This view, however, is a "myth" and should be discarded. French writers who have studied the social movement of their country and who are competent judges have tried to dispel the error that has gotten abroad.[176] The theorists of the _Mouvement Socialiste_ themselves have repeatedly declined the "honor" which error has conferred upon them. M. Lagardelle has reiterated time and again that revolutionary syndicalism was born of the experience of the labor movement and worked out by the workingmen themselves. M. Sorel has said that he learned more from the syndicalist workingmen than they could learn from him. And in an article reviewing the book of Professor Sombart, M. Berth has insisted that Professor Sombart was in error. "If we had any part," wrote he, "it was the simple part of interpreters, of translators, of glossers; we have served as spokesmen, that's all; but it is necessary to avoid reducing to a few propositions of a school, a movement which is so essentially working-class and the leading ideas of which, such as direct action and the general strike, are so specifically of a working-class character."[177] [176] See articles of Lagardelle, G. Weil and Cornelissen in the _Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik_, 1907-1910. [177] _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ (May, 1908), p. 390. This must not be taken as over-modesty on the part of "intellectuals" who are careful not to pose as leaders or as inspirers. The facts are there to prove the statements of M. Lagardelle and of M. Sorel. The idea of the general strike was elaborated by workingmen-members of the various committees on the general strike. The idea of "direct action," as has been shown, found its defenders in the first Congresses of the General Confederation of Labor. The theory of the social rôle of the syndicat was formulated by Pelloutier and by other members of the "Federation of Bourses" before M. Sorel wrote his little book on _The Socialist Future of the Syndicats_. Even the statement of M. Berth must be somewhat modified. The theorists of the _Mouvement Socialiste_ have never by any means been the authorized "spokesmen" of the revolutionary syndicalists of the General Confederation. They were no more than a group of writers who, watching the syndicalist movement from the outside, were stimulated by it to their reflections and ideas. They thought they found in the syndicalist movement "a truly original force capable of refreshing the socialist conception", and they formulated their ideas on the subject. They never took any part in the movement, and could not feel themselves its representatives.