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26o
VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
to deal with. Indeed, it was necessary for Marx to
forecast half a century of capitalist development in order
to clarify the program of socialism and to emphasize the
necessity for that program.
It is a noteworthy and rather startling fact that Sidney
and Beatrice Webb had pointed out the economic fallacies
of syndicalism before the French Confederation of
Labor was founded or Sorel, Berth, and Lagardelle had
written a line on the subject. In their "History of Trade
Unionism" they tell most interestingly the story of
Owen's early trade-union socialism. The book was published
in 1894, two or three years before the theories
of the French school were born. Nevertheless, their
critique of Owenism expresses as succinctly and forcibly
as anything yet written the attitude of the socialists toward
the economics of modern syndicalism. "Of all
Owen's attempts to reduce his socialism to practice,"
write the Webbs, "this was certainly the very worst.
For his short-lived communities there was at least this
eliminated. But in 'the
excuse : that within their own area they were to be perfectly
homogeneous
little socialist States. There were
to be no conflicting sections, and profit-making and competition
were to be effectually
Trades Union,' as he conceived it, the mere combination
of all the workmen in a trade as cooperative producers
no more abolished commercial competition than a combination
of all the employers in it as a joint stock company.
In effect, his Grand Lodges would have been
simply the head offices of huge joint stock companies
owning the entire means of production in their industry,
and subject to no control by the community as a
whole. They would, therefore, have been in a position
at any moment to close their ranks and admit fresh generations
of workers only as employees at competitive