_ INTRODUCTION
THE attempt to conceive imaginatively a better
ordering of human society than the destructive and
cruel chaos in which mankind has hitherto existed
is by no means modern: it is at least as old as Plato,
whose "Republic" set the model for the Utopias of
subsequent philosophers. Whoever contemplates the
world in the light of an ideal--whether what he seeks
be intellect, or art, or love, or simple happiness, or
all together--must feel a great sorrow in the evils
that men needlessly allow to continue, and--if he be
a man of force and vital energy--an urgent desire to
lead men to the realization of the good which inspires
his creative vision. It is this desire which has been
the primary force moving the pioneers of Socialism
and Anarchism, as it moved the inventors of ideal
commonwealths in the past. In this there is nothing
new. What is new in Socialism and Anarchism, is
that close relation of the ideal to the present
sufferings of men, which has enabled powerful political
movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers.
It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism
important, and it is this that makes them dangerous
to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously
upon the evils of our present order of society.
The great majority of men and women, in ordinary
times, pass through life without ever contemplating
or criticising, as a whole, either their own
conditions or those of the world at large. They find
themselves born into a certain place in society, and
they accept what each day brings forth, without any
effort of thought beyond what the immediate present
requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of
the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of
the moment, without much forethought, and without
considering that by sufficient effort the whole
conditions of their lives could be changed. A certain
percentage, guided by personal ambition, make the effort
of thought and will which is necessary to place
themselves among the more fortunate members of the
community; but very few among these are seriously
concerned to secure for all the advantages which they
seek for themselves. It is only a few rare and exceptional
men who have that kind of love toward mankind
at large that makes them unable to endure
patiently the general mass of evil and suffering,
regardless of any relation it may have to their own
lives. These few, driven by sympathetic pain, will
seek, first in thought and then in action, for some
way of escape, some new system of society by which
life may become richer, more full of joy and less
full of preventable evils than it is at present. But
in the past such men have, as a rule, failed to interest
the very victims of the injustices which they wished
to remedy. The more unfortunate sections of the
population have been ignorant, apathetic from excess
of toil and weariness, timorous through the imminent
danger of immediate punishment by the holders of
power, and morally unreliable owing to the loss of
self-respect resulting from their degradation. To
create among such classes any conscious, deliberate
effort after general amelioration might have seemed
a hopeless task, and indeed in the past it has
generally proved so. But the modern world, by the
increase of education and the rise in the standard of
comfort among wage-earners, has produced new
conditions, more favorable than ever before to the
demand for radical reconstruction. It is above all
the Socialists, and in a lesser degree the Anarchists
(chiefly as the inspirers of Syndicalism), who have
become the exponents of this demand.
What is perhaps most remarkable in regard to
both Socialism and Anarchism is the association of a
widespread popular movement with ideals for a better
world. The ideals have been elaborated, in the
first instance, by solitary writers of books, and yet
powerful sections of the wage-earning classes have
accepted them as their guide in the practical affairs
of the world. In regard to Socialism this is evident;
but in regard to Anarchism it is only true with some
qualification. Anarchism as such has never been a
widespread creed, it is only in the modified form of
Syndicalism that it has achieved popularity. Unlike
Socialism and Anarchism, Syndicalism is primarily
the outcome, not of an idea, but of an organization:
the fact of Trade Union organization came first, and
the ideas of Syndicalism are those which seemed
appropriate to this organization in the opinion of
the more advanced French Trade Unions. But the
ideas are, in the main, derived from Anarchism, and
the men who gained acceptance for them were, for
the most part, Anarchists. Thus we may regard
Syndicalism as the Anarchism of the market-place
as opposed to the Anarchism of isolated individuals
which had preserved a precarious life throughout the
previous decades. Taking this view, we find in
Anarchist-Syndicalism the same combination of ideal
and organization as we find in Socialist political
parties. It is from this standpoint that our study
of these movements will be undertaken.
Socialism and Anarchism, in their modern form,
spring respectively from two protagonists, Marx and
Bakunin, who fought a lifelong battle, culminating
in a split in the first International. We shall begin
our study with these two men--first their teaching,
and then the organizations which they founded or
inspired. This will lead us to the spread of Socialism
in more recent years, and thence to the Syndicalist
revolt against Socialist emphasis on the State
and political action, and to certain movements outside
France which have some affinity with Syndicalism--
notably the I. W. W. in America and Guild
Socialism in England. From this historical survey
we shall pass to the consideration of some of the
more pressing problems of the future, and shall try
to decide in what respects the world would be happier
if the aims of Socialists or Syndicalists were
achieved.
My own opinion--which I may as well indicate
at the outset--is that pure Anarchism, though it
should be the ultimate ideal, to which society should
continually approximate, is for the present impossible,
and would not survive more than a year or two
at most if it were adopted. On the other hand, both
Marxian Socialism and Syndicalism, in spite of many
drawbacks, seem to me calculated to give rise to a
happier and better world than that in which we live.
I do not, however, regard either of them as the best
practicable system. Marxian Socialism, I fear,
would give far too much power to the State, while
Syndicalism, which aims at abolishing the State,
would, I believe, find itself forced to reconstruct a
central authority in order to put an end to the
rivalries of different groups of producers. The BEST
practicable system, to my mind, is that of Guild
Socialism, which concedes what is valid both in the
claims of the State Socialists and in the Syndicalist
fear of the State, by adopting a system of federalism
among trades for reasons similar to those which
are recommending federalism among nations. The
grounds for these conclusions will appear as we
proceed.
Before embarking upon the history of recent
movements In favor of radical reconstruction, it will
be worth while to consider some traits of character
which distinguish most political idealists, and are
much misunderstood by the general public for other
reasons besides mere prejudice. I wish to do full
justice to these reasons, in order to show the more
effectually why they ought not to be operative.
The leaders of the more advanced movements
are, in general, men of quite unusual disinterestedness,
as is evident from a consideration of their careers.
Although they have obviously quite as much ability
as many men who rise to positions of great power,
they do not themselves become the arbiters of
contemporary events, nor do they achieve wealth or the
applause of the mass of their contemporaries. Men
who have the capacity for winning these prizes, and
who work at least as hard as those who win them,
but deliberately adopt a line which makes the winning
of them impossible, must be judged to have an
aim in life other than personal advancement;
whatever admixture of self-seeking may enter into the
detail of their lives, their fundamental motive must
be outside Self. The pioneers of Socialism, Anarchism,
and Syndicalism have, for the most part,
experienced prison, exile, and poverty, deliberately
incurred because they would not abandon their
propaganda; and by this conduct they have shown that
the hope which inspired them was not for themselves,
but for mankind.
Nevertheless, though the desire for human welfare
is what at bottom determines the broad lines of such
men's lives, it often happens that, in the detail of
their speech and writing, hatred is far more visible
than love. The impatient idealist--and without some
impatience a man will hardly prove effective--is
almost sure to be led into hatred by the oppositions
and disappointments which he encounters in his
endeavors to bring happiness to the world. The more
certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth
of his gospel, the more indignant he will become when
his teaching is rejected. Often he will successfully
achieve an attitude of philosophic tolerance as
regards the apathy of the masses, and even as regards
the whole-hearted opposition of professed defenders
of the status quo. But the men whom he finds it
impossible to forgive are those who profess the same desire
for the amelioration of society as he feels himself,
but who do not accept his method of achieving this
end. The intense faith which enables him to withstand
persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes
him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that
any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest,
and must be actuated by some sinister motive
of treachery to the cause. Hence arises the spirit of
the sect, that bitter, narrow orthodoxy which is the
bane of those who hold strongly to an unpopular
creed. So many real temptations to treachery exist
that suspicion is natural. And among leaders,
ambition, which they mortify in their choice of a
career, is sure to return in a new form: in the desire
for intellectual mastery and for despotic power
within their own sect. From these causes it results
that the advocates of drastic reform divide
themselves into opposing schools, hating each other with
a bitter hatred, accusing each other often of such
crimes as being in the pay of the police, and demanding,
of any speaker or writer whom they are to
admire, that he shall conform exactly to their
prejudices, and make all his teaching minister to their
belief that the exact truth is to be found within the
limits of their creed. The result of this state of
mind is that, to a casual and unimaginative attention,
the men who have sacrificed most through the
wish to benefit mankind APPEAR to be actuated far
more by hatred than by love. And the demand for
orthodoxy is stifling to any free exercise of intellect.
This cause, as well as economic prejudice, has made
it difficult for the "intellectuals" to co-operate prac-
tically with the more extreme reformers, however they
may sympathize with their main purposes and even
with nine-tenths of their program.
Another reason why radical reformers are
misjudged by ordinary men is that they view existing
society from outside, with hostility towards its
institutions. Although, for the most part, they have
more belief than their neighbors in human nature's
inherent capacity for a good life, they are so
conscious of the cruelty and oppression resulting from
existing institutions that they make a wholly
misleading impression of cynicism. Most men have
instinctively two entirely different codes of behavior:
one toward those whom they regard as companions or
colleagues or friends, or in some way members of the
same "herd"; the other toward those whom they
regard as enemies or outcasts or a danger to society.
Radical reformers are apt to concentrate their
attention upon the behavior of society toward the
latter class, the class of those toward whom the
"herd" feels ill-will. This class includes, of course,
enemies in war, and criminals; in the minds of those
who consider the preservation of the existing order
essential to their own safety or privileges, it includes
all who advocate any great political or economic
change, and all classes which, through their poverty
or through any other cause, are likely to feel a
dangerous degree of discontent. The ordinary citizen
probably seldom thinks about such individuals or
classes, and goes through life believing that he and
his friends are kindly people, because they have no
wish to injure those toward whom they entertain no
group-hostility. But the man whose attention is
fastened upon the relations of a group with those
whom it hates or fears will judge quite differently.
In these relations a surprising ferocity is apt to be
developed, and a very ugly side of human nature
comes to the fore. The opponents of capitalism
have learned, through the study of certain historical
facts, that this ferocity has often been shown by the
capitalists and by the State toward the wage-earning
classes, particularly when they have ventured to
protest against the unspeakable suffering to which
industrialism has usually condemned them. Hence
arises a quite different attitude toward existing
society from that of the ordinary well-to-do citizen:
an attitude as true as his, perhaps also as untrue,
but equally based on facts, facts concerning his
relations to his enemies instead of to his friends.
The class-war, like wars between nations,
produces two opposing views, each equally true and
equally untrue. The citizen of a nation at war,
when he thinks of his own countrymen, thinks of them
primarily as he has experienced them, in dealings
with their friends, in their family relations, and so
on. They seem to him on the whole kindly, decent
folk. But a nation with which his country is at
war views his compatriots through the medium of a
quite different set of experiences: as they appear
in the ferocity of battle, in the invasion and subjugation
of a hostile territory, or in the chicanery of a
juggling diplomacy. The men of whom these facts
are true are the very same as the men whom their
compatriots know as husbands or fathers or friends,
but they are judged differently because they are
judged on different data. And so it is with those who
view the capitalist from the standpoint of the
revolutionary wage-earner: they appear inconceivably
cynical and misjudging to the capitalist, because the
facts upon which their view is based are facts which
he either does not know or habitually ignores. Yet
the view from the outside is just as true as the view
from the inside. Both are necessary to the complete
truth; and the Socialist, who emphasizes the outside
view, is not a cynic, but merely the friend of the
wage-earners, maddened by the spectacle of the needless
misery which capitalism inflicts upon them.
I have placed these general reflections at the
beginning of our study, in order to make it clear to
the reader that, whatever bitterness and hate may
be found in the movements which we are to examine,
it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their
mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who
torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it
is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of
outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which
are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.
If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by
Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in
this from their opponents; and in the source of their
inspiration they have shown themselves superior to
those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the
injustices and oppressions by which the existing
system is preserved. _