NATIONAL GUILDS.

 (By Professor Murdoch.) 

The present time may perhaps be known to future historians as the Age of Bewilderment. It is a time of swift and stupefying disintegrations of belief; a time when the authoritative voices have lost their old dogmatic tone, and the prophets are put to shame, and the experts visibly confounded; a time when the old faiths have crumbled, and the old formulae have failed us, and the old certitudes—the cherished doctrines, the rooted convictions—are torn up and blown hither and thither like dead leaves by the mighty hurricane which has come raging and roaring through the world. Nowhere is this so manifest as in the field of industrial relations. None but the obvious charlatan any longer dares to speak with assurance of what the industrial future may hold in store for us. We know that it will be different from the present; beyond that barren knowledge, all is groping and conjecture. Nevertheless, if we look steadily at the chaos and confusion around us, we do presently begin to discern, or to think, we discern, hints of a certain definite drift of opinion; we do begin to see which way the wind is blowing. In the industrial world I submit that the wind is blowing, though gustily enough, m the direction of national guilds.

 At the risk of seeming to utter the stalest of truisms, one must remark that during the last hundred years we have been presented with four main attempts to solve the industrial problem—the problem, that is, of the relations of Capital and Labour to one another and of the State to both. Individualism was followed by Socialism, Socialism by Syndicalism; and now Syndicalism is being rapidly superseded in its turn by the idea of National Guilds, an idea to which some of its apostles have given the rather misleading name of Guild Socialism.

 Dickens has stated in one immortal phrase the comfortable gospel of Individualism: "Every man for himself and God for us all, as the elephant said when he danced among the chickens." The theory of Individualism was, briefly, that the private employer was to settle his own relations with the employed, while the State stood aside and minded its own business. The practical applications of this alluringly simple creed gave England the spectacle of, in Mr. Sidney Webb's words, "women working half-naked in the coal mines; young children dragging trucks all day in the foul atmosphere of the underground galleries; infants bound to the loom for fifteen hours in the heated air of the cotton mill, and kept awake only by the over-looker's lash; hours of labor for all, young and old, limited only by the utmost capabilities of physical endurance." England, the England that had lately emerged from an heroic struggle for the liberties of Europe turned herself into an industrial hell, so appalling that, though some may still sigh in secret for the good old days before the State began to pry and fuss and meddle in industry, no one openly advocates a return to such conditions. As an avowed creed, Individualism is dead and done with, one of the evil memories of mankind.

 It was succeeded, inevitably, by Socialism; I mean, of course, neither the socialism of the red flag and the barricades and the swift and sudden and relentless seizure of land from  the landlord and of capital from the capitalist, nor the mild, hum-drum, respectable, unadventurous Fabian socialism which aims at the gradual training and equipment of a vast army of State officials; I mean something wider, some thing which includes these and innumerable other creeds, all of which have this belief in common, that salvation cometh by the State, that the industrial problem is to be solved by the action of the State. This is a belief, which no longer animates any large body of thinking persons.

 In France and America Socialism was succeeded by Syndicalism, a doctrine which sprang out of the worker's discovery that the politician was a broken reed and that the bureaucrat could be as much a tyrant as the worst private employer. The discredit into which, all the world over, politicians and parliaments have of late years fallen—whether justly or unjustly I do not pretend to know—made inevitable the coming of some such philosophy as that of Syndicalism.. The syndicalist was essentially anti-socialist; he was 'more hostile to the State than even the old individualist had been. He pinned  his faith to industrial combinations, arrayed for battle against capitalism; and his method was violence. His choice of methods was a fatal mistake, because if the appeal is to violence the worker must always, in the long run, be beaten; but his worst blunder was his attitude towards the State. By taking up that attitude, he not merely threw away an indispensables weapon, but quixotically put that weapon into the hands of the enemy. The failure of the great Australian strike of last year—essentially a  syndicalist adventure—showed many thoughtful men among the strikers where the fallacy of syndicalism lay.

 On the heels of Syndicalism came the doctrine of National Guilds, a doctrine which has made great strides since the war began, and which, as even the London "Times" admitted the other day, "is stirring great numbers of the younger workers, and is receiving quite inadequate notice in the general Press." It has certainly received quite inadequate notice in Australia; we are destined, if I am not mistaken, to hear much of it in the near future. The best exposition of it, so far, is to be found in a book entitled "National Guilds," by Mr. A. R. Orage, the editor of the "New Age," a journal which has been preaching this gospel, week in, week out, these many years. Another book which the inquiring spirit may be strongly advised to read is the remarkable volume, "Authority, Liberty, and Function," by Ramiro de Maeztu, a Spaniard, who writes excellent English, and who seeks to give  the doctrine a philosophical basis.

 A recent article in the "Round Table" points out that the adoption of the Whitley Report by the British Government is a momentous event in the ordering of British life:  "It lays firm the foundations of the new industrial order which the country expects to see after the war—and upon a basis of absolute equality between the two chief partners in the industrial process, management and labour." Now it is true the Whitley Councils are not National Guilds but they are unquestionably a step in that direction; their establishment is one among the innumerable straws which show which way the wind, in Britain at all events, is blowing. The doctrine of National Guilds appears to combine what is best in the ideals of the trade unionist with what is best and most practicable, in the ideals of the socialist; it avoids the fatal error of Syndicalism, in that it clearly recognises the necessary functions of the State: but the name sometimes given to it, "Guild Socialism," is, as I have said, rather misleading, for the National Guildsman has no belief whatever in the State enterprises which we commonly call socialistic. He pins his faith to the idea of a combination of all the men and women—labourers, administrators, hand-workers, brain-workers, skilled and unskilled—connected with a particular industry into a guild which shall manage that industry as a national undertaking. He does not seek to supplement wages by the method known as "profit-sharing:" he seeks rather to abolish the wages system and to substitute therefore a genuine partnership. In the work of the guild the State participates, regulating and controlling on behalf of the community. Syndicalism aims at the creation of guilds so powerful as to be able at their own sweet will to hold up the community; a madness into which the National Guildsman does not fall, being saved by his altogether saner and sounder view of the true relation of the State and industry. I am not going to attempt however, an exposition of this new gospel. Frankly, I am qualified neither to champion nor to condemn, nor even to expound, this or any other industrial creed. But I suppose that even a rank outsider, who confesses with shame that he has never read through a text-book of economics, may be allowed to recognise that the industrial condition into which we have fallen is intolerable in the present and full of darkest menace for the future. Even an outsider may be allowed to feel convinced that the problem will never be solved except by the substitution of some form of partnership for the present relations of employer and employed; and that, unless a sufficient number of people can be brought to recognise this in time, the present war of the nations will be followed by an industrial war within each nation, more horrible still. And my sole purpose in writing these lines is to draw some attention to a proposal which has not yet, in Australia, attracted the notice it deserves; a proposal which may be right or wrong, but which is at any rate an honest attempt to grapple with the facts which lie at the root of industrial discontent. Some in our midst are already thinking along these lines, as a recent correspondence in the columns of the "West Australian" shows. No one, I imagine, believes that the Guild idea can be suddenly realised, in England, or anywhere else; the change must come bit by bit, as all great and salutary changes do; and the essential preliminary is that as many minds as possible should be set brooding over the matter.

West Australian (Perth, WA),  1918  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27473534

EVOLUTION OF MODERN SOCIALISM.-No. 5.

 (BY FRANK STONEMAN).

(1) ORIGIN.

Guild Socialism is the reflection in the intellectual sphere of the revolt against Parliamentary action, and inaction, chronicled in Article IV. Though the formulation of its theories is the work of a handful of "intellectuals," it is no closet philosophy. A close study of trade union conditions and a resolute and energetic attempt to grapple with the actual problems of industry, acquit it of the charge of Utopianism. Though it has made more headway among University men with a radical bent than among workingmen, it is beginning to influence trade union policy here, in Britain, and in America. Guild Socialism originated as a revolt against Fabianism. As the admirable schemes of the Fabian Society, designed by the patient, passionless, and tireless Webbs, became more definite, a fierce feeling of revolt stirred among many of their co-workers and disciples. This bureaucrats' Utopia meant the destruction of all spontaneity, and of all liberty. It meant a State created in the image and likeness of the Civil Service. It meant the minute regulation of life, not according to the will of the people, but according to the will of a trained and disciplined administrator. The State would take over industry from the great joint-stock companies; would eliminate waste, muddle and inefficiency; would abolish pauperism; would see that every child was "well born and brought up"; would sterilise or segregate the unfit; would ease the path to the grave by pensions and insurance schemes, and would leave nothing to individual or independent social groups, but a routine of ordered duties. Parliament, a clumsy and inefficient body, would become a machine for registering the decisions of the expert, public opinion would be the echo of the still small voice of the expert; the turmoil and struggle which make life hard, strenuous, and interesting, would cease because everybody would surrender his own private foolish desires, and cut the cloth of daily life according to a fashion designed by the expert. This threatened apotheosis of the expert drove those who valued life more than the means of life to seek other solutions. Mr. Belloc drank yet another jug of beer and wrote, "The Servile State." The name had more influence than the book, and the term became a stigma sufficient to damn attempts at State paternalism. Mr. H. G. Wells, with rage in his heart, wrote the "New Machiavelli," in which appeared Oscar and Altiora Baillie—a cold capable couple who pulled wires whereat Parliamentary caucuses and Local Government committees carried out their irreproachable scheme of Social amelioration. L. T. Hobhouse, who was approaching Socialism by the route of Liberalism, discerned resemblances between the Imperialism of Lord Milner and the Collectivism of the Administrator. And finally a coterie of artistic souls saw in the "Selfridge State" the perpetuation of the dull uniformity which is the heaviest burden modern industry has laid on life. These last were the men who have since formulated the theories we know as Guild Socialism. The "New Age" was their chief expression, and G. D. H. Cole, S. G. Hobson, and A. R. Orage the chief promulgators of the new theories. 

(2) FUSION OF SYNDICALIST AND COLLECTIVIST IDEAS.

 Guild Socialism is the child of Syndicalism and Collectivism. The romantic strain in its composition yearns after the violent methods of its turbulent French father, but it follows the tidy ways of the mother, it scolds with a rather amusing petulance. "Syndicalism," writes Mr. Cole, "is the infirmity of noble minds. Collectivism is only the sordid dream of a business man with a conscience." ("Self-Government in Industry," G. D. H. Cole.) That is to say, the Guildsman recognises the necessity for efficient organisation, but refuses to sacrifice freedom and spontaneity to efficiency. Consequently he holds that industry should be controlled in such a way as to leave the fullest possible freedom to the worker.  The question of remuneration is quite secondary. What is of prime moment is whether the workman shall have a voice in the government of his own working conditions. Guildism, therefore, rejects the Collectivist objective of State Socialism, and adopts the Syndicalist ideal of producers' control. The State, representing the community on a geographical basis, reflects the views of the organised consumers. Though it might ultimately be a better master than the capitalist, because there is no skimming off of the productive surplus, it would leave the employee as much a "wage slave" as he is now. He would be subject to a great hierarchy of administrative officials, who would regulate his working life down to the minutest detail. The subjection of the man to the machine, the bitterest of all the bitter draughts that capitalism has made us drink, would be intensified. And the pretence of political self-government must finally vanish from such a community. The conditions of employment influence the characters of men, at least as much as the diversions of their leisure hours. A man chained to such a servile system would become a very slave in soul. He would be even less capable of electing competent legislators than is our present democracy. Real government would fall into the hands of the principal civil servants. We should arrive then at a Dictatorship of the Efficient. Man would have sold his birthright of freedom for the pottage of good wages, and increased leisure.

 Furthermore, producers' control seems a natural development of the present system. Within the structure of capitalist controlled industry have grown up the trade unions. From being organisations to secure better conditions they have become militant associations, reaching out their hands for power. Would they bow the neck to the State yoke even if bribed by higher wages ? Present tendencies indicate no hope of such an attitude. The post office servants in France and Britain kick against the authority of the State, and the more radical trade unions, the world over, are asking not for nationalisation, but for self-government in industry. 

So far Guild Socialism is in line with Syndicalism. But whereas the Syndicalist believes that the State will be destroyed or will atrophy when the workers take over industry, the National Guildsman believes it will remain to perform functions which could not adequately be performed by a Federation of Guilds.

 The first of these is to safeguard the interests of the consumer. Both the Syndicalist and the Collectivist are wrong when they assert that because we are all (except the idle rich and the idle poor) consumers and producers there is no conflict of interests between these two classes. Man's chief concern as a consumer is to get goods cheaply. His chief concern as a producer is to get fair remuneration and decent working conditions. We are grouped as consumers with other people who inhabit the same locality. We are grouped as producers according to the industry or profession in which we work. The only way to reconcile our interests is to elect responsible bodies to represent us in each capacity. A balance will then be maintained between the conflicting interests of the whole community. This involves a theory of the State which is radically different from the traditional view, and no less different from the Marxian conception. 

(3) THE GUILD THEORY OF THE STATE. 

The theory of Sovereignty generally accepted to-day is that the State, as the supreme representative of the community, has the right to limit the activities of every individual and of every smaller social group. The Marxian theory, accepted by Revolutionists, is that the State is but an organ of capitalism, maintained to preserve order among the exploited class. National Guildsmen maintain that the legitimate function of the State is to represent the whole community as consumers. As producers people will be represented in the National Guild, which will represent and govern their trade or profession, and in the Guild Congress, which will represent the whole body of producers. Thus sovereignity will be divided between the Legislature and Local Governing bodies on one side, and the Guilds on the other. The line of demarcation between their respective spheres will be tolerably clear because of their very different functions, but an independent judiciary will be necessary to decide disputed cases. In deciding on a policy which affects the whole community, such as a war, joint conferences of the Legislature and the Guild Congress may be held. 

Despite the obvious objections which strike the most uncritical on examining this theory National Guildsmen maintain that it is essential. Not merely capitalist domination, but any concentration of power is inimical to individual liberty and the freedom of social groups. Unless the spontaneity and vigor of the smaller social groups and of the individual who is not a "dominating personality," are preserved by a policy of non-interference, the centralised government will establish the "Servile State.''

 This new theory of Sovereignty, which bears some affinity to the older doctrine is Laissez-Faire, or non-interference with individual action, has a respectable juristic backing. Gierke, the great German jurist, and Maitland, one of the greatest of English legal historians, have advanced the doctrine that an association which arises spontaneously to satisfy some legitimate human need, has an inherent right to exist and to take on new functions. If this theory be accepted, trade unions do not exist by favor of the State but in their own right. Furthermore, they may take on new functions without permission of the State, and when they have grown to their full dimensions the State has no right to interfere with them. In the Guild community the State, i.e., the existing Governmental machinery shorn of its coercive power over industry, and the National Guilds will exist side by side, each performing a communal function, and each sovereign in its own sphere.

 (4). THE METHOD OF APPROACH.

 This theory of ultimate character of the Guild community determines the line of action advocated by Guildsmen. They neither eschew political action like the Syndicalist, nor deprecate direct industrial action like the Collectivist. Since the State is not sovereign, it does not matter whether capitalism is destroyed by "constitutional" means or not. It is purely a question of tactics. And as capitalism, with its economic power, is the substance, while the State, with its political power is but the shadow, the Guildsmen lay heavy emphasis on the necessity for industrial action. The unions must concentrate on the task of building a new society within the old. Before capitalism is destroyed, the trade unions must have perfected an organisation capable of controlling industry. Then they must strike hard, both in politics and industry. They must, by a series of strikes, acquire Self-Government piecemeal. In some cases nationalisation will precede Guild-control. Therefore they must gain and keep control of the Parliamentary machine, taking care, however, that the strength of unionism is not drained away in a futile attempt to achieve everything by political action. The main guard of the Socialist army must be a federated system of strong "blackleg-proof" unions, organised on an industrial basis. The political movement will be mainly occupied in preserving the rights of free speech and free association, and in keeping the coercive force of the State from being used by the employers.

 (5) PRODUCTION UNDER THE GUILD SYSTEM.

 A series of distinct but connected changes rather than a grand "coup," such as a general strike, is anticipated. Probably the railways and the mines will be controlled by Guilds under a semi-Socialist State, while the remainder of the industry is still in the bonds of capitalism. When the great key industries, which, having the most powerful and militant unions, may be expected to "go Guild" first, have established self-government, something in the nature of a "landslide" may be expected. The final act of the Sovereign State will be to divest itself of its coercive power over industry. This power will then be vested in the Guilds consisting of a number of National Guilds, each of which controls a whole industry, e.g., mining, transport, steel manufacture, textile industry and the like, and a federation called the Guild Congress.

 The Parliamentary and Municipal machinery will remain, purged of capitalist domination, to control society in all those matters which concern men as neighbors, and as theirs of the same traditions. Freed from the burden of regulating industry, and no longer subject to pressure from predatory interests, the State will devote its energies to assisting the spread of culture, and the growth of art. It will leave the economic side of the national life to the Guilds, and become the guardian of the higher common interests of the community.

 (6) CRITICISM.

 Such, in a broad outline, is the theory of Guild Socialism, its originators are conscious that no society will ever be established exactly in accordance with their plans. But they hold that the successful fashioning of a new commonwealth depends on the knowledge of economic and political tendencies possessed by those who sway thought and passion. They realise that they are attempting to forecast organic changes. Consequently their attempt to visualise a new order, and indicate the method of approach to it, is of immense value, though the realisation will differ from the plan. Criticism centres mainly round two points. First, the division of Sovereignty. Second, the preservation of the present Governmental machinery in a Socialistic community. Collectivists and Constitutional Theorists maintain that either the organised consumers, or the organised producers must ultimately be Sovereign. Revolutionary Socialists maintain that the existing State will perish when communism is once established, because its function will be gone. Both criticisms are weighty. Neither should detract from the practical lesson that Guildsmen have to offer the Socialist movement. The present task is to built up "blackleg-proof" unions on an industrial basis in order to face concentrated capitalism with an organisation having an equal economic weight, while at the same time maintaining in the legislatures a party powerful enough to legalise what is won on the industrial field. The future society will almost certainly leave the control of actual working conditions in the hands of unions of Guilds of producers. It will also retain the State, or establish some new central organisation, to represent the whole community, and reconcile the claims of conflicting groups. Much will depend on the success or failure of the Soviet system in Russia. Indeed, the success during this century of the Socialist movement seems to hang on the outcome of the great experiment of the first Communist Government. Guild Socialism is valuable, mainly for its revival of idealism in British Socialism, for its insistence on freedom, even at the expense of mechanical efficiency, and for its attempt to reconcile the claims of the worker struggling to be free with the claims of the member of the community striving toward decent living conditions.

Truth (Perth, WA ), 11 June 1921,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article210048694

EVOLUTION OF MODERN SOCIALISM.-No. 4.

 (BY FRANK STONEMAN).

(1) THE CHALLENGE TO THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS.

 In 1910 the British Socialist leaders were perturbed by a new strange thing called Syndicalism. The placid waters of Trade Unionism and Parliamentary Socialism began to be troubled. A monthly publication, "The Industrial Syndicalist," conducted by Mr. Tom Mann, sounded the old call familiar to every progressive movement, "To your Tent, O Israel." The Transport Workers' Federation was formed on the principles of Industrial Unionism. The Welsh and Scottish miners became mutinous, talked of sabotage, and displayed signs of preparing to "bolt." The old and trusted leaders of the Labor Party, Ramsay Macdonald and Philip Snowden, looked round with an expression of hurt and surprise, wrote books to demonstrate that the thing was naught, and showed by their concern that it was really a matter of some moment. The constitutional methods of the Parliamentary Labor Party and the time-honored tactics of Trade Unionism were alike challenged by the new Industrial Syndicalism, which aimed at "the capture of the Industrial System, and its management by the workers themselves for the benefit of the whole community." Whence came this trouble of the Socialist camp.

(2) TOM MANN

 Mr Tom Mann had just returned from the "storm centre of Australian Industrialism"—Broken Hill, and the energy he infused into the English movement had been largely generated in his battles with the silver lords. But the ideas which began to permeate the left wing of Labor in 1910 came chiefly from America and France.

(3) THE I.W.W. 

The I.W.W. was the outcome of the peculiar political and economic conditions of the United States. The selfish policy of the American Federation of Labor, organised on a craft basis, seeking special privileges for skilled labor, and making no attempt to raise the status of working men generally; the power wielded by concentrated Capital over corrupt legislatures; and the successful breaking of strikes by the use of blacklegs and "Pinkertons" (bands of private-controlled mercenaries); all these had combined to produce the revolutionary organisation known as the I.W.W. It avowed that the State was the instrument of the Master-class, that Democracy was a sham, and that the road to emancipation lay along the lines of the class war. It took its tone from the Trust Magnate, who told a Congressional committee that he did not "care a fig for their ethics." Its outlook was almost a precise counterpart of the real politics of the German junkers. The world could not be saved by "softness." Instead let us have hardness of head and hardness of heart, bitter reprisals for bitter repression, war in the workshop and war in the street, in short the overcoming of force by force.

 "Might was Right when Gracchus bled upon the Stones of Rome.

 Might was Right when Christ was hanged beside the Jordan's foam,"

 chanted the Industrialist. Whether we agree with his doctrines or shudder at them we must concede that they were the outcome of grinding industrial tyranny and that he sought not to initiate a new era of oppression but to end an old one. He was acting in the spirit of John Brown, who held that blood could only be wiped out by blood, and who strove to emancipate the slave of the old South by means of a slave revolt I.W.W. propaganda got no hold on the British workers until the Parliamentary Party began to show signs of sinking into impotence and the method of collective bargaining by Trade Unions failed to keep wages abreast of the cost of living. The British workers would have no truck with Sabotage and Direct Action while they could look forward to "a Revolution by due process of law." But in 1910 the hope of ever converting the "damned compact majority" died in many hearts; Socialism, made respectable, seemed to be Socialism emasculated; they were tired of leaders who could achieve nothing; and the militant section among the rank and file decided to wage pitiless, unrelenting war after the fashion of the Industrial Workers of the World.

 (4) FRENCH SYNDICALISM.

 While the tactics of British and Australian Syndicalism are mainly derived from America, it is to France that we must look for the ideas. The word Syndicalism is derived from Syndicat, which means an association, and has become the ordinary appellation for Syndicat Ouvrier (Trade Union). Until 1902, the Trade Union movement in France was faction-rent like its comrade Parliamentary movement. In that year the Federation des Bourses du Travail (Federation of Labor Exhanges) which under the leadership of Pelloutier had become the backbone of Unionism, coalesced with the Confederation Generale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor), a sort of standing Trade Union Congress organised for industrial strife. Since then the C.G.T. has dominated French Labor. and the militant left wing has dominated the C.G.T. Thus Syndicalism has come to mean not merely Trade Unionism but Trade Unionism organised for Revolution. If we would know what message Syndicalism has for the Labor movement generally, we must turn to its theorists (though they would scorn the title) Lagardelle and Sorel and other refined and cultured dreamers. Werner Sombart thus described them: "They are good-natured, gentlemanly, cultured people; people with spotless linen, good manners, and fashionably dressed wives; people with whom one holds social intercourse as with one's equals; people who would at first sight hardly be taken as the representatives of a new movement whose object it is to prevent Socialism from becoming a middle-class belief." (Sombart's "Socialism, and the Socialism Movement," p. 99.) They have produced a fine crop of ideas which may help to revitalise the Labor movement. Syndicalists are too anarchic in their thought and their methods to gain the whole world, but they have saved their souls. They may help to save the soul of Labor.

 (5) SYNDICALIST IDEAS.

 The theory of Syndicalism is to have no theory. Its central idea is that ideas are all but valueless. It is as anarchic as the seeming chaos out of which Energy fashioned the Universe. But like that chaos it ferments with creative power. The apostles of Syndicalism start from the assumption, for which the philosophy of Bergson and the psychology of Ribot give them warrant, that action is determined not by conscious thought but by the unconscious striving of human nature. The intellect is but a mechanism evolved by the process of adaptation to environment, in order that man may accomplish what his ineradicable instincts desire. Given the environment which fosters the "good life" a man will live nobly. By the unalterably law of his being he must strive to secure those conditions. Therefore, the workers must be bound neither by the theories they have constructed for their own emancipation, nor by the moral ideas which Bourgeois ideologists foist on them. Their historic mission is to destroy exploitation and to create a Communist Society and no theories or moral scruples are to be allowed to hinder them in the performance of their work. This single idea, apparently, the Syndicalists adhere to. But no other idea must be allowed to baulk the free activity upon which its realisation depends. Let the workers act freely in whatever way appears to them at the moment to be right. The Great Babel will fall and the kingdom of the righteous exist on earth. This insistence on action rather than thought and on spontaneity rather than discipline springs from and tends to perpetuate the local autonomy of the Bourses. The C.G.T. is an advisory body, and the initiative in all industrial struggles is taken by the several districts. This also is in accordance with the belief that conscious thought is the servant of man's needs not the regulator of his life. If the eternal energy demands a certain line of conduct then let each man make his poor little mind obey its bidding. No Syndicalist would state the matter precisely in that way, yet such seems to be the tenor of their arguments. Syndicalism is nearer to philosophic anarchism than to collectivism. Certain ultimate aims and certain lines of policy seem to meet with the general approval of Syndicalists despite their anti-intellectualism.

 (6) ULTIMATE AIMS. 

They aim at the complete destruction of the State and the substitution therefore of a purely economic organisation of producers. To them authority does not exist to enable "good men to live among bad," but "to enable rich men to live among poor." When exploitation has ceased there is no need for coercive authority. Parliaments, Courts of Justice, prisons and policemen will go the way of the Inquisition, the axe, and the gibbet. Associations of workmen will control mines, factories and workshops. These associations will be none other than the existing Trade Unions transformed into Producers' Syndicates. In effect, then, their ultimate aim is to replace the present governmental bodies, elected on a geographical basis and representing the whole body of consumers, by a new set of governmental bodies, elected on an occupational basis and representing the whole body of producers.

 (7) METHODS. 

The method by which this is to be attained is "Direct Action." They assert that political action has not only been a failure but is forever doomed to be a failure because Parliaments are Bourgeois institutions which respond always to the economic pressure of the financiers. The argument is inconclusive, but syndicalists support it by the argument "ad hominem." Millerand and Briand were Socialists until they began to administer the affairs of the Bourgeois State. Then they became first opportunists and finally reactionaries. The really sound argument in favor of industrial as opposed to political action is that working men understand the mechanism of the Trade Unionism, whereas they are inferior to the lawyer in the art of manipulating the legislative machine. Many a good Union official has been spoiled to make a poor deputy. Therefore there is a grain of sound sense in the theory that the Proletariats should leave the machinery of government alone and concentrate all their efforts on building up a new economic and social structure to replace the old. The direct pressure by which the Unions are to shatter the dominance of capital may express itself in a strike, in sabotage or in a boycott, but all these are theoretically ubordinate to a plan of campaign which is to culminate in a general strike (greve generale). When that day of wrath arrives all the wheels of industry are to stand still. The great heart of France, Paris, will be threatened with starvation, the bourgeoisie will capitulate, and industry will resume under the direction of the Syndicats. Sabotage is the most distinctly syndicalist method of warfare. It is derived' from the French word "sabot." One explanation that when the factory system was supplanting the domestic system of industry, early in the last century, the workers used their wooden shoes to break windows and put machinery out of gear. Another is that a man shod with sabots is likely to tread slowly. The word therefore would seem to cover the policy the policy of violence and "go slow." Generally it means any method of working which will reduce the employer's profits. Thus the refusal to use bad material at the command of a jerry-builder is sabotage no less than the refusal to speed up. Further detailed description of Syndicalist methods is unnecessary. All ore the outcome of the belief that the class war is the ultimate fact in present day human relationships and that the exploited class should have regard to no principle or code that would hinder their free activity.

 (8.) THE VALUE OF THE SYNDICALIST PROTEST. 

As a constructive scheme for the regeneration of society, Syndicalism is defective. As a protest against certain tendencies in the Socialist movement, it has considerable value. It has placed a premium, on idealism, and has registered a healthy protest against time-serving and opportunism. It has emphasised the necessity for using the Industrial wing of the Socialist army as a fighting force, instead of regarding it is an appanage of the political party. It is an irritant which has roused the somnolent collectivist from his "masterly inactivity." And finally by stressing the truth that the value of a movement depends more on its incessant action than on the soundness of its theories, it has vitalised the forces of labor. Nevertheless, it fails as a programme of action. The substitution of industrial for political action would mean abandoning every weapon save passive resistance and force. It would mean surrendering to the Capitalist complete control of Army and Police, Customs. Finance, and Public Opinion. No one can doubt that a Government of class-conscious business men would, in desperation, use all these influences to destroy organised Labor. What would it profit the Trade Unions if they seized mines and factories, and left the command of the Customs and the Military with their opponents? How would the industrial movement fare if a rigorous press-censorship were established and unlicensed public meetings forbidden? And how is industry under a Communist Government to be conducted at all, if a sound system of communal credit has not been built up by political action? The very existence of Trade Unions, which make industrial action possible, depends on laws permitting free association and free speech. These laws can only be preserved in their integrity by the unremitting activity of parties which are not dependent on capitalist support. And the worker can never be sure that there is a party independent on the Money Power unless he maintains an independent Labor Party. The proposal to hand over all industry to groups of producers is equally inadequate. It is true we are all consumers and producers. But our interest as producer is opposed to our interest as consumer. It is the interest of a group of miners to get high prices (or more purchasing power) for metals. It is also their interest to get food cheap. The farmer's interest, on the other hand, is to get high prices for food while he buys his ploughs cheaply. Some single central representative body must therefore represent the whole community to provide machinery for reconciling conflicting claims. The Syndicalist policy is this respect is a reversion to the old theory of "Laissez-Faire." Instead of leaving individuals to settle supply and demand among themselves they propose to leave that task to corporate persons—to groups of producers. Moreover there are communal needs which are not economic. Education concerns the child and his parents more than it concerns the teacher. Could we leave it entirely in the hands of a Teachers' Union? Finally Syndicalism stands condemned for its neglect of the principle of organic growth. Metaphysical conceptions of the State and organic conceptions of society have given an exaggerated idea of the importance of the nation. Nevertheless there is value in the conception of the community as an entity which includes our fathers who begot us ourselves, and the unborn generation who will continue the glorious adventure of mankind on the earth. It Is well that national jealousies should cease and that individuals should not be sacrificed, on the altar of the Moloch of Nationalism. But it is not desirable that Frenchmen should forget their kinship with fellow French men nor that Australians should forget that they form a Commonwealth. Some body representative of the whole community must be retained even if we hand industry over to syndicates of producers. What better representative body could be found than those ready to our hands? Socialists of all shades agree with Syndicalists that the whole purpose of Democratic Government is defeated by the existence of an exploiting class. But when industry is conducted by little Commonwealths of workers will not the Great Commonwealth to which we all belong find its true purpose and fulfilment?

Truth (Perth, WA), 4 June 1921,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article210048654

CONFEDERATION OF LABOR

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