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

4 16/ ANARCHISM
and for as long as that blackmail does its job, the government has an interest in the continued
survival of fascism (which is more or less disposed to follow its instructions} ...
The bourgeoisie has learnt how to put this weapon to use; and if the proletariat
fails to destroy its will to do so, by means of a practical demonstration that it knows
how to dash it from bourgeois hands, the latter may-even if they set it aside for the
moment-pick it up again at the first opportunity.
1 14. The lWA: Dec/aration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism
(1922)
After the First World War, various anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary syndicalist organizations
regrouped, forming a new incarnation of the International Workers' Association (IWA) at a
congress in Berlin in 1922, with delegations representing two mi/lion workers from 15 countries
ill Europe and Latin America. Distancing themselves from the Marxist-Leninists who were then in
the process of creating a Moscow dominated Communist International, the Congress openly declared
itself in fa vour of libertarian communism and opposed to all fo rms of state power, including
the so-called "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in Russia.
I. REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM, BASING itself on the class struggle, aims for the
union of all manual and intellectual workers in combative economic organizations,
to prepare for and achieve their liberation from the double yoke of capital and the
state. Its goal is the reorganization of all social life on the basis of libertarian communism
via the collective revolutionary action of the working classes themselves. Since
only the economic organizations of the proletariat are capable of achieving this objective,
revolutionary syndicalism addresses itself to workers in their capacity as producers
and creators of social wealth, in opposition to the modern labour parties,
which it declares are incapable of the economic reorganization of society.
II. Revolutionary syndicalism is the staunch enemy of all social and economic
monopoly, and aims at its abolition by the establishment of economic communes
and administrative organs run by the workers in the fields and factories, forming a
system of free councils without subordination to any authority or political party. As
an alternative to the politics of states and parties, it posits the economic reorganization
of production, replacing the rule of man over man with the simple administration
of things. Consequently, its goal is not the conquest of political power, but the
abolition of all state functions in the life of society. It considers that along with the
disappearance of a property owning caste, must come the disappearance of a central
ruling caste; and that no form of statism, even the so-called "Dictatorship of the Pro-