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continuance impossible and that it was moving toward ultimate disintegration.While believing this, the socialist movement contented itselflargely with reformist activity in favor of a group of reforms uponwhich it was able to unite with the non-socialist liberal elements. Thisfraternization led to a good deal of tolerance for the socialist diagnosisamong liberals. And thus, while liberals were not willing toadopt the socialist cure—the overthrow of the system—they didtinker extensively with the idea of planning and control. By degreesthe conviction that the economic system was fundamentally defectiveand needed remolding or repair with a greater degree ofconscious control was almost universally adopted among the laboringgroups, the liberal elements allied with them, and the conservativecapitalist groups. Out of Italy had gone definitely any importantparty committed to the theory that the economic systemshould be free.Into this state of affairs drifted a new group with a new theory—the syndicalists. And this is perhaps the most important single developmentin the long march of society toward the fascist state. We neednot concern ourselves with the ultimate springs of syndicalism. Itsorigins are endlessly debated. But certainly it was Georges Sorel, aFrench engineer turned economic reformer, who brought this latestism on a vital scale into European affairs and who supplied it witha logic and a dialectic. Sorel, famous as the author of Reflections onViolence and The Decomposition' of Marxism, nevertheless acceptedthe central doctrine of Marx, that the tools of production belongedto the workers, the inevitability of class war and the expropriationof the capitalists. To this extent syndicalism sprang out of socialism.But there the agreement ended.The old socialists had argued for the taking over of the instrumentsof production by the state which would manage them for thebenefit of the people. Sorel saw in this an evil worse than capitalism.It was, in fact, state capitalism or statism. The tools of industryshould be owned, not by the state, but by the workers. Society, noworganized in geographical groups, should reorganize in economicgroups. Thus, for instance, the steel industry would be organizedas a great economic province. It would be under the dominion of the30