Socially far-right adaptation of syndicalism
National syndicalism
is a
far-right
adaptation of
syndicalism
to suit the broader agenda of
integral nationalism
. National syndicalism developed in
France
in the early 20th century, and then spread to
Italy
,
Spain
, and
Portugal
.
France
[
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]
French national syndicalism was an adaptation of
Georges Sorel
's version of
revolutionary syndicalism
to the monarchist ideology of integral nationalism, as practised by
Action Francaise
.
Action Francaise
is a French nationalist-monarchist movement that was led by
Charles Maurras
at that time.
Background (1900?1908)
[
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]
In 1900,
Charles Maurras
declared in
Action Francaise'
s newspaper that anti-democratic socialism is the "pure"
[1]
and correct form of socialism. From then on, he and other members of
Action Francaise
(like
Jacques Bainville
,
Jean Rivain
, and
Georges Valois
) interested in Sorel's thought discussed the similarity between the movements in
Action Francaise'
s conferences and in essays published in the movement's newspaper, hoping to form a collaboration with revolutionary syndicalists. Such collaboration was formed in 1908 with a group of labor unions' leaders led by
Emile Janvion
. As a result of this collaboration, Janvion founded the anti-republican journal
Terre libre
.
Beginning (1909)
[
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]
Georges Sorel
is sometimes described as the father of revolutionary syndicalism.
[2]
[3]
He supported militant trade unionism to combat the corrupting influences of parliamentary parties and politics, even if the legislators were distinctly socialist. As a French Marxist who supported Lenin, Bolshevism and Mussolini concurrently in the early 1920s,
[4]
[5]
Sorel promoted the cause of the proletariat in class struggle, and the "catastrophic polarization" that would arise through social myth-making of general strikes.
[6]
The intention of syndicalism was to organize strikes to abolish capitalism; not to supplant it with State socialism, but rather to build a society of worker-class producers. This Sorel regarded as "truly true" Marxism.
[7]
In 1909, the integral nationalists
Action Francaise
began to work with Sorel. The connection was formed after Sorel read the second edition of Maurras' book,
Enquete sur la monarchie
. Maurras favorably mentioned Sorel and revolutionary syndicalism in the book, and even sent a copy of the new edition to Sorel. Sorel read the book, and in April 1909 wrote a praising letter to Maurras. Three months later, on 10 July, Sorel published in
Il Divenire sociale
(the leading journal of Italian revolutionary syndicalism) an essay admiring Maurras and
Action Francaise
. Sorel based his support on his anti-democratic thought. For example, he claimed that
Action Francaise
was the only force capable to fight against democracy.
[8]
Action Francaise
reprinted the essay in its newspaper on 22 August, titled "Anti-parliamentary Socialists".
La cite francaise and L'Independance (1910?1913)
[
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]
In 1910 Sorel and Valois decided to create a journal called
La cite francaise
. A prospectus for the new journal was published in July 1910, signed by both revolutionary syndicalists (Georges Sorel and
Edouard Berth
) and
Action Francaise
members (Jean Variot,
Pierre Gilbert
and Georges Valois).
La cite francaise
never got off the ground because of Georges Valois's animosity toward Jean Variot.
After the failure of
La cite francaise
, Sorel decided to found his own journal. Sorel's biweekly review, called
L'Independance
, was published from March 1911 to July 1913. Its themes were the same as the journal of
Action Francaise
, such as
nationalism
,
antisemitism
, and a desire to defend the French culture and heritage of ancient Greece and Rome.
Cercle Proudhon
[
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]
During the preparations for launching
La Cite francaise
, Sorel encouraged Berth and Valois to work together. In March 1911,
Henri Lagrange
(a member of
Action Francaise
) suggested to Valois that they found an economic and social study group for nationalists. Valois persuaded Lagrange to open the group to non-nationalists who were anti-democratic and syndicalists. Valois wrote later that the aim of the group was to provide "a common platform for nationalists and leftist anti-democrats".
[9]
The new political group, called
Cercle Proudhon
, was founded on 16 December 1911. It included Berth, Valois, Lagrange, the syndicalist Albert Vincent and the royalists
Gilbert Maire
, Rene de Marans, Andre Pascalon, and Marius Riquier.
[10]
As the name
Cercle Proudhon
suggests, the group was inspired by
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
. It was also inspired by Georges Sorel and Charles Maurras. In January 1912 the journal of
Cercle Proudhon
was first published, entitled
Cahiers du cercle Proudhon
.
Italy
[
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]
In the early 20th century, nationalists and syndicalists were increasingly influencing each other in Italy.
[11]
From 1902 to 1910, a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists including
Arturo Labriola
,
Agostino Lanzillo
,
Angelo Oliviero Olivetti
,
Alceste De Ambris
,
Filippo Corridoni
and
Sergio Panunzio
sought to unify the Italian nationalist cause with the syndicalist cause and had entered into contact with Italian nationalist figures such as
Enrico Corradini
.
[12]
These Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection of
bourgeois
values,
democracy
,
liberalism
,
Marxism
,
internationalism
, and
pacifism
while promoting
heroism
,
vitalism
, and violence.
[13]
Not all Italian revolutionary syndicalists joined the Fascist cause, but most syndicalist leaders eventually embraced nationalism and "were among the founders of the Fascist movement," where "many even held key posts" in Mussolini's regime.
[14]
Benito Mussolini
declared in 1909 that he had converted over to revolutionary syndicalism by 1904 during a general strike.
[14]
Enrico Corradini promoted a form of national syndicalism that utilized
Maurassian
nationalism alongside the syndicalism of
Georges Sorel
.
[15]
Corradini spoke of the need for a national syndicalist movement that would be able to solve Italy's problems, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action through a willingness to fight.
[15]
Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "
proletarian nation
" that needed to pursue
imperialism
in order to challenge the "
plutocratic
" nations of France and the United Kingdom.
[16]
Corradini's views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing
Italian Nationalist Association
(ANI) that claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by corruption within its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism".
[16]
The ANI held ties and influence amongst
conservatives
, Catholics, and the business community.
[16]
A number of Italian fascist leaders began to relabel national syndicalism as
Fascist syndicalism
. Mussolini was one of the first to disseminate this term, explaining that "Fascist syndicalism is national and productivistic… in a national society in which labor becomes a joy, an object of pride and a title to nobility."
[17]
By the time
Edmondo Rossoni
became secretary-general of the General Confederation of Fascist Syndical Corporations in December 1922, other Italian national syndicalists were adopting the "Fascist syndicalism" phrase in their aim at "building and reorganizing political structures… through a synthesis of State and labor".
[18]
An early leader in Italian trade unionism, Rossoni and other fascist syndicalists not only took the position of radical nationalism, but favored "class struggle".
[19]
Seen at the time as "radical or leftist elements," Rossoni and his syndicalist cadre had "served to some extent to protect the immediate economic interests of the workers and to preserve their class consciousness".
[20]
Rossoni was dismissed from his post in 1928, which could have been due to his powerful leadership position in the Fascist unions,
[21]
and his hostilities to the business community, occasionally referring to industrialists as "vampires" and "profiteers".
[22]
With the outbreak of
World War I
, Sergio Panunzio noted the national solidarity within France and Germany that suddenly arose in response to the war and claimed that should Italy enter the war, the Italian nation would become united and would emerge from the war as a new nation in a "
Fascio nazionale
" (national union) that would be led by an aristocracy of warrior-producers that would unite Italians of all classes, factions, and regions into a disciplined socialism.
[23]
In November 1918,
Mussolini
defined national syndicalism as a doctrine that would unite economic classes into a program of national development and growth.
[24]
Iberian Peninsula
[
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]
National syndicalism in the
Iberian Peninsula
is a political theory very similar to the Fascist idea of
corporatism
, inspired by
Integralism
and the
Action Francaise
(for a
French
parallel, see
Cercle Proudhon
). It was formulated in
Spain
by
Ramiro Ledesma Ramos
in a manifesto published in his periodical
La Conquista del Estado
on 14 March 1931. National syndicalism under
Franco
aimed to provide a suitable replacement for capitalist mode of production with worker managed cooperatives, a system in which workers and employers elect representatives to form syndicates/corporations which manage worker and employer relationships and instantiating and promulgate worker ownership.
National syndicalism was intended to win over the anarcho-syndicalist
Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo
(CNT) to a corporatist nationalism. Ledesma's manifesto was discussed in the CNT congress of 1931. However, the National Syndicalist movement effectively emerged as a separate political tendency. Later the same year,
Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista
was formed, and subsequently voluntarily fused with
Falange Espanola
. In 1937 Franco forced a further less voluntary merger with traditionalist
Carlism
, to create a single less radical party on the Nationalist side of the
Spanish Civil War
.
During the war, Falangists fought against the
Second Spanish Republic
, which initially had the armed support of CNT. National syndicalism was one of the ideological bases of
Francoist Spain
, especially in the early years. Franco’s brother who died fighting for the nationalist cause was also a syndicalist rebel leader in the Andalusian syndicalist revolt. Franco introduced in 1940 a radical syndicalist law that gave extensive rights to workers in the syndicates. In later years the rights of the syndicates became more constrained, but there are still examples of successful worker cooperatives such as the Mondragon worker cooperative that could develop under the wings of Franco’s national syndicalist regime. An example of worker cooperatives practicing worker ownership is Mondragon's ten union/co-op principles founded in 1987, one principle is for the sovereignty of labor. "Sixty years of the Mondragon cooperative experience showcase pathways to overcoming Labor commodification through wider, deeper and more inclusive worker ownership practices".
[25]
The ideology was present in
Portugal
with the
Movimento Nacional-Sindicalista
(active in the early 1930s), its leader
Francisco Rolao Preto
being a collaborator of Falange ideologue
Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera
.
The Spanish version theory has influenced the
Kataeb Party
in
Lebanon
, the
Falanga National Radical Camp
in
Poland
and various
Falangist groups in Latin America
.
The
Unidad Falangista Montanesa
maintained a
trade union
wing, called the Association of National-Syndicalist Workers.
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
- ^
"
a socialism liberated from the democratic and cosmopolitan element
fits nationalism as a well-made glove fits a beautiful hand" (italics in original). Published in L'Action francaise, page 863, 15 November 1900. Quoted in
Sternhell, Zeev
; Sznajder, Mario; Asheri, Maia (1995).
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
(Third printing, and first paperback printing ed.). Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press
. p.
82
.
ISBN
0-691-03289-0
.
For a detailed study of this quote, see:
- Sternhell, Zeev (1984).
La droite revolutionnaire, 1885-1914: les origines francaises du fascisme
. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
ISBN
978-2-02-006694-5
.
- Mazgaj, Paul (1979).
The Action francaise and Revolutionary Syndicalism
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
ISBN
978-0-8078-1316-4
.
- ^
Spencer M. Di Scala, Emilio Gentile, edits.,
Mussolini 1883-1915: Triumph and Transformation of a Revolutionary Socialist
, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, Chap. 5, Marco Gervasoni, "Mussolini and Revolutionary Syndicalism," p. 131
- ^
James Ramsay McDonald,
Syndicalism: A Critical Examination
, London, UK, Constable & Co. Ltd., 1912, p. 7
- ^
"For Lenin," Soviet Russia, Official Organ of The
Russian Soviet Government Bureau
, Vol. II, New York: NY, January-June 1920 (April 10, 1920), p. 356
- ^
Jacob L. Talmon
,
The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century
, University of California Press (1981) p. 451. Sorel's March 1921 conversations with Jean Variot, published in Variot's
Propos de Georges Sorel
, (1935) Paris, pp. 53-57, 66-86 passim
- ^
Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri,
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
, Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 76
- ^
Georges Sorel,
Reflections on Violence
, edited and intro by Jeremy Jennings, Cambridge Texts of the History of Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. ix
- ^
"A vigorous protest had to be made against this spirit of decadence: no other group except Action francaise was able to fulfill a role requiring both literacy and faith. The friends of Maurras form an audacious avant-garde engaged in a fight to the finish against the boors who have corrupted
everything they have touched in our country. The merit of these young people will appear great in history, for we may hope that due to them the reign of stupidity will come to an end some day near at hand".
Originally published in
Sorel, Georges
(22 August 1909). "Socialistes antiparlementaires".
L'Action francaise
.
Quoted in
Sternhell, Zeev
; Sznajder, Mario; Asheri, Maia (1995).
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
(Third printing, and first paperback printing ed.). Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press
. p.
79
.
ISBN
0-691-03289-0
.
- ^
Quoted in
Sternhell, Zeev
(1986).
Neither right nor left: fascist ideology in France
. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press. p. 11.
ISBN
978-0-691-00629-1
.
- ^
Douglas, Allen (1992).
From fascism to libertarian communism: Georges Valois against the Third Republic
.
Berkeley
and
Los Angeles
:
University of California Press
. p. 29.
ISBN
978-0-520-07678-5
.
- ^
Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri,
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 161
- ^
Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri.
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
, Princeton University Press, 1994. pp. 31-32
- ^
Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri.
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 32
- ^
a
b
Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri.
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 33
- ^
a
b
Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri.
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 163
- ^
a
b
c
Martin Blinkhorn.
Mussolini and fascist Italy
. Second edition. New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2003 Pp. 9.
- ^
A. James Gregor,
The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century
, Yale University Press, 1999, p 216, note 42, Mussolini "Commento" in
Opera omnia
, vol. 18, pp. 228-229
- ^
Emilio Gentile,
The Origins of Fascist Ideology 1918-1925
, New York, NY, Enigma Books, 2005, p. 322
- ^
Martin Blinkhorn, edit.,
Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth-Century Europe,
chap. 2: Roland Sarti, "Italian fascism: radical politics and conservative goals," London/New York, Routledge, 2001, pp. 22-23
- ^
David D. Roberts,
The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism
, University of North Carolina Press, 1979, p. 290
- ^
Franklin Hugh Adler,
Italian Industrialists from Liberalism to Fascism: The Political Development of the Industrial Bourgeoisie, 1906-1934
, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 391
- ^
Lavoro d'Italia
, January 6, 1926
- ^
Anthony James Gregor.
Mussolini's intellectuals: fascist social and political thought
. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 78.
- ^
Anthony James Gregor.
Mussolini's intellectuals: fascist social and political thought
. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 81.
- ^
"Ten Union Co-op/Mondragon Principles"
.
www.1worker1vote.org/
. Retrieved
23 September
2022
.
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