Anarchist Studies (2009) Volume 17, Issue 2 17 2

125 Pages·2009·1 MB·English

by  Norry LaPorte

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About this issue’s cover
In the summer of 2008, having just
arrived in London, I encountered
Matthew Butcher’s red and black
Model for A Monument: TheAnarcho-
Syndicalist Town Hallin the south east
corner of Russell Square,adjacent to
the British Museum. A write-up affixed
Photo: Tim Brotherton
to the model informedme that the
imposing 5.5 metre-high lattice wood structure had beencommissioned by Camden
Council as part of that year’s London Festivalof Architecture. Originally, Butcher
imagined his model might occupy thesite of a former communist cinema and propa-
ganda distribution centre at 84Grays Inn Road, but the Russell Square location was
equally meaningful and appropriate, as it memorialized a squat in one of the
adjacentbuildings that had been closed by police in 2002. Butcher’s prefigurationof
anarchism in the form of a model town hall where the local communitycould gather
to organize the social transformation of society pointedtoward moments of radi-
calism that crop up again and again in the historyof the square and its environs.
Butcher’s metaphor for radicalism’shistoric transience was an anarchist-syndicalist
flag painted on themodel’s red rotatable roof.When the roof was set in motion the
flagperiodically came into view, but only thanks to human agency. Similarly,anar-
chism entails a constant process of renewal through criticaldiscussion and
engagement, an insight Butcher gained from a debate betweenErico Malatesta and
Pierre Monatte at the 1907 International AnarchistConference in Amsterdam.
Responding to Monatte’s call for anarchists tofocus their efforts on building the
syndicalist movement, Malatestaobserved that though syndicalism is anti-parliamen-
tary, syndicalism alonewould inevitably degenerate into an instrument for the
corporate needs ofthe unionized working class, with no regard for the non-union-
ized or, forthat matter, those of other classes.Anarchism’s purpose, he argued, wasto
liberate the whole of society, and to engage all classes in thatprocess.Syndicalism
might serve as one of the means through which ananarchist society could be
realized, but should never be mistaken for thegoal.
Matthew Butcher runs his own architectural design firm, Post-Works, and
teaches at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.
He can be reached at [email protected].
Allan Antliff
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Guest Editorial
Paul Chambers and Norry LaPorte
The three articles by Tosstorff, Darlington and Morgan in this issue examine syndi-
calism from its origins in the nineteenth century through its encounter with
Bolshevism to its current manifestations. They were originally presented as papers to
a one-day conference at the University of Glamorgan in the autumn of 2007.1
Reiner Tosstorff’s paper is one of the few articles of its kind available in English.
It is the product of extensive research in several languages, notably communicating
the former secrets of the Soviet archives to readers. Its focus is the discussions held
between the Bolsheviks and foreign syndicalist organisations to set up a new, revolu-
tionary communist-dominated Red International of Trade Unions in the aftermath
of the 1917 revolution. Of course, this encounter was far from harmonious. What
attracted syndicalists to talk to the communists was as compelling as it became prob-
lematic: the Bolsheviks had made a successful revolution, sweeping away ‘capitalism’
(if this is a suitable definition of Russian society) in a seeming ‘red dawn’. It comes as
no surprise that the discussions between syndicalists, Bolsheviks and their supporters
in the West were laden with tensions and disagreement. The fault lines ran along
well established grooves, between the Leninist conception of the ‘leading role’ of the
party and political activism as the means to the revolutionary end; and the syndical-
ists’ prioritisation of economic and industrial struggle. Unlike the Bolsheviks,
syndicalists were largely opposed to working within the established, social-demo-
cratic dominated ‘reformist’ unions. Yet, as Tosstorff reminds us, we should not
forget the significance of disunity between and within the fissiparous syndicalist
organisations.
Those breaking off the dialogue with the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the
1920s emphasised syndicalism’s anarchist ideological inheritance in a development
marking the birth of Anarcho-syndicalism. Yet, even those syndicalists joining ranks
with Bolshevism – most famously, Andreu Nin and Alfred Rosmer – were among
the first and most vocal opponents of the Bolshevisation and ensuing Stalinisation of
international communism. Importantly, this political flirtation reminds us that
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communism’s pre-1917 roots were not only in social democracy, but also in revolu-
tionary syndicalism. In Germany – home to the largest communist movement
outside Soviet Russia until the Nazi ‘seizure of power’ in 1933 – the breakaway
syndicalist-type Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD) outnumbered the
‘official’ Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Berlin, and in several heavy-indus-
trial centres, until its unification with the Independent Socialist Party (USPD) –
through the aegis of the Comintern – at the end of 1920.
Internationally, many social democrats and trade unionists visited Russia after
the end of the Civil War in 1920 and wrote positively of what they had seen (or,
more precisely, what they had been shown). In South Wales, S.O. Davies visited
Soviet Russia as a miners’ union official in 1920, and was so impressed that he
remained more communist in political orientation than Labourite, despite being the
long-serving Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil. Indeed, during the early years of the
Cold War, he was the only British MP to speak in Parliament in support of the Red
Army’s suppression of the anti-communist rising in East Germany in 1953. In the
summer of 1935, he had led a delegation to Berlin to hand a petition signed by 100
MPs to the Nazi authorities, which demanded the release from prison of the
Communist leader Ernst Thälmann. Davies’ Soviet sympathies were typical of the
left of ‘old’ Labour’s ‘Russia complex’: perceptions of a better world eclipsed the
often grim realities of Bolshevik rule that refuted ideological claims to the contrary.
While the Left of international social democracy was (generally speaking)
impressed by the seeming achievements of Soviet Russia, it was syndicalists who
drew attention to the nascent party dictatorship. Yet, in Germany – as in much of
the ‘developed’ western world – syndicalist accounts of the ‘dictatorship’ in Russia
were eclipsed by the accounts of other, less hostile, left-wing parties. Nevertheless,
syndicalist activists kept the issue of Soviet political prisoners alive at factory
meetings – for example in the massive Hamburg shipyards – and always exerted an
attraction to activists on communism’s quasi-syndicalist ‘ultra-left’, who rejected all
organisational cooperation with ‘reformism’.
Although Reiner Tosstorff’s article focuses on syndicalism in ‘underdeveloped’
southern – or ‘Latin’ Europe – it also notes its influence in the advanced, highly
industrial powerhouse of Germany, the Ruhr. The region’s later industrialisation, in
the ‘heavy industrial revolution’ of the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and
the ensuing waves of immigration, produced a fractured workers’ milieu in which
social democracy was weak and syndicalism an important expression of radicalism.
Syndicalism was also an expression of workers’ radicalism in areas of Germany, such
as the eastern districts of Saxony around Dresden, where social democracy was
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deeply implanted but on the right of the national party organisation. In the early
years of the Weimar Republic, syndicalism as an organised, political movement and
as a ‘tendency’ among local communists – not least in Berlin – represented a signifi-
cant challenge to Bolshevism from the left.
Ralph Darlington, in his nuanced overview of syndicalism and anarchism in
their French, Italian and Spanish contexts, explores national variations on an interna-
tionalised leitmotif. Along the way he critically re-addresses two commonly held
assumptions: that anarcho-syndicalism thrives best in regions that remain socially
and economically under-developed, and that the appeal of this movement resides
with the lumpenproletariat and the landless peasantry (historically two groups with
relatively low levels of political organisation) rather than the industrial working class.
The discussion is foregrounded with a very useful exploration of the terms
‘syndicalism’ and ‘anarcho-syndicalism’. While in broad terms syndicalism is above
all ‘revolutionary trade unionism’, it has always existed in tension with reformist
tendencies and situational imperatives. Moreover, while it is formally internation-
alist and revolutionary, its concrete manifestations have been shaped by national
traditions and contexts, resulting in many nationally specific variants on the theme,
which were themselves subject over time to the flux and flow of changing leader-
ships and directions. Thus, as a generic term with internationalist significance, it is
best understood in terms of political action rather than ideology – ‘a practical social
movement engaged in working class struggle’. Ironically, ‘anarcho-syndicalism’
began life as a pejorative term deployed by the parties of the Communist
International, but soon became a useful rallying point for those workers increas-
ingly opposed to centralised political control, and for local autonomy, and
ultimately played a role in the transformation of anarchism from a minority current
to a movement with appreciable mass appeal.
Darlington charts the exponential growth of anarchist influence in trade
unionism in Italy, Spain and France, noting that rather than being always the
product of supposedly ‘backward’ societies characterised by weak capitalism and
underdeveloped industry, the social and economic contexts were much more fluid
and regionally variable. For example, while France lagged behind Britain, Germany
and the USA, the period after 1905 saw significant, if uneven growth, among the
industrial workforce. Moreover, the distinctive French revolutionary tradition had
shaped a culture of revolution from below, and when this was combined with an
existing political culture that effectively marginalised workers, a revolutionary union-
based politics that eschewed parties and parliaments came to be seen as an attractive
and necessary option that utilised the main weapon in workers’ arsenals, their power
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at the level of the shop floor. In terms of the occupational composition of those
drawn towards syndicalism, from 1900 onwards workers were as likely to be drawn
from large scale industries as the more traditional small scale industrial concerns,
with the overall picture being one of diversity. By 1909, the French Confédération
Générale du Travail (CGT)had gained half a millionnew members, many clearly
members of the industrial working class, which raises questions about customary
notions that syndicalism mainly had its roots in marginalised sections of the work-
force.
Spain, a predominately agrarian society and late entrant to the industrialising
sphere, dominated by an absolute monarchy backed by the army and Church, clearly
fits the bill of ‘backwardness’, but again local factors, notably a century of armed
struggles against the Madrid establishment, long-standing and widespread anarchist
and federalist sympathies and a repressive and unstable political climate, do much to
explain the broad appeal of anarcho-syndicalism. While in terms of occupational
composition, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) drew much of its
strength from the agrarian labouring class, it had from its inception a heavily indus-
trial character, reflecting its roots in the emerging industrial regions. By way of
contrast, Italy, a society marked by deep rural poverty in the south (and a history of
spontaneous labour uprisings) and a rapidly industrialising north (but with a lack of
those political channels which might have been utilised for reform), saw the steady
transmission of revolutionary union action from the south to the north rather than
vice versa, although it did not gain a significant foothold in the politicised industrial
classes to the same extent as in France or Spain. What we see in all these cases are
particular sets of historical and cultural contexts combining with a broader affinity
towards an emerging international syndicalism, while at the same time exhibiting
distinct national diversities.
Kevin Morgan focuses not on social movements but on an individual, Emma
Goldman, utilising her story to address wider issues and themes in the early twen-
tieth-century revolutionary Left. In a meticulously researched discussion Morgan
focuses on the expressive function of anarchism in order to tease out the tensions
between ‘social’ and ‘individual’ anarchism. The crucial question here is the compati-
bility of these distinct tendencies; Goldman’s life and principles serve as the canvas
on which these tendencies are played out. Interestingly, Morgan avoids conventional
analysis of the tensions between socialism and libertarianism and instead focuses on
‘elitist and popular’ or ‘democratic’ conceptions of social change’ – revolution from
above or below. This allows him to engage in what he describes as ‘a less innocent
reading of her anarchism’, which engages with Goldman’s fascination with and
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appropriation of elements of Nietzsche’s philosophy, her ambivalence towards syndi-
calist modes of operation, and her preference for individual acts of ‘propaganda by
deed’. Morgan’s view is that Goldman saw herself as a vanguard figure – a herald of
the revolution – who used her personal charisma, access to public platforms and
privileged speaking role, notably in the pages of the literary journal Mother Earth, to
transform propaganda by the deed into propaganda as deed. Sharing Nietzsche’s
iconoclasm, Goldman also appeared increasingly drawn to his elitism and to the idea
of the lone revolutionary as intellectual and ‘superman’, a direction arguably at odds
with the practical anarchism of solidaristic social movements engaged in working
class struggle, but reflective of the fact that there was not one but many anarchisms
playing themselves out in this period.
Chris Ealham’s article on anarchist activist-historian Jose Peirats, while not part
of the original Glamorgan history conference, nevertheless nicely complements
those papers, not least because it focuses on the creation of labour history. Ealham
offers a fascinating account of labour history in the making, and through a
poignant account of the trials and vicissitudes of Spanish anarchists in exile, situates
the researching and writing of history firmly within the revolutionary struggle itself.
Peirats’s history of the revolution is no dry academic account, and the history itself,
emerging as it does from ‘below’ and in the context of ongoing revolutionary
struggle and sacrifice, situates Peirats and his many collaborators and supporters as
‘heralds of the revolution’.
In retrospect, and as Darlington notes, it appears that the influence of anarcho-
syndicalism as a current within international trade unionism was relatively
short-lived. Arguably, the waning of the movement was less to do with internal
factors and rather more to do with the disruptive activities of the nascent Comintern
and the triumph of fascism in Europe. The CNT has re-emerged in post-Franco
Spain, but it has struggled to adapt to a radically re-configured environment.2While
it remains recognisably ‘anarchist’ and ‘syndicalist’, these currents are of historical
interest where the CGT is concerned. Nevertheless, anarchist currents continue to
resonate globally, particularly in the alter-globalisation movement (but also in the
praxis of environmentalist, peace and women’s movements).3In a very real sense, the
series of revolutions that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
subsequent crisis within Marxism, the abortive protests of Tiananmen Square and
the creation of a state-sponsored capitalist market in the People’s Republic of China,
have helped strengthen anarchism’s hand. At the same time reformist and main-
stream social democratic tendencies appear also to be in crisis in Europe. It is
worthwhile therefore to re-consider seriously Darlington’s contention that the emer-
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gence of anarcho-syndicalism was coterminous with a crisis in both reformist social
democratic politics and orthodox Marxism. Opportunities clearly exist, more so with
the emergence of the internet, and new heralds of the revolution – notably Chomsky
and Klein – continue to carry the torch for anarchism and bottom-up revolution.
Paul Chambers
is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glamorgan. He
has published on various facets of religion including religion, politics and human
rights. He is the author of Religion, Secularization and Social Change in Wales
(University of Wales Press, 2005). He is currently engaged on research into recent
Norman LaPorte
Polish migration in Wales. is Senior Lecturer in Modern
European History at the University of Glamorgan. He works on communism and
related topics. His publications includeThe German Communist Party in Saxony,
1924-1933(Peter Lang, 2003). He is writing a biography of the German communist
leader, Ernst Thälmann.
NOTES
1. The first three pieces in the issue were originally presented as papers to a one-day
conference at the University of Glamorgan in the autumn of 2007. We are grateful to
the Division of History at the University of Glamorgan, which generously offered
funding, and to the Centre for Modern and Contemporary Wales and Llafur(the
Association for the Study of Welsh Labour History). The event was part of a series
organised in collaboration with Kevin Morgan at the University of Manchester and
Steve Hopkins at the University of Leicester. Other papers presented at these confer-
ences have been published in a special issue of Socialist History(Issue 34). The fourth
feature article in this issue, an evaluation of José Peirats’s La CNT en larevolución
españolaby Chris Ealham, though not part of the conference, also offers an important
contribution to our understanding of syndicalism.
2. See B.R. Martínez, ‘Anarchism, anthropology and Andalucia: an analysis of the CNT
and the ‘New Capitalism’, Anarchist Studies14:2, pp. 106-130.
3. D. Held and A. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization,Cambridge, 2002, pp. 112-
115.
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The syndicalist encounter with Bolshevism
Reiner Tosstorff
Translated by Norry LaPorte
ABSTRACT
The Russian Revolution of 1917 represented a great opportunity for the interna-
tional Left but also exacerbated tensions between those who argued for revolution
from below via industrial action and those who supported the Leninist conception
of the vanguard party. This article draws from previously secret Soviet archive
material and focuses on the dialogues and tensions between organs of the nascent
Bolshevik state and foreign syndicalist organisations post-1917 and the subsequent
emergence of a distinctive anarcho-syndicalist current.
Keywordssyndicalism, industrial associations, Bolshevism, Comintern, Profintern, ‘the trade
union question’, ideological anarchism
This article is about the conflictual relationship of non-Russian syndicalist organi-
sations with Bolshevism and the Communist International after the October
Revolution.1The term ‘syndicalism’ is defined as covering all of the tendencies
whose self-perception gave precedence to the revolutionary trade union over the
party, if not its complete replacement. This rather dismissive relationship to the
organisational form of the party represented its main point of difference with the
emergent communist movement. This does not mean that, aside from this main
characteristic, there were not strong differences of opinion in syndicalist ranks. This
could be assumed from the contemporary political language, which differentiated
between Industrialists, Unionists and the ‘actual’ Syndicalists. In this way, one could
differentiate between organisations in the ‘craft trade union’ tradition of the French
CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail), industrial unions like the North
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American IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) – who were better known as the
‘Wobblies’ – or the then British Shop Stewards, as well as the ‘united (or unity)
organisations’2after the example of the German industrial unions, to say nothing of
the more ‘exotic’ examples like supporters of the now forgotten Daniel DeLeon,
who attributed to industrial associations equal rights alongside the party. These
organisational differences may have influenced the relationships that particular
groups forged with Bolshevism. Yet they were only a subordinate factor in the
general feud about the main issue of whether trade union or party had priority in
the class war. This article will not, however, deal with the complicated question of
the anarchists’ – who are often wrongly equated with syndicalists – relationship to
the October Revolution, since they did not belong to such trade union organisa-
tions.3Indeed, there were significant anarchist tendencies which strongly rejected
work in the trade unions as, by their nature, they inclined to reformism. Before the
First World War, the self designation – above all in Romance languages – was
simply ‘syndicalist’4, which meant nothing more other than trade union movement;
perhaps for clarity, the adjective ‘revolutionary’ was then added. ‘Anarcho-syndical-
ism’ is then the later specific nexus of anarchism and syndicalism as first produced
in the controversy about the Bolshevik revolution.
In summary, this article deals with revolutionary trade union associations which
were self-sufficient and represented an ‘industrial strategy’, from wage struggles to the
general strike. They were united in strident criticism of parliamentarianism and the
bureaucratisation of the ‘traditional’ trade unions; in other words, with what we
today would call rejection of indirect representation.5This portrait of revolutionary
unions has its main emphasis in southern Europe. Here, syndicalism dominated the
trade-union movement in many areas and was, thus, more influential than ‘Marxism’.
This does not mean that syndicalism was not represented in many other countries;
but that it tended to be a minority current.
Before the First World War, the Bolsheviks followed the model of the ‘orthodox
Marxism’of the German Social Democrats in their virulent rejection of syndicalism.
Although syndicalism did not play a great role in the Russian workers’ movement,
the Bolsheviks had ‘learned’ – by following debates in the international workers’
movement – that it represented a ‘negative deviation’. Lenin used this in the interna-
tional debates of the Bolshevik faction. For, apart from some anarchists, it was the
‘ultra-Left’ Bolsheviks around Bogdanov and Lunacharsky who tried to make known
the ideas of West European syndicalism to Russian workers and who, in Lenin’s eyes,
appeared particularly deviationist.6This negative attitude changed with the First
World War. When social democracy split into supporters and opponents of the war,
Anarchist Studies 17.2