Syndicalism at a Crossroads

Next May, a congress of Italian workers' organizations that follow the method of direct action, i.e., with a syndicalist orientation, will be held in Bologna. We do not know the rules governing admission to this congress, and whether, as would be desirable, together with representatives of unions, chambers of labor, and trade union federations, representatives of minorities, the majority of whom are reformists, will also be admitted. In any case, it is our fervent hope that men from all regions of Italy, even the most distant ones, will gather in Bologna, so that we may have before our eyes a mirror of the revolutionary trade union movement of our entire country and not just of a few provinces or regions.

Since this congress is truly decisive for trade unionism, we will learn from the words and resolutions of the congress participants what the true thinking is of that part of the Italian proletariat that is tired of reformist tactics and wants to move towards a more revolutionary approach. Does it have a clear concept of its own mission? Does it seriously want to ‘go it alone’ without the protection of doctors, professors, and political lawyers? In short, is revolutionary trade unionism in Italy a real and heartfelt thing, or is it instead a new scam that serves a group of new demagogues to elevate themselves on the shoulders of the proletariat and then betray it?

This is what revolutionaries want to know; this is what we anarchists especially want to know, especially those of us among the anarchists who have watched the new movement take shape with sympathy, and who have helped it and continue to help it, without stupid jealousy, happy that others are working with weapons that have been ours for thirty years, making their own a whole part of our program, which has been ours since the finest days of the International.

Workers' syndicalism in Italy must still rid itself of an original flaw that pollutes it. If it wants to march in step with the entire international syndicalist movement, it must immediately rid itself, without equivocation or insinuation, without compromise or prudent silence, of that bit of parliamentarism and those non-worker parliamentarian leaders who are in its midst.

The revolutionary and trade unionist revolt against social democratic reformism initially drew in men whose ideas were fundamentally opposed to trade unionism: some were fossilized remnants of intransigent dogmatic socialism (the Guesdists of Italy), who paved the way for today's reformism but do not want to follow it to where logic has led it; others, thrown out of the orbit of social democracy by personal hatreds, envy, and unfulfilled ambitions, who pose as revolutionaries because there are no more empty seats to occupy among the reformists, and who want to gain a prominent position or a seat in parliament by becoming an instrument of the proletarian revolt against the reformists.

Now, Italian workers' syndicalism must definitively rid itself of this dual pseudo-syndicalist element, and there are two ways to do so: the assertion that workers' organizations must no longer concern themselves in any way with parliamentary politics and elections; and the declaration that syndicalism, to be truly such, must be carried out by workers, by proletarians organized in trade unions, and not by doctors, professors, journalists, and students, and by their circles and groups, which are the small chapels in embryo of a new political church. Fortunately, the second part of this purge program has already been partially carried out, and all that remains is to complete it with clear resolutions.

This does not, of course, imply a denial of freedom to those outside the workers' organizations who wish to carry out specific propaganda activities in a syndicalist sense as a group. We do not deny this freedom to others, nor would we have the right or power to deny it, just as others cannot deny the right of existence of our anarchist groups. But the separation of the workers' organization, as an organization, from all other groups and parties that are not specifically corporatist, its absolute independence from them and the denial of any political relationship with them, must become clear and precise, visible and unambiguous, so as not to give rise to any further misunderstandings.

The other question, which the congress must resolve first and decisively, is the question of electoral and parliamentary politics; if syndicalism wants to survive, and above all wants to be sincere, it must do what it has already done everywhere else, in all other countries of the world; it must affirm that parliamentary politics is completely foreign to trade unionism and falls completely outside the functions of the workers' organization; and that therefore the class organization cannot, without denying itself and without polluting its movement, participate in any way, for or against, in political electoral competitions.

This essential principle, the basis and sine qua non of harmony within the trade union movement, arose with the emergence of trade unionism – before then, it had only been sincerely affirmed by anarchists; and wherever there is a syndicalist movement, in France as in Argentina, in Holland as in Spain, in Austria as in Germany or Switzerland, it has not even been discussed in order to be accepted, so much did it seem to everyone, even to the most moderate and those furthest from anarchism, to be the first condition for the vitality of the revolutionary trade union movement.

Only in Italy was there an exception to the rule, due to the aforementioned flaw in the origins of syndicalism there, which began more as a movement and a split from a political party than as a class organization. Many of those who came to syndicalism from the Socialist Party brought with them, along with a deep hatred for the men of the party they had abandoned, an unacknowledged but equally deep attachment to its methods and its legalistic and especially electoral ideas. Their fear of being seen as anarchists is an indication of this, as is the fact that, now that time has softened and faded personal grudges, in the last elections many syndicalists, either personally or in groups, in the first round or in the run-offs, openly and without hypocrisy campaigned for the reformists, as in Borgo S. Donnino, Carrara, in the Ferrara area, in Bologna, and in some other places.

Does the trade union movement, therefore, have an electoral tendency in Italy as a whole? Despite everything we have said above, no, absolutely not. Every time trade unionists have attempted to hold a congress, without exception, the vast majority have declared themselves anti-parliamentary when the question has been raised; and when it has been prudently discarded by the leaders, aversion to parliamentarianism has nevertheless manifested itself in a thousand ways through other channels. We do not recall the 1905 Bologna conference for the sake of history, but the most recent ones, from the national trade unionist conference in Ferrara to that of the organizations in Parma, and the most recent regional and provincial ones in Genoa and Bologna, have all clearly demonstrated the conviction already held by trade unionist workers that parliamentary and electoral politics must be inexorably expelled from proletarian trade union organizations, – allowing each member to express their political activity independently of the organization and outside of it, according to their personal convictions.

Those who have not understood this and stubbornly refuse to understand are certain personalities, let's call them that, who are representative of trade unionism, who live outside the workers' movement and consider trade unionism more as a doctrine than as a fact of action. However, these individuals would be of little consequence (after all, some already seem to be leaning towards our concept) were it not for a few of their minor satellites who, taking advantage of their positions in certain organizations, lead them into truly inconceivable deviations and contradictions, which can only be explained by the bad faith or utter recklessness of their authors.

Who can still believe, for example, that the workers' organizations in the Ferrara area are revolutionary syndicalists, when during the last elections they broke the pact of trade union neutrality and descended into the slippery terrain of electoral politics to support candidates who were not only self-styled syndicalists but also reformists who would have repugnant to the dignity of serious and conscious men? One need only read the issues of the Ferrara Chamber of Labor's publication, paid for with the money of all organized workers during the elections, to be convinced of the kind of unionism it promotes. In essence, it did nothing but repeat all the old leitmotifs of electoral socialism from the time when Ferri was in charge: the need to combat clericalism and to help the evolution and democratization of the bourgeoisie, the need to erect a bloc (sic) in defense of civilization, and other pleasant statements taken from the repertoire of the worst kind of politicking – not excluding, of course, the defamation of anarchist abstentionists.

We do not know if it is true – and we hope not – that, as Arturo Labriola bitterly said when he retired from militant life to private life, trade unionism has seen its triumph delayed by twenty years with the latest elections; but if it were true, the fault would lie not with the reformists, who after all are following their own program, but with those trade unionists who have failed to keep faith with theirs and who, while managing to garner only ridiculous votes for protest candidates, have facilitated the victory of the reformist candidates, allowing only one trade unionist candidate (or self-styled such) to succeed and – what a coincidence – the very candidate who was not a protest candidate and who, as soon as he climbed the steps of Montecitorio, hastened to turn his back on them and return to the socialist party, from which he had been expelled with insults. Ettore Ciccotti, who does not call himself a trade unionist, has given a very different demonstration of personal dignity; and those who have showered Prampolini and Turati with insults for their shift to the right should reflect on this about-face, a thousand times quicker than that of their tiny Marangoni. The misery of human misery.

But Marangoni is not the exponent of Italian revolutionary syndicalism, any more than the two or three other secretaries of labor chambers or editors of corporate periodicals who got him elected. During and after the elections, Ferrarese's obscene electoral bargaining – and it was truly bargaining – was countered by the consistent action, in agreement with that of us anarchists, of trade unionist groups in many locations that would take too long to enumerate, from Turin to Ancona, from Jesi to Rome and Piombino. But precisely because we know that the soul of the majority of Italian trade unionists is not the soul of politicians, we appeal to their energy to remove from their midst the principle of electoral gangrene that has infiltrated it. The cut will be effective if the Bologna congress is able to assert the absolute incompatibility between direct action and the electoral method.

After that, the perfection of the revolutionary trade union movement will certainly not be achieved; and subsequently, other important internal issues will have to be discussed concerning the organization and various activities of the working class, on which we have several ideas and proposals to make. But not even the smallest improvement will be possible if the ground is not cleared of this preliminary question of electoralism, and cleared in such a way that it never has to be discussed again. This is, we repeat, the only condition under which Italian syndicalism will be able to do anything practical and lasting, achieve harmony within itself, and come to an agreement and harmony with the international revolutionary syndicalist movement.