title: Syndicalism

text: Many scholars, including Ralph Darlington, Marcel van der Linden, and Wayne Thorpe, apply the term "syndicalism" to a number of organizations or currents within the labor movement that did not identify as "syndicalist". They apply the label to one big unionists or industrial unionists in North America and Australia, Larkinists in Ireland, and groups that identify as revolutionary industrialists, revolutionary unionists, anarcho-syndicalists, or councilists. This includes the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the United States, for example, which claimed its industrial unionism was "a higher type of revolutionary labor organization than that proposed by the syndicalists". Van der Linden and Thorpe use "syndicalism" to refer to "all revolutionary, direct-actionist organizations". Darlington proposes that syndicalism be defined as "revolutionary trade unionism". He and van der Linden argue that it is justified to group together such a wide range of organizations because their similar modes of action or practice outweigh their ideological differences.


title: Syndicalism

text: Others, like Larry Peterson and Erik Olssen, disagree with this broad definition. According to Olssen, this understanding has a "tendency to blur the distinctions between industrial unionism, syndicalism, and revolutionary socialism". Peterson gives a more restrictive definition of "syndicalism" based on five criteria:


title: Syndicalism

text: This definition excludes the IWW and the Canadian One Big Union (OBU). Peterson proposes the broader category "revolutionary industrial unionism" to encompass syndicalism, groups like the IWW and the OBU, and others. The defining commonality between these groups is that they sought to unite all workers in a general organization.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalism originated in France and spread from there. The French CGT was the model and inspiration for syndicalist groups throughout Europe and the world. Revolutionary industrial unionism, part of syndicalism in the broader sense, originated with the IWW in the United States and then caught on in other countries. In a number of countries, however, certain syndicalist practices and ideas predate the coining of the term in France or the founding of the IWW. In Bert Altena's view, a number of movements in Europe can be called syndicalist, even before 1900. According to the English social historian E.P. Thompson and the anarcho-syndicalist theorist Rudolf Rocker, there were syndicalist tendencies in Britain's labor movement as early as the 1830s. Syndicalism's direct roots were in Pierre Joseph Proudhon's mutualism, a form of socialism that focused on cooperation among the community of man. He coined the term capitalist to describe the political class granting itself monopolies on the use of capital, and wanted workers to oppose this state control, though through peaceful means, only using force defensively. Proudhon's ideas were popular in the anti-authoritarian wing of the early First Internationale, the international socialist organization formed in 1864. Its most successful early leader, Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, came to believe that worker organizations should consider using force to advance their cause, when necessary. He and his followers advocated the general strike, rejected electoral politics, and anticipated workers' organizations replacing rule by the state, central syndicalist themes. According to Lucien van der Walt, the Spanish section of the First International, formed in 1870, was in fact syndicalist. Kenyon Zimmer sees a "proto-syndicalism" in the influence the anarchist-led International Working People's Association (IWPA) and Central Labor Union, which originated in the American section of the First International, had in the Chicago labor movement of the 1880s. They were involved in the nationwide struggle for an eight-hour day. On May 3, 1886, the police killed three striking workers at a demonstration in Chicago. Seven policemen and four workers were killed the following day when someone, possibly a police member, threw a bomb into the crowd. Four anarchists were eventually executed for allegedly conspiring to the events. The Haymarket Affair, as these events became known, led anarchists and labor organizers, including syndicalists, in both the United States and Europe to re-evaluate the revolutionary meaning of the general strike.


title: Syndicalism

text: According to Émile Pouget, a French anarchist and CGT leader, from "the United States, the idea of the general strike fertilized by the blood of anarchists hanged in Chicago [...] was imported to France". In the 1890s, French anarchists, conceding that individual action such as assassinations had failed, turned their focus to the labor movement. They were able to gain influence, particularly in the , which served as labor exchanges, meeting places for unions, and trades councils and organized in a national federation in 1893. In 1895, the CGT was formed as a rival to the , but was at first much weaker. From the start, it advocated the general strike and aimed to unite all workers. Pouget, who was active in the CGT, supported the use of sabotage and direct action. In 1902, the merged into the CGT. In 1906, the federation adopted the Charter of Amiens, which reaffirmed the CGT's independence from party politics and fixed the goal of uniting all French workers.


title: Syndicalism

text: In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World were formed in the United States by the Western Federation of Miners, the American Labor Union, and a broad coalition of socialists, anarchists, and labor unionists. Its base was mostly in the Western US where labor conflicts were most violent and workers therefore radicalized. Although Wobblies insisted their union was a distinctly American form of labor organization and not an import of European syndicalism, the IWW was syndicalist in the broader sense of the word. According to Melvyn Dubofsky and most other IWW historians, the IWW's industrial unionism was the specifically American form of syndicalism. Nevertheless, the IWW also had a presence in Canada and Mexico nearly from its inception, as the US economy and labor force was intertwined with those countries.


title: Syndicalism

text: French syndicalism and American industrial unionism influenced the rise of syndicalism elsewhere. Syndicalist movements and organizations in a number of countries were established by activists who had spent time in France. Ervin Szabó visited Paris in 1904 and then established a Syndicalist Propaganda Group in his native Hungary in 1910. Several of the founders of the Spanish CNT had visited France. Alceste de Ambris and Armando Borghi, both leaders in Italy's USI, were in Paris for a few months from 1910 to 1911. French influence also spread through publications. Emile Pouget's pamphlets could be read in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, and Swedish translations. Journals and newspapers in a number of countries advocated syndicalism. For example, , a journal mainly for miners in Charleroi, Belgium, urged its readers to follow "the example of our confederated friends of France". The IWW's newspapers published articles on French syndicalism, particularly the tactic of sabotage and the CGT's carried articles about Britain's labor movement by the British syndicalist Tom Mann. Migration played a key role in spreading syndicalist ideas. The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (, FORA), openly anarchist by 1905, was formed by Italian and Spanish immigrants in 1901. Many IWW leaders were European immigrants, including Edmondo Rossoni who moved between the United States and Italy and was active in both the IWW and USI. International work processes also contributed to the diffusion of syndicalism. For example, sailors helped establish IWW presences in port cities around the world.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists formed different kinds of organizations. Some, like the French radicals, worked within existing unions to infuse them with their revolutionary spirit. Some found existing unions entirely unsuitable and built federations of their own, a strategy known as "dual unionism". American syndicalists formed the IWW, though William Z. Foster later abandoned the IWW after a trip to France and set up the Syndicalist League of North America (SLNA), which sought to radicalize the established American Federation of Labor (AFL). In Ireland, the ITGWU broke away from a more moderate, and British-based, union. In Italy and Spain, syndicalists initially worked within the established union confederations before breaking away and forming USI and the CNT respectively. In Norway, there were both the Norwegian Trade Union Opposition (, NFO), syndicalists working within the mainstream Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions ( in Norwegian, LO), and the Norwegian Syndicalist Federation ( in Norwegian, NSF), an independent syndicalist organization set up by the Swedish SAC. In Britain, there was a similar conflict between ISEL and the local IWW organization.


title: Syndicalism

text: By 1914, there were syndicalist national labor confederations in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, and France, while Belgian syndicalists were in the process of forming one. There were also groups advocating syndicalism in Russia, Japan, the United States, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, and Great Britain. Outside of North America, the IWW also had organizations in Australia, New Zealand, where it was part of the Federation of Labour (FOL), Great Britain, though its membership had imploded by 1913, and South Africa. In Ireland, syndicalism took the form of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU), which espoused a mix of industrial unionism and socialist republicanism, and was labeled Larkinism, taking its name from James Larkin.


title: Syndicalism

text: Scholars have given several explanations for the emergence of syndicalism. Werner Sombart, a German economist and sociologist, commenting in 1905, ascribes the rise of syndicalism to the Italian and particularly the French mentality. He writes: "The only people who could possibly act up to such a system of teaching are Frenchmen and Italians. They are generally men who do things impulsively [...], who are seized upon by a sudden passionate enthusiasm [...], but they have little application, perseverance, calm or steadiness."


title: Syndicalism

text: There was a significant uptick in workers' radicalism in most developed capitalist countries from 1911 to 1922, though it relented during World War I. Strikes increased in frequency, numbers of workers involved, and duration. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, syndicalism was only one way this radicalization expressed itself. In the United Kingdom, for example, the period from 1910 to 1914 became known as the Great Labour Unrest. Many historians see syndicalism as a consequence of this unrest, but Elie Halévy and the politician Lord Robert Cecil claim it was its cause. Employers in France likewise blamed an upsurge in workers' militancy in the same period on syndicalist leaders. Syndicalism was further encouraged by employers' hostility to workers' actions. The economist Ernesto Screpanti hypothesized that strike waves such as the one from 1911 to 1922 generally occur during the upper turning-points of the periodic global long cycles of boom and bust known as Kondratieff waves. Such waves of proletarian insurgency, claims Screpanti, were global in reach, saw workers breaking free of the dynamics of the capitalist system, and aimed to overthrow that system.


title: Syndicalism

text: According to van der Linden and Thorpe, workers' radicalization manifested itself in their rejection of the dominant strategies in the, mostly socialist, labor movement, which was led by reformist trade unions and socialist parties. Lenin posited that "revolutionary syndicalism in many countries was a direct and inevitable result of opportunism, reformism and parliamentary cretinism." A feeling that ideological disputes were draining workers' power led Dutch, French, and American syndicalist organizations to declare themselves independent of any political groups. In countries like Italy, Spain, and Ireland, which was still under British rule, parliamentary politics were not seen as a serious means for workers to express their grievances. Most workers were disenfranchised. Yet even in France or Britain, where most male workers had the right to vote, many workers did not trust party politics. The enormous numerical growth of well-organized socialist parties, such as in Germany and Italy, did not, in the minds of many workers, correlate with any real advance in the class struggle as these parties were thought to be overly concerned with building the parties themselves and with electoral politics than with the class struggle and had therefore lost their original revolutionary edge. The socialists preached the inevitability of socialism, but were in practice bureaucratic and reformist. Similarly, the trade unions frequently allied with those parties, equally growing in numbers, were denounced for their expanding bureaucracies, their centralization, and for failing to represent workers' interests. For example, between 1902 and 1913 the German free trade unions' membership grew by 350% but its bureaucracy by more than 1900%.


title: Syndicalism

text: Another common explanation for the rise of syndicalism is that it was a result of the economic backwardness of the countries in which it emerged, particularly France. Newer studies have questioned this account. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, changes in labor processes contributed to the radicalization of workers and thereby to the rise of syndicalism. This rise took place during the Second Industrial Revolution. Two groups of workers were most attracted to syndicalism: casual or seasonal laborers who frequently changed jobs, and workers whose occupations were becoming obsolete as a result of technological advances. The first group includes landless agricultural workers, construction workers, and dockers, all of whom were disproportionately represented in several countries' syndicalist movements. Because they frequently changed jobs, such workers did not have close relationships with their employers and the risk of losing one's job as a result of a strike was reduced. Moreover, because of the time constraints of their jobs they were forced to act immediately in order to achieve anything and could not plan for the long term by building up strike funds or powerful labor organizations or by engaging in mediation. Their working conditions gave them an inclination to engage in direct confrontation with employers and apply direct action. The second group includes miners, railway employees, and certain factory workers. Their occupations were deskilled by technological and organizational changes. These changes made workers from the second group similar in some respects to the first group. They did not entirely result from the introduction of new technology, but were also caused by changes in management methods. This included increased supervision of workers, piecework, internal promotions, all designed make workers docile and loyal and to transfer knowledge and control over the process of production from workers to employers. Frustration with this loss of power led to formal and informal resistance by workers. Altena disagrees with this explanation. According to him, it was workers with significant autonomy in their jobs and pride in their skills who were most attracted to syndicalism. Moreover, he argues, explanations based on workers' occupations cannot explain why only a minority of workers in those jobs became syndicalists or why in some professions workers in different locations had vastly different patterns of organization. The small size of many syndicalist unions also makes observations about which workers joined statistically irrelevant.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalism came to be seen as a viable strategy because the general strike became a practical possibility. Although it had been advocated before, there were not sufficient numbers of wage workers to bring society to a standstill and they had not achieved a sufficient degree of organization and solidarity until the 1890s, according van der Linden and Thorpe. Several general or political strikes then took place before World War I: in 1893 and in 1902 in Belgium, in 1902 and in 1909 in Sweden, in 1903 in the Netherlands, in 1904 in Italy in addition to significant work stoppages during the Russian Revolution of 1905.


title: Syndicalism

text: Darlington cites the significance of the conscious intervention by syndicalist militants. The industrial unrest of the period created conditions which made workers receptive to syndicalist leaders' agitation. They spread their ideas through pamphlets and newspapers and had considerable influence in a number of labor disputes. Finally, van der Linden and Thorpe point to spatial and geographical factors that shaped the rise of syndicalism. Workers who would otherwise not have had an inclination to syndicalism joined because syndicalism was dominant in their locales. Workers in the Canadian and American West for example, were generally more radical and drawn to the IWW and One Big Union than their counterparts in the East. Similarly, southern workers were more drawn to syndicalism in Italy. According to Altena, the emergence of syndicalism must be analyzed at the level of local communities. Only differences in local social and economic structures explain why some towns had a strong syndicalist presence, but others did not.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalism was not informed by theory or a systematically elaborated ideology the same way socialism was by Marxism. Émile Pouget, a CGT leader, maintained that: "What sets syndicalism apart from the various schools of socialism and makes it superior is its doctrinal sobriety. Inside the unions, there is little philosophising. They do better than that: they act!" Similarly, Andreu Nin of the Spanish CNT proclaimed in 1919: "I am a fanatic of action, of revolution. I believe in actions more than in remote ideologies and abstract questions." Though workers' education was important at least to committed activists, syndicalists distrusted bourgeois intellectuals, wanting to maintain workers' control over the movement. Syndicalist thinking was elaborated in pamphlets, leaflets, speeches, and articles and in the movement's own newspapers. These writings consisted mainly in calls to action and discussions of tactics in class struggle. The philosopher Georges Sorel's "Reflections on Violence" introduced syndicalist ideas to a broader audience. Sorel presented himself as the premier theorist of syndicalism and was frequently thought of as such, but he was not a part of the movement and his influence on syndicalism was insignificant, except in Italy and Poland.


title: Syndicalism

text: The extent to which syndicalist positions reflected merely the views of leaders and to what extent those positions were shared by syndicalist organizations' rank-and-file is a matter of dispute. The historian Peter Stearns, commenting on French syndicalism, concludes that most workers did not identify with syndicalism's long-range goals and that syndicalist hegemony accounts for the relatively slow growth of the French labor movement as a whole. Workers who joined the syndicalist movement, he claims, were on the whole indifferent to doctrinal questions, their membership in syndicalist organizations was partly accidental and leaders were unable to convert workers to syndicalist ideas. Frederick Ridley, a political scientist, is more equivocal. According to him, leaders were very influential in the drafting of syndicalist ideas, but syndicalism was more than a mere tool of a few leaders, but a genuine product of the French labor movement. Darlington adds that in the Irish ITGWU most members were won over by the union's philosophy of direct action. Bert Altena argues that, though evidence of ordinary workers' convictions is scant, it indicates that they were aware of doctrinal differences between various currents in the labor movement and able to defend their own views. He points out that they likely understood syndicalist newspapers and debated political issues.


title: Syndicalism

text: "Syndicalism" is used by some interchangeably with "anarcho-syndicalism". This term was first used in 1907, by socialists criticizing the political neutrality of the CGT, although it was rarely used until the early 1920s when communists used it disparagingly. Only from 1922 was it used by self-avowed anarcho-syndicalists. Syndicalism has traditionally been seen as a current within anarchism, but in some countries it was dominated by Marxists rather than anarchists. This was the case in Italy and much of the Anglophone world, including Ireland where anarchists had no significant influence on syndicalism. The extent to which syndicalist doctrine was a product of anarchism is debated. The anarchist Iain McKay argues that "syndicalism" is but a new name for ideas and tactics developed by Bakunin and the anarchist wing of the First International, while it is wholly inconsistent with positions Marx and Engels took. According to him, the fact that many Marxists embraced syndicalism merely indicates that they abandoned Marx's views and converted to Bakunin's. Altena too views syndicalism as part of the broader anarchist movement, but concedes there was a tension between this and the fact that it was also a labor movement. He also sees Marxist ideas reflected in the movement, as leading syndicalists such as F. Domela Nieuwenhuis and Christiaan Cornelissen as well as much of the Australian syndicalist movement were influenced by them, as well as older socialist notions. According to Darlington, anarchism, Marxism, and revolutionary trade unionism equally contributed to syndicalism, in addition to various influences in specific countries, including Blanquism, anti-clericalism, republicanism, and agrarian radicalism.


title: Syndicalism

text: Bill Haywood, a leading figure in the IWW, defined the union's purpose at its founding congress as "the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism". Syndicalists held that society was divided into two great classes, the working class and the bourgeoisie. Their interests being irreconcilable, they must be in a constant state of class struggle. Tom Mann, a British syndicalist, declared that "the object of the unions is to wage the Class War". This war, according to syndicalist doctrine, was aimed not just at gaining concessions such as higher wages or a shorter working day, but at the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists agreed with Karl Marx's characterization of the state as the "executive committee of the ruling class". They held that a society's economic order determined its political order and concluded that the former could not be overthrown by changes to the latter. Nevertheless, a number of leading syndicalist figures worked in political parties and some ran for elected office. Jim Larkin, the leader of the Irish ITGWU, was active in the Labour Party, Haywood in the Socialist Party of America. Yet, they saw the economic sphere as the primary arena for revolutionary struggle, while involvement in politics could at best be an "echo" of industrial struggle. They were skeptical of parliamentary politics. According to Father Thomas Hagerty, a Catholic priest and IWW leader, "dropping pieces of paper into a hole in a box never did achieve emancipation for the working class, and to my thinking it will never achieve it". Syndicalist trade unions declared their political neutrality and autonomy from political parties. Political parties, syndicalists reasoned, grouped people according to their political views, uniting members of different classes. Unions, on the other hand, were to be purely working-class organizations, uniting the entire class, and could therefore not be divided on political grounds. The French syndicalist Pouget explained: "The CGT embraces outside of all the schools of politics all workers cognisant of the struggle to be waged for the elimination of wage-slavery and the employer class." In practice, however, this neutrality was more ambiguous. The CGT, for example, worked with the Socialist Party in the struggle against the Three-Year Law, which extended conscription. During the Spanish Civil War the CNT, whose policy barred anyone who had been a candidate for political office or had participated in political endeavors from representing it, was intimately connected with the Iberian Anarchist Federation (, FAI).


title: Syndicalism

text: In the syndicalist conception, unions played a dual role. They were organs of struggle within capitalism for better working conditions, but they were also to play a key role in the revolution to overthrow capitalism. Victor Griffuelhes expressed this at the CGT's 1906 congress in the following manner: "In its day-to-day demands, syndicalism seeks the co-ordination of workers' efforts, the increase of workers' well-being by the achievement of immediate improvements, such as the reduction of working hours, the increase of wages, etc. But this task is only one aspect of the work of syndicalism; it prepares for complete emancipation, which can be realised only by expropriating the capitalist class". For unions to fulfill this role, it was necessary to prevent bureaucrats "whose sole purpose in life seems to be apologising for and defending the capitalist system of exploitation", according to Larkin from inhibiting workers' militant zeal. Battling bureaucracy and reformism within the labor movement was a major theme for syndicalists. One expression of this was many syndicalists' rejection of collective bargaining agreements, which were thought to force labor peace upon workers and break their solidarity. The Wobblie Vincent St. John declared: "There is but one bargain that the Industrial Workers of the World will make with the employing class complete surrender of the means of production." The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (, FORA) and the OBU did, however, accept such deals and others began accepting them eventually. Similarly, syndicalist unions did not work to build large strike funds, for fear that they would create bureaucracy separate from the rank-and-file and instill in workers the expectation that the union rather than they would wage the class struggle.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists advocated direct action, including working to rule, passive resistance, sabotage, and strikes, particularly the general strike, as tactics in the class struggle, as opposed to indirect action such as electoral politics. The IWW engaged in around 30 mostly successful civil disobedience campaigns they deemed free speech fights. Wobblies would defy laws restricting public speeches, in order to clog up prisons and court systems as a result of hundreds of arrests, ultimately forcing public officials to rescind such laws. Sabotage ranged from slow or inefficient work to destruction of machinery and physical violence. French railway and postal workers cut telegraph and signal lines during strikes in 1909 and 1910.


title: Syndicalism

text: The final step towards revolution, according to syndicalists, would be a general strike. It would be "the curtain drop on a tired old scene of several centuries, and the curtain raising on another", according to Griffuelhes.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists remained vague about the society they envisioned to replace capitalism, claiming that it was impossible to foresee in detail. Labor unions were seen as being the embryo of a new society in addition to being the means of struggle within the old. Syndicalists generally agreed that in a free society production would be managed by workers. The state apparatus would be replaced by the rule of workers' organizations. In such a society individuals would be liberated, both in the economic sphere but also in their private and social lives.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalist policies on gender issues were mixed. The CNT did not admit women as members until 1918. The CGT dismissed feminism as a bourgeois movement. Syndicalists were mostly indifferent to the question of women's suffrage. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an IWW organizer, insisted that women "find their power at the point of production where they work", rather than at the ballot box. Of the 230 delegates present at the founding of Canada's One Big Union, a mere 3 were women. When a female radical criticized the masculinist atmosphere at the meeting, she was rebuffed by men who insisted that labor only concern itself with class rather than gender issues. The historian Todd McCallum concludes that syndicalists in the OBU advocated values of "radical manhood". Francis Shor argues that the "IWW promotion of sabotage represents a kind of masculine posturing which directly challenged the individualizing techniques of power mobilized by industrial capitalism". Thus, "the IWW's masculine identity incorporated features of working-class solidarity and protest [...] through 'virile' syndicalism." For example, while defending a black fellow worker against a racist insult, an IWW organizer in Louisiana insisted that "he is a man, a union man, an IWW—a MAN! ... and he has proven it by his action". During WWI, one of the IWW's anti-war slogans was "Don’t Be a Soldier! Be a Man!" In some case syndicalist attitudes towards women changed. In 1901, the CGT's agricultural union in southern France was hostile to women, but by 1909 this had changed. The CNT, initially hostile to independent women's organizations, worked closely with the libertarian feminist organization during the Civil War.


title: Syndicalism

text: According to the historian Sharif Gemie, the male orientation of parts of the syndicalist labor movement reflected the ideas of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who defended patriarchy because women, of their own accord, are "chained to nature".


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists were involved in a number of strikes, labor disputes, and other struggles. In the United States, the IWW was involved in at least 150 strikes including miners' strikes in Goldfield, Nevada in 1906–1907, a steel workers' strike in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania in 1909, a textile workers' strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, timber workers' strikes in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1912–1913, and a silk workers' strike in Paterson, New Jersey. The most prominent was the struggle in Lawrence. Wobblie leaders brought together 23,000 mostly immigrant workers, many of whom did not speak English. They arranged for workers' children to be sent to live with sympathetic families outside of Lawrence for the duration of the strike so their parents could focus on the struggle. Unlike most IWW-led strikes, the struggle was successful. In Mexico, syndicalism first emerged in 1906 during a violent miners' strike in Cananea and an even more violent textile workers' strike in Río Blanco, Veracruz. In 1912, during the 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution, anarchists formed the syndicalist union House of the World Worker (). It led a series of successful strikes in 1913 in Mexico City and central Mexico. After the Constitutionalist Army occupied the capital in 1914, syndicalists allied with the government it established to defeat rural forces such as the Zapatistas and therefore received government support. Once those forces had been suppressed, this alliance broke apart and the campaigned for workers' control of factories and the nationalization of foreign capital. It contributed to a rise in labor unrest that began in mid-1915. It led general strikes in May and in July–August 1916 in greater Mexico City. The latter was quelled by the army, marking the defeat of the , which was also suppressed.


title: Syndicalism

text: In Portugal, the deposition of the King in 1910 was followed by a strike wave throughout the country. After the police occupied the offices of an agricultural union, syndicalists called for a general strike. During the strike, Lisbon was controlled by workers and there were armed uprisings in several other cities. In 1912, the strike wave ebbed off. Italian syndicalists successfully organized agricultural workers in the Po Valley by uniting different parts of agricultural working class. They were most successful in areas where the reformist union Federterra had been thwarted by employers. Syndicalists led large strikes by farm workers in Parma and Ferrara in 1907–1908, but these strikes failed as a result of employers' strikebreaking tactics and infighting among workers. In 1911–1913, syndicalists played an important role in a large strike wave in Italy's industrial centers. The syndicalist union confederation USI was formed in 1912 by veterans of both strike movements.


title: Syndicalism

text: British Wobblies were involved in two major strikes in Scotland, one at Argyll Motor Works and the second at a Singer's sewing machine factory in Clydebank. In 1906, several industrial unionists began to spread their ideas and organize workers at Singer's. In 1911, they organized a strike after a woman was fired for not working hard enough. The strike was cleverly defeated by management and most activists lost their jobs. The ISEL leader Tom Mann was also at the center of several labor disputes during the Great Labour Unrest, including the 1911 Liverpool general transport strike where he chaired the strike committee. In Ireland, Jim Larkin and the ITGWU led 20,000 during the 1913 Dublin lockout. After the ITGWU attempted to unionize Dublin's trams and tram workers went on strike, the city's employers threatened to fire any workers who did not sign a pledge to not support the ITGWU, thereby turning the dispute into a city-wide conflict in late September. Workers' resistance crumbled in January 1914.


title: Syndicalism

text: There was no international syndicalist organization prior to World War I. In 1907, CGT activists presented the Charter of Amiens and syndicalism to an international audience a higher form of anarchism at the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam in 1907. Discussions at the Congress led to the formation of the international syndicalist journal . The CGT was affiliated with the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers (ISNTUC), which brought together reformist socialist unions. Both the Dutch NAS and the British ISEL attempted to remedy the lack of a syndicalist counterpart to ISNTUC in 1913, simultaneously publishing calls for an international syndicalist congress in 1913. The CGT rejected the invitation. Its leaders feared that leaving ISNTUC, which it intended to revolutionize from within, would split the CGT and harm working-class unity. The IWW also did not participate, as it considered itself an international in its own right. The First International Syndicalist Congress was held in London from September 27 to October 2. It was attended by 38 delegates from 65 organizations in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Discussions were contentious and did not lead to the founding of a syndicalist international. Delegates did agree on a declaration of principles describing syndicalism's core tenets. They also decided to launch an International Syndicalist Information Bureau and to hold another congress in Amsterdam. This congress did not take place due to the outbreak of World War I.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists had long opposed interventionism. Haywood held that "it is better to be a traitor to your country than to your class". French syndicalists viewed the Army as the primary defender of the capitalist order. In 1901, the CGT published a manual for soldiers encouraging desertion. Similarly, in 1911 British syndicalists distributed an "Open Letter to British Soldiers" imploring them not to shoot on striking workers, but to join the working class's struggle against capital. Patriotism, syndicalists argued, was a means of integrating workers into capitalist society by distracting them from their true class interest. In 1908, the CGT's congress invoked the slogan of the First International, proclaiming that the "workers have no fatherland".


title: Syndicalism

text: When World War I broke out in July 1914, socialist parties and trade unions both in neutral and belligerent countries supported their respective nations' war efforts or national defense, despite previous pledges to do the opposite. Socialists agreed to put aside class conflict and vote for war credits. German socialists argued that war was necessary to defend against Russia's barbaric Tsarism, while their French counterparts pointed to the need to defend against Prussian militarism and the German "instinct of domination and of discipline". This collaboration between the socialist movement and the state was known as the in France, the in Germany, and in the Netherlands. Moreover, a number of anarchists led by Peter Kropotkin, including the influential syndicalist Christiaan Cornelissen, issued the Manifesto of the Sixteen, supporting the Allied cause in the war. Most syndicalists, however, remained true to their internationalist and anti-militarist principles by opposing the war and their respective nation's participation in it.


title: Syndicalism

text: The majority of the French CGT and a sizable minority in the Italian USI did not. The CGT had long had a moderate, reformist wing, which gained the upper hand. As a result, according to historians like Darlington or van der Linden and Thorpe, the CGT was no longer a revolutionary syndicalist organization after the start of World War I. It followed the French president's call for national unity by agreeing to a no-strike pledge and to resolve labor disputes through arbitration and by actively participating in the French war effort. Most of its members of military age were conscripted without resistance and its ranks shrank from 350,000 in 1913 to 49,000 dues-paying members in 1915. CGT leaders defended this course by arguing that France's war against Germany was a war between democracy and republicanism on the one side and barbaric militarism on the other. Italy did not initially participate in World War I, which was deeply unpopular in the country, when it broke out. The Socialist Party and the reformist General Confederation of Labor opposed Italian intervention in the Great War. Once Italy became a participant, the socialists refused to support the war effort, but also refrained from working against it. From the start of the war, even before Italy did so, a minority within USI, led by the most famous Italian syndicalist, Alceste De Ambris, called on the Italian state to take the Allies' side. The pro-war syndicalists saw Italian participation in the war as the completion of nationhood. They also felt compelled to oppose the socialists' neutrality and therefore support the war. Finally, they gave similar arguments as the French, warning of the dangers posed by the "suffocating imperialism of Germany", and felt obliged to follow the CGT's lead.


title: Syndicalism

text: USI's pro-war wing had the support of less than a third of the organization's members and it was forced out in September 1914. Its anarchist wing, led by Armando Borghi, was firmly opposed to the war, deeming it incompatible with workers' internationalism and predicting that it would only serve elites and governments. Its opposition was met with government repression and Borghi and others were interned by the end of the war. The anti-war faction in the CGT, on the other hand, was a small minority. It was led by the likes of Pierre Monatte and Alphonse Merrheim. They would link up with anti-war socialists from around Europe at the 1915 Zimmerwald conference. They faced considerable difficulties putting up meaningful resistance against the war. The government called up militants to the Army, including Monatte. He considered refusing the order and being summarily executed, but decided this would be futile. Syndicalist organizations in other countries nearly unanimously opposed the war. "Let Germany win, let France win, it is all the same to the workers," José Negre of the CNT in neutral Spain declared. The CNT insisted that syndicalists could support neither side in an imperialist conflict. A wave of pro-British sentiment swept Ireland during the war, although the ITGWU and the rest of the Irish labor movement opposed it, and half of the ITGWU's membership enlisted in the British military. The ITGWU had also been significantly weakened in 1913 in the Dublin Lockout. After Jim Larkin left Ireland in 1914, James Connolly took over leadership of the union. Because of the organization's weakness, Connolly allied it along with its paramilitary force, the Irish Citizen Army, with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Together, they instigated the Easter Rising, seeking to weaken the British Empire and hoping that the insurrection would spread throughout Europe. The uprising was quickly quelled by the British army and Connolly was executed. In Germany, the small FVdG opposed the socialists' and Germany's involvement in the war, challenging the claim that the country was waging a defensive war. Its journals were suppressed and a number of its members were arrested. The United States did not enter the war until the spring of 1917. The start of the war had induced an economic boom in the US, tightening the labor market and thereby strengthening workers' bargaining position. The IWW profited from this, more than doubling its membership between 1916 and 1917. At the same time, the Wobblies fervently denounced the war and mulled calling an anti-war general strike. Once America became a combatant, the IWW maintained its anti-war stance, while its bitter rival, the AFL, supported the war. It did not, however, launch an anti-war campaign, as it feared the government would crush it if it did and wanted to focus on its economic struggles. The IWW's practical opposition to the war was limited, 95% of eligible IWW members registered for the draft, and most of those drafted served. Syndicalists in the Netherlands and Sweden, both neutral countries, criticized the truce socialists entered with their governments in order to shore up national defense. The Dutch NAS disowned Cornelissen, one of its founders, for his support for the war.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists from Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, and Cuba met at an anti-war congress in El Ferrol, Spain, in April 1915. The congress was poorly planned and prohibited by the Spanish authorities, but delegates managed to discuss resistance to the war and extending international cooperation between syndicalist groups. Argentine, Brazilian, Spanish, and Portuguese delegates later met in October in Rio de Janeiro to continue discussions and resolved to deepen cooperation between South American syndicalists. While syndicalists were only able to put up a rather limited practical struggle against World War I, they also looked to challenge the war on an ideological or cultural level. They pointed to the horrors of war and spurned efforts to legitimate it as something noble. German syndicalists drew attention to the death, injury, destruction, and misery that the war wrought. German, Swedish, Dutch, and Spanish syndicalists denounced nationalism with , a syndicalist journal in Barcelona, calling it a "grotesque mentality". The Dutch newspaper criticized nationalism, because "it finds its embodiment in the state and is the denial of class antagonism between the haves and the have-nots". German and Spanish syndicalists went further still by putting into question the concept of nationhood itself and dismissing it as a mere social construct. The Germans pointed out that most inhabitants of the German Empire identified not as Germans, but in regional terms as Prussians or Bavarians and the like. Multilingual countries like Germany and Spain also could not claim a common language as a defining characteristic of the nation nor did members of the same nation share the same values or experiences, syndicalists in Spain and Germany argued. Syndicalists also argued against the notion that the war was a clash of different cultures or that it could be justified as a defense of civilization. Various cultures were not mutually hostile, they claimed, and the state should not be seen as the embodiment of culture, since culture was the product of the entire population, while the state acted in the interests of just a few. Moreover, they argued that if culture was to be understood as "high culture", the very workers dying in the war were denied access to that culture by capitalist conditions. Finally, syndicalists railed against religious justifications for war. Before the war, they had rejected religion as divisive at best, but support for the war by both Catholic and Protestant clergy revealed their hypocrisy and disgraced the principles Christianity claimed to uphold, they claimed.


title: Syndicalism

text: As the war progressed, disaffection with worsening living conditions at home and a growing numbers of casualties at the front eroded the enthusiasm and patriotism the outbreak of war had aroused. Prices were on the rise, food was scarce, and it became increasingly clear that the war would not be short. In Germany, for example, food shortages led to demonstrations and riots in a number of cities in the summer of 1916. At the same time, anti-war demonstrations started. Strikes picked up from around 1916 or 1917 on across Europe and soldiers began to mutiny. Workers distrusted their socialist leaders who had joined the war effort. Thanks in part to their fidelity to internationalism, syndicalist organizations profited from this development and expanded as the war drew to an end.


title: Syndicalism

text: Disaffection with the war condensed in the post-World War I revolutions that began with the 1917 Russian Revolution. In February 1917, strikes, riots, and troop mutinies broke out in Petrograd, forcing the Russian Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate on March 2 in favor of a provisional government. Immediately, anarchist groups emerged. Russian syndicalists organized around the journal ("The Voice of Labor"), which had a circulation of around 25,000, and the Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda. Anarchists found themselves agreeing with the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, who returned to Russia in April, as both sought to bring down the provisional government. Lenin abandoned the idea that capitalism is a necessary stage on Russia's path to communism – dismissed the establishment of a parliament, favoring that power be taken by soviets – and called for the abolition of the police, the army, the bureaucracy, and finally the state all sentiments syndicalists shared. Although the syndicalists also welcomed the soviets, they were most enthusiastic about the factory committees and workers' councils that had emerged in all industrial centers in the course of strikes and demonstrations in the February Revolution. The committees fought for higher wages and shorter hours, but above all for workers' control over production, which both the syndicalists and Bolsheviks supported. The syndicalists viewed the factory committees as the true form of syndicalist organization, not unions. Because they were better organized, the Bolsheviks were able to gain more traction in the committees with six times as many delegates in a typical factory. Despite the goals they had in common, syndicalists became anxious about the Bolsheviks' growing influence, especially after they won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets in September.


title: Syndicalism

text: The Petrograd Soviet established the 66-member Military Revolutionary Committee, which included four anarchists, among them the syndicalist Shatov. On October 25, this committee led the October Revolution; after taking control of the Winter Palace and key points in the capital with little resistance, it proclaimed a Soviet government. Anarchists were jubilant at the toppling of the provisional government. They were concerned about the proclamation of a new government, fearing a dictatorship of the proletariat, even more so after the Bolsheviks created the central Soviet of People's Commissars composed only of members of their party. They called for decentralization of power, but agreed with Lenin's labor program, which endorsed workers' control in all enterprises of a certain minimum size. The introduction of workers' control led to economic chaos. Lenin turned to restoring discipline in the factories and order to the economy in December by putting the economy under state control. At a trade union congress in January, the syndicalists, who had paid little attention to the unions, only had 6 delegates, while the Bolsheviks had 273. No longer depending on their help in toppling the provisional government, the Bolsheviks were now in a position to ignore the syndicalists' opposition and outvoted them at this congress. They opted to disempower local committees by subordinating them to the trade unions, which in turn became organs of the state. The Bolsheviks argued that workers' control did not mean that workers controlled factories at the local level and that this control had to be centralized and put under a broader economic plan. The syndicalists criticized the Bolshevik regime bitterly, characterizing it as state capitalist. They denounced state control over the factories and agitated for decentralization of power in politics and the economy and "syndicalization" of industry. The Civil War against the White Army split anarchists. The syndicalists were criticized harshly, because most supported the Bolshevik regime in the war even as they excoriated Bolshevik policy. They reasoned that a White victory would be worse and that the Whites had to be defeated before a third revolution could topple the Bolsheviks. Yet, syndicalists were harassed and repeatedly arrested by the police, particularly the Cheka, from 1919 on. Their demands had some sway with workers and dissidents within the Bolshevik party and the Bolshevik leadership viewed them as the most dangerous part of the libertarian movement. After the Civil War ended, workers and sailors, including both anarchists and Bolsheviks, rose up in 1921 in Kronstadt, a bastion of radicalism since 1905, against what they saw as the rule of a small number of bureaucrats. Anarchists hailed the rebellion as the start of the third revolution. The government reacted by having anarchists throughout the country arrested, including a number of syndicalist leaders. The Russian syndicalist movement was thereby defeated.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists in the West who had opposed World War I reacted gushingly to the Russian Revolution. Though they were still coming to grips with the evolving Bolshevik ideology and despite traditional anarchist suspicions of Marxism, they saw in Russia a revolution that had taken place against parliamentary politics and under the influence of workers' councils. They also, at this point, had only limited knowledge of the reality in Russia. Augustin Souchy, a German anarcho-syndicalist, hailed it "the great passion that swept us all along. In the East, so we believed, the sun of freedom rose." The Spanish CNT declared: "Bolshevism is the name, but the idea is that of all revolutions: economic freedom. [...] Bolshevism is the new life for which we struggle, it is freedom, harmony, justice, it is the life that we want and will enforce in the world." Borghi recalled: "We exulted in its victories. We trembled at its risks. [...] We made a symbol and an altar of its name, its dead, its living and its heroes." He called on Italians to "do as they did in Russia". Indeed, a revolutionary wave, inspired in part by Russia, swept Europe in the following years.


title: Syndicalism

text: In Germany, strikes and protests against food shortage, mainly by women, escalated and by 1917 had eroded public confidence in the government. The German Emperor was forced to abdicate in November 1918 after sailors' mutinies sparked an insurrectionary movement throughout the country. The syndicalist FVdG, which had just 6,000 members before the war and was almost completely suppressed by the state during the war, regrouped at a conference in Berlin in December 1918. It was active in the revolutionary events of the following years, particularly in the Ruhr area. It supported spontaneous strikes and championed direct action and sabotage. The FVdG started to be held in high regard for its radicalism by workers, particularly miners, who appreciated the syndicalists' ability to theorize their struggles and their experience with direct action methods. Starting in the second half of 1919, workers disappointed by the socialist party's and unions' support for the war and previously non-unionized unskilled workers who were radicalized during the war flocked to the FVdG. The revolution also saw the introduction to Germany of industrial unionism along the lines of the IWW with some support from the American organization, but also with links to the left wing of the Communist Party. In December 1919, the Free Workers' Union of Germany (Syndicalists) (, FAUD) was formed, claiming to represent over 110,000 workers, more than eighteen times the FVdG's pre-war membership. Most of the new organization came from the FVdG, but industrial unionists, whose influence was dwindling, were also involved. Rudolf Rocker, an anarchist recently returned to Germany after spending several years in London, wrote the FAUD's program.


title: Syndicalism

text: Class struggle peaked in Italy in the years 1919–1920, which became known as the or red biennium. Throughout this wave of labor radicalism, syndicalists, along with anarchists, formed the most consistently revolutionary faction on the left as socialists sought to rein in workers and prevent unrest. The Italian syndicalist movement had split during the war, as the syndicalist supporters of Italian intervention left USI. The interventionists, led by Alceste de Ambris and Edmondo Rossoni, formed the Italian Union of Labor (, UIL) in 1918. The UIL's national syndicalism emphasized workers' love of labor, self-sacrifice, and the nation rather than anti-capitalist class struggle. Both USI and the UIL grew significantly during the . The first factory occupation of the was carried out by the UIL at a steel plant in Dalmine in February 1919, before the military put an end to it. In July, a strike movement spread through Italy, culminating in a general strike on July 20. While USI supported it and was convinced by the workers' enthusiasm that revolution could be possible, the UIL and the socialists were opposed. The socialists succeeded in curtailing the general strike and it imploded with a day. The government, unsettled by the radicalism on display, reacted with repression against the far left and concessions to workers and peasants.


title: Syndicalism

text: In Portugal, working class unrest picked up from the start of the war. In 1917, radicals began to dominate the labor movement as a result of the war, the dictatorship established that year, and the influence of the Russian Revolution. In November 1918, a general strike was called but failed and in 1919 the syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (, CGT) was formed as the country's first national union confederation.


title: Syndicalism

text: In Brazil, in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, syndicalists, along with anarchists and socialists, were leaders in a cycle of labor struggles from 1917 to 1919. It included a general strike in 1917, a failed uprising in 1918 inspired by the Russian Revolution, and a number of smaller strikes. The movement was put down by increased organization by employers to resist workers' demands and by government repression, including the closure of unions, arrests, deportations of foreign militants, and violence, with some 200 workers killed in São Paulo alone. In Argentina, FORA had split into the anarcho-communist FORA V and the syndicalist FORA IX. While FORA V called for a futile general strike in 1915, FORA IX was more careful. It called off general strikes it had planned in 1917 and 1918. In January 1919, five workers were by the authorities during a strike led by a union with tenuous links to FORA V. At the funeral, police killed another 39 workers. Both FORA organizations called for a general strike, which continued after FORA IX reached a settlement. Vigilantes, supported by business and the military, attacked unions and militants. In all, between 100 and 700 people died in what became known as the Tragic Week. Nevertheless, strikes continued to increase and both FORA V and IX grew.


title: Syndicalism

text: The United States underwent an increase in labor militancy during the post-war period. 1919 saw a general strike in Seattle, large miners' strikes, a police strike in Boston, and a nationwide steel strike. The IWW, however, had been nearly destroyed in the previous two years by local criminal syndicalism laws, the federal government, and vigilante violence. It attempted to take credit for some of the strikes, but in reality was too weak to play a significant role. The post-war Red Scare intensified the attacks on the IWW and by the end of 1919 the IWW was practically powerless. In 1919 Canada was hit by a labor revolt, leading to the formation of One Big Union, which was only partly industrial unionist.


title: Syndicalism

text: Though the Bolsheviks suppressed syndicalism in Russia, they courted syndicalists abroad as part of their international strategy. In March 1919, the Comintern or Third International was founded at a conference in Moscow. The Bolsheviks acknowledged syndicalism's opposition to socialist reformism and saw them as part of the revolutionary wing of the labor movement. No syndicalists attended the founding convention, mainly because the blockade of Russia by the Allies powers made travel to Moscow near impossible. After long discussions, the CNT opted to join the Comintern, though it classified its adherence as provisional as a concession to detractors of Bolshevism. USI also decided to join, though some like Borghi had reservations about the course of events in Russia. In France, the CGT's radical minority that had opposed the war enthusiastically supported Bolshevism. They formed the Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees and attempted to push the CGT as a whole to support the Comintern. The General Executive Board of the IWW decided join the Comintern, but this decision was never confirmed by a convention. German and Swedish syndicalists were more critical of Bolshevism from the start. Rocker declared already in August 1918 that the Bolshevik regime was "but a new system of tyranny".


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalists became more estranged from the Comintern in 1920. The second congress of the Comintern in the summer of 1920 was attended by numerous syndicalists. The Italian USI, the Spanish CNT, the British shop stewards, and the revolutionary minority of the CGT had official representatives, but others like John Reed of the American IWW, Augustin Souchy of the German FAUD, and the Japanese Wobbly Taro Yoshiharo also attended in an unofficial capacity. This was the first major international gathering of syndicalists since the end of the war. Western syndicalists' knowledge of the facts on the ground in Russia was at this point rather limited. They thought of the soviets as organs of workers' control over production and the Bolsheviks depicted them as such. Syndicalists were not aware of the extent to which they were in reality subordinated to the communist party. The congress, however, revealed the irreconcilable differences between the syndicalist and the Bolshevik approach. Before the congress, the Comintern's executive committee arranged discussions with syndicalists to challenge the reformist International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). A document proposed by Alexander Lozovsky derided the apolitical unions as "lackeys of imperialist capitalism" for their betrayal during the war, to which syndicalists replied that of the syndicalist unions this only applied to the CGT. Throughout the preliminary meetings, syndicalists clashed with other delegates on the questions of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the conquest of state power as well as on relations with communists and the Comintern. Eventually all syndicalists agreed to the formation of a council tasked with spreading revolutionizing the trade union movement. Disagreements continued at the congress itself.


title: Syndicalism

text: The International Workers' Association, formed in 1922, is an international syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different countries. At its peak, it represented millions of workers and competed directly for the hearts and minds of the working class with social democratic unions and parties.


title: Syndicalism

text: From the early 1920s, the traditional syndicalist movements in most countries began to wane; state repression played a role, but movements that were not suppressed also declined. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, syndicalist organizations saw themselves as having three options: They could stay true to their revolutionary principles and be marginalized, they could give up those principles in order to adapt to new conditions, or they could disband or merge into non-syndicalist organizations. By the end of the 1930s, meaningful legal syndicalist organizations existed only in Bolivia, Chile, Sweden and Uruguay.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalist Georges Sorel began to increasingly advocate more focus on direct action to advance socialist ideals. As Marxism went through a reformist phase, this syndicalist alternative gained in support. In 1900, French syndicalist Charles Maurras declared in 's newspaper that anti-democratic socialism is the "pure"


title: Syndicalism

text: and correct form of socialism. From then on, he and other members of (like Jacques Bainville, , and Georges Valois) interested in Sorel's thought discussed the similarity between the movements in 's conferences and in essays published in the movement's newspaper, hoping to form a collaboration with revolutionary syndicalists. Such collaboration was formed in 1908 with a group of labor unions' leaders led by Émile Janvion. As a result of this collaboration, Janvion founded the anti-republican journal .


title: Syndicalism

text: Georges Sorel played a role in shaping the views of Benito Mussolini and by extension the wider Italian fascist movement, which retained the syndicalist belief in direct action by organizations to advance a socialist agenda. In March 1921, Sorel wrote that Mussolini was "a man no less extraordinary than Lenin".


title: Syndicalism

text: In the early 20th century, nationalists and syndicalists were increasingly influencing each other in Italy. 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. 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. 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. Benito Mussolini declared in 1909 that he had converted over to revolutionary syndicalism by 1904 during a general strike.


title: Syndicalism

text: Mussolini's flavor of national syndicalism went through several name changes, from Fasces of Revolutionary Action to Italian Fasces of Combat, to the National Fascist Party. In 1915 members started calling themselves "fascist" instead of simply national syndicalist.


title: Syndicalism

text: In 1919, National Syndicalist leader Alceste De Ambris wrote the Fascist Manifesto, advocating eight hour work days, a minimum wage, participation of workers in the functions of industry commissions, supporting labor unions, a progressive income tax, and other issues in a document paralleling the Communist Manifesto.


title: Syndicalism

text: After Sorel's death in 1922, syndicalist leader Agostino Lanzillo, now of the fascist movement, wrote in the Italian fascist review , which was edited by Mussolini: "Perhaps fascism may have the good fortune to fulfill a mission that is the implicit aspiration of the whole oeuvre of the master of syndicalism: to tear away the proletariat from the domination of the Socialist party, to reconstitute it on the basis of spiritual liberty, and to animate it with the breath of creative violence. This would be the true revolution that would mold the forms of the Italy of tomorrow".


title: Syndicalism

text: The anarcho-syndicalist revolution during the Spanish Civil War resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly socialist organisational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to three years, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia and parts of the Levante, with the main organisation being the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. Much of Spain's economy was put under worker control—in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%.


title: Syndicalism

text: On the other side, there was a national syndicalist thread represented originally by the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista of Onésimo Redondo and Ramiro Ledesma, inspired by Georges Sorel and Action Française, and primarily based amongst students in Madrid and workers and peasants in and around Valladolid. Ledesma failed to win approval for his ideas from the CNT in 1931, and instead merged into the Falange, creating the in 1934. After the nationalist victory in the civil war, a corporatist and vertical Spanish Labour Organization became the sole legal trade union in Francoist Spain.


title: Syndicalism

text: Syndicalism's decline was the result of a number of factors. In Russia, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, syndicalist movements were suppressed by authoritarian governments. The IWW in the United States and the Mexican House of the World Worker were weakened considerably by state repression. Syndicalist movements that were not suppressed also declined. According to van der Linden and Thorpe, this was primarily the result of the integration of the working class into capitalist relations. Proletarian families became units of individualized consumption as standards of living increased. This was partly the result of state intervention, particularly the emergence of the welfare state. Avenues for social reform opened up and the franchise was widened, giving parliamentary reformism legitimacy. Altena agrees that the state's growing influence in society was decisive for syndicalism's diminished influence. In addition to the welfare state, he refers to the increased significance of national policies, which eroded local autonomy. This made centralized unions able to negotiate national agreements more important and national and parliamentary politics more enticing for workers. They therefore turned to social democracy in larger numbers. Additionally, according to Altena, syndicalism lost out to sports and entertainment in the cultural sphere.


title: Syndicalism

text: Vadim Dam'e adds to this that the development of capitalist production and changes in the division of labor diminished syndicalism's recruitment base. According to authors like Stearns, Edward Shorter, Charles Tilly, and Bob Holton, who deem syndicalism a transitional form of workers' resistance between older craft-based artisanship and modern factory-based industry, syndicalism's decline was a product of that transition having been completed and workers being assimilated to capitalist factory discipline. Darlington counters that syndicalism attracted a variety of workers, not just artisans and skilled workers, but concedes that such changes did play a role in Spain, France, and some other countries.


title: Syndicalism

text: Several authors claim that syndicalism's demise was the result of workers' inherent pragmatism or conservatism, causing them to only be interested in immediate material gains, rather than long-term goals like overthrowing capitalism. Robert Hoxie, Selig Perlman, and Patrick Renshaw invoke this argument to explain the IWW's decline and Stearns, Dermot Keogh, and G. D. H. Cole do so with respect to French, Irish, and British syndicalism, respectively. Darlington disputes the assumption that workers are incapable of developing a revolutionary consciousness. Seeking material gains is not incompatible, he claims, with developing class consciousness, which entails the awareness that workers' material interests conflict with capitalism, particularly in times of crisis.


title: Syndicalism

text: According to many Marxists, syndicalism was a reaction to reformism in the labor movement and could not survive without it. The collapse of reformism after the war therefore automatically weakened syndicalism. According Eric Hobsbawm, the biggest reason for syndicalism's decline, however, was the rise of communism. Several communist parties drew their cadres from the syndicalists' ranks. To radical workers, the programmatic distinctions between syndicalism and communism were not all that relevant. The key is that after the war communism represented militancy or revolutionary attitude as such. Darlington, too, sees the effects of the Russian Revolution as an important reason for the decline of syndicalism. The emergence of communism highlighted syndicalism's inherent weaknesses: the contradiction of building organizations that sought to be both revolutionary cadre organizations and mass labor unions, the emphasis on economic struggle to the detriment of political action and the commitment to localism limiting its ability to provide an effective centralized organization and leadership. Bolshevism's overcoming of these limitations and its success in Russia drew syndicalist leaders and members. It also exacerbated splits within the syndicalist camp.


title: Syndicalism

text: The Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War put an end to syndicalism as a mass movement. Immediately after World War II, there were attempts to rekindle anarcho-syndicalism in Germany, but they were thwarted by Cold War anti-communism, Stalinism, and a failure to attract newer younger activists. Syndicalists maintained some influence in Latin American labor movements into the 1970s. The protest movements of the late 1960s saw renewed interest in syndicalism by activists in Germany, the US, and Britain. During its Hot Autumn of 1969, Italy experienced labor actions reminiscent of syndicalism, but syndicalists did not actually exert any influence, according to Carl Levy. In the 1980s, in communist Poland, the trade union Solidarity (), though not strictly syndicalist, attracted masses of dissident workers by reviving many syndicalist ideas and practices.


title: Syndicalism

text: The IWA exists to this day, but with very little influence. At most, it is a "flicker of history, the custodian of doctrine" according to Wayne Thorpe. Among its member organizations is the British Solidarity Federation, which was formed in 1950, originally named the Syndicalist Workers' Federation. The German Free Workers' Union (, FAU) was formed to carry on the FAUD's tradition in 1977, but has a membership of just 350 as of 2011. It left the IWA in 2018 to form the International Confederation of Labor (ICL). Spain has several syndicalist federations, including the CNT, which has around 50,000 members as of 2018. It, too, was a member of the IWA until 2018, when it joined the FAU in forming the ICT. After being defeated in the Civil War, tens of thousands of CNT militants went into exile, mostly in France. In exile, the organization atrophied, with just 5,000 mostly older members by 1960. During Spain's transition to democracy, the CNT was revived with a peak membership of over 300,000 in 1978. However, it was soon weakened, first by accusations of having been involved in the bombing of a nightclub, then by a schism. Members who favored participation in state-sponsored union elections left and formed an organization they would eventually name the General Confederation of Labor (, CGT). Despite these concessions, the CGT still views itself as an anarcho-syndicalist organization and has around 100,000 members as of 2018.


title: Syndicalism

text: According to Darlington, syndicalism left a legacy that was widely admired by labor and political activists in a number of countries. For example, the IWW song "Solidarity Forever" became part of the American labor movement's canon. The strike wave, including the recruitment of unskilled and foreign-born workers by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, that swept the United States in the 1930s followed in the IWW's footsteps. The tactic of the sit-down strike, made famous by the United Auto Workers in the Flint sit-down strike, was pioneered by Wobblies in 1906.


title: Syndicalism

text: In his study of French syndicalism, Stearns concludes that it was a dismal failure. The radicalism of syndicalist labor leaders, he claims, shocked French workers and the government and thereby weakened the labor movement as a whole. Syndicalism was most popular among workers not yet fully integrated into modern capitalist industry, but most French workers had adapted to this system and accepted it. Therefore, syndicalism was not able to seriously challenge prevailing conditions or even scare politicians and employers.


title: Pony

text: A pony is a type of small horse ("Equus ferus caballus"). Depending on the context, a pony may be a horse that is under an approximate or exact height at the withers, or a small horse with a specific conformation and temperament. Compared to a larger horse, a pony may have a thicker coat, mane and tail, with proportionally shorter legs, a wider barrel, heavier bone, a thicker neck and a shorter, broader head. The word "pony" derives from the old French "poulenet", meaning foal, a young, immature horse.


title: Pony

text: Small horses and ponies were traditionally used for riding, driving and as pack beasts. During the Industrial Revolution, particularly in Great Britain, many were used as pit ponies, hauling loads of coal in the mines. In the modern era they may be kept as children's mounts, for recreational or competitive riding or driving, or for cultural or conservation reasons.


title: Pony

text: Ponies are generally considered intelligent and friendly. They are sometimes also described as stubborn or cunning. Properly trained ponies are appropriate mounts for children who are learning to ride. Larger ponies can be ridden by adults, as ponies are usually strong for their size. In modern use, some organizations may define a pony as a mature horse below a certain height at the withers; this may vary from about to nearly . Some breeds classify an animal as either horse or pony from its pedigree and phenotype, no matter its height. A full-sized horse may sometimes be called a pony as a term of endearment.


title: Pony

text: For many forms of competition, the official definition of a pony is a horse that measures less than at the withers. Standard horses are 14.2 or taller. The International Federation for Equestrian Sports defines the official cutoff point at without shoes and with shoes, though allows a margin for competition measurement of up to without shoes, or with shoes. However, the term "pony" can be used in general (or affectionately) for any small horse, regardless of its actual size or breed. Furthermore, some horse breeds may have individuals who mature under that height but are still called "horses" and are allowed to compete as horses. In Australia, horses that measure from are known as a "galloway", and ponies in Australia measure under .


title: Pony

text: Ponies originally developed as a landrace adapted to a harsh natural environment, and were considered part of the "draft" subtype typical of Northern Europe. At one time, it was hypothesized that they may have descended from a wild "draft" subspecies of "Equus ferus." Studies of mitochondrial DNA (which is passed on though the female line) indicate that a large number of wild mares have contributed to modern domestic breeds; in contrast, studies of y-DNA (passed down the male line) suggest that there was possibly just one single male ancestor of all domesticated breeds. Domestication of the horse probably first occurred in the Eurasian steppes with horses of between to over , and as horse domestication spread, the male descendants of the original stallion went on to be bred with local wild mares.


title: Pony

text: Domesticated ponies of all breeds originally developed mainly from the need for a working animal that could fulfill specific local draft and transportation needs while surviving in harsh environments. The usefulness of the pony was noted by farmers who observed that a pony could outperform a draft horse on small farms.


title: Pony

text: By the 20th century, many pony breeds had Arabian and other blood added to make a more refined pony suitable for riding.


title: Pony

text: In many parts of the world ponies are used as working animals, as pack animals and for pulling various horse-drawn vehicles. They are seen in many different equestrian pursuits. Some breeds, such as the Hackney pony, are primarily used for driving, while other breeds, such as the Connemara pony and Australian Pony, are used primarily for riding. Others, such as the Welsh pony, are used for both riding and driving. There is no direct correlation between a horse's size and its inherent athletic ability.


title: Pony

text: Ponies are often distinguished by their phenotype, a stocky body, dense bone, round shape and well-sprung ribs. They have a short head, large eyes and small ears. In addition to being smaller than a horse, their legs are proportionately shorter. They have strong hooves and grow a heavier hair coat, seen in a thicker mane and tail as well as a particularly heavy winter coat.


title: Pony

text: Pony breeds have developed all over the world, particularly in cold and harsh climates where hardy, sturdy working animals were needed. They are remarkably strong for their size. Breeds such as the Connemara pony are recognized for their ability to carry a full-sized adult rider. Pound for pound ponies can pull and carry more weight than a horse. Draft-type ponies are able to pull loads significantly greater than their own weight, with larger ponies capable of pulling loads comparable to those pulled by full-sized draft horses, and even very small ponies are able to pull as much as 450 percent of their own weight.


title: Pony

text: Nearly all pony breeds are very hardy, easy keepers that share the ability to thrive on a more limited diet than that of a regular-sized horse, requiring half the hay for their weight as a horse, and often not needing grain at all. However, for the same reason, they are also more vulnerable to laminitis and Cushing's syndrome. They may also have problems with hyperlipemia.


title: Pony

text: Ponies are generally considered intelligent and friendly, though sometimes they also are described as stubborn or cunning. The differences of opinion often result from an individual pony's degree of proper training. Ponies trained by inexperienced individuals, or only ridden by beginners, can turn out to be spoiled because their riders typically lack the experience base to correct bad habits. Properly trained ponies are appropriate mounts for children who are learning to ride. Larger ponies can be ridden by adults, as ponies are usually strong for their size.


title: Pony

text: For showing purposes, ponies are often grouped into small, medium, and large sizes. Small ponies are and under, medium ponies are over 12.2 but no taller than , and large ponies are over but no taller than .


title: Pony

text: The smallest equines are called miniature horses by many of their breeders and breed organizations, rather than ponies, even though they stand smaller than small ponies, usually no taller than at the withers. However, there are also miniature pony breeds.


title: Pony

text: Some horse breeds are not defined as ponies, even when they have some animals that measure under . This is usually due to body build, traditional uses and overall physiology. Breeds that are considered horses regardless of height include the Arabian horse, American Quarter Horse and the Morgan horse, all of which have individual members both over and under .


title: Pony

text: Many horse breeds have some pony characteristics, such as small size, a heavy coat, a thick mane or heavy bone, but are considered to be horses. In cases such as these, there can be considerable debate over whether to call certain breeds "horses" or "ponies." However, individual breed registries usually are the arbiters of such debates, weighing the relative horse and pony characteristics of a breed. In some breeds, such as the Welsh pony, the horse-versus-pony controversy is resolved by creating separate divisions for consistently horse-sized animals, such as the "Section D" Welsh Cob.


title: Pony

text: Some horses may be pony height due to environment more than genetics. For example, the Chincoteague pony, a feral horse that lives on Assateague Island off the coast of Virginia, often matures to the height of an average small horse when raised from a foal under domesticated conditions.


title: Pony

text: Conversely, the term "pony" is occasionally used to describe horses of normal height. Horses used for polo are often called "polo ponies" regardless of height, even though they are often of Thoroughbred breeding and often well over . American Indian tribes also have the tradition of referring to their horses as "ponies," when speaking in English, even though many of the Mustang horses they used in the 19th century were close to or over , and most horses owned and bred by Native peoples today are of full horse height. Non-racing horses at racetracks that are used to lead the racehorses, ponying them, are called "pony horses".


title: Pony

text: The term "pony" is also sometimes used to describe a full-sized horse in a humorous or affectionate sense.


title: Pony

text: The United States Pony Club defines "pony" to be any mount that is ridden by a member regardless of its breed or size. Persons up to 25 years old are eligible for membership, and some of the members' "ponies" actually are full-size horses.


title: Lady

text: The word lady is a term for a girl or woman, with various connotations. Once used to describe only women of a high social class or status, the equivalent of lord, now it may refer to any adult woman, as gentleman can be used for men. Informal use is sometimes euphemistic ("lady of the night" for prostitute) or, in American slang, condescending in direct address (equivalent to "mister" or "man").


title: Lady

text: "Lady" is also a formal title in the United Kingdom. "Lady" is used before the family name of a woman with a title of nobility or honorary title "suo jure" (in her own right), or the wife of a lord, a baronet, Scottish feudal baron, laird, or a knight, and also before the first name of the daughter of a duke, marquess, or earl.


title: Lady

text: The word comes from Old English '; the first part of the word is a mutated form of ', "loaf, bread", also seen in the corresponding "", "lord". The second part is usually taken to be from the root "dig-", "to knead", seen also in dough; the sense development from bread-kneader, or bread-maker, or bread-shaper, to the ordinary meaning, though not clearly to be traced historically, may be illustrated by that of "lord".


title: Lady

text: The primary meaning of "mistress of a household" is now mostly obsolete, save for the term "landlady" and in set phrases such as "the lady of the house". This meaning is retained in the southern states of the United States. In some contexts "lady" is synonymous with the old-fashioned word "gentlewoman", meaning someone of high social status by birth and upbringing, but not necessarily titled. The term is also used in titles such as first lady and lady mayoress, the wives of elected or appointed officials.


title: Lady

text: In many European languages the equivalent term serves as a general form of address equivalent to the English "Mrs" (French ', Spanish ', Italian ', German ', Polish ', etc.). In those languages it is correct to address a woman whose name is unknown as ', "", etc., but in polite English usage "lady" has for centuries only normally been a term of address in the plural, which is also the case for "gentleman". The singular vocative use (i.e. to address someone directly) was once common but has become mostly confined to poetry. In some dialects it may still be used to address an unknown woman in a brusque manner, often in an imperative or interrogatory context, analogous to "mister" for an unknown male: e.g., "Hey, lady, you aren't allowed in here!" In this usage, the word "lady" is very seldom capitalized when written. The usual English term for politely addressing a woman is "madam" or its abbreviation "ma'am".


title: Lady

text: In English, relatively few job titles are un-gendered. Some names for jobs are gender-neutral, e.g. mail carrier (postal worker), but where there is a common word with a -man suffix, sometimes -lady may be used as an equivalent, e.g. postman and (sometimes) postlady. Using "lady" in professional job titles which had previously been male preserves fell out of favour with second-wave feminism (lady doctor, lady engineer, lady judge), though lady doctor is sometimes used by a healthcare receptionist when booking an appointment at a group practice health centre so that the situation is clear to the patient. It is still used in some other occupations, to give dignity and express respect to less skilled work such as tea ladies in offices and hospitals, lunch ladies (or dinner ladies) in school canteens, cleaning ladies in private homes and in business premises, and healthcare ladies for female healthcare assistants.


title: Lady

text: Both British and American commentators noted the shifting uses of "lady" in the mid-twentieth century. The American journalist William Allen White noted one of the difficulties in his 1946 autobiography. He relates that a woman who had paid a fine for prostitution came to his newspaper to protest, not against the fact that her conviction had been reported, but that the newspaper had referred to her as a "woman" rather than a "lady". After the incident, White assured his readers, his papers referred to human females as "women", with the exception of police court characters, who were all "ladies". The British historian Nancy Mitford wrote an influential essay in 1954, "U vs. non-U", in which she noted the class distinctions: lower class women strongly preferred to be called "ladies", while those from higher social backgrounds were content to be identified as "women". Commenting on the word in 1953, C. S. Lewis wrote that "the guard at Holloway said it was a "ladies"' prison!" The term "a bag lady" (vagabond) is a euphemism for a woman who has fallen on hard times; a "lady of the night" is a polite term for a prostitute.


title: Lady

text: In British English, "lady" is often, but not always, simply a courteous synonym for "woman". Public toilets are often distinguished by signs showing simply "Ladies" or "Gentlemen". "Lady" can have a formal and respectful quality, being used to describe an elderly woman as "an old lady" or when speaking about a woman to a child (e.g. "Give the money to the lady.") It remains in use as a counterpart to "gentleman", in the plural phrase "ladies and gentlemen", and is generally interchangeable (in a strictly informal sense) with "woman" (as in, "The lady at the store said I could return this item within thirty days"). However, some women, since the rise of second-wave feminism, have objected to the term used in contexts such as the last example, arguing that the term sounds patronising and outdated when used in this way; a man in the same context would not necessarily be referred to as a "gentleman". One feminist proponent of language reform, Robin Lakoff, in her book "Language and Woman's Place" (1975), notably raised the issue of the ways in which "lady" is not used as the counterpart of "gentleman". It is suggested by academic Elizabeth Reid Boyd that feminist usage of the word "lady" has been reclaimed in the 21st century.


title: Lady

text: Formally, "Lady" is the female counterpart to higher ranks in society, from gentlemen, through knights, to peers of the realm. During the Middle Ages, princesses or daughters of the blood royal were usually known by their first names with "Lady" prefixed, e.g. "The Lady Elizabeth"; since Old English and Middle English did not have a female equivalent to princes or earls or other royals or nobles. Aside from the queen, women of royal and noble status simply carried the title of "Lady".


title: Lady

text: As a title of nobility, the uses of "lady" in Britain are parallel to those of "lord". It is thus a less formal alternative to the full title giving the specific rank, of marchioness, countess, viscountess or baroness, whether as the title of the husband's rank by right or courtesy, or as the lady's title in her own right. A peeress's title is used with the definite article: Lord Morris's wife is "the Lady Morris". A widow's title derived from her husband becomes the dowager, e.g. "The Dowager Lady Smith".


title: Lady

text: The title "Lady" is also used for a woman who is the wife of a Scottish feudal baron or laird, the title "Lady" preceding the name of the barony or lairdship. In the case of younger sons of a duke or marquess, who have the courtesy title "Lord" prefixed to their given and family name, the wife is known by the husband's given and family name with "Lady" prefixed, e.g. "Lady John Smith". The daughters of dukes, marquesses and earls are by courtesy "ladies"; here, that title is prefixed to the given and family name of the lady, e.g. "Lady Jane Smith", and this is preserved if the lady marries a commoner, e.g. "Mr John and Lady Jane Smith". "Lady" is also the customary title of the wife of a baronet or knight, but in this case without Christian name: "Lady" with the surname of the husband only, "Sir John and Lady Smith". When a woman divorces a knight and he marries again, the new wife will be "Lady Smith" while the ex-wife becomes "Jane, Lady Smith".


title: Lady

text: Female members of the Order of the Garter and Order of the Thistle also receive the prefix of "Lady"; here that title is prefixed to the given and family name of the lady, e.g. "Lady Marion Fraser, LT", with the post nominal LG or LT respectively, and this is preserved if the lady marries.


title: Lady

text: The special use of the word as a title of the Virgin Mary, usually "Our Lady", represents the Latin "Domina Nostra". In Lady Day and Lady Chapel, the word is properly a genitive, representing "hlǣfdigan" "of the Lady".


title: Lady

text: Margaret Thatcher was informally referred to in the same way by many of her political colleagues when Prime Minister of Great Britain. Her husband was later created a baronet, thus making her "Lady Thatcher" as of right. After she retired, she was given a barony as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, and was thereafter known as "The Lady Thatcher".


title: Lady

text: Elsewhere in the Commonwealth, the word is used in a similar fashion to aristocratic usage in Britain. In Ghana, for example, the consort of the Asantehene of the Ashanti people is known as Lady Julia Osei Tutu. In Nigeria, the Yoruba aristocrats Kofoworola, Lady Ademola and Oyinkansola, Lady Abayomi made use of the title due to their being the wives of British knights.


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: Mike Birbiglia (; born June 20, 1978) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, storyteller, director, producer and writer. He is a frequent contributor to "This American Life" and "The Moth", and has released several comedy albums and television specials. His feature-length directorial debut "Sleepwalk with Me" (2012), based on his one-man show of the same name and in which he also starred, won awards at the Sundance and Nantucket film festivals. He also wrote, directed, and starred in the comedy-drama "Don't Think Twice" (2016). His 2010 book "Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories" was a "New York Times" bestseller and a finalist for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Birbiglia has appeared in films such as "Your Sister's Sister" (2011), "Cedar Rapids" (2011), and "Trainwreck" (2015), played a recurring role in "Orange Is the New Black", "Billions" and has guest starred in episodes of "Girls", "Inside Amy Schumer", and "Broad City". He also replaced Jimmy Kimmel on his talk show for a week, as Kimmel caught COVID-19.


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: Birbiglia was born in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Jean (née McKenzie), a nurse, and Vincent Paul Birbiglia, a doctor. He is the youngest of four children. He is partially of Italian descent and was raised Catholic. Birbiglia attended the all-boys Catholic school St. John's High School for one year, and graduated from St. Mark's School in 1996. He says seeing comedian Steven Wright perform inspired him to begin writing jokes at age 16. He subsequently attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 2000. During college he performed as a member of the Georgetown Players Improv Troupe, worked as a server in a comedy club, and began performing at DC Improv (The Improv) in Washington, D.C.


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: Birbiglia began doing improv in 1997. His sister was able to get him an interview on Conan O’Brien's show as an intern, where he worked for associate producer Jordan Schlansky. Birbiglia moved to New York in 2000, and appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman" in 2002. He told his first story on stage at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, in 2003, and eventually became a semi-regular contributor to "The Moth" storytelling series. He released his first album, "Dog Years", in 2004, followed by "My Secret Public Album, Volume 1a" (2005) a compilation of his appearances on "The Bob and Tom Show". His next two albums, "Two Drink Mike" (2006), and "My Secret Public Journal Live" (2007) were released on Comedy Central Records. "My Secret Public Journal Live" was named one of the best comedy albums of the decade by The A.V. Club


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: In 2008 CBS picked up a sitcom pilot loosely based on Birbiglia's life and featuring himself, Bob Odenkirk and Frances Conroy that ultimately never aired. He later called the failure of his pilot "the luckiest thing that ever happened to me."


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: In 2008, Birbiglia opened "Sleepwalk with Me", a one-man show that straddled standup comedy and theater, off-Broadway at the Bleecker Street Theater. The show was presented by Nathan Lane, and "The New York Times" called it "simply perfect". "Time Out New York" named it their "Show of the Year" in 2009.


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: Birbiglia adapted his material into the 2010 book "Sleepwalk with Me, and Other Painfully True Stories" and the 2011 album "Sleepwalk With Me Live". The book debuted at #29 on the hardcover nonfiction "New York Times Bestseller List" and number four on the hardcover nonfiction section of the "Washington Post" Political Bookworm Best Sellers. The book was also a finalist for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor. "Sleepwalk With Me Live" debuted at #1 on the "Billboard" Comedy Charts.


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: Birbiglia made his directorial debut with "Sleepwalk with Me", based on his one-man show and which he wrote, directed, and starred in. The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and won the NEXT Audience Award. It was selected in the "Festival Favorites" category at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas and also appeared in the Nantucket Film Festival where it won the award for best writer/director. The film was produced by Jacob Jaffke and "This American Life"'s Ira Glass and stars Birbiglia, Lauren Ambrose, Carol Kane, James Rebhorn, and Cristin Milioti and has cameos by Glass, Kristen Schaal, Wyatt Cenac, David Wain, Jessi Klein, John Lutz and Marc Maron. While hosting the 2012 Gotham Awards, Birbiglia roasted "I Heart Huckabees" director David O. Russell by reading a transcript of Russell's on-set argument with actress Lily Tomlin. The event, specifically the joke and what transpired after it, later formed a large part of Birbiglia's show, "Thank God for Jokes".


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: In addition to starring in "Sleepwalk with Me", Birbiglia has appeared in films such as "Trainwreck", "Going the Distance", "Cedar Rapids", "Your Sister's Sister" and "The Fault in Our Stars". He has also guest-starred in episodes of "Girls", "Inside Amy Schumer", and "Broad City". He played the role of Oscar Langstraat in the third and fifth seasons of Showtime's hit show "Billions" and Danny Pearson on the Netflix series "Orange Is the New Black" in its third and fourth seasons, with which he shared the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: In 2011, Birbiglia mounted his second one-man show, "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend", which ran for four months off-Broadway and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show. He toured "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend" around the world with tour dates in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. On June 2, 2013, Birbiglia performed it for the last time at Carnegie Hall. "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend" was featured as the number one stand-up special of 2013 by Vulture, "Paste", The Laugh Button and Laughspin. It was also named one of "Time Out New York"'s Best Comedy Specials of 2013. "Flavorwire" listed the special as one of the top 20 funniest stand-up specials of all time.


title: Mike Birbiglia

text: For his second film, Birbiglia drew upon his early experience with improv in "Don't Think Twice" (2016), which centers on a fictional Manhattan improv troupe. Birbligia also stars among an ensemble cast including Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, Kate Micucci, Tami Sagher, and Chris Gethard. The film was nominated for several awards, including the Critics' Choice Award for Best Comedy and St. Louis Film Critics Association award for Best Comedy.