Black Flag 216 index
Letter
On Kieran Casy on the IWA
Dear Black Flag,
It took a great deal of courage for Black Flag to print Kieran
Casey's open letter to the IWA in your last issue. At last we are
beginning to see admissions by folks with connections to the IWA,
that something is wrong. The false portrayal of SAC as an
organization trying to promote a reformist agenda on the
international syndicalist movement has kept the IWA from working
together with the SAC during a critical time in our history. Just
when the world marxist movement has disintegrated, and left a
political opening for alternatives, the anarchists and syndicalists
are fragmented and more interested in fighting each other than in
building a mass revolutionary movement. Now when a strong IWA is
needed, its sectarianism has made it unable to carry out the
functions it was created for.
Why is the IWA so sectarian? Basically it is because of two
reasons: the domination of the Spanish section, and the IWA's
haphazard affiliation process. In the first case, the rebirth of
the CNT in the 1970s revitalized the IWA by recalling the past
glories of the Spanish Revolution. Unfortunately the CNT of today
is not the the CNT of the 1930s. After a brief explosion of
activity, the CNT begin to split apart as it faced the problems of
all revolutionary unions working within liberal democracies, and it
did not have enough members with either the experience or commitment
to adapt to these conditions. As a consequence of the internal
schism, the CNT began to look for scapegoats, and saw enemies
everywhere. The non-Spanish sections of the IWA, naturally followed
the CNT's leadership. Every internal problem in the revolutionary
syndicalist movement in every country became part of a grand
conspiracy. If the sections of the IWA, however, had been a little
less influenced by CNT paranoia, they might have seen CNT fears as
being specific to what the CNT was going through domestically, and
taken these fears less seriously.
The paranoia of the CNT was made worse by the affiliation policies
of the IWA. After the CNT reorganized there was a rush of
syndicalist groups wanting to become part of the IWA. In some
countries these syndicalist groups were representative of the
revolutionary unionists living in that country and had some roots in
the workplace. In other countries these groups were small sectarian
outfits wanting to promote themselves by becoming the "official
voice" of the IWA (ie. CNT) and did not represent the majority of
syndicalists in that country. The IWA did not make a serious effort
to distinguish the one candidate from another, but awarded section
status on a "first come, first served" basis. So in the countries
where sectarian outfits became the IWA affiliate, the majorty of
syndicalists suddenly found themselves "beyond the Pale", outside of
the IWA, and with no way to communicate to the IWA except through
the offices of their sectarian rivals. The sectarian affiliates of
the IWA, in turn, fed the paranoia of the CNT by implying that
anyone who criticized any IWA affiliate must be part of the
"counter-revolutionary" conspiracy.
Can the situation be salvaged? This will depend on the non-Spanish
sections of the IWA. There is probably nothing that anyone outside
of Spain can do about the internal problems of the CNT. The CNT
will have to get its own act together. However there is no reason
why the rest of the IWA should let the Spanish situation dictate
what goes on in the rest of the world. This may mean "biting the
bullet" and voting down CNT proposals that promote sectarianism, and
voting for re-establishing communications with the SAC. If the CNT
doesn't like it, then make them decide what is more important:
always getting their way, or co-operating with the rest of the
movement? Also the IWA needs to re-examine its affiliation process,
and make sure that its affiliates in every country actually
represent the revolutionary unionists there. This might mean
establishing direct communications with organizations like the IWW,
which are presently having to work around small IWA affilates, one
tenth their size, in a ludicrous diplomatic protocol.
The IWA should be a forum for the majority of the revolutionary
labor movement, not an umbrella group for a collection of small
anarchist or syndicalist sects.
In Solidarity, Jeff Stein