American Syndicalism/Chapter 17

by John Graham Brooks

XVII

SOME EFFECTS OF RESPONSIBILITY

The larger world area, from which Syndicalism sprang, on which it has developed and now acts, must be studied, not merely for its origins, but to learn what fate has befallen it; what internal and external difficulties have appeared.

This natural history of the movement in very different countries will enable us to make a closer estimate of its possible destinies in the United States. That a very few years of revolutionary activity in France, for example, should produce an inner schism in which radical and conservative Syndicalists confront each other as in opposing camps instructs us because we see the same beginnings and the same tendency already among our I. W. W. The explanation is almost too simple to be stated. In any large gathering of bread winners, many are married, others want to be; some are well paid and have continuous work, others are ill paid for fitful and uncertain jobs, some are sceptical of revolutionary methods, others are so far satisfied with their wages as to prefer them to doubtful chances. These actual and temperamental differences inevitably come to the surface. Those who are permanently led by the power of a distant and uncertain ideal are few, while those are many who, soon or late, yield to the pressure of the nearer need. This conflict in the estimate of interests shattered the Knights of Labor. It may not shatter our I. W. W., but it will constantly check it, producing from within, its own conservative reactions. These are now so distinct in France that the words, "lefts," "rights," and "moderates," are seen in the recent literature. There are not only "reformists" (conservatives) like Niel, Keufer, Renard and Albert Thomas, but there are trade union groups that bear the same name. Steady and fairly remunerative work holds them back from hazardous ventures. Each of the above men has borne the heavy responsibilities attached to the office of working secretary, Keufer of the printers, Renard of the textile workers.^[1] In their positions things have to be done and not merely talked about or shirked by passing resolutions. Even if the wage system is outworn, the actual present facts of that system have now to be faced, as do the other conditions of sanitation, wages and hours of labor. The struggle with these hard realities begets the cooler temper and soberer choice of ways and means. Even Socialism that has borne its responsibilities is lined up against capitalism as unflinchingly as the I. W. W. Both desire to capture the power now held by capitalists, but the tactics differ about as widely as hot impulse differs from cool reflection. Yet the I. W. W. change their attitude wherever the struggle passes into the stage of definite accountabilities. When we are wiser we shall meet them at this point. It is precisely in that situation that education—for them and for us—is possible.

In the resounding victory which the I. W. W. claim at Lawrence, the very success forced its petty compromises with employers and with the wage system, closely after the manner of ordinary trade union dickering. Instead of "No compromise with employer or with wage-slavery," there was the same opportunist give-and-take. Superintendents were waited upon, and others of the strike committee held counsel with Boston officials of the American Company, to argue out the demands for fifteen per cent advance, discontinuance of the premium system and extra pay for overtime. This is the world-old story—the quick reaction of responsibility upon behavior. As it falls upon the I. W. W., the leaders begin to substitute some degree of cautious calculation for impulsive action. This reverses much eloquent theorizing upon the vices of the reason and the virtues of instinct which marks so much syndicalist speculation. When urgent and conflicting duties face us for immediate decisions, every conscious and rational faculty must act.

On the first approach of definite responsibility the I. W. W. reflect, compare and balance. They act as the politician acts. In the high flights of agitation, demands are sweeping and all things promised. "There shall be no compromise with the wage system because it is robbery," are words I heard from a speaker in the Lawrence strike. But on the first assurance that the battle was to be won, compromise was a necessity. With as much shrewdness as haste, the strikers took to the ordinary bartering of practical men. As the theory passed into a situation that must be met, they met it in the spirit of a sensible trade union or an arbitration board:—the spirit of a wholesome opportunism.

On wing in the "oratorical zone" they will stand upon "principle," will have the whole loaf or none. Face to face with the fact, they take their slice like the most despised of reformers. They are delighted to get for the skilled a slice so thin as a rise of five per cent, and to shout over the victory. In motive at least, it is much to their credit that the lowest paid should have the highest increase. The discrimination against the rewards of skill is open to grave question, but it is one of their "principles" to which much fidelity has been shown. They will, however, as others, take what they can get. They will haggle for this in ways as ancient as exchanges on a far Eastern market.

If their power grows, the old opportunist method will keep pace with it driving the wedge deeper between the Anarchist and those who accept the limitations and power of organization.

At the present writing an I. W. W. Proclamation goes out from Pittsburg to all steel, iron and coke workers in the district. It begins: "The hour has arrived.—Tie up all the mills, shut down the mines, blow out the furnaces and the ovens, pull the fires, stop the engines and the pumps—strike, strike all, hear ye, all together to win."

The demand reads:

THE EIGHT-HOUR WORKDAY

In all steel and iron mills and factories, in all mines, in the coke districts, everywhere!

AN INCREASE OF 40 PER CENT

in wages for the workers receiving less than $2 per day, of 20 per cent for all receiving from $2 to $4 per day, and a 5 per cent increase for all receiving more than $4 per day.

"Time and a half for overtime, double time for work on holidays."

All this is not a reproach. It shows good sense. But it shows also that the struggle instantly develops exigencies which divide men on the tactics to be employed. With every extension of the struggle, with every new increment of power and the liabilities it brings, these practical tactics make sharper division among those upon whom the burdens fall. Thus the struggle becomes selective and the process increases with every new committee to which special tasks are assigned. Every step involves organization, but this is intolerable to the Anarchist. Organization imposes delays, uniformities, and restraints. Within it the individual cannot do as he likes. One Syndicalist says, "Our history is nothing but the Fourth Estate coming to consciousness and thus to power." The Revolution of 1848, he says, was the final signal of victory. Out of it came the "World Brotherhood," the International of 1863. But organization with its fixing of responsibilities and limitations was found necessary even in the International.

As organization developed and coöperative action and conciliation in team-work became necessary, the eternal conflict with the anarchist type set in, as it will in all syndicalist and socialist fellowship.

Why, in its first heroic effort to bring the workers of the world together, did the International run amuck? It was not from any external opposition but solely from its own inner strife and discord. It could unite on the great phrases, but at the first attempt to construct policies the war was on. The war was on, moreover, precisely as it is now on between the I. W. W. on one side, and the American Federation of Labor, together with all of our more disciplined Socialists, on the other.

What drove the International from pillar to post was the presence of the Anarchist. The Anarchist refuses to submit to "group discipline." His name for the Devil is any sort of authority outside himself. For temporary shifts he will form a group, but the individual is not held by it.

He is continually slipping out of the restraining group and playing his hand alone after his own temperament. This, in the field of action, is the essence of anarchy.

For almost twenty years the International struggled with this outlaw element until the Association was driven to New York city, where it staggered on for a few years under the guidance of Johann Most.

The trade unions were of course first to discover the impossibility of working with this body. Then, one by one, it was abandoned by socialist groups. In this short history, we actually find the Anarchists themselves splitting into three warring sections each with its own emphasis.

One of these (Anarchist-Communist) splits again over the question of violence—when, where and how much violence may be sanctioned?

Twenty-five years ago we had the I. W. P. A. (International Working People's Association) and the I. W. A.; the latter claiming that "violence should be held in more restraint."

This same turbulent history will repeat itself in our own I. W. W., as it struggles with the older unionism and with that part of our Socialism which affiliates with political action and reform.^[2]

It is this strife between extreme individualism, or small recalcitrant minorities, and political majorities which produce all "reformist" parties that one sees now powerfully at work in France.

Syndicalism of the "reformist" character vetoes every extreme proposal of the revolutionary branch. First and most fundamental, it distrusts the action of small minorities as it rebels against giving the same vote to a small union as to a large one.^[3] It insists upon steadying the movement by appeal to entire federated groups. It asks, like the older unions, for more dues, more funds and benefits. It is less "anti-patriotic." It is far wiser about the possibilities of politics. It is not afraid of pension funds, and those like the printers, who have sick and strike funds, are in the "reformist" branch in France. Vigorous sections of textile, mine, tobacco workers and even railroad men are definitely reformist. The revolutionaries fight these cautious measures for the obvious reason that they are one and all the natural basis of agreements with employers' associations or with current political reforms. Such history of the syndicalist General Federation as is accessible shows clearly that a small and energetic minority hate the referendum appeal to large majorities. A leading "Reformist," A. Keufer, has from the start fought for the "collective contract," which assumes coöperation with employer and with politics.

All this inner struggle raises the question—Can Syndicalism develop permanent and constructive energies? This is inconceivable unless it affiliate with the main currents of existing social and reform legislation. The great tasks are no longer to be met except through endeavors that are organic and disciplinary. To this the anarchist temperament refuses to submit.

If the coöperative spirit triumph in the movement, it can come only through those inclinations that find their satisfaction in resolute team work. With competitive habits as old as the race struggle, this disposition to work helpfully together is created only as other habits are created. This is no more a moral test than it is an industrial test. By it Syndicalism as a constructive movement will stand or fall.

It may be doubted if any movement in existence is more calculated by its practical methods to defeat and to delay the coöperative temper and habit than the I. W. W., as at present directed in the United States. If there were some psychic scale or metre by which we could measure the accumulation of anger and resentment which sabotage alone kindles in the heart of industrial managers, it would make a very ghastly showing. I have never put this question to one I. W. W. member who thought of this manufactured hostility except with satisfaction. The reply is, "We want no coöperation with the employing class. The less of it, the better and the more hope for us." This does not meet the difficulty. It is not only that the three-fold weapon of the I. W. W. enrages the managers of business, it angers and irritates a large part of the wage earners. At this moment the real strength of Socialism and of trade unionism is against I. W. W. methods. Much of the very best in these two bodies is as hot in their protest as any capitalist manager.

Here, within the inner ranks of labor itself, the I. W. W. creates the exact opposite of the coöperative spirit and habit. As we have seen, these antagonisms are already smarting among Syndicalists themselves. This is the slippery anarchist slope from which the movement will free itself with utmost difficulty. Its raw fighting tactics are and have been its own worst enemy, if and in so far as a coöperating commonwealth is its declared hope.

This coöperative plan is nowhere better seen than in the "Preferential shop" in New York garment industries. The trade union, the employer and the public have organic recognition. It is a form of coöperation as educational to labor as it is to capital. Automatically the consumer becomes a partner in preserving the higher standards of income, conditions and sanitation.

Avoiding the perils of the "closed shop" collective bargaining and genuine labor organization are frankly recognized by employer and public alike. Even if, as syndicalists have it, capitalism is trembling on the edge of the abyss, the "protocol of peace" has an informing and educational influence so direct, so inclusive, so powerful that it should be welcomed by the rankest revolutionist as good preparatory discipline for those who are to reorganize the new society. That needs so rudimentary as these should be ignored is little to the credit of syndicalist campaigners.

The severest and most merited criticism of I. W. W. ways and means is: (1) their destructive character, and the consequent reaction on the habits of those who practice them; and (2) that these methods are treated as if they were principles of action: principles that can be safely entrusted in their application to miscellaneous masses of men and women in times of group excitement. It is not to such keeping that we shall entrust either our ethical or business destinies. If this means failure in all constructive achievement a question yet remains, What service if any, may we honestly assign to a movement dignified by such heroism and by inspiring sacrifices which lift it beyond our cynicism and beyond our moral indifference.

1. As early as 1904, in the Mouvement Socialist (November) an attack upon this more cautious membership was made by the anarchist Pouget.
2. In the organ of Industrial Unionism printed in Glasgow (December issue) the question is put: "Why is it that after about seven years of strenuous propaganda, and the sacrifice of time, money, and energy, the Industrial Union movement has failed to influence the working class?" In the January number, this is denied, but with evidence that proves the factional hostilities already at work. See The Socialist (Dec. and Jan.), 1912–13.
3. This exercise of power by small minorities is so insultingly undemocratic that one is not surprised to find frequent bitter attacks on the "fetish of democracy."