Remembering Fellow Workers Sacco & Vanzetti, 95 years later
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The Unions’ Life After Death: Recipes for a new labor movement
“Solidarity means that we stand up for one another and expect something from each other, even if we don’t like the other very much or even understand each other.”
— Frances Tuuloskorpi
Syndicalism is a movement of labor unions that aims for a vision beyond both capitalism and the nation-states. In two previous essays, Rasmus Hästbacka touched on this vision and strategies to reach it. The following essay concludes with recipes for rebuilding the labor movement.
A vision is pointless without strategies to reach it. Strategies are pointless without a movement that can pursue them. At least in Europe and North America, we need to “bring back the movement in the labor movement,” to quote Labor Notes. Continue reading
(R)evolution in the 21st Century: The case for a syndicalist strategy
“Those who work in the mills ought to own them, not
have the status of machines ruled by private despots.”— The Mill Girls of Lowell, 1845
Syndicalism is a movement of labor unions that aims for a vision beyond both capitalism and the nation-states. The syndicalist SAC—Central Organization of Workers in Sweden—neither advocates armed struggle to reach the vision nor revolt through a general strike. So, what do Swedish syndicalists propose? Rasmus Hästbacka addresses this question in the second in a series of three essays.
ASR is presenting this series in the spirit of debate and an exchange of ideas across national borders. We do not agree with every formulation. The SAC’s evolutionary approach is, we believe, unique in the international syndicalist movement. It is certainly possible to fetishize the general strike, transforming it into an idle fantasy that serves as a substitute for the day-to-day struggle in the workplaces for workers’ control and better conditions. But this is to violate the very essence of syndicalism: its emphasis on building revolutionary unions that battle for better conditions today while building the capacity and power to take over the industries and bring them under workers’ self-management. Continue reading
Another World is Phony? The Case for a Syndicalist Vision
“Most people live most of their lives within totalitarian institutions. It’s called having a job.”
— Noam Chomsky
Syndicalism is a movement of labor unions that aims for a vision beyond both capitalism and nation-states. But isn’t the nation-state the guarantor of all citizens’ security? What alternatives do syndicalists propose? These issues are addressed by Rasmus Hästbacka in the first in a series of three essays that will be posted to our website.
We are presenting this series in the spirit of debate and an exchange of ideas across national borders. We do not agree with every formulation, and have been quite explicit in our rejection of “participatory economics,” which fails to offer a vision of a free society, is unworkable, and seems to have given no thought as to how their bureaucratic utopia could be brought into being. We also reject the notion expressed below that markets are compatible with syndicalism, or indeed with any vision of social solidarity and emancipation. Continue reading
ASR 85 (Spring 2022)
Editorial The War in Ukraine
Wobbles Organizing Amazon, ‘Green Capitalism’…
Syndicalist News Myanmar, Turkish Strike Wave…
Articles Support the Trucker Convoys? by John Kalwaic
South Asian Truckers Build Class Solidarity, ‘Freedom Convoy’ Builds Fascism by Jeff Shantz
Mandates, Vaccines & Freedom by Wayne Price
Capital-labor relations in France, healthcare and American television by René Berthier
Responding to the Ukrainian War by Wayne Price
Black Wobblies: Hubert Harrison & Ben Fletcher review essay by Jeff Stein Continue reading
The War in Ukraine
Editorial, ASR 85 (Spring 2022)
By the time you read this, Russian forces may be in Kyiv, or not, depending on how the battle goes. Ukrainian resistance and Russian military incompetence has given the lie to Western tales of Russian military might that has fueled NATO expansionism since the end of the Cold War.
What induced Putin to invade Ukraine now? The war has actually been ongoing since 2014, Continue reading
Syndicalists shouldn’t have a black-and-white view on organizing
a response by Rasmus Hästbacka, member of the Umeå Local of SAC
In a previous article I made a distinction between three types of organizations: narrow cadre unions, broad popular movement unions and networks of workplace organizers. I hope that we in Sweden will develop the syndicalist SAC as a popular movement union (or, if one prefers the term: open class organization). Such a union can also build various forms of cross-union cooperation: forums, groups and networks of workplace organizers. Continue reading
Climate Charades
from asr 84
As this issue goes to press, diplomats are meeting in Glasgow to make their contribution to the climate crisis: a barrage of hot air. Even as they “pledge” to reduce greenhouse gases at some point in the distant future new coal-burning plants are being built, oil wells drilled, forests cleared, more of the earth buried in concrete.
Climate change is inflicting catastrophe on a daily basis. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world’s governments have stalled on meaningful action for so many decades that it is no longer possible to avoid intense global warming. This summer, blistering heat waves killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods devastated Germany and China, and wildfires raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece. Continue reading
ASR 84 – Winter 2021/2022
2 Editorial: If Voting Changed Anythin
g, It’d be Illegal
3 Climate Charades by Jon Bekken
4 Wobbles: Pensions attack workers, Union Scabbing…
6 International Shorts: Italy General Strike, Iranian Oil Workers Organize, Danish Nurses Wildcat, South Korea…
8 Articles: Undemocracy in the U.S. by Wayne Price
10 Migrant Workers Protest, Strike Amid Pandemic by John Kalwaic
13 Green Syndicalism and the Iron & Earth Report: Beyond Jobs Versus Environment by Jeff Shantz
15 Keeping Up With the Times: More on Syndicalist Strategy by Gabriel Kuhn
16 The Crisis Facing Swedish Syndicalism by Rasmus Hästbacka
19 Boston Labor Solidarity Committee by Steve Kellerman
20 The Union by Émile Pouget, translation by Iain McKay
27 Juanita Nelson: An Anarchist Life by Louis H. Battalen
29 Economic Disarmament by Juanita Morrow Nelson
31 Reviews: Caste in the USA review by Wayne Price
33 Resisting the Gig Economy review by Jon Bekken
33 Anarchy, Crime & Prisons review by Wayne Price
35 Globalization & Labor review essay by Ridhiman Balaji
39 Correction: Sources on Kronstadt by Malcolm Archibald
Keeping up with the times: More on syndicalist strategy
by Gabriel Kuhn, published in ASR 84
Rasmus Hästbacka has written an interesting article titled “Greetings from Sweden: A dual-track syndicalism?” Rasmus cites a few texts that I have written, some of them together with comrades from Sweden and Germany. I interpret Rasmus’s article as an invitation to continue the debate about the future of the SAC and syndicalist unions that find themselves in a similar position. My response reflects my own thoughts and not necessarily those of the comrades I have collaborated with. Continue reading