CHAPTER VIII
Character and Conditions of Revolutionary Syndicalism
The history of the General Confederation of Labor as told in the preceding chapters has brought out in a general way the character of revolutionary syndicalism and the conditions which have influenced its rise and development. It remains now in this last chapter to emphasize the principal points and to strengthen them by a more complete analysis of facts and conditions.
It has been maintained throughout this work that revolutionary syndicalism was created by a bloc of revolutionary elements in the Confederation. This character of a bloc has been denied by many. Those hostile to the Confederation are anxious to create the impression that the latter is exclusively the creation and the tool of the anarchists. Others more or less impartial fail to acknowledge the part played in the movement by the non-anarchist elements. Some anarchists themselves are only too glad to be considered the creators of the movement and to maintain a view which is a tribute to their organizing ability and to their influence.
Many revolutionary syndicalists, however, protest against being considered anarchists. Some of them are active members of the Unified Socialist Party. Others do not belong to the Socialist party, but have never been connected with the Anarchists. They are revolutionary syndicalists, “pure and simple.” And these two other elements are by no means less influential in the Confederation than the Anarchists.
The three elements enumerated have somewhat different ways of regarding revolutionary syndicalism. To the anarchists revolutionary syndicalism is but a partial application of anarchist ideas. M. Yvetot, secretary of the section of Bourses, said at the recent Congress of Toulouse (1910): “I am reproached with confusing syndicalism and anarchism. It is not my fault if anarchism and syndicalism have the same ends in view. The former pursues the integral emancipation of the individual; the latter the integral emancipation of the workingman. I find the whole of syndicalism in anarchism.”[214]
To the revolutionary socialists in the Confederation syndicalism is the primary and fundamental form of revolutionary socialism. It does not exclude, however, other forms; on the contrary, it must be completed by the political organization of the Socialist party, because it has no answer of its own to many social problems.
The third group of revolutionary syndicalists regards revolutionary syndicalism as self-sufficing and independent of both anarchism and socialism. This group, like the first, emphasizes the fact that there is an irreconcilable antagonism between syndicalism and political socialism. “It is necessary,” writes Jouhaux, secretary of the Confederation, “that the proletariat should know that between parliamentary socialism, which is tending more and more toward a simple democratization of existing social forms, and syndicalism, which pursues the aim of a complete social transformation, there is not only divergence of methods, but particularly divergence of aims.”[215]