VII. The Commune
In previous articles we have considered the vertical organization of syndicates, from the factory or job committee to the district and national Council of Labor. We are now to consider the horizontal organization, from the job committee to the local federation of syndicates.
The workers of each factory, mine, shop, garage, or other place of work in any one town or locality are affiliated to the local federation. Thus, any city, town, or group of villages may have an organization representative of engineering workers, railmen, busmen, teachers, shop assistants, tailors, municipal workers, builders, clerks, musicians and other workers. Certain localities will have delegates from dockers, seamen, miners and textile workers according to local constitution.
However, besides the delegates of the industrial workers organized in syndicates at their places of work, there are delegates of other groups, the unemployed, housewives, and small groups of odd trades.
The syndicates will endeavor to retain the membership of workers who become unemployed , unlike the wealthy craft unions which consider an unemployed man a liability. An out-of-work member will be thought of as, say, an unemployed carpenter, instead of just “one of the unemployed”. Where men are in and out of work continually this will not be difficult, but in “normal” times of depression there are hundreds of thousands of men and women whose loose all touch with their previous job and organization and into the vast anonymous ranks of “the Unemployed”. It is the task of Syndicalism to organize these men and women to fight against their miserable conditions, to prevent their being forced into blacklegging, and to become part of the forces of emancipation.
Where women are working in industry the syndicate organizes them with the men, but millions of working women, particularly in certain parts of Britain, never return to industrial work after the day of marriage. Yet these women, who have no proper place in the orthodox labor movement , are at once a weakness and a great strength of the workers’ movement. They are a weakness in a strike if they do not understand and appreciate the issues; they can slowly and steadily sap the will to victory of their struggling menfolk. But, if they understand the issues, they are a tremendous addition to our battle forces, as particularly the women of the mining areas have shown. They can organize food collections and communal kitchens, nursing service, entertainments and propaganda. They can carry out boycotts and strike picket lines. The industrial North has shown that women can do the latter job as well as men. Without doubt our Syndicalist movement must organize the housewife as well as the industrial woman worker.
As well as the factory committees, unemployed and housewives, the local federation of syndicates has to organize certain individuals and small groups who, because of the nature of their employment, cannot be organized in the syndicates of industry and service. Writers, artists, small dealers, odd job men and many others who have no syndicate will desire a part in the struggle. The local federation will organize them in local groups.
The chief task of the local federation in present circumstances is the mobilization of all labor forces for strike action. In a rail strike they will ensure that busmen are not used against railmen. In a miners’ strike they will see to it, that blackleg coal is not moved. The local forces of labor will be swung from sector to sector of the class front as the need arises.
As a center of strike propaganda, particularly in the case of small, “unofficial” strikes so familiar to us, the local is invaluable. Almost every such strike is greatly weakened by lack of propaganda and information issued by the factory strike committee, which usually lacks the means of propaganda. With a well-organized local, any strike in a factory, shop, or mine will be immediately reported to the local. Supplied with all necessary facts, the local operates its permanent propaganda and news service. Other jobs in the town and neighboring locals are informed of the facts of the case. Public meetings are held and local bulletins issued. Unemployed and workers from other jobs swell the picket ranks.
But the strike activity of the local is not limited to propaganda. Collections must be made to augment the strike pay. Perhaps it may even be necessary to organize the collection or cheap mass production of food, or the formation of communal kitchens.
In the case of certain strikes the boycott is applied. In disputes of cinema or theater workers, shop assistants, newspaper printers or the employees of firms selling branded goods, the boycott is an effective weapon.
The local form of Syndicalist organization is not limited to cities and thickly populated industrial areas. The mining areas and the countryside also have their own type of local federation. In the country we usually find small villages grouped around a larger village or small country town. The same is true of the semi-rural semi-industrial mining areas. In these cases each village would have its sub-federation affiliated to the federation of the parent village, corresponding to the town federation.
It is natural that the delegates of the local will desire to establish contact with the delegates of neighboring locals. To this end the local federation of syndicates in any region is affiliated to a regional confederation of labor, as Clydeside, the North East coast, Birmingham, South Wales or London. The Syndicalist mode of organization is extremely elastic, therein its chief strength, and the regional confederation can be formed, modified, added to or reformed according to local conditions and changing circumstances.
The opportunities of the local federation during the revolutionary struggle are too obvious to need underlining: organization of workers’ militia, propaganda, supplies and co-ordination of factory defense are the greatest of these.
With the triumph of the revolution and the passing of the class struggle the local organization of Syndicalism changes character and becomes the Commune, an organization of people who live together, for the purpose of living together. The Commune will take the place of the present unrepresentative borough council.
However, most of the functions of the municipalities will be carried out by the industrial syndicates. Local transport will be the responsibility of the Transport Syndicate, hospitals that of the Health Workers’ Syndicate, education that of the Teachers’ Syndicate, and so on. All of these services need men and women of experience, persons with some knowledge of the technical and intellectual problems, a knowledge not usually possessed by the typical town councillor. Local Education Committees, for instance are usually bossed by elder brewers, publicans, pork butchers, speculative builders, religious bigots and such like. Of course, the control of schools may be modified by the creation of teachers’, parents’, and scholars’ councils, but such problems are a matter of experiment; we are now concerned with the creation of working class organization which can take over education at once.
The abolition of the money basis of society will relieve the Commune of the chief task of the borough and county councils—the collection of rates. Nor will the Commune be concerned with running businesses, as many municipalities do, in order to gather profits to aid the rates.
The Commune, a much smaller and more intimate and decentralized body than the borough council, will be entirely devoted to improving the communal life of the locality. Making their requests to the appropriate Syndicates, Builders’, Public Health, Transport or Power, the inhabitants of each Commune will be able to gain all reasonable living amenities, town planning, parks, play-grounds, trees in the streets, clinics, museums and art galleries. Giving, like the medieval city assembly, an opportunity for any interested person to take part in, and influence, his town’s affairs and appearance, the Commune will be a very different body from the borough council, which is largely an organization for the protection of the big ratepayers, hobbled and controlled by the Ministry of Health from Whitehall.
In ancient and medieval times cities and villages expressed the different characters of different localities and their inhabitants. In red-stone, Portland or granite, in plaster or brick, in pitch of roof, arrangements of related buildings or pattern of slate and thatch each locality added to the interest of travelers. Scotland, the North of England, London, the West Country and east Anglia, each expressed itself in castle, home or cathedral.
How different is the dull, drab, or flashy ostentatious monotony of modern England. Each town the same. The same Woolworths’, Odeon Cinemas, and multiple shops, the same “council houses” or “semi-detached villas”, £50 down and 25 shillings an 6 pence for the rest of your life. North, South, East or West, what’s the difference, where is the change?
With the Commune the ugliness and monotony of present town and country life will be swept away, and each locality and region, each person will be able to express the joy of living, by living together.