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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." |
ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM
by Rudolf Rocker
Originally published 1938 by Martin Secker and Warbug
Anarchism: its Aims and Purposes
Anarchism versus economic monopoly
and state power; Forerunners of modern Anarchism; William Godwin and his
work on Political Justice; P.J. Proudhon and his ideas of political and
economic decentralisation; Max Stirner's work, The Ego and Its Own; M.
Bakunin the Collectivist and founder of the Anarchist movement; P. Kropotkin
the exponent of Anarchist Communism and the philosophy of Mutual Aid; Anarchism
and revolution; Anarchism a synthesis of Socialism and Liberalism; Anarchism
versus economic materialism and Dictatorship; Anarchism and the state;
Anarchism a tendency of history; Freedom and culture.
(45K)
The Proletariat
and the Beginning of the Modern Labour Movement
The era of machine production and
modern Capitalism; The rise of the Proletariat; The first labour unions
and their struggle for existence; Luddism; Trade Unionism pure and simple;
Political radicalism and labour; The Chartist movement; Socialism and the
labour movement.
(39K)
The Forerunners of Syndicalism
Robert Owen and the English labour
movement; The Grand National Consolidated Trade Union; William Benbow and
the idea of the General Strike; The period of reaction; Evolution of the
labour organisations in France; The International Workingmen's Association;
The new conception of trade unionism; The idea of the labour councils;
Labour councils versus dictatorships; Bakunin on the economic organisation
of the workers; The introduction of parliamentary politics by Marx and
Engels and the end of the International.
(46K)
The Objectives of Anarcho-Syndicalism
Anarcho-Syndicalism versus political
socialism; Political parties and labour unions; Federalism versus Centralism;
Germany and Spain; The organisation of Anarcho-Syndicalism; The impotence
of political parties for social reconstruction; The CNT in Spain: its aims
and methods; Constructive work of the labour syndicates and peasant collectives
in Spain; Anarcho-Syndicalism and national politics; Problems of our time.
(50K)
The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism
Anarcho-Syndicalism and political
action; The Significance of political rights; Direct Action versus Parliamentarism; The strike and its meaning for the workers; The Sympathetic Strike; The General Strike; The Boycott; Sabotage by the workers; Sabotage by capitalism; The social strike as a means of social protection; Anti-militarism.
(40K)
The Evolution of Anarcho-Syndicalism
Revolutionary Syndicalism in France and its Influence on the
labour movement in Europe; The Industrial Workers of the World;
Syndicalism after the First World War; The Syndicalists and the Third
International; The founding of the new International Workingmen's
Association; Anarcho-Syndicalism in Spain; In Portugal; In Italy; In
France; In Germany; In Sweden; In Holland; In South America.
(42K)
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