Syndicalism: a Critical Analysis, Part 3 of 3:
Libertarian communist perspectives on anarcho-syndicalism and workers struggle organisations

Continued from: Part 1 & Part 2

CRITICISM OF SYNDICALIST methods from anarchists, starting with Malatesta, has not been necessarily due to any anti-organisational tendency or sympathy with 'Marxism'. In Europe, the militants of the Dielo Truda group of Russian anarchists in exile began to question the identification of anarchism with syndicalism and the attitude towards syndicalism which libertarians had historically taken. Their Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists (1926) described "revolutionary syndicalism" as "only one of the forms of revolutionary class struggle" which, of itself contains no "determining theory" . They suggested that anarcho-syndicalism had failed to fully "anarchise" unionism and that a specific anarchist organisation was needed to do this. They also argued that such a specific anarchist organisation should attempt to "exercise theoretical influence on all trade unions" since "...if trade unionism does not find in anarchist theory a support in opportune times it will turn, whether we like it or not, to the ideology of a political statist party." To a great extent the latter claim can be seen to be true when the evolution of unions such as the French CGT, or the exodus of syndicalist militants into Bolshevik parties, is taken into consideration.

The Organisational Platform did not however have a great deal to say about the function of syndicalism or trade unionism for that matter. The experience of the council movement in Germany and the various ideas that came out of it appear to have passed them by.

Simultaneously, the Japanese anarchist communist theoretician Hatta Shuzo was arguing that syndicalism, being a reflection of the structure of industrial capitalism, ran the risk of replicating hierarchical social relations, particularly through a continued division of labour.

He argued that, because syndicalists called for the mines to be controlled by the miners, the steelworks to be controlled by the steelworkers etc. this division might end in the recreation of the state as arbiter between conflicting interests. As he put it: "In a society which is based on the division of labour, those engaged in vital production (since it forms the basis of production) would have more power over the machinery of co-ordination than those engaged in other lines of production. There would therefore be a real danger of the appearance of classes." (Collected Works: Anarchist Communism, Tokyo 1983)

The anarchist communists in Japan tended to favour a return to the land following a successful revolution, with industrial workers bringing their skills and technology back to their villages. In a predominantly rural society in an historical period where factory workers were generally still connected, through family, to the land, this perspective may have made some sense. Primitivists take note.

Working class self-organisation and permanent economic organisations

Most (but, unfortunately, by no means all) anarcho-syndicalists would agree with the ACF that the existing Trade Unions are not vehicles for social revolution. Some may also agree that permanent economic organisations (i.e. unions) have a tendency to become integrated into the mechanisms of exploitation, through their role as mediators or representatives, and to develop bureaucratic structures and modes of operation. However, they would argue that, because the anarcho-syndicalist union is simultaneously an economic and an 'ideological' organisation it is resistant to co-option and bureaucratisation. The 'conscious' anarchists within the anarcho-syndicalist union are seen as the safeguard against the organisation "selling-out" and the non-hierarchical structure safeguards against a division between the rank and file and its delegates, preventing the development of a strata with separate interests from the rest of the membership. Although this idea of the 'conscious' anarchist minority in the union has been common in the syndicalist movement it has also been rejected by many 'pure' syndicalists.

Degeneration

However, we would argue that all unions, regardless of their initial political orientation (and that would include anarcho-communist) have a tendency to become inexorably dragged into a mediating role and to eventually become a break on autonomous class struggle. This integration into capitalism is indeed