International Workers' Association | |
Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores | |
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| Founded | December 1922 (1922-12) |
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| Headquarters | Targowa 22/27 a, 03-731Warsaw, Poland |
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| Affiliations | Anarcho-syndicalism |
| Website | www |
TheInternational Workers' Association –Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores (IWA–AIT) is an international federation ofanarcho-syndicalistlabor unions and initiatives.
It aims to create unions capable of fighting for the economic and political interests of the working class and eventually, to directly abolishcapitalism and the state through "the establishment of economic communities and administrative organs run by the workers."
At its peak the International represented millions of people worldwide. Its member unions played a central role in the social conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s. However the International was formed as many countries were entering periods of extreme repression, and many of the largest IWA unions were shattered during that period.[1]
The IWA explicitly rejectscentralism,political parties,parliamentarism andstatism, including the idea of thedictatorship of the proletariat, as offering the means to carry out such change, drawing heavily on anarchist critiques written both before and after the Russian revolution, most famouslyMikhail Bakunin's suggestion that: "If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than theTsar himself."[2]
Instead emphasis is placed on the organization of workers as the agents of social change through their ability to take direct action:
Revolutionary unionism asserts itself to be a supporter of the method of direct action, and aids and encourages all struggles that are not in contradiction to its own goals. Its methods of struggle are: strikes, boycotts, sabotage, etc. Direct action reaches its deepest expression in the general strike, which should also be, from the point of view of revolutionary unionism, the prelude to the social revolution.
...
Only in the economic and revolutionary organisations of theworking class are there forces capable of bringing about its liberation and the necessary creative energy for the reorganisation of society on the basis oflibertarian communism.
— Statutes of the IWA[3]
From an early stage, the IWA has taken an anti-militarist stance, reflecting the overwhelminganarchist attitude since theFirst World War that theworking class should not engage with the power struggles betweenruling classes - and certainly should not die for them. It included a commitment toanti-militarism in its core principles and in 1926 it founded anInternational Anti-Militarist Coalition to promotedisarmament and gather information on war production.[4]
The IWA also states that syndicalists recognize violence as an acceptable defense against violence of the ruling classes, to be occur through the formation of a democratic popular militia rather than through a traditional military hierarchy. This has been posited as an alternative to the dictatorship of the proletariat model.[4]
The First International (International Workingmen's Association; IWMA) aimed at uniting a variety of differentleft-wingsocialist,communist[5] andanarchist political groups andLabor union that were based on theworking class andclass struggle.
Its split prompted several attempts to start specifically anarchist Internationals, notably theAnarchist St. Imier International (1872-1881) and theBlack International (1881–87). However heavy repression in France of theParis Commune, as well as in Spain and Italy, alongside the rise ofpropaganda of the deed within the anarchist movement and a dominant strand of social-democracy on the wider left wing in Europe, meant that serious moves to establish an anarcho-syndicalist international would not begin until the early 20th century.[1][6]
After the end of the war however, with the workers' movement resurgent following theOctober Revolution and subsequentRussian Civil War, what was to become the modern IWA was formed, billing itself as the "true heir" of the original international.[7]
The success of theBolsheviks in Russia in 1918 resulted in a wave of syndicalist successes worldwide, including the struggle of theIndustrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the USA alongside the creation of mass anarchist unions across Latin America and huge syndicalist-led strikes in Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy and France, where it was noted that "neutral (economic, but not political) syndicalism had been swept away."[1]
For many in this new revolutionary wave, Russia seemed to offer a successful alternative to social democratic reformism, so when in 1919 the Bolshevik Party issued an appeal for all workers to join it in building a new Red International it was met with great interest. Almost all of the syndicalist unions attended the 1920 congress of the Bolsheviks’ international of communists, theComintern, which unions in France and Italy joined immediately.[6] In contrast, attempts to organize a conference of anarchists in February 1919 in Copenhagen had seen only the Scandinavians able to attend.[1]
The final formation of this new international, then known as the International Workingmen's Association, took place at an illegal conference in Berlin in December 1922, marking an irrevocable break between the international syndicalist movement and the Bolsheviks.[1]
Signatories to the founding statement of the International Workingmen's Association included groups from around the world. The single largest anarcho-syndicalist union at the time, theCNT in Spain, was unable to attend when their delegates were arrested on the way to the conference, though they did join the following year, bringing 600,000 members into the international. Despite the CNT's absence, the international represented well over 1 million workers at its inauguration:[6]
The biggest syndicalist union in the US, the IWW, considered joining but eventually ruled out affiliation in 1936, citing the IWA's policies onreligious and political affiliation.[8]
In Argentina, the FORA had already begun a process of decline by the time it joined the IWA, having split in 1915 into pro and anti-Bolshevik factions. From 1922, the anarchist movement there lost most of its membership, exacerbated by further splits, most notably around theSeverino Di Giovanni affair. It was crushed byGeneral Uriburu's military coup in 1930.[9]
Portugal's CGT was driven underground after an unsuccessful attempt to break the newly installed President of Portugal,Gomes da Costa, with a general strike in 1927 which led to nearly 100 deaths. It survived underground with 15–20,000 members until January 1934, when it called a general revolutionary strike, which failed, against plans to replace trade unions with corporations. It was able to continue in a much reduced state until World War II, but was effectively finished as a fighting union.Massive government repression repeated such defeats around the world, as anarcho-syndicalist unions were destroyed in Peru, Brazil, Columbia, Japan, Cuba, Bulgaria, Paraguay and Bolivia. By the end of the 1930s legal anarcho-syndicalist trade unions existed only in Chile, Bolivia, Sweden and Uruguay.[1]
At the tenth congress in 1958, the SAC's response to its pressures led it into a clash with the rest of the international. It withdrew from the IWA following its failure to amend the body's statutes to allow it to stand in municipal elections and amid concerns over its integration with the state over distribution of unemployment benefits.[4]
In the early 2000s, the organisationPriama akcia [sk] (English:Direct action) was established inSlovakia and became the Slovak section of the IWA. It has published the journalŽerme bohatých (English:Let's eat the rich), which has reported on strike actions and trade union struggles in both Slovakia and the rest of the world.[10]
By the 21st century, the IWA was experiencing an internal crisis. This process culminated in 2016, with the expulsion of theCNT (Spain),USI (Italy),FAU (Germany), which together represented 80-90% of the IWA's working membership. In 2018, the expelled sections of the IWA established a new international organisation, theInternational Confederation of Labour (Confederación Internacional del Trabajo; ICL-CIT).[11] Alongside the CNT, USI and FAU, other affiliated organisations included the North American Regional Administration of theIWW, FORA (Argentina),ESE (Greece), andIP (Poland).[12] As of its founding, the ICL-CIT counted more than 10,000 members, located in both Europe and the Americas; in contrast, by 2020, the IWA's membership had dwindled to less than 1,000 active members, mostly located in Europe.[11]
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