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252
VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
oppressive. It cannot evolve or change its being. It cannot
serve the working class as it has previously served
feudalism, or as it now serves capitalism. It is an unchangeable
thing, that,
regardless of economic and social
conditions, must remain eternally the enemy of the people.
Evidently, the syndicalist identifies the revolutionist
with the anti- Statist— apparently forgetting that hatred
of the State is
often as strong among the bourgeoisie as
among
power of the Government was not only a powerful factor
in the French and American Revolutions, but since then
the workers. The determination to limit the
the slaveholders of the Southern States
in America, the
factory owners of all countries, and the trusts have exhausted
every means, fair and foul, to limit and to
weaken the power of the State. What difference is there
between the theory of laissez-faire and the antagonism of
the anarchists and the syndicalists to every activity of the
State However, it is noteworthy that antagonism to the
State disappears on the part of any group or class as
soon as it becomes an agency for advancing their material
well-being; they not only then forsake their anti-
Statism, they even become the most ardent defenders
of the State. Evidently, then, it is not the State that
has to be overcome, but the interests that control the
State.
It must be admitted that Labriola sketches accurately
enough the prevailing tendency toward State ownership,
but he misunderstands or wilfully misinterprets, as Bakounin
did before him, the attitude of the avowed socialist
parties toward such evolution. When he declares that
they confuse their socialism with Statism, he might
equally well argue that socialists confuse their socialism
with monopoly or with the aggregation of capital in the