This movement is called
Syndicalism. It is not Socialism, but, on the contrary,
radically opposed to Socialism, because the Syndicalists
hold that the State is the great enemy and that the
Socialists' ideal of State or Collectivist Ownership would
make the lot of the Workers much worse than it is now
under private employers. The means by which they hope
to attain their end is the General Strike, an idea which
was invented by a French workman about twenty years
ago,[27] and was adopted by the French Labor Congress in
1894, after a furious battle with the Socialists, in which
the latter were worsted. Since then the General Strike
has been the avowed policy of the Syndicalists, whose
organization is the Confederation Generale du Travail.''
[27] In fact the General Strike was invented by a Londoner
William Benbow, an Owenite, in 1831.
Or, to put it otherwise, the intelligent French worker
has awakened, as he believes, to the fact that Society
(Societas) and the State (Civitas) connote two separable
spheres of human activity, between which there is no
connection, necessary or desirable. Without the one, man,
being a gregarious animal, cannot subsist: while without
the other he would simply be in clover.
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