ticating the deepest unrest of labor. Within that party, therefore,
a leadership is required which will ride the forces of "syndicalism" and
use them for a constructive purpose. The brilliant writer of the "Notes
of the Week" in the English New Age has shown how this might be done. He
has fused the insight of the syndicalist with the plans of the
collectivists under the name of Guild Socialism.

His plan calls for co-management of industry by the state and the labor
union. It steers a course between exploitation by a bureaucracy in the
interests of the consumer--the socialist danger--and oppressive
monopolies by industrial unions--the syndicalist danger. I shall not
attempt to argue here either for or against the scheme. My concern is
with method rather than with special pleadings. The Guild Socialism of
the "New Age" is merely an instance of statesmanlike dealing with a new
social force. Instead of throwing up its hands in horror at one
over-advertised tactical incident like sabotage, the "New Age" went
straight to the creative impulse of the syndicalist movement.

Every true craftsman, artist or professional man knows and sympathizes
with that impulse: you may call it a desire for self-direction in labor.
The deepest revolt implied in the term syndicalism is against the
impersonal, driven quality of modern industry--against the destruction of
that pride which alone distinguishes work from slavery. Some such impulse
as that is what marks off syndicalism from the other revolts of labor.
Our suspicion of the collectivist arrangement is aroused by the picture
of a vast state machine so horribly well-regulated that human impulse is
utterly subordinated. I believe too that the fighting qualities of
syndicalism are kept at the boiling point by a greater sense of outraged
human dignity than can be found among mere socialists or unionists. The
imagination is more vivid: the horror of capitalism is not alone in the
poverty and suffering it entails, but in its ruthless denial of life to
millions of men. The most cruel of all denials is to deprive a human
being of joyous activity. Syndicalism is shot through with the assertion
that an imposed drudgery is intolerable--that labor at a subsistence wage
as a cog in a meaningless machine is no condition upon which to found
civilization. That is a new kind of revolt--more dangerous to capitalism
than the demand for higher wages. You can not treat the syndicalists like
cattle because fo