The FAUD(S) emerges from this study as a principled, nonviolent organization capable of change and adaptation. It never fully integrated anarchism and syndicalism but accommodated their often opposing cultural and union strategies for revolution. It drew support from a core of highly skilled artisans in well-defined trades, but between 1918 and 1924 also attracted industrial workers disillusioned with .the Marxist parties, especially in Rhineland-Westphalia and port cities. It survived the stabilization of 1924 by adopting a more conventional strategy of economic improvements through union-negotiated contracts, while allowing members to pursue radical cultural politics outside the workplace. Rübner concludes that the upsurge of German anarchosyndicalism was linked closely to the impact of economic rationalization on workers and to the political development of the Weimar Republic. It could not survive the expansion of the welfare state and mass consumption after 1945.
Although Rübner succeeds in placing German anarchosyndicalism in its historical context, his focus on a single organization is problematic. The FAUD(S) was one of many closely interrelated radical parties and unions in the Weimar Republic, and it makes little sense to treat it separately. The study's monographic conception inherently favors ideology, organization, and political infighting over more complex and illuminating social analysis. Most serious, Rübner does not discuss in depth the relations between the FAUD(S) and the procommunist Freie Arbeiter-Union (Gelsenkirchen)/Union der Hand- und Kopfarbeiter, the symbiosis of Communist strategy and syndicalist direct action in strikes, and the movement of unemployed workers, all major areas of syndicalist activity. Comparison with other radical organizations would have revealed significant similarities to their social bases of support, evolution from 1918 to 1933, and forms of industrial action. If the FAUD(S) did not differ from its radical competitors on key social structural, conjunctural, and tactical issues, we are left with the question of why some workers felt the need to create this union and were able to win enough mass support to influence the course of German history.
The FAUD(S) advocated a coherent, open, in many ways appealing libertarian alternative to the bureaucracy and authoritarianism of the Marxist parties. Studies of single left-wing organizations, however, have outlived their usefulness. Rübner clearly demonstrates that the FAUD(S) must be understood in its economic and political context rather than as a forerunner of contemporary new social movements. Needed now are comparative studies that explore the social breadth and complexity of German workers' radicalism after World War I.
American Historical Review, Vol. 101, No. 2 (April 1996),
p. 518.