There is an old argument amongst anarchists. The argument starts with the nature of unions, and ends with the conclusion that revolutionaries shouldn’t attempt to build libertarian alternatives outside the unions, and instead should enter into the established unions and agitate for anarchism there. Though the argument doesn’t derive from Malatesta, he wrote it most succintly and is an inspiration for many. Looking at the argument we can see the missing pieces, and why this orientation towards unions is mistaken.

Malatesta’s argument goes as follows.

1. A union is set up to improve working conditions

2. In order for it to make good on their demands, the unions have to bring together large enough groups.

3. If workers must be anarchists before they join then

   1. It would be unnecessary since the workers are already revolutionary, and could just launch a revolution. The union would just be a duplicate of a political organization.

   2. The members would merely be anarchists on paper.

      1. Assume that the union has a revolutionary program.

         1. In times when it is inactive, it is possible for active revolutionaries to maintain the program.

         2. In times when the union is active and attracts large numbers, there will be a number of conflicting ideas.

            1. Short term interests will be more expedient and win more gains, and thereby win out over the program.

The conclusion of the argument is the anarchists should not form unions built on anarchist principles (even ones built on a libertarian character without anarchist ideology). “In general to me it seems better that the anarchists remain, when they can, within the largest possible groupings” (Malatesta 1926¹). Within the unions anarchist argue for anarchist tactics and ideas, and organize against cooptation and authoritarian currents.

The structure of the argument then is to begin with the nature of the union [“a union is set up to defend the day to day interests of the workers and to improve their conditions” (Malatesta 1925²).], elaborate the anarchist’s goals in unions [“in the labour movement I see only a means of raising the morale of the workers, accustom them to free initiative and solidarity in a struggle for the good of everyone and render them capable of imagining, desiring and putting into practice an anarchist life” (Malatesta 1925b³).], derive a contradiction between an anarchist union and a union’s nature [“A labour organisation that were to style itself anarchist, that was and remained genuinely anarchist and was made up exclusively of dyed-in-the-wool anarchists could be a form… of [an] anarchist grouping; but it would not be the labour movement and it would lack the purpose of such a movement, which is to attract the mass of the workers into the struggle, and… to create a vast field for propaganda and to make new anarchists” (Malatesta 1925b)], and conclude that we should organize within the biggest non-ideological unions.

Malatesta’s conclusion is actually ambiguous. Within the same paragraph he asserts

“The whole point at issue is whether it suits our aims, in terms of action and propaganda, for the labour organisations to be open to all workers, irrespective of philosophical or social creed, or whether they should be split into different political and social tendencies”

and finishes with the prior quoted

“In general to me it seems better that the anarchists remain, when they can, within the largest possible groupings” (Malatesta 1926).

He somehow misses the logical leap between the largest unions, and unions merely open to all workers. The CNT and the IWW of the time had policies of being open to all workers willing to join, though having revolutionary ideology. The issue is further confused when he agrees with Vittorio when the author states ““I disagree that the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) in Spain should directly call itself anarchist, when, unfortunately, the immense majority of its members do not know what this means, what libertarian ideology is about.”” (Malatesta 1926⁴), and yet does not call for the CNT to dissolve and enter into the UGT.

There are three main errors in Malatesta’s argument that will lead us to different conclusions. Malatesta botches the role of history in union’s structure, the function of struggle in transforming the consciousness of its participants, and the variations in the forms of workers organizations.

1. Ideology is less a product of will than of history.

In his reply to de Santillan, Malatesta claims he recognizes this point. It may be that he did, but he fails to see the problem for his argument. The basic idea is that unions can be revolutionary to the extent that the class or sections of the class are revolutionary. This is a historical matter. History and society develops unevenly, there will always be sections of the working class moving into and away from various revolutionary praxis embedded in their organizations. Likewise the success and failure of these movements depend on their context, i.e. The ruling class, the other workers organizations, the region’s position in global capital, etc. When we move away from the abstract and timeless perspective Malatesta uses, one leg of his argument crumbles (that it is not possible to have mass unions that have revolutionary ideas and practice).

2. Malatesta misses the role of struggle radicalizing workers consciousness.

This makes growth without watering down principles possible, since workers in participating can be radicalized (not saying it will, just that it is possible, which destroys the fork in his argument). This is a similar issue as above with Malatesta’s lack of understanding of struggle across time. Workers’ ideas are not static, but rather shift in a dynamic between the notions they have, their activity, and the ideas they encounter. Throughout history workers have built libertarian organizations not necessarily from anarchist agitation within movements so much as being radicalized by the dynamics of struggle itself (though of course there are other examples too). This means that it is also possible for workers in libertarian unions to develop revolutionary consciousness without being required to be anarchists before joining. Since libertarian unions’ structure/principles are voluntarily built, there is always a struggle around the orientation of the union. That doesn’t mean however (as Malatesta argues) that unions by their nature will cease being revolutionary when struggle progresses. Otherwise we would not have seen libertarian institutions grow at all, they would have turned reformist while growing and never had the chance to be repressed. This isn’t negated by the fact that the CNT or whoever did in fact turn towards reformist activities, since in fact that was true by default. All revolutionary movements either produced reformism or were destroyed. There are other factors that explain cooptation (and this was not in fact Malatesta’s argument, he argues unions will become reformist before reaching revolutionary conclusions).

It is also worth pointing out that alternative libertarian institutions such as anarchosyndicalist unions, workers councils, militias, peasants’ councils, etc., formed perhaps the only significant anarchist movements. Given this history, the burden of proof falls on those who claim Malatesta’s strategy, which as of yet has no significant historical precedent.

3. Not all unions were created equal.

Since Malatesta died before seeing the integration of unions into the social partnership of the state and capital, it is not useful to view Malatesta’s unions as identicle to ours. For that reason, it is likewise naïve to think that one can merely exist within organizations that are setup for and schooled in repressing radical organizing and carry out propaganda effectively. Over 80 years of communist infultration into the unions failed to produce any significant shifts in the unions nor revolutionary movements. Again the burden of proof lies with anarchists who think otherswise, and who have next to nothing to show for anarchist attempts at such.

Malatesta’s arguments rely on the idea that all unions are the same, some just want ideology. But in fact the structure, methods, and aims of unions vary considerably. The fundamental division in our time is between unions (or workers’ organizations) that seek to mediate between capital and workers, and those that are spaces for autonomous organizing that don’t exist beyond the activities of workers. The former is the traditional American union, which exists mostly as a bureaucratic layer of paid staff with specialized skills who negotiate a contract for the workers. The contracts exchange workers control for largely economic gains. Workers interact with the unions, and struggle for changes through (and sometimes against it), but the union remains a third party with seperate interests of its own. The 20^th century is filled with examples of the unions are highly efficient repressive organizations for class cooptation and collaboration.

We can likewise show our own fork. If you try to bore within the existing repressive unions, either you do so autonomously (with workers’ own seperate structures to organize with) or you don’t. If you work within the union’s framework, you work on their terms and must fight against their superior resources both economically and in alliance with the boss and the state if you are successful. If you build a parallel structure, then you are pursuing what Malatesta argued against, it is a union of one form or another.

The conclusion we should draw is that we need our own autonomous organizations built on a libertarian basis. Like Malatesta though I have some skepticism about organizations that are built to win reformist gains within capitalism. This is why there has been recent debate within the present day anarchosyndicalist movement around the structure of anarchist unions. Instead of trying to be bodies that represent the workers and that try to become the institutional framework for boss-worker relations, the union should be the vehicle of struggle of the workers but not for the workers. We should build workers organizations that (a) build consciousness through struggle itself, (b) can initiate and widen struggle, and (c) create a framework for workers/community councils. The union is the historical memory of our experiences in struggle, maintaining resources for learning from struggle and pushing further fights, and for defending against the coordinated attacks of the capitalists and state. These conclusions are not far from what the councilists came to from similar premises that Malatesta has. What sets anarchosyndicalists apart from others is our belief that it is possible to build libertarian mass organizations that will prefigure and train us for the task of constructing a new society from the ashes of the old.

http://www.sojournertruth.net/tarp.html

Comments on the STO’s Towards a Revolutionary Party

Consciousness and revolutionaries

“The daily struggles of the workers against the capitalists do not develop to the point where the class is sufficiently organized and conscious to undertake the revolutionary reconstruction of society. From this it is clear that the struggle for a socialist revolution is not, ‘inherent’ in the spontaneous class struggle. Whether or not the circumstances and conditions of the daily conflicts between workers and capitalists develop into the basis for revolutionary struggle depends, fundamentally, on the intervention of conscious revolutionaries.”

This is false because:

a. workers have in the past organized spontaneously and launched revolts (say Hungary, France, etc). Whatever these insurrections where they went beyond trade union consciousness and cannot be attributed to the interventions of conscious revolutionaries. One could say that revolutionaries had sewn seeds or some such business, but this is different from the STO/leninist thesis that it is a necessary condition of revolution. Many revolutions had no party and had no centralized strategic intervention. Ones that did were no more successful. I’m not sure what the casuality is, but it ain’t like they say it is.

b. it implicitly accepts the logic that consciousness is external to the class and has to be brought from the outside, which is circular since class is throughout society and therefore problematic as to how we revolutionaries magically break out of our class conditioning to get the truth consciousness.

I actually waffle on this stuff between:

1. To build a good society, we need people to be able to control and participate in the decision making of society (direct democracy). To do that implies faith that it is possible for the people to self-organize. If people are able to self-organize, they can self-organize revolution and mass movements. If they can’t do that, then we can’t build such a society. If we need revolutionaries to build these, then we can’t build anarchism.

2. Spontaneous struggles tend to ebb and flow. When they spill over into revolts, They are easily coopted, diffused, and channeled into pre-existing authoritarian foundations. Intervention by organized revolutionaries is needed to disrupt authoritarianism and keep libertarian ideas present in popular movements.

I believe there is no contradiction between the two, but it requires demonstrating that anarchist political organization is a part of the self-organization of the masses, and not an externality. I think we can do this if we understand that the class is not homogenous, but rather is constantly evolving groupings, consciousness, and activity. The society we want to see is an emergence or evolve of society as a system, which is a product of the interaction of all the organized elements in society. I think that answers these problems.

Later they say “The second factor determining the content of working class ideology is the potential of that class to become a ruling class. This potential is manifested in, and demonstrated by, ideas and actions which run counter to the capitalist conception of the world. As has been said, these ideas and actions become mass phenomena during periods of sharp struggle…often being articulated as the explicit basis of the struggle. ”

Which is a contradiction of their earlier thesis, since this brought to its logical conclusion implies the development of revolutionary consciousness (you could still say that ruling class ideas win out without a party, but that merely delays the problem). I believe STO abandoned these positions in the 80s under the influence of autonomia.

It is also not consistent with:

“The two essential parts of our approach to the transformation of groups of exploited and oppressed workers into a revolutionary social bloc have now been clarified. The characteristics of the social bloc already exist in the attitudes, ideas, and experiences which are a part of the consciousness of the class. They will not have to be developed from scratch, or lectured into the workers. These autonomous characteristics are generally incorporated within, and subordinated to, the features of working class consciousness which are imprinted on the workers by the dominant ideology and culture, but the development of mass struggle tends to bring them out as competing political tendencies. ”

and

“The party must be in close contact with the day-today life and struggles of the working class in order to "appreciate its tasks." Its intervention in these struggles must always be critical, because, in themselves, they are not sufficient to develop revolutionary class consciousness. ”

They try to bridge it via:

“The basic strategic function of the party, then, is to take hold of each of these features of the struggle, clarify its revolutionary implications and the categorical nature of the break with old patterns of thinking and acting which it represents, and incorporate it into a more systematic challenge to capitalism. This is not primarily a job of agitation and propaganda, although clearly they are a part of what must be done. ”

They see the work of revolutionaries less as pedagogy, than with basically building a mass organization on a revolutionary basis (more iww than cnt) and by embodying revolutionary politics in struggle [which is good and i agree with]

“First, it must develop programs of activity and forms of mass organization which incorporate these features of working class consciousness as unifying and activating principles — as the basis for continuing the struggle. Second, the party must link these fragmentary elements together into a revolutionary dual power. In this fashion the party can begin to teach the working class that socialism is within its power. ”

Domination of ruling class ideas

“Finally, despite the growing crisis and the heightened level of mass struggle, the great bulk of the people are still under the sway of capitalist ideology. On the surface, this might not appear to be the case since it is true that there is a growing alienation from official and orthodox values, particularly within the Black community and among the youth. And beyond this more-or-less conscious alienation, a general disaffection affects the entire working class.

However, rejection of the official culture is not usually linked to the mass affirmation of a clear positive alternative worldview and lifestyle. Though there has been a tremendous growth in the numbers of those who are alienated from major features of capitalist culture, few have sufficiently escaped from capitalist ideological domination to be able to see the practicability of an alternative society.”

National Liberation struggles- they failed to see how these struggles would be easily recooperated within global capital. Some of these truly were threatening, but the statist nature of these revolutions allowed them to be coopted by the USSR and western powers.

Failure to develop mass organizations

“The lack of continuing popular participation in struggle, which truly mass organizations would make possible, increases the difficulties of unifying the sections of the working class which are presently divided from, and more or less hostile to, each other. Without such forms the mass movement takes on a sporadic character with peaks of activity in some areas cancelled out by fragmentation and demoralization in others.”

I like this.

The Ruling Class

“The first point to understand is that the capitalist class controls the state apparatus and dominates, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, the entire institutional framework of capitalist society… The capitalists also read Marx, Lenin, and Mao. To a degree they are class conscious and thus they are aware of the instability of their class rule, and have developed a variety of programs, to maintain their dominance. This does not mean that capitalist rule is purely rational and calculated. On the contrary, the partial and selfish interests of sections of the class, and the pressures of objective limitations on capitalist policy alternatives, as well as errors and prejudices, each enter into the determination of the specific content of class rule. Despite such limitations, the capitalist class is constantly implementing programs to undermine, divert, divide, isolate, and repress any potential revolutionary opposition, and to absorb and contain this opposition’s potential social base. Naturally, this is particularly true in periods of crisis.”

Their descriptions give a picture of capital as a conscious body of people plotting oppression. I think this is true to an extent, but distorting. I’d say that capital is largely an emergent product of decision makers and property owners. At the level of a class they act united, coopt, etc. But if you look at it on the ground you’d see diversity. They make a gesture towards this, but their focus remains on having unitary ideas and actions.

I also think that cooptation can autonomously from any overt efforts of the ruling class. The unions, racist movements, patriarchal movements, etc., arise from working class struggles. Hence the need to appeal to “false consciousness”. It makes more sense to just talk about how people can reproduce ideas and ways of behaving (which can come from any class), and that there are emergent forces that come out of the interactions of groups.

The necessity of organization

“However, one conclusion is possible. Whatever the improvements in the prospects for a revolution due to the development of a capitalist crisis, these will not be sufficient to insure the victory of the working class without definite organizational and ideological conditions that have been laid prior to its onset. A revolutionary opposition with the ability and the will to fight for power will not develop by itself during a crisis, nor can it built from scratch during such a period. ”

I’m split on this. If true we have troubles. If it’s necessary to build prefigurative experiences on a mass scale, then we have to have the resources and space to lay that foundation that can give revolutionary education to people. Yet, if we’re living under capitalism, any foundation big enough to have such an effect would be such a great threat, it would take a revolution to maintain it.

Let’s say its smaller then. What ensures that the people who are or aren’t experiencing it with act in the interest of society as a whole? This isn’t a problem for leninists since they have faith that communist-lead masses will lead to a ruling class for the workers (they don’t distinguish between of- and for-). But as anarchists, who see the potential of a new oppressive power arising, we have a problem. No minority can drag a majority to power. So either:

1. we can sew a base large enough to prefigure anarchist society (which would probably be crushed)

2. we gain space for ourselves through neutralizing our oppressors, then we can build it (i.e. The transition period, Malatesta/FdCA… which has the problem of how to transition out and how to retain our freedom and movement with the emergence of a non-capitalist state, and if that’s even possible)

3. The conditions that would repress our movement are removed objectively (determinism, aka faith)

4. Spontaneously consciousness will be developed in a grand rupture (faith?)

So we’re stuck between spontaneity, determinism, the reemergence of the state, or impending destruction?

Status Quo:

“It seems that the main determinant of the political stance of Marxist groups is their size and influence - or lack of same - rather than matters of political position, it is tempting to credit this to opportunism, but, without denying the reality of opportunism, this process is so general that opportunism of a deliberate and conscious variety can only be a part of the explanation. The basic cause is to be found in common notions of the strategic functions of the party that are accepted by a great variety of different, even hostile, groups.”

Yup. This is true of anarchists too. Whether through attaining leadership positions in the unions, or seperating themselves from the class via joining the union and NGO bureaucracies, the basic revolutionary work becomes distorted by the organizations they become integrated with. The cause though i don’t think is the political orientations of radicals (STO’s thesis) but rather the power dynamics of institutions of power themselves. Cooptation is emergent from the hierarchies and structures in these bodies (chomsky shows this well in manufacturing dissent about journalists). Our position should be to avoid positions of leadership in hierarchical organizations and to avoid working in these service organizations of the class that coopt authonomous movements.

THE C.P. STRATEGY

I read this as an indictment of the strategy of anarchists to radicalize the business unions in the US too.

The CP strategy is:

“-the party intervenes in the mass struggle in order to link the classes and strata that are objectively oppressed by monopoly capital into an anti-monopoly coalition. [could read it as unite the class into broadest possible organs of struggle, i.e. unions]

-At first, this coalition would be organized around a basic reform program to ‘curb’ monopoly power, but in the course of the struggle more and more of the participants in the coalition will begin to see the necessity of a struggle for working class power. [at first the struggles are on bread and butter issues but direct action and democracy in the unions bring more and more people to libertarian consciousness]

-The C.P. perspective is divided into two distinct parts. First, a broad coalition is organized. This coalition seeks ‘to curb monopoly’ It is not socialist or even implicitly anti-capitalist. Second, the development of this coalition makes it possible for the party to successfully raise the issue of the necessity and possibility of a socialist revolution.”

STO’s Critique

“-Since the formation of the coalition is so vital, the question of how (and whether) it may be formed becomes an urgent one.

-Unifying these disparate elements with such major internal contradictions will depend heavily on the ability of the party to pull the major components of the coalition together. [History does not favor this task. Unions as they develop politics crush opposition, and are prone to destructive splits]

-In other words, the only plausible road to the antimonopoly coalition depends on the C.P.’s winning stable organizational control over the most important elements of the desired coalition, and, in particular, over the trade unions. [hence the movement of some anarchists to attempt to run slates and win leadership in union locals]

-A number of problems are presented by this reliance on organizational control. It provides a strong pressure towards maneuvering and manipulating, towards unprincipled and, in our view, ultimately self-defeating alliances and arrangements. The whole period of uneasy alliance between the C.P. leadership and the CIO ‘center’ during the late thirties and early forties provides many examples of this. [it’s hard to see how an anarchist movement within the unions would end differently]

-The problem for the C.P. is that it must compete for mass leadership on essentially reformist grounds - who can ‘win’ the most - in order to make the first steps toward implementing its perspective. This entails a general exaggeration of the importance of reform victories and thus attempts to steer struggles into areas were the victories come easier because the power of capital is less endangered. It leads to the path of least resistance, lowest common denominator mode of organizing; to caution and conservatism; to a glorification of the routine conflict between labor and capital; to a picture of the struggle progressing inexorably ’step by step’ - just as rapidly as is ‘realistic.’ [oh snap!]

-In practice the role of the C.P. is to move all struggles to the right by pushing common denominator tactics and demands; that is, tactics that are more ‘legitimate’, and demands which are more ‘realistic.’

-However, if the goal of a socialist revolution is not projected within the struggle for immediate demands, how will its possibility and necessity ever be understood? And who will project such a goal, if not the revolutionaries?

The role of the party

“In our view, the primary role of the party in the mass movement is to discover and articulate the patterns of thought, action, and organization which embody the potential of workers to make a revolution. These patterns are manifested, embryonically, in the course of every genuine struggle. This characteristic content of mass struggle provides the only possible social basis for integrating the experiences of masses of workers into a coherent revolutionary ideology and culture. ”

I agree with this with the qualifier that the political organization is subservient to the mass organization (Within limits) and that the party is merely one element of many within the class arguing for and demonstrating the revolutionary practice, and not seeking to take leadership over the movement.

“The real work of the party involves linking these fragmentary autonomous elements and socializing them into a new culture of struggle. ”

via the mass organization.

The strike

STO pick out two features {demands and tactics}, they say that “once the ritual posturing of the union leadership is ended by the beginning of the strike, the demands generally turn out to be far less than what the workers need to make any real change in their situations.”, and that “…the main feature of the strike tactics of the union leadership are reliance on cooperation with management and the state to discourage or control mass participation and any attempts to generalize the struggle beyond the specific plant or industry. ” This is uncontroversial, it is just what happens. Whether we can change it is where anarchists disagree.

STO points to the internal organization of unions as a locus of cooptation. “Real struggle over demands and tactics are kept inside the inner-leadership caucuses in the union, and confrontation with management is limited to the top union-management bargaining meetings. The mass of the workers have no way to participate in or even to directly influence, these aspects of the strike. For them the entire process grows more institutionalized and alienated, more a matter of formal than substantive struggle. ”

Prefigurative struggle and consciousness are suppressed since “the present union leadership would combine with management to actively oppose it. But the more important obstacle is the entire institution of collective bargaining of which the normal strike is just a part. Collective bargaining is an inherently hostile terrain for the development of autonomous working class consciousness and organization, since its essence is the legal acceptance by the workers of the sanctity of the capitalist’s ownership of his capital. By tying themselves to a ‘better contract’ as the goal of the struggle, the workers bind themselves to capitalism”.

Upping the Ante

I like this section since it shows the problematic element of “militancy” without corresponding radicalization of the class. Militancy without popular support is merely blanquism.

Gramsci

""…does it not often happen that there is a contradiction between the intellectual fact and the norm of conduct? What then will the real conception of the world be: the one which is logically affirmed as an intellectual fact, or the one which is implicit in his actions? And since actions are always political actions, can we not say that the real philosophy of anyone is contained in his politics? This conflict between thought and action, that is, the coexistence of two conceptions of the world, one affirmed in words and the other explaining itself in effective actions, is not always due to bad faith. Bad faith can be a satisfactory explanation for some individuals taken singly, or even for more or less numerous groups, _ but it is not satisfactory when the contrast shows itself in the life of large masses; then it cannot be other than the expression of more profound contradictions of an historical and social order. It means that a social group, which has its own conception of the world, even though embryonic (which shows itself in actions, and so only spasmodically, occasionally, that is, when such a group moves as an organic unity) has, as a result of intellectual subordination and submission, borrowed a conception it also believes it is following, because it does follow it in ‘normal’ times, when its conduct is not independent and autonomous, but precisely subordinate and submissive." (Gramsci, THE MODERN PRINCE, page 61.)"

Couple things. I don’t dig Gramsci in part because of his leninist approach to consciousness. Here you can see that with the embryonic bit, except that I read that as tokenism? Is that merely tossing a bone to lenin? Like, really workers have revolutionary consciousness but i’ll call it embryonic to avoid being purged?

Also is he saying that workers follow ruling class ideas (which are alien to the class) during normal times because we are subjugated? Then in times of struggle when there’s more autonomy we can think our ideas?

What kind of freedom is it that frees up our ideas? What element of subjugation represses these ideas? Isn’t it more that these ideas are always there, but they become more prevalent during struggle? If that’s the case maybe they aren’t prevalent not because of repression, but because of lack of struggle which demonstrates them or makes them compelling. But then ideas aren’t about hegemony, but rather about modes of behaving.

Also what makes ideas inherently ours or not ours? Likewise can our ideas really be classified into a binary like that? I’d go out on a limb and say that even ruling class ideas are heterogeneous and contradictory. It seems like we don’t have object sets of ideas, but instead diverse ideas that arise out of social organization and experience, and that ebb and flow with our activities (and struggle).

Otherwise you won’t be able to explain things like fascism, white supremacy, multicultural bourgeoisie, etc

Centralism

Their analysis of the degeneration of communist parties is simplistic and crude. Rather than recognizing the role of power relations (or the possibility of a 3^rd alternative between loose federation of individuals and centralized party), they believe it is not prioritized and that if we adopt it as our ideas it would be better (which contrasts with their assessment of unions).

“Why is it then that most Leninist party organizations, and particularly those communist parties which model themselves after the CPSU, are rightly notorious both for their bureaucratic leadership and their a-critical membership?

There is really no mystery. While it is generally agreed that a critical membership and a genuinely collective organization are desirable goals, they are not seen as absolute necessities. ”

They persist in seeing these as issues of conception rather than form and merely assert the contradiction between an active engage group and centralized decision making power/discipline. “Decisions must be carried out with "iron discipline", but at the same time, every aspect of the work of the party must be under constant criticism. ”

We are trying to build a workers organization that can do away with the exploitation we live everyday. This exploitation runs deep, not just at our jobs, but in our homes, within us all. To take on this task, we’ve decided that we need to organize and both solve our immediate concerns at work (wages, hours, discrimination, quality of work, etc), and build a movement against the root causes of our exploitation, hierarchical  power and class relations. The two goals are connected. We build the movement by organizing on the job. Organizing through direct action and wide participation by our coworkers can build consciousness of the rottenness of this system. So our task is to help the organizing happen, and be a midwife for the lessons of the class struggle.

Our organizing stresses direct participation, developing leadership within the most oppressed sections of the class, avoiding the illusions and traps of the legalistic system with its contracts, paid bureaucracies, labor peace, and labor courts. We have to organize in the time we find between work, our frantic social lives, and trying to be a decent normal human every now and again. The bosses have massive resources, and all the time in the world. The organizing that does happen has become integrated into capital, with corresponding channels and venues to struggle that don’t threaten the general order. In most of the parts of the world we organize either struggle is diverted and contained within the contractual union system or is autonomous. Autonomous struggle is either fragmented and individualized, or fleeting and spontaneous. Spontaneous workplace flair ups are dealt with through destroying the social relationships between workers, capitulating on gains, restructuring, and outright repression.

Frequently we are able to organize, win grievances, and radicalize workers in the shop. After the grievances are won, the shop settles down, people move on, and activity reaches a lull. The problem for the union is that we want to build a militant movement rooted in these industries. Without long term commitment from workers, we can’t rely on solidarity or coordination necessary to press industrial demands, let alone transforming society to be something more livable.

Other unions solved this problem by embracing the solution that the state, business, and AFL-CIO union leaders developed in the 1930s as a way to contain workers revolt, and prevent it from overturning the social order. Unions need a stable base. By getting formal recognition and contracts, unions get more stability in terms of membership and finances. Being a member means much less in this context, basically you join by default, than when workers voluntarily join to be a part of organizing. Contracts trade something for something, usually you get better pay and benefits, and lose control over your job. Labor peace agreements put the union in the position of being enforcers of workplace discipline, and diffusers of shopfloor struggle. At its worst the union becomes a cop for the boss, and at the least must struggle against the contradictions of being a vehicle for workers to improve their lot and toeing the line with management based on bargaining. Contracts in most cases make it punishable by law to take action if your job is unsafe, if the boss leads an assualt on the workplace, etc.

The bargaining process creates institutional resistance to workers demands. The labor courts tend to privledge the rich, powerful, and easy-going, not workers who need results quickly (or they need a new job) and who are most powerful taking action together (which was bargained away for their contract). If the union starts to rock the boat and the grievances of a few individuals, management can make life hell during and before negotiations. The end result is that the union system as we’ve known it is unresponsive to our workplace demands, while winning us some spare change.

That would have been the end of the story if the economic system globally during the 1970s. Absenteeism, sabotage, wildcats, and other forms of spontaneous struggle (alongside open revolt in the 3rd world) became a major threat to capital. The levels of profits the capitalists were used to caused a rethinking of economic and political organization, and gave birth to Reaganomics or later neo-liberalism. The businesses figured out that through restructuring they no longer needed the unions or the welfare state system. Fololowing the restructuring an all out assualt has been led against unions and workers, which has problematized the way unions have done business for almost 70 years.

These problems are inherent to the process of revolutionary workers movements. The spanish union, the CNT, has essentially the same problem as ours, though on a different scale, in a different context, and with different character. During one of the congresses of the CNT, a debate broke out about marginalization and integration. Juan Gomez Casas, a CNT/FAI militant and noted author, characterized the debate in this way. In Casas’ words, José Bondía, another CNT militant, argued that “we need inevitably to become integrated into society. [José Bondía] finishes by saying that, as we are keen to become a social force, our non-marginalization (integration, I would say) has to be as deep as it possibly can be, and we must become part of the social structure”. (Solidaridad Obrera 1983)

This is similar to an arguments, or even a frustration or impatience, within the IWW. Wobblies sometimes feel that some of the tactics of business unions could be applied to our situation, but would be different because we have radical ideas or democracy. The idea is that we need to use whatever tactics will be most successful, to build up a force within society. By gaining a large stable base within society, we can press for more and more gains, in theory adding up to revolution in measured steps. Here the definition of success is raw numbers or material gains. The problem with thinking in this way is that not all numbers are the same. Having lots of members of an organization doesn’t in any way guarentee that they participate in the organization, or are particularly to tied to anything the organization stands for. Likewise material gains can (and often are) eroded by economic fluctuations, and when capital cannot integrate demands within the present system it forces restructuring, and expansion through creating new extraction sites and markets (primitive accummulation). We don’t want to build paper tiger organizations, but want workers’ organization with broad participation that challenges hegemonic ideas and builds consciousness through struggle. We want to build a movement that can overturn capital all together, not merely fight for reforms to have them taken away in short order. Casas brings out these contradictions well.

“Spanish society or the social structure as we know it today is the system. And Spanish society, or the system, is everything, that is, those who work, those who are unemployed, the marginalized, the oppressed, the oppressors, the armed forces, politicians, institutions, the State. Is it here that we are to integrate ourselves to become a ‘powerful’ force as he says? Above all, what does being ‘integrated’ mean? To be integrated is to unite the parts of a whole, make them live in harmony, so that they can fulfil their natural roles” (ibid).

It is important to understand though that every social system tolerates and assimilates a level and a venue of conflict. Not all struggle and opposition is a threat. Unions have been integrated into the system and are managers of capital alongside business (though whether that system will survive is up for debate). Protests, nonprofits, and activism have their place in society, and are yet to pose a real challenge to rupturing the system. Casas continues,

“These roles include differences, diversity and opposition, to a certain degree, but understood as a way of making the whole function properly. For the normal functioning of the system, we would say. This is how political reformism understands this question. Are the CNT and the libertarian movement integrated in the system? No. We are within the workings of the system. This limits us; indeed, it represses us and places us in the constraints of authoritarian relations. But we are against the system; we are not an integral part of the system for its development. In fact, we are in a position of marginalization accepted by ourselves. From this position, we try to get our ideas and values across, we try to get to the core of this society with our ideas and our practice. Collaboration or integration, as Bondía would have, would leave us prostrate and defenceless for the creation of alternatives which seek to perform a radical change in society and would make us into yet another part of the system” (ibid).

What Casas captures so lucidly is that given our position, given that we want to build a world without bosses, we accept a certain level of marginalization. We just plain have it harder than others. The state, the bosses, and the unions will all conspire to coopt or destroy any workers movement that threatens (or often even could potentially threaten) the existing order.

Experimentation within the IWW itself has illustrated these contradictions. Attempts to win elections and contracts, have often been crushed through the cooperation of the bosses and the state. Larger campaigns have been raided by other unions with the promise of more money and resources. When we have been able to win contracts, the workers tend not to become active within the union, and in some instances decay to the point where the bosses violate the contract but there isn’t the support to take them to task. The contracts themselves are in most instances below industry standard, and have labor peace agreements far worse than the norm in business union contracts. Campaigns that have used paid staff tend to produce campaigns that rely too heavily on hyper-active individuals, and fail to get a wide swath of workers involved necessary for the grassroots organizing we want. Not wanting to get into politics has led to opportunists using the union as their own soapbox for their opportunistic campaigns, which damage the union’s credibility and push it further towards an activist organization and not a militant workplace organization. None of these events are necessary or determined by simply going the contractual or paid staff route. Instead I think it shows the problematic dynamics of at once trying to be a revolutionary worker-run organization and to be a union that represents workers. 

Historically the IWW had similar failures. The IWW was killed by (a) industrial shifts, (b) assimilation of immigrant populations, (c) the illusions of the CIO and bolshevism, (d) spectactor-type organizing, and (e) repression. Tactics varied widely between industrial unions, but there was sometimes a tactic of just trying to show up at large disruptions and sweep in, which created unsustainable growth and contraction cycles. The IWW was unable to adapt to the shifts in capitalist strategy around the welfare state and contractualism. The disruption of communities and raised standard of living undermined the culture and community framework the IWW was built on. Ideologically the IWW’s refusal to take any political line left it open to attack from bolshevism and the CIO. The allure of authoritarian communism stole the IWW’s thunder, and in correlation attracted wobbly organizers to building the CIO, TUEL, etc. Similarly to today, seeing success of bolsheviks and the new business unions attracted wobblies who saw the industrial unionism and revolutionary development in the respective organizations. 

Where does this leave us though? Part of the problem is our plan to get our goals. In its simplest form the idea of the IWW is to build a mass workers organization and perhaps a movement out of struggles, step by step, and leaving all politics to the side. In reality there are a number of problems with this. First off the state will not stand by idlely while a mass revolutionary movement gets built shop by shop, industry by industry. We need the solidarity of the workers movement to protect us, but our strategy to build that movement already relies on it.

The revolutionary unions of the past have not been built this way. The IWW, the CNT, the CGT, etc., were all built through a combination of locals defecting, independent unions combining, and on the ground organizing and tendencies of workers. Likewise there are significant differences between the context in which the IWW was built and today. The IWW was built in a time before large scale integration and legalization of unions had occured. Secondly the IWW wants to have its cake and eat it too. We want to be revolutionary and yet be apolitical. This leads to a situation, when we’re still tiny and the majority of us aren’t organizing, where people are attracted to the union based on politics. Yet the politics vary wildly as does the intentions within the union. The product is endless personal (usually) and factional (occassionally) fights that get in the way of organizing, and turn sensible people off to the organization. This is not to say that we should have a line, that workers can’t join if they don’t agree with. I believe in the traditional idea shared by the IWW and CNT that any worker should be able to join if they are ok being in an organization with our politics. Rather we need to set priorities, strategy, and a common vision of what we want to see come out of our movement against capital in order to build a mass workers organization. Otherwise we will continue to fracture, splinter, and spend too much time fighting eachother (or the left) and not the bosses. 

Our plan needs to shift to meet our goals better. Rather than linearly trying to build shop by shop our power, we need to refocus on what we want to do. We strive to radicalize workers and organize collective activity around grievances. We know that struggles have ups and downs. During the down times workers tend to withdraw, since its not worth their time to attend meetings and be super active, not having been convinced that struggle is what they should spend all their free time doing. Rather than trying to build permanent representation shops, we need to try and build networks of organizers in industries. These networks would help coordinate actions to raise standards and consciousness throughout industries. They recruit workers to get involved and develop skills and critique through their activity. Our organizing recruits workers through our activity, directly solving grievances on the shopfloor. Through a combined process of struggle and education, we can develop leadership through grievance work, and bring workers into the organization to create a base for solving the deeper problems of the industries (and society). It is natural that in low points of struggle, workers will guard their time. Unlike the represenational union structure though, this is less of a problem for industrial networks. Networks keep up the educational and planning process (preparation for later struggles, and development) even when the struggle evaporates. Organizers from shops or industries can help out others engaged in struggle, rather than trying to coax participation out of workers to be in abstract union.

During organizing lulls the organization provides a place to keep the memory of class struggles and lessons of history, as well as develop analysis of success and failures, and push new strategies across our presence in industries. This means building skills, and having a strong organizational foundation for the development of organizers. With a solid foundation in an industry, it is much more likely that we could be in a position to assert industrial power and revolts during the spontaneous revolts that pop up now and again. The problem is not that workers don’t resist, but rather when they do they are easily fragmented. With industrial networks we could provide a democratic way of coordinating autonomous struggles, and educating workers about the traps capital sets. Building presences across industries and neighborhoods could help in spreading these struggles beyond an isolated section of society, to society as a whole.

Within the IWW, there is already this practice happening in some areas and campaigns. During the port trucker strikes of 2004, workers organized bi-coastal strikes of thousands of workers without political parties or unions. Using community media, centers, and organizations, a united front of multi-racial immigrant truckers came together. Workers can autonomously strike and win pretty hefty grievances. Workers have had trouble coordinating on more than a sporadic basis, and sometimes in crossing ethnic divides. The IWW played a small part in these struggles, and saw a strategy similar to the one I’ve given. Rather than trying to jockey for representation, the west coast intermodal trucking committee wanted to be a space and resources for bringing together organizers in the industry to set demands and take industrial action. The IWWs role was to be a space for organization of these existing and operating, and developing broader social support for the struggles. This never came together for a number of reasons. Importantly this work hadn’t been done in the recent IWW. We had no history of working together in this way, and no plan before the strikes swept the country. Building up networks rooted in industries that can develop plans, can bring together existing contacts, and draw on relationships and resources throughout society would be able to make projects like a national independent trucker industrial organization become a reality. This is one example of what it would look like to begin the process of building the IWW into an organization of revolutionary workers’ industrial networks.

Alongside this tactical shift, we need to begin political development within the union. We need an open process of debate, and a clearer idea of where we are going and how we will get there. By collectively developing some general level of common understanding, we can mediate and isolate the clashes and misunderstandings that are endemic in the union. Anyone can and should be able to join the IWW, irrespective of their political beliefs, but since we are in the process of building a mass workers organization (not all ready there) we need to have some agreement on what we’re doing. In some ways this is already true. You don’t have to believe to join. It is just that the political ideals we inheritted are hazy and loose enough to incorporate lots of contradictory ideas (not to mention being couched in language most of us don’t identify with). 

This process can be begun through giving space to strategic discussions. The Organizing Summit is a promising move in this direction, but it will take a cultural commitment as well as building structures for discussion and development through which this can actually happen. 

“Attention: New definitions about the anarchosyndicalism”. Gómez Casas, Juan. Solidaridad Obrera, nº 128 (special issue VI Congreso, CNT/IWA) 1983.

Why Organize: The nature of unions, and the goals of revolutionaries

There is an old argument that unions are by their very nature trapped in capitalism and end up serving the interests of the businesses and government. Of course there is ample evidence for this view, and others in a way validate it by merely asserting the opposite. That is, they argue that unions are the framework not just to overcome the systemic problems we have at work (revolution), but also the world we want to build after the revolution. All this misses the point, not just about unions, but about what we set out to do when we organize in the workplace.

Socialism and the Recuperated Factory Movement: capitalist development and delusions

Todd Hamilton

"It is one of the peculiarities of revolutions that just as the people seem about to take a great start and to open a new era, they suffer themselves to be ruled by the delusions of the past and surrender all the power and influence they have so dearly won into the hands of men who represent, or are supposed to represent, the popular movement of a by-gone epoch¹" (Marx)

The course of capitalist development in our time brings with it conflicts which are familiar from history, but easily ignored under the cacophony of propaganda. As power is restructuring in the wake of the collapse of the soviet dictatorships, there have been twin movements. One the one hand we see the consolidation of capital. Capitalist infrastructure, organization, and coordination has grown increasingly global and unified internationally. On the other hand there has been a corresponding increase in nationally-based power conflicts whose sources are complex. States attempt to structure conflict along national lines to diffuse the more threatening opposition to the state and capital as such. This should not be surprising given the largely successful capitalist legacies in the post-colonial world (let alone within the socialist movements of the 20^th century), it is a tactic which has born fruit for those who seek to immobilize popular movements. Yet, despite the illusions, struggle does emerge along these lines and autonomous pressure arises that pushes factions within the political apparatus to formulate and develop national reforms, conflicts, and restructuring that resist the face of capitalist expansion without disrupting or slowing that development. Out of this dynamic we see a number of tendencies arising such as those that seek to overturn the present in favor of racist and authoritarian nationalism, those who seek to unite social movements with elements of the state and capital, those who seek the creation of global states, those who wish to turn back time, and so on.

The debate around these issues has tendended to focus on the role of the state and its relationship, or sometimes more boringly its potential relationship, to autonomous social movements. This approach to the question ignores a second pole, which is crucial to any such understanding, namely the place of these movements in the historical development of power and counter power.

“Moved by claims that it will help the metabolism and productivity of his fellow citizens, President Hugo Chávez said clocks would be moved forward by half an hour at the start of 2008. He announced the change on his Sunday television program, accompanied by his highest-ranking science adviser, Héctor Navarro, the minister of science and technology. ‘’This is about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight,'’ Mr. Navarro said in comments reported by Venezuela’s official news agency²” (NYTimes)

Particularly surreal are the attempts of revolutionaries to portray the government of Venezuela under supposed socialist leadership as revolutionary. The claims do not only come from the familiar pantheon of leninists, leninist-burn outs, and authoritarian sects, but also from those that fashion themselves anarchist anti-imperialists. The facts are that venezuela is a capitalist nation with a coercive centralized institution of power. The supposed revolution arose out of the autonomous activity of the populace against the development of capital and the machinations of power of a segment of the bourgeoisie. The government of this nation has implemented social reforms that have led to improvements in some elements of the living conditions of its populace. These changes are viewed unfavorably by other states as it encroaches upon the model of capitalist expansion favored by some, and worse represents a potential path of resistance to oppressed classes (whether or not it even would be a successful path of struggle). These conflicts lead some to side with one capitalist state over that of another. They accuse others who oppose the state in Venezuela as siding with imperialist and reactionary forces abroad.

Yet we need to be clear about the nature of the Venezuelan state. The state is not organized against capitalism, but rather is the entrenchment of capitalism which evolved to incorporate popular struggle and thereby diffuse resistance. Anarchists in Venezuela have documented through their publication El Libertario that the reforms the Venezuelan government have introduced do not represent any great break with prior government practices, and are fueled more by the development of capitalist business within Venezuela than revolutionary political practice. Moreover the attempt to link social movements to the state provide a vehicle within which to control and diffuse those struggles, which during the proper stage, might otherwise be direct against central power as such. This understanding leads us to opposition to the state and capital, at the same time supporting the struggles of the oppressed classes in social movements. This is far from supporting the supposed imperialists or capital as Frank Fernandez argued about the anarchist position on the Cuban revolution: “…It’s one thing to make charges similar to those of non-anarchist forces and entirely another to place oneself under their command”³

An interesting case is that of recuperated factories in Venezuela, which have evolved alongside the more robust Argentinian experience. Yet in Venezuela the factories have largely aligned themselves with the state. This has not been without consequence though. The state intervenes directly to ensure the maintenance of capitalist organization of the workplace and the containment of workers struggles within organs such as private management and unions.

In a recent article by Megan Hise, an organizer working with a recuperated factory, this process is documented. Workers at Sanitarios Maracay in Caracas seized control of their workplace after receiving notice of a plant closure. Workers developed a factory council to run the workplace in order to retain the power they had gained in the organizing preceding the factory closure. “Under worker control, the factory faced serious obstacles. The bad debts of the boss risked the cutoff of utilities
such as electricity and gas. Raw material ran low and without serious credit, capital, and legal legitimacy, it proved difficult to purchase”⁴ The difficulty of running a business, collective or otherwise, under capital lead the workers to demand nationalization of the business in hopes of having a more stable economic base. The government is implementing a national housing program, and the factory, which makes toilets and the like, sought to help meet that demand. At first the governor gave some minor hand outs (“one month’s pay”) to pacify the workers.

The workers occupied a highway in hopes of furthering their cause, but the police and national guard responded with assaults and arrests. Government contracts overlooked the workers, and have been given to competing capitalist businesses. In the struggle that followed to maintain the business under capitalism the radical leadership of the factory council was deposed by the state-aligned union, who has brought back management functions. This leadership has now created “a new commission organized by the ministry of labor, which would consist of 5 representatives for the owner, 5 for the workers, and 3 from the labor ministry. Entailed is the return of the factory to the hands of [private ownership] in exchange for the back-wages and benefits owed to each worker” (ibid).

We can make sense of this by understanding the role of the state under capitalism is to contain struggle, further capitalist development, and centralize power and resources. The market and capitalist social relations act on businesses through pressure to constantly expand profit. Workers when faced with poverty and alienation have responded by taking over their workplaces and reorganizing them to better meet their immediate needs. Yet these struggles are in their infancy. They face capital as a minority of such industries, and must do so under the logic of the division of industry, the demands of capitalist businesses supplying materials and distributing, and attacks from the state. This isn’t to say that this project is not of significance. It poses a very real challenge to power in the form of prefiguring a way of living that goes beyond the present. Yet it has real limits based upon the place of development of autonomous social movements at present.

There is then the challenge within this movement of continued existence and cooptation. Speaking of the workers councils Maurice Brinton says,

“Like all forms of dual power, economic dual power is essentially unstable. It will evolve into a consolidation of bureaucratic power (with the working class exerting less and less control). Or it will evolve into workers’ management, with the working class taking over all managerial functions⁵”.

When we remain in between, when insurrection stops short at change in the actors of the state, we are faced with movements which must justify their existences. This situation leads to confusion amongst revolutionaries about the nature of the gains won and the state itself. This is not without historical precedent. In all insurrections there have always been those who in the words of a Cuban comrade wish to get behind whatever is happening, when they should be ahead of it.

“The confusion in the anarchist camp regarding the Cuban situation was fomented by the Castro government’s propaganda apparatus, which had enormous resources, talent, imagination, and great political ability. It replied to the exiled anarchists’ attacks precisely in that ideological territory which marxism had manipulated so successfully during the Spanish Civil War. The international left consisted of a number of political, social, and even religious groups that constantly attacked capitalism, militarism, the ruling class, and organized religion. The entrance of the "socialist" Castro regime into this political war zone was a very effective tactic in maintaining international sympathy for the regime and for keeping it in power. This was an especially powerful tactic in combination with the Castro regime’s extremely sophisticated methods of repression; and these two factors are the principal reasons for that regime’s durability⁶” (Chapter 5 Fernandez)

Fernandez analyzes the process of cooptation and repression well here by showing twin approaches of the state. On the one hand it seeks to eliminate revolutionary forces through repressive mechanisms whether it be propaganda, torture, imprisonment, or incorporation into the state. On the other hand it seeks to build support amongst a multiplicity of sectors and tendencies through the perpetuation of the illusion of being anti-capital, anti-imperialist, etc. A failure of revolutionaries to realize this is particularly disturbing in the case of the Iranian revolution. The views of anarchists and elements in the Iranian communist movement here converge. Monsoor Hekmat, though a leninist, pushed for the immediate abolition of wage labor and the demolition of the capitalist state. This understanding caused him, and the party he led the Worker Communist Party, to oppose the Islamic fundamentalists and the left that lent its support to one of the most horrifying dictatorship of our time. I quote his analysis at length for its lucidity and timeliness.