J.5.2 Why do anarchists support industrial unionism? (An Anarchist FAQ) is the 2nd entry of Section J.5 and 41st entry in Section J of An Anarchist FAQ. It discusses workplace organising, workers' self-management and anarcho-syndicalism.
Transcript
Simply because it is effective, expresses our ideas on how industry will be organised in an anarchist society and is a key means of ending capitalist oppression and exploitation. As Max Stirner pointed out the “labourers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once become thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing could withstand them; they would only have to stop labour, regard the product of labour as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labour disturbances which show themselves here and there.” [[[The Ego and Its Own (Book)|The Ego and Its Own]], p. 116] Libertarian workplace organisation is the best way of organising and exercising this power.
However, before discussing why anarchists support industrial unionism, we must point out thatthe type of unionism anarchists support has very little in common with that associated with reformist or business unions like the TUC in Britain or the AFL-CIO in the USA (see next section). In such unions, as Alexander Berkman points out, the “rank and file have little say. They have delegated their power to leaders, and these have become the boss... Once you do that, the power you have delegated will be used against you and your interests every time.” [[[The ABC of Anarchism (Book)|The ABC of Anarchism]], p. 58] Reformist unions, even if they do organise by industry rather than by trade or craft, are top-heavy and bureaucratic. Thus they are organised in the same manner as capitalist firms or the state — and like both of these, the officials at the top have different interests than those at the bottom. Little wonder anarchists oppose such forms of unionism as being counter to the interests of their members. The long history of union officials betraying their members is proof enough of this. Therefore anarchists propose a different kind of workplace organisation, one that is organised in a totally different manner than the current, mainstream, unions. We will call this new kind of organisation “industrial unionism” (although perhaps industrial syndicalism or workplace assemblies may be a better, less confusing, name for it). Industrial unionism is based upon the idea that workers should directly control their own organisations and struggles. As such, it is based upon workplace assemblies and their confederation between different workplaces in the same industry as well as between different workplaces in the same locality. An industrial union is a union which organises all workers in a given type of industry together into one body.
This means that all workers regardless of their actual trade would ideally be in the one union. On a building site, for example, brick-layers, plumbers, carpenters and so on would all be a member of the Building Workers Union. Each trade may have its own sections within the union (so that plumbers can discuss issues relating to their trade for example) but the core decision making focus would be an assembly of all workers employed in a workplace. As they all have the same boss it is logical for them to have the same union. However, industrial unionism should not be confused with a closed shop situation where workers are forced to join a union when they become a wage slave in a workplace. While anarchists do desire to see all workers unite in one organisation, it is vitally important that workers can leave a union and join another.
The closed shop only empowers union bureaucrats and gives them even more power to control (and/or ignore) their members. As anarchist unionism has no bureaucrats, there is no need for the closed shop and its voluntary nature is essential in order to ensure that a union be subject to “exit” as well as “voice” for it to be responsive to its members wishes. As Albert Meltzer argues, the closed shop means that “the [trade union] leadership becomes all-powerful since once it exerts its right to expel a member, that person is not only out of the union, but out of a job.” Anarcho-syndicalism, therefore, “rejects the closed shop and relies on voluntary mem-bership, and so avoids any leadership or bureaucracy.” [[[Anarchism: Arguments for and against (Book)|Anarchism: Arguments for and against]],p. 56 — also see Tom Wetzel’s excellent article “The Origins of the Union Shop”, part 3 of the series“Why does the union bureaucracy exist?”in Ideas & Action no. 11, Fall 1989 for a fuller discussion of these issues]
Without voluntary membership even the most libertarian union may become bureaucratic and unresponsive to the needs of its members and the class struggle (even anarcho-syndicalist unions are subject to hierarchical influences by having to work within the hierarchical capitalist economy although voluntary membership, along with a libertarian structure and tactics, helps combat these tendencies — see section J.3.9). Obviously this means that anarchist opposition to the closed shop has nothing in common with boss, conservative and right-wing libertarian opposition to it. These groups, while denouncing coercing workers into trades unions, support the coercive power of bosses over workers without a second thought (indeed, given their justifications of sexual harassment and other forms of oppressive behaviour by bosses, we can imagine that they would happily support workers having to join company unions to keep their jobs — only when bosses dislike mandatory union membership do these defenders of “freedom” raise their opposition).
Anarchist opposition to the closed shop (like their opposition to union bureaucracy) flows from their opposition to hierarchy and authoritarian social relationships. The right-wing’s opposition is purely a product of their pro-capitalist and pro-authority position and the desire to see the worker subject only to one boss during working hours, not two (particularly if this second one has to represent workers interests to some degree). Anarchists, on the other hand, want to get rid of all bosses during working hours. In industrial unionism, the membership, assembled in their place of work, are the ones to decide when to strike, when to pay strike pay, what tactics to use, what demands to make, what issues to fight over and whether an action is “official” or “unofficial”.
In this way the rank and file is in control of their unions and, by confederating with other assemblies, they co-ordinate their forces with their fellow workers. As syndicalist activist Tom Brown makes clear: “The basis of the Syndicate is the mass meeting of workers assembled at their place of work... The meeting elects its factory committee and delegates. The factory is Syndicate is federated to all other such committees in the locality... In the other direction, the factory, let us say engineering factory, is affiliated to the District Federation of Engineers. In turn the District Federation is affiliated to the National Federation of Engineers... Then, each industrial federation is affiliated to the National Federation of Labour ... how the members of such committees are elected is most important. They are, first of all, not representatives like Members of Parliament who air their own views; they are delegates who carry the message of the workers who elect them. They do not tell the workers what the ‘official’ policy is; the workers tell them. “Delegates are subject to instant recall by the persons who elected them. None may sit for longer than two successive years, and four years must elapse before his [or her] next nomination. Very few will receive wages as delegates, and then only the district rate of wages for the industry... “It will be seen that in the Syndicate the members control the organisation — not the bureaucrats controlling the members. In a trade union the higher up the pyramid a man is the more power he wields; in a Syndicate the higher he is the less power he has.“The factory Syndicate has full autonomy over its own affairs...” [[[Syndicalism (Book)|Syndicalism]], pp. 35–36]
As can be seen, industrial unionism reflects anarchist ideas of organisation — it is organised from the bottom up, it is decentralised and based upon federation and it is directly managed by its members in mass assemblies. It is anarchism applied to industry and the needs of the class struggle. By supporting such forms of organisations, anarchists are not only seeing “anarchy in action”, they are forming effective tools which can win the class war. By organising in this manner, workers are building the framework of a co-operative society within capitalism. Rudolf Rocker makes this clear: “the syndicate... has for its purpose the defence of the interests of the producers within existing society and the preparing for and the practical carrying out of the reconstruction of social life ... It has, therefore, a double purpose:
1. As the fighting organisation of the workers against their employers to enforce the demand of the workers for the safe guarding of their standard of living
2. As the school for the intellectual training of the workers to make them acquainted with the technical management of production and economic life in general.”
[[[Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice|Anarcho-Syndicalism]], p. 51] Given the fact that workers wages have been stagnating (or, at best, falling behind productivity increases) across the world as the trade unions have been weakened and marginalised (partly because of their own tactics, structure and politics) it is clear that there exists a great need for working people to organise to defend themselves. The centralised, top-down trade unions we are accustomed to have proved themselves incapable of effective struggle (and, indeed, the number of times they have sabotaged such struggle are countless — a result not of “bad” leaders but of the way these unions organise and their role within capitalism). Hence anarchists support industrial unionism (co-operation between workers assemblies) as an effective alternative to the malaise of official trade unionism.
How anarchists aim to encourage such new forms of workplace organisation and struggle will be discussed in the next section. We are sure that many radicals will consider that such decentralised, confederal organisations would produce confusion and disunity. However, anarchists maintain that the statist, centralised form of organisation of the trades unions would produce indifference instead of involvement, heartlessness instead of solidarity, uniformity instead of unity, and elites instead of equality, nevermind killing all personal initiative by lifeless discipline and bureaucratic ossification and permitting no independent action. The old form of organisation has been tried and tried again — it has always failed. The sooner workers recognise this the better. One last point. We must note that many anarchists, particularly communist-anarchists, consider unions, even anarcho-syndicalist ones, as having a strong reformist tendency (as discussed in section J.3.9).
However, all anarchists recognise the importance of autonomous class struggle and the need for organisations to help fight that struggle. Thus anarchist-communists, instead of trying to organise industrial unions, apply the ideas of industrial unionism to workplace struggles. In other words, they would agree with the need to organise all workers into a mass assembly and to have elected, recallable administration committees to carry out the strikers wishes. This means that such anarchists they do not call their practical ideas “anarcho-syndicalism” nor the workplace assemblies they desire to create “unions,” there are extremely similar in nature and so we can discuss both using the term “industrial unionism”.
The key difference is that many(if not most) anarcho-communists consider that permanent workplace organisations that aim to organise all workers would soon become reformist. Because of this they also see the need for anarchist to organise as anarchists in order to spread the anarchist message within them and keep their revolutionary aspects at the forefront (and so support industrial networks — see next section). Therefore while there are slight differences in terminology and practice, all anarchists would support the ideas of industrial unionism we have outlined above.