Since the year 1905, as the result of a union
between the Parti Socialiste de France (Part; Ouvrier
Socialiste Revolutionnaire Francais led by
Guesde) and the Parti Socialiste Francais (Jaures),
there have been only two groups of Socialists, the
United Socialist Party and the Independents, who
are intellectuals or not willing to be tied to a party.
At the General Election of 1914 the former secured
102 members and the latter 30, out of a total of 590.
Tendencies toward a rapprochement between the
various groups were seriously interfered with by an
event which had considerable importance for the
whole development of advanced political ideas in
France, namely, the acceptance of office in the Waldeck-
Rousseau Ministry by the Socialist Millerand
in 1899. Millerand, as was to be expected, soon
ceased to be a Socialist, and the opponents of political
action pointed to his development as showing
the vanity of political triumphs. Very many French
politicians who have risen to power have begun their
political career as Socialists, and have ended it not
infrequently by employing the army to oppress
strikers. Millerand's action was the most notable
and dramatic among a number of others of a similar
kind. Their cumulative effect has been to produce a
certain cynicism in regard to politics among the more
class-conscious of French wage-earners, and this
state of mind greatly assisted the spread of Syndicalism.
Syndicalism stands essentially for the point of
view of the producer as opposed to that of the consumer;
it is concerned with reforming actual work,
and the organization of industry, not MERELY with
securing greater rewards for work. From this point
of view its vigor and its distinctive character are
derived. It aims at substituting industrial for political
action, and at using Trade Union organization
for purposes for which orthodox Socialism would
look to Parliament. ``Syndicalism'' was originally
only the French name for Trade Unionism, but the
Trade Unionists of France became divided into two
sections, the Reformist and the Revolutionary, of
whom the latter only professed the ideas which we
now associate with the term ``Syndicalism.'' It is
quite impossible to guess how far either the organization
or the ideas of the Syndicalists will remain intact
at the end of the war, and everything that we shall say
is to be taken as applying only to the years before
the war. It may be that French Syndicalism as a
distinctive movement will be dead, but even in that
case it will not have lost its importance, since it has
given a new impulse and direction to the more vigorous
part of the labor movement in all civilized countries,
with the possible exception of Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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