Anarcho-syndicalism in difficult times
“The time has therefore come to concretize and define the syndicalism
of our era by placing it exactly where it
belongs in relation to its adversary, capitalism.”
Pierre Besnard, Les syndicats ouvriers et la révolution sociale (Workers’ Unions and the Social Revolution), 1930.
At the end of World War II, anarcho-syndicalism was little more than a historical relic, a witness to the better days of a proud proletariat alien to the norms of capitalist society. Its reappearance in Spain in the 1970s was the result of the development, during the end of Francoism, of an autonomous workers’ movement, which organized itself into assemblies, appointed delegates with a mandate to represent the workers, and used picket lines to inform and defend itself. Ignoring all the anti-labor legislation of the dictatorship, it exercised its rights through direct action, factory occupations, picket lines, and wildcat strikes. Despite everything, the joint counteroffensive by the state, the political parties, and the employers, through union elections, succeeded in imposing a new form of unionism based on vertical consultation, which inherited both the labor structures of the Franco regime and their neutralizing and immobilizing function. It was precisely in order to prevent the legalized bureaucratic unions, supported by the bosses and the parties, from monopolizing and usurping the representation of the working class that the majority of the assembly movement organized itself into independent unions, some of which adopted the tactics and objectives of anarcho-syndicalist ideology. The causes of the failure of this strategy are to be found in the undermining work of the aforementioned unions, in the failed reconstruction of the CNT and, above all, in the proletariat itself.
While it is true that, according to a well-known adage, the dramatic past of revolutionary syndicalism would often repeat itself in the future as a farce, it was nonetheless true that during the political transition to post-Franco party politics, the majority of workers did not aspire to abrupt social change, whose cost had been illustrated by the deaths in Vitoria, and were content with immediate improvements in their economic situation and cheap legal assistance for specific cases. Reorganizing a CNT open to the most opposing tendencies and the most abject adventurers imaginable was not a very bright idea. The fetishism of acronyms and organic patriotism were harmful factors. The forces of the old regime and those that replaced them were better able to take advantage of the critical moment to strengthen the state and stabilize patriotic capitalism, sabotaging any independent initiative by the proletariat. These were the years of the Moncloa agreements, the Scala fire, and the Workers’ Statute. After the union elections of 1978, workers renounced not only managing the political and social changes that were taking place, but also holding free assemblies to discuss their agreements and elect their representatives. The few works councils, representative committees, and factory councils that existed failed to consolidate, as did the unions that had encouraged them to expand. With a passive attitude that was difficult to understand, the working class of the Transition – from Francoism to democracy – tired and disorganized, under pressure from unemployment and layoffs, did not even manage to remain on the defensive. The few surviving anarcho-syndicalist groups were forced to focus on defending jobs and maintaining purchasing power in a tough labor market. For this, the CGT solution was much less libertarian but more functional. In any case, it did not prevent declassification. It was the end of utopia and the epiphany of so-called “democracy.” The basic principle of anarcho-syndicalism, according to which unions would be the main instrument of revolution and the complete emancipation of the class, the organic tool for avoiding a party dictatorship—and a state—or the organ with which a libertarian communist society would be built, remained unresolved. These cyclical factors were compounded by other factors of a structural nature.
National capitalism emerged from the crisis caused by rising oil prices and strikes by embarking on a process of industrial restructuring and conversion that led to the closure of many factories. The “modernization” of the 1980s—the “economic transition”—was nothing more than the adaptation of the Spanish economy to the European capitalist market, and consisted essentially of expelling the workforce from the productive process and shifting it to unproductive jobs. In less than a decade, the industrial proletariat lost almost all its weight in the economy, to the benefit of employees in finance, commerce, logistics, tourism, and the civil service, sectors that were much less organized and combative, less egalitarian, and less attracted to autonomy. The disappearance of solidarity strikes was a harbinger of the bad times to come. Extreme restrictions on the right to strike and the express prohibition of other forms of struggle that had once been commonplace were introduced without difficulty. The dominant ideas in working-class circles underwent a complete regression. The sense of class identity quickly faded in the complex and difficult economic climate. During the 1980s, assemblies in companies in crisis and assemblies of unemployed workers focused on defending jobs. The unions worked to organize employees and civil servants, who were still illegal to unionize. The state, engaged in an unprecedented process of growth, was called upon by the parties to act as mediator between capital and labor, as a major creator of jobs and regulator of the market. The jobs generated by the tourism and real estate boom, the civil service, and the release of assets from savings banks spread bourgeois consumerist habits among the wage-earning masses. The traditional family broke down, the social fabric inevitably frayed, and everyone detached themselves from the past to immerse themselves entirely in a commodified private life: where there had once been class consciousness, there was now only a middle-class mentality, satisfied, individualistic, and dependent. The consumer society was called the “welfare state.”
During the 1990s, in the midst of financial globalization, the illusion of stability and prolonged prosperity brought about by abundant credit and easy mortgages fostered a conformism among wage earners that was greater than that which Franco’s dictatorship had been able to impose by force. As the transition came to an end, the state retreated in the face of global markets and abandoned its role as mediator, despite the pleas of the salaried middle classes and institutionalized trade unions. Alternative trade unionism began to focus more on those in a weaker social position, unable to exercise their own rights, namely the unemployed, prisoners, low-skilled (often precarious) workers, the homeless, and the exploited immigrant workforce. Unfortunately, union defense of relegated or excluded workers was a marginal phenomenon. These workers were far from forming a common political subject and thus playing an important active role. On the other hand, the union had long since ceased to be the spearhead of a labor movement in disarray. Anti-capitalism was no longer rooted in the workplace, and the liberating goal was no longer the self-management of production and distribution. This, as it stood, did not change the pernicious nature of either, nor did it alter their capitalist foundations. Professions and trades had been so degraded that no one really liked their work anymore, let alone their workplace. Work was a sentence, the price of survival imposed by the capitalist system on the majority of mortals. The spread of junk jobs led to a rejection of work itself, rather than demands for its “dignification.” “Never work”—the abolition of work—was more a desire for liberation than a demand for “quality jobs.” Moreover, considering the superfluous and useless nature of most jobs, it is understandable why the idea of expropriating the means of production did not arouse much passion. In an era of automated production and services, virtual currency, the rise of the highly fearful middle classes, mass indebtedness, oversized minimal services, and a state of emergency, the fundamental weapon of anarcho-syndicalism, the general strike, could no longer paralyze the system as a pandemic or a power outage would. Even more so, the prospect of a revolution led by the unions had vanished into the sky of ideology. If libertarian organizations did not take all these details into account, they would contradict themselves.
The harmful consequences of developmentalism did not stop at crappy jobs. Infinite growth led to the most senseless intensive exploitation of nature. As a result, the economy came up against not only the barrier of limited natural resources, mainly energy, but also the deterioration of life on the planet. As global production of fossil fuels and “strategic” metals began to decline, and given that economic growth was endangering human survival, capital was sawing off the branch on which it sat. Its reproduction became increasingly difficult, foreshadowing a crisis of a different kind, an ecological crisis, destined by its implications to take center stage in the social question. And like all crises, it would be used by capital for its own expansion. From a capitalist perspective, disaster can be a source of profit, the main source even. For catastrophist leaders, the new capitalism had to be green, decarbonized, and electric, i.e., extractivist, or it would not be. The introduction of new technologies would suffice. Eager to be part of this overhaul, relative environmentalists lined up at the offices. “Dual” strategies have this effect. Multinational energy companies hired them to design sustainable development and capitalist circular economy modules. The great crisis of 2008 restored the role of the state in the financialized economy, accelerating the ecological facelift of capitalism and establishing guidelines for techno-economic development described as “sustainable.” In Galicia, this has resulted in the eucalyptization of the country and the construction of macro-factories for the production of paper pulp. In Castile-León, it is macro-farms and incinerators; in other regions, it is “plastic seas,” nuclear energy, and wind, photovoltaic, or biogas power plants. Within the government, the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Ultimately, the most vulnerable link in capitalism has shifted to the territory. By force of circumstance, circles of worker resistance were forced to take a stand on issues such as pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change (and, as a corollary, the use of fossil fuels), private motorization, waste accumulation, and, in general, the relentless attacks on the environment caused by agribusiness, extractivism, and rapid urbanization. By limiting their field of action to the world of work, the unions placed themselves in the same camp as the capitalists, deliberately ignoring both the dispensable nature of most jobs and the harmfulness of the products of labor, not to mention the impossibility of socializing many industrial activities, particularly those related to agriculture.
In the heroic phase of the working class, workers declared “social” strikes, refusing to cook spoiled food, build houses with inadequate materials, manufacture products harmful to health, adulterate beverages, etc. Today, however, workers do not question the social utility of the work they do and are indifferent to the nature of the product they help to produce. Whatever harm it causes, it does not seem to affect them. They are more likely to cling to their jobs and status against environmentalists, conservationists, farmers, and anti-developmentalists. With few exceptions, the proletariat, whether docile or rebellious, has always believed in progress and in the liberating role of science and technology. When the ecological crisis, rising inequality, and global digitalization discredited this belief by revealing an uprooted and unmanageable world, it retreated into its daily interests. But whether we like it or not, as environmental destruction progresses, the unilateral defense of jobs will increasingly come into conflict with the defense of the earth and the species. Most trade unionists are locked into the former, while professional environmentalists and light platforms attempt to reconcile the latter with green and statist development. However, attacks on territory and the “high cost of living” will continue to grow alongside urban agglomerations, residential areas, and infrastructure of all kinds. The capitalist dynamic is essentially destructive, and there is no real remedy to mitigate its effects. At this stage, anarcho-syndicalists must thoroughly rethink their tactics and ultimate goals.
Today’s workers are not in the same conditions as at the beginning of the 20th century, and their desire to live with their backs turned to the state is no longer the same. We are no longer in the era of the Amiens Congress or the Comedia Congress. There is no longer a working-class environment closed in on itself, with its own rules and customs. Market relations have imposed themselves on the daily lives of workers, destroying the sociability of their world and obscuring their distinct class consciousness. Their voice has been virtually kidnapped by professional deceivers. On the other hand, even if they were to develop considerably, it is unlikely that trade unions would be able to get rid of capitalism and ensure the success of a social revolution. The relative national isolation of the pre-war period has been replaced by a truly astonishing global interdependence. A trade union revolution would not survive more than a few days in a single country, falling victim to shortages and other problems caused by the blockage of the economy. But if the capitalist regime is no longer the same, neither is the state. The mechanisms of social control were not as powerful before, and fear was not as effective a factor in domesticating people. Trade unionists are not faced with rank-and-file police officers and local bosses, but with sophisticated repressive teams, complex weaponry, an imposing apparatus of domestication, and transnational groups of cadres. As the balance of power is so uneven, tactics will have to be much more thoughtful; in any case, the priority today is not the use of violence, but the end of a resigned mentality. Self-defense will come later.
With the aim of rebuilding a working-class civil society as far removed as possible from the state—and without abandoning the struggle for the well-being of all workers—libertarian-minded unions will need to revitalize, with more than just propaganda, not only their internationalism, but also the sense of community, oral tradition, and values of solidarity that prevailed in the pre-consumerist era. To do this, they will need a positive anarchist praxis. In principle, they will strive to resolve the question of supply outside the system—moving as far away from capitalism as possible—which will lead them to pay greater attention to exchange networks, alternative technologies, soup kitchens, free clinics, free education, collective gardens, and cooperatives. They will have to build bridges to what remains of the independent peasantry and bring their forces to bear against the predation of the land. The more the proletariat guarantees and decommodifies its subsistence, the less it will depend on capital and the state, and the more freedom it will have to think, choose its weapons, and choose its allies. Among other things, it will have to review or clarify its objectives, such as food sovereignty or self-management. Today, the latter concerns above all the decolonization of everyday life and, given the harmfulness of much of production in late capitalism, the only possible self-management is its dismantling. Gone are the days of labor progressivism and union faith in development, the legacy of the bourgeoisie. Anarcho-syndicalists will take good note of this. Just as they take note of the rise in housing costs, the worst consequence of the pursuit of private profit. Housing was a right that investment funds have turned into an ordeal. The current proletarian condition is better defined today by housing difficulties, reflected in housing movements, the struggle against evictions, land occupations, tenants’ unions, and attempts to settle in the countryside. The anarcho-syndicalist movement must be at the forefront of the resistance to gentrification.
Paradoxically, one of the future missions of the new proletariat, an urban class by force, or rather peri-urban, will be to rebalance the territory by dismantling conurbations, whether through radical unions or councils, producers’ associations, assemblies of repopulators, peasant communities, and any other form of self-organization that emerges. Even if the social question now lies primarily in everyday life and the defense of the territory against speculative interests and the administration that supports them, the defense forces, focused on wage labor, housing, health, and transportation, will come mainly from urban agglomerations. In principle, the convergence between the struggle for subsistence, characteristic of trade unionism, and the struggle against environmental catastrophe, typical of anti-development, has found its synthetic expression in the slogan of the French Yellow Vests: “end of the month, end of the world.” From there, everything or almost everything remains to be done.
Miguel Amorós
Conference at the 2nd Anarchist Book Fair organized by the Union Syndicaliste de La Coruña, May 24, 2025.
We are publishing this text because we believe that it is entirely in line with our communalist approach, both in its analysis of the evolution of the labor movement and trade unionism and in its recovery of environmentalism, which has also been duped by the cunning of green capitalism.
We also agree with its final proposals, provided that they are part of a communalist political movement capable of uniting these initiatives in order to establish an emancipated and fulfilled society beyond capitalism.
About the author: https://www.babelio.com/auteur/Miguel-Amoros/185370
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