Right, now I've been thinking about this for a while now and am yet to come to any firm conclusions in my head. I've been reading a lot about the Spanish Civil War recently (and boring my girlfriend to death talking about agrarian communes ) and was thinking about the CNT and @-Syndicalist unions in general.
The basics of my questions comes down to politicisation of the union i.e. should a union be political or not?
I definately think that unions should be organised non-hierarchically etc but do people think it would need to be explicitly Anarchist? I see advantages and disadvantages of both. For instance, an Anarchist union, though politically clear in its goals, wouldn't have the mass support.
An apolitical union, however, would have mass (or at least bigger) support and would still be an example of 'Anarchism in Action'. But obviously it wouldn't have clear goals and could easily get clouded by reformism. This would obviously be shite. But I guess you could still have an Anarchist 'faction' arguing for Anarchist ideals from within it (this would also be easier because it would be arguing from a position where our ideas were in practice).
Anyway, what are other people's views on this? Also, on a side note, what do people think are the best ways to build an Anarcho-Syndicalist union? I mean, it seems like we're stuck. We need members to make the union strong, but we won't get members until the union is strong. So what do we do?
Well I'm just off to bed but a couple of quick points. The CNT had "mass support" didn't it and it had clear anarchist goals. Also if you had an apolitical union, like say the IWW, and anarchists in it arguing for anarchist goals what happens when they win the argument? A mass anarchist union.
As I've said elsewhere ana anarcho-syndicalist union combines the political with the economic. Not everyone who joins such a union will have to be an out and out anarchist that can come with struggle and experience of organising differently.
How to build one? I'll have to come back to that. Just to end with Spain 1936 is not the UK 2004, things change and move on. Anarcho-syndicalism also develops and adapts to different circumstances/countries/times while retaining its basic principles.