Socialism As It Is Part 42

"Political society," says Lagardelle, "being the organization of the coercive power of the State, that is to say, of authority and the hierarchy, corresponds to an economic regime which has authority and the hierarchy as its base."[265] This proposition (the truth of which all Socialists would recognize in so far as it applies to political society in its present form) seems sufficient to Lagardelle to justify his conclusion that we can no more expect Socialist results through the State, than we could by a.s.sociation with capitalism. He does not agree with the Socialist majority that, while capitalism embodies a ruling cla.s.s whose services may be dispensed with, the State is rather a machine or a system which corresponds not so much to capitalism, as to the system and machinery of industry which capitalism controls.

Another and closely related idea of the syndicalists is that all political parties, as well as governments, necessarily become the tools of their leaders, that they always become "machines," bureaucratically organized like governments. Lagardelle adopts Rousseau's view that the essence of representative government (all existing governments that are not autocratic being representative) is "the inactivity of the citizen"

and urges that political parties, like society in general, are divided between the governing and the governed. While there is much truth in this a.n.a.lysis,--this being the situation which it is sought to correct both in government and within political parties by such means as direct legislation and the recall,--Lagardelle does not seem to see that exactly the same problem exists also in the labor unions. For among the most revolutionary as among the most conservative of labor organizations the leaders tend to acquire the same relative and irresponsible power as they do in political parties. The difficulty of making democracy work inheres in all organizations. It must be met and overcome; it cannot be avoided.

Lagardelle's distrust of political democracy goes even further than a mere criticism of representative government. He thinks the citizen to-day unable to judge general political questions at all,--so that in his view even direct democracy would be useless. It is for this reason, he says, that parties have it as an aim to act and to think in the citizen's place. Lagardelle's remedy is not the establishment of direct democracy in government or in parties, but the organization of the people to act together on "the concrete things of life"; that is, on questions of hours, wages, and other conditions closely a.s.sociated with their daily life and in his view adapted to their understanding. He does not seem to see that such questions lead almost immediately, not only to such larger issues as are already presented by the leading political parties, but also to the still larger ones proposed by the Socialists.

Others of the syndicalists' criticisms, if taken literally, would undoubtedly bring them in the end to the position occupied by non-Socialist and anti-Socialist labor unionists. Lagardelle frankly places labor union action not only above political action, which Socialists, under many circ.u.mstances, may justify, but above Socialism itself. "Even if the dreams of the future of syndicalistic Socialism should never be realized,--none of us has the secret of history,--it would suffice for me to give it my full support, to know that it is at the moment I am speaking the essential agent of civilization in the world." Here is a labor union partisanship which is certainly not equaled by the average conservative labor leader, who has the modesty to realize that there are other powerful forces making for progress aside from the movement to which he happens to belong.

The syndicalists, or those who act along similar lines in other countries, have brought new life into the Socialist movement; their criticism has forced it to consider some neglected questions, and has contributed new ideas which are winning acceptance. The basis of their view is that the working people cannot win by mere numbers or intelligence, but must have a practical power to organize along radically new lines and an ability to create new social inst.i.tutions independently of capitalist opposition or aid.

Lagardelle writes: "There is nothing in syndicalism which can recall the dogmatism of orthodox Socialism. The latter has summed up its wisdom in certain abstract immovable formulas which it intends w.i.l.l.y-nilly to impose on life.... Syndicalism, on the contrary, depends on the continually renewed and spontaneous creations of life itself, on the perpetual renewing of ideas, which cannot become fixed into dogmas as long as they are not detached from their trunk. We are not dealing with a body of intellectuals, with a Socialist clergy charged to think for the working cla.s.s, but with the working cla.s.s itself, which through its own experience is incessantly discovering new horizons, unseen perspectives, unsuspected methods,--in a word, new sources of rejuvenation."[266]

Here, at least, is a valuable warning to Socialism against what its most revolutionary and enthusiastic adherents have always felt is its chief danger.

The fact that lends force to Lagardelle's argument is that the average workingman has a much more important, necessary, and continuous function to fill as a member of the labor unions than as a member of the Socialist parties. It still remains a problem of the first magnitude to every Socialist party to give to its members an equally powerful daily interest in that work. On the other hand, it must be said in all fairness that the lack of active partic.i.p.ation by the rank and file is very common in the labor unions also, a handful of men often governing and directing, sometimes even at the most critical moments.

It is the boast of the syndicalists that in their plan of revolutionary unionism, practice and theory become one, that actions become revolutionary as well as words--"Men are cla.s.sed," says Lagardelle, "according to their acts and not according to their labels. The revolutionary spirit comes down from heaven onto the earth, becomes flesh, manifests itself by inst.i.tutions, and identifies itself with life. The daily act takes on a revolutionary value, and social transformation, if it comes some day, will only be the generalization of this act." It is true that Lagardelle's "direct action" tends towards revolution, but does it tend towards Socialism? His answer is that it does. But his answer itself indicates the tendency of syndicalism to drift back into conservative unionism and the mere demand for somewhat more wages. Socialist organizations, he says, "must necessarily be trained in _actions_ of no great revolutionary moment, since these are the only kind of _actions_ now possible, and in agitation; that is, the conversion or the wakening of the will of the working people to desire and to demand an entirely different life, which their intelligence has shown them to be possible, and which they feel they are able to obtain through their organizations."[267] (My italics.)

Not all members of the French "syndicats" (labor unions) are theoretical syndicalists of the dogmatic kind, like Lagardelle. Yet even men like Guerard, recently head of the railway union, and Niel of the printers, recently secretary of the Federation of Labor, both belonging to the less radical faction, are in favor of the use of the general strike under several contingencies, and stand for a union policy directed towards the ultimate abolition of employers. But this does not mean that they believe the unions can succeed in either of these efforts if acting alone, or even if a.s.sisted in Parliament by a party which represents only the unions, acts as their tool, and therefore brings them no outside a.s.sistance. Such men, together with others more radical, like Andre and the Guesdists in the Federation, realize that a larger and more democratic movement is needed in connection with the unions before there is any possibility of accomplishing the great social changes at which, as Socialists, they aim. (As evidence, see the proceedings of any recent convention of the Confederation Generale de Travail.)

Lagardelle, however, is a member of the Socialist Party and was recently even a candidate for the French Chamber of Deputies. Other prominent members of the Party as revolutionary as he and as enthusiastic partisans of the Confederation de Travail (Federation of Labor) are stronger in their allegiance to the Party. And there are signs that even in France syndicalism is losing its anti-political tendency. Herve, who demanded at the beginning of 1909 that the "directors of the Socialist Party cure themselves of 'Parliamentary idiocy'" (his New Year's wish), expressed at the beginning of 1910 the wish that "certain of the dignitaries of the Federation of Labor should cure themselves of a syndicalist and laborite idiocy, a form of idiocy not less dangerous or clownish than the other."

In fact, it may soon be necessary to distinguish a new school of political syndicalism, which is well represented by Paul Louis in his "Syndicalism against the State" (Le Syndicalisme contre l'etat).

"Syndicalism is at the bottom," says Louis, "only a powerful expression of that destructive and constructive effort which for years has been shaking the old political and social regime, and is undermining slowly the ancient system of property. It points necessarily to collectivism and communism. It represents Socialism in action, in daily and continuous action....

"Now the abolition of the State ... is the object of modern Socialism. What distinguishes this modern Socialism from Utopian Socialism which culminated towards 1848, whose best-known publicists were Cabet, Pecqueur, Louis Blanc, Vidal, is precisely that it no longer attributes to the State the power to transform, the capacity to revolutionize, the role of magic regeneration, which the writers in this dangerous phase of enthusiasm a.s.signed to it. For the Utopians all the machinery of a bureaucracy could be put at the service of all the cla.s.ses, fraternally reconciled in view of the coming social regeneration. For contemporary Socialists since Karl Marx ... this bureaucratic machinery, whose function is to protect the existing system and to maintain an administrative, economic, financial, political, and military guardianship must finally be disintegrated. The new society can only be born at this price.

"There still exist in all countries groups of men or isolated individuals who stand for collectivism, who claim to want the complete emanc.i.p.ation of all workers, but who nevertheless adhere to paternalism. These are called revisionists in Germany, reformists in France, Italy, and Switzerland.... They go back, without knowing it, to those theories of enlightened despotism which flourished at the end of the eighteenth century in the courts of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Madrid and Lisbon, the ridiculous inanity of which was sufficiently well demonstrated by events....

"But these Utopians of the present moment, these champions of a limitless adaptation to circ.u.mstances, are destined to lose ground more and more, according as Syndicalism expresses better and better the independent action of the organized proletariat.

"In its totality the Socialism of the world is as anti-governmental as Syndicalism, and in this is shown the ident.i.ty of the two movements, for it is difficult to distinguish the field of action of the one from that of the other."[268]

We see here that the central idea of syndicalism, which is undoubtedly, as Louis says, a revolutionary action against existing governments, is not on this account anti-political; the foundation of this point of view is that labor union action is bound sooner or later to evolve into syndicalism, which in its essence is an effort to put industry in the immediate control of the non-propertied working cla.s.ses, without regard to the att.i.tude taken towards this movement by governments;--

"Those who have long imagined that some kind of coordination would be brought about between old economic and social inst.i.tutions and the union organizations which would then be tolerated, those who thought they could incorporate these industrial groups in the mechanism of production and political society, were guilty of the most stupefying of errors. They were ignorant both of the nature of the State and of the essence of unionism; they were attempting the squaring of the circle or perpetual motion; they had not a.n.a.lyzed the process of disintegration which humanity is undergoing, which, accelerated by the stream of industrialism, has given origin to hostile cla.s.ses subordinated to one another, incapable of coexisting in a lasting equilibrium."[269]

We see here a complete agreement with the position of the revolutionary majority among the Socialists. If syndicalism differs in any way from other tendencies in the Socialist movement, it does so through a difference of emphasis rather than a difference of kind. It undoubtedly exaggerates the possibilities of economic action, and underestimates those of political action. Louis, for example, says that the working people are the subjects of capital, but the masters of production, that they cannot live without suffering in the factory, but that society cannot live without their labor. This, of course, is only true if stated in the most unqualified form. Society is able to dispense with all labor for a short time, and with very many cla.s.ses of labor for long periods.

Moreover, the forcing of labor at the point of the rifle is by no means so impracticable during brief emergencies as is sometimes supposed.

Syndicalism may, perhaps, be most usefully viewed as a reaction against the tendency towards "parliamentarism" or undue emphasis on political action, which has existed even among revolutionary Socialists in Germany and elsewhere (see Part II, Chapter V). Among the "revisionist"

Socialists of that country a great friendliness to labor union action existed, in view of the comparative conservatism of the unions. For this same reason the revolutionaries became rather cold, though never hostile, towards this form of action, and concentrated their attention on politics. In a word, syndicalism is only to be understood in the light of the criticisms of revolutionary Socialism as presented by Kautsky, just as the standpoint of the latter can only be comprehended after it is subjected to the syndicalist criticism--and doubtless both positions, however one-sided they appear elsewhere, were fairly justified by the economic and political situations in France and Germany respectively. "Only as a _political_ party," says Kautsky, "can the working cla.s.s as a whole come to a firm and lasting union." He then proceeds to argue that purely economic struggles are always limited either to a locality, a town, or a province, or else to a given trade or industry--the directly opposite view to that of the syndicalists, whose one object is also, undeniably, to bring about a unity of the working cla.s.s, though they claim that this can be accomplished _only by economic action_, while from their point of view it is political action that always divides the working cla.s.s by nation, section, and cla.s.s.

"The pure and simple unionist," says Kautsky, "is conservative, even when he behaves in a radical manner; on the other hand, every true and independent political party [Kautsky is speaking here of workingmen's organizations exclusively] is always revolutionary by its very nature, even when, according to its action, or even according to the consciousness of its members, it is still moderate." This again is the exact opposite of the syndicalists' position. They would say that a labor party unconnected with revolutionary economic action would necessarily be conservative, no matter how revolutionary it seemed. The truth from the broader revolutionary standpoint is doubtless that neither political nor economic action in isolation can long continue to be revolutionary. Exclusively economic action soon leads to exclusive emphasis on material and immediate gains, without reference to the relative position of the working cla.s.s or its future; exclusively political action leads inevitably to concentration on securing democratic political machinery and reforms which by no means guarantee that labor is gaining on capital in the race for power.

To Kautsky a labor party, it would seem, might be sufficient in itself, even if economic action should, for any reason, become temporarily impossible:--

"The formation and the activity of a special labor party which wants to win political power for the working cla.s.s already presupposes in a part of the laboring cla.s.s a highly developed cla.s.s consciousness. But the activity of this labor party is the most powerful means to awaken and to further cla.s.s consciousness in the ma.s.ses of labor, also. It knows only objects and tasks which have to do with the whole proletariat; the trade narrowness, the jealousies of single and separate organizations, find no place in it."[270]

It is easy to see how an equally strong case might be made out for the educative, unifying, and revolutionary effect of an aggressive labor union movement without any political features. The truth would seem to be that any form of organization that honestly represents the working cla.s.s and is at the same time militant--and no other--advances Socialism. The objections to action exclusively political hold also against action exclusively economic. Both trade union action as such, which inevitably spends a large part of its energies in trying to improve economic conditions in our _present_ society by trade agreements and other combinations with the capitalists, and political action as such, which is always drawn more or less into capitalistic efforts to improve present society by political means is fundamentally conservative. What Socialism requires is not a political party in the ordinary sense, but political organization and a political program; not labor unions, as the term has been understood, but aggressive and effective economic organization, available also for the most far-reaching economic and political ends.

It seems probable that the anti-political element in the new revolutionary unionism will soon be outgrown. When this happens, it will meet the revolutionary majority of the Socialists on an identical platform. For this revolutionary majority is steadily laying on more weight on economic organization.

FOOTNOTES:

[253] The _New York Call_, Nov. 13, 1911.

[254] Edmond Kelly, "Twentieth-Century Socialism," p. 152.

[255] The _Socialist Review_ (London), September, 1910.

[256] Winston Churchill, _op. cit._, p. 73.

[257] The _Socialist Review_ (London), October, 1911.

[258] The profound opposition between the "State Socialism" of the Labour Party and the revolutionary aims and methods of genuine Socialism and the new labor unionism appeared more clearly in the coal strike of 1912 than it had in the railway strike of the previous year. As Mr.

Lloyd George very truthfully remarked in Parliament, no leaders of the Labour Party had committed themselves to syndicalism, while syndicalism and socialism [_i.e._ the socialism of the Labour Party] were mutually destructive. "We can console ourselves with the fact," said Mr. Lloyd George, "that the best policeman for the syndicalists is the socialist [_i.e._ the Labourite]."

The conduct of many of the Labour Party leaders during this strike, as during the railway strike, fully justified the confidence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. MacDonald, for example, spoke of syndicalism in much the same terms as those used by Mr. Lloyd George. He viewed it as evil, to be obviated by greater friendliness and consideration on the part of employers towards employees, a position fully endorsed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the other Radicals of the British Cabinet.

The coal strike throughout was, indeed, almost a repet.i.tion of the railway strike. What I have said of the one applies, with comparatively slight changes, to the other. Even the so-called Minimum Wage Law is essentially identical with the methods adopted to determine the wages of railway employees.

[259] The _New York Call_, April 17, 1910.

[260] The _International Socialist Review_, June, 1911.

[261] The _Industrial Syndicalist_ (London), July and September, 1910.

[262] _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ (Paris), 1909, article ent.i.tled, "Plechanoff contre les Syndicalistes."

[263] "Le Federation des Bourses de Travail de France," p. 67.

[264] Hubert Lagardelle, Le Socialisme Ouvrier (Paris), 1911.

[265] _Le Mouvement Socialiste_, 1909, article ent.i.tled, "Cla.s.se Sociale et Parti Politique."

[266] Hubert Lagardelle, "Syndicalisme et Socialisme" (Paris), p. 52.

[267] Hubert Lagardelle, "Syndicalisme et Socialisme" (Paris), p. 50.