Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the labour movement that, through industrial unionism, seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes and other forms of direct action, with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of production and the economy at large through social ownership.
The International Workers' Association – Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores (IWA–AIT) is an international federation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions and initiatives.
Grigorii Petrovich Maksimov was a Russian anarcho-syndicalist. From the first days of the Russian Revolution, he played a leading role in the country's syndicalist movement – editing the newspaper Golos Truda and organising the formation of factory committees. Following the October Revolution, he came into conflict with the Bolsheviks, who he fiercely criticised for their authoritarian and centralist tendencies. For his anti-Bolshevik activities, he was eventually arrested and imprisoned, before finally being deported from the country. In exile, he continued to lead the anarcho-syndicalist movement, spearheading the establishment of the International Workers' Association (IWA), of which he was a member until his death.
Weimar paramilitary groups were militarily organized units that were formed outside of the regular German Army following the defeat of the German Empire in World War I. The most prominent of them, the Freikorps, were combat units that were supported by the German government and used to suppress uprisings from both the Left and the Right. There were also Citizens' Defense groups to maintain public order and paramilitary groups associated with specific political parties to protect and promote their interests.
The Free Workers' Union of Germany was an anarcho-syndicalist trade union in Germany. It stemmed from the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FDVG) which combined with the Ruhr region's Freie Arbeiter Union on September 15, 1919.
The Free Association of German Trade Unions was a trade union federation in Imperial and early Weimar Germany. It was founded in 1897 in Halle under the name Representatives' Centralization of Germany as the national umbrella organization of the localist current of the German labor movement. The localists rejected the centralization in the labor movement following the sunset of the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890 and preferred grassroots democratic structures. The lack of a strike code soon led to conflict within the organization. Various ways of providing financial support for strikes were tested before a system of voluntary solidarity was agreed upon in 1903, the same year that the name Free Association of German Trade Unions was adopted.
Karl Roche (1862–1931) was a German syndicalist and left communist trade unionist. Roche joined the Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG) around 1900 as a seaman. He became a prominent member of the organization.
Milly Witkop(-Rocker) was a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarcho-syndicalist, feminist writer and activist. She was the common-law wife of the prominent anarcho-syndicalist leader Rudolf Rocker. The couple's son, Fermin Rocker, was an artist.
Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism is a book written by Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt that deals with "the ideas, history and relevance of the broad anarchist tradition through a survey of 150 years of global history." The book includes a preface by Scottish anarchist and former political prisoner Stuart Christie.
German individualist philosopher Max Stirner became an important early influence in anarchism. Afterwards Johann Most became an important anarchist propagandist in both Germany and in the United States. In the late 19th century and early 20th century there appeared individualist anarchists influenced by Stirner such as John Henry Mackay, Adolf Brand and Anselm Ruest and Mynona.
Der arme Teufel was a leading German-American anarchist magazine, published in German at Detroit, Michigan from 1884 to 1900, and edited mainly by the Detroit anarchist Robert Reitzel from 1884 until his death in 1898.
Johann Rudolf Rocker was a German anarchist writer and activist. He was born in Mainz to an artisan family.
Antifa is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple far-left, autonomous, militant groups and individuals who describe themselves as anti-fascist. According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the use of the epithet fascist against opponents and the view of capitalism as a form of fascism are central to the movement. The antifa movement has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came. It was set up by the then-Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the late history of the Weimar Republic. After the forced dissolution in the wake of Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground. In the postwar era, Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different movements, groups and individuals in Germany as well as other countries which widely adopted variants of its aesthetics and some of its tactics. Known as the wider antifa movement, the contemporary antifa groups have no direct organisational connection to Antifaschistische Aktion.
Ernst Friedrich was a German anarcho-pacifist.
Anarchism in the Netherlands originated in the second half of the 19th century. Its roots lay in the radical and revolutionary ideologies of the labor movement, in anti-authoritarian socialism, the free thinkers and in numerous associations and organizations striving for a libertarian form of society. During the First World War, individuals and groups of syndicalists and anarchists of various currents worked together for conscientious objection and against government policies. The common resistance was directed against imperialism and militarism.
Helmut Kirschey was a German anarchist and resistance fighter.
Anarchism in Denmark emerged in the late 19th century from the revolutionary factions of early social democratic spheres, crystalizing into a widespread anarcho-syndicalist movement that reached its height during the late 1910s. After the disintegration of organized syndicalism, anarchists in post-war Denmark began to organize the squatters' movement, which led to the creation of Freetown Christiania.
Anarchism in Austria first developed from the anarchist segments of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), eventually growing into a nationwide anarcho-syndicalist movement that reached its height during the 1920s. Following the institution of fascism in Austria and the subsequent war, the anarchist movement was slow to recover, eventually reconstituting anarcho-syndicalism by the 1990s.
Helmut Rüdiger (1903–1966) was a German-Swedish journalist and anarcho-syndicalist activist. Born in Saxony, he became involved with the anarchist movement after the German Revolution of 1918–1919, becoming a leading member of the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD). During the 1930s, he moved to Spain, where he participated in the Spanish Revolution of 1936. After the defeat of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, he fled to Sweden, where he became a leading member of the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden and an influential figure in the "revisionist" tendency of anarcho-syndicalism. He died in Spain in 1966, while trying to make contact with members of the anarchist underground.
Paul Czakon was a Silesian anarchist. He was a regional founder of the Black Band, member of the Land and Freedom Column, and participant in the French Resistance.
