USE THE

BEST

Vol. XV.

No. 6

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PARIS, FRANCE, May 5, 1908. NTIL within a few years most of the labor newspapers and nearly all the leading orators and writers, popular among the working people of the continent of Europe, have been Marxian socialists. The various socialist parties have been the sole representatives of labor in politics, they have dominated the economic struggles of the unions, and in very many cases they have even founded and built up unions themselves. In other words, up to a few years ago the whole labor movement on the continent was overshadowed, sometimes even eclipsed, by the Marxian political parties.

It is unnecessary to say that a minority in every union, and even a majority in some of the most important, were bitterly discontented at the fact that the economic organizations of labor, absolutely necessary for the struggle against the employing class, should be utilized by the advocates of any social theory, however broad and unrestricted to any single class or however narrow and proletarian it might be. Those were even more numerous who, whether agreeing or not agreeing with the general ideas of the socialists, protested as with their last breath against any connection of

the economic organizations with such political parties as alone are likely to arise under modern constitutions, all originally written by employers, or modern governments, all almost exclusively in the hands of the employers and their friends.

As a result of this growing discontent there have arisen two great general revolts among continental labor organizations against the domination of the socialist parties-the first on the part of those who are against the creation of a labor party (whether on socialist lines or not), the second on the part of those who are fundamentally opposed to the old orthodox Marxian socialism on principle. The first revolt, already victorious, was merely practical and defensive; the second is aggressive and proposes nothing less than the control of all socialist parties by the labor unions.

This second and more aggressive revolt of Labor against the socialist parties is just reaching an acute stage, while the practical revolt, begun a decade ago, was victorious last year at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart and is familiar to all readers who follow the international labor movement. At that congress, where not only the socialist parties of the world, but also most of the labor unions, including the

British, were represented, it was finally decided, in contradiction with the old socialist ideas, that the labor unions were to be considered as free and independent, and if less important than the socialist parties, for the final emancipation, at least as having as dignified and necessary a role in the international movement. In other words, that the unions were to be permitted to consider their own interests above those of any of the parties. This is nothing less than a revolution in socialist opinion, since formerly the Germans and their imitators in other countries, while recognizing the necessity of the economic struggle and also its utility for their purposes, proposed to subordinate the unions always and everywhere to the political aims of the socialist parties which alone were supposed to be leading toward a complete and revolutionary victory of the working class over capitalism both in industry and government.

But already last year at Stuttgart the newer and more profound revolt against the old Marxism was also in progress. The resolution offered by the French socialists, giving to the unions, not only independence, but an equally important role with the party, both in the immediate defense and in the final emancipation of labor, was rejected by a considerable majority. This resolution itself had the result of a compromise of the French party with the French unionists, who claim for the federations of labor in all countries, not merely an equality with the political parties, but the position of sole representative of labor, both in the immediate political and economic conflict and in the general emancipation movement, and insist, that socialist parties exist only by sufferance and are genuine only as long as they obey the unions, to which they must be completely subordinated. At the same time, just as the French unionists have thus refused to allow a labor party to boss them, so they have no desire to boss a labor party, since they have only very limited demands to make of the present employer's government, and in politics expect to prevent a governmental reaction rather than to gain any advantages even as to the laws governing the economic conflict itself. It is from this economic struggle and not from politics that they hope not only for the defense of labor but for its ultimate emancipation in the social revolution of the future.

This is a revolution indeed! Looking forward to a state of society in which the working people will dominate, expecting to inaugurate this society against the violent opposition of the employers and their allies, possibly with a bloody revolution, the unionists still call themselves socialists, but not as a rule Marxists. Indeed, their leaders in thought are as much Marx's most bitter opponents as Proudhon and Bakounine. Their chief theoretical writer of the present time, Sorel, even entitles his latest book "The Decomposition of Marxism," and directs it almost wholly against the conclusions of the great German theorist.

The criticism of the Marxian socialism at the hands of the new "unionists" does not in the least resemble the comparatively mild attacks of Bernstein in Germany or of the Fabian socialists or the labor party in England. The effort of the new school of labor philosophy is to destroy Marx's science in all of its parts, leaving only what they call its germ-that is to say, the general spirit rather than the body of the doctrine. Their position can be summed up in a few words. They deny that there can be such a thing as "scientific" socialism. They attribute a very high value to Marx's writings, but only to the "symbolical" parts, which is as much as to say that not a single one of his dogmatic conclusions is well founded.

The only basic idea that the new "unionism" retains from Marx is that of the class struggle of the working people against the capitalists. But even this idea is retained not in the form of a doctrine but only as a suggestive phrase.

concluding that the working class must one day obtain an absolute victory over the other classes, Sorel quotes approvingly a phrase of a late philosophical anarchist very highly valued by the new "unionists," to the effect that they are the irreconcilable enemies of every despotism, moral or material, individual or collectivethat is to say, of laws and dictatorships. including that of the proletarian."

Lagardelle, the chief political writer of the new movement, and perhaps at the same time its most active organizer, also retains a great respect for Marx, even to the point of calling himself Marxist. However, he is diametrically opposed to all the existing socialist parties of the world in