Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism

The present social order, which is also called the capitalist order, is founded on the economic, political, and social enslavement of the working people, and finds its essential expression in the so called „property rights“, in the monopoly of property on the one hand and in the state, i.e. the monopoly of power, on the other.

Because land and the other means of production are monopolized in the hands of small, privileged social groups, the producing classes are forced to sell their mental and physical skills to the owners in order to scrape a living. As a result, they have to relinquish a significant part of their product of labour to the monopoly capitalists. Having in this way been forced into the position of wage slaves deprived of rights, they have no influence whatsoever on the course and the organisation of production, which is left entirely to the capitalist's rights of self-determination.

It is therefore wholly natural that the basis for the current production of goods is not determined by the needs of the people, but first and foremost by the condition of the entrepreneur's profit. Since, however, the same system also underlies the exchange and distribution of products, the same consequences arise in this area, too, and find their expression in the ruthless exploitation of the masses to the benefit of a small minority of owners. If robbing the producer is the more or less occluded purpose of capitalist production, it is the actual purpose of the capitalist system to defraud the consumer.

Under the system of capitalism, each and any accomplishment of science and the progress of thought are subordinated to the monopolist. Every new development in the area of technology, chemistry etc. contributes to the immeasurable increase in the riches of the propertied class, in gruesome contrast to the social misery of vast segments of society as well as the on-going economic insecurity of the producing classes.

As different national groups of capitalists fight over domination of the markets, this never-ending conflict creates the perpetual cause of interior and exterior crises, which are periodically discharged in devastating wars, the terrible consequences of which, in turn, have to be shouldered almost exclusively by the lower strata of society.

The social division of classes and the brutal struggle of „all against all‟, these characteristic features of the capitalist order, at the same time also yield degenerating and fatal consequences for the character and the moral sense of the human being, since what they they force into the background are the invaluable traits of mutual aid and a communal sense of solidarity. This precious inheritance, carried over by mankind from previous stages of its development, are replaced with pathological, anti-social features and habits, which find their expression in crime, in prostitution, and in all other manifestations of social rot.

With the development of private property and the attendant class antagonisms, the propertied classes developed the urgent need for political organisation which was supplied with the technical means to protect their privileges and to suppress the populace – the state. The state is consequently a product of the private monopoly and class partitions, so that once it has come into existence, it uses any means of guile and violence to sustain the monopoly and class distinctions; consequently it ensures the eternal perpetuation of the economic and social enslavement of the people, so that in the course of its development it has set itself up as a colossal institution for the exploitation of civilized mankind.

The external form of the state changes nothing about this historical fact. Monarchy and republic, despotism or democracy – they all merely present different political forms of expression of the respective economic system of exploitation, which differ in their external figuration, yet never in their inner being, and in all their forms are merely an embodiment of the organized violence of the propertied classes.

With the development of the state, the era of centralisation begins – the artificial organisation from top to bottom. Church and state were the first representatives of this system and remain their principal support to this day. And since it is part of the nature of the state to suborn all branches of human life to its authority, the method of centralisation must have increasingly fatal consequences the more the state can expand the ambit of its functions. After all, centralism is the most extreme embodiment of the very system which transfers the arrangement of each and anyone‟s businessg, lock, stock and barrel.

As a result, the individual becomes a puppet, steered and led from above, like a dead wheel in a monstrous mechanism. The common interests have to yield to a minority, personal initiative to an order from above, differences to uniformity, inner responsibility to dead discipline, education of personality to mindless conditioning. – and all with the purpose of developing loyal subjects, who do not dare to shake the foundations of what exists, remaining willing objects of exploitation for the capitalist employment market. In this manner, the state emerges as the most powerful obstacle to any advancement and any cultural development, a firm bulwark of the propertied classes against the attempts of working people to liberate themselves.

The syndicalists, because of their clear awareness of the facts established above, on principle are enemies of any monopolized economy. They strive for the public ownership of land, of instruments of labour, raw materials and all social resources; the reorganisation of the entire economic life on the basis of free, i.e. stateless, communism, which finds its expression in the motto “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

Proceeding from the recognition that socialism is ultimately a question of culture, and as such can only be solved from below, by means of the creative activity of the people, syndicalists discard any means of so- called nationalisation, which can only lead to the worst form of exploitation, to state capitalism, but never to socialism.

Syndicalists are convinced that the organisation of a socialist economic order cannot be regulated by a government‟s decisions and decrees, but only through the association of all those who work with their head or their hands in each specific branch of production; through the take-over of the administration of each individual company by the producers themselves, specifically in the form of individual groups, companies and branches of production as independent constituents of the common economic organism, which plan total production and general distribution on the basis of mutual and free agreements, in the common interest.

Syndicalists believe that political parties, irrespective of their ideas and affiliations, are never able to undertake the process of building socialism, but that this work can only be achieved by the workers‟ economic fighting organisations (Kampforganisationen). By no means do syndicalists see the union as a fleeting product of capitalist society for this reason; the union, instead, is the nucleus of the socialist economic organisation of the future. Along these lines, already today syndicalists seek a form of organisation which is to enable them to do justice to their great historic mission and the struggle for daily improvements of relations of wage and work alike.

In each place, workers join the revolutionary union of their respective professions, which in each case is free of a central organisation, administers its own funds and has complete autonomy. The local trade unions of different professions aggregate in a labour exchange (Arbeiterbörsen), the centre of regional union activity and revolutionary propaganda. All labour exchanges of the country unite as the General Federation of Labour Exchanges in order to combine their powers for general undertakings.

In addition, each union is federally connected with all unions of the same profession in the entire country, which in turn are connected with adjacent professions, thus forming large general industrial federations. In this way, the federation of labour exchanges and the federation of industrial associations are the two poles around which the entire social life revolves.

If, upon a victorious revolution, workers were confronted with the problem of building up socialism, every labour exchange would transform into a sort of statistical bureau and take over the administration of all housing, food, clothing etc. The labour exchange would be tasked with the organisation of consumption, and the General Federation of Labour Exchanges would make it a simple task to calculate the overall consumption of the country and organize it in the simplest manner.

The industrial federations, in turn, would have the task to use their local organs and the help of work councils to take over the administration of all present means of production, raw materials etc., and to supply the individual production groups and companies with everything necessary. In a word: organisation of companies and workshops through the work councils; organisation of general production through industrial and agricultural federations; organisation of consumption through labour exchanges.

As enemies of any state organisation, syndicalists reject the so-called conquest of political power, and instead see the radical elimination of any political power as the first condition of a truly socialist social order. The exploitation of man by man is most closely intertwined with domination of man by man, so that the disappearance of the one necessarily leads to the disappearance of the other.

Syndicalists fundamentally reject any form of parliamentary activity, or any participation in legislative entities, proceeding in this from their understanding that even the freest elective franchise cannot mitigate the glaring disparities within current society, and that the entire parliamentary system is dedicated to the cause of granting the appearance of legal rights to the system of lies and social injustice – thus causing the slave to mark his own slavery with the stamp of law.

Syndicalists reject any arbitrarily drawn political and national borders; they see nationalism as the religion of the modern state und reject any attempts to achieve so-called national unity, which cannot but mask the rule of the propertied classes. They only accept differences of a regional nature and demand the right of any ethnic groups to handle their matters and their specific cultural needs according to their own manner and disposition, in solidary agreement with all other groups and people‟s federations.

Syndicalists are firmly grounded in direct action and support all endeavours and struggles of the people that do not conflict with their goals – the abolition of economic monopolies and of the tyranny of the state. It is their task to educate the minds of the masses, and to unite the people in the economic fighting organisations (Kampforganisationen), which are developed towards the liberation from the yoke of wage slavery and towards the modern class state by means of economic action, which finds its highest expression in the social general strike.

As I rise to speak to justify the declaration of principle in more detail, I do so because especially now, in these agitated times, we all feel the need to give expression to the precepts and tactical methods of syndicalism in the clearest and most assured form. There have been very many debates about the name of our movement and many comrades here have taken offence to the word “syndicalism”. But let us not forget, that it is not the word that matters but the idea that covers a movement. In most cases the enemies are the ones to force a name on a party. It is for this reason that most words that dominate the everyday struggle are nondescript if one considers them from a purely etymological standpoint.

The best example for this is the word Bolshevism, which has emerged as the spectre of Europe, and which strictly speaking means nothing but the direction of the majority. But the word “Socialism” actually expresses nothing but the thought of community, as does the word “communism”.

The same is true for the word “syndicalism”, which means nothing but association. There are capitalist and unionist syndicates. Therefore it is not the word in and of itself that covers it but rather the idea. If the word is hateful to the enemies of the people‟s aspirations, this results only from the fact that the aspirations and methods of the syndicalist movement seem dangerous to the ruling classes. There was a time when the word “Christian” was generally proscribed, and if today we were to call ourselves the Free Association of Catholic Friars, the result would be exactly the same.

There is no need to become adamant about the word “Syndicalism”; however, there is a circumstance which obliges us all the more to keep the old, battle-tried name in future. After all, the nature of our movement is not only national, but international. The same syndicalism that is frowned upon in Germany has become the unified economic organisation of the proletariat in some countries and for this reason remains the symbol of recognition that allies us with our brothers beyond the German borders. This should serve as food for thought for those comrades, who continue to oppose the term for practical reasons.

{1} Grammar school with a focus on modern languages and sciences.