Anarchist communism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retention of personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined, it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism, as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism.
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, with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of production and the economy at large through social ownership. Developed in French labor unions during the late 19th century, syndicalist movements were most predominant amongst the socialist movement during the interwar period that preceded the outbreak of World War II.
Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in broader society. The goal of syndicalism is to abolish the wage system, regarding it as wage slavery. Anarcho-syndicalist theory generally focuses on the labour movement. Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism is centred on the idea that power corrupts and that any hierarchy that cannot be ethically justified must be dismantled.
Green anarchism, also known as ecological anarchism or eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that focuses on ecology and environmental issues. It is an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian form of radical environmentalism, which emphasises social organization, freedom and self-fulfillment.
Sinesio Baudillo García Fernández, commonly known by his pseudonym Diego Abad de Santillán, was a Spanish Argentine anarcho-syndicalist economist. Born in León, his family moved to Argentina while he was young. He returned to Spain for his higher education and became involved in the Spanish anarchist movement. After his studies, he went back to Argentina and became involved with the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA), co-founding the International Workers' Association (IWA). Following the 1930 Argentine coup d'état and the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic, he again went to Spain, becoming involved in the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI). During the Spanish Civil War, he served in the Catalan government as Minister of Economy. After the war, he returned to Argentina and largely ceased political activities, going back to Spain only after the Spanish transition to democracy.
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.
According to different scholars, the history of anarchism either goes back to ancient and prehistoric ideologies and social structures, or begins in the 19th century as a formal movement. As scholars and anarchist philosophers have held a range of views on what anarchism means, it is difficult to outline its history unambiguously. Some feel anarchism is a distinct, well-defined movement stemming from 19th-century class conflict, while others identify anarchist traits long before the earliest civilisations existed.
Anarchist economics is the set of theories and practices of economic activity within the political philosophy of anarchism. Anarchists are anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist, with anarchism usually referred to as a form of libertarian socialism, i.e. a stateless system of socialism. Anarchists support personal property and oppose capital concentration, interest, monopoly, private ownership of productive property such as the means of production, profit, rent, usury and wage slavery which are viewed as inherent to capitalism.
Anarchism in Africa refers both to purported anarchic political organisation of some traditional African societies and to modern anarchist movements in Africa.
Anarchism in South Africa dates to the 1880s, and played a major role in the labour and socialist movements from the turn of the twentieth century through to the 1920s. The early South African anarchist movement was strongly syndicalist. The ascendance of Marxism–Leninism following the Russian Revolution, along with state repression, resulted in most of the movement going over to the Comintern line, with the remainder consigned to irrelevance. There were slight traces of anarchist or revolutionary syndicalist influence in some of the independent left-wing groups which resisted the apartheid government from the 1970s onward, but anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism as a distinct movement only began re-emerging in South Africa in the early 1990s. It remains a minority current in South African politics.
A popular assembly is a gathering called to address issues of importance to participants. Assemblies tend to be freely open to participation and operate by direct democracy. Some assemblies are of people from a location, some from a given workplace, industry or educational establishment others are called to address a specific issue.
Anarchism in Sweden first grew out of the nascent social democratic movement during the later 19th century, with a specifically libertarian socialist tendency emerging from a split in the movement. As with the movements in Germany and the Netherlands, Swedish anarchism had a strong syndicalist tendency, which culminated in the establishment of the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden (SAC) following an aborted general strike. The modern movement emerged during the late 20th century, growing within a number of countercultural movements before the revival of anarcho-syndicalism during the 1990s.
Anarchism in Poland first developed at the turn of the 20th century under the influence of anarchist ideas from Western Europe and from Russia.
Codetermination in Germany is a concept that involves the right of workers to participate in management of the companies they work for. Known as Mitbestimmung, the modern law on codetermination is found principally in the Mitbestimmungsgesetz of 1976. The law allows workers to elect representatives for almost half of the supervisory board of directors. The legislation is separate from the main German company law Act for public companies, the Aktiengesetz. It applies to public and private companies, so long as there are over 2,000 employees. For companies with 500–2,000 employees, one third of the supervisory board must be elected.
Immanuel Ness is an American academic, and Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York (CUNY), Brooklyn, School of Humanities and Social Sciences. His academic focus is on worker's organization, migration, mobilization and politics. He is also a labour activist.
A workers' council, also called labor council, is a type of council in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces. In such a system of political and economic organization, the workers themselves are able to exercise decision-making power. Furthermore, the workers within each council decide on what their agenda is and what their needs are. The council communist Antonie Pannekoek describes shop-committees and sectional assemblies as the basis for workers' management of the industrial system. A variation is a soldiers' council, where soldiers direct a mutiny. Workers and soldiers have also operated councils in conjunction. Workers' councils may in turn elect delegates to central committees, such as the Congress of Soviets.
Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a defining characteristic of socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement, advocated variously by democratic, libertarian and market socialists as well as anarchists and communists.
A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions of political, social, and labour organizations and may also include rallies, marches, boycotts, civil disobedience, non-payment of taxes, and other forms of direct or indirect action. Additionally, general strikes might exclude care workers, such as teachers, doctors, and nurses.
The German strike of January 1918 was a strike against World War I which spread across the German Empire. It lasted from 25 January to 1 February 1918. It is known as the "Januarstreik", as distinct from the "Jännerstreik" which preceded it spreading across Austria-Hungary between January 3 and 25, 1918. The strike began in Berlin on 28 January and spread across the rest of Germany, but finally collapsed. The strike was caused by food shortages, war weariness and the October Revolution in Russia, which raised the hopes of revolutionary Marxists in Germany. The strike was conceived by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany or USPD, whose left wing, the Spartacus League was now agitating for political revolution in order to end the war. While the strikes were triggered by the earlier "Jännerstreik" in Austria, the widespread response in Germany signaled the USPD's growing importance in German politics. At its height the strike involved over a million people in important industrial regions such as Kiel, Hamburg, Mannheim, and Augsburg, only being shut down when the military arrested or impressed the strike leaders, sending them to the front lines.
