Syndicalism


Syndicalism is a labor movement within society that, through industrial unionism, seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes and other forms of direct action, with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of production and the economy at large through social ownership.
Syndicalist unions first emerged in Spain and North America in the 1870s, before rising to prominence in France and later emerging on other continents. Syndicalist movements were most predominant amongst the socialist movement during the interwar period that preceded the outbreak of World War II. Major syndicalist organizations included the General Confederation of Labor in France, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo in Spain, the Italian Syndicalist Union, the Free Workers' Union of Germany, and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. Although they did not regard themselves as syndicalists, the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, and the Canadian One Big Union are considered by most historians to belong to this movement.
The International Workers' Association – Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores, which was formed in 1922, is an international syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different countries. At its peak, it represented millions of workers and competed directly for the hearts and minds of the working class with social democratic unions and parties. A number of syndicalist organizations were and still are to this day linked in the IWA–AIT; some of its member organizations left for the International Confederation of Labour, which was formed in 2018.

Terminology

The word syndicalism has French origins. In French, a syndicat is a trade union, usually a local union. A syndicate is a self organizing group working towards a shared interest. The corresponding words in Spanish and Portuguese, sindicato, and Italian, sindacato, are similar. By extension, the French syndicalisme refers to trade unionism in general. The concept of syndicalisme révolutionnaire or revolutionary syndicalism emerged in French socialist journals in 1903, and the French General Confederation of Labor came to use the term to describe its brand of unionism. Revolutionary syndicalism, or more commonly syndicalism with the revolutionary implied, was then adapted to a number of languages by unionists following the French model.
Many scholars, including Ralph Darlington, Marcel van der Linden, and Wayne Thorpe, apply syndicalism to a number of organizations or currents within the labor movement that did not identify as syndicalist. They apply the label to one big unionists or industrial unionists in North America and Australia, Larkinists in Ireland, and groups that identify as revolutionary industrialists, revolutionary unionists, anarcho-syndicalists, or councilists. This includes the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States, which claimed its industrial unionism was "a higher type of revolutionary labor organization than that proposed by the syndicalists". Van der Linden and Thorpe use syndicalism to refer to "all revolutionary, direct-actionist organizations". Darlington proposes that syndicalism be defined as "revolutionary trade unionism". He and van der Linden argue that it is justified to group together such a wide range of organizations because their similar modes of action or practice outweigh their ideological differences.
Others, such as Larry Peterson and Erik Olssen, disagree with this broad definition. According to Olssen, this understanding has a "tendency to blur the distinctions between industrial unionism, syndicalism, and revolutionary socialism". Peterson gives a more restrictive definition of syndicalism based on five criteria:
  1. A preference for federalism over centralism.
  2. Opposition to political parties.
  3. Seeing the general strike as the supreme revolutionary weapon.
  4. Favoring the replacement of the state by "a federal, economic organization of society".
  5. Seeing unions as the basic building blocks of a post-capitalist society.
This definition excludes the IWW and the Canadian One Big Union, which sought to unite all workers in one general organization. Peterson proposes the broader category revolutionary industrial unionism to encompass syndicalism, groups like the IWW and the OBU, and others.

Emergence

Rise

Revolutionary industrial unionism, part of syndicalism in the broader sense, originated with the IWW in the United States and then caught on in other countries. In a number of countries, certain syndicalist practices and ideas predate the coining of the term in France or the founding of the IWW. In Bert Altena's view, a number of movements in Europe can be called syndicalist, even before 1900. According to the English social historian E. P. Thompson and the anarcho-syndicalist theorist Rudolf Rocker, there were syndicalist tendencies in Britain's labor movement as early as the 1830s. Syndicalism's direct roots were in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualism, a form of socialism that focused on cooperation among the community of man. He coined capitalist to describe the political class granting itself monopolies on the use of capital, and wanted workers to oppose this state control through peaceful means, only using force defensively. Proudhon's ideas were popular in the anti-authoritarian wing of the early International Workingmen's Association, the first international socialist organization, formed in 1864. Its most successful early leader, Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, came to believe that worker organizations should consider using force to advance their cause, when necessary. He and his followers advocated the general strike, rejected electoral politics, and anticipated workers' organizations replacing rule by the state, central syndicalist themes.
According to Lucien van der Walt, the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA, which was formed in 1870, was in fact syndicalist. Kenyon Zimmer sees a "proto-syndicalism" in the influence the anarchist-led International Working People's Association and Central Labor Union, which originated in the American section of the First International, had in the Chicago labor movement of the 1880s. They were involved in the nationwide struggle for an eight-hour day. On 3 May 1886, the police killed three striking workers at a demonstration in Chicago. Seven policemen and four workers were killed the following day when someone, possibly a police member, threw a bomb into the crowd. Four anarchists were eventually executed for allegedly conspiring to the events. The Haymarket Affair, as these events became known, led anarchists and labor organizers, including syndicalists, in both the United States and Europe to re-evaluate the revolutionary meaning of the general strike.
According to Émile Pouget, a French anarchist and CGT leader, from "the United States, the idea of the general strike fertilized by the blood of anarchists hanged in Chicago... was imported to France". In the 1890s, French anarchists, conceding that individual action such as assassinations had failed, turned their focus to the labor movement. They were able to gain influence, particularly in the bourses du travail, which served as labor exchanges, meeting places for unions, and trades councils and organized in a national federation in 1893. In 1895, the CGT was formed as a rival to the bourses but was at first much weaker. From the start, it advocated the general strike and aimed to unite all workers. Pouget, who was active in the CGT, supported the use of sabotage and direct action. In 1902, the bourses merged into the CGT. In 1906, the federation adopted the Charter of Amiens, which reaffirmed the CGT's independence from party politics and fixed the goal of uniting all French workers.
In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World were formed in the United States by the Western Federation of Miners, the American Labor Union, and a broad coalition of socialists, anarchists, and labor unionists. Its base was mostly in the Western United States, where labor conflicts were most violent and workers therefore radicalized. Although the Wobblies insisted their union was a distinctly American form of labor organization and not an import of European syndicalism, the IWW was syndicalist in the broader sense of the word. According to Melvyn Dubofsky and most other IWW historians, the IWW's industrial unionism was the specifically American form of syndicalism. Nevertheless, the IWW also had a presence in Canada and Mexico nearly from its inception, as the United States economy and labor force was intertwined with those countries.
French syndicalism and American industrial unionism influenced the rise of syndicalism elsewhere. Syndicalist movements and organizations in a number of countries were established by activists who had spent time in France. Ervin Szabó visited Paris in 1904 and then established a Syndicalist Propaganda Group in his native Hungary in 1910. Several of the founders of the Spanish CNT had visited France. Alceste de Ambris and, both leaders in Italy's USI, were in Paris for a few months from 1910 to 1911. French influence also spread through publications. Pouget's pamphlets could be read in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, and Swedish translations. Journals and newspapers in a number of countries advocated syndicalism. For example, L'Action directe, a journal mainly for miners in Charleroi, Belgium, urged its readers to follow "the example of our confederated friends of France". The IWW's newspapers published articles on French syndicalism, particularly the tactic of sabotage and the CGT's La Vie Ouvrière carried articles about Britain's labor movement by the British syndicalist Tom Mann. Migration played a key role in spreading syndicalist ideas. The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation, openly anarchist by 1905, was formed by Italian and Spanish immigrants in 1901. Many IWW leaders were European immigrants, including Edmondo Rossoni who moved between the United States and Italy and was active in both the IWW and USI. International work processes also contributed to the diffusion of syndicalism. For example, sailors helped establish IWW presences in port cities around the world.
Syndicalists formed different kinds of organizations. Some like the French radicals worked within existing unions to infuse them with their revolutionary spirit. Some found existing unions entirely unsuitable and built federations of their own, a strategy known as dual unionism. American syndicalists formed the IWW, although William Z. Foster later abandoned the IWW after a trip to France and set up the Syndicalist League of North America, which sought to radicalize the established American Federation of Labor. In Ireland, the ITGWU broke away from a more moderate, and British-based, union. In Italy and Spain, syndicalists initially worked within the established union confederations before breaking away and forming USI and the CNT respectively. In Norway, there were both the Norwegian Trade Union Opposition, syndicalists working within the mainstream Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, and the Norwegian Syndicalist Federation, an independent syndicalist organization set up by the Swedish SAC. There was a similar conflict between the Industrial Syndicalist Education League and the Industrial Workers of Great Britain.
By 1914, there were syndicalist national labor confederations in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and France, while Belgian syndicalists were in the process of forming one. There were also groups advocating syndicalism in Russia, Japan, the United States, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, and Great Britain. Outside of North America, the IWW also had organizations in Australia, New Zealand, where it was part of the Federation of Labour, Great Britain even though its membership had imploded by 1913, and South Africa. In Ireland, syndicalism took the form of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, which espoused a mix of industrial unionism and socialist Irish republicanism, and was labeled Larkinism.