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The basis of their view is that the working people cannot win by mere numbers or intelligence, but must have a practical power to organize along radically new lines and an ability to create new social institutions independently of capitalist opposition or aid. Lagardelle writes: "There is nothing in syndicalism which can recall the dogmatism of orthodox Socialism.
Lagardelle, however, is a member of the Socialist Party and was recently even a candidate for the French Chamber of Deputies. And there are signs that even in France syndicalism is losing its anti-political tendency.
Syndicalism comes after democracy; it perfects the life which democracy was powerless to organize." It is difficult to understand why Lagardelle persists in saying that a movement which thus supplements democracy, which does what democracy was claiming to do, and which is expected to supersede it, should on this account be considered as "anti-democratic."
Lagardelle would be right, from the Socialist standpoint, if he demanded that it should oppose mere political democracy, or "State Socialism" in proportion as these forces have succeeded in reorganizing the capitalist State or rather after they have been assimilated by it.
"Representative revolutionary unionists, like Lagardelle of France and Tom Mann of Australia," said the Review, "point out the immense value of a political party as an auxiliary to the unions. A revolutionary union without the backing of a revolutionary party will be tied up by injunctions. Its officers will be kidnapped.
The leading "syndicalist" writer to-day, Hubert Lagardelle, feels not only that a Socialist Party is not likely to bring about a Socialist society, but that any steps that it might try to take in this direction to-day would necessarily be along the wrong lines, since it would establish reforms by law rather than as a natural upgrowth out of economic conditions and the activities of labor unions, with the result that such reforms would necessarily go no farther than "State Socialism."
Democracy is, in the view of Sorel, the régime par excellence, in which men are governed "by the magical power of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by formulas rather than by reasons; by dogmas, the origin of which nobody cares to find out, rather than by doctrines based on observation." Lagardelle declares that syndicalism is post-democratic.
Among the leaders of Syndicalist thought on the Continent may be mentioned the names of three prominent Frenchmen, Berth, Lagardelle, and Sorel, together with that of the young Italian professor Labriola, who is leading the increasingly active party in his own country. In France, Italy, and America alike, Syndicalism stands for the class- war. Its central feature is the idea of a General Strike.
Even the "syndicalists," little interested as they are in reform, seem to fear, as Kautsky does, that so long as considerable changes for the better are possible, progress towards Socialism, which in their case also implies revolution, is impossible. I have shown that Lagardelle denies that Labor and Capital have any interest whatever in common.
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