The labour movement and mutual benefit societies: Towards an international approach

The comparative history of the mutualist and workers'movements shows up several notable points of convergence, from their beginnings up until the Second World War. They were branches of a common tree: tradesmen's and workers'guilds were more often than not at the origin of union and pre-union organizations and mutual aid societies. The two movements also developed in parallel over the course of the two industrial revolutions of 1780-1840 and 1880-1890. Despite this, their paths began increasingly to diverge. Setting out from the same essentially craft-based social milieu as the unions, the mutualist movement gradually took root among the lower-middle and middle classes, the civil service and the military. The mutualist ideology of a common good shared among the social classes was the antithesis of the prevailing ethos in the union movement, of which class struggle was the defining attribute. Finally, the aims of the two movements also diverged: on one hand the trade unionists, engaging in mass and sometimes violent action in support of immediate demands; on the other, the mutualists, working away at their necessarily long-term administrative tasks. From the last quarter of the nineteenth century on, therefore, the mutualist and workers'movements entered into a process of increasing diversification.