Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 21:03:45 +1000
From: Steve Wright <pmargin-AT-xchange.anarki.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: reply to Steve around contemporary anarcho-syndicalism


Harald Beyer-Arnesen wrote:

> I do believe that anarcho-syndicalism - whatever one
> may think of it - can raise interesting questions,
> i.e. also for people opposed to it as a strategy, as
> it immediately focuses on forms of organisation. But

yes.

> I would need much more time to write anything
> interesting around this. It sometimes seems that most
> of non-leninist marxism has completely given up work-
> places as an arena of struggle and agitation.

I'm not sure what tendencies you're referring to exactly. Certainly in Italy
there is a fascination in certain autonomist circles with the self-employed,
while the social centres have often had real difficlties - when they have felt
so inclined - to connect with activity in workplaces. Then again there is a
certain presence of 'non-leninist marxism' within the various alternative unions
in that country, even if this is dwarfed by anarchists and leninists alike.

If we're talking about other places: well, there is Collective Action Notes/Red
and Black Notes/Bad Days in North America, or Wildcat in Germany, Aufheben in
Britain, all with a particular interest in the workplace. Small circles,
admittedly.

I don't know, you could be right overall. I don't want to sound defensive about
this; after all, as you know, I have no great interest in preferring any
grouping over another on the grounds that one is marxist and the other not -
that isn't the most significant divide any more, if it ever was.

> As for anarcho-syndicalism, not an easy question to
> answer, as there is not much of an anarcho-syndicalist
> movement around, and where it exists in some numbers,
> that is something beyond being foremost a propaganda
> group, it has existed in a more or less constant state
> of crisis since it reemerged. The slowly increasing
> awarenes that it in fact finds itself in a crisis,
> is perhaps the most positive sign.

>From what I can see, the real numerical gains, as modest as they have been, are
amongst those tendencies which, for whatever reasons, find themselves outside
the IWA. Some would see their relative success as an indicator of good practice,
while others view it as proof of their alleged opportunism. I'm intrigued by
what little I have been able to find about - mainly through other IWW members -
concering both the CNT-F and Spanish CGT in this regard.

> And then there are of course all the questions of reaching
> out to other workers at all.

yet another can of worms - perhaps the most important of all.

Steve

>



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