This is an important and insightful book. There is, in English, a well-known survey of anarchism by Peter Marshall. The problem with a loose definition is that you do not have a clear subject of study inclusion and exclusion become vague, arbitrary and often absurd. It is important to the analysis and the research: I am not talking about drawing an arbitrary boundary, just to be exclusive for its own sake. The issue of where you draw the boundary around ‘anarchism’ is very important. So, if we are to discuss ‘anarchism,’ we need to have a clear definition, and this is where we come up against some serious problems in the existing literature.
You have to think very carefully how you define the subject. One of the key issues that must be addressed for a project like this – a project which looks at anarchism and seeks to do so in a truly global and planetary way, rather than through a narrow focus on parts of Europe (which is how the history of anarchism is often done) – is that
Revolutionary and anarcho-syndicalism, are forms of anarchist trade unionism, rooted in the anarchist tradition, constituting strategies for anarchism, rather than a separate ideology or movement.
And when I just say ‘anarchism’, I am usually including ‘syndicalism’ (both anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism) because it’s a variant of anarchism. Please note that when I use the term ‘syndicalism’, here I am using it in the English sense of specifically meaning revolutionary syndicalism and/ or anarcho-syndicalism, not in the Romance language sense of meaning unions in general. KEYWORDS: anarchism, syndicalism, labour, anti-colonialism, Bakunin, Kropotkin, class struggle, radicalism, anti-globalisation, global labour history The real history of the movement should not be confused with the mythological, propagandistic history of anarchism that sections of the movement subsequently promoted, centred on claims that ‘anarchism’ existed across all human history, was ‘natural’ etc. The movement’s immersion in mass movements – especially through syndicalism, peasant and civil rights struggles, fights against racism and women’s oppression, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles – can also only be properly appreciated from a global perspective – one in which the movement’s rich history in the colonial and postcolonial world is placed centre-stage.
Although public attention was drawn by the spectacular actions of the movement’s marginal ‘insurrectionist’ wing, it was the ‘mass’ anarchist approach – based on patient mass organising and education – that predominated. Barcelona was only one in a chain of red-and-black anarchist and syndicalist strongholds, and the Spanish Revolution only one of a number of major rebellions, revolutionary rehearsals and actual social revolutions in which anarchism/ syndicalism played a decisive role.
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Spanish anarchism was undoubtedly important, as was the anarchist Spanish Revolution of 1936–1939, but Spain provided but one of a series of mass-based, influential anarchist and syndicalist movements. An international movement in intent, conception and membership from the start, it drew on a range of modernist, rationalist socialist ideas, and developed a powerful base in many regions of the world by the 1940s. This article provides a global perspective on the history and theory of anarchism and syndicalism, arguing against views that treat anarchism as simple ‘anti-statism’ or a natural human ‘impulse’, in favour of the argument that the current is a socialist, working class tradition dating to the International Workingmen’s Association (the ‘First International’), 1864-1877. 85-106.ĪBSTRACT: The discussion below is a lightly edited transcription of a talk given by the author at the Ay Carmela, Rua das Carmelitas, in São Paulo, Brazil, on 2 November 2010. Lucien van der Walt, 2016, “Global Anarchism and Syndicalism: Theory, History, Resistance,” Anarchist Studies, volume 24, number 1, pp.
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