Anarcho-syndicalism

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Anarcho-syndicalism
Concepts Anarchism Co-operative economics Direct action General strike Industrial unionism Syndicalism Wage slavery Workers' cooperative Workplace democracy Workers' self-management
People Ascaso F. Ascaso J. Besnard Camus Chomsky Dolgoff García Oliver Gröndahl Leval Kater Köster Mainwaring Maksimov Meltzer Orobón Peiró Gandía Novomirskii Pelloutier Pestaña Petrichenko Pouget Rocker Rüdiger Santillán Schapiro Seguí Soto Souchy Witkop Yarchuk
Organizations Asociación Continental Americana de Trabajadores Awareness League Confederacion General del Trabajo Confédération Générale du Travail Confederación Nacional del Trabajo Confédération nationale du travail Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists Free Workers' Union Free Workers' Union of Germany International Workers' Association Norsk Syndikalistisk Forbund Priama akcia Solidarity Federation SAC Syndikalisterna Swedish Anarcho-syndicalist Youth Federation Unione Sindacale Italiana Union of Russian Workers Workers Solidarity Alliance
Literature Anarcho-Syndicalism Anarcho-Syndicalist Review
Related topics Anarcho-communism Collectivist anarchism Council communism Libertarian socialism Mutualism Neozapatismo Participatory economics Platformism Synthesis anarchism
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Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in broader society. The goal of syndicalism is to abolish the wage system, regarding it as wage slavery. Anarcho-syndicalist theory generally focuses on the labour movement. Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism is centred on the idea that power corrupts and that any hierarchy that cannot be ethically justified must be dismantled.^[1]

The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are solidarity, direct action (action undertaken without the intervention of third parties such as politicians, bureaucrats and arbitrators), and workers' self-management. Anarcho-syndicalists believe their economic theories constitute a strategy for facilitating proletarian self-activity and creating an alternative cooperative economic system with democratic values and production centred on meeting human needs. Anarcho-syndicalists perceive the primary purpose of the state as the defence of private property in the forms of capital goods and thereby of economic, social and political power. In maintaining this status quo, the state denies most of its citizens the ability to enjoy material independence and the social autonomy that springs from it.^[1]