The Ensign. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1912. WHAT IS SYNDICALISM?

Mataura Ensign, 14 May 1912, Page 4

The Ensign. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1912. WHAT IS SYNDICALISM?

An Edinburgh University writer says tliat the most notable term in use since the beginning of the great coal strike has becm Syndicalism. To the majority of r.cadcrs, he adds, the word is gruesome and unintelligible, and the fact that Tom Mann is president of the. industrial Syndicate League conveys little or nothing to the ordinary person. Perhaps to the majority of our readers it means something revolutionary. Its aim is the final overthrow of capitalism, Its method is to capture the trades unions in the interests of Socialism, not evolutionary, but revolutionary Social-1 ism. J.i means the abandonment of measured forward progress for extreme measures and industrial Avar, even for violence. Karl Marx (the founder of modern Socialism) saw the stormelouds gathering and was content to await thu vengeance which history would take, on] th,? oppressors of the poor. The Syn-j dicalists, on. the other hand, are out to make history. Socialism is, they affirm, out of date. Anarchism lias failed; the former lias unsuccessfully striven to work through a parliamentary group; the latter has cast the ineffectual lie's too wide. Moreover, the Anarchist was only a negative force; Syndicalism is creative. The Syndicalist calls on all workers —because he would compel all workers to become trades unionists—to close their ranksand inarch over •capitalism to victory. Acting on the, axiom that the wholo is greater than its part, the Syndicalist warns for each separate trade union to become a part of a great union of all tracks. To wrong an individual member is t<> touch the whole labor unions, not of oil" country only, but of the world. 13ut he argues that no such wrong 1 would ever be perpetrated. Labor is to jln a solid phalanx. Not one man is to ! fail to answer to his name. Capitalism is to go. They must act together like an army. Their every act must be ;m act of war, class against class. The ficilit accomplished, there will be no rancour or hatred, for there is no rancour in war. Labor will fight for tli" ; ".v of the battle, because in battle alone it roaches its own individuality, and in the vigor of the battle tY 1 salval'oti of the wx'ild will rest- "Thus," concludes the writer, "the violence of the proletariat is a very beautiful ami a verv heroic thing. It serves the pri-m-rcial interests of civilisation. Let us rihitf" ill" revolutionaries as the Creeks «'>bH-"d the Spartan heroes who defended Thermopylae, and kept the lamps

• I' tlu> nkl civilisation aflame." Georges Snrel, however, is not verv fortunate in his comparison of the Syndicalists to the three hundred Spartans. We re-

member the motto of Thermopylae,] "Go, stranger, and tell Sparta that we! died in obedience to her laws." Self-! sacrifice has ever been the first law of t heroism, and Mr Ensor, in his 'Modern Socialism,' has described the propa-j ganda of the Syndicalists not unfairly | as "the first big attempt for 30 years to direct and submit the Socialist move-! merit by an Anarchist movement from' within." Revolutionary Syndicalism! has an extensive literature, one French, one English and two Italian periodicals. It is at this time guided by a group of remarkable men. In Italy Professors Lagandelle and Labriola are its leading representatives, Georges Sorel in France, Eugene Debs in America and Tom Mann in England. In Italy, indeed, the whole movement has been for the most part in the hands of men of high University standing. The new , doctrine they preach is that workers must dissociate themselves from all [other parties, both political and civil. [ and with a united front act for themselves.