against the State (as anarchists always have) and against its lumbering procedure through parliamentary delays. These social laws, says one of them, "are mere substitutes for action. They move with feet of lead when we want wings." To fly to their goal instead of walking to it, becomes a passion. As they turn gruffly from the State and from the lazy ways of legal change, they also turn from the employer. This is among the drolleries of the situation. After employers have been revelling in their own refusal to "recognize" trade unions, our I. W. W. turn the tables. "We, too, refuse to 'recognize' employers." "We quit work without consulting them. We go back to work without notice. In all ways they shall be ignored."
If capitalism is "organized corruption," why should labor, the "all-creative," recognize it? This, too, it is said is as insincere and farcical as to recognize the politician and the state. This impatient activity was all there before it got philosophic expression in the writings of George Sorel. He gave to it the metaphysical touch that works as mystically on the imagination as the shadowy dialectic of Marx worked upon the awed devotees who could but faintly guess his meaning.
Rapidly a group of writers, either workingmen or in the closest way identified with them, put the new purpose into a literature for propaganda. If there is no help from the State, the politician, or the employer, the logic is evident. The worker must turn to himself and to the trade union as his fighting arm. If the State and employer alike are the enemy, this enemy must be disabled, in all ways badgered and
