Questions about FAUD

I'm under the impression, and may very well be wrong, that the FAUD , since it was built from factory groups, was closer to industrial unionism that pure craft.

The first type of unions was the organisation of craftsmen, they started their (known) strikes in times like 1329 in Breslau, taylors 1389 in Konstanz or coalminers 1469 in Altenberg. 1791 craftsmen went on strike in Hamburg and 1896/97 an 11 week stike of the habour workers became a generalstrike. So there is a long history of craftsunions.

In May 1897 there was the founding and the first "Kongress der lokal Organisierten oder der auf Grund des Vertrauensmännersystems zentralisierten Gewerkschaften Deutschlands“, the countrywide unions of localists. In September 1901 this localists unions took a new name „Freie Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften“ (FVdG). (Free Association of german Unions)

The "Freie Vereinigung", still had mostly craftsunions (for a lot of professions there have been/are still (!) requirements like a 3 year education and a certificate, otherwise you are not allowed to do this job) not because of ideology but because of the structure of the profesions of the membership.

The bigger countrywide unions had been the socialdemocratic "central organisation" and the christian unions. They had a strong influence in the coal mining and metall industry (construction was still not organised as industy but by different crafts and their unions). The "Freie Vereinigung" was prosecuted and banned because of her antimilitarism since the beginn of the war, while the other unions was still allowed. With the end of the WWI the unorganized workers got radical, specially the young coal miners in the Rhein/Ruhr area. A lot of them joined new founded local unions or the Freie Vereinigung.

In September 1919 five local unions meged in Rheinland-Westfalen and formed the "Freien Arbeiter-Union". Beside the 99 local groups of the "Freien Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften" in this area, the following local unions took part "Allgemeiner Arbeiter-Verband", "Allgemeine Bergarbeiter-Gewerkschaft", Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union (Essen) and Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiter Union (Düsseldorf).

At the 12. congress of the Freie Vereinigung, in December 1919 in Berlin, about 112.000 members was represented by 109 delegates. This congress is known as the founding congress of the FAUD, because the Freie Vereinigung renamed itself countrywide to „Freie Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands“ (Syndikalisten). From this time the FAUD moved into an industrial union, they tried to organize 10 coutrywide Industrieal Federations but could only establish five. .

Later some groups split, went to other unions or partys or took part in founding the AAU together with a split of the KPD. The history of the AAU is like a tree of splits and re-splits. Rocker described the situation that on every raining day there was a new idea and a new split... Two former IWW organizers ended in a "national-bolshewist" split.

As far as I know the FAUD did not take part in legal factory elections (Betriebsratswahlen) , this was done in the late 20th by some unions in some regions and it was a big conflict. The background was that (like all radical organisations) the FAUD lost a lot of members and some unions thought it could help to survive and grow again when they take part in factory elections. Additional in this time some FAUD unions got the title of "nicht tariffähig" by coutry courts which means to be not able to sign contracts. Background was that some judges said, the emloyers could not trust the FAUD unions because the are not really willing to follow the rules and want instead the social revolution.

We don't know a lot about the results because the history of the FAUD was mostly lost until the 1990th.

There have been more or less mainly craft unions until this time in germany. As I wrote, some areas was not industrialised the time after WWI so it was a transformation to industrial unions depending of the branch and the development there.
The question craft - or industrial unions was not the question of the FAUD and it was not the difference to the unionists or council commis.

Edit:
I was going to respond to this but
kc already did

There was the Föderation Kommunistischer Anarchisten Deutschlands (FKAD). From what little i can find about them in the libcom library and elsewhere, it looks like they had good relationships with FAUD

http://www.geocities.com/syndikalismus_im_laendle/synengl.htm
is this it?

Gilles Dauvé and Denis Authier discuss the FAUD in their book 'The Communist Left in Germany 1918-1921'.

This section is probably most relevant (I know this is a long cut and paste, but I don't believe it is on line):

"Revolutionary Syndicalism

The rupture (in the USA and other countries) between the official socialist movement and a more leftist movement with a Marxist orientation, as was the case in the split between the reformist Socialist Party of America and DeLeon’s Socialist Labor Party, was characteristic of a period when the proletariat was incapable of unity. The alternative was between obtaining reforms and “preparing” for the revolution: in the first case, there was integration into capital; in the second, a break with the real practice of the workers. This explains why the syndicalist perspective was the only one which thrived: it established the unity of immediate struggles and revolution. For the syndicalist perspective there is continuity between: 1) the immediate struggle, with trade union organization (by trade or, like the IWW, by industry); 2) the revolution, with the industrial organizations taking power; 3) socialism, with a social organization on this basis. Such an illusion has the merit of being coherent. The groups (DeLeon) which tried to unite with these syndicalists in order to penetrate the working class failed, because, by definition, this form of action rejected any kind of structure which was not formed “by the workers themselves” at the point of production.

The “syndicalists” were divided into two major currents. The first was a survival from the 19th century workers movement and of the “workers separatism”4 which rejected both the communist movement and capitalism for the same reason, preferring instead to deal with the labor question in its own way, in terms of its exclusively worker-based organization. It was connected to the Proudhonist tradition, which was not so much an ideological tendency as it was a theorization of workers aspirations; its contemporary analogue is the politics of self-management.5 This current, which was predominant in the early days of the CGT, entered into crisis after 1906 (when the general strike for the eight-hour day failed) due to the expanding industrialization which liquidated its base in trade- and skill-based organizations. French revolutionary syndicalism never underwent a factional struggle between moderates and radicals: the revolutionary tendency, by virtue of its own development, was transformed in a reformist direction. In 1914, there was no surprise: “For several years, Griffuelhes, Pouget and Merrheim had discouraged antipatriotic action.”6

The second current was much more modern and was inseparable from large industry. The IWW was the organization of the unskilled, Taylorized labor and the unemployed. This organization did not decay like the CGT, but was destroyed as an active movement. The trade unions of the CIO would come to occupy the positions which the IWW could not, because, as a hybrid movement, the IWW simultaneously wanted revolutionary action and an organization of all wage workers on an economic basis. The shop stewards, 7 on the other hand, were the organizations of workers delegates, often skilled, whose trade unions had not defended their privileges during the war. They often used original means in organizing to obtain the satisfaction of their demands, but their struggle was not revolutionary. Rather than preventing an autonomous organization of the workers against capital, they filled a vacuum abandoned by the trade unions.8 Germany combined the first and second currents of revolutionary syndicalism in an original synthesis, which would be adapted to events under pressure from the workers, and this development would be accentuated as the positions of the SPD and the ADGB drove the workers towards more leftist organizations.

The drift towards the more radical groups (USPD, KPD, syndicalists) would create a new conception of organization: unionism. At the beginning of 1919, the metal workers union, which, with 1,240,000 members and comprising 1/5 of all organized workers, was the leading German trade union, elected new leaders sympathetic to the USPD. During the war, its minority had already voted for a proposal, which was defeated by 77 votes to 44, to withhold its dues from the ADGB, whose patriotism it denounced.9 The Mannheim Accord of 1906 (cf. Chapter 2) had expired. But the ADGB responded by getting rid of its opponents: it would reintegrate the RO opposition and exclude the communists. In Halle, for example, where almost all the trade unions were led by communists, the local trade union committee fused with the council organization at the beginning of 1921; the ADGB immediately provoked a trade union split.10 In 1919, however, the KPD’s lack of a precise position on the trade union question at its founding congress led to an absence of relations between communists and trade union organs during the first half of the year, although the situation varied from region to region. “In Hamburg and Bremen, the communists attacked Legien’s trade union offices, seized their funds and distributed them to unemployed workers; the workers did not so much as lift a finger in defense of ‘their’ organization. The conference of the northern German sections of the KPD (August 1919) ruled that the members of the KPD must leave the ADGB.”11 It was only at the end of 1919, and thus after a series of defeats, that the purged KPD would adopt the orientation of conquering the trade unions, in which the USPD “had already conquered the leadership position in the legal trade union opposition”.12 Not much was accomplished in this regard, and the (right wing) KPD was not in touch with the spontaneous tendencies of the workers.

As often happened, once the revolution was over, the workers joined the most radical organizations which were, or appeared to be, correct, or created new ones, which slowly became counterrevolutionary if they survived into a prolonged period of “calm”. The rupture took place between a pre-existing tendency from before the revolution and the other, more recently produced tendency, which could not survive after the revolutionary defeat. The same process would take place in the communist party.

The FVDG broke the radical front by opposing the renovation of the General Union of Miners, destroyed in May 1919, and turned to the creation of an organization on the principles of revolutionary syndicalism in the Rhineland-Westphalia region, where it was strongest: the Freie Arbeiter Union (Rhineland-Westphalia) (Free Workers Union) was founded at the Düsseldorf Congress on September 15-16, 1919. The very name, FAU, was a compromise between anarchism (Freie: free) and unionism (Union). Indeed, besides the members of the post-November 1918 reconstituted FVDG, local unionist organizations sympathetic to the KPD also attended the congress (the Essen AAU, the General Union of Miners). The opposition of the two tendencies was clearly defined: the syndicalists appeared as “dogmatists” who wanted their 1906 program to be adopted. At that point, the differences revolved around organization by trade, an article of faith for classical revolutionary syndicalists, or by factory. A compromise was reached: in theory, organization by trades was adopted, but in practice the organization was based on what actually existed (organization of miners by shafts, and the others by factories). All political parties were condemned except the KPD. The FAU (R-W) would remain a coalition of organizations until the creation of the FAUD and the AAU.13

The FAUD was founded at the XIIth Congress of the FVDG in December 1919. This new name reflected the adherence of the various locals of the FAU, born since May, to the FVDG: the FAU of Rhineland-Westphalia, discussed above, was by far the most important. The organization had spread throughout Germany (FAUD, D: Deutschlands) and must have had approximately 200,000 members at the time. The left unionist opposition was weaker at that time and the FAUD returned to classical anarchosyndicalism, under the influence of Kropotkin, filtered through R. Rocker, the ideologist of the movement. It called itself the FAUD(S) to distinguish itself (S: Syndicalist). It broke with all political parties, declared itself against the dictatorship of the proletariat, for not being a dictatorship of “the whole class” “from the bottom up”, and was in favor of non-violence as a matter of principle. Its leadership was to disapprove of many of the revolutionary actions in which its rank and file would participate in 1920-1921. “Revolutionary syndicalism” (=FAUD(S)) was there to decree the general strike of all workers (proletarians), so it said: this strike would paralyze the economy and the bourgeoisie, and the trade unions would take affairs into their own hands and would organize the society of “the free and equal producers”.

The FAUD(S) was led by a central committee of old syndicalists, at whose head were R. Rocker and F. Kater, who defended a pacifist and anti-revolutionary syndicalism. They had been the first to proclaim the slogan of a united front, inviting the Spartacists and independent socialists, already in 1918, to join a “social-political” front. They would even continue to follow this policy in 1921, issuing invitations to the USPD as well as to the KPD/VKPD. In parallel with the Levi tendency, the German syndicalists adopted the same “anti-putschist” positions during the course of the March-April 1920, and March 1921 events. Like the Levists, the central committee of the FAUD(S) would characterize the attacks which the left communists (of the KPD and KAPD) carried out against the trains carrying arms to Poland during the summer of 1920 as “romanticism”.14 As a delegate from the Ruhr declared, requesting that the term “syndicalist” be abandoned: “the syndicalists are not revolutionary enough in the eyes of the Ruhr miners.”15

In the next period, the FAUD split into three principle tendencies. The leadership, now in the minority, upheld anarchosyndicalism in its original purity. It tried to set up a trade union international to rival the Communist International: the “IWA”. The IWW, the shop stewards and the CNT, however, tried to join the Communist International, through its affiliate the Red Trade Union International, founded in July of 1921. But the CI’s policies repelled them, since it wanted the traditional trade unions to join the RTUI, as well as to promote reformist struggles using more aggressive slogans and methods. If the IWA, founded at the end of 1922, would only have an ephemeral impact, by taking advantage of the RTUI’s opportunism, it at least managed to detour numerous revolutionary workers into a dead end. The primary activity of this new IWA would consist of denouncing the “communists” who were trying to shift the workers struggle away from its true terrain: the workers struggle. The behavior of the Communist International, at both the national and international levels, helped to push the revolutionaries—since at least some of these workers organizations showed a tendency towards radical actions and positions—into the arms of the reformists. It reinforced tendencies towards confusion and conciliation, which were strong in some trade unions (CNT), instead of extirpating or eliminating them.16

Equally insignificant, the second tendency was grouped around the Düsseldorf journal Die Schöpfung (The Creation), characterized above all by its activism and its “anti-dogmatism”. Some of its adherents judged that they “had to vote despite their principles”. Others, in September 1921, elaborated a program of action which involved issuing an ultimatum to the government and the trade unions, whose rejection would lead to the general strike. Its members also created “communes” and anarchist schools, etc.

The most important tendency, whose further development is most noteworthy, was the so-called “FAU of Gelsenkirchen” (FAU(G)), whose nucleus was formed by former members of the USPD and the General Union of Miners. It only superficially adopted the syndicalist ideology, and became the economic organization of the VKPD, while retaining a certain degree of autonomy (concerning the VKPD, cf. Chapter 13). It left the FAUD in November 1920, and had 110,000 members at that time, primarily in the FAU of the Rhineland-Westphalia region and the General Union of Miners of Central Germany and Upper Silesia. After its founding in December 1920, the VKPD acknowledged it as a revolutionary factor. The FAU(G) admitted, for its part, that many of its members were members of the VKPD. In September of 1921, the FAU(G) fused with two other trade union organizations which had existed since 1918 to form the General Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers of Germany (Council Organization), with 168,000 members.17 It would be the only German trade union to join the RTUI. However, after years of opposition, the VKPD and the CI would force it to dissolve into various reactionary trade unions in 1925.

The phenomenon of the unionen reflected a situation in which the proletarians were neither capable of nor wanted to attack capital, but refused to carry out purely economistic actions in the usual corporativist manner: this explains their anti-trade union reaction and their efforts to unify themselves in the unionen. Of course, since the assault was not undertaken with a firm resolve, reformism, no matter how strong it may have been, was condemned to failure. These new organizations would be eclipsed or would fall into dependence on another form of syndicalism, with apolitical aspirations but much more concerned with fighting against the Marxists than in driving the workers actions forward, and which would sabotage local and regional attempts at unification with unions inspired by left communists, who were judged to be “authoritarian” and violent. This narrow-minded spirit was a revelation of a competitive attitude typical of politics. Unionism would develop as a reaction against classical “revolutionary” syndicalism as much as against the ADGB.

4. A. Kriegel, Le pain et les roses, PUF, 1968, p. 37 et seq., and P. Ansart, Naissance de l’anarchisme, PUF, 1970.
5. For example, the case of LIP in France: cf. Négation No. 3, and LIP: Bilan et tentative de dépassement, Paris, 1973. In English, see LIP and the Self-Managed Counter-Revolution, Black & Red, Detroit, 1975; now available online at the John Gray website (www.geocities.com/~johngray/lip.htm).
6. Lefranc, Le syndicalisme en France sous la IIIe République, Payot, 1967, p. 190 et seq. Cf. also the article by Tilly and Shorter on the strikes in France, Annales, July-August 1973.
7. Cf. the introduction to MacLean, The War after the War, Socialist Reproduction, London, 1974.
8. Révolution Internationale, n.d., No. 8.
9. La question syndicale…, p. 7.
10. Ibid., pp. 48-49.
11. Ibid., p. 8.
12. Ibid., p. 9.
13. The text adopted by the congress appears in Bock, Document VI.
14. La question syndicale…, p. 16.
15. Bock, p. 57.
16. La question syndicale…, pp. 17-19.
17. Its extensive statutes are reproduced in Bock, p. 367."

Devrim