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workers and all would be workers. The citizens of that provincewould be its workers. Every industry and economic group wouldbe organized on the same model. The political state would disappear.Order would be obtained by a central council composed of therepresentatives of all these economic provinces. This central"council would estimate capacities and necessities of the region,co-ordinate production, arrange for the necessary commodities andproducts inward and outward. A species of economic federationwould thus replace the capitalist system."SorePs syndicalism therefore involved the extermination of thecapitalist state which he and his followers denounced as an instrumentof oppression that would become an even more formidableengine of oppression if its powers were enhanced by possession of allthe industries of the nation.The syndicalists added to this theory of society another that hadto do wholly with the technique of revolution. They rejected politicalaction. They urged direct action—violence, including sabotageand actual revolt when the time was ripe. The syndicalists formeda separate organization but as an organized movement made littleprogress. Its teachings, however, exercised a powerful influence onthe old socialist movement. The Socialist party of France becamealmost wholly syndicalist. In Italy the party developed a syndicalistwing that was only a small minority. But the syndicalist idea penetratedand permeated socialist thinking until it dominated thesocialist mind though not the official organs.Everywhere socialists were talking like syndicalists. Emile Vandervelde,socialist leader of Belgium, pointed out that the political statewill retain only the most rudimentary powers while the economiclife of the nation will be taken over by the people organized in astructure completely separated from the political state. "What syndicalistsdid was to focus the attention of socialists upon the factthat with the coming of their order a new kind of state wouldbe needed. "It is not true," said Vandervelde, "that the socialistswish to entrust the operation of the principal industries to thegovernment of the state," despite the fact that the communist manifestohad said that "the proletariat will use its political supremacyto wrest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize3i

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