"No syndicalism! Malatesta said so!"

 

Errico Malatesta was an Italian Anarchist and revolutionary who toured Europe in political exile agitating for a radical answer to society's problems. He came to reject republicanism for essentially the same reason that Marx rejects when he says that the right of the stronger prevails in constitutional republics. Malatesta was the Anarchist's Anarchist. As such his name carries major weight among contemporary Anarchists with any connection to historical Anarchist thought. In some quarters the name 'syndicalism' carries an inverse, negative weight. Syndicalism, it is maintained, is just one of the old tactics of the old labor movement. It slowly collects dust on the trash heap of history, no more interesting than Leninist vanguardism, or social democratic reformism, or bog-standard trade unionism.

How nice it is then, for those who see syndicalism as one of the oldest of old hats, that Malatesta, during his time, produced two critiques of syndicalism from an Anarchist perspective. The first Anarchism and Syndicalism dates to 1907 and the second Syndicalism and Anarchism is dated nearly 10 years later to 1925. As a result critics of syndicalism simply fling these two articles at it's advocates' feet. "See! Malatesta rebuked your nonsense already!".

Did he though? Lets examine it. First, what is syndicalism? It is my humble opinion that it's critics rarely understand what they are criticizing. So lets avoid the men cast in straw and state clearly what the movement which has existed since the late 19th century under the name 'revolutionary syndicalism' meant by this label.

The generic 'syndicalism' just refers to labor unions, but the specific 'revolutionary syndicalism' refers to a specific strategy of social revolution that utilizes a particular kind of labor union. Syndicalists seek the basic idea of libertarian socialism, the destruction of the state, capital, and private property for a society controlled by the producers themselves. According to revolutionary syndicalists the state has no place in revolutionary transformation. It is the blunt instrument of private property. Opposed to the state and property must be a mass movement of revolutionary workers. 

This mass movement is built through one principle means. Labor unions are created that are controlled by their worker members, not by some set of union officials. These unions do not have political criteria for membership, they are open to all workers. However, the movement as a whole is given a militant push by revolutionaries active in the unions. This movement is built up through the self-activity of the worker masses until the point at which the workers are strong enough to take hold of society. 

The original article in fact does not reject syndicalism as such. Anarchism and Syndicalism simply points out that there is a practical problem to be worked out in syndicalist approaches to revolutionary strategy. Effective unions are open to all workers, unlike specifically Anarchist organizations. This, says Malatesta, provides space for reformist elements only interested in moderate improvements for the workers and not the destruction of capital and the state. However, says Malatesta, Anarchists need to be involved in the labor movement. To get around this issue Malatesta calls for a labor movement bent around Anarchist ideas and objectives, an Anarcho-Syndicalism. 

As already pointed out Malatesta is simply pointing out the need for the basic revolutionary syndicalist conception of the militant minority. This is the group of radicals active in the labor movement that imbue it with a bent toward radical goals. Anarchism and Syndicalism can be called a critique of 'syndicalism' in the most generic sense, but it poses absolutely no challenge to the revolutionary syndicalist view. In fact, it affirms many of the basics of that view. 

Syndicalism and Anarchism is a different story all together. It is in this article that Malatesta actually breaks with revolutionary syndicalism and argues directly against it. Malatesta's argument is to take what in Anarchism and Syndicalism he considers to be a prompt for an Anarchist syndicalism as in fact a fatal problem for any such project. Unions are open to all workers by nature. However, Anarchism groups workers' together by their adherence to the revolutionary principles of Anarchism. Thus unions can only be reformist vehicles for addressing general grievances of workers, while Anarchism requires organizing on behalf of specific revolutionary ideas. 

What Malatesta is unwittingly arguing is actually a principle of the social democratic Marxist movement of the 19th century, specifically one that finds explicit expression in Lenin's "What Is To Be Done". In this pamphlet Lenin puts forward the key idea of 19th century Marxism (called "social democracy") that workers involved in union struggles for bread and butter have not yet attained awareness of, or involvement in, the struggles for broader political goals. When the workers involve themselves in trade unions they are concerned with hours of work, pay, conditions, ect. They are concerned with immediate economic problems and not with larger political issues like freedom of speech and democracy, never mind revolutionary social change. 

The inference from this assertion about "trade union consciousness" (more accurately understood through the Russian 'stikhiinyi' consciousness, or 'stikhiinost') is that social democratic consciousness, i.e. understanding of the principles of scientific socialism, needs to be imbued in the workers by revolutionaries. Scientific socialists need to teach the workers the science of Marxism. This justifies a national political party with a bureaucratic hierarchy. Anarcho-Syndicalism developed in part as a rejection of this analysis in favor of the idea that workers could indeed develop revolutionary ideas from their economic struggles. 

By arguing that unions, being open to all workers and not just Anarchists, are incapable of taking on a revolutionary mission, Malatesta is simply adopting the social democratic principle that an understanding of revolutionary ideas needs to be imbued in the workers by revolutionary experts (in this context Anarchist radicals, rather than socialist party bureaucrats). There are thus two problems with Malatesta's argument, the first being that it is inconsistent with Anarchist principles. If Malatesta is concerned with the observance of Anarchist principles, then he is being self-referentially inconsistent by making arguments that logically lead to the denial of Anarchist principles. Anarchists believe in the self-emancipation of the working class and thus can't and historically don't countenance the idea that workers can not themselves develop revolutionary ideas through their day to day struggles. 

The second problem is that the social democratic analysis was wrong. In his pamphlet Lenin asserted that it was primarily intellectuals of the propertied classes who understood scientific socialism. The assumption behind the dichotomy of 'stikhiinyi' consciousness vs scientific socialism is that the subject of history is not the working masses, but revolutionaries. The revolutionaries (whether social democrats, or Anarchists) need to imbue workers with the correct ideology, the workers themselves will not come up with substantive answers. 

However, a select group of people can't liberate the oppressed masses. Oppression exists in virtue of the fact that a select group of human beings control the rest of us. Switching out that select group with another select group won't liberate humanity, even if that select group thinks it knows what to do to achieve liberation. The subject of history is the workers themselves, not revolutionaries. However, it should not be extrapolated from the affirmation of the self-activity of the masses that revolutionaries play no role. One of the ways Anarcho-Syndicalism differs from some other similar tendencies is that it rejects ideas of pure spontaneity where the masses are suppose to rise up without any antecedent work on the part of activists and theorists. 

Malatesta's critique of syndicalism thus relies on a conception of movement strategy that is not only inconsistent with Anarchist principles, but also entirely wrong. It does nothing to refute revolutionary syndicalism. It should not be used to beat revolutionary syndicalists over the head. It should not dissuade anyone from adopting revolutionary syndicalism either. 

Sources
Lih, Lenin Rediscovered
Damier, Anarcho-Syndicalism In The 20th Century
International Workers' Association, Statutes
Malatesta, The Method of Freedom