Did anarchists reject “the need for organisation in the shape of trade unions”?
Mitchinson now decides to “expose” anarchism: “In its early days, this modern anarchism found a certain support amongst the workers. However, through the course of struggle workers learned the need for organisation in the shape of the trade unions, and also for political organisation which led to the building of the mass workers parties.” To see the total nonsense of this claim we need only to turn to Marx. In his words, Bakunin thought that the “working class . . . must only organise themselves by trades-unions.” [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 48] Bakunin himself argued “the natural organisation of the masses . . . is organisation based on the various ways that their various types of work define their day-to-day life; it is organisation by trade association.” [The Basic Bakunin, p. 139] Kropotkin argued that the “union [syndicat] is absolutely necessary. It is the only form of workers’ grouping which permits the direct struggle to be maintained against
