A Syndicalist State?

Hey,

Some of you are probably aware of the Kaiserreich mod for Hearts of Iron 2, which has Germany winning the first world war. One of the consequences is that there's a syndicalist revolution in France and Britain, but I've always found it vaguely disastisfying. The game assumes that syndicalism is basically interchangeable with Bolshevism, with a fiat government by a Trade Union Council taking the role of the party.

It's not clear to me how a syndicalist state would work, however. Thoughts?
 
More than likely it would be a dictatorship of sorts with a slightly modified Marxist theory being promulgated amongst society, Indoctrination in the schools, that sort of thing.

It would also be nationalistic of sorts, due to the way that they came about (in game terms) and the fact that they could turn their back on the internationalist aspects of Marxism/ early Bolshevism.

What would be more interesting to see would be how these states interact with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, assuming that the USSR is still around and still wins the Russian Civil War.
 

corourke

Donor
Any syndicalist state would have to be syndicalist in name only, simply because its very existence would be a contradiction.
 
Personally I've always found syndicalism a bit hard to grasp myself so forgive me if I'm mistaken in my interpretation of how it would work.

I picture a syndicalist government being basically a quasi-marxist sort of government, with a severe authoritarian and nationalist streak. I'd wager that all Unions would be merged into one National Union and that Union membership is elevated to citizenship. Perhaps instead of the Republic of France you have "The French Worker's Union".

Anyways those are my 2 cents...
 
I've always pictured "syndicatilism" as a more union-based form of communism in general. I.E., because France & Britain are certainly more industrialized & educated than Russia at that time, the workers would eventually have more say in government, and "syndicalism" would be a more worker-saavy form of government.
 
How it would work would depend, I suspect, to a very large degree on the circumstances of its creation, the nature of the state it was spawned from, etc, etc. If there isn't a Big Homogeniser like the USSR, we might see more variation among them.
One thing that would be different from bolshevikism is that the (theoretical) federalism of the Syndicalist state would be, well, union-based, instead of the more nation-based nature of the USSR's federalism. The co-ordinating Supraunion, and of course the leaders of it, would get a lot of power after a while, I suspect. However, a 'Russian SSR'-analogue (that is, a union that is theoretically equal with the others, yet clearly dominates the state) amongst the other unions might not appear.
 
I think Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War was controlled by Syndicalists, who governed it very efficiently.

Perhaps an independent Catalonia somehow emerges from the SCW, governed by Syndicalists?
 
a sindicalist "state" would probbably mean a federation of autonomus political entities that would supervise production and distribution of goods,that is the actual members of the sindicate would take posesion of all local kapital, factories, granaries, roads, shops etc.., hold legal and political authority each ower a smal area of jurisdiction, and keep sindical militias as armed forces, each answering to its respective sindicate administration, but coordinated under elected comand

basicaly its anarcho-sindicalism as was seen in catalonia, olnly posibly with less emfasis on freedom and autonomy, more on distribution of property and production means, egalitarianism etc..


such a economic/political/social organisation, set in the 1920/1930is could be wery efficient indeed, with huge potential if it spreads ower a large enough economical base

the flags would be red and/or red and black most likely, or some derivate from the french flag with leftist simbols and such

it would be interesting to se how a large sistem would organise utself in the long time, most likely it would become relatively centralised with some kind of central comitee tipe goverment, but still certain autonomy for individual sindical administrations

howewer such an economic model would ider have to grow into some form of competitive economy or it would stagnate and eventually go into recesion, if 20th century economic trends go on as in OTL
the advantage such a political and economic sistem would have ower other socialist and comunist sistems would probbably be more state/indipendant and interacting economy, as well as more competent managment, aloving efficient self organisation on a large scale
 
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See, I thought it'd actually be less efficient than Communism. More prone to undercapitalization, since the workers would be less inclined to invest in newer manfuacturing techniques or infrastructure upgrades, but not responsive to market forces.

The worst of both worlds, as it were. And I suspect anarchists would be unable to build a viable state, but that might be my bias.
 
I'd imagine some sort of Leninist party state. Interesting side question: what would the flags look like?

Something that mixes red and black together, like this flag I made. Another symbol seems to be a cog, which can be like an allegory for the hammer and sickle.

syndicalist.bmp


In my little fictional thing I'm working on in my head, Syndicalism is an allegory for Communism in our world. It has differences from what we think of as syndicalism. In it, the legislative body is the Trade Union Council, which elects a head of state with dictatorial powers.

It's semi-democratic in a way. Each trade union elects a representative for the TUC. The unemployed technically are not citizens in the system.

The world I'm building up, called Tariga, has a few syndicalist states.
 
well actually if a factory is run by an executive councill made of actuall workers in same factory, and if the firm the factory is registered under makes a profit, why would said workers not invest capital that is colectivly owned by the sindicate back into the actuall place they work all day and make said capital in the first place

by that logic a person that owns a shop does not inwest in his own shop for fear hed get himself fired, or a farmer not buying new field equipment for similar reasons

and the fact that its a sindicalist state, especialy if it folows a anarcho-sindical model, means it has to be responsive to market forces, as there is no monolithic state run planed economy, but numerous autonomus sindicates, cooperatives, comunes, etc, wich would get pretty competitive at times

look up the history of ipercoop, and the rural cooperative in italy, thats basically what jud get olnly with all segments of the economy included, and all administrative and legal autority given ower to the sindicates/cooperatives

in the end each individual sindicate would act similarly to a individual capitalist or capitalist company, olnly without te posibility to simply sack employees
 
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