Class analysis shows us in who's interests it is that society is maintained and in who's interest it is to change society. The question of the nature of the economic system we live under is recognised not just by the traditional workforce - usually said to be the 'constituency' of anarcho-syndicalism. Women recognise the importance of their economic position in calling for economic equality. Environmentalists recognise the direct relationship between industry and ecological destruction.
Anarcho-syndicalists believe that class analysis allows us to go beyond the linking of exploitation and individual oppression to a single source, as in movement politics, and look at the social and economic bases - and therefore what can be done. Given the changes in the nature of work in Australia - a decreasing organised workforce, increasing unemployment and a growing cash economy, automation and computerisation, it is now more important that those workers who remain in the organised workforce recognise their real allegiances. It is also important that those in the new, de-skilled workforce and the cash economy - who are exposed to lower wages longer hours, more unsafe conditions with no job security - organise to protect their interests.
Anarcho-syndicalists have historically supported industrial unionism because of the failures of trades and labour based unions, as well as the possibilities they offer for controlling and transforming production. The original trades unions emphasised the differences between workers on the basis of their trades skills, even in the same industry - tilers, plumbers, plasterers, painters and carpenters all in their own unions. They looked down on the unskilled labourers. Later the labourers organised themselves forming labour unions. The bosses have always exploited these differences - attacking one union while trying to buy off others with 'differentials' between different types of workers. Despite attempts to counter these divisions in combined union shop committees (in workplaces) and Trades and Labour Councils (locally), but mostly these divisions have limited the growth of the consciousness of workers of their common interests. They have undermined the practical solidarity between workers against the company.
Unions based on all the workers in one industry - industrial unions - create the possibility of fighting the bosses hard - when the factory is not producing, the stockpile can't be moved, the invoices aren't sent our, the cheques aren't cashed, and the managing-director's directives aren't typed then management is more likely to talk than when one group is on strike and the rest are still on the job! Industrial unionism also creates the possibility of workers taking over and running industries in a revolutionary situation. All the expertise is there and the workers are used to working together in the one union. The aim is not, as may anarchist critics of anarcho-syndicalism would suggest, to merely take over the industry and run it as before. 'The Workers' Atomic Energy Plant'? 'The Collectivised Useless Plastic Crap Factory'? Not bloody likely! But who better to transform an industry than the workers who know it and who turn out to also be members of their local community that is determining what its real needs are!
It seems that some of the rejection by anarchists of involvement in industrial struggles involves fear of involvement with people who may not share the anti-sexist, anti-racist, and environmental positions on the 'non-industrial left' This seems to arise from a fear of confronting these issues and experiences with such people. Anarcho-syndicalists believe people can and do change through struggle. But this involves confrontation, first in in our own organisations and then in the wider society.
Class analysis is linked to the question of organisation. Anarchists in Australia are avoiding the questions of how we stop capitalism (and state capitalism) and how we will organise the meeting of needs into the period of revolutionary change. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that is important that we are involved in the labour force. Workers are the people who still create most of what we need - despite sophisticated machines, which are only an accumulation of our labour after all. The also also produce a lot of what we don't need. In the present it is workers who, to earn a living, are put in a position where they must put chemicals in food and build freeways. But workers in these industries have the potential power to change that. They have a vital contribution to make to the transformation of society by taking control of their workplace.
Given the work economic organisation, not to have a class analysis in a country like Australia , where class consciousness might appear to be waning, is to betray those workers in places (some not 2000 kilometres from here) where 19th century working conditions (12 hour day, child labour, frequent, crippling, uncompensated injuries, workers sleeping under their machines, are daily reality. A modern class analysis recognises that ideology and culture (the ideas a society has of itself and the way people live in that society) are material forces in the reproduction of of that society. the concepts embodied in language and experience of domination and exploitation are intimately part of, and have developed out of, the long history of class societies. As anarchists we believe we must create the concepts and culture of opposition in our daily lives capable of contesting the structures and the people that exploit and oppress us.
Anarcho-syndicalists have always recognised the importance of understanding power relations. For example, Rudolph Rocker, one of the early theoreticians of anarcho-syndicalism and an activist involved in the founding of the International Workers Association, is also the author of a major study of culture and power - Nationalism and Culture. Anarcho-syndicalists are still keenly aware of the use of power by the state and the effects of domination and passivity in all aspects of our lives. The last half of the 20th century has seen the expansion of the commodification of culture. Artists, musicians and film-makers are now occupying positions of economic and cultural power. More recently, sports stars have undergone this change in status with the old arguments about amateurism dispearing under the weight of the onslaught of pay-TV. Rupert Murdoch's recent victory in the High Court to establish "Super League" represents the triumph of Capital over culture. Nevertheless, the failure of the forced merger Australian football clubs Hawthorn and Melbourne show the threat that culture poses to the ideology of Capital that sees sport as only a "business".