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SYNDICALISM.

During the past few weeks we have heard and read a great deal about Syndicalism. A few months ago hardly any one in the United Kingdom knew so much as the word; to those who knew the word, it represented something vague, extravagant, foreign, aloof, unlikely to touch us here. But now we are told by every newspaper that the country is dangerously in the grip of Syndicalism. It is difficult for the man of average plain intelligence to believe that the whole world of labor has adopted a new principle and a new method, and set it in tremendous operation suddenly, without preparation, without discovery, even unconsciously to themselves.

It is unreasonable, and it is certainly an erroneous idea. True, we have had a strike of an unprecedented character and magnitude. But a strike, even a general strike, even a universal strike, is not Syndicalism, though, as Demosthenes says, some should burst themselves in affirming it. We propose in the present article to say what Syndicalism is, what its aims are, and

in what way it hopes to attain those aims, writing from the Syndicalist point of view, and stating their real fundamental ideas.

The word Syndicalism was originated in France, and was derived from syndicat, the French name for a trade union, Literally it means "Unionism," but became the term for the revolutionary economic movement which contended that social revolution must come through the direct action of the labor unions. Socialists and Syndicalists alike look forward to the abolition of the present capitalist system, but while Socialists seek to bring it about by political action, by parliamentary measures accumulating reforms, Syndicalists claim that it is an incredible hope

that a Socialist party can ever obtain an effective majority in any parliament in any country. Socialism has done a great work as an educative and propagandist force. During the past fifty years it has leavened the whole lump of social ideas; yet, in spite of the many changes in capitalistic society, the legal relations between the capitalist and the worker have not undergone any vital essential change, which shows that the social environment within which an economic organism operates may be reformed without affecting the economic organism. A revolutionary process must be an inner process, a series of changes in the balance of the several parts of the economic organism, and cannot be an outer process-a result of a series of legislative influences and friendly transactions between the various parliamentary parties that represent the various classes of the nation. Syndicalism has replaced the mechanical conception of capturing the powers of government through parliamentary action by the dynamic conception of a class struggle through which the workers are to free themselves by transferring the functions and the life of the State to their own unions.

Syndicalists point out that the belief of the working-classes in an all-powerful political party that will automatically realize for them their ideals has demoralized them in so far as they found it unnecessary to make individual efforts for progress, and so confined all their revolutionary activities to-voting. This fetishism prejudiced their economic action, through fear lest their political purposes should be endangered; and, on the other hand, where the Socialist political parties gained influence, they compromised their revolutionary aims for small advantages.

In short, Socialist political action cannot realize the social revolution, while by claiming that it can, and so holding back the revolutionary energies of the workers, it limits their economic movement. Syndicalism transfers all problems of social evolution from the political to the economic field, and assigns to Socialist political action its sphere in obtaining the common advantages of democracy, constitutional and cultural reforms, conditions that may facilitate the organization of the workers.

Having got so far, the Syndicalist theorists considered deeply the means by which they must carry out their plans for arriving at supremacy; what part violence can be called on to play in proletarian movements, general strikes as creative of proletarian energies, the organization of Syndicalist society.

All these theories and discussions were academic; they helped to clarify, to establish principles, but could not further the Syndicalist movement in any real way. Syndicalism, as a doctrine, has now practically exhausted and solved its problems, and its fundamental conclusion is that the revolutionary energies of the workingclass are to be worked out in their economic movement and through their own functions as workers.

Then Syndicalism made its great practical mistake, imagining that when it had worked out this principle and proved it theoretically to the workingclasses, the working-classes, perceiving and accepting its truth, would at once become the ideal type of revolutionist as visualized by the Syndicalist, and be capable of realizing the new social order. Essentially the same mistake as was made by the Socialist parliamentarians when they declared that if working-men would only send a Socialistic majority to parliament, Socialism could be realized at once.

perceived their mistake, and most of them turned their attention to other problems. But the practical Syndicalists not only continued their original work-out of which had sprung all the theories-but found their ideas clarified and settled as the result of the working of the theories. What they felt to be true has become, through knowledge, a solid, practical standpoint, and more than ever they are assured that Syndicalism is substantially a practical method: it lives and moves and has its essence in action. They look for nothing from the past, and intend resolutely to possess the future.

Syndicalism is not, then, an artificial movement created by a group of French and Italian theorists and agitators. As a theory it is the expression of working-class experiences in the political and economic fields; while, as a practical movement, it is the inevitable response of the working-classes to the development of the industrial structure of society. The best proof of this lies in the fact that in different countries groups of workers have worked out a line of action which has all the characteristic features of Syndicalism, though they adopt the name only when it is attached to their method by their opponents, or when they discover that their independent theories and practice correspond with the Italian and French theories.

In America labor organizations found that, against trusts, and against technical developments that reduce the significance of individual trades and skill in industries, there is but one way to fight, namely, by merging the trade unions into industrial unions embracing all the workers in all the skilled or unskilled occupations within a particular industry. The same thing is taking place in England, in some of her colonies, and wherever modern industrial evolution is at work. Now the inThe Syndicalist theorists themselves dustrial union organized to make the

working-class better fitted to secure advantages from powerful capitalist corporations becomes the soil in which a revolutionary ideology inevitably springs up and thrives. The attention of the worker in the mass turns to the problem of organization, and inasmuch as the immediate aim of the organization is to secure greater control over the processes of production in their particular industry, the mass of the workers-or, at any rate, in the beginning the more alert, more educated, and foreseeing minority-becomes interested in the technical problem of production.

Through this technical interest the workers become more efficient, and their social and class consciousness grows. They want to work more and more effectively-not, however, for the capitalist, or for the State, but for the collective body of the workers. And it is here that the Syndicalists find their creed-that the best and simplest way of creating a new social order is by the organizations preparing for taking over their industries and carrying them on for the benefit of the collectivity. Each individual having a trade, each individual being a producer, the speediest and most organic way is to organize him as such and give him a social aim. When the workers have attained the highest technical skill and efficiency, when they are able and ready actually to run their industries, ready with their perfected organization and their skilled professional individuality, they will then take them over. Strikes, general strikes, and other forms of resistance are not the whole of Syndicalism; they are only means towards an end; and, above all, they teach the workers their power or their weakness, they are moulding their intellectual and moral energies, they make them perceive new issues and new human relations, new problems and their solutions.

This process goes on in different
LIVING AGE. VOL. LVI. 2918

countries quite independently of any theory. The great Post Office strikes in France are in everybody's memory. They have been denounced as barbarous manifestations of irresponsible egotism paralyzing the life of the nation wantonly and ruthlessly. But if we consider these strikes from the inside, we find a new point of view-the point of view of the Syndicalized Post Office workers.

The employés were tired of being directed and dominated by a political department administered by politicians who had no comprehension of the work of the Post Office clerk, nor indeed of work in general. They proposed, then, to deal with technical questions themselves, and to eliminate the present political element in administration, which offended their practical sense and their intimate and profound sentiments of right. They struggled for the autonomy and freedom of labor.

"The guarantee that this autonomy of labor will operate for the community lies in the fact that a demand for it advanced by the Post Office employés sprang from a professional sense of their effective worth jealously fostered, from a clear conception of economic relations, from a realization of the pub. lic interests and of the responsibilities connected with an industry of such national importance as the Post Office service." 1

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work, and a dignity-the dignity of the conscious producer.

Stimulated in this way, the employés have searched out faults in the complex mechanism of the service, have tried to neutralize mistakes due to the incompetent administration, to save money and labor-in a word, they have safeguarded the interests of the public. Many reforms have been originated by quite obscure clerks of humble rank, and through the professional group action of the employés many changes have been made to the public advantage.

"The effective value of the organization suggests that without the officials now retained at high salaries the department could work better and cheaper, animated by a new life, enriched by the competency and devotion of the employés, whose work their Association succeeded in co-ordinating." "

The strike of the Post Office einployés, then, was only an incident in their genuinely Syndicalist training. It was more than an expression of their suffering under inefficient administration, it was the expression of their consciousness of ability to carry on the whole postal service through their own organization more efficiently in their own and the public interest.

It is wholly wrong to say, as so many newspapers and magazines have lately declared, that Syndicalism is a crude method by which the workers try to capture an industry by reducing their own efficiency and output, by irritation strikes, by sabotage, &c., until the industry becomes unprofitable to the management and must come to terms. These means have always been applied by labor organizations for obtaining concessions; Syndicalists also apply them under certain conditions. They are merely incidents in the struggle for victory over the capitalist class. But

? Monbrunaud: La Grève des Postes et sa portée sociale.

they do not explain or represent the fundamental characteristics and ideal of the Syndicalist movement, the collective effort of the workers to raise the level of their competency in reference to their industries, and to use this increased competency for the benefit of the collectivity.

Syndicalists perceive the tremendous difficulty of social progress. They know it could make no substantial difference to have a new social order with the human material of the present order unchanged. Accordingly, they enIdeavor to combine the creation of the new society with the creation of the new man. They have a vision of a future in which social discipline will be evolved by the nature of the labor to be accomplished; of a future in which labor will be free and at the same time organized under an inner logical discipline voluntarily accepted. They firmly believe that the realization of such a future depends entirely upon their personal qualities and efforts, and upon their moral value. And so they consciously seek out ways of increasing the technical capacities of the individual worker, knowing that through this he will desire a profound change in the organization of the industries in particular and society in general. They are, therefore, intent on teaching the young workers all the details of their profession, in order to make them capable of taking the organization of production into their own hands.

This has been very well expressed by G. Beaubois, a clerk in the French Post Office: "Syndicalists must take care of the technical, moral, and social perfection of the young workers; they must guide and advise them, and awaken in them the spirit of observation, the qualities of initiative and energy. They must efface the painful and repugnant features that accompany labor under the present organization of production. The problem of progress

lies in saving work from monotony and routine, from fatality and servitude. In other words, the problem of progress lies in freeing work and ennobling it. To initiate every worker into the progress of industry and the marvels of human activity, to show them the usefulness of their efforts and the grandeur of their work-this is to give them a passion, a soul, a conscience.

"The labor organizations should become paternal homes for the young workers, protecting them from all temptations and leading them into life. A revolution does not improvise itself, and it is necessary that in the industrial groups new ideas, new collective sentiments, should be born, and should develop and prepare the social change."

This process of preparing the crea tion of the new society by the creation of new men and new industrial organisms with new functions-functions essentially different from those existing is the basic tendency of theoretical and practical Syndicalism.

And this tendency is such an organic product of certain conditions prepared by industrial progress and by a living social morality called forth in the working-class by the Socialist educative propaganda, that it imposes itself upon organizations that do not propose to call themselves Syndicalists, or that in reality have not even been touched by Syndicalist theories.

The greatest practical experiment in Syndicalism has been carried on now for some ten years by the Industrial Union of the Bottle Blowers of Italy, which had always been a so-called "safe" Socialist organization, adhering firmly to the Socialist theory of realizing a Socialist society by political action.

In Italy the bottle-making industry now lies between the factories of the Industrial Union and the Bottle Trust. The beginning was in a strike against

one glass manufacturer who refused a series of demands from the Bottle Blowers' Union, to which all workers in the bottle industry, whatever their trade, belong. After a year of struggle, the Union made a tremendous effort, raised a fund among its own members, many of them contributing all their money, selling all their belongings, even their beds, and with this fund they set up a factory, in which part of their comrades on strike found work. This factory was an immediate success, and a new furnace was planned to give work to yet more members of the Union on strike or out of employment. Without help from mechanics or masons, the men built the second furnace themselves in fortyseven days, a surprising feat considering that in normal circumstances it would have meant six months' uninterrupted work. All the strikers found work in their own factory, the manufacturer was beaten and was finally absorbed by the Trust, which granted all the demands of the Union for its members, comprising practically all the glass-blowers employed in Italy.

But now the co-operative factory became a competitor with the Trust, and the Trust, seeking to crush it before it should become too firmly established, quarrelled with the Union, which led to a series of strikes. Nearly every strike meant the starting of a new cooperative factory, so that the Trust found its commercial activities curtailed and its profits diminished. Then the Trust tried to beat them by underselling, and by persuading the banks to refuse them credit. This method failed, for the better wares and the technical superiority of the co-operative factories gained a decisive victory. Each factory produced a special bottle of such excellent quality that though its prices were higher than those of the Trust, it could dispose of its whole output in advance.

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