AUT: reply to Steve around contemporary anarcho-syndicalism

[Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

Steve, I forgot to answer your question about more
recent times. Not that I the best placed person to
do so. This is hardly either a direct answer to your
question, but some scattered thoughts of the moment
somewhat revolving around it. Sorry also if my last
post may have come over as bad-tempered.

I do believe that anarcho-syndicalism - whatever one
may think of it - can raise interesting questions,
i.e. also for people opposed to it as a strategy, as
it immediately focuses on forms of organisation. But
I would need much more time to write anything
interesting around this. It sometimes seems that most
of non-leninist marxism has completely given up work-
places as an arena of struggle and agitation.

        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.

As for anarcho-syndicalism, not an easy question to
answer, as there is not much of an anarcho-syndicalist
movement around, and where it exists in some numbers,
that is something beyond being foremost a propaganda
group, it has existed in a more or less constant state
of crisis since it reemerged. The slowly increasing
awarenes that it in fact finds itself in a crisis,
is perhaps the most positive sign.

Otherwise, I believe the answer to you question largely
depends on who you ask, and also somewhat will differ
from country to country. To some extent, and as far as
simplifications goes, the division between what could
broadly be defined as a "pure" revolutionary syndicalism
of French origin and the anarcho-syndicalism of Spanish
origin still lives on. And it is in the former you are
most likely to find people with might be called
"productivist" tendencies.

The big question may however not have so much to do
the with lessons from the past, as how to face a new
situation: social conditions that did not exist then.
Stile there is at least one question from the past
that still is of vital importance, and that is the
relation of anarcho-syndicalist organisation's to the
working class as a whole. Though seldom being asked
in those words, it underlies, I am quite certain,
many of the disagreements and conflicts within
contemporary anarcho-syndicalism.

The CNT do have a practice to, apart from their own
internal meetings, try to to call "asemblas"
including all workers at a workplace, regardless of
if they are affilated to CNT or not, but that does
not answer the whole question. ("Blood of Spain was
indeed and interesting book in this regard, as in
many others, even if it should be taken into conside-
ration that 300 individuals expressing their thoughts
and recollecting their experiences were not
necessarily the same persons as they were 40 or more
years earlier.)

Among other questions that remain are the emphasis on
industrial sections versus geographical communities.
What might be defined as "pure" anarco-syndicalism
would put equal emphasis on both. But the communities
have changed and grown more fragmented. Changed has
also the function of women within the communities and
in society as a whole (depending in which part of
the world you live though). The workplaces have also
changed. Somwhat related to this, the Spanish CNT has
focused much on companies like Manpower, the ETTs.

There did exist a tendency within the CNT, and it still
has its adherents, though they are certainly in a mino-
rity, that wanted to change the organisational structure
of the CNT and create what was called an "organization
integral," giving different so-called "new social move-
ments" a formal representation within the structure of
the CNT. At least some of them have argued that the work-
place can no longer serve as the main arena of the class
struggle, and also put forth the view that the strength
of the old CNT was always that it was not foremost a
union, or at least much more than a union, and that was
why it in the pre-Franco period could survive the years
of massive oppression, and jump back again as a mass
organisation as soon as the situation made it possibble/
legal.

Personally I don't think an "organization integral" would
be a good idea. But those I met who argued for it, who far
from belong to the "lifestyle crowd" in the U.S. sense of
the term, do so very sophistically, and if nothing else
provides one with interesting journeys through the history
of Spanish anarchism.

As for the question of what "libertarian communism," which
is still considered the end of anarcho-syndicalism, and not
as some may think, a "syndicalist society," I believe there
exists greater uncertainity than ever, and you would find
a wide range of opinons, including those which I would find
very doubtful. This is a field where much clarification
and thinking for certain is needed.

And then there are of course all the questions of reaching
out to other workers at all.

Harald









  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba@xxxxxxxxx



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