Untitled

THE NEWEST ANARCHISM 265
movement." (39) These are but three out of a number
of criticisms of democracy that might be quoted. Although
natural enough as a consequence of syndicalist
antagonism to the State, these ideas are nevertheless fatal
when applied to the actual conduct of a working-class
movement. It means that the minority believes that it
can drive the majority. We remember that Guerard suggested,
in his advocacy of the general strike, that, if the
railroad workers struck, many other trades "would be
compelled to quit work." "A daring revolutionary minor-
with it the
ity conscious of its aim can carry away
majority." (40) Pouget confesses : "The syndicalist has
a contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy — the inert,
unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when
the minority
wishes to act so as to benefit it . . ."
(41) He refers in another place to the majority, who
"may be considered as human zeros. Thus appears the
enormous difference in method," concludes Pouget,
"which distinguishes syndicalism and democracy: the
latter, by the mechanism of universal suffrage, gives
direction to the unconscious . . . and stifles the
minorities who bear within them the hopes
of the future."
(42)
This is anarchism all over again, from Proudhon to
Goldman. (43)
But, while the Bakouninists were forced,
as a result of these views, to abandon organized effort,
the newest anarchists have attempted to incorporate these
ideas into the very constitution of the French Confederation
of Labor. And at present they are, in fact, a little
clique that rides on the backs of the organized workers,
and the majority cannot throw them off so long as a score
of members have the same voting power
in the Confederation
as that of a trade union with ten thousand members.
All this must, of course, have very serious conse-