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Multitudes rushed to greet it as a kind of new revelation, while other multitudes instinctively looked upon it with suspicion as something that promised once more to introduce dissension into the world of labor. What is syndicalism? Whence came it and why? The first question has been answered in a hundred books written in the last ten years.
``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.
"The only thing that will do any good is to strike and keep on striking until the workers own the mills take everything away from the capitalists." "It's very simple," he agreed, "much simpler than the book I read. That's what they call syndicalism, isn't it?" "Yes."
"Syndicalism is at the bottom," says Louis, "only a powerful expression of that destructive and constructive effort which for years has been shaking the old political and social régime, and is undermining slowly the ancient system of property. It points necessarily to collectivism and communism. It represents Socialism in action, in daily and continuous action....
Sir James, who had all his life moved among serious and earnest people, found Miss Molly's easy cheerfulness very fascinating. Even portentous words like syndicalism, which rang in other people's ears like the passing bells of our social order, moved her to airy laughter. There were those, oldish men and slightly less oldish women, who called her flippant.
Tolstoi is a blasé aristocrat, disgusted with civilization by having too much eaten of it." Whether or not this characterization of Tolstoi is justified, there can be no question that many of this type rushed to the aid of syndicalism. Its savage vigor appeals to some artists, decadents, and déclassés.
Syndicalism, peaceful enough in other countries, immediately assumed in France an uncompromising and anarchical aspect, which betrayed itself in the shape of riots, sabotage, and incendiarism. Not to be repressed by timid Governments, the Jacobin spirit produces melancholy ravages in minds of mediocre capacity.
When these differences have been stated, there is little more to be said, and, on the whole, Yvetot was justified in saying at the congress of Toulouse : "I am reproached with confusing syndicalism and anarchism. It is not my fault if anarchism and syndicalism have the same ends in view.
Regarded as a project of social development, Syndicalism is ridiculous; regarded as an illuminating and unintentionally ironical complement to the implicit theories of our present social order, it is worthy of close attention. The dream of the Syndicalist is an impossible social fragmentation.
The Irish first conceived the idea of using their order-papers as funnels wherewith to reach the correct 'vroom vroom' on 'Earth. Labour, always conservative and respectable at a crisis, stood out longer than any other section, but when it came in it was howling syndicalism.
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