"Much is being written and said nowadays as to the danger of Socialism and in favor of trades unionism," writes the Mine Workers' Journal, "To us the condemnation of the Socialists, coming as it does from the capitalistic press, is a reminder that of the two evils to their selfish class interest, they prefer the least.... It is useless to attempt to divide trades unionism from Socialism. It cannot be done. They have all learned that their interests are common; they know that labor divided will continue to suffer, and will hang together before they will allow capital to hang them separately.

"Indeed, looking at trades unionism in all its phases and from every angle, we fail to see why Socialism and it should be separated. The man or men in the movement to-day who are not more or less Socialistic in their belief are few and far between and do not know what the principles of unionism are, or what it stands for. We are all more or less Socialistic in our belief."[252]

A perusal of the labor papers in general shows that while a number agree with the Garment Workers a still larger number share the opinion of the Mine Workers' Journal. Yet what is the essential difference?

The Garment Workers' organ claims that the European Socialists and trade unionists support one another's candidates and unite their power without the Socialists demanding the indorsement of their program, and argues for that policy in this country. This statement is not accurate. Only in England, where there has hitherto been no independent Socialist action of any consequence, has there been any such compromise. On the Continent of Europe the Socialists usually agree to leave the unions perfect freedom in their business, and not to interfere in the slightest with their action on the economic field, but there is no important instance in recent years where they have compromised with them at the ballot box. And this error is shared by the Mine Workers' Journal, which, as I have just shown, is friendly rather than hostile to Socialism. In another editorial in this organ we find it said that "whenever Socialism in America adopts the methods of the British, and other European toilers and pulls in harness with trade unionism, it is bound to make headway faster than at present, because there is scarcely a man in the labor movement that is not more or less of a Socialist." Here again the British (Labor Party) and the Continental (Socialist) methods are confused. It is true that the Socialist parties and the labor unionists everywhere act together. But there are two fundamental differences between the situation in Great Britain and that on the Continent. A large part of the unions on the Continent are extremely radical if not revolutionary in their labor-union tactics, and secondly, the overwhelming majority of their members are Socialists in politics. Surely there could be no greater contrast than that between the swallowing up of the budding Socialist movement by non-Socialist labor unions in Great Britain and the support of the Socialist Party by the revolutionary unionist on the Continent.

In America only a minority of the unions are definitely and clearly Socialist. The local federations of the unions in many of our leading cities have declared for the Party. Among the national organizations, however, only the Western Federation of Miners, the Brewers, the Hat and Cap Makers, the Bakers, and a few others, numbering together no more than a quarter of a million members, have definitely indorsed Socialism. The Coal Miners, numbering nearly 300,000, have indorsed collective ownership of industry, but without saying anything about the Socialist Party. Besides these, the Socialist Party, of course, has numerous individual adherents in every union. On the whole the Socialists are very much outnumbered in the unions, and as long as this condition remains, the majority of Socialists do not desire anything approaching fusion between the two movements.

Half a century ago, it is true, Marx himself favored the Socialists entering into a labor union party in England. He assumed that English unions would soon go into politics, whereas they took half a century to do it; he assumed, also, that when they entered politics they would be more or less militant and independent, and he never imagined that during fifteen years of "independent action" they would oppose revolutionary and militant ideas more than ever, and would even go so far in support of the Liberal Party as almost to bring about a split within their own anti-revolutionary ranks. Certainly Marx expected that they would accept his leading principles, whereas only the smallest minority of the present Labor Party has done so, while the majority has not yet consented to make Socialism an element of the Party's constitution, confining themselves to a broad general declaration in favor of "State Socialism"—and even this not to be binding on its members.

Marx's standard for a workingmen's party was Socialism and nothing less than Socialism. In his famous letter on the Gotha program addressed in 1875 to Bebel, Liebknecht, and others, at the time of the formation of the Socialist Party and perhaps the greatest practical crisis in Marx's lifetime, he said, it will be recalled, that "every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs," but he was even then against any sacrifice of essential principle. He saw that the workingmen themselves might be satisfied by "the mere fact of the union" of his followers with those of LaSalle, but he said that it was an error to believe that this momentous result could not be bought too dearly, and if any principle was to be sacrificed, he preferred, instead of fusion, "a simple agreement against the common enemy."

While Socialist workingmen, then, are inclined to attach more importance to the Socialist Party than to conservative unionism, they expect the new aggressive, democratic, and revolutionary unionism to do even more for Socialism, at least in the expected crisis of the future, than the Party itself. The tendency of the unions towards politics is merely an automatic result of the tendency of governments and capitalists towards a certain form of collectivism. Far more significant is their tendency towards Socialism whether through politics or through the strike, the boycott, and other means.

Trade unionism, transferred to the field of politics, is not Socialism. The struggles against employers for more wages, less hours, and better conditions has no necessary relation to the struggle against capitalism for the control of industry and government. The former struggle may evolve into the latter, and usually does so, but long periods may also intervene when it takes no step in that direction. Moreover, a trade union party of the British type, whether it takes the name Socialist or not, if it acts as rival to a genuine Socialist Party, checks the latter's growth.

When revolutionary labor organizations composed largely of genuine Socialists enter into politics, the situation is completely reversed—even when such organizations take the step primarily for the sake of their unions rather than to aid the Socialist Party. This situation I shall consider in the following chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[240] Eugene V. Debs, "His Life and Writings," p. 140.

[241] John Mitchell, "Organized Labor," p. 208.

[242] Miss Hughan in her "American Socialism," p. 220, quotes an expression of mine (see the New York Call, March 22, 1910) in which I said that "petty reforms never have aroused and never will arouse the enthusiasm of the working class and do not permit of its cooeperation, but leave everything in the hands of a few self-appointed leaders."

Miss Hughan herself points out that I have never considered all so-called reforms as petty (see "American Socialism of the Present Day," p. 216) and quotes (on p. 199) an expression from the very article above mentioned in which I define what reforms I consider are of special importance to the wage earners, namely, those protecting the strike, the boycott, free speech, and civil government. I even mentioned labor legislation on a national scale. The petty reforms I referred to were State labor laws. These will not only be carried out by non-Socialists, but receive very little attention from active labor bodies such as the city and State federations, which are almost wholly absorbed in the greater and more difficult task of defending the strike, boycott, free speech, and sometimes civil government. Labor will do everything in its power to promote child labor laws, workingmen's compensation etc., except to give them its chief attention instead of the struggle for higher wages and the rights needed to carry it on effectively. As a consequence these matters are left to a few selfish or unselfish persons, who are "self-appointed leaders," even when the unions consent to leave these particular matters in their hands. For active cooeperation of the masses in the legal, economic, and political intricacies of such legislation is not only undesirable, but impossible under the present system of society and government. Labor must govern itself through instructed delegates, while such work can be done only by representatives, who must often have the power to act without further consultation with those who elected them.

[243] George H. Shibley in the American Federationist, June, 1910.

[244] Samuel Gompers in the American Federationist, 1910.

[245] John Mitchell, "Organized Labor" (Preface).

[246] Eugene V. Debs, op. cit.

[247] Karl Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit, 1909, p. 679.

[248] Karl Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit, 1909, p. 680.

[249] Winston Churchill, op. cit., pp. 77, 336, 337.

[250] Die Neue Zeit, June 11, 1911.

[251] The Weekly Bulletin of the Garment Trades (New York), 1910.

[252] The Mine Workers' Journal (Indianapolis), Aug. 26, 1909, and April 21, 1910.



CHAPTER V

SYNDICALISM; SOCIALISM THROUGH DIRECT ACTION OF LABOR UNIONS

In America, France, Italy, and England, as well as in Germany (in a modified form) a new and more radical labor-union policy has been rapidly gaining the upper hand. This new movement—in its purely economic, as well as its political, bearings—is of far greater moment to Socialists than the political tendencies of those unions that continue to follow the old tactics in their direct relations with employers.

In America and in England, unfortunately, the name given to this new movement, "industrial unionism," is somewhat ambiguous. A more correct term would be "labor" unionism as distinct from "trade" unionism, or "class unionism" against "sectional unionism." By "industrial unionism" the promoters of the new movement means that all the employees of a given industry are to be solidly bound together in a single union instead of being divided into many separate organizations as so often happens to-day, and so as to act as a unit against the employer, as, for example, the steel workers, machinists, longshoremen, structural iron workers, etc., are all to be united against the Steel Trust. The essential idea is not any particular form of united action, but united action. Certainly the united action of all the trades at work under a single employer or employers' association is of the first importance, but it is equally important that "industrial" unions so composed should aid one another, that the united railway organizations, for example, should be ready to strike with seamen, dockers, etc., as was done in the recent British strike. An interview with Mr. Vernon Hartshorn, who recently headed the poll in the election for the executive committee of the important South Wales Mining Federation, indicates the tendency in Great Britain at the present moment—when both coal and railway strikes are threatened on a national scale—not merely towards industrial unionism, but towards the far more important union of industrial unions, which is really the underlying idea in the minds of most, though not all, of the propagandists of "industrial unionism."

"I think it a very silly business," exclaimed Mr. Hartshorn emphatically, "for the workers in different industries to be proceeding with national movements independently of each other. A short time ago we had a national stoppage on the railways; that, as a matter of course, rendered the miners idle. Before that we had something in the nature of a national stoppage in the case of the seamen's dispute; that, also, in many districts paralysed the mining industry and rendered idle the workmen. Now it appears likely that the miners will be taking part in a national stoppage which, in turn, will render the railway men and seamen idle.

"The idea is gradually dawning upon all sections of organized labor that the right thing to do would be for these three unions, through their executives, to establish a working alliance by means of which united action should be taken to secure reforms which would result in the raising of the standard of living of the whole of the workmen employed in these undertakings. Of course the grievances in different trades differ considerably in points of detail, but they all have a common basis in that they relate to wages and conditions of work. If the three organizations could be got to act together with a view of establishing a guaranteed minimum wage for all workmen employed, then not all the forces of the Crown, nor all the powers of government, could prevent them from emancipating themselves from their present deplorable position."[253]

It is equally necessary for the unions in order to obtain maximum results that a special relation should be established between the members of such trades as are to be found in more than one industry. Teamsters, stationary engineers, machinists, and blacksmiths, for example, whether employed by mines, railways, or otherwise, can aid one another in obvious ways—as by securing positions for blacklisted men and preventing non-unionists from obtaining employment—by means of a special "trade" organization or federation that cuts across the various "industrial" unions or federations. All this, indeed, is provided for in the plans of the "industrial unionists," in the idea of gradually reorganizing the present loose Federation of Labor into "a union of unions," or, as they express it, "One Big Union." This last term also is not very fortunate, for it is by no means proposed to form one absolutely centralized organization, like the former Knights of Labor, but to preserve a considerable measure of autonomy for the constituent industrial unions. Neither does the new unionism require, as some of its exponents allege, the abolition of the older trade unions, either local or national, but only that all unions shall be democratically organized and open to unskilled labor, and that the general organization, of which they are all a part, shall be the first consideration, and the local groupings whether by trade or industry only secondary.

The principle of the new union policy is exactly the same translated into terms of economic action, as the principle of revolutionary Socialism as conceived by Marx, and hitherto applied by Socialists chiefly on the political field. In the Communist Manifesto Marx says that the chief thing that distinguishes the Socialists from the other working-class parties is that the former "always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole." So while the older unions represented the economic struggle of certain more or less extensive parts of the working class, the industrial unionists aim at a unionism that represents the whole of the working class, and, since the ranks of labor are always open, all non-capitalist humanity. A closely organized federation of all the unions will rely very strongly upon numbers and embrace a large proportion of unskilled workers. It will, therefore, be forced to fight the cause of the common man. But this can only be done by fighting against every form of oppression and privilege—all of which bear on the men at the bottom.

The industrial policy idea has received its most remarkable indorsement in the great British railway strike of 1911. Before showing what lay behind this epoch-making movement, let me refer to the great change in the British Union world that preceded it.

In 1910 there occurred an unprecedented series of strikes in the four larges industries of the country, the railroads, shipbuilding, cotton, and coal-mining—all within a few months of one another, and all against the advice of the officials of the unions. The full and exact significance of this movement was seen when the hitherto conservative Trade Union Congress, after a very vigorous debate, decided, on the motion of Ben Tillett, to take a referendum of the unions on the question of the "practicability of a confederation of all trades" and on the "possibility of terminating all trade agreements on a given date after each year."

In the same year a great agitation began, led by the most prominent advocate of industrial unionism in Great Britain, the Socialist, Tom Mann, who with John Burns had been one of the organizers of the great dockers' strike in 1886, and who had returned, in 1910, from many years of successful agitation in Australia to preach the new unionism in his home country. That this agitation was one of the causes of the great seamen's, dockers', and railway strikes that followed is indicated by the fact that Mr. Mann was at once given the chief position in this movement.

His first principle is that the unions should include all the workers, in their respective industries:—

"Skilled workers, in many instances doing but little work, receive from two to seven or eight pounds a week, whilst the laborer, having the same responsibilities as regards family and citizenship, is compelled to accept one third of it or less.

"This must not be. We must not preach social equality and utterly fail to practice it; and for those receiving the higher pay to try and satisfy the demands of the lower-paid man for better conditions by telling him it will be put right under Socialism, is on a par with the parson pretending to assuage the sufferings of the poverty-stricken by saying, 'It will be better in the next world.' It must be put right in this world, and we must see to it now."

Unions composed exclusively of skilled workers, as many of the present ones, operate against the interests of the less skilled—often without actually intending to do so. Mr. Mitchell, for instance, concedes that the trade unions bring about "the elimination of men who are below a certain fixed standard of efficiency." This argument will appeal strongly to employers and believers in the survival of the fittest doctrine. But it will scarcely appeal to the numerous unskilled workers eliminated, or the still more numerous workers whose employment is thus lessened at every slack season. Mr. Edmond Kelly shows how the principle acts—"Where there is a minimum wage of $4 a day the workman can no longer choose to do only $3 worth of work and be paid accordingly, but he must earn $4 or else cease from work, at least in that particular trade, locality, or establishment."[254] The result is that the highest skilled workmen obtain steady employment through the union, while the less skilled are penalized by underemployment. The unions have equalized daily wages, but the employer has replied by making employment and therefore annual wages all the more unequal, and many of the workers may have lost more than they gained. Whereas if each man could secure an equal share of work, he might be paid according to his efficiency and yet be far better off than now. But the only way to secure an equal amount of work for all is through a union where all have an equal voice and where the union is strong enough to have a say as to who is to be employed.

It is this tendency either automatically or intentionally actually to injure unskilled labor, that has led men like Mann and Debs and Haywood to their severe criticism of the present policies of the unions, and even affords some ground for Tolstoi's classification of well-paid artisans, electricians, and mechanics among the exploiters of unskilled labor. In the days of serfdom, the great writer said, "Only one class were slave owners; all classes, except the most numerous one—consisting of peasants who have too little land, laborers, and workingmen—are slave-owners now." The master class, Tolstoi says, to-day includes, not only "nobles, merchants, officials, manufacturers, professors, teachers, authors, musicians, painters, rich peasants, and the rich men's servants," but also "well-paid artisans, electricians, mechanics," etc.

Mr. Mann thus defines the attitude of this new unionism to the old:—

"It is well known that in Britain, as elsewhere, there is only a minority of the workers organized; of the ten millions of men eligible for industrial organization only one fourth are members of trade unions; naturally these are, in the main, the skilled workers, who have associated together with a view to maintaining for themselves the advantage accruing to skilled workers, when definite restrictions are placed upon the numbers able to enter and remain in the trades.

"We have had experience enough to know that the difficulties of maintaining a ring fence around an occupation, which secures to those inside the fence special advantages, are rapidly increasing, and in a growing number of instances, the fence has been entirely broken down by changes in the methods of production. We know, further, that ... the majority of trade unionists still remain sectionally isolated, powerless to act except in single' sectional bodies, and incapable of approaching each other and merging and amalgamating forces for common action. This it is that is responsible for the modern practice of entering into lengthy agreements between employers and workers. Sectional trade unions being incapable of offensive action, and gradually giving way before the persistent power of the better organized capitalist class, they fall back upon agreements for periods of from two to five years, during which time they undertake that no demands shall be made." (My italics.)

The industrialists, therefore, advocate the termination of all wage agreements simultaneously and at short intervals or even at will (like tenancies at will, or call loans). They claim that employers are practically free to terminate existing agreements whenever they please, as they can always find grounds for dismissing individuals or for temporarily shutting down their works or for otherwise discriminating against active unionists or varying the terms of a contract before its expiration. But it is in America that the policy of no agreements, or agreements at will is most advanced. In Great Britain it is thought that agreements for one year and all ending on the same day may lead to the same results. If there is a central organization with power to call strikes on the part of any combination of unions, and the large majority of the workers are organized, it is held that the new unionism will soon prove irresistible, even if agreements in this form are retained.

The recent strikes have not only been stimulated by this gospel and led by its chief representatives, Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and others, but from the very first they have been an actual application of the new idea and have marked a long step towards the complete reorganization of the British unions. They were started with the seamen's strike in June, when the dockers in many places struck in sympathy, at the same time adding demands of their own. When the seamen won their strike, they refused to go back to work at several points, against the advice of their conservative officials, until the dockers received what they were striking for. With the dockers were involved teamsters, and these from the first had agreed to support one another, for they were both connected with Mr. Mann's "National Transport Workers' Federation." And the railway strike was largely due to the fact that the railway unions decided at least to cooeperate with this federation. The dockers had remained on strike at Liverpool in sympathy with the railway porters who had struck in the first instance to aid the dockers, and at the first strike conference of the railway union officials, forty-one being present, it was voted unanimously "that the union was determined not to settle the dispute with the companies unless the lockout imposed upon their co-workers because of their support of the railroad men at Liverpool and elsewhere is removed and all the men reinstated."

There can be little doubt that the railway strike would neither have taken place at the critical time it did, nor have gone as far as it went, except for this new and concerted action which embraced even the least skilled and least organized classes of labor.

Accompanying this movement toward common action, "solidarity" of labor, and more and more general strikes, was the closely related reaction against existing agreements—on the ground that they cripple the unions' power of effective industrial warfare. For several years there had been a simultaneous movement on the part of the "State Socialist" government towards compulsory arbitration, and among the unions against any interference on the part of a government over which they have little or no control—the railway strike being directed, according to the unionists, as much against the government as against the railways. For many years the government, represented by Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Winston Churchill, had acted as arbitrator in every great industrial conflict, and had secured many minor concessions for the unions. As long as no critical conflict occurred that might materially weaken either the government or the capitalist or employing classes as a whole, this policy worked well. It was only by a railway strike, or perhaps by a seamen's or miners' strike that it could be put to a real test. By the settlement of the threatened railway strike of 1907 the employees had gained very little, and had voluntarily left the final power to decide disputes in the hands of government arbitrators. A conservative Labourite, Mr. J. R. MacDonald, writing late in 1910, said:—

"We held at the time that the agreement which Mr. Bell accepted on behalf of the Railway Servants would not work. It was a surrender. The railway directors were consulted for days; they were allowed to alter the terms of agreement at their own sweet will, and when they agreed, the men's representatives were asked to go to the Board of Trade and were told that they could not alter a comma, could not sleep over the proposal, could not confer with any one about it, had to accept it there and then. In a moment of weakness they accepted. An agreement come to in such a way was not likely to be of any use to the men."[255]

Nevertheless, this extremely important settlement was accepted by the union. Mr. Churchill did not know how to restrain his enthusiasm for unions that were so good as to fall in so obediently with his political plans. "They are not mere visionaries or dreamers," says Churchill, "weaving airy Utopias out of tobacco smoke. They are not political adventurers who are eager to remodel the world by rule of thumb, who are proposing to make the infinite complexities of scientific civilization and the multitudinous phenomena of great cities conform to a few barbarous formulas which any moderately intelligent parrot could repeat in a fortnight. The fortunes of trade unions are interwoven with the industries they serve. The more highly organized trade unions are, the more clearly they recognize their responsibilities."[256]

By 1911 the whole situation was completely reversed. Over less important bodies of capitalists and employers than the railways, the government had power and a will to exercise its power. The railways, however, are practically a function of government—absolutely indispensable if it is to retain its other powers undiminished. It was for this reason that little if any governmental force was used against them, and the agreement of 1907 came to be of even less value to the men than agreements made in other industries. When the chorus of union complaints continued to swell, and the men asked the government to bring pressure on the railways, at least to meet their committee, it acknowledged itself either unable or unwilling to take any effective action unless to renew the offer to appoint another royal commission, essentially of the same character as that of 1907 except that it should be smaller and should act more speedily. This still meant that the third member of the board was to be appointed by a government, in which experience had taught the workers they could have no confidence—at least in its dealings with the powerful railways.

In view of this inherent weakness of the government, or its hostility to the new and aggressive unionism, or perhaps a combination of both, the unions had no recourse other than a direct agreement or a strike. But the refusal of the railways to meet the men left no alternative other than the strike, and at the same time showed that they did not much fear that the unions could strike with success. It was no longer a question of the justice or injustice, truth or untruth, of the unions' claims. The railways, in a perfectly practical and businesslike spirit, questioned the power of the unions, by means of a strike, to cause them sufficient damage to make it profitable even to meet their representatives—without the presence of a government representative, who, they had learned by experience, would in all probability take a position with which they would be satisfied. Mr. Asquith's offer, then, to submit the "correctness" of the unions' statements and the "soundness" of their contentions to a tribunal, was entirely beside the point. The representatives of the railways were sure to give such a tribunal to understand, however diplomatically and insidiously, that the unions were without that power, which alone, in the minds of "practical" men, can justify any considerable demand, such as the settlement of all questions through the representatives of the men (the recognition of the union).

Doubtless the railways had refused to meet the union representatives until they felt assured that the government's position would on the whole be satisfactory to them. The government's real attitude was made plain when, after the refusal of the unions practically to leave their whole livelihood and future in its hands, as in 1907, it used this as a pretext for taking sides against them—not by prohibiting the strike, but by limiting more and more narrowly the scope it was to be allowed to take.

The government loudly protested its impartiality, and gave very powerful and plausible arguments for interference. But the laborers feel that the right not to work is as essential as life itself, and all that distinguishes them essentially from slaves, and that no argument whatever is valid against it. Let us look at a few of the government statements:—

The government, said the Premier, was perfectly impartial in regard to the merits of the various points of dispute. The government had regard exclusively for the interests of the public, and having regard for those interests they could not allow the paralysis of the railway systems throughout the country, and would have to take the necessary steps to prevent such paralysis.

The representatives of the unions replied by a public statement, in which they declared that this was an "unwarrantable threat" and an attempt to put the responsibility for the suspension of work on the unions:—

"We consider the statement made in behalf of his Majesty's government, an unwarrantable threat uttered against the railroad workers who for years have made repeated applications to the Board of Trade and also to Parliament to consider the advisability of amending the conciliation board scheme of 1907.... And further it shows a failure of the Board of Trade to amend its own scheme, and also of the railroad companies to give an impartial and fair interpretation of such schemes.... And inasmuch as this joint meeting has already urged the employers to meet us with a view to discussing the whole position and which, if agreed to by them, would in our opinion have settled the matter, we therefore refuse to accept the responsibility the government has attempted to throw upon us, and further respectfully but firmly ask his Majesty's government whether the responsibility of the railroad companies is in any degree less than that of other employers of labor."

In other words, there is and can be no law compelling men to labor, and no matter what the consequences of their refusal to work, it is a matter that concerns the workers themselves more than all other persons.

Mr. Winston Churchill made a more detailed statement. He said that "the government was taking all necessary steps to make sure that the food supply as well as fuel and other essentials should not be interrupted on the railways or at the ports."

"All services vital to the community should be maintained, and the government would see to that, not because they were on the side either of the employers or the workmen, but because they were bound to protect the public from the danger that a general arrest of industry would entail." He continued:—

"The means whereby the people of this land live are highly artificial, and a serious breakdown would lead to starvation among a great number of poorer people. Not the well-to-do would suffer, but the poor of the great cities and those dependent upon them, who would be quite helpless if the machinery by which they are fed—on which they are dependent for wages—was thrown out of gear.

"The government believes that the arrangements made for working the lines of communication, and for the maintenance of order, will prove effective; but, if not, other measures of even larger scope will be taken promptly. It must be clearly understood that there is no escape from these facts, and, as they affect the supply of food for the people, and the safety of the country, they are far more important than anything else."

To this the railway workers answered that it is to protect their own food that they strike, and that food is as important to them as to others, that practically all those who are dependent on wages are willing to undergo the last degree of suffering to preserve the right to strike, that the means of livelihood of this majority are no whit less important than the "safety" of the rest of the country. Moreover, if the government is allowed to use military or other means to aid the railways to transport food, fuel, and other things, more or less essential, it prevents that very "paralysis" which is the necessary object of every strike. Industrial warfare of this critical kind must indeed be costly to the whole community, often endangering health and even life itself, but the workers are almost unanimous in believing that a few days or weeks of this, repeated only after years of interval, costs far less in life and health than the low wages paid to labor year after year and generation after generation. They demand the right to strike unhampered by any government in which capitalistic or other than wage-earning classes predominate. Only when the government falls into the hands of a group of wholly non-capitalist classes—of which wage earners form the majority—will they expect it to grant such rights and conditions as are sufficient to compensate them for parting with any element of the right to strike.

The great British strike, then, had a double significance. It showed the tremendously increased strength of labor when every class of workers is organized and all are united together, and it showed an increasing unwillingness to allow separate agreements to stand in the way of general strikes.

The strength of the strikers in the British upheaval of 1911, however, has been grossly exaggerated on both sides. There is no doubt that the aggressive action came from the masses of the workers, as their leaders held them back in nearly every instance. There is no question that the various unions cooeperated more than usual, that vast masses of the unskilled were for the first time organized, and that these features won the strikes. The advance was remarkable—but we can only measure the level reached if we realize the point from which the start was made. As a matter of fact, the unskilled labor of Great Britain until 1911 was probably worse paid and less organized than that of any great manufacturing country—and the advance made by no means brings it to the level of the United States.

Since the great dock strike of 1886, led by John Burns and Tom Mann, unskilled labor has tried in vain to organize effectively unions like those of the seamen and railway servants, the majority of whose members were neither of the least skilled nor of the most skilled classes, had an uphill fight, and were only able to organize a part of the workers. Five dollars a week was considered such a high and satisfactory wage by the wholly unskilled (dockers, etc.) that it was often made the basis of their demands. The Board of Trade Report shows that 400,000 railwaymen, including the most skilled, had from 1899 to 1909 an average weekly wage varying from $6.35 to $6.60 per week. The railway union found that of a quarter of a million men 39 per cent got less than $5 a week, and 89 per cent less than $7.50. Seamen at Liverpool received from $20 to $32.50 a month.

If then the Liverpool sailors received an increase of $2.50 a month, while the wages of other strikers were raised on the average about 20 per cent, what must we conclude? Undoubtedly the gain was worth all the labor and sacrifice it cost. But it must be remembered, first, that these wages are still markedly inferior to those of this country in spite of its hordes of foreign labor; and second, that the increase is little if any above the rise in the cost of living in recent years, and will undoubtedly soon be overtaken by a further rise. The great steamship lines increased their rates on account of the strike almost the same week that it was concluded, and the railway companies gave in only when the government consented that they should raise their rates. But the larger part of the consumers are workingmen, and their cost of living is thus rising more rapidly than ever on account of the strikes. Finally, the unions of the unskilled are as a rule not yet recognized by their employers, while the railway union is probably as completely at the mercy of the government as ever.

In a word, the point reached is by no means very advanced; on the other hand, the material gain made in view of the former backwardness of the railwaymen, seamen, and dockers is highly important for England, while the methods employed, the movement having originated from below, and having been sustained against conservative leaders (only a few radicals like Tom Mann and Ben Tillett being trusted), is of world-wide significance. The unions as well as their common organizations, the Trade Union Congress, the Labour Party, and the General Federation of Trade Unions are drawing closer together, while the Socialists and revolutionary unionists are everywhere taking the lead—as evidenced, for example, by the election of the most radical Socialist member of Parliament, Mr. Will Thorne, to be President of the 1912 Trade Union Congress.

The success of the new movement as against the older Labour Party and trade union tactics may also be seen from the disturbed state of mind of the older leaders. Take, for example, the attack of the Chairman of the Labour Party, Mr. J. R. MacDonald:—

"The new revolution which Syndicalism and its advocates of the Industrial Workers of the World contemplate has avoided none of the errors or the pitfalls of the old, but it has added to them a whole series of its own. It has never considered the problems which it has to meet. It is, as expressed in the Outlook of this month, a mere escapade of the nursery mind. It is the product of the creative intelligence of the man who is impatient because it takes the earth twenty-four hours to wheel around the sun (sic).... The hospitality which the Socialist movement has offered so generously to all kinds of cranks and scoundrels because they professed to be in revolt against the existing order has already done our movement much harm. Let it not add Syndicalism to the already too numerous vipers which, in the kindness of its heart, it is warming on its hearthstones."[257] [258]

The new revolutionary unionism takes different forms in Great Britain, France, and America. In France it has expressed itself through agitation for the general strike and against the army, the only thing that a general strike movement has to fear. The agitation has completely captured the national federation of unions, has a well-developed literature, a daily paper (La Bataille Syndicaliste—The Union Battle,—established in 1911), and has put its principles into effect in many ways, especially by more numerous and widespread strikes and by attacks on military discipline. But there has been no strike so nearly general as the recent British one, and both the efforts in this direction and those directed against the army have a future rather than a present importance and will be considered in succeeding chapters (Part III, Chapters VI and VII).

In America the new movement first appeared several years ago in the very radical proposal indorsed at the time by Debs, Haywood, and many prominent Socialists, to replace the older unions by a new set built on entirely different principles, including organizations of the least skilled, and the solid union of all unions for fighting purposes. This movement took concrete form in a new organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, which was launched with some promise, but soon divided into factions and was abandoned by Debs and others of its organizers. It has grown in strength in some localities, having conducted the remarkable struggles at McKees Rocks (Pa.) and Lawrence (Mass.), but is not at present a national factor—which is in part due, perhaps, to the fact that the older unions are tending, though gradually, towards somewhat similar principles.

Not only is Socialism spreading rapidly in all the unions, but along with it is spreading this new unionism. For many years the Western Federation of Miners, famous as the central figure in all the labor wars in the Rocky Mountain States, was the most powerful union in this country that was representative both of revolutionary Socialism and of revolutionary unionism. But it was not a part of the American Federation of Labor. When it became closely united with the Coal Miners, and the latter union forced its admission into the American Federation of Labor (in 1911), it at once began a campaign for its principles inside this organization. It now stands for two proposals, the first of which would solidly unite all the unions, and the second of which would cut all bonds between labor and capital. Neither is likely to be adopted this year, but both seem sure of a growing popularity and will in all probability result in some radical and effective action within a very few years.

In its Convention of July, 1911, the Western Federation of Miners decided to demand of the Federation of Labor the free exchange of membership cards among all its constituent unions. Thus the unions would preserve their autonomy, but every member would be free, when he changed his employer, to pass from one to the other without cost. The result would be that quarrels between the unions over members would lessen automatically, and also admission fees, dues, and benefits would tend towards a level. Thus all the things that keep the unions apart and prevent common action against the employer would be gradually removed, and the tendency of certain unions to ignore the interests of others reduced to a minimum. The plan is practical, because it has already been in successful operation for many years in France.

Another new policy—which should be regarded as a supplementary means for bringing about the same result—would be to so strengthen and democratize the general Federation as to allow great power to be placed in the hands of the executive, and at the same time subject it to the direct control of the combined rank and file of all the unions. If, for example, national Federation officials were elected, instructed, and recalled by a vote of all the unionists in the country, the latter would probably be willing to place in the hands of such an executive power to call out the unions in strike in such combinations as would make the resistance of employers most difficult, and power to control national strike funds collected from all the unions for these contests. Unions with a specially strong strategic situation in industry and a favored situation in the Federation are not yet ready to forego their privileges for this form of direct democracy, but the tendency is in this direction. (Since these lines were first written the Federation has taken steps towards the adoption of this plan of direct election of its officials by national referendum.)

Indeed, when the Western Miners' second proposal, the refusal to sign agreements for any fixed period, is adopted, this simultaneous centralization and democratization of the Federation may proceed apace. As long as the various unions are bound to the employers by an entirely separate and independent agreement terminable at different dates, it is impossible to arrange strikes in common, especially when the more fortunate unions adopt an entirely different plan of organization and an entirely different policy from the rest. The Western Miners now propose that all agreements be done away with, a practice they had followed long and successfully themselves—with the single tacit exception of the employees of the Smelter Trust (Guggenheim's). This exception they have now done away with. Their fundamental idea is that as long as the capitalist reserves his right to close down his works whenever he believes his interests or those of capital require it, every union should reserve its right to stop work at any moment when the interests of the union or of labor require it. Temporary arrangements are entered into which are binding as to all other matters except the cessation of work. That this cessation would not occur in any well-organized union over trifles goes without saying—strikes are tremendously costly to labor. The agreement binds in a way perfectly familiar to the business world in the call loan or the tenancy at will.

President Moyer of the Western Federation (one of those Mr. Roosevelt called an "undesirable citizen" at the time when he was on trial in Idaho, accused of being an accomplice in the murder of Governor Steunenburg) explained that his union knew that agreements might bring certain momentary advantages which it would otherwise lose, that it had often been in a position to win higher wages through an agreement, and in three cases even to gain a seven-hour day. But by such action, he declared the union would have surrendered its freedom. It would have been tied hand and foot, whereas now it was free to fight whenever it wanted to. If working people want to be united and effective, he concluded, they must have the fullest freedom of action. This would always pay in the end.

In view of the great advance in the organization and fighting spirit of labor secured by this new kind of industrial warfare, some revolutionary unionists even expect it to do more to bring about Socialism than the Socialist parties themselves. Indeed, a few have gone so far as to regard these parties as almost superfluous. Many of the new revolutionary unionists, though Socialists by conviction, attach so little importance to political action that they have formed no connection with the Socialist parties, and do not propose to do so. Others feel the necessity of some political support, and contend that any kind of an exclusively labor union party, even if it represents anti-revolutionary unions like most of those of the Federation of Labor, would serve this purpose better than the Socialist Party, which belongs less exclusively to the unionists.

An American revolutionary unionist and Socialist, the late Louis Duchez, like many of his school, not only placed his faith chiefly in the unskilled workers, either excluding the skilled manual laborers and the brain workers, or relegating them to a secondary position, but wanted the new organizations to rely almost entirely on their economic efforts and entirely to subordinate political action. The hours of labor are to be reduced, child labor is to be abolished, and everything is to be done that will tend to diminish competition between one workingman and another, he argued, with the idea of securing early control of the labor market. Through labor's restriction of output, production is to be cut down and the unemployed are to be absorbed. Thus, he declared, "a partial expropriation of capital is taking place" and "this constructive program is followed until the workers get all they produce."[259]

Here is an invaluable insight into the underlying standpoint of some of these anti-political "syndicalists," to use a term that has come to us from France. Nothing could possibly be more alien to the whole spirit of revolutionary Socialism than these conclusions. The very reason for the existence of Socialism is that Socialists believe that the unions cannot control the labor market in present society. The Socialists' chief hope, moreover, is that economic evolution will make possible and almost inevitable the transformation of a capitalist into a Socialist society; it is then to their interest not to retard the development of industry by the restriction of output, but to advance it. Indeed, Mr. Duchez's philosophy is not that of Socialist labor unionism, but of anarchist labor unionism, and there have been strong tendencies in many countries, not only in France and Italy, but also in the United States, especially among the more conservative unions, to be guided by such a policy. It is the essence of Mr. Gompers's program, as I have shown, to claim that "a partial expropriation of capital" is taking place through the unions, and that by this means, without any government action, and without any revolutionary general strike the workers will gradually "get all they produce." According to the Socialist view, such a gradual expropriation can only begin after a political and economic revolution, or when, on its near approach, capitalists prefer to make vital concessions rather than to engage in such a conflict.

The leading Socialist monthly in America, the International Socialist Review, which has indorsed the new unionism, has even found it necessary recently to remind its readers that the Socialist Party does after all play a certain role and a more or less important one, in the revolutionary movement. "Representative revolutionary unionists, like Lagardelle of France and Tom Mann of Australia," said the Review, "point out the immense value of a political party as an auxiliary to the unions. A revolutionary union without the backing of a revolutionary party will be tied up by injunctions. Its officers will be kidnapped. Its members, if they defy the courts, will be corralled in bull pens or mowed down by Gatling guns.

"A revolutionary party, on the other hand, if it pins its hopes mainly to the passing of laws, tends always to degenerate into a reform party. Its 'leaders' become hungry for office and eager for votes, even if the votes must be secured by concessions to the middle class. In the pursuit of such votes it wastes its propaganda on immediate demands."

The Review adds, however, that a non-political menace of revolution does ten times as much for reforms as any political activity; which can only mean that in its estimation revolutionary strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, etc., are of ten times higher present value than the ballot.

Mr. Tom Mann seems also to subordinate political to labor union action: "Experience in all countries shows most conclusively that industrial organization, intelligently conducted, is of much more moment than political action, for, entirely irrespective as to which school of politicians is in power, capable and courageous industrial activity forces from the politicians proportionate concessions.... Indeed, it is obvious that a growing proportion of the intelligent pioneers of economic changes are expressing more and more dissatisfaction with Parliament and all its works, and look forward to the time when Parliaments, as we know them, will be superseded by the people managing their own affairs by means of the Initiative and the Referendum."[260] The last sentence shows that Mr. Mann had somewhat modified his aversion to politics, for the Initiative and Referendum is a political and not an economic device. His objection to politics in the form of parliamentarism (that is, trusting everything to elected persons, or representatives) as distinguished from direct democracy, would probably meet the views of the majority of Socialists everywhere (except in Great Britain).

A later declaration of Mr. Mann after his return from Australia to England shows that he now occupies the same ground as Debs and Haywood in America—favoring a revolutionary party as well as revolutionary unions:—

"The present-day degradation of so large a percentage of the workers is directly due to their economic enslavement; and it is economic freedom that is demanded.

"Now Parliamentary action is at all times useful, in proportion as it makes for economic emancipation of the workers. But Socialists and Labour men in Parliament can only do effective work there in proportion to the intelligence and economic organization of the rank and file....

"Certainly nothing very striking in the way of constructive work could reasonably be expected from the minorities of the Socialists and Labour men hitherto elected. But the most moderate and fair-minded are compelled to declare that, not in one country but in all, a proportion of those comrades who, prior to being returned, were unquestionably revolutionary, are no longer so after a few years in Parliament. They are revolutionary neither in their attitude towards existing society nor in respect of present-day institutions. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that many seem to have constituted themselves apologists for existing society, showing a degree of studied respect for bourgeois conditions, and a toleration of bourgeois methods, that destroys the probability of their doing any real work of a revolutionary character.

"I shall not here attempt to juggle with the quibble of 'Revolution or Evolution,'—or to meet the contention of some of those under consideration that it is not Revolution that is wanted. 'You cannot change the world and yet not change the world.' Revolution is the means of, not the alternative to, Evolution. I simply state that a working-class movement that is not revolutionary in character, is not of the slightest use to the working class."[261]

If Mr. Mann later resigned from the British Social Democratic Party, this was in part due to the special conditions in Great Britain, as he said at the time, and partly to his Australian experience of the demoralizing effects of office seeking on the Labour Party there. Mann stands with Herve in the French Party and Debs and Haywood in the American. The reasons given for his withdrawal from the British Party embody the universal complaint of revolutionary unionists against what is everywhere a strong tendency of Socialist parties to become demoralized like other political organizations. Mr. Mann, in his letter of resignation, said:—

"After the most careful reflection I am driven to the belief that the real reason why the trade unionist movement of this country is in such a deplorable state of inefficiency is to be found in the fictitious importance which the workers have been encouraged to attach to parliamentary action.

"I find nearly all the serious-minded young men in the Labour and Socialist movement have their minds centered upon obtaining some position in public life, such as local, municipal, or county councilorship, or filling some governmental office, or aspiring to become a member of Parliament.

"I am driven to the belief that this is entirely wrong, and that economic liberty will never be realized by such means. So I declare in favor of Direct Industrial Organization, not as a means but as the means whereby the workers can ultimately overthrow the capitalist system and become the actual controllers of their own industrial and social destiny."

There is little disagreement among Socialists that "Direct Industrial Organization" is likely to prove the most important means by which "the workers can ultimately overthrow the capitalist system." This, the "industrial unionism" of Debs and Haywood and Mann, is to be sharply distinguished from French "syndicalism" which undermines all Socialist political action and all revolutionary economic action as well, by teaching that even to-day by direct industrial organization—without a political program or political support, and without a revolution—"a partial expropriation of capital is taking place."

The advocates of revolutionary labor unionism in America for the most part are not allowing the new idea to draw away their energies from the Socialist Party; it merely serves to emphasize their hostility to the present unaggressive policy of the Executive American Federation of Labor and some of the unions that compose it.

Mr. Haywood (another of Mr. Roosevelt's "undesirable citizens") urges the working class to "become so organized on the economic field that they can take and hold the industries in which they are employed." This view might seem to obviate the need of a political party, but Mr. Haywood does not regard it in that light. He says:—

"There is justification for political action, and that is, to control the forces of the capitalists that they use against us; to be in a position to control the power of government so as to make the work of the army ineffective.... That is the reason that you want the power of government. That is the reason that you should fully understand the power of the ballot.

"Now, there isn't any one, Socialist, S.L.P., Industrial Worker, or any other working man or woman, no matter what society you belong to, but what believes in the ballot. There are those—and I am one of them—who refuse to have the ballot interpreted for them. I know or think I know the power of it, and I know that the industrial organization, as I have stated in the beginning, is its broadest interpretation. I know, too, that when the workers are brought together in a great organization they are not going to cease to vote. That is when the workers will begin to vote, to vote for directors to operate the industries in which they are all employed."

In the recent pamphlet, "Industrial Socialism," Mr. Haywood and Mr. Frank Bonn develop the new unionism at greater length. Their conclusions as to politics are directed, not against the Socialist Party, but against its non-revolutionary elements:—

"The Socialist Party stands not merely for the POLITICAL supremacy of labor. It stands for the INDUSTRIAL supremacy of labor. Its purpose is not to secure old age pensions and free meals for school children. Its mission is to help overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism.

"The great purpose of the Socialist Party is to seize the powers of government and thus prevent them from being used by the capitalists against the workers. With Socialists in political offices the workers can strike and not be shot. They can picket shops and not be arrested and imprisoned.... To win the demands made on the industrial field it is absolutely necessary to control the government, as experience shows strikes to have been lost through the interference of courts and militia. The same functions of government, controlled by a class conscious working class, will be used to inspire confidence and compel the wheels of industry to move in spite of the devices and stumblingblocks of the capitalists....

"Socialist government will concern itself entirely with the shop. Socialism can demand nothing of the individual outside the shop.... It has no concern with the numberless social reforms which the capitalists are now preaching in order to save their miserable profit system.

"Old age pensions are not Socialism. The workers had much better fight for higher wages and shorter hours. Old age pensions under the present government are either charity doled out to paupers, or bribes given to voters by politicians. Self-respecting workers despise such means of support. Free meals or cent meals for poverty-stricken school children are not Socialism. Industrial freedom will enable parents to give their children solid food at home. Free food to the workers cuts wages and kills the fighting spirit."

The American "syndicalists" are not opposed to political action, but they want to use it exclusively for the purposes of industrial democracy.

While Messrs. Haywood and Bohn by no means take an anarchistic position, they show no enthusiasm for the capitalist-collectivist proposals that present governments should take control of industry. They are not hostile to all government, but they think that democracy applied directly to industry would be all the government required:—

"In the shop there must be government. In the school there must be government. In the conduct of the great public services there must be government. We have shown that Socialism will make government democratic throughout. The basis of this freedom will be the freedom of the individual to develop his powers. People will be educated in freedom. They will work in freedom. They will live in freedom....

"Socialism will establish democracy in the shop. Democracy in the shop will free the working class. The working class, through securing freedom for itself, will liberate the race."

Even the American "syndicalists," however, attach more importance to economic than to political action. Hitherto revolutionary Socialists have agreed that the only constructive work possible under capitalism was that of education and organization. The "syndicalists" also agree that nothing peculiarly socialistic can be done to-day by political action, but they are reformists as to the immediate possibilities of economic action. Here they believe revolutionary principles can be applied even under capitalism. Even the conservative and purely businesslike effort to secure a little more wages by organized action, they believe, can be converted here and now into a class struggle of working class vs. capitalists. What is needed is only organization of all the unions and a revolutionary policy. With the possibilities of a revolutionary union policy when capitalism has largely exhausted its program of political reforms and economic betterment and when Socialism has become the political Opposition, I deal in following chapters. But syndicalists, even in America, say revolutionary tactics can be applied now—Mr. Haywood, for instance, feels that the only thing necessary for a successful revolutionary and Socialistic general strike in France or America to-day, is sufficient economic organization.

Mr. Debs admits the need of revolutionary tactics as well as revolutionary principles and even says: "We could better succeed with reactionary principles and revolutionary tactics than with revolutionary principles and reactionary tactics." He admits also that Socialists and revolutionary unionists are inspired with an entirely new attitude towards society and government and indorses as entirely sound certain expressions from Haywood and Bohn's pamphlet which had been violently attacked by reformist Socialists and conservative unionists. Mr. Debs agrees with the former writers in their definition of the attitude of the Socialist revolutionist's attitude towards property: "He retains absolutely no respect for the property 'rights' of the profit takers. He will use any weapon which will win his fight. He knows that the present laws of property are made by and for the capitalists. Therefore he does not hesitate to break them." But he does not agree that this new spirit offers any positive contribution to Socialist tactics at the present time. Just as Herve has recently admitted that the superior political and economic organization of the Germans were more important than all the "sabotage" (violence) and "direct action" of the French though he still favors the latter policies, so the foremost American revolutionary opposes "direct action" and "sabotage" altogether under present conditions. Both deny that revolutionary economic action under capitalism is any more promising than revolutionary political action. Even Herve defends his more or less friendly attitude to "direct action" wholly on the ground that it is good practice for revolution, not on Lagardelle's syndicalist ground that it means the beginning of revolution itself (see below).

By much of their language Haywood and several industrial unionists of this country would seem to class themselves rather with Lagardelle and Labriola (see below) than with Herve, Debs, and Mann. Haywood, for example, has said that no Socialist can be a law-abiding citizen. Haywood's very effective and law-abiding leadership in strikes at Lawrence (1912) and elsewhere would suggest that he meant that Socialists cannot be law-abiding by principle and under all circumstances. But this statement as it was made, together with many others, justifies the above classification. Debs, on the contrary, claims that the American workers are law-abiding and must remain so, on the whole, until the time of the revolution approaches. "As a revolutionist," he writes, "I can have no respect for capitalist property laws, nor the least scruple about violating them," but Debs does not believe there can be any occasion to put this principle into effect until the workers have been politically and economically organized and educated, and then only if they are opposed by violence (see the International Socialist Review, February, 1912).

The French and Italian advocates of revolutionary unionism also assign to the party a very secondary part, though they are by no means, like the anarchists, opposed to all political action. They do not as a rule oppose the Socialist parties, but they protest against the view that Socialist activities should be chiefly political. Their best-known spokesman in Italy, Arturo Labriola, one of the most brilliant orators in the country, and a professor in the University of Naples, writes:—

"The Social Democracy will prove to have been the last capitalistic party to which the defense of capitalistic society will have been intrusted. The syndicalists [revolutionary unionists] ought to get that firmly into their heads and draw conclusions from it in their necessary relations with the official Socialist Party. The latter ought to resign itself to being no more than a simple party of the legal demands of the proletariat [i.e. the unions,] on the basis of existing society, and not an anti-capitalist party."[262]

This is strong language and brings up some large questions. Far from being displeased with the moderate and non-revolutionary character of the Socialist Party, Labriola, himself a revolutionist, is so indifferent to the party as a direct means to revolution, as to hope that it will drop its revolutionary claims altogether and become a humble and modest but more useful tool of the unions. He even admitted in conversation with the writer that, attaching no value to political advance as such, he was not even anxious at this time that the illiterate South Italians should be given a vote, since they would long remain under the tutelage of the Catholic Church.

One of the founders of the present French movement, its earliest and chief theorist, Pelloutier, who has many followers among the present officials of the French Federation of Labor, went even further, denying to the government, and therefore to all political parties, any vital function whatever. To Pelloutier the State is built exclusively upon "superfluous and obnoxious political interests." The unions are expected to work towards a Socialist society without much, if any, political support. They are to use non-political means: "The general strike as a purely economic means that excludes the cooeperation of parliamentary Socialists and demands only labor union activity would necessarily suit the labor union groups."[263]

The leading "syndicalist" writer to-day, Hubert Lagardelle, feels not only that a Socialist Party is not likely to bring about a Socialist society, but that any steps that it might try to take in this direction to-day would necessarily be along the wrong lines, since it would establish reforms by law rather than as a natural upgrowth out of economic conditions and the activities of labor unions, with the result that such reforms would necessarily go no farther than "State Socialism."[264]

Lagardelle speaks of the "State Socialistic" reform tendency as synonymous with "modern democracy." Because it supposes that there are "general problems common to all classes," says Lagardelle, democracy refuses to take into account the real difference between men, which is that they are divided into economic classes. Here we see the central principle of Socialism exaggerated to an absurdity. Few Socialists, even the most revolutionary, would deny that there are some problems "common to all classes." Indeed, the existence and importance of such problems is the very reason why "State Socialism," of benefit to the masses, but still more to the interest of the capitalists, is being so easily and rapidly introduced. Lagardelle would be right, from the Socialist standpoint, if he demanded that it should oppose mere political democracy, or "State Socialism" in proportion as these forces have succeeded in reorganizing the capitalist State—or rather after they have been assimilated by it. But to obstruct their present work is merely to stand against the normal and necessary course of economic and political evolution, as recognized by the Socialists themselves, a similar mistake to that made by the Populists and their successors, who think they can prevent normal economic evolution by dissolving the new industrial combinations and returning to competition. Just as Socialists cannot oppose the formation of trusts under normal circumstances, neither can they oppose the extension of the modern State into the field of industry or democratic reform, even though the result is temporarily to strengthen capitalism and to decrease the economic and political power of the working people. One of the fundamental differences between the Socialist and other political philosophies is that it recognizes ceaseless political evolution and acts accordingly. It teaches that we shall probably pass on to social democracy through a period of monopoly rule, "State Socialism," and political reforms that in themselves promise no relative advance, economic or political, to the working class.

In a recent congress of the French Party, Jaures protested against a statement of Lagardelle's that Socialism was opposed to democracy. "Democracy," Lagardelle answered, "corresponds to an historical movement which has come to an end; syndicalism is an anti-democratic movement to the extent that it is post-democratic. Syndicalism comes after democracy; it perfects the life which democracy was powerless to organize." It is difficult to understand why Lagardelle persists in saying that a movement which thus supplements democracy, which does what democracy was claiming to do, and which is expected to supersede it, should on this account be considered as "anti-democratic." Socialism fights the "State Socialists" and opposes those whose democracy is merely political, but it is attacking not their democracy or their "State Socialism," but their capitalism.

"Political society," says Lagardelle, "being the organization of the coercive power of the State, that is to say, of authority and the hierarchy, corresponds to an economic regime which has authority and the hierarchy as its base."[265] This proposition (the truth of which all Socialists would recognize in so far as it applies to political society in its present form) seems sufficient to Lagardelle to justify his conclusion that we can no more expect Socialist results through the State, than we could by association with capitalism. He does not agree with the Socialist majority that, while capitalism embodies a ruling class whose services may be dispensed with, the State is rather a machine or a system which corresponds not so much to capitalism, as to the system and machinery of industry which capitalism controls.

Another and closely related idea of the syndicalists is that all political parties, as well as governments, necessarily become the tools of their leaders, that they always become "machines," bureaucratically organized like governments. Lagardelle adopts Rousseau's view that the essence of representative government (all existing governments that are not autocratic being representative) is "the inactivity of the citizen" and urges that political parties, like society in general, are divided between the governing and the governed. While there is much truth in this analysis,—this being the situation which it is sought to correct both in government and within political parties by such means as direct legislation and the recall,—Lagardelle does not seem to see that exactly the same problem exists also in the labor unions. For among the most revolutionary as among the most conservative of labor organizations the leaders tend to acquire the same relative and irresponsible power as they do in political parties. The difficulty of making democracy work inheres in all organizations. It must be met and overcome; it cannot be avoided.

Lagardelle's distrust of political democracy goes even further than a mere criticism of representative government. He thinks the citizen to-day unable to judge general political questions at all,—so that in his view even direct democracy would be useless. It is for this reason, he says, that parties have it as an aim to act and to think in the citizen's place. Lagardelle's remedy is not the establishment of direct democracy in government or in parties, but the organization of the people to act together on "the concrete things of life"; that is, on questions of hours, wages, and other conditions closely associated with their daily life and in his view adapted to their understanding. He does not seem to see that such questions lead almost immediately, not only to such larger issues as are already presented by the leading political parties, but also to the still larger ones proposed by the Socialists.

Others of the syndicalists' criticisms, if taken literally, would undoubtedly bring them in the end to the position occupied by non-Socialist and anti-Socialist labor unionists. Lagardelle frankly places labor union action not only above political action, which Socialists, under many circumstances, may justify, but above Socialism itself. "Even if the dreams of the future of syndicalistic Socialism should never be realized,—none of us has the secret of history,—it would suffice for me to give it my full support, to know that it is at the moment I am speaking the essential agent of civilization in the world." Here is a labor union partisanship which is certainly not equaled by the average conservative labor leader, who has the modesty to realize that there are other powerful forces making for progress aside from the movement to which he happens to belong.

The syndicalists, or those who act along similar lines in other countries, have brought new life into the Socialist movement; their criticism has forced it to consider some neglected questions, and has contributed new ideas which are winning acceptance. The basis of their view is that the working people cannot win by mere numbers or intelligence, but must have a practical power to organize along radically new lines and an ability to create new social institutions independently of capitalist opposition or aid.

Lagardelle writes: "There is nothing in syndicalism which can recall the dogmatism of orthodox Socialism. The latter has summed up its wisdom in certain abstract immovable formulas which it intends willy-nilly to impose on life.... Syndicalism, on the contrary, depends on the continually renewed and spontaneous creations of life itself, on the perpetual renewing of ideas, which cannot become fixed into dogmas as long as they are not detached from their trunk. We are not dealing with a body of intellectuals, with a Socialist clergy charged to think for the working class, but with the working class itself, which through its own experience is incessantly discovering new horizons, unseen perspectives, unsuspected methods,—in a word, new sources of rejuvenation."[266]

Here, at least, is a valuable warning to Socialism against what its most revolutionary and enthusiastic adherents have always felt is its chief danger.

The fact that lends force to Lagardelle's argument is that the average workingman has a much more important, necessary, and continuous function to fill as a member of the labor unions than as a member of the Socialist parties. It still remains a problem of the first magnitude to every Socialist party to give to its members an equally powerful daily interest in that work. On the other hand, it must be said in all fairness that the lack of active participation by the rank and file is very common in the labor unions also, a handful of men often governing and directing, sometimes even at the most critical moments.

It is the boast of the syndicalists that in their plan of revolutionary unionism, practice and theory become one, that actions become revolutionary as well as words—"Men are classed," says Lagardelle, "according to their acts and not according to their labels. The revolutionary spirit comes down from heaven onto the earth, becomes flesh, manifests itself by institutions, and identifies itself with life. The daily act takes on a revolutionary value, and social transformation, if it comes some day, will only be the generalization of this act." It is true that Lagardelle's "direct action" tends towards revolution, but does it tend towards Socialism? His answer is that it does. But his answer itself indicates the tendency of syndicalism to drift back into conservative unionism and the mere demand for somewhat more wages. Socialist organizations, he says, "must necessarily be trained in actions of no great revolutionary moment, since these are the only kind of actions now possible, and in agitation; that is, the conversion or the wakening of the will of the working people to desire and to demand an entirely different life, which their intelligence has shown them to be possible, and which they feel they are able to obtain through their organizations."[267] (My italics.)

Not all members of the French "syndicats" (labor unions) are theoretical syndicalists of the dogmatic kind, like Lagardelle. Yet even men like Guerard, recently head of the railway union, and Niel of the printers, recently secretary of the Federation of Labor, both belonging to the less radical faction, are in favor of the use of the general strike under several contingencies, and stand for a union policy directed towards the ultimate abolition of employers. But this does not mean that they believe the unions can succeed in either of these efforts if acting alone, or even if assisted in Parliament by a party which represents only the unions, acts as their tool, and therefore brings them no outside assistance. Such men, together with others more radical, like Andre and the Guesdists in the Federation, realize that a larger and more democratic movement is needed in connection with the unions before there is any possibility of accomplishing the great social changes at which, as Socialists, they aim. (As evidence, see the proceedings of any recent convention of the Confederation Generale de Travail.)

Lagardelle, however, is a member of the Socialist Party and was recently even a candidate for the French Chamber of Deputies. Other prominent members of the Party as revolutionary as he and as enthusiastic partisans of the Confederation de Travail (Federation of Labor) are stronger in their allegiance to the Party. And there are signs that even in France syndicalism is losing its anti-political tendency. Herve, who demanded at the beginning of 1909 that the "directors of the Socialist Party cure themselves of 'Parliamentary idiocy'" (his New Year's wish), expressed at the beginning of 1910 the wish that "certain of the dignitaries of the Federation of Labor should cure themselves of a syndicalist and laborite idiocy, a form of idiocy not less dangerous or clownish than the other."

In fact, it may soon be necessary to distinguish a new school of political syndicalism, which is well represented by Paul Louis in his "Syndicalism against the State" (Le Syndicalisme contre l'Etat).

"Syndicalism is at the bottom," says Louis, "only a powerful expression of that destructive and constructive effort which for years has been shaking the old political and social regime, and is undermining slowly the ancient system of property. It points necessarily to collectivism and communism. It represents Socialism in action, in daily and continuous action....

"Now the abolition of the State ... is the object of modern Socialism. What distinguishes this modern Socialism from Utopian Socialism which culminated towards 1848, whose best-known publicists were Cabet, Pecqueur, Louis Blanc, Vidal, is precisely that it no longer attributes to the State the power to transform, the capacity to revolutionize, the role of magic regeneration, which the writers in this dangerous phase of enthusiasm assigned to it. For the Utopians all the machinery of a bureaucracy could be put at the service of all the classes, fraternally reconciled in view of the coming social regeneration. For contemporary Socialists since Karl Marx ... this bureaucratic machinery, whose function is to protect the existing system and to maintain an administrative, economic, financial, political, and military guardianship must finally be disintegrated. The new society can only be born at this price.

"There still exist in all countries groups of men or isolated individuals who stand for collectivism, who claim to want the complete emancipation of all workers, but who nevertheless adhere to paternalism. These are called revisionists in Germany, reformists in France, Italy, and Switzerland.... They go back, without knowing it, to those theories of enlightened despotism which flourished at the end of the eighteenth century in the courts of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Madrid and Lisbon, the ridiculous inanity of which was sufficiently well demonstrated by events....

"But these Utopians of the present moment, these champions of a limitless adaptation to circumstances, are destined to lose ground more and more, according as Syndicalism expresses better and better the independent action of the organized proletariat.

"In its totality the Socialism of the world is as anti-governmental as Syndicalism, and in this is shown the identity of the two movements, for it is difficult to distinguish the field of action of the one from that of the other."[268]

We see here that the central idea of syndicalism, which is undoubtedly, as Louis says, a revolutionary action against existing governments, is not on this account anti-political; the foundation of this point of view is that labor union action is bound sooner or later to evolve into syndicalism, which in its essence is an effort to put industry in the immediate control of the non-propertied working classes, without regard to the attitude taken towards this movement by governments;—

"Those who have long imagined that some kind of cooerdination would be brought about between old economic and social institutions and the union organizations which would then be tolerated, those who thought they could incorporate these industrial groups in the mechanism of production and political society, were guilty of the most stupefying of errors. They were ignorant both of the nature of the State and of the essence of unionism; they were attempting the squaring of the circle or perpetual motion; they had not analyzed the process of disintegration which humanity is undergoing, which, accelerated by the stream of industrialism, has given origin to hostile classes subordinated to one another, incapable of coexisting in a lasting equilibrium."[269]

We see here a complete agreement with the position of the revolutionary majority among the Socialists. If syndicalism differs in any way from other tendencies in the Socialist movement, it does so through a difference of emphasis rather than a difference of kind. It undoubtedly exaggerates the possibilities of economic action, and underestimates those of political action. Louis, for example, says that the working people are the subjects of capital, but the masters of production, that they cannot live without suffering in the factory, but that society cannot live without their labor. This, of course, is only true if stated in the most unqualified form. Society is able to dispense with all labor for a short time, and with very many classes of labor for long periods. Moreover, the forcing of labor at the point of the rifle is by no means so impracticable during brief emergencies as is sometimes supposed.

Syndicalism may, perhaps, be most usefully viewed as a reaction against the tendency towards "parliamentarism" or undue emphasis on political action, which has existed even among revolutionary Socialists in Germany and elsewhere (see Part II, Chapter V). Among the "revisionist" Socialists of that country a great friendliness to labor union action existed, in view of the comparative conservatism of the unions. For this same reason the revolutionaries became rather cold, though never hostile, towards this form of action, and concentrated their attention on politics. In a word, syndicalism is only to be understood in the light of the criticisms of revolutionary Socialism as presented by Kautsky, just as the standpoint of the latter can only be comprehended after it is subjected to the syndicalist criticism—and doubtless both positions, however one-sided they appear elsewhere, were fairly justified by the economic and political situations in France and Germany respectively. "Only as a political party," says Kautsky, "can the working class as a whole come to a firm and lasting union." He then proceeds to argue that purely economic struggles are always limited either to a locality, a town, or a province, or else to a given trade or industry—the directly opposite view to that of the syndicalists, whose one object is also, undeniably, to bring about a unity of the working class, though they claim that this can be accomplished only by economic action, while from their point of view it is political action that always divides the working class by nation, section, and class.