Syndicalism, Psychological Liberation, and the Reconstruction of Working-Class Self-Efficacy.
Introduction: From ideological conversion to collective self-emancipation
A syndicalist strategy for helping workers escape authoritarian belief systems must begin with a distinction between liberating people from coercive relationships and demanding that they adopt a supposedly liberating ideology. The distinction is fundamental. An organisation can proclaim its opposition to capitalism, hierarchy and religious authority while reproducing the same patterns of domination within its own ranks. Conversely, workers who hold religious beliefs, vote for conservative parties or have absorbed individualistic assumptions about economic life can participate in collective struggles that expand their practical freedom and challenge the power of employers.
The central question is therefore not simply how workers can be persuaded to abandon their existing beliefs. It is how they can develop the social relationships, practical competencies and collective confidence necessary to examine those beliefs independently, resist coercion and organise their lives without subordinating themselves to self-appointed authorities.
This is where syndicalism offers a distinctive approach.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) tradition, anarcho-syndicalism and contemporary class-struggle unionism place considerable emphasis on workers organising themselves around their common material interests. Rather than treating workers as an audience to be educated by a revolutionary leadership, syndicalism regards them as the agents of their own emancipation. Organisation is not simply a vehicle for implementing a programme developed elsewhere. Properly understood, it is a process through which workers acquire the practical ability to make collective decisions, challenge authority and manage their own affairs.
Rasmus Hästbacka’s article, We Need a United Class, Not a United Left, makes this distinction particularly clear. Writing about syndicalist organisation, Hästbacka argues that workers should be united through their shared position in production rather than required to subscribe to a predetermined package of political opinions. The purpose of a class union is to organise workers as workers, not to recruit them into an ideological community. Class Autonomy
The SE Queensland IWW essay Building a New Syndicalism in the Shell of the IWW similarly provides a framework for understanding organisation as a means of developing solidarity, collective agency and democratic social relations. The broader argument is that workers’ organisation should embody, as far as possible, the emancipatory relationships that a future society would require.
These principles have important implications for understanding authoritarian religious organisations, capitalist ideology and the psychological processes through which people become dependent on institutions that restrict their autonomy.
However, some distinctions are essential.
Religion is not inherently cultish, capitalism is not a cult in the literal organisational sense, and ideological agreement is not itself evidence of brainwashing. Religious communities vary enormously, from authoritarian organisations that punish dissent to voluntary associations that provide mutual aid and challenge oppression. Capitalism is an economic and social system that demands and enjoys a single-minded ideological hegemony, rather than a single organisation with a unified leadership. Its ideological influence frequently operates through ordinary institutions, material incentives and taken-for-granted assumptions as much as deliberate conspiracies against the common good.
Likewise, the term brainwashing is often used too loosely. Psychological research has not established a single mechanism capable of reliably overriding people’s independent judgement. Nevertheless, researchers have documented coercive persuasion, social isolation, conformity pressures, manipulation of information, and the use of fear, shame and dependency within high-control groups. These mechanisms can undermine a person’s confidence in their own judgement without eliminating their agency. Cambridge
The task is therefore not to construct a rival system of ideological control. It is to help people recover and strengthen their capacity for independent thought and collective action.
From a syndicalist perspective, that requires three connected processes:
- Exit: enabling people to question or leave coercive relationships without being subjected to further intimidation, humiliation or dependency.
- Reconstruction: helping them develop social connections, practical confidence and independent judgement outside the authority structure they are questioning.
- Collective self-activity: building organisations through which people experience, in practice, their ability to change the conditions governing their lives.
The third process is particularly important. People do not necessarily become independent simply because they have rejected one set of beliefs. If they continue to depend on an external authority to interpret reality, make decisions and determine acceptable opinions, the underlying relationship of subordination can survive the ideological transformation.
A genuinely emancipatory strategy must therefore go beyond changing what workers believe. It must change the relationships through which they acquire confidence, exercise judgement and participate in collective life.
1. Understanding the mechanisms of authoritarian attachment
1.1 Why people remain in organisations that restrict their freedom
A common mistake in discussions of cults is to assume that people remain in coercive groups because they are unintelligent, gullible or incapable of recognising contradictions. This explanation is inadequate, and it can become a justification for treating former members as if they need a new authority to think for them.
People enter and remain in high-control groups for many reasons. They may be seeking community, purpose, security, spiritual meaning, intellectual certainty or relief from loneliness. They may have been introduced to the group by people they trust. They may find that participation provides genuine emotional support, at least initially. Some have been raised within the group and have never experienced an alternative social environment.
These motivations are not inherently pathological. The problem emerges when a group’s capacity to satisfy legitimate human needs becomes conditional on obedience.
A person might initially join a religious organisation because it offers friendship and mutual assistance. Over time, however, the organisation might insist that members distrust outsiders, submit personal decisions to leaders, confess private doubts, restrict contact with former members or interpret criticism as evidence of spiritual corruption.
The social relationship changes. What began as a source of support becomes an institution that claims authority over the conditions under which support is available.
Similar dynamics can develop in political organisations. A revolutionary group might initially attract people through its opposition to exploitation, its account of social injustice and its promise of collective emancipation. Members might then discover that disagreement with the leadership is treated as betrayal, that outside relationships are discouraged, or that every organisational failure is blamed on insufficient ideological commitment.
In both cases, a person may gradually become dependent on the very organisation that is undermining their independence.
Research on leaving high-control groups identifies several relevant factors. A study by Rousselet and colleagues, based on interviews with former members, identified social insecurity following departure as a potential obstacle to leaving and external support as an important protective factor. The study was relatively small, so its findings should not be treated as universal laws, but it highlights a critical point: leaving a group is not merely an intellectual decision. It also involves the practical question of what kind of life becomes possible outside it. ScienceDirect
For syndicalists, this suggests a useful starting principle:
People are more likely to sustain their independence when they have access to relationships and institutions that do not require them to surrender their independence in exchange for belonging.
This principle has implications extending far beyond narrowly defined cults.
1.2 Love-bombing, conditional acceptance and the manufacture of belonging
Some high-control groups initially overwhelm newcomers with attention, encouragement and apparent unconditional acceptance. This pattern is often called love-bombing, although the term should not be applied indiscriminately to every enthusiastic welcome or close community.
The potential problem is the relationship between affection and compliance.
If a newcomer is treated as uniquely valuable while embracing the group’s beliefs, but becomes an object of suspicion after expressing doubt, acceptance becomes a means of control.
The person learns that belonging is conditional on agreement.
A political organisation can reproduce this dynamic without explicitly discussing affection. New members may be praised for demonstrating the correct revolutionary consciousness, adopting the group’s vocabulary or defending its leaders. They may be invited into increasingly exclusive social circles as their ideological conformity deepens.
Eventually, they may find that disagreeing with an established position risks not merely losing an argument but losing friendships, status and an entire social world.
This is especially significant when members have few relationships outside the organisation. Under those circumstances, disagreement carries a much higher psychological and social cost.
The syndicalist response should not be to withhold solidarity until workers become ideologically reliable. It should be to build relationships in which people can disagree, learn and change without being subjected to humiliation or social expulsion.
An effective union organiser does not need to manufacture dependency. They need to make cooperation worthwhile.
For example, workers who initially disagree about religion or politics might discover that they share concerns about unpredictable rosters, unsafe working conditions, low wages or unfair disciplinary procedures. A campaign around these issues can create a basis for trust that does not depend on resolving every disagreement beforehand.
The resulting solidarity is not superficial merely because it is practical. It is a relationship developed through shared experience.
Indeed, it can be more durable than solidarity founded exclusively on ideological identification because it is reinforced by demonstrated mutual support.
1.3 Isolation and the narrowing of social reality
A second important mechanism is the restriction of contact with alternative perspectives.
High-control groups may encourage members to distrust family, former friends, independent information sources or anyone who challenges the group’s teachings. They may reinterpret external criticism as persecution, thereby transforming evidence of wrongdoing into confirmation that the group is uniquely righteous.
Once this process becomes established, the group can become its own source of evidence.
Members learn that outsiders are ignorant or malicious. The leader’s interpretation becomes the approved explanation for why criticism exists. Evidence against the group is dismissed as propaganda, while evidence supporting it is treated as proof of its special insight.
The resulting worldview becomes difficult to challenge because the group controls not only its conclusions but also the criteria by which conclusions are judged.
Comparable dynamics can occur in closed political subcultures. A faction may treat its own publications and leaders as the only reliable sources of political analysis. External criticism is dismissed as hostile infiltration, while internal failures are explained through increasingly elaborate accounts of sabotage.
The distinction between legitimate caution and conspiratorial closure is crucial.
Organisations sometimes face genuine hostility, surveillance or interference. But the existence of external opposition does not establish that every internal critic is an agent of the opposition. A healthy organisation must retain the ability to distinguish evidence-based security concerns from explanations that immunise its leadership against accountability.
For syndicalists, the practical remedy is to preserve connections beyond the organisation.
Workers should be encouraged to maintain friendships, participate in community life, consult independent sources and cooperate with people who do not share their political outlook. Unions should build relationships with other workplace organisations rather than treating every external association as a threat to ideological purity.
The aim is not to eliminate a group’s distinctive identity. It is to prevent that identity from becoming a closed system in which the organisation monopolises its members’ access to information, relationships and meaning.
1.4 Fear, guilt and the punishment of doubt
Fear is another means by which high-control organisations can restrict independent judgement.
Religious groups may warn that leaving will result in spiritual catastrophe, permanent exclusion from the community or the loss of family relationships. Political groups may suggest that dissent will objectively assist reaction, sabotage the revolution or expose the dissenter as morally corrupt.
Not every warning about consequences is manipulative. Decisions really can have consequences, and political disagreements sometimes involve serious ethical questions.
The problem arises when fear is used to make certain questions psychologically unaskable.
A member who asks whether the leadership has acted dishonestly might be told that raising the question demonstrates disloyalty. Someone who questions a religious authority might be accused of arrogance or spiritual weakness. A worker who challenges a political faction might be informed that their criticism proves their lack of revolutionary consciousness.
The argument becomes circular: the act of questioning is treated as evidence that the questioner is wrong.
A syndicalist organisation must resist this tendency by establishing procedures through which members can question decisions without being presumed guilty of disloyalty.
This requires more than declaring a commitment to free discussion. It requires practical safeguards:
- Members must be able to raise concerns without facing personal retaliation.
- Leaders and delegates must be accountable for their conduct.
- Minority opinions must be allowed to circulate.
- Allegations must be assessed using evidence rather than factional reputation.
- Organisational decisions must be open to review.
- Members must be able to resign from positions or leave the organisation without being subjected to intimidation.
These safeguards protect people who disagree with the majority, but they also protect the organisation from its own tendency to rationalise mistakes.
When dissent is permitted, members can identify problems before they become entrenched. When dissent is punished, problems accumulate until they can be discussed only through a crisis.
1.5 Cognitive dissonance and the escalating cost of admission
The concept of cognitive dissonance, associated with psychologist Leon Festinger, helps explain why people sometimes defend beliefs that conflict with their experience.
When individuals invest substantial time, money, emotional energy and social identity in an organisation, evidence that the organisation is harmful can threaten more than a particular belief. It can call into question the meaning of years of personal commitment.
A person might ask: If the organisation has deceived me, what does that say about my judgement? What happens to my friendships? Have I harmed other people by defending it? What would I do if I no longer believed in the cause that has organised my life?
These questions can make acknowledging a contradiction emotionally difficult.
One possible response is to reconsider the belief. Another is to reinterpret the evidence so that the original belief can survive.
If a political organisation repeatedly fails to achieve its stated objectives, members might investigate whether its strategy is mistaken. Alternatively, they might conclude that the strategy is correct but that members have been insufficiently disciplined, insufficiently educated or insufficiently loyal.
The second explanation can generate an escalating cycle. Every failure becomes a reason for greater conformity, and greater conformity makes it harder to investigate the original failure.
The organisation becomes increasingly dependent on the very explanation that prevents it from learning.
The syndicalist remedy is to make organisational learning a collective responsibility rather than a test of personal virtue.
A failed campaign should prompt questions about the strategy, resources, workplace relationships, decision-making process and assumptions that informed the campaign. It should not automatically become a referendum on whether members possess the correct consciousness.
Workers need to be able to say, “We tried this, it failed, and we need to understand why,” without fearing that such honesty will be interpreted as ideological weakness.
The capacity to admit error is not a concession to the enemy. It is a precondition for collective intelligence.
1.6 Why the language of brainwashing must be used carefully
The word brainwashing can communicate the seriousness of coercive influence, but it can also obscure how people actually become dependent on authoritarian organisations.
It may suggest that a mysterious force has replaced a person’s mind with somebody else’s. This portrayal risks treating people who have experienced coercion as passive objects rather than individuals who have made decisions under difficult circumstances.
The clinical literature is more cautious. A recent chapter in A Clinical and Forensic Guide to Cults and Persuasive Leadership discusses coercive persuasion and the psychological difficulties associated with authoritarian group involvement, while also noting that claims about mind control have not established a single scientifically validated mechanism that overrides individual agency. The evidence supports examining specific patterns of manipulation, social pressure and control rather than assuming that all high-demand groups operate identically. Cambridge
This distinction matters politically.
If people are portrayed as brainwashed, an aspiring revolutionary leadership can claim that it must act on their behalf until they acquire the correct consciousness.
That argument can reproduce the paternalism it supposedly opposes.
A better approach is to identify the actual barriers to independent action. Does a person lack alternative social relationships? Are they afraid of losing their livelihood? Are they financially dependent on a religious community? Have they been punished for questioning authority? Do they lack experience participating in democratic decision-making? Are they uncertain about how to challenge an employer or organise with colleagues?
These questions identify conditions that can be changed.
Rather than treating people as victims of an invisible power residing inside their minds, a syndicalist approach examines the social relationships through which their confidence and choices are constrained.
The objective is to increase their options, not to replace their judgement.
2. The social and material conditions of leaving
2.1 Why an exit strategy needs somewhere to go
A person can recognise that an organisation is harmful and still find leaving extremely difficult.
They might depend on it for housing, employment, childcare, friendship, financial assistance or a sense of purpose. They may fear losing relationships with people they love. They might have no confidence that they can establish a viable life outside the group.
In these circumstances, telling someone simply to leave can be both ineffective and insensitive.
It treats departure as an act of will while overlooking the material conditions that make departure possible.
Research on cult membership and departure has identified social precarity and the availability of outside support as relevant considerations. The important implication is not that all departures follow a single pattern, but that rebuilding social and practical support can reduce the barriers to leaving. ScienceDirect
This is where a syndicalist organisation can offer something distinctive.
A functioning union is not merely a forum for exchanging political opinions. It can become a network through which workers develop relationships of mutual assistance, learn about their rights, defend one another against workplace retaliation and participate in decisions affecting their lives.
A worker who has spent years in a restrictive religious community might find it easier to question that community when they have developed independent friendships and a stronger sense of their own capabilities.
A worker who has been immersed in an authoritarian political group might find it easier to reject its demands when they have discovered that collective action does not require submission to a charismatic leader.
The union does not need to make leaving a religious or political organisation a condition of participation. Its value lies in providing an alternative basis for solidarity.
The distinction is important: the union should increase the worker’s freedom to choose, rather than make that freedom conditional on choosing the union’s preferred worldview.
2.2 Practical independence before ideological agreement
Consider a worker who belongs to a conservative religious community and believes that trade unions are unnecessary or politically suspect.
An organiser could begin by arguing about religion, capitalism, class consciousness and the historical failures of religious institutions.
Some of those discussions might eventually prove useful. But beginning with them risks making union membership appear to require the worker to renounce an important part of their identity.
An alternative is to begin with the worker’s actual circumstances.
Are their shifts changed without notice? Are they being denied breaks? Is the employer withholding wages? Are casual employees afraid to report unsafe conditions? Are workers being pressured to compete for hours?
These are questions that can be investigated together.
Suppose several workers agree that their rosters are unfair. They discuss the problem, gather information, identify what they want changed and develop a collective proposal. They consult relevant workplace rules, agree on how to communicate with management and decide who will present their concerns.
Perhaps the employer initially ignores them. The workers then decide how to escalate their campaign, drawing on advice and support from others.
Even if the immediate result is modest, participants may learn something important: a problem they had experienced as a private failure can be addressed through collective action.
They have not necessarily abandoned their religious beliefs. They have discovered a practical basis for acting independently of an authority that previously seemed beyond challenge.
The same process can occur among workers influenced by capitalist individualism.
Someone who believes that economic success depends entirely on individual effort may initially interpret workplace difficulties as evidence of personal inadequacy. Collective organising can help them recognise how staffing levels, managerial decisions, insecure employment and unequal bargaining power shape individual outcomes.
The lesson is not simply that capitalism is unjust. It is that workers possess capacities that become visible when they act together.
The experience itself provides material for subsequent reflection.
2.3 Solidarity as an alternative to dependency
There is a difference between depending on other people in the ordinary sense of mutual interdependence and being dependent on an authority that can withdraw support to enforce obedience.
Human beings need other people. Syndicalism does not seek to produce isolated individuals who have no obligations to anyone. It seeks to organise interdependence on more equal and democratic terms.
Under authoritarian conditions, support may flow downward from a leader who retains the power to decide who deserves it. In a solidaristic organisation, members contribute to collective capacities that they can also help direct and access.
This distinction can be seen in the difference between charity administered at the discretion of a superior and mutual aid organised through reciprocal relationships.
Charity is not necessarily authoritarian, and mutual aid is not automatically egalitarian. The relevant question is how decisions are made, whether recipients retain their autonomy, and whether assistance creates obligations of obedience.
A syndicalist organisation should therefore avoid turning solidarity into a reward for ideological conformity.
Workers should not have to demonstrate sufficient revolutionary enthusiasm before receiving help with a workplace grievance. They should not have to share an organiser’s religious or philosophical convictions before being treated as comrades. Nor should people be pressured to disclose personal experiences of coercion to prove that they deserve support.
Mutual assistance becomes emancipatory when it increases people’s ability to make decisions and act independently.
The organisation’s success should be measured partly by whether members become more capable of doing without individual patrons, charismatic figures and permanent intermediaries.
2.4 Respecting religious workers without surrendering criticism of religious authority
A syndicalist strategy for challenging authoritarian religion must distinguish between religious belief, religious community and institutional domination.
These are not interchangeable.
A worker may find meaning in religious practice while opposing clerical control. A congregation may provide food, companionship and assistance to people neglected by public institutions. Religious traditions have also inspired movements against slavery, colonial domination, dictatorship and economic exploitation.
Other religious institutions have defended class hierarchy, patriarchal authority, persecution and political repression.
The appropriate response is not to classify every religious worker as a victim who must be liberated by secular radicals. Nor is it to treat all religious institutions as benign.
It is to ask specific questions about power.
Can members question religious leaders? Are people free to leave? Are dissenters subjected to threats or humiliation? Are personal decisions controlled through fear? Are resources administered transparently? Does the community respect the independence of its members?
These questions can be asked without assuming that every religious belief is irrational or that every religious community is coercive.
They also help identify the practical point at which a union should intervene.
If a religious institution acts as an employer, workers should be able to organise around wages, safety, discrimination and workplace democracy. If a religious authority pressures workers to abandon collective action, the union can challenge that pressure through discussion and solidarity. If members experience coercion within their private lives, they should be able to access appropriate support without having their experiences reduced to a political argument.
The aim is not to make atheism a membership requirement. It is to establish that religious authority, like every other form of authority, should not be exempt from scrutiny.
3. Capitalist brainwashing: How an economic system reproduces its own authority
3.1 From individual beliefs to social reproduction
The expression capitalist brainwashing is most useful when it describes the everyday social processes through which people learn to regard existing economic relationships as natural, inevitable or morally deserved.
Capitalism does not require a central organisation to instruct everyone in its preferred ideology. Its assumptions are reproduced through workplaces, schools, advertising, popular culture, family expectations, political institutions and the practical consequences of economic dependency.
A worker learns that their income depends on employment. They may also learn that unemployment signifies personal failure, that competition is the natural basis of social life, that managers possess superior judgement, and that economic inequality reflects differences in individual merit.
These beliefs do not all originate in deliberate propaganda. Some arise from people’s direct experiences, while others are encouraged by institutions that benefit from them.
The crucial question is how such assumptions become sufficiently entrenched that workers have difficulty imagining alternatives.
Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism provides one starting point. In Capital, social relationships between people appear through the relationships between commodities. Economic arrangements created through human activity acquire an apparently independent existence, as though they were governed by natural forces beyond human control.
Workers encounter prices, wages, competition and market demands as objective constraints. They may recognise that a particular employer behaves badly while regarding the economic system that empowers employers as unavoidable.
This creates a distinction between recognising individual injustice and understanding the social relationships that reproduce it.
A worker might believe that their employer is greedy but still regard wage labour as the only realistic way of organising production. Another might resent their insecure employment while accepting that people who cannot compete successfully deserve their position.
Capitalist ideology is reproduced not merely when people praise capitalism, but when the social arrangements of capitalism become the unquestioned boundaries of what they consider possible.
However, the concept should not imply that workers are simply passive recipients of ideological manipulation. People regularly resist workplace discipline, share knowledge, cooperate informally and develop practical criticisms of their conditions.
Indeed, these activities provide the starting point for syndicalist organising.
The question is how to transform dispersed acts of resistance into collective capacities that can challenge the institutions producing the problems.
3.2 Competition and the privatisation of failure
One of capitalism’s most persistent ideological effects is the tendency to interpret collective problems as individual failures.
Workers are encouraged to compete for jobs, promotions, desirable shifts and recognition. They may be assessed through individual performance targets even when their work depends on cooperation.
Under these circumstances, a staffing problem can be interpreted as a failure of personal time management. Inadequate wages can become evidence that a worker has failed to develop the right skills. Exhaustion can be understood as a weakness of individual resilience rather than a consequence of excessive demands.
This interpretation is reinforced by the cultural ideal of the self-sufficient individual.
The ideal suggests that successful people are responsible for their achievements and unsuccessful people are responsible for their difficulties. It obscures the extent to which outcomes depend on bargaining power, inherited resources, social connections and institutional arrangements.
A syndicalist strategy challenges this individualisation by helping workers investigate the common conditions shaping their experiences.
Suppose several employees believe that they cannot manage their workloads because they are insufficiently organised. Through collective discussion, they discover that everyone has been assigned more work than can reasonably be completed during paid hours.
The problem changes character.
What initially appeared to be a series of individual inadequacies becomes a collective issue concerning staffing, workload allocation and managerial decisions.
This transformation is significant because it creates a basis for action.
Workers can compare experiences, identify patterns, develop demands and coordinate their responses. Instead of each person privately attempting to adapt to an unreasonable situation, they can collectively challenge the conditions producing it.
This is a practical form of ideological criticism.
It does not begin by demanding that workers adopt an abstract theory of capitalism. It begins by examining the relationship between their experiences and the organisation of their working lives.
3.3 The workplace as a school of collective independence
The SE Queensland IWW essay Building a New Syndicalism in the Shell of the IWW argues that revolutionary organisation should develop workers’ confidence to act on their own behalf rather than treating them as an audience requiring ideological instruction. It emphasises listening, relationships of trust, achievable collective action and the development of self-efficacy. SE Qld IWW
This approach is consistent with the syndicalist idea of the union as a school of revolutionary gymnastics: an institution in which workers develop their capacities through participation in struggle.
The metaphor is important.
A person does not become capable of collective action merely by reading about its importance. They develop that capability by practising it, learning from mistakes and discovering how their actions relate to those of others.
Consider a workplace where management regularly changes rosters without consulting employees.
Initially, individual workers complain privately. Some attempt to negotiate exceptions for themselves. Others assume that nothing can be done.
A syndicalist organiser listens to these complaints and helps workers identify their common interests.
The workers might begin by documenting roster changes and discussing their effects. They then decide what minimum notice they require, who should communicate their position and how they will respond if management refuses.
The campaign may succeed immediately, achieve only partial concessions or fail.
Each outcome can produce useful knowledge.
Success demonstrates that collective pressure can change workplace decisions. Partial success reveals both the possibilities and limitations of the workers’ organisation. Failure can expose weaknesses in communication, participation, timing or strategy.
The essential point is that workers learn through a process in which they are participants rather than spectators.
Their confidence grows because they have acquired evidence of their own capacities.
This is more substantial than simply being told that the working class has revolutionary potential.
3.4 Why revolutionary propaganda cannot substitute for organisation
Political education matters. Workers need opportunities to investigate the history of capitalism, understand class relations and examine competing strategies for social change.
But education becomes counterproductive when it is detached from workers’ practical experience or organised as a test of ideological loyalty.
A political group might deliver sophisticated lectures about exploitation while leaving members uncertain about how to talk to a colleague, organise a meeting, challenge a manager or resolve a disagreement.
The organisation may possess an elaborate theory of emancipation while reproducing dependency among its own members.
This contradiction arises when knowledge is treated as the property of a specialist leadership rather than a resource that members can collectively develop and use.
A syndicalist approach should connect political education to concrete questions:
- How does managerial authority operate in this workplace?
- Why are workers encouraged to compete with one another?
- Which decisions are made collectively, and which are imposed from above?
- How do workers’ contributions sustain the organisation?
- What would it take for workers to manage these activities themselves?
- Which strategies have succeeded elsewhere, and what can be learned from their failures?
These questions make political education investigative rather than catechetical.
The organiser is not simply transmitting answers. They are helping workers develop the capacity to ask better questions, examine evidence and draw conclusions together.
The distinction is between learning a doctrine and developing the ability to analyse social relations independently.
An organisation committed to self-emancipation should welcome the latter even when it leads members to challenge some of the organisation’s own assumptions.
4. Why syndicalism prioritises class solidarity over ideological conformity
4.1 The difference between a class organisation and an ideological organisation
A syndicalist union and a revolutionary political party can both oppose capitalism while having fundamentally different organisational purposes.
A political party typically seeks to assemble people around a programme, political analysis or shared ideological commitments. Its internal debates concern which programme to adopt and how to implement it.
A class union, by contrast, begins from the common interests of people whose working lives are shaped by their subordinate position in the production of goods and services.
Its purpose is to organise those interests into collective power.
This distinction does not mean that a syndicalist union lacks political principles. A union can defend workplace democracy, solidarity, anti-racism, feminism and independence from employers while remaining open to members who disagree about religion, electoral politics or competing theories of socialism.
The crucial distinction is between shared commitments necessary for collective organisation and comprehensive agreement about how the world should be interpreted.
Hästbacka’s We Need a United Class, Not a United Left argues that syndicalist unions should unite workers around their common interests rather than require them to identify with the political left or subscribe to a particular collection of opinions. He distinguishes class organisations from political organisations that recruit people on the basis of shared ideological commitments. Class Autonomy
This has direct implications for helping workers escape authoritarian belief systems.
If union membership depends on renouncing religious beliefs, accepting a particular Marxist interpretation of history or adopting the political line of a dominant faction, the union risks reproducing the conditional belonging characteristic of high-control organisations.
Workers may conclude that they can participate only after passing an ideological examination.
Those who are already convinced of the organisation’s doctrine will feel at home. Those who are uncertain may conceal their doubts. Those who disagree may leave before discovering whether collective organisation can improve their lives.
The result is a self-selecting political community rather than a broad class organisation.
The problem is not that ideological communities have no legitimate purpose. People may reasonably establish study groups, political associations or affinity groups based on shared commitments.
The problem arises when such groups attempt to substitute themselves for organisations capable of uniting workers across political differences.
4.2 Why the united class is not the same as a united left
The distinction between a united class and a united left is more than a disagreement about political terminology.
It concerns the social basis of organisation.
A project to unite the left attempts to assemble people who identify with a particular political tradition or consider themselves part of a common ideological movement.
A project to unite the class attempts to develop common interests and collective capacities among workers whose opinions may differ considerably.
The first approach risks making ideological identification the starting point of solidarity. The second makes solidarity a process through which people can develop their capacity for collective action.
A union campaign against wage theft can involve workers who support different political parties, attend different religious institutions or reject socialism altogether.
They do not need to settle those differences before organising against the employer.
Through the campaign, they may develop a stronger understanding of their common interests. They may also revise some of their assumptions about management, economic competition and the possibilities of collective action.
But these changes should emerge through participation and reflection rather than being imposed as conditions of belonging.
Hästbacka’s argument is that the class organisation must be open to workers generally, not restricted to those who already identify with the left. The union’s democratic principles and obligations of solidarity still matter, but members do not need to share every political opinion. Class Autonomy
This is particularly important when the objective is to help people escape authoritarian systems of belief.
A union that requires prior ideological conversion may inadvertently reinforce the assumption that collective life must be organised around a body of authoritative doctrine.
A union that demonstrates the possibility of cooperation across disagreement offers a different experience.
It allows people to discover that common action need not depend on comprehensive agreement.
4.3 Trotskyist party lines and the danger of political tutelage
Trotskyist organisations are diverse, and it would be inaccurate to assume that every Trotskyist group operates as a coercive or cult-like organisation.
There is nevertheless a recognisable organisational problem wherever a political leadership claims a privileged understanding of historical necessity and treats its interpretation as binding on members and allied organisations.
In some vanguardist traditions, the working class is understood to possess an incomplete or inadequate political consciousness that must be developed under the guidance of a revolutionary party.
This argument has a long history in Marxist debates about political organisation. Its implications depend on how it is interpreted and institutionalised.
There is an important difference between arguing that political education and organised strategy can help workers understand the conditions they face, and arguing that workers’ independent judgement must remain subordinate to a leadership that claims superior knowledge.
The first proposition can support democratic organisation. The second can establish a relationship of political tutelage.
The problem becomes especially serious when a party expects workplace organisations to subordinate their activities to party priorities.
Imagine a group of workers who have organised themselves around a particular workplace grievance. They have developed relationships of trust, identified a demand and begun building collective support.
An external political organisation intervenes and insists that the campaign should be subordinated to a broader political strategy, even though the workers themselves have not agreed to that strategy.
The party might argue that it understands the wider political situation better than the workers do.
But even if its analysis contains useful insights, it does not follow that the party should acquire authority over the workers’ organisation.
The workers are the people who must sustain the campaign. They possess practical knowledge of the workplace, bear the immediate consequences of decisions and have a legitimate claim to determine their collective priorities.
A syndicalist approach would invite the political organisation to contribute analysis, experience and assistance without granting it an automatic right to command.
This is not an argument against coordination or strategic planning. Large-scale struggles require both.
It is an argument that coordination should be organised through accountable procedures rather than the presumption that an external leadership possesses an inherent right to direct the class.
4.4 The psychological attraction of the vanguard
Why might workers or activists accept an organisation that claims the right to interpret political reality on their behalf?
There is no single answer, but several possible attractions are worth considering.
First, a comprehensive doctrine can reduce uncertainty. Social and political problems are complicated, and an organisation that offers a unified explanation may provide an appealing sense of clarity.
Second, a disciplined political community can provide belonging and purpose. Members may feel that they are participating in a historically significant project.
Third, deference to experienced activists can appear efficient. When people lack organising experience, it is tempting to rely on those who seem more knowledgeable.
None of these motivations is inherently pathological.
The problem emerges when legitimate expertise becomes an entitlement to unaccountable authority.
An experienced organiser can offer valuable advice without acquiring the right to decide everything. A political theory can illuminate social relationships without becoming immune to criticism. A shared commitment can sustain collective action without requiring members to suppress their independent judgement.
Vanguardism becomes especially problematic when members are encouraged to interpret their own doubts as evidence of political inadequacy.
Under those conditions, the organisation may reproduce the psychological structure it claims to oppose: an authority defines reality, members are expected to defer, and disagreement becomes a test of loyalty.
The danger is not simply that the leadership might be wrong.
It is that the organisation can lose the capacity to discover that it is wrong.
4.5 Ideological purity and the manufacture of internal enemies
Organisations that prioritise ideological purity can develop a tendency to interpret disagreement as evidence of disloyalty or contamination.
A member who questions a strategic decision may be accused of insufficient commitment. Someone who challenges the leadership’s conduct may be portrayed as assisting hostile forces. A disagreement over priorities can escalate into a struggle over who belongs to the morally legitimate community.
Sometimes serious misconduct does require investigation and disciplinary action. A democratic organisation must be able to address harassment, discrimination, intimidation and abuse.
The danger lies in turning every disagreement into a moral emergency.
When organisational disputes are resolved through accusations rather than evidence, members learn to protect themselves by demonstrating their loyalty. Public denunciations can become more valuable than practical contributions. Leaders may gain authority by presenting themselves as defenders of organisational purity.
This creates opportunities for informal hierarchy.
People who control the language of legitimacy can influence who is trusted, who is heard and who is permitted to participate. Their authority may exceed their formal responsibilities because members become reluctant to challenge those who determine whether they are regarded as politically reliable.
The organisation may retain democratic procedures on paper while developing a culture in which disagreement carries disproportionate social costs.
The SE Queensland IWW essay warns against organisational cultures dominated by ideological factionalism, internal purges and performative moralising. Its argument is that such practices can undermine trust, deepen insularity and displace the work of building collective capacities. SE Qld IWW
A syndicalist response should not be indifference to harmful conduct. It should be the development of fair, transparent and accountable procedures that distinguish genuine misconduct from ordinary political disagreement.
Solidarity requires both the protection of members from abuse and the protection of democratic discussion from arbitrary punishment.
5. Worker self-efficacy as an antidote to authoritarian dependency
5.1 What self-efficacy means
Psychologist Albert Bandura developed the concept of self-efficacy to describe people’s beliefs about their capacity to perform particular actions and achieve particular outcomes.
Self-efficacy is not identical to self-esteem, optimism or general confidence. It concerns the judgement that one can carry out the actions required to meet a challenge.
A worker might believe that management is behaving unfairly while doubting their ability to do anything about it. They may be convinced that collective action is necessary but assume that organising a meeting, speaking to colleagues or making a demand is beyond their competence.
This gap between recognising a problem and believing that one can act on it is politically important.
People can possess sophisticated criticisms of society while remaining practically dependent on institutions they dislike.
They might understand that employers benefit from unequal bargaining power yet feel unable to challenge their own employer. They might criticise authoritarian leadership while assuming that their organisation cannot function without a dominant personality.
The challenge is to develop confidence grounded in experience rather than merely encouraging people to feel more confident.
Bandura’s work identifies mastery experiences—experiences of successfully performing an activity—as an important source of self-efficacy. In a syndicalist context, this suggests that workers develop confidence by participating in achievable collective tasks, learning from their results and gradually taking on more demanding responsibilities.
The important qualification is that success cannot always be guaranteed. Organising involves setbacks, and people can develop confidence through understanding failures as well as achieving immediate victories.
The aim is to establish a realistic belief that action is possible and that skills can be developed.
5.2 Small victories and expanding capacities
Suppose a worker has never organised a meeting or challenged a managerial decision.
Asking that person to lead a major industrial dispute immediately may be unrealistic. Expecting them to remain permanently dependent on an experienced organiser would be equally undesirable.
A better approach is to provide opportunities for gradual participation.
They might begin by discussing an issue with one colleague. They could then help gather information, contribute to a meeting, assist with a written proposal or take responsibility for communicating an agreed decision.
As their experience grows, they can develop more complex skills.
They learn how to listen, assess competing accounts, distinguish a personal disagreement from a collective problem and coordinate activities with others.
These experiences can change how they understand themselves.
The worker is no longer merely someone who experiences workplace decisions as an external force. They become someone who can help shape those decisions.
This transformation has implications for authoritarian dependency.
People who have learned to act collectively may become less inclined to assume that an external authority must always solve their problems. They have practical evidence that they can organise, make decisions and respond to difficulties.
This does not mean that they will reject every form of leadership or expertise. Rather, they gain a stronger basis for deciding when expertise is useful, when delegation is appropriate and when authority needs to be challenged.
5.3 Why collective efficacy matters as much as individual confidence
Syndicalism should not reduce self-efficacy to a programme of personal empowerment.
The point is not to produce more assertive individuals who can compete successfully within the existing system.
The goal is to develop the capacity of people to act together.
Collective efficacy concerns a group’s belief in its ability to coordinate action and achieve shared objectives.
A worker may feel personally confident but still lack the ability to organise with colleagues. Conversely, a group may possess substantial practical resources but remain paralysed because its members do not believe that others will support them.
Collective action can change these expectations.
Workers discover who is willing to contribute, how disagreements can be resolved and what kinds of commitments they can reasonably make to one another.
They develop knowledge of their shared strengths and limitations.
This knowledge becomes a practical resource.
An organisation that has successfully coordinated a small campaign may be better positioned to undertake a larger one, not because its members have memorised a more radical doctrine, but because they have acquired experience in cooperation.
That experience can also make political education more effective.
When workers have participated in collective action, discussions about class power and workplace democracy become connected to situations they understand directly.
The union becomes a setting in which theory and practice can inform one another.
5.4 The difference between self-efficacy and obedience
An authoritarian organisation may also encourage members to feel capable and confident.
The question is: capable of doing what, and under whose direction?
A political cadre may become highly effective at recruiting members, defending leadership decisions and implementing a party line. Yet if its members cannot independently question the strategy, initiate activities or revise organisational priorities, their competence remains subordinate to an external authority.
They have learned to execute instructions rather than to exercise collective self-government.
A syndicalist organisation should develop a different set of capacities.
Members need to be able to:
- Identify problems without waiting for permission.
- Initiate discussions and propose solutions.
- Organise colleagues around shared interests.
- Evaluate advice critically.
- Participate in democratic decisions.
- Challenge the conduct of delegates and organisers.
- Learn from mistakes without treating failure as personal disgrace.
- Transfer skills to other members rather than monopolising expertise.
These capacities are not acquired automatically. They require an organisational culture that makes participation meaningful.
If every important decision is made informally by experienced activists, newcomers will have little opportunity to develop their own judgement. If meetings are dominated by people with the most time, confidence or theoretical knowledge, the organisation may reproduce inequalities among its members.
Self-efficacy therefore requires institutional support.
It is not enough to tell workers that they are capable of self-management. They must have genuine opportunities to practise it.
6. Informal hierarchy: How bureaucracy grows inside emancipatory organisations
6.1 Bureaucracy begins before it becomes an official structure
Bureaucracy is often imagined as a problem of formal offices, permanent officials and elaborate administrative procedures.
Those features can certainly contribute to bureaucratic domination, but informal hierarchy can emerge long before an organisation acquires a substantial administrative apparatus.
Some members possess more experience than others. Some are more articulate, have more free time or enjoy greater social confidence. Others may control access to information, maintain important external relationships or become trusted interpreters of organisational disputes.
These differences are not inherently oppressive. Every organisation needs people with different skills, and experience can be extremely valuable.
The problem arises when differences in capacity become durable differences in power.
An experienced organiser may gradually become the person who decides which issues deserve attention. A delegate may become the only member who understands the union’s procedures. A politically confident activist may acquire the authority to determine which interpretations of events are considered legitimate.
Other members may begin to defer automatically.
Over time, the organisation becomes dependent on particular individuals even when no formal rule grants them special authority.
The informal hierarchy can then defend itself through arguments about efficiency, expertise or organisational necessity.
Those arguments may contain some truth. Experienced members can often act more quickly than inexperienced ones. But efficiency in the short term can undermine collective capacity in the long term if it prevents others from learning.
A union that relies on a small number of indispensable people may appear effective until those people become unavailable, make serious mistakes or begin using their positions to control others.
The problem is structural rather than simply personal.
An organisation should not depend on every individual being unusually virtuous. It should establish procedures that allow members to exercise accountability even when particular people behave badly.
6.2 The monopoly of knowledge
One important source of informal hierarchy is the unequal distribution of organisational knowledge.
A delegate might understand the relevant workplace procedures, maintain contact with other unions, know the history of a dispute and possess the information necessary to make decisions.
If this knowledge remains concentrated in one person, other members must rely on that person’s interpretation.
Even an entirely well-intentioned delegate can become a bottleneck.
The organisation becomes vulnerable because members cannot independently assess the information on which decisions depend.
A syndicalist approach should therefore treat the distribution of knowledge as an organising responsibility.
Procedures should be documented. Relevant information should be shared. Members should be trained to perform essential tasks. Delegates should explain their decisions and make it possible for others to review their work.
Where confidentiality or privacy is necessary, information should be handled carefully rather than circulated indiscriminately. Democratic accountability does not require exposing sensitive personal information or compromising legitimate workplace security.
The objective is to prevent unnecessary monopolies of knowledge.
A well-organised union should become more capable as more members learn its procedures, not more dependent on a shrinking circle of specialists.
6.3 Rotation, delegation and accountability
Rotating responsibilities can help prevent the permanent concentration of authority.
Not every task should be rotated constantly. Some responsibilities require continuity, specialised knowledge or established relationships. Excessive rotation can also become burdensome, particularly for workers with disabilities, caring responsibilities or unpredictable schedules.
The principle is therefore not rotation for its own sake.
It is that no member should acquire an unchallengeable position merely because they have performed a task for a long time.
Useful safeguards include:
Clear mandates. Delegates should know what decisions they are authorised to make and which decisions require consultation.
Recallability. Members should have a workable process for replacing delegates who lose their confidence.
Transparent reporting. Delegates should communicate what they have done, what decisions they have made and what problems require collective attention.
Shared training. Essential organisational skills should be taught to multiple members rather than concentrated in one person.
Distributed responsibility. Tasks should be divided so that participation does not depend on a single individual performing every administrative function.
Meaningful review. Members should be able to evaluate decisions and change procedures when they are not working.
These measures are not merely administrative safeguards. They are part of the organisation’s political education.
Workers learn self-government by exercising it.
A union that delegates authority while maintaining accountability can combine coordination with democratic control.
6.4 The hidden hierarchy of time and confidence
Informal hierarchy can also emerge through unequal access to time.
Workers who have secure employment, fewer caring responsibilities or greater financial resources may be able to attend more meetings and undertake more unpaid organisational work.
Over time, these members can become the people who know one another best, understand the organisation’s routines and influence decisions.
Others may appear less committed simply because their circumstances make participation more difficult.
The result can be a hierarchy in which those with the most time acquire the greatest authority, even if the organisation formally treats all members equally.
This problem is particularly important for a syndicalist strategy aimed at working-class self-emancipation.
If participation requires workers to sacrifice their health, family relationships or economic security, the organisation may disproportionately favour people already equipped to sustain those sacrifices.
The answer is not to lower expectations of participation to the point that collective organisation becomes impossible. It is to design participation around the actual circumstances of members.
Meetings should have clear purposes. Administrative work should be proportionate to the organisation’s needs. Responsibilities should be distributed fairly. Decisions should not be made inaccessible to members who cannot attend every meeting.
Organisers should also recognise that different people contribute in different ways.
A worker who cannot attend evening meetings may still be able to communicate with colleagues, provide workplace information or participate in a particular campaign.
Democratic participation should be substantive rather than measured solely by attendance or visible enthusiasm.
6.5 From informal hierarchy to permanent bureaucracy
When an organisation repeatedly relies on a small number of people, those people can acquire interests that differ from those of the membership.
They may become more concerned with maintaining the organisation’s reputation, preserving established procedures or defending their own positions than with expanding workers’ capacity for independent action.
This is not inevitable. Experienced organisers can remain committed to democratic practice, and stable administrative structures can support effective collective action.
The danger emerges when the organisation’s survival becomes detached from the purpose for which it exists.
A union begins as a means through which workers develop collective power. It can gradually become an institution whose preservation takes priority over that power.
Members are asked to protect the organisation from criticism rather than examine whether it is fulfilling its purpose. Administrative continuity becomes more important than democratic participation. Challenges to officials are treated as threats to organisational stability.
At that point, the organisation risks reproducing the separation between rulers and ruled that syndicalism seeks to overcome.
The remedy is not to abolish every procedure, office or specialist role. Large-scale cooperation requires coordination.
The remedy is to ensure that coordination remains subordinate to collective self-government.
The organisation must continually ask whether its structures increase members’ ability to act independently or make them increasingly dependent on permanent intermediaries.
7. Building an exit-oriented syndicalist practice
The preceding arguments can be translated into a practical framework for workplace and community organising.
The purpose is not to identify religious or political workers as targets for ideological conversion. It is to create conditions in which people can question coercive authority, develop independent judgement and participate in collective life.
7.1 Begin with listening rather than diagnosis
An organiser should not assume that a worker’s religious beliefs, political affiliations or attitudes towards capitalism reveal everything important about their circumstances.
Nor should they assume that they understand a worker’s needs before listening to them.
The first task is to understand the person’s actual situation.
What problems are they experiencing at work? What are they trying to change? Which relationships do they rely on? What risks do they face if they challenge an employer or institution? What forms of collective action have they tried?
These questions allow workers to define their concerns in their own terms.
They also help prevent the organiser from turning every conversation into an attempt to demonstrate ideological superiority.
A person who feels that they are being examined for political correctness is unlikely to regard the conversation as an opportunity for independent thought.
Listening does not mean avoiding difficult questions. It means approaching them through a relationship of respect rather than presuming that the organiser already possesses the correct answers.
7.2 Identify coercive behaviour rather than demanding ideological labels
The term cult is often used as a general insult for unfamiliar religions, political groups or communities.
That usage is unhelpful because it can obscure the specific behaviours that make an organisation coercive.
A more useful approach examines observable patterns.
Can members disagree without being threatened? Are they free to maintain relationships outside the organisation? Can they leave without intimidation? Are leaders accountable? Are resources handled transparently? Are personal decisions controlled through fear or shame?
These questions focus on the organisation’s conduct rather than its label.
They also allow people to recognise harmful behaviour without immediately having to reject every aspect of a community to which they belong.
Someone might recognise that a religious leader has used coercive tactics while continuing to value their faith. A political activist might reject a faction’s internal bullying while retaining their commitment to socialism.
This distinction makes it possible to challenge abuse without demanding that people resolve every aspect of their identity at once.
7.3 Make participation possible before demanding agreement
A syndicalist organisation should offer meaningful opportunities to participate in collective action without requiring ideological conversion.
Workers might join a campaign for safer conditions, fairer rosters or protection against workplace retaliation.
They should be able to contribute their skills, raise concerns and participate in decisions without having to demonstrate agreement with every aspect of the union’s broader political analysis.
This does not mean that anything goes.
The organisation can establish clear expectations concerning solidarity, democratic decisions and the treatment of other members. It can oppose racism, harassment, intimidation and discriminatory conduct.
But those expectations should be connected to the organisation’s ability to protect members and act collectively, rather than used as a pretext for controlling every aspect of their beliefs.
The distinction between behaviour and belief is important.
A union cannot guarantee that all members will privately agree about religion, politics or morality. It can establish that members must respect one another’s rights and refrain from conduct that undermines collective solidarity.
7.4 Build a culture in which questions are ordinary
A democratic organisation should not treat questioning as an exceptional event requiring special justification.
Members should be able to ask why a decision was made, what evidence supports a strategy and whether an alternative approach might work better.
This requires organisers to model intellectual humility.
When an organiser is uncertain, they should be able to say so. When a campaign fails, they should be able to acknowledge mistakes. When another member offers a better idea, they should be willing to adopt it.
Such behaviour demonstrates that authority does not depend on appearing infallible.
It also changes the social meaning of disagreement.
Instead of treating criticism as an attack on personal status, members can learn to regard it as a contribution to collective understanding.
This is particularly valuable for people leaving authoritarian environments, where questioning may have been associated with punishment or rejection.
A union cannot erase those experiences through a declaration of democratic values. It can, however, offer repeated experiences in which disagreement does not automatically lead to humiliation or exclusion.
Over time, such experiences may help rebuild confidence in independent judgement.
7.5 Make collective victories educational
A workplace campaign should not be evaluated solely by whether it achieves an immediate demand.
It should also be an opportunity to examine how the organisation worked.
Who participated? Which methods proved effective? Were some members excluded from decision-making? Did a small group take on too much responsibility? Was information distributed adequately? What would the organisation do differently next time?
These questions help transform experience into shared knowledge.
They also make it harder for individual leaders to claim exclusive credit for success or blame others for failure.
When the lessons of a campaign are collectively discussed and documented, the organisation becomes less dependent on individual memory and reputation.
Its capacity grows through participation.
The result is a form of political education rooted in the practical exercise of solidarity.
7.6 Support people who leave without claiming ownership of them
A syndicalist organisation should recognise that leaving a coercive group can involve complicated emotional, financial and social consequences.
People may experience grief, uncertainty, shame or the loss of important relationships. They may need time to reconsider beliefs that previously organised their lives.
They should not be expected to replace one comprehensive identity with another immediately.
A union can provide friendship, collective activity and opportunities to develop new skills. Where appropriate, it can help people identify professional counselling, community support or other services.
It should also respect their privacy and autonomy.
No one should be required to recount traumatic experiences to an organising meeting. No one should be pressured to make public denunciations of a former community. No one should have their personal history turned into evidence of the union’s ideological superiority.
Research and professional guidance concerning recovery from high-control groups emphasise the value of understanding coercive dynamics, rebuilding boundaries and addressing the difficulties that can accompany departure. Such support should be responsive to individual circumstances rather than imposed through a universal formula. ICSA
The purpose of assistance is to expand the person’s freedom, not to acquire a new claim over their loyalty.
8. The limits of syndicalist organising: Solidarity is not a substitute for every form of support
It is important not to exaggerate what a union can accomplish.
Workplace organising can develop collective confidence and provide relationships of mutual support, but it cannot by itself resolve every difficulty associated with coercive religious or political involvement.
Some people need specialist psychological care. Others may face housing insecurity, financial abuse, threats or family estrangement. Some may require independent legal advice or assistance from services familiar with high-control groups.
A union should not attempt to replace these forms of support with political education.
Nor should it assume that a person’s decision to remain in a religious community demonstrates that they have failed to understand their circumstances.
People have different needs, values and tolerances for risk. They may have reasons for remaining in a community while setting new boundaries around their participation. Others may leave but retain some beliefs associated with their former organisation.
The objective is not to prescribe a single acceptable outcome.
It is to help people develop greater freedom of judgement and action.
A similar qualification applies to capitalist ideology.
Collective action can challenge the assumption that workers are powerless, but it cannot eliminate economic dependency simply by changing attitudes. Workers remain subject to material constraints, including the need to earn income and the unequal distribution of resources.
Syndicalist organisation must therefore address both ideological assumptions and the conditions that sustain them.
Encouraging workers to think independently while leaving them isolated in precarious employment is insufficient. Equally, improving material conditions without developing democratic capacities can leave workers dependent on institutions that make decisions for them.
The two tasks must proceed together.
Material security makes independent action more feasible; collective self-activity develops the capacities through which people can use that freedom.
9. An organisational model: From dependency to self-government
The following framework summarises how an exit-oriented syndicalist strategy might develop.
| Problem | Syndicalist response | Intended result |
|---|---|---|
| Fear of losing social belonging | Build durable relationships that do not depend on ideological agreement | Greater freedom to question authority |
| Isolation from alternative perspectives | Maintain connections with other workplaces, community groups and independent sources of information | A broader basis for judgement |
| Individualisation of workplace problems | Investigate shared conditions and organise around common demands | Recognition of collective interests |
| Dependence on charismatic organisers | Distribute skills, information and responsibility | Reduced reliance on individual patrons |
| Fear of disagreement | Establish transparent, democratic procedures | Greater confidence in independent judgement |
| Ideological gatekeeping | Make participation depend on solidarity and democratic conduct rather than comprehensive agreement | Broader class participation |
| Informal monopolies of knowledge | Share documentation, train members and review delegated decisions | Greater organisational resilience |
| Repeated campaign failures | Conduct collective evaluations and revise strategy | Institutional learning |
| Social insecurity after leaving a coercive group | Provide practical solidarity and connect people with appropriate support | A more viable alternative to dependency |
| Permanent concentration of authority | Maintain accountability, review and meaningful participation | Stronger worker self-government |
This framework should not be understood as a mechanical programme that guarantees particular results.
Organisations have different resources and face different circumstances. What works in one workplace may be inappropriate elsewhere.
The underlying principle is that the organisation should expand the capacity of members to act independently and collectively.
That principle provides a basis for evaluating its methods.
If a strategy increases dependence on a small leadership, suppresses criticism or makes participation conditional on personal loyalty, it deserves scrutiny even when its stated objectives are emancipatory.
If a practice helps members develop skills, share knowledge, challenge authority and cooperate across differences, it is more consistent with the aims of syndicalism.
10. The historical question: What kind of organisation can sustain emancipation?
The history of revolutionary movements repeatedly raises a difficult problem.
Organisations established to challenge domination can develop internal structures that reproduce it.
A movement may oppose economic exploitation while concentrating decision-making power in a permanent leadership. It may criticise religious dogmatism while treating its own political doctrine as unquestionable. It may denounce capitalist competition while encouraging internal struggles for status and influence.
These contradictions cannot be explained simply by claiming that particular leaders were hypocritical or that individual members lacked sufficient revolutionary commitment.
Personal conduct matters, but organisational structures also shape the available incentives and relationships.
When a small group controls information, makes decisions and determines acceptable interpretations, other members have limited opportunities to develop independent capacities. When the organisation repeatedly rewards obedience and punishes criticism, members learn to defer. When administrative functions become permanent monopolies, the organisation may acquire interests separate from those of the people it claims to represent.
This is why syndicalist self-management must be understood as more than a constitutional arrangement.
It is a continuing practice of distributing knowledge, responsibility and decision-making power.
The organisation’s internal relationships matter because they shape the capacities its members develop.
If workers are expected to obey today in the hope that a future revolutionary leadership will eventually establish freedom, they are being asked to postpone self-government until after the concentration of power has already occurred.
A syndicalist alternative begins by developing forms of collective self-government in the present.
This does not mean pretending that existing unions can immediately abolish every hierarchy or operate without delegation. They must function within a society structured by unequal resources, legal constraints and competing demands on workers’ time.
It means treating the reduction of domination as an organisational objective rather than a distant promise.
The union becomes a place where members can practise making decisions, coordinating activities, evaluating results and holding delegates accountable.
These practices are valuable in themselves. They also develop the capacities required for a more democratic society.
The connection to leaving coercive groups is direct.
People who have experienced authoritarian relationships need alternatives that do not reproduce the same dependency under a different name. A political organisation cannot convincingly teach autonomy while demanding that members surrender their judgement to its leadership.
An emancipatory movement must make room for people to develop their own capacities, including the capacity to criticise the movement itself.
11. Conclusion: Building the conditions of freedom
A syndicalist strategy for helping workers escape coercive belief systems must avoid becoming another programme of ideological conversion.
The objective is not to replace religious authority with political authority, capitalist individualism with revolutionary dogmatism, or one closed community with another.
It is to help people develop the social and practical capacities required to live with greater independence while participating in collective life.
Research on high-control groups suggests that leaving can involve significant social and psychological difficulties. Coercive persuasion, isolation, fear and conditional belonging can make it harder to question authority or imagine an alternative life. Social support, independent relationships and appropriate professional assistance can help address some of these difficulties. ScienceDirect
A syndicalist organisation can contribute by creating an alternative experience of cooperation.
Workers who are accustomed to treating workplace problems as individual failures can discover the power of collective action. Those who assume that important decisions must be made by authorities can learn to participate in democratic decision-making. People who have been taught to fear disagreement can experience organisations in which criticism is compatible with solidarity.
These changes do not require everyone to adopt the same philosophy.
A worker can remain religious while opposing authoritarian religious authority. They can reject a Trotskyist party line without abandoning socialism. They can retain disagreements about political strategy while cooperating with colleagues against exploitation.
What matters is whether they can participate in collective life without surrendering their independent judgement.
This is the central distinction between a class organisation and an ideological community that seeks to direct the class from above.
Syndicalism understands solidarity as something that workers build through shared interests, common activity and democratic organisation. Its purpose is not merely to unite people who already agree, but to develop the capacity for collective action among people whose experiences and opinions differ.
The SE Queensland IWW essay Building a New Syndicalism in the Shell of the IWW emphasises the importance of listening, practical organising and developing workers’ self-efficacy rather than treating political argument as a substitute for collective activity. Hästbacka’s We Need a United Class, Not a United Left similarly argues for class organisations that unite workers around common interests rather than ideological identity. SE Qld IWW
Taken together, these arguments suggest that the most effective antidote to authoritarian dependency is not the imposition of a supposedly correct worldview.
It is the development of relationships in which people can exercise their judgement, acquire practical skills, share responsibility and experience the consequences of their own decisions.
This requires more than individual confidence. It requires institutions that distribute power, make knowledge accessible, prevent the permanent concentration of authority and enable members to challenge those who represent them.
A union that relies on charismatic leaders, ideological gatekeeping and informal monopolies of knowledge can reproduce the very dependency it claims to oppose. A union that develops its members’ capacities for self-government can offer a practical alternative.
The ultimate test is not whether workers have learned to repeat the right revolutionary formula.
It is whether they have become more capable of acting together, questioning authority, resolving disagreements and managing their collective affairs.
The purpose of syndicalist organisation is not to produce workers who obey the correct leadership. It is to develop the collective power through which workers no longer need masters.
Selected references and further reading
Syndicalism, class solidarity and worker self-activity
- Wildcat Wob. Building a New Syndicalism in the Shell of the IWW (2026). The principal source for the argument about worker self-activity, practical organising, ideological gatekeeping and informal hierarchy. SE Qld IWW
- Rasmus Hästbacka. We Need a United Class, Not a United Left (2025). A defence of class unions that unite workers around common interests rather than political identity. Class Autonomy
- Mikhail Bakunin. The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State and related writings on federalism and collective self-emancipation. Useful for examining the relationship between revolutionary organisation and the development of popular capacities.
- Rudolf Rocker. Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1938). A historical and theoretical introduction to syndicalist organisation, direct action and workers’ self-management.
- Ralph Darlington. Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism: An International Comparative Analysis (2022). A comparative examination of syndicalist movements and the problems they encountered in developing revolutionary strategies.
Coercive persuasion and recovery from high-control groups
- Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter. When Prophecy Fails (1956). A classic study of belief, social commitment and the responses of a religious group when its expectations are contradicted.
- Albert Bandura. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997). A foundational treatment of self-efficacy and the development of perceived capabilities.
- Steven Hassan. Combating Cult Mind Control (1988; later editions). An influential practitioner-oriented account of coercive persuasion and recovery. Its terminology and theoretical claims should be assessed critically alongside the broader research literature.
- M. Rousselet, J. B. Hardouin, M. Grall-Bronnec and colleagues. Cult membership: What factors contribute to joining and leaving? (2017). A study of factors associated with involvement in high-control groups and departure, including the importance of social support. ScienceDirect
- International Cultic Studies Association. Resources for professionals and service providers. Guidance on understanding coercive influence, boundaries, shame, trauma and recovery. ICSA
Capitalism, ideology and bureaucracy
- Karl Marx. Capital, Volume I. Particularly relevant are the discussions of commodity fetishism, wage labour and the social relationships concealed by economic forms.
- Antonio Gramsci. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Important for understanding hegemony, consent and the relationship between material institutions and political ideas.
- Robert Michels. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911). A classic account of organisational oligarchy, although its conclusions should not be treated as proof that bureaucracy is inevitable.
- Jo Freeman. The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972). An influential analysis of how informal power can persist in organisations that reject formal hierarchy.
- James C. Scott. Seeing Like a State (1998). Useful for examining the dangers of centralised administrative schemes that subordinate local knowledge to supposedly comprehensive plans.
The common thread across these works is that emancipation requires more than a change in declared beliefs. It requires changes in the practical relationships through which people exercise power, acquire knowledge and organise their lives.
Discover more from SE Qld IWW
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
