SYNDICALISM

Syndicalism was a movement at the confluence of anarchism and early trade unionism. The term syndicalism comes from the French syndicalisme, from syndicat, the common term for any group seeking to defend common interests. Syndicat came to mean "trade union," while syndicalisme came to mean the belief that workers could, through their unions, eschew socialist parties and electoral politics, defend and improve their conditions, gradually build their numbers, and eventually overthrow capitalism, replacing capitalist ownership with worker control through their own union organizations. The primary impulse for the ideology of syndicalism came from anarchists. Those hostile to syndicalism often referred to it as anarchosyndicalism, while those who favored it called it revolutionary syndicalism. Syndicalism first emerged in France during the 1880s and reached its apogee in the first decade of the twentieth century. Syndicalism developed in parallel fashion in Italy and Spain (and after World War I in a number of other countries).

origins of syndicalism in france, 1884–1902

Syndicalism brought together the emerging forces of the labor movement with anarchists in the new Bourses du Travail (Labor Exchanges). In 1884 trade unions were legalized, and in 1886 the Paris Prefect of Police subsidized the first Bourse du Travail in order to control the crowds seeking work. Inspired by the Communard Jean Allemane and by the young anarchist journalist Fernand Pelloutier, Parisian workers insisted on their right to run the bourses themselves. They thus created a unique French institution, not only a place to look for jobs but also a space for political development. By 1907 there were 157 bourses across France.

In 1892 Pelloutier and Émile Pouget, also a journalist, helped create the Fédération des Bourses du Travail, which soon claimed four hundred thousand members. Pelloutier was secretary of the federation from 1895 until his death in 1901. The federation's Nantes Congress of 1894 was dominated by anarchists; the congress resolved that workers could achieve their own liberation through direct action, without participating in electoral politics. Henceforth the federation opposed republican and socialist parties that participated in electoral politics; it aimed to coordinate strikes and ultimately unleash the general strike that would bring down capitalism directly and turn factories and workshops over to their workers. In 1895 a rival group founded the smaller Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT; General Confederation of Labor). A good many French workers began to turn toward syndicalism following the anarchist attacks of 1892–1894; "propaganda by the deed" seemed a dead end. In 1902 the two organizations merged under the name CGT with a program largely dictated by syndicalists, who controlled most of the top positions, though the secretary, Victor Griffuelhes, was also active in politics: he was linked to Edouard Vaillant's Blanquist Party as it turned toward socialist politics in the 1890s.

the amiens charter and the showdown with government, 1902–1914

In 1904 the CGT began preparing a great strike for the eight-hour day, scheduled for 1 May 1906. Many hoped this would be the general strike to bring down capitalism. But the strike was triggered prematurely when, on 10 March 1906, a gas explosion at Courrières killed between 1,060 and 1,300 miners. Across the country, 61,000 miners went on strike. Soon hundreds of thousands in all trades were striking.

Georges Clemenceau, then minister of the interior, covered the striking areas with troops—fifty thousand for Paris alone—and arrested seven hundred union leaders. Workers felt deserted by politicians: even the socialists had shown too much willingness to collaborate with the government. Labor would go it alone. The CGT Congress at Amiens in October 1906 voted overwhelmingly for a broad resolution that became known as the Amiens Charter. It was the most influential statement of the syndicalist ideal. It envisaged that the union movement should not only struggle for better conditions but also prepare "integral emancipation, which can be realized only by the expropriation of capitalist property" through a general strike. The union, "today the group of resistance, will be, in the future, the group of production and of distribution, the base of social reorganization." Direct, grassroots action, especially strikes, would in turn further strengthen unions, leading to the general strike. Through these unions, workers would replace owners, managers, and the whole capitalist structure with a democratic economic structure run by the workers themselves.

This was the key to syndicalist thought. Workers did not need and indeed should keep aloof from electoral politics, even from links to the Socialist Party. This view had long-lasting effects. Only the year before Amiens, the French socialists had unified into one party, the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO; French Section of the Workers' International). The Amiens Charter kept French unions independent of political parties and thus prevented the formation of a labor or social democratic party as in the United Kingdom and Germany. The charter also inspired some intellectuals, led by Georges Sorel, to the view that revolutionary violence would cleanse and purify society. Sorel believed that the general strike was only a myth to inspire workers. Such ideas, however, were extremely rare among workers themselves.

Clemenceau became prime minister after Amiens. During his three-year reign, troops brutally repressed many strikes, killing strikers and demonstrators on several occasions. The practical failure of direct action eroded the prestige of the hard-line syndicalists, and in July 1909 Griffuelhes was replaced as secretary of the CGT by Léon Jouhaux, a more pragmatic syndicalist, but repression continued to shift the balance of union power from syndicalists to moderates. By 1914 the CGT used the rhetoric of syndicalism only to cover the reality of pragmatic collective bargaining. When World War I began, far from declaring the general strike as many had once expected, the CGT cooperated with the government in the union sacrée (sacred union). Syndicalism ceased to be a major force in France, but it still had far to go in Italy and Spain.

syndicalism in italy

Syndicalism in Italy was a response to a new era in politics after the turn of the nineteenth century. Reformist socialists of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI; Italian Socialist Party) began cooperating with a progressive government. This policy worked well for workers in developed industrial areas but not for nonunionized labor, poor rural laborers in the south, or the unemployed, groups within which anarchists had developed significant support. From their ranks emerged syndicalists led by Alceste de Ambris, who was involved in the first syndicalist newspaper, Il sindacato operato (The workers' union; first appeared 1905).

Expelled from the PSI and defeated when the reformists created the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGL; General Confederation of Labor), the syndicalists, acting through a plethora of local organizations, encouraged major strikes among rural laborers and artisans. These reached a high point with a strike of 20,000 rural laborers in Parma in May and June 1908. The strike was defeated by the united front of employers. The syndicalists sought to regain support, setting up the Committee for Direct Action as a faction within the CGL in 1910. Antimilitarist ideas brought more workers to their movement after Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire to make Libya an Italian colony in 1911. In November 1912 syndicalists split from the CGL and set up the Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI; Italian Syndicalist Union), which achieved a membership of one hundred thousand the following year.

By this point many political anarchists had joined the USI. Syndicalists found that however much their principles derived from anarchism, they were more interested in trade union issues, so the USI was torn between anarchist efforts to foment a revolution and unionist attempts to win battles with employers. In 1914 troops killed three workers at anarchist antimilitarist demonstrations, and anarchists called a general strike. The results took everyone by surprise. More than a million workers went on strike in what became known as "Red Week," June 1914. Although Benito Mussolini (the future dictator) in Milan, Alceste de Ambris in Parma, and Errico Malatesta in Ancona proved effective leaders in their areas, "Red Week" achieved only disillusionment. Nevertheless, it showed that syndicalism was a strong and growing force at the outbreak of World War I.

syndicalism in spain

In the 1870s and 1880s Russian émigrés Mikhail Bakunin's and Peter Kropotkin's competing anarchist ideas inspired many in the nascent labor movement in Spain; those of Marx inspired others. The Marxists were at the core that in 1888 founded the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT; General Union of Workers). It was not, however, until 1907 that, inspired by the Amiens Charter, Spanish anarchists and others founded the Solidaridad Obrera (SO; Workers' Solidarity) in Barcelona. Similar anarchist groups quickly sprang up across the country, and in November 1910 they coalesced as the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT; National Confederation of Labor).

The CNT aimed at unity with the UGT but became instead a competing trade-union central based on revolutionary syndicalism. In 1911, after its second congress, a general strike broke out. The government accused the CNT of fomenting the strike and declared the organization illegal. The CNT had only twenty-six thousand members, so it is more likely that many workers shared similar views than that the CNT actually caused the strike. But it was not until 1915 that the CNT was rebuilt. It played a major role after World War I, culminating in its major role on the Republican side in the Spanish civil war.

See alsoAnarchism; Anarchosyndicalism; Labor Movements; Strikes.

bibliography

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Charles Sowerwine