Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20th Century

2016

A preliminary note on termsPlease note that when I use the term 'syndicalism', here I am using it in the English sense of specifically meaning revolutionary syndicalism and/ or anarcho-syndicalism, not in the Romance language sense of meaning unions in general. And when I just say 'anarchism', I am usually including 'syndicalism' (both anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism) because it's a variant of anarchism. Revolutionary and anarcho-syndicalism, are forms of anarchist trade unionism, rooted in the anarchist tradition, constituting strategies for anarchism, rather than a separate ideology or movement.One of the key issues that must be addressed for a project like this - a project which looks at anarchism and seeks to do so in a truly global and planetary way, rather than through a narrow focus on parts of Europe (which is how the history of anarchism is often done) - is that you have to think very carefully how you define the subject. So, if we are to ...

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, 2013

Anarchism refers to a tradition of social and political thought that in the 1860s emerged as an organized political force. Since then, anarchism has inspired protests, organizations and movements, mainly in Europe, Russia and the Americas, but also in other parts of the world. While it may be difficult to talk of ‘one’ anarchist movement, a distinct anarchist current within the history of the labor movement can be identified as well as anarchist tendencies and groups within other social movements. The term ‘anarchy’ comes from the Greek an-arkhos, meaning ‘without a leader or ruler’. It was first used in a positive sense, being identified as the ideal form of government, in Pierre- Joseph Proudhon’s (1809-1865) What Is Property? (1840). Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) and Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921) pioneered a broad tradition which has developed in a variety of forms. These range from varying interpretations of how to organize society in economic terms to the more basic distinction between social anarchism and currents farther removed from collective action (e.g. philosophical, individualist, and spiritual anarchism) as well as more specific variations around forms of organization, of action, the use of violence, and so on. In spite of this rich variety, anarchism can be identified by its strong commitment to individual freedom and sovereignty, the opposition to any form of oppression, domination and authority, the promotion of voluntary, decentralized and non-hierarchical associations, and the use of forms of direct action that prefigure a freer society with more solidarity and respect for individual self government.

The discussion below is a lightly edited transcription of a talk given by the author at the Ay Carmela, Rua das Carmelitas, in São Paulo, Brazil, on 2 November 2010. This article provides a global perspective on the history and theory of anarchism and syndicalism, arguing against views that treat anarchism as simple ‘anti-statism’ or a natural human ‘impulse’, in favour of the argument that the current is a socialist, working class tradition dating to the International Workingmen’s Association (the ‘First International’), 1864-1877. An international movement in intent, conception and membership from the start, it drew on a range of modernist, rationalist socialist ideas, and developed a powerful base in many regions of the world by the 1940s. Spanish anarchism was undoubtedly important, as was the anarchist Spanish Revolution of 1936–1939, but Spain provided but one of a series of mass-based, influential anarchist and syndicalist movements. Barcelona was only one in a chain of red-and-black anarchist and syndicalist strongholds, and the Spanish Revolution only one of a number of major rebellions, revolutionary rehearsals and actual social revolutions in which anarchism/ syndicalism played a decisive role. Although public attention was drawn by the spectacular actions of the movement’s marginal ‘insurrectionist’ wing, it was the ‘mass’ anarchist approach – based on patient mass organising and education – that predominated. The movement’s immersion in mass movements – especially through syndicalism, peasant and civil rights struggles, fights against racism and women’s oppression, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles – can also only be properly appreciated from a global perspective – one in which the movement’s rich history in the colonial and postcolonial world is placed centre-stage. The real history of the movement should not be confused with the mythological, propagandistic history of anarchism that sections of the movement subsequently promoted, centred on claims that ‘anarchism’ existed across all human history, was ‘natural’ etc.

The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution

Since the early 1990s the world has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of anarchist and syndicalist ideology, organisation, and methods of struggle. This resurgence is generally explained as a response to the imposition of neoliberal economic policies, the impact of increasingly globalized capital, the restructuring of state-society relations, the advent of new forms of authoritarianism and social control, and the collapse of world communism. 1 Rather than signal "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution," the post-Soviet period has been characterised by experimentation, reinvention and rediscovery on the part of progressive movements. 2 Anarchism and syndicalism have been part of this process of renewal. New movements have emerged in areas with little in the way of a revolutionary, libertarian socialist tradition; existing movements in areas of historic influence have revived, and a more diffuse anarchistic influence permeates a number of important social movements. The last two decades have seen new anarchist groups emerge in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Nigeria and Syria. In 1997, for example, several hundred gold miners registered a branch of the Industrial

Science & Society, 2015

Marx's first meeting with Mikhail Bakunin in 1847 was amicable. Sixteen years later, however, he crossed swords with Bakunin, who had by then formed his own anarchist current. The setting was the just-founded International Workingmen's Association (IWA) or First International. At the heart of their differences was whether workers should engage in political action, with Marx in favor and Bakunin opposed. While making a forceful case for its position, the Marx party was never able to get Bakunin or his current to openly debate the question in the International. Their conflict focused, rather, on organizational issues. Marx accused Bakunin, with evidence, of having formed a secret center within the IWA, in violation of its norms. The majority of its affiliates agreed and expelled Bakunin's current in 1872, while adopting Marx's political action course, which contained the seeds of the mass working-class political parties in Europe. Bakunin's current passed into oblivion. • G4358Text.indd 153 2/26/2015 4:30:23 PM 154 SCIENCE & SOCIETY interests. "Yet," he writes, in words that resonate today, "the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labor." There was only one answer, Marx concluded, to this cold fact: "To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes." And in the opening sentence of the preface to the accompanying rules for the new organization, he wrote: "The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves" (MECW, 20, 5-14). 1 Both claims were at the very core of Marx's political program and the axis around which his work for the next decade in the IWA revolved. They explain why he and his partner Frederick Engels would eventually clash and part company-in international socialism's first most public dispute-with another member of the new organization and the current he led, Mikhail Bakunin and the anarchists. 2 Marx and Engels' Politics before the IWA "Marx," Hal Draper convincingly argues, "was the first socialist figure to come to an acceptance of the socialist idea through the battle for the extension of democratic control from below.. .. He was the first to fuse the struggle for consistent political democracy with the struggle for a socialist transformation" (Draper, 1977, 59). The socalled "father of anarchism," Pierre-Joseph Proudhon-often thought of as a socialist although he wasn't-declined Marx's invitation in 1846 to have a civil debate about their differences. When Marx did take him on in his book The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)-a sarcastic play on the subtitle of Proudhon's book, The Philosophy of Povertyhis critique was almost exclusively about the failings of its economic nostrums, exactly because Proudhon's perspective was bereft of any political content. Marx, nevertheless, did make the point that strikes, MARxISM VERSUS ANARCHISM

Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies , 2013

Examining the theory and practice of ‘mass’ anarchism and syndicalism, this paper argues against Daryl Glaser's views that workers' council democracy fails basic democratic benchmarks and that, envisaged as a simple instrument of a revolution imagined in utopian ‘year zero’ terms, it will probably collapse or end in ‘Stalinist’ authoritarianism—Glaser also argues instead for parliaments, supplemented by participatory experiments. While agreeing with Glaser on the necessity of a ‘democratic minimum’ of pluralism, rights, and open-ended outcomes, I demonstrate, in contrast, that this ‘minimum’ is perfectly compatible with bottom-up council democracy and self-management, as envisaged in anarchist/syndicalist theory, and as implemented by anarchist revolutions in Manchuria, Spain and Ukraine. This approach seeks to maximise individual freedom through an egalitarian, democratic, participatory order, developed as both means and outcome of revolution; it consistently insists that attempts to ‘save’ revolutions by suspending freedoms, instead destroy both. Parliament, again in contrast to Glaser, from this perspective, meets no ‘democratic minimum’, being part of the state, a centralized, unaccountable institutional nexus essential to domination and exploitation by a ruling class of state managers and capitalists. Rather than participate in parliaments, ‘mass’ anarchism argues for popular class autonomy from, and struggle against, the existing order as a means of winning economic and political reforms while—avoiding ‘year zero’ thinking—also building the new society, within and against, the old, through a prefigurative project of revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture. Revolution here means the complete expansion of a bottom-up democracy, built through a class struggle for economic and social equality, and requiring the defeat of the ruling class, which is itself the outcome of widespread, free acceptance of anarchism, and of a pluralistic council democracy and self-management system.

Review of Political Economy, 2014

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International Studies , 2022

In this article, I attempt to critically assess Kenneth Waltz's deployment of the idea of anarchy to erect a 'scientific theory of international politics'. First, I argue that the formation of a concept requires comprehension of the object from the standpoint of historical development, not a narrow reading of it. Second, I subject the thinner abstractions of self-help, balance of power and bandwagoning to the test of history. Third, I argue about mainstream international relations' disdain for revolutions. I would posit that revolutions are fine templates which store rich agential history of structural transformation, a theme subject to much chagrin by realists of all hues, particularly neorealists. In doing so, I take the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as my benchmark. I elucidate that through the occlusion of first and second images, man and state, in the favour of third image, that is, structural anarchy, Waltz tends to ignore the role of agency as a conscious collective which could be best captured by the Bolshevik Revolution. In doing so, I rely on Perry Anderson's three modes of agency in history. As a corrective to Waltz's theorization, I make a strong case for class transcending both man and state as an organic category with immense potential of becoming a level of analysis which both acts upon the structure and refracts through it. I finally conclude by saying that anarchy was a condition and not a 'social relation' of any sort which could claim to constitute the 'international'.