The birth of revolutionary syndicalism

From 8 to 14 October 1906, 300 representatives of local CGT groups gathered in Amiens, at what is now the Albert Roze School, to discuss and adopt a common trade-union programme. It was the ninth congress of the trade union founded in 1895, and a milestone in the history of the revolutionary workers’ movement. . On the penultimate day, 13 October, the Charter was adopted. This was followed by a two-day conference of the Bourses du Travail.

The CGT itself had been founded in 1895 and, at the time of the congress, was still regarded by some like James Guillaume as standing firmly in the tradition of the International Workingmen’s Association. In 1906, it had around 300,000 members.

The significance of the declaration can be seen in the following aspects: the Charter advocates both the day-to-day struggle of the working class to secure immediate improvements in its living and working conditions and the ultimate aim of abolishing capitalist exploitation as such. At the same time, it asserts the independence of trade unions from party politics of any kind.

These positions are clearly expressed, for example, in the following passage: “The Congress considers that this declaration is a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic front, pits workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, both material and moral, perpetrated by the capitalist class against the working class. (…) As trade-union organisations, the affiliated organisations have no concern with the parties and sects which, outside and alongside them, are free to pursue social transformation.”

The declaration is now regarded as a founding document of revolutionary syndicalism, comparable in significance to Rudolf Rocker’s Principles of Anarcho-Syndicalism (1919) for that particular tendency. In Germany, revolutionary syndicalism can be compared with the positions of localism, from which the Free Workers’ Union of Germany – Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands (FAUD) emerged.

Although revolutionary syndicalism overlaps with anarcho-syndicalism, the two tendencies should nevertheless be clearly distinguished. Revolutionary syndicalism can be understood as a political and economic current within the workers’ movement which regards trade unions as the principal means of overcoming capitalism and establishing a self-managed society. It is therefore a revolutionary trade-union strategy. Anarcho-syndicalism employs the same strategy, but combines it with anarchist principles. Anarcho-syndicalist tendencies only became discernible in France from the early 1920s onwards and found organisational expression in 1926 with the founding of the CGT-SR (Confédération générale du travail – Syndicaliste révolutionnaire), from which the CNT-F later emerged.

The Charter of Amiens did not, of course, emerge in a vacuum. From 1904 onwards, the syndicalist George Sorel had been propagating revolutionary-syndicalist ideas in trade-union newspapers, and in 1908 he published Réflexions sur la violence, another key work of revolutionary syndicalism.

One year before the adoption of the Charte d’Amiens, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in the United States. Its unionist concept overlaps with revolutionary syndicalism in several respects, particularly in its emphasis on trade-union independence and on the general strike as a weapon of the working class.

The Charter also shaped the debates surrounding the trade-union question at the International Anarchist Congress held in Amsterdam in 1907. One of the speakers was the Italian Errico Malatesta, who criticised the exclusive focus on syndicalism in his contribution Syndicalism: An Anarchist Critique, thereby making an important contribution — still relevant today — to the question of the relationship between anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism. A contrasting position was taken by the French activist Pierre Monatte, who placed his hopes in the trade unions as the agents of social revolution.

With the outbreak of the First World War, the Charter lost much of its significance and was superseded by other principles. After the First World War, anarcho-syndicalism also emerged as a distinct tendency, developing the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism further by giving them a clearly anarchist orientation.

Today, a commemorative plaque at the school recalls the congress and the Charter adopted there, to which several trade unions in France still nominally refer, including the CNT-F. The plaque bears the following inscription: “On 13 October 1906, the Charter of Amiens was adopted at the 15th National Trade Union Congress of the C.G.T. The independence of trade unions from political parties and sects. C.G.T. Force Ouvrière.”