(en) Britain, The Solidarity Federation's book, Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle - Chapter II. (2/6)

Radical currents in the workers' movement ------ Introduction ------- This chapter will 
introduce three radical currents from the historical workers? movement. First we will look 
at anarchism, the name given to the anti-state socialists in the European workers? 
movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. Anarchism, as a political doctrine, opposed 
itself to all statist politics, whether parliamentary or ?revolutionary?, instead placing 
its emphasis on human capacities for voluntary co-operation, mutual aid and working class 
direct action. Second, we will encounter syndicalism. Emerging in France, the syndicalist 
movement of rank and file controlled, radical unions spread to many countries taking new 
forms in different conditions. We will focus on the French CGT, the North American IWW and 
the syndicalist currents in the workers? movement in Britain.

In all cases, working class direct action was the watchword of the syndicalists who, often 
under anarchist influence, formed unions based on the shared economic interests of 
workers. Finally, we will look at council communism, a radical Marxist current which broke 
with orthodoxies such as the necessity of the Party and the capture of state power. The 
council communists drew some very similar conclusions to many anarchists and 
anarcho-syndicalists, but we will also explore some important differences.

Socialism without the state: Anarchism

Anarchism has its origins in the working class and socialist movements of Europe in the 
19th century.25 It was a major force in the ?First International?, an alliance of 
socialist organisations and unions which existed between 1864 and 1876. When that 
organisation split between pro-state socialists (who became known as Marxists and 
associated with the colour red) and anti-state socialists (who became known as anarchists 
and associated with the colour black), the German statesman Otto von Bismarck remarked 
that ?Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and 
Red unite!?

Anarchism, covering all the anti-state socialists, took numerous forms. It is often said 
the three main currents are mutualism (associated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon), 
collectivism (associated with Mikhail Bakunin) and communism (associated with Ericco 
Malatesta and Peter Kropotkin). In reality, there was considerable overlap and evolution, 
as ideas developed in conjunction with the movement. The ideas of mutualism, a 
self-managed market economy probably had their greatest influence on the co-operative 
movement. Anarchist collectivism proposed expropriation of private property to be owned 
communally and operated under worker self-management, with money abolished and replaced by 
some form of labour notes, essentially IOUs for work done. Collectivism was a significant 
influence on Spanish anarcho-syndicalism in the 1920s and 30s although its modern 
influence has waned.

The third school, that to which the anarcho-syndicalist IWA belongs, is anarchist or 
libertarian communism. The origins of anarchist communism are most often credited to ?the 
anarchist Prince? Peter Kropotkin, although he was largely taking up and elaborating ideas 
that originated in the Italian section of the First International. Like collectivism, 
anarchist communism is for worker self-management and the abolition of private property, 
but goes further in advocating the abolition of market exchange and money to be replaced 
by production and distribution according to the principle of ?from each according to 
ability, to each according to needs.?

In all its incarnations, anarchism was never simply ?anti-state?, but has always been the 
anti-state wing of the socialist movement. Anarchist collectivism was firmly in the camp 
of the class struggle, as its leading proponent Mikhail Bakunin was a prominent member of 
the First International, and had great influence on the more libertarian sections (which 
later fed into the development of anarcho-syndicalism).

In the case of anarchist communism, however, there was sometimes less emphasis on the 
class struggle and more on the human capacity for mutual aid and voluntary co-operation, 
which Kropotkin had set out at length as an important factor of evolution.26 Thus, 
anarchist communism often had a more humanist bent and the tradition put varying emphasis 
on the class struggle as either a progressive or regressive force:

?[T]he theoreticians of anarcho-communism (Peter Kropotkin, Ericco Malatesta, and others)
maintained that the roots of social development lie in progress of the ethical concepts of 
humanity; that capitalism is a regressive system since it undermines the intrinsic social
nature of humanity based on mutual aid; and that the division of humanity into warring 
classes plays a reactionary role, retarding the self-realization of the human personality?27

For this reason, early anarchist communism did not focus primarily on the labour movement. 
In 1907, there was an important debate between Pierre Monatte and Ericco Malatesta at the 
International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam. Monatte argued for a neutral syndicalism 
that was not political, and not even anarchist, on the grounds that workers? economic 
conditions gave them ?identical interests?, so that political ?differences of opinion, 
often subtle and artificial, fall into the background in the syndicate, enabling 
agreement.?28 In contrast, Malatesta had argued that:

?The basic error of Monatte and of all revolutionary syndicalists, in my opinion, derives 
from an overly simplistic conception of class struggle. It is a conception whereby the 
economic interests of all workers ? the working class ? are held to be equal (?) The 
reality is very different, in my view (?) there are therefore no classes, in the proper 
sense of the term, because there are no class interests. There exists competition and 
struggle within the working ?class?, just as there does amongst the bourgeoisie.?29

Monatte and Malatesta agreed that syndicalism was an economic movement, but for Malatesta 
this wasn?t sufficient, and must be supplemented by separate anarchist political 
organisations. This separation was most clearly articulated in his 1925 article 
?Syndicalism and anarchism.'30 In it, he makes the case for syndicalist unions which 
unite all workers on an economic basis, and separate political, anarchist organisations of 
varying kinds which operate both inside and outside the unions. Malatesta by no means 
denied the importance of the labour movement. On the contrary, he insisted that ?everyone, 
or almost everyone, is in agreement on the usefulness and the need for the anarchists to 
take an active part in the labour movement and to be its supporters and promoters.?

Syndicalist unions, he argued, were often founded on anarchist principles. However, they 
either proved ineffective and thus remained small, barely functioning as unions at all, or 
they won their initial battles, and these victories attracted more workers into their 
ranks, which enabled them to win more battles and attract more workers and so on. The 
problem with this, Malatesta diagnosed, was that there was no reason to think these 
workers, who were attracted by the union?s success in winning gains for workers, shared 
the anarchist principles upon which the union was founded.

?For a union to serve its own ends and at the same time act as a means of education and 
ground for propaganda aimed at radical social change, it needs to gather together all 
workers ? or at least those workers who look to an improvement of their conditions ? and 
to be able to put up some resistance to the bosses. Can it possibly wait for all the 
workers to become anarchists before inviting them to organise themselves and before 
admitting them into the organisation??

Thus he held that ?syndicalism (by which I mean the practical variety and not the 
theoretical sort, which everyone tailors to their own shape) is by nature reformist? and 
that ?pure anarchism cannot be a practical solution while people are forced to deal with 
bosses and with authority.? For that reason he argued for a separation of the necessarily 
reformist, economic, syndicalist unions from the various political anarchist organisations 
which should propagandise revolutionary anarchist ideas within them. For Malatesta, the
role of anarchists was not to make the unions more anarchist, but to argue within them for 
anarchist tactics while keeping them open to all workers who wanted to fight to improve 
their conditions, regardless of political affiliation. Meanwhile, the anarchists should 
also fight within the union to keep it neutral from political parties. ?If the survival of 
the organisation and the needs and wishes of the organised make it really necessary to 
compromise and enter into muddied negotiations with authority and the employers, so be it. 
But let it be the responsibility of others, not the anarchists.?

For Malatesta, therefore, any concession or negotiation under capitalism was reformist, 
and so it was important for anarchists to remain ?pure?, leaving this dirty business to 
others. This approach would become known as ?dual organisationalism?, a current of 
anarchism that holds that mass, class organisations such as unions need a specific 
political organisation operating within them. But not all dual organisationalists think 
alike. While Malatesta saw the role of anarchists as keeping themselves pure on political 
lines and keeping unions organised along economic lines, independent of political ideas,
others sought to use political organisation as a means to politicise economic associations 
? to ?anarchise? syndicalist unions.

This brings us to the ?Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists.? This text 
was published in 1926 by the Dielo Truda group, who were anarchists in exile after the 
Communist Party consolidation of power in the young and misnamed Soviet Union. Drawing on 
their experiences of the struggle against both capitalism and Bolshevism, they set out a 
template for anarchist organisation which remains influential among anarchists today.

First of all, the Platform firmly espouses anarchist communism as its goal, and situates 
this firmly within the class struggle. The document outlines the necessity for violent 
social revolution and the anarchist opposition to all states including democratic ones. In 
terms of their attitude to unions, syndicalist and mainstream, the Platform argues that 
they can have no ideology of their own and therefore any union ?always reflects the 
ideologies of a range of political groupings, notably of those most intensively at work 
within its ranks.?31 The necessity is therefore for anarchists to organise themselves 
politically and work intensely both inside the unions to ?anarchise? them and outside them 
to exert a similar influence in other spheres. Thus, the Platform is supportive of 
anarcho-syndicalism as ?a step forward?, but argues that syndicalist unions only become or 
remain anarcho-syndicalist because of the vigorous political organisation of anarchists 
within their ranks to keep them that way, and ?to prevent any slide towards opportunism.?32

Thus ?platformists?, as those influenced by the Platform are colloquially known, are also 
dual organisationists. But rather than keeping the economic organisation apolitical, the 
task of the political organisation is to politicise it with anarchism. There are four 
famous organisational principles set out to define the basis of the political organisation 
which should carry out this task: theoretical unity; tactical unity; collective 
responsibility and federalism.33 The Platform wagers that thusly organised, anarchists 
will be able to out organise state socialist parties within the trade unions, soviets and 
other organs of the working class, and so ensure the working class movement develops in an 
anarchist direction and the revolution develops in the direction of libertarian communism 
and not state socialism.

The advocacy of a tight, unified and disciplined political organisation reminded many 
anarchists at the time of a political party, and the authors of the Platform were labelled 
?anarcho-Bolshevik? in some quarters. This criticism strikes us as unfair. If one wants to
organise an anarchist political organisation, the principles set out in the Platform make 
perfect sense in terms of combining unity of action with internal democracy and thus 
combining effective political organisation with anarchist principles. From an 
anarcho-syndicalist point of view the problems lie elsewhere. For instance, in the next 
section we will see how the slide of certain syndicalist unions into reformism was not 
because of the lack of political organisation within their ranks, but rather a function of 
the very ?apolitical? nature the Platform affirms.

Thus platformists can also be anarcho-syndicalists, but anarcho-syndicalists are not 
necessarily platformists. Certainly to anarcho-syndicalist eyes, the Platform places too 
much emphasis on the ability of political organisations to combat the material 
contradictions which arise from unions organising under capitalism, principally the 
development and domination of the representative function over the associational one. As 
anarcho-syndicalists, we of course believe these contradictions can be successfully 
navigated in a way consistent with our revolutionary principles. But before we can 
elaborate, we must first examine some of these contradictions in the case of syndicalism, 
from which anarcho-syndicalism has evolved.


Unions without bureaucrats: Syndicalism

The workers? movement in France had faced severe repression in the aftermath of the 1871 
Paris Commune. Radical tendencies were forced underground, and it was in this period that 
the stereotype of the anarchist bomb thrower emerged, as some anarchists turned away from 
the labour movement towards ?propaganda by the deed?: assassinations and bombings against 
the rich. However, by the late 19th century, there was something of a regrouping of the 
workers? movement with the development of an anarchist influenced form of trade unionism ? 
revolutionary syndicalism. Rudolf Rocker writes that this tendency ?developed quite 
spontaneously within the French working class as a reaction against political Socialism, 
the cleavages in which for a long time permitted no unified trade union movement.?34

This movement had its origins in a coming together of existing unions and the ?bourses du
travail?, mutual aid schemes including ?job placement, unemployment benefits, relocation 
aid, and aid for those injured on the job?, as well as cultural, educational and 
propaganda services and some of the union functions of organising strikes.35 Anarchist 
involvement was significant in the bourses and, as Rocker notes, the anarchist message of 
class unity gained popularity in the face of a political socialist movement wrought with 
sectarian divisions. French revolutionary syndicalism proposed this unity be brought about 
through a general union for workers. That union was the CGT (General Confederation of 
Labour), founded in 1895. In its early days, the union was under heavy anarchist 
influence, and elected a series of anarchist and non-party socialist general secretaries, 
including Victor Griffuelhes. Paul Mason writes that:

?In the space of a decade Griffuelhes had created a superbly effective form of trade 
unionism; with minimal dues-paying and bureaucracy the militant workers could, every so 
often, unleash a lean, mean striking machine. What is more, they did it not just in an 
atmosphere of repression but of stolid refusal to negotiate; only in the years 1905 and 
1906 did the number of strikes ended by negotiation rise above 10%. Nine out of ten 
strikes finished without any formal contract across the table: either you lost and went 
back to work or, as with Haviland, the boss opened the factory gates and upped the wages. 
Sixty percent ended this way, with victory to the unions.?36

By its very nature as a general union, the CGT was open to all workers. Consequently ?the 
CGT was not composed exclusively of revolutionary trade unions, certainly half of its 
members were of reformist tendency and had only joined the CGT because they recognised 
that the dependence of the trade unions on the political parties was a misfortune for the 
movement.?37 If we ask why reformists were relatively weak, we need only note the ruling 
class? preference for repression and refusal to negotiate, which limited the space for 
reformist unionism and class collaboration. Social partnership takes two, and the bosses 
weren?t playing? at first at least.

As a result, revolutionary ideas held great sway within the ranks of the CGT. These were 
most clearly articulated in the Charter of Amiens in 1906, and in the writings of its 
leading theoretician, Emile Pouget (to which we will return in the following chapter). The 
Amiens Charter was a clear statement of the CGT?s revolutionary syndicalism.38 The Charter 
espoused a revolutionary programme, but also enshrined ?political neutrality?, understood 
as standing outside all political schools and parties but not opposed to them, leaving 
political party allegiance (or lack of) to the conscience of individual members. ?The 
Charter served to minimize political dissension in the unions, which were to focus 
attention exclusively on the economic struggle.?39 Against the political parties, the CGT 
defined itself as an economic organisation which grouped ?together all workers conscious 
of the fight to be carried out for the disappearance of wage labour and of employers.? In 
doing so, it made the ?revolutionary? in ?revolutionary syndicalism? a matter of internal
democracy. So long as revolutionaries formed a majority, the union espoused a 
revolutionary perspective and pursued uncompromising class conflict and social change via 
direct action methods.

But in the early 20th century, bosses and the state began to react to the gains of the CGT 
with a more conciliatory attitude. This increased the space for reformists to operate, as 
class collaboration could be seen to bear fruit. By 1909, the growth of the union had put
the revolutionaries in the minority (the CGT grew from 100,000 members in 1902 to 700,000 
in 1912, out of a population of 7 million). Victor Griffuelhes resigned as general 
secretary amidst machinations against him, and ?mile Pouget left the union, disillusioned. 
The slide into class collaboration, reformism and bureaucratisation was crowned by the 
CGT?s support for the national war effort in 1914. This was the most decisive break with 
its revolutionary, internationalist origins. Although revolutionaries remained inside the 
CGT to try and pursue an anti-militarist agenda, following the First World War it 
increasingly fell under the sway of political parties, leading to a series of splits as 
revolutionaries and others left the organisation. The CGT still exists today, and even 
maintains elements of the Amiens Charter in the constitutions of many of its member 
unions. But in practice it has become almost indistinguishable from other modern trade 
union federations, with all the pitfalls that implies

As the CGT grew, syndicalist ideas were also taking root amongst the working class in 
North America. The IWW was founded in 1905 amidst violent class conflict. ?Few strikes 
took place without loss of life. The resulting bitterness had made the prospect of 
fundamental change appealing to most workers.?40 Much like the CGT, it espoused a 
revolutionary intent and oriented itself to the whole working class, not just particular 
crafts or trades. They called this model ?industrial unionism?, where all the workers in 
one industry, whatever their job, belonged to the same industrial union, and in turn these 
industrial unions all belonged to the ?One Big Union? of the IWW. At the time only a 
minority of workers were organised, and the IWW set out to 'organise the unorganised'. 
From its very beginnings, the IWW was also a racially mixed union at a time of widespread 
segregation. ?Big Bill? Haywood issued a statement of intent at the founding conference,
declaring that ?we are here today to confederate the workers?into a working class movement 
that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave 
bondage of capitalism.?41

On the participants at the founding conference, historian Patrick Renshaw writes that they 
were not representative of the working class as a whole, but rather the radical elements 
of it.

?Most of them came from unions that, for one reason or another, were at loggerheads with 
the AF of L [American Federation of Labour]. They were all radicals, and most of the 
leading personalities had been influenced by socialism of varying kinds, though this was 
often overlaid with syndicalism or anarchism. They shared a common conviction that the 
craft form of unionism, represented by the AF of L, should be replaced by industrial 
organisation.?42

Consequently, the IWW represented an uneasy truce between militant unionists, anarchists, 
syndicalists and party socialists, with Marxism a major influence (much of their famous 
preamble paraphrases passages from Marx43).

?Tensions between revolutionaries and reformers manifested itself in countless 
disagreements over tactics. The most bitter of these within the ranks of the IWW itself 
involved those who urged the IWW to have a political arm and those who argued that the 
basic power of workers was at the point of production.?44

The basic fault line was between those who wished for the IWW to be an economic 
organisation linked to a separate political wing, and those who argued for direct 
industrial action as the means of social and political change. The most notable of the 
former tendency was Daniel DeLeon of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), who wanted the 
IWW?s industrial muscle to back the party?s electoral ambitions. Opposing this view were 
the various shades of direct actionists, who argued that the political aims of the union, 
enshrined in the preamble as including ?the abolition of the wage system?, were best 
pursued on the industrial front and thus that the IWW was both a political and an economic 
organisation at the same time.45 This battle was settled in favour of the direct 
actionists in 1908, with the expulsion of the DeLeonists. Subsequently, the IWW engaged in 
a series of high profile free speech fights, confirming this attitude to pursuing 
political and social goals through direct action rather than recourse to party politics.

The Wobblies, as they were known, grew in size and reputation off the back of several high 
profile struggles, most notably the aforementioned free speech fights and the 1912 
Lawrence textile strike, where the IWW had only a few hundred members but exerted great 
influence. But they found that membership tended to swell dramatically with struggles, and 
then ebb away. It?s been said that ?many a worker who did not carry the red membership 
card or had kept up dues payments was still to be counted a Wobbly.?46 The IWW was opposed 
on principle to the kind of incentives for member retention pursued by more mainstream 
unions, such as health or insurance benefits, and instead opted to deploy a job delegate 
system. This entailed travelling organisers authorised to collect dues and form union 
locals amongst the highly mobile, casual workforce of the early 20th century United 
States. Consequently, ?a local could exist in the hat or satchel of a mobile delegate.?47

This was an innovative model and one which refused to succumb to the temptation to 
stabilise membership against the ebbs and flows of struggle with a host of member 
services. But it also brings to the fore a dual meaning of the term ?One Big Union?. On 
the one hand, this meant ?One Big Union? as opposed to ?many sectional unions?. This 
conception was perfectly compatible with the ever shifting membership of the IWW, and in 
fact made sense as casual workers could simply transfer from one industrial union to 
another within the IWW if they changed industries. However, the other interpretation was 
that ?One Big Union? meant all, or at least a substantial proportion of, workers needed to 
be brought into the ranks of the union for the purposes of a revolutionary general strike 
and the transition to industrial democracy:

?[The] industrial unions would fight for gains within the existing system until the IWW 
was strong enough to call a general strike that would bring all economic activity to a 
standstill. The condition for returning to work would be the substitution of industrial 
unions for all business enterprises and governmental agencies. The means of production 
would then be run by the unions to satisfy social needs rather than private profit.?48

The extent to which this was a literal aspiration or a revolutionary myth varies with the 
Wobbly. Some ?Wobs? were unaware of the revolutionary aspect of the IWW when they 
joined,49 and the reality is that both interpretations coexisted within the IWW.50 What is 
clear is that the US government took the revolutionary threat of the IWW seriously enough 
to launch a brutal wave of repression. Between 1916 and 1918, dues paying membership 
soared from 60,000 to 100,000, with influence extending far further than those numbers 
alone. This also gave the Wobblies a significant cultural influence on the wider working 
class. In 1917, using damage to war production as the pretext, over 150 leading Wobblies 
were arrested, tried on spurious charges and given long prison sentences. Union halls were 
raided by armed vigilantes and shoot outs ensued. Of course, only the Wobblies were 
arrested and sentenced to long jail terms, or simply lynched, as in the case of Wesley 
Everest.51 The repression broke the IWW as a serious force, and the apparent ?success? of 
the Communist Party in Russia led to a resurgent Communist influence which eventually 
split the declining organisation in two in 1924.

After a period of two rival IWWs (who at times fought in the streets for control of the 
HQ), the much weakened official IWW continued through the 1920s and 30s under increased 
anarchist influence, but as an increasingly fragmented and marginal force (though as late 
as 1936, the IWW on the Philadelphia docks had the power to prevent a ship leaving with 
munitions for the Spanish fascists52). It survived through the post-war period and remains 
active today.53

Finally, we turn to British syndicalism. The British context was somewhat different to 
elsewhere as, by the early 20th century, Britain had a mature industrial economy and a 
well established trade union movement which was soon to gain a parliamentary wing through 
the Labour Party. Consequently, the influence of French revolutionary syndicalism and 
American industrial unionism led to a different kind of syndicalist movement. Whereas 
French and American syndicalists (and others) had to endure harsh repression, in Britain 
radical workers faced a different problem:

?Instead of undue repression, it was increasingly agreed [by the ruling class] that trade 
union demands could be more effectively diffused by bargaining and in particular by 
utilising union officials as a mediating influence between labour and capital.?54

Thus British syndicalism emerged as a rank and file reaction against the recuperation of 
the existing labour movement into a mediating, representative role. In a sense, it was a 
rebellion of the associational function of unions against the representative one. Its idea
of unionism was ?the workers united? as opposed to the bureaucratic apparatus of paid 
officials, legalism and so on, which mediated this collective power. It was also fuelled 
by the failings of the trade unions and the parliamentary socialists to defend workers? 
living conditions, as falling real wages, increasing unemployment, and deskilling squeezed 
the working class. The great strategic debate in British syndicalism was between ?dual 
unionism? ? setting up independent revolutionary unions like in France or America ? and 
?boring from within? ? building a rank and file movement which could take independent 
action as well as push to reform the existing bureaucratic unions in a syndicalist 
direction. In Britain, probably in large part because trade union membership was so much 
higher than elsewhere, the latter tendency won out.55

This tendency was exemplified by the prominent organiser Tom Mann, who had played a 
leading role in the 1889 London Dock strike. Mann had emigrated to Australia to pursue 
electoral projects but became disillusioned with the Labour Party and what he saw as the 
corrupting effects of government, as well as the sectional and divisive nature of the 
existing trade unions. He saw industrial unionism as the answer. In 1910 he visited French 
syndicalists and returned to England a convert. However, rather than set up new 
revolutionary unions, Mann proposed to reform the existing ones from within:

?I was thoroughly convinced that the economic struggle would ultimately be conducted 
through the trade unions; (?) that however reactionary the unions might be at the hour, 
the only sensible policy would be to recognise them as the proper channels through which, 
sooner or later, the working class would have to function. So we declined to be identified 
with any policy that aimed at injuring the unions, but on the contrary, worked with might 
and main within their ranks to throw them on the right lines.?56

Consequently, syndicalism in Britain did not take the form of separate revolutionary 
unions, but a radical rank and file presence in the existing trade unions. Numerically, 
syndicalists were a small minority, but the great labour unrest of 1910-1914 created an 
unparalleled platform for their ideas, and their influence, particularly via the shop 
stewards? movement, extended far beyond their own ranks. Indeed:

?The facts that neither syndicalists nor syndicalism caused the labour unrest, and that in 
any event there just were not all that many syndicalists in Britain, (?) have forced 
historians to make the awkward but perhaps unavoidable distinction between syndicalism 
proper, of which there was little, and a syndicalist mood and atmosphere, for which a 
stronger case can be made.?57

Consequently, British syndicalism was less a coherent, organised force than a loose 
network of different tendencies (anarcho-syndicalists, militant shop stewards, 
socialists?) whose influence extended far beyond its limited numbers. The only formally 
organised groups were small propaganda groups like the Industrial Syndicalist Education 
League (ISEL). As a result, British syndicalism operated more as a culture of direct 
action amongst the working class than an organised alternative to the TUC unions. Indeed, 
as Mann?s quote suggests, there was often a surprisingly pro-TUC attitude insofar as 
syndicalists felt they could fill the unions with militant workers and reform them in a 
syndicalist, industrial unionist direction.58 This proved na?ve, and alongside repression 
(most famously in the Syndicalist Trials),59 ?as important as the attack, isolation and 
defeat of syndicalism, was the fact that it was also partially co-opted.?60 As some trade 
unions merged into industrial ones, syndicalists became sucked into union reform 
activities which took their energies away from the shop floor. In this process, much of 
the radical political content was lost in favour of changes to the organisational 
structure of the unions.

The syndicalist movement took different forms under different conditions. Everywhere it 
was more than just a union but also a wider culture within the working class; ?many 
workers regarded themselves as members without paying dues.?61 Everywhere it was 
characterised by an advocacy of class militancy, unity and direct action. The main 
strategic divide was between ?dual unionism? and ?boring from within?, with the latter 
approach being favoured where unionisation levels were already high through the 
established trade unions. Interestingly, in light of the renewed wave of casualisation 
under neoliberalism:

?[I]n the occupational composition of syndicalist movements two categories of workers were 
strongly represented. To the first category belonged casual, seasonal or project 
labourers, whose working lives were characterised by forms of discontinuity: by episodic 
work periods, by frequent changes of employer, and often of work site and sometimes of 
geographic locale as well.?62

The second category is the structurally powerful miners and industrial workers, who 
perhaps make up the more enduring stereotype of union militancy. But it seems important 
today to note that syndicalism once thrived amongst casualised workers as well as more 
stable workforces.

In terms of the political content of syndicalism, Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe 
write:

?The ultimate ends of the syndicalist agenda were undeniably political: the abolition of 
the capitalist economic and political system, the establishment of a collectivist society 
structured on labour?s economic associations, and the transfer of decision making and 
administration to the producers.?

While many trade unions pay lip service to these same goals, what distinguishes 
syndicalism is its direct action methods, highly democratic structures and minimal 
bureaucracy. And yet, these political goals were to be pursued by purely economic or 
?apolitical? organisations. In many cases, were they not smashed, this opened the door to 
creeping reformism, co-option by political parties or the existing trade unions, and/or 
outright class collaboration. The CGT?s degeneration from a fighting workers? association 
to a recruiting sergeant for imperialist war is the most striking example.63 This tendency 
would seem to confirm Malatesta?s scepticism. But as we will see, this is only partly the 
case. Despite its shortcomings, the syndicalist tradition is a rich and diverse one, to 
which anarcho-syndicalism belongs and owes much. We will pick this up in the following 
chapter.

Marxism without a Party? Council communism

Council communism emerged in the early 20th century as a dissident current within Marxism, 
particularly in the Netherlands and Germany. Contrary to what the name might suggest, what 
distinguishes council communism from other traditions is not advocacy of workers? 
councils. Anarchists, syndicalists, anarcho-syndicalists and even Leninists favour a 
council system in some form. Rather, the ?council? serves to distinguish the council 
communists from the party communists on a question central to Marxist revolutionary 
theory: who should exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communist Party or 
the workers? councils?

?State socialism is not control of the means of production by the workers, but control by 
the organs of the state. If it is democratic at the same time, this means that workers 
themselves may select their masters. By contrast direct control of production by workers 
means that the employees direct the enterprises and construct the higher and central 
organisations from below. This is what is called the system of workers councils.?64

This is not to say the council communists abandoned political parties altogether. The most 
important of these was the German Communist Workers? Party (KAPD), formed in 1920 when 
they were expelled from the Communist Party.65 The KAPD styled itself as a different kind 
of political party, which would not seek power but serve as the bearer of ?communist 
consciousness?, in parallel to the factory organisations of the General Workers? Union of 
Germany (AAUD), which had been formed by workers breaking with the trade unions during 
unofficial strikes.66 The AAUD itself adopted a revolutionary programme, including a 
hostility to political parties, with the exception of the KAPD.67 The KAPD and the AAUD 
therefore formed the political and economic wings of the council communist movement 
respectively:

?The idea behind the relationship of the KAPD to the AAUD was that the factory 
organisations, operating as workers? councils for the social [re]organisation of 
production following the revolution, were to form the basis of the dictatorship of the 
proletariat. However they could only fulfil this function in so far as those participating 
in them had a revolutionary and political conception of their tasks and functions ? a 
communist consciousness. In so far as this was not the case ? the KAPD was conceived of as 
the separate organisation of conscious communists, whose role was to promote communist
perspectives and goals, through its own independent activity and influence within the 
factory organisations.?68

A co-thinker and sometime member of the KAPD was the Dutch Marxist, Anton Pannekoek. His 
book ?Workers? Councils? remains one of the most widely read council communist texts, and 
was recently republished by anarchist publishers AK Press. Pannekoek acknowledges that the 
self-organised activity he advocates is indeed direct action. For Pannekoek, direct action 
takes place against both capital and the trade unions. In his view, the bureaucratic and 
inertial nature of the trade unions is a function simply of their size:

?[T]he increase in the number of workers, the urgent necessity of association, make the 
trade unions giant organisations, needing an ever-increasing staff of officials and 
leaders. These develop into a bureaucracy administering all business, a ruling power over
the members, because all the power factors are in their hands.?69

He is explicitly referring to the trade unions rather than syndicalist or 
anarcho-syndicalist unions, and his criticisms would not seem to apply so much to the 
latter, which typically sought to prevent bureaucracies emerging by rejecting paid 
officials, and making all positions into mandated recallable delegates. In fact Pannekoek 
praises the IWW, although hoping it is a ?transitional form? that will become unnecessary
as workers begin to take direct action spontaneously.70

In place of trade union organisation, Pannekoek advocated spontaneous direct action, with 
workers forming and disbanding strike committees and factory councils as the struggle
dictated. But in the tradition of deterministic Marxism, he linked this faith in 
spontaneity somewhat mechanically to the predicted ever deepening crises of capitalism:

?The depressing tendencies grow stronger under big capitalism and so the resistance of the 
workers must grow stronger, too. Economic crises grow more and more destructive and 
undermine apparently secured progress. The exploitation is intensified to retard the 
lowering of the profit rate for rapidly increasing capital. So again and again the workers 
are provoked to resistance.?71

Pannekoek does not reject organisation; in fact, he stresses the ?fight of the workers 
against capital is not possible without organisation.? However, ?organisation springs up 
spontaneously, immediately?, not in the form of a new trade union but through forms such 
as strike committees.72 This reliance on spontaneity and intermittent workplace 
organisation is one of the main differences with the anarcho-syndicalist tradition, which 
we will explore in detail in the following chapter. However, Pannekoek?s analysis is 
problematic. If the strike committee is formed spontaneously, that implies the strike 
itself? just happened. There may well be examples of such spontaneous strikes, but recent 
history does not support the idea that capitalist attacks make for spontaneous resistance. 
Rather, numerous factors come into play, such as the confidence and morale of the workers 
involved, their experiences of past struggles, the level of organisation on the shop 
floor, and so on. The workplace organisation of the AAUD was formed not to wage these 
everyday struggles, but to push for communism. Everyday struggles were left as a matter of 
spontaneity.73

Nonetheless, the council communism of the KAPD/AAUD drew strong criticism from the party 
communists. Amadeo Bordiga wrote that ?The declaration of the 'Left' Communists of Germany
(KAPD) at their founding congress in April, that they were founding a party, but 'not a 
party in the traditional sense of the word', is an ideological surrender to these 
reactionary views of syndicalism and industrialism.?74 In a sense, Bordiga is right.
However, from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective, a rejection of revolution as party
dictatorship, and an emphasis on the revolutionary power of workers organised at the point 
of production is not a retreat, but a significant advance on mainstream Marxism. And if 
Bordiga thought the KAPD and AAUD were surrendering to syndicalism, the founding of the 
AAUD-E soon after went one step further.

Otto R?hle was expelled from the KAPD in October 1920, and took with him some sections of 
the party, which merged into the AAUD forming the AAUD-E (the 'E' standing for 'unitary'). 
Its programme espoused hostility to parliament, political parties and trade unions, banned 
paid officials, and advocated the international expropriation of capitalists to be managed 
by workers? councils.75 Whereas the KAPD/AAUD had split the councillist movement into 
political and economic organisations, the AAUD-E sought to serve as a unitary 
organisation, one which merged the party into the factory organisation and organised at 
the point of production. R?hle was the leading theoretician of this tendency. His 1920 
text ?the revolution is not a party affair? attracted the ire of Lenin, and set out an 
account of the revolutionary union as he saw it:

?This General Workers? Union is taking root in the factories, building itself up in 
branches of industry from the base up, federally at the base, and through revolutionary 
shop stewards at the top. It exerts pressure from the base up, from the working masses. It 
is built according to their needs; it is the flesh and blood of the proletariat; the force 
that motivates it is the action of the masses; its soul is the burning breath of the 
revolution. It is not the creation of some leaders; it is not a subtly altered 
construction. It is neither a political party with parliamentary chatter and paid hacks, 
nor a trade union. It is the revolutionary proletariat.?76

While the influence of syndicalism is clear, there are a number of important differences. 
Firstly, the councillist unions rejected everyday struggles, leaving these to either 
reformist unions or spontaneous action by workers. This can be seen as a product of the 
time ? revolution seemed on the horizon, so all their energies were directed at that goal 
? but the reliance on spontaneity is distinct from the syndicalist stress on agitation and 
organisation. Similarly, workers? struggles were only seen as being ?political? on a mass 
scale, with widespread strikes and the possibility of revolution. The meaning of 
?politics? for anarcho-syndicalists will be taken up in the next chapter. The move away 
from party politics to the shop floor also brought with it a very crude workerism, 
rejecting struggles outside the factories, with R?hle writing that ?whenever the worker is 
seen outside the factory, he is a petty bourgeois.?77 This contrasts sharply with the 
wider cultural, educational and social elements of the syndicalist tradition.

Second, the council communists saw their revolutionary unions as transitional 
organisations to be formed on the eve of revolution to make the final push for workers? 
councils and communism. This was pursued by either maintaining the dual (political) 
party/(economic) union organisation from mainstream Marxism, or in the case of the AAUD-E, 
by a merger of party and factory organisation into a 'unitary' political economic 
organisation. It was implicit that when the prospects of revolution receded, these 
organisations should disband and revert to more traditional Marxist forms. Indeed, the 
membership of the councillist groups dwindled from hundreds of thousands around 1920 to 
just hundreds by 1923.78 Similarly, the struggle up to that point was to be pursued by a 
more traditional reformist union-revolutionary party pairing, with the party 
propagandising against the limits of reformist unionism and for workers? councils.

Summary

In this chapter we have encountered three radical currents in the workers' movement: 
anarchism, the anti-state wing of socialism; syndicalism, a direct action union movement; 
and council communism, a dissident Marxist tradition which arrived at some similar 
political and organisational conclusions to anarchism and syndicalism. Broadly speaking, 
anarchism constitutes a political current, whereas syndicalism addresses itself to 
workers' shared economic interests. The latter sometimes left the door open for a creeping 
representative function and recuperation by the state. But that's not to say syndicalist 
currents, such as the IWW direct actionists, have not sought to make the political content 
more explicit, particularly in favouring unions as workers? associations for direct action 
as opposed to representation. In a similar vein, council communism broke with the Marxist 
orthodoxy separating economic trade unions from the political party and formed 
revolutionary unions. These also refused a representative role, insisting only workers? 
councils could express the interests of the working class. However, these were seen as a 
temporary formation on the eve of revolution, rather than the long term organising force 
within the working class favoured by syndicalism.

Further reading

On anarchism, the Anarchist FAQ is the first port of call. It?s a huge, encyclopaedic 
account of the numerous strands of anarchism and their relation to other currents, and 
debunks a lot of common myths. The first volume is available in print, edited by Iain 
McKay, and the web version is regularly updated. ?No Gods No Masters? by Daniel Guerin is 
also a highly regarded anthology. Units 5-12 of the SelfEd history of anarcho-syndicalism 
cover the early history of syndicalism (including anarcho-syndicalism) around the world. 
In terms of syndicalism, there are several recommended books. Marcel van der Linden and 
Wayne Thorpe?s edited volume ?Revolutionary Syndicalism? is highly informative, as is Bob 
Holton?s ?British Syndicalism 1900-1914?. ?The Slow Burning Fuse? by John Quail also 
covers much of early British anarchism and syndicalism. In terms of council communism, 
there are several introductions available online which give an overview. ?An introduction
to left communism in Germany from 1914 to 1923? by Dave Graham is available on libcom.org 
and provides a good introduction.79?The communist left in Germany 1918-1921? by Gilles 
Dauv? and Denis Authier is also available in full online and provides a detailed 
account.80 Anton Pannekoek?s ?Workers? councils? was recently republished by AK Press,
with an introduction by Noam Chomsky, and remains one of the clearest statements of 
council communism. Mark Shipway?s ?Anti-parliamentary communism ? the movement for 
workers? councils in Britain 1917-1945? covers British councillist tendencies, with some 
overlap with syndicalism and the shop stewards? movement.