In December 2012, international anarchosyndicalism celebrates two anniversaries : the 90th anniversary of the rebuilding of the International Workers Association, and 170 years since the birth of the most prominent theorist of anarcho-communism, Peter Kropotkin. This coincidence of dates can be consideredsymbolic. Kropotkin was never a member of any revolutionary-syndicalist or anarcho-syndicalist organization, but he made a very important contribution to the creation of the anarcho-syndicalist International, and his ideas have had an enormous impact on its goals and principles.
Kropotkin was one of the first anarchist thinkers who launched a campaign for the restoration of the anti-authoritarian wing of the First International, and he led this campaign, even when most of the libertarian movement activists were carried away with so-called "propaganda of the deed." Kropotkin saw the basis for this reconstruction in the workers' unions. Back in the "Bulletin of Jura Federation", he repeatedly wrote about the labor movement and workers' unions, and in this period he tried to make contacts in trade union circles.In the newspaper "Le Révolte" he later published about 20 articles on the need to work in trade unions - at a time when these ideas did not yet have support from such anarchist activists and agitators, as JeanGrave, Errico Malatesta or Johann Most (1).
Kropotkin argued with much energy for the strengthening of trade unions and the inclusion of anarchists in their work. In 1900, in the newspaper "Freedom", he called for the convening of a universal "convention of labor", and in 1901 for the creation of "an international federation of trade unions of the Earth." He had great expectations caused by the radical metalworkers' strike in Barcelona in 1902 and by an upturn in the strike movement in Europe. These events led Kropotkin to propose the creation of an "International Union of Labor," and this idea he voiced through Anselmo Lorenzo in the newspaper "Tierra and Libertad" in September 1902. He raised the question of the organization of a working International, which would in general advocate socialist goals and the socialization of the economy, self-emancipation of the working people, and whose purpose was the preparation the strikes, the fight against the exploitation of female and child labor, the promotion of cooperation, and in the future, the development of plans of socialist expropriation of production (2). By the development of a more detailed program, the differences from the old International should be taken into account. Interestingly, in the next two issues of the newspaper, it publisher, Federico Urales, rejected this proposal, considering it a simplified retrospective.