Syndicalist State

What would a nation with a syndicalist government be like? The main reason I ask, is because an ideology close to syndicalism replaces communism in a fictional thing I'm working on.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
I'm guessing that in order to vote/run for public office you must have a job. Perhaps even be protected by the rule of law you must have a job. *am continuing, just need to think about it some more*
 
You should read the book "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin for a pretty in-depth, idealistic but still critical examination of a sort of anarcho-syndicalist society. It's also a pretty good story.
 

Mussleburgh

Banned
I'm an Anarco-Syndicalist and am planning to study it at university. So here's my take on the idea (its a brief summary mind):

You have a factory and every member of this factory decides that the standards in the factory or the place they live aren't good enough so they form a union and vote for a union rep who (after a debate by a house of commons like structure) joins as an MP. The MPs then vote on who they want to be leader of the country (I would have maximum 2-3 year terms with new MPs being elected every 2-4 years) and who they want to be in a cabinet that will have a say over any decisions the president of the country wants to make.

This structure will lead to people not being elected because they are Conservative or Republican or Labour but because the people in the steel mill down the road think that immigration or tariffs are too high. In the end this will lead to the state becoming extremely isolationist. Trading with in its self (every factory/union is basically a mini country) and its neighbors.

Thats my basic take on the idea. Tell me if I've missed any bits out.
 
[Shameless but somewhat justified plug]

In my NSCW timeline, Durruti and the anarchists plan something similar for Spain when WWII ends. Another thing is if other parties of the government coalition will let them. Anyway, a similar ideology, but throwing trotskyism into the mix, will be wildly popular in the Third World during my TL's cold war.

[For those who haven't read it: after the failure of the military coup in 1936, the anarchists of Spain decide to form a mainstream political party. Spain joins WWII in early 1940 in the allied side, and Buenaventura Durruti becomes president of the republic one year later after Azaña's sudden death, only one week before the germans invade Spain]
 
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wormyguy

Banned
Franco's Spain called itself Syndicalist, and Corportatism/Fascism borrowed much of their economic ideas from it, in OTL, if that's any help.
 
No, wormy is right; during the first years of Franco's regime, when Falange's influence was higher, Spain called itself a Nationalsyndicalist regime, i. e., a corporate state like Salazar's Portugal. Franco's enemies were the anarchosyndicalists.
 
I don't know how a state can be syndicalist. It can have a syndicalist economy, which would mean that it would primarily industry-based (not service-based), all its workers, white or blue collar would belong to a union according to job sphere rather than to class, and would have an equal share and say in the union.

Fascist Italy had tried to institute some similar policies, but I'm unaware as to how well it succeeded. Also, there was a small short-lived state that had a syndicalist economy, and that was Fiume, conquered for (two years pre-Fascist) Italy by (proto-Fascist) volunteers led by D'Annunzio. If you look at the Constitution of Fiume, its economic setup is typically syndicalist/corporatist.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Fiume
 
I have noi dea how a syndicalist state works. For one thing, you seem to get an issue of shortage of capital. Who runs the banks? What sort of free initiative is there? Etc.
 
No free initiative obviously. The spheres of economy -there were 12 in Fiume- would be regulated and controlled by unions - the system is similar to medieval guilds of course. If you wanted to become a carpenter, you had to do it through the carpenters' guild, and there was no other way to even learn carpentry.

Of course, the aim in a corporatist/syndicalist would be job security and product quality, not a growing economy, etc...
 
What little I'v read about the Spanish civil war, where they most likely will gain power, they where more into banning stuff then increasing freedom.
 
The book 1985 (written by the author of Clockwork Orange) deals somewhat with the idea of a syndicalist Britain though within a pretty alarmist right-wing/libertarian critique of 70s Britain. Basically by 1985 the unions have come to dominate the economy and the central characters is shut out of work due to his political beliefs, ala the guild system. However the book also suggests by 1985 the Isle of Wight would be Muslim (alcohol being replaced in beer by a mild depressant chemical), and Arab millionaires would puppeteer this syndicalist hell-hole quite openly. Strange but interesting.
 
I myself have occasionally pondered on the potential for Syndicalism to "take off", as it were, as an ideology.

One scenario which I have thought holds some interesting potential is one in which the competing ideologies of the Cold War are not capitalism and communism, but rather forms of Corporatism versus Syndicalism.

A theory I had on creating such a situation involves the Menschaviks winning out in the (first) Russian Civil War, derailing the Soviet Union as we understand it, but subsequently collapsing into a second civil war sometime in the 30's and leading to the establishment of a Syndicalist state. Simultaneously, the corporate-backed coup planned in the U.S. during the Depression manages to somehow succeed, leading to a significant Corporatist lean in American politics. From this are two ideological poles created to shape the evolution of global geopolitics in the later twentieth century.
 
While I am aware of the general idea of syndicalism being about worker control of industry, I think a lot depends on how specifically you define it. In many ways some of the more decentralised forms of corporatism and 'guild socialism' are very similar.
 
Any economy which has huge corporation monopolies would be syndicalist in that specific area where the monopoly is, I suppose. A truly capitalist free market economy would have serious checks on monopolies, and in truth I'm not sure that a free market, without corporate welfare, could support monopolies.
 
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