What is "anarcho-syndicalism"

n. A branch or field of anarchism that focuses on the abolition of capitalism through the organization of revolutionary worker syndicates.

Anarcho-syndicalism (also referred to as revolutionary syndicalism) is a theory of anarchism which views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and use that control to influence broader society. Syndicalists consider their economic theories a strategy for facilitating worker self-activity and as an alternative co-operative economic system with democratic values and production centered on meeting human needs.

The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are solidarity, direct action (action undertaken without the intervention of third parties such as politicians, bureaucrats and arbitrators) and direct democracy, or workers' self-management. The end goal of anarcho-syndicalism is to abolish the wage system, regarding it as wage slavery. Anarcho-syndicalist theory therefore generally focuses on the labor movement.

Anarcho-syndicalists view the primary purpose of the state as being the defence of private property, and therefore of economic, social and political privilege, denying most of its denizens the ability to enjoy material independence and the social autonomy which springs from it. In contrast with other bodies of thought, particularly with Marxism–Leninism, anarcho-syndicalists 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 posit 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. Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism holds to the idea that power corrupts.

Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. An Introduction to a Subject Which the Spanish War Has Brought into Overwhelming Prominence is a book written by the German anarchist Rudolf Rocker. Its first edition (158 pages) was published by Secker and Warburg, London in 1938 and was translated from Ray E. Chase. Rocker penned this political and philosophical work in 1937, at the behest of Emma Goldman, as an introduction to the ideals fueling the Spanish social revolution and resistance to capitalism and fascism the world over. Within, Rocker offers an introduction to anarchist ideas, a history of the international workers' movement, and an outline of the syndicalist strategies and tactics embraced at the time ( direct action, sabotage and the general strike). The Pluto Press and the newest AK Press editions including a lengthy introduction by Nicolas Walter and a preface by Noam Chomsky.