Anarcho-syndicalism Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Anarcho-syndicalism is the anarchist wing of the labor union movement. Its primary aim is to abolish the capitalist wage-labor system.
The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are:
- workers’ solidarity
- direct action
- self-management
Anarcho-syndicalists believe that only direct action — that is, action concentrated on directly attaining a goal, as opposed to indirect action, like electing a representative to a government position — will allow workers to liberate themselves.
Moreover, anarcho-syndicalists believe that workers’ organizations — the organizations which struggle against the wage system and which, in anarcho-syndicalist theory, will eventually form the basis of a new society — should be self-managing. They should not have bosses or “business agents”; rather, the workers should be able to make all the decisions which affect them amongst themselves.
Rudolf Rocker was one of the most popular voices in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. He outlined a view of the origins of the movement, what it sought, and why it was important to the future of labor in his pamphlet Anarcho-Syndicalism.
Hubert Lagardelle wrote that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon laid out the fundamental theories of anarcho-syndicalism, through his repudiation of both capitalism and the state, his flouting of political government, his idea of free, autonomous economic groups, and his view of struggle, not pacifism, as the core of man.
The International Workers Association is an international anarcho-syndicalist federation of various labor unions from different countries. The Industrial Workers of the World, a once-powerful, still active, and now re-growing labor union, is considered a leading organ of the anarcho-syndicalist philosophy in the United States. The Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo played and still plays a major role in the Spanish labor movement; it was also an important force in the Spanish Civil War.
The anarcho-syndicalist orientation of many early American labor unions played an important role in the formation of the American political spectrum. The United States is the only industrialized ("first world") country that does not have a major labor-based political party. See It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, ISBN 0-39-332254-8.
Rudolf Rocker, wrote in Anarcho-Syndicalism:
- “Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are rather forced upon them from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. They do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace”
This is an Article on Anarcho-syndicalism. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Anarcho-syndicalism Anarcho-syndicalist Organizations
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