Associated with Chicago anarchists Albert Parsons and August Spies in the mid-1880s, prior to their executions during the Haymarket affair, proponents of the Chicago idea believed in militant, revolutionary unionism in which the labor union would bring about wholesale social revolution rather than piecemeal reforms, replacing capitalism with a worker-run cooperative commonwealth and economy.
[2] This ideology put all power in the union members (through direct action) and came with an expectation of distrust towards vainglorious leaders and centralized decision-making.
[3] Parsons and Spies built a large following for the idea between the 1883 congress and 1886 Haymarket affair, though they did concede their absolute condition that the unions would only pursue revolution instead of reform.
The Chicago idea did not address sabotage or the general strike, though historian Paul Avrich notes that these concepts were not developed at the time.
While they were related, the rise of anarcho-syndicalism owed more to 1860s/1870s European workers' councils thought and Bakunin's writings on federations of labor unions than to the Chicago idea.