New article: why it's important to develop a new, transformative vision for trade unions
in a world of crisis and inequality; the limits of business unionism and of nationalist,
Marxist-Leninist and social democratic approaches; and how anarcho- and revolutionary
syndicalism -- as an important historical tradition, as a set of ideas, and as a
revolutionary experience, notably in Spain 1936-1939 -- can contribute to the debate. ----
Union politics remain central to the new century. It remains central because of the
ongoing importance of unions as mass movements, internationally, and because unions, like
other popular movements, are confronted with the very real challenge of articulating an
alternative, transformative vision. There is much to be learned from the historic and
current tradition of anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism. This is a tradition with a
surprisingly substantial and impressive history, including in the former colonial world; a
tradition that envisages anti-bureaucratic and bottom-up trade unions as key means of
educating and mobilising workers, and of championing the economic, social and political
struggles of the broad working class, independent of parliamentary politics and party
tutelage; and that aims, ultimately, at transforming society through union-led workplace
occupations that will institute self-management and participatory economic planning,
abolishing markets, hierarchies and states.
This contribution seeks, firstly, to contribute to the recovery of the historical memory
of the working class by drawing attention to its multiple traditions and rich history;
secondly, to make a contribution to current debates on the struggles, direction and
options for the working class movement (including unions) in a period of flux in which the
fixed patterns of the last forty years are slowly melting away; thirdly, it argues that
many current union approaches ? among them, business unionism, social movement unionism,
and political unionism ? have substantial failings and limitations; and finally, it points
to the need for labour studies and industrial sociology to pay greater attention to labour
traditions besides business unionism, social movement unionism, and political unionism.
To do this, this paper considers what progressive trade unions can learn from an
engagement with the anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalist tradition ? especially given
the current crisis of social democratic, Marxist-Leninist and nationalist approaches.
Worldwide, unions are grappling with the challenges posed by today?s crisis-ridden,
inequitable world, in which labour and human rights abuses multiply in a vicious
race-to-the-bottom. On the other hand, however, unions are haunted by the failure of the
Keynesian welfare state, by the collapse of nationalist models like
import-substitution-industrialisation, and by the implosion of the Soviet model.
This situation was recently brought into sharp relief in post-apartheid South Africa,
where much hope had been placed in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), to which
the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the South African Communist Party
(SACP), are formally allied. Strikes in a mining sector based on cheap labour were marked
by union schisms and, in August 2012, by the police massacre of 34 workers at Marikana.
Events such as these, and ongoing frustration with ANC policies, were the backdrop for
momentous decisions by COSATU?s biggest affiliate, the 335,000-strong, radical National
Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). In December 2013, it rebelled against
COSATU resolutions by breaking with both parties, its general-secretary Irvin Jim stating
?It is clear that the working class cannot any longer see the ANC or the SACP as its class
allies in any meaningful sense? (Letsoalo and Mataboge, 2013). NUMSA, with roots in the
independent 1980s trade union left (the ?workerists?), and, more recently, a formal
commitment to Marxism-Leninism, has supported the ANC programme since 1987.
In charting a way forward for 2014, however, NUMSA has stopped short of simple answers,
choosing instead an open-ended process of building a ?movement for socialism? and a
?united front? of popular movements. NUMSA has started to pay more attention to its
?workerist? past, while leaving its future options open. This openness signals, at least
in part, a cautious and potentially innovative approach: post-apartheid South Africa is
littered with failed attempts to form left alternatives. Significantly, however, the union
has rejected ties with the new Economic Freedom Fighters party: its ?centralised,
commandist? structure and corrupt leaders were deemed incompatible with NUMSA?s traditions
of bottom-up decision-making and anti-capitalism (?Economic Freedom Fighters,? in NUMSA,
2013).
But what does a ?movement? for radical change mean in the 21st century? If the state,
including the nominally leftwing ANC state, has proved so dangerous and unreliable an ally
for organised labour, is it possible to recover union traditions that are radical, even
anti-capitalist, yet autonomous of state power? Answering such a question requires, I
would suggest, critically examining a broad range of experiences, and I would further
suggest that an engagement with syndicalism would be especially fruitful.
The syndicalist tradition has recently been the subject of several important works and a
rapidly growing scholarship (notably Damier, 2009; Darlington, 2008; Ness, 2014), which
has also made some important organizing breakthroughs. It influences, for example, sectors
of the Solidarity-Unity-Democracy unions in France (SUD, Solidaires Unitaires
D?mocratiques) and parts of the Italian COBAS (Comitati di Base, ?committees of the
base?). In Spain, meanwhile, the anarchosyndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT)
represented in 2004 around two million workers through the workplace elections
(Alternative Libertariare, 2004), making it that country?s third largest federation.
Today?s CGT is one of the several important heirs of the classical Spanish anarchist
movement which, centred on the National Confederation of Labour, or CNT, launched in the
1930s one of the most ambitious attempts to reshape society ever undertaken. This
experience, which built upon decades of building a counter-hegemonic consciousness and
movement, and years of careful reflection, planning and militant struggle, saw thousands
of workplaces and millions of acres of land placed under worker and peasant
self-management, the radical democratisation of the economy and a transformation of daily
life, including gender relations. As a concrete example of this syndicalist praxis and its
relevance to current union renewal, this paper will pay close attention to the Spanish
Revolution of 1936-1939.
*Unions today: Organisation without social transformation?
A core reason for reclaiming the syndicalist tradition is that it helps address the great
challenge of today, for unions as for other popular movements. The great challenge is not
developing better organising strategies. It is the great challenge of developing a vision
of social change that fundamentally shifts wealth and power to the popular classes, and a
commensurate strategy to achieve this vision above all. It is at the level of vision that
organized labour currently flounders.
In terms of numbers and organising, unions viewed globally are actually doing fairly well
? this despite major challenges and some real defeats. Union density remains substantial
in many Western countries, especially in the state sector (Connolly, 2008: 18). Unions
have also shown resilience, even growth, of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Pillay and
van der Walt , 2012), where they are often ?one of the very few societal organisations?
with a ?sizeable constituency, country-wide structures and the potential for mobilizing
members on social or political matters? (Schillinger, 2005: 1). Many unions can mobilise
substantially more people than their formal membership (for example, The Economist, 2006).
The new International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) and the creative use by unions of
International Framework Agreements (IFAs) show innovative approaches to organising
neglected sectors. Militant, left-wing trade unionism continues to exist, including
formations influenced by anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism, and by other traditions
including classical Marxism.
*After statism: The loss of union vision
The very successes of unions in winning gains in wages and working conditions, and in
areas of civil and political rights and social justice, inevitably pose a larger question:
how to move from defensive and partial struggles to a larger, transformative project that
can fundamentally change the balance of power and wealth in society? Without such a
change, every gain by working and poor people is under continual threat, for the simple
reason that they are a subordinate, disempowered class in a social order geared against
them ? a system that does not operate in their interests, and that only makes concessions
when forced to do so.
But what, exactly, does a progressive project mean, after the failures of the big projects
of social democracy, Marxism-Leninism, and import-substitution-industrialisation? For
example, given its numbers, its power and its deep popular roots, NUMSA?s commitment to a
?movement for socialism? has enormous potential, unmatched by previous left projects in
South Africa, yet faces the same challenge as its predecessors ? and indeed, of unions
elsewhere.
Generally organised labour has struggled to develop a clear alternative to the current
order ? a problem that unions share with many other popular class sectors. The Arab Spring
is the latest example of a series of struggles against the impact of neo-liberalism, and
against authoritarian governments, that has been defined and limited by largely negative
aims: anti-globalisation, antiprivatisation, anti-oligarchy, anti-dictatorship. But
without a positive programme, space created by successful struggles is quickly captured by
neo-liberal parties (witness one-time trade unionist Frederick Chiluba?s Zambia in the
1990s), business oligarchies with empty slogans (?Yes, We Can?: Barrack Obama?s Democrats,
with their war and austerity), and religious and nationalist fundamentalists (Egypt?s
resurgent Muslim Brotherhood, and its tussle with the military is a case in point).
Union responses to the larger challenge of vision have often fallen into three broad
categories, none of which has proved satisfactory historically? and certainly, none is
satisfactory today. Firstly, there is economism, or business unionism, which seeks to
avoid larger issues altogether by focusing on immediate bread-and-butter issues of wages
and workplace conditions. The problem is that the wages, conditions and employment itself
are deeply shaped by the larger social order, and working and poor people face challenges
at work, and outside work, that go far beyond wages and conditions. Business unionism
certainly cannot address these issues.
*The limitations of social movement and political unionism
A second approach, dubbed ?social movement unionism?, has sought to forge alliances and
campaign beyond the workplace, stressed democratic unionism, and played a role in fighting
against repressive governments and employers. The problem is that social movement unionism
stops short of a clear programme for systemic change, beyond demands for democratic
reforms. The content of those reforms, and of that democracy, is left opaque; its politics
tends to the problem of being defined by what it opposes, rather than what it proposes.
In most cases, unions in the social movement union tradition have moved fairly quickly
into the third approach, political unionism. This involves unions allying with a political
party aiming at state power, in the belief that this will provide working class access to,
and benefits from, state power and policy-making. Variants of political unionism include
social democracy, in which unions ally with mass parties seeking to capture parliament;
Marxism-Leninism, in which unions are led by vanguard parties aiming at the creation of
revolutionary dictatorships; and nationalism, in which unions join a national bloc aiming
at wielding a national state.
A core problem has been that such alliances, rather than strengthen unions, have often
subordinated unions to states and ruling parties, enmeshing them in networks of patronage,
institutions of class collaboration and political alliances that have limited their
autonomy, vision and, often, their internal democracy, meanwhile, workers and unions are
divided into rival blocs of party loyalists.
One version of this problem is a continual exodus of unionists into prestigious state
employment, which has few effects on state policy, yet damages union capacity and promotes
careerism amongst unionists. The 2014 South African elections saw 12 senior COSATU figures
rewarded with senior state appointments (Musgrave, 2014; for more on this process and its
effects: Buhlungu, 2010). In more extreme cases, unions have been transformed into
?transmission belts? between the ?vanguard? and ?the mass?, relaying demands for more
output while disciplining recalcitrant workers (e.g. Lenin, [1920] 1965: 21, 31-32).
The other core problem is that the project of political unionism, with its statist
project, is faced with the general crisis and failure of the left?s statist projects.
Keynesian and related social democratic strategies still exercise a certain fascination,
but their viability is questionable. Besides the problem that such strategies have had
little success outside of the advanced industrial countries, it is difficult to deny that
the regulatory institutions, relatively closed economies, economic booms and insurgent
working class movements that forced the emergence of the classic Keynesian welfare state
no longer exist.
Even at its (rather impressive) best, the Keynesian welfare state?s real gains for working
people were marred by substantial inequalities in wealth and power and massive union and
societal bureaucratisation: initial opposition to the model came not from the right but
the left, with demands around self-management, gender equity and environmental issues
(Wilks, 1996: 97). Its existence was to a large extent contingent on its compatibility
with the goals of capitalists and state managers: as those goals changed, in the face of
factors like capitalist crisis and globalisation, the system was phased out (for
variations on this theme: Pontussen, 1992; Swenson, 1991; Wilks, 1996).
Although classic Marxist regimes retain some attraction, including in unions like NUMSA,
their record raises serious questions. It is marked indelibly by massive repression (not
least, of labour and unions), economic inefficiency and crisis, and inglorious collapse
(precipitated in substantial part by deep working class discontent). Even their
achievements in social welfare must be viewed with some scepticism.1
This has drastically undermined the old confidence that these represented a compelling,
superior ?new civilization? (e.g. Webb and Webb, 1937). A growing literature, in fact,
demonstrates that these Marxist regimes were always deeply shaped by global capitalist
dynamics (e.g. Sanchez-Sibony, 2014) and confirm, in many respects, the old anarchist and
syndicalist argument that they represented a form of ?state-capitalism? (e.g. Sergven,
[1918] 1973: 122-125).
Writers who wish to insist that such experiences were not the ?real? Marxist project, or
misrepresented Marx, have to deal with the unpleasant reality that this was the dominant
Marxist project, including for the great majority of Marxists, and provides the only
historic cases of revolutionary Marxist rule.
Meanwhile, nationalist import-substitution-industrialisation has faded as a policy option
(Waterbury, 1999). Its legacies are uneven, and sometimes positive, but the project itself
is no longer viable. Even at its most successful, however, the model was typified by
authoritarian regimes and by substantial labour repression and union cooptation (e.g.
Freund, 1988: chapter 5): cheap labour was, after all, one of the major subsidies to
?national? capital provided by state intervention in capital-poor countries.
*Reclaiming syndicalism: Prefiguration, democracy, anti-capitalism
This brings us to the fourth approach, syndicalism. There is, admittedly, much confusion
regarding what syndicalism encompasses. This is, for example, true in the South African
context where syndicalism is often misleadingly used as a term for militant but apolitical
unionism. This follows the tendency of Lenin, Poulantzas and others to dub syndicalism a
form of ?left economism? (Holton, 1980: 5-7, 12-13, 18-19), a proposition that is itself
rooted in the notion that unions are, by their nature, reformist and narrow unless
subordinated to a political party (e.g. Toussaint, 1983).
Such labelling errs in two main ways: on the one hand, the record of a union like NUMSA,
which is playing a decisive role in rebuilding the left project, without party tutelage
and, indeed, in defiance of the SACP, completely confounds notions that unions are
inherently reformist, left to their own devices; on the other hand, they manifestly fail
to grapple with the ideology and history of actual syndicalism.
Syndicalism promotes a vision of a society free of social and economic inequalities, with
a participatory democratic economy and society that extends into the direct control of the
workplace and a bottom-up planned economy; in this society, hierarchy and elite control
over economic and other resources is removed.
In speaking of the working class, too, it had an expansive approach, including all wage
earners, skilled as well as unskilled, urban as well as rural, and their families and
defenders: this was not a narrow project for men in hard-hats alone. For example, today?s
syndicalist unions like the CGT include many white collar workers, technicians and
professionals; the 1930s CNT included not just industrial workers, but ?peasants and
field-workers? and the ?brain-workers and the intellectuals? (Rocker, [1938] 1989: 98-99).
Also of especial interest is the prefigurative approach of the movement, that is, the
strategy of developing, in its daily life, the basic moral, political and organisational
infrastructure and daily practices of the new society. Rather than embrace an
instrumentalist approach, in which ends justify means, syndicalism, like the anarchist
movement in which it is rooted, stresses that means shape ends and, therefore, that
today?s politics must foreshadow tomorrow?s future.
Consciousness, developed through struggle, education and participation ? a revolutionary
counter-culture ? wedded to a flat, decentralized, inclusive, pluralist and pragmatic, yet
militant and autonomous style of union organisation ? a counter-power, opposed to the
institutions of the ruling class ? are to be forged in daily struggles, until ready and
prepared for the final assault.
But in the final assault there would be both rupture ? the removal of the old regime ? and
continuity ? in that the unions, and their allies, already carried within themselves the
basic framework of the new society, including the means of occupying workplaces and
placing them under self-management. Syndicalist unions thus combine ?the defence of the
interests of the producers within existing society?, including in political struggles,
with ?preparing the workers for the direct management of production and economic life in
general? (Rocker, [1938] 1989: 86). Or, in the words of the old South African
revolutionary syndicalist paper, The International, it involves (1917):
?. One Big Union of all wage workers? aggressively forging ahead ?. gaining strength from
each victory and learning by every temporary set-back ? until the working class is able to
take possession and control of the machinery, premises and materials of production right
from the capitalists? hands, and use that control to distribute the product entirely
amongst the workers ? It takes every colour, creed and nation. Revolutionary Industrial
Unionism is ?organised efficiency?. Every worker in every industry; every industry part
and parcel of one great whole.
*Political, autonomous, anti-statist
With this ethos, syndicalism envisages a militant class-struggle unionism that empowers
members while minimising internal hierarchy, and actively opposing domination and
oppression by nation, race and sex ? within the larger society, but within the union too.
Historically, it promoted political education and struggle around larger social and
political issues, and forged alliances with a range of other popular movements, including
neighborhood, youth and political groups, while steering sharply clear of alliances with
all political parties aiming at state power.
To use the state, with its hierarchical character and deep alliance with capitalists and
landlords, contradicts the basic syndicalist project of constituting, from the bottom-up,
a militant and autonomous working class movement able to replace hierarchy and
exploitation (including by the state). Moreover, the state is no ally of the working
class, providing a place of power and wealth for a political elite that is allied,
structurally, to the corporations, themselves a place of power and wealth for an economic
elite. Reliance on electoral parties is viewed as futile, serving mainly to deliver the
unions up as voting cattle, while promoting passive reliance on officials, bureaucrats and
the (hostile) capitalist state (Spitzer, 1963: 379-388). Allying with vanguard parties to
create revolutionary dictatorships is also incompatible with a bottom-up movement for
self-management; such regimes can only repress, never emancipate, the popular classes.
Syndicalist anti-statism does not, it must be stresssed, mean disinterest in political
issues, for syndicalism fights for ?political rights and liberties? just as much as it
does for better wages (Rocker, [1938] 1989: 88-89, 111). However, it does not do so
through parliaments and the state, but outside and against both, with the trade union,
?toughened by daily combat and permeated by Socialist spirit? and bringing to bear the
power of workers at the point of production, the ?lance head? of these and other broader
working class battles (Ibid.).
*A viable alternative?
To what extent was syndicalism ever an important tradition, worthy of serious
consideration? And to what extent can its project be seen as one that is more than merely
rhetorical i.e. to what extent did it achieve both its immediate and ultimate objectives?
A complete answer to the first question exceeds the scope of this paper, suffice it to say
that the view that anarchism and syndicalism were ?never more than a minority attraction?
(e.g. Kedward, 1971: 120) has been widely challenged by a ?small avalanche? of scholarship
(Anderson, 2010: xiii) demonstrating the existence of mass anarcho- and revolutionary
syndicalist unions in the Caribbean, Latin America and parts of Europe, in countries as
diverse as Argentina, Bolivia, France, Cuba, Peru, Portugal, The Netherlands as well as of
powerful syndicalist movements elsewhere, including Britain, Czechia, Hungary, Italy,
Japan and Russia, and the lasting imprint of both on popular and union culture. In
colonial and postcolonial countries, including Bolivia, Egypt and South Africa, these
formations played an important part in struggles against imperialism and national
oppression; they pioneered unions in countries as diverse as China, Egypt, Malaysia, and
Mexico. Syndicalist unions were also involved in major uprisings and rebellions, including
in Mexico (1916), Italy (1913, 1920), Portugal (1918), Brazil (1918), Argentina (1919,
1922), and Spain (1909, 1917, 1932/3).
Nor did the story of these movements end in 1914 (or 1917): many syndicalist movements and
currents peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, as in Peru and Poland, and a number survived ?
sometimes undergoing big bursts of growth, as in postwar France (Damier, 2009: 193) and
Chile? in the years that followed. For instance, syndicalism remained an influence in
Argentinean, Brazilian, Bolivian, Chilean and Cuban unions into the 1960s, and among
Uruguayan workers and students in the 1970s (Mechoso, 2002), with a massive revival in
Spain in the 1970s and early 1980s; other notable cases include the guerrilla war of the
anarchist Chu Cha-pei in Yunan, China, against the Maoist regime in the 1950s (H. L. Wei
interview in Avrich, 1995: 214 et seq.). The 1960s revolts and the New Left, the
post-Berlin Wall era, and in contemporary and Occupy movements (for anarchists in Occupy
Wall Street: Bray, 2013) and radical unions (Ness, 2014) have all provided vectors for new
anarchist and syndicalist influence and growth.
*Transformation from below: Syndicalism as revolution
Regarding the second question, the extent to which syndicalism achieved its immediate and
ultimate objectives, a growing literature generally indicates that syndicalist formations
generally had and have an impressive record of promoting oppositional working class
movements, of organising durable movements with pragmatic yet principled programmes and
democratic practices, of winning real economic, political and social gains, and in
providing space for the elaboration of radical alternatives and human dignity. ?Embedded
in larger popular movements and countercultures, linked to other organised popular
constituencies, taking up issues that went well beyond the workplace, playing a central
role in community struggles, and at the heart of a project of revolutionary
counterculture, including the production of mass circulation daily and weekly newspapers,
the historical syndicalist unions were social movements that never reduced the working
class to wage earners, or the aspirations of the working class to wages? (van der Walt and
Schmidt, 2009: 21).
*Counter-power, counter-culture: The CNT in Spain
What, then, of the ability to move from prefiguration to figuration, from counter-power to
taking power, from revolutionary preparation to revolution? There are a number of
important cases of the concrete and positive anarchist and/or syndicalist programme being
implemented in various degrees, including in Macedonia, Mexico, the Ukraine, and
Manchuria. But the case in which syndicalist unions played the most central role remains
that of the Spanish Revolution of 19361939.
The most important union federation in Spain was the 2-million strong CNT, in a population
of around 24 million: if we keep the proportions, and translate them onto today?s larger
South African population, the CNT would have been 4-million strong i.e. twice as large as
COSATU. The CNT organised in a wide variety of sectors, with a major presence in the
industrial region of Catalonia, but it also had a rural presence and important strongholds
elsewhere in the country (for material on the CNT and the Revolution, see inter alia
Ackelsberg, 1985; Ackelsberg, 1993; Amsden, 1978; Bosch, 2001; an overview can be found in
Hattingh, 2011; contemporary accounts and oral histories can be found in Dolgoff 1974;
Fraser, 1979).
The CNT was strong but bottom-up, well-organised but decentralised, and very, very
militant. Its union structure was relatively flat, with a minuscule full-time staff, with
decisions centred on the local membership, which met regularly in general assembly and
appointed mandated delegates, roughly equivalent to shopstewards. In terms of struggles,
emphasis was placed on direct action, rather than the use of industrial courts and
arbitration, or parliamentary politics, as a means of promoting self-confidence,
self-reliance and self-activity.
CNT activities were ambitious and wide-ranging. It had a history of partial and general
strikes, and had actively joined rent strikes and other protests; it had cells working
within the armed forces; and it had an enormous presence in many working class
neighbourhoods, running centres that provided meeting spaces, classes and a range of
cultural activities; it was closely linked to anarchist youth, women?s and propaganda
groups. In addition the CNT published and distributed vast numbers of books and pamphlets:
by 1938, it ran more than 40 newspapers and magazines, including many mass circulation
dailies (Rocker, [1938] 1989: 146), and had a radio service.
In short, the CNT had an enormous impact on working class and peasant consciousness,
stressing revolution as direct working class and peasant control of society, including
self-management of workplaces through CNT structures. The most radical CNT militants
organised in the semi-clandestine Anarchist Federation of Iberia (FAI): not a
parliamentary party or a Leninist vanguard, the 30,000-strong FAI was an anarchist
political organisation that aimed to promote the CNT project and the revolutionary
struggle. It is, finally, worth noting that the CNT and FAI vastly overshadowed the
Spanish Communist Party, which struggled to move to get above 10,000 members.
*The Spanish Revolution, 1936-1939: Resist, occupy, produce
In July 1936, there was an attempted military coup, backed by the most conservative
sectors of the ruling class. Armed CNT militants stopped the coup in most of Spain;
sections of the armed forces came over to the CNT, as did members of the moderate unions.
A large CNT militia, numbering around 120,000, defended much of the country.
In the cities, CNT structures quickly took over large parts of industry. In Catalonia
province, workers within hours seized control of 3,000 enterprises, including all public
transportation, shipping, electric and power companies, gas and water works, engineering
and automobile assembly plants, mines, cement works, textile mills and paper factories,
electrical and chemical concerns, glass bottle factories and perfumeries, food processing
plants and breweries. Most of these were placed under direct workers self-management
through assemblies and committees. Where employers remained at the company, they were
either made to report to workers? control commissions, or to join the commission ? in
which case they were paid the same wage as everyone else, and decisions were made
democratically. The workers? control structures emerged directly out of CNT structures:
crudely, CNT assemblies now ran the factories, and the ?shopstewards? committees acted as
the control committees. Then factories were linked up, first by industry and then by
region: so, for example, the CNT metal union provided the means of coordinating the metal
industry, and through the CNT, coordinated this with other industries.
The CNT also had an important impact, in this period, on the rank-and-file of the rival
social democratic union, the General Union of Labour (UGT), who were also drawn into
collectivisation en masse, especially in the countryside; in a number of cases, joint
CNT-UGT collectives were established. In the countryside, perhaps two thirds of farmland
came under various forms of bottom-up collectivisation: by some estimates, a further five
to seven million people were involved here, besides the two million in the urban collectives.
This was not a system of nationalisation, in which the state took over, nor yet of
privatisation, but of collectivisation, the roots of which lay deep in decades of
preparation. The revolutionary period saw substantial changes in many areas of daily life.
Income, in the collectives, was delinked from ownership, and to a large extent, from
occupation: in urban areas, especially, people were ?paid? on the basis of family needs;
in many rural areas, money was completely abolished. Divorce was made available, and CNT
halls were sometimes used for revolutionary weddings. The CNT?s allies, Mujeres Libres (or
?free women?) meanwhile ran further education and mobilisation campaigns among women.
There was a general effort to restructure work, to make it more pleasant, more healthy and
less stressful: as an example, small and unhealthy plants were replaced by large, airy
ones, which were cheaper as well as healthier. The unemployed were given work, with
unemployment dramatically reduced while output increased and hours decreased. The
collectives were not, it should be added, ?owned? by the workers ? they were run by them;
they could not be sold or rented out. It was the larger network of collectives, born of
the CNT, that had possession; it was through congresses and conferences that changes could
be made.
The larger project of the revolution stalled, however, for a range of reasons. One myth,
that should be disposed of at once, was that the CNT and FAI lacked a concrete plan to
remake society, or to defend, with coordinated military force, the revolutionary society.
The CNT had organised a series of armed uprisings in the early 1930s, and developed a
clandestine military structure coordinated through local, regional and finally, national,
defence committees; its May 1936 congress reaffirmed the need for coordinated military
action, based on the unions, in the event of revolution (for the CNT?s 1936 programme: CNT
[May 1, 1936] n.d.; for a fuller critique of the claim that the CNT lacked a concrete
programme or military perspectives, see van der Walt, 2011: 195-197). The CNT militias
formed in 1936 emerged directly out of the earlier clandestine CNT military (Guillam?n,
2014), just as the CNT collectives emerged directly from the CNT union branches.
First and foremost, the revolution stalled following a tactical decision in late 1936 to
form a broad anti-fascist bloc against the (by no means defeated) army plotters.
Significant moves towards planning the economy from the bottom-up did not develop far
beyond the provincial level; the collectivisation of the financial sector was aborted; the
CNT?s Popular Front allies sabotaged its collectives, slowly destroying the Revolution and
demobilising the revolutionary spirit that had halted the coup of 1936; in the end, the
Popular Front, now abandoned by the CNT, was itself crushed by the plotters of 1936, who
instituted four decades of dictatorial repression.
*Some conclusions
The point of the above exposition is not to present the CNT as perfect, but to underline,
rather, a core part of the constructive history of syndicalism: it showed that industry
and agriculture could be run effectively without the profit motive, and without
bureaucratic hierarchies, and that a working class, inspired by a great ideal, can remake
the world.
To prove the CNT was flawed is possible; to draw critical lessons on its history is
necessary; however, to dismiss the possible contribution of this and other syndicalist
experiences to current labour challenges is, however, mistaken. Syndicalism has
historically played a very important role in the history of the working class movement,
not just in Spain, but elsewhere; it is a tradition that bears close scrutiny, for to
?recall anarchism?, and anarcho-syndicalism, ?which Leninist Marxism suppressed?, is, as
Arif Dirlik argued, in his study of the Chinese movement, to rethink the very meaning and
possibilities of the left tradition, and ?recall the democratic ideals for which anarchism
? served as a repository? (1991: 3-4, also pp. 7-8).
This anarchist and syndicalist repository is one that bears investigation, not as a simple
cure-all for all difficulties, but as a basis for reflection and renewal in labour
movements and in scholarship. As part of confronting the challenges facing today?s unions,
there is everything to be gained from broadening our understanding of the history and
traditions of the labour movement. For scholars of labour studies and of industrial
sociology, too, there is a need to pay greater attention to traditions like anarcho- and
revolutionary syndicalism, both in theorising labour, and in understanding its pasts,
presents, and possible futures.
NOTES
[1] The much-lauded Cuban healthcare system is in fact deeply segmented: official
statistics and observations of its tourist and elite sectors obscure the serious
inequities and shortages experienced by most Cubans (e.g. Hirschfeld, 2001). Repression of
dissident doctors is also well documented (e.g. Reiner, 1998).
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* BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
LUCIEN VAN DER WALT is a Professor of Industrial and Economic Sociology at Rhodes
University, in Grahamstown, South Africa. He has published widely on labour and left
history, political economy, and anarchism and syndicalism. He is also involved in union
and working class education. [email: l.vanderwalt@ru.ac.za]
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