National syndicalism
| Part of a series on |
| Fascism |
|---|
 |
|
Core tenets
|
|
Topics
|
|
Ideas
Class collaboration · Corporatism · Futurism · Heroic capitalism · National Socialism · National syndicalism · Populism · Self-sufficiency · State capitalism · State socialism · Statism · Supercapitalism · Totalitarianism · Yellow socialism
|
|
Movements
Arrow Cross Party · Austrofascism · Brazilian Integralism · Falange · Iron Guard · Italian Fascism · Japanese fascism · Nazism · Rexism · Ustaše
Para-Fascist: Austrofascism · Estado Novo (Portugal) · 4th of August Regime · Francoist Spain · Imperial Rule Assistance Organization · Japanese statism · Baathism |
|
Works
|
|
Organizations
|
|
Related topics
|
| Fascism portal Politics portal |
National syndicalism is a nationalist variant of syndicalism typically associated with the labour movement in Italy which would later become a basis of Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party.
Contents |
[edit] Outlook
Unlike anarcho-syndicalists, trade unionists, and Marxist elements of the Italian labor movement, the national syndicalists supported Italy’s involvement in World War I. They also rejected the internationalism of the anarchists and Marxists in favor of militarism and nationalism.
National syndicalists imagined that the liberal democratic political system would be destroyed in a massive general strike, at which point the nation’s economy would be transformed into a corporatist model based on class collaboration, contrasted with Marxist class struggle. (see the Nazi model of Volksgemeinschaft). But national syndicalists also publicly declared their opposition to bourgeoisie-class rule and instead supported a strong "proletarian nation" which would rid itself of class-based society and convert it to a national society. National syndicalists typically opposed communism, capitalism, liberalism, forms of socialist-oriented syndicalism and any other internationalist movement which was deemed to be threatening the strength and/or unity of the nation.
Some famous advocates of National Syndicalism are the Italian Alceste De Ambris, British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley, and Italian Fascist Party member Sergio Panunzio.
[edit] Italian national syndicalism
In the early 20th century, nationalists and syndicalists were increasingly influencing each other in Italy.[1] From 1902 to 1910, a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists including Arturo Labriola, Agostino Lanzillo, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, and Sergio Panunzio sought to unify the Italian nationalist cause with the syndicalist cause and had entered into contact with Italian nationalist figures such as Enrico Corradini.[2] These Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection of bourgeois values, democracy, liberalism, Marxism, internationalism, and pacifism while promoting heroism, vitalism, and violence.[3] Many of these national syndicalist proponents would go on to become Fascists.[4]
Enrico Corradini promoted a form of national syndicalism that utilized Maurassian nationalism alongside the syndicalism of Georges Sorel.[5] Corradini spoke of the need for a national syndicalist movement that would be able to solve Italy's problems, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action through a willingness to fight.[5] Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation" that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the "plutocratic" nations of France and the United Kingdom.[6] Corradini's views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI) that claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by corruption within its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism".[6] The ANI held ties and influence amongst conservatives, Catholics, and the business community.[6]
With the outbreak of World War I, Sergio Panunzio noted the national solidarity within France and Germany that suddenly arose in response to the war and claimed that should Italy enter the war, the Italian nation would become united and would emerge from the war as a new nation in a "Fascio nazionale" (national union) that would be led by an aristocracy of warrior-producers that would unite Italians of all classes, factions, and regions into a disciplined socialism.[7]
In November 1918, Mussolini defined national syndicalism as a doctrine that would unite economic classes into a program of national development and growth.[8]
[edit] Iberian context
National syndicalism in the Iberian Peninsula is a political theory very different from the fascist idea of corporatism, inspired by Integralism and the Action Française (for a French parallel, see Cercle Proudhon). It was formulated in Spain by Ramiro Ledesma Ramos in a manifesto published in his periodical La Conquista del Estado on March 14, 1931.
National syndicalism was intended to win over the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) to a corporatist nationalism. Ledesma's manifesto was discussed in the CNT congress of 1931. However, the National Syndicalist movement effectively emerged as a separate political tendency. Later the same year, Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista was formed, and subsequently voluntarily fused with Falange Española. In 1936 Franco forced a further less voluntary merger with traditionalist Carlism, to create a single party on the Nationalist side of the Spanish Civil War. It was one of the ideological bases of Francoist Spain, especially in the early years.
The ideology was present in Portugal with the Movimento Nacional-Sindicalista (active in the early 1930s), its leader Francisco Rolão Preto being a collaborator of Falange ideologue José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
The Spanish version theory has influenced the Kataeb Party in Lebanon and various Falangist groups in Latin America.
The Unidad Falangista Montañesa a maintains a trade union wing, called the Association of National-Syndicalist Workers
[edit] See also
- ^ Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Ashéri. The birth of fascist ideology: from cultural rebellion to political revolution. Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. 161.
- ^ Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Ashéri. The birth of fascist ideology: from cultural rebellion to political revolution. Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. 31-32.
- ^ Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Ashéri. The birth of fascist ideology: from cultural rebellion to political revolution. Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. 32.
- ^ Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Ashéri. The birth of fascist ideology: from cultural rebellion to political revolution. Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. 33.
- ^ a b Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Ashéri. The birth of fascist ideology: from cultural rebellion to political revolution. Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. 163.
- ^ a b c Martin Blinkhorn. Mussolini and fascist Italy. Second edition. New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2003 Pp. 9.
- ^ Anthony James Gregor. Mussolini's intellectuals: fascist social and political thought. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 78.
- ^ Anthony James Gregor. Mussolini's intellectuals: fascist social and political thought. Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 81.
[edit] External links
- Workers Power & the Ultraright by Ean Frick
