A CONTINENTAL VIEW
PEEP BEHIND THE SCREEN.
Philosophus, after perusal of the latest European files, writes:—
I have come to the conclusion that the great coal strike In Great Britain is intimately connected with the growing influence of syndicalism. In Boulogne, Sur Mer, lives a man who has brought about this world-wide movement. His name Is George Sorel, and his chief work is called "Thoughts About Force." He says in it of himself:—
I am neither a professor nor a popular literary man. Neither am I desirous to offer myself as the leader of a party: all I offer to the public is my note-book, in which the letters of my own alphabet are laid down.
What are the aims of Sorel, and how did he arrive at a definition and bring about the development of syndicalism? That is one of those remarkable events which prove the Influence of philosophical doctrines, abstract ideas, on our daily life, on our civic organisation, and on the State. The French philosopher Bergson, whose theories are now a sort of fashion, is the sworn enemy of all Rationalism.
According to his conception, genius has been given by nature many long octopus arms, which enable it to catch up, without regard to any ordinary research, and even without logically conclusive evidence, some new truths, or to effect some great deeds. Bergson calls these sudden inspirations, which so to say, are a jump from the dark right into daylight: Intuition. This is the central idea of his philosophical conviction, which has an especially strong aversion to all intellectuality.
The philosophy of Bergson, which starts, so to say, from a sort of twilight, places the power of intuition much higher than that of deep and reflected reasoning, and this has had a most intense effect on George Sorel. He has always been an opponent of that particular Socialistic school which wants to bring about changes of our society by means of Parliamentary legislation. He ridicules Jaures as a good-natured, lovable Professor of the middle classes. He indites the leaders of Labor, who are afraid, as monitors of Parliament, to be considered aggressive barbarians. He maintains that the transference of the socialistic movement into politics has weakened the recognition of the industrial war of the classes. Sorel does not want a rational socialism. He hates the intellectuals who are leading it. They are constantly looking for intellectual motives, want constantly proofs. Policy has ruined the power of the proletariat in the whole of Europe. Lassalle is to blame for this. The German Socialists have, in spite of Karl Marx's protest to the programme of Gotha, continued in this disastrous direction. The creator of syndicalism desires a socialism after the philosophy of Bergson, who himself was one of the most peaceful thinkers, like Hegel, from whose brain Marx and Lassalle have drawn their thoughts.
Sorel wants a socialism of intuition, no worrying, and no waste of time with the building up of new systems, and, before all, no policy. This is the leading idea of his teaching. The socialism of intuition, born of the innermost feeling of the proletarian classes, wants only one thing, "to fight." It need not matter whether in any particular case there is a chance of success or not; whether there is even a hope for victory or not. That is too rational, too intellectual. Socialists must only strive for what they feel to be their intuition, their innermost nature, that is, the Strike, the General Strike, the Continuous Strike, the Strike with the object of never leaving Capital unworried, to break its power of resistance by exhaustion, to paralyse it.
Socialists must not act like the ancient conquerors who came to Rome, and were there ashamed of their barbarism, and went into the schools of the sophists of the sinking Latin civilisation. The world, according to Sorel, must be handled with a rough hand. The transformation into the Socialistic stage cannot be like a promenade on roses, but it can only be effected by means of catastrophes. Just like our geological layers, and our living organism could only have been created by the greatest convulsion. Force is great! On that idealism rests the doctrine of syndicalism. Sorel gets intoxicated with the æsthetics of such mass revolutions, the beauty of brutal force, and the results of the passions of the rioting masses. Nothing great, he repeats, over and over again, can ever be done without force. What does it matter if the world can only progress by destruction? By all means let it progress all the same. Sorel and some of his friends and adherents founded at Montpelier the "Confederation of Labor." Sorel denies that he is the actual founder, and assures us that the idea came from Fernando Pelioutter, a small civil servant, whose name became known by his launching the idea of a Labor Exchange for the city of Paris. The Confederation of Labor is the great lever of the syndicalists, the engine they have used with the greatest recklessness, and are continuing to use. The secretary of this union, Jouhaux, describes the objects of the confederation as follows:—
The movement is not only conceived for higher wages and shorter hours, but it is a movement whose object is to create class sentiments and class opinions, and to strengthen the spirit of Labor solidarity. To do this it it necessary to keep the working classes in a continuous state of excitement through public demonstrations, strike, boycots, and sabotage; in unite them by these means so strongly that they are finally able to successfully oppose and conquer the powers that form the present state of modern society. The aid of the confederation is to starve, and thus to conquer, the present social system. The general strike, the strike in large concerns, such as Post, Railways, and coal mines, shall destroy the whole network of industrial life, and by creating constant friction in all other industries between Capital and Labor, shall unite all the working classes in a combined effort to exterminate the present system of private property.
Sorel wants to know nothing of Evolution: no slow changes, no Rationalistic methods. Peace is, according to his view, against the intuition of the workers. Their interests, their temperament, their whole character, demands war, a war on the whole line. Whoever asks what state of society should be placed on the ruins of the capitalistic world, will get no reply. Such mechanical planning for the future is only the aim of politicians and intellectuals. Such questions are not fit for an age in which Bergson has theoretically annihilated Rationalism, with its constant queries of Why and Wherefore.
From his innermost passions man should act, and not under the continuous whip of logic. The strike is, for Sorel, the noble emotion of human sentiments, following the suggestions of temperament, quite irrespective of whatever might be the immediate personal result. Sorel imitates even the language of the philosopher, Bergson, when he describes the General Strike as an indivisible whole, out of which issues, in the transformation from capitalism to socialism, a catastrophe the description of which defies words. Whoever tries to follow those thoughts into reality must be astounded how much unclearness, how much fanaticism, how much amateurishness, they combine.
However, syndication is a war-cry to the instincts of the masses, not asking them any consideration of existing conditions, any respite for the process of evolution, which might only benefit their children or grand-children. Syndicalism plays with the thought to knock down by a single shock, so to say by an earthquake, everything that has built up society during thousands of years. Syndicalism captures imagination. On the other side of the catastrophe which Sorel desires to bring about, he, who despises every seed of future development, expects to find factories controlled by labor only. He has before his mind a picture similar to that of Ruskin, who reminds one that masons have built the Gothic Cathedrals in the open, and were not shut up in small rooms. It would be useless to argue against such economic temptation, the results of intuition.
Cities inhabited by peaceful, hard working people, are not built with red-hot lava stones ejected by furious volcanoes. Syndicalism, which wants to make the working man the master of society, despises the quiet continuous work of social progress. Even big streams are composed of small drops of water. Revolutions, which are not the last word of already completed Evolutions, are not fruitful. Syndicalism wants war— war for war's sake. Society wants peace, and wants it badly, and the bold proposal, now made in England, to fix by law a minimum wage, proves what great changes the modern State can bring about without destroying the present social foundations.
Syndicalism will not conquer, because its innermost tendency is barren; because it only destroys; because it gives no guarantee that a better world will be built upon the ruins.
Herald (Melbourne, Vic.), 13 April 1912, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article241499999
