News from France about Creation of New Syndicalist Organisation

international | workers issues | press release Tuesday November 20, 2012 19:52 by CNT Solidarité Ouvrière contact at cnt-so dot org

Creation of a new syndicalist organisation in France.

Address to militant CNT activists and sympathizers.

The CNT came into being in 1946 to fight against the Stalinien stronghold over the worker's movement. Upholding anarchy and revolutionary syndicalism, the CNT engaged to fight for the abolition of capitalism and the installation of libertarian communism. It's objective, past and present, remains the cohesion and organization of a proletarian majority which is considered being the only efficient way to exert pressure in the course of the struggle between classes and enables the CNT to attain the goal it had set at its foundation.

Unfortunately, the wild hopes of its beginnings rapidly came up against Reality. Extremist groupuscule activities, personal hatreds and rigid ideological viewpoints soon reduced the CNT to a near stand still. From the 50's on, CNT activity completely disappeared from the political and syndical scene. However, the ongoing assiduity of a handful of comrades maintained the CNT and gave it a new lease of life in 1968 which then flourished in the '90's. A new generation joined the older ones and the CNT made a new and thunderous entry into the arena of class struggles. Bosses, bureaucratic union leaders and professional politicians warily watched as the organization left the ghettos to become a real counterforce. What would happen, against all odds, if the CNT really became a mass organization if not capable of overthrowing the existing order at least capable of menacing it ?

Their fears were short-lived. The same problems that had undermined the CNT after 1946, reducing it to an insignificant sect, soon arose again. Extremist groupuscule activities, personal hatreds and rigid ideological viewpoints submerged the dream of the '90's. The CNT should never have ceased to be that which incited us all, both men and women, to join it ; the desire to build together an anti-authoritarian, revolutionary alternative…Today we are forced to admit that this project has been largely defiled.

Intimidation, diverse and varied forms of manipulation, systematic accusations (concerning the cleansing union of the RP), repeated lies, bureaucratic delirium(in the run for office), power snatching, inter-clan squabbling between power-hungry militant activists, physical and verbal violence of this same group stretching out into general public places and suspension of unions …has led to successive and numerous departures of valued activist/e/s. This is and has been the reality of the CNT for the last few years - a CNT walking on it's head. This has been the daily lot that has discouraged and revolted many comrades. A climate that has seized up all outside activity, reducing the organization's action and it's creativity. The CNT is on it's death-bed, no more than a dying sect.

In the light of this desperate situation, a certain number of unions, syndicalists, structures and militant activists have decided to react. We will not renounce that which forged our original engagement to the revolutionary movement, we agree to uphold the pleasure of battling together with both a sense of fraternity and of efficiency, to weigh in the course of class-struggles and to constitute a real menace against capital and the dominating class.

We pledge fidelity to the founding principles of the CNT, we will persue the work of anarcho - revolutionary syndicalism by re-founding our organization under the name of CNT Solidarité Ouvrière.

For us, the CNT should in no way be homogenous and centralized. We engage ourselves to find the necessary openness, sense of experimentation and capacity of innovation to remain in close contact with the realities of today's world.

We call on all unions, syndical bodies and militant activists to join us. All those of you today dispersed in different political and syndical organizations, all those wishing to break away from sectarian practices, all those wishing to unite together along the path of the anarcho-revolutionary syndicalsts.

Interim Confederate Office.