became known as "Platformists" during the 1920s. A fear, which was well founded, was that anarcho-syndicalism would become dominated by the syndicalist part of the equation to the detriment of a clear revolutionary perspective which related to all aspects of working class life, not just the factory or workshop.

The relationship between the anarcho-syndicalists and the ‘revolutionary’ syndicalists varied from country to country. Many ‘revolutionary’ syndicalists rejected even the ‘anti-political’ politics of the anarchists and saw in syndicalism the form and the content of revolution. They created a syndicalist ideology, at the pinnacle of which was the union organised General Strike which would usher in the new society. For some syndicalists the General Strike assumed an almost mythical significance and replaced the idea of violent revolution, which was considered unrealistic. For ‘revolutionary’ syndicalist ideologues the union replaced the party and was identified with the class as a whole. A desire to organise all workers, regardless of political or religious belief, led to ‘revolutionary’ syndicalists attempting to marginalise anarcho-syndicalists in order to appeal to workers who actually remained tied to social democracy.

Whilst this anti-politicism led many of the ‘revolutionary’ syndicalists to a pronounced anti-statism, it did not stop others from entering into alliances with ‘revolutionary’ parties and politicians. Although politics were unwelcome in the syndical organisation itself this did not mean that ‘revolutionary’ syndicalism was not involved in politics.

Whilst the Italian ‘revolutionary’ syndicalists flirting with extreme nationalism from 1914 onwards, demanding that Italy join the imperialist bloodbath (a demand totally opposed, to their great credit, by the anarcho-syndicalists of the Union Sindicale Italiana) is probably the most graphic example of syndicalist political alliances, many others existed.

In Norway the pre-war ‘Revolutionary’ syndicalist "fagopposition" (union opposition), for example, was closely identified with the left wing of social democracy whilst in the United States the industrial unionist (the North American equivalent of syndicalist) Industrial Workers of the World were for the first three years of their existence (1905-1908) riven with open political rivalry between the Socialist Party of America and the Socialist Labour Party. In Ireland the syndicalistic Irish Transport and General Workers Union was led by people who had been or still were active members of socialist parties and Irish syndicalism, despite its militancy, rarely exhibited the anti-statism and anti-party sentiment of other syndicalist movements.

Often ‘revolutionary’ syndicalists appeared to be simply impatient with the stodgy Second International version of socialism that dominated the Left and were not against ‘revolutionary parties’ per se. The mass defection of ‘revolutionary’ syndicalists to Bolshevism in the period immediately following the Russian Revolution bears witness to this. Collaboration with the bourgeoisie was not confined to the nominally apolitical ‘revolutionary’ wing of syndicalism, however. An interesting example of anarcho-syndicalism being found on the wrong side of the class barricade, twenty years before the infamous CNT involvement in the Spanish government, is the experience of Mexico.

During the first twenty years of the 20th century Mexico was engulfed in revolutionary turmoil. Various ‘constitutionalist’ (i.e. democratic) capitalist factions vied for power whilst attempting to overthrow the dictatorship of General Porfirio Diaz . Meanwhile the Agrarian (landless peasant) movement of Emiliano Zapata and the emerging urban working class attempted to defend their own interests amidst the chaos. The Agrarians engaged in guerrilla activity against the various ‘revolutionary’ governments with the aim of reclaiming and defending the land of the indigenous population from the landowners. During the years 1906 to 1915 the Partido Liberal Mexicano (P.L.M.) played a leading in role in attempting to bring together Agrarian and proletarian revolt. Beginning from an advanced left liberal-democratic position the P.L.M., under the influence of the Magon brothers, developed into an anarchist communist organisation with its own guerrilla units involved in the expropriation of land in the Baja California region and leading strikes in Veracruz, amongst other areas. The P.L.M. called for "Tierra y Libertad" (Land and Freedom), the immediate expropriation of the landlords and bosses and the abolition of the state.

In 1912 the anarcho-syndicalist Casa del Obrero Mundial (House of the World Worker) was formed and rapidly attracted the urban workers of Mexico City to its ranks. Yet, within three years the anarcho-syndicalists were organising Red Battalions to fight in defence of the Mexican state! Although the Casa emerged with a typical anti-politicism and a desire to concentrate on economic struggle several factors led it to give support to one bourgeois faction, the Constitutionalist forces of Venustiano Carranza, against the Agrarians and their P.L.M. allies. Firstly, the anarcho-syndicalists viewed the industrial proletariat as the organised vanguard of the social revolution, in spite of the fact that they constituted a tiny minority of the Mexican working population. This vanguard, they argued, had to be developed and expanded as rapidly as possible and the anarcho-syndicalists sought what they hoped would be the best conditions for this. Secondly, the anarcho-syndicalists considered the Agrarian movement as an essentially reactionary one, committed to turning back the clock, and rejecting the ‘advances’ in technology and understanding that capitalism had brought. They pointed to the Zapatista’s "religiosity" and general ‘backwardness’ as proof of their danger to the ‘advanced’ sections of the working class. Finally, and most importantly, the anarcho-syndicalists believed that the progressive, democratic bourgeois state which was offering the Casa freedom to organise (and in fact was actually encouraging the Casa to organise!) should be defended against ‘reaction’, Agrarianist or anti-constitutionalist.

After the anarcho-syndicalist Red Battalions had played their part in ‘saving’ the Mexican state, the inevitable happened. In the spring of 1916 the Constitutionalist government turned on the Casa, disbanded the Red Battallions and forcibly closed down the syndicates following the second of two General Strikes that year. The failure of the anarcho-syndicalists to recognise the class nature of the state, despite all their verbal anti-statism, had led them to take sides against genuinely revolutionary movements.

Without doubt the high-point of syndicalism was the period between (roughly) 1895 and 1914. In this period the only current, in the workers movement on an international level, to offer an alternative to mainstream social democracy was syndicalism It is of course possible to argue that much of syndicalism was in fact social democratic in content if not in form.

However, despite Leninist claims to the contrary, this was far from the end of the story and the revolutionary wave which engulfed the world following the 1917 Russian Revolution also saw a ‘revival’ of syndicalism following the four years of world war. Syndicalism now, however, had two new rivals, Bolshevism and council or left communism.

Bolshevism’s triumph in Russia sent shock waves throughout the workers movement. Social Democratic parties everywhere developed would-be Bolshevik factions. These factions sooner or later split from the old parties and formed Communist Parties modelled on the Russian example. Many of the very earliest Communist Parties, however, emerged from the syndicalist, anarcho-syndicalist and anarchist movements. The CGT in France developed a powerful communist-syndicalist faction; the IWW in the United States was wracked by in-fighting between dyed-in-the-wool industrial unionists and budding Bolsheviks; many of Britain’s foremost pre-war syndicalists such as Tom Mann quickly gravitated towards the embryonic Communist Party. Impressed by the dynamism of Bolshevism and its ostensible break with social democracy, former syndicalists constituted the early rank and file of such parties everywhere. Amongst anarchists also, Bolshevism possessed a magnet-like quality, not least because it was associated with the Soviets, the council organisations which seemed to offer an alternative to state organisation.

When news came through that everything in the Socialist Fatherland was not rosy and as Bolshevism attempted to create both a Third International of political parties and a Red Trade Union International under their strict control, dissension began to emerge. Many of the earliest critics of Moscow were not syndicalists however but Marxists previously involved with socialist political parties. These militants began to question the Trade Union and Parliamentary policy of the Bolsheviks and their closest impersonators. Groups such as the Workers Socialist Federation in Britain, the Communist Workers Party of Germany and similar ‘left’ communists (meaning ‘left’ of the Third International) saw in the experience of the revolutionary workers councils (or Soviets) in Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1919 the form, as they saw it, that the new struggles would take. After coming out against the Bolsheviks and attempting to create their own International in 1921 (the original 4th International!) this political current became known as council communism. Council communist organisations only took anything approaching mass form in Germany although they also existed in countries such as Holland, France, Belgium and Britain.

At the same time the international syndicalist movement began to re-organise itself through the creation of the I.W.A.(International Working Mens’ Association). In 1922 the syndicalist movement could still claim large unions such as the Unione Sindicale Italiana (500,000 members), the Confederacao Geral do Trabalho in Portugal (150,000) and the Freie Arbeiter Union in Germany (120,000). They were joined by the Spanish Conferacion Nacional de Trabajo (CNT) in 1923. By 1923, however, the Leninist/Stalinist ice-age was beginning and between that and the emergence of fascism, syndicalism was facing a difficult period, to say the least. Within 10 years the only mass syndicalist union left was the CNT. The others were now reduced to groups of militants scattered in exile or living in a semi-underground condition. By 1936 all that was left were small propaganda groups in various countries, a few minority unions and the 2 million strong CNT about to play a historic role in the Spanish Civil War and Revolution.

Continue in Organise! 47 with SYNDICALISM: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS, Part 2 of 3
The Spanish Revolution - The End of Anarchism?