I am a Syndicalist.
I regard the state as a profoundly anti-worker institution, ironically agreeing with James Madison that the primary function of government is to 'protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.' I view the primary purpose of the state as being the defense of private property and therefore of economic, social and political privilege, even when such defense denies its citizens the ability to enjoy material independence and the social autonomy which springs from it. In contrast to other bodies of thought (Marxism–Leninism being a prime example), I deny that there can be any kind of workers' state, or a state which acts in the interests of workers, as opposed to those of the powerful, and that any state with the intention of empowering the workers will inevitably work to empower itself or the existing elite at the expense of the workers. Power corrupts.
Economically, I propose confederations of collectivized trade unions or industrial unions. A form of socialist economic corporatism that advocates interest aggregation of multiple non-competitive categorized units to negotiate and manage an economy. For adherents, labor unions are the potential means of both overcoming economic aristocracy and running society fairly in the interest of the majority, through union democracy. Industry in a syndicalist system would be run through co-operative confederations and mutual aid. Local syndicates would communicate with other syndicates through the Bourse du Travail (labor exchange) which would manage and transfer commodities.
Syndicalist theory holds, on an ethical basis, that all participants in an organized trade internally share equal ownership of its production. By contrast, socialism emphasizes distributing output among trades as required by each trade, not necessarily considering how trades organize internally. Communism rejects government-sanctioned private ownership of the means of production in favor of ownership by the class of individuals who actually use such property (i.e., the workers or proletariat, who under most variants of communism would have control of the state as well, muddling the distinction between state and proletarian ownership). In syndicalism, unions exist independent of the state rather than needing the state's micromanagement and central planning. As with businesses in capitalism, labor unions in syndicalism would likely share a complicated relationship of co-operation and opposition with the state (with the obvious exception of anarcho-syndicalism, under which there would be no state). Syndicalists state that society is to be organized bottom-up based on direct democracy, confederation, workplace democracy and decentralized socialism, and that to get to such a society they may either initiate a general strike through direct action and workplace occupation or - in the case of reformist syndicalists - develop the syndicalist economics alongside the state, in competition to it. Syndicalists state that delegation - the use of proxy representation - will facilitate direct democracy and that each commune/region would be independent in the confederation.
The Marxist, Communist, and Socialist Guild
Formerly called the NCS, this is a place for communists and socialists to talk about communism and socialism.
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