The history of anarcho-syndicalism dates back to the anti-authoritarian faction of the International Workingmen's Association. Revolutionary syndicalism as a tendency was constituted in the 1890s by the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT), which became a model union for other syndicalist organisations to base themselves on. Anarchists were involved in the syndicalist movement from the outset and a specific anarchist tendency developed within the movement over the subsequent decades.
Anarcho-syndicalism was developed as a specific tendency following the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam in 1907, when anarchists within the syndicalist movement began establishing international connections between various unions. Anarcho-syndicalism soon became the founding principles of national trade union centres throughout the world, gaining particular prominence in Europe and Latin America. After breaking with Bolshevism in the wake of the Russian Revolution, anarcho-syndicalists established their own International Workers' Association (IWA) in 1922. Anarcho-syndicalism reached its apex during the Spanish Revolution of 1936, when the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) established an anarcho-syndicalist economy throughout much of the Spanish Republic.
After the defeat of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, the suppression of anarcho-syndicalist unions by various authoritarian regimes and the establishment of welfare states throughout much of the Western bloc, anarcho-syndicalism went into a period of decline. The movement split into two factions: the "orthodox" faction, which held to traditional syndicalist principles in spite of changing material conditions and increased political isolation; and the "revisionist" faction, which aimed to achieve a mass base and push for progressive reforms within existing systems to create an industrial democracy. By the end of the 20th century, the rise of neoliberalism and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc had led to a revival in anarcho-syndicalism, with syndicalist unions once again being established throughout the globe.
Origins The roots of anarcho-syndicalism lie in the anarchist faction of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), which upheld the central role of trade unions in the class struggle and called for a general strike to replace the state with a free association of producers. This was in opposition to the Marxist faction, which proposed the seizure of state power by a political party. The IWA's largest section was the Spanish Regional Federation (FRE), which adopted the anarchist platform of revolutionary trade unionism and organised itself according to a structure that anticipated syndicalism. The FRE was driven underground following the suppression of the FRE-led Petroleum Revolution in 1873, after which they were succeeded by a series of unions such as the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE) and the Union and Solidarity Pact (PUS). The FRE's model was also taken up by Cuban anarchists, who established their own union federations to organise Cuban workers and recently emancipated slaves.
In the United States, the anarchists of the International Working People's Association (IWPA) also adopted the proto-syndicalist platform of Albert Parsons and established a large trade union federation in Chicago. Despite its suppression after the Haymarket affair, the IWPA was strongly influential on the development of syndicalism (described as "anarchism made practical") and left behind a legacy commemorated in International Workers' Day. Anarchists also participated in the trade union movement in Mexico, where they established the Mexican Workers' General Congress (CGOM) and dedicated it towards using unions as their vehicle for social revolution. While the influence of the anarchists was strong in the Spanish and American labour movements, most of Europe's trade unions fell under the control of social-democratic political parties. During the 1880s, a period of economic growth had encouraged the development of reformist tendencies such as social democracy, resulting in the sidelining of the anarchists, who had largely neglected labour organisation in favour of individual acts of "propaganda of the deed".
But the technological innovations achieved during the Second Industrial Revolution also preceded a simultaneous rise in profits and decline of wages, while new management strategies resulted in the increase of both workload and working time. Increasing levels of the division of labour brought with it a rise in alienation among workers, which led to the development of calls for workers' self-management and workers' control over the means of production. Even as strike actions became more common around the world, social-democratic union leaders remained largely reluctant to engage in strikes and limited the decision-making power of individual members through internal bureaucracy. Despite protests by the membership, these centralised trade unions often preferred to form compromised "wage agreements" with their employers rather than risk opening their accumulated strike fund. The moderate tendencies of the union leadership eventually provoked widespread disillusionment among the rank-and-file union members, with some such as Karl Roche coming to characterise paid union officials as a new upper class.
Increasing tensions between the union leadership and membership led to the development of a current that had by now become known as syndicalism, which called for workers themselves to take direct action to improve their own material conditions. Anarchists also began to move away from insurrectionism and back towards the labour movement, increasingly promoting syndicalism as a "practical form of organisation for the realisation of anarchist-communism" and even beginning to capture some unions from the social-democrats.
Growth of syndicalism
The birth of the revolutionary syndicalist movement took place in France, at the end of the 19th century. After the French state's suppression of the Paris Commune and the First International, trade unions were left disorganised and many fell under the control of republican and socialist political parties. At this time, workers began to establish the Bourses du Travail (Labour Exchanges), which provided mutual aid, encouraged the self-organisation of independent trade unions and organised strike actions. These institutions were established outside of political party control by a broad coalition of rank-and-file trade union members, revolutionary socialists and anarchists. Led by Fernand Pelloutier, the anarchists saw the bourses as an embryo for the formation of a stateless society, conceiving of them as a means for workers to negotiate short-term gains while preparing for a revolutionary general strike. By the turn of the 20th century, the bourses had joined with other independent trade unions to form the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), which eventually came to include 60% of French workers across all economic sectors within its ranks. Holding to the principles of revolutionary syndicalism, in 1905, the CGT launched a campaign for workers themselves to institute the eight-hour day. On International Workers' Day of 1906, this campaign culminated in a general strike, which secured a reduction in working time and workload, an increase in wages and the introduction of the weekend. But the years that followed brought increased state repression against the CGT, eventually forcing it to turn towards reformism.
By this time, revolutionary syndicalism had already spread throughout Europe. In the Netherlands, the National Labor Secretariat moved away from social democracy and adopted syndicalism. In Italy, a series of syndicalist-led general strikes brought about the establishment of the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI), which itself led a further series of general strikes that culminated in the Red Week. In Portugal, the repression that followed the 1910 Revolution, during which a syndicalist-led general strike had briefly brought Lisbon under workers' control, forced the socialists and anarchists to join within the National Workers' Union (UON). In Germany, syndicalists established the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG) outside the control of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In Sweden, the defeat of a general strike accelerated the split of syndicalists from the social-democratic unions, with the formation of the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden (SAC). Syndicalism also experienced a growth in Norway and Denmark, after the negotiated end to a series of lockouts by social-democratic union leadership pushed radicals to establish their own syndicalist unions: the Norwegian Syndicalist Federation (NSF) and Trade Union Opposition Federation (FS).
In contrast to the spread of French-style syndicalism throughout Europe, the English-speaking world saw the development of a tendency known as industrial unionism, which upheld the concept of "One Big Union". This movement was led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which spread from the United States to Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa. The only development of syndicalism in Anglophone countries was in Britain, where in 1910, the Industrial Syndicalist Education League (ISEL) was founded by Tom Mann and began to organise workers in the mining and transportation industries. The ISEL organised the 1911 Liverpool general transport strike, which managed to receive significant international support, and convinced the South Wales Miners' Federation to reorganise along syndicalist lines, before going on to participate in the 1912 United Kingdom national coal strike. By the 1910s, syndicalism had spread throughout every country in Europe and anarchist tendencies started to develop within the movement.
Development of anarchist syndicalism
Despite their shared commitment to trade union action, revolutionary syndicalists lacked a coherent ideology. The Dutch syndicalist Christiaan Cornelissen found that the movement was divided into three main groups: socialists, who saw syndicalism as a means to break away from parliamentary politics; trade unionists, who saw it as a distinct ideology of class conflict; and anarchists. In 1906, the CGT attempted to find a compromise between these different syndicalist tendencies by creating a unified declaration of syndicalist principles: the Charter of Amiens. The Charter declared that the CGT was to be a class-based organisation, not an ideological one, and would welcome workers of all political tendencies so long as they agreed with the abolition of wage labour and capitalism. It stated that the "dual purpose" of syndicalism was to work towards immediate improvements of working conditions, and to prepare for a general strike in which trade unions would take over production and distribution. Ideological convictions outside of these aims were requested to be left outside the union.