Syndicalism - the Creed of Force

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 27, 1913

Syndicalism — the Creed of Force

We stand face to face with great crises,—crises in the home, in the church, in the state, in society. Warring elements ever striving for the mastery are already engaged in hand-to-hand conflict. In the home the integrity of the marriage institution is threatened; in the church it is the culmination of the deadly conflict which has been waged between truth and error through all the ages; in the state it is a strife between the various ideals of government and between law and lawlessness; in the industrial life of the people it is the long-drawn-out struggle between capital and labor, merged in this period of the world's history into strong organizations and combinations seeking their own interests to the undoing of all opposition.

This industrial struggle promises to be one of the thrilling and dramatic issues of the future. On the one hand it is a struggle in behalf of property rights in the interest of invested capital; on the other it is a fight for existence, for bread and butter, on the part of the great multitude of wage-earners. Combinations of wealth for the purpose of self-protection, and many times self-aggrandizement, on the one hand have served to create combinations and unions of labor on the other. The one has grown more overreaching and domineering; the other has become more aggressive and threatening. One demands the fruits of labor as the reward of invested capital; the other demands the machinery, the mill, the mine, the railroad, and the implements of labor as the legitimate fruit of its industry.

This demand on the part of organized labor is known as the doctrine of syndicalism. This theory, according to the New York Evening Post of Nov. 7, 1912, would “brush aside all efforts to settle the so-called class difference by peaceful methods, and would by ‘direct action’ force the other side to yield without governmental interference.” In the accomplishment of this purpose it hesitates at no means that promise success. Representing this doctrine, the I. W. W., or the Industrial Workers of the World, stands among labor organizations as the chief exponent. Says Andre Tridon, in his book “The New Unionism:” —

As a revolutionary organization the Industrial Workers of the World aims to use any and all tactics that will get the results sought with the least expenditure of time and energy. The question of “right” and “wrong” does not concern us.

The Independent recently requested Arturo M. Giovannitti, as a leader of the I. W. W., to interpret this statement of Mr. Tridon's. Mr. Giovannitti is a recognized authority of this order. In the Independent of Oct. 13, 1913, he complies with this request; and as representing the sentiments of that strong, aggressive organization,—the sentiments which are now taking such deep root in the minds of thousands of working men throughout the world,—his words are worthy of careful thought. They surely indicate the crisis which is approaching in the great industrial world. In answer to the question as to whether the order he represents stands for every form of aggressive action, he says:—

It does and it does not. Syndicalism, which is the philosophy of the revolutionary labor movement, has no aprioristic scruples or prejudicial propensity either for or against any and all methods and means of attack and defense, but it maintains that each situation will suggest, through the infallible instinct of the workers themselves, the line of action to pursue and the means to adopt or reject.

Mr. Giovannitti then goes on to argue that in the industrial as well as the political world force is the only arbiter. He quotes what he considers the unrefuted axiom of Marx: “Between two irreconcilable conflicting interests [which engender two opposite rights] the only arbiter that can decide is force.” The writer declares that “the law is no concern of ours,” and that the I. W. W. proposes to create its own laws. He states further:—

There is one thing, however, that every class-conscious working man considers inexpressibly abominable, and this is “scabbery.” Outside of that, any and all means are right and permissible on the sole condition that they bring results disastrous to the master class and advantageous to the proletariat. However shocking this may sound to pious, God-fearing souls, it nevertheless reflects the entire attitude of the Syndicalist Movement in connection with the class struggle. If the attitude is indefensible on moral grounds, so much the better. We never intended to defend it, anyway; we only endeavor to elucidate it.

Relying upon its own power, Mr. Giovannitti declares that the strength of the I. W. W. is in discrediting existing standards:—

The more flippant, defiant, unconventional, and disrespectful it is toward the existing standards of ethics, good manners, law, and order, the more effective it becomes in its work of demolition, which is the most essential task of any revolution. The more it disregards the opinions of outsiders, the more unmindful it is of their approval or condemnation, the more it will fall back on its own power,—on which alone it must exclusively rely,—build its own individual character, forge its own weapons of attack and defense, and hold its own entrenched position against the embattled forces of reaction.

In concluding his argument, he states: “We are going to do what we need and intend to do, simply because we have the power to do it.” This he claims is the right exercised by the state and by invested capital:—

If you have the power to prevent us, why, it is your privilege, your right, your duty, as a class to do so. And you are doing it. You tore to pieces the Constitution in order to prevent us from assembling and voicing our grievances and our protest. You battered our skulls with your policemen’s clubs. You stabbed us to death with your soldier’s bayonet. You hired your private thug to insult, assault, and murder us. You instructed your private judge to sentence us to the penitentiary or to the scaffold for crimes which had been committed by your hirelings. You ordered your private priest to curse us and damn us to hell. You sweated us, starved us, bled us, dispossessed us, reviled us in your subsidized press—and we bore it all sullenly and doggedly and said nothing.

Was it right? Well, you will perhaps blush hypocritically and say that it was wrong, now that you have done it and fear the consequences of the example you have set, but we say that it was right. It was perfectly right simply because you were defending your interests and privileges, because you had the power to do it, because you were the stronger, and because it is the law of the jungle, from which neither you nor we have yet graduated. But whether it is right or not, we are going to do the same because you have taught us that these tactics are the only ones which bring results.

The extent to which this principle will be carried when the laboring man comes into his own, the writer expresses in these words:—

You will call this a fearsome creed, a sinister philosophy of force. So it is. Our ethics are the ethics of power, those of the absolute social and economic dictatorship of the proletariat, exactly as yours are those of the supreme mastery of plutocracy, or of the exclusive dominion of middle-class cowardice and imbecility.

No, we do not believe in killing or bearing false testimony against you, our neighbor, nor do we want your ass, your ox, or your wife, but we do want your land, your machinery, your mill, your mine, your railroad, and your beloved thirty-six per cent—and we are going to take them back, as surely as you have stolen them from us.

We have nothing in common with you; we do not recognize the “public,” the “people,” the “nation,” Christendom, or humanity; we know only the working class, and rigidly maintain that outside of the working class there is not, nor shall there ever be, any hope of salvation in the great social hereafter.

A pen-picture of this deadly conflict just before us is given by the apostle James. He declares that through the oppression of greed, which holds back the hire of the laborers, violence and bloodshed shall result. The condition which we have facing us is forcibly portrayed in other scriptures: perplexity and distress, and in consequence “men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.” Luke 21:25, 26. Happy is the man who, during the perils of today and the fearful ordeal of the future, can rest securely in the faith of a great overruling God and his watchful providence over his children. The promise is, “I will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.”