Basically, we do it in order to encourage and promote solidarity. This is the key to winning struggles in the here and now as well as creating the class consciousness necessary to create an anarchist society. At its most simple, generalising different struggles means increasing the chances of winning them. Take, for example, a strike in which one trade or one workplace goes on strike while the others continue to work:
"Consider yourself how foolish and inefficient is the present form of labour organisation in which one trade or craft may be on strike while the other branches of the same industry continue to work. Is it not ridiculous that when the street car workers of New York, for instance, quit work, the employees of the subway, the cab and omnibus drivers remain on the job? . . . It is clear, then, that you compel compliance [from your bosses] only when you are determined, when your union is strong, when you are well organised, when you are united in such a manner that the boss cannot run his factory against your will. But the employer is usually some big . . . company that has mills or mines in various places. . . If it cannot operate . . . in Pennsylvania because of a strike, it will try to make good its losses by continuing . . . and increasing production [elsewhere]. . . In that way the company . . . breaks the strike." [Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism, pp. 53-54]
By organising all workers in one union (after all they all have the same boss) it increases the power of each trade considerably. It may be easy for a boss to replace a few workers, but a whole workplace would be far more difficult. By organising all workers in the same industry, the power of each workplace is correspondingly increased. Extending this example to outside the workplace, its clear that by mutual support between different groups increases the chances of each group winning its fight.
As the I.W.W. put it, "An injury to one is an injury to all." By generalising struggles, by practising mutual support and aid we can ensure that when we are fighting for our rights and against injustice we will not be isolated and alone. If we don't support each other, groups will be picked off one by one and if we are go into conflict with the system there will be on-one there to support us and we may lose.
Therefore, from an anarchist point of view, the best thing about generalising different struggles together is that it leads to an increased spirit of solidarity and responsibility as well as increased class consciousness. This is because by working together and showing solidarity those involved get to understand their common interests and that the struggle is not against this injustice or that boss but against all injustice and all bosses.
This sense of increased social awareness and solidarity can be seen from the experience of the C.N.T in Spain during the 1930s. The C.N.T. organised all workers in a given area into one big union. Each workplace was a union branch and were joined together in a local area confederation. The result was that:
"The territorial basis of organisation linkage [of the C.N.T. unions] brought all the workers form one area together and fomented working class solidarity over and before corporative [i.e. industrial] solidarity." [J. Romero Maura, "The Spanish Case", in Anarchism Today, D. Apter and J. Joll (eds.), p. 75]
This can also be seen from the experiences of the syndicalist unions in Italy and France as well. The structure of such local federations also situates the workplace in the community where it really belongs (particularly if the commune concept supported by social anarchists is to be realistic).
Also, by uniting struggles together, we can see that there are really no "single issues" - that all various different problems are inter-linked. For example, ecological problems are not just that, but have a political and economic basis and that economic and social domination and exploitation spills into the environment. Inter-linking struggles means that they can be seen to be related to other struggles against capitalist exploitation and oppression and so encourage solidarity and mutual aid. What goes on in the environment, for instance, is directly related to questions of domination and inequality within human society, that pollution is often directly related to companies cutting corners to survive in the market or increase profits. Similarly, struggles against sexism or racism can be seen as part of a wider struggle against hierarchy, exploitation and oppression in all their forms. As such, uniting struggles has an important educational effect above and beyond the benefits in terms of winning struggles.
Murray Bookchin presents a concrete example of this process of linking issues and widening the struggle:
"Assume there is a struggle by welfare mothers to increase their allotments . . . Without losing sight of the concrete issues that initially motivated the struggle, revolutionaries would try to catalyse an order of relationships between the mothers entirely different from [existing ones] . . . They would try to foster a deep sense of community, a rounded human relationship that would transform the very subjectivity of the people involved . . . Personal relationships would be intimate, not merely issue-orientated. People would get to know each other, to confront each other; they would explore each other with a view of achieving the most complete, unalienated relationships. Women would discuss sexism, as well as their welfare allotments, child-rearing as well as harassment by landlords, their dreams and hopes as human beings as well as the cost of living.
"From this intimacy there would grow, hopefully, a supportive system of kinship, mutual aid, sympathy and solidarity in daily life. The women might collaborate to establish a rotating system of baby sitters and child-care attendants, the co-operative buying of good food at greatly reduced prices, the common cooking and partaking of meals, the mutual learning of survival skills and the new social ideas, the fostering of creative talents, and many other shared experiences. Every aspect of life that could be explored and changed would be one part of the kind of relationships . . .
"The struggle for increased allotments would expand beyond the welfare system to the schools, the hospitals, the police, the physical, cultural, aesthetic and recreational resources of the neighbourhood, the stores, the houses, the doctors and lawyers in the area, and so on - into the very ecology of the district.
"What I have said on this issue could be applied to every issue — unemployment, bad housing, racism, work conditions — in which an insidious assimilation of bourgeois modes of functioning is masked as 'realism' and 'actuality.' The new order of relationships that could be developed from a welfare struggle . . . [can ensure that the] future penetrates the present; it recasts the way people 'organise' and the goals for which they strive." [Op. Cit., pp. 231-3]
As the anarchist slogan puts it, "Resistance is Fertile." Planting the seed of autonomy, direct action and self-liberation can result, potentially, in the blossoming of a free individual due to the nature of struggle itself (see also section A.2.7) Therefore, the generalisation of social struggle is not only a key way of winning a specific fight, it can (and should) also spread into different aspects of life and society and play a key part in developing free individuals who reject hierarchy in all aspects of their life.
Social problems are not isolated from each other and so struggles against them cannot be. The nature of struggle is such that once people start questioning one aspect of society, the questioning of the rest soon follow. So, anarchists seek to generalise struggles for these three reasons — firstly, to ensure the solidarity required to win; secondly, to combat the many social problems we face as people and to show how they are inter-related; and, thirdly, to encourage the transformation of those involved into unique individuals in touch with their humanity, a humanity eroded by hierarchical society and domination.