“Amalgamation” argues that the principal weakness of the American labor movement is its fragmentation by craft (trade) unions, which limits the workers’ collective power. Fox contends that the path forward requires the amalgamation (bringing together) of existing unions into industrial unions (one union per industry) rather than maintaining separate craft unions or forming rival unions.

He writes that the class struggle is inevitable under capitalism, and the workers’ strategy should be to reorganize their institutions (the unions) to match the realities of industrial production—rather than remain stuck in older trade-craft models.

Jay Fox
(1870-1961) American anarchist, journalist, and labor activist, active mostly from the late 1890s through the 1930s. He’s probably best remembered for editing The Agitator and later The Syndicalist, small but spirited radical newspapers that promoted anarcho-syndicalist ideas — that is, the belief that workers should run industries collectively, without bosses or political parties

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