Is pure Syndicalism dead?

[The Idler]

Following on from the IWW thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/seeking-honest-critiques-t183172/index.html), is pure Syndicalism dead?

[Skyhilist]

You could ask the same question about pretty much every radical tendency -- we're all marginalized. Why choose syndicalists specifically?

[Yuppie Grinder]

The Left is dead.

[Popular Front of Judea]

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[GiantMonkeyMan]

The branch sec of the CWU posties in Bridgewater is a syndicalist, they went on strike recently and he seemed alright when I met him on the picket line, very much alive as well.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Syndicalism has been (for all intents and purposes) dead since the 1940's, at least LOL.

Basically all forms of leftism that weren't completely riddled with Leninism and political party fetishism (as dictated by the high priests in Moscow and Peking) were only of very marginal relevance past that time, up until the fall of the USSR

[SmirkerOfTheWorld]

Syndicalism was horribly co-opted and undermined by the Leninists - either because so many syndicalists came under the wing of local Communist parties or because (in the case of the CNT in Russia) they were actually crushed by them.

Sadly, the biggest syndicalist success story of the last 30 years or so was probably Solidarnosc who were (or became) very conservative...

Still, I think there's still a lot of potential - and the collapse of the USSR and discreditation (arguably) of Leninist organising, combined with an aversion to a disorganised libertarian left, and the brutal attacks on workers rights and labour laws could see it returning as a force.

[Hrafn]

We're all dead. This is leftist purgatory.

[SmirkerOfTheWorld]

Good quote from Paul Mason on the co-opting of Syndicalist history:

"One of the problems of labour history is that the syndicalist leaders – from Bill Haywood, to Tom Mann to Jim Larkin – actually became Communists after 1917, and in the process there was a new spin put on the history of syndicalism. So while the RILU (the Comintern’s trade union wing) tried to codify the experience into “theses”, a lot of the actual experience was discounted. It’s the same in the other direction: Nye Bevan was a syndicalist first, Labour MP after. The history of syndicalism got buried beneath what the syndicalists became.
Right now, at the most basic level, unless the labour movement repeats what the syndicalists did, and gets the mass of unskilled, unorganised and migrant workers into trade unions, it will not pass first base."

[DDR]

No, I don't thinks so, at least in the Spanish State.

[vijaya]

I'd like to optimistically say "no it's not!", but unfortunately the reality doesn't always live up to our utopian optimism!

I voted 'yes', but I don't think any radical left movement is ever truly 'dead'. There are always considerable numbers of followers who are devoted to their respective movements, and syndicalism (in it'ts anarcho- form) is still fairly recognisable in certain geographic areas. In some Northern English cities there are anarcho-syndicalist movements, and in I'm sure in Greece and elsewhere there are hopeful steps for locales.

This is the whole thing with leftists in this 'post-ideological' world we live in; small-scale, local and somewhat temporary movements are all seen as achievements. Vast societal change is unlikely in the very near future, and socio-economic justice isn't in near sight, so these small syndicalist (or whatever) victories are proof that movements for worker emancipation aren't 'dead', but vitally, nor are they 'alive' in the sense that they can mold society and install the societal structures and implement the changes they desire.

[Decolonize The Left]

Following on from the IWW thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/seeking-honest-critiques-t183172/index.html), is pure Syndicalism dead?

Seems to me like pure syndicalism is the expression of the root of working class consciousness, so at the moment it's extremely weak in a lot of places, but not dead. I think it will be the strongest point in favor of the working class as class tensions increase.

[MarxSchmarx]

I'm somewhat curious what the "pure" qualification here means to people.

Does this preclude "syndicalism with adjectives" like "anarcho-syndicalism" and "national syndicalism"?

As far as I know, there was really no exclusively economic "syndicalism" - some groups tried to restrict their practice to the work place, but most if not all had an understanding that the state was an actor that could affect the ebb and flow of their workplace action and in any event had given some thought to how to go about getting rid of it. In the end I think it's fair to say there was a continuum of groups that had varying degrees of explicit political involvement as part of their tactics.