(en) Britain, The Solidarity Federation's book, Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle - Chapter III. (3/6)


Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th century ------- Introduction ------ In this chapter we 
will introduce anarcho-syndicalism as a synthesis of the anarchist politics and 
syndicalist methods we encountered in the previous chapter. This will be explored through
the theory of ?mile Pouget, the Argentine FORA (Argentine Regional Workers? Federation), 
the German FAUD (Free Workers? Union of Germany) and the Spanish CNT (National 
Confederation of Labour). While the mainstream workers? movement is separated into 
political (party) and economic (trade union) wings, anarcho-syndicalism's revolutionary 
unions are at the same time political and economic organisations. In countries where 
reformist trade unionism was not well established (such as Spain) this revolutionary 
current sometimes became the mainstream.

Where trade unions were stronger (such as Germany), anarcho-syndicalism constituted a 
revolutionary alternative to the mainstream workers? movement. This chapter will also show 
how this synthesis of anarchism and syndicalism has taken different forms in response to 
different conditions, but always rejected the division of the workers? movement into 
economic and political wings, and rejected representation in favour of associations for 
direct action.

The emergence of anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism, as a coherent idea, emerged from the actual practices of anarchists
and syndicalists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The ideas of 
anarcho-syndicalism were first developed within the French CGT. However, as we have seen, 
the CGT never itself embraced anarcho-syndicalism but maintained an attitude of political 
neutrality (in principle, if not always in practice, with both parliamentary and 
anti-parliamentary tendencies). Thus, in tracing the evolution of anarcho-syndicalism, 
Rudolf Rocker writes that within the CGT, ?the revolutionary wing, which had the most 
energetic and active elements in organised labour on its side and had at its command, 
moreover, the best intellectual forces in the organisation, gave to the CGT its 
characteristic stamp, and it was they, exclusively, who determined the development of the 
ideas of anarcho-syndicalism.?81 Amongst the leading members of this tendency was ?mile 
Pouget, the vice-secretary of the union from 1901 to 1908.

Pouget wrote a number of influential pamphlets including ?Direct Action? and ?Sabotage?, 
as well as a fictionalised (to avoid the censors) manifesto of revolutionary anarchism 
entitled ?How we shall bring about the revolution? written in 1909 with ?mile Pataud. 
Pouget never saw his ideas realised fully within the CGT and left the union movement after 
it was captured by reformists. But they were taken up enthusiastically by others 
elsewhere. For that reason, they are worth exploring further. In the opening passage of 
the pamphlet ?Direct Action?, Pouget sets out the definition which all anarcho-syndicalism 
goes by:

?Direct action is the symbol of revolutionary unionism in action. This formula is 
representative of the twofold battle against exploitation and oppression. It proclaims, 
with inherent clarity, the direction and orientation of the working class's endeavours in 
its relentless attack upon capitalism. Direct action is a notion of such clarity, of such 
self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It 
means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, 
expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own 
conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action. It means that, against 
the existing society which recognises only the citizen, rises the producer. And that that 
producer, having grasped that any social grouping models itself upon its system of 
production, intends to attack directly the capitalist mode of production in order to 
transform it, by eliminating the employer and thereby achieving sovereignty in the 
workshop ? the essential condition for the enjoyment of real freedom.?82

Considering these words were penned over a century ago, we can make only minor criticisms.
The emphasis on producers rather than the working class in a more general sense could be 
seen to treat work as the exclusive site of struggle and thus exclude the unemployed, 
housewives and others (although as we will see, the subsequent anarcho-syndicalist 
movement did make attempts, with varying success, to organise these groups too). The rise 
of mass media and subsequently of publicity stunts by various campaigners and activists 
has mystified the once self-evident clarity of direct action with images of men dressed as 
superheroes and imaginative lobbies of parliament. Pouget would have had no time for such 
nonsense, insisting that ?direct action thus implies that the working class subscribes to 
notions of freedom and autonomy instead of genuflecting before the principle of 
authority.?83 For Pouget parliament and democracy were just the latest form of this 
principle of authority which must be overthrown, not petitioned or participated in. In 
?Sabotage?, he sets out a communist analysis of wage labour which could have been lifted 
from Marx (distinguishing between labour and labour power, for instance84), but couples 
this analysis of exploitation with that of oppression, insisting on the inseparability of 
such economic and political struggles and their unity through working class direct action. 
Pouget also deals with the criticism that fighting for concessions under capitalism is 
either reformist or utopian, by arguing that what is revolutionary about working class 
direct action is that it links the means and ends of the revolutionary union whilst waging 
the everyday struggle:

?This task of laying the groundwork for the future is, thanks to direct action, in no way 
at odds with the day to day struggle. The tactical superiority of direct action rests 
precisely in its unparalleled plasticity: organisations actively engaged in the practice 
are not required to confine themselves to beatific waiting for the advent of social 
changes. They live in the present with all possible combativity, sacrificing neither the 
present to the future, nor the future to the present. It follows from this, from this 
capacity for facing up simultaneously to the demands of the moment and those of the future 
and from this compatibility in the two-pronged task to be carried forward, that the ideal 
for which they strive, far from being overshadowed or neglected, is thereby clarified, 
defined and made more discernible.

?Which is why it is both inane and false to describe revolutionaries drawing their 
inspiration from direct action methods as "advocates of all-or-nothing". True, they are 
advocates of wresting EVERYTHING from the bourgeoisie! But, until such time as they will 
have amassed sufficient strength to carry through this task of general expropriation, they 
do not rest upon their laurels and miss no chance to win partial improvements which, being
achieved at some cost to capitalist privileges, represent a sort of partial expropriation 
and pave the way to more comprehensive demands. From which it is plain that direct action 
is the plain and simple fleshing-out of the spirit of revolt: it fleshes out the class 
struggle, shifting it from the realm of theory and abstraction into the realm of practice 
and accomplishment. As a result, direct action is the class struggle lived on a daily 
basis, an ongoing attack upon capitalism.?85

For Pouget, this was to culminate in the insurrectionary general strike. He held that the 
revolution could not be planned, but would develop organically from the overlapping 
partial struggles of workers. Thus the general strike would come about through a 
generalisation of these escalating struggles, which the revolutionary union sought to 
organise:

?The stoppage of work, which on the previous day had been spontaneous, and was due to the 
accident of personal initiative and impulse, now became regularised and generalised in a 
methodical way, that showed the influence of the union decisions.?86

But this generalisation of the strike, if successful, would pit the workers? hunger 
against the capitalists? deep pockets. So once the strike was generalised and developed, 
the revolutionary union would seek to organise expropriations, where workers take over 
production of goods and services and self-manage them on the basis of needs. So, while up
to this point, the revolutionary union had been an organising force made up of ?an active 
minority?, it would now throw its ranks open to all, and use its federal structure as the 
basis for administering the newly expropriated social production. Thus, while it ?had 
been, in the past, an organisation for fighting (?) [now] it was to be transformed into a 
social organism?.87 By throwing open its ranks, the revolutionary union would transform 
itself from a revolutionary minority of class conscious workers fighting against 
capitalism, into a federal structure for the self-management of the new society. As to the 
nature of that society, Pataud and Pouget did not see a contradiction between collectivism 
and communism. Rather, they saw it as inevitable that ?pure communism? would only emerge 
in fits and starts, and since people had to eat in the meantime, something like 
collectivism could be employed for ?luxury items? wherever scarcity meant that free 
distribution according to needs was not possible.88 But from the start of expropriation, 
necessary goods and services ? food, water and so on ? were to be provided free on the 
production of a union card (with the union now transformed from a fighting organisation to 
an administrative one open to all workers). Pouget?s brand of anarcho-syndicalism would 
prove influential on the Spanish CNT. But first, let?s look at the lesser known FORA of 
Argentina.

The FORA was founded in 1904 out of a merger of existing unions on an explicitly 
anarcho-communist basis. However, contrary to Pouget?s vision, they saw the revolutionary 
union as a necessary product of capitalism, and thus did not think it should become the 
structure of the new society:

"We must not forget that a union is merely an economic by-product of the capitalist 
system, born from the needs of this epoch. To preserve it after the revolution would imply 
preserving the capitalist system that gave rise to it. We, as anarchists accept the unions 
as weapons in the struggle and we try to ensure that they should approximate as closely to 
our revolutionary ideals. We recommend the widest possible study of the economic 
philosophical principles of anarchist communism. This education, going on from 
concentrating on achieving the eight-hour day will emancipate us from mental slavery and 
consequently lead to the hoped-for social revolution."89

The FORA had its roots in the immigrant community, which contained many European radicals 
in exile, including veterans of the Paris Commune. Thus, as resident aliens without the 
right to vote, party politics was not an option for many of its founders, even if they?d 
been that way inclined. This may help account for the FORA?s overtly anti-state communist 
ideology, as opposed to the ?political neutrality? more common amongst syndicalist unions 
at the time. In these two aspects, its anarchist communist ideology and its insistence the 
union should not form the basis of the post-capitalist society, the FORA is often 
contrasted with the Spanish CNT (who were closer to Pouget?s approach). There are 
certainly differences between the two, stemming from the differences in context, as well 
as differing theoretical conceptions of anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary social 
change. For instance, while the CNT advocated industrial unionism, the ?FORA took a stand 
against industrial (sectoral) forms of organization, considering that they imitated 
capitalism.?90 In part because the FORA did not aim to form the structure of the new 
society, it formed a regional federation optimised for its agitational and organisational 
activities, as opposed to an industrial federation which could form the nucleus of a 
structure of social administration during the insurrectionary general strike.

FORA?s theoreticians developed a critique of European revolutionary syndicalism which they 
considered overly Marxist, of European anarcho-syndicalism, which they saw as trying in 
vain to reconcile revolutionary syndicalism with anarchism, and also of separate anarchist 
political organisations as proposed by Malatesta and the Platform. The ?FORA countered
this by advancing a model of an ?anarchist organization of workers,? structured like a 
syndicate but not limiting itself to strictly economic problems but also taking up issues 
of solidarity, mutual aid, and anarchist communism.?91 Thus, the FORA developed the most
overtly ideological brand of anarcho-syndicalism, and it proved highly effective. With a 
membership of between 40,000 and 100,000 throughout the 1920s, they managed to win six 
hour work days through a series of local and regional general strikes.

The FORA?s stance, that imitating capitalism?s structure with an industrial union would 
lead to imitating capitalist relations after the revolution, was related to its conception 
of libertarian communism. This is worth examining, because it was partly at the root of an 
important split. Industrialisation was in its relatively early stages in Argentina at the 
dawn of the 20th century, and people had living memory of their ties to the land. Whilst 
these had been semi-feudal and hardly desirable conditions, they were still considered 
favourably by many compared with the horrors of modern industry and its giant sweatshops. 
The FORA critiqued the Marxist view that capitalist industrialisation was progressive as
it developed the capacity for material abundance which made communism possible. They 
warned that imitating the structures of capitalism, whether its political state or its 
economic division of labour, would lead to just another version of capitalism, as had 
happened with the Communist Party in Russia.

Instead, the FORA theoreticians turned to the anarchist communist, Peter Kropotkin, for 
inspiration. They argued history was not driven by inexorable economic laws, but also by 
ideas and ethical concepts (a critique later taken up by the German anarcho-syndicalist, 
Rudolf Rocker, in the first chapter of his ?Nationalism and culture?). Consequently, 
rejecting the progressive nature of industry, they favoured a more agrarian communism 
based on the free commune and small scale production. One of their leading theoreticians,
Emilio L?pez Arango, wrote that rather than being the inheritor of the earth following on 
from capitalist industrialisation, the working class was rather:

?[D]estined to become the wall which would stem the tide of industrial imperialism. Only 
by creating ethical values which would enable the proletariat to understand social 
problems independently from bourgeois civilization would it be possible to arrive at an 
indestructible basis for an anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist revolution ? a revolution 
which would do away with the regime of large-scale industry and financial, industrial, and 
commercial trusts.?92

This anti-industrialism led to a split in 1915. At the 9th Congress of the FORA, its 
commitment to anarchism was overturned in favour of a ?neutral? syndicalist stance. The 
anarchist unions immediately convened an emergency Congress and reverted to their 
anarchist communist position. There were now two FORAs. The anarcho-syndicalist one joined 
the IWA at its founding in 1922, while the more moderate split, known as the ?FORA IX? 
(which wasn?t communist and favoured industrial unionism), merged into the Union Sindicale 
Argentina in the same year, and then later into the Argentinean CGT. The FORA IX's slide 
into reformism and class collaboration can be measured by the fact the FORA continued to 
face harsh repression, whilst its more moderate splits were relatively unimpeded (the CGT 
ended up as part of the Peronist corporatist settlement in the 1950s, when the Ministry of 
Labour made it the mandatory union for workers).93

Before we turn to the most famous anarcho-syndicalist organisation, the CNT, we will 
consider one more of the lesser known anarcho-syndicalist unions of the 20th century, the 
FAUD of Germany. Germany faced very different conditions to Argentina. There was already 
an established trade union movement several million strong, and outside of this was only 
the small Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG), a decentralised federation whose
membership typically hovered around 6,000 nationally, and had peaked at 18,000 in 1901. 
The FVdG was originally the economic wing of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), but as 
this party gained power and revealed its reformist, class collaborationist nature, the 
FVdG increasingly adopted an anti-parliamentary stance and advocated socialism by means of 
the general strike rather than parliament led reforms. The years of World War I saw rising 
discontent amongst German workers at war discipline in production and austerity in living 
standards. This regime was being managed by the mainstream trade unions (Gewerkschaften), 
and led to increasing dissent amongst the workers in their ranks. The Russian Revolution 
of 1917 was taken by many as the signal that international revolution was imminent, and 
this sparked an upsurge in militancy.

During 1918-19, there was a near revolution in Germany. Workers occupied factories in some 
regions, forming factory councils to manage them; ?the influence of the syndicalists rose 
quickly after the armed suppression of a general strike in the Ruhr in April 1919.?94 
Indeed, ?disappointed with the ?old union?, the workers withheld membership dues, 
symbolically burned union cards, and urged entry into the FVdG.?95 In December 1919, the 
FVdG, together with several breakaways from the mainstream unions and some anarchists, 
formed the Free Workers? Union of Germany (FAUD). The shift from ?gewerkschaft? (trade 
union) to ?union? (association of workers) signified the shift to anarcho-syndicalism. In 
1920, there were open, civil war type battles in the industrialised Ruhr region. In the 
?Red Army of the Ruhr?, 45% of the soldiers were FAUD members.96 The FAUD, numbering some 
112,000, called in vain for a general strike to turn back the tide of counter revolution, 
which was seeing revolutionaries extrajudicially murdered by the social democratic SPD 
government in league with the Freikorps, right wing militias of demobilised troops. The 
counter revolution most famously claimed the lives of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht 
of the Communist Party.

At the FAUD?s founding congress, the organisation had near unanimously adopted Rudolf 
Rocker?s ?declaration of the principles of syndicalism.?97 Rocker was a communist 
anarchist who put an emphasis on both union action by workers and cultural change. A year 
later the FAUD appended ?anarcho-syndicalist? to their name, confirming this orientation. 
However, ?the ebb of the revolutionary wave and government repressions led to a rapid 
decrease in the membership of the organization", dwindling from over 100,000 to under 
70,000 by 1922.98 As part of its cultural activities, the FAUD also formed women?s leagues 
in order to discuss the situation of working class women. These peaked at around 1,000 
members and declined through the 1920s. The FAUD?s membership as a whole continued to 
decline through the 1920s as the Weimar Republic established itself. Membership stabilised 
around 25,000, higher than any of its pre-war, pre-revolution predecessors. The FAUD?s 
emphasis on political and cultural organising also meant that, despite its decline, ?the 
FAUD remained relatively the strongest element within the anti-authoritarian camp of the 
Weimar Republic.?99 Summarising the FAUD?s brand of anarcho-syndicalism, Vadim Damier 
writes that:

?According to the notion of the German anarcho-syndicalists, in the course of a victorious 
general strike it was appropriate to carry out the expropriation of private property, 
enterprises, food stores, real estate, etc. The management of enterprises was to be 
transferred into the hands of Councils of workers and employees [office workers]; the 
management of dwellings into the hands of Councils of tenants. Delegates from enterprises
and districts would constitute a Commune. Money and the system of commodity production 
(for sale) was slated to be abolished.?100

The possibility of implementing this receded as the revolution was crushed by the combined 
forces of the Social Democrats and the Freikorps, who handled their dirty work. The Social 
Democrats legalised the factory councils in 1920, causing the FAUD to boycott them, as 
they turned from revolutionary organs into organs of class collaboration (similar 
institutions ? works councils ? were adopted across Europe after World War II). The fact 
the working class largely remained behind the Social Democrats in doing both of these 
things can?t be ignored either, and would seem to reflect the lack of anti-parliamentary 
agitation and organisation amongst the class prior to the war and revolution. The FAUD?s 
council model of social revolution meant they often worked alongside the council communist 
organisations, particularly in several armed uprisings in 1920 and 1921. But they remained 
critical towards the AAUD?s subjugation to the tutelage of the KAPD. When the AAUD-E 
rejected political parties, they were invited as observers to FAUD conferences. But 
despite some overlap of membership, there remained important differences over the 
?dictatorship of the proletariat?, and the role of revolutionary unions.

The FORA and the FAUD were not of course the only anarcho-syndicalist organisations of the 
20th century. But these examples help to show how anarcho-syndicalism has taken different 
forms in different places in response to different conditions. Having surveyed the FORA 
and the FAUD, we can now turn to look at their more famous sister section in the 
International Workers Association, the CNT.

The CNT in the Spanish (counter) revolution

It is ironic that the CNT is the most famous, indeed often taken as the definitive, 
anarcho-syndicalist organisation. Yet, when compared to the FORA, the FAUD and others, it 
was perhaps the least successful in synthesising anarchism and syndicalism into a coherent 
whole. That is not to say it was not anarcho-syndicalist ? what else do you call a 
syndicalist union with an anarchist programme that organises for anarchist revolution? 
Rather, the two tendencies antagonistically battled it out within the organisation, and 
the CNT as a whole was thus a contradictory amalgamation of syndicalist union and 
anarchist organisation. It was simultaneously non-ideological and libertarian communist, 
revolutionary and reformist, collectivist and communist, with different tendencies winning 
out at different times under different conditions. Founded in 1910 by a merger of existing 
unions, roughly on the model of the French CGT, from the start the CNT was under heavy 
anarchist influence and rejected ?neutrality? for a libertarian communist programme. Two 
decades of agitation culminated in the revolutionary events of 1936.

The libertarian Marxist, Guy Debord, no fan of anarchism, writes that ?in 1936, anarchism 
in fact led a social revolution, the most advanced model of proletarian power in all time? 
? high praise indeed. However, he continues to summarise the paradox of the Spanish 
revolution:

?[T]he organized anarchist movement showed itself unable to extend the demi-victories of 
the revolution, or even to defend them. Its known leaders became ministers and hostages of 
the bourgeois state which destroyed the revolution only to lose the civil war.?101

Even for disinterested students of history, this would pose a conundrum. For 
anarcho-syndicalists even more so: is this where our efforts lead, to inevitable counter 
revolution? Clearly, we don?t think so, but this puzzle cannot go unaddressed. The 
explanations are often unsatisfactory. On the one hand, sympathisers often dismiss the 
CNT?s turn to class collaboration as either a product of extraordinary circumstances, or 
mistakes. But the extraordinary circumstances of social revolution were after all the 
CNT's declared goal. And the mere concept of an anarchist Minister of Justice, never mind 
its actual existence, requires a more convincing explanation than the mistakes of individuals.

But on the other hand, critics of anarcho-syndicalism tend to find in the complex events 
of Spain the confirmation of their own particular ideology. So we are told that this is 
what happens when you lack a vanguard party, or this is what happens when you make a 
revolution in the wrong period of history, or that this confirms that any union is by its 
very nature destined to side with the state against the working class. This last claim is 
the most common anarchist criticism of anarcho-syndicalism, so it?s worth looking at why 
it doesn?t hold up. For one thing, we?ve already seen examples of anarcho-syndicalist 
unions which didn?t do this in the FORA and the FAUD. But also, the claim doesn?t tell us 
what about the CNT's very nature supposedly doomed it.102 There certainly were tendencies 
towards class collaboration in the CNT before 1936, but these were not the sole source of 
the collaboration with the Popular Front government. Additionally, when we look closely,
mistakes do appear to play a role, but one which poses as many questions as answers.

None of this is to say that even if everything had gone perfectly, the revolution in Spain 
could have established durable libertarian communism. Even if Franco?s fascists and the 
bourgeois republic had been defeated, there would have likely been a foreign intervention 
by the imperialist powers. By this time, fascism had already crushed the IWA in Italy and 
Germany, British workers had been pegged back by the manoeuvrings of the TUC and Labour 
Party in the 1926 General Strike, and the CGT in France was by now thoroughly 
collaborationist and bureaucratised, and the anarcho-syndicalist movement small. Even if 
the Spanish proletariat had defeated imperialist intervention, it would have stood alone 
in a world on the brink of total war.103 It?s impossible to see how ?libertarian communism 
in one country? could have triumphed. However, this recourse to ?objective conditions? 
only explains the failure of the revolution in a general sense. It doesn?t explain why it 
ultimately failed the way it did, and why the CNT collaborated with the bourgeois state.

On the 17th of July 1936, General Franco staged a military coup. The coup had been long 
expected, and in fact came largely as a result of the militancy of the working class and 
peasantry in general, and of the CNT in particular. The CNT had been pursuing a strategy 
of ?revolutionary gymnastics?, launching a wave of militant strikes, occupations and 
insurrections which had rendered the state relatively powerless to enforce the rule of the
propertied class. Increasingly, the ruling class turned away from republican democracy 
towards monarchy, church and military, as sources of authority to discipline the labouring 
classes, a peculiarly Spanish variant of fascism. So when rumours of the impending coup 
spread, the CNT was at the forefront of organising resistance, or rather social 
revolution, as they saw the choice as one between fascism and libertarian communism. On 
the docks, CNT unions requisitioned arms shipments, and their militants disarmed police of 
their firearms in the weeks leading up to the coup, stockpiling them for arming the 
workers. When the coup came, the CNT called a general strike and the fascist forces were 
met on the streets by armed workers, with CNT militants on the front lines.

Years of direct action, coupled with libertarian communist propaganda, meant when the 
opportunity arose, workers and peasants didn?t hesitate to take over the factories and 
fields and start running them on the basis of needs. In much of the countryside and many 
of the cities, production was restarted under workers? control along libertarian communist 
lines, with free access (sometimes on production of a union card along the lines Pouget 
had advocated). Other factories and firms were run on a collectivist basis, or where money 
and markets still existed as a sort of ?self-management straddling capitalism and 
socialism, which we maintain would not have occurred had the revolution been able to 
extend itself fully?, as participant, Gaston Leval, put it.104 Whether this reflected 
collectivist ideology within the CNT, or the limits of trying to implement 'communism in 
one region', or whether the former was merely a rationalisation of the latter, are 
questions to be taken up another time. But that millions of workers and peasants took part 
in the most sweeping social revolution in history is not in doubt. There is also no doubt
that the CNT initially played the revolutionary role ascribed to it by anarcho-syndicalist 
theory. Indeed, without the CNT, there would have been no revolution.

When the dust settled following the street fighting on the 19th July 1936, Franco?s forces
controlled about half the country, whereas the other half was controlled by the insurgent 
workers and peasants. Indeed:

?[T]he regional government of Catalonia (the Generalitat) headed by Luis Companys 
controlled only its own building. Local administrations were either removed or 
neutralized. The army and police were either disbanded or destroyed. Barcelona was 
controlled by workers? militias, primarily anarcho-syndicalist in composition.?105

Thus in Barcelona, the CNT?s heartland, events transpired which help us untangle the 
perplexing series of events which followed. Catalan President Luis Companys recognised his 
position of weakness, having virtually no forces at his disposal, while workers were in 
control of the streets and busy expropriating the fields, factories and workplaces across 
Catalonia and beyond. He invited the CNT to a meeting and told them the following:

?First of all, I must acknowledge that the CNT and FAI [anarchists within the CNT] have 
never been treated as merited their true importance. You have always been harshly 
persecuted. Even I, who had been your ally, was forced by political realities to oppose 
and persecute you, much as it pained me. Today you are masters of the city and Catalonia. 
You alone defeated the fascists, although I hope you will not take offense if I point out 
that you received some help from Guards, Mozos [Catalan police] and men loyal to my party. 
(?) But the truth is that, harshly oppressed until two days ago, you have defeated the 
fascist soldiers. Knowing what and who you are, I can only employ the most sincere 
language. You?ve won. Everything is in your power. If you do not want or need me as 
President of Catalonia, tell me now, so that I can become another soldier in the battle 
against fascism.?106

The heavily armed CNT-FAI delegation stood before the President of Catalonia and heard him
effectively beg their mercy. Companys had one proposal: a collaboration against fascism 
with the republican political parties, whose leaders he had gathered in an adjoining room.

?The anarcho-syndicalists, who now enjoyed a dominant influence among the workers of 
Catalonia, were confronted by a decision about what to do with this power: whether to 
destroy it, take it into their own hands, or hand it over to others.?107

How did the CNT snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? As they saw it, they faced a stark 
choice: either the CNT took power in an oxymoronic ?anarchist dictatorship?, or the CNT
shared power with the bourgeois political forces via Companys' proposal for an 
anti-fascist popular front.

?Within the CNT there had long existed a belief that a genuine social revolution would be 
possible only when the CNT represented an overwhelming majority of the workers in the 
whole of Spain.?108

Even in its Catalonian heartland, the CNT only accounted for less than half of the working 
class. Having made access to collectivised services like transport conditional on a union 
card, they faced an impasse. As they saw it, they could either substitute themselves for 
the working class as a whole and take power as the CNT, without having gathered all the 
workers and peasants in their ranks (they rightly saw this 'anarchist dictatorship' as 
substitutionism, repeating the errors of the Russian Revolution, where the Communist Party 
did just that). Or they could join Companys' popular front.

While the workers were busy forming neighbourhood and factory committees, often jointly 
with workers in the socialist UGT, the third option of a council system had already been 
ruled out in the inter-war years. While the German anarcho-syndicalists, as well as the 
Russian syndicalist GP Maximov, had both supported the workers? councils in their 
respective revolutions, and indeed a ?system of free councils? is enshrined in the 
statutes of the IWA, the CNT had reflected on the failings of the Russian and German 
revolutions. They concluded that, in part at least, these failings were down to the 
ability of political parties to infiltrate and manipulate the councils (as the Communist 
Party did in Russia). Their alternative was the kind of model ?mile Pouget had outlined, 
where the union would throw open its ranks to the class during the revolution, but thereby 
exclude professional revolutionaries and other non-working class or peasant forces from 
influencing the course of the revolution. Therefore, having ruled out the option of a 
council system, and fearful of repeating the path of the Russian Communist Party in taking 
power on behalf of the working class, by a process of elimination the CNT was left with 
class collaboration through the popular front.

This was probably the worst option. At least taking power would have meant the possibility 
of a Pouget type scenario, where any worker or peasant could just join the union and have 
control of it through the rank and file assemblies, as the CNT was far more member 
controlled than the centralised, hierarchic Russian Communist Party. No sooner had the 
CNT-FAI delegation left Companys' office than he set about working towards the popular 
front. Thus, collaboration fast became a fait accompli, with the CNT?s lay activists 
outmanoeuvred by experienced politicians as the CNT entered the unfamiliar world of 
representative politics it had so long opposed. While the CNT unions had the possibility 
of recalling their delegates and thus stopping the decision to collaborate, those who were 
so inclined were talked out of it by others in the union.

?The activists of the CNT did not risk taking the path of independent revolutionary 
action, dreading the prospect of war on three fronts: against the fascists, the 
government, and possibly foreign interventionists. In other words, the majority of the 
activists believed it was premature to talk about social revolution on a country-wide 
scale, while libertarian communism in Catalonia alone was inevitably doomed.?109

This leaves one more dilemma. Fast forward 10 months, and the CNT, as part of the Catalan 
government, opposed its own armed rank and file in the ?May days?. How had an 
anarcho-syndicalist union, where delegates aren't meant to have any power over the members
in assembly, ever developed to the point where this was possible? The answer to this lies 
in the contradictory nature of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism.

?One must also take note of the fact that the CNT had always harboured reformist 
tendencies which from time to time took control of the organization. Thus, Pesta?a and 
Piero, who headed the CNT at the end of the 1920?s and the beginning of the 1930?s, 
supported close contacts with republican political organizations, and in 1931-1932 became 
the leaders of a reformist group, the ?Treintistas.? A significant part of this fraction 
quit the CNT, but returned to it in 1936. However, besides the ?Treintistas? there 
remained a substantial number of ?pure? syndicalists in the union federation as well as
members who were simply pragmatically inclined. To a certain extent, this was a 
consequence of the contradictory organizational vision of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, 
which tried to combine anarchist goals and social ideals with the revolutionary 
syndicalist principle of trade unions being open ?to all workers,? independently of their 
convictions. The membership of the CNT were far from being made up entirely of conscious 
anarchists; this was particularly true of those who had joined during the period of the 
Republic (from 1931 on). These partisans of a pragmatic approach could be relied upon by 
those activists and members of the executive organs of the CNT who preferred to avoid 
risky, ?extremist? decisions.?110

Thus, the CNT had never really moved away from the French CGT?s model of ?neutral? 
economic unionism, but had nonetheless tried to bolt anarchist politics on the top. To 
prevent the tendency of neutral syndicalism towards reformism which, in crude terms, 
derives from lots of reformist members plus internal democracy, the Iberian Anarchist 
Federation (FAI) had been formed in 1927. The FAI served as a counter weight to the 
reformist political factions within the CNT such as Angel Pesta?a and the other 
?Trientistas? (?the Thirty?). But what this meant was recreating the split between the 
political and the economic. However, here the split was not between a union and a party, 
rather it was a vertical split between the economically recruited rank and file and the 
political factions vying for control at the top. The internal split between the economic 
and the political created a space in which a creeping representative function began to 
develop, with competing tendencies elected to run the union on the members? behalf (though 
there were no paid officials, and they were still subject to mandates and recall).

The reformists had from time to time taken control of the CNT, so can?t simply be 
dismissed as an insignificant minority. They clearly had a base in the unions which they 
could rely on for support. The CNT was trying to have its cake and eat it: it wanted a 
membership recruited on a non-ideological basis, but it didn?t want that to result in the
election of reformists to key positions, or to otherwise compromise the CNT?s anarchist 
ideology.111 The vertical split between the political and the economic, though well 
intentioned as an attempt to maintain revolutionary anarchist politics with a ?neutral 
syndicalist? organisational model, carried within it the seeds of bureaucratisation. It 
did so because it created a cleavage between an ideological leadership and the rank and 
file (of which at least a substantial minority?s, and sometimes a majority's, views were 
at variance with that leadership). The booming membership growth under the Republic 
exacerbated this dynamic, though for most of that time the main reformists were outside 
the CNT. But the problem didn?t go away with the expulsion of ?the Thirty? in 1931. On 
hearing of a secret meeting between reformists in the CNT and the Catalan government in 
1934, CNT militant, Buenaventura Durruti, wrote:

?Why did we fight ?the Thirty? if we?re also practicing ?thirty-ism?? Isn?t it a form of 
?thirty-ism? to complain to Companys about the fact that we?re persecuted? What?s the 
difference between Companys, Casares Quiroga, and Maura? Aren?t they all bourgeois? They 
persecute us. Yes, of course they do. We?re a threat to the system they represent. If we 
don?t want them to harass us, then we should just submit to their laws, integrate 
ourselves into their system, and bureaucratise ourselves to the marrow. Then we can become 
perfect traitors to the working class, like the Socialists and everyone else who lives at 
the workers? expense. They won?t bother us if we do that. But do we really want to become 
that?"112

We can therefore conclude the tendency was a structural one rather than being attributable 
to individual reformist leaders. While the FAI and other revolutionaries succeeded in 
combating the reformists, the unintended consequence of this was to create a separation 
between the ideological leadership and the rank and file which, with collaboration with 
state power, was turned against that rank and file when the leadership failed them and 
they were making the revolution. And this raises one final point. Ultimately, both the FAI 
and other political groups, such as the Friends of Durruti, proved impotent, despite their 
significant efforts, to prevent the CNT?s slide from revolutionary force to a counter 
revolutionary one. This reflects the fact that the tendency towards bureaucratisation and 
collaboration was a product of the, albeit modified, neutral syndicalist model the CNT had
adopted. The very particular conditions of pre-1936 Spain had prevented this tendency 
manifesting more strongly earlier, though there had been signs such as 'the Thirty'. For 
example, it was the state which rebuffed the overtures of the reformists, who subsequently 
drew Durruti?s above quoted ire.

Yet, neither does this make the case for political organisation to supplement union 
organisation. On the contrary, the political organisations within the CNT ultimately 
failed. And indeed, their number included more reformist anarchists such as Juan Peiro113 
and, arguably, Diego Abad de Santilli?n,114 who had supported the industrialists in the 
FORA,115 advocated collaboration with the popular front from the start,116 and advocated 
collectivist economics not too dissimilar to self-managed capitalism, with prices, tax 
reforms and so on.117 So the political organisations charged with ensuring the 
revolutionary fidelity of the CNT weren?t free of reformists themselves. Indeed, there?s 
absolutely no reason why ideological anarchists cannot be reformists; revolutionary 
ideology is often a foil for reformist practice.

But this wasn?t a problem inherent to all anarcho-syndicalism, but one specific to the 
CNT?s particular contradictory fusion of ?neutral syndicalist? structures and 
revolutionary anarchism, a fusion that was only tentatively possible under particular 
historical conditions. The problem does not lie simply in the CNT?s openness to 'all 
workers' resulting in a lack of anarchist ideology (the rank and file, after all, made the 
revolution), but rather in its contradictory and contested nature. The problem was not 
that the leadership were anarchist or reformist, but that a leadership layer had emerged 
at all. After all, there was always a reformist tendency within the CNT leadership, which 
could draw support from reformist sections of the rank and file. The CNT was both a 
reformist and a revolutionary union at the same time. These tendencies would not 
decisively split until after the death of Franco in the 1970s, when the more reformist CGT 
split from the anarcho-syndicalist CNT over the question of participating in works 
councils and accepting state funds.

The tragedy lay in the fact that this contradiction was largely masked by circumstances 
until it mattered most. Precisely as the rank and file overtook their ?revolutionary 
leaders? who had kept the reformists in check, those very same revolutionary leaders were 
co-opted against the insurgent rank and file. Thus, in a curious way, the failures of 
Spanish anarcho-syndicalism were twofold. On the one hand a failure to be syndicalist 
enough, tolerating the separation of a leadership layer from the rank and file to keep the 
reformists at bay. On the other hand, a failure to be anarchist enough, failing to smash 
the state (in Catalonia at least) when given the chance and thus allowing it to recompose 
its forces against the revolution and co-opt the CNT?s leadership to that end. It is easy, 
of course, to supersede the failings of the revolution in theory. But that means little 
until they are superseded in practice. We must learn from the failings of the CNT. But 
that is only half of it. The task is to do better.

Theorising anarcho-syndicalism

The history of the twentieth century makes clear there are two distinct currents within 
syndicalism. On the one hand, ?neutral? or economic syndicalism, which seeks to unite all 
workers within its ranks on the basis of economic interests.118 Pierre Monatte, in his 
debate with Malatesta at the 1907 International Anarchist Congress, was one of the 
clearest exponents of this tendency.119 On the other hand, there is the tendency which 
seeks to unite syndicalist methods with anarchist philosophy and its goal of social 
transformation ? anarcho-syndicalism. However, history does not follow such neat 
conceptual distinctions, and these opposing tendencies often found themselves battling it 
out inside the same organisation. In the French CGT, the anarcho-syndicalists? influence 
waned as the union grew. In the Spanish CNT, the price of keeping the reformists at bay 
was a semi-bureaucratisation which, in the course of the Spanish revolution, proved the 
CNT?s undoing. In Argentina, these tendencies spun out into the anarcho-syndicalist FORA 
and the ?neutral? FORA IX, on a trajectory of integration into the state. Such a split did 
not occur elsewhere in the anarcho-syndicalist movement until 1956, when the Swedish SAC 
left the International Workers Association (IWA) in a row over administering state 
unemployment benefits; again in 1979, when the CNT in Spain split, producing the CGT-E; 
and 1993, when the French CNT split into the CNT-AIT and CNT-Vignoles, the latter two over 
participation in state sponsored works council elections (state backed bodies in which 
unions compete for votes to represent workers, and receive proportional state subsidies in 
return). By the end of the 20th century, these tendencies had more or less all spun out 
into separate organisations. It is the anarcho-syndicalist (i.e. IWA) current with which 
we are concerned here.120

As we have seen, anarcho-syndicalism combines the political philosophy and goals of 
anarchism with the economic organisation and methods of syndicalism. This political 
economic organisation is a matter of practical experimentation, taking different forms in 
different places, adapted to circumstances. As the then secretary of the IWA, Pierre 
Besnard, wrote in 1937,

?like any truly social doctrine, anarcho-syndicalism is essentially a matter of trial and 
error. (?) [T]he idea springs from the act and returns to it.?121

This trial and error approach inevitably includes errors, such as those in Spain. But if
the economic content of anarcho-syndicalism is self-evident ? organising workers as 
workers to fight for their interests ? then what is the political content? Lenin famously 
commented that ?politics begin where millions of men and women are; where there are not 
thousands, but millions.?122 Anarcho-syndicalists could not disagree more strongly. This 
is in fact one of the fundamental differences with Marxism, even in its more libertarian 
forms. Pepe Gomez, a CNT militant active in the Puerto Real shipyard disputes of 1987, 
shrewdly noted that:

?There are two points inherited from a Marxist perspective. First of all, Marxism 
separates the political and the economic to try and promote the idea of economic unions, 
unions that deal purely and simply with economic issues, whereas the political issues are 
tackled by the political party. Secondly, we are left with the need to struggle against 
the whole culture that has been built up around delegating activities, around delegating 
power to others. Anarcho-syndicalism is trying to oppose these negative legacies of 
Marxism, so that people are actually re-educated in order to destroy this culture of 
dependency and to build up a new kind of culture that is based on activity and action for 
people, by themselves.?123

The contention that politics requires millions is precisely the reason Marxism separates 
the political and the economic; the party needs to develop the ideas with which to lead 
the millions. For the council communists of the AAUD-E, this is why their political 
economic union was meant to be temporary; for them, political and economic struggles only 
combined in the mass struggles of the revolutionary period in Germany. For 
anarcho-syndicalists, however, politics begin long, long before there are blossoming mass 
movements. Mass movements are only the culmination of a huge number of smaller, 
preparatory struggles which are both economic and political in nature and which shape the 
character of mass movements when they occur. Politics is weaved into our everyday lives 
and conflicts. To begin to explore this contention, a quote from the historian of 
syndicalism, Marcel van der Linden, is instructive:

?In practice there seem to be at least three analytical levels which quite often are not, 
or not sufficiently, distinguished. In the first place, we could distinguish the 
ideological level, at which one thinks about the movement in a general, 
political-philosophical way. At issue here are questions such as: what is the world really 
like? What is unjust, bad, etc.? Who are our enemies and friends? What social changes are 
possible, and how can they be accomplished? Secondly, we could distinguish the 
organisational level: how is the trade union structured (for example subscriptions, strike 
funds) and how does it behave in daily practice, when labour conflicts occur, towards 
employers and the state? Thirdly, there is the shopfloor level: are the workers who are 
members militant and strike prone? What forms of action do they favour??124

Thus, we can think of the political content of anarcho-syndicalism as consisting of three 
interconnected levels. On the shop floor level, it consists in seeing that even ?economic? 
struggles for wages or rents are, at the same time, political struggles for power over the 
workplace and community. At the organisational level, it consists of the associational 
function of a union, stripped of any representative functions, and with structures, based 
on mandates and delegates, within which workers can collectively speak for themselves. At 
the ideological level, it consists of an opposition to integration into the state and the 
management of capitalism, and the goal of libertarian communism. These levels are 
interconnected; for example, integration into the state funded system of works councils 
would result in a development of a representative function at the organisational level and 
changes to the functioning of the union at the shop floor level, where management?s right 
to manage would need to be accepted as a condition of participation in the industrial 
relations framework. While the emphasis between the different levels may differ, e.g. the 
FORA?s ?ideological unionism? compared with the CNT?s ?non-ideological unionism?, in 
reality all three levels are intimately connected to both the form and content of the 
union?s activity. Together, they distinguish revolutionary unionism from reformist 
versions, although there is not, and cannot be, a monolithic anarcho-syndicalism across 
all times and places.

Another example of the political content of a revolutionary union would be the commitment 
to approaches to anti-racism and the emancipation of women. The old IWW was multiracial at 
a time of widespread segregation, and this was certainly a political assertion of class 
principles, going against the prevailing grain of the times. The FAUD attempted, albeit 
with only modest success, to set up women?s leagues for self-education and discussion 
about the situation of working class women. Perhaps the most famous case is Spain?s 
Mujeres Libres (?Free Women?). This was a group formed by anarcho-syndicalist women of the 
CNT in 1936, largely in response to the marginalisation of women within the male dominated 
union, despite its formal commitment to women?s emancipation. The very existence of the 
Mujeres Libres was an indication of a failing of the CNT to express the needs of the whole 
class, i.e. not just the male half of it. It is a clear example of the way political 
content does not exist only on an ideological level, but is an immensely practical thing 
too. Indeed, it?s relatively easy to adopt a formal ideological position in favour of 
women?s emancipation, without really integrating that organisationally or in practical 
shop floor activity. In this sense the ideological level is the least important.

Van der Linden argues that confusion arises when some but not all of these shop floor, 
organisational and ideological levels are present. Certainly, this is true in some of the
syndicalist unions we considered in Chapter 2. But in practice, such contradictions will 
tend to be resolved one way or another. A union which organisationally excludes women or 
minorities is likely to reproduce divides along these lines rather than traversing them. A 
militant and strike prone union, without any revolutionary ideology, will either develop 
one and refuse to be integrated into state and management structures, or it won?t and will 
likely find its militancy increasingly checked by bureaucratic obstacles thrown up by 
developing representative functions. Or, of course, it could take up the offer of 
integration into the system, as many a once militant union has done before. On the other 
hand, ideological anarcho-syndicalist groups which lack any organisational or shop floor 
capacity for direct action are not unions at all, but propaganda groups (the Solidarity 
Federation has only recently begun to develop beyond this). The question of how to move 
from such a position towards being a functioning revolutionary union is one we take up in 
our final chapter. Van der Linden is right to stress that ideology is not decisive. Just 
because an organisation says it is anarcho-syndicalist (or libertarian communist, 
revolutionary, feminist etc) doesn?t make it so. But neither is ideology unimportant, 
whether it is expressed implicitly through refusal to be integrated into state and 
management structures and other aspects of its practice, or is more overtly stated.

However, for anarcho-syndicalism, fidelity to revolutionary principles has come at a cost. 
Since World War II, the capitalist strategy for dealing with organised labour in the most 
developed countries switched definitively from repression to recuperation (this is the 
subject of the following chapter). Unions were invited in as partners in social 
management. For the IWA, this provoked a series of splits. When the SAC withdrew from the 
IWA in 1956, with Franco?s dictatorship still strong in Spain and the CNT in exile, this 
left the IWA with no functioning union sections. Thus, Malatesta?s claim about the 
impossibility of synthesising anarchism and syndicalism seemed to be proved correct, as 
the only functioning syndicalist unions were of a reformist character. The aforementioned 
splits in Spain and France over participation in works? councils were another reflection 
of this problem. By the end of the 20th century, anarcho-syndicalism was reduced to a 
militant, minority current, even in its strongest sections.

Today, the organised labour movement is plural and reflects the working class, with a 
range of unions and initiatives from revolutionary to reformist, and through to outright 
fascist and scab unions at the other extreme. Consequently, if revolutionary unionists are 
to avoid the division of the working class via separate unions, we need to find ways to 
organise struggles which unite workers beyond our membership and avoid divisions along 
union lines. The struggles in Puerto Real were one clear example; there, the CNT played a 
pivotal role in organising workplace and community assemblies which united workers and 
their families regardless of union membership. Consequently, the CNT was able to catalyse 
self-organised struggle along direct action lines. It couldn?t have done this without a 
well established, organised basis in the workplace (i.e. its union section in the 
shipyards). But equally, it didn?t require the CNT to turn itself into a purely economic 
union and recruit a majority of workers regardless of whether they shared its aims and 
approach (though it surely grew from its activities).

Such assemblies are far from a panacea and are prone to many of the weaknesses of soviets, 
such as co-option by political parties, or larger reformist unions, or the degeneration 
into reformism and bureaucracy. But ultimately this is a ?weakness? of democracy, i.e. if 
enough workers do not want revolutionary change or direct action methods, little can be 
done to force them whether they are organised in assemblies, committees, councils or 
unions. Rather, the fact the union is made up of those who do want these things means the 
struggle can be used as a prove the necessity for social revolution and direct action 
methods, and through the struggle, to win more workers round to revolutionary unionism. 
For example, as gains are eroded by inflation or legislation, or as the cops intervene on 
the side of the bosses, the anarcho-syndicalist union?s anti-capitalist, anti-state 
perspective can be shown to make sense and can thereby broaden its appeal as the best way 
to advance our economic and wider class interests. The organisational forms taken by 
anarcho-syndicalism are intimately related to its practical content, the twofold task of 
waging the everyday class struggle in defence of and to advance our living standards, and 
doing so in such a way which prepares the working class for social revolution, building 
confidence through collective direct action, engendering a culture of solidarity, and 
creating a working class public sphere where revolutionary ideas can be debated and 
developed as part of a real, practical movement.

?Here we come to the general cultural significance of the labour struggle. The economic 
alliance of the producers not only affords them a weapon for the enforcement of better 
living conditions, it becomes for them a practical school, a university of experience, 
from which they draw instruction and enlightenment in richest measure.?125

Through the process of struggle, people change. A revolutionary union presence on the shop 
floor or in the local area can regroup those who want to organise along 
anarcho-syndicalist lines to carry on further struggles, even when the wider struggles 
ebb. The CNT continued to organise when the big Puerto Real struggles and the mass 
assemblies ran their course, and indeed was strengthened by this process. Much the same 
was in evidence with the FAUD, which declined following the revolutionary period in 
Germany, but still remained consistently larger than their pre-revolution predecessors 
until fascist repression finished them off. This exposes a fundamental flaw in Malatesta?s 
argument for the separation of economic syndicalism and political anarchism. It?s not 
necessary, after all, for a union to drop its anarchist principles in order to organise. 
It just needs a more radical approach which does not see the union as the container into 
which to bring the whole working class, but rather as a catalyst which acts within the 
working class to organise direct action along anarcho-syndicalist lines. Even as a 
minority, a revolutionary union can organise struggles, and through these struggles 
demonstrate its ideas in practice, grow, consolidate, and organise bigger struggles in 
turn. Of course this process is not continuous or without setbacks. The membership and 
influence of even the CNT in the 1920s and 1930s fluctuated wildly with wider social 
conditions. But whatever the conditions, the revolutionary union seeks to organise class 
conflicts using direct action, in such a way as to prepare workers for revolutionary 
social change by experiencing self-organised struggles, practical solidarity and the taste 
of victories won by our own efforts.

Furthermore, while trade unions often divide the class, a plural union movement, which by 
the end of the 20th century was a point of fact, does not have to mean divided workers. We
absolutely want to win as many workers as possible to anarcho-syndicalism. But while 
they?re not won over, we still need solidarity on a class basis. A revolutionary union can 
commit itself to supporting the struggles of workers in the more reformist unions on a 
principled class basis. The recent rapprochement between the CNT and CGT in Spain, with 
co-operation in working towards a general strike against austerity measures, bodes well 
for such class based unionism.126 Of course, there is no guarantee this will be 
reciprocated. Anarcho-syndicalists may respect a TUC union picket line, but we can hardly 
expect TUC unions to respect ours. We can, however, appeal directly to the workers in more
reformist unions to respect class solidarity, and will be in a stronger position to do so 
if we?ve already supported them, and have the organisational capacity to do so. If the 
principal form taken by anarcho-syndicalism is the revolutionary union as a political 
economic organisation, the principal content of its activity is the organisation of class 
conflicts which serve as both the means to directly meet our immediate demands and as a 
?practical education in social philosophy.?127

As we have seen, anarcho-syndicalism found its widest appeal in Spain and Argentina. Where 
conditions differed, e.g. in Germany or within the French CGT, anarcho-syndicalism 
operated more as a revolutionary minority. Indeed, as we saw, even Emile Pouget foresaw 
that, going into a revolutionary process, the revolutionary union would be "an active 
minority."128 The million strong CNT of 1936 would surely have amazed him! The mass appeal 
of anarcho-syndicalism in certain times and places seems to stem from three main factors.

1. The context of early industrialisation. This had several important aspects. First, the 
dramatic social turmoil of industrialisation and urbanisation made capitalism something 
new, and meant many workers had either direct experience of this novelty, or it was within 
living memory. Capitalism was clearly a historical system and millions of people had 
experienced something else (even if that was rural poverty). The second aspect was that 
the countries where anarcho-syndicalism flourished the most, i.e. those that lacked 
widespread industry, also lacked developed trade union movements, meaning 
anarcho-syndicalism was 'the only game in town', or at least lacked the competition of 
established reformist unions with a high and stable membership and a cosy relationship to 
the state. Contrast this with the more developed countries like Britain and Germany, where 
syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism operated mainly as militant minority tendencies inside 
and outside the established unions.

2. The lack of political integration of the working class into the state. Argentina and 
Spain were dictatorships or fragile republics. Suffrage was rarely universal. In 
Argentina, many militant workers were migrants too, and ineligible to vote. Workers had 
little opportunity to participate in party politics even if they wanted to. This did not 
eliminate party socialism, but did provide a huge boost to direct actionists, as well as 
increasing the appeal of anarchist ideology which preached that the state was a tool of 
the ruling class and couldn't be used for liberatory purposes. This is different today, 
although the dismantling of the welfare state and the declining appeal of 'post-political' 
party politics may be taking things back in the direction of a more naked 'us and them' 
(this will be explored in the following chapter).

3. In many ways related to the above, the ruling class in these places opted for 
repression of working class organisation rather than accepting and seeking to integrate it 
(as had happened in Britain for example, or Germany, with the legalisation of the factory 
councils). Of course they used repression because it could be effective; we saw how the 
IWW was smashed in the US. However, the flipside of this was that it polarised society 
between haves and have nots and legitimised revolutionary ideas. If you were going to be 
imprisoned or murdered for being a union activist, once you made the decision to become a 
union activist, you did so as a revolutionary unionist almost automatically. There is 
another side to this. As we've seen, reformists within the CNT argued that they could 
reduce repression by playing by the rules and seeking a rapprochement with the state. 
However, their overtures were rebuffed (until after the events of July 1936 at least), 
which limited the space for the reformist tendency to grow. Class collaboration takes two, 
and with bosses and the state favouring repression over recuperation, reformists had 
little gains to show for their efforts and thus had less appeal than they otherwise might 
have had. The ruling class preference for repression made it appear as a choice between 
revolution or nothing, which suited the revolutionaries.

None of these conditions from Argentina, Germany or Spain in the early 20th century are 
likely to be replicated wholesale, certainly in the most developed countries, or even 
elsewhere where the ruling classes have the benefits of learning from their class 
brethren's mistakes. But we should also not make the mistake of taking the historical high 
points of anarcho-syndicalism as defining the whole tradition. Even in Spain and 
Argentina, membership and influence fluctuated wildly. And in their survey of 
revolutionary syndicalist currents, Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe remind us that 
overall, syndicalism of all stripes represents "a distinctive minority tradition."128 That 
is not to say anarcho-syndicalism cannot seek or achieve mass appeal. Obviously, we work 
for the widest possible adoption of our ideas and methods. But we don?t rely on such a 
mass appeal.

Anarcho-syndicalists can get on with the business of organising collective direct action
in our own lives and workplaces perfectly well as a militant minority if needs be, while 
hopefully earning the respect of fellow workers with our principled and consistent 
solidarity, even if they, for now, do not share our revolutionary, anti-capitalist, 
anti-state perspective. As contemporary conditions are not identical to those in 1900s 
France, or 1910s Argentina, or 1920s Germany, or 1930s Spain, we cannot simply pluck 
Pouget, or the FORA, or the FAUD, or the CNT from history as a ready made blueprint. 
Rather, we must adapt by trial and error the political economic core of 
anarcho-syndicalism to present conditions, just as they did, whilst learning from their 
mistakes. We must therefore analyse the changing conditions since World War II (Chapter
4), before setting out our revolutionary unionist strategy for the 21st century (Chapter 5).

Summary

In this chapter we have encountered four distinctive forms of 20th century 
anarcho-syndicalism in the theory of ?mile Pouget, the Argentine FORA, the German FAUD and
the Spanish CNT. We then drew on these examples to understand anarcho-syndicalism as a 
practice of trial and error around a political economic core, combining anarchist 
principles and syndicalist methods in ways adapted to the conditions of particular times 
and places. We ended by taking stock of the situation at the end of the 20th century, with 
anarcho-syndicalism constituting a militant minority current within the working class, and 
discussed how this need not be a barrier to effective agitation and organisation on a 
class basis, nor to an effective revolutionary unionism.

Further reading

Vadim Damier?s ?Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th century? is the most comprehensive account 
in the English language, itself an abridged translation of a longer Russian text. Rudolf 
Rocker?s ?Anarcho-syndicalism in theory and practice? remains an important read on the 
origins of anarcho-syndicalism and the movement up to WWII. Units 13-18 of SelfEd focus on 
anarcho-syndicalism and Spain in particular, while unit 9 looks at Argentina. The Direct 
Action Movement pamphlet ?Revolutionary unionism in Latin America ? the FORA in Argentina? 
is also well worth the read. Hans Manfred Bock?s chapter in Marcel van der Linden and 
Wayne Thorpe?s edited volume ?Revolutionary Syndicalism? is a good account of the FAUD in 
Germany. Abel Paz?s ?Durruti in the Spanish Revolution? is far more than a simple 
biography (though it excels at that) and contains important information on the period, as 
well as the internal wrangling in the CNT between reformists and revolutionaries. Jose 
Peirats? three-volume ?The CNT in the Spanish Revolution? is considered the most official 
and authoritative account. Martha Acklesberg?s ?Free Women of Spain? is a book length 
account of the Mujeres Libres.
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