syndicalist weapons can be put that does not raise the question of violence and its relation to the propaganda. In a publication just from the press[1] one reads (p. 26[deeplink needed]): "If the ruling class of today decide as its prototypes of the past have decided, that violence will be the arbiter of the question, then we will cheerfully accept their decision and meet them to the best of our ability and we do not fear the result." "The I. W. W.," it says, has now "come to the knowledge that justice, liberty, rights, &c. are but empty words, and power alone is real. Refusing to even try to delegate its power, it stands committed to the policy of direct action."
In the following chapter we shall see that its culmination is in the general strike which French anarchists define as identical with the social revolution. We shall see the theoretic justification of any unpleasantness which might follow direct action, namely, that "the property owners who own all of us," safe behind the mask of laws made in their own defense, practice indirect action to keep power from the people. Because of this exclusion labor, it is said, has no choice but in action that is "direct." The general strike thus becomes in Griffuehle's words, "the conscious explosion of labor's efforts to free itself."[2] In its last expression it is the taking possession of the world's machinery for the good of all—au profit de tous.
This is the revolution. Is violence to be expected? This, he says, depends wholly upon the attitude of the possessors. The general strike will be violent or pacific according to the amount of resistance to be overcome.
- ↑ On the Firing Line, P. O. Box 2129, Spokane, Wash.
- ↑ L'Action Syndicaliste, p. 32.
