anarcho-syndicalism

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the question. Do you mean that advocates of anarcho-syndicalism, or A-S groups, have "kept up with the times"?

I belong to an anarcho-syndicalist group, Workers Solidarity Alliance, and I can only try to answer this question in terms of our group's perspective. However, I am writing as only one member. When WSA was formed in the 1980s, we tried to develop an understanding of what anarcho-syndicalism might mean today, in the USA.

As I see it, libertarian syndicalism is not a worldview but a revolutionary strategy. The basic idea is that the working class develops mass organizations that are directly controlled -- self-managed -- by the members. This self-management of mass organizations, self-management of mass struggles, prefigures a society in which self-management itself is general. And in developing a broader solidarity, the movement prefigures a society that has structures to facilitate human solidarity, not competition and oppression.

But in my view, class struggle spills outside the workplace, and into the broader community. The working class also needs a way of addressing broad social issues that affect the working class, and in fact needs to project a perspective on the way society should be run, because this also prefigures the working class as an alternative power in society. This led the WSA to advocate community as well as labor organizing as part of the strategy. You can think of developing self-managed community organizations or self-managed mass struggles in the community (housing, public transit, whatever) as a kind of community syndicalism. This is an extension of the early syndicalist concept, which was focused on the workplace struggle.

Another way in which we tried to adapt our perspective to American reality of the late 20th century was to develop an understanding of the non-class forms of oppression, such as race, gender oppression, gay oppression, and of how struggles in these areas can be related to the class struggle. I don't think we were completely successful necessarily, but I think this is something that needs to be done.

Looking at the actual bureaucratic unionism of the AFL-CIO, and the low level of struggle, the relative weakness of the working class, and the fact this is expressed in not a high level of radical class consciousness, we decided that at present it would make most sense to advocate a flexible, two-pronged strategy, one that emphasized the development of autonomous rank and file shop organization, independent of the bureaucracy, in AFL-CIO unions, not thinking in terms of simply changing leaders in office, but of changing the nature of the movement, maybe reforming how local unions are run, etc, or where feasible developing mass actions outside the union; and, as a second direction, the development of self-managed forms of unionism, more militant in rejecting "labor/capital partnership", outside the AFL-CIO.

In both cases the idea is to encourage more in the way of collective action and solidarity, so as to encourage development of people as actively involved, develop a sense of the power to change things, develop cohesion and self-confidence in the working class. This viewpoint assumes that the development of the working class towards a revolutionary consciousness in the USA is a protracted process.

WSA is itself not a union or proto-union. WSA is a political group. What follows is my own view. I think that
a political organization is needed, to group the people who've learned lessons and become revolutionaries through various struggles and experiences, to provide visibility for revolutionary left-libertarian perspectives (thru things like publications), to help activists think strategically and work together on common projects, and to take advantage of the fact that people can be more effective when they aren't isolated. In my view such an organization should strive to be an organized group of activists and organizers who are involved in mass struggles and in building mass organizations that are self-managed, to the degree we're able to influence things.

I think a political organization is needed because mass organizations are of various sorts, it wouldn't be sufficient to think just in terms of a single union, for example, as there are struggles mounted thru various unions, through community organizations, there are struggles outside the workplace as well as in.

It is possible then to think of libertarian syndicalism as a strategy, one that is part of the strategic orientation of a political organization, rather than thinking of syndicalism as embodied solely in, say, a particular union.

t.

fighting the boss could never go outa style

although the scenery has changed a little bit since the old timey labor movement (new pop artists, new industry, some different national borders), humans still must sell themselves for wages, anarcho-syndicalism still fights the wage system (not the only focus however). Given that, i'd say it has kept with the times quite well.

can you give evidence that it hasn't? or are you suggesting a/s is strictly tied only building a/s unions?

i see you're from (englsih speaking)canada, so, i suspect, many of the same conditions exist by you as by us down in the US.

as i have to go to work now, i'd be interested in continuing this discussion, particularly as it relates to north america.

Well I don't know of anyone in the USA or Canada who are working on an explicitly anarcho-syndicalist union. The only thing that comes close in the English speaking world is the Solidarity Federation, and they are really solid, but also small and in the beginning stages. However there are anarcho syndicalist unions still alive in Spain, France and Italy. In Spain two very large unions claim to be anarcho syndicalist, the CGT and the CNT, as well there is the 'reformist' SAC.

Having said that there are plenty of anarchist projects that are what could be called 'syndicalist'. Lots of anarchists are in the IWW, as well the WSA (the workers solidarity alliance) is involved in various labour projects.

You'll probably need to define what you mean by "workerism." If you mean the reduction of class politics to the labor movement, the politics of the workplace, then even the CNT of the '30s wasn't "workerist" by that definitnion since they saw the need for neighborhood organization, dealing with a worker's whole life. I've sometimes run into anarchists who seem to mean by "workerism" an orientation to worker struggle, to people as workers. If that's the meaning, I see no reason to abandon it.

t.

what would those workerist roots be? if you knew anything you'd know that anarcho syndicalists sought to bring community and workplace struggles together, infact many people criticised the CNT for not being workerist enough.

Mole can correct me if he thinks I'm wrong on this but I think this is a perfect example of left communist jargon being warmed over and appropriated by North American Post-Left anarchists.

What he means by workerist is an ideology that orients itself towards workers as an agent of social change and considers the workplace to be somewhere worthy of revolutionary agitation.

You'll see AJODA, Chuck0, insurrectionists, and crimthinc types use the word 'workerist' basically to describe those who orient themselves towards the working class at all.

I call myself a workerist all the time. As much as I disagree with anarcho-Syndicalism as theory and praxis at least syndicalists are fighting the right fight and have exactly the right intentions.

I'm glad you're canadian. I thought all the anarcho-wingnuts lived in the U.S. Sharing the pain makes it more palatable.

comrade oldmoleshadow, what are you driving at?

Probably driving at his parents suburban home on his way back from his university.

ol' mole hasn't answer the question i asked, What does he mean by "workerism"? His most recent post makes his intervention here even more puzzling. What does "workerism" have to do with Taylorism? In the WWI era, it's true that opposition to Taylorism was a partial motivation for worker control and syndicalist currents, in opposition to Taylorism. I've never encountered any discussion of Taylorism in relation to the CNT in the '20s and '30s.

Taylorism was part of the process that created the coordinator class in the period between the 1890s and 1930s. The book "Five Dollar Day" shows how the transformation of the labor process at Ford Motor Co. between 1910 and 1917 led to a massive expansion of the cadres of engineers and managers and time-study experts -- this class was needed in order to carry out a program to jack up the rate of exploitation of labor. Taylorism, by sub-dividing work and re-defining jobs, creates an elaborate hierarchical scheme that removes conceptualization and decision-making, as much as feasible, from workers and puts this into the hands of the new professional/managerial hierarchy.

Like the Marxists, the CNT didn't have a good analysis of this class, the coordinators. Some of the practices in the worker-managed industries, such as appointing engineers and former bosses to technical committees with significant role in the running of industries, and the failure to rebuild the worker shop steward committees after the existing shop committee became the admin council for the expropriated industry, showed a lack of appreciation of the dangers of the emergence of a coordinatorist elite and the need to redefine jobs and so on. The empowerment of the working class is a protracted process, not just a question of changing the sign on the door. However, it was wartime, and very often the workers themselves did take over roles performed formerly by coordinators.

ol' mole:

yeah, but, again, you don't tell us what you mean by "workerism." Nor do you explain what "dissolution of the working class itself" might mean. Perhaps this is an obscure "post-left" way of formulating what I hinted at above, the need to redefine the jobs, and train workers, so that the coordinatorist hierarchy is not preserved. The idea should be to make workers masters of production, but that is surely a "workerist" idea.

t.

Syndicalism has not "kept up with the times." Primarily because most of those who have inherited Syndicalism refuse to engage in an understanding of the contemporary economy.

As so one mentioned Syndicalism is more like a strategy or tactic than an ideology. If this is the case then naturally you are going to be out of step if you are seriously propogatingg early 20th century solutions to 21st century problems.

p.s. I have always identified as an anarcho-syndicalist.

What do anarcho-syndicalist think of the often repeated argument that anarcho-syndicalism (or syndicalism or council communism) was a movement of the past cos it was predicated on manual, highly skilled, largely blue collar labour of workers who had some autonomy at work and a lot of control over their workpace and workplace? (I think this is what ol' mole might be getting at by 'workerism', which means to me the idolisation of this type of blue collar manual male-dominated labour).

The argument is that after c. the early 1920s capital, thru the imposition of Taylorism and Fordism, destroyed and broke up the power of highly skilled labour working in small workshops and replaced it with unskilled or semi-skilled assembly line work in huge factories. Assembly line workers were far less into the anarcho-syndicalist praxis of self-management cos they did not want so much to control or self-manage their shitty workplace, and their boring and repetitive work, unlike the skilled workers who often took pride and love in their work, and thus wanted to self-manage it and dump the bosses off their back. So they explain the decline of syndicalism by a change in class composition.

(This is a very rough paraphrasing of the argument by people like Sergio Bologna in his famous Class Composition article. Bologna is more talking about the German council commies but he does mention the IWW. I think, perhaps, his comments apply to anarcho-syndicalism too? Or maybe not, i'm not sure about the class composition of anarcho-syndicalist unions).

I'm not suggesting i agree 100% with this argument, but i'd be interested to see responses to it. cheers.

When I was in London last year I had the opportunity to chat with members of SolFed, and what I found interesting was what Martinh told me about even the CNT in Spain realises now that it can't act as a union in the traditional sense anymore, and argues for mass assemblies to control the struggle. I have seen the same position on here from other anarchosyndicalists.

It would be interesting to know what theoretical developments this is causing in anarchosyndicalism. If the union is no longer the unitary organisation of the working class, as the assembly is, what is the role of the anarchosyndicalist union? Do they see that this is just a period, and in the future it will be possible to build up there unions as the mass unitary organisation of the class again, or do they recognise that there has been a more fundamental change?

The WSA in America also seems to recognise this:

I think that this recognition is something that is something that may come quicker to anarchosyndicalists in countries, like the UK, or the States, which don't have the tradition of syndicalist unions will come to this realisation earlier.

It will be interesting to see what conclusions they draw. I think that some of the things that have been coming out of KRAS in Russia are very interesting in this respect.

Devrim

I would argue that increasing workers' control of their own workplace has the potential to remain an attractive proposition even if the actual work done is boring and unnecessary. Workers' control could bring about more pleasant working conditions, shorter hours, more breaks, less monitoring from management and higher wages. Miners in the NUM used to manage all their own rotas etc in some places, and would all immediately down tools if any management representative came to observe them. I believe the london underground 'workmates' group has engaged in similar struggles over conditions of work. These are hardly jobs in which workers' are creating some beautiful craft that they fell proud of and want to control for that reason, necessary though they are.

I see a-s as the control of struggle by mass assemblies, except that these assemblies are linked by organisational structures so that they can coordinate their actions more effectively, and hopefully act in the interests of the whole working class rather than sectionally. Mass assemblies which cooperate in this way are what makes an a-s union, IMO.

I don't think Syndicalistcat's quote says what you think it says Dev, he's arguing for promoting rank-and-file organisation inside reformist unions but independent of the beurocracy, whilst similtaneously "where feasible developing mass actions outside the union" and "the development of self-managed forms of unionism". All of these have traditionally been part of the activities of anarcho-syndicalists in places without an a-s union, I don't see how they represent a rejection of acting as a union 'in the traditional' or any other sense.

I see anarcho-syndicalism as the working class coming together in an organised and directly democratic way (usually called a union) to coordinate direct action to improve their lives under capitalism and eventually to expropriate and destroy it. Tactics and focus may change but I don't see how this basic idea can lose it's relevance until we are living in a libertarian communist world. Also, I've been keeping up with 'Celebrity Big Brother' and we have at least one member who is a keen reader of 'Heat' magazine, so we can't be that far behind the times....

No, I know what he is saying. It was just an example of anarchosyndicalists realising that it wasn't possible to build a/s unions at present, and have to think 'outside the box'. I think that some of his comments suggest that he does see one unitary anarchosyndicalist union emerging:

This to me suggests that there is some sort of rethink of traditional a/s theory.

On your points, I think that the question is how are these assemblies co-ordinated. Is the CNT suggesting that they be co-ordinated through itself? If they are not, then what is the role of the CNT? I would suggest that it would be operating as a political organisation, which I think is a radical departure from 'traditional anarcho-syndicalism‘.

Devrim

I don't really know about how the workers of the twenties felt about self-management (syndicalism) and its relation to boring factory work (i suppose i dont' read enough, or maybe its because I havn't done shitty 1920's factory work). More worker control in my workplace however(a boring, repeatative factory job) would without a doubt help with the boredom via:

1. regular worker meetings to discuss workplace issues, as these would break up the "production"(really fucking boring) time.
2. subsequent equalisation of labor tasks (all workers maintaining machines, cleaning, producing, cooking, shipping, etc as equally as possible) This previously mentioned scenerio as opposed to the "one worker, one job" as is popular in factories nowadays) would lead to greater pride in ones work.
3. the battle for control of ones life is an exciting endeavor indeed!

So you consider a refusal to cooperate with any struggles taking place outside the union or in other unions a hallmark of traditional anarcho-syndicalism? I've always considered wider class consciousness to be an important aspect of a-s.

(Please don't mention the IWA conference thread )

No, that is not what I am saying. What I am asking is if the CNT doesn't consider itself to be the unitary organ of the class (and I don't know if this is the case), and that the assemblies are, what then is the role of the CNT. If it is arguing for mass assemblies to control the struggle, it is acting in a way different from traditional anarchosyndicalism, and more like a political organisation, or as a 'union of anarchists' as some of the KRAS people tend to call it.

Devrim

Well ideally the mass assemblies and the union should be one and the same thing, if not then yes I suppose relations between struggling workers inside and outside the union become slightly more complicated, but no more so than those between two different mass assemblies or workers' councils. I don't see how this leads to the a-s union becoming a narrow political organisation which only wants to organise workers' who've read enough Bakunin or Rocker which is what I interpret the 'union of anarchists' position as.

I think that the fact that they are not is at the heart of this question. If they are not the same thing what is the role of the a/s union?

Devrim

i dont think it is a question of either or - we will need to use both approaches along the way for sure.

ol' mole's language is obscure, as i expect from "post-lefts". An "emphasis on production" is not taylorism. The working class had an obvious reason for having an "emphasis on production" in Spain at that time...they were in the midst of a life or death struggle against fascist counter-revolution. We've already discussed Seidman's book under the Friends of Durruti thread. Commenter there thought Seidman was motivated by bourgeois individualism to smear the revolution. Changing the division of labor and redefining jobs to empower workers also means changing the "production apparatus" but it's hard to know what you mean because you're being obscure.

t.

Probably. Meanwhile I'm waiting for my jacuzzi to heat up.