What is the relationship between the objectives of the revolutionary union movement and its actions? Ever since unions were first integrated into the State and its legal framework for collaborative industrial relations, the revolutionary union movement has had hard questioned pressed upon it. At crucial moments revolutionary unions defected to back policies destructive to the working class such as the CGT in France supporting WWI, the leadership of the CNT joining the government during the war, and Mexico’s Casa del Obrera Mundial taking up arms for the state against the rural Zapatista movement in its revolution. The post-war labor movement has been defined by trying to navigate the integration of unions within the State and often management, and the subsequent dismantling of those relationships. Today we still grapple with these issues as we try to find ways to fight around daily issues while building a powerful movement of working class people towards a new revolutionary horizon.
This piece comes to us from our brothers and sisters in the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists CRAS-AIT in Russia. Vadim Damier, historian of the seminal work Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century (published and translated by Black Cat Press) writes about the experiences of the spanish anarchosyndicalist union the CNT from a critical perspective, and gives an alternative followed by CRAS-AIT today inspired by experiences in anarchosyndicalists in Argentina. Whichever position you take, this discussion is crucial now as the basis for unions is being transformed, and uncertain possibilities and challenges are unfolding.
Read More
