One take I see around the web here and there – by which I mean the pit of hell takes that is Tankie Twitter – is that syndicalism (anarcho-syndicalism more specifically) paved the way for fascism ideologically, or that fascism came from the syndicalist camp. The aim of this piece is to discuss this notion in detail.

What This Claim Gets Right

What is absolutely true is that there were fascists who used to be or continued to claim to be syndicalists. Mussolini declared himself a syndicalist in the early 1900s after seeing the power of a general strike. His Minister of Labor, Edmono Rossini, was once an IWW member, and wrote a piece called “The Significance of Fascist Syndicalism”. And of course we would be remiss not to mention the so-called “national syndicalists” in France & Spain as well, the latter of whom came to power under Franco’s regime. It is also true enough to say that fascism’s earliest formation was rooted in national syndicalist and Sorelian circles (to the extent these are even different things).

“National Syndicalists”

National syndicalism, the first fascist formation, came to be as a result of combining Georges Sorel’s revisionist Marxism & mythological thinking with Charles Maurass’ extremely reactionary & antisemitic nationalism. The resulting combination professed to be antisemitic, anti-communist, anti-democratic (all breaking with the syndicalist movement), anti-capitalist, and anti-bourgeoisie. We see already that this is also the earliest formation of “Third Position”, a fascist politic that claims to be against both free market capitalism and Marxist communism, offering itself as some new third way. To say then that men like Sorel or Rossini could consistently be called syndicalists after going over to nationalism is ridiculous.

Nor, incidentally, can it claim to be anti-capitalist or anti-bourgeois. In this same piece, Rossini wrote that:

The aim of fascist syndicalism is unity and collaboration: it does not oppose, but conforms to the needs of production; it does not deny the conscious aims of labour, but harmonizes them with the aims and with the industrial experience of the managers. This is the true and fundamental difference between fascism, Syndicalism, and Trade-Unionism, based as the latter is on class warfare. If this is understood by the capitalist class, the whole position changes, and collaboration finds a fertile soil for development.

The idea of the “national syndicalists” has nothing to do with being anti-bourgeois. On the contrary, their position is that the bourgeoisie mustn’t act violently towards their subordinates, for doing so is against the spirit of nationalism. But the fascists, anti-materialist as they are, deny the inevitable tensions and contradictions of the boss-worker relationship. What’s more, they deny the mathematically exploitative nature of the wage relation. This is as “anti-capitalist” as Randian Objectivism.

The National Syndicalist System In Practice

Although fascism banned all trade unions and then adopted a monopoly on organized labor, we have one example in practice to look to: Francoist Spain. Though Franco never really declared himself a national syndicalist ideologically, his party did. As such, his government possesses the only explicitly national syndicalist system in practice. The Spanish Labor Organization acted as Spain’s sole legal trade union during the regime, and by law every employer & worker was a member of it, which essentially meant that if you were able to work, you did, and you were a member. The SLO set wages for employees, made firing a difficult if not impossible process, and banned both strikes & lockouts. Members of the SLO held absolutely no power whatsoever, as the government held full dictatorial control. Those familiar with fascist economics will note that this is a rebranded form of Mussolini’s corporatist economy, where the state & capital have engaged in an incestuous merger. Capitalism is not abolished, it is in mother’s lap.

Conclusion

To call syndicalism a precursor to fascism is ahistorical. The fascists in no uncertain terms abandoned syndicalist ideas, and the so-called “national syndicalists” and “left fascists” were adherents in name only.