Submitted by MustaphaMond in Anarchism

Marx rejected the ‘syndicalist path’ in his quarrels with Bakunin during the years of the First International. But, could it be true that syndicalism in fact represents the very essence of Marxian socialism, as a model of ‘the self-government of the commune’ and as a bulwark against despotic ‘red bureaucracy’?

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d4rk wrote

Fascism and Anarchism would have been identical if we were Bakunin based than Marx based. Firstly because Sorel and Bakunin had very identical ideas for Syndicalism's goals Sorel pulling the National Myth angle and Bakunin on the technical angle, it was scarily compatible, not to mention They were both Anti-Semites. Second, If you had Bakuno-Deleonism you got yourself NeoCorporatism. Any socdem party under such conditions would easily fall into fascism. Third, Mussolini wouldn't have left the Italian Socialist Party if that were the case, since Bakunin wouldn've been all for total war against everybody.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

syndicates have a bureaucracy too, in fact that's pretty much the definition of a union: something in between the boss and the workers.

the opportunistic bank robbers and guerilla fighters of the marxist revolutions, however, the bolsheviks and che and fidel and so on-- i think these are actually much closer to the type of politics of the illegalists and individualist anarchists, ironically, than something like the CNT ever would be, and even then they're still much different. Now you might have lost me here, but listen for a moment. It's not about the overall goals, but rather the approach, especially in terms of starting their processes. Sure, The authcoms wanted to violently overthrow and replace the old regimes, the illegalists wanted to popularize the idea of spontaneously and continously destroying it. It seems different but...

but the CNT's idea was to build up another state through its own structures. they even had forced labor and systems of criminal justice and an army etc. it's...it's very constructivist, positivist, in a way that the second world actually was not, at least not in its founding days. At least the bolsheviks understood you needed to materially do the insurrection thing to get anywhere, there are a lot of social anarchists to this day that are willing to compromise their anarchy with replacement states right out of the gate. So where does that lead? Does this really work?

It is notable that after the failure of the spanish revolution, many of the revolutionaries left for other countries where they engaged in more direct illegalist actions, rather than trying to build labor unions or repeat the same approach that led up to the revolution. You can question how effective this was, but I do think it's an indication that some felt they hit a dead end and tried to imagine something different. I'm sure you can find examples of others who chose to stay the course on the positive worldbuilding, and of course the CNT and FAI are still around to this day in some form, although their power seems greatly reduced compared to their role in Spanish social life in the early 20th century.

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