They are also the product of workers struggles, workers organisations, and workers aims. In 1936, for example, the Spanish CNT armed workers to smash an attempted fascist coup, and spearheaded a successful mass movement of 7 million workers and peasants to seize the land and factories and manage them through democratic collectives. We must do two things if we want the unions to play a revolutionary role. First, get rid of the union bureaucracy and make sure that the unions are controlled by the membership. Second, win the union membership over to Anarchist- Syndicalist ideas.
All unions are workers combat units.
It withdraws militants from the unions, leaving them at the mercy of bureaucrats and reformists. It isolates militants in tiny splinter unions because the masses prefer to join large, established unions. Small groups of revolutionaries working inside established unions can achieve impressive results. Syndicalism in this way in the early twentieth century.