the role of an anarcho-syndicalist organisation and the role of an anarchist federation

I'll assume you're just trying to shoehorn everything you read into existing debates in which you've already obtained the 'correct' position, rather than being dishonest, but this misrepresents me twice.

firstly, I don't reject spontaneity, I just think it's insufficient and and excellent excuse to detach your politics from the everyday class struggle. secondly, it's fallacious to assume that just because you can't build one big union piecemeal then you can't build any kind of minority industrial organisation and should just join the party. you really don't need that many people in an industrial network to produce an industrial freesheet etc. it's not like I'm talking about patiently building the 1930s CNT.

I mean when you take into account the inneffectiveness of existing anarchist organisations at responding to people who actually want to join, plus our massive lack of visibility meaning dissillusioned trade union militants, politicised/radicalised workers, students etc who are looking for something more tend to join trot groups and become schooled in leftism then we really could do better. yes that means being a better organised, less miniscule organisation that's still a significant minority, and only really class struggle will change that plateau (contra nick durie's exponential growth bet with jack), but not having an industrial strategy because 'the class struggle will take care of it' is an untenable position.

I presume this is where decadence theory steps in (although this is for another thread entirely); faced with socialism or barbarism, workers must organise themselves. but we are workers, the class isn't some big other we sit around waitng to awake, but our co-workers, neighbours, friends, flatmates - and the way we organise ourselves as revolutionaries can influence them too (e.g. there's a periphery developing around our two EWN comrades who work together). Yes our influence is often small and you cannot conjure class struggle out of nothing, however neither is it some external object to fetishise; we can play a part in collectivising grievances in our own workplaces, communities etc, and we can better do this when we are organised (which will always be supplemented by more informal, ad hoc groupings).

not just abstract philosophy no, there's practical activity that can be done around religion and sexual freedom for instance. but lets hear from the AF on what they see their role as consisting of:

so that seems pretty clear and definitive (last revised November 2008 iirc). taking an anarcho-syndicalist organisation (such as that which SolFed aspires to be) as a 'grassroots organisation of the working class' it seems natural that the AF should be part of it, but that leaves loads of other activity for a specifically anarchist federation. if AF members aren't interested in that other stuff, but just want to be part of permanent industrial agitational networks, then i guess they're anarcho-syndicalists at heart.

even regular trade unions can defend trans people from discrimination no? (maybe Steven. can correct me on this, but i'm sure it would be fairly par for the course for him as a Unison rep to help someone suffering discrimination on those grounds). it's just basic class solidarity (even if expressed through trade union channels), and doesn't require an anarchist critique of gender at all. (fwiw this is a bad example anyway as trans politics seem to wed gender to biological sex with the whole 'trapped in the wrong body' thing). in any case, i fully accept there's an overlap in roles, so trying to think up borderline cases doesn't really establish much imho.

i don't know if it's because i express myself in quite a 'theoretical' manner or if it's just a response to thinking things through very rigourously, but there's nothing abstract or idealist about this discussion. i'm part of a growing local group that's making new contacts with people fairly frequently and the question of who we do and don't admit as members and what we see our role as being is a very concrete one.

if we took the CNT Sevilla position for example, we'd presumable be inviting in everyone from the Vestas support group (largely trots with or without parties, plus some council communist types and the odd green). at the other end of the spectrum, if we took the AF position we'd be screening people for religious belief. this whole discussion has arisen from our concrete practical activity, the 'theory' is attempts to draw generally applicable points from particular concrete experiences and historical examples.

at present, i think this is fairly uncontroversial. only because the anarchist federation want to be an anarchist federation they do it pretty well, because SolFed doesn't we mostly shuffle our feet and wonder why we're not the CNT. that's an exaggeration, but it's fair to say we don't put much effort into being something we want to be, and we've yet to formulate a strategy for changing it (although there are various detailed proposals under discussion).

ok, i'll reiterate why i don't think a merger is the best course of action:

1) I do think there are distinct roles to be played.
2) Even if you disagree, the chances of this happening from scratch are pretty low due to historical sectarianism/conservatism
3) Consequently, even if you reject 1) the best thing to do seems to be an SF-AF relationship where they join SF and SF clarifies its strategy (ideally outlining the relationship between networks and WRGs), drawing on the AF's support for the networks strategy and commitment to participate in 'grassroots organisations of the working class.' Then if there really is no division of roles, we'll soon find out and de jure merger might follow the de facto one. but like i say, i'm currently opposed to that, although i'm willing to be proved wrong in practice.

i agree - informal groupings of militant workers don't require a formal network, but a formal network might help germinate them and link them on a regional and industrial basis (e.g. the EWN could provide a means for WRGs in different universities to communicate and co-ordinate).

i think that's fair enough, and this relationship between formal revolutionary groupings (with conferences, subs, publications and so on) and less formal workplace groups is something we've been grappling with in theory and practice (as i say, our EWN members are trying to pull together a broader , informal workplace group - i think they've had a few informal meetings in the pub and have discussed doing a MWR-style piss-takey newsletter). this thread has helped clarify things, and i think more rigorously defined Workplace Resistance Groups are complementary to Industrial Networks rather than being an alternative.

true, in the current level of struggle. i mean we have two EWN members at a university of ~2000 workers. they're not able to function as a revolutionary union and would probably get fired if they tried. exactly what level of membership constitutes a 'revolutionary union' is an impossible question in advance as it's so contingent on the influence of the members - e.g. a really respected, charismatic militant might be able to pretty much call a mass meeting single-handed, random workers nobody knows may require more densitiy. that's why Brighton oppose the 'declaration strategy' of becoming a union where we simply declare that we are now a revolutionary union regardless of reality. for us, it's simply a designation after the fact.

i really don't think i'm being opaque. if, despite my repeated explanations of what SolFed people mean by a 'revolutionary union' you are unable to concieve of anything except that which drops neatly into a ready-made ICC critique then i'm sorry. i think i've spelled out pretty clearly and repeatedly what SolFed mean. here it is again (from page one):

this came from an internal critique of S&S, and Brighton members were impressed by its clarity. S&S also goes into great length about the relationship of organisational possibilities to the level of class struggle, so again there's no need for the fallacy that if you don't hold that capitalism is decadent you are ahistorical and acontextual.

yes, i was impressed with Miles and your reports of your involvement in the Tower Hamlets stuff which seemed eminently practical and dispelled a few prejudices i may have had about the ICC (i didn't really think you'd turn up like a latter-day Jan of Leyden declaring 'the end is nigh!', honest ).

i've just seen Gordon Brown on the telly saying MPs will be made recallable. this is probably bollocks, but it raises an interesting parallel that makes my point about anarchism being for self-organsiation not representation.

if, as CNT Sevilla have it an 'anarcho-union' is just like a regular union with democratic structures, surely if Brown makes MPs recallable that makes him an 'anarcho-parliamentarist'. obviously this is absurd, because anarchists reject political representation per se, and should apply the same standards to economic representation. that leaves the conception of an anarcho-syndicalist 'revolutionary union' i've outlined, which doesn't seek to recruit represent workers but agitates for self-organisation.

we walked past on sunday, but left it to the SWP's Enthusiastic Youth Legions to sloganeer him into submission

also, asn made an interesting comment on another thread:

this is basically the same distinction i've been drawing, only using the opposite terminology. for me, if you take the anarchism out of anarcho-syndicalism, you're left with just syndicalism. of course the CNT was founded as a simple revolutionary syndicalist union a la the CGT (in 1910), and only became more anarchist-influenced later (e.g. adopting libertarian communism as a goal in 1923); so i would actually say the FAI were pushing for anarcho-syndicalism on the FORA model:

i think that organising model can be separated from the insurrectionary tactics the FAI pushed (i mean they weren't wrong, revolution was just around the corner, but i'm no fan of insurrectionary tactics).

well i think a revolutionary union should have an aim of libertarian communism and expect its members to agree with its aim. but i think you can have that goal without necessarily having politics as developed and tight as those required by an anarchist federation. ideally this would be something under debate within the 'union' too yes, but i wouldn't expect the same level of agreement as from a political organisation

ok, i see what you mean, but that's still not an anarchist critique of gender which sees it as a set of social roles for everyone not just trans people. the point remains you can oppose discrimination based on race, sexuality, gender without having any developed critique of any of them just on grounds of basic class solidarity - defending your fellow worker regardless of their characteristics.

i don't see how this contradicts what i've said. trade unions are largely economic bodies that outsource their political elements to the Labour Party. revolutionary unions of the type i describe are political-economic and thus closer to political anarchist organisations with more overlap.

well it's at a higher level of abstraction that 'who should Brighton SolFed allow to be members?' and 'how do we relate to Brighton AF?' because i think the answers to these questions are more general and effect people far beyond our particular concrete circumstances in Brighton. thats also why i'm refering to 'an anarcho-syndicalist organisation' and 'an anarchist federation' in general as well as the SF and AF in particular as the obvious candidates to be those...

that's true. there seem to be signs that SolFed is not content to remain a political organisation in denial, so the concrete dimension of this is if not a political group, what should an anarcho-syndicalist organisation be? what functions should we be looking to take on, and which should we be leaving to the AF?

to be fair the AF appear from the outside to be doing a pretty good job of being an anarchist federation, although i think they lack a coherent industrial/community strategy (SFs is only really being rigorously articulated now, although it seems there's been a pretty thought-out approach behind the networks strategy from the off).

so like i say this discussion of roles, while pitched at a slightly abstract level is only done so tobe applicable to others, but reflects conversations within SolFed about what 'union functions' we're looking to develop (such as drop-in advice sessions) and what 'anarchist federation' functions we're looking to shed (stuff like Manc's Sex pamphlet has been mentioned).

the over-arching point is that the AF and SF aren't rivals, but many on both sides have long seen them as such. this is ghetto politics. we are not irrelevant because we don't appeal to anarchists, but because we offer nothing to discontented workers. even at the present levels of struggle the membership and throughput of the Trot parties far dwarfs anarchist ones, and having worked with a lot of Trots i can say that most of them join not out of an ideological leftism or commitment to Trotsky's butchering of Krondstadt but because it's the first 'alternative' they come across. if we're looking for 'rivals' it's the 'workers' parties' which capture militant workers and curious students and channel them into leftist politics. sure, even if all the decent working class militants in the Trot parties became anarchists, we'd still be a tiny minority and only really an upturn in the class struggle will create more working class militants. but it does show up AF-SF rivallry for the irrelevant ghetto identity politics it is (for our part, i think we had a motion affirming that anarcho-syndicalists 'own' the red and black flag a few conferences back and that anyone who uses it should acknowledge that it's 'ours'...)

raw, the thing is to do so while avoiding becoming a synthesist 'anarchists without adjectives' political organisation with all the practical incoherence and debilitating internal conflict that brings. i think the kind of anarcho-syndicalist organising i've been describing offers a way out of that by leaving different political tendencies free to organise independently while only requiring strategic unity on industrial and community organising which we do as anarchist workers (with a diversity of tactics at a local level within that strategy).

now i think if we sat down and thrashed it out, there could be an agreement on such a strategy - rejecting representative structures and seeing our role as being to agitate for and initiate mass meetings, whether in the workplace or the community. there's all sorts of groups that are kinda doing this already like HSG (and maybe your mob, don't know much about what you're up to at the moment).

i'm not insistent that organisation is SolFed, if it requires a new organisation to fill that role that everyone joins then so be it. that might be the best way to overcome sectarian objections.* if such an organisation could be formed with a principled strategic unity, that would be a significant development (i'm aware these discussions are somewhat perennial, we'll see what happens).

* sectarianism as in putting your organisation before the needs of the class struggle.

what our comrade said was "The union is made up of workers committed to the methods and ideas of anarcho-syndicalism." i would argue this doesn't mean you have to self-identify as an anarcho-syndicalist, only that you agree with some basic principles and methods. as there isn't a gospel of anarcho-syndicalism, i'll C&P Brighton SolFed's:

if you have a 'revolutionary union' (whatever you call it) with something like the above principles, i think you've got an anarcho-syndicalist organisation (you could expand solidarity to explicitly include opposition to all sorts of discrimination and necessarily requiring internationalism). i have no doubt some SolFed comrades would shit a brick at the absence of the word 'union' from those, just as ICC/AF people shit a brick at its presence. i can only encourage people to focus on the substance, and if we find ourselves in agreement then look for mutually agreeable words to describe it. tbh, i think the ICC's curious intellectual gymnastics with regard to the Bolsheviks as well as past reputation would probably create a lot of opposition to your involvement in such an organisation, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...

well the idea is you have permanent industrial networks doing their thing (like publishing industrial papers, which ideally would be like a regular a Tea Break for each industry, although the content would be less strike bulletin-like and more general outside of major disputes), then there will be more ad hoc, informal groups that form amongst the most militant workers in different places depending on the context. the members of these 'workplace resistance groups' may not be explicitly revolutionary - they may well just be militant shop stewards frustrated with the union bureacracy, or rank-and-file members of a Trot party for instance.

however in a particular situation they may well be arguing for mass meetings and militant direct action, so you take what allies you can find and work together. but these are very much groups that will ebb and flow. tomorrow, the militant shop steward may have reconciled himself with the bureaucracy or the Trot may have been ordered to stop messing around with the infantile and disorderly. ideally, they'd be impressed with the practice of the revolutionaries, come to agree with their ideas and join the 'revolutionary union', raising the baseline for the next time.

imagine if there were 'revolutionary union of education workers' members in two or three educational institutions in their town. they would have access to industrial propaganda to help agitate, and assuming there was a half-decent level of class struggle would probably each be involved in more informal Workplace Resistance Groups in their own workplaces. straight away, the presence of the 'revolutionary union' provides a basis for linking their struggles and spreading them both locally and further afield, as well as being able to provide resources to the ad hoc WRGs such as cash for leaflets, design expertise or legal/tactical advice based on past experiences.

i know the ICC sees the party as doing this, but the whole point is the political-economic revolutionary union is broader and larger than such a party without compromising on the revolutionary bottom line. say the mergerists had their way and an 'organisation of libertarian communist workers' was formed, even today it could have 300+ members and be truly nationwide. that's got a lot more chance of linking struggles and serving as a repository of experience than a small, ideologically tight-knit party, though by all means continue to also organise on a purely poltical basis, whether you're the ICC or the AF.

AF + SolFed = ~200
AF + SolFed + ICC = 203 + a dog

the real growth from such a project would be from people like Raw's lot, the other libcom admins etc who agree in principle with an anarchist workers group but don't think any of the existing feds fit the bill, plus possibly groups like HSG which (i think reject the anarchist label but organise through self-organsied direct action). then there's groups like Organise!, L&S, the Hereford Solidarity League and the Portsmouth Anarchists up and down the country (with some overlap with the AF) who may well join such an organisation. I think you'd be looking at 300 or so to start with, with a possibility to grow quite rapidly to a plateau of 500 or so by pulling in individuals from the milieu. further growth would require a longer-term strategy of high visibility and practical involvement in struggles.

that said i have a feeling at the very mention of such an idea some of the older hands in all parties will roll their eyes and say 'here we go again'. we're revolutionaries, no change here

this is what we've been trying to say since S&S, only it really is hard to find mutually intelligible language ("as to industrial networks, we see membership of these as less determined by ideas and more by economic position (being a militant in a particular industry). Of course a level of theoretical and tactical agreement is required – networks are not apolitical - but we do not see this as being as high as for propaganda groups.")

the only thing i'd add is that networks aren't purely industrial; i think it makes sense to also have locals since industrial network members may be quite geographically dispersed. even the SAC who are a lot bigger than what we're talking about organise primarily though locals.

i'm busy pretty much all day but i'll be around afterwards. would be good to have some non-Brighton SF people too; i can translate between revolutionary unionist and anarchist-communist for all you guys who get caught up in terminology rather than substance

political differences prevent political unity; just consider the history of failed 'left unity' electoral fronts from the Trots. but this is precisely why I'm arguing for a distinction between a political-economic organisation (where we organise as workers with a shared class interest) and purely political ones (where we organise as politicos and small differences are amplified). all a political-economic organisation needs is what I'd call 'principled strategic unity'; agreement on a set of basic A&Ps and an agreed strategy within which a diversity of tactics can be pursued according to local initiative. this thread has shown such an agreed strategy may be possible - along the lines of a dual structure of industrial networks and local groups that aim to agitate for and if possible organise mass meetings where we argue for militant direct action, as well as acting as a link between more informal workplace groupings and servng as a repository of experience. tbh that's the kind of organisation people in SolFed dream about... I can only hope we'd rather have 500 people acting like a 'revolutionary union' than 50 people deciding to call themselves one!

like i say we passed a motion at our last conference that said:

i'd sincerely hope that developing a joint industrial strategy would not be seen as 'a threat to our principles' (unless there's a secret 'fuck the AF' principle nobody's told us about )

ah, but would that constitute 'taking a position on sexuality'?