The Principles of Anarcho-Syndicalism
The Principles of Anarcho-Syndicalism
The anarcho-syndicalist union is based on three fundamental principles: Self-Management, Federalism and Mutual Aid.
Self-management means self-government. The anarcho-syndicalist union desires that individuals, workplaces, villages, cities and all other entities, manage their own affairs, without the interference of any authority.
Federalism presupposes autonomy, and is the bond which joins in free union all groups, as much economic as social. Federalism is the basic principle that prevails within the structure of the CNT, which is nothing but a confederation of sovereign organizations, not subject to a central power.
Mutual Aid is seen as a better system of development, in contrast to the competition which exists in the capitalist system. Mutual Aid sees the world as a whole, in spite of different races, languages and cultures.
In consequence, anarcho-syndicalism is anti- authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-militarist, anti- centralist, anti-theocratic, anti-nationalist... Or if you prefer, libertarian, communists, pacifist, secular, internationalist...
Direct Action: The Tactics of Anarcho-Syndicalism
The word tactic signifies action taken in the terrain of specific situations. Direct action presupposes action without intermediaries, the direct solution of problems by the interested parties. Direct Action is a rejection at the same time of the activities of parliaments, magistrates, [bureaucratic] committees, governments, etc. in the affairs of the people.
Example:
- You decide one month to go on strike requesting improvements in the terms of employment and to stop implementation of management's production plan. The same strike with the same strike call can be carried forth by means of Direct Action, made in an assembly of all the workers and their delegates elected from the different departments of the workplace; or by Mediated Action, in which the strike is called by the [official] enterprise committee, which negotiates without informing nor asking the opinion of the assembly, and with the intervention of the [government] labor authorities who can dictate a settlement.
- You have been fired. Direct Action means that your problem is taken up as the problem of the anarcho-syndicalist union and by your fellow workers, who spread the word, exert pressure, job actions, sabotage, etc. in order to get your reinstatement. Mediated Action goes directly to a lawyer and awaits the action of a magistrate.
The only type of action approved by the anarcho-syndicalist union, is the tactic of Direct Action, in all its congresses since 1910.
Nevertheless, and to be frank, it is necessary to consider the times and our [meager] forces. We have to resort at times to a type of mediated action by way of our legal offices and the labor magistrates.
We always prefer to solve our problems without resort to lawyers, who tend to put our sovereignty into the hands of the judicial system, prolonging processes which could be more quickly resolved without it, and spending a great deal of money to maintain an expensive, parasitical, pernicious and useless legal system.
But there are times in which for lack of a resolution, or support from the people... there remains no other remedy than to resort to a lawyer, or else do nothing. For this reason on occasion it has been proposed to accept into the accords of congresses, the use of direct action preferably, but mediated action when other remedies don't exist. It has not been done, because as long as Direct Action is held to be the only tactic acceptable to anarcho-syndicalist militants, we will maintain a commitment to it, and every time that we act contrary to Direct Action, we are aware that we are breaking an accord. If we admit a type of tactics against our structure and we swallow the indigestible, it is possible that when we have enough strength and enough people to carry out our point of view without supporting legal norms, we will not be able to see it and will routinely appeal to the tribunals.
Direct Action is always quicker, cheaper and more effective than recourse to mediation. It has the disadvantage of requiring more energy and courage to carry out.
The final goal of anarcho-syndicalism
NOT TRANSLATED:-
?...Después de este congreso no será ya pan lo que reclamaremos. Desde hoy reclamaremos justicia, reclamaremos equidad. Luchamos desventajosamente, pero afirmo que tenemos el derecho a la vida y para conquistar este derecho, sólo nos queda el recurso legal y supremo de rebelarnos. Debemos prepararnos para cruentas luchas. El mundo burgués se hunde por sí solo. No hará falta que empujemos mucho para derribar el puntal carcomido que lo sostiene. El principio de autoridad está tan relajado...? (El delegado del gobierno y las fuerzas de represión intentan suspender el mitin y ocasiona un buen conflicto) ?...No pretendo dar lugar a que la autoridad cometa una torpeza; pero
From this congress it will not only be bread that we will demand. From today we will demand justice, we will demand equality. We struggle ?, but firm in we hold the right to livelihood and in order to achieve this right, only ? us legal recourse and ? of . We have to prepare for struggle ?. The bourgeois world ? for this alone. It will not lack that we ? much in order to ? the ? that sustains it. The principle of authority is so ? (The delegate of the government and the forces of repression intend to suspend the meeting and it causes a great conflict) I don’t pretend to give struggle to which the authority ? a ;
tengo el deber y el derecho de manifestar que el principio de autoridad está podrido hasta la misma médula. Es preciso que nos demos cuenta del momento actual. Cuando el mundo burgués se derrumbe, cuando toda esta escoria social injusta e inhumana se hunda para siempre, se hará necesario patentizar ante el mundo que ha sido aplastada por el peso de sus propias faltas. No somos nada, somos esclavos; cuando hombres y cuando ancianos exprimidos por el privilegio y la desigualdad, durante toda nuestra vida de miserias y sufrimientos, llevamos, hasta que bajamos a la tumba, el estigma de esta sociedad inicua y cruel. Se hace necesario pues, camaradas, que el día de la liquidación de las injusticias, el pueblo derrumbe los restos del régimen decrépito aventando las cenizas para que jamás pueda reconstruirse. ? (Angel Pestaña, en el mitin de clausura del congreso de 1918, en Barcelona).
But I have the ? and the right to demonstrate that the principle of authority is able? since the same ?. It is precisely that we ? account of the actual moment. When the bourgoeis world ?, when all this ? social injustice and inhumanity ? always, it will be necessary to ? before the world that it had been ? by the ? ot its very faults. We are not nothing, we are ?, when mean and when ? ? by privilege and inequality, during all our life of misery and suffering, we ?, since which we ? to the ?, the stigma of this society ? and cruel. It becomes necessary then, comrades, that the day of the liquidation of injustice, the people ? the ? of the ? so that ? it can reconstruct (Angel Pestana, in the meeting of ? of the congress of 1918 in Barcelona)
Anarcho-syndicalism wants to transform society. It wants to abolish the capitalist system and the state. It believes that no one has the right to impose their will on others in order to rob and exploit their labor, and to maintain this system supported by an apparatus of organized violence and terror which is the state and its police system. There exists a large quantity of literature dedicated to a critique of the capitalist system, and we are not going to dwell much on this theme.
In order to arrive at this transformation, the anarcho-syndicalist union affirms that there exists no other means than the Social Revolution, an abrupt change by which the authoritarian structures are demolished. It is the end of a process and the beginning of something new. The revolution occurs when the people collectively see it as necessary, when the moral, ethical, philosophical and economic basis of the system is seen as bankrupt. It is not a predictable phenomenon, nor realized by a minority, but you prepare for it, then there comes a moment when it is possible, something breaks loose, and it happens. The role of the anarcho-syndicalist union is to build upon the contradictions of the system, to make clear to the people the falsehood, the deception, the exploitation committed by a ruling minority, and to be present during the revolutionary process to incite it if possible, and to avoid on the side of the revolution the self-seeking benefit of minorities, vanguards, parties, etc., and on the other, when the counter-revolution comes, that the people lose as little as possible of what they gained. The revolution must abolish property, the state, governments, police, the army, universities, churches, banks, industries, the competitive and individualist mentality... and establish new structures and forms of life.
The revolution is thought, liberty and desire in action. People who have lived through revolutionary times describe them as a festival of lights, sounds and joy. It is not a bath of blood and violence such as they show on television. The people stop in the street and talk, this happens always and is very important. They talk about everything, they talk with people of other languages and they understand them because they want to communicate with you. They talk about things that nobody before had ever said and that now comes out naturally, without effort. They accomplish things which days before would have been inconceivable... Whoever has seen such moments on any occasion will never forget them.
The Italian raised his head and said quickly:
- Italiano?
I answered in my bad Spanish:
- No, ingles. Y tu?
As we went out, he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard. Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was as though his spirit and mind had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy…
So far as one could judge, the people were contented and hopeful. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and in the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings, and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barber’ shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being prostitutes. To anyone from the hard-boiled, sneering civilisation of the English-speaking races there was something rather pathetic in the literalness with which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrases of revolution. (George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, 1937)
The revolutionary act is an act of the people. It is realized by the existing people with all their defects. There has been a debate over the centuries whether the revolution could be brought about through normal beings, who are more or less as forceful, authoritarian, violent as is this sick society, or by people who are better formed and who carry within them the form of future behavior and have been changed by education and other methods. In general, although there are as many opinions in the anarcho-union as there are persons, the CNT holds the opinion that the revolution will be realized by the people as they are today, and that the way to form persons in liberty and responsibility is first to have a social transformation. That is to say that it is first necessary to change the social structure and the people will change afterward. It likewise happens that the revolution purifies people, at least until the time in which the counter-revolution comes, and the longer the revolution lasts, the better they become.
In spite of this idea, the anarcho-syndicalist union makes an effort to turn the union into a school of the people, transmitting through it by means of constant debate with other schools of thought, and foreshadowing the future society by creating here and now, a structure similar to that which we hope to substitute to authoritarian society, a new moral and ethical way of life.
The capitalist state has taken on the responsibility over the decades, with the valued aid of the establishment unions and political parties, of inculcating us with the idea that revolution doesn't bring anything more than disasters, and that in our developed western civilizations, democracy is the only viable invention. The CNT is certain that the social revolution is the only worthwhile, sincere and realistic future for the human species, that the revolution is not the bloodbath depicted in films and history books. The revolution must be treated as a process that is gestating now, that will arrive, as it always arrives, and we should be prepared to meet it without fear, and add fuel to the blaze. Whether it will be provoked by a strike, by a military coup, by a crash in the stock market, by the refusal to pay taxes, by a capitalist war, by factory occupations, by an invasion of immigrants, is something that we can't know. That which is certain is that a large CNT, merged with the people, will be the revolution's best guarantee of triumph, and that what has happened in previous attempts, in which the state has reasserted itself and the same conditions in a different guise, does not happen again.
The structure that society will take once the revolution is carried out, is that which the confederation calls, Communismo Libertario [Libertarian Communism], an economic system in which each person will take from society what they need, and will give in exchange what they are able.
The CNT and the Spanish people had the opportunity of developing the most profound and beautiful revolution in human history, during the period of social war from 1936 to 1939. They put into practice the ideas which have been expressed above, and demonstrated that a free life and equality doesn't depend on anything more than free will. For capitalism it was necessary to wage a war of extermination, in order to destroy Utopia for the moment.
