the relevancy of anarcho-syndicalism

a more basic concern with reagrds anarcho-sydicalism.....what would be the point of establishing anarcho-syndicalist groups with the explicite aim of establishing workers councils in a work place such as an office or a call centre? Baring in mind that the service sector is perhaps the biggest employer in britain today what relevance does anarcho-sydicalism have to any worker in this sector and should workers in the service sector even organise to take control of their workplace or just aim at its abolition?

Or a radical reconstitution of their workplace. It's a myth that anarcho syndicalism was fundamentally about the taking over the running of workplaces, rather it was the taking over of the workplace as the first step of providing a material base for the realisation of libertarian communism. For example bakeries where drastically change under the control of the CNT, and schools and hospitals were built in the rural areas. Of course these things don't happen at once and depend on the deepening of the revolution and the extension of working class power ie it's ability to take the means of production and their organisation under proletarian organs, as well as the small matter of defence.

What pisses me off most about some ultra leftist/anti work critiques is their assertion that increasing productivity in workers controlled industries is proof of it's essential capitalist nature. One can only imagine what would happen if the proletariat had fucked off to the beach instead of making araments for the anarchist militias, they would have been anihilated quicker.

jack-its a point ive heard a couple of anarchists use against AS before, i personally dont think its a valid criticism but if its a question that others ask about AS then surely its important to answer it?

alright, soz!

Recent threads suggest it's a gross misunderstanding that some anarcho-syndicalists are quite happy to repeat.

Do I need to go and find those posts by Rata or can you remember them?

He also said anarcho-syndicalists shouldn't organise in arms factories, and you wouldn't attribute that as a generic syndicalist position.

I think that's the fundamental issue that Catch misses ie that anarcho syndicalism was not (and shouldn't be) some fucking programme, but rather an organic articulation of mass struggle. He prefers to reify ala Bookchin and then take pot shots at it from the high ground of over half a centuries historical developments, therefore the fact the Spanish CNT didn't have Call Centre workers, means that anarcho syndicalism can't deal with the issue of next to useless jobs.

I was just reading over To Remember Spain: The Anarchist and Syndicalist revolution, and it really is an awful book, even the title belies his disingenuous take on anarcho syndicalism, as if it's merely the joining of two distinct positions.

A) Yeah, I'm well aware of the many dickheads that see anarcho syndicalism as a nice blue print, a paint by numbers set for organising, many of them actually seem to be inside the IWA these days, in groups of 10 or so.

Anarcho syndicalism was an organic movement, a tendency, an articulation of the proletariat. Therefore to talk about it being "dead" because of changes in class composition and industrial base is as silly as talking about the death of "communism", "strikes" or "sabotage", I do not call myself an anarcho syndicalist because I think too many people who do see it as a blueprint, and seek to build it round a programme. However I get very pissed off with people making false periodisations whereby "anarcho syndicalism can no longer be relevant because "blah" and "blah" has changed", especially when it's done in the manner of Bookchin, who misrepresents anarcho syndicalism and creates false dichotomies, overlooking how the CNT (in areas it had near total dominance) organised libertarian communism in various manners, popular assemblies, communes as well as workers control ie it was not workplace centric or that it sought mere workers self management.

So basically I think anarcho syndicalism represents a high water mark in the proletariats history, one that must be moved beyond for sure, but which offers us a very rich legacy, and one that is in danger of being lost by those who seek to reduce it into a narrow programe, blueprint or even worse mutilate and castrate it to fit their own intellectual dishonesty eg Bookchin.

IWW isn't anarcho-syndicalist.

who cares!?

maybe a puritanical one...

I agree with Horseloves' comments about the role of union beauracracies, but I don't entirely agree with this:

"maybe it's no longer really feasable to strike for improvements in the rate of exploitation"

I think this needs some clarification. While I don't think modern capitalism allows for the reformist struggles where the working class sought recognition within the system (through unions and political parties) this doesn't mean we still can't defend ourselves against capitalism's attacks and even win temporary victories. In fact, it makes it even more vital that we do so.

The problem is that without an explicitly communist consciousness, no permanent union (with a small u!) can survive without being integrated into the state. And, obviously, the majority of workers do not have this consciousness most of the time.

Nonetheless, when the working class begins to move it rapidly creates highly effective organs to organise its struggles: strike committees, general assemblies, etc. These organs draw their combativity from the will of workers to defend themselves, from their anger and determination, and it is this dynamic will that preserves their proletarian character. Because of this, these organs can only last as long as the struggle lasts - when they survive longer they quickly become integrated into the hierarchy of unions and left-wing political organisations. Only in a revolutionary situation when struggle itself has become permanent and the consciousness of the proletariat far more developed can these organs become permanent. At this stage they take on a higher form, that of the soviet.

Here's an interesting article which I posted elsewhere on libcom. This ties into some of this discussion in terms of building an alternative libertarian workers movement here in the US.

The article is fuzzy on the issue of unions and worker centers. I believe this was purposeful as it reflects these workers (mainly Chinese & Latin) generally negative experiances with certain trade unions---mainly the garment division of UNITE and the resturant division of HERE (unite-here!).

Anyway, just some additional food for thought.

Workers' Centers & the New Labor Movement:
http://libcom.org/forums/organise/workers-centers-the-new-labor-movement

We presumably advocate libertarian syndicalism as a strategy (if we do) because we see it as a path to social transformation, the self-emancipation of the working class. The basic idea, i take it, is that mass organizations, formed by oppressed communities (workers in workplaces are oppressed communities), can -- not always but can -- prefigure a different kind of society. This is so because workers could only liberate themselves from the class system collectively, and they need mass organizations to develop in that direction. A sense of collective power requires collective struggles that exhibit that power in practice. Many of the actual mass organizations are quite defective from our point of view, such as the various bureaucratic trade unions. But the need for effective collective struggle provides a motivation to develop something better. I don't see any reason to believe that a particular mass organization formed at the present time in the USA, when inklings of a movement that could effectively challenge the capitalists, are small, could be predicted to actually encompass that movement of tens of millions needed.

Also, the class struggle doesn't just exist in workplaces, but spreads throughout the society, in struggles over housing and other areas. And there are struggles against other aspects of the system of oppression, here in the USA structural racism is particularly important, and hard to separate from the class struggle, and this includes things like fights about police brutality, criminalization of youth, extreme incarceration rates (the prison system), and so on. Thus it seems likely that a powerful movement could be a coming together of a variety of mass organizations into something like a people's alliance, that would bring together threads of struggle against various aspects of oppression. Mass labor organizations would be a crucial part of this, if only because workers must ultimately take over responsibility for social production, not to mention the power of workers to shutdown the system. Because we can't predict what sort -- or sorts -- of labor organization are going to be developed, I think it is better, as syndicalist says, to leave it open, so that we talk more generally about the need for self-managed mass workplace organization, leaving open the possibility that this might include various independent initiatives.

Given the small size of the IWW in the USA at present, it seems to me likely that some of these initiatives are likely to emerge outside the IWW. Consider for example CUE, an independent rank-and-file controlled clerical workers union, which emerged out of a rank and file rebellion against AFSCME, with a number of radicals playing an important role. CUE may not be officially committed to a revolutionary program, as the IWW is, but I think some vagueness on that score is inevitable in the current period given the relative lack of revolutionary consciousness in the USA.

t.

I'm curious how different anarcho-syndicalists (and those close to anarcho-syndicalism)see their activities and roles today. That is, what sort of organization and what sort of organizational relevancy foots their bill?

In the US and Canadian context, what would an expplicitly anarcho-syndicalist organization mean and do? Given the diversity of activist efforts here in the US/Canada, can an anarcho-syndicalist organization be more like a "especifico" organization? That is, an organization of like minded activists coming together to issue libertarian literature and help develop and enhance their work in a variety of worker, social and community struggles. Or must its sole and defining role be something else or something else?