Spain's storied CNT union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, the union that stopped the Fascists' coup attempt in Barcelona and Catalonia in 1936 Spain and initiated an Anarchist Revolution that established what George Orwell described as "a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism," has issued a statement in support of Madison workers along with some very interesting advice.
The CNT begins with their perspective on events in Wisconsin:
The National Committee of Confederación Nacional de Trabajo CNT, Spain would like to take this opportunity to greet the American workers who have taken a stand against aggressions to their rights as laborers and especially to their right to organize. We believe the workers' struggle has to take place in their own midst, not dictated from above by their bosses, not from the upper hemispheres by their governmental “representatives” and not from their union “leaders”. As Madison is showing, the workers' can defend themselves just fine, all by themselves, are not lacking in solidarity and know how to react when attacked.
The CNT was founded more than a century ago. In the decades since, it has both thrived to the point of becoming a revolutionary force, and survived times when severe repression threw many of its members in prison or sent them to their deaths. It has learned decentralized, "bottom up" organizing and solidarity unionism work best in the hard times and are most effective in preparing workers to be their own leaders when the time is ripe to overthrow the status quo.
The CNT goes on to explain its political philosophy:
As anarchosyndicalists we believe in that the workers need to join and fight together, pick their own battles, decide how to fight those battles and, ultimately, control their own jobs and work-places. Our revolutionary aims – the overthrow of capitalism and its faithful servant the state and the establishment of anarchy – do not prevent us from standing with and behind any grass-roots workers' struggle, anywhere in the world as and when they arise and we would like to do so now, with the public servants of Wisconsin who have rightly rejected Governor Walker's poorly veiled assault on the rights they earned through more than a 100 years of battles in the streets and in the shops.
(For one take on what anarchosyndicalism is, go here.)
Based on its long experience in fighting the kind of repression that Wisconsin workers are now experiencing, the CNT offers the following advice:
We hope that this battle succeeds in stopping the Governor's plans and that it rides the momentum to go one step further and ask for more, take more, take what is rightfully its own. To do that, you don't need leaders telling you what to do, not leaders in the big establishment unions, not leaders on the capitol. You just need each other, you need horizontal organization, mutual aid and self-management. The right to organize is the right to control over our own work and, fundamentally, the right to a free human society.
The CNT closes by affording the Wisconsin workers its highest tribute, a comparison to CNT martyr Buenaventura Durruti:
Buenventura Durruti said in 1936 that the workers weren't worried about “the ruins, because we're destined to inherit the earth and we carry a new world in our hearts...a world that is growing right now.”
All of our solidarity in your struggle to plant the seeds for that new world.
The workers in Tunisia and Tahrir Square helped to inspire Wisconsin's workers to stand up for themselves. Now workers in other parts of the world, struggling against the same forces, are finding cause for celebration and inspiration in what is taking place in Wisconsin.
Seeds for a new world are being planted all over.