CHAPTER XV SYNDICALISM

IN the preceding chapter we have witnessed the Revisionists remodelling their Marx, so that socialism has become little better than an attenuated liberalism, a doctrine of progress, and of aspiration towards peace on earth and good-will to men; we have been present, slightly awed, at Fabian receptions in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. Against all this, syndicalism comes as a many-headed protest. It is a protest against compromise; a protest against the danger that socialism may become respectable; a protest against middle-class vapourings and oleaginous shaking-of-hands. It is a protest against the futility and the ineffectiveness of Parliament and of the parliamentary machine; against all existing authorities; against the accustomed way of doing all things. Into a world in danger of becoming peaceful, syndicalism represents the irruption of violence, the hoarse-voiced clamour for war, and for war without end. It speaks with the voice of Jehu: ‘What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me.’

Syndicalism is in its origins an exclusively French movement—with Italian contributions later. Doubtless there were repercussions in America; and in this country, on the 27th March, 1912, the House of Commons devoted an hour and a half of its valuable time to discussing, somewhat ineffectively, the ‘grave danger to the State’ involved in the growth of syndicalism; and ‘it being Eleven of the Clock the Debate stood adjourned’—which, in its way, is almost an adequate epitaph on the syndicalist movement, as a movement, so far as concerns this country. Syndicalism is indeed a manifestation of the Latin races, and it never took root outside the Latin countries. Nevertheless, the underlying ideas, which are perhaps more political than economic, have been an important ingredient in the fermenting pot of the last generation, and to a large extent were embalmed for us later in the doctrines of the Guild Socialist school. Even if syndicalism throughout thus bears the mark of its foreign origin and was obviously designed for foreign use, it is not thereby void of significance for us.

On its first impact, the word ‘syndicalism’ may have a somewhat mystifying, and indeed misleading, effect on English-hearing ears. That words, common to several languages, may perversely follow a different path in each is a constant vexation of spirit to the hack translator. Heaven alone knows what a syndicate is, and what a syndicate may (or may not) cover in English.¹ But in French a ‘syndicat’ is the everyday word for a trade union. ‘Syndicalism,’ then, is merely ‘trade unionism.’ Strictly speaking, one should probably refer to the movement as ‘revolutionary syndicalism’ to distinguish it from those forms of syndicalism (or trade unionism) which followed a more peaceful path. In short, then, syndicalism (‘revolutionary’ being understood, or dropped as otiose) is that form of socialism which looks to the achievement of a revolution as the outcome of a class war, waged through the instrumentality of the ‘syndicats’ or trade unions, which are destined to displace and supplant the State and the machinery of the State.

An exposition of syndicalism, within the limits of a chapter, is confronted with a difficulty which is scarcely encountered elsewhere, or at least not in so acute a form. Syndicalism in its origin was a spontaneous movement among the workers and in the ‘syndicats’; it was a natural development of the history of the trade unions and of the working-class movement in France. But alongside this ‘proletarian’ movement, the sources of which are best found in the records of Trade Union Conferences and in the writings of men actively engaged in the movement, there is a considerable syndicalist literature, written by philosophers, professors and middle-class intelligentsia. It may be that history is in the process of doing an injustice here. The syndicalist movement in its origin owed nothing to its philosophers: and probably while it existed it continued to owe them nothing. They came along later and supplied a philosophy for a movement already in being. Georges Sorel (1847–1922), the most conspicuous of the intellectuals, took no part whatever in the movement, remaining indeed rather ostentatiously aloof. Sorel and Lagardelle alike declared that they had nothing to teach, and everything to learn from, the working classes—a gesture of modesty notably absent from the Guild Socialists later. Yet there has been a tendency to identify Sorel with syndicalism, and indeed in Sombart,¹ if nowhere else, we have hints of ‘Sorelism.’ In a full-length study of syndicalism it would be necessary to keep these two strands separate; here, with a consciousness of the danger involved, it may be sufficient to give a composite picture. Nor indeed, apart from the injustice of attributing to Sorel the paternity of a child whom he merely explained and justified later, the current view perhaps does no great harm. Except (it may be) on two points, Sorel does not greatly differ from ‘proletarian’ syndicalism²: moreover, whatever may be the rights and the wrongs, it is safe to say that now and hereafter the world, looking back, will see syndicalism through the writings of Sorel and Lagardelle, rather than in the transactions of recurring conferences.

It has been said above that revoluntary syndicalism is a peculiarly French product, explicable only in the light of French traditions and the nature and limitations of French trade unionism. The ordinary man must walk gingerly in this field of social history, threading his way delicately as Agag, among Blanquists, Guesdists, Broussists and Allemanists: and even so, he will probably forget his steps, when he has been removed for a week from his authorities, finding ruefully that his knowledge passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day.¹ It is sufficient here to note that the French trade unions, such as they were, were for the most part local bodies; to the Anglo-Saxon eye they appear to have been weak, both in membership and in financial resources. They were late in development, not being fully legalised until the Act of 1884. France never has been a highly industrialised country (despite the vision of Saint-Simon), and its industry has been relatively on a small scale. These considerations are sufficient to explain why French trade unionism, at the beginning of the period with which we are concerned, was largely based on small local unions with a small membership and a restricted field of activity.

On the structure of French trade unionism, the merest hint may here suffice. A large part was played by the ‘Bourses du Travail,’ of which the first was established in Paris in 1887. The Bourse du Travail was in its origin (or in its revived incarnation) a curious cross between voluntary trade union activity and State encouragement. It was designed to be a headquarters for the syndicats of any locality, serving educational and propaganda purposes and equipped with libraries; but also it was in part designed as an employment bureau. In short, it was an amalgam of a Trades Council, a working-men's club, and an employment exchange. In this last capacity their creation was encouraged and they were (at the outset) subsidised by the municipality. Presently, there was established a Fédération des Bourses du Travail with, as its secretary, Fernand Pelloutier, one of the leading creators of syndicalism as a movement, and not as a mere philosophy. Meanwhile in 1895 there had been created the Confédération Générale du Travail, known as the C.G.T.—letters which later acquired ominous import. At first the C.G.T., despite its ostensible comprehensiveness, was rather ineffective and futile. The union of the Bourses du Travail and the C.G.T., arranged towards the end of 1902, operated from January 1st, 1903. It was in the Bourses du Travail and later, in its period of greatest prominence, in the C.G.T. that revolutionary syndicalism as a working-class theory, with manifestations in working-class practice, was worked out.²So far as concerns the working-class end of the movement, the sources of syndicalism are fairly obvious. It is, above all, a manifestation of disillusionment, a reaction of the proletariat against democracy. Much had been promised; much had been expected. The experiment had been made. Democracy had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.¹ Governments had been changed; measures had been passed. The essential injustice of things remained. To the outsider, at a comfortable distance in space and time, it is little short of astounding to note how prominent a place in syndicalist literature is occupied by l'affaire Miller and. Revolutionary leaders were obviously bought, seduced by the enemy. Just for a handful of silver he left us: even worse, it may have been a mere ribbon to stick in his coat. And as Lagardelle lugubriously puts it: ‘Après Millerand, Briand; après Briand, Viviani; après Viviani, .... d'autres viendront.’² Impatient, embittered, disillusioned, the syndicalists exclaimed that it was time to turn their backs on the State and the parliamentary game, and to seek their own salvation in their own way.

With this there is another dominant consideration. It is for the historian to pass judgment on the French character before the nineteenth century; but indubitably and obviously, ever since the French Revolution, the French outlook has been profoundly influenced by the revolutionary tradition, reinforced in 1848 and by the events of the Commune. On the least provocation, they visualise themselves as overturning something; there have perhaps been too many pictures of revolutionary heroes storming the barricades with wide-open mouths. Doubtless for good in many directions—though perhaps for not-so-good in others—the Marseillaise is in their blood. It has again been gloriously manifested in the days of August 1944. It is with them second nature to be revolutionary. Syndicalism, viewed as a working-class movement, springs from a realisation of the futility of the parliamentary machine as a means of getting anywhere, combined with the promptings and the stirrings of the revolutionary tradition. The syndicalists demand accordingly that the everlasting struggle be moved to another field, and waged with other weapons of their own forging.

For it is this class struggle—la lutte de classe—which in both currents of syndicalism is placed at the centre of things. And indeed, once the reality of the class struggle is conceded as something eternal, it is probable that the whole of syndicalism, in theory and practice, follows with logical necessity. For the intellectuals, the emphasis on the class struggle is merely a belated return to Marx—not to Marx as commonly understood and interpreted, not to the embroideries and frills of Marx, but to the essential Marxian core, whether Marx understood it or not. Sorel tells us that his task was to ascertain ‘comment se pourrait réaliser l'essentiel des doctrines marxistes.’¹ It was the function of the syndicalists, so he claimed, to ‘purge’ traditional Marxism of all that was not specifically Marxist, and to retain what was, according to them, le noyau, the kernel of the doctrine.² Elsewhere, in a phrase that might intrigue the metaphysicians, he claims that syndicalism retains ‘ce qu'il y a de vraiment vrai dans le marxisme’—something transcending all formulas, to wit, that the class struggle is the alpha and omega of socialism.³ Marx, it is admitted, was not always happily inspired; he allowed a quantity of old rubbish to creep into his writings; he had the disadvantage that ‘he did not move in circles which had acquired a satisfactory notion of the General Strike.’⁴ But if the dross was washed away from Marx (and dross there unmistakeably is), the pure gold that remains is the doctrine of the class struggle. In this, and in this alone, is the sincere milk of the word.

The idea of the class struggle is thus ‘the beginning and the end of socialism.’⁵ Nor should it be a matter for regret that there is this warfare at the heart of things. The class struggle is itself a creative force, a prophylactic against sloth and slackness. The two parties in this feud must oppose each other implacably in the interests of both sides, and in the ultimate interests of humanity.⁶ There must be no point of contact, no fusion. They must not think alike. ‘All our efforts,’ says Sorel, ‘should aim at preventing bourgeois ideas from poisoning the rising class.’⁷

Those who thus see an eternal and irreducible opposition within society, and whose chief aim is to accentuate and perpetuate the line of demarcation, are obviously not designed for political activity. Along various lines, partly by intuitive impulse in the Syndicats, partly by ratiocination among the philosophers, the syndicalists turned their backs on ‘reform,’ the parliamentary socialist party, democracy and the State.

There is in the first place the very practical point already glanced at, namely, that parliamentary action has not in fact been found to deliver the goods. Parliamentary action, as Godwin had indicated long ago, rests on lobbying, on compromise, on give-and-take; it demands collaboration with other parties; it calls for the qualities of the trimmer. It is maddeningly slow. How, asks Lagardelle, can a system ‘qui ne vit que des ruses, d'équivoques, de concessions, de compromissions, de conciliations’—how can it evoke the best sentiments of the human soul?¹ Moreover, the would-be revolutionary member breathes an infected and poisoned atmosphere; he is compelled to concern himself with precedents and procedure; he must needs attend receptions; gradually he clothes himself in the physical and mental vestments of the Bourgeoisie and becomes a lost soul: ‘il devient un excellent bourgeois avec la plus grande facilité.’² He is, in short, a prisoner, a hostage in the hands of the enemy; and the eloquent procession of Millerand, Briand and Viviani provides overwhelming testimony to the dismal conclusion.

All this would be true even if democracy were ‘right’: but the philosophers at least, even if their arguments may have been too subtle for the ordinary trade unionist, were not slow in producing proof that democracy rests on assumptions that cannot be accepted by the class-strugglers. In his earliest significant work, Sorel argued that government by the totality (l'ensemble) of the citizens had never been anything but a fiction: how could the vote of a chaotic majority disclose Rousseau's General Will which is incapable of error?³ Moreover, along a different line, Marx is invoked to point the same conclusion. Democracy, he argues, is antipathetic to Marxian conceptions ‘parce qu'elle recherche toujours l'unité.’⁴ It is profoundly true; the ultimate aim of democracy is agreement, even if it be but that makeshift, an agreement to differ. The same point is made by Lagardelle, when he argues at considerable length that democracy places itself above all classes and the conflicts of classes. Its object is to ‘reduce differences and destroy antagonisms.’ Democracy and the class struggle are therefore conflicting conceptions: democracy pursues the harmony and not the conflict of classes.⁵ The ultimate clash between democracy and syndicalism is represented by the incompatibility between collaboration and conflict; and to the syndicalist, whilst collaboration is a delusion, conflict is the mother of all things.⁶

Another fine of attack on democracy in its normal operation is significant, because it again reveals a just appreciation of one of the main characteristics of democracy, and at the same time is one of the many pointers to Guild Socialism later. It is of the nature of democracy (so writes Lagardelle) to allow criticism to play unrestrained on every subject. Again, it is an entirely just observation; if the essence of democracy is to be sought for in any single criterion, it must probably be found in the fact that democracy encourages the utmost possible freedom of discussion. Even if democracy must in the end constrain a minority, it aims at allowing all concerned to say all that they have to say before a decision is taken. But, continues Lagardelle, that this criticism playing on all things may be of any value, education is necessary. Unfortunately, he argues, the questions now at issue are so complicated that the masses cannot be sufficiently educated to play their part. The multitude does not govern: it is governed—by its representatives.¹ As against this necessary incompetence of the electorate in the political field, when we turn to industry, ‘la masse ouvrière est capable de juger.’² It is a frequent plea of the Guild Socialists in their arguments for industrial democracy. Lagardelle does, however, allow a minor part to parliamentary action in the democratic field, on condition that it is recognised as subsidiary. In a rather grotesque metaphor, he admits that the democratic atmosphere is the only one that can be breathed by socialist lungs.³ Nevertheless, der Henker steht vor der Thüre: working-class democracy makes use of political democracy only in order the better to destroy it.⁴

A further reason why parliamentary or political activity is smitten in advance with sterility is to be found in the distinction drawn by the syndicalists between a class and a party. This is an argument particularly dear to Lagardelle, and it is stated repeatedly throughout Le Socialisme Ouvrier with varying degrees of felicity. Any party, and this applies equally to the Socialist Party, is an artificial aggregate of heterogeneous elements drawn from all classes, and united solely by a lien de volonté. The class, on the other hand, is a natural product of historical development, comprising elements of the same kind, and whose grouping is accordingly due to a lien de necessité. The one represents an intellectual unity; the other rests on homogeneity of origin and of conditions of life. The party comprises men of strangely different social levels. The working class (la classe ouvrière), on the other hand, is confined to the proletariat, living the same life, subject to the same eventualities, having the same interests.⁵ The one has an economic basis; the other merely an ideological foundation. Another variant of the same point is of interest because it serves to mark the connecting-link between the syndicalists and their enfeebled offspring, the Guild Socialists. The organism of the party (and it is still Lagardelle to whom we are listening) is concerned with the worker in his quality as an elector, as a member of the political society, that is to say, when he mingles with other citizens belonging to other classes; the organism of the class seizes him in his quality as a worker, as a member of the economic society, that is to say, at the moment when he separates himself from all the other classes and is opposed to them. Parties act on the terrain common to all men; classes, on the other hand, display their activity only on the terrain which separates them from the rest of society.¹ Here, as will be seen in the next chapter, is a significant pointer to certain of the social theories of the earlier days of Guild Socialism.

We see then why a party is so fashioned that it must dissolve in the day of adversity. The Liberal Party may comprise a few earls or even a marquess; it also includes charwomen and railway porters. Thé Socialist Party doubtless contains workers;—but it also enrolls in its ranks middle-class intellectuals, journalists and political careerists. They are bound together by, at most, an intellectual creed. They have no common interests; in a world of economic determinism, no real effective bond unites them. But a class, or so we are told, is based on common interest and nothing but common interest. The class will therefore stand when the party crumbles. It is significant that Sorel regards it as one of the cardinal features of Marxism that it discarded the idea of a party, which was fundamental in the conception of ‘classical revolutionaries,’ in order to replace it by that of a class.²

Yet if one penetrates still deeper, there is an even more fundamental reason for turning away from political activity. It is that the State is a capitalistic State, the tool of the enemy: perhaps, if properly viewed, it may itself be the supreme enemy. Political activity, by its very nature, accepts the State; ‘the socialist parties act within the framework of the existing State.’ But clearly, as Lagardelle adds, mere amelioration of the lot of the workers inside capitalistic society has nothing to do with socialism; socialism is the organisation of working-class revolt against society as we know it.³ Labriola is abundantly right: it is impossible for socialists or the Socialist Party to accept the responsibility of governing in the existing State, without thereby becoming defenders of the existing State.⁴ You cannot by Satan cast out Satan; a socialist minister, confronted by the prospect of disorder, is compelled to use his utmost endeavour to maintain order.

Sufficient reason for turning one's back on the parliamentary regime, which is the abomination of desolation; on democracy, which is synonymous with mediocrity and corruption; on the State, which is for ever ‘unproductive, incompetent and arbitrary.’¹ But if the class struggle is not to be waged under the banner of democracy, with social reform as the fruit of the high contention of parties, what then must men do? The answer is entirely evident from the argument already developed. The working-class movement is essentially revolutionary, and the lutte de classe can be conducted only on the terrain de classe.² The workers must work out their own salvation, creating for the purpose working-class institutions, distinct from and apart from the State. It is idle to ask from the State, cap in hand. The workers must prepare to take what they want—by direct action.

If we ask where we are to find the people, the classe ouvrière, the answer is again simple. They are to be found in the trade unions. The Syndicats, the Bourses du Travail, the Federations of Syndicats—these are the peculiar organs of the proletariat, because, as Lagardelle expresses it, they group together workers only, and further because they group them only ‘en tant qu'ouvriers’—only workers and only as workers.³ One of the landmarks in the history of syndicalism on the academic side is represented by Sorel's early work, L'avenir socialiste des syndicats, which appeared (in magazine form) as far back as 1898. Writing retrospectively in a later preface, Sorel declared that his purpose had been to draw the attention of socialists to the great role which the syndicats might be called upon to play in the modern world.⁴ The main idea in this highly significant work is that the trade union, the syndicat, is primarily an instrument of the guerre sociale. The unions exist for war, and in this field there is no room for diplomatic action with a view to the establishment or maintenance of peace, such as exists in the corresponding conflicts between States, for the simple reason that the proletariat aims at the destruction of its adversaries.⁵ It is a war without truce and without armistice. The syndicats must accordingly consciously remould themselves not merely that they may become more effective instruments of war, but also that they may be fitted to play their part in the world which will result from their triumph. They must therefore prove their political capacity.⁶ As against the State, they must pursue a policy analogous to what, with us, was later known as ‘encroaching control.’ Thus in the case of the Bureaux de placement, then a matter of current controversy, Sorel argued that if the syndicats could but take over their administration, ‘ils auraient arraché à l'autorité politique traditionelle tin lambeau de son pouvoir.’⁷ So, with regard to other functions of the State (e.g. Factory Inspection and Public Assistance), ‘il faut qu'ils arrachent ces pouvoirs petit à petit, en les réclamant sans cesse.’ The struggle for political power is not merely designed to unseat the bourgeois and occupy their vacant places: it is a struggle to divest the existing political organism of all life, and to transfer whatever of value it may have contained to a proletarian organism created concurrently with the development of the proletariat.¹ Thus, like an encroaching and adolescent cuckoo, the syndicat should aim at ousting the State from the nest.

Such is the programme: ‘to snatch from the State and from the Commune, one by one, all their attributes in order to enrich the proletarian organisms in process of formation.’² But for this task in its fullness the syndicats are not yet prepared. Before the world can be transformed, the workers must first acquire ‘a superior degree of moral culture.’³ Hence the rather pathetic insistence which Sorel lays on the powers of the trade unions to impart uplift: they must become ‘puissants mécanismes de moralisation.’⁴ If anyone doubts it, let him look at the dockers in England where, under trade union influence, many have abandoned their intemperate habits, ‘et quelques-uns sont devenus même teetotalers.’ This même is an eloquent tribute to the regenerative influence of trade unions. So also the idea of a new education, under trade union guidance and with trade union inspiration, figures largely in Sorel: ‘We must bring the young to love their work.’⁵ The trade unions, in short, are to become moralising and educational agencies so that their members may be fit for their high task. And if trade unions are equipped and prepared on these lines, then—so Sorel concludes his thesis—the whole future of socialism is to be found in the autonomous development of the workers’ unions.⁶

We have succeeded in reducing socialism to the class struggle; and the conduct of this war that knows no armistice has been entrusted to the trade unions, suitably reformed. It remains to say something of the strategy and of the munitions of war, of the tools with which, it was confidently expected, the syndicalists would finish the job. It is scarcely the whole truth, but it is a reasonable approximation to the truth, to say that on this side syndicalism reduced itself to the theory and the advocacy of the General Strike. The conception of the General Strike has a reasonably venerable history. It was a familiar idea in England in the days of Owen. It has been pointed out that it figures in the concluding chapters of Disraeli's Sybil under the pleasant euphemism of a ‘National Holiday.’ In the fat, peaceful, progressive reformist years in the middle of the century, it had faded into the back-ground. The re-launching of the idea in the epoch with which we are concerned is attributed by Pouget to a French anarchist, Tortelier, a carpenter, who developed the theory of the General Strike at a meeting of the International in London in November, 1888—sans grand écho, as is added.¹ The grand echo was, however, not long in coming; and by 1892 no less a person than Aristide Briand had produced considerable reverberations in inducing the National Federation of Syndicats to approve the principle of the General Strike. Indeed, the conception of the General Strike found its natural home in the Bourses du Travail, and later in the C.G.T.; and though the Guesdists, tainted with reformism, might declare that the General Strike was General Nonsense, it rapidly became the especial badge of the syndicalist school.

In the original form the idea of the General Strike is of a simplicity and a naivete that at least testify to the innocence of mind of those who devised it. This was the Grève des bras croisés. How much simpler than the Parliamentary solution, involving delay, intrigue, compromise, uncertainty and defeat! All that is necessary is that the workers in a mass should simultaneously fold their arms, and go for a picnic in the Bois de Vincennes with their wives, families, a lunch-basket and their folded arms. After a few days of this care-free life under a serene heaven, the hated bourgeoisie, crawling supine, will lower the flag, and the revolution will be over. The workers, at last unfolding their arms, will relieve their wives of the luncheon-baskets and return home to a regenerated world. Unimaginative, hard-bitten, ‘reformist’ trade union leaders, holding with the Guesdists that the General Strike is General Nonsense, have little difficulty in making hay of this idyllic picture. It is unveiling the obvious to observe that while doubtless a General Strike of folded arms would produce chaos, the workers on strike would not be immune from the chaos so produced. They also, when not picnicking in the Bois de Vincennes, would be sitting in houses where the light had failed and where the water-tap (and not merely the water-tap) had ceased to do its duty. Nor might it be an easy matter to replenish the luncheon-basket from day to day in this strange transitional period. ‘When toil ceases, the People suffer,’ it is recorded in Sybil; ‘that is the only truth that we have learnt, and it is a bitter one.’ Indeed even on syndicalist theory, one is rather impelled to the view that the General Strike, in its naive form, does in fact approximate to General Nonsense. For if the bourgeoisie and the State, the two great enemies, are so powerful for evil as we are led to believe they are, they will not lightly succumb before the serried ranks of folded arms. They will retaliate; they will protect themselves. The picnickers in the Bois will have to unfold their arms sooner than they had intended. Not by such simple means as these will it be possible to fulfil their dignified resolution not to ‘expose themselves to the brutalities of the police.’ In short, a General Strike, assuming its possibility, would be the mother of chaos on all sides. And who may with confidence undertake in advance to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm to a predestined end?

It should perhaps in fairness be made clear that in certain phases of syndicalist discussion, some ambiguity attaches to the phrase ‘General Strike,’ which sometimes means a strike of everybody everywhere, and sometimes merely a nation-wide strike in one industry. Yet indubitably the syndicalist movement became more and more attached to strikes on as large a scale as possible, not with the object of attaining any immediate or limited end, but because all strikes are in themselves praiseworthy and desirable as a means of carrying on the class war. The ostensible objects of the strikes and the outcome of the strikes were alike matters of minor significance. And equally beyond question, when the ‘proletarian’ syndicalist spoke of a General Strike, he meant (like an honest man) what he said, that they were contemplating and moving towards a general cessation of all work which would in fact take place some day not too remote. Turning to the philosophers, however, and above all to Sorel, we find that the General Strike assumes a somewhat different significance; here indeed is one of the points of differentiation between ‘proletarian’ syndicalism and the syndicalism of the Chair. The Sorelian view of strikes in general, and of the General Strike in particular, is coloured by the rather mystical part assigned in his philosophy to the role of violence, and by his somewhat celebrated, not to say notorious, doctrine of myths. Already in one of his (somewhat) later prefaces to the Avenir Socialiste des Syndicats, Sorel had emphasised under three headings what the conception of the General Strike did, and in its way this passage provides a convenient introduction to this curious tract of speculation. Firstly, the General Strike usefully and unmistakeably underlines that the time of political revolutions is over and done with (an interesting example of how far out the best of us may be in our guesses regarding the not-so-remote future). Secondly, the General Strike gives concrete expression to the fact that socialism cannot be achieved (pace the Revisionists and the Fabians) by easy stages; it has to be a catastrophic and complete change. And thirdly, the conception of the General Strike gives meaning and significance to all the paltry little day-to-day strikes of ordinary industrial life. Each strike, no matter how local it may be, becomes a skirmish in the great battle which we call the General Strike.¹

On this view, all strikes are educational, disciplinary and symbolic. Every strike is an incident in something larger; it may in itself, and in appearance, be but an affair of outposts, yet it may turn out to be the prologue to the great decisive engagement. The small strike, frequently repeated, cannot fail to ‘rejuvenate the socialist idea in the proletariat, reinforce sentiments of heroism, of sacrifice and of union, and keep perpetually alive the hope of the Revolution.’¹ So also it impresses the great truth that the workers are not merely individuals, but that they form a body (un corps); otherwise expressed, it gives them solidarity.²

One of the characteristic features of Sorel's view of this ceaseless war in which every conflict is a ‘vanguard fight’ is that the other side also must be compelled to fight, and thus to fulfil its destiny. We are confronted with the ‘cowardice of government’; we witness the timidity of the forces of law; a cowardly middle class pursues the chimera of social peace. But just because socialism is destined to be the heir of capitalism, the inheritance must be fully developed. Sorel clearly prefers a middle class ‘which would find satisfaction in looking after their own interests.’ The world in its upper reaches has gone flabby—terribly ignorant, gapingly stupid, politically impotent—and that it may recover its former energy, the lines of demarcation must be ruthlessly maintained: there must be no fraternising.³

The dangers implicit in the existence of a benevolent and philanthropic middle class figure so largely in the Sorelian philosophy that the point almost demands illustration in his own language. ‘We are to-day faced with a new and very unforeseen fact—a middle class which seeks to weaken its own strength.’ A little later on the same page he goes on:

A growing and solidly organised working class can compel the capitalist class to remain firm in the industrial war; if a united and revolutionary proletariat confronts a rich middle class, eager for conquest, capitalist society will have reached its historical perfection.⁴

To the same effect:

Everything may be saved, if the proletariat by their use of violence manage to re-establish the division into classes, and so restore to the middle class something of its former energy.⁵

Elsewhere the attitude of the philosophical syndicalist to the works of social peace is indicated with a rude frankness:

To repay with black ingratitude the benevolence of those who would protect the workers, to meet with insults the homilies of the defenders of human fraternity, and to reply by blows to the advances of the propagators of social peace... is a very practical way of indicating to the middle class that they must mind their own business and only that.⁶

This point of view is not peculiar to Sorel. Lagardelle likewise, in language which ultimately seems to point to confusion of aim, emphasises the blessedness of struggle as a stimulating force, and the benefits which capitalism itself will derive therefrom. It is not, he says, the debilitating atmosphere of social peace, but the salubrious air of the class struggle that excites the ardour of the masters of production¹; and in a further sentence which somehow seems to lose its piquancy if removed from its French atmosphere, he says that provided there is

un proletariat hardi, enivré de l'esprit de conquête, insatiable dans ses reclamations, un proletariat qui ne tolère pas qu'on s'arrête un instant, et voila le capitalisme marchant, comme malgré lui, de triomphe en triomphe.²

The mystified proletarian syndicalist, groping in his trade union, might very pertinently ask: ‘But who anyhow (or words to that effect) wants to see capitalism, in spite of itself, marching from triumph to triumph?’

Thus it is the violence of the class war—proletarian violence, ‘a very fine and very heroic thing’—that is to save the world from barbarism³; and the main vehicle for violence is to be found in the strike and in its universalisation, the General Strike. But for Sorel, the General Strike, so far from having the unsophisticated significance attaching to it in the proletarian mind, fades away into something mysterious and nebulous. It is a myth; it is indeed the myth in which socialism is wholly comprised. It would be as well to leave it to Sorel to explain, even in an abbreviated form, what he means by a myth:

‘Experience shows that the framing of a future, in some indeterminate time, may, when it is done in a certain way, be very effective, and have very few inconveniences.’ Such myths ‘enclose with them all the strongest inclinations of a people, of a party or of a class.’ They ‘give an aspect of complete reality to the hopes of immediate action.’ Moreover ‘these social myths in no way prevent a man profiting by the observations which he makes in the course of his life, and form no obstacle to the pursuit of his normal occupations.’⁴

Such, to avoid misrepresentation on slippery ground, is the Sorelian statement of what is involved in the idea of a myth. A myth is a compelling picture not so much of what we believe, as of what, if we could but believe, would move us to action now. The test of a myth is found in its power to influence action in the present; ‘to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future history is devoid of sense.’⁵ For the early Christians (says Sorel) the belief in the return of Christ provided the myth which embodied their hopes and explained their actions. Elsewhere Sorel refers incidentally to the Marxian doctrines of the increasing degradation of the proletariat as a ‘myth’; though perhaps he ought to have said that it was part of a greater myth, for it is of the essence of myths that they must be taken as undivided wholes. In this case one does not hope for the increasing degradation of the working classes; one may not believe it; it may indeed be statistically disproved. But if the working classes carry about with them a vivid ‘body of images’ of their increasing degradation (whether true or not), it will move them to action and justify its existence as a myth. This, though it would doubtless have surprised the genuine member of the Classe Ouvrière, is what the conception of the General Strike is and does. It provides

a body of images capable of evoking instinctively all the sentiments which correspond to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by socialism against modern society. Strikes have engendered in the proletariat the noblest, deepest and most moving sentiments they possess; the general strike groups them all in a co-ordinated picture, and, by bringing them together, gives to each one of them its maximum intensity.... We thus obtain that intuition of socialism which language cannot give us with perfect clearness—and we obtain it as a whole, perceived instantaneously.¹

The great advantage of dealing in myths (no small matter for a philosopher) is that myths cannot be refuted or analysed. Myths are ultimately ‘not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act.’² People who live in a world of myths are secure from all refutation³: how vain then to argue (or even to prove) that the General Strike is General Nonsense. A revolution needs an ideology to give the actors the necessary confidence, and later on to justify the revolution that has taken place.⁴ Herein lies the Sorelian justification of the Sorelian myth; and indeed for these reasons we should apparently, so far as practicable, breathe an atmosphere of myths, at least to this extent that we should be on our guard against formulas ‘autres que des formules mythiques.’⁵ Lagardelle, though in language less remote from the usage of his clients, gives substantially the same elusive view of the General Strike. He traces its development from the Grève des bras croisés, until finally the idea of the General Strike was affirmed ‘in all its symbolic purity’—something indeed whose primary purpose is to give a higher meaning to the petty incidents of the daily struggle.⁶ Thus with the philosophers, the General Strike, the central conception of syndicalism, fades away into something that may never happen; nor does it greatly matter if it never does happen. Enough that it is meanwhile a nice thing to think about.¹

Apart from the cultivation of strikes, for their tonic effect as much as for any immediate end, two other weapons for use in the class war figure with some prominence in the syndicalist armoury. They may be dealt with rather summarily here, because though they may occupy a conspicuous place in the history of syndicalism as a movement, and indeed largely contributed to making syndicalism a word of terror, it may be doubted whether they involve any point of theoretical principle, or anything that is not in a sense obviously implicit in the syndicalist postulates. The first of these is the practice of sabotage, which may doubtless be interpreted to cover a variegated multitude of sins. Assuming that there is a class warfare, then presumably it follows that either party, by the rules of war, is justified in inflicting damage on the other. In its simplest form it is based on the principle of ‘poor work for poor pay’: ‘A mauvaise paye, mauvais travail’; and it may be achieved by slackness, by what Mr. F. W. Taylor, with a deceitful semblance of classical learning, designated as Ca canae. From this to crude wanton destruction there is of course an ascending scale of possibilities. Undoubtedly, sabotage unscrupulously applied might prove a fearful weapon of destruction and confusion. In the days when syndicalism was a power, much perverted ingenuity was applied to discovering irreprehensible ways of reducing output. In certain spheres of activity, it may be possible to bring things to a standstill by carrying out all instructions literally, especially if the instructions are codified in a large folio volume which demands to be consulted; it may be possible to achieve sabotage by doing conscientiously good work when the management was bargaining on a shoddy output. On all this question of sabotage one point only need be stressed. Sabotage, so far as it was approved, was a weapon of proletarian syndicalism: it never received the blessing of Sorel or the philosophers, except in such eccentric cases as the sabotage which rested on doing too good work. And the reasons for Sorel's disapproval are significant. Firstly, socialism is the heir of capitalism, and he is a foolish heir-presumptive who damages his prospective inheritance. Secondly, syndicalism is an educational and moralising influence, producing the best type of worker for the future; but you cannot create the perfect worker for the future out of men who meanwhile are encouraged to slovenliness, slackness, indolence and deceit.

The other element in syndicalist strategy which calls for brief notice is to be found in its anti-patriotic and anti-militaristic campaign. Again it probably represents no more than a logical inference from the primary syndicalist assumptions. If, as Lagardelle reminds us, the important frontiers for Marx were those between classes and not those between peoples,¹ then the line of division must be drawn accordingly, and the trumpet must sound to the proletariat of all countries. In a well-worn phrase, made familiar though not necessarily made true by much repetition, ‘the worker has no Patrie.’ A school of thought which denies the State and seeks to extinguish the State, which thinks in terms of a world-wide conflict between classes, can hardly be expected to sympathise with the usual manifestations of patriotism. This, however, is not peculiar to syndicalism; and indeed the cult of cosmopolitanism (in the truer sense of the word), of indifference between existing States, is a logical tendency of all liberal and anarchist thought.

The anti-militaristic campaign pursued by the syndicalists, the attempted ‘seduction’ of the army, is, however, a more peculiar feature. Needless to say, in a school which sanctifies violence and looks on conflict as the mother of progress, this was not due to love of pacifism or ‘exaggerated humanitarianism.’ On this point Sorel's reassurance is unnecessary. The anti-militaristic aspect of syndicalism is but a phase of its attitude of hostility to the State, due to a realisation of the fact that ‘the army is the clearest and the most tangible of all possible manifestations of the State.’² This general consideration is, moreover, reinforced by a particular application. Should the State seek to suppress a strike (and this would be a natural stage in the progress and development of the General Strike), it would call out the soldiers and use the army for the purpose. The army is thus (among other things) a strike-breaking agency. This reflection becomes even more galling if one asks who, after all, are these soldiers who, with rifle and bayonet, may bring to naught the sublime work of the General Strike. For these soldiers are the brothers of the strikers. They have been members of the proletariat; they are now doing their period of conscript service; they will return to the ranks of the proletariat. Syndicalist propaganda therefore sought to impress on the recruit that on joining the army he did not thereby lose his old affiliations: he was still of the people. Should the day of trial come, he should remember this, and should act (or, preferably, fail to act) accordingly.

In these ways, then, the class war should be waged—a double warfare against employer and State, though doubtless the campaigns merge into one. Before drawing together the threads in all this matter of the lutte de classe, which finds its almost complete expression in the General Strike (in fact or in myth) there are two questions of tactics which usefully illumine the syndicalist outlook. The first comes with something of a shock to the dull prosaic Anglo-Saxon mind. It is the curious emphasis which the syndicalists lay on the virtue of unpreparedness: perhaps school-day memories of Ethelred the Unready have tilted us too far the other way and have made us somewhat over-conscientious in scanning the future. It may be that in this matter French syndicalism made a virtue of necessity. The syndicats were, to our way of looking at things, grotesquely and absurdly poor, for the quite sufficient reason that the trade union member did not like paying contributions any more than the trade union liked paying contribution to its federation. Sorel (speaking, it is true, of certain English unions which had fallen by the way) says that their members faded out ‘quand ils ont trouvé trop dure l'obligation de payer tou-jours.’¹ The phrase, even if it awakens a sympathetic chord in every heart, explains much in French trade union history. The syndicats were innocent of reserves and resources; and therefore, like the de-tailed fox in the fable,² they persuaded themselves that they were better without them:

Que faisons-nous, dit-il, de ce poids inutile?

Accordingly, and not wholly without reason, it was argued that accumulated funds might represent a debit rather than an asset. For the union which has funds becomes timorous and fearful of losing these funds. It becomes conservative, for there is nothing so effective in quenching the revolutionary spark as a moderate possession of this world's gear. From the higher idealism of penniless adventurousness, it is accordingly possible for the syndicalist to look down his nose across the Channel, at the ‘insipidly materialistic conception of a trade unionism concerned solely with high wages and mutual benefits.’³ Syndicalism, in this as in other things, is profoundly anti-rational. What is required is not foresight, planning, preparation or much goods laid up in barns. What is needed to storm the barricades is élan, entraînement, what Lagardelle calls ‘adventurous energy.’ Syndicalism is a philosophy not of thought but of action, and it gives the first place to ‘intuition.’⁴ Griffuelhes, in some pages which are not unamusing, contrasts the French worker with his duller German brother, who is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. Those who think too much never do anything; in any case, it is quite impossible to foresee everything—so why try? But the French worker!—‘Il resiste et proteste; il critique et s'insurge. Et il passe à l'acte immédiatement.’ There indeed is the essence of French syndicalism. ‘Il ne se laisse pas paralyser, lui, par la peur et la crainte.’ Oh no. It consists wholly of action, like the French worker of whom Griffuelhes says: ‘Il agit, et voila tout.’¹ Attack, audacity, surprise—such are the keys of success in the eyes of the syndicalists who, forgetful of the Baconian dictum that boldness is a child of ignorance, accord a place of honour to the untrimmed lamp and the ungirt loin.

Il agit, et voila tout. It is a picture with pleasing aspects; but cold-blooded people who have drawn into their infant lungs the mists of London or the haar of Eastern Scotland may regard all this as an exquisitely embroidered veil concealing a policy of acting first, and reflecting (and perhaps being sorry) later.

The other point in tactics—if it be tactics—illustrates the antidemocratic bias of syndicalism. It is found in the supremely important part assigned to the ‘conscious minority.’ This is, of course, a Marxian idea; and it is of the essence of the theory and practice of Leninism. The syndicalists, as indeed all revolutionaries, hold majorities in contempt, and despise representatives, who, once elected, take it upon themselves to do everything that requires to be done, thus losing all contact with those who elect them, and these as a further consequence tend to become ‘inert.’ All great things, it is claimed, are done by minorities who interpret the views and desires which may as yet be but latent and dormant in the inert mass. And in fact, the syndicalists would be right, if the theory of the ‘conscious minority’ were merely intended to give a convenient summary of the world's mechanism. Anyone who has had experience knows that if, of a committee of twelve, there are three who from the outset have already a draft report in their portfolio, while the other nine have deplorably virgin minds, the conscious minority have a fair chance of getting there. All great visions have been originally the visions of a few—probably the vision of one. In this sense, we may applaud the services of minorities—whether we call them ‘conscious’ or ‘determined.’

Syndicalist reasoning on this question may, however, give rise to doubt, when they assign to the conscious minority—or at least the conscious minority in whom they are interested—a peculiar sanctity and a position of peculiar privilege. Let Lagardelle (abbreviated) describe the process. Direct action, he says, presupposes the effective intervention of minorités hardies. It is no longer mere numbers that form the law. ‘Mais il se forme une élite qui, par sa qualité, entraîne la masse et l'oriente dans les chemins du combat.’ There takes place a selection of the most courageous, the most audacious, etc., who are drawn in advance at the head of the others. The only condition imposed is that they shall be ‘en correspondance avec l'instinct intime des masses.’¹

There is much virtue, because much vagueness, in the use of the reflexive in the French language: Il se forme une élite, il se produit une selection. ‘But how?’ is the question to which there is no answer. This élite of the courageous and the audacious is thrown up or throws itself up: the conscious minority, conscious of its superior merit, imposes itself. It is a political theory which, with little modification, may be used to defend any tyranny, any dictatorship, or any other manifestation of gangsterdom.

Syndicalism is almost exclusively a theory of the class struggle, and of the place of the strike (and ultimately of the General Strike) as a weapon of class warfare. The class struggle is not, however, the peculiar property of the syndicalists, and what little may have to he said on this subject by way of comment should perhaps be reserved for a later chapter.² But the glorification of the strike is the undisputed pride of the syndicalists, even if there be a pale after-glow in their sucklings, the Guild Socialists. It may therefore be not inappropriate to suggest here on what grounds, as the ordinary man sees things, the syndicalist theory of strikes appears to be psychologically entirely at fault.

When strikes are condemned, the condemnation is generally based on what Sorel would call the ideology of a timorous humanitarian middle class, asking nothing more than to be allowed to live in peace.³ Strikes involve loss: the Ministry of Labour chronicles how many man-days’ productive power are wasted in this way each year; they are very infrequently completely successful; they are quite frequently not successful at all; they leave behind a trail of festering bitterness. None of these consequences would distress Sorel; some he would welcome. But, apart from these grounds of objection, rooted in low considerations of profit-and-loss and in the ‘chimera of social peace,’ there is another reason (equally one of expediency) for suggesting that strikes are unwise. This springs from the very nature of what a strike is. Now, though doubtless not so intended, a strike is an invitation to the public to find out how they can get along without the services of a particular group of workers; the strikers in effect say not merely to the employers but to the world at large; ‘You just try and do without us.’ The trouble is that we all tend to overrate our indispensability:

The weaver's Art, it is renowned so,
That rich or poor without it cannot go.

No doubt; but it is possible, if need arises, to make an old suit serve its primary purpose for a wonderfully long time. If we invite the world to do without us, the world may take us at our word, and may demonstrate that we are not so important as we thought we were. When miners strike, they invite their foreign customers to make arrangements (probably long-term arrangements) with mines in other countries, and their home customers to ascertain in how many ways they can economise in coal from day to day. When railwaymen strike, they invite the public to find out how convenient buses may be; and if road transport should happen at the time to be struggling to its feet, the railway strike may set the buses on a rock, establishing their way. One may not generalise in these matters; but probably there are few large strikes which do not result in a shrinkage (which may sometimes be permanent) in the demand for the strikers’ product. The public at large has written down their indispensability. Probably this consideration would not apply to the same extent in a world where the proletariat of all countries had succeeded in uniting; it is a consideration which cannot yet be ignored.

In assessing the syndicalist doctrines in this matter, it is unnecessary to comment further on the strike des bras croisés, which, as we have seen, rests on a view of life which the lower grades of the kindergarten should have outgrown. But beyond this, the doctrine of impulsive unpreparedness, of indifference to defeat, and the emphasis on the conscious minority alike betray ignorance of human nature and of human possibilities. An age which has become enamoured of the idea of ‘planning’ does not need to be told that the world cannot be rebuilt by élan. A war cannot be won by relying on the sudden impulse of a private soldier storming a barricade one evening when he feels like it. Elan has its uses, but there ought to be somewhere a General Staff with a few ideas about the campaign as a whole. The syndicalists mislead and confuse themselves with the military metaphors in which the whole subject of the class war is steeped. The syndicalist doctrine is that unpreparedness is not merely a virtue, but (what is far better) an asset. They hold that one thing is needful, and that the good part consists in being aglow with passionate enthusiasm; that no heights will be stormed by an army of Marthas troubled about many things. To look upon every encounter as a vanguard action which may lead to the great Napoleonic battle is to make grand strategy depend on the outcome of chance skirmishes; and alike in the military and industrial field such a course is merely to invite disaster.

Equally wrong in its perverseness is the view that all strikes are good, because they provide a bracing tonic, because they teach solidarity, and because all are useful preparations for a still greater engagement. Even if a strike is a failure, it is supposed to possess these educational virtues, and consequently the true syndicalist is indifferent to failure. It is true that a succession of military reverses (if not carried too far) may at times have the effect of making a nation more determined and more resolute. Peoples of a certain temperament and with the right leadership may be tried in adversity and may come forth as gold; though even here defeat is not a matter of indifference. But in the case of strikes and industrial disputes, it may be doubted whether the analogy holds at all. In the industrial field nothing is so discouraging and demoralising as a series of defeats; nothing so quickly turns the revolutionary into a reformist, or so promptly depletes the membership of the union affected. The failure of a big strike has, as an almost inevitable concomitant, the outbreak of bickerings and recriminations among those who have suffered defeat. That a strike, irrespective of its outcome, has a tonic effect is simply not true.

So far as concerns strikes, the emphasis on the conscious and active minority is also a snare and a source of weakness. It has already been conceded that, in the march of things, the minority may be the salt of the earth, leavening the whole lump (if this conjunction of similes be permissible): equally, of course, a minority may be the worst form of public nuisance. In the case of a strike, however, to place reliance on an active conscious minority in the middle of an inert mass is merely to invite failure. The active minority may precipitate a strike; but unless they have got far beyond the stage of being a minority, they will not be able to continue the strike—a reflection which points back to the root principle of democracy that it is the task of the minority to turn itself into the majority as its path to achievement. Indeed, on syndicalist theory, the kind of strike contemplated demands that the whole mass of the workers must be tingling with enthusiasm.

How far the position with regard to the General Strike is clarified, how far the policy of encouraging strikes is strengthened by the Sorelian conception of the myth, might be a matter for argument. Probably the ‘myth,’ while providing much material for philosophical discussion on the nature and foundations of belief, floated over the heads of the workers, unheeded and uncomprehended. Yet in so far as echoes of Sorelian philosophy penetrated to the proletarian mind, the event can hardly have been without influence in unsettling the ideas of the workers as to what the whole business meant. The myth, as we have seen, is a ‘body of images,’ capable of moving to action; to enquire into its literal accuracy is wholly otiose. No detail in a myth must be discussed as if it were ‘un fait historique previsible.’¹ Myths are not ‘astrological almanacs’; nothing that is contained in them may ever come to pass. Though Sorel does not so express it, a myth is, in current jargon, an effective slogan with a picture behind it, whether true or misleading. If it stirs the blood and moves men to act by crystallising their hopes and fears, then it has done its work.

The early socialists, it will be recalled, continually conduct their readers to the outskirts of theological discussion—even if it be a theology of their own. Sorel comes near to reviving the tradition by drawing his illustrations of the functions of myths from the theological as well as from the social field. It may be doubted, on various grounds, whether the expectation held by the early Christians of an imminent return of Christ provides a happy example of the Sorelian myth. He is perhaps on surer ground in invoking ‘the myth of the struggle with Satan.’ In England, more than in Scotland, it is customary for people to ‘renounce the Devil and all his works’ when, quite obviously—to judge from their walk and conversation—they have no great living belief in the existence of a subordinate, malevolent, frustrated, but not yet wholly defeated deity. But for the fact that in this country we are still somewhat shy in talking of God it would be interesting, by taking a cross-section of the population, to ascertain what exactly people in general think they are doing when they renounce the devil. Probably most would reply, on Sorelian lines, that the struggle against Satan is a picturesque, convenient and traditional way of expressing a very obvious reality, that somehow there is such a thing as evil, and that evil must be warred against; adding that the effectiveness of the picture is in no way impaired because few of us now visualise Satan as he may be encountered in the first chapter of the Book of Job.¹ Nevertheless, even if some would admit that there is a place for ‘symbolic truth,’ the conception of the ‘myth’ as applied to the General Strike is somewhat peculiar, and so far as it had any effect on the ordinary man, must in the long run have produced effects contrary to what was intended. For the essence of the Sorelian myth in this case is that we, the proletariat, are to be inspired from day to day by an apocalyptic vision of the General Strike, which at the same time we are told will in all probability never take place: we should realise that every dispute in which we may engage may, for all we know, be the prelude to an earth-shaking event, which turns out to be the figment of a philosopher's brain—regarding which it is, further, foolishness to ask whether it means what it purports to mean, or whether it means anything at all. If all this were apprehended, hope deferred would soon cool the workers’ ardour. If in this life only we have myths, then are we of all men most miserable.

Something, in conclusion, should be said of the syndicalist future: fortunately, at the end of an unduly lengthy chapter, there is surprisingly little to say. Doubtless there is in existence a syndicalist Utopia or fairy-tale, explaining Comment nous ferons la Revolution, but it is in accordance with the principles of a school whose motto is to act first and think later (if at all), that in the syndicalist scheme of things the future is left to look after itself. Certain points on very broad lines are clear, and have already been indicated incidentally. By a progressive process of encroaching control, the syndicats are to oust the present employers, and place themselves in the warm nest as the legitimate heir: ‘it counts on expelling the capitalists from the productive domain, and on taking their place in the workshop created by capitalism.’ Likewise it ‘proposes to suppress the State.’¹ The same double purpose is expressed by Lagardelle, when he defines the purpose of syndicalist socialism as consisting in the simultaneous suppression of the exploitation of man by man, and of the government of man by man. There is here clearly a strong infusion of anarchism, which admittedly exercised considerable influence in the early days of the formulation of syndicalist policy. It is, however, an anarchism of groups; the individual is not left loose and irresponsible in a disordered world. On the contrary, the individual is to find his responsibilities, his human satisfactions and affiliations in the syndicat. But, so far as can be judged of a prospect where precision is avoided, the syndicats will be left to jostle anarchistically in the void. In a sense, however, it would be truer to say that the syndicalist refused to think of the future. The primary question for them was whether the proletariat has enough strength to enter on the struggle.² There is repeated emphasis on the fact that not merely is there no need for programmes, it is even folly to plan socialism, since ‘tout en lui est imprevisible’: it is only a reactionary who would draw up a programme.³ Lagardelle is particularly scornful of detailed plans: if the esprit de lutte is combined with the esprit positif, then they may calmly entrust their destiny to the care of history.⁴ It is pleasant to encounter this child-like faith. Syndicalism is like the syndicalist worker: il agit, et voilà tout.

Syndicalism was, while it lasted—and in retrospect still is—an extremely interesting movement. It is significant that it combined in a peculiar degree two of the most characteristic tendencies of the last generation—and two of the most undesirable tendencies, as it may appear to those of us who are senescent. Syndicalism is antidemocratic; and it is anti-rational and anti-intellectual. Why so large a part of the world has turned its back on democracy, why even democrats agree, sorrowfully, that the theory of democracy needs restatement, may not be considered here. Enough to note that in their irreconcilable antagonism to Parliament and all its ways; in their belief in ‘direct action’; in their exaltation of minorities, the syndicalists were, throughout and profoundly, anti-democratic, and were among the first to be so on a large and consistent scale.¹ So also the last generation has to a large extent turned its back on reason, so dear to the eighteenth century. We no longer ask that our poetry, our art, or our music should ‘mean’ anything; for many of the younger generation, meaning has ceased to have any meaning. Instinct, intuition, impulse, imagination have displaced reason. It is again a feature profoundly characteristic of the syndicalists who placed enthusiasm in the forefront, scoffed at preparations, relied on their intuitions and refused to think of the future. Georges Sorel, the leading exponent of syndicalism on its philosophical side, is also something of a portent, and a figure who would repay study as a psychological case. He lived long enough to wash his hands of syndicalism because it had failed to fulfil its promise. Indeed, living a placid but increasingly pessimistic life in his villa in the pleasant bourgeois suburb of Boulogne-sur-Seine, he was able in the fullness of time to get a certain kick out of the appearance of Lenin and of Mussolini on the horizon of things. A General Strike (as a myth, and in imagination); a revolution in far-off Russia; a march on Rome (at a distance) were equally welcome as an escape from the slothful slough of modern civilisation. Fundamentally, Sorel detested the mediocrity and drabness of life with an intensity which suggests that life in the villa at Boulogne-sur-Seine was surrounded by a sea of drabness and mediocrity, by an unending fen of stagnant waters. Doubtless there are certain ‘bourgeois’ suburbs in which one is instinctively impelled to reflections on violence. Most people work it off by reading, or writing, detective novels.