Sorelian syndicalists found?

Syndikalisternas Förbund (the League of Syndicalists) was a small left-wing radical group in Sweden. Formed during the 1950´s by Rudolf Holmö, they seem to have become dormant after his death in 1963, only to be resurrected around 1979. Their next date of expiry is unknown, but some members or perhaps ex-members of the group were still around circa 1992. I briefly corresponded with one of them. The publication of SF (or S-F) was called Våra Idéer.

Holmö´s version of syndicalism is most similar to the revolutionary syndicalism of the CGT in France during the decades immediately preceding World War I. Holmö certainly regarded various CGT leaders as the “fathers” of syndicalism. Holmö was more critical of anarcho-syndicalism, seeing it as a breach of the “non-partisan” character of syndicalism, the “party” taking over the syndicates of course being the anarchists. To Holmö, all forms of anarchism save one were incompatible with syndicalism since they didn´t really support full socialization of the economy. The sole exception is Kropotkin´s anarcho-communism. Holmö had a special animus against those anarchists who moved “to the right” after World War II, essentially becoming a kind of Cold War liberals. Or perhaps Cold War libertarians! In Holmö´s worldview, there was no contradiction between being an “anarchist” and working for the CIA. He opposed both. The Swedish syndicalist organization, the SAC, supported the new course and expelled Holmö and the S-F leadership when their factional activities became too annoying. In 1981 (I think), SAC rescinded the expulsions – this was at a time when the organization was moving back towards more leftist positions, albeit a strong Cold Warrior faction still remained. Ironically, the S-F didn´t attract much support among the 70´s radicals who had joined the SAC. The group was seen as strange, anachronistic and cultish. It still insisted that the main inspirator of the Cold War course, Helmut Rüdiger, must of course literally have been a CIA agent…

The pamphlet I´m reviewing contains two articles, “Georges Sorel: Kort biografi” by Leif Björk and “Den syndikalistiska rörelsens historiska bakgrund” by Fritz Jonsson. My copy of the pamphlet was published in 1979, but the two articles seem to be from the 1920´s. Jonsson´s text is a history of the French CGT, showing the CGT-fixation of this group. The real blockbuster is the first article. Yes, it really is a surprisingly good exposition of Georges Sorel´s basic ideas. Indeed, this is what prompted me to procure the pamphlet in the first place. To S-F, Sorel was the leading theoretician of revolutionary syndicalism in France circa 1900-1910, but everyone who knows his intellectual history knows that Sorel, of course, was more than this. Much more. Today, Sorel is often regarded as a forerunner of fascism and Red-Brown blocs, also having strong affinities to Bolshevism, or rather the “left” Bolsheviks who were often criticized by Lenin. Philosophically, Sorel is often paired with Bergson. However, neither Holmö nor the S-F had any fascistic or vitalistic tendencies, being by all accounts a left-wing socialist group which eschewed violence in the here and now, instead concentrating on publishing rather boring theoretical texts (the only “violence” from their quarter being their often acerbic polemics). At the same time, S-F must have been aware of Sorel´s more peculiar ideas, since several of them are mentioned in Leif Björk´s article! I´m not sure how to square this little circle.

Björk´s identity is unknown to me, but based on internal evidence, the article must have been published in some Swedish syndicalist magazine during the 1920´s. The author clearly likes Sorel, at one point calling his works “EPOCHAL IN SIGNIFICANCE” (caps in original). Since Björk is a leftist, he studiously avoids Sorel´s connections to the Catholic conservatives and proto-fascists. However, he does expound on other distinctly Sorelian notions. There is the idea that proletarian violence is good for society since it forces the bourgeoisie to abandon its pacifism and resist, the admiration of the capitalists for developing science and the productive forces, the fear of “degeneration”, and the notion that the general strike is really a “myth”. Björk does a good job explaining these peculiar notions, and I get the impression that he believes in them himself. He also ably summarizes Sorel´s more typically syndicalist ideas. Finally, he mentions Sorel´s qualified support for Lenin´s Bolsheviks after the 1917 October revolution in Russia. The really interesting question is of course how much the S-F believed of this “left Sorelianism”. It would have been piquant to discover a Swedish left-Sorelian group, but as I have already indicated, I don´t think S-F were really Sorelians at all. But if so, why on earth this pamphlet?

Another curious thing is that the pamphlet was printed by Stockholms LS, the Stockholm branch of the SAC which had expelled Holmö and the S-F leaders back in 1953! What that means, is of course an interesting question, too…

The Lenin of syndicalism

Anarchist good guy?

This is one of the most obscure products I´ve reviewed. Unless you are Swedish and very interested in the history of anarcho-syndicalism, chances are you never heard of “Förhållandet mellan syndikalism och anarkism”, with the long subtitle, or perhaps front cover slogan, “Syndikalismens förhållande till anarkismen är ett annat än de olika anarkistiska attitydernas förhållande till syndikalismen!”. First published in 1963, my copy is dated 1981.

The author, Rudolf Holmö (alias Rudolv Holmö or Rudolv Holme) had been a high-ranking syndicalist and member of the Swedish syndicalist dual union SAC during the 1910´s and 1920´s. It´s not clear to me when he left the SAC the first time, but his resurfacing during the 1950´s is said to have been a reentry into the organization. He was expelled from the SAC by its Stockholm branch (Stockholms LS) in 1953 together with some close associates. At the time, SAC had changed most of its traditional revolutionary politics in favor of a kind of Cold War liberalism, or rather ditto libertarian socialism, inspired to take this step by Helmut Rüdiger, a German exile living in Sweden. The twin disasters of Stalinist Communism and Nazism had made the SAC give up its revolutionary goals and methods, instead calling for peaceful change and decentralization through co-operative movements and businesses. Internationally, the SAC supported the West in its Cold War against the Soviets, even going so far as to support South Korea and the United States during the Korean War! Thus, Rüdiger could be seen as the libertarian socialist equivalent of Max Shachtman.

Holmö opposed Rüdiger “from the left”, calling for a return to more traditional syndicalist positions (or maybe not – see further below). His group, Syndikalisternas Förbund (the League of Syndicalists) published the magazine Våra Idéer (Our Ideas). The Rüdigerites were not amused, and unceremoniously expelled Holmö and the other S-F leaders from the SAC. However, it seems the expulsions were declared null and void by Stockholms LS in 1981 (Holmö was already dead by this point) and the S-F certainly existed within the SAC during the 1980´s. Ironically, the more leftist elements within the SAC were *not* attracted to S-F´s often curious positions and rabid polemical style, instead preferring classical anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism. Holmö´s version of syndicalism was more similar to that of the French CGT (pre-World War I), and it could be argued that he adapted himself to both Social Democracy and Communism. Above all, his version of revolutionary syndicalism was specifically anti-anarchist, and he was sometimes dubbed “the syndicalist Lenin” for this fact. The Rüdiger faction had accused him of being in cahoots with the Social Democrats, and it´s certainly interesting to note that Holmö had a prominent position in the ABF during his absence from the SAC, the ABF being a Social Democratic-dominated educational association.

“Förhållandet mellan syndikalism och anarkism” is a curious pamphlet in many ways. Logically, Holmö should attack Rüdiger for being a bourgeois liberal and Cold Warrior. He *does* imply at several points that Rüdiger must be a CIA agent, and he certainly regards him as “liberal”, this being a serious reproach in Holmö´s more classically socialist worldview. However, most of the time, Holmö accuses Rüdiger and his co-thinkers of being *anarchists*, seeing this as the main problem. To Holmö, all anarchist currents save one are inevitably hostile to the interests of the labor movement and therefore also the interests of syndicalism. The sole exception are the anarcho-communists around Peter Kropotkin, who in Holmö´s opinion always supported the revolutionary “syndicates” in an admirable fashion. All other anarchist currents are either confused (such as those upholding Bakunin) or outright reactionaries, such as those harking back to Proudhon. Holmö has a special animus against Errico Malatesta, whose “free communism” he associates with complete decentralization, societal decay and general mayhem, in plain English anarchy! Malatesta´s self-proclaimed disciple Max Nettlau is another object of venom for Holmö, and so are Rudolf Rocker and Augustin Souchy in their respective post-World War II incarnations. Rüdiger was apparently associated with all these people. In some curious way, then, Holmö connects anarchism, anarchy (in the negative sense), liberalism and – surprise – the CIA.

Holmö´s alternative turns out to be a centralized form of labor organization, complete socialization of the economy (albeit under “the self-management principle”) and a strictly uniform society (he is very adamant on this point), rather than the utopian “free communism” of Malatesta, Nettlau and other Agency assets. Holmö believes that syndicalism must be strictly neutral towards all partisan parliamentary politics, and also towards religion, since the only function of a syndicalist labor union is to promote the socialization of production. Like the French CGT, Holmö never really explains how this can work in practice – the CGT, of course, was *not* neutral towards the socialist political parties but *opposed* them, the militant minority de facto acting as a quasi-political party itself (albeit an extra-parliamentary one). Holmö also explicitly states that the goal of syndicalism isn´t to abolish the state. Indeed, the state *can´t* be abolished, since all societies need a centralized organ of some kind to function properly. I get the impression that Holmö is trying to anachronistically resuscitate the “pure” syndicalism of the CGT in 1950´s Sweden, where the political lineups were very different. 

As already indicated, the Holmö group failed to attract much support or interest during the 1980´s, when they had been allowed to work freely inside the SAC. The old guard of Rüdiger must have vomited at every mention of these people, while the new style 70´s radicals considered a “syndicalist” group sounding like a blend of pseudo-Communism and pseudo-Social Democracy very, very strange. And then there was that angry polemical style – the syndicalists I knew (including the ones who were on the anarcho-syndicalist side of things) were sick and tired of the ra-ra-revolutionary sloganeering and dogmatism of the Leninist groups and didn´t react very well to the S-F version either!

Finally, I noticed something very strange about the publication history of Holmö´s pamphlet. At one occasion, it was reprinted by the Anarchist Federation in Stockholm! I´m not sure if this was some kind of bizarre trolling, or if these particular anarchists were of the nice anarcho-communist Kropotkinesque version. Also, my copy of the pamphlet, while published by the S-F, is actually printed by Stockholms LS…

What on earth for?!

Next posting: more S-F high strangeness. Stay tuned, comrades!