Anarcho-syndicalism

Workers organise in unions independent of parties and the state, use direct action such as strikes and boycotts, and aim to run production themselves through federated workplace and regional bodies instead of owners and a state.

Rudolf Rocker's Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938) set out the doctrine: the union is "the embryo" of the new order, decisions rise from the base by federation, and political parties are rejected. The International Workingmen's Association was founded at a Berlin congress in December 1922–January 1923 to unite such unions.

• Spain: the CNT was founded in Barcelona in 1910. After the July 1936 military rising, CNT unionists collectivised many workplaces in Catalonia and elsewhere.
• In November 1936 four CNT leaders (Montseny, García Oliver, Peiró, López) joined Francisco Largo Caballero's government.
• Smaller anarcho-syndicalist unions persist, including the CNT in Spain and the SAC in Sweden.

The 1936 cabinet seats contradicted its anti-statism and divided the movement. Critics also point to the difficulty of coordinating a complex economy through federated unions, to tensions between rank-and-file democracy and union leadership, and to the movement's defeat in the Civil War.

It influenced workplace self-management and labour organising but has not sustained a stateless economy at scale; assessments of 1936–37 collectivisation differ.