Concept
Syndicalism
Overview
type of syndicalism based on direct-action and worker autonomy
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Syndicalism is discussed.
There is a Reformist section in the C. G. T., but it is practically always in a minority, and the C. G. T. is, to all intents and purposes, the organ of revolutionary Syndicalism, which is simply the creed of its leaders. The essential doctrine of Syndicalism is the class- war, to be conducted by industrial rather than politi- cal methods. The chief industrial methods advocated are the strike, the boycott, the label…
Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
The coöperative movement is capable of replacing the wage system over a very wide field, but it is not easy to see how it could be applied to such things as railways. It is just in these cases that the principles of syndicalism are most easily applicable. If organization is not to crush individuality, membership of an organization ought to be voluntary, not compulsory, and ought always to carry with it a voice in…
Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight
states what it is; names the idea
In England, the Labor Party, after separating from the Liberal Party, entered into the closest association with it again. In France the Syndicalists passed over to reformist positions. Gustav Herve changed to the opposite of himself in the shortest time. And in the German Social Democracy the Revisionists lifted their heads, encouraged by history's having given them such a revenge.
Leon Trotsky, The Bolsheviki and World Peace
names the idea
The relations and methods of distribution appear, therefore, merely as the reverse sides of the agents of production. An individual who participates in production as a wage laborer, receives his share of the products, i. e. of the results of production, in the form of wages.
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
author linked in the graph
The unions become the organizers of labor discipline. They demand from the workers intensive labor under the most difficult conditions, to the extent that the Labor State is not yet able to alter those conditions. The unions become the apparatus of revolutionary repression against undisciplined, anarchical, parasitic elements in the working class. From the old policy of trade unionism, which at a certain stage is…
Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy
Philosophers who discussed Syndicalism
Related ideas
- Vladimir Lenin
- Federalism
- Anarchism
- High culture
- Karl Marx
- Women's suffrage
- Leon Trotsky
- Mutualism (economic theory)
- Spanish Civil War
- Welfare state
- October Revolution
- Republicanism
- Russian Revolution
- Rio de Janeiro
- Socialism
- State (polity)
- Stalinism
- World War II
- New Statesman
- Anti-war movement
- Social revolution
- Workers' control
- Workers' council
- Mensheviks
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Anarchism.