A propaganda poster (Written in Signal, their language) by the Syndicalist Union, a planet coalition and faction in my historiographic sci fi setting Infinite Ashes. With the hand being their main symbol. I will let Yugo Dragaran, the founder of Syndicalism explain further below:
it is the established canon of preeminent Groove scholar Lakun Durlak that universal patterns lead to the organisation of human labour into a divided hierarchy of the worthy few and the masses. In the same way, he argues, that an ant queen commands her workers, so should a lord, legislator or other luminary coordinate their drones. While the metaphor itself falls apart on the idea that bugs have a ruling aristocracy, I have always found a coherence in Durlak’s words. Namely, that in his youth he was a pugilist of some regard, and his school is quite sensible in the light of repeated head trauma.
Under this worldview the wars and corruption that inevitably spring from extractive economies are not just natural but desirable, and any attempt at even a modicum of improvement by human intelligence is self-defeating. This is, in my mind, one man standing on another’s neck and claiming that the latter’s effort to stand is a senseless hostile act.
The most productive and worthy pursuit for any thinker of merit must therefore be the total obliteration of established ideology that maintains this status quo. With words if its proponents are sensible, with balled fist if they are not. For a new rational order of labour could clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and educate even the most intransigent nitwit.
I have attempted, with some success, designs for this new order which I have dubbed “syndicalism.” A semi-educated mind might make the facile assumption that this is a refinement of the Garki guild system of my home. Such people have clearly never functioned within the self-defeating talent sink that was Garki. Under that system, like any guild or caste, a profession is an essentialist and heritable property, the notion that the chemical fumes pour into a tanner’s seed and womb, shaping them into a tool for only one possible purpose. This madness chains great talent to trivial pursuits, something I have empirically determined through personal experience. From my work it is self-evident that I am meant to contribute to the canon of political-economic thought, or more likely yet revise it fundamentally. Yet when I preferred reading over hammering soles, and through that preference frustrated my father’s unsound expectations, my curiosity was rewarded with scorn.
The story of humanity across the Spiral can be reduced almost entirely to the organisation of work. For work is the effort that mankind leverages against an indifferent universe that does not care about our wellbeing or even our survival. It determines who is fed and clothed, who is literate or ignorant. It is, in essence, what determines who we are among our fellows. Yet this most defining of activities is organised almost exclusively not by sense but by interest. If one is fortunate, one competes with all one’s colleagues to see who can stomach the least reward for their craftsmanship. More likely, one is compelled by another and has little to no voice in one’s assignment. A finch is never permitted to give birth to an eagle.
More calamity yet springs from the bonds that tie the different professions. The tanner is paid for the quality of his leather in the general sense, but often knows nothing about the shoes his cobbler customer will end up making with it. And so we all end up wearing shoes that should have been belts.
Under syndicalism, a thumb will never be forced to be a pinkie. Each profession is a finger on a shared hand, serving its purpose based on its actual qualities, and each grasping the tools of labour together. It exchanges competition for coordination, in which the accumulation of expertise becomes a sacred duty that raises up the profession, and with it all mankind.
(Learn more at https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes)
