What is syndicalism?

Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses confederations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions. It is a form of socialist economic corporatism that advocates interest aggregation of multiple non–competitive categorised units to negotiate and manage an economy.

For adherents, labour unions are the potential means of both overcoming economic aristocracy and running society fairly in the interest of the majority, through union democracy. Industry in a syndicalist system would be run through co–operative confederations and mutual aid.

It holds that all participants in an organised trade internally share equal ownership of its production. In syndicalism, unions exist independent of the state rather than needing the state’s micromanagement and central planning. As with businesses in capitalism, labor unions in syndicalism would likely share a complicated relationship of co–operation and opposition with the state (with the obvious exception of anarcho–syndicalism, under which there would be no state).

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