A seminar on Anarcho Syndicalist was held at Dylogg Coworking here on Sunday. Benjamin Smith of Australian Anarcho Syndicalist Federation was present as the speaker on the occasion.
Benjamin Smith of Australian Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation, the Australian section of the International Workers' Association talked about What Anarcho-Syndicalism is and what it isn't. He talked about its principles and its aim. A huge crowd was noticed at the seminar.
Talking about Anarcho-syndicalism, Benjamin said that it is a theory and practice of anarchism that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and, with that control, influence broader society. Syndicalists consider their economic theories a strategy for facilitating worker self-activity and as an alternative co-operative economic system with democratic values and production centered on meeting human needs.
He said that the basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are solidarity, direct action and direct democracy, or workers' self-management. The end goal of syndicalism is to abolish the wage system, regarding it as wage slavery. Anarcho-syndicalist theory therefore generally focuses on the labour movement.
Anarcho-syndicalists view the primary purpose of the State as being the defense of private property, and therefore of economic, social, and political privilege, denying most of its denizens the ability to enjoy material independence and the social autonomy that springs from it.
He further said that reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism is centered on the idea that power corrupts and that any hierarchy that cannot be ethically justified must either be dismantled or replaced by decentralised egalitarian control.