THORPE, Wayne. Keeping the Faith: The German Syndicalists in the First World War.

Central
European History, v. 33, n. 2, p. 195–216, 2000.

"The FVdG had neither supported the national cause nor endorsed the Burgfrieden, or civil truce,
whereby all factional disputes were to be set aside and all sectoral interests subordinated to the
higher interests of the imperiled nation. Its opposition to the war, its refusal to cooperate with the
state and the employers, moreover, had made the FVdG a beneficiary of the growing radicalization
of German workers. In the immediate postwar period it expanded at a rate six times greater than any
other labor organization in the country." (p. 195)
"The FVdG regarded support for a national war to be incompatible with its commitment to workers'
internationalism. Its response in August 1914, and indeed throughout the war, diverged not only
from that of the national liberal and Christian trade union organizations, but also from that of the
largest union organization in Germany, the massive Free Trade Unions linked to the Social
Democratic Party (SPD)." (p. 195)
"Barred from the prewar Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions,
both dominated by their Social Democratic conationals, the German syndicalists had their own,
more informal international network. Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, and German
organizations had met in London in September 1913 in the first International Syndicalist Congress.
Antimilitarism had figured on the agenda, and in closing the proceedings, congress Co-President
Fritz Kater, the administrative head of the FVdG, reiterated syndicalist opposition to war. When war
came, the FVdG constituted only one of a series of syndicalist organizations in belligerent and
neutral countries to refuse to support it." (p. 196)
"Although the FVdG had outposts scattered throughout Germany, its approximately 6,000 members
in 1914 were concentrated geographically in Berlin and occupationally in the building trades, but
included other workers such as brushmakers, metal and textile workers, and musical instrument
makers. While ideas of direct action and general strike had made considerable headway within the
markedly decentralist FVdG, itself a vocal critic of the centralization of the Free Unions, many
FVdG members were nevertheless long-standing supporters of the SPD. In 1907, siding
unequivocally with the centralist Free Unions, the SPD sought to break the FVdG by ordering party
members within it to enter the Free Unions. (p. 196) Many members complied and the FVdG's 1907
membership of over 17,000 declined precipitously. But a diminished FVdG survived to confront
war in 1914." (p. 196-197)
"Antimilitarism had long figured prominently in the syndicalist press. […] Once war came, the syn?
dicalists refused to rally to the cause of national defense. Even after the declaration of war, they
boldly, if futilely, attempted to continue their antiwar demonstration. […] Noting the inaction of the
massive Social Democratic organizations in the face of war, and recognizing that their own numbers
were far too small to undertake direct antiwar action alone, the FVdG counseled individual
members to act with prudence. […] But if with the coming of war the FVdG advised against
reckless antimilitarist gestures, it also refused to elevate national unity over the international
commitment of class, defend the war, justify Germany s participation in it, or seek material gains or
greater acceptance by condoning and actively cooperating in the war effort" (p. 197)
"The FVdG would pay a high price for this commitment. As soon as its policy of noncompliance
became clear, the authorities suppressed its two newspapers, Der Pionier and Die Einigket. (p. 197)
[…] By contrast, the newly cooperative attitude of the Social Democrats prompted the War
Ministry, at the end of August 1914, to exempt their publications from an 1894 ban on the
distribution of revolutionary literature in the army" (p. 197-198)
"They responded by issuing a new weekly, Mitteilungsblatt, and after its suppression in June 1915,
with the biweekly Rundschreiben, which suffered the same fate in May 1917. In the first days of
mobilization, moreover, some thirty syndicalist activists in Cologne, Elberfeld, Dusseldorf, Krefeld
and elsewhere, were arrested; several were still under house arrest two years later. The authorities
also occasionally banned FVdG meetings, and not only those dealing strictly with trade union
matters. The authorities in Dusseldorf even banned meetings of the local syndicalist choir." (p. 198)
"But while the FVdG's executive immediately appealed to members to do all they could to preserve
their unions in the crisis of war, it also emphasized that this effort would involve no reversal of
principles" (p. 198)
"The FVdG proved markedly resistant to the nationalist fervor that swept over Germany with the
coming of war. […] In any event, virtually all German trade unions regarded Germany as engaged
in a defensive war. […] the syndicalists had not rallied to the national cause, […] they attributed the
underlying causes of war to imperialism. […] From the beginning the FVdG deplored the
nationalism that found expression in the press of the main workers' organizations, combated
national stereotyping, disdained accusations of atrocities, suggesting that such charges could only
be assessed after the war, and protested against the hostility directed against foreign workers,
notably Italians and Poles, in Germany." (p. 199)
"Syndicalist noncompliance rested on the principles that workers shouid neither cooperate with
employers nor abandon internationalism simply because war had come. (p. 199) The war, they
argued, could only bring greater exploitation of labor. As the only national labor association that
had refused to embrace the Burgfrieden and whose newspapers had been suppressed in August
1914, the FVdG concentrated on keeping its own organizations alive and on its role as critic of the
dominant labor strategy. In wartime, the leadership of the liberal, Christian, and more strikingly the
Free trade unions could unite on a strategy of mobilizing organized labor's support for the war effort
while seeking concessions from the government and employers. Free Union officials quickly
reached an under? standing with the government […] whereby the unions and their assets would
remain intact, wages would not be cut, and the unions would be consulted regarding the economic
transformations accompanying the war. On the other side, the unions would support the war effort,
help mobilize the workers for this purpose, end current strikes, and not support new ones". (p. 199-
200)
"Constantly testing the boundaries of dissent, the FVdG sometimes breached the civil truce in the
eyes of the authorities. The Supreme Command invoked the violation of the spirit of the
Burgfrieden in suppressing the Mitteilungsblatt in June 1915.28 Under the Burgfrieden union
agitation was necessarily limited and had to take new forms. Immediately preceding the war the
FVdG had spent nearly 40 percent of its annual income (slightly more than it spent on its press)
supporting strikes and lockouts.29 In war, however, the FVdG's executive, recognizing the restraints
of the Burgfrieden, the disruptions to the economy and union life, and the need to support materially
the families of members under colors and of those under detention, suspended union payments to
the agitation fund. In some cases the FVdG could only protest the use of blacklists against
noncompliant workers or efforts to coerce workers to renounce FVdG membership in order to
secure or retain work. In other cases, affiliated unions, such as the Dresden metalworkers, could
only lament that strongly antiwar members were compelled by simple hunger to take up warrelated
work.31 But despite the limitations imposed by the Burgfrieden, efforts of organized resistance
continued, (p. 201) such as the carpenters' opposition to Sunday work, the woodworkers'
continuation of their own agitation fund, and the use of union meetings to communicate matters ‘of
agitational significance.’ But the FVdG's opportunities for action were severely limited and it is safe
to con? clude that its immediate postwar influence came not from its deeds in wartime, when its
affiliated unions struggled to survive, but from its role as critic and counterexample, challenging
class collaboration by organized labor in general, and social benefit plans and practices of collective
bargaining in particular, while defending principles of workers' autonomy and direct action". (p.
201-202)
"Those unions that had embarked on a policy of cooperation, the syndicalists argued, were not
enhancing their power, but rather surrendering their ability to protect workers' interest". (p. 202)
"The FVdG repeatedly challenged efforts to legitimate war as a positive phenomenon, as somehow
beneficial, purifying, redemptive, or even progressive". (p. 204)
"The FVdG also repeatedly questioned the concepts of nation and Kultur enshrined in the discourse
of defense. While millions of men stood ready to sacrifice themselves for their nations, "nation" and
"nationality" were not sacrosanct ideas, the syndicalists argued, but emotive notions open to
manipulation. […] War in defense of culture, in short, was doubly absurd: conceptually, because it
falsely posited distinct and competitive cultures within a historically inter? national cultural
environment; practically, because it led to wholesale destruc? tion and social regression in the name
of higher values”. (p. 205)
"Ideas and ideals prompted the masses to go to war, selflessly, against their own objective, material
interest. […] Bourgeois society had successfully preserved its interests through the adept
ideological mobilization of the masses. The workers' leaders had failed here. Misled by their
materialism, ignoring the experience of history, the Social Democrats had erred in not emphasizing
the higher ideal of socialism against the antiquated nationalism nurtured by bourgeois society.
Convinced that socialism would eventually arise as the product of personal material advantages, the
Social Democrats chose "to let the stomach, the bed, the bigger piece of bread decide " By ignoring
the power of ideas they had been completely outmaneuvered. Nor were the syndicalists above
reproach. In an exercise in selfcriticism, the Mitteilungsblatt now mused that the syndicalists had
drawn too much on the materialist worldview, (p. 206) had too often shared the fundamental error
of reminding workers of their present material interests. This was always a danger in a movement
that was simultaneously trade unionist and revolutionary". (p. 206-207)
"The FVdG expressed dismay that CGT Secretary Leon Jouhaux would join with political socialists
in a propaganda committee for the war, even more that the Paris-based, veteran Dutch syndicalist
Christiaan Cornelissen, the founder of the Bulletin international du mouvement syndicaliste, would
urge Dutch workers to rally to the prowar cause". (p. 207)
"Throughout the war they identified with those foreign syndicalists who repudiated defensism: with
those of Denmark, Sweden, and Spain; with the Dutch Nationaal Arbeids Secretariaat (NAS)
against Cornelissen; with a growing antiwar minority in France against Jouhaux's CGT majority;
with the Italian Armando Borghi, the new antiwar spokesman of the majority, against an
interventionist minority that split the 100,000 member Unions Sindacale Italiana (USI)". (p. 208)
"When, early in 1917, a revolution in Russia overthrew the Romanov dynasty, the German
syndicalists welcomed it above all as the most important expression yet of a people s desire for
peace and as a salutary demonstration of the power of mass action". (p. 209)
"It welcomed Zimmerwald both as a sign of antiwar activity and ? because the French syndicalist
minority had been represented along with Social Democrats from elsewhere, including dissident
Germans as an indication of the possibility of syndicalist-socialist antiwar cooperation". (p. 210)
"The FVdG not only survived the war, but, untainted by support for the state, the war, and
collaboration with the employers, its revolutionary ethos found a greater audience in an increasingly
radicalized atmosphere. It expanded rapidly to over 100,000 members in the immediate postwar
period; for every unionist in the FVdG at the beginning of the war there were over eighteen in
1919". (p. 211)
"The FVdG's postwar organizational transformation, moreover, proved to be geographical and
occupational as well as quantitative. It now exerted its greatest appeal in the Rhineland and
Westphalia, where syndicalism had been weak prior to 1914. In December 1918 the revivified
FVdG reactivated its full Business Commission (reduced by 75 percent during the war to save
salaries), founded Der Syndikalist, a new newspaper in Berlin under the editorship of Max Winkler,
dispatched Kater on an agitation tour through the Ruhr, (p. 211) helped to subsidize in Duisburg
another journal, Die Freiheit, and convened its first post war conference. The FVdG s advocacy of
direct action and workers' control, its antibureaucratic federalism, and its low dues appealed to
disaffected mem? bers of centralist unions in Rhineland-Westphalia; rapid syndicalist expansion
beyond Berlin continued into 1919. Its December 1919 congress, representing over 110,000
workers, rechristened the FVdG the Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschland (FAUD), which would bear
the syndicalist flag and speak through Der Syndikalist until 1933". (p. 211-212)
"[…] while the syndicalists opposed the new Weimar state as they had opposed the preceding
Wilhelmian state, and the new state sometimes responded coercively (as when it took the principal
administrative and ideological leaders of the FAUD, respectively Kater and Rudolf Rocker, into
"protective custody" for three weeks in February 1920), they were also prepared to defend the
republic against the Right. Syndicalists joined radical socialists in the vanguard of the general strike
that thwarted the attempted putsch of Wolfgang Kapp in March 1920". (p. 212)