Syndicates

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I have a few questions concerning the following statement:


In anarchist communism, profit no longer exists. Not only that, but goods are given away as gifts in the certainty that others will also give products back. In an industrial setting, this would occur between worker syndicates as well as between individuals. If one syndicate does not share their products, they will not receive resources from other syndicates, making it in their best interest to share.

From my understanding, [please correct me if I'm wrong :D ] a syndicate, when speaking in terms of anarchism/communism, is a work place run democratically. Is there a difference between that and worker council?

How would one syndicate not share their products with the public? ;) Wouldn't the community have to grant most enterprises a place of production?

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 05:42 am
a syndicate, when speaking in terms of anarchism/communism, is a work place run democratically. Is there a difference between that and worker council?

Yes. A syndicate would be, as you said, a council that runs it's own workplace and nothing else. It is an administrative body that only has authority over that particular workplace. A "workers council" generally refers to an administrative body that runs an entire geographic region or community. Representatives from each syndicate would be part of that council.


How would one syndicate not share their products with the public? ;) Wouldn't the community have to grant most enterprises a place of production?

Yes, the syndicates would own the places of production. They would have complete administrative control over it. However, they would recieve an overall mandate (for example, producing 1000 bikes a year) from the workers councils (which they are a part of)

If they no longer wish to participate in the community, the community is no longer obliged to provide electricity to the factory, or food and housing to the workers. In return for the bikes. The members of the syndicate are also free to leave and join another workplace and maintain their association with the community as an individual. As long as they work to their abilities, they recieve what they need.

[blackstone]

Originally posted by William Everard+October 08, 2007 10:17 am--> (William Everard @ October 08, 2007 10:17 am)
[email protected] 08, 2007 05:42 am
a syndicate, when speaking in terms of anarchism/communism, is a work place run democratically. Is there a difference between that and worker council?

Yes. A syndicate would be, as you said, a council that runs it's own workplace and nothing else. It is an administrative body that only has authority over that particular workplace. A "workers council" generally refers to an administrative body that runs an entire geographic region or community. Representatives from each syndicate would be part of that council.


How would one syndicate not share their products with the public? ;) Wouldn't the community have to grant most enterprises a place of production?

Yes, the syndicates would own the places of production. They would have complete administrative control over it. However, they would recieve an overall mandate (for example, producing 1000 bikes a year) from the workers councils (which they are a part of)

If they no longer wish to participate in the community, the community is no longer obliged to provide electricity to the factory, or food and housing to the workers. In return for the bikes. The members of the syndicate are also free to leave and join another workplace and maintain their association with the community as an individual. As long as they work to their abilities, they recieve what they need. [/b]
I'm sorry that makes no sense at all. The syndicates do not own the places of production. The means of production,which includes the points of production, would have been socialized in the event of a communist/anarchist revolution.

If they no longer wish to partake in the community, then they would have to leave, seeing that the factory,does not belong to them, but to the communist/anarchist society.

As you said the members of the factory are free to leave and join another workplace and continue to be members of society, but the idea of the workers in the factory are the only owners of the factory is ludicrous. All workers and all members of society are owners, even if they never worked there. This is assured the through linkage of various worker and neighborhood councils and assemblies.

Forgive me if i read wrong.

[Bilan]

Originally posted by William Everard+October 08, 2007 08:17 pm--> (William Everard @ October 08, 2007 08:17 pm)
[email protected] 08, 2007 05:42 am
a syndicate, when speaking in terms of anarchism/communism, is a work place run democratically. Is there a difference between that and worker council?

Yes. A syndicate would be, as you said, a council that runs it's own workplace and nothing else. It is an administrative body that only has authority over that particular workplace. A "workers council" generally refers to an administrative body that runs an entire geographic region or community. Representatives from each syndicate would be part of that council.


How would one syndicate not share their products with the public? ;) Wouldn't the community have to grant most enterprises a place of production?

Yes, the syndicates would own the places of production. They would have complete administrative control over it. However, they would recieve an overall mandate (for example, producing 1000 bikes a year) from the workers councils (which they are a part of)

If they no longer wish to participate in the community, the community is no longer obliged to provide electricity to the factory, or food and housing to the workers. In return for the bikes. The members of the syndicate are also free to leave and join another workplace and maintain their association with the community as an individual. As long as they work to their abilities, they recieve what they need. [/b]
From what I read in Workers Councils that doesn't really sound right.
Basically, from what I gathered, Workers Councils and Syndicates are pretty much the same thing.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:01 pm
The syndicates own the places of production. The means of production,which includes the points of production, would have been socialized in the event of a communist/anarchist revolution.
Semantic.

I said the workers councils would mandate the syndicates, therefore having authority over them. In other words everyone would have control of the means of production, but the workers who actually work in the factory would have a certain level of autonomy when it comes to running it. And could even refuse to run it.


the idea of the workers in the factory are the only owners of the factory is ludicrous. All workers and all members of society are owners, even if they never worked there. This is assured the through linkage of various worker and neighborhood councils and assemblies.

Ok I worded it badly. They would not have the power to deny a certain community of the factory, but they would have the right to disasociate with the workplace and disolve the syndicate. But as they are also part of the community it would be in their interests to work it, in order to produce and recieve.


Forgive me if i read wrong.

No I didn't articulate my point properly.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by Proper Tea is [email protected] 08, 2007 01:57 pm
From what I read in Workers Councils that doesn't really sound right.
Basically, from what I gathered, Workers Councils and Syndicates are pretty much the same thing.
Well, my understanding was that a Workers syndicate, in Syndicalist ideology was essentially a union branch that had taken complete control of the workplace.

it gets confusing because Syndicalists often state that the syndicates would take complete control of society. But as a Communist, I only see them as having control over the economic sphere, and broader community councils made up of the unemployed (including the unable to work), house workers and other interest groups such as residents associations.

[Bilan]

Originally posted by William [email protected] 09, 2007 12:33 am
it gets confusing because Syndicalists often state that the syndicates would take complete control of society. But as a Communist, I only see them as having control over the economic sphere, and broader community councils made up of the unemployed (including the unable to work), house workers and other interest groups such as residents associations.
aye, sounds about right.

[syndicat]

"syndicate" is from the word for union in the Latin languages, "sindicato" in Spanish means union. "Syndicate" is not the best translation. In the USA the word "syndicate" suggests the mob or business association.

If the workers collectively own the factory, this sets up a bargaining power relation to the rest of society, essentially a market relationship. If there is a larger regional congress or regional meeting of delegates that simply "mandates" the factory group what to produce, then you have a form of central planning, and that violates the self-management of the workers. The society might then move to set up bosses over them to make sure they carry out their "mandates."

What is needed here is some recognition of consumption and production as affecting people in different ways, and requiring different organizations to be the place where decisions related to consumption or production are made. The means of production should be owned in common by everyone. The workers organization at a factory has only a use right, and only as long as they operate the factory in a socially responsible way, and stick to the social plan. But the social plan needs to come about as the result of some sort of negotiation between the consumer organizations and producer organizations. We can think of consumption requests being developed by the neighbordhood residents organizations, and maybe expanded on thru some city-wide congress of delegates, and the worker organizations then respond to these requests with their ideas about how to meet these requests, and what resources they need to do so, which gives us an estimate of social costs. People may then decide that certain things are too costly, and scale back their initial plans. That's what i mean by negotiation.

But i don't think it makes sense simply giving everything away because then we'd have no way of knowing what is really important to people to produce, and we'd have no way of knowing whether what was produced was what they most preferred use of their resources.

We could have a substantial free sector but i don't think it would be wise to extend this to everything. You also need to provide motivation for people to do the work that society needs being done. So there needs to be some notion of people earning a consumption entitlement thru work effort, if they are able-bodied adults. People who are willing to work, but currently out of a job, also should receive the same consumption entitlement since it is the society's obligation to provide work for people to do, and to spread the work around.

[Bilan]

I was hoping you'd post something, Syndicat. :wub:

But for clarification, what exactly is the difference between a "syndicate" and a workers council? or isn't there one?

[syndicat]

well, the term "workers council" has been used to mean a variety of different things. sometimes it is used to refer to the workers own democratic organization for the management of a workplace or industry, sometimes it is used to refer to a local or regaional worker governance structure with delegates from the various industries, like the Russian soviets.

for purposes of being clear, i prefer to use a different terminology. so i'd talk about the industrial federation as the organization of the workers for the management of an industry, which federates the various sites. and i'd speak of an assembly or workplace meeting as the basic decision making body, which elects a workplace council. so a workplace unit has its general meeting and its elected council of delegates. and then for the city or region, the idea would be to have a congress or convention of delegates from all these workplace units. this provides the basic worker decision-making power.

i think there needs to be also some sort of neighborhood-based organization that groups residents, like a general meeting or assembly of people in a neighborhood, an area of a few thousand adults. And this general meeting elects the neighborhood committee, and also elects a delegate to attend a city-wide council or congress of neighborhood delegates.

I would imagine the worker congress and the council of neighborhood delegates as being co-equal powers for governance of the city or urban region. From the point of view of the operation of the economy, negotiation would be required.

So, if we think of long-term planning for things like public utilities, transportation, health care, housing production, we can imagine that the neighborhood federation has various planning groups to help it develop plans, as far as what people want, and the worker industrial federations in areas like electric power, housing production, etc. they also have their people who do planning and research, at least part of the time (shouldn't be a specialized professional group, but some workers who have the training and interest) make responses to proposals in regard to cost estimates. "Okay, so you want to increase housing units by 5% in the next 2 years, well, that will require X, Y, Z resources."

To figure out the total resources needed, you also need to factor in everyone's requests or plans as far as their private consumption is concerned also. That way you get an idea of total demand on available reources.

But of course it would be the construction worker groups who self-manage the actual construction, and the industrial federations in public utilities that actually manage the public utilities, and so on. But what they do is within the overall social plan that is worked out thru negotiation in the way suggested above.

[catch]

Originally posted by William Everard+October 08, 2007 02:23 pm--> (William Everard @ October 08, 2007 02:23 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 01:01 pm
The syndicates own the places of production. The means of production,which includes the points of production, would have been socialized in the event of a communist/anarchist revolution.
Semantic.
[/b]
Not at all. There are plenty of examples of 'self-management under capitalism" where workers ended up running plants.

See Lip 1973 (http://libcom.org/library/lip-and-the-self-managed-counter-revolution-negation) or Portugal 1974 (http://libcom.org/tags/portugal-1974-5) for examples of where this was anything but a semantic question.


William Everard
I said the workers councils would mandate the syndicates, therefore having authority over them. In other words everyone would have control of the means of production, but the workers who actually work in the factory would have a certain level of autonomy when it comes to running it. And could even refuse to run it.
This has no basis in the history of workers self-management or much of the theory of it.

Workers councils emerged in Germany and Italy (and arguably Russia with the factory committees) - closely related to council and left communism. Generally they emerged against the existing unions entirely.

Syndicalism was in the US, Mexico, Spain, Argentina - in all cases the setting up of an alternative union. Now in Spain I think you could certainly say that there were workers councils (and agricultural communes) parallel to the syndicates, but these would be at the level of the individual enterprise, with the syndicate being an industrial and/or regional federation.

[syndicat]

catch:
Workers councils emerged in Germany and Italy (and arguably Russia with the factory committees) - closely related to council and left communism. Generally they emerged against the existing unions entirely.

In the case of Italy, the factory council movement emerged as a kind of radical shop stewards movement in Turin after World War I, modeled on the World War I era British shop stewards movement. The movement for workplace assemblies and election of unpaid worker delegates was developed independently of the FIOM union "internal commission" which was regarded as an unresponsive bureaucracy. Moreover, the idea was to create a cross-union solidarity by bringing into a single unity workers from the FIOM, USI (IWW-style union), technicians' craft union. During the mass seizure of the factories in Sept 1920 this organization was seen as prefiguring, becoming, the organization of workers management of industry. The USI then adopted this program for its entire union organization. However, the factory council movement in Turin was also a rank and file reform movement in that eventually they rebuilt the structure of the FIOM branch, bringing it under the control of the shop councils.

But this is very different than the Soviets in Russia. More akin to the Russian factory committees, as you suggest.


Syndicalism was in the US, Mexico, Spain, Argentina - in all cases the setting up of an alternative union.

Not in all cases. There were important rank and file opposition movements in some of the AFL unions, and the Syndicalist League was formed to foment internal change in the unions, tho it ended up woefully inadequate to that task.



Now in Spain I think you could certainly say that there were workers councils (and agricultural communes) parallel to the syndicates, but these would be at the level of the individual enterprise, with the syndicate being an industrial and/or regional federation.

I'm not sure what "workers councils" you're talking about. In the summer of 1936 the industries were expropriated by the unions and were directly managed by the unions prior to the collectivization decree of October 1936, when many enterprises were reorganized as cooperatives. Typically the shop stewards committee converted itself into a workplace administrative council, which was accountable to a general assembly. Maybe that's why you mean by "workers council." the CNT did in fact sometimes talk about "factory councils."

There were also industrial federations organized independently of the unions in cases where there was more than one union with significant support in an industry. Such as the Revolutionary Railway Federation, an industrial federation that ran the railways, but with joint control by the CNT and UGT. In other cases the union was the industrial federation that managed the industry, as with the furniture and lumber industry.

but the CNT never got to the point of linking these organizations up into some new regional organization of social control, such as a workers congress, tho their program called for that.

The CNT's program also talked about an entirely separate organization, based on residence, the "free municipality" and there were some rural villages in Aragon where the functions of the polity, and economy were all merged into a single collective based on an assembly and an elected council (revolutionary committee, or antifacsist committee).

[blackstone]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 04:38 pm
well, the term "workers council" has been used to mean a variety of different things. sometimes it is used to refer to the workers own democratic organization for the management of a workplace or industry, sometimes it is used to refer to a local or regaional worker governance structure with delegates from the various industries, like the Russian soviets.

for purposes of being clear, i prefer to use a different terminology. so i'd talk about the industrial federation as the organization of the workers for the management of an industry, which federates the various sites. and i'd speak of an assembly or workplace meeting as the basic decision making body, which elects a workplace council. so a workplace unit has its general meeting and its elected council of delegates. and then for the city or region, the idea would be to have a congress or convention of delegates from all these workplace units. this provides the basic worker decision-making power.

i think there needs to be also some sort of neighborhood-based organization that groups residents, like a general meeting or assembly of people in a neighborhood, an area of a few thousand adults. And this general meeting elects the neighborhood committee, and also elects a delegate to attend a city-wide council or congress of neighborhood delegates.

I would imagine the worker congress and the council of neighborhood delegates as being co-equal powers for governance of the city or urban region. From the point of view of the operation of the economy, negotiation would be required.

So, if we think of long-term planning for things like public utilities, transportation, health care, housing production, we can imagine that the neighborhood federation has various planning groups to help it develop plans, as far as what people want, and the worker industrial federations in areas like electric power, housing production, etc. they also have their people who do planning and research, at least part of the time (shouldn't be a specialized professional group, but some workers who have the training and interest) make responses to proposals in regard to cost estimates. "Okay, so you want to increase housing units by 5% in the next 2 years, well, that will require X, Y, Z resources."

To figure out the total resources needed, you also need to factor in everyone's requests or plans as far as their private consumption is concerned also. That way you get an idea of total demand on available reources.

But of course it would be the construction worker groups who self-manage the actual construction, and the industrial federations in public utilities that actually manage the public utilities, and so on. But what they do is within the overall social plan that is worked out thru negotiation in the way suggested above.
Factory/Industrial Enterprise/Unit of Production :

General Assembly of the Factory:
Consists of all workers of a given factory/industrial enterprise/etc
Highest decision-making body for all problems relating to the factory
This decision making process involves, but not limited to, amending and rejecting various proprosals
Elegates delegates of the Worker's Council and elects Delegates to the Central Assembly of Delegates

Worker's Council:
The suggested functions of the Worker's Council is up the the disposal of the General Assembly of the factory.
Examples of functions, include, but not limited to, coordination of activities between the various departments of an enterprise
Maintenance of relations between industries within the same sector and industries within same locality.
Delegates are revocable at any time and should function on a rotation basis.


Commune:

General Assembly of Commune:
As with the, general assembly of the factory, they are made up of the population of the commune, through various neighborhood associations and grassroots organizations.
They elect delegates to the People's Council/ Commune Comittee and delegates to the Central Assembly of Delagates.

People's Council:
The suggested functions of the Peoples's Council is up the the disposal of the General Assembly of the commune.
Examples of functions, include, but not limited to, coordination of needs between the various neighborhood associations
Delegates are revocable at any time and should function on a rotation basis.


Central Assembly of Delegates
The Central Assembly of Delegates is the totality of Delegates of Factories and Communes in a specific region.

Council of Central Assembly of Delegates
This council represents the highest form of worker's self management, is is made up of delegates from the different regional Central Assembly of Delegates.


More can be found here, if i errored in any way. Please correct me.
http://www.point-of-departure.org/Lust-For...ndEconomics.htm (http://www.point-of-departure.org/Lust-For-Life/WorkersCouncilsAndEconomics/WorkersCouncilsAndEconomics.htm)

[syndicat]

well, there is a significant difference between the Castoriadis pamphlet and what you quote. The Castoriadis pamphlet talks about the polity or governance body being a meeting of the delegates of the worker counciils in the local workplaces.

But your "Commune" and its "General Assembly" are not based on the workplaces but meetings of the residents in neighborhoods. And then you have a regional organization, the Central Assembly of Delegates, from the "communes" (neighborhood assemblies) and the worker councils (workplaces).

What do you see as the different functions of these (resident versus workplace organization)?

So, which is the polity to be based on, just the workplace organizations, just the neighborhood assemblies, or some body that has representatives from both?

It seems that you want to represent people as workers and as consumers/citizens/residents. I agree there needs to be both sorts of base organization, neighborhood assembly and workplace assembly.

I'm just not sure about where the governing power in the city or region should reside. Some would say it should reside with the citizens, the residents. Some say it should reside with the workers, and the workplace based organizations. What reasons are there to favor one over the other?

I think an argument for the importance of the power of the congress of delegates from the workplace organizations is because in the period of transition a working class based power is needed, in order to counter the opposition of the classes that are being deposed, ex-capitalists, ex-managers, ex-landlords. They may remain as citizens with rights as such, but the danger is that they might dominate neighborhood or resident based organizations.

On the other hand, people need to have voice as residents, as citizens, as consumers, and the residence based organizations can play that role.

[catch]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 07:30 pm
Typically the shop stewards committee converted itself into a workplace administrative council, which was accountable to a general assembly. Maybe that's why you mean by "workers council." the CNT did in fact sometimes talk about "factory councils."
Yeah that's what I meant, I have no idea to what extent they had similarities with previous (or future) movements that were actually called workers councils, could be a red herring.

[Killer Enigma]

Semantic.
*Semantics.

[blackstone]

I think for me what it boils down to is a few things. I suppose you already know about the Jena, Louisiana situation.

Not only does the black community make up a small portion of Jena population, but they represent an disproportioned percentage of the unemployment rate.

If the worker's council of Jena is the main governing body then how will the black community be sure they will not be unfairly prosecuted through racism and discrimination? Not, saying neighborhood assemblies, or a joint council of neighboorhood and worker counciles will solve this problem, but it will give at least a microphone to their voices.

What other measures or seperate governing council can rectify this or prevent another Jena?

[syndicat]

I think that's a good point. Particular ethnic or racial groups in the USA, if they are oppressed groups, may be concentrated in particular neighborhoods. However, they may also be concentrated in particular jobs or industries as well, such as the US postal system, which has a high concentration of African-American workers.

Part of the reason I think that individuals should be able to make proposals for their personal consumption is that if they are part of an ethnic minority, they can use this to ensure that things are produced that are part of their cultural tradition. This differs from the anarcho-communist tradition, which envisioned consumption controlled collectively thru something like neighborhood assemblies. But in the USA the working class is so diverse that even neighborhoods are not necessarily homogenous.

Forcibly assimilating everyone to a single culture is what some people would call cultural imperialism. And cultural communities may not necessarily coincide exactly with either neighborhood or workplace assemblies.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

So how exactly would a Syndicate/Worker's Council be able to trade with another? I would think the communities and individuals would handle the crux of that. Obviously everything can't be produced in one commune -- would, say, a commune with great farming trade food with an automobile factory, or would that be left to the syndicates to decide?

[syndicat]

Economies are integrated affairs. Any decisions about production in one community or industry will have ripple effects elsewhere. But if we're to eliminate the class system, we can't continue to have market relations govern. People will use their bargaining power in market systems to their advantage and you'll soon have a class system all over again.

We should think instead of the means of production being owned by everyone in the entire society, and the workers in a particular workplace having simply a use right, a right to earn their entitlement to consume a share of the total social product, through their work effort in that facility. The self-management of an industry by the workers is thus a delegation of a responsibility from the entire society. So, how do they decide what it is that they are to do on behalf of the society? This requires first of all that people in their communities have a way to express what it is that they want from the system of production.

Your factory makes bicycles. People in other cities want your bicycles. We might think of this, initially, as the people in communities put in requests for bicycles. But requests for bicycles has ripple effects. However many bicycles we make, we can't use the metal and rubber for other things. The people making the bikes won't be available to do other work. And what if people demand more bicycles than we currently have the capacity to produce?

These considerations suggest that there needs to be a process of negotiation between producers and consumers to work out a social plan that covers all the things people want, and provides an agenda for production for the whole economy.

Everyone has only a finite share of the total social product. So we can then think of each person as having a budget. So they can request things up to the limit of their budget, and a community also produces things, it puts a certain amount of effort in to the effort for production for the whole society, and we can think of this as, initially, the basis of its share, its budget. Of course, if a particular community has been oppressed in the past or has had an emergency, the society as a whole might allow them to consume more of the total output than what they earn through their own work right now. For example, a certain area might have been underdeveloped thru plunder of its resources, and so a fund might be decided on by the entire society for bringing that region up to the level of productive capacity etc. as other areas.

So, individuals and communities request things from production groups everywhere -- whatever they want -- up to the limits of the budgets. Production groups and research organizations can provide estimates of what things will cost.

Production groups thus end up with an agenda for what to produce that isn't determined by its bargaining power in a market, but by the social plan that results from people requesting its products, within the limits of their budgets. The whole idea of individuals and communities being limited to budgets does presuppose that we have a social accounting unit in which we can express the total value of products that someone can consume, and a way of evaluating the costs of products, and thus a way for appropriate prices to emerge that measure the social costs of production.

[blackstone]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 05:50 pm
I think that's a good point. Particular ethnic or racial groups in the USA, if they are oppressed groups, may be concentrated in particular neighborhoods. However, they may also be concentrated in particular jobs or industries as well, such as the US postal system, which has a high concentration of African-American workers.

Part of the reason I think that individuals should be able to make proposals for their personal consumption is that if they are part of an ethnic minority, they can use this to ensure that things are produced that are part of their cultural tradition. This differs from the anarcho-communist tradition, which envisioned consumption controlled collectively thru something like neighborhood assemblies. But in the USA the working class is so diverse that even neighborhoods are not necessarily homogenous.

Forcibly assimilating everyone to a single culture is what some people would call cultural imperialism. And cultural communities may not necessarily coincide exactly with either neighborhood or workplace assemblies.
I think that's an interesting point that you bring up, but i mean more so fair representation in the terms of the administrative of justice.

How can their rights be protected?

[YSR]

P.S. this is the best topic I've seen on RevLeft in some time.