SYNDICALISM.
Syndicalism. By J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P. (Constable and Co. le. net.)—That the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party should dislike the Syndicalist agitation is easily intelligible, for the Syndicalist runs counter to the Parliamentary Socialist at almost every point. His whole purpose is to work through trade unions exclusively and to draw working men away from politics. To the Syndicalist, as Mr. Ramsay MacDonald puts it "the State and the nation are nothing except the forces by which the indus- trial order with which he is at war are maintained." Moreover, the Syndicalist, while hating the State, is unkind enough to despise the Socialist, and especially the Socialists of the Fabian Party, whom he regards as "snobbish on the one hand and cunning on the other." For these reasons Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has evident pleasure in devoting his pen to the destruction of the Syndicalist creed. It is not a difficult task, nor does his little book add very much to the existing body of criticism. He emphasizes what has been frequently pointed out before, that the principal Syndicalist body in Franco, the Confederation ginticale du travail, represents only a minority of a minority of the working classes. But of course, the whole theory of Syndicalist action is that the energetic minority must guide, and if necessary coerce, the majority. With regard to the general strike, which is the weapon of the Syndicalist, Mr. MacDonald is as emphatic as any mere bourgeois economist might be that such a weapon must injure those who use it more than society as a whole, against whom it is directed.
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