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Updated: May 16, 2025
Here, at least, is a valuable warning to Socialism against what its most revolutionary and enthusiastic adherents have always felt is its chief danger. The fact that lends force to Lagardelle's argument is that the average workingman has a much more important, necessary, and continuous function to fill as a member of the labor unions than as a member of the Socialist parties.
Lagardelle's remedy is not the establishment of direct democracy in government or in parties, but the organization of the people to act together on "the concrete things of life"; that is, on questions of hours, wages, and other conditions closely associated with their daily life and in his view adapted to their understanding.
In a recent congress of the French Party, Jaurès protested against a statement of Lagardelle's that Socialism was opposed to democracy. "Democracy," Lagardelle answered, "corresponds to an historical movement which has come to an end; syndicalism is an anti-democratic movement to the extent that it is post-democratic.
The revolutionary spirit comes down from heaven onto the earth, becomes flesh, manifests itself by institutions, and identifies itself with life. The daily act takes on a revolutionary value, and social transformation, if it comes some day, will only be the generalization of this act." It is true that Lagardelle's "direct action" tends towards revolution, but does it tend towards Socialism?
Lagardelle's distrust of political democracy goes even further than a mere criticism of representative government. He thinks the citizen to-day unable to judge general political questions at all, so that in his view even direct democracy would be useless. It is for this reason, he says, that parties have it as an aim to act and to think in the citizen's place.
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