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workers and all would be workers. The citizens of that province
would be its workers. Every industry and economic group would
be organized on the same model. The political state would disappear.
Order would be obtained by a central council composed of the
representatives of all these economic provinces. This central
"council would estimate capacities and necessities of the region,
co-ordinate production, arrange for the necessary commodities and
products inward and outward. A species of economic federation
would thus replace the capitalist system."
SorePs syndicalism therefore involved the extermination of the
capitalist state which he and his followers denounced as an instrument
of oppression that would become an even more formidable
engine of oppression if its powers were enhanced by possession of all
the industries of the nation.
The syndicalists added to this theory of society another that had
to do wholly with the technique of revolution. They rejected political
action. They urged direct action—violence, including sabotage
and actual revolt when the time was ripe. The syndicalists formed
a separate organization but as an organized movement made little
progress. Its teachings, however, exercised a powerful influence on
the old socialist movement. The Socialist party of France became
almost wholly syndicalist. In Italy the party developed a syndicalist
wing that was only a small minority. But the syndicalist idea penetrated
and permeated socialist thinking until it dominated the
socialist mind though not the official organs.
Everywhere socialists were talking like syndicalists. Emile Vandervelde,
socialist leader of Belgium, pointed out that the political state
will retain only the most rudimentary powers while the economic
life of the nation will be taken over by the people organized in a
structure completely separated from the political state. "What syndicalists
did was to focus the attention of socialists upon the fact
that with the coming of their order a new kind of state would
be needed. "It is not true," said Vandervelde, "that the socialists
wish to entrust the operation of the principal industries to the
government of the state," despite the fact that the communist manifesto
had said that "the proletariat will use its political supremacy
to wrest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize
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