structive action is as unavoidable as in any other form of warfare.[1]
I asked a writer in this propaganda what he meant by telling the public that violence was entirely excluded in their principles. He said that it was both unnecessary and unintelligent. "When we have the power," he added, "we have only to stand off. We need not take our hands out of our pockets or utter a threat." This worthy sentiment might be true if capitalism were really at the end of its tether; if labor were ready to assume its functions and had reached that degree of mastery essential to its control of the world's business. If we imagine this end to be attained, violence would be, in his words, "unnecessary and unintelligent." The trifling obstacle here is that none of these things have yet happened. It will be marvel enough if they happen in several generations.
Our solicitude about violence does not concern the far end of achieved power, when the conquerors could afford to "fold their arms," our concern is with the long intervening spaces between the now and the then. Can labor use its approved weapons—the five-fold strike, its ingenuities of sabotage—in the long tug before it brings capitalism to its knees, without violence? There is not a page in the history of our I. W. W., or of Syndicalism generally, to give this hope the slightest warrant and most Syndicalists are perfectly aware of the fact. The main battle is all before them, and both their weapons and their primary doctrine of the
- ↑ In the article quoted from The Independent, Mr. Tridon says, in this fight Syndicalists do not even pretend to observe the rules of civilized warfare. The flag of truce does not protect emissaries.
