Syndicalism is a current in the labor movement to establish local, worker-based organizations and advance the demands and rights of workers through strikes. Major
syndicalist organizations include the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the General Confederation of Labor in
France, the National Confederation of Labour in Spain, the Italian
Syndicalist Union, the Free Workers' Union of
Germany, and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. A number of
syndicalist organizations were and still are to this day linked in the International Workers' Association.
Syndicalists advocate
direct action, including working to rule, passive
resistance,
sabotage, and strikes, particularly
… Read more the general
strike, as tactics in the class struggle, as opposed to indirect action such as
electoral politics. The final step towards
revolution, according to
syndicalists, would be a general
strike. Labor unions were seen as being the embryo of a new
society in addition to being the means of struggle within the old.
Syndicalists generally agreed that in a free
society production would be managed by workers. The state apparatus would be replaced by the rule of workers' organizations. In such a
society individuals would be liberated, both in the economic sphere but also in their private and social lives.
Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power to directly reach certain goals of interest by, for example, revealing an existing problem, using physical force, highlighting an alternative, or demonstrating a possible solution. Both
direct action and actions appealing to others can include
nonviolent and violent activities which target
persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the action participants.
Nonviolent direct action may include sit-ins, strikes, street blockades,
sabotage, and counter-economics.
Nonviolent direct action has historically been an assertive regular feature of the tactics employed
… Read more by social movements, including
Mahatma Gandhi's Indian Independence Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Anarchists
organize almost exclusively through
direct action, this manifests as a varied set of actions,
non-violent or violent.
Direct action is used by anarchists due to a rejection of party politics, and refusal to work within hierarchical bureaucratic institutions.