To anyone who is looking for light it is a pleasure to receive a criticism so acute and on the whole so fair-minded as Professor Montague has given to my little book on Syndicalism and Philosophical Realism in the last number of the Philosophical Review. I am indebted to the editor for permission to publish a few lines of reply,...

This essay reevaluates the work of Herbert Croly, a central figure in American progressivism. Croly contests the thesis that the liberal tradition in the United States is inhospitable to anticapitalist alternatives, drawing from the American past a history of resistance to capitalist wage relations that is fundamentally liberal. This historical reconstruction guides his departure from progressivism. Croly reclaims an idea Progressives allowed to lapse -- that working for wages is a lesser form of liberty. Increasingly sceptical of social welfare legislation (...) to remedy social ills, he argues that America's liberal promise can be redeemed only by syndicalist reforms involving workplace democracy. (shrink)

Corporatism and syndicalism have a certain family resemblance as political philosophies and political projects committed to functional representation, but they also differ in other, more fundamental respects. Viewed as forms of economic and political interest intermediation, their crucial common feature is explicit organization in terms of the functions performed in the division of labour by those represented through such organizational forms. Such representation can be organized in various ways, however, which enables one to distinguish syndicalism from corporatism and (...) their variant forms. Both historically and comparatively, syndicalism is simpler and so easier to define. Essentially it comprises an economic and political movement of the working class that is avowedly both anti‐capitalist and anti‐statist; and its ultimate goal is to abolish capitalism and the state in favour of a loose decentralized federation of worker‐owned and worker‐managed production units. Corporatism is harder to encapsulate in a sentence or two. But there is broad agreement that most corporatist projects accept the legitimacy (or, at least, medium‐term inevitability) of both market forces and state institutions but also seek to limit, modify and guide their operation by linking them formally and substantively to functional representation. (shrink)

What does syndicalism want? was first published in 1909, when the syndicalist revolt was growing worldwide. Baginski is clear in his call for working class rebellion: the task is not to fight simply for better conditions but ‘to break the chains of wage labor and at the same time the shackles of servitude to the state.’ At the same time, Baginski is no joyless martyr to ‘the cause’: personal freedom joins collective struggle at the core of his anarchism. Max (...) Baginski (1864-1943) was a German-born American anarchist activist and writer. Rudolf Rocker called him “one of the most outstanding human beings I have met in my life”. Nathan Jun’s introduction puts Baginski in his political and intellectual context as writer and anarchist. (shrink)

What is perhaps most remarkable in regard to both Socialism and Anarchism is the association of a widespread popular movement with ideals for a better world. The ideals have been elaborated, in the first instance, by solitary writers of books, and yet powerful sections of the wage-earning classes have accepted them as their guide in the practical affairs of the world. In regard to Socialism this is evident; but in regard to Anarchism it is only true with some qualification. Anarchism (...) as such has never been a widespread creed, it is only in the modified form of Syndicalism that it has achieved popularity. Unlike Socialism and Anarchism, Syndicalism is primarily the outcome, not of an idea, but of an organization: the fact of Trade Union organization came first, and the ideas of Syndicalism are those which seemed appropriate to this organization in the opinion of the more advanced French Trade Unions. But the ideas are, in the main, derived from Anarchism, and the men who gained acceptance for them were, for the most part, Anarchists. Thus we may regard Syndicalism as the Anarchism of the market-place as opposed to the Anarchism of isolated individuals which had preserved a precarious life throughout the previous decades. Taking this view, we find in Anarchist-Syndicalism the same combination of ideal and organization as we find in Socialist political parties. It is from this standpoint that our study of these movements will be undertaken. (shrink)

« Les femmes de Troyes ont toujours été des bagarreuses, ah oui, très batailleuses... Jamais j'ai vu des femmes résignées à Troyes ». Suzanne Gallois définit ainsi les bonnetières troyennes. On pourrait faire le portrait de cette militante syndicaliste dans les mêmes termes. Au bout d'une vie très longue d'activité militante, elle n'a rien perdu de sa verve, de sa passion du syndicalisme. Dans la période de l'entre-deux-guerres, elles ne sont pas très nombreuses à militer et à assumer...

« Les femmes de Troyes ont toujours été des bagarreuses, ah oui, très batailleuses... Jamais j'ai vu des femmes résignées à Troyes ». Suzanne Gallois définit ainsi les bonnetières troyennes. On pourrait faire le portrait de cette militante syndicaliste dans les mêmes termes. Au bout d'une vie très longue d'activité militante, elle n'a rien perdu de sa verve, de sa passion du syndicalisme. Dans la période de l'entre-deux-guerres, elles ne sont pas très nombreuses à militer et à assumer...

Le syndicalisme féminin chrétien représente un mouvement original dans le paysage syndical français de l’entre-deux-guerres. Pratiquant la non‑mixité, les organisations féminines ont favorisé l’émergence de militantes dont l’action a marqué le mouvement syndical chrétien. Leur engagement est vécu comme un apostolat social au service d’un idéal. Elles n’hésitent pas à proclamer haut et fort leur foi et à intégrer, dans l’action syndicale, les manifestations sensibles de la culture catholique. La mise en œuvre de ces discours et de ces pratiques forge (...) leur engagement autour de l’affirmation d’une foi militante, dans le cadre particulier de l’organisation syndicale. (shrink)

We can think of the club not as a small business, but as a would‐be “anarchist‐syndicalist commune.” Anarcho‐syndicalism is a kind of anarchism based in labor unions, where workers take control of the economy not through a top‐down government bureaucracy but through revolutionary labor associations called “syndicates. The club resembles just such a syndicate: it's hierarchical, but, unlike capitalist enterprises, it is a democratically governed hierarchy. The state is essentially an instrument of class struggle and will gradually “wither away,” (...) as both the “anarchy” of capitalist markets and the centralized command economy are replaced with socialist anarchism. This chapter portrays the difference between Marxists and classical anarchists such as the French Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon and the Russian Peter Kropotkin, for whom the state should immediately be abolished. SAMCRO seems anarchistic in its principal economic relations, too, with decisions about production, distribution, and labor made by members of the MC collectively. (shrink)

In Moral Passages, Kathryn Pyne Addelson presents an original moral theory suited for contemporary life and its moral problems. Her basic principle is that knowledge and morality are generated in collective action, and she develops it through a critical examination of theories in philosophy, sociology and women's studies, most of which hide the collective nature and as a result hide the lives and knowledge of many people. At issue are the questions of what morality is, and how moral theories (whether (...) traditional or feminist) are implemented. Addelson takes up a large number of historical cases and contemporary social problems, including teen pregnancy, contraception and abortion, and gay rights. These cases allow her to see how the knowledge and lives of some people are declared deviant or immoral, while those of others appear to show the public consensus. One case she uses throughout the book is Margaret Sanger's early work on birth control with the anarcho-syndicalist movement--a revisionist history that reveals rather than hides the collective nature of morality and knowledge. Addelson shows how the usual individualist philosophies promote theories which hide the authority of the professionals who make them. A collectivist approach, she argues, must show the part professionals play in collective action. Her aim is to allow professional knowledge makers to be morally and intellectually responsible. Based on Addelson's twenty years of work in feminist philosophy and interactionist sociology as well as her long-standing involvement in women's community organization, Moral Passages investigates how morality and knowledge are collectively enacted in today's world. (shrink)

How might good work—skilled, autonomous work which affords workers opportunities for meaningful social cooperation in decent conditions—be made available to all? I evaluate five commonly advanced strategies: an unregulated labor market, egalitarian redistribution of resources, state regulation, collective bargaining, and workplace democracy. Each, I argue, has significant limitations. An unregulated labor market ignores workers' unduly weak bargaining power vis-à-vis employers. Egalitarian redistribution alone fails to solve this problem due to distinctive and endemic imperfections of labor markets. Direct state regulation is (...) insufficiently context-sensitive and insufficiently dynamic in the face of technological and other developments. Collective bargaining gives workers only indirect and sometimes costly influence over their working conditions. And workplace democracy leaves workers vulnerable to collective action problems induced by competition between firms. I argue, however, that these strategies can be complemented in a promising way by "syndicalist economic democracy": direct worker participation in the government of the economy, largely specific to particular occupations or economic sectors but above the level of the individual workplace. (shrink)

Après deux ans de pouvoir de Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, un bilan de cette expérience unique dans la culture politique brésilienne d'une arrivée au pouvoir d'un ouvrier, syndicaliste, peut être tentée. Il s'agit surtout de répérer le changement de paradigme opéré par le président, tant du point de vue du réalisme politique que de celui de la mutation de l'homme lui-même.After two years of power Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, an overview of this unique experience in Brazilian political culture (...) of coming to power of a worker, trade unionist, can be attempted. This is especially the Local orientation paradigm shift made by the President, both from the perspective of political realism as that of the transformation of the man himself. (shrink)

Anarchy and utopia have traditionally had a contentious relationship throughout the history of political thought. Although some anarchic thinkers have occasionally verged on the utopian genre – for instance, French anarchists Joseph Déjacque and Jean Grave, or anarcho-syndicalists Émile Pataud and Émile Pouget – the anarchic mindset has generally shown a deeply-rooted mistrust towards any representation of systematically planned ideal societies, often seen as intellectualist and fundamentally authoritarian projects.

À Marseille, en 1943, des jeunes femmes catholiques, laïques, font le choix de vivre leur foi chrétienne en partageant les conditions de vie des ouvriers. Plutôt que d’intégrer une communauté religieuse, elles décident d’aller travailler en usine, dans l’industrie chimique ou alimentaire et deviennent souvent syndicalistes. Leur petite communauté, partie prenante du « front pionnier apostolique », fait le choix de la spiritualité ignacienne. En 1953, peu après l’interdiction des prêtres-ouvriers par Rome, elles quittent Marseille pour s’établir à Paris et (...) dix ans plus tard, elles envoient une équipe dans l’Algérie devenue indépendante. Volontairement autonomes par rapport à l’Église catholique, ces femmes construisent leur communauté à mi-chemin entre vie religieuse et vie laïque. Elles occupent un espace inédit qu’il convient de prendre en compte dans l’analyse de la place des femmes dans l’Église. (shrink)

In this chapter I seek to provide a theoretical defense of workplace democracy that is independent from and outside the lineage of Marxist and communist theory. Common to the council movements, anarcho- syndicalism and many other forms of libertarian socialism was the idea “that workers’ self- management was central.” Yet the idea of workers’ control has not been subject to the same theoretical development as Marx’s theory, not to mention capitalist economic theory. This chapter aims to contribute at a (...) theoretical level by providing a justification and defense of self- managed workplaces that is independent of the particular historical tradition of the council movements. There is a clear and definitive case for workplace democracy based on first principles that descends to modern times through the Reformation and Enlightenment in the abolitionist, democratic and feminist movements. By the twentieth century, the arguments had been scattered and lost – like the bones of some ancient beast scattered in a desert – partly due to misconceptions, mental blocks and misinterpretations embodied in Marxism, liberalism and economic theory. When one has worked through some of these intellectual roadblocks, then one may be better able to reassemble the case for workplace democracy from well- known first principles developed in the abolitionist, democratic and feminist movements. (shrink)

Coming from anarchist circles and revolutionary-syndicalist trade unions, Simone Weil initially saw herself as a Marxist and an anarchist, before increasingly becoming their early and extremely pointed critic. From 1933 on, she distanced herself more and more from the syndicalist movement in terms of content, and at the same time she was increasingly skeptical of its politics. She saw in the syndicalists, socialists, and communists no more accurate knowledge of society than in the conservatives or fascists. Moreover, she came to (...) realize that they did not have the necessary means of action to carry out a revolution. In the assertion of the "historical mission of the working class," she saw a phrase that served the functionaries but only further humiliated and betrayed the working class. In this respect, even Marxism was for Weil still the intellectual expression of the bourgeoisie, because even a change in property relations would not have eliminated the oppression of the working class. Until the end of her life, she held that instead a radical change in labor relations was necessary to end the oppression of the working class and its social misery. The article attempts to situate Simone Weil's early disillusionment with syndicalism, socialism, Marxism and Stalinism, as well as her recognition of what was widely labelled totalitarianism in Western societies at the latest after the Second World War, in her writings. (shrink)

The Marx-Bakunin Conflict in the First International : A Confrontation of Political Practices. The conflict between Marx and Bakunin within the First International was more than a merely political opposition. It was in fact a conflict about the very status of the political. Accused of being apolitical, Bakunin replied by declaring his anti-statist stance, while at the same time misinterpreting the Marxian political project. The position he defended within the International prefigured the anarcho-syndicalist subsumption of the political within syndicalism. (...) In return, the opposition helped to clarify the Marxian conception of worker organisations. Finally, the conflict would enable Bakunin to identify the dangers of bureaucratisation to which such organisations are prone, while Marx, for his part, sought to conceive of a type of political action which was specific to the proletariat. The conflict thus enables us to characterise Marx and Bakunin as two types of militant engagement. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article examines some thoughts on the rise of National Socialism by Rudolf Rocker and Gerhard Wartenberg, two figures of fundamental significance in the anarchism of the Weimar Republic, militant in the anarcho-syndicalist Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands, active from 1919 to 1933. A systematic reading of the period's anarchist press, in particular of the weekly ‘Der Syndikalist’ and the monthly ‘Die Internationale’ will show that their rejection of Hitler was based on the theoretical principles of anarchism and a criticism (...) of the authoritarian outcomes of the Russian Revolution, suggesting a substantial affinity between communism and fascism. This topic, recurrent in the international anarchist press between the two wars, confirms the intrinsic plurality of anti-fascism and the impossibility of identifying it completely with communism, and anticipates conceptually the later adoption of the notion of totalitarianism. The article thus retraces the pluralist and many-sided concept of Nazism formulated by Rocker and Wartenberg, a concept that found its place in a European perspective and took into consideration political, economic, cultural and psychological aspects. (shrink)

This English translation of _Sorel’s Study on Vico_ opens the way to a radical re-evaluation not only of Sorel’s trajectory, but of his French intellectual contexts, and the anarcho-syndicalism he is sometimes said to represent.

Des remèdes miracles comme la baisse des impôts, l'augmentation des dépenses publiques, l'arrêt de l'immigration, la semaine de 32 heures, la réindustrialisation des territoires, ou encore la taxation des transactions financières sont censés nous guérir sans coût de tous nos maux. Ces contre-vérités rabâchées à l'envi par les médias portent un nom : le négationnisme économique. A l'origine de choix stratégiques, il nous appauvrit et se traduit par des millions de chômeurs. Or aujourd'hui on ne peut affirmer tout et son (...) contraire, car l'économie est devenue une science expérimentale fondée sur une analyse rigoureuse des faits. Cette révolution méconnue produit des connaissances qui heurtent souvent de plein fouet les croyances et les intérêts des grands patrons, des syndicalistes, des intellectuels et des politiques. Ils font tout pour semer le doute, même sur les vérités les plus établies. Débusquer le négationnisme économique, tel est l'objet du présent ouvrage. Pour arrêter de perdre notre temps avec des débats déjà tranchés et ne pas nous laisser berner par les impostures et la démagogie. (shrink)

Paul Lafargue, the disciple and son-in-law of Karl Marx, helped to found the first French Marxist party in 1882. Over the next three decades, he served as the chief theoretician and propagandist for Marxism in France. During these years - which ended with the dramatic suicides of Lafargue and his wife - French socialism, and the Marxist party within it, became a significant political force. Leslie Derfler explores Lafargue's political strategies, specifically his break with party co-founder Jules Guesde in the (...) Boulanger and Dreyfus episodes and over the question of socialist syndicalist relations. Derfler shows Lafargue's importance as both political activist and theorist. He describes Lafargue's role in the formulation of such strategies as the promotion of a Second Workingmen's International, the pursuit of reform within the framework of the existent state but opposition to any socialist participation in nonsocialist governments, and the subordination of trade unionism to political action. He emphasizes Lafargue's pioneering efforts to apply Marxist methods of analysis to questions of anthropology, aesthetics, and literary criticism. (shrink)