Goals And Means

Description

€œEssential reading for anyone interested in the wider roots and antecedents

of international syndicalism and anarchism.” —David Welch, author of

Propaganda, Power and Persuasion: From the First World War to WikiLeaks

Goals and Means investigates the relationship between revolutionary

syndicalism and anarchism in Spain from the founding of the Confederación

Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in 1910 to the Second Republic in 1931. Garner

explores Spanish anarcho-syndicalism’s unique characteristics while placing

its development within global events and the wider international

syndicalist movement. Anarcho-syndicalism is a hybrid of revolutionary

syndicalism in which the anarchist goal—the triumph of the social

revolution and the implantation of libertarian socialism—would be achieved

by syndicalism’s tactical means. Working outside statist and

collaborationist political structures did not, however, mean abandoning

political strategy. The Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) was formed in

1927 and quickly sought to ensure a role for anarchism within the

syndicalist union. The development of anarcho-syndicalism—and the tensions

it spawned within the larger socialist movement—has much to teach us today

as we chart our own future.