Worker Solidarity Alliance: Ideas & Actions - Lost Conversations: Questioning the legacy of anarchosyndicalism By Scott Nappalos

There is more interest than ever in anarchosyndicalist unions, their history, and lessons 
for doing organizing in today?s context. During its peak, anarchosyndicalism engaged 
millions of workers on every continent except Antarctica. Though the Spanish experience 
through the CNT and 1936 revolution stands out, anarchosyndicalism was perhaps stronger in 
Latin America and Asia than in Europe. Despite the depth of those experiments and today?s 
interests, our knowledge of anarchosyndicalism is still poor. ---- Anarchosyndicalism is 
usually characterized by about being about principles and form of the anarchosyndicalist 
union. Emphasis is frequently placed on democracy, solidarity, and other values. Formal 
aspects of the union like direct democracy, autonomous locals, federations, the use of 
direct action, etc., are seen to carry inherent power to guarantee the desired future 
society. The problem partially lies with the anarchosyndicalists we find readily available 
in English. For instance Rudolph Rocker, the German anarchosyndicalist who in many way 
popularized the term, writes:

?For the Anarcho-Syndicalists the labour syndicates are the most fruitful germs of a 
future society, the elementary school of Socialism in general. Every new social structure 
creates organs for itself in the body of the old organism; without this prerequisite every 
social evolution is unthinkable. To them Socialist education does not mean participation 
in the power policy of the national state, but the effort to make clear to the workers the 
intrinsic connections among social problems by technical instruction and the development 
of their administrative capacities, to prepare them for their role of re-shapers of 
economic life and give them the moral assurance required for the performance of their 
task. No social body is better fitted for this purpose than the economic fighting 
organisation of the workers; it gives a definite direction to their social activities and 
toughens their resistance in the immediate struggle for the necessities of life and the 
defense of their human rights.?1

If you read Rudolph Rocker?s classic text on the issue Anarcho-syndicalism, he largely 
focuses on those issues and encourages thinking about it that way.2 Anarcho-syndicalism?s 
friendly opponents likewise frame the debate around that conception, for example: 
Malatesta?s critique of syndicalism3 and with him anarchist?s right wing who propose to 
only work within the largest established institutions, and the anti-union sections of the 
Marxist ultraleft. Is ideology relevant or not? Is only focusing on form enough? How much 
form makes it syndicalist or not? Today?s anarchosyndicalists often encourage this 
reading. Many anarchosyndicalist publications frequently put their agitation in terms of 
setting up certain structures or promoting libertarian ideas.

One of the main problems in evaluating this is that the history of anarchosyndicalism is 
nearly lost. With the experiences of the CNT in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 being for 
most purposes the height of anarchism, still very little has been translated or even 
studied.4 Even just looking at Spain, key texts from the Spanish experience have never 
made it into English. Consider that we have none of the works of the Libertarian Youth 
Federation (FIJL), who took similar positions to the Friends of Durruti, none of the 
original texts of the Mujeres Libres, none of the publications or discussions of the 
Friends of Durruti, or even the largest and best histories of the revolt. Worse still are 
other experiences. In South America anarchism was dominant in the labor movement for key 
periods, yet we have essentially none of the original texts or even histories translated. 
Taking the Argentinian FORA, even in Spanish most of the texts are out of print with few 
studies in the original language. The texts of Lopez Arango, Santillan, Gilimon, and other 
key theorists of the FORA are not in present print in Spanish and to our knowledge were 
never translated despite having been at the center of one of the largest and most 
significant anarchist milieus in the world. In many cases, even in Spanish original texts 
are out of print, and there is no online archive comparable to what is available in 
English through resources like libcom.org. Still less is known of or translated of other 
historically important anarchosyndicalist movements such as the Italian USI during the Red 
Years, the Korean and Japanese anarcho-syndicalists, the South African syndicalists, or 
even within the United States the foreign language sections of the IWW (of which many were 
ideologically anarchist).

Beyond the issues of language who the anarchosyndicalists were created problems for 
passing on their history. Most anarchosyndicalists where not wealthy or formally educated, 
coming from the global proletariat to a degree dissimilar to many other movements of their 
era. Like other parts of the broader ultraleft, anarchosyndicalist movements lacked 
institutional support (either by Moscow or academia) to reproduce their works, relying 
instead on the donations and voluntary labor of anarchist workers. It?s treasures often 
lie still hidden in part by the proletarian nature of the movement, lack of professional 
theorists to catalogue and popularize its perspectives, and a dearth of resources to 
publish and distribute their works. With these factors in mind, when we take a textual and 
historical approach to anarchosyndicalism it is often based on fragments, semi-random 
pieces that have made it into English, and more frequently the biases of hostile 
commentators from the official left who were in opposition to the syndicalist currents.

Taking a few small cases, it will become clear how this is a limited perspective. Consider 
that anarchosyndicalism is typically charged with having been only focused on the 
workplace and on men. This is largely true in that there were clear issues in the movement 
of unquestioned patriarchy failing to build a powerful movement of women?s workers, and a 
core focus on workplace struggles. Even a brief look at the history complicates the 
picture though. Mujeres Libres, an organization of women members of the CNT aimed at 
addressing patriarchy and developing its own militants, stands out as one of the most 
advanced feminist movements in the history of the left as a whole, and one that emerged 
within anarchosyndicalism as an attempt to expand upon its practices.5 Despite the 
interest in popular education, how little has been done to look at the practices of 
capacitation raised by the Mujeres Libres? Their concept of capacitation was that of 
increasing the abilities of women militants to intervene within struggles rather than as 
instruction or simply changing formal aspects of anarchosyndicalist organizations to 
address patriarchy. Capacitation offers an alternative view of education taken away from 
its elitist and intellectualist practices, and one based off key moments in struggle.

Capacitation was also raised in the writings of the FORA and debates within the 
Argentinian anarchist movement of the early 20th century, though I have been unable to 
find any in-depth discussion of it. Likewise in Argentina and Chile, a significant women?s 
movement emerged that produced it?s own interventions such as anarchist communist women?s 
publications, Resistance Societies specifically for women and women?s struggles, and 
fights led by women. Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil all had experiences with 
attempts to grapple with patriarchy and build movements both within the workplace and 
community led by anarchosyndicalist women.6 In Germany, the FAU-D attempted to construct 
women?s leagues for self-education.7 There is next to nothing in English on these 
struggles and the material is difficult to find in Spanish, let alone Portuguese or 
German. Anarchosyndicalists were grappling with the dominant patriarchy of their time, and 
in key instances were creative in trying to address it and build proletarian women?s 
organization. Little of this history is acknowledged, known even within the anarchist 
movement, or studied.

The same is true of struggles outside the workplace organized by anarchosyndicalist 
unions. The Buenos Aires Tenant?s Strike of 1907 was led by some of the women?s Resistance 
Societies and women leadership within the FORA. Involving perhaps tens of thousands or so 
tenants, it was led primarily by the FORA and represented the intervention of the 
organization into social life beyond the factory walls as rents were climbing excessively 
in Buenos Aires.8 In 1931, the CNT pushed a similar mass rent strike against unsafe and 
increasingly expensive housing in Barcelona.9 Today?s anarchosyndicalist organizations 
participate in struggles inside and outside the workplace from housing struggles to 
transportation and struggles around social benefits. Groups like Seattle Solidarity and 
the UK?s Solidarity Federation take inspiration from anarchosyndicalism in doing 
organizing within a broader sphere of working class life, not limited to the walls of the 
shop floor. Far from an aberration, the anarchosyndicalist movement did not have a 
position on the centrality of the workplace as cleanly as some would place on it.

Anarchosyndicalism is often charged with overemphasizing unions and inheriting defects 
that all unions allegedly have. The history is a bit fuzzy here as some of the groups that 
are called anarchosyndicalist were equivocal or even rejected the label of union. Some 
writers and speakers of the FORA critiqued the title anarchosyndicalism preferring to call 
it an anarchist communist workers organization, if a union at all.10 In Chile, Uruguay, 
and Argentina the anarchist workers organization were built out of Resistance Societies or 
locality based organization of workers.11 There were distinct organizations of trades 
apart from the mixed Resistance Societies. Even the French CGT arose first out of a 
federation of the bourses du Travail, local workers societies that combined culture, 
education, and mutual aid. The FORA itself went so far as to reject the industrial 
divisions of capitalist society altogether, and indeed ANY role for unions after the 
revolution.12 The clean picture of unionist workers trying to build the future cells of 
society becomes problematized when one goes beneath the surface.

If we think about it, it is logical. Any movement that encompasses millions will have 
within it a wealth of experiences and conflicting perspectives that make pinning narrow 
frameworks on it difficult. This history and debate within the anarchosyndicalist movement 
has largely been lost and ignored, reducing its breadth to caricature and a na?ve 
workerist economism by its enemies. Though these examples themselves are limited, they 
offer a chance to rethink what we believe about anarchosyndicalism, these movements, and 
our own practices in social movements, political ideology, and the path towards 
liberation. The real advances and lessons of anarchosyndicalism are yet to be fully 
tapped. Specifically very little has been done to look at the contribution
anarchosyndicalists made to understanding how workers become radicalized, the relationship 
between ideas and activity, and struggling against the totality of working class life. We 
would be better served by viewing anarchosyndicalism as a global experience without trying 
to reduce it to narrow formulas, structures, or merely specific moments. Our own challenge 
today is to find our way through the maze of a changing world. Within these struggles 
there continues to be echoes of the experiences of the anarchosyndicalists.

Rocker, R. Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism. 
http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-and-anarcho-syndicalism-rudolf-rocker[?]
Rocker, R. Anarcho-syndicalism. 
http://libcom.org/library/anarcho-syndicalism-rudolf-rocker [?]
Malatesta, E. (1925). Syndicalism and Anarchism. 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1925/04/syndic1.htm [?]
The work of Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt in Black Flame and Cartography of 
Revolutionary Anarchism both available from AK Press shed some much needed light on 
challenging a Spain and euro-centric view of anarchism. [?]
Acklesburg, M. (2004). Free Women of Spain. AK Press. [?]
Maxine Molyneux?s 1997 Ni Dios, Ni Patr?n, Ni Maridos: Feminismo anarquista en la 
Argentina del Siglo XIX. 
http://www.cnm.gov.ar/generarigualdad/attachments/article/199/Ni_Dios_ni_patron_ni_marido.pdf;
Bellucci, Mabel. (1989). Anarquismo y Feminismo. El Movimiento de Mujeres Anarquistas con 
sus logros y desaf?os hacia principios de siglo. Buenos Aires.; Valle Ferrer, Norma. 
(2004). Anarquismo y feminismo. La ideolog?a de cuatro mujeres latinoamericanas de 
principios del siglo XX. Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorrique?a, N? 9, junio. San 
Juan. [?]
Solidarity Federation. (2012). Fighting for Ourselves: Anarchosyndicalism and class 
struggle.Black Cat Press. [?]
On the Tenant?s Strike in Buenos Aires see Juan Suriano?s 1983 La huelga de inquilinos de 
1907. CEAL. [?]
Worker?s Solidarity Alliance. The Barcelona Mass Rent Strike of 
1931.http://workersolidarity.org/archive/rentstrike1931.htm [?]
Lopez Arango, E. (1925). Syndicalism and Anarchism. 
http://libcom.org/library/syndicalism-anarchism [?]
De Laforcade, Geoffroy. (2011). Federative Future: Resistance Societies, and the 
Subversion of Nationalism in the Early 20th-Century Anarchism of the R?o de la Plata 
Region. E.I.A.L Vol. 22 (2).http://www1.tau.ac.il/eial/images/vn22n2/laforcade-v22n2.pdf [?]
Federaci?n Obrera Regional Argentina. (1923). Memoria presentada por la F.O.R.A al 
Congreso de Berlin de la Asociaci?n Internacional del Trabajadores A.I.T. 
http://fora-ait.com.ar/ait/index.php?text=presentacionFORA1923; Damier, Vadim. (2011). 
Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century. Chapter 
8.http://libcom.org/library/chapter-8-ideological-theoretical-discussions-anarcho-syndicalism-1920?s-1930?s 
[?]
Posted: September 30th, 2013 under Debate, History, Syndicalism.