National syndicalism

French national syndicalism was an adaptation of Georges Sorel's version of revolutionary syndicalism to the monarchist ideology of integral nationalism, as practised by Action Française. Action Française is a French nationalist-monarchist movement that was led by Charles Maurras at that time.

In the early 20th century, nationalists and syndicalists were increasingly influencing each other in Italy.[11] From 1902 to 1910, a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists including Arturo Labriola, Agostino Lanzillo, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Alceste De Ambris, Filippo Corridoni 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.[12] 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.[13] Not all Italian revolutionary syndicalists joined the Fascist cause, but most syndicalist leaders eventually embraced nationalism and "were among the founders of the Fascist movement," where "many even held key posts" in Mussolini's regime.[14] Benito Mussolini declared in 1909 that he had converted over to revolutionary syndicalism by 1904 during a general strike.[14]

Enrico Corradini promoted a form of national syndicalism that utilized Maurassian nationalism alongside the syndicalism of Georges Sorel.[15] 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.[15] 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.[16] 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".[16] The ANI held ties and influence amongst conservatives, Catholics, and the business community.[16]

A number of Italian fascist leaders began to relabel national syndicalism as Fascist syndicalism. Mussolini was one of the first to disseminate this term, explaining that "Fascist syndicalism is national and productivistic… in a national society in which labor becomes a joy, an object of pride and a title to nobility."[17] By the time Edmondo Rossoni became secretary-general of the General Confederation of Fascist Syndical Corporations in December 1922, other Italian national syndicalists were adopting the "Fascist syndicalism" phrase in their aim at "building and reorganizing political structures… through a synthesis of State and labor".[18] An early leader in Italian trade unionism, Rossoni and other fascist syndicalists not only took the position of radical nationalism, but favored "class struggle".[19] Seen at the time as "radical or leftist elements," Rossoni and his syndicalist cadre had "served to some extent to protect the immediate economic interests of the workers and to preserve their class consciousness".[20] Rossoni was dismissed from his post in 1928, which could have been due to his powerful leadership position in the Fascist unions,[21] and his hostilities to the business community, occasionally referring to industrialists as "vampires" and "profiteers".[22]

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.[23]

In November 1918, Mussolini defined national syndicalism as a doctrine that would unite economic classes into a program of national development and growth.[24]

National syndicalism in the Iberian Peninsula is a political theory very similar to 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 14 March 1931. National syndicalism under Franco aimed to provide a suitable replacement for capitalist mode of production with worker managed cooperatives, a system in which workers and employers elect representatives to form syndicates/corporations which manage worker and employer relationships and instantiating and promulgate worker ownership.

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 1937 Franco forced a further less voluntary merger with traditionalist Carlism, to create a single less radical party on the Nationalist side of the Spanish Civil War. During the war, Falangists fought against the Second Spanish Republic, which initially had the armed support of CNT. National syndicalism was one of the ideological bases of Francoist Spain, especially in the early years. Franco’s brother who died fighting for the nationalist cause was also a syndicalist rebel leader in the Andalusian syndicalist revolt. Franco introduced in 1940 a radical syndicalist law that gave extensive rights to workers in the syndicates. In later years the rights of the syndicates became more constrained, but there are still examples of successful worker cooperatives such as the Mondragon worker cooperative that could develop under the wings of Franco’s national syndicalist regime. An example of worker cooperatives practicing worker ownership is Mondragon's ten union/co-op principles founded in 1987, one principle is for the sovereignty of labor. "Sixty years of the Mondragon cooperative experience showcase pathways to overcoming Labor commodification through wider, deeper and more inclusive worker ownership practices".[25]

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, the Falanga National Radical Camp in Poland and various Falangist groups in Latin America.

The Unidad Falangista Montañesa maintained a trade union wing, called the Association of National-Syndicalist Workers.

• Corporatism
• Fascism
• National Trade Union Confederation of Finland
• Economics of Fascism
• Faisceau
• Syndicalism
• Proto-fascism
• Spanish Trade Union Organisation
• Falangism
• State capitalism
• Third Position
• Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista

• Sternhell, Zeev; Sznajder, Mario; Ashéri, Maia (1995). The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Third printing, and first paperback printing ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03289-0.
• Sternhell, Zeev (1986). Neither right nor left: fascist ideology in France (2nd ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-00629-1.