International Workers Association

IWA/AIT

International Workers' Association
Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores
Founded	1922
Country	International
Affiliation	anarcho-syndicalism
Key people	Ratibor Trivunac (General Secretary)
Office location	TBA Belgrade, Serbia
Website	www.iwa-ait.org

The International Workers' Association (IWA) (Spanish: AIT - Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores, and in German: IAA-Internationale ArbeiterInnen Assoziation) is an international anarcho-syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different countries. It was founded as the International Workingmen's Association in 1922, at a Berlin congress of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions.

History

Previously, the same name was used to refer to the unitary socialist international organisation founded in 1864. But this first International was not able to withstand the differences between anarchist and Marxist currents, being dissolved some time later.

Signatories to the founding statement of the 1922 IWA included groups from Argentina, Chile, Germany, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. The single largest anarcho-syndicalist union at the time, the CNT in Spain, were unable to attend when their delegates were arrested on the way to the conference. Despite the CNT's absence, the international represented millions of workers in its inaugural year.

According to UK IWA affiliate Solidarity Federation: "Centralism, political parties, parliamentarism and the state, including the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, were all emphatically rejected. The congress also rejected the concept of economic determinism from some Marxists that liberation would come about; 'by virtue of some inevitable fatalism of rigid natural laws which admit no deviation; it's realisation will depend above all on the conscious will and the use of revolutionary action of the workers and will be determined by them.'" ^{(SelfEd Pages 188-189)}.

The IWA programme envisaged a system of economic communes and administrative groups, based within a system of federated free councils at local, regional, national and global levels forming the basis of a self-managed society based on pre-planning and mutual aid.

Following the first congress, other groups affiliated from France, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. Later, a bloc of unions in the USA, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Cuba, Costa Rica and El Salvador also shared the IWA's statutes.

Many of the largest members of the IWA were subsequently broken, driven underground or wiped out as Fascists came to power in states across Europe. Italian IWA union the USI had a membership of up to 600,000 people ^{(SelfEd Page 189)} but was destroyed after Mussolini came to power, while the German union FAU was destroyed by the Nazis. The CNT, which had millions of members in Spain, was driven underground by a victorious Francisco Franco.

The sixth IWA congress took place in 1936, shortly after the Spanish Revolution had begun, but it was not to meet again until after the war had finished, in 1951. During the war, only one member of the IWA had been able to continue to function as a revolutionary union, the SAC in Sweden. Afterwards, much of the Spanish CNT's active membership were split, some in exile in France and Britain, the rest driven underground, and in Italy previously active members of the USI had to start over. At the seventh congress, the IWA was relaunched, though it would not be until the eighth congress in 1953 that the CNT was accepted as a member again.

The IWA fell into decline again in the 1960s, following the withdrawal at the tenth congress in 1958 of the SAC after its failure to amend the international's statutes to allow it to stand in municipal elections.^[1] This left the IWA with no functioning unions.

In 1976, at the 15th congress, the IWA was not functioning as an international union, with only five member groups, two of which (the Spanish and Bulgarian members) were operating in exile ^{(SelfEd Page 306)}. But the 1980 congress showed much improvement, with ten sections and huge growth in the CNT, which was able to send delegates from Spain (as opposed to exiles) for the first time following the death of Franco. The reorganised USI and Norwegian sections, along with others from the UK, US, Germany and Australia, also joined.

The IWA grew throughout the 1980s and saw two new groups join from Japan and Brazil, and further growth was recorded in the 1990s, though splits and expulsions occurred in Spain and France, and the USA section also split.

IWA Today

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Organizations of the IWA are:

Western Europe

• AIT-Portugal
• Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT-E, Spain)
• Confédération nationale du travail (CNT-AIT, France)
• Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union (FAU, Germany)
• Norsk Syndikalistisk Forbund - Internasjonale Arbeider Assosiasjon (NSF-IAA, Norway)
• Solidarity Federation (SolFed, United Kingdom)
• Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI or USI-AIT, Italy)

Eastern Europe

• Anarho-sindikalisticka inicijativa (ASI-MUR, Serbia)
• Konfederatsiya Revolyutsionnikh Anarkho-Sindikalistov (KRAS, Russia)
• Federace anarchistických skupin (FSA, Czech republic)
• Priama Akcia (Slovakia)

South America

• Brazilian Working Confederation (FORGS-COB, Brazil)
• Federacion Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA, Argentina)
• Amigos de la AIT (Colombia) - Friend of the IWA
• Germinal (Chile) - Friend of the IWA

Africa

• Awareness League - IWA (Nigeria)

Australia

• Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation (Australia) - Friend of the IWA

The XXIII annual congress of the IWA was held in Manchester, UK from 8th-10th December 2006, and saw 14 members, Friends of the IWA and other guest associations from around the world send delegates. The 2008 Congress will be held in Brazil.

Other anarchist internationals

• International of Anarchist Federations (1968 - )
• Anarchist St. Imier International (1872 - 1877)
• Black Bridge International (2001 - 2004 )
• International Libertarian Solidarity (2001 - 2005)

See also

• List of trade unions

External links

• International Workers' Association
• Statutes of the IWA
• A history of the IWA from 1922 to today on libcom.org.
• Notes on the 2006 congress of the IWA

References

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