It’s clear that there is a concerted campaign, orchestrated by innumerable sections of the media, dedicated to discrediting what is commonly understood by “unionism”; a campaign that has been noted as ruthless by one of the leaders of the CCOO [one of Spain’s two major union confederations], given that it is principally against this organization as well as the UGT [Spain’s other major union confederation] that this campaign is occurring. Nevertheless, in a full campaign against the working class in general, which contains the specific campaign against unionism, we must consider that that aim is not only to bring discredit on the CCOO and UGT, but above all to discredit the concept of unionism itself, given that the system knows perfectly well (because it has those organizations at its service) that any resemblance between authentic unionism and the CCOO and UGT is a mere coincidence. And this authentic unionism is not obsolete, but continues to be as necessary as ever.
In the current situation, in which we find ourselves up against yet another of the periodic crises of capitalism, what is obsolete is the supposed unionism practiced bythese collaborationist and pactist organizations, since whenever there is a certain economic prosperity, it is easy to obtain from the capitalists a few crumbs from the big cake, in return for which they receive social peace.
The only valid unionism in these times is a genuine unionism, a combative and revolutionary unionism; in short: the unionism advocated by the CNT, because in difficult times we can only achieve economic and social conquests through a hard struggle, at the same time that we strengthen the self-defense mechanisms of the working class, since it was precisely for self-defense and struggle that the first unions worthy of the name were born.
