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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.
While there is much truth in this analysis, this being the situation which it is sought to correct both in government and within political parties by such means as direct legislation and the recall, Lagardelle does not seem to see that exactly the same problem exists also in the labor unions.
Lagardelle frankly places labor union action not only above political action, which Socialists, under many circumstances, may justify, but above Socialism itself.
It is a noteworthy and rather startling fact that Sidney and Beatrice Webb had pointed out the economic fallacies of syndicalism before the French Confederation of Labor was founded or Sorel, Berth, and Lagardelle had written a line on the subject. In their "History of Trade Unionism" they tell most interestingly the story of Owen's early trade-union socialism.
"Political society," says Lagardelle, "being the organization of the coercive power of the State, that is to say, of authority and the hierarchy, corresponds to an economic régime which has authority and the hierarchy as its base."
Lagardelle speaks of the "State Socialistic" reform tendency as synonymous with "modern democracy." Because it supposes that there are "general problems common to all classes," says Lagardelle, democracy refuses to take into account the real difference between men, which is that they are divided into economic classes. Here we see the central principle of Socialism exaggerated to an absurdity.
It is the boast of the syndicalists that in their plan of revolutionary unionism, practice and theory become one, that actions become revolutionary as well as words "Men are classed," says Lagardelle, "according to their acts and not according to their labels.
The French advocate of economic action and revolutionary labor unionism, Lagardelle, who recently surprised some of his French comrades, as I have already pointed out, by running as a candidate for the French Chamber, claimed that he did this in entire consistency with his principles.
There is nothing perhaps in socialist literature which so ably sustains the traditional position of the socialist movement. The battles in France over this question have been bitterly fought for over half a century. The most brilliant of minds have been engaged in the struggle. Proudhon, Bakounin, Briand, Sorel, Lagardelle, Berth, Hervé, are men of undoubted ability.
Whatever the English, the Swiss, the Germans, and the Americans might hope to accomplish by means of the present political State the Belgians repudiated theirs." pp. 31-2. See "La Grève Générale," compiled by Lagardelle, p. 95. Another resolution dealt with what was called the "split" among the workers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
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