thoughts on Solidarity Federation's "Fighting For Ourselves"?

[Os Cangaceiros]

It's available in print and free online:

http://anarchistnews.org/content/fighting-ourselves-anarcho-syndicalism-and-class-struggle-solidarity-federation

I've read the first 40 pages in PDF form. It's OK, nothing particularly new. I am a (critical) sympathizer of the IWA, though, I think it's a good organization, although I don't feel that revolutionary syndicalism is particularly relevant anymore, with a couple exceptions.

[skitty]

It's available in print and free online:

http://anarchistnews.org/content/fighting-ourselves-anarcho-syndicalism-and-class-struggle-solidarity-federation

I've read the first 40 pages in PDF form. It's OK, nothing particularly new. I am a (critical) sympathizer of the IWA, though, I think it's a good organization, although I don't feel that revolutionary syndicalism is particularly relevant anymore, with a couple exceptions.

I only made it to page 22 and burned out for tonight; but wonder how you feel about the IWW and if there's more to it than simply signing up sufficient numbers of people?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I only made it to page 22 and burned out for tonight; but wonder how you feel about the IWW and if there's more to it than simply signing up sufficient numbers of people?

I think the history of the Spanish Revolution shows that there is more to it than just being able to build a fighting revolutionay union. I think anarcho-syndicallism is very important and I admire the ideals and think they have the right orientation (organizing from the bottom up and focusing on rank and file power in the workplace) but I also think their strategy is ultimately problematic.

I think there's a contradiction or problem to this approach in that in order to become sucessful and build this kind of organization, it takes a lot of direct class struggle from workers - which is what we should all want, so that's not a problem in of itself. This helps workers organize themselves and their power in the workplace and that is a precondition for working class self-rule IMO. But if these actions are sucessful (and if they are not, the organization is unlikely to grow - especailly with competition from the mass unions and their liberal leadership) then the capitalist class is going to be provoked to respond and try and stop this sucess. Being defeated in the economic sphere doesn't stop the capitalist though because then they turn to the political and eventually military spheres of capitalist power to try and reign in the labor upsurge. So economic self-organization alone is incomplete when an actual revolution happens, we also have to be independantly politically organized and capable of creating a worker's defense against the military and fascists. The defense networks can be more or less spontanious - as this has happened in many revolutions, but the political organization is very important and the lack of this orientation is part of the reason IMO that the CNT in Spain became politically attached to the Popular Front rather than having an independant working class political organization to match the economic and resistance organization.

[Devrim]

I think the history of the Spanish Revolution shows that there is more to it than just being able to build a fighting revolutionay union.

I think that you have misunderstood what they are saying. I am not sure if it is in the pamphlet as I have only skimmed through it, but I imagine it must be. What they advocate today isn't a union in the traditional sense, but what they call a political-economic organisation. If we are comparing to past anarcho-syndicalism there model is more similar to the Argentinian FORA than the Spanish CNT, not a 'revolutionary union', but a 'union of revolutionaries'.


but the political organization is very important and the lack of this orientation is part of the reason IMO that the CNT in Spain became politically attached to the Popular Front rather than having an independant working class political organization to match the economic and resistance organization.

There wasn't a lack of an anarchist political organisation in Spain, the FAI. The fact is that it failed in its 'role', as it was the FAIists who actually joined the government. It did exist though.

Devrim

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think that you have misunderstood what they are saying. I am not sure if it is in the pamphlet as I have only skimmed through it, but I imagine it must be. What they advocate today isn't a union in the traditional sense, but what they call a political-economic organisation. If we are comparing to past anarcho-syndicalism there model is more similar to the Argentinian FORA than the Spanish CNT, not a 'revolutionary union', but a 'union of revolutionaries'.I was responding to the 2nd the post above and if getting enough people to join the revolutionary union "is enough", not the article which looks good, but long and so I won't be able to read it until later.


There wasn't a lack of an anarchist political organisation in Spain, the FAI. The fact is that it failed in its 'role', as it was the FAIists who actually joined the government. It did exist though.

DevrimOf course, but what they failed was in seeing the need to develop independant working class political organization. A group of people without ideology in a political situation are going to make political choices, rejecting politics is a political choice, etc. So I don't mean that there was no political organization in an absolute sense, just that by not taking the worker's networks and running society through that, the revolutionaries eventually joined the only alternative to working class rule which was supporting bourgoise rule in effect. This "failure" wasn't for lack of courage or conviction on the part of the revolutionaries, just the failure to establish an independant political force for the movement, not one tied to the popular front.

I think they had a conception (and I could be wrong here) that revolution would come about when people were organized into the urban revolutionary union and rural collectives which would then nullify capitalist economic power causing the class and their state to fall apart. This conception, if this is a fair description of it, is connected to an older sysndicalist viewpoint and focus on building the big union and I think it's problematic - and many anarcho-syndicalist groups have tried to figure out how to deal with this issue, or at least the IWW has to my knowledge.

[Android]

A member of the Commune has published a short critical review (http://thecommune.co.uk/2012/12/29/fighting-for-ourselves/) of the SolFed pamphlet.

Towards the end of the review, he makes what I feel is an important point:

Despite a few caveats about SolFed not being the be all and end all, this is a SolFed-centric vision. This is maybe most evident in the passage about the SolFed Local:

“At the heart of the anarcho-syndicalist union is the Local, which aims to be at the centre of community and workplace struggle in the surrounding area. But the role of the Local goes beyond that. It provides the physical space where a diverse range of groups, such as oppressed, cultural, and education groups can organise. The Local acts as the social, political, and economic centre for working class struggle in a given area. It is the physical embodiment of our beliefs and methods, the means by which workers become anarcho-syndicalist not just on the basis of ideas but activity.”

Such bodies will need to exist. But if there is a particular reason why they should be part of – or mainly facilitated by – SolFed, it is not described within these pages. Thinking of Liverpool radical politics right now, I would love to be in such a group with the SolFed comrades, but I’d want AFed comrades there too, as well as the many unaligned comrades who make up the overwhelming majority of radical class struggle activists.

The hypothetical SolFed organisation of the future as painted so vividly at the end of Fighting For Ourselves is just that – a theoretical abstraction based on lessons learned from all the defeated mass struggles of the past. If – as seems likely – mass struggles break out worldwide in 2013, workers may well make use of SolFed. But why not AFed? Why not the IWW? Why not the platformist groups? But come to that, why won’t they forge their own tools with which to beat the boss class, based on their own lived experiences in their own class struggle classrooms? Surely, in this hyper-globalised, hyper-linked world, what works will spread memetically, in a way prefigured by the Occupy movement of 2011.

For all this pamphlet’s attacks on ‘vanguards’, its focus on building a specific organisation – i.e. by SolFed – when “we reject the idea that the conditions created by capitalism will spontaneously lead to workers’ resistance”, still leaves us with a tiny minority trying to lead the immense global proletariat by example