BOOKS.
SYNDICALISM AND SOCIALISM*
THE ordinary conception of philosophy is of something very remote from the obvious sane business of life. Metaphysics, in particular, we are inclined to regard as a rather dreary kind of game played in large volumes and the heavier quarterlies by erudite persons, each of whom invents his own rules, wins triumphantly, and then quarrels with other erudite persons who have invented different rules. Buckle's famous remark that " there is no other study which has been so zealously prosecuted, so long continued, and yet remains so barren of results. In no other department has there been so much move- ment and so little progress," still fairly represents popular opinion on the subject. It is, however, a mistaken view, and dangerously mistaken ; for thought may be as violent an explo- sive as tri-nitro-toluene. A philosopher with an idea is much less controllable than an Anarchist with a bomb ; his sphere of influence is wider, his persistence is greater, and he is much less likely to slice* to the results of his own activities. Yet we suppress Anarchism when we can under the Defence of the Realm Act, while we allow Philosophy to stalk unchecked, like Respectability in the streets of Boston, under the impression that it is a visionary and abstract thing which does not really concern us. The task Mr. Scott has undertaken in the volume before us is to show that, on the contrary, some alarming mani- festations of recent years are fundamentally allied to certain teachings about the nature of ultimate reality which have been promulgated in the same period.
He begins with an outline of the growth and the doctrines of Syndicalism. Trade Unionism arose out of the recognition by craftsmen of the advantages of collective bargaining. The individual worker who withholds his labour in order to secure an increase in his wages can generally be replaced ; but when all the workers in a factory go out it is not so easy to replace them, and when all the workers in a district are on strike together the difficulty becomes acute. When, however, means of com- munication improve, distant localities become more accessible, and the employer has a larger field from which to procure sub- stitutes. The Union then endeavours to regain its strategic advantage by widening the Union until it includes, if possible, all the workers in that particular trade in the country. The next obvious step is to form alliances with the Unions of other trades ; this Unionism outside the Unions is the mechanical basis of Syndicalism.
Up to this point Trade Unionism had been moving towards State Socialism. Its intention was to reform existing conditions
• Syndicalism and Rhilotophieal Realists: a Study in the Conflation of Con- temporary Social Tendencies. By 3. W. Scott. London; A. and C. Pluck. lies..et.1
by means of State action. Its earlier exponents sought for a moral good as well as an economic good ; they believed in the good of the State as including all classes. But Marx and his followers looked chiefly, if not altogether, to the immediate good of the working classes, which they believed could be secured only at the expense of other classes, and they preached con- sistently a class war. Syndicalism of to-day is essentially economic and revolutionary :—
" It is the resolution to secure at whatever cost the benefit of a class and shut the eyes to what lies beyond. Wo said that Syndicalism had resigned something of value. That it has resigned is faith in the possibility of creating a shareable good of the whole community. 'What it has substituted therefor is the conviction that nothing more is possible than that one class should seize its portion of a good which is unshareable."
The class war was to be waged relentlessly because in the eyes of Marx it was the way of evolution. No concessions were to be made or accepted on either side ; the employer who fought hardest for his class was bringing the ultimate triumph of the workmen nearest. But the modern Syndicalist goes a step further; he believes in strikes for their own sake. M. Georges Sorel, who is the modern apostle of the movement, becomes almost mystical in his devotion to the general strike. Its in- describable perfections move him to instinctive worship ; its sheer passionate beauty affects him like a sonnet :— " Strikes," he says, " have engendered in the proletariat the noblest, deepest, and most moving sentiments that they possess; the general strike groups them all in a coordinated pictnre, and, by bringing them together, gives to each one of them its,maximum intensity ; appealing to their painful memories of particular conflicts, it colours with an intense life all the details of the composition presented to consciousness. We thus obtain that intuition of Socialism which language cannot give us with perfect clearness—and we obtain it as a whole, per- ceived instantaneously."
Readers of M. Bergson will see how closely this is allied to the Bergeonian philosophy. Intuition instead of reason, and the benefits of immediate action, are tenets which he and the Syndicalists hold in common ; and they are basic tenets. It would take us too long to follow the analysis by which Mr. Scott detects an element of materialism in M. Bergson's teach- ing ; for that we must refer our readers to the book itself ; but to this element Mr. Scott refers M. Bergson's spiritual kinship with X Sorel :—
" He is induced by what is realistic in his work to utter a virtual benediction upoiyany political policy which bids people go back from action which is rational, towards action which is instinctive and blind. This is precisely what Syndicalism needs to justify its policy. . . . Syndicalism has taken courage explicitly to relinquish the more comprehensive, constructive, political view of the preceding Socialism ; and to fall back upon direct action, upon striking straight for the immediate need, upon violence and action for action's sake. The Syndicalist who saw clearly how well the whole outlook of Bergson confirmed his practical policy could, as we said, surprise no one if he responded to his teaching with a fervent amen."
The connexion with the Realism of Mr. Bertrand Russell is not quite so apparent ; Mr. Scott finds it in a certain contented narrowness which is characteristic of both. The Socialistic ideal has receded from the benefit of the commonwealth to the benefit of a class ; it has abandoned the wide prospects of Parlia- mentary action for the immediate harvest of a strike. "The reforming spirit is content to be narrow, attempting less for the sake of accomplishing more." Mr. Scott argues that in the same way Mr. Russell's realism—his fondness for this-here-now- outside-the-mind—is essentially narrowing and unconstructive in thought, and leads to further narrowness in social theory, Certainly in his preference for the smaller organization over the larger, when the larger becomes large enough to identify itself with the State, Mr. Russell is in close touch with the Syndicalists ; indeed, he says himself that he sympathizes with them ; but the connexion between his political and meta- physical theories seems to us to be rather one of analogy than logical necessity. The section dealing with this aspect of the question is, on the whole, the least convincing of the book. It is more clever than satisfactory. Whatever difference of opinion there may be about the truth or falsehood of Mr. Scott's principal positions, there can be none about the ability with which he has handled his material His style is trenchant ; he hits hard but he hits fairly ; and it is permeated with a sense of humour as delightful in a work of this description as it is unexpected. The manner in which he hammers his arguments home with a twinkling phrase reminds us at times of Walter Bagehot ; our eye lights on a representative passage where we happen to open the book :— Marx temporarily lifted Socialism out of all this, but only temporarily. There arose an order of creature after him, peace- ably-minded Revisionists, Fabians, et hoc genus seine, smoothing over his sharp points and toning down his inertial spirit, who are regarded by the newer lights with abundant loathing. Now Bergson helps to define those bourgeois within the ca rp, and of course one cannot despise a set of persons properly till one has defined them. Those people profess inter est in Socialism. But they are ' intellectuals.' They make plans, they study sociology, they amass statistics, they write books. T hey see how the great programme is all going to work. They have even tried to com- mence the working. They have put on their big spectacles, and taken up their long forceps and begun to patch and to doctor. After Bergson, what does all this mean but that they are just what their name implies—that they have become the dupes of the intellect again, have tried to act like beings who could foresee, and not simply sought to lie back on the running flood, spread their sails to the winds of God, and await the grand catastrophe ? "
Mr. Scott's humour would entitle him to consideration for its own sake ; but its value is intensified because it is only the grace which makes his more substantial merits attractive ; it is the spear-head of his clear, driving thought.
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