Anarcho-syndicalism

Also known as "syndicalism or trade unionism". The opportunist trend of thought belonging to petty-bourgeoisie among the international workers' movement. It was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Latin America, where there was considerable development of large industries but also still an extensive amount of small commodity economy. Its emergence and spread were linked to the process of the growing impoverishment of the petty-bourgeoisie in the imperialist era, and the discontent of the working class regarding the reformist policies of the Second International. In the World War I, anarcho-syndicalists, who influenced by their own bourgeoisie, supported their own government's imperialist war policies, and thus, split the workers' movement and turned to social chauvinism. After the World War I, anarcho-syndicalists founded the International Workers' Association (IWA) in Berlin in 1922, and then respectively moved its secretariat to Barcelona, Paris and Sweden in 1933, 1934 and 1938. Following the World War II, anarcho-syndicalism still had influence in some countries, but with the development of proletarian revolutionary struggle, this trend of thought lost its influence day by day.

The main representative of anarcho-syndicalism was Sorel (1847-1922) from France. He held that the ultimate goal of the workers' movement should be transforming the means of production from capitalist private ownership to public ownership through social reforms; opposed political struggle and the proletarian revolution based on the broad masses of working class; Sorel called for the general strike as the most basic method of working class struggle; advocated the tactic of "direct action" for trade unions to organize workers and carry out economic struggle; denied the struggle of the working class for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, opposed the establishment of working class political parties, and held that trade unions are the highest form of organization of the working class. He advocated the elimination of all the state and its organs and the establishment of a society under the direct coordination and control of the federation of trade unions. Anarcho-sydicalism denied the leading role of the proletarian party in the workers' movement and the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat during the transitional period from capitalism to communism. Under the leadership of Lenin, the Bolshevik party repeatedly waged a resolute struggle against anarcho-syndicalist deviations from Marxism in speech and deed. Lenin pointed out that the spontaneous workers' movement itself can only (and inevitably will) result in the trade unionism, which is precisely bourgeois politics of the working class. In 1907, at the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, the Bolshevik Party made severe criticisms on the anarcho-syndicalist propaganda that was being carried out among the proletariat which direct attacked the Party, and considered that a most determined ideological struggle must be waged against the anarcho-syndicalist movement among the proletariat and against Axelrod’s and Larin’s ideas in the Social-Democratic Party. In 1920, the Workers' Opposition put forward the proposal: “The organization of the management of the national economy is the function of an All-Russia Congress of Producers organized in trade and industrial unions.” In 1921, the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (B) adopted the resolution "On the Syndicalist and Anarchist Deviation in Our Party" to condemn and point out that to organize the propaganda of these ideas as being incompatible with membership of the R.C.P. (B). Lenin said that in all his works, Marx and Engels sharply challenged those who tended to forget class distinctions and spoke about producers, the people, or working people in general, and pointed out that only communism can abolish classes. The Workers' Opposition ceased to exist in 1922, till the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) adopted the document titled “Resolution on Several Members of the Former Workers' Opposition", which issued a resolute warning to the leaders who continued factional splittive activites within the Party. The Congress expelled the most malicious disrupters of party discipline from the party, and instructed the Central Committee to expel the remaining members of the Workers’ Opposition, if they indulged in antiparty behavior.