20 SYNDICALISM 



"To the growing intelligence of the manual workers in the great industries it seems 

 that trade-unionism, however much it benefits particular sections, has in no way diminished 

 inequality. The trade-union of the orthodox type assumes and accepts as permanent the 

 very organisation of industry against which the ' class-conscious ' wage-earner is revolting. 

 If the workers in an industry can form a trade-union, and elect their own officials to lead 

 them in a strike, or to negotiate with the employer, why should not the same body of manual 

 workers, who form in every business organisation the immense majority, elect the general 

 manager and the foreman, the buyer and the salesman, who are now appointed by the 

 capitalist private owner of the enterprise to administer it for his own profit ? All that 

 stands in the way seems to be the private ownership of the instruments of production, entail- 

 ing as it does the ownership of the whole product." 



Neither Co-operation nor State-Socialism of the ordinary political type appears to 

 offer any real remedy for the social inequality of which our revolting wage-earner is so 

 bitterly conscious. Successful as the Co-operative movement has been, so far as the 

 working-class members are concerned who are consumers, he feels that it has done very 

 little for the producers whom the co-operative societies employ: 



"Thus in England, though the fifty million pounds of capital of this most profitable 

 business is owned by the two and a half million working-class members, and all the managing 

 committees are most democratically elected, yet the 120,000 men and women who work in 

 the stores and their factories are, as producers, paid weekly wages, and work under the orders 

 of managers and foremen over whom they exercise no more influence and control than in the 

 enterprises of private capitalism." 



It is the same with " nationalisation " or " municipalisation," which have become 

 the ideal of the Fabianite State-socialists, and also with the results, so far as our wage- 

 earner sees, of getting Labour members into Parliament, where conventional ideas of 

 property and the necessity of the support of a miscellaneous electorate block the way: 



"When Socialism was worked out to mean the transfer of industry from private to public 

 ownership, it became plain that it by no means meant handing industry over to the manual 

 workers. The ownership and control passed to the whole body of citizens, among whom the 

 wage-earners in any particular industry found themselves in an insignificant minority, 

 receiving wages and obeying orders just as before. Nor do the Syndicalists see that the 

 progress of this sort of Socialism has in itself any tendency to lead to any other state of things. 

 Its tendency is to induce the manual workers to put their reliance on the promises of the 

 politicians, who are for the most part not of the manual working-class, while such working- 

 class members as are elected quickly fall away, with the great change in the circumstances 

 of their lives, from that full ' class-consciousness ' which is bred of the wage-earner's insecu- 

 rity, impecuniosity, and subjection to the orders of others." 



The Syndicalist, in fact, objects to one of the fundamental doctrines of democracy. 

 Unlike the ordinary Socialist, who relies for progress on the conversion of a majority of 

 the community, the Syndicalist has no satisfaction in the subjection of the " conscious 

 minority " of intensely feeling workmen to the " incompetent vote " of an inert and 

 apathetic mass, and is not prepared to wait for their conversion. " French Syndica- 

 lism," writes Hubert Lagardelle, one of its leaders, " was born of the reaction of the pro- 

 letariat against democracy." " The minority," writes fimile Pouget, the most repre- 

 sentative of French syndicalists, " is not disposed to give up its claims and aspirations 

 before the inertia of a mob not yet animated and stirred by the spirit of revolt." In- 

 stead of looking to the " public," or the whole community, the Syndicalist considers that 

 the manual wage-earners must rely exclusively on themselves. " The working-class 

 movement," says M. Victor Griffuelhes in L' Action Syndicaliste, " having arisen from 

 the miseries of the wage-earners, ought to include only wage-earners, and ought to be 

 conducted only by wage-earners, exclusively for the specific interests of the wage-earn- 

 ers." Instead of being " guided by abstract ideas expounded by intellectuals," it is the 

 business of the manual workers simply to " fight against the employers, in order to ex- 

 tract from them, and to their hurt, even greater ameliorations of the worker's lot, on the 

 way to complete suppression of exploitation." 



In the organised warfare which the manual workers are to wage on employers, with- 

 out any foolish consideration for anybody but themselves, the two principal weapons 

 used by the Syndicalists are the " irritation strike " and the " general strike," strikes 

 being advocated not so much as a means of insisting, as with the older trade unionism, on 



