Anarcho-syndicalism (also referred to as revolutionary syndicalism) is a theory of anarchism which views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and, with that control, influence broader society. Syndicalists consider their economic theories a strategy for facilitating worker self-activity and as an alternative co-operative economic system with democratic values and production centered on meeting human needs.
The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are solidarity, direct action (action undertaken without the intervention of third parties such as politicians, bureaucrats, and arbitrators) and direct democracy, or workers' self-management. The end goal of anarcho-syndicalism is to abolish the wage system, regarding it as wage slavery. Anarcho-syndicalist theory therefore generally focuses on the labour movement.
Anarcho-syndicalists view the primary purpose of the state as being the defence of private property, and therefore of economic, social, and political privilege, denying most of its denizens the ability to enjoy material independence and the social autonomy which springs from it.[3] In contrast with other bodies of thought, particularly with Marxism–Leninism, anarcho-syndicalists accept the denial of a workers' state, or a state which acts in the interests of workers, as opposed to those of the powerful, and posit that any state with the intention of empowering the workers will inevitably work to empower itself or the existing elite at the expense of the workers. Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism holds to the idea that power corrupts.