Part of a series commemorating 30 years of WSA ---- I am a relative newcomer to the WSA. I
did not join until 2006. I might have joined some years earlier had I only heard of its
existence. WSA is not exactly the most visible political organization in the country. This
is unsurprising as anarcho-syndicalism is scarcely known as an ideological tendency in
modern America. When I did eventually learn of the WSA it was via the byline of a member
writing in a leftist internet publication. The sort of media one finds only if looking for
it rather than the kind of rag that can be picked up on a whim at the street corner,
perhaps while waiting for the bus. ---- Discovering the WSA was something of a relief for
me ? proof that there were living members of a tradition which I felt intuitively to be
correct, yet had encountered only in history books. If anarcho-syndicalism is, as Noam
Chomsky believes, ?the proper mode of organization for a highly complex, advanced
industrial society?, then what are we to make of the invisibility of the organized
tendency in the U.S.?
In part, the marginalized status of the current is simply a reflection of the left. The
thirty years of WSA existence have marked perhaps the weakest period of the political left
since the 19th century. The relative marginality of the left has had the concomitant
effect of shrinking its aspirations. Radicalism is marked simply by a rejection of hopes
for salvation through the Democratic Party. The radicals then, while perhaps of not
insubstantial numbers, are very rarely organized in any coherent fashion. Debate on issues
like the relative merits of worker self-management or workers? parties therefore is mired
in a small, shallow pond with little room for air.
We are very far from the days when Rudolf Rocker advocated for worker?s power within the
wide sea of a militant and quite radically-minded labor movement and immigrant
communities; or C Wright Mills extolled the virtues of anarcho-syndicalism from within an
intellectual ferment that still asked big questions and did not feel itself to be living
after the end of history.
Yet the role of organizations like WSA remains vital. As the Occupy wave reminded us,
popular struggle can pick up at any time, and necessarily relies heavily upon the
institutional memory of pre-existing political groupings to popularize otherwise forgotten
traditions that demand a society self-governed by the workers. Otherwise, the lessons of
peoples? history must be relearned forever anew, usually after it is too late. For three
decades, in the hostile terrain of the most influential nation on the planet, WSA has kept
that black flame of memory alive.
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» US, WSA Ideas & Action: WSA 30 Year Anniversary By Steven Fake