Syndicalism, its cause and cure. (1912)

Book Review from the December 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Syndicalism and the General Strike – by Arthur D. Lewis. (London; T. Fisher Unwin. Price 7s 6d)

As the only party in Great Britain that has taken up a definite and consistent attitude towards Anarchism in all its forms, it is meet that we should have something to say on the latest work on Syndicalism that has been published.

We have adopted a frankly hostile policy to this latest importation for the simple reason that we are a Socialist party. The sorry plight of those so-called Socialist bodies like the B. S. P. and the I. L. P. is a natural result of their lack of principles based on a correct knowledge of the position of our class. Inside the former body there is a heated controversy, both among the “leaders” and the rank and file, as to whether Syndicalism is the road for the workers to travel. The curious position of the I. L. P. is shown by their advocacy of the General Strike at the International Labour Congress as a weapon against war!

The cause of Syndicalism lies in the history of these and similar parties. In the Blatchford section they have literally bred Syndicalism by their disgusting election tricks, so often exposed in these pages. Their former members, now Syndicalists, point to the vote-hunting, compromising campaigns of Bethnal Green and Northampton, along with others, as showing the failure and danger of political action. The Independent Labour Party, too, has so treacherously played the part of advance agents of the Liberal party that from political opportunism their supporters right-about-turn to denounce political action altogether  — not that they understand Syndicalism any more than its leading votaries, but believing it to be anti-political, they seek shelter beneath its slogans and formulas.

Our statement of the cause of Syndicalism is supporter by the Syndicalist author of the book under review, who states (p. 187) that: –

“There are practically only one or two Syndicalists in England, but discontent with the degree of success obtained through the Parliamentary Labour Party has led to a general return to trade unionism and strikes as a means of fighting the employers . . . The belief that at least one member of the party bargains with the Liberal Government with a view to his personal advantage; the moderation of its words in Parliament compared with its words on the platform; the incapacity of many members of it, who are only dolls in the hands of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald; the acceptance by certain of its members of paid posts given by the Liberals; and its love of Puritanism, have all helped to cause a feeling of disappointment and disillusionment in many who once trusted and believed in it.”

That, then, is the cause of the spread of Syndicalism. It is clearly shown by this that Syndicalism thrives on ignorance. Only mis-educated, non Socialist workers would ever trust the Labour Party, would ever expect them to look after the toilers’ interests; and when the failure of their political inaction is realised, it is not the political method itself that has been found wanting, but it is the lack of sound knowledge on the workers’ part that is demonstrated. Because the political machine has been used in a capitalist direction the Syndicalist and his dupes proclaim the failure of politics!

The present book consists chiefly of quotations from the works of the Syndicalist leaders of to-day throughout Europe, and the author ventures his opinions very little. When he does so, he shows not only that he does not understand Syndicalism, but that he understands Socialism still less. In the preface he declares Socialism to mean that “huge State monopolies are to be formed in all industries, and that these will be controlled by a few very powerful officials at Westminster”.

This is typical of the misrepresentation that the Syndicalists feed their followers on. If Mr. Lewis would consult what he calls an “orthodox” Socialist, say Frederick Engels, he would find that Socialism rises upon the ashes of the State, for when Socialism comes the day of the State has closed for ever.

Though the title of the work is Syndicalism and the General Strike, only one chapter is devoted wholly to the latter question. The chief part deals with the theory of Syndicalism and Syndicalists.

Our author tells us that “the Syndicalist likes poor unions best — riches bring caution: he likes low weekly dues and small benefits”. Rather we would say, the average Syndicalist likes no dues and many benefits. We are promised much melodrama and but little organisation and education by his statement that: “The great weapon of the workers against their masters is disorder”. And one phase is described as “sabôtage or the destruction of property, intimidation of masters, sitting in factories with folded arms so no blacklegs can take your places, leaving work at an hour earlier than the masters want, telling the truth to customers: all these are means by which the masters can be made to yield”.

What they are to be made to yield by these means we are not told. But anyone can realise that while these things may prove aggravating to the isolated employer, and make him more bitter against the music-hall revolutionists, yet if this kind of thing was general, all the employers being on the same footing, they would feel its effects very little.

But to keep this conduct up the workers would need the power, not merely to personate George Washington, but to take control of the entire means of life; not to leave at an earlier hour than the masters desire, but to leave masters altogether. The crude notions of these folk are brought forward in the idea of “sitting with folded arms” while the masters want food, clothing, etc. for their daily needs. Sabotage, like all Syndicalist methods, is born of the want of sound knowledge and strong organisation.

Despite the fact that the author declares that the General Confederation of Labour in France “contains both a reformist and a revolutionary section”, and that the latter is “the minority of a minority of a minority — only some of the members of the C. G. T. being revolutionists and the C. G. T. itself only representing a minority of the unions” — despite that, however, the Anarchists miscalled revolutionists have a governing influence in the organisation, and have made its actions both comedies and tragedies.

They don’t believe in democracy. As the leading French Syndicalist, Émile Pouget, says in the work quoted — “The Syndicalist” — “Syndicalism and democracy are the two opposite poles which exclude and neutralise each other . . . This is because democracy is a social superfluity, a parasitic and external excrescence, while Syndicalism is a logical manifestation of the growth of life”, etc. Another French leader, M. Pierrot, is quoted as saying in “Syndicalism and Revolution” : “It is better to have an active group who know how to carry the masses and turn them in the right direction by their words and actions” . “The Syndicalist”, says our author “has contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy: the inert, unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the minority wishes to act so as to benefit it”.

That is the key note. The ‘intellectual’ few are to dominate the many. Not democracy but autocracy and dictatorship. The day of  a revolution carried out on these lines would also be the day of counter-revolution, the day of disaster, of drilled, unthinking masses being driven to the New Jerusalem. The day of revolution would but be the prelude to the long, black night of apathy and despair.

 

The Socialist Party, however, clings fast to democracy in organisation and in action. It knows that the real, reliable movement can only be built up with an alert, awakened, interested working class. That alone can bring about emancipation — not a few leaders hypnotising an ignorant rank and file.

Syndicalism means but a change of leaders. As Gaylord Wilshire’s (the wealthy Syndicalist) magazine declares (November 1912): “The new movement calls for new leaders”. And again: “The new conditions must bring forth a new type of leader, powerful, inspiring, and heroic”. Leadership, not a live membership doing their own work in their own way, that is the ideal. Mr. Lewis points out that unions with small funds are wanted, for, says he, “where funds are large the workers are made to vote for or against a strike”, thus showing that the Syndicalist objects to the will of the worker being expressed and acted upon.

“Syndicalism has an immediate programme. It would have the unions look to it that there are meeting places for working men, where there will be lectures, baths, and all that helps them to learn how to take control of production and consumption; also the officials, with professional help, should get for the workers their legal rights and place medical and legal advice at their disposal.”

So anxious are they about reforms that they even worry about legal rights. Fancy hungering after the rights conferred by lawyers and by Parliament! But it is not surprising, for above all else the Syndicalists are reformers. Without economic knowledge or political insight, what else could they be? The English Syndicalist, Mr. Tom Mann declares (“A Twofold Warning”) that poverty can be abolished under capitalism, and he also says: “I contend that reducing the working hours provides a solution for the problem of unemployment, and it matters not what system obtains”. With this rot they make converts among the ignorant, yet any tyro in economics could prove to him that the reserve army of labour is the corner-stone of capitalism, and that the shortening of hours doesn’t mean the lessening of the product of the same number of men. The Chief Inspector of Mines just reports that in spite of the Eight Hours Day Bill, and the strikes last year, over seven million tons more coal were produced than in 1912, and on the average every miner’s output increased three tons. This is typical of the whole industrial world.

Syndicalists claim great things for their strikes and sabotage. Something now! “The use of trade union labels is regarded as an instance of direct action”. The free advertisement of particular employers! Further we are told that by sabotage “bread has been made inedible but not injurious” — a kind of general “hunger strike” forced upon the working class.

But the sad story of Spanish, French and Italian strikes and sabotage has somewhat dimmed the picture. Yvetot, the chief of the C. G. T., in his ABC of Syndicalism, confesses that “the principle obstacle to a revolution is the army . . . When the Government does not use the army to replace strikers, it makes soldiers into massacrers of workmen”. What, then, is the use of the General Strike? What can it do against the army? As Yvetot says, the army massacres the strikers. In Italy, we are told (p. 104): “A general strike of railway workers was attempted in 1905 as a protest against a new attempt to introduce the (strike smashing) law; it failed and the law was passed. Men were shot down by the soldiers in 1907 and there was a renewal of a wide-spread strike. The strikers were defeated, and it was said that 20,000 men, or one third of all the men on the railways, were punished, either by imprisonment, discharge from the service, fines, or degradation of rank.”

Arturo Labriola, the leading Italian Syndicalist, shows the similarity between Syndicalism and capitalism. He says: “You can imagine that a Syndicat for a certain trade could contain all the workers in a single branch of industry, could contract on uniform conditions with all the capitalists on behalf of these workers, and would form a kind of common treasury of all the profits, to be distributed according to a rule of exalted justice to all its members  . . . This process could go further. It can be imagined that at a certain point of its development the workers’ union might hire the capital of the capitalists for a fixed return and then use it co-operatively, either working in one mass or constructing so many separate co-operative bodies each having separate and distinct accounts.”

And he goes on: “Syndicates, as organisms opposed to monopoly, and therefore open to all, would enthusiastically receive the capitalists of yesterday become the companions of to-day, and would make use of their indisputable directive and administrative ability.”

Before leaving the General Strike theory it is useful to note the words of Mr. Ben Tillett, quoted in the book. Speaking after the 1911 Transport strike was over he said (Glasgow, 11.2.12): “A  week before the strike a Cabinet Minister pleaded with me in a tearful voice to stop the strike. Of course, this pleading was unheeded until the men got what they wanted”.

Yet within six months of that speech the transport workers were fighting fir the very demands they had “won” the year before! And what a cruel comment was the suffering of that historic defeat on the “efficacy of the strike” idea!

The general strike of miners and other strikes in England bring home the lessons of the Socialist. Whilst the strike, local or industrial, may effect improvement for the time, slavery remains. Whilst the threat of a general strike may induce concessions, it cannot bring a solution. The best results of economic unity can only be effected by class-conscious toilers who recognise the need for class action, class union, for working class ends; who realise that, as the road to emancipation lies in control of political power, political action is a vital necessity.

The cure for Syndicalism is education in the Socialist principles and policy. There is no substitute for a Socialist working class seeking its salvation through the political struggle. When the toilers understand Socialism they will have no room in their minds for the sophisms and fallacies of Syndicalism.

Adolph Kohn

Syndicalism: its origins and weaknesses (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month the main French trade union confederation of the time adopted at its Congress in Amiens a Charter which, spreading far beyond France, became the doctrinal basis of a theory of unionism and revolution known as “syndicalism” (this is in fact merely the ordinary French word for trade unionism, so in France this doctrine is known as “revolutionary syndicalism “). As this doctrine has played an important historical role in working class thinking and organisation, we mark this event by publishing below an English version of the chapter on trade unionism that appeared in the pamphlet Pour le Socialisme Mondial (“For World Socialism”) put out in French by the world socialist movement in 1981 and which reproduced the Charter in full as well as giving a socialist assessment of it.

Associations of workers of the same trade have existed since the Middle Ages but only became organisations of wage earners to negotiate wage rates and conditions of work with employers in the middle of the 19th century. Up till then these associations had been mainly mutual aid societies, but even these had been banned by the Le Chapelier Law of 1791 which was later incorporated into the Napoleonic Code. Workers’ associations nevertheless continued to exist. It was not until 1864 that they were permitted to come out into the open and not until 1884 that they were fully legalised.

In the 1860s the main workers’ organisation in France was the “Association Internationale des Travailleurs” (International Working Men’s Association) which had been founded in 1864 by French and British workers. Although Karl Marx played a prominent role in its activities the IWMA was not a socialist organisation but was mainly concerned with organising trade unions and supporting strikes. It did, however, introduce some socialist ideas to French workers. Thus in 1869 we find a federation of workers’ organisations in Paris proclaiming as its final aim “the total emancipation of the workers in a new social order where the wages system will be abolished” and in 1870 Leo Frankel declaring (not quite accurately) during a trial of some French members of the IWMA that “the international association does not have as its aim an increase in the wage of workers, but indeed the abolition of the wages system”. This demand for “the abolition of the wages system” had first been raised by the British Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s and had been taken up by Marx in an address he gave to the General Council of the IWMA in 1865 (published after his death as a pamphlet entitled Value, Price and Profit which we strongly recommend for an understanding of trade unionism, its uses and limitations). It was to become a prominent slogan of French trade unionism in the period up till the First World War, after the working class movement had recovered from the setback represented by the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.

In 1895 various trade unions and other workers’ organisations joined together to form a “Confédération générale du travail” (General Confederation of Labour) which in 1902 declared its objective to be “the disappearance of the wages system and employers”. In 1906 the CGT adopted at its congress in Amiens a new programme. In view of its historical importance we reproduce (in a contemporary translation) this “Charte d’Amiens” in full:

“The General Confederation of Labour unites, independent of all political groupings, all workers who recognise the struggle to be carried on for the abolition of the wages system [. . .]

Congress considers this declaration to be a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic field, places the workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, material and moral, carried out by the capitalist class against the working class.

      Congress makes this theoretical affirmation more precise by the following points:

Regarding day-to-day needs. Trade Unionism pursues the co-ordination of the efforts of the workers, the increase of the workers’ welfare through the realisation of immediate amelioration, such as the shortening of working hours, wage increases, etc.

But this is only one aspect of its task. Trade Unionism is preparing complete emancipation which can only be realised by the expropriation of the capitalist class. It favours as a means to this end the general strike and considers that the trade union, now a unit of resistance, will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation.

Congress declares that this two-fold task, for day-to-day life and for the future, arises from the actual position of wage-earners, which forces the working class and imposes on all workers, whatever their opinion and political and philosophical views, the duty to belong to the basic organisation, the trade union. Therefore, so far as individual members are concerned, Congress declares complete freedom for every Trade Unionist to participate, outside of the trade organisation, in any forms of struggle in accordance with his political or philosophical views, confining itself only to asking him, in return, not to introduce into the trade union the opinions which he professes outside it.

In so far as organisations are concerned, Congress decides that in order that Trade Unionism may obtain utmost effectiveness, economic action should be exercised directly against the employing class and that the Confederal organisations should not, as trade unions, pay any attention to parties or sects which, outside or alongside, may pursue completely independently the transformation of society.”

The doctrine here expounded became a current in the working class movement that has become known as “syndicalism”. Only some of the leaders of the CGT accepted this doctrine and regarded the trade unions and the general strike as the means to overthrow capitalist rule and establish a new society. The bulk of the members were interested only in “day to day needs”, though they were sometimes prepared to support revolutionary phrases as a means of frightening employers into conceding higher wages or better conditions.

The Charter was not as anti-political as it has sometimes been claimed to be. It does not proclaim the incompatibility of trade union and political action, but only that political divisions should not be introduced into the trade unions. This was sensible, since to be effective in their role of bringing pressure to bear on employers over wages and working conditions trade unions need to organise as many workers as possible, irrespective of their political or philosophical views. They are, and must be, composed of workers of all views. To introduce political views (including the anti-politicaI views of the anarchists) is to risk division, so weakening the union in the face of the employers. In recognising this the Charter of Amiens adopted a sound position (one which is unfortunately not always remembered today).

Trade unions arise out of the wage-relation that is at the basis of capitalism. Capitalist society is divided into two classes: the capitalist class who own and control the means of production and the working class who, excluded from such ownership and control, are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. The wage which workers receive is the price of their labour-power and the price of this commodity fluctuates, like that of all commodities, around its value as determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it. If competition between workers for jobs was unrestricted then wages would tend to fall below the value of labour-power, as often happened in the 19th century before effective trade unions existed. Combining together in trade unions to exert collective pressure on employers is a way workers can prevent their wages falling below the value of their labour-power. Put another way, it is a way of ensuring that they are paid the full value of what they have to sell. This is the usefulness of trade unions to the working class but they can do no more than this. They cannot substantially increase the living standards of their members under capitalism but they can ensure that wages are not reduced below the subsistence level.

Trade unions, then, are defensive organisations of the working class which, in order to be effective, must recruit all workers, on the basis merely that they work for wages in a particular industry or trade and not on the basis of their political or philosophical views. This means that they are not, and cannot be, revolutionary organisations since they will be composed of non-socialists as well as of socialists. In fact at the present time, when the working class does not yet want and understand socialism, the overwhelming majority of trade unionists will inevitably be non-socialist and hence non-revolutionary. This was so before the First World War too. This was why it was absurd to expect, as did the syndicalists, the trade unions to act in a revolutionary way for this was to expect non-revolutionaries to behave as revolutionaries.

To end capitalism the great majority of workers must have first come to want and understand this change since the new socialist society which will be established in place of capitalism can only function with the conscious and active participation of its members—something the syndicalists did not accept. They imagined that they, as a conscious minority, could lead the discontented mass of workers in a general strike against capitalism. This would inevitably have been defeated with many workers being killed, especially as the anti-political stand of the syndicalists meant that the state, which controls the means of coercion, was to be left in the hands of a government representing the capitalist class.

Although the sincerity of the syndicalists’ desire to end capitalism cannot be questioned, their understanding of the future society to replace it can be. In suggesting that society should be organised on the basis of trade unions—“the trade union [. . .] will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation”—the syndicalists were merely projecting into socialism the industrial and professional divisions of workers which exist under capitalism. Since socialism is based on the social ownership (= ownership by society) of the means of production, the trade union ownership proposed by the syndicalists was not socialism at all but a modified form of sectional ownership.

The First World War revealed that not only were the bulk of CGT members not revolutionary but that they were patriotic. From this time on began a process of collaboration with and integration into the state by the trade unions which continues to this day, with the unions represented on many governmental institutions at national and local level and receiving subsidies from the state for certain of their activities. Trade unionism, in other words, has dropped its pretence at being revolutionary, though the present CGT did not eliminate its paper commitment to “the disappearance of the wages system and of employers” till 1969. This has led some to argue that as the trade unions are no longer revolutionary they should not be supported by those who want social revolution, but should on the contrary be opposed. This is not a fair criticism nor a valid conclusion.

The trade unions are essentially defensive organisations with the limited role of protecting wages and working conditions and it is by this criterion that their effectiveness or otherwise ought to be judged. By this standard, although they make many serious mistakes (disunity and rivalry, collaboration with the state and with political parties), by and large the existing trade unions do succeed in protecting wage rates and working conditions against what Marx called “the never-ceasing encroachments of capital”. Our members do join the existing trade unions and work within them to defend wages and conditions. We do not criticise the unions for not being revolutionary, but we do severely criticise them when they depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between workers and employers; when they collaborate with employers, the state or political parties; when they put the corporate interests of a particular section of workers above that of the general interest of the working class as a whole.

But even if the unions made no mistakes of this sort, what they can achieve for the working class under capitalism is very limited. They can—and do—enable workers to get the full value of their labour-power, but they cannot stop the exploitation of the working class. This exploitation is inherent in the wages system and can only be abolished along with it through the conversion of the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of the whole community. But this requires political action based on socialist understanding by a socialist political party for which the trade unions, with their limited defensive role, can never be a substitute.

Adam Buick

The Labor Movement in France. (1909)

From the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Syndicalist and Anti-Militarist wins brought to declare for political action.

Translated from Proletary (Russian) by J. Kresswell and adapted from the Weekly People (New York).

__________

The late October, 1908, convention of the United Socialist Party and the General Confederation of Labor in France will undoubtedly serve as a turning point in the history of the French labor movement. The vacillating course and the somersaults, from “opportunistic” Socialism to “revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism” are destined to be relics of the past.

The tactics of the French proletariat, are becoming more and more similar to those of Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.

By attaching the “Socialist” Millerand to the Cabinet of the clever and masterful Waldeck-Rousseau, the French bourgeoisie succeeded in temporarily breaking down the ranks of the labor organisations. At the head of the General Confederation of Labor at that time were the reformers of the English trade unionist type, among whom were active adherents of Jaures’ theory of the co-operation of the classes. Geraud, the then secretary of the Confederation, used to support in the Federation Millerand, who opened wide the treasury of the ministry of Commerce to the labor syndicates. In those days the Confederation used to give banquets in honor of Millerand, and radical municipalities used to give to labor unions free lyceums and pecuniary subsidies. Consequently the demoralisation of labor organisations became so great that nothing better seemed to remain to honest Socialists but to join the anarcho-syndicalists in their conflict with the reformers.

In Bourges the anarcho-syndicalists, thanks to the active co-operation of the Guesdists trade unions, captured temporarily the G.C. of L. and became the moving spirits in theory and practice in the French labor movement. The reformers also prepared a fine field for anarcho-syndicalists. The hostility to political action which seized the laboring masses in the rising period of neo-syndicalism, appears only as a just reaction to the excesses of the parliamentary tactics. Only four years have passed since “revolutionary” syndicalism triumphed, yet it is now passing. We limit ourselves to a short review of the evolution this syndicalism has gone through in this time.

Arming themselves at Bourges with a complele arsenal of revolutionary phrases, our syndicalists imagined that we were on the eve of the grand sunset of the capitalist world. In their inflamed imagination the first important strike became almost the beginning of the Social Revolution. The words “general strike” became a sacred commandment. The Paris Convention of 1901 even decided to form a special committee to prepare for such a strike, and the syndicalists were convinced that the day when the working class would go on strike would be the last of the bourgeois regime. Syndicalists taught the workers that high dues, rich union treasuries and numerous syndicates lead to narrow English unionism only, that strikes must always be hastily improvised, and to prepare for them long is unnecessary. The general laboring masses they considered cowardly and apathetic, and they assigned the principal role to an active and energetic minority. These agitators being in most cases at the head of syndicates in embryo, acted with surprising self-assurance, and the unsuccessful outcome of strikes never worried them. Strikes in their eyes always served as “revolutionary gymnastics.”

With such views the syndicalists prepared themselves for the first decisive battle, which they were to give to “capital” on May 1st, 1906, in order to gain the eight hour day. Their impressive revolutionary proclamations and the previously raised hue and cry momentarily scared the French bourgeoisie. The radical ministry concentrated in proletarian centres enormous military forces. The French workingmen, without a sou in their union treasuries, without strong syndicates, temporarily influenced by the revolutionary phraseology of the demagogues, stumbled not only over the more perfectly organised capital, but also upon the government’s army. The result was the complete defeat of the workers. A great number of unions became almost wholly demoralised and disbanded. Others lost considerable of their membership—the metal workers, for instance, more than a third. The federation of pressmen, whose caution the syndicalists ridiculed and condemned, was the only one to carry on a successful struggle. This union succeeded in gaining a nine-hour day in a considerable part of France. How powerful was the blow delivered to the working class by this inflated first of May movement may be judged from the fact that the number of successful strikes for this year reached only 7 per cent., while the average for the previous ten years was 14 per cent. The Confederation of Labor, which, according to Pouget, had 250 thousand members in 1903, had at the convention of Amiens four years later only 203 thousand.

Far poorer results were shown from syndicalist practice the last two years, which even the revolutionary leaders, Pouget and Griffeulhes confess. At the same time the bourgeoisie had not remained idle. During one year the numbers in employers’ associations increased from 268 thousand to 315 thousand, a gain of 18 per cent. A more rapid progress is shown in the class-conscious organisation of capital in 1907. In the metallurgical, electrical, automobile, glass and chemical industries a series of trusts were formed almost embracing all the national industries. The league of merchants and shopkeepers alone, which was shortly formed to combat the Sunday rest idea, counts 100 thousand members. To these well organised forces of capital the Confederation of Labor proposed to give battle with the small undisciplined and provisionless army, composing only 27 per cent, of France’s working population, and only one-third of the organised labor of the land.

The revolutionary syndicalists, who during six years held noisy harangues about a general strike, understood the necessity of large and powerful organisations, when their attempt to call a general strike during the May agitation and the events at Draveil-Vigneux resulted in complete defeat. These events conclusively proved that their practical influence upon organised labor was absolutely nil. Pouget, the real head of the revolutionary syndicalists, wrote at the end of June in the Voice of the People:

“Unfortunately it must be acknowledged that if the idea of the general strike has made great theoretical gains in France, in practice we are behind even the Italian proletariat. The cause of this appears to be the state of illusion of the workers. To the practical syndicalists the lessons of the past have not been in vain, many of them have found out the errors of the past.” Griffeulhes, sec. cf the Confederation, confessed to the editor of L’Humanite that the empty revolutionary phraseology scared away the laboring masses, especially in the provinces, and instilled distrust in the trade unions. He added that what was wanted was less noise and more organisation work. Luke, the temporary secretary of the Confederation, wrote still more moderately

“What the proletariat wants are real results, i.e., real reforms. And it has come to the conclusion that for the realisation and preservation of such reforms strong organisations are absolutely necessary.”

The same revolutionary experience has been made by other “revolutionary” syndicates. They have lost the sarcastic and nagging tone in which they used to attack contemporary class-conscious proletarian organisations of Western Europe. As a result the majority of the trade unions established high membership dues. Their contempt for the necessity of numerous and powerful syndicates has vanished and such hot heads as the secretary of the metal workers’ union, advises the workers to carefully prepare for each strike and to survey the field of battle beforehand. A few ultra-syndicalists still pin their faith to “revolutionary manoeuvres.” But from the debates at Marseilles it is clearly seen how quickly the French proletariat is freeing itself from the guardianship of neo-syndicalism. 

In those debates no mention was even made of a general strike. The responsibility for the August 3rd events was by all present placed upon the government’s shoulders, but if the whole administration of the Confederation had not at that moment been behind prison bars, the “prehistoric” tactics of the “revolutionary” syndicalists would have been severely condemned there and then.

Latopy, another secretary of the metal worker’s union and a good “revolutionary” syndicalist, expressed himself thusly :

“I would like to know whether we will continue to pass resolutions, which in the future we are unable to carry out or defend. … I would that henceforth we shouldn’t enter the battlefield for the pleasure and vanity of a few leaders, who themselves remain in the security of their homes.”

This arrow was intended for the theoreticians and a few of the remaining supporters of syndicalism.

The syndicalists had to beat a retreat, as well in questions of anti-militarism and of the international trades union secretariat. At Amiens the syndicalists voted for the ultra-revolutionary resolution of Yvetot, binding them to carry on a strong anti-militarist and “anti-patriotic” propaganda, and at Marseilles, Marrheim, the prime mover of this resolution, brought forth another, in which there was not a word about “anti-militarism” or “anti-patriotism.” At Amiens the Confederation resolved to participate in the international conferences of trades union secretaries only under the condition that “anti-militarism” and the “general strike” should be deliberated. At Marseilles they were satisfied with a very moderate request: the international secretariat to be required to put on the order of the day the question of call for the convention of the international trades unions.

It is true that the “revolutionary” syndicalists have as yet preserved their majority in the central organisations, but this is because of the peculiar mode of representation at conventions, where every section of the syndicate has one vote, no matter what its numerical strength. Thus the produce union with 3 thousand members had 39 votes at Marseilles, while the miners’ union, numbering 30 thousand, had only 35. The weaker unions occupied in small production, were in fact rulers of these conventions. This is the real reason of the neglect of the majority of organised labor to obey the resolutions passed by a ficticious majority of delegates. No wonder the “revolutionary” syndicalists oppose with might and main a more just and proportional representation, for on the day of such realisation there will appear, at the head of those organisations, pure and simple reformers instead of reformers turned inside-out.

At Lyons, where the question of proportional representation was first raised, only five per cent. of the delegates present were in favour. At Montpelier this number rose to sixteen per cent., at Bourges to twenty-six per cent., and at Marseilles to thirty-four per cent., which, according to the minutest calculations, represents 160 thousand workers out of the total 170 in the Confederation. In fact, even now the majority of the trades unions, those who consider themselves “revolutionary,” do not in their practice differ from the reformers.

(To be concluded)

An “Industrialist” Rout. (1909)

Party News from the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Thursday, May 27th, at the Latchmere Baths, Battersea, J. Fitzgerald and E. J. B. Allen debated as to the correctness of the position taken up by their respective organisations in compassing the end to which both are pledged, viz., the abolition of the present system of society and the substitution of the Socialist Commonwealth.

The debate was conducted in a splendid spirit, and followed by a large audience with an attention which demonstrated their recognition of the importance of the issue raised.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain feels more than justified in giving the above title to the following short account of the debate, where the representative of the Industrialist League cleverly defended a position which, under the stern bombardment of Fitzgerald became hopelessly untenable, ultimately presenting a picture of “looped and windowed raggedness” which must have been apparent even to the adherents of, and sympathisers with, that organisation.

Mr. H. B. Rogers was in the chair. After a few opening remarks he called upon Allen to hold the fort for half an hour.

E. J. B. Allen acknowledged the oneness of aim of the two organisations. The question was:

HOW WAS THE WORKING CLASS TO GAIN CONTROL ?

On the political field we saw the waste of time and energy in the quarrels between the various political parties, while in those places where revolutionary unionism existed you had a revolutionary working class. The class struggle was manifested mainly in the factory, field and workshop. There the revolutionary organisation must be built up. Street-corner propaganda was useless, unless backed up by revolutionary tactics in every-day life. In the political field you had your Burns’s, Vivianis, Millerands, and Briands taking sides with the capitalists because they had been placed in a false position through political action. The franchise can, it has been, it may be, monkeyed with. What weapon then, had the S.P.G.B. to fall back upon? The “political” Socialist was quick to point out failures of strikes ; he seemed to shut his eyes to electoral failures with the consequent waste of time, money and energy. The Revolutionary Union would be prepared to take political action to dispossess the capitalist of power. They would use the weapon of the Strike up to the partial and complete General Strike. The French Postal workers had used this weapon with success. It looked as though after all the S.P.G.B. would have to follow the methods it denounced as impracticable, viz., the nationalisation of industries piecemeal. To-day the Parliament did not control the Army, for the Army Council was not under the control of any elected body. Along with Industrial Unionism there must be an

ANTI-MILITARIST PROPAGANDA.

There are not wanting signs that the times are ripe for such a movement. The soldiers at Featherstone killed three. Had they shot as ordered they could have killed three hundred. The capitalist class had built up their economic power before they overthrew the absolute monarchy. The recent Postal strike in Paris illustrated the fact that a worker of whatever political colour could act solid with his class in the workshop. A Radical operator held up wires from Rome which would have facilitated work of the masters. Therefore he answered, “Yes,” his organisation would accept even members of the I.L.P. It would accept anyone willing to act solid with his class. Once in the organisation the lesson of Socialism could be driven home by the Socialist already in the ranks. Besides a man would act straight as a worker who may be hopelessly befogged as a politician. The S.P.G.B. had run municipal candidates. They did not bar Parliamentary candidature. What would their representative do if elected ? He could but

SUPPORT PALLIATIVES

as the elected representatives of the I.L.P. etc. did.

J. Fitzgerald in his all too brief half hour’s reply, said that he intended, before answering his adversary’s points directly, to state briefly, the position of his Party. A mere statement of that position would refute much that had been said in opposition. What were the main obstacles to the goal ? Two. The first corporeal, measurable, gross to sight, viz., the armed forces and other political machinery ; the second, alas ! incorporeal, immeasurable, unseen but real, vague but potent, heavy with the heaviness of Death—

WORKING-CLASS IGNORANCE.

That ignorance it is the duty of every Socialist to dispel. With regard to the first obstacle he noticed that the Industrialist League had added a new item to its programme since the inception of Industrial Unionism, when they argued they could “lock out the capitalist class,” viz., Anti-Militarism. Not that he attached much importance to that particular form of propaganda, except that it clearly demonstrated that the Industrialist League had learnt from the S.P.G.B. the imperative necessity of reckoning with the armed forces instead of ignoring, Anarchist fashion, the political machinery. Did not this fact of itself show, however, that the “neutral,” telescope-to-the-blind-eye attitude of the Industrial Leaguists as far as “politics” were concerned, was officially capable of expression as a pious belief, but ludicrously impossible as practical tactics?

Allen had stated that Revolutionary Industrial organisations had made the French, Spanish, and Italian workers “more revolutionary.” Had they? Is that why they continue to send representatives of the master class to their exploiters’ grand committees for the conservation of class privilege and the preservation of class oppression ?

With regard to the second obstacle—working-class ignorance—Allen and himself were both agreed as to the vital need of teaching. It was alleged that such teaching would be most effective on the spot where the worker found himself face to face with class exploitation. As a matter of fact the workers are more split on the economic field, where they have over 1,000 organisations, than on the political, where they have less than 100. Must he bring his opponent back to the solid ground of fact by reminding him that the present system

FORCES TWO INDUSTRIALISTS TO FIGHT

for a job ? Political leaders “sell out! ” Do economic leaders never do so ? “Strikesmasher” Barnes, “Arbitration” Bell, “Mabon,” etc., never “sell out” ! Oh no ! He would remind him of Frank Rose’s sinister declaration in the Clarion of 18th September, 1908 : “They (the masters) bribe away the best and most knowing of the operatives’ officials by giving them better jobs and bigger salaries, and the internal working of the operatives’ unions are open books lo them.

“IT IS A GHASTLY BUSINESS.”

Regarding the General Strike, the ablest writer on the subject, Arnold Roller, showed the absurdity of the Industrialists’ statement that the workers could continue to carry on production for themselves and starve out the capitalists, for he says : “It is evident in such a struggle the ruling class would pay no sentimental regard to law and would simply seize the provisions of the proletariat for themselves and their army.”

What became of the talk about “taking and holding” ? Moreover, the statement completely knocked the bottom out of the case for the General Strike. What had the French Postal workers got by this weapon ? Six hundred had got— the sack !

It was not true that the Army Council was not under the control of any elected body, for it was appointed by the Cabinet, that was in its turn appointed by Parliament, which was an elected body and had ultimate control. With regard to Anti-Militarism, it were wise, especially while the Party was small, to direct their energies to most likely material for conversion. His opponent could judge of the relative accessibility to Socialist thought of soldiers and civilians, hedged in as the former were by every influence, positive and negative, tending to stupification of the thinking faculties. The gist of Hervé’s teaching consisted of calling upon the workers to resist conscription and to be shot rather than join the army ! We had been told, as an instance of the success of Herve’s propaganda, that the 71st Regiment of the line in France had mutinied when called on to fire upon the wine growers in the South, but the truth was this regiment was recruited from that very district, and it was this very fact of being called upon to fire at their own relatives—in some cases their own fathers and mothers—that caused the mutiny, and not the propaganda of Anti Militarism.

In answer to the question as to the attitude of elected representatives on public bodies, his reply was, no! they will not bolster up palliatives; they will be there to speak from the wider platform as revolutionary propagandists; essentially they can but continue the propaganda while in the minority.

Allen in his 20 minutes reply reiterated several of his former points. He said that Marx himself had declared (in his “Eighteenth Brumaire” ) that politicians would mar any movement. Suppose a majority of Socialists elected to the House. Would reactionary army officers etc. yield at the word of a majority ? No ! The means of production must be made ready for seizing by previous revolutionary work in the factories, etc. As far as education was concerned, contesting elections simply meant educating the worker in the divineness of capitalist “law and order” ; whereas

DIRECT ACTION

implies the contrary. The political movement is not a class movement, for capitalists and “intellectuals” may join, while the I.U. only admitting workers, was a class movement. In Warsaw during the late troubles, the workers struck and drove out the capitalists, who had to ask to be allowed to come back and take the works again. He again asked how the S.P.G.B. intended “seizing the political machinery” without the necessary force to seize it.

Fitzgerald in his 20 minutes reply pointed out that “revolutionary” speeches and actions born of more excitable temperaments, easily carried on waves of enthusiasm and as easily correspondingly depressed, did not constitute revolutionary tactics. The Confederation General du Travail (C.G.T.) had been referred to. Let it be clearly understood that that body was a loose conglomeration, controlled by a small body of Anarchists, who showed their individualistic proclivities with their accompanying thimble-rigging and wire-pulling, by insisting upon “one group, one vote,” which means that a precious “group” of about six carried equal weight with a genuine association of a thousand. Truly, this showed the close relationship and connection of the I.U. with the avowed Anarchists.

The C.G.T. had cal1ed a “general strike” every May Day for the last three years, and the Industrialist said they were promised one this year. All of them had been miserable fiascos and the only “revolutionary” action that took place this year was the singing of “L’Internationale” by some men while marching

TO WORK ! !

The whole tenor of C.G.T. thought is “leadership,” and “leadership” had meant, and will mean, a shambles for the workers. Organisers charged to carry out intelligently the democratic will? Yes! The S.P.G.B. stands by that. “Leaders,” in the sense of the bourgeoisie, of the I.L.P., of the S.D.P., looking meekly for direction and guidance to their middle-class tin gods ? A thousand times No !

THERE IS NO ROOM

for the “middle”-class “intellectual” on the make, if the movement was truly democratic and therefore clean. On the “Industrialist” basis Marx and Engels would have been kept out of the movement. Marx had been quoted to bolster up the “non-political” character of Industrialism. Let his opponent read that brilliant monograph and cease to drag the lustrous name of Marx in the mire. “Parliamentary idiotcy” was a disease attaching to the “pure and simple” politician. In the case of the coup-d’état of 1851, it refers more particularly to the action of the fatuous “Party of Order” in calling Napoleon the Little to “concentrate the whole executive power in his own person” (pp. 50-51). Reference by any fair-minded person to the Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B. would dispel any illusion to the effect that his Party could be charged with such “idiotcy,” as it distinctly states that the workers must obtain control of the fighting forces. And then as to Warsaw. What a specimen of “revolutionary” education ! When the capitalists “asked ” they were allowed to go back and recommence exploiting those who had turned them out!

Allen in his ten minutes round averred that the strong minority must lead the majority. History proved his contention. As for Parliamentary action, did not “Pride’s Purge” demonstrate the uselessness of that? Members were expelled ruthlessly by the soldiers. The Parliament did not control the militia, for when Charles went to Nottingham the majority of the trained bands followed him. As to the C.G.T., could it be denied that an organisation claiming to be out for the expropriation of the capitalist class was revolutionary ? The General Strike implied a revolutionary upheaval, animated by sheer unconstitutionalism, ignoring individual safety in looking for the salvation of the whole. It was minorities made all movements. They started the idea and dinned it into the heads of the others.

Fitzgerald, reviewing the whole situation in his last ten minutes, rammed home by apt quotation and scathing humour several points previously touched upon. The mention of “Pride’s Purge ” by Allen was peculiarly unfortunate. Above all things that event showed the enormous leverage which the seizure of political power gave. In the struggle between sections of the bourgeosie which “Pride’s Purge” illustrated, the victory was to that section effectively controlling the army as part of the political machinery. The North v. South slave struggle of 1861 in America illustrated the same point. Temporary and brilliant successes of Southern generals were bound to be rendered nugatory in the long run by the political force wielded by the North. As for the trained bands going to Charles, according to Gardiner, when the first call was made by Parliament in London, 40,000 fully armed and 100,000 lesser armed men responded—a splendid start for the Parliament. A final word as to “agitation in the workshop,” which is claimed to be so educationally efficient. Why ? In these days of speeding up, when is this propaganda to go forward? From a sheer common-sense point of view, surely, in his hours of leisure, however scant, the workman is more accessible to Socialist thought and teaching. At any rate the task-master won’t be immediately present.

The General Strike and minorities being right—well, let us see again what Roller has to say. Judge for yourselves the discrepancy between Roller’s picture and that drawn by Allen. “The immense advantage of the General Strike is that it begins

ENTIRELY LAWFULLY

and without any danger to the workers, and for this reason thousands will take part who would never have thought of taking part in a revolution, but would have stayed at home behind the grate.” What sort of “revolutionaries” are these ? Directly action in revolutionary lines was needed they would disappear and leave the others to be crushed. Is the ”General Strike” the last word of “Industrial Leagism” ? It stands self condemned.

A few harmless humourosities from the chairman closed the proceedings. That some “Industrialists” went away sadder if not wiser men is the firm hope, not to say conviction, of

REGINALD.

Classic Reprint: The Collapse of Direct Action (1954)

A Classic Reprint from the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have reproduced an article contributed to the "Socialist Standard" in 1909. It will be seen that the main conclusions of this article are as fresh and pertinent to-day as when it was written. Time, that has played havoc with the parties that flourished at that period, has left the outlook we put forward still clear and sound.

Industrial Unionism” is merely a pleasant name for Anarchism and  “Direct Action.” It is one of those almost inevitable elements of confusion and disorganisation which beset the working class in its advance. Every dog has its day, and every freak idea its boom, as though the workers were prepared to traverse every avenue of error before keeping steadily to the right road. The freak idea that the workers can, without the conquest of political power and by means of an industrial organisation alone, “take and hold” the means of life from the capitalists, is one that has just enjoyed its brief boom; but its hollowness has been quickly seen, and its followers have in consequence been rapidly dropping away.

The Industrial Unionists of this country being entirely unable to think out for themselves the adaptation of means to end that would be suitable to the situation here, have hitherto blindly followed in the unsteady footsteps of that peculiarly American organisation, the Industrial Workers of the World, and have added to the gaiety of life by their ludicrous attempt at copying that organisation, from its structure even down to its slang. As things are going however, the British Industrialists seem likely to be hard put to it for something to imitate; and what will their “Union” do then, poor thing?

The Industrial Workers of the World, of Chicago and elsewhere goes from bad to worse. It still continues to propagate – by fission, for while the total number of members in all the I.W.W.s grows less and less, the number of distinct and warring I.W.W.s multiplies apace. This suggests the not impossible outcome that in the near future the few remaining adherents of that idea will be each a separate I.W.W. unto himself.

 

The General Confederation of Labour of France has also until now been a source of joy and inspiration to the Industrialists because of the theatrical policy of the Anarchist section which has hitherto controlled it. The English Industrialists, indeed, are fond of speaking of the Conféderation Générale du Travail as though it were a homogeneous body, when, in reality, it is, as its name implies, a heterogeneous agglomeration of unions and federations, each with its own rules, scales of subscription, and the like and comprising almost all shades of political opinion. But with that fine contempt for democracy which characterises the Anarchists, they have, until recently, bossed the French labour organisation, notwithstanding that they are a minority of the membership. The “blessed word” of the Anarchists is “liberty,” but not the liberty of the greatest number, for that would be democracy, and therefore accursed. Thus in the General Confederation of Labour the voting for the administrators is by group, and not per member, and since the Anarchists are divided into many small groups, and the Socialists united into fewer large ones, the Anarchist minority has been able to govern the majority.

But now there are tears and curses in the Anarchist camp. Their candidates have been beaten, and by a majority which, though it appears small, represents in reality two-thirds of the membership. Niel, an opponent of the Anarchistic “Direct Action,” has been elected secretary of the Confederation. The Guesdist organ, Le Socialisme, is naturally jubilant about it, and says:

“The Anarchist-Syndicalists, beaten twice by the election of Niel and of Thil, are again furious. The Confederal organisation was theirs. They thought it would endure so for ever, but they did not notice that their brutal authoritarianism had ended by disgusting even their friends. They believed that their electoral system would ensure their preponderance for ever, but they have been compelled to admit that even such a fantastic system may turn against them. And their chagrin equals their fury. The coarse abuse which their organ, the Revolution, pours out upon the ‘blacklegs’ and ‘traitors’ who have elected Niel will complete their discredit in trade union circles”.

 It will be seen that with the decline of the “Direct Action” movement in France and America, the British Industrialists are in a sad plight. They are likely to be left entirely to their own mental resources, and the worst is to be feared for them. It is, indeed, inevitable that the neo-Anarchist movement should, in every country in which it appears, soon begin to fall to pieces of its own unsoundness and futility; while it is equally inevitable that the sound Socialist movement should, in every country on the globe, advance steadily and surely, even if slowly, step by step nearer to its triumph.

F. C. Watts

(Socialist Standard, April 1909).

The Socialist in Action – the Two “Possiblisms”. by P. M. Andre (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is only one Socialism, but there are at the same time two ways of conceiving its realisation: the scientific way – that of the international Socialism – and the “possiblist”. Quite a large number of French Socialists have for a long time been suffering from the latter. Scientific Socialism does not believe that the Social Revolution can be brought about by stages. It is waiting for the social change to take place through the seizure of political power by the working class, and it is with a view to that seizing by force that it is organising the proletariat into a class party. The efforts it makes are all those of recruiting, educating, and organising. To get the greatest number of workers, both hand and brain, to understand that, in the words of  Sieyès, “they are everything in the nation, and can be everything whenever they want to”, to show them that the inevitable necessity for socialising the means of production, to draw them towards Socialism by a propaganda they can understand, and suited to their respective spheres; to use, in order that this propaganda should be as effective as possible, every means at our disposal under capitalist rule, legal means being thereby understood; to repudiate any proceeding capable of doing harm to the recruiting and educating of the masses – such are the essential methods of international Socialism.

This method has for reformers the serious inconvenience of condemning Socialists to what certain busy people call “inaction”. To recruit, educate and organise is, it seems, to do nothing. We must, perforce, wait until the recruiting, educating and organising of the proletariat is far enough advanced for the revolutionary seizure of the “State” to be brought to a triumphant issue.

And those who, in imitation of [the] Roy [king] of France, are “afraid to wait”, are full of praise for a swifter method, that of “possibilism”. By virtue of this last they begin the revolution all at once. This beginning takes place in different ways: by peaceful penetration or by direct action. They pretend to “act according to one’s temperament” but in fact, try to realise, from this very moment, in the midst of capitalist rule, all the immediate possibilities of slices of socialism. On the one hand they are associated with bourgeois reformers, in order to make popular and vote for reforms which, if added together, end to end, all along the centuries, will accomplish the transformation of property “without a blow being struck”. On the other hand, not having enough patience to recruit, educate and organise their workmen comrades, they reckon solely on the “active minority” in order to reduce in succession the rights of the masters, and for the expropriation of capitalism, workshop by workshop and factory by factory.

Radical “possiblists” and Anarchist “possiblists” have each in turn made trial of their own method. Every one of their experiments has proved an admirable lesson in facts for the French proletariat. The attempt made in 1893 by the railway union showed that merely proclaiming “general strike” and voting for it at congress was not sufficient for this pretended possibility of freedom to be actually realised by the will of a bold minority. Bomb-rule à la Ravachol and Emile Henry ended in a complete fiasco. Millerand’s entry into the ministry proved that “peaceful penetration” in the Government laboratory changed the victor into a servant of the bourgeoisie. The recent manoeuvre of revolutionary syndicalism only succeeded in decoying into a military trap those whose eyes were blinded by direct action. Finally, even the supreme manifestation, by which the General Federation of Labour [CGT] wished to protest against the massacre of its troops, could not reach its full extent, because the active minority by itself alone would not be able to arrange for a general cessation of work, if only for the space of 24 hours. On the contrary, the 21st section of the Livre, because it is an educated and organised union, because it has not exhausted its adherents by ceaseless strikes, was able, inspite of the uncertainty of the movement, to save the honour of union organisation.

Thus, one after another, all the workings of “possibilism”: reformist and Governmental preparation, Anarchist preparation, far from being the beginnings of the Social Revolution, have provided capitalist Governments with an occasion for easy victories.

Victories of a day, doubtless, for if the hard lessons of experience discourage for a moment those amongst our people who “do not know how to wait”, the greatest number of militant workers derive from those lessons greater confidence in the old method of international Socialism. Don’t let us look for impossibilism under the pretext of possibilism. To fight by hundreds against thousands, with stones or wretched revolvers against sharpened swords and repeating rifles is useless heroism. Firing on proletarians in uniform, while exhorting them not to fire upon proletarians in work-a-day dress, is to put back the hour when the army will be on the side of the insurrection. To excite by vain threats public opinion against workmen’s organisations is to fetter the work of education which should go on before and at length make possible the Social Revolution. Let us get ready for the victory of the proletariat by preparing the forces indispensable for that victory: recruiting, educating and organising.

P. M. Andre

(Translated  for the Socialist Standard from Le Socialisme by Fritz)

Non-Revolutionary Unionism (1971)

Book Review from the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolutionary Syndicalism in France, by F. F. Ridley. Cambridge University Press. £4.20.

This is a study of the theory and practice of the French equivalent of the TUC, the Confédération Génerale du Travail, in its syndicalist period from 1900 to 1914.

The basic unit of worker organisation in France at this time was the syndicat, or local union of workers in the same trade. Hence “syndicalism”, which on its own is really just the French word for trade unionism. The CGT leaders described their policy as “revolutionary” syndicalism. They were anarchists and wanted the unions to stage a general strike to overthrow capitalism and set up a moneyless, wageless, Stateless society where the unions would control production.

The bulk OF the CGT members, however, were just militant trade unionists, interested mainly in fighting the day-to-day struggle to improve wages and conditions within capitalism. Most of the CGT’S policies for this struggle—political neutrality so as not to divide workers who need unity to defend their economic interests; recognition of the class struggle between the workers and the capitalists and their government; strike action; the only real gains are those the workers get by their own action—were just good trade unionism. Others such as sabotage and intimidation were, as we shall see, a sign of the movement’s weakness.

The anarcho-syndicalist leaders of the CGT were in the same sort of position on the industrial front as the Social Democrats were on the political front: workers supported them not because they wanted to overthrow capitalism, but because they felt that their policies would bring some improvements within capitalism. Like Socialism for the Social Democratic parties, the General Strike became for the CGT a more and more ultimate aim which had little reference to its day-to-day activity, except perhaps as an inspiration. Ridley brings out this point well.

The CGT was no more an anarchist organisation than the Social Democratic parties were socialist. Its pretensions too were exposed at the outbreak of the first World War, though it seems to have been a reasonably good trade union body for its time.

Ridley brings out a number of other valid points. Wage and salary earners were a minority both of the population and of the electorate in the France of this period. Of the 12 million wage and salary earners, only about 836,000, or less than 7 per cent, were organised and less than half of these were in the CGT. The CGT, in other words, only represented about 2 to 3 per cent of the working class. As Ridley says,

  in a sense, violence is the only path open to the weak. There is a close relationship between weak, unorganised labour movements and the outbreak of revolutionary or anarchist activity in Russia, Spain and Italy, as well as in France.

French industry too was backward. The syndicalist slogan “The Workshops to the Workers” was taken literally to mean that the small-scale workshops where many French workers were employed would be run by the syndicats, or local unions. It is significant that the nation-wide unions representing workers employed in large-scale industry—mines, textiles, railways, post office—though in the CGT were opponents of its anarchist leaders.

The General Strike was originally put forward as an alternative to the ballot box as a peaceful way to end capitalism. But, as the Socialist Party of Great Britain pointed out at the time, experience of much lesser strikes showed that any such move would be met by the violence of the State. And. why if a majority can be persuaded to strike for Socialism don’t they at least try the easier way—the ballot box—first?

The cult of action, or action-for-action’s sake, some syndicalist theoreticians espoused was shared also by extreme nationalists and monarchists which, as Ridley suggests, is why after the first World War so many of them found it easy to go over to fascism. Mussolini himself, though never an anarcho-syndicalist as such, was a leading figure on the direct-actionist wing of the Italian Socialist Party before the war. Ridley also says that it is wrong to see Sorel’s Reflections on Violence as a statement of syndicalist principles since Sorel was not a syndicalist leader or militant; he was only someone who happened to sympathise with some aspects of syndicalism at the time he wrote his book.

Unthinking activism and contempt for democratic discussion and peaceful persuasion—break-up of meetings, lectures and sports matches, confrontations with the police, physical attacks and threats against people with different views—is again being indulged in by the assorted followers of Mao, Guevara and Trotsky without their realising its dangers. This is vehemently opposed by the Socialist Party.

Professor Ridley’s book is a good analysis of syndicalism, though some may find the philosophical discussion in the third part a little abstruse.

Adam Buick

Revolution in France (1969)

Book Review from the January 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism in Modern France by George Lichtheim. Columbia UP 20s.

France has provided many of the names well-known in the social democratic and anarchist movements: Saint-Simon. Proudhoun, Blanqui, Guesde, Jaurès, Sorel. Before the first world war the antics of reformists like Jaurès made the workers suspicious of parliamentary politics, a suspicion which expressed itself as Syndicalism, the view that the workers could only project their interests by direct action and the general strike leading to a regime of industrial unions.

After the war the bulk of the syndicalist workers backed the newly-formed Communist Party as they believed that Russia really was a soviet union and, of course, Leninism, with its conspiratorial vanguards and armed uprisings, fitted in well with the views of Blanqui. Today the Communist Party is a mass party, essentially reformist, but with a pseudo-revolutionary ideology. Its militants, however, are still influenced by syndicalism; hence their support for occupying the factories in 1968 as well as 1936.

Marx held that Socialism would be the outcome of the class struggle between the workers and the capitalists which would end with the workers winning political power and using it to convert the means of production into the common property of society as a whole. This view was inherited, in grossly distorted forms, by the Communists (PCF) and the Social Democrats (SFIO)who both saw themselves as expressions of the workers’ class struggle for Socialism.

In recent years they have had to face a crisis of theory: workers no longer seem interested in appeals to class and talk of revolution. Some have concluded that industrial workers are now played out as a revolutionary force and that Marx was wrong. The SFIO, characteristically, turned instead to the technocrats interested in extending state control, while the PCF always held in effect that the vanguard party, rather than the workers, would establish “socialism” (read “state capitalism”).

Lichtheim’s book, republished recently as a paperback, discusses both these views and those of their critics in what is a useful guide to French political thought.

Adam Buick

Politics: Syndicalism & the General Strike (1975)

From the January 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just as a seed contains the varied hues in a flower, so capitalism at its birth contained all that has flowered into various expressions of revolt. The misery it brought has fostered ideas of short cuts to salvation that continually reappear with different signposts.

Thus, the main arguments of Syndicalism were repeated by the Bolsheviks and their servile followers in Britain in the ’twenties and ’thirties. The Claims that Syndicalism was based on the principles of Marx; that the mass of workers were ignorant and inert, and required leading (and forcing) into the promised land; that the days of theory had passed and the days of action come — these and a host of other ideas demonstrated not only a similarity in outlook between Syndicalism and Bolshevism, but the common source of both movements.

The backbone of Syndicalism was the General Strike. As a proposed means to achieve the workers’ emancipation it has an old history, and received considerable support before the capture of power by parliamentary action had come within the workers’ reach. Like Anarchism, it attracted artists and professional people by its insistence upon leadership, its violent attacks on established institutions, its spurning of theoretical knowledge, and its promise of rapid victory.

After they were expelled from the International the anarchist movement fell to pieces, unable to make progress because of their own opposition to all organization; and the acts of violence to which groups of anarchists resorted led to vigorous police action against them. In their extremity they sought a new lease of life by infiltrating the developing trade union movement. The propaganda of the General Strike fitted in with their anti-State and general-destruction policies, as well as the idea of the capture of power by a militant minority. Sorel describes the position as follows:

Many anarchists, tired at last of continually reading the same grandiloquent maledictions hurled at the capitalist system, set themselves to find a way which would lead them to acts which were really revolutionary. They became members of syndicates which, thanks to violent strikes, realised to a certain extent, the social war they had often heard spoken of. Historians will one day see in this entry of the anarchists into the syndicates one of the greatest events that has been produced in our times, and then the name of my poor friend Fernand Pelloutier will be as well known as it deserves to be.

(Reflections on Violence)

In England and America the influence was brief (though for a short time it captured the imaginations of some who should have known better). The main support was in countries where small industries flourished as France, Italy, Spain and Russia.

It was in France that the General Strike was first exhaustively discussed and propagated. The growth of the trade-union movement led to a struggle between its advocates and those of political action At the Trade Union Congress in 1879 the Guesdist movement, which stood for the conquest of political power, scored a temporary victory, but political action subsequently lost its hold. To the impatient, industrial action appeared as a royal and easy road without having to wait. In 1888 the Congress of the French National Federation of Trade Unions voted in favour of the General Strike and the idea then spread rapidly, even receiving some support from political parties. Among its champions was Aristide Briand who, later as a capitalist cabinet minister, was its vigorous opponent and oppressor.

The arguments for the General Strike at that time may be summed up as follows. To strike was legal, so no matter how widespread it might be the government was unable to prosecute the strikers. A general stoppage of work would reduce the ruling class to famine; it would need to be operated only a short time to compel the government to capitulate and bring the workers into control of power. Its spontaneity meant that it could begin at any time and, hastened by propaganda and organization, bring about the revolution rapidly. The workers must have an organization to take over production afterwards, and the trade unions were admirably suited for this purpose.

Although a minority in the trade-union movement, the anarchists soon occupied key positions and by the middle of the ’nineties were the dominating section. Apart from their fanatical activity, they were assisted by the method of selecting delegates by group and not by number. Being divided in many small groups while their opponents were in fewer larger ones, the anarchists were able to capture the controlling influence; the few highly industrialized parts of France were not able to send as many delegates to conferences as the scattered backward parts where the anarchists predominated. Consequently each congress was “packed” by anarchists — a form of “tactics” with which we are still familiar.

Under their influence, General Strike propaganda went beyond just sitting down and folding arms. Sabotage was adopted, involving the destruction of means of production and the forcing of the support of the unwilling. The practical policy that grew out of the French Revolution and was adopted by Blanqui, Bakunin, De Leon and Lenin was based on the idea that an active minority can carry with it an inert and ignorant mass. It is a policy that depends upon leadership and always places power in the hands of one or two outstanding persons, finally degenerating into personal quarrels between these leaders. Behind it, though rarely recognized, is the conflict between idealism and materialism: the power of the idea alone against the power of material circumstances, which include ideas.

In 1895 a new federation of workers was formed, the General Confederation of Labour (known as the CGT — Confederation General de Travail). It included the General Strike as part of its programme. A conglomeration of unions and federations, it comprised all political shades but was ruled by the anarchist minority until 1909, when the crushing of a large-scale postal strike made clear the weakness of industrial action against the power of the state. The opposition to the General Strike policy, particularly by the Guesdists, also showed its failings. For example, the syndicalists were compelled to include anti-militarist propaganda, as an admission that governmental power would not collapse in a general cessation of work.

Probably the most complete expression of the syndicalist outlook is  contained in Arnold Roller’s The Social General Strike (published by the Debating Club No. I, Chicago, 1905). Sliding over difficulties and inconsistencies, the writer distinguishes between strikes for higher wages or political privileges and the strike. According to him the General Strike begins in a small way, spreads in sympathetic strikes, and develops into the overthrowing of the system; it is the culmination of hundreds of earlier strikes in which the workers have gained experience and an ever-stronger sense of solidarity.

Following that argument, one would imagine that the majority of workers had gradually acquired sufficient class-consciousness to understand their social position and desire a change in the basis of society. But this is not the syndicalist view. According to them, the mass of workers are backward and inert until the General Strike commences. Then, in the course of the movement, they become more active and enthusiastic until they convert the strike from the attainment of some minor object into the social revolution. And this change is supposed to occur in a few days or weeks, as production and distribution are brought to a standstill: knowledge grows like a mushroom out of the quagmires of disaster!

Roller is not disturbed by the fact that all workers will not come out on strike. He says: “This ideal of propaganda will, however, in spite of its beauty always be a dream.” He claims that it is only necessary to interrupt production in the whole country for long enough to totally disorganize capitalist society; this, he claims, can be done by sabotage in the principal industries. (But at another time he insists that a great advantage of the General Strike, that will gain for it many adherents who lack courage, is that it will be perfectly legal.) He makes the following very significant statement:

Modern industry, with its extremely specialised labour division and complications, is but poorly adapted to oppose a general strike caused by a minority, for the strike will completely wreck the whole system necessary for the management of production, and vital to the life of modem society.

The sabotage to assist in this wrecking was to include cutting telephone and telegraph wires; tearing up railway lines; causing accidents; loosening screws in machinery; destroying supports and applying fire and dynamite in mines; sinking ships; and many other methods of destruction — a choice assortment is also described by Pataud and Pouget in their phantasy Syndicalism and the Co-operative Commonwealth, 1913. Thus, as in the policy of Bakunin, society is to be completely wrecked.

In such circumstances, what would be the position of the workers? The inert mass that has suddenly developed “revolutionary fervour” is supposed to trust local leaders, who will pacify them by reporting the progress of the revolution (how, with the means of communication smashed, is not explained). The feeding of the population in the midst of this wreckage is also glossed over with childlike simplicity, with the answer that hungry people will attack stores of food. Leaving out of consideration the action of the government, what city has stores of food to support its inhabitants for any length of time? And what about water and sanitation? It does not require a great deal of imagination to foresee disease and devastation sweeping through cities like London, Paris, Berlin and New York. If the syndicalists were as successful as they hoped, it would not be a question of bringing the ruling class to their knees but of submerging everyone in a common holocaust of disaster.

But before matters had reached such a pitch the government would have stepped in with the forces at its disposal. Roller has an inkling of this. He claims first that the destruction would be so widespread that there would be insufficient military forces to cope with it, and then that it is essential to get the military on the side of the workers: “For the revolutionising of the present order of society, anti-militarism and its propaganda is an absolute necessary supplement to the General Strike.”

Time after time the power of governments to smash big strikes has been demonstrated. Sometimes naked power has been used, sometimes concessions made, and sometimes the workers have been starved into subjection. The condition the syndicalists take for granted, lack of knowledge on the part of the majority, is a condition that is bound to defeat them by playing into the government’s hands. The experience of large strikes has been the very opposite of that anticipated by the syndicalists. The government smashed the French postal workers in 1909 by simply calling the postal workers to the colours and then sending them back to their old jobs as soldiers. Soldiers are average members of the working class made more amenable by the discipline to which they are subjected and, like the mass of workers up to the present, accept the suppression of "disorder" as a proper course of action.

Gilmac.

Part 2 of this article will deal with the Syndicalist movement in the United States of America.