Anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism is a form of anarchism that seeks to replace capitalism and the state with worker-controlled industry organized through revolutionary trade unions.

Revolutionary syndicalism: A labor movement strategy that uses direct action and unions to pursue workers’ emancipation. Anarcho-syndicalism develops this union-centered revolutionary strategy within an explicitly anarchist framework.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A French political thinker whose mutualist ideas influenced later anarchist traditions. His anti-capitalist and federalist ideas helped shape the intellectual background of anarchist labor politics.
Fernand Pelloutier: A French labor organizer who advanced revolutionary syndicalism and workers’ exchanges in the 1890s. His work helped develop the union institutions and educational culture that anarcho-syndicalists later valued.
Spanish Revolution of 1936: A revolutionary upheaval during the Spanish Civil War that brought extensive worker and peasant collectivization. CNT-led collectivization made the movement’s project of workers’ control a large-scale experiment.
Anarcho-communism: A form of anarchism advocating common ownership and distribution according to need without state authority. It shares anarchism’s aims but need not make revolutionary trade unions its principal vehicle.
General strike: A coordinated stoppage of work across multiple industries or a large part of an economy. Anarcho-syndicalists regard mass strikes as a means to disrupt state and capitalist power.
Mikhail Bakunin: A Russian revolutionary and anarchist who advocated collective action against state and capitalist authority. His emphasis on revolutionary organization and mass action influenced syndicalist currents.
Rudolf Rocker: A German anarchist writer and labor organizer who became a major theorist of anarcho-syndicalism. His writing gave the movement a systematic account of labor organization and social transformation.
May Days of 1937: A series of armed clashes in Barcelona in May 1937 among Republican factions during the Spanish Civil War. The clashes exposed tensions between anarchist organizations and the Republican state and its allies.
Marxism–Leninism: A communist political tradition centered on a vanguard party and the establishment of a workers’ state. Its party and state strategy sharply contrasts with anarcho-syndicalist opposition to political authority.

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