Book Blog: Anarcho-Syndicalism Theory & Practice
Bottom Up Socialism
Unfortunately this hasn’t left much spare time for writing a bunch of full-length essays, so today I thought I’d remind you all that I’m still alive by posting a scattering of smaller maintenance-type posts across my various websites. That includes reviving a feature I haven’t posted here in several months – the Quickshot Quotation. There’s a twist to this round of recommended reading however, because thanks to the folks at libcom.org and their excellent (and completely free) selection of anarcho-syndicalist resources, I can actually share a readable PDF of today’s book with you.
Today’s selected passage comes to us from Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice a 1937 banger by one of my personal heroes in the history of anarchist theory, Rudolf Rocker. You can find a back-of-the-napkin review of the book by clicking here.
Why should you read Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice in the year 2020? Because, for all of the clucking among online leftists about Rocker’s theories being outdated, the evidence that both the electoral process and the capitalist state have failed the labor class in America is all around you; and while this might make Communists howl, you could fit all the militant revolutionary Marxists in this country inside of Giants Stadium with plenty of breathing room to spare.
So if you can’t vote away fascism, slavery and repression, and the revolution isn’t coming any time soon, you need another answer – Anarcho-syndicalism, which is also sometimes known colloquially as “Radical Unionism,” is that answer; because I assure you lad, they aren’t going to let us stop toiling to make capitalists rich any time soon, which means we will continue to be “the labor class.”
Moving beyond elections, Anarcho-Syndicalists seek to use direct action weapons like the boycott, sabotage, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist agitprop, the strike, the slowdown, the General Strike and if necessary, armed military resistance to defend and expand the rights of workers; not until the labor class destroys the state, but until the labor class itself literally becomes the state by gaining the capacity for direct rule over ourselves – and not waiting on orders from a revolutionary vanguard or bourgeoisie intellectuals slumming left, to do it.
If ceasing to waste time and energy on a rigged political process and taking power for the labor class directly through resistance to capitalism appeals to you, check our Rudolf Rocker’s anarchist theory classic “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice by clicking on the link below:
Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice by Rudolf Rocker on libcom.org
– nina illingworth
