During the 1890s, trade union activities were largely coordinated by the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), which favoured reformism and electoralism over revolutionary syndicalism.

[6] Members of the Young Socialists (SUF) began to advocate for the adoption of the syndicalist methods of the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT).

[7] SUF member Albert Jensen [sv] became the leading advocate of anarcho-syndicalism in Sweden, synthesising the ideas of Daniel De Leon together with anarchist proposals for a post-capitalist society.

[10] They established their own party, which rejected reformism, electoralism and centralisation, endorsed the prefigurative conception of trade unionism and advocated for a revolutionary general strike.

[9] By this time, the nascent Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) had established a collective bargaining agreement with the LO, which included a "right to work".

[22] It refused to affiliate to the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU), as the SAC considered it to be an organ of party politics and thus incompatible with the anti-political stance of syndicalism.

[29] In December 1922, the SAC, along with syndicalist unions from Argentina, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain, established the International Workers' Association (IWA).

[36] During World War II, the grand coalition that governed Sweden introduced a number of emergency measures which restricted workplace organising.

The SAC became one of the few opposition forces in Sweden; its protests against the government's appeasement of Nazi Germany made it a target of political repression, which weakened the organisation and caused its membership numbers to dwindle.

Members of the SAC, including Arbetaren editor Birger Svahn, were imprisoned or sent to internment camps, the latter of which had been established to separate left-wing radicals from detained military personnel.

[38] In Sweden, where the anarcho-syndicalist movement hadn't been suppressed by dictatorship or wartime repression, the SAC remained active, making it one of the few IWA affiliates that continued to function.

In a challenge to the anarchist "orthodoxy" of anti-statism, he thus proposed that anarcho-syndicalists should act within existing state systems in order to democratise the economy, rather than waiting around for a social revolution.

[41] In order to pursue such reforms to the state structure and bolster its own popularity, the SAC elected to participate in the administration of unemployment benefits in Sweden.

Rejecting direct action, they declared their goal to be the establishment of industrial democracy by bringing state and private companies under workers' control.

[54] Throughout the 1960s, the SAC saw an increase in its membership numbers, although following the turbulence of the previous decades, it also lacked a coherent ideological programme and its members became concerned that it was facing stagnation.

Local federations subsequently reorientated themselves from workplace organising towards broader social campaigns, including environmentalism, feminism and LGBT rights.

[51] In the 1970s, the SAC began to swing back towards far-left politics and reaffirmed some syndicalist principles, although it continued to administer state unemployment benefits.

[59] The following decade, the SAC participated in the establishment of Red and Black Coordination, which brought it together with the British branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the French National Confederation of Labour (CNT-F), the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI), the Greek Union of Libertarian Syndicalists (ESE), the Polish Workers' Initiative (IP), and the Spanish General Confederation of Labour (CGT).

In 2002, the SAC national congress passed motion to refocus efforts on workplace organising, while also maintaining an intersectional analysis of oppression.

[60] The restructuring also highlighted the SAC's urban-rural divide, as it caused a resurgence of activism in the urban centres of Gothenburg, Malmö and Stockholm, while local federations in small towns and rural areas faced difficulties adapting to the organisational changes.

The attack provoked mass anti-fascist demonstrations throughout Sweden and a crackdown on far-right extremists, with broad support from Swedish society.

[62] In commemoration of Söderberg, the SAC holds an annual memorial event and awards a Civil Courage Prize (Swedish: Civilkuragepriset).

[51] In 2004, the Stockholm local federation of the SAC established an Undocumented Group (Swedish: Papperslésasgruppen), which was tasked with organising migrant workers without work permits, many of whom have immigrated to Sweden from Latin America since the 1970s.

[66] The breakthrough campaign for the SAC's undocumented workers' union came in 2007, when one of their members had their wages withheld by their employers at the South Asian restaurant they worked in.

The initiative quickly spread from Stockholm to Malmö, where picket lines became the scene of violent clashes between striking workers and police.

[70] The base geographic unit of the SAC is the local federation (Swedish: Lokal Samorganisation; LS), which brings together workers in a given municipality to coordinate their workplace struggles.

[71] The central body of the SAC is its Executive Committee (Swedish: Arbetsutskott; AU), which consists of seven members that meet on a bi-weekly basis to handle administrative tasks.