AUT: doomed to repeat the past?

[Steve Wright <pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Harald Beyer-Arnesen wrote:

> Sort of an answer to Fabian/"Leutha Blissett":
>
> Because CNT ended up in collaboration in 1936, any anarcho-
> syndicalist project would be doomed to repeat this for all
> future, is that your theory? In case, you should extend
> your critique to workers councils (far more vulnerable
> for this kind of critique) and by implication council
> communists.
>

I suspect that most of the criticisms that could be made about
anarcho-syndicalism in the first half of the 20th century would apply equally
well - maybe even better - to the council communism of the same period . . .

Since this can of worms has been opened, though, I'm very interested in the ways
that anarcho-syndicalists and council commuists of more recent times have
attempted to move beyond what they and others see as past limitations. For
example, the productivism which characterised so much of earlier
anarcho-syndicalist and council communist ideology isn't nearly so evident
today, so far as I can see. Similarly, I know that Harald - to give one person
as an example - doesn't think that the immediate process of production is the
only sphere 'that counts' - is this sensibility also common today in such
circles? The IWW today, to take the only so-called 'syndicalist' group about
which I have any direct knowledge, there is a sort of  recognition that the
unwaged are workers too - a good start in practical terms, even if the reasons
as to why this should be so isn't clear from any wobbly literature that I've
seen.

Steve

P.S. I only call the IWW "so-called 'syndicalist' " because it is still
nominally an industrial unionist organisation. But in this country at least, it
is an industrial unionist organisation with a likely syndicalist majority.



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