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Texts :: theory |
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The Policy of the International |
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by Mikhail Bakunin |
03 Sep 2005
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". . . there is still too great a difference in the level of industrial, political, intellectual, and moral development among the working masses in various countries for it to be possible today to unite them around a single political, anti-religious program. To suggest such a program for the International and to make it an absolute condition for admission to that Association, would be to establish a sect, not a worldwide association, and it would destroy the International. |
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Texts :: theory |
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Programme of Anarcho-Syndicalism |
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by G.P. Maximoff |
03 Sep 2005
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"The basic fabric of the future society is composed, in the anarchist view, of three elements. The first is the producers' association of the people, leading, through the syndicalisation of production, to producers' communism. The second is the consumers' association resulting, through the utilisation of cooperatives in consumers' communism. The third is the territorial association of the people, leading through communism to unity in diversity, i.e. the confederation of nations, based on the fundamental principles of Anarchism -- liberty and equality . . . However, the Anarchists do not visualise future society in such a simplified and schematic form. On the contrary, in their eyes it is represented by a far more complicated pattern, in which the basic fabric is interwoven by innumerable threads of varied and constantly overlapping human groupings, producing a great diversity of needs and activities on the part of the individual. in whom society is finally rooted." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Trade Union Objections to Anarcho-Syndicalism |
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by Albert Meltzer |
03 Sep 2005
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"Trade unionists often regard anarcho-syndicalism as a direct menace, sometimes viewing the Anarchist objections to authoritarian leadership and to the closed shop as equivalent with Conservative attacks on free trade unionism." |
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Texts :: theory |
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The Revolutionary IWW |
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by Grover H. Perry |
03 Sep 2005
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"The Industrial Workers of the World are laying the foundation of a new government. This government will have for its legislative halls the mills, the workshops and factories. Its legislators will be the men in the mills, shops and factories. Its legislative enactments will be those pertaining to the welfare of the workers . . . These things are to be. No force can stop them. Armies will be of no avail. Capitalist governments may issue their mandates in vain. The power of the workers--industrially organized--is the only power on earth worth considering--once they realize that power. Classes will disappear, and in their place will be only useful members of society--the workers." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Sabotage |
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by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn |
03 Sep 2005
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"For us to discuss the morality of sabotage would be as absurd as to discuss the morality of the strike or the morality of the class struggle itself. In order to understand sabotage or to accept it at all it is necessary to accept the concept of class struggle. If you believe that between the workers on the one side and their employers on the other there is peace, there is harmony such as exists between brothers, and that consequently whatever strikes and lockouts occur are simply family squabbles; if you believe that a point can be reached whereby the employer can get enough and the worker can get enough, a point of amicable adjustment of industrial warfare and economic distribution, then there is no justification and no explanation of sabotage intelligible to you. Sabotage is one weapon in the arsenal of labor to fight its side of the class struggle. Labor realizes, as it becomes more intelligent, that it must have power in order to accomplish anything; that neither appeals for sympathy nor abstract rights will make for better conditions." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Sabotage |
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by Emile Pouget |
03 Sep 2005
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"Since the day a man had the criminal ability to profit by another man's labour, since that very same day the exploited toiler has instinctively tried to give to his master less than was demanded from him. In this wise the worker was unconsciously doing SABOTAGE, demonstrating in an indirect way the irrepressible antagonism that arrays Capital and Labor one against the other." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Introduction to Pouget's Sabotage |
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by Arturo Giovannitti |
03 Sep 2005
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"Now that the bosses have succeeded in dealing an almost mortal blow to the boycott, now that picket duty is practically outlawed, free speech throttled, free assemblage prohibited and injunctions against labor are becoming epidemic; Sabotage, this dark, invincible, terrible Damocles' Sword that hangs over the head of the master class, will replace all the confiscated weapons and ammunition of the army of the toilers. And it will win, for it is the most redoubtable of all, except the general strike. In vain may the bosses get an injunction against the strikers' funds -- Sabotage will get a more powerful one against their machinery. In vain may they invoke old laws and make new ones against it-they will never discover it, never track it to its lair, never run it to the ground, for no laws will ever make a crime of the "clumsiness and lack of skill" of a "scab" who bungles his work or "puts on the bum" a machine he "does not know how to run."." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Syndicalism and the SAC, a Short Introduction |
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by Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation (SAC) |
03 Sep 2005
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The categories of workers which were attracted to SAC during its first years were made up of road and construction workers, forestry and mine workers, as well as the quarry workers. SAC wasn't then or even later especially strong among industrial workers. Another peculiarity is that SAC organised a larger percent of trades that had a lower prestige and status. In certain cases this low status was combined with low wages while in others, for example railway navvies, they could by being in SAC and using syndicalist methods of struggle raise their material standards to that of the highest paid among the working class. |
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Texts :: theory |
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Syndicalism in Myth and Reality |
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by L. Gambone |
03 Sep 2005
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"Syndicalism died after WWI. Syndicalism was finished as a revolutionary movement by 1910. Syndicalism was finished off by Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Syndicalism was a primitive millennial movement which evolved into modern social democratic unionism. Or so the academic labour historians will tell you. The purpose of this pamphlet is to show that these conceptions are myths." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Syndicalism: Its Theory and Practise |
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by Emma Goldman |
03 Sep 2005
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"Of course Syndicalism, like the old trade unions, fights for immediate gains, but it is not stupid enough to pretend that labor can expect humane conditions from inhuman economic arrangements in society. Thus it merely wrests from the enemy what it can force him to yield; on the whole, however, Syndicalism aims at, and concentrates its energies upon, the complete overthrow of the wage system. Indeed, Syndicalism goes further: it aims to liberate labor from every institution that has not for its object the free development of production for the benefit of all humanity. In short, the ultimate purpose of Syndicalism is to reconstruct society from its present centralized, authoritative and brutal state to one based upon the free, federated grouping of the workers along lines of economic and social liberty." |
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