Syndicalism in France

by Lewis L. Lorwin

This view, however, is a “myth” and should be discarded. French writers who have studied the social movement of their country and who are competent judges have tried to dispel the error that has gotten abroad.[176] The theorists of the Mouvement Socialiste themselves have repeatedly declined the “honor” which error has conferred upon them. M. Lagardelle has reiterated time and again that revolutionary syndicalism was born of the experience of the labor movement and worked out by the workingmen themselves. M. Sorel has said that he learned more from the syndicalist workingmen than they could learn from him. And in an article reviewing the book of Professor Sombart, M. Berth has insisted that Professor Sombart was in error. “If we had any part,” wrote he, “it was the simple part of interpreters, of translators, of glossers; we have served as spokesmen, that's all; but it is necessary to avoid reducing to a few propositions of a school, a movement which is so essentially working-class and the leading ideas of which, such as direct action and the general strike, are so specifically of a working-class character.”[177]

This must not be taken as over-modesty on the part of “intellectuals” who are careful not to pose as leaders or as inspirers. The facts are there to prove the statements of M. Lagardelle and of M. Sorel. The idea of the general strike was elaborated by workingmen-members of the various committees on the general strike. The idea of “direct action,” as has been shown, found its defenders in the first Congresses of the General Confederation of Labor. The theory of the social rôle of the syndicat was formulated by Pelloutier and by other members of the “Federation of Bourses” before M. Sorel wrote his little book on The Socialist Future of the Syndicats.

Even the statement of M. Berth must be somewhat modified. The theorists of the Mouvement Socialiste have never by any means been the authorized “spokesmen” of the revolutionary syndicalists of the General Confederation. They were no more than a group of writers who, watching the syndicalist movement from the outside, were stimulated by it to their reflections and ideas. They thought they found in the syndicalist movement “a truly original force capable of refreshing the socialist conception”, and they formulated their ideas on the subject. They never took any part in the movement, and could not feel themselves its representatives.

What then was their influence? In general, the same as that of other socialist writers. They were and are read by the French workingmen just as Kropotkin, Jaurès, Proudhon and other contemporary or former socialist and anarchist writers, and as many non-socialist writers are. Naturally, some workingmen came more under their influence, than under that of others; and such workingmen may be disposed to look upon them as their theoretical guides and leaders.

But even the latter interpretation is by no means applicable to all the theories of M. Sorel, for the main ideas of Sorel seem fundamentally incapable of inspiring a movement of large masses. The theory of the “social myth” may be original and attractive, but if accepted by the workingmen could not inspire them to action. If “images of battles” are important for the “rising classes” as an impelling force, they can be so only so long as they are naïvely and fully believed in. The worm of reflection must not touch them. The “men longing for deliverance” must believe that the future will be just as they picture it, otherwise their enthusiasm for these pictures would find no nourishment. Should they come to realize the “utopian” and “mythical” character of their constructions they would abandon them.

The pessimistic basis of M. Sorel's Weltanschauung may appeal to literary men, to students of philosophy and to individuals longing for a moral theory. It can not be assimilated by a mass “moving toward emancipation.” When one reads the original documents of the syndicalist movement, he is struck, on the contrary, by the powerful torrent of optimism by which the movement is carried along. Only a strong belief in a “speedy emancipation” created the enthusiasm for the idea of the general strike. There may be a subconscious pessimism back of this optimism, but its appearance in the field of clear consciousness would have been destructive for the movement.

It is, therefore, quite natural that the writers representing the General Confederation of Labor who address the workingmen directly do not reproduce these theories of M. Sorel. As has been indicated already, their writings bear a different stamp. And if among these writers some, as for instance M. Griffuelhes, seem to have come more under the influence of the group Le Mouvement Socialiste, the rest occupy an independent position even from the theoretical point of view.

How little M. Sorel could have been the “leader” of the revolutionary syndicalist movement may be illustrated by the following comparison. At the Congress of Lyons in 1901 the secretary of the General Confederation of Labor, M. Guérard, wrote, as we have seen, that the Confederation is destined to transform society. In the same year, M. Sorel, in his preface to Pelloutier's Histoire des Bourses du Travail, wrote: “The Confederation of Labor appears to me to be destined to become an officious Council of Labor, and an academy of proletarian ideas, which will present its wishes to the government, as the large agricultural societies do.” The history of the General Confederation of Labor since 1902, to be considered in the following chapter, will show that M. Sorel missed the point too far to be able to claim the title of “leader” whose function, presumably, is to point out the way and not to acknowledge it, after it has once been taken.

It is necessary to bear all this in mind in order to grasp the real character of revolutionary syndicalism. M. Sorel has recently renounced his revolutionary syndicalist ideas. In December, 1910, he wrote to the Italian revolutionary syndicalists who invited him to their Congress at Boulogne:

It seems to the author [of the Reflections on Violence] that syndicalism has not realized what was expected from it. Many hope that the future will correct the evils of the present hour; but the author feels himself too old to live in distant hopes; and he has decided to employ the remaining years of his life in the deepening (approfondir) of other questions which keenly interest the cultivated youth of France.[178]