A-Infos (en) Catalunia, EMBAT: Interview with the Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees of the French state (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Web: https://www.syndicaliste.com/ ---- Embat has interviewed the French 
organization called CSR. It is a tendency grouping that operates within 
trade unionism to strengthen a revolutionary trade unionist line. 
Although Embat does not share all the postulates that the CSRs present 
to us, we frame it within the scope of the open debate with other 
partner organizations. We are interested in making this paradigm so 
unknown in Catalonia known. ---- The CSRs were created after the First 
World War, they reached 15,000 members who functioned as union cadres of 
the CGT. But the crisis of the 1920s diluted revolutionary expectations 
and, according to the CSRs, this unitary effort was divided into 
ideological sectors: anarcho-syndicalism and communist syndicalism.

The CSR was reconstituted in the 90s as a way to channel the trade union 
activity of the revolutionary militancy that was left to the French CGT. 
So they usually attract militants from the CNT and SUD. They aim to 
return to the essence of the revolutionary syndicalist CGT of Amiens.

During the text, concepts will come up that might sound strange to us. 
One of them is that of the double task . It is about giving a practical 
and permanent content to his revolutionary project. The Charter of 
Amiens said: " The Congress declares that this double task, daily and 
future, follows from the situation of wage earners that weighs on the 
working class and that it does for all workers, whatever their 
tendencies political or philosophical, a duty to belong to the essential 
grouping that is the union ."

Revolutionary syndicalism posits the union as the backbone of 
post-revolutionary socialist society. It is not only a vindictive tool 
to achieve better working conditions but also the tool that will be able 
to manage a large part of the economy and companies once the social 
revolution has taken place.

Now we leave you with the interview.

EMBAT.- What are CSRs? Is it an organization? Is it a trend? How do they 
work?

CSR.- The CSRs wish to give orientation and political exits to trade 
union practices. We are, therefore, a revolutionary political 
organization of trade unionism. However, in order not to place ourselves 
on the sidelines of the proletariat already organized in trade unions, 
we appear as a trade union tendency, that is to say, we act within the 
class organization and not outside it, as the parties do, the vanguards 
and all the so-called "specific" organizations. The organization of the 
CSRs follows the federalist trade union model: local committees to 
represent the territories and industry committees to represent the 
sectoral branches.

Unlike the social democrats and the leftists, we do not adopt the 
bourgeois conception of work, that is to say, the situation of 
exploitation. We believe that all human activity falls within the 
concept of work and that, therefore, nothing can be alien to trade 
unionism. For this reason, we do not divide militancy into a multitude 
of specific struggles. We resume the historical social model of the CGT 
and manage the problems with the right tools. For example, with union 
commissions on immigration, women, youth, housing, disability, sports 
and culture.

We defend a union strategy and practice in the day-to-day life of our 
class organizations, but also in congresses. Our tendency carries out a 
great task of development and training to compensate for the weaknesses 
of the confederations in this area.

Our militants intervene in a coordinated manner within the framework of 
the Double Task , which means that each action is designed within the 
dynamics of building a proletarian counter-society that prepares the 
revolutionary break and the socialization of the means of production. 
The trend thus serves as a permanent reference to maintain our political 
autonomy within the framework of the capitalist system that we fight and 
that tries to integrate us.

Embat.- If you can tell, we would like to know in which unions, 
federations and territories you have influence?

CSR.- We are not in a position to publicly detail our implementation. 
However, we can say that, through our networks of militants, 
sympathizers and contacts, we have a sufficient overview to be able to 
act and coordinate in different professional sectors (transport, 
construction, public services, education, chemistry , cleaning, social 
action, press and books, metallurgy...), union structures and 
localities, as well as to influence key moments in the life of the 
confederation, of society or during the mobilizations in France.

EMBAT.- Is the CGT-F no longer controlled by the PCF?

CSR.- We believe that the CGT was never really controlled by the PCF 
but, on the contrary, from 1923 many revolutionary trade unionists took 
refuge in the PCF to use it as an institutional resource and as a source 
of financing.

The congress of the PCF of 1924 marked a change in the social 
composition of the party. The SRs now occupy positions of responsibility 
at all levels of the party apparatus. Pierre Semard, a former member of 
the Central Committee of the CSR, became secretary of the PCF. Pierre 
Monatte directed the newspaper Humanité.

This was the strength of the PCF, which drew its militants from the CGT 
and benefited from their trade union know-how and knowledge. This also 
explains why no other similar organization has managed to establish 
itself in the working class after the PCF crisis. It was a party created 
and led by trade unionists. In the last 20 years it has lost this class 
composition.

After the fall of the Soviet bloc, many "communist" trade unionists 
distanced themselves from the PCF. There were still active affinity 
networks in the CGT, but they were not actually directed by externally 
organized philosophical factions. They don't have a political line. Some 
federations and departmental unions are affiliated with the World Trade 
Union Federation (WFTU) and develop a phraseology inspired by Marxist 
Leninism. But at the last confederal congress, the agri-food federation, 
a historical stronghold of the WFTU, opposed the other federations of 
the WFTU.

The members of these networks, such as those of Trotskyist or 
libertarian inspiration, coordinate from time to time to strengthen 
their personal cultural capital, but do not follow any alternative 
strategy. Affiliation by affinity, apart from the confederation, serves 
to justify an accompanying trade unionism, radical in expression and 
action, but social democratic, since it does not develop any concrete 
perspective of breaking with capitalism. These networks continue the 
PCF's tribune function, i.e. manage dissent, but within the framework of 
the system.

Each militant makes a career choice, some in state institutions, 
volunteering, in the cultural and intellectual world, in "alternative" 
companies... and others in trade unionism. The PCF and its various 
sensibilities, like the other networks, are used as a meeting place and 
for networking, but there is no collective movement towards a common 
project.

EMBAT.- Do you see the unification of French trade unionism as possible?

CSR.- The main obstacle to unification continues to be the absence of 
perspectives. There may be bureaucratic interests merging organizations 
to maintain weakened apparatuses. This is the case of the current debate 
on reunification between the FSU (Unitary Trade Union Federation) (the 
main autonomous education federation) and the CGT. Solidaires , faced 
with a lasting development crisis, is also starting to think about it.

But without a social project, trade unionists are condemned to suffer 
the mental and structural domination of the bourgeoisie. When there is 
no longer social life and you close yourself off, in relationships of 
affinity, when you reproduce the mode of existence of the bourgeoisie, 
when you perceive capitalism as insurmountable, why will you want to 
open your union organization to others? Trade unionists, like activists, 
currently defend their immediate interests, without projecting 
themselves or federating with others.

This is why we believe that without a Double Task dynamic , trade 
unionism will continue to fragment between confederations, but also 
within each confederation.

Therefore, reunification is only possible by rewriting a revolutionary 
project in the development of a class sociability that teaches us to 
build our lives collectively. The ultimate project, towards which we 
advance, is an egalitarian society that includes all individuals.

EMBAT.- What is revolutionary trade unionism?

CSR.- Revolutionary syndicalism is very well summed up in the Charter 
adopted at the Amiens Confederal Congress of 1906. It could not be more 
clear and concise. It is in this text that the Double Task strategy is 
explained .

But it was a confederal text, also voted for by the reformists, who 
suffered at the time from the hegemonic action of the revolutionaries. 
It did not address the question of union tendencies. It could give the 
illusion that the union was automatically revolutionary if the majority 
of its members were SR. But we believe that the trade union can only 
become revolutionary in a pre-revolutionary period, that is, when it 
gathers a majority of workers with a global and detailed view of 
industry, when this majority no longer wants to obey the capitalist 
powers. But only when a revolutionary project is adopted does the 
situation become revolutionary. In other words, a material elaboration 
of the means to reorganize the industry. Because the revolution is not 
just a feeling of revolt fueled by some theoretical concepts like "long 
live communism" (libertarian or not). It is a project that allows us to 
go on the offensive and assume our leadership role over the ruins left 
by capitalism.

The function of the tendency is precisely to prepare, in the class 
organizations, this elaboration and transmission of the political 
program. The revolutionary confederation materializes only through a 
fusion process of the SR tendency and the mass confederation. Without 
these two tools, a pre-revolutionary situation, often limited in time, 
cannot overcome this phase and quickly allows the adversary to resume 
the initiative or automatically cedes power, privatized, to militants 
who possess theoretical or intellectual knowledge. This opens the door 
to a bureaucratization like that which marked Russia in 1917 and Spain 
in 1936.

In both processes, the SR trend became a necessity, but too late. The 
creation of the Russian Workers' Opposition and the French CSRs in 1920 
and the Friends of Durruti in 1937 were material responses to an 
objective situation, to the need for a missing tool. But the 
revolutionary impulse was already very fragile, which made these 
tendencies, still fragile for being too new, fall victim to repression 
and demoralization.

EMBAT.- After the protests of the Loi du Travail or against the pension 
reform, how is the social situation in France?

CSR.- The mobilization against the Labor Law and against the pension 
reform focused on mass demonstrations by citizens who left their jobs 
through various means (strikes, but especially permits, days off, 
daycare centers, etc. ). So capitalism was only slightly destabilized, 
except in some rare sectors (railroads, energy, shipping).

The weakness of strikes in the professions forced the militant sectors 
and trade unionists to multiply blocking actions. They took the place of 
collective class action, which was not organized outside of scheduled 
mass demonstrations.

This demonstrated the fragility of institutional trade unionism and the 
negative impact of the left, which consists of focusing on the 
institutions of the State without attacking employers. This social 
democratic vision of the class struggle is shared by everyone, from PS 
militants to the ultra-left. The need for the strike is weakened by 
individualism, which is an obstacle to union organization in companies 
and professions.

Therefore, it seems necessary to recreate a collective consciousness 
based on the strategy of the Double Task . Our militants are also very 
involved in sports and neighborhood associations, where we revive a 
worker sociability that is not limited to an affinity or a particular 
community, but is open to the entire working class.

EMBAT.- How do you handle the rise of the extreme right in France? Drag 
to the working class?

CSR.- Far-right ideas are quickly making inroads among the working 
class, and not only among the petty bourgeoisie that has historically 
constituted the social base of the far-right. Fortunately, the National 
Rally, like fascist organizations, has difficulty organizing its 
supporters. However, their number is increasing. Young proletarians are 
increasingly contaminated by a confused adherence to the theses of the 
extreme right. This is facilitated by the fact that all sectors of the 
left, from classical social democracy to libertarians, have abandoned 
class analysis in favor of radicalized populism.

They encourage their members to become self-employed (eco-farmers, 
builders, service providers, freelance artists, bar owners, etc.). His 
concept of "the little ones against the big ones" not only does not 
clarify the class nature of the extreme right or denounce its bourgeois 
composition, but reinforces the populist drift.

The idealistic strategy of the left, based on theoretical discourses and 
anti-fascist actions disconnected from the class, has shown its 
inability to counterattack.

EMBAT.- What would you say to someone who tells you that SR was fine 100 
years ago, but that now - the way society works - it's impractical?

CSR.- Capitalism has increased the complexity of its organization, both 
within industries and on an international scale. The Toyota strategy has 
deliberately broken up work teams and encouraged outsourcing based on 
individualism. However, capitalism has never been stronger.

This increase in the complexity of capitalism rendered totally 
ineffective the alternative strategies that sought to compete against 
the SR. These strategies, based on the nation-state or the coordination 
of local groups, lose all anti-capitalist perspective.

A communist society project depends, more than ever, on a program of 
socialization of the professional sectors, on a local, national and 
global scale. It is necessary to place trades and work again at the 
center of the revolutionary strategy and abandon activist, idealist and 
sectarian drifts. Therefore, the CSRs have launched the Industry 
Networks to involve as many trade unionists as possible in the 
strategies of grassroots trade unionism and then help our unions to do 
so. This is a necessary step to create a credible revolutionary dynamic 
for the proletariat, a true social project based on the re-signification 
of work. Starting immediately with the Double Task .

This is also the reason why CSRs wish to participate in the creation of 
an international SR trend that goes beyond the simple publication of 
vaguely anti-capitalist texts, as international networks of militants 
do, and that specifically federates militants revolutionaries around 
reflection and action in their industries at an international level.

EMBAT.- This sounds like anarcho-syndicalism to us, what would be the 
difference? What is the state of anarcho-syndicalism in France?

CSR.- The Charter of Amiens offers a strategy for the organic 
unification of the proletariat as a counter-society, as an embryo of 
Socialism. It reminds us that this counter-society is only possible if 
there is a unitary trade union confederation. Because, obviously, there 
cannot be two Socialisms in the same country. The proletarians will not 
be able to manage their industries with 3 or 10 competing trade union 
federations. Otherwise we will reproduce the disorganization that 
existed during the Russian and Spanish revolutions and that favored the 
rapid emergence of state capitalism.

The union unity of the proletariat is the central element of the SR. 
Conversely, during the wave of decline of the early 1920s, some trade 
unionists affected by pessimism fell back on the logic of creating 
affinity confederations. The proclamation of adherence to a certain 
philosophy (be it anarchism or the Communist International from 1928) 
did nothing more than justify the division and did not provide any 
critical strategic reflection, quite the opposite.

That is why both anarcho-syndicalism and "communist syndicalism" were 
branches of the SR, which faced the breakdown of the labor movement. 
This phenomenon also affected the Spanish CNT, which in the twenties 
abandoned the Charter of Amiens as a reference and the SR and split into 
several affinities.

In the 90s, France was characterized by a rapid development of 
anarcho-syndicalism. The CNT established itself in certain professions 
and acquired a significant influence among young activists. At the same 
time, the SUD (solidarity, unitary and democratic) unions, organized in 
the Unió syndical Solidaires (Solidaris), grouped union dissidents and 
many young people around their anti-globalization identity.

These grouping poles could have influenced union recomposition, 
proposing a reunification that would have questioned the current 
situation[of unionism in the 1990s]. But they closed themselves in an 
anarcho-syndicalist dynamic and ended up reproducing the same bourgeois 
schemes, with a profusion of internal tensions, splits and a total 
strategic vacuum. The reference to a philosophy helped to recruit 
people, but in the end it only served to justify the existence of 
organizations without a global vision of society. Thousands of young 
people have passed through the CNT and the SUD, and many of them now 
occupy positions of responsibility in the CGT, managing a classic social 
democratic practice with a radical and artificial discourse. They 
reproduce in the CGT the anarcho-syndicalism of their youth: managing a 
piece of the apparatus, without any class perspective and justifying 
their role as tribunes by mentioning a group or a philosophy of affinity.

Many sincere militants have exhausted themselves trying to create new 
mass organizations, building them at the same time as they had to work 
out a revolutionary strategy. Overwhelmed by their work, they ended up 
unable to do either. This crisis of the anarcho-syndicalist model in 
France explains why the CGT continues to attract the vast majority of 
young militants and young proletarians who want to get involved in trade 
unionism. And this despite the very worrying situation of the CGT.

EMBAT.- You also claim industrial unionism, what does that mean?

CSR.- Industrial or grassroots trade unionism is a strategy based on the 
organization of the class on the basis of the professional sector. 
Grassroots unions do not recruit based on profession or capitalist 
institution (private or public), but based on the goods or service produced.

Therefore, this strategy is based on the union and the industry 
federation. They are coordinated at the territorial level in local 
interprofessional unions (UL) and at the national level in a 
Confederation to socialize the action.

Industrial trade unionism is not the monopoly of SRs. Reformists and 
social democrats can also see its immediate effectiveness. But for SR it 
is fundamental, because it establishes the Double Task . On a day-to-day 
basis, the industrial union brings together all the proletariat in the 
sector (those in training, those who are unemployed, those with 
precarious contracts, those with indefinite contracts and those who are 
retired) , which gives him a strike force and a global knowledge of the 
industry, of each sector, of each trade and of each employment 
situation. Above all, it is the only tool capable of drawing up a 
program of reorganization of the industry. That is why a trade unionist 
can only give a revolutionary dimension to his action by intervening in 
an organized way in industrial trade unionism to guide it towards a 
revolutionary break.

CSR.- Additional information:

CSRs are often criticized for reporting on affinity organizations. It is 
often a way of avoiding the debate that we propose systematically.

We respect and apply the Charter of Amiens. The CSRs are managed by 
comrades from different philosophical backgrounds, which not only allows 
for the pooling of individual experiences, but also avoids artificial 
tensions. They come together exclusively on the basis of a practice that 
is part of a strategic approach.

Therefore, the only criticism we can make of affinity organizations is 
that they often do not respect their role. It is not the role of an 
affinity group, party member or not, to mobilize on issues of housing, 
capitalist exploitation, education or even calling a strike! There is no 
point in trying to drive a nail with a screwdriver.

Since the crisis of the labor movement in the 1920s, it was normal for 
affinity groups to replace mass organizations in all areas. The result 
is that their actions are totally ineffective, since they are not able 
to mobilize a large number of people in the long term. They are locked 
in a succession of isolated struggles, often without a future and 
without participating in the creation of a class counter-society. They 
thus encourage a profusion of collectives, associations or committees 
that deal with partial issues and automatically feed social democratic 
reflexes.

Locked in this strategy of permanent agitation, affinity groups fail to 
fulfill their basic political education function: for example, calling 
the proletariat to join unions in order to socialize.

In the end, the affinity organizations forget to do what they were 
created for: think a vision of society and a strategy to reach it, at 
the same time as they popularize their proposals. In a socialist 
approach, the affinity organization can only go so far in its work of 
reflection and education. And that's a lot! Social transformation must 
necessarily go through social organizations, that is, through mass 
organizations.

We apply the same rigor. We systematically refuse to intervene directly 
in struggles when we believe that our trade unions can do so. We cannot 
replace the working class. We present proposals to the general 
assemblies of unions. And only if the proposals are not adapted do we 
intervene as a revolutionary organization, knowing full well that the 
impact will be minor.

That's why we emphasize the working culture of work, because we remember 
what each tool is for and how they should be used. It is essential to 
reappropriate the knowledge of each of these tools (confederation, 
union, affinity group, trend, etc.) if we want to obtain good results.

https://embat.info/entrevista-als-comites-sindicalistes-revolucionaris-de-lestat-frances/
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