Strategy and struggle - anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century

Strategy & Struggle: anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century

A pamphlet produced in January 2009 by Brighton Solidarity Federation as a clarification of the meaning of anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century, and as a contribution to the debate over strategy and organisation.

Author

Solidarity Federation

Libcom note: this 2009 pamphlet provoked strong debate within the Solidarity Federation and several critiques. Responses from within Solfed are included in the PDF below.

After a period of internal discussion, this lead to the publication in 2012 of Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle, a longer text representing the consensus SolFed reached following the 'Strategy & Struggle debate'.

PREFACE
Since this document was first circulated, it has provoked both discussion within the Solidarity Federation - where in its current form it represents a minority viewpoint - and also in the wider libertarian class struggle milieu, with reports of discussions from the Netherlands to Eastern Europe to the United States.

We encourage our critics to publish their critiques, for the purpose of furthering the necessary debate over how best to build a libertarian working class movement. For our part, based on comrades criticisms, further historical and primary research and reflections on our own activities in our town and workplaces, we have begun the process of drafting a new, much more comprehensive document to build on the ideas set forth in this pamphlet. Let this document too be subject to intellectual criticism and the cauldron of practice, in order to contribute to new and more effective strategies and tactics.

Brighton SolFed
May 2009

INTRODUCTION

"The spirit of anarcho-syndicalism (...) is characterised by independence of action around a basic set of core principles; centred on freedom and solidarity. Anarcho-syndicalism has grown and developed through people taking action, having experiences, and learning from them (...) the idea is to contribute to new and more effective action, from which we can collectively bring about a better society more quickly. That is the spirit of anarcho-syndicalism."
– Self Education Collective (2001)1

Anarcho-syndicalism is a specific tendency within the wider workers’ movement. As a tendency, it has a history of its own dating back over a century. In contemporary discussions many - self-identified advocates and critics alike – take the tradition as it was 50, 70 or 100 years ago as definitive of the tradition as a whole. There is also the fact that the tradition is a plural one, and its core principles have allowed varied, sometimes conflicting practices at differing times in its history. The anarcho-syndicalism of the CNT of 1930 was not the same as the CNT of 1980. The anarcho-syndicalism of the Friends of Durruti was different yet again. As was that of the FORA. And so on.

What this underlines is the need to clarify exactly what anarcho-syndicalism means in practical terms in a 21st century context. That is the purpose of this pamphlet. This aim will be pursued by way of introducing the current industrial strategy of the Solidarity Federation (SF), with some historical context as well as theoretical clarification of the meaning of a ‘revolutionary union’, different organisational roles and the relationship between the form and content of class struggle. This theoretical clarification is solely for the purpose of informing contemporary practice, and not some mere intellectual exercise.

So we see anarcho-syndicalism as a living tradition that develops through a critical reflection on our experiences and adaptation to new conditions. It may well be the ideas presented here are not unique to any one tradition of the workers’ movement and may find resonance with those who do not identify as anarcho-syndicalists - if anything this is evidence of their validity. This pamphlet is written to contribute to new and more effective action, from which we can collectively bring about a better society more quickly; it is written in the spirit of anarcho-syndicalism.

CLASSICAL ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM

"Through the taking over of the management of all plants by the producers themselves under such form that the separate groups, plants, and branches of industry are independent members of the general economic organism and systematically carry on production and the distribution of the products (…) Theirs must be the task of freeing labour from all the fetters which economic exploitation has fastened on it."
- Rudolph Rocker (1938)2

Anarcho-syndicalism emerged in the late 19th century from the libertarian wing of the workers’ movement. Stressing solidarity, direct action and workers’ self-management, it represented a turn to the labour movement and collective, class struggle in contrast to the concurrent tendency of individualistic ‘propaganda by the deed’ – assassinations and terrorist bombings – that had become popular with many anarchists following the massacre of the Paris Commune in 1871.

Classical syndicalists, including many anarcho-syndicalists sought to unite the working class into revolutionary unions. Like the ‘One Big Unionism’ of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the goal was to build industrial unions until such a point as they could declare a revolutionary general strike as the prelude to social revolution. However, unlike the IWW on the one hand, and Marxists and social democrats on the other, anarcho-syndicalists rejected the separation of economic (trade union) and political (party) struggles.

They stressed that workers themselves should unite to fight for their interests whether at the point of production or elsewhere, not leave such struggles to the specialists of political parties or union officials or still less neglect political goals such as the overthrow of capital and the state in favour of purely economic organisation around wages and working hours.3 Furthermore they stressed that workers should retain control of their organisations through direct democratic means such as sovereign mass meetings and mandated, recallable delegates.

The goal of these unions - as suggested in the Rudolph Rocker quote above – was to expropriate the means of production and manage them democratically without bosses. As such, the dominant tendency saw building the union as ‘building the new society in the shell of the old.’ The same directly democratic structures created to fight the bosses would form the basic structure of a new society once the bosses were successfully expropriated.

Consequently, building the union was seen as one and the same as building both the new society and the social revolution that would bring it about. Class struggle became not just a question of (self-)organisation, but of building the organisation. As the union grew to a sufficient size and influence, strikes could be launched, culminating in the revolutionary general strike that would bring about libertarian communism.4 There was almost a blueprint for social revolution that simply needed to be implemented.

This approach appeared to be vindicated with the outbreak of the Spanish revolution in 1936 in which the anarcho-syndicalist CNT played a prominent role. In Barcelona, factories, public transport and other workplaces were taken over and self-managed by their workers. In the countryside land was collectivised and libertarian communism proclaimed. However the revolution ended, tragically, in defeat, but not before the paradoxical spectacle of the CNT providing anarchist ministers to the government while it ordered insurgent workers off the streets.

The experience of Spain led to many criticisms of classical anarcho-syndicalism in addition to those which had already been made during its development in the early 20th century. To these criticisms we will now turn.

CRITICISMS OF CLASSICAL ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM

"The modern proletarian class does not carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight..."
– Rosa Luxemburg (1918)5

Criticisms have come from many quarters. We will focus here on four in particular which have relevance to developing anarcho-syndicalist practice as they share our goal of libertarian communism (unlike say, social democratic criticisms). Addressed in order of their severity, these four criticisms are: those which emerged from within - at the height of the Spanish revolution in the form of the Friends of Durruti group; those from the platformist tradition that grew out of the lessons of the 1917 anarchist revolution in the Ukraine; those which came from the council communist tendency in the workers’ movement, and in particular Rosa Luxemburg; and finally those which, for want of a better term emanate from the contemporary ‘ultra-left’ and Gilles Dauvé in particular.

The Friends of Durruti’s criticisms
The Friends of Durruti (FoD) were a group of rank-and-file CNT militants during the Spanish revolution in 1936-7. Their main criticism was that having defeated the army and taken the streets and workplaces, the CNT didn’t know where to go. “The CNT did not know how to live up to its role. It did not want to push ahead with the revolution with all of its consequences (…) it behaved like a minority group, even though it had a majority in the streets.”6 The CNT simply started self-managing the workplaces and collaborating with the remnants of the state, rather than decisively smashing the state and moving towards libertarian communism. For the FoD, the CNT lacked two things: “a program, and rifles.”

Platformist criticisms
In many ways platformist criticisms are similar to those of the FoD; whilst supporting the structures of anarcho-syndicalist unions they stress the need for a specific libertarian communist organisation to argue for a communist program within such mass organisations. This organisation would be a single ‘general union of anarchists’ and be founded on four organisational principles; theoretical unity, tactical unity, collective responsibility and federalism.7

In contrast to classical anarcho-syndicalism, contemporary platformism seeks not to build mass organisations, but to insert into them and influence them in an anarchist direction. For example the position paper on trade unions by the influential platformist Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) states that “no matter how conservative they can become, it does not alter the fact that they are the most important mass organisations of the working class (…) activity within them is an extremely important ongoing activity.”8 Consequently, they advocate reforming the existing Trade Unions towards anarcho-syndicalist structures of mandated recallable delegates, rank-and-file control etc.9 Council communist criticisms
For Rosa Luxemburg, anarcho-syndicalists had an undialectical view of revolution where they could build up their organisation, the one big union, set the date for the revolutionary general strike and that would be it. There was no space for spontaneity, or for learning from struggle and adapting the forms accordingly; the anarcho-syndicalist union was taken as a given. She contrasted the anarchist general strike to the mass strike, a more spontaneous expression of class struggle not called by any one group.

Her ruminations on the mass strikes in Russia – which she claimed were “the historical liquidation of anarchism”10 - led her to formulate a ‘dialectic of spontaneity and organisation.’ For Luxemburg, organisation was born in the midst of class struggle, she held the anarcho-syndicalists put the organisation before struggle; they thought building the union was the same as building the revolutionary struggle, since it was the union that would call the revolutionary general strike.

Ultra-left criticisms
Communist writer Gilles Dauvé has been particularly critical of anarcho-syndicalism. Whilst the Friends of Durruti and the platformists saw the failures of anarcho-syndicalism as stemming from the absence of a clear communist program, and Rosa Luxemburg and the council communists from a proscriptive disconnect from unforeseen, spontaneous developments of the class struggle, Dauvé argues the problems are far more fundamental. He writes that

“‘You can’t destroy a society by using the organs which are there to preserve it (..) any class who wants to liberate itself must create its own organ’, H. Lagardelle wrote in 1908, without realizing that his critique could be applied as much to the unions (including a supposed revolutionary syndicalist French CGT on a fast road to bureaucratisation and class collaboration) as to the parties of the Second International. Revolutionary syndicalism discarded the voter and preferred the producer: it forgot that bourgeois society creates and lives off both. Communism will go beyond both.”11

Furthermore he argues that “the purpose of the old labour movement was to take over the same world and manage it in a new way: putting the idle to work, developing production, introducing workers’ democracy (in principle, at least). Only a tiny minority, ‘anarchist’ as well as ‘marxist’, held that a different society meant the destruction of the State, commodity and wage labour, although it rarely defined this as a process, rather as a programme to be put into practice after the seizure of power.”12 CONTEMPORARY ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM

"Not only did the great determination and ingenuity on the part of the [Puerto Real] workers bring results, but that of the communities too. Mass assemblies both in the yards and surrounding localities involved workers, their families, neighbours and all supporters. Initiating and maintaining entire communities' involvement in mass assemblies alone was fine achievement."
– Solidarity Federation (1995)13

There are numerous examples of contemporary anarcho-syndicalist practice, from the small group organising in Germany and the Netherlands described in FAU Bremen’s ‘Notes from the class struggle’ pamphlet,14 to the McDonalds Workers Resistance network15 to recent struggles in Spain, Australia and elsewhere. However, we will focus on two examples that go beyond the limits of the classical anarcho-syndicalism we have considered thus far, and illustrate elements of contemporary practice which are emphasised in the SF’s industrial strategy. These two examples are the struggles around the shipyards in Puerto Real, Spain in 1987, and the Workmates collective that existed amongst track maintenance workers in London in the early part of this decade.

Puerto Real
When the Spanish government announced a programme of 'rationalisation' at the Puerto Real shipyards, the workforce came out on strike. The CNT was at the forefront in spreading the action to the surrounding population. Not only was the government defeated, but a number of pay and condition improvements were secured. The most noteworthy development was the spread of mass assemblies both in the shipyards and the surrounding communities. These assemblies were the sovereign bodies of the struggle, controlling it from the bottom up. People decided for themselves, rejecting control by unaccountable politicians, union officials or 'experts' and ensuring control remained in the workplace and locality.

These bodies reflected the kind of ‘dialectic of spontaneity and organisation’ that Rosa Luxemburg declared anarchism “liquidated” a century ago for lacking. The CNT did not seek to get everyone in the shipyards and surrounding communities to join it and then declare a strike (although their levels of membership and longer-term agitation certainly contributed to their influence), but when the rationalisations were announced they sought instead to initiate mass assemblies open to all workers regardless of union membership, whilst arguing for the core anarcho-syndicalist principles of solidarity, direct action and rank-and-file control.

Workmates
Workmates began as a handful of militants working in various track maintenance and engineering jobs on the London Underground in 2002. These included track installers, track welders, crossing makers, carpenters, ultrasonic rail testers, track vent cleaning gangs, along with lorry drivers. In Februrary 2003, a meeting attended by around 150 workers voted unanimously to move from being a loose collective of RMT members and set up a delegate council along anarcho-syndicalist lines.16 Each ‘gang’ of workers (typically between 8 and 12) elected a recallable delegate and mandated them to sit on the delegate council.

LUL used a large number of casualised agency staff, most of whom were non-unionised. These workers were also included in the Workmates collective, which was independent of the RMT and open to all workers at LUL (minus scabs and management). The initial struggle Workmates was involved with was resistance to the privatisation of LUL and concomitant attacks on working conditions this entailed. While LUL was privatised, Workmates subsequently scored several victories over working practices after mass meetings organised work-to-rules and delegates consulted with their gangs to plan further action.17

However, there were also some defeats. These, coupled with high staff turnover meant that the levels of participation and struggle were not sufficient to sustain the delegate council structure. Consequently Workmates waned back to being a residual network of militants rather than an independent union, however a legacy of canteen mass meetings whenever a dispute arises remains, and the levels of solidarity are still high, as demonstrated by the level of support for a militant recently victimised by management in the depot where workmates is centred, which helped force an embarrassing climb-down.18 ON FORM AND CONTENT (THE PRIMACY OF STRUGGLE)

"Communist revolution is the creation of non-profit, non-mercantile, co-operative and fraternal social relations, which implies smashing the State apparatus and doing away with the division between firms, with money as the universal mediator (and master), and with work as a separate activity. That is the content… this content won’t come out of any kind of form. Some forms are incompatible with the content. We can’t reason like the end was the only thing that mattered: the end is made out of means."
– Gilles Dauvé (2008)19

Anarcho-syndicalism is commonly associated with particular organisational forms, namely revolutionary unions, mass meetings and mandated, recallable delegate councils. But it cannot be forgotten that these forms are necessarily the expression of some content. This is much like how a pot-maker can fashion many forms from a single lump of clay, but cannot fashion anything without the clay to start with. Structure requires substance, content precedes form. However we are not philosophers interested in such niceties for their own sake, but for their practical implications. So what is this content to which anarcho-syndicalism seeks to give form?

Simply, it is class struggle. Conflict between classes is immanent to capitalism, since capital is defined by our exploitation. We understand class struggle as a process of self-organisation to collectively advance our concrete, human needs as workers. Since these needs are in conflict with the needs of capital accumulation, the rejection of inhuman conditions carries with it the seed of a future human community; libertarian communism, the revolution described by Dauvé above. With the Workmates collective, we have an example of this content – a certain level of militancy – being given an anarcho-syndicalist form; a form which subsequently dissipated as the level of militant participation ebbed with high staff turnover and several telling defeats.

So while class struggle has primacy over the particular forms it takes, which are only means to advance our concrete needs and ultimately establish a society based on those needs, we do seek to give this struggle particular forms. These forms cannot be created from scratch, but we can seek to give disparate content a particular form, in turn focussing and developing that content. This is where the pot-maker analogy breaks down, because some forms sustain and expand the struggle while others strangle and suppress it. The relationship is dialectical in that the particular form the struggle takes in turn affects the development of the struggle. Since it is the class struggle that will create libertarian communism, we must always give it primacy over the needs of particular organisational forms. This was a lesson drawn by the Friends of Durruti when they found themselves facing expulsion from the CNT for advocating revolutionary struggle against the state of which it had become a part.

SOME NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS

"The most important thing that I would to point out, is that [in Puerto Real] we managed to create a structure whereby there was a permanent assembly taking place. In other words decisions within this particular conflict were made by those people who were directly involved in the conflict."
– Pepe Gomez, CNT (1995)20

Before we can proceed further, we will need to make three conceptual distinctions. The reasons for such precision will become apparent in the following sections, as well as for properly understanding the Industrial Strategy which completes this pamphlet.

Permanent/non-permanent organisations
Pepe Gomez above describes the assemblies in Puerto Real as “permanent”, yet he also notes how they were an expression of a “particular conflict.” Perhaps ‘regular’ captures this meaning better in English. We would define a permanent organisation as one which endures between cycles of struggle – political parties, trade unions and anarchist propaganda groups are all permanent organisations. We would define non-permanent organisations as those which are inexorably the expression of a certain level of struggle and cannot outlive it without becoming something else entirely. The assemblies described by Pepe Gomez would fit into this category. For us therefore regular meetings do not equal permanent organisation.

Mass/minority organisations
We call a mass organisation one which is open to essentially all workers in whatever area it operates (we would call a popular organisation one open to all people, regardless of class). We call a minority organisation one which maintains specific, usually political criteria of membership which preclude some from joining. A trade union is an example of a mass organisation. A political group such as the Solidarity Federation is a minority organisation, since it requires agreement with specific, revolutionary aims and principles which are necessarily minority views outside of revolutionary upsurges. Some of the anti-war groups in 2002-4, at least those which organised via open public meetings as was the case in Brighton would be examples of a popular organisations.

Revolutionary/pro-revolutionary organisations
The final distinction we must draw is between revolutionary and pro-revolutionary organisations. We call revolutionary organisations those which are actually capable of making a revolution. These are necessarily mass organisations since no minority can make a revolution on behalf of the class – the pitfalls of such Leninist vanguardism are well known and don’t need repeating here. We call pro-revolutionary organisations those which are in favour of revolution but which are in no position to make it themselves. Propaganda groups would be an example of this. We do find the term ‘pro-revolutionary’ less than ideal, and in fact something like ‘agitational’ might be better. However this doesn’t immediately capture the relationship of the organisation to revolution that we are trying to convey.

ORGANISATION AND ORGANISATIONAL ROLES

"To organise is always a necessity, but the fixation on your own organisation can be perilous. Against that we believe in the diversity of groups and organisations, that arises from different situations and fulfil different needs in the flow of class struggle. Some are more temporary, while others are continuous."
– Riff Raff (1999)21

We can use the distinctions in the previous section to identify four ideal types of organisation. Of course many different forms of organisation are possible, but only some are of interest to anarcho-syndicalists since only some offer the potential to develop the class struggle both in the here-and-now and ultimately in the direction of social revolution and libertarian communism. Now while these are ideal types and therefore not all actually existing organisations fit neatly into one category or the other, they do identify the real tensions present in organisations that try to defy the logic inherent to their particular organisational form. We will discuss real-world examples below to help illustrate the argument.

Mass, permanent organisations
Mass, permanent organisations are by definition de-linked from the levels of militancy of their members and class struggle more broadly. Therefore, they are not expressions of the self-organisation of workers sought by anarcho-syndicalists, but for the representation of workers as workers. We therefore recognise that neither trade unions or so-called mass workers’ parties are revolutionary organisations. In the case of trade unions, their structural role as representatives of labour power within capitalism compels them to offer disciplined workforces to the employers.

If they cannot offer the promise of industrial peace, they are in no position to negotiate. Such social partnership is inherent to the idea of mass, permanent workers representation, de-linked from class struggle. Furthermore, they divide up the class by trade and in addition to their structural limitations are bound by a host of laws just to make sure they fulfil this function, such as restrictions on secondary action and the notice needed for industrial action, all on pain of the sequestration of funds and imprisonment of officials.

If levels of militancy are low, trade unions work hand-in-hand with management to impose cuts and restructuring. If levels of struggle are higher, they will posture more militantly and operate as a limited expression of that struggle in order to appear to workers to really 'represent' their interests, calling tokenistic one-day strikes and suchlike. There are numerous recent examples.22 As and when such struggles begin to take on a self-organised character and go beyond the institutional and legal limits of the trade union form - by the development of mass meetings, wildcat action, flying pickets etc – two things can happen. The trade union will either come into conflict with the workers (as in the isolation of the Liverpool postal wildcat during the national strikes of 200723 ), or effectively cease to exist as a permanent organisation as it is superseded by the structures of mass meetings and the like, which as expressions of the level of militancy represent a non-permanent, potentially revolutionary supersession of the mass/permanent trade union form.

Consequently, we hold that not only are permanent mass organisations not revolutionary, but that in the final analysis they are counter-revolutionary institutions (note, we are not saying trade unionists are counter-revolutionary, the institutions are). The counter-revolutionary nature of trade unions does not arise from bad leadership, bureaucratisation and a lack of internal democracy, rather the leadership, bureaucratisation and lack of internal democracy arise from the logic of permanent mass organisations representing workers as workers. As revolutionary forms are necessarily the expression of class struggle and so necessarily non-permanent, the de-linking of form from content represents a counter-revolutionary inertia.

Of course it does not follow that we reject membership or activity within the trade unions, as their ultimately counter-revolutionary nature does not mean revolution would break out tomorrow if they suddenly ceased to be. Rather, the unions only act as a brake on struggles when they develop a degree of self-organisation in contradiction to the permanent form. Until that point, they do act as a limited expression of struggles precisely to secure their role as representatives. Consequently as workers we think it makes sense to be union members in workplaces where a trade union is recognised.

But as anarcho-syndicalists we hold no illusions in reforming them in accordance with our principles; instead arguing for, and where possible implementing, an anarcho-syndicalist strategy of mass meetings, mandated recallable delegates, delegate councils and secondary solidarity action regardless of the wishes of the union. Reforming the trade unions would be a waste of time, because the very level of self-organisation required to force such reforms would render the reforms themselves redundant, since we’d already be doing the things independently we were lobbying to be allowed to do. In workplaces where there is no recognised union, we advocate alternative structures, which will be discussed below.

Minority, permanent organisations
These are the kinds of organisation familiar to us today. There are two distinct pro-revolutionary roles for minority permanent organisations of interest to anarcho-syndicalists: propaganda groups and networks of militants. We see these as two distinct roles that organisations can fulfil. This could be attempted as a single organisation – as is the case with the SF’s current attempts to operate a dual structure of locals and industrial networks – or separate organisations, each focusing on its own role. We will elaborate our preference in the following ‘how we see it’ section, for now it is sufficient to understand that within a given type of organisation there can be distinct roles. We do not find it useful to refer to any kind of minority organisation - even an industrial/workplace one - as a union as in English in particular this has the connotations of mass organisations, for which we reserve the term.

Minority, non-permanent organisations
This type of organisation essentially mirrors minority/permanent ones, except that they will be created out of the needs of the class struggle at given times and places rather then being something we could have a general strategy for building. Examples would be the Friends of Durruti as a hybrid propaganda group/network of militants, and arguably workplace groups like McDonalds Workers Resistance,24 the informal social networks of ‘faceless resistance’ described by the Swedish communist group Kämpa Tillsammans,25 or some of the groups of anti-war activists that formed during the upsurge in anti-war sentiments in 2002-3. On account of their varied and non-permanent nature the only strategic approach to such organisations we can offer is to support them where they form and to try and create them in our own workplaces or localities as and when conditions permit.

Mass, non-permanent organisations
Mass, non-permanent organisations are a product of a certain level of class struggle, and therefore they cannot simply be built piecemeal by recruitment. For us, these organisations are the only type that are potentially revolutionary, as they are the mass expression of heightened class conflict. The organisations we can build in the present are the pro-revolutionary, minority ones, which can network, propagandise and agitate to develop the class struggle and give it anarcho-syndicalist forms as it develops. We think failure to recognise the fundamental difference between mass revolutionary organisations and minority pro-revolutionary organisations can only lead to practical confusion and demoralisation. Only if we recognise the relationship of organisation to class struggle can we be clear about what is possible and practical in the here and now and also how this gets us closer to the mass, revolutionary unions we want to see (more on which in the following section ‘how we see it’).

Reprise
It must be borne in mind that these four organisational types are to a certain extent idealised ones. In reality, groups exist that are in fact combinations of them. However these ideal types represent real tensions. For instance the paradox of a mass, directly democratic revolutionary organisation in times when the majority of workers are not pro-revolutionary places real limits on the size of attempts to create revolutionary unions in the here and now. Take for example the split between the Spanish CNT and the CGT over participation in state-run class collaborationist works councils.

The departure of the Swedish SAC from the International Workers Association (IWA) for similar reasons also reflects this paradox: internal democracy in a mass organisation when the majority of workers are not pro-revolutionary means the organisation has to sacrifice either internal democracy or its revolutionary principles – either way breaking with anarcho-syndicalism - the only other alternative being implausibly successful internal education to turn all members into pro-revolutionaries. Furthermore, the very co-existence of revolutionary organisations with the state is a necessarily unstable, temporary situation of dual power, they either make a revolution, are repressed, or accommodate themselves to legal existence as a regularised trade union.

Consequently while the organisational types we have described are not definitive of all actually-existing organisations, they do demonstrate the distinct types that exist and the tensions present within organisations that try to combine them. The paradox is only resolved with increased levels of class struggle and class consciousness – hence revolutionary unions are necessarily non-permanent products of struggle, and attempts to maintain them beyond the struggle of which they are an expression will see them lapse into a counter-revolutionary role. Without militant struggle they couldn’t but become organs for the representation of workers within capitalism, not the ultimate abolition of the working class.

OUR NOTION OF REVOLUTION

"A libertarian communist economy, a system without the market and where everyone has equal rights to have their needs met, has always been the aim of anarcho-syndicalists. Workers' self-management would amount to little in a world of inequality with decisions being dictated by the market."
– Solidarity Federation (2003)26

Anarcho-syndicalists are libertarian communists. Without this communist perspective, anarcho-syndicalism would amount to little more than democratic trade unionism for a self-managed capitalism. Communists recognise that capitalism is not simply an undemocratic mode of management, but a mode of production. Making it more democratic doesn’t make it any more responsive to human needs so long as money, commodity production and exchange persist. Consequently, against Rudolph Rocker’s classical position quoted earlier in this pamphlet, our notion of revolution is not simply the taking over of production in order to self-manage it democratically, but a simultaneous process of communisation – restructuring social production around human need.

This entails not the liberation of the working class envisaged by Rocker, but our abolition as a class and with it the negation of all classes. It also implies not the democratisation of work but its abolition as a separate sphere of human activity. Much activity - waged or not - that is potentially rewarding in itself is reduced to repetitive, alienating work by the requirements of capital accumulation. We don’t want democratically self-managed alienation, but its abolition. Furthermore - and this is of practical import to anarcho-syndicalists – whole sectors of the economy need to be abolished altogether, while those that remain need to be radically transformed in terms of the division of labour and the nature of productive activity itself.

This is significant, since while for example mass assemblies of call centre or financial services workers will likely be a part of any revolutionary upsurge, outbound call centres and finance have no place in a libertarian communist society. In parts of the UK these sectors account for nearly half of all employment. But at some point these assemblies would be deciding to dissolve themselves as part of the process of reorganising production around human needs, a process which constitutes social revolution. This once again demonstrates the limitations of the classical approach stressing the goal of self-management alone and reaffirms the need to state clearly and unequivocally that we are communists and that social revolution is a process of communisation.

HOW WE SEE IT

"We want a society based on workers' self-management, solidarity, mutual aid and libertarian communism. That society can only be achieved by working class organisations based on the same principles - revolutionary unions (...) Revolutionary unions are means for working people to organise and fight all the issues - both in the workplace and outside."
– Solidarity Federation Constitution (2005)27

As we have seen, an anarcho-syndicalist union isn’t just a really democratic trade union, but an altogether different beast with an altogether different purpose. Permanent mass organisations such as trade unions exist as things which organise workers. By contrast, the revolutionary unions advocated by anarcho-syndicalists are an expression of a process of workers’ self-organisation at its higher points. Therefore if we want to see these organisations, we have to agitate to build the class struggle itself, and for it to take these forms as and when class militancy develops sufficiently. ‘Building the union’ per se literally makes no sense, and represents a fetishism of form that forgets that the form can only ever be an expression of content, of class struggle.

For us, a revolutionary union is necessarily non-permanent because it is an expression of a given wave of class struggle. It cannot outlive the struggle of which it is an expression without becoming something fundamentally different, something counter-revolutionary, precisely because anarcho-syndicalist unions are defined by militant participation, direct action, solidarity and rank-and-file control. The particular form such unions entail is mass assemblies open to all workers (minus scabs and managers), and mandated recallable delegates forming delegate councils to co-ordinate the struggle. Federation by region and/or industry would also be advised as the numbers of such assemblies grew.

In order to develop the class struggle in a direction where such revolutionary unions are possible, we see two distinct organisational roles to enable anarcho-syndicalists to engage in direct action in the here-and-now. These are libertarian communist propaganda groups (of which anarcho-syndicalist propaganda groups are a subset), and networks of militants (of which industrial networks are a subset, on which we will focus).

In contrast to a platformist ‘general union of anarchists’ or left communist ‘single proletarian party’ we take a more pluralist approach to propaganda groups. While we are opposed to needless duplication of effort and resources, we are also opposed to the false unity that often accompanies attempts to unite everyone into one single political organisation. If there are real political differences between groups, they should organise independently. This does not however preclude practical co-operation on concrete projects of common interest. Consequently, while we clearly believe strongly in our ideas and seek to persuade others of them, with regard to propaganda groups we advocate an approach of non-sectarian pluralism and fraternal co-operation wherever possible to spread libertarian communist ideas and develop the class struggle.

In terms of propaganda, our goal is twofold: both to win other pro-revolutionaries to our positions and tactics, and to promote anarcho-syndicalist tactics and libertarian communist ideas amongst the wider class. The most obvious means of the former is the production of pamphlets and engaging in debates with the wider pro-revolutionary milieu – if we are confident in our ideas we should not fear an open confrontation of them with others. The latter goal of spreading our ideas amongst the wider class entails activities like producing and distributing strike bulletins on picket lines or distributing propaganda at workplaces facing redundancies, as well as maintaining accessible online information and holding public meetings.

As to industrial networks, we see membership of these as less determined by ideas and more by economic position (being a militant in a particular industry). Of course a level of theoretical and tactical agreement is required – networks are not apolitical - but we do not see this as being as high as for propaganda groups. For example it would be foolish not to organise with other militants because they have a different understanding of revolution, or are yet to be convinced of its necessity, but nonetheless support direct action, mass meetings and rank-and-file control of struggles.

Consequently we believe membership of a political organisation should not be a precondition of joining an industrial network as it represents an unnecessary barrier to the establishment and growth of such networks. Therefore we see the development of such networks as a concrete project for practical co-operation with other pro-revolutionary groups and non-aligned individuals who also see the need for them. The role of these networks would be to produce industrially specific propaganda and agitate industrially for direct action, solidarity and rank-and-file control. In the immediate term this means invisible, ‘faceless resistance’, but the goal is to foster open conflict controlled by mass meetings of all workers.

This may seem to represent a separation of political and economic organisation alien to anarcho-syndicalism. We do not agree. Both organisational roles address both ‘economic’ and ‘political’ issues of interest to the class, whether wages and conditions or border controls and the availability of abortions. The only separation is one which is a material fact of capitalist society – we share an economic position with fellow workers who may well be militant without sharing all our political ideas. We simply say this should not be a barrier to common action, only that it should be recognised and organisations structured accordingly. We believe the propaganda group/industrial network roles are a means of achieving this.

Finally, we should say that the list of activities given as examples for each type of organisation is not exhaustive. There are for example times when either type could engage in forms of direct action either to support its members or to support other workers in struggle who for whatever reason cannot take certain forms of action themselves.28 The possibilities thrown up by the class struggle cannot all be known in advance, and it would be foolish to try and prescribe exactly and exhaustively what each organisation should do. Instead, we seek only to describe the kinds of organisation that can advance the class struggle and move us closer to libertarian communism.

SOLIDARITY FEDERATION INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

The Solidarity Federation seeks to create a militant opposition to the bosses and the state, controlled by the workers themselves. Its strategy can apply equally to those in the official trade unions who wish to organise independently of the union bureaucracy and those who wish to set up other types of self-organisation.

Rank and file control
Decisions should be made collectively. This means they are made by mass meetings, not by officials in union offices. These mass meetings include all those in the workplace, regardless of union membership. It will not, however, include scabs or managers.

Anyone we elect to negotiate with management should have a mandate from the workforce that gives them clear guidance on what is and is not acceptable. Mass meetings of workers need to be able to recall all delegates.

Direct action
Direct action at work means strikes, go-slows, working-to-rule, occupations and boycotts. We are opposed to the alternative which is 'partnership' with bosses. Workers can only win serious concessions from management when industrial action is used or when bosses fear it might be.

Solidarity
Solidarity with other workers is the key to victory. Workers should support each others' disputes despite the anti-trade union laws. We need to approach other workers directly for their support. 'Don't Cross Picket Lines!'

Control of funds
Strike funds need to be controlled by the workers themselves. Officials will refuse to fund unlawful solidarity action. Union bureaucrats use official backing and strike pay to turn action on and off like a tap.

Unions use a large proportion of their political funds on sponsoring parliamentary candidates. Backing the Labour Party is not in the interests of workers. We should also not fall into the trap of backing so-called 'socialist' candidates. The Parliamentary system is about working class people giving up power and control, not exercising it.

Social change
The interests of the working class lie in the destruction of capitalist society. The whole of the wealth of society is produced by the workers. However, a portion of this is converted into profits for the shareholders and business people who own the means of production. When workers make wage demands, they are simply trying to win a bigger share of what is rightfully their own.

This means that trade union organisation around traditional bread and butter issues is not enough on its own, although it is vital. As well as a structure of mass meetings and delegates there also needs to be a specifically anarcho-syndicalist presence in any workplace organisation. This will necessarily involve only a minority of workers in the present time. The role of anarcho-syndicalist militants is not to control the workplace organisation but to put forward an anarcho-syndicalist perspective in the meetings of the workplace organisation and attempt to gain broad support for our aims and principles, through propaganda work.

Preamble
Solidarity Federation's ultimate aim is a self-managed, stateless society based on the principle of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. It is a society where we are no longer just used as a means to an end by bosses wanting to make money from our labour.

In the medium term and as an essential forerunner to such a society, SolFed promotes and seeks to initiate anarcho-syndicalist unions. To this end, SolFed seeks to create a militant opposition to the bosses and the state, controlled by the workers themselves. Its strategy can apply equally to those in the official trade unions who wish to organise independently of the union bureaucracy and those who wish to set up other types of self-organisation.

Details of the strategy
Mass meetings should be seen as an alternative structure to official union structures that are dominated by full-time bureaucrats. Decisions are made collectively in these assemblies. The work of these assemblies in different workplaces should be co-ordinated by delegate councils.

In the most militant workforces regular mass meetings will be held and this is obviously the ideal we are aiming at. This may not be possible in other workplaces where it will only be possible to organise such meetings when a dispute arises.

We need a three-pronged approach to the business of actually setting up an independent organisation at work.

1.In a workplace with a recognised TUC union, an SF member would join the union but promote an anarcho-syndicalist strategy. This would involve organising workplace assemblies to make collective decisions on workplace issues. However, workers will still be likely to hold union cards here to avoid splits in the workplace between union members and non-union members.

2.In a non-unionised workplace, independent unions, based on the principle of collective decision-making, should be set up wherever possible.

3.In a non-unionised workplace, that is difficult to organise due to a high turnover of staff or a large number of temps, we should just call workers assemblies when a dispute arises.

SF members will also undertake anarcho-syndicalist propaganda work in each scenario. The principles of our industrial strategy would apply to all three approaches.

1http://www.selfed.org.uk/units/2001/index.htm#24
2Cited in http://www.chomsky.info/books/state01.htm
3"The anarcho-syndicalists also saw the need to combine the political and the economic struggle into one. They rejected pure economic organisation and insisted that the revolutionary union should have a clear political goal, the overthrow of capitalism and the state." - http://www.solfed.org.uk/booklets/british-anarcho-syndicalism.htm
4"Every strike, whether successful or not, was seen to increase the hostility between the classes and so stimulate further conflict. Strikes encourage feelings of solidarity and are a training ground for further struggles. The climax would be, after a long series of strikes growing in breadth and intensity, the revolutionary 'general strike'." - http://www.solfed.org.uk/booklets/british-anarcho-syndicalism.htm
5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg#Dialectic_of_Spontaneity_and_Organisation [In a Revolutionary Hour: What Next?, Collected Works 1.2, p.554]
6Quoted in http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/spain/sp001780/chap8.html
7The founding document of the platformist tradition is the ‘Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists’ - http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1000
8http://struggle.ws/wsm/positions/tradeunions.html
9For examples of this reform program see the ‘Union Democracy’ section of the WSM position paper; “We fight to change the role of the full-time officials (…) For direct elections to all committees, conference delegations and national officerships, subject to mandation and recall (…) Where revolutionaries can gain enough support to win election to national officerships in large unions, or indeed small ones, this support should not be used to merely elect a candidate. Instead it should be used to fundamentally change the structure of the union in such a way as to return power to the membership and turn the officers into administrators and resource people rather than decision makers.”
10The Mass Strike, p15.
11Gilles Dauvé, A contribution to the critique of political autonomy - http://libcom.org/library/a-contribution-critique-political-autonomy-gilles-dauve-2008
12Gilles Dauvé, The eclipse and re-emergence of the communist movement - http://libcom.org/library/eclipse-re-emergence-giles-dauve-0
13For a far more comprehensive account see the Solidarity Federation pamphlet ‘Anarcho-syndicalism in Puerto Real: from shipyard resistance to community control’ - http://libcom.org/library/anarcho-syndicalism-puerto-real-shipyard-resistance-community-control
14Available in print from the Solidarity Federation or online here.
15See here.
16For a report on the establishment of the delegate council see here - http://www.solfed.org.uk/solidarity/03.htm#04
17See ‘Workmates Victory’ here - http://www.solfed.org.uk/solidarity/04.htm#04
18See - http://libcom.org/news/metronet-climb-down-activist-victimisation-15102008
19Gilles Dauvé, A contribution to the critique of political autonomy - http://libcom.org/library/a-contribution-critique-political-autonomy-gilles-dauve-2008
20http://libcom.org/library/anarcho-syndicalism-puerto-real-shipyard-resistance-community-control
21See http://www.riff-raff.se/en/furtherreading/workmove.php
22A several are described by a libertarian communist and UNISON convenor here: http://libcom.org/library/cost-living-pay-increase-struggles-interview-2008
23See http://libcom.org/library/pay-what-went-wrong-2007
24See http://libcom.org/tags/mcdonalds-workers-resistance
25See here and here.
26http://www.solfed.org.uk/booklets/the-economics-of-freedom.htm#09
27http://www.solfed.org.uk/constitution/#01b
28We are thinking specifically of the 2001 Brighton bin men’s strike and occupation, where anarchists in conjunction with a wildcat occupation assisted by locking onto bin trucks to prevent scabs using them, while also helping flyer recruitment agencies that were recruiting scabs. See an account here - The London Coalition Against Poverty (LCAP) would also be an example of a group that engages in direct action both outside the workplace and beyond just propaganda.

Attachments

strategy_and_struggle_debate_-_solidarity_federation.pdf (394.3 KB)

Comments

Thanks for the effort

Thanks for the effort comrades! Just printed by copy out to read today. Going to forward link.
Perhaps some comments to follow.

Only just had a quick look

Only just had a quick look and this seems like a good document. On the issue of permanent organisation necessarily becoming counter-revolutionary is this just a wee bit over-stated? The CNT is an anarcho-syndicalist union that could be regarded as a permanent organisation, and that combined with low levels of class struggle has certainly caused problems, but have they not experienced splits and greatly reduced numbers rather than actually becoming counter-revolutionary?

we do address that - it's

we do address that - it's hard to class the CNT as a mass organisation (by our definition) since its explicitly pro-social revolution and the vast majority of workers aren't. thus we'd tend to characterise it as a permanent, pro-revolutionary minority organisation; a network of militants, essentially. we think its self-identification as a union, whilst possibly reflecting problems with rendering sindicato as 'union' in english represents one of the confusions in contemporary anarcho-syndicalism we're trying to clarify; that of conflating the minority organisations of pro-revolutionaries with the mass organs that actually make revolution (the CNT avoided this pitfall in Puerto Real, we argue, as did Solfed with Workmates, by not trying to get everyone to join the SF).

we do allow that there is some overlap between the ideal types we set out, and the CNT does take on some union functions. but there have been splits (CGT) over this function, since there's a tension between being a permanent mass organisation (union) and a permanent minority, pro-revolutionary one (network of militants1 ), a tension only resolved by increased levels of struggle.

1some would say 'minority union', although we find this usage of 'union' unneccesarily unclear

Thanks for that, thats grand

Thanks for that, thats grand although I have no problem with the use of the term union - I do not believe that its necessary or practical to see a union as a permanent mass organisation involving the majority of workers so would have no problem with the use of 'minority union'.

if we're clear what we mean

if we're clear what we mean by it, then semantics are just that. however we feel that 'union' has lots of connotations that make it unneccessarily confusing (just see how people read solfed's industrial strategy's reference to 'independent unions' on a thread about this).

Or, as we say in the pamphlet: "We do not find it useful to refer to any kind of minority organisation - even an industrial/workplace one - as a union as in English in particular this has the connotations of mass organisations, for which we reserve the term."

if people are clear they're talking about minority pro-revolutionary groups when they say 'minority unions', then we're talking about the same thing. but like i say, since this is the same word given to mass, revolutionary organisations there's plenty of scope for confusion.

Quote: we do address that -

we do address that - it's hard to class the CNT as a mass organisation (by our definition) since its explicitly pro-social revolution and the vast majority of workers aren't. thus we'd tend to characterise it as a permanent, pro-revolutionary minority organisation;

Except it dosn't see itself that way:

Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), Anarcosindicalismo: Basico, 1998

No ideological qualification is necessary to
be in the CNT. This is because the CNT is anarcho-syndicalist, that is, it is an organisation
in which decisions are made in assembly, from the base. It is an autonomous,
federalist structure independent of political parties, of government agencies, of professional
bureaucracies, etc. The anarcho-union only requires a respect for its rules,
and from this point of view people of different opinions, tendencies and ideologies
can live together within it. Ecologists, pacifists, members of political parties... can be
part of the CNT. There will always be different opinions, priorities and points of view
about concrete problems. What everyone has in common within the anarcho-union
is its unique way of functioning, its anti-authoritarian structure.

Devrim

you mean like what i just

you mean like what i just said?

"we think its self-identification as a union, whilst possibly reflecting problems with rendering sindicato as 'union' in english represents one of the confusions in contemporary anarcho-syndicalism we're trying to clarify."

if there's no ideological membership criteria it would be a mass organisation - and be all in favour of works councils and the like if the membership was. except it split with the CGT over exactly that, and in practice as far as i can tell it operates as a minority network (in principle solfed's open to all workers too, or so i've been told - doesn't mean we're actually a mass organisation, or a 'revolutionary union in formation' or whatever). if the IWA was really into 'no ideological qualification' they'd be loving the SAC. they're not. there are clearly paradoxes that need to be worked out, which is why we've drafted the pamphlet. the self-identification of politicised minorities as unions is one of the issues we're addressing by setting out the different organisational roles.

This is crazy good. Honestly

This is crazy good. Honestly this is the closest statement to my politics I've seen.

I have a couple critiques:

-it is brief in the early parts with the critiques of anarchosyndicalism. it makes it readable, but hey brevity vs depth. For instance it is worth pointing out that rosa and dauve's critiques are basically straw men. They have some truth, but have to distort history to get them to be true on sectarian grounds. Still solid though.

-the end part about organization- I think there is an artificial critique of platformist and councilist political organization. The critique basically argues against artificial unity of groups with different politics. That is strange because that's the whole platformism vs synthesism thing. Honestly I think the FoD, this pamphlet, and platformists share positions on the need for political organization, the division is on mass organization.

I also think its a mistake to call it a propaganda organization. The political organization does more than that since it coordinates in the network of militants and mass movements, it fights authoritarian and coopting elements, etc.

oh, and how have the

oh, and how have the FORistas and CNTistas responded to this?

no you had my points

no you had my points exactly. I think its just semantic. I'm worried people will read the phrase and blow it off for that reason (they just want to publish pamphlets as their political activity). The inspiration of FoD should clarify that some though :)

Boulcolonialboy

Boulcolonialboy wrote:

On the issue of permanent organisation necessarily becoming counter-revolutionary is this just a wee bit over-stated? The CNT is an anarcho-syndicalist union that could be regarded as a permanent organisation, and that combined with low levels of class struggle has certainly caused problems, but have they not experienced splits and greatly reduced numbers rather than actually becoming counter-revolutionary?

We don't believe that all class-struggle organisations fit neatly into one of the categories we establish, many will display characteristics of two of these categories. However, all organisations will experience the pressures we identify: a mass organisation that attempts to persist through times of low class struggle will tend to sacrifice its revolutionary character to maintain its size ; alternatively it can preserve a pro-revolutionary character at the expense of its size ; only in times of high class struggle can a mass organisation be revolutionary:

It must be borne in mind that these four organisational types are to a certain extent idealised ones. In reality, groups exist that are in fact combinations of them. However these ideal types represent real tensions. For instance the paradox of a mass, directly democratic revolutionary organisation in times when the majority of workers are not pro-revolutionary places real limits on the size of attempts to create revolutionary unions in the here and now. Take for example the split between the Spanish CNT and the CGT over participation in state-run class collaborationist works councils.
[...]
Consequently while the organisational types we have described are not definitive of all actually-existing organisations, they do demonstrate the distinct types that exist and the tensions present within organisations that try to combine them. The paradox is only resolved with increased levels of class struggle and class consciousness – hence revolutionary unions are necessarily non-permanent products of struggle, and attempts to maintain them beyond the struggle of which they are an expression will see them lapse into a counter-revolutionary role. Without militant struggle they couldn’t but become organs for the representation of workers within capitalism, not the ultimate abolition of the working class.

Comrades, on the Workmates

Comrades, on the Workmates Council, is there anything more to read about them? I found these two almost identical articles (one from the AF other from SF) on them.

Be interested to read more about their experiances and finality.

Thanks.

TUBE WORKERS ORGANISE!

Tube workers at a West London depot have started creating their own organisations. Last February a meeting of the Workmates Collective was attended by 150 workers. It unanimously carried a proposal to set up a council composed of mandated and recallable delegates. The Collective has transformed itself into Workmates Council. Workers from various London Underground Ltd (LUL), engineering departments, including Track Installers, Track Welders, Crossing Makers, Carpenters, Ultrasonic Rail Testers, Track Vent Cleaning Gangs, along with lorry drivers. Some of these departments work alongside large numbers of subcontracted labourers, many of them not in unions, comprising 120 agency workers in all.
More than 250 workers formed the Collective originally to fight against the privatisation of London Underground through the Public-Private Partnership. Over the last 5 years of this struggle agency workers have shown utmost loyalty to their LUL workmates during a number of strikes. This was established early on by agency Track Installers and Track Welders, some of whom had been Yorkshire and Kent miners, and has been maintained ever since.

This solidarity has also been maintained in dealing with health and safety issues affecting both agency and LUL workers. This has led to some work stoppages on health and safety issues.
The various gangs have now nominated and mandated their delegates, and some meetings have been called to form the Council. This way of organising puts full power into the hands of the workers. resistance sends the warmest best wishes and solidarity to the Workmates Council

{Info on A-Infos} resistance #51 - Monthly bulletin of the Anarchist Federation (Britain) Date Tue, 1 Jul 2003

With a nearly identical article appearing in http://www.solfed.org.uk/solidarity/03.htm#04
"Solidarity for Anarcho-Syndicalism" # 3, Spring 2003 (North & East SF-IWA)

Exellant contribution from

Exellant contribution from Brighton SolFed and one of the most positive rethinking of modern anarchosyndicalism to emmerge for a long time.

I'd be very interested to find out how this is received within the rest of the SolFed and the wider IWA.

Just few criticisms:

I found the short SolFed 'Industrial Strategy' summary at the end a bit dissapointing as it did not reflect very well the rest of the analysis or the important redefining of terms (Is it in fact at all new?)

The lack of any real historical perspective is perhaps responsible for the under-emphasis of the everyday reactionary role of the trade unions today or a fuller explanation of what the 'new conditions' are or have been requiring this kind of rethink.

On a smaller point it would be more accurate to quote Rosa Luxemburg's critique as a 'precurser' of the Council Communist critique (Anton Pannekoek being a more representative choice). This approach is neatly summarised in Mark Shipway's short introduction to Council Communism here: http://www.kurasje.org/arkiv/15600t.htm

The first I heard about

The first I heard about Workmates was on alasbarricadas.org... For some reason it seems that lots of spaniards know of it, if not in detail.

Thanks Jack....really look

Thanks Jack....really look forward to reading more about Workmates.

Recognizing the situation on LUL at that time, did the established unions (RMT,ASLEF) work against Workmates?, try to co-opt struggles? try and organize the workers (well, I guess this would've been RMT)? Is some of RMT's "militantcy" in reaction to what transpired on LUL?

Anyway, look forward more Workmates stuff.

Comrades...while I'm still

Comrades...while I'm still reading and absorbing some of the concepts set out in the pamphlet, I think the Brighton comrades have made an interesting attempt to open up a discussion on 21st century anarcho-syndicalism. While I share some of the criticims of the pamphlet language (and how that language can be interpreted) it is fair to say that these apparently younger comrades (younger than my generation that is) are trying to face their reality.

It also appears that the anarcho-syndicalism of the pamphlet is also reflective of a new generation of comrades who have been influenced at least as strongly by anarchist-communism as by anarcho-syndicalism. Yet there is something to explore and learn from each tradition. What is key, in my opinion, is that anarcho-syndicalism re-emerges as a constructive force in the workers' and community movements. While I may not agree with all the nuances of the Brighton pamphlet, it appears that the comrades are trying to think "out of the box". And this, for purposes of discussion and debate, is admirable. The question of practical application, with these proposals and others in the movement, are always the toughest.

The one thing which seems to be a recognition that anarcho-syndicalism (in most countries) is not the same as in the pre-WW 1 or WW2 period. By virtue of its marginalization as a majority labor movement (for many reasons), the pamphlet recognizes our (speaking as an a/s) "minority" status. That anarcho-syndicalism, in essense, is currently workers organized "guerilla" warfare (my term and analogy). A sort of hit and run manner of class struggle in the current period.

Again, just first impressions.

Leave it to the Germans,

Leave it to the Germans, darling!
Aw nah! Mr Joseph Kay! You are an intelligent chap. Wot you doin? This is a load of mumbo jumbo! Sorry - I respect yur energy and enthusiasm etc. etc. but this is really a pile of pants. Are you seriously going to bother spending good money on a piece of poo poo that no-one outside the rarefied milieu of 'anarcho syndicalists' (whatever that is) would have a scooby-doo about, let alone interest in? There was just a small revolution in pyschoanalysis way back at the start of the century, for flips sake, which kind of leaves all this flim-flam about 'productive relations' a little, shall we say..comatose to say the least... The least you might do is broach the subject of 'abstract labour' as daunting as it may be...if not, save your hard earned cash, and translate some german texts...as Dorothea says to Causobon, as he frets over his 'Key to All Mythologies' in Middlemarch: 'Why bother? The Germans have already done it, darling!' Indeed they have Mr JK!

Talk about garbage that no

Talk about garbage that no one reads :roll:

Quote: Aw nah! Mr Joseph Kay!

Aw nah! Mr Joseph Kay! You are an intelligent chap. Wot you doin? This is a load of mumbo jumbo!

Practical, constructive commentary and damning critique all in one.

Hey, if solfed is planning

Hey, if solfed is planning to do their print-run using the duplex version of the pamphlet, you should probably include a page 9 in it.

I would be interested in

I would be interested in whether there has been any discussion about the pamphlet within in SolFed and if so, whether it is documented somewhere. I find this text a quite interesting approach to get some of the critiques from the councilist and certain workerist (operaist) ideas into anarcho-syndicalism. I think we will try to translate it into German in the context of a broader discussion about anarcho-syndicalist strategies. The text reflects very much the situation and conditions of an anarcho-syndicalist propaganda group like SolFed or FAU. Therefor it might be a good idea to investigate, how the spanish CNT reemerged in certain regions within the past few years (Sevilla and its surroundings for instance) by focusing on class struggles instead of ideological ones. Maybe this would as well enrich the discussion about permanent organisation vs. spontaneity, the dialectics between seccion sindical and asemblea etc. from a more practical point of view. I guess Beltrán Roca Martinez amongst others (http://www.libcom.org/forums/thought/debate-cnt-27122007) might be someone to contribute a lot to such a discussion.

Robot, I find it interesting

Robot, I find it interesting to see how the ideas of "from the councilist and certain workerist (operaist) ideas" have been intergrated into anarcho-syndicalism in this pamhlet.
I think this is reflective of a younger generation (from ours). We see it here in some segments of the movement as well, and within WSA as well. Not the dominent position, but there are some who take a similiar viewpoint.

robot wrote: Quote: I would

robot wrote:

I would be interested in whether there has been any discussion about the pamphlet within in SolFed and if so, whether it is documented somewhere.

The pamphlet is a publication by the Brighton SolFed local rather than the national SolFed organisation. It is the outcome of discussion within our local and with other individuals. It will be discussed at the next SF conference.

captain soap wrote: Hey, if

captain soap

Hey, if solfed is planning to do their print-run using the duplex version of the pamphlet, you should probably include a page 9 in it.

well spotted! corrected the pdf above

robot

I would be interested in whether there has been any discussion about the pamphlet within in SolFed and if so, whether it is documented somewhere.

there's been some discsussion on our internal email list (no official status) - there should be some in the Internal Bulletin but it wasn't in the last one for some reason (the IB does have official status), and it's going to be discussed at conference later this year. strictly speaking all of these are internal-only, but we could try and draft the conference motion to say something public.

robot

I guess Beltrán Roca Martinez amongst others (http://www.libcom.org/forums/thought/debate-cnt-27122007) might be someone to contribute a lot to such a discussion.

i'll have a read through that when i get the chance

syndicalist

Robot, I find it interesting to see how the ideas of "from the councilist and certain workerist (operaist) ideas" have been intergrated into anarcho-syndicalism in this pamhlet.
I think this is reflective of a younger generation (from ours).

i think it might be generational to an extent, our local is mostly under 30. but it's primarily borne of a desire to find practice adequate to our conditions. we are engaged in various activities, but we felt the need to rigourously think through what forms of organisation are possible, what forms are desirable, how we relate as a militant minority to the wider class and class struggles etc.

i don't actually think operaismo is that strong an influence, except possibly negatively. that is to say both operaismo and some anarcho-syndicalism tends to look back at certain high points of the class struggle and see a model to emulate (italy 68-72, spain 33-37), whereas what we're saying is that the forms of organisation at such high points of struggle are necessarily different to what is possible now. so if we want to get into such situations, we have to recognise this and organise appropriately - often this will mean on a permanent, minority basis, whether as propaganda groups or networks of militants.

there's also the possibility of mass, non-permanent groups in particular struggles. for instance, the anti-war movement in brighton (under anarchist/communist influence) was organised through open public meetings. out of these meetings, permanent networks coalesced, which survived the ebbing of the big public meetings as the anti-war movement subsided (obviously these were anti-war networks rather than class networks of militants, but it shows the kind of dynamics between mass/minority, permanent and non-permanent organisations we're trying to capture).

Actually, my comment wasn't

Actually, my comment wasn't intended to be a criticism. In fact, I personally have no problem absorbing some of the best criticisms and traditions of other libertarian currents in buiding an effective anarcho-syndicalism. I obviously draw lines on certain things, but being open minded can only be positive.

I'm not taking it as a

I'm not taking it as a criticism, just trying to clarify our influences really. I'm glad it's provoking debate - that's our intention as such discussion can only strenghten our practice.

Good stuff, it's interesting

Good stuff, it's interesting to see something like this coming out of SolFed around the same time that the AF is working on our own industrial strategy.

Though I have to ask, what do you see about the strategy and ideas you outline here as being specifically anarcho-syndicalist, rather than anarchist communist?

madashell wrote: Good stuff,

madashell

Good stuff, it's interesting to see something like this coming out of SolFed around the same time that the AF is working on our own industrial strategy.

i must stress it's only a publication of the Brighton local at this stage. it would need to be approved by conference to become national, which is by no means a given. we're trying to get a debate going on it to find out how others feel - we've not had a huge amount of feedback internally as of yet, but it may take time to digest and respond to i guess.

madashell

Though I have to ask, what do you see about the strategy and ideas you outline here as being specifically anarcho-syndicalist, rather than anarchist communist?

the principles of solidarity, direct action and rank-and-file control advocated in solfed's industrial strategy and central to anarcho-syndicalist practice since forever, as well as an advocacy of workplace groups along said principles, industrial organisation, and structures like delegate councils etc.

now we're not chauvinists about it, and if others agree bar the name then fair enough. these ideas have sometimes existed in other traditions or outside them altogether. but our main influences are anarcho-syndicalism on the practical side and the sort of councilist/left communist stuff typified by Dauvé on a more theoretical tip.

however we're not content with critique, we want to develop ideas for organisation we can put into practice, and the pamphlet is kinda a framework or a conceptual toolbox for doing so. we're using it to formulate our strategy in relation to the crisis for example; how we see our role as a minority group, what other forms of organisation we'd like to see emerge and from where, how we relate to struggles going on around us etc.

Quote: madashell wrote:

madashell wrote:

Though I have to ask, what do you see about the strategy and ideas you outline here as being specifically anarcho-syndicalist, rather than anarchist communist?

The idea that a mass organisation of workers has the capacity to abolish the class system i.e. is revolutionary is still, all we're saying is that such a revolutionary mass organisation will only arise in times of widespread class struggle, and that we need to do more than just building the one big union when class struggle ebbs as the best we can achieve in such conditions is advocating revolution (be 'pro-revolutionary') rather than carry out revolution (be revolutionary).

Joseph K wrote: you mean

Joseph K

you mean like what i just said?

"we think its self-identification as a union, whilst possibly reflecting problems with rendering sindicato as 'union' in english represents one of the confusions in contemporary anarcho-syndicalism we're trying to clarify."

if there's no ideological membership criteria it would be a mass organisation - and be all in favour of works councils and the like if the membership was. except it split with the CGT over exactly that, and in practice as far as i can tell it operates as a minority network (in principle solfed's open to all workers too, or so i've been told - doesn't mean we're actually a mass organisation, or a 'revolutionary union in formation' or whatever). if the IWA was really into 'no ideological qualification' they'd be loving the SAC. they're not. there are clearly paradoxes that need to be worked out, which is why we've drafted the pamphlet. the self-identification of politicised minorities as unions is one of the issues we're addressing by setting out the different organisational roles.

I think that your reply here shows some of, what I would consider to be, the confusion that exists. You write that the CNT in practice as far as you can tell acts like a minority organisation, but then in practice it also acts as if it were a unitary organisation (see the earlier quote on who can be a member of the CNT).

In my opinion, this is due to a misunderstanding inherent in anarchosyndicalism of the differences between a political and unitary organisation. Equally, I can understand how anarchosyndicalists would say that they are 'bridging the divide' between the two.

I think that the CNT isn't sure what it wants to be. I get the impression that there are many anarchosyndicalists who aspire to the days of mass revolutionary syndicalist unions, and others who realise that the period today doesn't allow that (and maybe also believe that it won't allow that in the future.

Devrim

Quote: I think that the CNT

I think that the CNT isn't sure what it wants to be.

That great big homogenous blob, that it is. The membership is made of many different tendencies. Especially if looking at the struggle in Peurto Real as a model of AS practice/praxis.

I get the impression that there are many anarchosyndicalists who aspire to the days of mass revolutionary syndicalist unions, and others who realise that the period today doesn't allow that (and maybe also believe that it won't allow that in the future.

I would agree (not sure on the numbers though), which i think is obvious in the pamphlet that we as a local want to shake that dogma and forge ahead, we're showing that this method of organising does not and cannot work, obviously we're not unique in this idea.

Quote: Quote: I get the

Quote:

I get the impression that there are many anarchosyndicalists who aspire to the days of mass revolutionary syndicalist unions, and others who realise that the period today doesn't allow that (and maybe also believe that it won't allow that in the future.

Perhaps, comrade, there are still some who might believe in future possibilities. That is, today we are in a period of relative weakness, "tommorow", in some case, we might not. If we always try and paint a pitcure of "black or white" and or pose the question as simply
"either or" we leave room for possibilities. I tend to like to continue to the leave the door open for future possibilities. Just a personal opinion.

joseph - in the "criticisms"

joseph - in the "criticisms" section you give good pithy summaries of those four positions (FoD, platformist, council communist,and dauve). far be it from me to make work for anyone, but i wonder if the a-s response might be inserted at that point to each of those critiques?

It seemed to me that the

It seemed to me that the reason these four criticisms are included is because they are actually spot in in certain ways, no?

A really fantastic effort!

A really fantastic effort! Nicely done.

Very interesting. I've just

Very interesting. I've just read it through (admittedly quickly). It parallels the discussions we've been having in the AF recently, which is encouraging as it suggests the scope for better co-operation.

Reading it though, I find little in it that is actually anarcho-syndicalist. If I could offer a phrase, it would be "pragmatic council communism". Certainly when I was in the Subversion group we'd have had little difficulty with most of it. You seem pretty clear that mass movements will only arise during the process of class struggle and that permanent mass organisations must inevitably slip into a counter revolutionary role. Where does that leave the CNT? Either it's a "real" union or it's an organisation of industrial militants.

It's also interesting to read your view on industrial networks. However, what scope do you see for launching them in Britain? Approaches to Solfed in the past by myself and other AFers were rebuffed because we would have had to join SF first before we could become part of the existing industrial networks (to the extent that they had any real existence). As a result we joined the IWW and put our efforts in there because it seemed to offer the nearest to those networks we could see. Would you see scope for doing the same?

Finally, reading this text has raised my hopes loads. We're having a preliminary discussion of our document this weekend and should be finalising it around Easter time. It'll be interesting to compare notes!

I agree completely with what

I agree completely with what Knightrose says in the second paragraph. There is little that is specifically 'anarchosyndicalist' in it.

Devrim

petey wrote: joseph - in the

petey

joseph - in the "criticisms" section you give good pithy summaries of those four positions (FoD, platformist, council communist,and dauve). far be it from me to make work for anyone, but i wonder if the a-s response might be inserted at that point to each of those critiques?

OliverTwister

It seemed to me that the reason these four criticisms are included is because they are actually spot in in certain ways, no?

partly for reasons of space, and partly for reasons of structure we didn't want to respond directly to the criticisms there and then. they're all aimed at (a perhaps caricatured) classical anarcho-syndicalism, and make valid points to that extent. the next section shows ways in which contemporary a-s has gone beyond its previous limits (particularly the emphasis of mass assemblies/meetings, which also features prominently in solfed's strategy).

knightrose

Reading it though, I find little in it that is actually anarcho-syndicalist. If I could offer a phrase, it would be "pragmatic council communism".

Devrim

I agree completely with what Knightrose says in the second paragraph. There is little that is specifically 'anarchosyndicalist' in it.

i think advocacy of political-economic industrial organisation is specifically anarcho-syndicalist. not exclusively perhaps, but certainly specific. the only thing is we recognise that for such organisations to be anarcho-syndicalist (i.e. both internally democratic in structure and libertarian communist in demands/objectives), this necessarily implies minority organisation outside of mass struggles or particularly militant workplaces. this is simply a recognition of reality.

kinghtrose

You seem pretty clear that mass movements will only arise during the process of class struggle and that permanent mass organisations must inevitably slip into a counter revolutionary role. Where does that leave the CNT? Either it's a "real" union or it's an organisation of industrial militants.

well we allow that real-world organisations can straddle our ideal categories. i think there are tendencies to both 'anarchist trade unionism' and anarcho-syndicalism (as we see it) in the CNT; manifested by the fact that it's notionally an organisation with no ideological membership requirements, yet split with the CGT over class collaboration (while the IWA expelled the SAC etc). i think in practice it's a minority network of militants, in places taking on union functions. our pamphlet is intended to clarify the different kinds of organisation which are possible, and how they relate to the class struggle. thus we wouldn't see trying to be a 'real union' as useful, since for us a group like Workmates can't be built by will power alone - although neither would it be purely spontaneous and independent of the deliberate actions of militants - but is an expression of a certain level of militancy.

knightrose

It's also interesting to read your view on industrial networks. However, what scope do you see for launching them in Britain? Approaches to Solfed in the past by myself and other AFers were rebuffed because we would have had to join SF first before we could become part of the existing industrial networks (to the extent that they had any real existence). As a result we joined the IWW and put our efforts in there because it seemed to offer the nearest to those networks we could see. Would you see scope for doing the same?

i have the same problem with the IWW as i do with other people wanting to be a 'real union.' already we've had no-strike deals, and the MSP debacle, which i think illustrate the tendencies of mass permanent organisation we outline, even in situations far short of revolutionary events. i think that's why the more sensible wobblies are treating it as a minority network rather than claiming you'll grow exponentially to tens of thousands within a few years (as a certain Glasgow-based member bet with a libcom admin).

however i then have the problem of the wobblies constitutional apoliticism. i want to see political-economic networks, not a complete separation of economic networking from political objectives. there will be a motion at solfed's next conference about making network membership independent of membership of solfed. i hope our pamphlet provides arguments in favour of that, and also for dialogue with others who are attracted by such an idea (which may include the AF and many wobblies who feel limited by official apoliticism).

as you say such networks hardly exist at present, and to have a decent go at forming them would imho require inter-organisational co-operation, as well as outreach to militants who aren't members of any of the tiny anarchist groups.

knightrose

Finally, reading this text has raised my hopes loads. We're having a preliminary discussion of our document this weekend and should be finalising it around Easter time. It'll be interesting to compare notes!

yes, i'm very interested to see what you come up with. the recent developments in inter-organisational co-operation are certainly positive (e.g. we adapted the AF North Gaza leaflet, which was then distroed by other Solfed and independent groups, while the AF in liverpool were adapting our local BNP leaflet - small things, but practical co-operation nonetheless).

Quote: Approaches to Solfed

Approaches to Solfed in the past by myself and other AFers were rebuffed because we would have had to join SF first before we could become part of the existing industrial networks (to the extent that they had any real existence). As a result we joined the IWW and put our efforts in there because it seemed to offer the nearest to those networks we could see. Would you see scope for doing the same?

There are currently discussions in SolFed to change this and enable membership in the industrial networks without requiring SolFed membership.

I agree completely with what Knightrose says in the second paragraph. There is little that is specifically 'anarchosyndicalist' in it.

I find this criticism quite strange - surely what matters is pushing revolutionary theory forward and not a sectarian clinging to a-s specifics if these specifics turn out to hold us back?

The aim of the pamphlet is as the title suggests - developing a strategy for anarchosyndicalism to succeed in the 21st century, by learning the lessons from the previous century, by taking on board sensible criticism of anarchosyndicalism, by theorising anarchosyndicalist successes in the present (puerto real, workmates).

The central idea of anarchosyndicalism is that a revolutionary union, based on the principles of direct action, solidarity, and rank and file control, has the capacity to transform society, abolishing capitalism and the state to be replaced by libertarian communism. This idea is central to our pamphlet (of course much of the pamphlet is necessarily about discussing criticisms of a-s etc.) and we try to develop it further by asking what happens when class struggle ebbs and class consciousness is low, so that we can work more effectively towards creating that revolutionary union.
We recognise the obvious fact that revolution is only possible when most workers want revolution, that therefore a revolutionary union is only possible in times of heigtened class struggle and class consciousness. This implies that when class struggle is low, an a-s organisation can either aim at being a mass organisation at the expense of being revolutionary, or it can remain pro-revolutionary (i.e. advocating revolution) but accept being a minority organisation.

Unless one believes that anarchosyndicalism is specifically about blindly building the one big union regardless of historical context and isolated from actual class struggles, this recognition furthers anarchosyndicalism because it clarifies the nature of the obstacles we need to overcome.

hmm.... cross post with jk

theoretical unity comrade

theoretical unity comrade ;)

Comrades, just a minor point

Comrades, just a minor point of clarification. The Swedish SAC was never really expelled from the IWA. In 1956, the SAC withdrew from the IWA on its own. This probably was pre-emtive on the SAC's part in the face of opposition to them signing on to the Unemployment Fund set-up,support for a form of libertarian municiplaism and so forth.

Again, just meant for historical clarification and not to derail the conversation.

Quote: he Swedish SAC was

he Swedish SAC was never really expelled from the IWA. In 1956, the SAC withdrew from the IWA on its own.

This is true. And the SAC was the only union within what was left from the IWA in that times.

What would interest me is whether the comrades from Brighton had first hand information about Puerto Real when they took it into account for their text or if it just was from analysing texts. My impression when I talked to militants from the Cadiz bay area some years ago was, that they advocated the asamblea rather as a tactical tool because their section in the shipyard though beeing quite numerous was a minority of the workers at the site, and not because they thought that it was something fundamentally new.

Anyway the text provides some interesting aspects. But I think it shares one problem with all councilists or other –let's say spontaneists– I talked to. They are quite good in criticising the immanent reformist tendencies of permanent mass organisations (btw. where does the “mass” roughly start – 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000?) but when you ask them for their own ideas there is often little more than some sort of messianic hope for they masses. Other define their role as being some sort of a postman trying to connect isolated struggles fought by others (This brings about the question of avantgardes doesn't matter whether anarchist or other ones).

The more often I read the text the more I am asking myself I there really is any alternative to the “classical“ anarcho-syndicalist union form and the culture around it where class-struggle experiences can be made, analyzed, circulated, passed to others and preserved from one wave of struggles to the next one. While I admit that a certain tendency towards reformism seems to be immanent to revolutionary syndicalism (maybe this just reflects that any workers struggle within non-revolutionary times is necessarily “reformist”?), I guess there is little alternative to it.

robot wrote: syndicalist

robot

syndicalist

the Swedish SAC was never really expelled from the IWA. In 1956, the SAC withdrew from the IWA on its own.

This is true. And the SAC was the only union within what was left from the IWA in that times.

sloppy on our part, but the point stands: there is a tension between mass organisation and anarcho-syndicalist principles (internal democracy, revolution) that is only resolved by heightened class struggle.

robot

What would interest me is whether the comrades from Brighton had first hand information about Puerto Real when they took it into account for their text or if it just was from analysing texts.

it's drawn almost entirely from solfed's 'anarcho-syndicalism in puerto real' pamphlet, the introduction to which reads...

Solfed

Mass assemblies both in the yards and surrounding localities involved workers, their families, neighbours and all supporters. Initiating and maintaining entire communities' involvement in mass assemblies alone was fine achievement. (...) The experiences and actions of Spanish workers have provided valuable lessons in the past, but today as we approach the 21st century new ideas are needed. It is to serve this purpose that this pamphlet is published.

...so that seemed to be an uncontroversial solfed view of things at least. We would characterise that as a permanent minority organisation initiating mass non-permanent organisation.

robot

My impression when I talked to militants from the Cadiz bay area some years ago was, that they advocated the asamblea rather as a tactical tool because their section in the shipyard though beeing quite numerous was a minority of the workers at the site, and not because they thought that it was something fundamentally new.

this may well be true, but it doesn't change the fact anarcho-syndicalist militants are almost always a minority, and so the mode of action (networks of militants seeking to initiate mass assemblies) seems a positive development, rather than say, trying to get everyone to join the CNT.

robot

(btw. where does the “mass” roughly start – 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000?)

we deliberately avoid defining 'mass' numerically, rather doing so by membership criteria. just like we avoid defining 'permanent' by some arbitrary duration, instead defining it in relation to struggle.

robot

I think it shares one problem with all councilists or other –let's say spontaneists– I talked to (...) when you ask them for their own ideas there is often little more than some sort of messianic hope for they masses. Other define their role as being some sort of a postman trying to connect isolated struggles fought by others (This brings about the question of avantgardes doesn't matter whether anarchist or other ones).

we're not at all spontaneist (although we recognise class struggle goes on regardless of the actions of anarcho-syndicalists, who are a tiny irrelevant minority at present). we just recognise that we are a minority and have to organise on that basis - i.e. reality - rather than lamenting 'why aren't we a union yet?' we are very much in favour of formal organisation, and don't think the kind of forms we advocate come out of thin air.

robot

The more often I read the text the more I am asking myself I there really is any alternative to the “classical“ anarcho-syndicalist union form and the culture around it where class-struggle experiences can be made, analyzed, circulated, passed to others and preserved from one wave of struggles to the next one.

well, a minority network of militiants can carry out that function. the problem is people look at classical anarcho-syndicalism ahistorically; spain in the 30s was a period of open, bloody class conflict and a high level of militancy. the revolutionary character of mass organisation (the CNT) reflected this (although not without counter-tendencies). you can't just try and recreate that without regard to context. i think we set out a more dynamic approach to mass and minority organisations. rather than seeing 'the union' as the goal and its preservation once achieved as vital; we see it as a product of struggle aimed at furthering that struggle, that necessarily ebbs to a minority network when that struggle wanes, preserving the experiences, analysing them etc ready for the next outbreak of open conflict, where they can be put into practice.

robot

While I admit that a certain tendency towards reformism seems to be immanent to revolutionary syndicalism (maybe this just reflects that any workers struggle within non-revolutionary times is necessarily “reformist”?), I guess there is little alternative to it.

we don't use the term reformist anywhere in the pamphlet, because we don't find it useful. any concession short of libertarian communism is a reform, and revolution is not always on the table, so 'revolutionary demands' are often mere posturing. instead we say "We understand class struggle as a process of self-organisation to collectively advance our concrete, human needs as workers. Since these needs are in conflict with the needs of capital accumulation, the rejection of inhuman conditions carries with it the seed of a future human community; libertarian communism, the revolution."

personally i would draw a distinction between such communist demands (over our concrete needs) and leftist demands over how capital should be managed. i find that distinction much more useful than reformist/revolutionary - there's nothing revolutionary per se about demanding a pay rise, but we should still support it, whereas demanding all firms be turned into co-ops operating in a market say would require a revolution (mass seizure of the means of production at least), but wouldn't have much to do with communism (and would be a waste of such revolutionary capacity).

that'll learn me to have

that'll learn me to have multiple threads open at once. corrected :oops:

Quote: Anyway the text

Anyway the text provides some interesting aspects. But I think it shares one problem with all councilists or other –let's say spontaneists– I talked to. They are quite good in criticising the immanent reformist tendencies of permanent mass organisations (...) but when you ask them for their own ideas there is often little more than some sort of messianic hope for they masses.

I think you (probably) have an interesting point, but could you be more precise? Our own ideas about what? Why would the hope be messianic?

As JK says we are not spontaneist, and we re not talking about reformism. We are not saying that the counter/non-revolutionary tendency of a permanent mass organisation is immanent to mass organisations, but rather that it derives from the non-militant context, necessarily delinking the mass organisation from class-struggle, and substituting revolutionary proletarian self-organisation with representation of workers to the bosses. We are saying that class struggle has primacy over a-s form, and that the mass organisation, the a-s union, will only be revolutionary if it is a meaningful expression of militant proletarian class struggle ("a process of self-organisation to collectively advance our concrete, human needs as workers").

Is this a messianic hope for the masses, i.e. (if I understand you correctly) that the masses will suddenly enact revolution through some unfathomable almost supernatural cause ? Not really. History tells us that there are periods of social peace and periods of all-out class war. Our hope is that in a period of all-out class war, class-struggle will be expressed through anarchosyndicalist forms, thereby bringing about libertarian communism. Thus we do believe there will be times of heightened militancy but that's hardly a religious belief.

In my opinion, the pertinent question that our pamphlet leads to but doesn't answer is, how does militant class struggle develop? Is it something militant pro-revolutionaries can bring about through dedicated hard political work? Or is it a phenomenon of emergent behaviour and self-organisation as studied by disciplines like physics, that is unpredictable and outside of our control in the same way chaos theory tells us next week's weather is unpredictable.

I really don't know the answer to that question and I'm very interested in other people's ideas on this, but my guess is that it is the latter. My guess is that militant revolutionary struggle becomes possible only when certain conditions are met, such as when the existing social order is discredited (e.g. end of WW1) and the proletariat's concrete needs particularly unfulfilled. We basically have no control over these conditions. When these conditions are met, revolutionary struggle becomes possible not inevitable - it will only develop with the right strategies and if we are prepared for this situation, and it will only succeed with a bit of luck.

To give an analogy, we want to have a big party on the beach. If we do this in February in Brighton, buy kegs of beer and burgers, get a DJ and invite 500 people, chances are that it's going to be cold and rainy and no-one will turn up because people aren't stupid. I think building the One Big Union in times of social peace is a bit like that. But if we wait for July and we have some luck with the weather then it may well be the best party ever. So is there anything we can do in February? Well, we can float the idea, buy a bbq and look out for decent DJs.

Quote: To give an analogy, we

To give an analogy, we want to have a big party on the beach. If we do this in February in Brighton, buy kegs of beer and burgers, get a DJ and invite 500 people, chances are that it's going to be cold and rainy and no-one will turn up because people aren't stupid. I think building the One Big Union in times of social peace is a bit like that. But if we wait for July and we have some luck with the weather then it may well be the best party ever. So is there anything we can do in February? Well, we can float the idea, buy a bbq and look out for decent DJs.

a very excellent analogy!

watch out: a certain organization on here will extend the analogy by saying due to global warming eventually it will be warm enough to swim in february. ;)

I think I said above, but if

I think I said above, but if not I'll repeat that I think this is a good and interesting document, and I welcome its publication.

As I said on another thread, about anarcho-syndicalism and the meaning of the word "union" is that I think some of this is defining the word "union" differently, to basically merge the idea of anarchosyndicalism with those of the ultraleft/councillists/Dauvé.

As I would probably put myself in the same sort of camp as the ultraleft and Dauvé, while also recognizing that one of the most inspiring and consistently revolutionary historical trends in the working class is anarchosyndicalism I probably agree with most of it.

I had a couple of comments, some on accuracy and some on politics. I will go through the text in order, otherwise I will probably lose track of my notes.

Organisation and organisational roles
- the headings in this section like "mass/permanent organisations" are grammatically different to those of the previous section. The previous section uses the "/" to indicate either/or, where in this section they are not. I think that using commas would be clearer, i.e. " mass, permanent organisations" - as they are not mass or permanent, but mass And permanent.
- the statement "the union is only act as a brake on struggles when they develop a degree of self organisation in contradiction to the permanent form" I disagree with. I would say that unions act as a brake on struggles pretty much all the time, unless there is pretty much no struggle at all. For example, in the recent public sector pay disputes there has not been self organisation threatening to go beyond the union form, but the unions still sabotaged the struggles.
- In the subsection entitled "minority/permanent organisations" the second sentence says "there are two distinct pro-revolutionary roles for minority nonpermanent organisations...". I think you mean "permanent organisations"
- I think McDonald's workers resistance would not count as a nonpermanent organisation, because I think they wanted it to be permanent.

How we see it
- you talk about assemblies excluding scabs and managers. Many so-called "managers" are actually low ranking workers who might have some sort of token supervisory role. I would replace the word managers with "bosses", as this implies people who have some sort of actual decision-making power.
- the sentence "if we are confident in our ideas we should not fear an open confrontation of them with others". "Open confrontation" sounds a bit weird here I think, a bit too full on maybe, like it implies physically fighting.
- as for the industrial networks, I think this is a big issue. Obviously within SF this will be an issue for you guys. But also it is a big political discussion more generally. While I would be sympathetic to the idea of pro-revolutionary industrial networks, which don't require being a member of SF, I do think that there would still have to be strict ideological criteria. Otherwise the same fate would befall them as the "mass permanent organisations" - either they are controlled undemocratically by revolutionaries and have a consistent revolutionary line, or they get lots of nonrevolutionary workers and get dilute. I think that this is a real danger, because what are key points for us, communists, are not even considered by anyone else really. Principally in terms of industrial networks this would be the line that workers ourselves should try to control struggles ourselves and bypass the unions, that we should try to spread struggles as much as possible, that we should not try to reform the unions. So these are things to bear in mind if they are to be set up.

Solidarity Federation industrial strategy
- "workers themselves" might be better as workers "ourselves"
- "scabs or managers" - again I think scabs or bosses would be better.
- of course, the rest of this section is a reprint of the additional SF industrial strategy. I think that some of this is now contradictory to the rest of the document. For example the statement "trade union organisation around traditional bread and butter issues... is vital". And as for the three points of the strategy:
1-I think a more case-by-case approach is useful than a blanket "SF member would join a recognized TUC union". Although I don't have a problem with union membership as such, there are difficulties as many workplaces will have multiple recognized unions, and so joining any of them would still help with dividing up the workforce. Furthermore some recognized TUC unions are very much bosses or scab unions, which it probably wouldn't be useful at all to join.
2 - recommending "independent unions" to be set up is problematic, unless you make clear some sort of alternate definition for "union". If you do this, then that will make this point no different to 3.
3 - see above, and also this probably would go without saying, but rather than just calling workers assemblies, on a practical level people would try to gather around them trusted colleagues based on informal relationships in a workplace on a more long-term basis.

Well, they were all points I made reading through it. But I look forward to seeing how discussions around this move forwards. I have long thought that there are unnecessary false divisions between anarchists in the UK based on personal stuff and semantics. For example, I think that there are more disagreements on politics within both SF and the AF than between them. I hope that this document and any resultant discussion can move towards bridging some of these divisions - I would have thought that one productive step might be some sort of joint discussions around industrial strategy. If the AF is reviewing its strategy, and depending on how discussions in SF progress things there might change slightly there could even be some sort of common ground, which may also be shared by many non-aligned people such as myself. If libcom can help facilitate these discussions further in anyway we would be very happy to.

Steven wrote: . I have long

Steven

. I have long thought that there are unnecessary false divisions between anarchists in the UK based on personal stuff and semantics. For example, I think that there are more disagreements on politics within both SF and the AF than between them. I hope that this document and any resultant discussion can move towards bridging some of these divisions - I would have thought that one productive step might be some sort of joint discussions around industrial strategy. If the AF is reviewing its strategy, and depending on how discussions in SF progress things there might change slightly there could even be some sort of common ground, which may also be shared by many non-aligned people such as myself. If libcom can help facilitate these discussions further in anyway we would be very happy to

Many people in the AF really like this document, and we've been circulating it around the membership. We plan to release our strategy as a pamphlet after our conference, in a similar form to what Brighton Solfed have done - a document on policy and strategy aimed outside the organisation. Our strategy will have to be passed by the conference in April, but I've been involved in writing it and some of the similarities with what Brighton solfed have done here are striking. Most of the other main contributors have said the same thing. So lots of us have positive feelings about this.

I'd like to see some formal dialogue with Solfed about working together. Lots of AF and Solfed local groups have good relationships with each other, and it would be good to see this done better on a national basis. In Manchester we attend each others meetings, do joint interventions on demos, etc. So perhaps after both the conferences when we have a better picture of what the official positions of the national organisations are we can look at how we can work together more effectively. Building workers' networks based on communist political criteria which are open to anyone who agrees with them would be an excellent move.

Quote: Building workers'

Building workers' networks based on communist political criteria which are open to anyone who agrees with them would be an excellent move.

Eh?

Quote: I'd like to see some

I'd like to see some formal dialogue with Solfed about working together. Lots of AF and Solfed local groups have good relationships with each other, and it would be good to see this done better on a national basis. In Manchester we attend each others meetings, do joint interventions on demos, etc. So perhaps after both the conferences when we have a better picture of what the official positions of the national organisations are we can look at how we can work together more effectively.

This all sounds good, I would just say to bear in mind the many more people who are in other organisations like Organise, or those not in any organisation, such as myself (partly because I do not wish to align myself with one or other side of a false divide)

syndicalist wrote: Quote:

syndicalist

Quote: Building workers'

Quote:

Building workers' networks based on communist political criteria which are open to anyone who agrees with them would be an excellent move.

Eh?

Quote: Building workers'

Building workers' networks based on communist political criteria which are open to anyone who agrees with them would be an excellent move.

Eh?

?

I don't understand what the comrade is saying...... "based on communist political criteria"

Steven. wrote: This all

Steven.

This all sounds good, I would just say to bear in mind the many more people who are in other organisations like Organise, or those not in any organisation, such as myself (partly because I do not wish to align myself with one or other side of a false divide)

Well workers networks used by members of SF, AF and others like yourself and Organise would be a good development, as would an increased openness generally. Looking at the feasibility of setting them up would be something to do after AF and Solfed conferences I think. I think IWW dual card networks would be a difficulty that needs to be addressed, as I can understand both why people would use them (networking with militants) and why people wouldn't use them (problems with the IWW).

Quote: I don't understand

I don't understand what the comrade is saying...... "based on communist political criteria"

"Communist" as it is used on a daily basis on this website.

Steven. wrote: you talk about

Steven.

you talk about assemblies excluding scabs and managers. Many so-called "managers" are actually low ranking workers who might have some sort of token supervisory role. I would replace the word managers with "bosses", as this implies people who have some sort of actual decision-making power.

I agree with this approach. We're having the same conversation for the movie thing we're working on. However, I would advocate for the use of "management" as even "bosses" could be misconstrued to mean direct supervisor who is often a promoted working class guy and even if not, often people feel they have some manner of personal, positive relationship with their direct supervisor--you know the "good boss." Here in the states when workers refer to management, it's pretty clear (whether acknowledged or not) they are referring to our class enemy.

All that said, it is a very small matter of semantics which may or may not be important, but I do think we should be very particular with word choice in outward-looking propaganda.

Steven wrote: Quote: This

Steven wrote:

This all sounds good, I would just say to bear in mind the many more people who are in other organisations like Organise, or those not in any organisation, such as myself (partly because I do not wish to align myself with one or other side of a false divide)

I don't want to be picky, but that's a really poor reason not to be in an organisation. People are not in the AF or Solfed because they want to be on one side or other of a divide. We are in them because we want to work together effectively in a collective way. We do that with like-minded people. We don't do it because we like being divided from others.

I like jweidner's suggestion

I like jesuithitsquad's suggestion of 'management' - doesn't fall into the job title pitfall of 'manager' and I've heard it used a lot more than bosses.

Quote: syndicalist:I don't

syndicalist:I don't understand what the comrade is saying...... "based on communist political criteria"

Django: "Communist" as it is used on a daily basis on this website.

Is the suggestion that industrial networks must have an anarchist-communist program? That the sole criteria for member and organization is aspecific political criteria? This is what I'm really driving at. Perhpas this isn;t waht you meant.

For being a text that aims

For being a text that aims to be a "clarification of the meaning of anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century", I have to say I find the language used here to be very confusing.

First of all, I have to agree with the posters who have argued that what is being proposed here is really basic council communism presented in anarcho-syndicalist language (with some Gilles Dauvé added for extra obscurity). The authors of the pamphlet seem to want to abandon the idea of syndicalist unions, but then tries to obscure this break with anarcho-synicalist tradition by redefining the term anarcho-syndicalist union to encompass mass workers assemblies, strike commettiees etc. This is a usage of the term that I don't think I have seen anyone else use. Yes, the CNT in Spain - as well as most other IWA sections - supports carrying out workplace struggle through mass assemblies, but these assemblies are not the union, the CNT is the union.

Furthermore, we are told that the form of the class struggle should be subordinated to its content, which is fair enough. But then the rest of the pamphlet focuses almost entirely on forms, and we are presented with "ideal types" of these forms and told which ones are good and wich ones are bad - all of this with no apparent connection with the current state of the class struggle. Now, I do think that the proposal of "pro-revolutionary" propaganda groups combined with networks of militant workers, is a good practical suggestion for today's situation in the UK or Norway. However, other places and other times might call for other forms of struggle.

I think the most interesting part of the pamphlet is the suggestion of separating the propaganda groups from the militant networks. One of the biggest problems I see with the small propaganda groups in the IWA is that they seem to have the strategy that the syndicalist union and/or militant workplace network will grow out of their own organization as soon as they just recruit enough members. This strategy forgets that a propaganda group has a different function and needs a different membership criteria than either a militant workplace network or a union. I think this is a more important distinction than that between a "mass" and a "minority" organisation.

I know in this article

I know in this article you've responded to many from the left who have attempted to debunk anarchosyndicalism... but I was curious if someone could respond to Murray bookchin's "the goast of anarchosyndicalism" critique of such movements.

I'd echo the other posters

I'd echo the other posters who've said that there is very little, if anything at all, in this document that is specifically anarcho-syndicalist. I think this is good thing. I'm sure some of the authors must recognise this?

I would also be interested where the language, and central importance, of minority vs. majority and permanent vs. temporary comes from. I know that's something that I've also taken from debates on these board, particularly from the debates with our resident left communists about unions (specifically Alf, I think), and why it is that they become reactionary. But is it something that's ever been specifically raised in those terms before, in an article anywhere? If anyone knows of one, I'd appreciate a link or reference.

Just to quickly comment on

Just to quickly comment on what those are saying regarding the document not containing anything "specifically anarcho-syndicalist", I think you're missing the point.

The main thing for me with this pamphlet is that it reflects a lot of what is currently anarcho-syndicalist practice, the examples given here are Workmates and Puerto Real. Were these activities not anarcho-syndicalism in practice? If not, then what is?

Activity of anarcho-syndicalist groups is all based around being minority organisations (because that's what they are) while the talk is all about becoming a mass, permanent, revolutionary union. For me, I have always found this confusing (and was glad to see the Brighton lot point it out) especially as I think you'd only find a tiny minority of anarcho-syndicalists today who think it is the union itself which will make a revolution and that their organisation is/will become that union.

As a final point, when I was involved in Solfed a couple of years ago (very sporadically, mind), one of the appeals was that when talking to the South London lot, they criticised the IWW for putting the organisational cart before the horse i.e. this is the structure of the revolutionary union, we recruit to this until it becomes big enough to start calling strikes. Now it seems that this same reason I decided Solfed was for me, is exactly the thing that makes it not "specifically anarcho-syndicalist". Admittedly, I'd say there was a lot of confusion within Solfed about what it currently is and what it wants to be; which again, is why I'm pleased the Brighton group wrote this pamphlet...

Quote: I was curious if

I was curious if someone could respond to Murray bookchin's "the goast of anarchosyndicalism" critique of such movements.

You mean the ghost of Murray Bookchin?

Sorry for the double

Sorry for the double posting. Someone started a different post on this pamphlet http://libcom.org/forums/theory/left-communists-solfeds-approach-anarcho-syndicalism-revolutionary-organising-2002 but I figure my comments would also fit here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
As an anarcho-syndicalist, I've no problem with this:

from the introduction:
"Anarcho-syndicalism is a specific tendency within the wider workers’ movement. As a tendency, it has a history of its own dating back over a century. In contemporary discussions many - self-identified advocates and critics alike – take the tradition as it was 50, 70 or 100 years ago as definitive of the tradition as a whole. There is also the fact that the tradition is a plural one, and its core principles have allowed varied, sometimes conflicting practices at differing times in its history. The anarcho-syndicalism of the CNT of 1930 was not the same as the CNT of 1980. The anarcho-syndicalism of the Friends of Durruti was different yet again. As was that of the FORA. And so on.
[...]
So we see anarcho-syndicalism as a living tradition that develops through a critical reflection on our experiences and adaptation to new conditions. It may well be the ideas presented here are not unique to any one tradition of the workers’ movement and may find resonance with those who do not identify as anarcho-syndicalists - if anything this is evidence of their validity. This pamphlet is written to contribute to new and more effective action, from which we can collectively bring about a better society more quickly; it is written in the spirit of anarcho-syndicalism."

I'm here in the US and have been an active anrcho-syndicalist since the 1970s. One of the things folks I've associated with have always said is that we have neiether a blueprint or fixed in cement way of going about our work. Has our work been the same as other anarcho-syndicalists elsewhere, for the most part, probably not. Maybe the closest our perspectives and works has been was closest to the Direct Action Movement and perhaps the networks concept of the early Solfed. Would I proscribe the same for Spain, France or Germany (to name a few countries), absolutely not. They've got working class traditions that are different then ours. Does this mean one tactic, strategy, form or method is better or more superior, probably not. can we all learn from each other, absolutely. Can we learn from the experiances of others, sure can.

I would think the goal of anarcho-syndicalists are to build and enhance the most libertarian forms of struggle. Will the method be replicated in the same form from land to land, surely not.
Although I'm not in the IWA, I think the "Introduction" to the IWA Principles binds like minded libertarian workers together.

Regardless of the form we can all agree that "the duty of the workers is to participate in all actions that lead towards a revolutionary transformation of society, always striving to move towards our final goals. We must make our strength felt through this participation, always striving to give our movement, through propaganda and organization, the necessary means to supplant our adversaries. Similarly, wherever possible, we must realize our social system through the means of model and example, and our organizations must exert, to the limits of their possibilities, the greatest possible influence on other tendencies in order that they may be incorporated into our struggle, which is the common struggle against all statist and capitalist adversaries, always keeping in mind that circumstances of place and time, but remaining faithful to the goals of the movement for workers’ emancipation." ( http://iwa-ait.org/statutes.html )

I'll leave it here for now.

Ed - I accept all the things

Ed - I accept all the things you say about Puerto Real and Workmates representing the real activity of people who identiy as anarcho-syndicalist. But then you have this pattern where 'traditions' go something like this:

1. Someone sets out some theory, probably based on observing real world practice. They get their new school of thought a name.
2. Someone makes some activity, based on that theory, and perhaps builds an organisation round it. The organisation now defines the school.
3. So everthing done by the organisation now counts as practice of that school - the practice will take place in different circumstances to the first lot, and hence will be different. The practice is named, theorised, brought under the umbrella of the school.

OK. Then the whole cycle can start again. People who take part in, and sympathise with things done by the organisation (stage 3) join it, adopt the name and theory of the school, and identify themselves with it. They then face new and different material conditions, develop new practices, name them...

... and so it can continue, and it's good that it does. But how far can the eventual practice get from the first stage practice before it doesn't count as the same thing any more? Sure, people can call it what they want. But by this point, the school is as much of a cultural or organisational trend as it is an identification with particular politcal principles (which is surely why the name was useful in the first place). And that means re-raising the reasons for organisational separation, adopting particular labels, etc.

But at the same time, there will be other 'traditions' undergoing the same process. And, quite probably, many of them will end up with similar practice and theory, coz after a few rounds of this cycle, real conditions will have more impact than the stage one practice and the stage one theory.

Fact is, I'm sure - and I reckon I can probably find some examples - of non anarcho-syndicalists doing similar things, even as non-ideological industrial militants. So if non-anarcho-syndicalists can do it as well... what?

When I said it was a good thing, I wasn't having a dig at anarcho-syndicalism. I think that convergence is a good thing because it suggests that organisations are relating their practice and their theory to reality. People can call the finished product what they want... I guess I just hope that the labels don't become barriers to realising what's really important in the content of the theory, either for "anarcho syndicalists", or anyone else.

Posi, what you've described

Posi, what you've described is the natural evolution of ideas over time. For instance, when I look at the stuff the AF put out, I find very little relevance of Kropotkin in it. Of course there is some common ground. In fact, fuck it, loads of the general principles come from his work, but the point is that anarchism has moved on since Kropotkin and in terms of the nuts and bolts of fighting the class struggle in 2009, Kropotkin is pretty far from the final word.

Similarly, anarcho-syndicalism has moved on since Durruti (I'm sure he'd have wanted it that way too) and the tools which his generation of anarcho-syndicalists created have been blunted by the relentless march of history (of course, this is my opinion, I'd be interested to hear from some anarcho-syndicalists who disagree). What we need to do is to take the general principles (direct action, rank and file control etc) and make them relevant to today; as, I feel, the AF has done with old anarchist-communists.

So again, we come to your question: "how far can the eventual practice get from the first stage practice before it doesn't count as the same thing any more?" Well, I don't know. But it depends on how far you think the pamphlet 'strays' from 'classical anarcho-syndicalism'. Indeed, I'd like to know what you think 'classical anarcho-syndicalism' is and how much its formation was a result of the historical conditions it found itself in.

posi

Fact is, I'm sure - and I reckon I can probably find some examples - of non anarcho-syndicalists doing similar things, even as non-ideological industrial militants. So if non-anarcho-syndicalists can do it as well... what?

I don't understand this bit. The pamphlet isn't claiming anarcho-syndicalist copyright to self-directed working class struggle. Or are you saying that 'non-politico' workers have formed non-ideological militant networks as well? Probably. But these networks aren't supposed to be non-ideological (you can join the IWW for that). The industrial networks as laid out in the pamphlet aren't supposed to be non-ideological, just not as strictly ideological as say, joining a political organisation.

I think I acknowledged what

I think I acknowledged what you say about how tradition evolve in my post before, of course that's how things evolve and that's a good thing. What I'm saying is that it unavoidably raises questions about what is specifically part of that tradition, and what is also part of other traditions. The pamphlet is framed as being - as Felix Frost says - about the meaning of anarcho syndicalism. What I'm saying is that, though you've chosen to frame it in that way, the things you say could equally well be said by people from other political traditions. (In fact, if they couldn't, you'd have a problem, since the point of the proposal as I see it is that non-anarcho-syndicalist revolutionaries can get involved in the networks on equal terms.)

This isn't a criticism, it's positively a good thing... fwiw, I agree with the conclusions of the pamphlet, and have been writing something with a friend for similar conclusions myself, I guess from a libertarian Marxist perspective.

On the second section of your post - I understand that's what's being advocated. But I wasn't aware Workmates had ideological criteria, though you're using it as an example and don't say there were such criteria?

I agree with Posi's points -

I agree with Posi's points - that there's very little which is specifically anarcho-syndicalist in this, and that this is a good thing.

One additional point - Puerto Real and Workmates aren't the only examples of anarcho-syndicalism in practice - organisational work, producing and distributing propaganda - these are also the practice of organisations. So it's not just a disconnect between what organisations say and what they do - and this is reflected in the pamphlet's proposal to make industrial networks no-longer tied to solfed local membership.

posi wrote: But I wasn't

posi

But I wasn't aware Workmates had ideological criteria, though you're using it as an example and don't say there were such criteria?

Ah, right, sorry, I thought you were talking about non-politicos setting up industrial networks.. no, there wasn't ideological criteria in Workmates (beyond being militant, pro-direct democracy etc). That said, I think my original response still stands: I don't think we (or 'classical anarcho-syndicalists', or council communists, or anyone else I would consider a decent communist) need to claim copyright to self-directed working class struggle to feel affinity with modern tactics of building that struggle. The point is that we (me and you and other libertarian communists) take our cue from the class, we find the organisational forms that work, that are relevant to our experience. Are we deviating from our tradition as it was 50, 70, 100 years ago? Yes, and I'm glad you agree that this is a good thing (fancy joining an industrial network? ;) )..

I guess all I'm saying is that I don't see the point in saying "Oi, that's not anarcho-syndicalism.. where's the union?" The 'union' will come in good time comrades, but what shape it will take we're yet to see as organisational form is shaped through struggle.. it makes as little sense for us to decide on the organisational form now and base it on the experiences of Spain in 1936 as it would for the CNT of 1936 to base their organisational form on some old artisan trade guild of mid-19th Century England.

Steven. wrote: the headings

Steven.

the headings in this section like "mass/permanent organisations" are grammatically different to those of the previous section. The previous section uses the "/" to indicate either/or, where in this section they are not. I think that using commas would be clearer, i.e. " mass, permanent organisations" - as they are not mass or permanent, but mass And permanent.

good point, will change that

Steven.

the statement "the union is only act as a brake on struggles when they develop a degree of self organisation in contradiction to the permanent form" I disagree with. I would say that unions act as a brake on struggles pretty much all the time, unless there is pretty much no struggle at all. For example, in the recent public sector pay disputes there has not been self organisation threatening to go beyond the union form, but the unions still sabotaged the struggles.

this has definitely happened, and indeed is quite common. but i'm not sure it's inherent to unions per se - as far as we're aware the RMT didn't try and undermine Workmates for instance. now that's probably got a lot to do with the general level of militancy of RMT members coupled with the fact it never properly established itself as an independent force, but it would beg lots of questions to both big up Workmates and then say all unions sabotage all struggles all the time.

Steven.

In the subsection entitled "minority/permanent organisations" the second sentence says "there are two distinct pro-revolutionary roles for minority nonpermanent organisations...". I think you mean "permanent organisations"

i think we do, cheers.

Steven.

I think McDonald's workers resistance would not count as a nonpermanent organisation, because I think they wanted it to be permanent.

if someone wanted solfed to be a mass, permanent revolutionary union that wouldn't make it so. there is no necessary reason why workplace networks at large employers must be non-permanent though, and in reality MWR probably to some extent straddled our ideal categories, like a lot of real-world organisations.

Steven.

you talk about assemblies excluding scabs and managers. Many so-called "managers" are actually low ranking workers who might have some sort of token supervisory role. I would replace the word managers with "bosses", as this implies people who have some sort of actual decision-making power.

the wording is taken from solfed's industrial strategy. while many workers have 'manager' in their job title, and while the wording could perhaps be improved i think it's obvious who's meant to be included/excluded, at least i'm sure it would be to the workers involved in any given situation (everyone knows the bosses' chums, grasses, the 'team leaders' who don't give a shit and are really on our side etc).

Steven.

the sentence "if we are confident in our ideas we should not fear an open confrontation of them with others". "Open confrontation" sounds a bit weird here I think, a bit too full on maybe, like it implies physically fighting.

you think? i think it's pretty clear we're talking about a clash of ideas, not settling political disagreements in the car park...

Steven.

as for the industrial networks, I think this is a big issue. Obviously within SF this will be an issue for you guys. But also it is a big political discussion more generally. While I would be sympathetic to the idea of pro-revolutionary industrial networks, which don't require being a member of SF, I do think that there would still have to be strict ideological criteria. Otherwise the same fate would befall them as the "mass permanent organisations" - either they are controlled undemocratically by revolutionaries and have a consistent revolutionary line, or they get lots of nonrevolutionary workers and get dilute. I think that this is a real danger, because what are key points for us, communists, are not even considered by anyone else really. Principally in terms of industrial networks this would be the line that workers ourselves should try to control struggles ourselves and bypass the unions, that we should try to spread struggles as much as possible, that we should not try to reform the unions. So these are things to bear in mind if they are to be set up.

yes, this is important. we can see these different tendencies at work with the national shop stewards network. on the one hand it has the potential to be a really useful cross-union, cross-sector national network of militants; but then the brighton launch meeting next week is subtitled "how can we rebuild Trade Union power?" - i think reflecting Socialist Party influence. Obviously working class power and trade union power are not the same thing at all, and if the NSSN becomes a rank-and-filist caucus for reforming the unions it will be a great waste of militancy and self-organisation. we're definitely in favour of political-economic industrial organisation, and the political has to be well-defined (i don't think things like positions on national liberation would be relevant in the way they would be for a specifically political libertarian communist organisation though).

Steven.

Solidarity Federation industrial strategy... of course, the rest of this section is a reprint of the additional SF industrial strategy. I think that some of this is now contradictory to the rest of the document. For example the statement "trade union organisation around traditional bread and butter issues... is vital".

well, i think organisation around traditional bread-and-butter issues is vital - this is in the context of saying our interests lie in the revolutionary destruction of capital, but stressing this doesn't mean we neglect bread and butter issues for revolutionary posturing. often these struggles take place through unions to some extent, and when it happens in non/barely- unionised workplaces unionisation is often a result. as the strategy makes clear, we do not advocate TUC-unionising non-unionised workplaces, but forming independent workplace groups ("independent unions"), which we argue are necessarily mass, non-permanent organisations like Workmates.

Steven.

1-I think a more case-by-case approach is useful than a blanket "SF member would join a recognized TUC union". Although I don't have a problem with union membership as such, there are difficulties as many workplaces will have multiple recognized unions, and so joining any of them would still help with dividing up the workforce. Furthermore some recognized TUC unions are very much bosses or scab unions, which it probably wouldn't be useful at all to join.

i think that's probably accurate, and reflects our actual approach in practice. i doubt anyone in solfed would join a bosses/scab union because the strategy says so, and of course it says nothing of which union to join in workplaces with multiple ones. i read it as an anti-abstentionist position - we participate in unions at shop-floor level even though we want to go beyond them, and argue for mass meetings, rank-and-file control, solidarity and spreading struggles from that position - an approach i'm sure you agree with.

Steven.

2 - recommending "independent unions" to be set up is problematic, unless you make clear some sort of alternate definition for "union". If you do this, then that will make this point no different to 3.

we've made clear our definition (mass, non-permanent, with structures like a delegate council and mandation/recallablity a la Workmates). This is different to 3, because calling a one-off mass meeting in a given dispute is not the same as having regular mass meetings, a delegate council etc i.e. an independent workplace organisation (anarcho-syndicalist union). remember "for us therefore regular meetings do not equal permanent organisation."

Steven.

3 - see above, and also this probably would go without saying, but rather than just calling workers assemblies, on a practical level people would try to gather around them trusted colleagues based on informal relationships in a workplace on a more long-term basis.

see above. on a practical level, yes, of course. that's why we bring in 'faceless resistance' into the equation, as our stated strategy jumps straight in at the visible level of class struggle, when clearly mass meetings don't come out of nowhere, but from often informal social networks within workplaces, bonds of trust and solidarity built up by thousands of tiny acts, friendship etc. certainly that better describes my current work situation than any imminent possibility of mass meetings/anarcho-syndicalist unions (it's more likely now than 6 months ago though).

Steven.

I have long thought that there are unnecessary false divisions between anarchists in the UK based on personal stuff and semantics. For example, I think that there are more disagreements on politics within both SF and the AF than between them. I hope that this document and any resultant discussion can move towards bridging some of these divisions

the issue is that both are permanent, minority polticial organisations. solfed is meant to be an anarcho-syndicalist organisation - i.e. a political-economic local & industrial network of militants with libertarian communist politics, united by advocacy of direct action, solidarity and rank-and-file control - in practice it isn't this, but is an organisation of anarcho-syndicalists (which is why you, the AF etc aren't members). i think there's a place for both a specific libertarian communist political organisation and an anarcho-syndicalist political-economic organisation.

catch wrote: I agree with

Mike Harman

I agree with Posi's points - that there's very little which is specifically anarcho-syndicalist in this, and that this is a good thing.

lots of people are making this point, but it just seems like identity politicking to me. i've no doubt if we were ICC members publishing this as 'left communism for the 21st century' then our advocacy of political-economic industrial organisation would immediately be identified as anarcho-syndicalist. i'm more interested in whether people agree with the substance than the nomenclature tbh; arguing the pamphlet represents a certain convergence of anarcho-syndicalism and council/left communism is one thing (we're not hiding our openness to criticism or the influence of Dauvé), but presenting it as a complete break with a-s when Workmates is one of its major inspirations is just silly. we do advocate anarcho-syndicalist unions, we just recognise they are necessarily non-permanent (a recognition of reality, and explanation why they haven't been built by force of will), and therefore we make organisational proposals for what we should do as a minority in the class other than lament 'why aren't we a union yet?'

Quote: Joseph Kay

Joseph Kay wrote:
lots of people are making this point, but it just seems like identity politicking to me. i've no doubt if we were ICC members publishing this as 'left communism for the 21st century' then our advocacy of political-economic industrial organisation would immediately be identified as anarcho-syndicalist. i'm more interested in whether people agree with the substance than the nomenclature tbh; arguing the pamphlet represents a certain convergence of anarcho-syndicalism and council/left communism

There is something a bit similar to all this isn't there?

Jack wrote ('Call for meeting of grassroots education workers' thread)

I'm a member of the local who produced it, and JK was the principle author who has been posting on this thread. I'm sure we'd both love to hear your great incites into our fetishising the pre-1940 working class.

In case you missed it, here it is: CSA fetishizes pre-1940s working class

nobody missed it, it just

nobody missed it, it just doesn't merit a response.

That's literally the

That's literally the shittest criticism of class struggle anarchism I've ever read. It's cool though, coz sometimes I get thrown off by Principia Dialectica's nice design and post-Marxist rhetoric and think they might be onto something. But then I read stuff like this:

Principia Dialectica

In other words, CSAs [class struggle anarchists] believe that for the majority of UK workplaces - which are unproductive - the workers should fight to take control of the workplaces in order to, after the revolution - close them down.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to do when I worked in a call centre, I wanted to take it over until we had a revolution.. :roll:

Principia Dialectica

How are home based call centre workers going to have a mass assembly? Go from all over the country to meet at a workplace that doesn’t exist? Do they then occupy their own homes and wait for someone to tell them that the revolution has been successful and that they can communise them?

Well, there goes my blueprint on how to organise the entire working class through a single tactic.. what now, comrades?

B Reasonable wrote: In case

B Reasonable

In case you missed it, here it is: CSA fetishizes pre-1940s working class

Lol, Principia Dialectica are such morons. Its hilarious that these lot can call people who identify a class antagonism in capitalism dinosaurs following "nineteenth century navigation techniques" whilst calling on people to vote against the toffs in the London Assembly!

That "critique" is so packed full of straw men its just amazing.

Ed wrote: That's literally

That's literally the shittest criticism of class struggle anarchism I've ever read. It's cool though, coz sometimes I get thrown off by Principia Dialectica's nice design and post-Marxist rhetoric and think they might be onto something.

Well, they're Crimethinc for postgrad students. You can't polish a turd but you can certainly wrap it in nice typography.

FYI, the Seasol/Seattle IWW

FYI, the Seasol/Seattle IWW reading group will be reading this text this month (along with the markedly different "Rules for Radicals" by Alinsky).

"FYI, the Seasol/Seattle IWW

"FYI, the Seasol/Seattle IWW reading group will be reading this text this month "

Sounds good.

yep

What happened to the PDF

What happened to the PDF version? Am I blind or has it been removed?

We were formally requested

We were formally requested by another local not to further distribute the pamphlet until after our national conference, pending discussion. we agreed and took down the pdf. discussions are ongoing, and our conference is this weekend, after which we'll decide how to proceed.

Wondered if this has become

Wondered if this has become official SolFed position or not? Rumour has it it was rejected by the conference.

Yes it was rejected and the

Yes it was rejected and the pamphlet only represents the politics of the Brighton local not the federation. Some comrades in SF have somewhat misread our intentions (thinking it was an attack on SF rather than a contribution to the debate about contemporary anarcho-syndicalism) and our position (thinking that we're advocating SF should limit itself to being a political propaganda group rather than aiming to become a political-economic organisation). There are also a few more factual problems that have been highlighted. We will probably write a second version of the pamphlet that takes into account the discussion and criticisms, fleshing out some things, and giving more concrete examples.

that's too bad. what's to

that's too bad. what's to come of it then? if you were asked to take it down before the conference, with it being rejected are you allowed to continue to publish it as a brighton solfed pamphlet?

so it's not just a minor

so it's not just a minor disagreement regarding the pamphlet then?

*clearly none of my business so i will gladly fuck off upon request.

Just out of interest were

Just out of interest were you surprised, Jack?

Devrim

There is an ongoing debate

There is an ongoing debate within Solfed about our industrial networks - some feel they should be uncoupled from Solfed to become networks that are only sponsored by Solfed, others are strongly opposed to this. In our pamphlet, we say membership of the industrial networks should be "less determined by ideas and more by economic position" and that the "level of theoretical and tactical agreement required" should not be "as high as for propaganda groups". Some have interpreted this as calling for a seperation of the networks from Solfed, although that's not our local's actual position, and this is the only accusation of the pamphlet violating the SF aims and principles that has been substantiated.

We'd be really interested to

We'd be really interested to hear what you made of the AF's industrial document. To our mind the politics involved are remarkably similar, though developed independently.

new preface added to clarify

new preface added to clarify the status of the document. we're working on a new expanded version and this one has prompted a very constructive ongoing debate within SolFed.

Hi Folks: Very glad to have

Hi Folks:

Very glad to have found this website. Read and skimmed the "Strategy and Struggle" document, and found it to be quite edifying and agreeable.

We've got a lot of organizing and action left to be done, especially here in the USA, especially when the libertaian communist plan needs to entail a fundamental change in the way that resources are allocated to and within communities as well as within and among economic sectors.

I am new to this website and need to do more exploring, more probing, more reaching out. I am hoping that it can be a locus of organizing for a worldwide movement.

I would greatly appreciate feedback, hopefully shed in a positive light.

Thank you.

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
mlarosamorin [AT] earthlink.net
friendmorin [AT] yahoo.com
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com

Admin edit: Broke email links so you don't get spammed.

So, tip one, do not leave

So, tip one, do not leave your real name and address on an Anarchist open forum. It's just not smart.

Other than that, welcome to the forum and congrats on being post no. 100.

~J.

The problem with SF as it

The problem with SF as it stands is that we have an industrial stratergy that is asking people to be anarcho-syndicalist before they join by deferring interest in networks to the national organisation. This means that people who have shown interest but dont feel comfortable with joining the national organisation have tended to go join the IWW and grumble about its short failings. This needs to be changed, otherwise SF will remain dormant. Obviously myself and a few others (martinh and jason cortez) want a concerted effort to change this, but Im not sure how Brighton is feeding into that as no1's comments make out.

Brighton's position that we

Brighton's position that we put at conference was that we support the dual local-industrial structure of SolFed, but recognise it has been a barrier to growth. We have various suggestions to address this which we're discussing in the local at present and will be circulating shortly (hopefully in the July IB).

The important thing to note is that while the networks do require SolFed membership, there is nothing to stop SolFed members initiating or participating in wider networks (such as the moves in London towards co-operation between SF-AF-IWW education workers), and non-SF members are welcome to join the network email lists and participate in discussions etc without becoming formal members.

(In case this appears to contradict anything else I've said on here, this is a change of position for me as I was talked round by others in the local in our pre-conference mandating meeting).

.

Jacque wrote: Our current

Jacque

Our current structure is not a "dual" structure in my view (this would require that our networks are purely economic and "defensive" - in contrast within a dual structure the locals would be "political" and "offensive").

being a federation of local and industrial groups is a dual structure no? it doesn't require a split between politics and economics any more than the CNT having regional federation as well as industrial unions does. You could argue that since we only have one functioning network we don't have a truly dual structure, i.e. that we're more a federation of local propaganda groups than an anarcho-syndicalist organisation proper. there's some truth in that, but that's a different argument to the one you're making imho.

Jacque

On the issue of organisational structure, I believe that this is a relatively easy issue to resolve - a motion should be made to allow each of our locals, if they intend to focus their efforts on furthering the development the industrial networks - to be able to become inter-professional networks (ie; SOVs).

how would an inter-professional network differ from a local?

.

Jacque wrote: I understand

Jacque

I understand dual structure in a very negative sense, but I can appreciate that you don't mean it in the sense that is commonly understood (ie; party leads and is "offensive" - unions unite workers and are "defensive"). In our case "locals" and "networks" have different purposes based on what they can accomplish. I am familiar enough with your point of view to know that you are not promoting what concerns me and if you are comfortable with calling it a dual structure, I'll try understand it in the way you are applying the concept. To be honest the hierarchical use of the term, that concerns me is rarely used, and you are referring to it in terms of purpose, so be it.

i wasn't aware it had leninist connotations... i certainly don't mean to separate political and economic struggles in that way. is there a better way to describe solfed's (desired) structure?

.

well so far we've been

well so far we've been councilist liberal hippy Marxist platformist insurrectionists, so it wouldn't surprise me :P nah, point taken.

i guess i'm trying to distinguish solfed's (desired) structure from something like the AF say, which is also federalist but has no aspiration to organise economically - seeing that as a role for a separate organisation (at present, the IWW), with the AF handling the politics. on the other hand we aspire to organise on a politcal-economic basis, both geographically and industrially. i guess 'anarcho-syndicalist' should cover it really :P

.

New article on the ICC's

New article on the ICC's site:

http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/07/Solfed-AF-unions-debate

"Two recent documents coming from different parts of the anarchist movement both make attempts to address the questions of the role of the unions and how workers can struggle. The first is a document that was circulated by the Brighton local of the Solidarity Federation for discussion in the period leading up to their national conference. The second is the workplace strategy of the Anarchist Federation that was adopted by their national conference in April.....".

Russian translation online at

Russian translation online at aitrus.info
[ en | ru ] Борьба и стратегия: анархо-синдикализм в XXI веке (Strategy and struggle - anarcho-syndicalism in the XXIst century)

I know that someone from

I know that someone from CNT-AIT in France planned to translate this as well. Perhaps it would be good to say when the improved and updated version will be out in case SF folks know it already. Priama akcia also planned to publish Slovak translation (which is already done) but we will rather wait for the updated version.

What's the status of the PDF?

What's the status of the PDF? Is there any way someone could PM it to me? I wanna read this, but it's too long to not print it out. I guess I could just copy and paste but if there's gonna be a PDF I'd much rather have that....

as far as I'm aware, the PDF

as far as I'm aware, the PDF was withdrawn as it was acknowledged by all parties that the text was flawed. So an updated document is being prepared. However, I would think that Joseph or one of the Brighton people could message you with the PDF to read for your information

I'd still be happy to

I'd still be happy to translate it into Spanish and/or Portuguese, or to work with others on that...

Whatever happened with this?

Whatever happened with this? I recall reading that it was being re-editted and debated within solfed. I'd be interested to see the revised version.

There's been a lot of very

There's been a lot of very constructive debate within SolFed since this came out, which should at some point lead to a new pamphlet. As far as Brighton SF are concerned, we're keen to do this but it's been put on the back-burner for now as we're very busy with practical stuff, some of which helps answer the questions posed in the text quite concretely (i.e. our involvement in and relation to struggles isn't merely a theoretical problem but a practical one).

Any progress on this? I'd

Any progress on this? I'd like to see any new version if it exists...

a new pamphlet will be

a new pamphlet will be written at some point, but a lot of practical progress is being made in SolFed at the moment (a new national training syllabus, moves towards 'direct action solidarity' conflict work, a new pamphlet series...) and there's a new strategy commission that's formulating some concrete proposals to move forward. as that debate feeds into the strategy discussion, it doesn't make sense to pre-empt it with a pamphlet at the moment, although some preliminary work/historical research has been done. so i don't know on the timescale to be honest - it depends on lots of different factors. we might try to float ideas that may make it in through articles in Direct Action or something like that if it looks like it could be a while...

Ok just wondering. I was

Ok just wondering. I was going to print out a few copies to give out at stalls. Sounds like SolFed is doing worthwhile stuff...

This pamplet really impressed

This pamplet really impressed me, fie on those who claim anarchism is without constructuve theory.

the part explaining the inherent problems in permenant organizations - and how making them perm means disconnecting them from how high class struggle is - was something I've always thought but couldn't put into words properly, I'd never considered this form of defining organizations, and I know real life organizations don't fit perfectly in here, but for the most part i think it applies very well to political organizations in general, not just ones related to anarchism.

What do you think you'd add to the new version? or change?

Also, the section dealing with critism can be shortened by removing the friends of Durutii critic considering the platformists make an almost identicle criticism, so you could save much needed space a little by adding their criticism to the platformist part.

I'm surprised Rosa had this criticism, but shes difficult to pin down, I've got quotes of her's arguing for vangaurd parties, DoP, leninism, anti democracy, and others going the libertarian route.
As is the case with so many figures, which is why naming a theory after one gets a bit complicated.

I know this is an old

I know this is an old article, but I find it excellent. I'm very glad it mentions Kampa Tillsammans and "faceless resistance" and attempts to integrate it into a wider syndicalist strategy. It's amazing Solfed has realized 'organization' and 'substance' are two different things and that syndicalists often conflate the two!

Again, if I were a briton I'd join Solfed.

Maybe, its worth including a

Maybe, its worth including a link in the intro to Fighting for Ourselves?

done!

yo, was there ever a pdf of

yo, was there ever a pdf of this made? i know its more a historical document in transition per se, but it's still a reference point for many and it'd be nice to have to print out and read. if not no biggie, just a thought. :D

Very interesting text from…

Very interesting text from SolFed and discussion above

See also this piece on syndicalist strategy from 2022

https://libcom.org/article/revolution-21st-century-case-syndicalist-strategy

And do check out this long…

And do check out this long but nice nugget

https://libcom.org/article/build-revolution-anarcho-syndicalism-21st-century

Can this be updated to…

Can this be updated to include the replies? There is a PDF here:
http://solfed.org.uk/sites/default/files/uploads/strategy_and_struggle_debate_-_solidarity_federation.pdf

I've added the pdf and…

I've added the pdf and updated the intro. Does anyone know why it says "UNPUBLISHED" at the end of the top intro paragraph?

Fozzie wrote: I've added the…

Fozzie wrote: I've added the pdf and updated the intro. Does anyone know why it says "UNPUBLISHED" at the end of the top intro paragraph?

I recall at some point SolFed asked us to take this down, because they released the final version of the text as Fighting for Ourselves. So we took it down. I guess at some point though it must have become okay for this to be back online for the historical record/reference, but the unpublished note never got removed. I have removed it now.

Strategy and struggle - anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century

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