Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Anarcho-Syndicalism /197
straightforward and easier, because it involves those best versed in the goal pursued.
Groups for individual tasks and understanding between these groups in more transcendental
matters: there we have revolutionary organization. Economic organization
is rather more complicated and tricky because of the great masses involved and
the multiplicity of its intentions. Which is why that system of organization has
proved slow work, to which the finest intellects have made their contributions, because
such organization too is the real lever of revolutionary might and may yet represent
the new society within the old.
So such organization, which we describe as economic in order to distinguish it
from the revolutionary, in order to avoid misunderstandings, rather than out of any
intention to say that they are not both at once economic and revolutionary, is the one
that is truly still in need of further examination.
Each individual should cling to his freedom and his rights, equal with the rights
and freedom of his co-associates, and should not allow his freedom and his rights to
be infringed by anything or anyone in his handiwork, in his centres, in the bosom of
society, in what is being created for the good of all. Trade union association being a
product of wills coalescing around specific purposes, those wills need to be active;
which is to say that each and every person works on behalf of the proposed aim and
does not allow some people to shoulder all the burden while others remain indifferent
to every effort, because that leads to a victimhood of laziness or bossiness.
We must ensure that the associate finds society not merely a support in his
struggle against capital as he presses home his demands, but also the source of the
greatest possible number of gratifications and relief from all his most pressing needs.
In short: let the collective be complementary to the individual in whatever the latter
cannot achieve by his own unaided efforts, in a setting of the most perfect comradeship,
without bullying or tyranny ...
The first task for a trades society to tackle should be federation with other societies
from the same trade existing in the region, and, should there be none, to set
about forming some and federating with them .
... [O]ccasionally, the use ofthe word federation and even the federative principle
has been shunned because of the use made ofthose terms in authoritarian bodies
and in State constitutions. Such wariness is well founded, because a federal or
federative regime based on authoritarian units is not destructive of authoritarian
unity, but is, all things considered, just as despotic as a unitary system.
It should not be fo rgotten that every ideal carries within itself an implicit logical
procedure. One cannot, if one aspires to good and to freedom, adopt a barrack-like