anarcho-syndicalism

Could you provide examples of this, particularly examples of this within anarcho-syndicalism?

Also, please elaborate on the meaning of "productivist"?

Skraeling: "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."

The CNT in the '30s was strongest in the big industries in Catalonia, whereas the UGT, which had more of a traditional craft union structure, was stronger in the more backward, small shop industry in the less developed parts of Spain.

Why should the working class cease to be interested in increasing its power because of a change from small-shop production indutries to large industries and services?
If anarcho-syndicalism aims to empower the working class, why should it not aim to do away with the coordinator class hierarchy and division of labor characteristic of the corporate form of capitalism?

In the USA the IWW circa 1921 did have a discussion of Taylorism. They believed that it would destroy the basis of craftist unionism of the AFL, and make it easier to organize their brand of syndicalist industrial union. It did lead to more of an emphasis on industry-wide organizing, but bureaucratic business unionism was able to adapt to that change. The IWW in the '20s/'30s was too influenced by Veblen, and failed to appreciate the emergence of the coordinator class, as a class with its own interests antagonistic to those of the working class.

It's a question of evoling one's understanding of the system, and of evoling anarcho-syndicalism, as a libertarian revolutionary strategy, in keeping with that. It would be a mistake to suppose that "anarcho-syndicalism" has some static meaning.

To answer Devrim's original point, the reason that anarcho-syndicalists in Spain were driven to the conclusion it was the assemblies, independent of union, that are the organ of the class, in struggle, is due to the splitting up of the working class into diverse unions in Spain, on the one hand, and also the experience of the assemblies in the mass strike wave after the death of Franco. But then you have the example of the FEEP (longshore union) that was highly influenced by anarcho-syndicalism, and there the strike assemblies were converted into an ongoing union. Still the dominant union in longshore in Spain, but the longshoremen were dismayed by the sectarian infighting in the CNT and refused to affiliate to either CNT faction (CNT or CGT). But this exemplifies the idea of the assembly being the union.

The CNT and CGT, despite favoring the assemblies, do see a role for the union sections, perhaps as something like militant minorities? The CGT in Spain is known as "el sindicato de no" because it works as a watchdog, fighting sellouts by the UGT and Workers Commissions on the bargaining councils. Various sections of the CGT take the position that assemblies should be invoked to make the decisions, not the "union leaders" on the bargaining councils. The CNT on the other hand prefers to simply boycott the bargaining councils. This appears to be to some extent a tactical difference.

t.

While I am quite critical of anarchosyndicalism, I would say the phrase "not keeping up with the times" reflects cloudy and even "spectacular" thinking. Something can fail change over time because it is moribund or because it has no need to change because reality hasn't disproved it. The phrase "hasn't kept up with times" can be applied to just about anything and taken to extremes just implies that something doesn't appear in the latest magazines (or doesn't have many myspace friends or whatever).

Best,

Red

Briefly, to Dev, I think you would get lots of answers within the CNT as to what it is "for", as it is not a purely political organisation.

That said, my opinion, which I know is shared by most in SF, is that ideally we have assemblies controlling things. We recognise that we are in a low level of struggle at the moment, but see this as the best way forward. There may be times when it is not possible, but it's what we would aim for. The role of anarcho-syndicalist organisation is to agitate , educate and organise for them and for workers to control their own struggles and make direct links. It is also to argue politically for a libertarian communist society and argue for no division between political and economic struggles, i.e. that they are all of concern to the working class, as workers, rather than being reserved for specialists (politicians and union leaders). It's also worth adding that struggles or organisations can be directly democratic, with workers in control, but still have no political content

Perhaps, in the light of this, we ought to ask what left communists are for?

Regards,

Martin

Could you translate that for me comrade?

"el sindicato de no" can be loosely translated as "the union that says no". This is because the CGT apparently often finds itself as the opposition on the comites de empresa (bargaining councils) to the UGT and Workers Commissions.

One aspect of the Spanish situation that is sometimes overlooked is that the vast majority of Spain's workers are covered by collective contracts. 75% of all workers in Spain vote in the elections for delegates to the bargaining councils. The CGT gets the votes of between 1 and 2 million workers in these elections, or just short of 10% of workers who vote.

I believe that this situation of widespread collective contracts was inherited from the old fascist corporatist unionism, just as Spain's health insurance and pension systems are holdovers from the fascist era as well. The bargaining councils are equivalent to the lowest level of the old fascist trade union -- the only level elected by the workers -- in that they exist thru legal fiat of the state.

t.

We would agree with the vast majority of this, Martin. My question was not what the CNT is for, but how the CNT sees its role. In my opinion, if what you say is true then the CNT in my opinion seems to be acting as a political organisation not as an anarchosyndicalist union. I think that it is confused though about what its role is. Is it a political organisation, or is it a unitary organ?

Syndicalistcat wrote:

From this the CNT seems to be taking the role of a political organisation, which I am not saying is any bad thing. I just think that its practice seems to be moving ahead of its theory, which is also no bad thing, and is something that happens in struggle. Having said that maybe it isn't. I don't read Spanish, so obviously any information I get regarding the CNT is second hand at best.

On your points about the CNT being driven to this conclusion 'due to the splitting up of the working class into diverse unions in Spain', Cat, I am sure you are aware that this is the position in most of continental Europe. In Turkey for example, there are unions based on ideological persuasion going from the 327,000 strong 'revolutionary syndicalist union’ to fascist, and religious unions. I think that the point here is that this is not an isolated example in one country, but a widespread phenomenon. Indeed, in the countries that this isn't true, for example the UK, or Germany, I think there is even less chance of setting up a/s unions. I think that the interesting question here is whether anarcho-syndicalism is changing its theory to adapt to these conditions, which to be honest are not new ones.

Finally JDMF writes:

I think that this is an example of what I would call a 'conservative' (sorry JDMF) tendency within anarcho-syndicalism. There are lots of anarcho-syndicalists, who despite being good worker militants, are attached to an idea (i.e. building mass anarcho-syndicalist unions), which I believe is rooted in the past.

Also, I think that the mass a/s unions of the early part of the last century are in some ways the flip side of the 'social democratic' coin, and I see a deeply subsitutionalist tendency within some of Magnifico's earlier arguments:

So to answer Martin's question on 'what left communists are for?', I would say the same thing that he says anarcho-syndicalists are for. The statement is quite vague though, and we may well have different strategies about how we think that this is best carried through.

Devrim

edited to fix quotation

Devrim, Yes, I know that in many countries in Europe, and Turkey apparently, there is this division into various unions. I think some anarcho-syndicalists are confused about the idea of an anarcho-syndicalist union. Not that a left-libertarian structure and methods might not come to be dominant in various strands of the labor movement, and need to in order to have a liberatory revolution, but there are different ideas about how that might come about. Given existing consciousness in the working class in the USA, it doesn't make sense to start off trying to build a mass organization on an explicitly revolutionary platform.

Change in working class consciousness I see as a more protracted process. I think it is better to have a political organization which has a libertarian sydicalist strategy, and then interpret this, not as trying to form a pre-cooked "revolutionary union", but building mass organizations of workers that push the envelope, in terms of degree of direct rank and file control, independent of the AFL or CtW bureaucracy, rejecting labor/capital partnership ideas, but without the political revolutionaries trying to impose an ideology. I thnk it's necessary also to have a perspective in terms of rank and file empowerment, in terms of developing skills, training people to be organizers, etc. I think that in order to have a liberatory revolution, the working class does need to develop mass organizations it controls, to have the experience of running things themselves, develop the sense of confidence in being able to run things, and to have the organizational means to work towards a different sort of society. If the liberation of the working class is to be the work of the workers themselves, they need to fit themselves with mass organizations and organizational skills to do this.

t.

Starting to turn into an interesting discussion.

Dev. wrote: "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."

I wouldn't say this analysis carries into every country and within every anarcho-syndicalist organization. In some places it will be easier to build anarcho-syndicalist unions than others. In some places these unions will have some strength.

I would also argue that the US does have a tradition of revolutionary unionism as a major tendency, but this tendency has been diminished over the decades. Yet we also have a tradition of there been militant fights by members of reformist unions as well. So we can walk between both worlds in a way.

There has been no overall "theoretical" changes for most within the international a/s movement. Since the 1940s a/s views have been minoritarian at best.It is true that in the US some of us have a perspective that more reflective of our own realities that may differ from some of our other comrades. Each of us have our own realities and try and find the best ways of dealing with them. For the most part we have deal with being a minoritarian movement and this poses many questions.

I would suspect that even as a minoritarian movement we continue to argue our viewpoint and show by example. That we build our own tendency within all aspects of the workers movement---and beyond.

That the "propaganda group" of the past is becoming as much a meeting place for a/s activists as it is for propaganda.

More to say, but I'm tired and will call it to a close.