Revolutionary syndicalism

Revolutionary syndicalism, often shortened to just syndicalism, is a tendency that advocates the working class forming into a union movement as the sufficient means to carry out a social revolution toward a socialist or communist society. It involves the complete rejection of political action, the constitution of workers into political parties for the conquest of state power, as it rejects the idea of politics as a terrain separate from economics worth fighting in. Syndicalism envisions workers using purely economic means - the unions - to not only wage their struggle against the bosses, but to address issues of political struggle.

The most important thing about revolutionary syndicalism is the way in which workers are organized according to the principle of federation. It is meant to create a labor movement in which the workers control their own struggles and affairs, as opposed to one in which bureaucrats, even if elected, wields power over them. The union advocated is essentially a non-hierarchical association of workers at their workplace, in which each worker is vested equal rights and duties. The unions based in workplaces join together, or federate, on either a geographic basis or industrial or both. Federation on a geographic basis entails unions in a single locality uniting into what corresponds to a commune of the future, then organize communes into regions, regions into countries, and countries into a final great international federation. As an alternative or complementary to this is federation of all unions in the same industry, and the networking of industrial federations into a larger configuration encompassing all workers.

The tactics preferred by the syndicalists are those of direct action, such as strikes, boycotts, sabotage, or other similar actions that rely upon and demonstrate the power of workers at the point of production. Rather than voting in “socialists” to positions of power, or appealing to those in control of capital or the state, it is argued that direct actions are the best tactics to win reforms or concessions, such as higher wages or some social benefit, that makes life more bearable in a capitalist society. It is argued that the more workers are able to win reforms, the more their collective strength and confidence will be improved upon.

It is important to stress that syndicalists are anti-statists. They do not consider the organization of the working class as described above as prefiguring the establishment of a “workers’ state,” but rather prefiguring that of stateless socialism. The unions are the basic building blocks of the society of the future, providing a means for workers to learn how to collectively manage their own affairs. When come the day of revolution, the workers seize control of all land and means of production through the unions, the organization provided by the unions in turn become the same means by which the workers collectively administer production and distribution according to their needs.

The basic idea of revolutionary syndicalism was first expressed by the anti-authoritarian faction within the first International Workingmen’s Association. While a number of movements following the International can be considered syndicalist, the term itself did not arise until after the turn of the 20th century. Eventually it found its greatest practical example in a specifically anarchist form in the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Today, it remains a marginal but still relevant libertarian left politics.