Spezzano Albanese is a small town of 6000 situated in the Sila, in Calabria. The albanese community where one speaks again of the old albanais and orthodox religion.

The interview was carried out by 2 comrades of the group who went to southern Italy this summer. The remarks are from Domenico Liquore, one of the oldest actors in this experience.

Drapeau Noir: How did the Municipal Federation of the Base become constituted?

A: The FMB is the result of an intervention for the past 20 years by the local anarchist group which began to agitate at the end of 72 beginning 73. The FMB was born during 92. All the activity which we have deployed was always characterised by a particular attention given to local and territorial problems, without ever ignoring national and international issues. For example, the death of Franco, the reconstruction of the CNT in Spain, which brought about a debate at the national level in Italy, was resumed across different interventions in Spezzano. In the region of Cosance, where there are different groups, there was talk of creating a Calabrian federation. Those were the years of the strong social movements in Italy. We were at the beginning of the 70s, after the Massacre of the Piazza Fontana. Here, this was expressed in a strong student and unemployed movement. There were 2 textile factories which were threatened with closure, so there was a movement of workers of Inteca, etc.

Our group quickly understood that it couldn't limit itself to an ideological intervention and it was thought that our principles must be matched with the practice of the struggle which was self experimenting in these times. The group was made up of students, unemployed, some building workers and dailies (?). The only group not represented was perhaps women. Our eternal problem while there were more and more women in the collectives coming out of these struggles.

From these struggles were organised the first Committees of the Unemployed, of Workers, which formed the first mass structures which wanted a national extent/ size. In these structures there weren't only anarchists. They were completely autonomous from the specific work of the anarchist group. A dual vision of the organisation - on one side, the specific groups, on the other, the mass organisations. This work was carried out until 1977, the years in which the anarchists of this place served as a rallying point for the whole Castovillari region. The other Marxist movements, such as Lutta Continua, which were very strong in this region have completely disappeared.

At a national level in those years we started to talk of the reconstruction of the USI (Unione Sindacale Italiana - AIT section). There were 2 congresses, one in Rome the other in genes, from where emerged 2 tendencies. Here, we have fought much for anarcho-syndicalism because the intervention which we make brought about our feeling the need of a union structure already before the debate took place nationally. We participated in the national debate and it was reported that the Italian situation didn't correspond to our manner of reading reality. Which we brought about with the positions more in accord with our view. One saw in the national debate a mainly ideological discourse, of almost personal polemics and one perceived that the USI wasn't born from the world of work but from the wishes of certain anarchists who simply changed their name. During this time, in Spezzano, the anarcho-syndicalist discourse was building itself in the committees of struggle which engulfed a vast territory and were composed not only of anarchists, but also of comrades from extra-parliamentary groups, some from Proletarian Democracy or Marxist formations and the majority were workers, unemployed, etc. While the birth of a true mass structure was proposed, at a national level, there was little anarchist presence in the struggles which were raging in this period (hospital workers, airport workers, etc) And the USI was born inside the specific movements incapable of regrouping dissidents from the official unions. This situation brought about, at the Congress of Genes, the 2 different positions. On 1 side certain comrades wanted the renaissance of the USI, on the other were those who prioritised work within the base structures (e.g. temporary school workers).

We did not see ourselves in either of these motions and on returning to Spezzano it was decided to unify all the different structures of the territory in one Union Sindacale de Zone (USZ). The USZ formed in 78, did not adhere to the CAD (Committee of Direct Action) formed in Bologna after the Genes Congress, nor to the USI constituted in the Parma Congress in 1979. With the USZ, work was done for more than 5 years on the problems of the world of work, unemployment & became interested in the theme of territorial opposition to the town hall. From this communalist and municipalist current came, in 1992, the FMB. . I would like it to be understood - the diversified mass structures, which were doing a specific job, with the USZ, found unity which translated onto larger territory. It passed from a classical syndicalist vision to a complex intervention which put together not only workplace issues but also the other realities present in the communal territory. It was begun to look at the administrative choices which were denounced in public interventions for their clientist character and blackmail, for the choices discriminatory and repressive, surely this must concern us. There were struggles over health, education & the question of fraud in the commune. This drove to create a rapport of struggle with the communal administration which tried to stop our meetings. Sympathy was growing towards us. There were 200 in the organisation of which 30 were very active

DN: Which were the left groups working in the same terrain at the same time?

A: In 76, Luta Continua disappeared. In 77, the Marxist left came back into parliamentary institutions as Proletarian Democracy. There were some M-Ls and Workers Autonomy who never had much weight with us. There weren't any groups organised and already in 77 our group was the only reference in the whole district.

DN: Which party controlled the Town Hall?

A: The mayor was Communist Party, but was worse than a Christian democrat. Our work consisted also to make understood that political membership didn't change things deeply. . Power corrupts. There the libertarian ideology of the USZ could be seen and it was agreed to propagate this idea, even if it meant hard struggles with the base of the PC whose leaders worked up against us. There were moments where the confrontation tended towards being physical.

In 92 the magistrate charged the mayor and a group of councillors . People began to understand that everything we had been denouncing since the end of the 70s wasn't just affabulations. This made people more interested in our activities. Before 83, in full conflict with the communal admin, the mayor often defied us to denounce to the magistrate his dealings knowing this was against our logic and our praxis. In 83, some of the workers in the USZ, after a big debate at the personal level, decided to take the matter before the magistrate. A year later, following the enquiry, a split occurred in the PC. In 84, to keep his place, the mayor was obliged to buy a councillor of the MSI (fascists). In 85, during the electoral period, we realised the opportunity to create an alternative to this situation. There were strong pressures to present a list )of candidates) however over the years we developed an abstentionist practice. . The message got across at the national level but in the locality the illusion of being able to change things by elections was tenacious. And in one effect, a civic list was presented in which we refused to participate. This list, in an indirect manner, had libertarian aspirations and took back many of the methods which we had used effectively in the previous years. With time, it changed practice and objectives in defending the same interests as the previous lists. While the civic list was being constituted we recognised that a libertarian response, to explain again the reasons for our abstentionism at national and local level, a Federation Municipal of Base which wanted to be an alternative to the power of the town hall. And while the others made their electoral campaign, we set up a Committee for the FMB in an attempt to gather together everyone who saw themselves in the discourse of self - organisation and direct action in opposition to the choice of abdication of power in favour of the municipal council. . The FMB was as such an anarchist proposal and quickly heard from a large part of the population. IN the full electoral campaign, a constitutive assembly of the FMB was held. The Town Hall was made up of the civic list, socialists, CDs and the PC in opposition. The mayor was from the civic list.

DN: What were the relations between the FMB and the communal administration?

A: The FMB posed an alternative. It was set up on that basis. It has always wanted to be something other than the power of the Town Hall and that's why we defined ourselves as an alternative. Relations with the Town Hall were conflictual. In what concerned the organisation the FMB took into account all past experience and volunteered a complex structure. A mass organisation which didn't want to be only about the bread and butter issues of the workplace, unemployment and the school, but also political. It had to be the bearer of a project which makes a glance at what could be a future libertarian society, that is to say a complex organisation of the society which prefigured the libertarians. In the FMB were workplace union structures but they gathered the different social categories in the civic union.

DN: What's the civic union?

A: The workers were not only those who fought for their rights but also citizens enrolled in a common territorial theme. All the particular structures had the right to sit in the civic union. This structure organises in the district services, education and health in opposition to the choice of the administration and offer a different way of managing and deciding. When we began to talk about the FMB, we were afraid of being misunderstood by the libertarian movement, of being accused of being ÒinterclassistsÓ, of constituting the UIL Committee of Citizens (UIL is a right wing union) proposed by Benfento. (?Who he) That was what made us afraid but it was the logical follow-on from our intervention over the years. It must be stated that our conception of municipalism is different from that of Bookchin. Communalism is very varied. In Italy, there have been, historically, proposals in the communalist tradition. Berneri is one of the greatest agitators in this tradition and I believe he would have much to say to Bookchin, as he would to Malatesta, in his later years when he began to talk of gradualism. It is certain he would not have agreed with Bookchin.

DN: What does Bookchin propose?

A: He proposes that anarchists should become like the other parties, present themselves for election, to manage power in the town halls. ÒSince one is anarchist, one could give an impulse to a democracy of the base and directÓ> We believe that to enter into the electoral game is to lose to anarchism its specificity and its values. Anarchists refuse the delegation of power. They can never create a party. To accept power and to say that the others are in bad faith and that we would be better, is to act as if a party of the society, whether you like it or not, which would be obliged to force non-anarchists towards direct democracy. We have refused this logic and affirm that all organisations must come from the base.

DN: How do you define communalism?

A: It is the interest borne at the district. The commune understands about the world of work, civil life, etc. In intervening at a municipal level, we become involved in not only the world of work but also the life of the community. Every time the Spezzano council make a choice, the Civic Union of the FMB make counter proposals, which aren't presented to the Council but proposed for discussion in the country to raise the people's level of consciousness. Whether they like it or not the Town Hall is obliged to take account of these proposals. For example, it was proposed that the rates and the land use plans and its variants should be discussed in a general assembly. It is clear that the administrators have made choices which we have fought and continue to fight, but this has served to make understood that it is possible, by positioning oneself as an alternative, to make alternative proposals & manage it properly.

DN: We read in Umanita Nova that there was one assembly where 4 mayors were invited. How did you arrive at that decision and what was brought to the FMB?

A: We have made links with 4 council districts because we felt that our experience should go beyond Spezzano. In effect, the FMB is already known since Spezzano is the main place in the canton and because our activity and public intervention was not only heard in the country around but by many passing through. We think that we must make a qualitative leap to promote the formation of identical structures in the neighbouring areas where there already exists sympathy for the FMB. IN areas such as Terranova, Tarsai, etc, research on services and administrative choices was done. We have been to 4 communes where they have been given provisional rates and studied them and looked at the choices involved. It must be said that in this work we have some facilities because after 20 years of existence not one commune dares refuse what we ask out of fear of public denunciation. In this study, a document was produced where we laid out the choices and put counter proposals at a departmental level. Those proposals which touched services, health, education and town planning were addressed not just to Spezzano, but also to Terranova, Tarsia and San Lorenzo. AT the end of this work we made the assembly where we invited the mayors for them to see the functioning and critiques of the assembly. The assembly was positive because it created the condition for this type of intervention to grow to the whole district. After the summer holidays, it's the type of intervention we are going to develop. Today, nationally, this type of intervention is much discussed. The fairs of self-organisation area mirror of all which in Italy turns to the question of Communalism versus municipalism or self government (the 2 terms used in Italy - municipalism a la Bookchin or communalism which we prefer)

DN: Do other experiences of this type exist in Italy? Or others who work from the same perspective?

A: When we were thinking about the Civic Union we were afraid that many comrades would misunderstand our step. This led us to little publicise the FMB. The editors of Umanita Nova we made only a report of the initiatives leading to the FMB without explaining what they truly were made up of. We immediately received a quantity of letters which asked for further explanations. In effect we got the contrary reactions which we thought we would. This got us to broadcast our step. It was discovered that other realities agitated on the municipalist problem. We made contact with a network of small entities which were co-ordinated from Bologna. From it was born a first congress. At the same time the Liga Nord were making a discussion of federalism in this manner. On one side, in Italy, there is a reactionary federalism, racist and conservative, borne by The Liga, and on the other, in opposition, libertarian federalism was revalued with its historic ideological roots. Comrades of Milan, Turin and others had the idea of a fair of self- organisation to confront all the realities which are active in the domaine of municipalism, communalism or simply self -organisation, as an alternative to the logic of domination. At Alessandria, the first fair of self- organisation happened and many different currents were present. This fair linked all ages and it became more important as much on a quantitative level as a qualitative. There were also some publications (the book of Sandro Vaccaro and mine). I would like to reaffirm that municipalism wasn't invented by Bookchin. Municipalism is part of the historic ideological patrimony of the anarchists. Bookchin has taken a type of this theme and put his things inside it, things which are not shared by all, including us. We refuse the logic which poses to the anarchists a candidature which obliges them to manage power and which could lose them their identity. This type of logic can arise from real base movements but the anarchists must have to capacity to defend an alternative project. Otherwise, they risk becoming no better than the other parties. Those comrades who follow the logic of Bookchin and present themselves for municipal elections are few and are not taken to be in the general anarchist movement.

DN: In your book, you speak about the attitudes and language that the anarchists have taken to the Marxist movement. You consider it embarrassing and negative, why?

A: I think that the anarchists, historically, have an inferiority complex towards Marxism (also in the Spanish revolution I believe many errors were due to this complex). If one takes as an example the concept of class and class struggle, we still retain the Marxist conception of the proletariat. In the anarchist movement, the class is not only the proletariat but all the exploited, dominated, those submitting to power. One goes on to speak of the exploited, of the dominated, inside of which we have the proletariat, but not only. When we begin to speak only of the proletariat, our logic is Marxist. Even our syndicalism, which is complex and not only supportive (anarcho-syndicalism ), has submitted to the same logic. The Spanish CNT has at its core a strong conception of the proletariat even though it realised communalism and self organisation. It's as if the anarchists want to use the same Marxist logic, logic in which they will be lost. If the Marxists have, as perspectives, the question of power, the anarchists must take account of all the exploited, of all the dominated and create the social structures which presage that which must be the future libertarian society. Apart from the Spanish revolution we have not succeeded in that. I think that just as the Spanish revolution must be discussed in a critical manner to separate the positive aspects and their limits.

DN: Does the FMB limit itself only to this work of counter-propositions to the Town Hall or does it seek to create alternatives on the ground?

A: We have created a co-operative, "Arcobaleno" (Rainbow) of house painters. We have also tried to organise agricultural workers and services. We want to be capable of creating self-organised work. The big merit and the goal of self- organisation is to regroup the comrades not only for political discussions on municipalism but to confront the practical experiences like the co-operatives. Beyond intervention in opposition to the institution, one wants to create alternative structures of production capable of making a glimpse of the reality of a future society.

DN: Let's be devil's advocate. Are you not afraid that your co-operative will become like the co-operatives in the north of Italy? These co-operatives, in their confrontation with the capitalist economy succeeded in achieving self exploitation, that is to say their insertion in the logic of the market which has made them lose all alternative potential.

A: The end of the co-operatives in Italy is as you say but the origin is a libertarian idea of self - organisation. They must be taken back to their origins. One could have the same fears concerning federalism: the US is federalist, Bossi (leader of the Liga Nord) is federalist, Switzerland is federalist. They have taken many of our words, such as federalism, self -organisation, etc, but should that stop us using these words? As for the co-operatives, it is sure there are some dangers especially when there isn't a strong libertarian presence. We have had many difficulties when we created the co-operative because it lacks a mentality and conception of production and working in an alternative way, in opposition to the capitalist model. Again today, there is this type of problem and contradictions. One can certainly be mistaken but if one is profoundly convinced and if the anarchist movement begins to be interested, in a practical manner, in these things and to be on the inside, there will be less of a danger of an authoritarian drift. When we are not present and only allow others the initiative, it is clear that the co-operatives shall be like Emilia and Romagna.

DN: The co-operative is an economic structure and must be accountable to the market. It is for this that I spoke to you of self-exploitation. To survive, where you create an alternative market, an alternative manner of living capable of blocking the race to consumption, which ends by denaturing it.

A: It's sure that if the co-operatives are born in an isolated manner, if they aren't inserted in a global debate which includes different realities (that is the aim of the self- organisation fair), the danger of which you speak is very real. We always have it in mind. That's why we seek to bring together all the realities, all the problems and contradictions, to seek solutions. You spoke of self- exploitation. It is certain that it is possible that in a co-operative one wins less and works more. But all that can change if there are more comrades who have input and a network of different realities. The important thing is that you do something without a boss. Decisions are taken altogether. One can make some concessions seen that which the capitalist system puts forward, because we are beginning to model an alternative society. In the anarchist movement there is a division. Certain comrades are for the supportive struggle, political, conflictual towards power. They think that the co-operatives, the self-organised groups, must be refused because they are not manageable within the capitalist system. The others think that it's necessary only to work in function to creation of co-operatives or the self-organising moments. For me, both lack something. They must be brought together, one cannot live in an antagonist manner. In a system of domination, one must be in conflict with the power and at the same time one can put forward alternative structures; these 2 attitudes are part of the same struggle against domination. On the contrary, many among us live either 100% class struggle, or a life of retirement in the fortunate isles. In both cases there is a danger of reintegration.

DN: After a long absence one is struck by the uniformity that the south has submitted to and by the push to the race of consumption. For 12 years there has existed here a quantity of different cultures and poverty could easily be distinguished from the rich. Today it seems that the social fabric might disintegrate.. People live in front of the tv where the programmes are identical to those of France. In one of the poorest regions of Italy there is an appearance of impressionable riches. One would like to know what you evaluate this process and what is your position towards these new facts.

A: The same situation can be seen which everywhere else is perhaps amplified by the fact that people identify with the tv models to have the impression that they can leave their under development. I donÕt believe that this should be something positive because this hides the contradictions that we live in. For example, in Spezzano, with time, many albanese words are replaced by Italian words. It is submitted to the tyranny of an italianising culture. The anarchists must be sensible and in this changing situation, not making it a priority of their fight but to insert it in a wider cultural reflection , to make understood that a different way of life to that proposed by consumerism and capitalism does exist. A communalist intervention could take account of this question, not to retreat but to project towards the future in a federalist discourse of respect for minority cultures. Our struggle must be global and culture forms a part of it.

DN: What do you think of Bossi's proposition of secession from Italy?

A: I can say that in the south, this type of debate doesn't exist. In Sicily, in the last regional elections, there was a tentative independentist list but it failed. There isn't a strong independentist movement here and secessionism is badly viewed. There is, on the contrary, a strong demand for administrative decentralisation. In the FMB there are also people who see federalism as a means of decentralisation. For example we are often asked why our taxes must pass through Rome, and why we can't decide ourselves on their use? Ourselves, often say that it is the community which ought to decide and not twenty people and that the logic of paying taxes to Rome which after they are returned to us in financial form. This discourse elicits much interest. If there doesn't exist an independentist sentiment, the Liga Nord is rather rejected than viewed as a project to which to adhere, it exists when even that demand to be against the state. the State with us is seen in a contradictory way. It is hated and liked at the same time, liked for the facilities it gives.

DN: What are your links today with USI?

A: We adhered to USI because we believed that , inside USI, it doesn't matter any longer what syndicate, one could have a discourse of social organisation a real project of society. Today, with the split of the USI, it was decided to stay outside. We think that it's lacking and that it will be indispensable at the moment, a great debate on anarcho-syndicalism: its ends and means. For the moment this debate does not exist. And without it we can't see what will come out of it.

This article was sent to us by comrades in North America, and details how NAFTA is part of a broader agenda by global capitalism to slice up the world and make more profits. It puts telling arguments as to why workers in the north should be in solidarity with those in the south - after all, whose wages are we going to be equalised to by this "free market"?

The author is a member of the Candian Autoworkers Union, the leading private sector union in Canada with a good tradition of internationalism. As a side point, it's worth noting that the CAW has just won agreements from the US Big Three car makers not to contract out production away from core plants. An insight into the CAW can be given by the union's leader, Buzz Hargrave, saying "If you fight, you can win," and "You can't win if you don't challenge managements' rights." It's hard to imagine John Monks or Bill Morris challenging management's rights, or even fighting to win or even fighting. The deal between the union and GM was reached only after a three-week strike but deals were negotiated with Ford and Chrysler.

It's now expected that limits to a corporation's ability to outsource work will now be a key demand by other unions across the country as companies continue to shed workers.

Globalisation and the neo-liberal economic policies which go with it is the major problem facing the international workers movement today. We will continue to examine these themes in future issues of Black Flag.
...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a trilateral treaty designed to transform the North American continent into a single economic zone. It will facilitate the realisation of global economic order that will further entrench an increasingly unhindered global, market based economic system; and further erode, if not preclude, public policy involving significant state intervention in this economic system.

The origins of NAFTA can be traced back to the Reagan /Bush "Enterprise for the Americas" initiative which envisioned the creation of a free trade zone throughout the entire western hemisphere, including the Caribbean basin, Central and South America. NAFTA constituted the next logical step towards that end following the 1988 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The NAFTA treaty was signed on August 12 1992 and began to go into effect on January 1 1994. Superficial and largely ineffective side agreements on labour and environmental issues were also signed and implemented.

To properly understand the significance of NAFTA, it is vital to view it as a means to facilitate a sweeping multi-faceted or multi-tiered process of corporate restructuring within the context of the global capitalist economic system. This is particularly apparent with corporate restructuring in the auto industry throughout North America since the early 1990s. This restructuring has been marked by the widespread implementation of the lean or Toyota production system; the proliferation of non-union, Japanese transplants employing lean production methods; successive waves of plant closures by parts manufacturers and the US Big Three car manufacturers; and the growth of an enormous, export-oriented Mexican car and parts industry which also underwent major corporate restructuring during this period.

Content Rules

The two free trade agreements made changes to vehicle content rules. The 1988 FTA ended the 1965 Canada-US Auto Pact's requirement for a 60% Canadian content in vehicles (in Canada) and replaced it with a 50% North American requirement, with North American defined as US and Canada. NAFTA raised the North American content to 62.5% but redefined North American to include Mexico. These changes made it possible for corporations such as General Motors (GM) to relocate as much of their production wherever they wished in any of the three NAFTA countries without being penalised by tariffs. By giving corporations this unprecedented degree of capital mobility, NAFTA also made it increasingly possible for them to restructure their operations as they saw fit and to engage in corporate whipsawing.

Whipsawing is a practice in which corporations draw workers from different plants into defacto bidding wars by competing with each other for work. In these bidding wars those plants with local unions that accept what leading North American auto executives commonly refer to as "competitive agreements" stand the best chance of either retaining existing work or acquiring new work. These are also called Modern Operating Agreements or Living Agreements (Living agreements can be re-opened at any time with the consent of both parties). Significantly, the most competitive agreements are those with the most contract concessions and in which only the union surrenders its rights.

The car corporations' desire for "competitive agreements" highlights how the lean system of production fits into this scenario. Acceptance of the Toyota or lean system and the contract concessions that go with it are the principal criteria used to determine whether particular plants or operations will continue to operate and /or attract new work. The lean system means continuous restructuring of work processes and specific work operations in pursuit of "continuous improvement" and the corporate objective of eliminating "waste". It specifically involves restructuring focused on the shop floor and at the plant level, with the goals of maximising output with minimal manpower and "rightsizing" or downsizing the workforce (corporate speak for sacking workers).

Corporate whipsawing in the car and auto parts industries enables the car corporations to accelerate the drive to lean production as fully as possible throughout their organisations. This shows that there is a direct and complementary relationship between lean's implementation; phenomena such as the waves of plant closures throughout North America over the past 15 to 20 years(ie GM's announcement in 1991 that it would close 21 plants and eliminate 74,000 jobs) and the implementation of free trade agreements such as NAFTA consciously crafted to facilitate this restructuring of corporations to make them more competitive in the increasingly global economic system.

Understanding the relationship between these things is essential to understanding what has caused the dramatic decline of the United Autoworkers (UAW) union in the US. In 1979 UAW membership stood at about 1.5 million ; now it is only slightly more than half that number. Furthermore the UAW's pitiful decline has been a major cause of the decline of the US labour movement. Today only about 9% of private sector workers belong to a union.

Mexico Factors In

Mexico has factored into this situation principally because the implementation of NAFTA allowed car and auto parts companies to locate as much production as they want in any of the countries that signed the treaty. To consider what this has already meant in very stark terms, reflect on the following statistics:

In 1986 20,500 vehicles were exported northward from Mexico

In 1995 the US Big Three alone exported 385,000 cars and 168,000 trucks northward from Mexico, while Nissan and Volkswagen exported 225,000 northward, out of a total of 778,000 vehicles from Mexico. (38 times the 1986 level)

In 1992, the year NAFTA was signed, auto parts companies (including GM & Ford subsidiaries) exported US$6.4 billion worth of parts northward from Mexico

In 1995, the figure rose to US$9.5 billion.

In the same period, the number of auto parts plants based in Mexico rose form 192 to 210 and the number of workers employed from 156,000 to 210,000.

Approximately 450,000 Mexican workers are now employed in the car and auto parts industries, which now account for 21% of Mexico's manufacturing exports.

Consider the situation at GM's Mexican operations. In 1981 GM employed a Mexican workforce of 7,000. Today it employs about 75,000 in 54 facilities. Furthermore if GM's Mexican operations were a single corporation, it would be the 135th largest in the world. Such developments leave no doubt that GM dramatically expanded the its Mexican operations both before and after NAFTA. In the meantime GM reduced its Canadian workforce by more than one third, from about 40,000 to about 26,000.

In view of these things it is essential to consider the situation of both automotive workers in Mexico and Mexican workers in general, and to see that they face horrendous problems of their own. The principal problems faced by Mexico's workers are the low wages they are paid and the poor conditions they live in. Indeed Mexican workers' wages generally range from as little as US$4 per day to $1.25 per hour. The latter is the rate paid to workers in the US Big Three's assembly operations in Mexico. The particular problems faced by Mexican workers in the industry reveal the very same forces that have eroded the gains made by their US and Canadian counterparts since the 1930s.

An article headlined "Detroit South" in Business Week (March 16th 1992 edition) stated that, "In Detroit's view, Mexico's young workforce adapts more quickly to new industrial regimes than entrenched workers in the Rust Belt," and went on to say that this workforce is "amenable to the manufacturing revolution." Simply stated, Business Week was reporting that Detroit believed Mexican autoworkers were more adaptable to the lean system than traditional US blue collar workers. To further appreciate this, it is only necessary to draw on a brilliant article by Kevin J.Middlebrook entitled "The Politics of Industrial Restructuring: Transnational Firms Search for Flexible Production in the Mexican Automobile Industry", which appeared in Comparative Politics in April 1991. It perceptively starts from the premise that "restructuring in the auto industry is fundamentally a global process" and emphasises that the shift to the construction of export-oriented automotive manufacturing facilities in central and northern Mexico has coincided with efforts to redefine labour relations in the new plants to lower labour costs and limit union influence in the manufacturing process. Notably, auto corporations have taken advantage of the passive unions in the Mexican automotive industry, which are usually linked to the government controlled Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). Within the car industry, CTM unions have obstructed efforts to unify workers in different auto plants and in effect allowed the corporations to blackmail workers at older, more established plants to gain greater management flexibility.

A trend has emerged where older plants with better paid workers and more rights often saw their operations restructured or closed, while new, comparatively more lean production facilities were built that employed younger, more poorly paid workers with fewer rights and less, if any, union experience. In short, Middlebrook recognised that workers were being subjected to a phenomenon similar in nature to whipsawing and were on the receiving end of exactly the same type of corporate restructuring which autoworkers in the US and Canada have faced.

Mexican autoworkers and other Mexican labour activists are quick to acknowledge that such things have happened and they see similarities between what has been taking place in the automotive industry there and in the rest of North America.

Some of the most compelling evidence of just how harmful this restructuring has been for Mexican workers can be seen in the rapid growth of car and parts plants within and in close proximity to the Maquiladora Zone and in the conditions of life for the workers in these plants. Many believe the Maquiladora Zone shows what the future holds for the entire Mexican working class, once NAFTA has fully come into effect.

The Maquiladora Zone is located throughout the US-Mexican border region. It is only a few miles wide but it is 2,000 miles long and includes several urban centres which are immediately adjacent or in close proximity to US border cities, both large and small.

There are over 3,100 maquilas or foreign-owned industrial plants producing mainly for export in the Maquiladora Zone. These currently employ more than 670,000 workers and produced 39% of Mexico's exports in 1995.

Besides car and auto parts there are numerous textile, metal and wood products plants and a rapidly growing number of electronics plants especially in Tijuana in north-west Mexico. The transnational corporations that own most of these facilities are only required to pay taxes based on the value added to goods while they are in Mexico.

These transnational corporations profit from employment of workers who are not only paid less than workers elsewhere in Mexico, but receive few, if any, benefits. Most are under 25 and work in plants with no union whatsoever. Those who are in a union are usually represented by the government controlled CTM, whose national leadership has repeatedly agreed to and helped enforce a freeze on workers' wages that holds them far below Mexico's rate of inflation. Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that there are some dissident local unions within CTM. These unions have tried, and in some cases succeeded in functioning like legitimate workers' organisations.

Mexican Labour Law

Another problem workers in the Maquiladora Zone face is that they are kept in the dark about Mexico's progressive but poorly enforced labour laws. Indeed the maquilas have been able to operate outside of Mexico's federal labour law since the 1970s when these plants began to be built in any numbers. They were built to order according to Kathryn Kopinak of the University of Western Ontario in a recently published book about the Maquiladora Zone, "Desert Capitalism". Because the plants operate outside federal labour law, workers in the Maquiladora Zone are routinely denied the right to organise independent unions that are genuinely accountable to them and have even faced police violence when they tried.

Ciudad Juarez is a city of over a million people located next to El Paso, Texas, and has a thriving maquila industry. Few of the workers are unionised and almost all of those who are belong to a CTM union. As a direct consequence of this most strikes in Ciudad Juarez are wildcat strikes organised by temporary coalitions of workers that form around specific issues and then dissolve once each struggle is over.

In 1995 there was a series of wildcat strikes over wages in Juarez. One of these took place at a Zenith plant and another at a Ford plant. Both of these strikes were actively opposed by CTM officials representing the workers in these plants. The CTM had negotiated wage increases for the workers within the limits of the wage freeze. Yet both of these illegal strikes won wage settlements that were superior to what the CTM had negotiated.

Health and safety laws are likewise poorly enforced in the Maquiladora Zone. The situation with hazardous waste materials labelling is indicative of the reprehensible situation that prevails with respect to worker health and safety. The text of the labelling is often only in English. Containers from Canadian firms such as Custom Trim Ltd, of Waterloo, Ontario, have even been found with bilingual labels - in English and French! There is a callous disregard for the health and safety of the young women workers who make up half the workforce in the border region (i.e. unprotected exposure of women of child bearing age to soldering fumes in electronics plants, such as Zenith at Matamoros). Sexual harassment is also overt and rampant throughout the region.

Environmental laws are likewise poorly enforced throughout Mexico and toxic pollution is an extremely serious problem in the Maquiladora Zone. Domingo Gonzalez, a leading environmental activist in the border region and a prominent member of the tri-national Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras based in San Antonio, Texas perceptively described the Rio Grande which runs through the border region as a toxic time bomb created by massive poisoning of the water table.

Two incidents that occurred in the early 1990s involving severe toxic pollution dramatise the seriousness of the situation. A sampling taken by the US-based National Toxics Campaign from a ditch next to a GM Fischer Body Bumper plant in Matamoros revealed the presence of the hydrocarbon xyklene in a concentration of 2,700,000 parts per billion, (about 6,000 times the US standard).

The same hydrocarbon was found by the National Toxics Campaign at 53,000 times the US standard behind a Matamoros plant owned by the Stepan Chemical Corporation of Northfield, Illinois. Stepan is arguably the worst toxic polluter in the region, and the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras made a video about it called "Stepan Chemical: The Poisoning of a Mexican Community".

More recently US activist organisation Public Citizen, in an extensive investigation of the environmental crisis in the border region, found that the situation has worsened since NAFTA. The findings disputed the claims of NAFTA's supporters who have consistently tried to argue that the environmental situation would improve as a result of economic development facilitated by the treaty. Most importantly, this toxic pollution is routinely located either in the midst of, or very close to, the colonias or residential districts where the maquila workers live. In some cases ditches with the stench of toxic pollution coming from them run right by workers' houses. The children of these workers play immediately around these ditches as well.

Living conditions and the lack of economic infrastructure have not been seriously addressed since NAFTA. Most workers live in homes that are little or no better than shacks, without heat, running water, acceptable toilet facilities and in some cases electricity. Almost all the roads that run by their homes are unpaved and the colonias in which they are located typically have no garbage collection. One colonia in Matamoros is built over what used to be a rubbish dump. As a result the danger of cholera outbreaks is all too real. These conditions exist in large measure because of the low wages paid to the workers, rapid and uncontrolled economic growth and the fact that the transnational corporations operating in the Maquiladora Zone typically do not pay municipal taxes.

The Peso Crisis

In addition, the immediate economic situation of the workers, many of whom migrated to northern Mexico due to the wide availability of work there, has grown considerably worse since NAFTA, despite NAFTA's supporters' claims that the treaty would produce rising incomes for Mexico's workers. The most immediate cause of this development was the sharp devaluation of the Mexican peso at the end of 1994. Because most of the goods purchased in the Maquiladora Zone are bought with US dollars the purchasing power of the pesos paid to Mexican workers there dropped by about one half. This development was especially brutal because many of these workers were witnessing a sharp drop in the real income of Mexico's workers for the second time in about a decade.

During the 1980s the wages of all Mexican workers were cut roughly in half when the government limited wage increases as part of a package of economic reforms. Those economic reforms were designed to liberalise or restructure Mexico's economy, in response to the country's debt crisis and pressure from the International Monetary Fund. The reforms were meant to make Mexico open for business. In the aftermath of the 1994 peso crisis, it became common for families in the Maquiladora Zone to need at least three wage earners to maintain a subsistence income. At the same time the sharp decline in the value of the peso also yielded a sharp drop in labour costs for employers in the border region and a sudden surge in their plants' profitability. This is in turn stimulated additional foreign investment in the Maquiladora Zone, more uncontrolled economic growth and more corporate restructuring.

In short, the corporate restructuring and greatly increased mobility of capital that were facilitated by the implementation of NAFTA have been, and continue to be, synonymous with the economic and ecological plunder of Mexico's Maquiladora Zone by transnational corporations. These very same corporations, particularly in the auto industry, are relentlessly restructuring and downsizing their operations elsewhere in Mexico, the US and Canada at the expense of workers to become lean and yield a higher rate of profit.

In conclusion, these things illustrate the kind of barbarism that is being wrought in North America by the global corporate agenda, and this barbarism will not be stopped until we understand the forces that are creating it and recognise and act on the need for workers to build a movement of resistance on a multi national basis.

Bruce Allen, Canadian Autoworkers Local 199
Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras

The following is, as far as we know, the first English translation of this article, based on the German reprint published in June 1977 by “Die Anarchistische Vereinigung Norddeutschland” (Anarchist Union of North Germany) which was a direct reprint of the article from Der Syndicalist (Berlin) in 1908, originally from Les Temps Nouveaux. It was translated by J.Goddard and proofread by L.Guenther in 1994. We are publishing it because, although dated, it still has many relevant points for today.

From all sides, people are always asking us, “What is Syndicalism and what is its relationship to Anarchism?”. Here we will do our best to answer these questions.

Syndicalism is only a new name for an old tactic in which the workers of Great Britain have taken successful refuge for a long time: the tactic of Direct Action, and the fight against Capital in the economic sphere. This tactic, in fact, was their favourite weapon. Not possessing the right to vote, British workers in the first half of the nineteenth century won important economic gains and created a strong trade union organisation through use of this weapon alone, and even forced the ruling classes to acknowledge their demands with legislation (including an extension of the franchise).

Direct Action has proved itself, both in achieving economic results and in extracting political concessions, to be a significant weapon in the economic arena.

In Britain, the influence of this idea was so strong that in the years 1830 to 1831 Robert Owen attempted to found one big national union, and an international workers organisation, which using direct action would struggle against Capital. Early fears of persecution by the British government forced him to abandon this idea.

This was followed by the Chartist movement, which used the powerful, widespread and partly secret worker's organisations of the time in order to gain considerable political concessions. At this point British workers received their first lesson in politics: very soon they realised that although they backed political agitation with all means at their disposal, this agitation won them no economic advantages other than those they themselves forced the employers and lawgivers to concede through strikes and revolts. They realised how pointless it was to expect serious improvements to their conditions of life to come from parliament.

French workers came to exactly the same conclusion: the revolution of 1848 which had given France a Republic convinced them of the complete fruitlessness of political agitation and even of political victories; the only fundamental changes to workers conditions of life are those which the ruling classes are forced to concede by Direct Action.

The revolution gave the French another lesson. They saw how completely helpless were their intellectual leaders when it came to finding out about new forms of production which would secure for the workers their share and bring about the end of their exploitation by Capital. They saw this helplessness both in the Luxembourg Commission, which met between April and June 1848, and in the special Chamber chosen to study this question in 1849, on which over 100 Social Democratic Deputies sat. From this, they realised that workers themselves had to work out the main lines of the social revolution, on which they must travel if they are to be successful.

The use of direct action by Labour against Capital, and the necessity for workers themselves to work out the forms of economic organisation with which to eliminate capitalist exploitation: these were the two main lessons received by the workers, especially in the two countries with the most developed industry.

When, then, in the years 1864/66 the old idea of Robert Owen was realised and an international worker's organisation was set up, this new organisation adopted both of the above fundamental principles. As the International Workers Association (IWA) had been brought into being by representatives of the British trade unions and French workers (mainly followers of Proudhon), who had attended the second World Exhibition in Paris, it proclaimed that the emancipation of the workers must be the task of the workers themselves and that from then on the capitalists would have to be fought with mass strikes, supported internationally.

Following on from this, the first two acts of the International were two such mass strikes, causing enormous agitation in Europe and a salutary fright for the middle class: a strike in Paris, supported by the British trade unions, the other in the Genoese building trade, supported by French and British workers.

In addition, congresses of the Internacional workers no longer bothered with discussing nonsense with which nations were entertained by their rulers in parliamentary institutions. They discussed the fundamental question of the revolutionary reconstruction of society and set in motion the idea which since then has proved so fruitful; the idea of the General Strike. As to what political form society would take after the social revolution, the federations of the Latin countries openly stood against the idea of centralised states. They emphatically declared themselves in favour of an organisation based on a federation of free communes and farming regions, who in this way would free themselves from capitalist exploitation and on this basis, on the basis of federal combination, form larger territorial and national units.

Both basic principles of modern Syndicalism, of direct action and the careful working out of new forms of social life, are based on trade union federations: from the beggining, both were the leading principles of the IWA.

Even them within the Association, however, there were two differing currents of opinion concerning political activity which divided the workers of different nations: Latin, and German.

The French within the International were mainly supporters of Proudhon, whose leading idea was as follows: The removal of the existing bourgeois state apparatus, to be replaced by the workers own organisation of trade unions, which will regulate and organise everything essential to society. It is the workers who have to organise the production of life's necessities, the fair and impartial exchange of all products of human labour, and their distribution and consumption. And if they do that, we will see that there will be very little left for the state to do. Production of everything needed, and a more equitable exchange and consumption of products, are problems which only the workers can solve. If they can do all this, what remains to be done by existing governments and their hierarchy of officials? Nothing that workers can't organise themselves.

But among the French founders of the International there were those who had fought for the Republic and for the Commune. They were insistent that political activity should not be ignored and that it is not unimportant for the proletarian whether they live under a monarchy, a Republic, or a commune. They knew from their own experience that the triumph of conservatives or of imperialists meant repression in all directions, and an enormous weakening of the power of workers to combat the aggressive politics of the capitalists. They were not indifferent to politics, but they refused to see an instrument for the liberation of the working class in electoral politics or successes, or in the whole to-ing and fro-ing of political parties. Accordingly, the French, Spanish, and Italian workers agreed to insert the following words into the statutes of the International: “Every political activity must be secondary to the economic.”

Among British workers there were a number of Chartists who supported political struggle. And the Germans, unlike the French, did not yet have the experience of two republics. They believed in the coming parliament of the German Reich. Even Lasalle – as is now known – had some faith in a socialist Kaiser of the united Germany he saw rising.

Because of this, neither the British nor the Germans wanted to rule out parliamentary action, which they still believed in, and in the English and German texts of the same statutes inserted: “As a means, every political activity must be secondary to the economic.”

Thus was resurrected the old idea of trust in a bourgeois parliament.

After Germany had triumphed over France in the war of 1870-71 and 35,000 proletarians, the cream of the French working class, were murdered after the fall of the Commune by the armies of the bourgeoisie, and when the IWA had been banned in France, Marx and Engels and their supporters tried to re-introduce political activity into the International, in the form of workers candidates.

As a result, a split occurred in the International, which up to then had raised such high hopes among proletarians and caused such fright among the rich.

The federations of the Latin countries, of Italy, Spain, the Jura and East Belgium (and a small group of refugees from France) rejected the new course. They formed their own separated unions and since this time have developed more and more in the direction of revolutionary Syndicalism and Anarchism, while Germany took the lead in the development of the Social Democratic Party, all the more so after Bismarck introduced the universal right to vote in parliamentary elections following the victory in war of the newly established German Reich.

Forty years have now passed since this division in the International and we can judge the result. Later, we will analyse things in more detail but even now we can point to the complete lack of success during these 40 years of those who placed their faith in what they called the conquest of political power within the existing bourgeois state.

Instead of conquering this state, as they believed, they have been conquered by it. They are its tools, helping to maintain the power of the upper and middle class over the workers. They are the loyal tools of the Church, State, Capital and the monopoly economy.

But all across Europe and America we are seeing a new movement among the masses, a new force in the worker's movement, one which turns to the old principles of the International, of direct action and the direct struggle of the workers against capital, and workers are realising that they alone must free themselves – not parliament.

Obviously, this is still not Anarchism. We go further. We maintain that the workers will only achieve their liberation when they rid themselves of the perception of centralisation and hierarchy, and of the deception of State appointed officials who maintain law and order – law made by the rich directed against the poor, and order meaning the submission of the poor before rich. Until such fantasies and delusions have been thrown overboard, the emancipation of the workers will not be achieved.

But during theses 40 years anarchists, together with these workers who have taken their liberation into their own hands, making use of Direct Action as the preparatory means for the final battle of exploited Labour against – up to the present day – triumphant Capital, have fought against those who entertained the workers with fruitless electoral campaigns. All this time they have been busy among the working masses, to awaken in them the desire for working out the principles for the seizure of the docks, railways, mines, factories, fields and warehouses, by the unions, to be run no longer in the interests of a few capitalists but in the interest of the whole of society.

It has been shown how in England since the years 1820-30, and in France following the unsuccessful political revolution of 1848, the efforts of an important section of the workers were directed at fighting Capital using Direct Action, and with creating the necessary worker's organisations for this.

It has also been shown how, between 1866 and 1870, this idea was the most important within the newly established International Workers Association but also how, following the defeat of France by Germany in 1871 and the fall of the Paris Commune, political elements took the upper hand within the International through this collapse of its revolutionary forces and temporarily became the decisive factor in the worker's movement.

Since this time both currents have steadily developed in the direction of their own programmes. Worker's parties were organised in all constitutional states and did everything in their power to increase the number of their parliamentary representatives as quickly as possible. From the very beginning it could be seen how, with representatives who chased after votes, the economic programme would increasingly become less important; in the end being limited to complete the trivial limitations on the rights of employers, thereby giving the capitalist system new strength and helping to prolong the old order. At the same time, those socialist politicians who competed with the representatives of bourgeois radicalism for the capture of worker's votes helped, if against their intentions, to smooth the way for a victorious reaction across Europe.

Their whole ideology, the ideas and ideals which they spread among the masses, were focused on the one aim. They were convinced supporters of state centralisation, opposed local autonomy and the independence of small nations and devised a philosophy of history to support their conclusions. They poured cold water on the hopes of the masses while preaching to them, in the name of “historical materialism”, that no fundamental change in a socialist direction would be possible if the number of capitalists did not decrease through mutual competition. Completely outside their observations lay the fact which is so obvious in all industrialised countries today: that British, French, Belgian and other capitalists, by means of the ease with which they exploit countries which themselves have no developed industry, today control the labour of hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. The result is that the number of those people in the leading industrialised countries of Europe who live off the work of others doesn't gradually decrease at all. Far from it. In fact, it increases at a constant and alarming rate. And with the growth of this number, the number of people with an interest in the capitulation of the capitalist state system also increases. Finally, those who speak loudest of political agitation for the conquest of power in the existing states fiercely oppose anything which could damage their chances of achieving political power. Anyone who dared to criticise their parliamentary tactics was expelled from international socialist congresses. They disapproved of strikes and later, when the idea of the General Strike penetrated even their own congresses, they fought the idea fiercely with all means at their disposal.

Such tactics have been pursued for a full 40 years, but only today has it become clear to everyone that workers throughout Europe have had enough. With disgust, many workers have come to reject them. This is the reason we are now hearing so much about “Syndicalism”.

However, during these 40 years the other current, that which advocates the direct struggle of the working class against Capital, has also grown and developed; it has developed despite government persecution from all directions and in spite of denunciation by capitalist politicians. It would be interesting to plot the steady development of this current and to analyse its intellectual as well as personal connections with the social democratic parties on the one hand, and with the anarchists on the other. But now is not the time for publication of such work, all things given it is perhaps better that it has not yet been written. Attention would be turned to the influence of personalities, when it is to the influence of the major currents of modern thought and the growth of self-confidence among the workers of America and Europe, a self-confidence gained independently of intellectual leaders, to which special attention has to be directed in order to be able to write a real history of Syndicalism.

All that we now have to say about it is the bare facts that completely independently of the teachings of Socialists, where working masses were gathered together in the main industrial centres, that these masses maintained the tradition of their trade organisations from former times, organising both openly and secretly, while all the time growing in strength, to curb the increasing exploitation and arrogance of the employers. At the same time that the organised working masses grew larger and stronger, becoming aware of the main struggle which since the time of the great French revolution has been the true purpose of life of civilised peoples, their anti-capitalist tendencies became clearer and more certain.

During the last 40 years, years in which political leaders in different countries have used the widest possible means to try to prevent all worker's revolts and to suppress any of a threatening character, we have seen workers' revolts extend even further, becoming ever more powerful, and workers' aims expressed more and more clearly. Ever increasingly, they have lost the character of mere acts of despair; whenever we have contact with the workers, more and more we hear the prevailing opinion expressed, which can be summarised in the following few words: “Make room, gentlemen of industry! If you can't manage to run the Industries so that we can scrape a living and find in them a secure existence, then away with you! Away, if you are so short sighted and incapable of coming to a sensible understanding with one another over each new turn of production which promises you the greatest instant profit, that you must attack without regarding the harmfulness or usefulness of its products like a flock of sheep! Away with you, if you are incapable of building up your wealth other than with the preparation of endless wars, wasting a third of all goods produced by each nation in armaments useful only for robing other robbers! Away. If from all the wonderful discoveries of modern science you have not learnt to gain your riches other than from the poverty to which a third of the population of the big towns and cities of our exceptionally rich countries are condemned! Away, if that is the only way you can run industry and trade! We workers will know better how to organise production, if only first we succeed in eradicating this capitalist pest!”

These were the ideas fought over and discussed in workers' households throughout the entire civilised world; they provided the fertile ground for the tremendous workers' revolts we have seen year after year in Europe and in the United States, in the form of strikes by dockers, rail workers, miners and mill workers, etc., until finally taking the form of the General Strike – soon growing into major struggles comparable with the powerful cycles of the force of nature, and next to which small battles in parliaments appear as a children's game.

While the Germans celebrated their ever growing electoral success with red flags and torchlit possessions, the experienced Western people's quietly set to work on a much more serious task: that of the internal organisation of the workers. The ideas with which these last peoples occupied themselves were of a much more important nature. They asked themselves, “What will be the result of the inevitable worldwide conflict between Labour and Capital?”, “What new forms of industrial life and social organisation will this conflict create?”.

And that is the true origin of the Syndicalist movement, which today's ignorant politicians have just discovered as something new to them.

To us anarchists this movement is nothing new. We welcomed the recognition of syndicalist trends in the programme of the International Workers Association. We defended it, when it was attacked within the International by the German political revolutionaries who saw in this movement an obstacle to the capture of political power. We advised the workers of all nations to follow the example of the Spanish who had kept their trade union organisations in close contact with the sections of the International. Since this time we have followed all phases of the worker's movement with interest and know that whatever the coming clashes between Labour and Capital will be like, it will fall to the syndicalist movement to open the eyes of society towards the tasks owing to the producers of all wealth. It is the only movement which will show to thinking people a way out of the cul-de-sac into which the present development of capitalism has given our generation.

It goes without saying that anarchists have never imagined that it was they who had provided the syndicalist movement with its understanding of its tasks with regard to the reorganisation of society. Never have they absurdly claimed to be the leaders of a great intellectual movement leading humanity in the direction of its progressive evolution. But what we can claim is to have recognised right from the beginning the immense importance of those ideas which today constitute the main aims of Syndicalism, ideas which in Britain have been developed by Godwin, Hodgkin, Grey and their successors, and in France by Proudhon: The idea that workers' organisations for production, distribution, and exchange, must take the place of existing capitalist exploitation and the state. And that it is the duty and the task of the workers' organisations to work out the new form of society.

Neither of these two fundamental ideas are our invention; nor anyone else's. Life itself has dictated them to nineteenth century civilisation. It is now our duty to put them into reality. But we are proud that we understood and defended them in those dark years when social democratic politicians and pseudo-philosophies trampled them underfoot, and we are proud that we stand true to them, today as then.

Published in Black Flag 210, pp. 24-27, 1997.
Digitized by Ratibor Trivunac and Camilo Álvares.