PART II.

PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE

IV. WORK AND PAY

V. GOVERNMENT AND LAW

VI. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

VII. SCIENCE AND ART UNDER SOCIALISM

VIII.THE WORLD AS IT COULD BE MADE

INTRODUCTION

THE attempt to conceive imaginatively a better

ordering of human society than the destructive and

cruel chaos in which mankind has hitherto existed

is by no means modern: it is at least as old as Plato,

whose ``Republic'' set the model for the Utopias of

subsequent philosophers. Whoever contemplates the

world in the light of an ideal--whether what he seeks

be intellect, or art, or love, or simple happiness, or

all together--must feel a great sorrow in the evils

that men needlessly allow to continue, and--if he be

a man of force and vital energy--an urgent desire to

lead men to the realization of the good which inspires

his creative vision. It is this desire which has been

the primary force moving the pioneers of Socialism

and Anarchism, as it moved the inventors of ideal

commonwealths in the past. In this there is nothing

new. What is new in Socialism and Anarchism, is

that close relation of the ideal to the present

sufferings of men, which has enabled powerful political

movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers.

It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism

important, and it is this that makes them dangerous

to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously

upon the evils of our present order of society.

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary

times, pass through life without ever contemplating

or criticising, as a whole, either their own

conditions or those of the world at large. They find

themselves born into a certain place in society, and

they accept what each day brings forth, without any

effort of thought beyond what the immediate present

requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of

the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of

the moment, without much forethought, and without

considering that by sufficient effort the whole

conditions of their lives could be changed. A certain

percentage, guided by personal ambition, make the effort

of thought and will which is necessary to place

themselves among the more fortunate members of the

community; but very few among these are seriously

concerned to secure for all the advantages which they

seek for themselves. It is only a few rare and exceptional

men who have that kind of love toward mankind

at large that makes them unable to endure

patiently the general mass of evil and suffering,

regardless of any relation it may have to their own

lives. These few, driven by sympathetic pain, will

seek, first in thought and then in action, for some

way of escape, some new system of society by which

life may become richer, more full of joy and less

full of preventable evils than it is at present. But

in the past such men have, as a rule, failed to interest

the very victims of the injustices which they wished

to remedy. The more unfortunate sections of the

population have been ignorant, apathetic from excess

of toil and weariness, timorous through the imminent

danger of immediate punishment by the holders of

power, and morally unreliable owing to the loss of

self-respect resulting from their degradation. To

create among such classes any conscious, deliberate

effort after general amelioration might have seemed

a hopeless task, and indeed in the past it has

generally proved so. But the modern world, by the

increase of education and the rise in the standard of

comfort among wage-earners, has produced new

conditions, more favorable than ever before to the

demand for radical reconstruction. It is above all

the Socialists, and in a lesser degree the Anarchists

(chiefly as the inspirers of Syndicalism), who have

become the exponents of this demand.

What is perhaps most remarkable in regard to

both Socialism and Anarchism is the association of a

widespread popular movement with ideals for a better

world. The ideals have been elaborated, in the

first instance, by solitary writers of books, and yet

powerful sections of the wage-earning classes have

accepted them as their guide in the practical affairs

of the world. In regard to Socialism this is evident;

but in regard to Anarchism it is only true with some

qualification. Anarchism as such has never been a

widespread creed, it is only in the modified form of

Syndicalism that it has achieved popularity. Unlike

Socialism and Anarchism, Syndicalism is primarily

the outcome, not of an idea, but of an organization:

the fact of Trade Union organization came first, and

the ideas of Syndicalism are those which seemed

appropriate to this organization in the opinion of

the more advanced French Trade Unions. But the

ideas are, in the main, derived from Anarchism, and

the men who gained acceptance for them were, for

the most part, Anarchists. Thus we may regard

Syndicalism as the Anarchism of the market-place

as opposed to the Anarchism of isolated individuals

which had preserved a precarious life throughout the

previous decades. Taking this view, we find in

Anarchist-Syndicalism the same combination of ideal

and organization as we find in Socialist political

parties. It is from this standpoint that our study

of these movements will be undertaken.

Socialism and Anarchism, in their modern form,

spring respectively from two protagonists, Marx and

Bakunin, who fought a lifelong battle, culminating

in a split in the first International. We shall begin

our study with these two men--first their teaching,

and then the organizations which they founded or

inspired. This will lead us to the spread of Socialism

in more recent years, and thence to the Syndicalist

revolt against Socialist emphasis on the State

and political action, and to certain movements outside

France which have some affinity with Syndicalism--

notably the I. W. W. in America and Guild

Socialism in England. From this historical survey

we shall pass to the consideration of some of the

more pressing problems of the future, and shall try

to decide in what respects the world would be happier

if the aims of Socialists or Syndicalists were

achieved.

My own opinion--which I may as well indicate

at the outset--is that pure Anarchism, though it

should be the ultimate ideal, to which society should

continually approximate, is for the present impossible,

and would not survive more than a year or two

at most if it were adopted. On the other hand, both

Marxian Socialism and Syndicalism, in spite of many

drawbacks, seem to me calculated to give rise to a

happier and better world than that in which we live.

I do not, however, regard either of them as the best

practicable system. Marxian Socialism, I fear,

would give far too much power to the State, while

Syndicalism, which aims at abolishing the State,

would, I believe, find itself forced to reconstruct a

central authority in order to put an end to the

rivalries of different groups of producers. The BEST

practicable system, to my mind, is that of Guild

Socialism, which concedes what is valid both in the

claims of the State Socialists and in the Syndicalist

fear of the State, by adopting a system of federalism

among trades for reasons similar to those which

are recommending federalism among nations. The

grounds for these conclusions will appear as we

proceed.

Before embarking upon the history of recent

movements In favor of radical reconstruction, it will

be worth while to consider some traits of character

which distinguish most political idealists, and are

much misunderstood by the general public for other

reasons besides mere prejudice. I wish to do full

justice to these reasons, in order to show the more

effectually why they ought not to be operative.

The leaders of the more advanced movements

are, in general, men of quite unusual disinterestedness,

as is evident from a consideration of their careers.

Although they have obviously quite as much ability

as many men who rise to positions of great power,

they do not themselves become the arbiters of

contemporary events, nor do they achieve wealth or the

applause of the mass of their contemporaries. Men

who have the capacity for winning these prizes, and

who work at least as hard as those who win them,

but deliberately adopt a line which makes the winning

of them impossible, must be judged to have an

aim in life other than personal advancement;

whatever admixture of self-seeking may enter into the

detail of their lives, their fundamental motive must

be outside Self. The pioneers of Socialism, Anarchism,

and Syndicalism have, for the most part,

experienced prison, exile, and poverty, deliberately

incurred because they would not abandon their

propaganda; and by this conduct they have shown that

the hope which inspired them was not for themselves,

but for mankind.

Nevertheless, though the desire for human welfare

is what at bottom determines the broad lines of such

men's lives, it often happens that, in the detail of

their speech and writing, hatred is far more visible

than love. The impatient idealist--and without some

impatience a man will hardly prove effective--is

almost sure to be led into hatred by the oppositions

and disappointments which he encounters in his

endeavors to bring happiness to the world. The more

certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth

of his gospel, the more indignant he will become when

his teaching is rejected. Often he will successfully

achieve an attitude of philosophic tolerance as

regards the apathy of the masses, and even as regards

the whole-hearted opposition of professed defenders

of the status quo. But the men whom he finds it

impossible to forgive are those who profess the same desire

for the amelioration of society as he feels himself,

but who do not accept his method of achieving this

end. The intense faith which enables him to withstand

persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes

him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that

any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest,

and must be actuated by some sinister motive

of treachery to the cause. Hence arises the spirit of

the sect, that bitter, narrow orthodoxy which is the

bane of those who hold strongly to an unpopular

creed. So many real temptations to treachery exist

that suspicion is natural. And among leaders,

ambition, which they mortify in their choice of a

career, is sure to return in a new form: in the desire

for intellectual mastery and for despotic power

within their own sect. From these causes it results

that the advocates of drastic reform divide

themselves into opposing schools, hating each other with

a bitter hatred, accusing each other often of such

crimes as being in the pay of the police, and demanding,

of any speaker or writer whom they are to

admire, that he shall conform exactly to their

prejudices, and make all his teaching minister to their

belief that the exact truth is to be found within the

limits of their creed. The result of this state of

mind is that, to a casual and unimaginative attention,

the men who have sacrificed most through the

wish to benefit mankind APPEAR to be actuated far

more by hatred than by love. And the demand for

orthodoxy is stifling to any free exercise of intellect.

This cause, as well as economic prejudice, has made

it difficult for the ``intellectuals'' to co-operate prac-

tically with the more extreme reformers, however they

may sympathize with their main purposes and even

with nine-tenths of their program.

Another reason why radical reformers are

misjudged by ordinary men is that they view existing

society from outside, with hostility towards its

institutions. Although, for the most part, they have

more belief than their neighbors in human nature's

inherent capacity for a good life, they are so

conscious of the cruelty and oppression resulting from

existing institutions that they make a wholly

misleading impression of cynicism. Most men have

instinctively two entirely different codes of behavior:

one toward those whom they regard as companions or

colleagues or friends, or in some way members of the

same ``herd''; the other toward those whom they

regard as enemies or outcasts or a danger to society.

Radical reformers are apt to concentrate their

attention upon the behavior of society toward the

latter class, the class of those toward whom the

``herd'' feels ill-will. This class includes, of course,

enemies in war, and criminals; in the minds of those

who consider the preservation of the existing order

essential to their own safety or privileges, it includes

all who advocate any great political or economic

change, and all classes which, through their poverty

or through any other cause, are likely to feel a

dangerous degree of discontent. The ordinary citizen

probably seldom thinks about such individuals or

classes, and goes through life believing that he and

his friends are kindly people, because they have no

wish to injure those toward whom they entertain no

group-hostility. But the man whose attention is

fastened upon the relations of a group with those

whom it hates or fears will judge quite differently.

In these relations a surprising ferocity is apt to be

developed, and a very ugly side of human nature

comes to the fore. The opponents of capitalism

have learned, through the study of certain historical

facts, that this ferocity has often been shown by the

capitalists and by the State toward the wage-earning

classes, particularly when they have ventured to

protest against the unspeakable suffering to which

industrialism has usually condemned them. Hence

arises a quite different attitude toward existing

society from that of the ordinary well-to-do citizen:

an attitude as true as his, perhaps also as untrue,

but equally based on facts, facts concerning his

relations to his enemies instead of to his friends.

The class-war, like wars between nations,

produces two opposing views, each equally true and

equally untrue. The citizen of a nation at war,

when he thinks of his own countrymen, thinks of them

primarily as he has experienced them, in dealings

with their friends, in their family relations, and so

on. They seem to him on the whole kindly, decent

folk. But a nation with which his country is at

war views his compatriots through the medium of a

quite different set of experiences: as they appear

in the ferocity of battle, in the invasion and subjugation

of a hostile territory, or in the chicanery of a

juggling diplomacy. The men of whom these facts

are true are the very same as the men whom their

compatriots know as husbands or fathers or friends,

but they are judged differently because they are

judged on different data. And so it is with those who

view the capitalist from the standpoint of the

revolutionary wage-earner: they appear inconceivably

cynical and misjudging to the capitalist, because the

facts upon which their view is based are facts which

he either does not know or habitually ignores. Yet

the view from the outside is just as true as the view

from the inside. Both are necessary to the complete

truth; and the Socialist, who emphasizes the outside

view, is not a cynic, but merely the friend of the

wage-earners, maddened by the spectacle of the needless

misery which capitalism inflicts upon them.

I have placed these general reflections at the

beginning of our study, in order to make it clear to

the reader that, whatever bitterness and hate may

be found in the movements which we are to examine,

it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their

mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who

torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it

is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of

outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which

are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.

If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by

Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in

this from their opponents; and in the source of their

inspiration they have shown themselves superior to

those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the

injustices and oppressions by which the existing

system is preserved.

PROPOSED ROADS

TO FREEDOM

SOCIALISM, ANARCHISM AND SYNDICALISM

PART I

HISTORICAL

CHAPTER I

MARX AND SOCIALIST DOCTRINE

SOCIALISM, like everything else that is vital, is

rather a tendency than a strictly definable body of

doctrine. A definition of Socialism is sure either to

include some views which many would regard as not

Socialistic, or to exclude others which claim to be

included. But I think we shall come nearest to the

essence of Socialism by defining it as the advocacy

of communal ownership of land and capital. Communal

ownership may mean ownership by a democratic

State, but cannot be held to include ownership

by any State which is not democratic. Communal

ownership may also be understood, as Anarchist

Communism understands it, in the sense of

ownership by the free association of the men and

women in a community without those compulsory

powers which are necessary to constitute a State.

Some Socialists expect communal ownership to arrive

suddenly and completely by a catastrophic revolution,

while others expect it to come gradually, first

in one industry, then in another. Some insist upon

the necessity of completeness in the acquisition of

land and capital by the public, while others would

be content to see lingering islands of private ownership,

provided they were not too extensive or powerful.

What all forms have in common is democracy

and the abolition, virtual or complete, of the present

capitalistic system. The distinction between Socialists,

Anarchists and Syndicalists turns largely upon

the kind of democracy which they desire. Orthodox

Socialists are content with parliamentary democracy

in the sphere of government, holding that the evils

apparent in this form of constitution at present

would disappear with the disappearance of capitalism.

Anarchists and Syndicalists, on the other

hand, object to the whole parliamentary machinery,

and aim at a different method of regulating the political

affairs of the community. But all alike are

democratic in the sense that they aim at abolishing

every kind of privilege and every kind of artificial

inequality: all alike are champions of the wage-

earner in existing society. All three also have much

in common in their economic doctrine. All three

regard capital and the wages system as a means of

exploiting the laborer in the interests of the possessing

classes, and hold that communal ownership, in one

form or another, is the only means of bringing freedom

to the producers. But within the framework

of this common doctrine there are many divergences,

and even among those who are strictly to be called

Socialists, there is a very considerable diversity of

schools.

Socialism as a power in Europe may be said

to begin with Marx. It is true that before his time

there were Socialist theories, both in England and in

France. It is also true that in France, during the

revolution of 1848, Socialism for a brief period

acquired considerable influence in the State. But

the Socialists who preceded Marx tended to indulge

in Utopian dreams and failed to found any strong or

stable political party. To Marx, in collaboration

with Engels, are due both the formulation of a coherent

body of Socialist doctrine, sufficiently true or

plausible to dominate the minds of vast numbers of

men, and the formation of the International Socialist

movement, which has continued to grow in all

European countries throughout the last fifty years.

In order to understand Marx's doctrine, it is

necessary to know something of the influences which

formed his outlook. He was born in 1818 at Treves

in the Rhine Provinces, his father being a legal

official, a Jew who had nominally accepted

Christianity. Marx studied jurisprudence, philosophy,

political economy and history at various German

universities. In philosophy he imbibed the doctrines

of Hegel, who was then at the height of his fame,

and something of these doctrines dominated his

thought throughout his life. Like Hegel, he saw in

history the development of an Idea. He conceived

the changes in the world as forming a logical development,

in which one phase passes by revolution into

another, which is its antithesis--a conception which

gave to his views a certain hard abstractness, and a

belief in revolution rather than evolution. But of

Hegel's more definite doctrines Marx retained nothing

after his youth. He was recognized as a brilliant

student, and might have had a prosperous career as

a professor or an official, but his interest in politics

and his Radical views led him into more arduous

paths. Already in 1842 he became editor of a newspaper,

which was suppressed by the Prussian Government

early in the following year on account of

its advanced opinions. This led Marx to go to Paris,

where he became known as a Socialist and acquired

a knowledge of his French predecessors.[1] Here in the

year 1844 began his lifelong friendship with Engels,

who had been hitherto in business in Manchester,

where he had become acquainted with English Socialism

and had in the main adopted its doctrines.[2] In

1845 Marx was expelled from Paris and went with

Engels to live in Brussels. There he formed a German

Working Men's Association and edited a paper

which was their organ. Through his activities in

Brussels he became known to the German Communist

League in Paris, who, at the end of 1847, invited him

and Engels to draw up for them a manifesto, which

appeared in January, 1848. This is the famous

``Communist Manifesto,'' in which for the first time

Marx's system is set forth. It appeared at a fortunate

moment. In the following month, February,

the revolution broke out in Paris, and in March it

spread to Germany. Fear of the revolution led the

Brussels Government to expel Marx from Belgium,

but the German revolution made it possible for him

to return to his own country. In Germany he again

edited a paper, which again led him into a conflict

with the authorities, increasing in severity as the

reaction gathered force. In June, 1849, his paper

was suppressed, and he was expelled from Prussia.

He returned to Paris, but was expelled from there

also. This led him to settle in England--at that

time an asylum for friends of freedom--and in England,

with only brief intervals for purposes of agitation,

he continued to live until his death in 1883.

[1] Chief among these were Fourier and Saint-Simon, who

constructed somewhat fantastic Socialistic ideal commonwealths.

Proudhon, with whom Marx had some not wholly friendly relations,

is to be regarded as a forerunner of the Anarchists rather

than of orthodox Socialism.

[2] Marx mentions the English Socialists with praise in ``The

Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847). They, like him, tend to base

their arguments upon a Ricardian theory of value, but they

have not his scope or erudition or scientific breadth. Among

them may be mentioned Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869), originally

an officer in the Navy, but dismissed for a pamphlet critical

of the methods of naval discipline, author of ``Labour Defended

Against the Claims of Capital'' (1825) and other works;

William Thompson (1785-1833), author of ``Inquiry into the

Principles of Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human

Happiness'' (1824), and ``Labour Rewarded'' (1825); and

Piercy Ravenstone, from whom Hodgskin's ideas are largely

derived. Perhaps more important than any of these was Robert

Owen.

The bulk of his time was occupied in the composition

of his great book, ``Capital.''[3] His other

important work during his later years was the formation

and spread of the International Working Men's

Association. From 1849 onward the greater part

of his time was spent in the British Museum, accumulating,

with German patience, the materials for his

terrific indictment of capitalist society, but he

retained his hold on the International Socialist movement.

In several countries he had sons-in-law as

lieutenants, like Napoleon's brothers, and in the

various internal contests that arose his will generally

prevailed.

[3] The first and most important volume appeared in 1867;

the other two volumes were published posthumously (1885 and

1894).

The most essential of Marx's doctrines may be

reduced to three: first, what is called the material-

istic interpretation of history; second, the law of the

concentration of capital; and, third, the class-war.

1. The Materialistic Interpretation of History.--

Marx holds that in the main all the phenomena of

human society have their origin in material conditions,

and these he takes to be embodied in economic

systems. Political constitutions, laws, religions,

philosophies--all these he regards as, in their broad

outlines, expressions of the economic regime in the

society that gives rise to them. It would be unfair

to represent him as maintaining that the conscious

economic motive is the only one of importance; it

is rather that economics molds character and opinion,

and is thus the prime source of much that appears

in consciousness to have no connection with them.

He applies his doctrine in particular to two revolutions,

one in the past, the other in the future. The

revolution in the past is that of the bourgeoisie

against feudalism, which finds its expression, according

to him, particularly in the French Revolution.

The one in the future is the revolution of the wage-

earners, or proletariat, against the bourgeoisie,

which is to establish the Socialist Commonwealth.

The whole movement of history is viewed by him as

necessary, as the effect of material causes operating

upon human beings. He does not so much advocate

the Socialist revolution as predict it. He holds, it

is true, that it will be beneficent, but he is much more

concerned to prove that it must inevitably come.

The same sense of necessity is visible in his exposition

of the evils of the capitalist system. He does

not blame capitalists for the cruelties of which he

shows them to have been guilty; he merely points out

that they are under an inherent necessity to behave

cruelly so long as private ownership of land and

capital continues. But their tyranny will not last

forever, for it generates the forces that must in the

end overthrow it.

2. The Law of the Concentration of Capital.--

Marx pointed out that capitalist undertakings tend

to grow larger and larger. He foresaw the substitution

of trusts for free competition, and predicted

that the number of capitalist enterprises must diminish

as the magnitude of single enterprises increased.

He supposed that this process must involve a diminution,

not only in the number of businesses, but also

in the number of capitalists. Indeed, he usually

spoke as though each business were owned by a single

man. Accordingly, he expected that men would be

continually driven from the ranks of the capitalists

into those of the proletariat, and that the capitalists,

in the course of time, would grow numerically weaker

and weaker. He applied this principle not only to

industry but also to agriculture. He expected to

find the landowners growing fewer and fewer while

their estates grew larger and larger. This process

was to make more and more glaring the evils and

injustices of the capitalist system, and to stimulate

more and more the forces of opposition.

3. The Class War.--Marx conceives the wage-

earner and the capitalist in a sharp antithesis. He

imagines that every man is, or must soon become,

wholly the one or wholly the other. The wage-

earner, who possesses nothing, is exploited by the

capitalists, who possess everything. As the capitalist

system works itself out and its nature becomes more

clear, the opposition of bourgeoisie and proletariat

becomes more and more marked. The two classes,

since they have antagonistic interests, are forced

into a class war which generates within the capitalist

regime internal forces of disruption. The working

men learn gradually to combine against their

exploiters, first locally, then nationally, and at last

internationally. When they have learned to combine

internationally they must be victorious. They

will then decree that all land and capital shall be

owned in common; exploitation will cease; the tyranny

of the owners of wealth will no longer be

possible; there will no longer be any division of

society into classes, and all men will be free.

All these ideas are already contained in the

``Communist Manifesto,'' a work of the most amazing

vigor and force, setting forth with terse compression

the titanic forces of the world, their epic battle, and

the inevitable consummation. This work is of such

importance in the development of Socialism and

gives such an admirable statement of the doctrines

set forth at greater length and with more pedantry

in ``Capital,'' that its salient passages must be

known by anyone who wishes to understand the hold

which Marxian Socialism has acquired over the intellect

and imagination of a large proportion of working-class

leaders.

``A spectre is haunting Europe,'' it begins, ``the

spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old

Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise

this spectre--Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot,

French Radicals and German police-spies. Where

is the party in opposition that has not been decried

as communistic by its opponents in power? Where

the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding

reproach of Communism against the more

advanced opposition parties, as well as against its

re-actionary adversaries?''

The existence of a class war is nothing new:

``The history of all hitherto existing society is the

history of class struggles.'' In these struggles the

fight ``each time ended, either in a revolutionary

re-constitution of society at large, or in the common

ruin of the contending classes.''

``Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie . . .

has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a

whole is more and more splitting up into two great

hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing

each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.'' Then follows

a history of the fall of feudalism, leading to a

description of the bourgeoisie as a revolutionary

force. ``The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a

most revolutionary part.'' ``For exploitation, veiled

by religious and political illusions, it has substituted

naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.'' ``The

need of a constantly expanding market for its products

chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface

of the globe.'' ``The bourgeoisie, during its rule of

scarce one hundred years, has created more massive

and more colossal productive forces than have all

preceding generations together.'' Feudal relations

became fetters: ``They had to be burst asunder;

they were burst asunder. . . . A similar movement

is going on before our own eyes.'' ``The weapons

with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the

ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgoisie forged the weapons

that bring death to itself; it has also called into

existence the men who are to wield those weapons--

the modern working class--the proletarians.''

The cause of the destitution of the proletariat

are then set forth. ``The cost of production of a

workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means

of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance

and for the propagation of his race. But the price

of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal

to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore,

as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage

decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of

machinery and diversion of labor increases, in the

same proportion the burden of toil also increases.''

``Modern industry has converted the little workshop

of the patriarchal master into the great factory

of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers,

crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers.

As privates of the industrial army they are placed

under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers

and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois

class, and of the bourgeois State, they are

daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the

over-looker, and, above all, by the individual

bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this

despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the

more petty, the more hateful, and the more embittering

it is.''

The Manifesto tells next the manner of growth

of the class struggle. ``The proletariat goes

through various stages of development. With its

birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At

first the contest is carried on by individual laborers,

then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the

operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the

individual bourgeois who directly exploits them.

They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois

conditions of production, but against the instruments

of production themselves.''

``At this stage the laborers still form an incoherent

mass scattered over the whole country, and broken

up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they

unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet

the consequence of their own active union, but of

the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to

attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the

whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for

a time, able to do so.''

``The collisions between individual workmen and

individual bourgeois take more and more the character

of collisions between two classes. Thereupon

the workers begin to form combinations (Trades

Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together

in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found

permanent associations in order to make provision

beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and

there the contest breaks out into riots. Now and

then the workers are victorious, but only for a time.

The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate

result, but in the ever-expanding union of

the workers. This union is helped on by the im-

proved means of communication that are created

by modern industry, and that place the workers

of different localities in contact with one another.

It was just this contact that was needed to centralize

the numerous local struggles, all of the same character,

into one national struggle between classes.

But every class struggle is a political struggle. And

that union, to attain which the burghers of the

Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required

centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways,

achieve in a few years. This organization of

the proletarians into a class, and consequently into

a political party, is continually being upset again by

the competition between the workers themselves. But

it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It

compels legislative recognition of particular interests

of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions

among the bourgeoisie itself.''

``In the conditions of the proletariat, those of

old society at large are already virtually swamped.

The proletarian is without property; his relation

to his wife and children has no longer anything in

common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern

industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the

same in England as in France, in America as in

Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national

character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so

many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in

ambush just as many bourgeois interests. All the

preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought

to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting

society at large to their conditions of appropriation.

The proletarians cannot become masters

of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing

their own previous mode of appropriation, and

thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation.

They have nothing of their own to secure and to

fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous

securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements

of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The

proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent

movement of the immense majority, in the

interest of the immense majority. The proletariat,

the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot

stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole super-

incumbent strata of official society being sprung

into the air.''

The Communists, says Marx, stand for the proletariat

as a whole. They are international. ``The

Communists are further reproached with desiring

to abolish countries and nationality. The working

men have no country. We cannot take from them

what they have not got.''

The immediate aim of the Communists is the conquests

of political power by the proletariat. ``The

theory of the Communists may be summed up in the

single sentence: Abolition of private property.''

The materialistic interpretation of history is

used to answer such charges as that Communism is

anti-Christian. ``The charges against Communism

made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally,

from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving

of serious examination. Does it require deep

intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views and

conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness,

changes with every change in the conditions of his

material existence, in his social relations, and in his

social life?''

The attitude of the Manifesto to the State is not

altogether easy to grasp. ``The executive of the

modern State,'' we are told, ``is but a Committee for

managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.''

Nevertheless, the first step for the proletariat

must be to acquire control of the State. ``We have

seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the

working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position

of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to

wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie,

to centralize all instruments of production in the

hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized

as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive

forces as rapidly as possible.''

The Manifesto passes on to an immediate program

of reforms, which would in the first instance

much increase the power of the existing State, but

it is contended that when the Socialist revolution is

accomplished, the State, as we know it, will have

ceased to exist. As Engels says elsewhere, when the

proletariat seizes the power of the State ``it puts an

end to all differences of class and antagonisms of

class, and consequently also puts an end to the State

as a State.'' Thus, although State Socialism might,

in fact, be the outcome of the proposals of Marx and

Engels, they cannot themselves be accused of any

glorification of the State.

The Manifesto ends with an appeal to the wage-

earners of the world to rise on behalf of Communism.

``The Communists disdain to conceal their views and

aims. They openly declare that their ends can be

attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing

social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble

at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have

nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world

to win. Working men of all countries, unite!''

In all the great countries of the Continent,

except Russia, a revolution followed quickly on the

publication of the Communist Manifesto, but the

revolution was not economic or international, except

at first in France. Everywhere else it was inspired

by the ideas of nationalism. Accordingly, the rulers

of the world, momentarily terrified, were able to

recover power by fomenting the enmities inherent

in the nationalist idea, and everywhere, after a very

brief triumph, the revolution ended in war and

reaction. The ideas of the Communist Manifesto

appeared before the world was ready for them, but

its authors lived to see the beginnings of the growth

of that Socialist movement in every country, which

has pressed on with increasing force, influencing

Governments more and more, dominating the Russian

Revolution, and perhaps capable of achieving

at no very distant date that international triumph to

which the last sentences of the Manifesto summon

the wage-earners of the world.

Marx's magnum opus, ``Capital,'' added bulk

and substance to the theses of the Communist Manifesto.

It contributed the theory of surplus value,

which professed to explain the actual mechanism

of capitalist exploitation. This doctrine is very

complicated and is scarcely tenable as a contribution

to pure theory. It is rather to be viewed as a translation

into abstract terms of the hatred with which

Marx regarded the system that coins wealth out of

human lives, and it is in this spirit, rather than in

that of disinterested analysis, that it has been read

by its admirers. A critical examination of the theory

of surplus value would require much difficult and

abstract discussion of pure economic theory without

having much bearing upon the practical truth or

falsehood of Socialism; it has therefore seemed impossible

within the limits of the present volume. To

my mind the best parts of the book are those which

deal with economic facts, of which Marx's knowledge

was encyclopaedic. It was by these facts that

he hoped to instil into his disciples that firm and

undying hatred that should make them soldiers to

the death in the class war. The facts which he

accumulates are such as are practically unknown to

the vast majority of those who live comfortable lives.

They are very terrible facts, and the economic system

which generates them must be acknowledged to be

a very terrible system. A few examples of his choice

of facts will serve to explain the bitterness of many

Socialists:--

Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared,

as chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms,

Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, ``that there was

an amount of privation and suffering among that portion

of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown

in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized

world. . . . Children of nine or ten years are dragged

from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o clock in

the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence

until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing

away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening,

and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like

torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate.''[4]

[4] Vol. i, p. 227.

Three railway men are standing before a London coroner's

jury--a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman.

A tremendous railway accident has hurried hundreds of

passengers into another world. The negligence of the

employes is the cause of the misfortune. They declare

with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years

before, their labor only lasted eight hours a day. During

the last five or six years it had been screwed up to

14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure

of holiday-makers, at times of excursion trains, it

often lasted 40 or 50 hours without a break. They

were ordinary men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their

labor-power failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain

ceased to think, their eyes to see. The thoroughly

``respectable'' British jurymen answered by a verdict that

sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter,

and, in a gentle ``rider'' to their verdict, expressed the

pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways

would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of

a sufficient quantity of labor-power, and more ``abstemious,''

more ``self-denying,'' more ``thrifty,'' in the

draining of paid labor-power.[5]

[5] Vol. i, pp. 237, 238.

In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily

papers published a paragraph with the ``sensational''

heading, ``Death from simple over-work.'' It dealt with

the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years

of age, employed in a highly respectable dressmaking

establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name

of Elise. The old, often-told story was once more recounted.

This girl worked, on an average, 16 1/2 hours,

during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst

her failing labor-power was revived by occasional supplies

of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the

height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up

in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the

noble ladies bidden to the ball in honor of the newly-

imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had

worked without intermission for 26 1/2 hours, with 60

other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded 1/3 of

the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they

slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the

bedroom was divided by partitions of board. And this

was one of the best millinery establishments in London.

Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday,

without, to the astonishment of Madame Elise,

having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor,

Mr. Keys, called too late to the death bed, duly bore

witness before the coroner's jury that ``Mary Anne

Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over-

crowded workroom, and a too small and badly ventilated

bedroom.'' In order to give the doctor a lesson in good

manners, the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict

that ``the deceased had died of apoplexy, but there

was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated

by over-work in an over-crowded workroom, &c.'' ``Our

white slaves,'' cried the ``Morning Star,'' the organ of the

free-traders, Cobden and Bright, ``our white slaves, who

are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine

and die.''[6]

[6] Vol. i, pp. 239, 240.

Edward VI: A statue of the first year of his reign,

1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be

condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced

him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread

and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks

fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no

matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the

slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for

life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the

letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as

a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him

out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel

or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the

masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the

peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it

happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three

days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a

redhot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set

to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labor.

If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to

become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants,

or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons

have the right to take away the children of the

vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young

men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If

they run away, they are to become up to this age the

slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip

them, &c., if they like. Every master may put an iron

ring around the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which

to know him more easily and to be more certain of him.

The last part of this statute provides that certain poor

people may be employed by a place or by persons, who

are willing to give them food and drink and to find them

work. This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England

until far into the 19th century under the name of

``roundsmen.''[7]

[7] Vol. i, pp. 758, 759.

Page after page and chapter after chapter of

facts of this nature, each brought up to illustrate

some fatalistic theory which Marx professes to have

proved by exact reasoning, cannot but stir into fury

any passionate working-class reader, and into

unbearable shame any possessor of capital in whom

generosity and justice are not wholly extinct.

Almost at the end of the volume, in a very brief

chapter, called ``Historical Tendency of Capitalist

Accumulation,'' Marx allows one moment's glimpse

of the hope that lies beyond the present horror:--

As soon as this process of transformation has

sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom,

as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their

means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist

mode of production stands on its own feet, then the

further socialization of labor and further transformation

of the land and other means of production into so-

cially exploited and, therefore, common means of production,

as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors,

takes a new form. That which is now to be

expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself,

but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This

expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent

laws of capitalistic production itself, by the

centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills

many, and in hand with this centralization, or this

expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on

an ever extending scale, the co-operative form of the

labor-process, the conscious technical application of

science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the

transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments

of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all

means of production by their use as the means of production

of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement

of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with

this, the international character of the capitalistic regime.

Along with the constantly diminishing number of the

magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all

advantages of this process of transformation, grows the

mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation;

but with this, too, grows the revolt of the working-

class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined,

united, organized by the very mechanism of the

process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of

capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production,

which has sprung up and flourished along with, and

under it. Centralization of the means of production and

socialization of labor at last reach a point where they

become incompatible with their capitalist integument.

This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist

private property sounds. The expropriators are

expropriated,[8]

[8] Vol. i pp. 788, 789.

That is all. Hardly another word from beginning

to end is allowed to relieve the gloom, and in this

relentless pressure upon the mind of the reader lies

a great part of the power which this book has

acquired.

Two questions are raised by Marx's work: First,

Are his laws of historical development true? Second,

Is Socialism desirable? The second of these questions

is quite independent of the first. Marx professes

to prove that Socialism must come, but scarcely concerns

himself to argue that when it comes it will be

a good thing. It may be, however, that if it comes,

it will be a good thing, even though all Marx's arguments

to prove that it must come should be at fault.

In actual fact, time has shown many flaws in Marx's

theories. The development of the world has been

sufficiently like his prophecy to prove him a man of

very unusual penetration, but has not been sufficiently

like to make either political or economic history

exactly such as he predicted that it would be.

Nationalism, so far from diminishing, has increased,

and has failed to be conquered by the cosmopolitan

tendencies which Marx rightly discerned in finance.

Although big businesses have grown bigger and have

over a great area reached the stage of monopoly,

yet the number of shareholders in such enterprises

is so large that the actual number of individuals

interested in the capitalist system has continually

increased. Moreover, though large firms have grown

larger, there has been a simultaneous increase in

firms of medium size. Meanwhile the wage-earners,

who were, according to Marx, to have remained at

the bare level of subsistence at which they were in

the England of the first half of the nineteenth century,

have instead profited by the general increase

of wealth, though in a lesser degree than the capitalists.

The supposed iron law of wages has been

proved untrue, so far as labor in civilized countries

is concerned. If we wish now to find examples of

capitalist cruelty analogous to those with which

Marx's book is filled, we shall have to go for most

of our material to the Tropics, or at any rate to

regions where there are men of inferior races to

exploit. Again: the skilled worker of the present day

is an aristocrat in the world of labor. It is a question

with him whether he shall ally himself with the

unskilled worker against the capitalist, or with the

capitalist against the unskilled worker. Very often

he is himself a capitalist in a small way, and if he

is not so individually, his trade union or his friendly

society is pretty sure to be so. Hence the sharpness

of the class war has not been maintained. There

are gradations, intermediate ranks between rich and

poor, instead of the clear-cut logical antithesis

between the workers who have nothing and the capitalists

who have all. Even in Germany, which

became the home of orthodox Marxianism and developed

a powerful Social-Democratic party, nominally

accepting the doctrine of ``Das Kapital'' as all but

verbally inspired, even there the enormous increase

of wealth in all classes in the years preceding the

war led Socialists to revise their beliefs and to adopt

an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary attitude.

Bernstein, a German Socialist who lived long in

England, inaugurated the ``Revisionist'' movement

which at last conquered the bulk of the party. His

criticisms of Marxian orthodoxy are set forth in

his ``Evolutionary Socialism.''[9] Bernstein's work,

as is common in Broad Church writers, consists

largely in showing that the Founders did not hold

their doctrines so rigidly as their followers have

done. There is much in the writings of Marx and

Engels that cannot be fitted into the rigid orthodoxy

which grew up among their disciples. Bernstein's

main criticisms of these disciples, apart from such as

we have already mentioned, consist in a defense of

piecemeal action as against revolution. He protests

against the attitude of undue hostility to Liberalism

which is common among Socialists, and he blunts the

edge of the Internationalism which undoubtedly is

part of the teachings of Marx. The workers, he

says, have a Fatherland as soon as they become

citizens, and on this basis he defends that degree of

nationalism which the war has since shown to be

prevalent in the ranks of Socialists. He even goes

so far as to maintain that European nations have a

right to tropical territory owing to their higher

civilization. Such doctrines diminish revolutionary

ardor and tend to transform Socialists into a left

wing of the Liberal Party. But the increasing prosperity

of wage-earners before the war made these

developments inevitable. Whether the war will have

altered conditions in this respect, it is as yet

impossible to know. Bernstein concludes with the wise

remark that: ``We have to take working men as they

are. And they are neither so universally paupers as

was set out in the Communist Manifesto, nor so free

from prejudices and weaknesses as their courtiers

wish to make us believe.''

[9] Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben

der Sozial-Demokratie.''

In March, 1914, Bernstein delivered a lecture in Budapest

in which he withdrew from several of the positions he had taken

up (vide Budapest ``Volkstimme,'' March 19, 1914).

Berstein represents the decay of Marxian orthodoxy

from within. Syndicalism represents an attack

against it from without, from the standpoint of a

doctrine which professes to be even more radical and

more revolutionary than that of Marx and Engels.

The attitude of Syndicalists to Marx may be seen in

Sorel's little book, ``La Decomposition du Marxisme,''

and in his larger work, ``Reflections on

Violence,'' authorized translation by T. E. Hulme

(Allen & Unwin, 1915). After quoting Bernstein,

with approval in so far as he criticises Marx, Sorel

proceeds to other criticisms of a different order. He

points out (what is true) that Marx's theoretical

economics remain very near to Manchesterism: the

orthodox political economy of his youth was accepted

by him on many points on which it is now known to

be wrong. According to Sorel, the really essential

thing in Marx's teaching is the class war. Whoever

keeps this alive is keeping alive the spirit of Socialism

much more truly than those who adhere to the

letter of Social-Democratic orthodoxy. On the basis

of the class war, French Syndicalists developed a

criticism of Marx which goes much deeper than those

that we have been hitherto considering. Marx's

views on historical development may have been in a

greater or less degree mistaken in fact, and yet the

economic and political system which he sought to

create might be just as desirable as his followers

suppose. Syndicalism, however, criticises, not only

Marx's views of fact, but also the goal at which he

aims and the general nature of the means which he

recommends. Marx's ideas were formed at a time

when democracy did not yet exist. It was in the

very year in which ``Das Kapital'' appeared that

urban working men first got the vote in England and

universal suffrage was granted by Bismarck in

Northern Germany. It was natural that great hopes

should be entertained as to what democracy would

achieve. Marx, like the orthodox economists,

imagined that men's opinions are guided by a more

or less enlightened view of economic self-interest, or

rather of economic class interest. A long experience

of the workings of political democracy has shown

that in this respect Disraeli and Bismarck were

shrewder judges of human nature than either Liberals

or Socialists. It has become increasingly difficult

to put trust in the State as a means to liberty,

or in political parties as instruments sufficiently

powerful to force the State into the service of the

people. The modern State, says Sorel, ``is a body of

intellectuals, which is invested with privileges, and

which possesses means of the kind called political for

defending itself against the attacks made on it by

other groups of intellectuals, eager to possess the

profits of public employment. Parties are constituted

in order to acquire the conquest of these

employments, and they are analogous to the State.''[10]

[10] La Decomposition du Marxisme,'' p. 53.

Syndicalists aim at organizing men, not by party,

but by occupation. This, they say, alone represents

the true conception and method of the class war.

Accordingly they despise all POLITICAL action through

the medium of Parliament and elections: the kind of

action that they recommend is direct action by the

revolutionary syndicate or trade union. The battle-

cry of industrial versus political action has spread

far beyond the ranks of French Syndicalism. It is

to be found in the I. W. W. in America, and among

Industrial Unionists and Guild Socialists in Great

Britain. Those who advocate it, for the most part,

aim also at a different goal from that of Marx. They

believe that there can be no adequate individual

freedom where the State is all-powerful, even if the

State be a Socialist one. Some of them are out-and-

out Anarchists, who wish to see the State wholly

abolished; others only wish to curtail its authority.

Owing to this movement, opposition to Marx, which

from the Anarchist side existed from the first, has

grown very strong. It is this opposition in its older

form that will occupy us in our next chapter.

CHAPTER II

BAKUNIN AND ANARCHISM

IN the popular mind, an Anarchist is a person

who throws bombs and commits other outrages,

either because he is more or less insane, or because

he uses the pretense of extreme political opinions as

a cloak for criminal proclivities. This view is, of

course, in every way inadequate. Some Anarchists

believe in throwing bombs; many do not. Men of

almost every other shade of opinion believe in throwing

bombs in suitable circumstances: for example,

the men who threw the bomb at Sarajevo which

started the present war were not Anarchists, but

Nationalists. And those Anarchists who are in

favor of bomb-throwing do not in this respect differ

on any vital principle from the rest of the community,

with the exception of that infinitesimal portion

who adopt the Tolstoyan attitude of non-resistance.

Anarchists, like Socialists, usually believe

in the doctrine of the class war, and if they use

bombs, it is as Governments use bombs, for purposes

of war: but for every bomb manufactured by an

Anarchist, many millions are manufactured by Governments,

and for every man killed by Anarchist

violence, many millions are killed by the violence of

States. We may, therefore, dismiss from our minds

the whole question of violence, which plays so large

a part in the popular imagination, since it is neither

essential nor peculiar to those who adopt the Anarchist

position.

Anarchism, as its derivation indicates, is the

theory which is opposed to every kind of forcible

government. It is opposed to the State as the

embodiment of the force employed in the government

of the community. Such government as Anarchism

can tolerate must be free government, not merely in

the sense that it is that of a majority, but in the sense

that it is that assented to by all. Anarchists object

to such institutions as the police and the criminal

law, by means of which the will of one part of the

community is forced upon another part. In their

view, the democratic form of government is not very

enormously preferable to other forms so long as

minorities are compelled by force or its potentiality

to submit to the will of majorities. Liberty is the

supreme good in the Anarchist creed, and liberty

is sought by the direct road of abolishing all forcible

control over the individual by the community.

Anarchism, in this sense, is no new doctrine. It

is set forth admirably by Chuang Tzu, a Chinese philosopher,

who lived about the year 300 B. C.:--

Horses have hoofs to carry them over frost and snow;

hair, to protect them from wind and cold. They eat grass

and drink water, and fling up their heels over the champaign.

Such is the real nature of horses. Palatial

dwellings are of no use to them.

One day Po Lo appeared, saying: ``I understand the

management of horses.''

So he branded them, and clipped them, and pared

their hoofs, and put halters on them, tying them up by

the head and shackling them by the feet, and disposing

them in stables, with the result that two or three in

every ten died. Then he kept them hungry and thirsty,

trotting them and galloping them, and grooming, and

trimming, with the misery of the tasselled bridle before

and the fear of the knotted whip behind, until more than

half of them were dead.

The potter says: ``I can do what I will with Clay.

If I want it round, I use compasses; if rectangular, a

square.''

The carpenter says: ``I can do what I will with

wood. If I want it curved, I use an arc; if straight, a

line.''

But on what grounds can we think that the natures

of clay and wood desire this application of compasses and

square, of arc and line? Nevertheless, every age extols

Po Lo for his skill in managing horses, and potters and

carpenters for their skill with clay and wood. Those

who govern the empire make the same mistake.

Now I regard government of the empire from quite

a different point of view.

The people have certain natural instincts:--to weave

and clothe themselves, to till and feed themselves. These

are common to all humanity, and all are agreed thereon.

Such instincts are called ``Heaven-sent.''

And so in the days when natural instincts prevailed,

men moved quietly and gazed steadily. At that time

there were no roads over mountains, nor boats, nor

bridges over water. All things were produced, each for

its own proper sphere. Birds and beasts multiplied,

trees and shrubs grew up. The former might be led by

the hand; you could climb up and peep into the raven's

nest. For then man dwelt with birds and beasts, and

all creation was one. There were no distinctions of good

and bad men. Being all equally without knowledge,

their virtue could not go astray. Being all equally

without evil desires, they were in a state of natural

integrity, the perfection of human existence.

But when Sages appeared, tripping up people over

charity and fettering them with duty to their neighbor,

doubt found its way into the world. And then, with

their gushing over music and fussing over ceremony, the

empire became divided against itself.[11]

[11] ``Musings of a Chinese Mystic.'' Selections from the Philosophy

of Chuang Tzu. With an Introduction by Lionel Giles,

M.A. (Oxon.). Wisdom of the East Series, John Murray, 1911.

Pages 66-68.

The modern Anarchism, in the sense in which we

shall be concerned with it, is associated with belief

in the communal ownership of land and capital, and

is thus in an important respect akin to Socialism.

This doctrine is properly called Anarchist Com-

munism, but as it embraces practically all modern

Anarchism, we may ignore individualist Anarchism

altogether and concentrate attention upon the

communistic form. Socialism and Anarchist Communism

alike have arisen from the perception that private

capital is a source of tyranny by certain individuals

over others. Orthodox Socialism believes that the

individual will become free if the State becomes the

sole capitalist. Anarchism, on the contrary, fears

that in that case the State might merely inherit the

tyrannical propensities of the private capitalist.

Accordingly, it seeks for a means of reconciling communal

ownership with the utmost possible diminution

in the powers of the State, and indeed ultimately with

the complete abolition of the State. It has arisen

mainly within the Socialist movement as its extreme

left wing.

In the same sense in which Marx may be regarded

as the founder of modern Socialism, Bakunin may

be regarded as the founder of Anarchist Communism.

But Bakunin did not produce, like Marx, a finished

and systematic body of doctrine. The nearest

approach to this will be found in the writings of his

follower, Kropotkin. In order to explain modern

Anarchism we shall begin with the life of Bakunin[12]

and the history of his conflicts with Marx, and shall

then give a brief account of Anarchist theory as set

forth partly in his writings, but more in those of

Kropotkin.[13]

[12] An account of the life of Bakunin from the Anarchist

standpoint will be found in vol. ii of the complete edition of

his works: ``Michel Bakounine, OEuvres,'' Tome II. Avec une

notice biographique, des avant-propos et des notes, par James

Guillaume. Paris, P.-V, Stock, editeur, pp. v-lxiii.

[13] Criticism of these theories will be reserved for Part II.

Michel Bakunin was born in 1814 of a Russian

aristocratic family. His father was a diplomatist,

who at the time of Bakunin's birth had retired to his

country estate in the Government of Tver. Bakunin

entered the school of artillery in Petersburg at the

age of fifteen, and at the age of eighteen was sent as

an ensign to a regiment stationed in the Government

of Minsk. The Polish insurrection of 1880 had just

been crushed. ``The spectacle of terrorized Poland,''

says Guillaume, ``acted powerfully on the heart of

the young officer, and contributed to inspire in him

the horror of despotism.'' This led him to give up

the military career after two years' trial. In 1834

he resigned his commission and went to Moscow,

where he spent six years studying philosophy. Like

all philosophical students of that period, he became

a Hegelian, and in 1840 he went to Berlin to continue

his studies, in the hope of ultimately becoming a

professor. But after this time his opinions underwent

a rapid change. He found it impossible to

accept the Hegelian maxim that whatever is, is

rational, and in 1842 he migrated to Dresden, where

he became associated with Arnold Ruge, the publisher

of ``Deutsche Jahrbuecher.'' By this time he had

become a revolutionary, and in the following year

he incurred the hostility of the Saxon Government.

This led him to go to Switzerland, where he came in

contact with a group of German Communists, but, as

the Swiss police importuned him and the Russian

Government demanded his return, he removed to

Paris, where he remained from 1843 to 1847. These

years in Paris were important in the formation of his

outlook and opinions. He became acquainted with

Proudhon, who exercised a considerable influence on

him; also with George Sand and many other well-

known people. It was in Paris that he first made

the acquaintance of Marx and Engels, with whom he

was to carry on a lifelong battle. At a much later

period, in 1871, he gave the following account of his

relations with Marx at this time:--

Marx was much more advanced than I was, as he

remains to-day not more advanced but incomparably more

learned than I am. I knew then nothing of political

economy. I had not yet rid myself of metaphysical

abstractions, and my Socialism was only instinctive. He,

though younger than I, was already an atheist, an

instructed materialist, a well-considered Socialist. It

was just at this time that he elaborated the first foundations

of his present system. We saw each other fairly

often, for I respected him much for his learning and his

passionate and serious devotion (always mixed, however,

with personal vanity) to the cause of the proletariat,

and I sought eagerly his conversation, which was always

instructive and clever, when it was not inspired by a

paltry hate, which, alas! happened only too often. But

there was never any frank intimacy between as. Our

temperaments would not suffer it. He called me a

sentimental idealist, and he was right; I called him a

vain man, perfidious and crafty, and I also was right.

Bakunin never succeeded in staying long in one

place without incurring the enmity of the authorities.

In November, 1847, as the result of a speech

praising the Polish rising of 1830, he was expelled

from France at the request of the Russian Embassy,

which, in order to rob him of public sympathy, spread

the unfounded report that he had been an agent of

the Russian Government, but was no longer wanted

because he had gone too far. The French Government,

by calculated reticence, encouraged this story,

which clung to him more or less throughout his life.

Being compelled to leave France, he went to

Brussels, where he renewed acquaintance with Marx.

A letter of his, written at this time, shows that he

entertained already that bitter hatred for which

afterward he had so much reason. ``The Germans,

artisans, Bornstedt, Marx and Engels--and, above

all, Marx--are here, doing their ordinary mischief.

Vanity, spite, gossip, theoretical overbearingness

and practical pusillanimity--reflections on life, action

and simplicity, and complete absence of life,

action and simplicity--literary and argumentative

artisans and repulsive coquetry with them: `Feuerbach

is a bourgeois,' and the word `bourgeois' grown

into an epithet and repeated ad nauseum, but all of

them themselves from head to foot, through and

through, provincial bourgeois. With one word, lying

and stupidity, stupidity and lying. In this society

there is no possibility of drawing a free, full breath.

I hold myself aloof from them, and have declared

quite decidedly that I will not join their communistic

union of artisans, and will have nothing to do

with it.''

The Revolution of 1848 led him to return to Paris

and thence to Germany. He had a quarrel with

Marx over a matter in which he himself confessed

later that Marx was in the right. He became a member

of the Slav Congress in Prague, where he vainly

endeavored to promote a Slav insurrection. Toward

the end of 1848, he wrote an ``Appeal to Slavs,''

calling on them to combine with other revolutionaries

to destroy the three oppressive monarchies, Russia,

Austria and Prussia. Marx attacked him in print,

saying, in effect, that the movement for Bohemian

independence was futile because the Slavs had no

future, at any rate in those regions where they hap-

pened to be subject to Germany and Austria.

Bakunin accused Mars of German patriotism in

this matter, and Marx accused him of Pan-Slavism,

no doubt in both cases justly. Before this dispute,

however, a much more serious quarrel had taken

place. Marx's paper, the ``Neue Rheinische Zeitung,''

stated that George Sand had papers proving

Bakunin to be a Russian Government agent and one

of those responsible for the recent arrest of Poles.

Bakunin, of course, repudiated the charge, and

George Sand wrote to the ``Neue Rheinische

Zeitung,'' denying this statement in toto. The denials

were published by Marx, and there was a nominal

reconciliation, but from this time onward there was

never any real abatement of the hostility between

these rival leaders, who did not meet again until 1864.

Meanwhile, the reaction had been everywhere

gaining ground. In May, 1849, an insurrection in

Dresden for a moment made the revolutionaries masters

of the town. They held it for five days and

established a revolutionary government. Bakunin

was the soul of the defense which they made against

the Prussian troops. But they were overpowered,

and at last Bakunin was captured while trying to

escape with Heubner and Richard Wagner, the last

of whom, fortunately for music, was not captured.

Now began a long period of imprisonment in

many prisons and various countries. Bakunin was

sentenced to death on the 14th of January, 1850, but

his sentence was commuted after five months, and he

was delivered over to Austria, which claimed the

privilege of punishing him. The Austrians, in their

turn, condemned him to death in May, 1851, and

again his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for

life. In the Austrian prisons he had fetters on hands

and feet, and in one of them he was even chained to the

wall by the belt. There seems to have been some

peculiar pleasure to be derived from the punishment

of Bakunin, for the Russian Government in its turn

demanded him of the Austrians, who delivered him

up. In Russia he was confined, first in the Peter and

Paul fortress and then in the Schluesselburg. There

be suffered from scurvy and all his teeth fell out.

His health gave way completely, and he found almost

all food impossible to assimilate. ``But, if his body

became enfeebled, his spirit remained inflexible. He

feared one thing above all. It was to find himself

some day led, by the debilitating action of prison,

to the condition of degradation of which Silvio Pellico

offers a well-known type. He feared that he might

cease to hate, that he might feel the sentiment of

revolt which upheld him becoming extinguished in

his hearts that he might come to pardon his persecutors

and resign himself to his fate. But this fear

was superfluous; his energy did not abandon him a

single day, and he emerged from his cell the same

man as when he entered.''[14]

[14] Ibid. p. xxvi.

After the death of the Tsar Nicholas many political

prisoners were amnested, but Alexander II with

his own hand erased Bakunin's name from the list.

When Bakunin's mother succeeded in obtaining an

interview with the new Tsar, he said to her, ``Know,

Madame, that so long as your son lives, he can never

be free.'' However, in 1857, after eight years of

captivity, he was sent to the comparative freedom of

Siberia. From there, in 1861, he succeeded in escaping

to Japan, and thence through America to London.

He had been imprisoned for his hostility to

governments, but, strange to say, his sufferings had

not had the intended effect of making him love those

who inflicted them. From this time onward, he

devoted himself to spreading the spirit of Anarchist

revolt, without, however, having to suffer any further

term of imprisonment. For some years he lived in

Italy, where he founded in 1864 an ``International

Fraternity'' or ``Alliance of Socialist Revolutionaries.''

This contained men of many countries, but

apparently no Germans. It devoted itself largely to

combating Mazzini's nationalism. In 1867 he moved

to Switzerland, where in the following year he

helped to found the ``International Alliance of So-

cialist Democracy,'' of which he drew up the program.

This program gives a good succinct resume of

his opinions:--

The Alliance declares itself atheist; it desires the

definitive and entire abolition of classes and the political

equality and social equalization of individuals of both

sexes. It desires that the earth, the instrument of labor,

like all other capital, becoming the collective property of

society as a whole, shall be no longer able to be utilized

except by the workers, that is to say, by agricultural and

industrial associations. It recognizes that all actually

existing political and authoritarian States, reducing

themselves more and more to the mere administrative functions

of the public services in their respective countries,

must disappear in the universal union of free

associations, both agricultural and industrial.

The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy

desired to become a branch of the International

Working Men's Association, but was refused admission

on the ground that branches must be local, and

could not themselves be international. The Geneva

group of the Alliance, however, was admitted later,

in July, 1869.

The International Working Men's Association

had been founded in London in 1864, and its statutes

and program were drawn up by Marx. Bakunin at

first did not expect it to prove a success and refused

to join it. But it spread with remarkable rapidity

in many countries and soon became a great power

for the propagation of Socialist ideas. Originally

it was by no means wholly Socialist, but in successive

Congresses Marx won it over more and more to his

views. At its third Congress, in Brussels in September,

1868, it became definitely Socialist. Meanwhile

Bakunin, regretting his earlier abstention, had

decided to join it, and he brought with him a

considerable following in French-Switzerland, France,

Spain and Italy. At the fourth Congress, held at

Basle in September, 1869, two currents were strongly

marked. The Germans and English followed Marx

in his belief in the State as it was to become after the

abolition of private property; they followed him also

in his desire to found Labor Parties in the various

countries, and to utilize the machinery of democracy

for the election of representatives of Labor to

Parliaments. On the other hand, the Latin nations in

the main followed Bakunin in opposing the State and

disbelieving in the machinery of representative

government. The conflict between these two groups grew

more and more bitter, and each accused the other

of various offenses. The statement that Bakunin

was a spy was repeated, but was withdrawn after

investigation. Marx wrote in a confidential

communication to his German friends that Bakunin was

an agent of the Pan-Slavist party and received from

them 25,000 francs a year. Meanwhile, Bakunin

became for a time interested in the attempt to stir

up an agrarian revolt in Russia, and this led him

to neglect the contest in the International at a crucial

moment. During the Franco-Prussian war Bakunin

passionately took the side of France, especially after

the fall of Napoleon III. He endeavored to rouse

the people to revolutionary resistance like that of

1793, and became involved in an abortive attempt at

revolt in Lyons. The French Government accused

him of being a paid agent of Prussia, and it was

with difficulty that he escaped to Switzerland. The

dispute with Marx and his followers had become

exacerbated by the national dispute. Bakunin, like

Kropotkin after him, regarded the new power of

Germany as the greatest menace to liberty in the

world. He hated the Germans with a bitter hatred,

partly, no doubt, on account of Bismarck, but probably

still more on account of Marx. To this day,

Anarchism has remained confined almost exclusively

to the Latin countries, and has been associated with, a

hatred of Germany, growing out of the contests

between Marx and Bakunin in the International.

The final suppression of Bakunin's faction

occurred at the General Congress of the International

at the Hague in 1872. The meeting-place was

chosen by the General Council (in which Marx was

unopposed), with a view--so Bakunin's friends contend--

to making access impossible for Bakunin (on

account of the hostility of the French and German

governments) and difficult for his friends. Bakunin

was expelled from the International as the result of

a report accusing him inter alia of theft backed; up

by intimidation.

The orthodoxy of the International was saved,

but at the cost of its vitality. From this time onward,

it ceased to be itself a power, but both sections continued

to work in their various groups, and the Socialist

groups in particular grew rapidly. Ultimately

a new International was formed (1889) which continued

down to the outbreak of the present war. As

to the future of International Socialism it would be

rash to prophesy, though it would seem that the

international idea has acquired sufficient strength to

need again, after the war, some such means of expression

as it found before in Socialist congresses.

By this time Bakunin's health was broken, and

except for a few brief intervals, he lived in retirement

until his death in 1876.

Bakunin's life, unlike Marx's, was a very stormy

one. Every kind of rebellion against authority

always aroused his sympathy, and in his support he

never paid the slightest attention to personal risk.

His influence, undoubtedly very great, arose chiefly

through the influence of his personality upon important

individuals. His writings differ from Marx's as

much as his life does, and in a similar way. They are

chaotic, largely, aroused by some passing occasion,

abstract and metaphysical, except when they deal

with current politics. He does not come to close

quarters with economic facts, but dwells usually in

the regions of theory and metaphysics. When he

descends from these regions, he is much more at the

mercy of current international politics than Marx,

much less imbued with the consequences of the belief

that it is economic causes that are fundamental. He

praised Marx for enunciating this doctrine,[15] but

nevertheless continued to think in terms of nations.

His longest work, ``L'Empire Knouto-Germanique et

la Revolution Sociale,'' is mainly concerned with the

situation in France during the later stages of the

Franco-Prussian War, and with the means of resisting

German imperialism. Most of his writing was

done in a hurry in the interval between two insurrections.

There is something of Anarchism in his lack

of literary order. His best-known work is a fragment

entitled by its editors ``God and the State.''[16]

In this work he represents belief in God and belief in

the State as the two great obstacles to human liberty.

A typical passage will serve to illustrate its style.

[15] ``Marx, as a thinker, is on the right road. He has established

as a principle that all the evolutions, political, religious,

and juridical, in history are, not the causes, but the effects of

economic evolutions. This is a great and fruitful thought, which

he has not absolutely invented; it has been glimpsed, expressed

in part, by many others besides him; but in any case to him

belongs the honor of having solidly established it and of having

enunciated it as the basis of his whole economic system. (1870;

ib. ii. p. xiii.)

[16] This title is not Bakunin's, but was invented by Cafiero

and Elisee Reclus, who edited it, not knowing that it was a

fragment of what was intended to he the second version of

``L'Empire Knouto-Germanique'' (see ib. ii. p 283).

The State is not society, it is only an historical form

of it, as brutal as it is abstract. It was born historically

in all countries of the marriage of violence, rapine, pillage,

in a word, war and conquest, with the gods successively

created by the theological fantasy of nations.

It has been from its origin, and it remains still at present,

the divine sanction of brutal force and triumphant

inequality.

The State is authority; it is force; it is the ostentation

and infatuation of force: it does not insinuate

itself; it does not seek to convert. . . . Even when

it commands what is good, it hinders and spoils it, just

because it commands it, and because every command provokes

and excites the legitimate revolts of liberty; and

because the good, from the moment that it is commanded,

becomes evil from the point of view of true morality, of

human morality (doubtless not of divine), from the point

of view of human respect and of liberty. Liberty, morality,

and the human dignity of man consist precisely

in this, that he does good, not because it is commanded,

but because he conceives it, wills it and loves it.

We do not find in Bakunin's works a clear picture

of the society at which he aimed, or any argument

to prove that such a society could be stable.

If we wish to understand Anarchism we must turn

to his followers, and especially to Kropotkin--like

him, a Russian aristocrat familiar with the prisons

of Europe, and, like him, an Anarchist who, in spite

of his internationalism, is imbued with a fiery hatred

of the Germans.

Kropotkin has devoted much of his writing to

technical questions of production. In ``Fields,

Factories and Workshops'' and ``The Conquest of

Bread'' he has set himself to prove that, if production

were more scientific and better organized, a

comparatively small amount of quite agreeable work

would suffice to keep the whole population in comfort.

Even assuming, as we probably must, that he

somewhat exaggerates what is possible with our

present scientific knowledge, it must nevertheless be

conceded that his contentions contain a very large

measure of truth. In attacking the subject of production

he has shown that he knows what is the really

crucial question. If civilization and progress are to

be compatible with equality, it is necessary that

equality should not involve long hours of painful

toil for little more than the necessaries of life, since,

where there is no leisure, art and science will die and

all progress will become impossible. The objection

which some feel to Socialism and Anarchism alike on

this ground cannot be upheld in view of the possible

productivity of labor.

The system at which Kropotkin aims, whether or

not it be possible, is certainly one which demands a

very great improvement in the methods of production

above what is common at present. He desires

to abolish wholly the system of wages, not only, as

most Socialists do, in the sense that a man is to be

paid rather for his willingness to work than for the

actual work demanded of him, but in a more fundamental

sense: there is to be no obligation to work,

and all things are to be shared in equal proportions

among the whole population. Kropotkin relies upon

the possibility of making work pleasant: he holds

that, in such a community as he foresees, practically

everyone will prefer work to idleness, because work will

not involve overwork or slavery, or that excessive

specialization that industrialism has brought about,

but will be merely a pleasant activity for certain

hours of the day, giving a man an outlet for his

spontaneous constructive impulses. There is to be no

compulsion, no law, no government exercising force;

there will still be acts of the community, but these

are to spring from universal consent, not from any

enforced submission of even the smallest minority.

We shall examine in a later chapter how far such

an ideal is realizable, but it cannot be denied that

Kropotkin presents it with extraordinary persuasiveness

and charm.

We should be doing more than justice to Anarchism

if we did not say something of its darker side,

the side which has brought it into conflict with the

police and made it a word of terror to ordinary citizens.

In its general doctrines there is nothing essentially

involving violent methods or a virulent hatred

of the rich, and many who adopt these general doctrines

are personally gentle and temperamentally

averse from violence. But the general tone of the

Anarchist press and public is bitter to a degree that

seems scarcely sane, and the appeal, especially in

Latin countries, is rather to envy of the fortunate

than to pity for the unfortunate. A vivid and readable,

though not wholly reliable, account, from a

hostile point of view, is given in a book called ``Le

Peril Anarchiste,'' by Felix Dubois,[17] which

incidentally reproduces a number of cartoons from anarchist

journals. The revolt against law naturally leads,

except in those who are controlled by a real passion

for humanity, to a relaxation of all the usually

accepted moral rules, and to a bitter spirit of

retaliatory cruelty out of which good can hardly come.

[17] Paris, 1894.

One of the most curious features of popular

Anarchism is its martyrology, aping Christian forms,

with the guillotine (in France) in place of the cross.

Many who have suffered death at the hands of the

authorities on account of acts of violence were no

doubt genuine sufferers for their belief in a cause,

but others, equally honored, are more questionable.

One of the most curious examples of this outlet for

the repressed religious impulse is the cult of Ravachol,

who was guillotined in 1892 on account of

various dynamite outrages. His past was dubious,

but he died defiantly; his last words were three lines

from a well-known Anarchist song, the ``Chant du

Pere Duchesne'':--

Si tu veux etre heureux,

Nom de Dieu!

Pends ton proprietaire.

As was natural, the leading Anarchists took no part

in the canonization of his memory; nevertheless it

proceeded, with the most amazing extravagances.

It would be wholly unfair to judge Anarchist

doctrine, or the views of its leading exponents, by

such phenomena; but it remains a fact that Anarchism

attracts to itself much that lies on the borderland

of insanity and common crime.[18] This must be

remembered in exculpation of the authorities and

the thoughtless public, who often confound in a common

detestation the parasites of the movement and

the truly heroic and high-minded men who have elaborated

its theories and sacrificed comfort and success

to their propagation.

[18] The attitude of all the better Anarchists is that expressed

by L. S. Bevington in the words: ``Of course we know that

among those who call themselves Anarchists there are a minority

of unbalanced enthusiasts who look upon every illegal and sensational

act of violence as a matter for hysterical jubilation.

Very useful to the police and the press, unsteady in intellect

and of weak moral principle, they have repeatedly shown themselves

accessible to venal considerations. They, and their violence,

and their professed Anarchism are purchasable, and in

the last resort they are welcome and efficient partisans of the

bourgeoisie in its remorseless war against the deliverers of the

people.'' His conclusion is a very wise one: ``Let us leave

indiscriminate killing and injuring to the Government--to its

Statesmen, its Stockbrokers, its Officers, and its Law.'' (``Anarchism

and Violence,'' pp. 9-10. Liberty Press, Chiswick, 1896.)

The terrorist campaign in which such men as

Ravachol were active practically came to an end in

1894. After that time, under the influence of Pelloutier,

the better sort of Anarchists found a less

harmful outlet by advocating Revolutionary Syndicalism

in the Trade Unions and Bourses du Travail.[19]

[19] See next Chapter.

The ECONOMIC organization of society, as conceived

by Anarchist Communists, does not differ

greatly from that which is sought by Socialists.

Their difference from Socialists is in the matter of

government: they demand that government shall

require the consent of all the governed, and not only

of a majority. It is undeniable that the rule of a

majority may be almost as hostile to freedom as the

rule of a minority: the divine right of majorities is a

dogma as little possessed of absolute truth as any

other. A strong democratic State may easily be led

into oppression of its best citizens, namely, those

those independence of mind would make them a force

for progress. Experience of democratic parliamentary

government has shown that it falls very far

short of what was expected of it by early Socialists,

and the Anarchist revolt against it is not surprising.

But in the form of pure Anarchism, this revolt has

remained weak and sporadic. It is Syndicalism, and

the movements to which Syndicalism has given rise,

that have popularized the revolt against parliamentary

government and purely political means of emancipating

the wage earner. But this movement must

be dealt with in a separate chapter.

CHAPTER III

THE SYNDICALIST REVOLT

SYNDICALISM arose in France as a revolt against

political Socialism, and in order to understand it

we must trace in brief outline the positions attained

by Socialist parties in the various countries.

After a severe setback, caused by the Franco-

Prussian war, Socialism gradually revived, and in all

the countries of Western Europe Socialist parties

have increased their numerical strength almost

continuously during the last forty years; but, as is

invariably the case with a growing sect, the intensity

of faith has diminished as the number of believers

has increased.

In Germany the Socialist party became the

strongest faction of the Reichstag, and, in spite of

differences of opinion among its members, it preserved

its formal unity with that instinct for military

discipline which characterizes the German nation.

In the Reichstag election of 1912 it polled a third

of the total number of votes cast, and returned 110

members out of a total of 397. After the death of

Bebel, the Revisionists, who received their first

impulse from Bernstein, overcame the more strict

Marxians, and the party became in effect merely one

of advanced Radicalism. It is too soon to guess what

will be the effect of the split between Majority and

Minority Socialists which has occurred during the

war. There is in Germany hardly a trace of Syndicalism;

its characteristic doctrine, the preference of

industrial to political action, has found scarcely

any support.

In England Marx has never had many followers.

Socialism there has been inspired in the main by the

Fabians (founded in 1883), who threw over the

advocacy of revolution, the Marxian doctrine of

value, and the class-war. What remained was State

Socialism and a doctrine of ``permeation.'' Civil

servants were to be permeated with the realization

that Socialism would enormously increase their

power. Trade Unions were to be permeated with the

belief that the day for purely industrial action was

past, and that they must look to government (inspired

secretly by sympathetic civil servants) to bring

about, bit by bit, such parts of the Socialist program

as were not likely to rouse much hostility in the rich.

The Independent Labor Party (formed in 1893) was

largely inspired at first by the ideas of the Fabians,

though retaining to the present day, and especially

since the outbreak of the war, much more of the

original Socialist ardor. It aimed always at

co-operation with the industrial organizations of

wage-earners, and, chiefly through its efforts, the

Labor Party[20] was formed in 1900 out of a

combination of the Trade Unions and the political

Socialists. To this party, since 1909, all the important

Unions have belonged, but in spite of the fact

that its strength is derived from Trade Unions, it

has stood always for political rather than industrial

action. Its Socialism has been of a theoretical and

academic order, and in practice, until the outbreak

of war, the Labor members in Parliament (of whom

30 were elected in 1906 and 42 in December, 1910)

might be reckoned almost as a part of the Liberal

Party.

[20] Of which the Independent Labor Party is only a section.

France, unlike England and Germany, was not

content merely to repeat the old shibboleths with

continually diminishing conviction. In France[21] a new

movement, originally known as Revolutionary

Syndicalism--and afterward simply as Syndicalism--

kept alive the vigor of the original impulse, and

remained true to the spirit of the older Socialists,

while departing from the letter. Syndicalism, unlike

Socialism and Anarchism, began from an existing

organization and developed the ideas appropriate

to it, whereas Socialism and Anarchism began with

the ideas and only afterward developed the organizations

which were their vehicle. In order to understand

Syndicalism, we have first to describe Trade

Union organization in France, and its political

environment. The ideas of Syndicalism will then

appear as the natural outcome of the political and

economic situation. Hardly any of these ideas are

new; almost all are derived from the Bakunist section

of the old International.[21] The old International

had considerable success in France before the Franco-

Prussian War; indeed, in 1869, it is estimated to

have had a French membership of a quarter of a million.

What is practically the Syndicalist program

was advocated by a French delegate to the Congress

of the International at Bale in that same year.[22]

[20] And also in Italy. A good, short account of the Italian

movement is given by A. Lanzillo, ``Le Mouvement Ouvrier en

Italie,'' Bibliotheque du Mouvement Proletarien. See also Paul

Louis, ``Le Syndicalisme Europeen,'' chap. vi. On the other

hand Cole (``World of Labour,'' chap. vi) considers the strength

of genuine Syndicalism in Italy to be small.

[21] This is often recognized by Syndicalists themselves. See,

e.g., an article on ``The Old International'' in the Syndicalist

of February, 1913, which, after giving an account of the struggle

between Marx and Bakunin from the standpoint of a sympathizer

with the latter, says: ``Bakounin's ideas are now more alive

than ever.''

[22] See pp. 42-43, and 160 of ``Syndicalism in France,'' Louis

Levine, Ph.D. (Columbia University Studies in Political Science,

vol. xlvi, No. 3.) This is a very objective and reliable account

of the origin and progress of French Syndicalism. An admirable

short discussion of its ideas and its present position will be

found in Cole's ``World of Labour'' (G. Bell & Sons), especially

chapters iii, iv, and xi.

The war of 1870 put an end for the time being

to the Socialist Movement in France. Its revival

was begun by Jules Guesde in 1877. Unlike the Ger-

man Socialists, the French have been split into many

different factions. In the early eighties there was a

split between the Parliamentary Socialists and the

Communist Anarchists. The latter thought that the

first act of the Social Revolution should be the

destruction of the State, and would therefore have

nothing to do with Parliamentary politics. The

Anarchists, from 1883 onward, had success in Paris

and the South. The Socialists contended that the

State will disappear after the Socialist society has

been firmly established. In 1882 the Socialists split

between the followers of Guesde, who claimed to represent

the revolutionary and scientific Socialism of

Marx, and the followers of Paul Brousse, who were

more opportunist and were also called possibilists

and cared little for the theories of Marx. In 1890

there was a secession from the Broussists, who followed

Allemane and absorbed the more revolutionary

elements of the party and became leading spirits in

some of the strongest syndicates. Another group

was the Independent Socialists, among whom were

Jaures, Millerand and Viviani.[23]

[23] See Levine, op. cit., chap. ii.

The disputes between the various sections of

Socialists caused difficulties in the Trade Unions and

helped to bring about the resolution to keep politics

out of the Unions. From this to Syndicalism was

an easy step.

Since the year 1905, as the result of a union

between the Parti Socialiste de France (Part; Ouvrier

Socialiste Revolutionnaire Francais led by

Guesde) and the Parti Socialiste Francais (Jaures),

there have been only two groups of Socialists, the

United Socialist Party and the Independents, who

are intellectuals or not willing to be tied to a party.

At the General Election of 1914 the former secured

102 members and the latter 30, out of a total of 590.

Tendencies toward a rapprochement between the

various groups were seriously interfered with by an

event which had considerable importance for the

whole development of advanced political ideas in

France, namely, the acceptance of office in the Waldeck-

Rousseau Ministry by the Socialist Millerand

in 1899. Millerand, as was to be expected, soon

ceased to be a Socialist, and the opponents of political

action pointed to his development as showing

the vanity of political triumphs. Very many French

politicians who have risen to power have begun their

political career as Socialists, and have ended it not

infrequently by employing the army to oppress

strikers. Millerand's action was the most notable

and dramatic among a number of others of a similar

kind. Their cumulative effect has been to produce a

certain cynicism in regard to politics among the more

class-conscious of French wage-earners, and this

state of mind greatly assisted the spread of Syndicalism.

Syndicalism stands essentially for the point of

view of the producer as opposed to that of the consumer;

it is concerned with reforming actual work,

and the organization of industry, not MERELY with

securing greater rewards for work. From this point

of view its vigor and its distinctive character are

derived. It aims at substituting industrial for political

action, and at using Trade Union organization

for purposes for which orthodox Socialism would

look to Parliament. ``Syndicalism'' was originally

only the French name for Trade Unionism, but the

Trade Unionists of France became divided into two

sections, the Reformist and the Revolutionary, of

whom the latter only professed the ideas which we

now associate with the term ``Syndicalism.'' It is

quite impossible to guess how far either the organization

or the ideas of the Syndicalists will remain intact

at the end of the war, and everything that we shall say

is to be taken as applying only to the years before

the war. It may be that French Syndicalism as a

distinctive movement will be dead, but even in that

case it will not have lost its importance, since it has

given a new impulse and direction to the more vigorous

part of the labor movement in all civilized countries,

with the possible exception of Germany.

The organization upon which Syndicalism de-

pended was the Confederation Generale du Travail,

commonly known as the C. G. T., which was founded

in 1895, but only achieved its final form in 1902. It

has never been numerically very powerful, but has

derived its influence from the fact that in moments

of crisis many who were not members were willing

to follow its guidance. Its membership in the year

before the war is estimated by Mr. Cole at somewhat

more than half a million. Trade Unions (Syndicats)

were legalized by Waldeck-Rousseau in 1884,

and the C. G. T., on its inauguration in 1895, was

formed by the Federation of 700 Syndicats. Alongside

of this organization there existed another, the

Federation des Bourses du Travail, formed in 1893.

A Bourse du Travail is a local organization, not of

any one trade, but of local labor in general, intended

to serve as a Labor Exchange and to perform such

functions for labor as Chambers of Commerce perform

for the employer.[24] A Syndicat is in general

a local organization of a single industry, and is thus

a smaller unit than the Bourse du Travail.[25] Under

the able leadership of Pelloutier, the Federation des

Bourses prospered more than the C. G. T., and at

last, in 1902, coalesced with it. The result was an

organization in which the local Syndicat was fed-

erated twice over, once with the other Syndicat in

its locality, forming together the local Bourse du

Travail, and again with the Syndicats in the same

industry in other places. ``It was the purpose of the

new organization to secure twice over the membership

of every syndicat, to get it to join both its local

Bourse du Travail and the Federation of its industry.

The Statutes of the C. G. T. (I. 3) put this point

plainly: `No Syndicat will be able to form a part of

the C. G. T. if it is not federated nationally and an

adherent of a Bourse du Travail or a local or departmental

Union of Syndicats grouping different associations.'

Thus, M. Lagardelle explains, the two sections

will correct each other's point of view: national

federation of industries will prevent parochialism

(localisme), and local organization will check the

corporate or `Trade Union' spirit. The workers will

learn at once the solidarity of all workers in a locality

and that of all workers in a trade, and, in learning

this, they will learn at the same time the complete

solidarity of the whole working-class.''[26]

[24] Cole, ib., p. 65.

[25] ``Syndicat in France still means a local union--there are

at the present day only four national syndicats'' (ib., p. 66).

[26] Cole, ib. p. 69.

This organization was largely the work of Pellouties,

who was Secretary of the Federation des Bourses

from 1894 until his death in 1901. He was an Anarchist

Communist and impressed his ideas upon the

Federation and thence posthumously on the C. G. T.

after its combination with the Federation des

Bourses. He even carried his principles into the

government of the Federation; the Committee had

no chairman and votes very rarely took place. He

stated that ``the task of the revolution is to free

mankind, not only from all authority, but also from

every institution which has not for its essential purpose

the development of production.''

The C. G. T. allows much autonomy to each unit

in the organization. Each Syndicat counts for one,

whether it be large or small. There are not the

friendly society activities which form so large a part

of the work of English Unions. It gives no orders,

but is purely advisory. It does not allow politics

to be introduced into the Unions. This decision was

originally based upon the fact that the divisions

among Socialists disrupted the Unions, but it is now

reinforced in the minds of an important section by

the general Anarchist dislike of politics. The C. G.

T. is essentially a fighting organization; in strikes, it

is the nucleus to which the other workers rally.

There is a Reformist section in the C. G. T., but

it is practically always in a minority, and the C. G.

T. is, to all intents and purposes, the organ of

revolutionary Syndicalism, which is simply the creed

of its leaders.

The essential doctrine of Syndicalism is the class-

war, to be conducted by industrial rather than politi-

cal methods. The chief industrial methods advocated

are the strike, the boycott, the label and sabotage.

The boycott, in various forms, and the label,

showing that the work has been done under trade-

union conditions, have played a considerable part

in American labor struggles.

Sabotage is the practice of doing bad work, or

spoiling machinery or work which has already been

done, as a method of dealing with employers in a

dispute when a strike appears for some reason

undesirable or impossible. It has many forms, some

clearly innocent, some open to grave objections. One

form of sabotage which has been adopted by shop

assistants is to tell customers the truth about the

articles they are buying; this form, however it may

damage the shopkeeper's business, is not easy to

object to on moral grounds. A form which has been

adopted on railways, particularly in Italian strikes,

is that of obeying all rules literally and exactly, in

such a way as to make the running of trains practically

impossible. Another form is to do all the

work with minute care, so that in the end it is better

done, but the output is small. From these innocent

forms there is a continual progression, until we come

to such acts as all ordinary morality would consider

criminal; for example, causing railway accidents.

Advocates of sabotage justify it as part of

war, but in its more violent forms (in which it is

seldom defended) it is cruel and probably inexpedient,

while even in its milder forms it must tend to encourage

slovenly habits of work, which might easily persist

under the new regime that the Syndicalists wish

to introduce. At the same time, when capitalists

express a moral horror of this method, it is worth

while to observe that they themselves are the first

to practice it when the occasion seems to them appropriate.

If report speaks truly, an example of this

on a very large scale has been seen during the Russian

Revolution.

By far the most important of the Syndicalist

methods is the strike. Ordinary strikes, for specific

objects, are regarded as rehearsals, as a means of

perfecting organization and promoting enthusiasm,

but even when they are victorious so far as concerns

the specific point in dispute, they are not regarded

by Syndicalists as affording any ground for industrial

peace. Syndicalists aim at using the strike,

not to secure such improvements of detail as employers

may grant, but to destroy the whole system of

employer and employed and win the complete emancipation

of the worker. For this purpose what is

wanted is the General Strike, the complete cessation

of work by a sufficient proportion of the wage-earners

to secure the paralysis of capitalism. Sorel, who

represents Syndicalism too much in the minds of the

reading public, suggests that the General Strike is to

be regarded as a myth, like the Second Coming in

Christian doctrine. But this view by no means suits

the active Syndicalists. If they were brought to

believe that the General Strike is a mere myth, their

energy would flag, and their whole outlook would

become disillusioned. It is the actual, vivid belief

in its possibility which inspires them. They are much

criticised for this belief by the political Socialists

who consider that the battle is to be won by obtaining

a Parliamentary majority. But Syndicalists have

too little faith in the honesty of politicians to place

any reliance on such a method or to believe in the

value of any revolution which leaves the power of the

State intact.

Syndicalist aims are somewhat less definite than

Syndicalist methods. The intellectuals who endeavor

to interpret them--not always very faithfully--

represent them as a party of movement and change,

following a Bergsonian elan vital, without needing

any very clear prevision of the goal to which it is to

take them. Nevertheless, the negative part, at any

rate, of their objects is sufficiently clear.

They wish to destroy the State, which they

regard as a capitalist institution, designed essentially

to terrorize the workers. They refuse to

believe that it would be any better under State Socialism.

They desire to see each industry self-governing,

but as to the means of adjusting the relations between

different industries, they are not very clear. They

are anti-militarist because they are anti-State, and

because French troops have often been employed

against them in strikes; also because they are

internationalists, who believe that the sole interest of the

working man everywhere is to free himself from the

tyranny of the capitalist. Their outlook on life is

the very reverse of pacifist, but they oppose wars

between States on the ground that these are not

fought for objects that in any way concern the

workers. Their anti-militarism, more than anything

else, brought them into conflict with the authorities

in the years preceding the war. But, as was to be

expected, it did not survive the actual invasion of

France.

The doctrines of Syndicalism may be illustrated

by an article introducing it to English readers in

the first number of ``The Syndicalist Railwayman,''

September, 1911, from which the following is quoted:--

``All Syndicalism, Collectivism, Anarchism aims at

abolishing the present economic status and existing private

ownership of most things; but while Collectivism

would substitute ownership by everybody, and Anarchism

ownership by nobody, Syndicalism aims at ownership by

Organized Labor. It is thus a purely Trade Union

reading of the economic doctrine and the class war

preached by Socialism. It vehemently repudiates Parliamentary

action on which Collectivism relies; and it is,

in this respect, much more closely allied to Anarchism,

from which, indeed, it differs in practice only in being

more limited in range of action.'' (Times, Aug. 25, 1911).

In truth, so thin is the partition between Syndicalism

and Anarchism that the newer and less familiar ``ism''

has been shrewdly defined as ``Organized Anarchy.'' It

has been created by the Trade Unions of France; but it

is obviously an international plant, whose roots have

already found the soil of Britain most congenial to its

growth and fructification.

Collectivist or Marxian Socialism would have us believe

that it is distinctly a LABOR Movement; but it is

not so. Neither is Anarchism. The one is substantially

bourgeois; the other aristocratic, plus an abundant output

of book-learning, in either case. Syndicalism, on the contrary,

is indubitably laborist in origin and aim, owing

next to nothing to the ``Classes,'' and, indeed,, resolute to

uproot them. The Times (Oct. 13, 1910), which almost

single-handed in the British Press has kept creditably

abreast of Continental Syndicalism, thus clearly set forth

the significance of the General Strike:

``To understand what it means, we must remember

that there is in France a powerful Labor Organization

which has for its open and avowed object a Revolution,

in which not only the present order of Society, but the

State itself, is to be swept away. This movement is called

Syndicalism. It is not Socialism, but, on the contrary,

radically opposed to Socialism, because the Syndicalists

hold that the State is the great enemy and that the

Socialists' ideal of State or Collectivist Ownership would

make the lot of the Workers much worse than it is now

under private employers. The means by which they hope

to attain their end is the General Strike, an idea which

was invented by a French workman about twenty years

ago,[27] and was adopted by the French Labor Congress in

1894, after a furious battle with the Socialists, in which

the latter were worsted. Since then the General Strike

has been the avowed policy of the Syndicalists, whose

organization is the Confederation Generale du Travail.''

[27] In fact the General Strike was invented by a Londoner

William Benbow, an Owenite, in 1831.

Or, to put it otherwise, the intelligent French worker

has awakened, as he believes, to the fact that Society

(Societas) and the State (Civitas) connote two separable

spheres of human activity, between which there is no

connection, necessary or desirable. Without the one, man,

being a gregarious animal, cannot subsist: while without

the other he would simply be in clover. The ``statesman''

whom office does not render positively nefarious

is at best an expensive superfluity.

Syndicalists have had many violent encounters

with the forces of government. In 1907 and 1908,

protesting against bloodshed which had occurred in

the suppression of strikes, the Committee of the C.

G. T. issued manifestoes speaking of the Government

as ``a Government of assassins'' and alluding

to the Prime Minister as ``Clemenceau the murderer.''

Similar events in the strike at Villeneuve St. Georges

in 1908 led to the arrest of all the leading members

of the Committee. In the railway strike of October,

1910, Monsieur Briand arrested the Strike Committee,

mobilized the railway men and sent soldiers

to replace strikers. As a result of these vigorous

measures the strike was completely defeated, and

after this the chief energy of the C. G. T. was directed

against militarism and nationalism.

The attitude of Anarchism to the Syndicalist

movement is sympathetic, with the reservation that

such methods as the General Strike are not to be

regarded as substitutes for the violent revolution

which most Anarchists consider necessary. Their

attitude in this matter was defined at the International

Anarchist Congress held in Amsterdam in

August, 1907. This Congress recommended ``comrades

of all countries to actively participate in autonomous

movements of the working class, and to

develop in Syndicalist organizations the ideas of

revolt, individual initiative and solidarity, which are

the essence of Anarchism.'' Comrades were to

``propagate and support only those forms and manifestations

of direct action which carry, in themselves,

a revolutionary character and lead to the

transformation of society.'' It was resolved that

``the Anarchists think that the destruction of the

capitalist and authoritary society can only be realized

by armed insurrection and violent expropriation,

and that the use of the more or less General Strike

and the Syndicalist movement must not make us

forget the more direct means of struggle against

the military force of government.''

Syndicalists might retort that when the movement

is strong enough to win by armed insurrection

it will be abundantly strong enough to win by the

General Strike. In Labor movements generally, success

through violence can hardly be expected except

in circumstances where success without violence is

attainable. This argument alone, even if there were

no other, would be a very powerful reason against

the methods advocated by the Anarchist Congress.

Syndicalism stands for what is known as industrial

unionism as opposed to craft unionism. In this

respect, as also in the preference of industrial to

political methods, it is part of a movement which

has spread far beyond France. The distinction

between industrial and craft unionism is much dwelt

on by Mr. Cole. Craft unionism ``unites in a single

association those workers who are engaged on a single

industrial process, or on processes so nearly akin

that any one can do another's work.'' But ``organization

may follow the lines, not of the work done,

but of the actual structure of industry. All workers

working at producing a particular kind of commodity

may be organized in a single Union. . . .

The basis of organization would be neither the craft

to which a man belonged nor the employer under

whom he worked, but the service on which he was

engaged. This is Industrial Unionism properly

so called.[28]

[28] ``World of Labour,'' pp. 212, 213.

Industrial unionism is a product of America,

and from America it has to some extent spread to

Great Britain. It is the natural form of fighting

organization when the union is regarded as the means

of carrying on the class war with a view, not to

obtaining this or that minor amelioration, but to a

radical revolution in the economic system. This is

the point of view adopted by the ``Industrial Workers

of the World,'' commonly known as the I. W. W.

This organization more or less corresponds in America

to what the C. G. T. was in France before the

war. The differences between the two are those due

to the different economic circumstances of the two

countries, but their spirit is closely analogous. The

I. W. W. is not united as to the ultimate form which

it wishes society to take. There are Socialists,

Anarchists and Syndicalists among its members. But it

is clear on the immediate practical issue, that the

class war is the fundamental reality in the present

relations of labor and capital, and that it is by

industrial action, especially by the strike, that

emancipation must be sought. The I. W. W., like the

C. G. T., is not nearly so strong numerically as it is

supposed to be by those who fear it. Its influence

is based, not upon its numbers, but upon its power

of enlisting the sympathies of the workers in moments

of crisis.

The labor movement in America has been characterized

on both sides by very great violence. Indeed,

the Secretary of the C. G. T., Monsieur Jouhaux,

recognizes that the C. G. T. is mild in comparison

with the I. W. W. ``The I. W. W.,'' he says,

``preach a policy of militant action, very necessary

in parts of America, which would not do in France.''[29]

A very interesting account of it, from the point of

view of an author who is neither wholly on the side

of labor nor wholly on the side of the capitalist, but

disinterestedly anxious to find some solution of the

social question short of violence and revolution, is

the work of Mr. John Graham Brooks, called ``American

Syndicalism: the I. W. W.'' (Macmillan, 1913).

American labor conditions are very different from

those of Europe. In the first place, the power of the

trusts is enormous; the concentration of capital has

in this respect proceeded more nearly on Marxian

lines in America than anywhere else. In the second

place, the great influx of foreign labor makes the

whole problem quite different from any that arises

in Europe. The older skilled workers, largely American

born, have long been organized in the American

Federation of Labor under Mr. Gompers. These

represent an aristocracy of labor. They tend to

work with the employers against the great mass of

unskilled immigrants, and they cannot be regarded as

forming part of anything that could be truly called

a labor movement. ``There are,'' says Mr. Cole,

``now in America two working classes, with different

standards of life, and both are at present almost

impotent in the face of the employers. Nor is it possible

for these two classes to unite or to put forward

any demands. . . . The American Federation

of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the

World represent two different principles of

combination; but they also represent two different

classes of labor.''[30] The I. W. W. stands for industrial

unionism, whereas the American Federation of

Labor stands for craft unionism. The I. W. W. were

formed in 1905 by a union of organizations, chief

among which was the Western Federation of Miners,

which dated from 1892. They suffered a split by the

loss of the followers of Deleon, who was the leader of

the ``Socialist Labor Party'' and advocated a

``Don't vote'' policy, while reprobating violent

methods. The headquarters of the party which he

formed are at Detroit, and those of the main body

are at Chicago. The I. W. W., though it has a less

definite philosophy than French Syndicalism, is quite

equally determined to destroy the capitalist system.

As its secretary has said: ``There is but one bargain

the I. W. W. will make with the employing class--

complete surrender of all control of industry to the

organized workers.''[31] Mr. Haywood, of the Western

Federation of Miners, is an out-and-out follower

of Marx so far as concerns the class war and the

doctrine of surplus value. But, like all who are in

this movement, he attaches more importance to industrial

as against political action than do the European

followers of Marx. This is no doubt partly

explicable by the special circumstances of America,

where the recent immigrants are apt to be voteless.

The fourth convention of the I. W. W. revised a

preamble giving the general principles underlying

its action. ``The working class and the employing

class,'' they say, ``have nothing in common. There

can be no peace so long as hunger and want are

found among millions of the working people and the

few, who make up the employing class, have all the

good things of life. Between these two classes, a

struggle must go on until the workers of the world

organize as a class, take possession of the earth and

the machinery of production, and abolish the wage

system. . . . Instead of the conservative motto,

`A fair day's wages for a fair day's work,' we must

inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword,

`Abolition of the wage system.' ''[32]

[29] Quoted in Cole, ib. p. 128.

[30] Ib., p. 135.

[31] Brooks, op. cit., p. 79.

[32] Brooks, op. cit., pp. 86-87.

Numerous strikes have been conducted or encouraged

by the I. W. W. and the Western Federation

of Miners. These strikes illustrate the class-war

in a more bitter and extreme form than is to be found

in any other part of the world. Both sides are always

ready to resort to violence. The employers have

armies of their own and are able to call upon the

Militia and even, in a crisis, upon the United States

Army. What French Syndicalists say about the

State as a capitalist institution is peculiarly true in

America. In consequence of the scandals thus arising,

the Federal Government appointed a Commission

on Industrial Relations, whose Report, issued in 1915,

reveals a state of affairs such as it would be difficult

to imagine in Great Britain. The report states that

``the greatest disorders and most of the outbreaks

of violence in connection with industrial `disputes

arise from the violation of what are considered

to be fundamental rights, and from the perversion

or subversion of governmental institutions''

(p. 146). It mentions, among such perversions,

the subservience of the judiciary to the mili-

tary authorities,[33] the fact that during a labor

dispute the life and liberty of every man within

the State would seem to be at the mercy of the

Governor (p. 72), and the use of State troops

in policing strikes (p. 298). At Ludlow (Colorado)

in 1914 (April 20) a battle of the militia and the

miners took place, in which, as the result of the fire

of the militia, a number of women and children were

burned to death.[34] Many other instances of pitched

battles could be given, but enough has been said to

show the peculiar character of labor disputes in the

United States. It may, I fear, be presumed that this

character will remain so long as a very large

proportion of labor consists of recent immigrants.

When these difficulties pass away, as they must

sooner or later, labor will more and more find its

place in the community, and will tend to feel and

inspire less of the bitter hostility which renders the

more extreme forms of class war possible. When

that time comes, the labor movement in America will

probably begin to take on forms similar to those of

Europe.

[33] Although uniformly held that the writ of habeas corpus

can only be suspended by the legislature, in these labor disturbances

the executive has in fact suspended or disregarded the

writ. . . . In cases arising from labor agitations, the judiciary

has uniformly upheld the power exercised by the military,

and in no case has there been any protest against the use of

such power or any attempt to curtail it, except in Montana,

where the conviction of a civilian by military commission was

annulled'' (``Final Report of the Commission on Industrial

Relations'' (1915) appointed by the United States Congress,''

p. 58).

[34] Literary Digest, May 2 and May 16, 1914.

Meanwhile, though the forms are different, the

aims are very similar, and industrial unionism,

spreading from America, has had a considerable

influence in Great Britain--an influence naturally

reinforced by that of French Syndicalism. It is

clear, I think, that the adoption of industrial rather

than craft unionism is absolutely necessary if Trade

Unionism is to succeed in playing that part in altering

the economic structure of society which its advocates

claim for it rather than for the political

parties. Industrial unionism organizes men, as craft

unionism does not, in accordance with the enemy

whom they have to fight. English unionism is still

very far removed from the industrial form, though

certain industries, especially the railway men, have

gone very far in this direction, and it is notable that

the railway men are peculiarly sympathetic to Syndicalism

and industrial unionism.

Pure Syndicalism, however, is not very likely to

achieve wide popularity in Great Britain. Its spirit

is too revolutionary and anarchistic for our temperament.

It is in the modified form of Guild Socialism

that the ideas derived from the C. G. T. and the I. W.

W. are tending to bear fruit.[35] This movement is as

yet in its infancy and has no great hold upon the rank

and file, but it is being ably advocated by a group

of young men, and is rapidly gaining ground among

those who will form Labor opinion in years to come.

The power of the State has been so much increased

during the war that those who naturally dislike

things as they are, find it more and more difficult to

believe that State omnipotence can be the road to the

millennium. Guild Socialists aim at autonomy in

industry, with consequent curtailment, but not abolition,

of the power of the State. The system which

they advocate is, I believe, the best hitherto proposed,

and the one most likely to secure liberty without

the constant appeals to violence which are to be

feared under a purely Anarchist regime.

[35] The ideas of Guild Socialism were first set forth in

``National Guilds,'' edited by A. R. Orage (Bell & Sons, 1914),

and in Cole's ``World of Labour'' (Bell & Sons), first published

in 1913. Cole's ``Self-Government in Industry'' (Bell &

Sons, 1917) and Rickett & Bechhofer's ``The Meaning of

National Guilds'' (Palmer & Hayward, 1918) should also be

read, as well as various pamphlets published by the National

Guilds League. The attitude of the Syndicalists to Guild

Socialism is far from sympathetic. An article in ``The

Syndicalist'' for February, 1914, speaks of it in the following

terms: a Middle-class of the middle-class, with all the shortcomings

(we had almost said `stupidities') of the middle-

classes writ large across it, `Guild Socialism' stands forth

as the latest lucubration of the middle-class mind. It is a

`cool steal' of the leading ideas of Syndicalism and a deliberate

perversion of them. . . . We do protest against the `State'

idea . . . in Guild Socialism. Middle-class people, even

when they become Socialists, cannot get rid of the idea that the

working-class is their `inferior'; that the workers need to be

`educated,' drilled, disciplined, and generally nursed for a very

long time before they will be able to walk by themselves. The

very reverse is actually the truth. . . . It is just the plain

truth when we say that the ordinary wage-worker, of average

intelligence, is better capable of taking care of himself than the

half-educated middle-class man who wants to advise him. He

knows how to make the wheels of the world go round.''

The first pamphlet of the ``National Guilds

League'' sets forth their main principles. In industry

each factory is to be free to control its own

methods of production by means of elected managers.

The different factories in a given industry are to be

federated into a National Guild which will deal with

marketing and the general interests of the industry

as a whole. ``The State would own the means of

production as trustee for the community; the Guilds

would manage them, also as trustees for the community,

and would pay to the State a single tax or

rent. Any Guild that chose to set its own interests

above those of the community would be violating

its trust, and would have to bow to the judgment of

a tribunal equally representing the whole body of

producers and the whole body of consumers. This

Joint Committee would be the ultimate sovereign

body, the ultimate appeal court of industry. It

would fix not only Guild taxation, but also standard

prices, and both taxation and prices would be periodically

readjusted by it.'' Each Guild will be

entirely free to apportion what it receives among its

members as it chooses, its members being all those who

work in the industry which it covers. ``The distribution

of this collective Guild income among the

members seems to be a matter for each Guild to decide

for itself. Whether the Guilds would, sooner or later,

adopt the principle of equal payment for every member,

is open to discussion.'' Guild Socialism accepts

from Syndicalism the view that liberty is not to be

secured by making the State the employer: ``The

State and the Municipality as employers have turned

out not to differ essentially from the private capitalist.''

Guild Socialists regard the State as consisting

of the community in their capacity as consumers,

while the Guilds will represent them in their capacity

as producers; thus Parliament and the Guild Congress

will be two co-equal powers representing consumers

and producers respectively. Above both will

be the joint Committee of Parliament and the Guild

Congress for deciding matters involving the interests

of consumers and producers alike. The view of the

Guild Socialists is that State Socialism takes account

of men only as consumers, while Syndicalism takes

account of them only as producers. ``The problem,''

say the Guild Socialists, ``is to reconcile the two

points of view. That is what advocates of National

Guilds set out to do. The Syndicalist has claimed

everything for the industrial organizations of producers,

the Collectivist everything for the territorial

or political organizations of consumers. Both are

open to the same criticism; you cannot reconcile two

points of view merely by denying one of them.''[36]

But although Guild Socialism represents an attempt

at readjustment between two equally legitimate points

of view, its impulse and force are derived from

what it has taken over from Syndicalism. Like Syndicalism;

it desires not primarily to make work better

paid, but to secure this result along with others by

making it in itself more interesting and more democratic

in organization.

[36] The above quotations are all from the first pamphlet of the

National Guilds League, ``National Guilds, an Appeal to Trade

Unionists.''

Capitalism has made of work a purely commercial

activity, a soulless and a joyless thing. But substitute

the national service of the Guilds for the profiteering of

the few; substitute responsible labor for a saleable commodity;

substitute self-government and decentralization

for the bureaucracy and demoralizing hugeness of the

modern State and the modern joint stock company; and

then it may be just once more to speak of a ``joy in

labor,'' and once more to hope that men may be proud

of quality and not only of quantity in their work. There

is a cant of the Middle Ages, and a cant of ``joy in

labor,'' but it were better, perhaps, to risk that cant

than to reconcile ourselves forever to the philosophy of

Capitalism and of Collectivism, which declares that work

is a necessary evil never to be made pleasant, and that

the workers' only hope is a leisure which shall be longer,

richer, and well adorned with municipal amenities.[37]

[37] ``The Guild Idea,'' No. 2 of the Pamphlets of the National

Guilds League, p. 17.

Whatever may be thought of the practicability

of Syndicalism, there is no doubt that the ideas which

it has put into the world have done a great deal

to revive the labor movement and to recall it to certain

things of fundamental importance which it had

been in danger of forgetting. Syndicalists consider

man as producer rather than consumer. They are

more concerned to procure freedom in work than to

increase material well-being. They have revived the

quest for liberty, which was growing somewhat

dimmed under the regime of Parliamentary Socialism,

and they have reminded men that what our modern

society needs is not a little tinkering here and there,

nor the kind of minor readjustments to which the

existing holders of power may readily consent, but

a fundamental reconstruction, a sweeping away of

all the sources of oppression, a liberation of men's

constructive energies, and a wholly new way of

conceiving and regulating production and economic

relations. This merit is so great that, in view of it,

all minor defects become insignificant, and this merit

Syndicalism will continue to possess even if, as a

definite movement, it should be found to have passed

away with the war.

PART II

PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE