Untitled

THE NEWEST ANARCHISM 267
. . . It is impossible not to regret that the first introduction
of the English Trade Unionist to Socialism
should have been effected by a foredoomed scheme which
violated every economic principle of collectivism, and
left the indispensable political preliminaries to pure
chance." (44) Little need be added to what the Webbs
have said on the Utopian features of syndicalism or even
upon the haphazard method adopted to achieve them.
"No politics
in the unions" follows logically enough
from an avowed antagonism to the State. If one starts
with the assumption that nothing can be done through
the State— as Owen, Bakounin, and the syndicalists have
done— one is, of course, led irretrievably to oppose parliamentary
and other political
methods of action.
When the syndicalists throw over democracy and foreswear
political action, they are fatally driven to the
point where they must abandon the working class. In
the meantime, they are it.
sadly misleading It is when
we touch this phase of the syndicalist movement that
we begin to discover real bitterness. Here direct action
stands in opposition to political
action. The workers
must choose the one method or the other. The old
clash appears again in all its tempestuous hate. Jules
Guesde was early one of the adherents of Bakounin, but
in all his later life he has been pitiless
in his warfare
on the anarchists. As soon, therefore, as the directactionists
began again to exercise an influence, Guesde
entered the field of battle. I
happened to be at Limoges
in 1906 to hear Guesde speak these memorable words
at the French Socialist Congress: "Political action is
necessarily revolutionary. It does not address itself to
the employer, but to the State, while industrial action
addresses itself to the individual employer or to associations
of employers. Industrial action does not attack