more local in range than in other and more highly developed
countries. But the movement towards large-scale organization
which has so profoundly affected every aspect of economic life in
recent years has produced a corresponding modification in
syndicalist ideals. At the same time, it has begun to be recog-
nized by the theorists of the movement that the consumers'
point of view cannot wholly be disregarded. The experience of
the World War has also had its effect. The Congress of Lyons,
therefore, in 1919 was moving with the times when, in demanding
the " industrialized nationalization of the great services of mod-
ern economy: land and water transport, mines, water-power,
and credit organizations," it denned " nationalization " as " the
confiding of national property to the interested parties, namely,
the associated producers and consumers." This clearly envisages
organization on a national scale and the participation of consu-
mers' organizations in control.
Syndicalist theory starts, as has been said, from the idea of a class war which must be waged relentlessly till a complete social transformation has been accomplished. The essential weapon in this struggle is the power of the organized workers. As the cause of the conflict is economic it must necessarily be fought out in the economic sphere. Syndicalist congresses have persistently repu- diated political action, and pinned their faith to a general strike as the grand instrument of social revolution. This reliance upon in- dustrial or " direct " methods of action flows necessarily from the fundamental notions of syndicalism as to the nature of the State, and also from strictly practical considerations. Outside the mine or factory, workingmen hold divergent religious or political opinions which make effective mass action difficult, if not impossible. Inside, the nature of their employment gives them a sense of solidarity which overrides minor differences and bands them together in the syndicat for common defence; to persuade them to pass from the defensive to the offensive is the syndicalist's task, and in the accomplishment of this political labels and controversies would be a hindrance. Moreover, the political party is not, and cannot be, a class organization. The Socialist parties swarm with men of middle-class origin whose only bond with the workers is the slender one of opinion. In any event, the political party is an inefficient instrument for revolu- tion; it can only operate effectively at electoral periods, and even then the mass of voters do nothing more than cast a ballot and return to their customary apathy for a term of years. Political action does nothing to rouse them from that apathy, to inspire them with revolutionary flan, to train them to initiative and independent thought. On the contrary, it asks for nothing better than docile followers of self-constituted leaders. The strike, therefore, is the characteristic syndicalist weapon. However limited in its scope and object, it is an educative experience; successful, it inspires the workers with a sense of power; unsuc- 'cessful, it impresses upon them the servility of their lot and the necessity for better organization and wider aims. Thus every strike is a preparation for the revolutionary " day," when the workers, or a fighting minority of them (for syndicalism repudi- ates as bourgeois the dogma of the sacredness of majority rule), shall seize the instruments of production by an " expropriatory " strike. In the meantime, they are working out from day to day, in the ordinary course of their employment, the ethics and the jurisprudence of the new social order.
The strike, of course, is not the only weapon in the syndicalist armoury. Various other means of waging the class war, known collectively as sabotage, are both preached and practised. These range from bad or slow work to the grew perlee (destruction of goods or machinery) and the chasse aux renards (assaults on " blacklegs " orjaunes). It is fair to say that many syndicalist leaders criticize these methods as destructive of the worker's moral and technical competence.
Syndicalism is essentially French in origin and reflects French working-class experience and conditions of life; nevertheless the history of Great Britain shows interesting foreshadow! ngs of it. The idea of industrial self-government by the producers attracted fora time the mobile mind of Robert Owen; and the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of 1834 was an attempt
to realize it in practice. James Morrison, a young self-taught operative builder, seems to have originated the syndicalist con- ception of class antagonism on the part of the working-classes (see Max Beer, History of British Socialism). The Building Trades Union had developed the same notion in the previous year (S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism). The plan of a general strike originated by one Benbow for a time, under the strange title of the " Sacred Month," made part of Chartist propaganda. There is no evidence, however, that these projects had any echo on the European continent. The syndicalist idea, as understood in France, may be said to have originated in the discussions of the International Working Men's Association. A French delegate to the Congress of Basle in 1869, for instance, prophesied that " the grouping of different trades in the city will form the commune of the future " when " government will be replaced by federated councils of syndicats and by a committee of their respective delegates regulating the relations of labour this taking the place of politics " (Levine, Syndicalism in France). The collapse of trade-unionism in France after the sanguinary suppression of the Communalist insurrection in 1871 had as a necessary consequence the submergence of these ideals for a considerable period, and only a combination of favouring circumstances brought them once more to light. Among these the discontent of the organized workers with Socialist politics, and the anarchist propaganda of a general strike, may be partic- ularly mentioned. These influences manifested themselves with increasing strength during the 'nineties in the two great labour organizations of the period the General Confederation of La- bour (or " C.G.T." under its French initials) and the Federation of Bourses du Travail. The secretary of this latter organization, Pelloutier, did more perhaps than any other individual to work out the characteristic doctrines of syndicalism and spread them among his fellow-workers. When these two bodies joined forces in 1902, trade-unionism in general and syndicalism in particular received an immense accession of strength, and the doctrine subse- quently remained in spite of the efforts of political socialists to capture the syndicats for their own purposes the characteristic expression of French revolutionary idealism.
As such, it has inevitably received much attention from obser- vers and writers drawn from other social classes. Of these the best known is Georges Sorel, but it is a complete error to suppose that he was the originator of syndicalism, or that he has had much influence on working-class opinion. The difficult form of his writings, with their frequent obscurity and lack of continuity, would alone have made this impossible. Sorel's adaptation of the Bergsonian doctrine of the " elan vital " to syndicalist purposes, and his theory of " social myths " (of which the general strike is one), have had considerable influence upon intellectual circles, but have affected no more than a fringe of working-class readers.
Syndicalist doctrine has had considerable influence outside France. In the United States, a movement of somewhat similar character arose with the organization of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Chicago Convention of the I.W.W. in 1905 drew up a declaration, the preamble of which affirmed the reality of the class struggle, embodied the theory of social organization which this involves and further made a plan for the realization of this ideal:
" The unit of organization industrially is the workshop or Yard Committee, wherein the workers are organized as workers, irres- pective of craft, grade, or sex. These Committees are coordinated by the formation of Works or Plant Committees, composed of dele- gates from each Workshop or Yard Committee. The Plant or Works Committees are coordinated by delegates from each of these Com- mittees, in a village, town, city, or district, forming a Workers' Council, in which there are also delegates from the residential com- mittees, these latter being the units of the social aspects of the organization."
The above scheme differs very little from the general theory of syndicalism in France, and presents a simple parallel to the shop-stewards' movement in Great Britain, which indeed was based upon it. The influence of the I.W.W., it may be noted, was, largely confined to the alien immigrant workers: it never pene- trated the American Federation of Labor to any serious degree.
