https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/06/syndicalism-for-the-twenty-first...
The dogmatic syndicalist attachment to the mass union is based on a false interpretation of history. Syndicalism’s ultimate goal was not to establish mass unions. Syndicalism’s ultimate goal was to establish a classless society, or, as many a syndicalist preamble declares, “libertarian socialism.” A hundred years ago, building mass unions appeared to be a viable means to reach this goal. Today, it does not. This doesn’t discredit the syndicalist idea of strengthening worker’s self-organization and solidarity in order to fight capital and the state. It only means that syndicalism has to express itself in other forms.
At what point does syndicalism stop being syndicalism though? The article brings up a lot of good points but at some point it is just not syndicalism really. Are they proposing that SAC and FAU are turned into some type of quasi-party that connects threads to both solidarity groups, community groups, political parties, rank-and-file militants, and so on? I of course support the forming of such a political formation but at some point that is just a revolutionary group of some kind that acts as political and organizational leadership, but it is also a very large endeavor.
Though I still feel like the most recent successes of SAC have been "typical" unionism. In my pretty rural area they managed to help organize EU-migrant workers("Skåne Factory Worker's Section") who had not gotten the help they wanted from the social-democratic union, and then they threatened with industrial actions and eventually won negotiations for safer forms of employment.
Not directly related to syndicalism but "independent" unionism also had a large success this year with the dock worker's union winning against the dock employer's organisation and against the social-democrat union in its fight for a collective barging agreement through the usage of strikes.
They also don't seem to engage with why the CGT has mass-support and is called "reformist". Is it not in part because they engage with more "traditional" unionism, such as putting up candidates in the "trade union elections" while CNT rejects such activity?
I have a feeling that they are projecting their own positions as intellectuals... In general I feel like this article is turning SAC's failure to organizing larger sections of shop-floor workers as a general historical tendency and not a failure in organizational methods. Why was SAC not a "mass union" during the 70's, 60's, 50's, etc before the neo-liberalisation? Why were the driving ideological forces in the syndicalist movement mostly students, like Zenit? There has obviously been a failure in class composition and I think the usage of worker's centers is a good start to resolving this contradiction.
I think a lot of these strategies, like worker's centers, are still very untested in general, and especially in rural areas. It has worked will in Stockholm as we have seen but what strategies can be used to form this "militant worker's organisation" outside of the cities, or how do you organize rank-and-file militants in industrial centers outside of cities?