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Theories of Syndicalist Revolutionaries

The Western European working-class movement presents us with the most curious and new combinations. The most numerous and well-proportioned detachment of the international socialist party, the German Social Democracy, having acquired, in the words of Engels, rosy cheeks in an atmosphere of legality and parliamentarism, unexpectedly for many was convinced that on the path of constant electoral successes it would not expect a calm and confident "evolution" into the dominant party, but the evil old woman dialectics with her revolutionary surprises. The legal struggle threatens to turn into its own opposite, the connivance of the Junker-police state and the bourgeoisie is about to be replaced by provocative insolence and drastic measures.

If Parliament, an instrument for equalizing and mutually adjusting individual conflicting interests of diverse groups of bourgeois society, begins to pass into the hands of the proletariat and turn into a noose for bourgeois society in these hands, this latter will naturally throw all its legality to hell and put everything at stake in order to show "black" her real place.

And the German Social Democracy strove to find means of struggle that would show that its real strength in society was at least as good as its parliamentary significance. And then a mass political strike—this is a specially proletarian weapon—came out of its own accord. But the party as such (400,000 registered members) is not in a position to carry out a mass political strike, and it naturally looked for an ally in the trade unions that had flourished powerfully by that time (1½ million members). While the party lived and lived in an atmosphere of peaceful parliamentarianism, it established this view of the trade unions and the party: the party represents the organization of the proletarian class as a whole, it pursues a general class goal: the conquest of power (or the upholding and expansion of freedoms, as a path) and the transition to socialism.

Trade unions, on the other hand, reflect the private professional interests of the workers, their goal is to defend the worker from the exploitative inclinations of entrepreneurs, to win some relief, a reduction in the working day, an increase in wages. This is respectable and necessary, but it has only an indirect relation to socialism. The general position that all willing workers, regardless of their party views, should be accepted as members of trade unions is indisputable, but with the somewhat indifferent attitude of "politicians", orthodox, revolutionary Marxists to the cause of socialist propaganda in the womb of the trade unions, it turned out in practice that there they built a nest and firmly rooted opportunists, in the genus Legin, with true Cadet stubbornness they cling to legality and have the audacity to hide behind the names of the great revolutionaries Marx and Engels. It is impossible not to welcome the new resolutions of the Mannheim Party Tag, which we, by the way, quote:

“Trade unions are absolutely essential for raising the class position of the workers in bourgeois society. They are no less necessary than the Social-Democratic Party, which is fighting for the political equality of the working class with other classes of society and, in general, for raising the political position of the working class. Alongside this immediate task, the Party fights for the emancipation of the working class from all exploitation by abolishing the system of recruitment and the organization of production and exchange on the basis of social equality, i.e., socialist society. This goal must also be pursued by workers who are members of the trade unions and are conscious of their class interests.

Both organizations (professional and political) must therefore enter into agreements with each other and mutually support each other.

It is highly gratifying that this resolution states with complete clarity that the unions, or syndicates, are socialist organizations pursuing not only purely economic goals, but revolutionary ones in the political and social sense. But it is all the more sad that this new honorable role is being assigned by the Party to the trade unions at a time when they are poisoned by the poison of opportunism, when they are capable of dragging the Party into the swamp and have succeeded in instilling in Bebel himself such a dose of prudence and sobriety that our Russian Cadets could not fail to show on pages of "Speech" and "Comrade" restrained jubilation.

The situation is quite different in France and Italy. There, the majority of the workers' syndicates are imbued with an irrepressible revolutionary spirit and are a reliable support for the social revolution and a strong antidote against the vulgarity of ministerialism and the pernicious influence of the petty-bourgeois electors, who are flooding in waves to the socialist ballot boxes and corrupting the right wing of the socialists to the end.

Attacking socialist reformism in the name of a social revolution, attacking the outrageous exaggeration of the role of deputies within the walls of parliament, in the name of the revolutionary struggle of the masses themselves, the theoreticians of syndicalism, not without reason, put forward as their motto the words: "back to Marx!"

When they recall the significance of consciousness and violence in history, relying on Marx and correctly interpreting his historical philosophy, as scientific as it is deeply revolutionary, deeply active; when they point out that the social revolution is not only a political but also a technical task—to plant new production, which only confederations of workers' syndicates can carry out—they refresh and purify Marxist thought, bringing it closer to its bright primary sources.

The period of calm weaned the socialists (and not only the "right wing") from the thought of a revolutionary offensive course of action. But the need for a revolutionary defense against attacks on Parliament spontaneously brings combative questions back to the forefront, and here the young and courageous theoreticians of revolutionary syndicalism will play their part.

But one has to frown with skepticism when one reads the tirades of the theorists of syndicalism, Lagardel and Labriola, those typical intellectuals, against the influence of the intelligentsia on the working masses, reading their hymns in honor of the calloused fist. It's so... not smart! And so ... tired! That politicians like Millerand, who has already been thrown out of the party, or Turati, whom it would not be bad to throw out as well, are corrupting (as far as they can) the working masses, this is true, but to make some somersaults out of this to condemn the entire intelligentsia, forgetting about their own belonging to it , this has long been simply ridiculous. But let us not be too strict about this feature of the theorists of syndicalism. There is a certain resentment here. The offended have long appealed to the calloused fist against the "bad shepherds". The same offense led to the same reception even of our venerable "worker" Plekhanov.

But besides this, real heresies, dangerous heresies, are rooted in the theories of revolutionary syndicalism, as they are now developing. In Italy, at a recent party congress, all three factions of socialism (reformists, integralists (Ferry) and syndicalists) broke their spears. Describing his position, the leader of the syndicalists, Arthur Labriola, pointed to his book "Il riformismo e la riyoluzione sociale" as a source for getting acquainted with the point of view of his faction.

The book is markedly imbued with anarchist hatred of the state. Labriola, forgetting all his Marxism, in a purely anarchist way, naively equates collectivism with state socialism, he is frightened by the prospect of a broad and centralized national or even international organization of labor. Necessary for such an organization, the central administration, democratically elected, with strictly defined powers, under the constant control of the people, he stubbornly calls state power and is afraid of a new slavery of people in relation to it. Labriola completely forgets that the state is an organization of class domination, and that where there is no room for class distinction, there can be no place for "power." In the meantime, look at what sad results follow from this fear of centralization, i.e.

Labriola goes out of his way to prove that the idea of ​​collectivism was completely alien to Marx. According to his interpretation, socialism for Marx involves only the elimination of surplus value and the exploitation of man by man. What forms the labor organization will take is a matter of indifference to Marx. It turns out that the ideals of Proudhon with his individual independent producers in the absence of hired labor fit perfectly into Marxism.

It is clear that the anti-statist Labriola rejects the idea of ​​the conquest of state power by the proletariat, rejects the important transitional role of the proletarian revolutionary provisional government. But he cannot fail to realize that in a revolutionary epoch the final struggle against the centralized bourgeois state can be waged with a chance of victory only by a united centralized and disciplined proletarian army. Therefore, Labriola, relying on his understanding of socialism as outlined above, draws the following perspective: the best organized and richest individual syndicates rent industrial enterprises from the capitalists; they are followed by an ever-expanding stream and others; when there is sufficient support, the tenant syndicates will, in a revolutionary way, refuse to pay rent to the capitalists and will prove to be the only masters in industry. And such an intelligent person as Labriola finds no other guarantee against the conversion of advanced syndicates in this way into aristocratic cooperatives, closed circles, under favorable circumstances, even ready to hire workers - except for the unsubstantiated assertion that the syndicate is such a democratic thing ... that isolation is fundamentally hated by them, and similar phrases unworthy of a Marxist.

But let us even assume that wage labor and the exploitation of man do not flourish again, in which case Labriola replaces socialism with half-hearted cooperatism. We shall have before us a whole series of self-producing co-operatives which will exchange among themselves while preserving the market and money; Labriola mentions this specifically. How to avoid under such conditions the overproduction of some products, the underproduction of others, how to avoid those cruel natural means by which the market regulates production, that is, the ruin of some producers and the enrichment of others, is unknown. All the devastating criticism that Engels brought down on Proudhon in the preface to The Poverty of Philosophy applies entirely to Labriola's construction. The ruin of some cooperatives and the rapid enrichment of others in the presence of the market and free competition is inevitable. And therefore, mutual anger is inevitable, perhaps, wars, etc. Along the way, Labriola agrees to truly monstrous theoretical propositions; for example, he argues that if there were no state, if bourgeois society were left to itself, it would naturally settle down and exploitation would disappear in it, due to ... a gradual drop in the percentage of entrepreneurial profits !!

Meanwhile, for the sake of this more than dubious ideal, as a result of this childishly naive fear of power, Labriola undermines proletarian discipline and that organic striving of the proletariat for the broadest and most complete organizations, which serves as the best guarantee of the victory of the working class over its enemies.

It is to be hoped that a fresh and strong working-class movement, marching under the banner of syndicalism, will be able to purify the theories of its leaders and arrive at an integral and harmonious true Marxist world outlook, as well as at corresponding multilateral tactics.

It does not hurt to note that, despite all their one-sidedness, the theoreticians of revolutionary syndicalism do not completely reject the parliamentary struggle and in their assessment of parliamentarism are closer to true Marxism than the socialist parliamentary cretins.

A. Lunacharsky.