Syndicalism
Syndicalism puts trade unions at the centre of social change. Workers organise by industry, use direct action and the general strike to win power, and the unions themselves then become the bodies that run production in place of owners and the state.
- The workplace, not parliament, is the main arena of political struggle.
- Direct action such as strikes, boycotts and occupations is preferred over electoral politics.
- After the transformation, industry should be run by federations of workers' unions.
Revolutionary syndicalism developed in France around the CGT's Charter of Amiens (1906), with Georges Sorel as its best-known theorist. It spread to Spain, where the anarcho-syndicalist CNT became a mass union, to Italy, and to the United States through the Industrial Workers of the World. Rudolf Rocker's Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938) is its classic statement.
Critics argue that organising society by industry neglects consumers, people outside paid work and interests that cross workplaces. Marxist–Leninists consider unions too narrow to lead a revolution without a party.
No country or historical regime in our data has Syndicalism as its closest ideology.
Syndicalism is also the second-closest ideology for: Revolutionary Catalonia.
Method: each ideology is placed at a typical position on the 12 axes, scored from 0 to 100 toward the first pole. Ranks compare it with the other 45 ideologies; matches are 100 minus the average distance across all axes. The positions are our own calibration, not taken from any third-party source.