place the union ahead of the party. This is why the trade union happens to be the main weapon of the social revolution.
Besides that, in the opinion of the theoreticians and active workers of anarcho-syndicalism (of whom we may name Sorel, LaGuardelle, Grifuel) the characterization which differentiates the trade unions is that they not only are the basic stronghold of the working class in its struggle to overthrow capitalism, but also organizations around which the new society will be built. According to the belief of the anarcho-syndicalists the trade unions will not only make the revolution but will also create the new society. The trade unions will organize production, regulate production within the industries, will govern the public economy. This is the social philosophy of anarcho-syndicalism. But this is not all.
There is one more characteristic of anarcho-syndicalism which is, in full, inherited from the anarchist theory concerning the State: The State, independently of its form or contents, is an enemy. The structure of the State in itself—the anarchists always write the State with a capital "S"—is an organ of exploitation, of one part of the people by the others, and that exploitation is always used against the workers. Therefore, before the war, the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat was a very vague and theoretical one. The anarcho-syndicalists were always out-spoken against the dictatorship of the proletariat, for, from their theory, the latter will mean the continuation of exploitation. They are anti-state, claiming that the State should be destroyed. They thought of the new society which will arise from the social revolution as one in which the trade union will play the leading role. They imagined it as a non-state society, which would be regulated only by the trade unions and which would be occupied only by the problems of production, distribution, etc.
However, this is only in the future; but what differentiates the anarcho-syndicalists from the other trade unionists? Anarcho-syndicalism in its direct struggle uses some methods which differentiate it from other movements. First of all, it believed in the initiative of the minority, and according to its ideas that minority with initiative could in many cases take the place of the mass. The anarcho-syndicalists in general shared the anarchist distrust of the masses. The individual plays the more important role. The minority with initiative can not only start something, drag the masses along, but also build for the masses, instead of them.
This role of the "militant minority" is one of the main characteristics of the anarcho-syndicalist point of view. And, from this angle, they brought into the every-day struggle things that we do not see in other movements. They brought into the struggle an element of adventure which could always be seen in their custom of exaggeration of the role
