Those who consciously call themselves revolutionary syndicalists belong to one of the groups described, and the three groups constitute the bloc spoken of above. To understand revolutionary syndicalism means to understand this bloc of revolutionary elements, how it was made possible, why it is maintained, and what conditions have secured for it the leadership in the General Confederation of Labor.
It has been shown in the preceding chapters that since 1830 a considerable part of the French workingmen, the so-called “militant” workingmen, have always cherished the hope of a “complete” or “integral” emancipation which should free them from the wage-system and from the economic domination of the employer. The desire of independence had guided the life of the journeyman under the guild-system, and its birth under modern economic conditions is natural enough to need no explanation. But while under the guild-system this desire had an individualistic character, under the technical conditions of the present time it necessarily led to collectivist ideas. With the development of highly expensive means of production, only an insignificant number of workingmen could hope to become economically independent by individual action, and the only way to attain economic freedom and equality for all pointed to the collective appropriation of the means of production and to the collective management of industrial activities.
The insistence on economic freedom—in the sense indicated—runs through all the literature of the French Labor Movement. It is not only and not so much the inequality of wealth, the contrasts of distribution that stimulate the militant workingmen to their collectivist hopes, as it is the protest against the “arbitrariness” of the employer and the ideal of a “free workshop.” To attain the latter is the main thing and forms the program of the General Confederation as formulated in the first clause of its statutes.
The sensitiveness to economic inferiority is increased in the French militant workingmen by the fact that in a country like France economic distinctions are combined with social distinctions. Owing to the traditions of the past, economic classes are separated by a number of other elements, in which intellectual, social and other influences combine and which transform the economic classes into social classes. The aspiration towards economic equality increases, therefore, in volume and becomes a striving after social equality.
The historical traditions of France combined with the impatience for emancipation explain the revolutionary spirit of the French socialist workingman. All who have come into contact with French life have convinced themselves of the power which the revolutionary traditions of the past exert over the people. The French workingman is brought up in the admiration of the men of the Great Revolution; his modern history is full of revolutionary secret societies, of insurrections, and of revolutionary struggles. He cherishes the memory of the Revolution of 1848, his indignation is aroused by the story of the Days of June, his pity and sympathy are stimulated by the events of the Commune. Looking backward into the history of the past century and a half, he can only get the feeling of political instability, and the conviction is strengthened in him that “his” revolution will come just as the revolution of the “Third-Estate” had come. Combined with the desire to attain the “integral” emancipation as soon as possible, these conditions engender in him the revolutionary spirit.[216]
The revolutionary spirit predisposes the socialist workingman to a skeptical attitude toward parliamentary action which rests on conciliation and on compromise and is slow in operation. He seeks for other methods which seem to promise quicker results. The methods themselves may change; they were insurrection once, they are now the general strike. But the end they serve remains the same: to keep up the hope of a speedy liberation.
The distrust of parliamentary methods has been strengthened in the French socialist workingman by another fact. The French workingmen have seen their political leaders rise to the very top, become Ministers and Premiers (e. g., Millerand, Viviani, Briand), and then turn against their “comrades” of old. The feeling has been thereby created in the socialist workingmen that parliamentary methods are merely a means to a brilliant career for individuals who know how to make use of them.
The mistrust of “politicians” finds some nourishment in the fact that the political leaders of the Socialist movement are generally the “intellectuals,” between whom and the workingmen there is also some antagonism. The “intellectuals” are thrown out upon the social arena principally by the lower and middle bourgeoisie and generally enter the liberal professions. But whether lawyer, writer, doctor or teacher, the French “intellectual” sooner or later enters the field of “politics” which allures him by the vaster possibilities it seems to offer. In fact, the “intellectual” has always been a conspicuous figure in the history of French Socialism. As a socialist poet, Pierre Dupont, sang,
“Socialism has two wings,
The student and the workingman.”
And as the socialist ideas have spread, the number of “intellectuals” in the socialist movement has been constantly increasing.