In fact, Revolutionary Syndicalism is an attempt to fuse revolutionary socialism and trade unionism into one coherent movement. Peculiar conditions of French social history have thrown the socialists and anarchists into the syndicats and have secured their leadership there. In this respect, Revolutionary Syndicalism is a unique and interesting chapter in the history of both Socialism and Trades unionism and of their mutual relations. Revolutionary Syndicalism has attracted much attention outside of France. Its more or less rapid development, the turmoil into which it has thrown France several times, the extreme ideas which it expresses, the violent methods it advocates, and its attempts of proselytism outside of France have awakened an interest in it. A number of studies on the movement have appeared in German, Italian, Russian and other European periodicals and books. In English, however, the subject has not received the consideration it would seem to deserve from the theoretical as well as from the practical point of view. Revolutionary Syndicalism is an aggressive movement. Its aim is to do away with existing institutions and to reconstruct society along new lines. It must, therefore, necessarily call forth a definite attitude on the part of those who become acquainted with it. Those who speak about it are either its friends or its enemies, and even those who want to be impartial towards it are generally unable to resist the flood of sentiment which such a movement sets loose in them. Impartiality, however, has been the main effort of the writer of this study. It has appeared to him more important to describe the facts as they are and to understand the conditions back of the facts, than to pass sentence whether of approval or of condemnation. He has made the effort, therefore, to suppress his personality entirely in all that part of his work which is purely descriptive. The method adopted has been to describe ideas and facts sympathetically--whether syndicalist or anti-syndicalist, whether promoting or hindering the development of Revolutionary Syndicalism. The idea that has guided the writer is as follows: Let us imagine that social phenomena could be registered automatically. All social facts would then be recorded with all the sympathies and antipathies with which they are mixed in real life, because the latter are part of the facts. When social descriptions go wrong it is not because they are tinged with feeling, but because they are colored by those feelings which they arouse in the writer and not by those which accompany them in reality. The main task of the writer, therefore, is to try to enter into the feelings which go along with the facts which he is describing. This means that the writer must alternately feel and think as a different person. However difficult this may be, it is still possible by an effort of imagination prompted by a desire to get at the truth.