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George Woodcock (1912-1995) was a historian, political biographer, essayist, poet, and anarchist. He wrote biographies of such anarchist thinkers as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, William Godwin, Oscar Wilde, and Peter Kropotkin. Throughout his life, Woodcock was given numerous awards for his work, but he refused several awards from the government of Canada on the grounds that he only accepted awards granted by his peers.
In this chapter, Woodcock discusses the roots and growth of anarcho- syndicalism, the anarchist school of thought that began in the early- nineteenth century but came to full prominence at the beginning of the twentieth century in England, the US, and Spain. Anarcho-syndicalism is both a system for fostering revolutionary feeling in the working class and a system for a fair distribution of resources after the revolution. Anarcho- syndicalists seek to organize workers on the job in order to assert control over the means of production. Through direct action, anarcho-syndicalists assert they can overthrow capitalism and the state by direct action of the workers.