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Texts :: theory |
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A review of Vadim Damier's 'Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century' |
by Jared Davidson
Previously published: libcom.org |
08 Jun 2010
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For those who can read Russian, Vadim Damier’s two-volume study of the International Workers’ Association (IWA) is a comprehensive history of the worldwide anarchist labour movement in the early 20th Century. For the rest of us, Malcom Archibald has translated what is essentially a streamlined version of Damier’s larger work into English. Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century is a broad survey of a movement often marginalised by Marxist academics, and is a welcome addition to the existing literature on anarcho-syndicalism. As Damier illustrates, anarcho-syndicalism was far from a outmoded, ineffective or petty-bourgeois movement — the practice of direct action and revolutionary struggle controlled and self-managed by the workers themselves extended to all countries of the world. |
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Texts :: theory |
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A Workers' Guide to Direct Action |
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by Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) |
02 Sep 2005
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"Direct action is any form of guerrilla warfare that cripples the boss' ability to make a profit and makes him/her cave in to the workers' demands. The best-known form of direct action is the strike, in which workers simply walk off their jobs and refuse to produce profits for the boss until they get what they want. This is the preferred tactic of the ACTU "business unions," but is one of the least effective ways of confronting the boss." |
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Texts :: theory |
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After the Revolution |
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by Diego Abad de Santillan |
04 Sep 2005
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"..in facing the problem of social transformation, the Revolution cannot consider the state as a medium, but must depend on the organisation of producers. We have followed this norm and we find no need for the hypothesis of a superior power to organised labour, in order to establish a new order of things. We would thank anyone to point out to us what function, if any, the State can have in an economic organisation, where private property has been abolished and in which parasitism and special privilege have no place. The suppression of the State cannot be a languid affair; it must be the task of the Revolution to finish with the State. Either the Revolution gives social wealth to the producers in which case the producers organise themselves for due collective distribution and the State has nothing to do; or the Revolution does not give social wealth to the producers, in which case the Revolution has been a lie and the State would continue. Our federal council of economy is not a political power but an economic and administrative regulating power. It receives its orientation from below and operates in accordance with the resolutions of the regional and national assemblies. It is a liaison corps and nothing else." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism |
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by Rudolf Rocker |
04 Sep 2005
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"Anarchism recognises only the relative significance of ideas, institutions, and social conditions. It is, therefore not a fixed, self enclosed social system, but rather a definite trend in the historical development of mankind, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life. Even freedom is only a relative, not an absolute concept, since it tends constantly to broaden its scope and to affect wider circles in manifold ways. For the Anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all capacities and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account. The less this natural development of man is interfered with by ecclesiastical or political guardianship, the more efficient and harmonious will human personality become, the more will it become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in which it has grown." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Anarchism and Sovietism |
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by Rudolf Rocker |
08 Oct 2005
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"The idea of "soviets" is a well defined expression of what we take to be social revolution, being an element belonging entirely to the constructive side of socialism. The origin of the notion of dictatorship is wholly bourgeois and as such, has nothing to do with socialism. It is possible to harness the two terms together artificially, if it is so desired, but all one would get would be a very poor caricature of the original idea of soviets, amounting, as such, to a subversion of the basic notion of socialism." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Anarchism and the Labor Movement - A Shared History of Conflict and Cooperation |
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by Brian Oliver Sheppard |
04 Sep 2005
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"Luigi Galleani wrote that the "anarchist movement and the labor movement follow two parallel lines, and it has been geometrically proven that parallel lines never meet." (Galleani's comments were, I noticed, prefaced with a note by the editors that they "disagree strongly with" some of Galleani's ideas.) While no mathemetician would argue with Galleani's geometry, a historian might: the real history of the anarchist and labor movements can not be framed in terms so simple or absolute." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Anarchism and the Workers' Unions |
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by Fernand Pelloutier |
04 Sep 2005
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"Suppose now that, on the day the revolution breaks out, virtually every single producer is organised into the unions: will these not represent, ready to step into the shoes of the present organisation, a quasi-libertarian organisation, in fact suppressing all political power, an organisation whose every part, being master of the instruments of production, would settle all of its affairs for itself, in sovereign fashion and through the freely given consent of its members? And would this not amount to the "free association of free producers?" |
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Texts :: theory |
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Anarchism in Australia |
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by Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation (ASF) |
04 Sep 2005
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"Anarcho-syndicalists see the workplace and the community intimately intertwined, and organises on the bases of local groups and industrial associations. This is a logical consequence of our dual aim -- to struggle for better conditions within existing structures and to build now the structures necessary for the establishment of an anarchist society. Anarcho-syndicalists clearly see the need to have workplace activity supported in the community, and community activity supported in the workplace. Either without the other is ineffective." |
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Texts :: theory |
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Anarcho-syndicalism |
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by Tom Wetzel |
30 Dec 2005
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Text of talk given in New York City, October 2002 |
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Texts :: theory |
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Anarcho-Syndicalism |
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by Rudolf Rocker |
04 Sep 2005
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"The term "workers' syndicate" meant in France merely a trade union organisation of producers for the immediate betterment of their economic and social status. But the rise of Anarcho-Syndicalism gave this original meaning a much wider and deeper import. Just as the party is, so to speak, the unified organisation for definite political effort within the modern constitutional state, and seeks to maintain the bourgeois order in one form or another, so, according to the Syndicalist view, the trade union, the syndicate, is the unified organisation of labour and has for its purpose the defence of the interests of the producers within existing society and the preparing for and the practical carrying out of the reconstruction of social life after the pattern of Socialism. It has, therefore, a double purpose: 1. As the fighting organisation of the workers against the employers to enforce the demands of the workers for the safeguarding and raising of their standard of living; 2. As the school for the intellectual training of the workers to make them acquainted with the technical management of production and economic life in general so that when a revolutionary situation arises they will be capable of taking the socio-economic organism into their own hands and remarking it according to Socialist principles." |
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