Presentation of the book Anarcho-syndicalism in Germany. Affirmation, Rise and Decline (1892-1923), Malamente, 2024 by Hartmut Rübner, live from Germany.
With David Bernardini.
Following the event, from 8:30 pm, BOAB fundraising dinner.
Organized by Biblioteca Elio Xerri and Edizioni Malamente.
The text is the translation of a 2024 essay by Hartmut Rübner, one of the most active researchers on the libertarian currents of the workers’ movement in Germany. His writing, introduced by a preface from David Bernardini, allows us to understand the fundamental coordinates of the history of German anarcho-syndicalism up to the rise of Nazism. The anarchist movement has always been a minority in Germany, facing the most powerful social democratic party in the world, except for the brief revolutionary period between 1919 and 1922 when it managed to reach one hundred thousand members. However, its case is of interest because, in that social crucible that was the Weimar Republic, the Freie Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands (FAUD) represented an alternative to the authoritarianism of other political forces. For the anarcho-syndicalist FAUD, the radical transformation of society in a socialist and libertarian sense envisaged the management of the means of production by industrial federations, while the labor exchanges would organize consumption and take on the administrative functions of the state. The revolution thus became both the ultimate goal and something that could be shaped in the immediate present. The FAUD was at the same time a revolutionary union and a practical-educational center, combining direct action in workplaces with the formation of production and housing cooperatives, consumer associations, free schools, two publishing houses, and practices of mutual aid among women.