[224] _X Congrès National Corporatif_, p. 203; _XII Congrès National Corporatif_, pp. 15, 29, 44. The result of this psychology is not only poor syndicats, but syndicats weak in other respects. Many syndicats are but loosely held together, are easily dissolved and are composed of a more or less variable and shifting membership. The instability is increased of course by the absence of benevolent features in the syndicats. The _Fédération du Livre_ alone pays sick and other benefits. The weakness of the syndicats predisposes the French workingmen to more and more generalized forms of struggle. Syndicats on strike impelled by the desire to increase their forces try to involve as many trades and workingmen as possible and to enhance their own chances by enlarging the field of struggle. This is why such general movements, as the movement for an eight-hour day in 1906, described in the preceding chapter, are advocated by the syndicats. The latter feel that in order to gain any important demand they must be backed by as large a number of workingmen as possible. But in view of their weakness, the syndicats can start a large movement only by stirring up the country, by formulating some general demand which appeals to all workingmen. The same conditions explain in part the favor which the idea of the general strike has found in the syndicats. Such forms of struggle must necessarily bring the syndicats into conflict with the State, particularly in France where the State is highly centralized and assumes so many functions. With a people so impulsive as the French, the intervention of the forces of the State in the economic struggles must inevitably lead to collisions of a more or less serious character. The result is a feeling of bitterness in the workingmen towards the army, the police and the government in general. The ground is thus prepared for anti-militaristic, anti-State and anti-patriotic ideas. The organized workingmen are a minority of the working-class. Still they must act as if they were the majority or the entirety of the workingmen. The contradiction must be smoothed over by some explanation, and the theory of the "conscious minority" arises to meet the situation. The weaker the syndicats and the more often they are exposed to the danger of dissolution the greater the necessity of the theory. A disorganized syndicat generally leaves behind a handful of militant workingmen determined to keep up the organization. The theory of the "conscious minority" is both a stimulus to and a justification for the activities of these persistent "militants."