"How can small unions possibly fight big capital? Stuff like this is why it's easy to see anarchists as living in a dream world."
Not all anarchists think that. Chuck0 may, and he may be a self-appointed ambassador of anarchism this list, but a lot of anarchists subscribe to the ideas of the IWW, whose motto has always been "One Big Union." {That is, all unions should combine as one to fight capital.) In any event, most anarchists I have read or have heard of would stress social, working class solidarity with even small unions, to amplify their effects during a strike or while doing a picket line.
But anyone who fetishizes "smallness" in social organizations -- who thinks that an organization, by virtue of simply being large, is going to somehow become authoritarian automatically -- will have a hard time fighting capitalism.
-B.
===== "I'm not too worried by hegemony / I know the cadre will look after me" - Magazine, "Model Worker," 1978