The historical origins of French syndicalism are not difficult to understand. A vigorous theory of the necessity of a class war had come down from Proudhon. The many fac tions into which French socialists had split and the bitter animosity which developed between them weakened the cause of the proletariat, and the socialist cause was further discredited with the radical laboring element because for mer socialists like Millerand and Briand had been willing, when they entered the French government, to use the forces of the capitalistic state against radical labor revolts. Therefore, there arose a determination among a large num ber of French labor leaders to turn their back upon all political activity, and to distrust polit ical methods of relief whether from state socialism or Marxian revolutionary hopes. At the close of the °eighties° labor exchanges were organized, first in Paris, and later throughout the leading French cities, to act as a general clearing-house for local labor prob lems and policies. In 1892 they established a national organization — the Federation of La bor Exchanges (Federation des Bourses du Travail). This movement was guided by Ferdi nand Pelloutier (1867-1901), a French disciple of communist anarchism. At about the same time another radical labor organization was developing in France. This was the General Confederation of Labor (Confederation Gen erale du Travail), founded in 1895 by a union of some 700 French local industrial unions or Syndicats, from which the syndicalist move ment gets its name. In 1902 the Federation of Labor Exchanges and the General Confedera tion of Labor united and became the basis of the organized syndicalist movement. The syste matic theorist of French syndicalism is Georges Sorel (1847-).
The syndicalists eschew any attempt to come to favorable terms with their capitalistic em ployers in any settlement which may be re garded as permanent. They aim frankly and openly at conducting a class war by industrial methods which will sooner or later drive the capitalist from industry and overthrow his po litical bulwark —the modern national state. The unit of organization at which the syndi calists aim is the industrial union, the general organization of all laborers in a given industry, which, it is hoped, will give greater strength and less division of interests than craft union ism. Their method of carrying on the class war is the so-called "direct action," the two chief types of which are °sabotage° and the "general strike.° The former is more of a temporary instrument designed to serve until the general strike finally drives the capitalist from the field. It consists in every type of harassing the employer, from serious injury to machinery, to slow and inferior workmanship in production. While some employers might be discouraged and abandon the fight merely as the result of sabotage, a more vigorous method will be needed to deal with the more obdurate capitalists and with the state, and for this pur pose the syndicalists propose to resort to the general strike, which is not merely a suspension of labor to improve local conditions, but a general "cessation of work, which would place the country in the rigor of death, whose terrible and incalculable consequences would force the government to capitulate at once.° Were the syndicalists successful in destroying the capital istic order they would institute a communistic economic society and a governmental organiza tion based upon the industrial system. As Pro fessor Orth has well expressed it, "syndicalists believe in a local or communal government. Their state is a glorified trade union whose activities are confined to economic functions, their nation is a collection of federated com munal trade societies.° They would, then, take government out of the front-door of the state to bring it in by the back-door of industrial regimentation. Of all the radical modern re form movements syndicalism has come the nearest to translating the class war into prac tical concrete action and it is that form of or ganization and procedure into which the capital ists should most hesitate to drive the laboring classes. Aside from its own specific program, syndicalism has attracted a sympathetic study from many who are not willing to accept its whole economic program, but feel that some thing must be done to decentralize the over grown and unwieldy modern national state and to give representative government a more rational basis, through allowing the representa tion of economic interests and classes. Further, many exponents of the more orthodox trade unionism feel that they would gain greatly by giving up the craft union organization and ac cepting the principles of the industrial union organization. While syndicalism began as dis tinctly a French movement it has spread into other European countries, notably Italy. In the United States it has been adopted by a con siderable group — the Industrial Workers of the World. From the combined influence of France and the United States syndicalism has built up a considerable following in Great Britain.
11. Gild-Socialism as a Compromise be tween Socialism and Syndicalism.— The movement generally known as gild-socialism means in its essence an economic decentraliza tion and the solution of the labor problem through the revival of industrial associations like the mediaeval gilds, adapted to the changed conditions of modern industrialism. Such a proposal dates back to the first half of the 19th century, when it was foreshadowed by some of the propositions of the English Christian So cialists and Ruskin. Especially congenial has
gild-socialism been to modern Catholic social reformers, like Bishop Ketteler, Franz Hitze, Count de Mun and Hilaire Belloc. It also has been defended in a modified form by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, while it has par ticularly attracted the younger British labor leaders, such as Mr. Cole and his associates. In its modern and elaborated form it aims to effect a reconciliation between state socialism syndicalism. The political control and ad ministration, which represents society as con sumers and which receives the chief atten tion of the socialists, will be retained by the state. The management of industrial affairs, which pertains to society as producers and is represented by syndicalism, will be turned over to gilds or associations of workingmen, properly federated into national organizations, This will give essential industrial autonomy. Above both political and economic authority will be a joint committee composed of representatives of the state and the gilds, which will have the final decision on disputed points and on those vital matters which concern the citizens as both pro ducers and consumers. To many, gild-social ism seems the most promising of the modern reform policies and a clever synthesis of two of the most powerful of radical reform pro grams. Others, however, deny the possibility of any real separation of political and indus trial functions. As Prof. Ernest Barker has expressed it, "any doctrine of separation of powers, such as Guild-Socialism advocates, is bound to collapse before the simple fact of the vital interdependence of all the activities of the 'great society' of to-day. Either the State must go, as Syndicalists seem to advocate, and that means chaos, or the State must remain— and then, if you are to have Socialism, it must be State-Socialism?" 12. Henry George, the Single Tax and Land Nationalization.— The great majority of radical reform programs in recent times have centred about attacks upon the methods of pro duction and distribution of the earnings in man ufacturing industry and commercial enter prises, but these ignored certain sources of mod ern social problems and evident causes of pov erty and misery involved in the unequal and undemocratic methods of landholding. There fore, it was natural that at least one important reform program should revolve about the pro posal to reconstruct the methods of landhold ing to bring them more into harmony with mod ern democratic principles. The leader in this movement was a brilliant and energetic Ameri can, Henry George (1839-97). Living in Cali fornia in the early days of its civic and indus trial development he was struck with the great increase in land values that took place from purely social causes in less than a decade. Com ing to New York the same phenomena attracted his attention in the extreme land values created by social and economic concentration on Man hattan Island. So forcibly was he struck by these facts that he came to regard this increase of real estate values and its absorption by pri vate persons as the chief cause of poverty and misery. Consequently, he proposed, in his notable work on 'Progress and Poverty' (1879), the general abolition of other forms of revenue and the imposition of a so-called "sin gle-tax" on land, which would turn into the public treasury the unearned or social incre ment in land values. This process would ulti mately drive the landlord out of existence and pave the way for the democratic nationaliza tion of land. George's theories attracted the greatest amount of interest in England where the evils he attacked were especially prevalent and where the Liberal party found a modified version of his doctrines a fine instrument to be used in attacking their traditional enemies— the Tory or Conservative landlords. Among his followers was the famous scientist, Alfred Rus sel Wallace, but it remained for David Lloyd George to give these doctrines some prelimi nary application in legislation. In the "small holdings Act" of 1907 and in his budget of 1909 he made a definite attack upon the vested landed interests. At the outbreak of the World War he was preparing a radical program of agrarian reform for Great Britain, but the close of the conflict found him detached from the reform party and sitting at the Peace Conference with two of the most tenacious adherents to agrarian autocracy in England, Arthur J. Balfour and Bonar Law. In the meantime the Bolshevik government in Russia had proceeded to carry through a plan of actual land nationalization, but it would seem that this was much more a product of the peculiar aims of the agrarian So cialist, or Social Revolutionary, party in Rus sia than it was of the direct adoption of the views of Henry George. Most progressive thinkers differ from Henry George primarily in holding that the single-tax should not be re garded as the sole remedy for modern social problems, though the majority of them would agree that society should in some manner ab sorb these socially created values known as the unearned increment, and all would give him credit for having called attention to the fact that the capitalistic manufacturer or merchant is not wholly responsible for the evils and mis ery of the present order. Much of the vitality of the single tax discussion has, however, been subsequently destroyed by changed economic conditions, particularly the relative decrease in the proportional importance of landed as com pared with other forms of wealth, and the grow ing fluidity and legal elusiveness of the present modes of land-holding.