Anarcho-Syndicalism and Direct Action

Posted on January 14, 2009, filed Under Worker Struggle. 2 Comments

(The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism)

By Rudolf Rocker. Ed. By Scott R.

Exerpted from: Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938).

People owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. Governments have employed every means that lay in their power to prevent the attainment of these rights or to render them illusory. Great mass movements among the people and whole revolutions have been necessary to wrest these rights from the ruling classes, who would never have consented to them voluntarily. Even the freest ballot cannot do away with the glaring contrast between the possessing and non-possessing classes in society. It can only serve to impart to a system of social injustice the stamp of legal right and to induce the slave to set the stamp of legality on his own servitude. But, most important of all, practical experience has shown that the participation of the workers in parliamentary activity [trusting politicians, political parties, labor law, etc.] cripples their power of resistance and dooms to futility their warfare against the existing system. Parliamentary participation has not brought the workers one iota nearer to their final goal; it has even prevented them from protecting the rights they have won against the attacks of the reaction.

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The Barcelona Mass Rent Strike of 1931

Posted on September 2, 2005, filed Under Housing & Urban Issues. Leave a Comment

by Tom Wetzel

This is the story of one of the major rent strikes of the 20th century.

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