hands of a set
of irresponsible capitalists. The only truly democratic system would
be one which left the internal management of railways in the hands of
the men who work on them. These men should elect the general manager,
and a parliament of directors if necessary. All questions of wages,
conditions of labor, running of trains, and acquisition of material,
should be in the hands of a body responsible only to those actually
engaged in the work of the railway.

The same arguments apply to other large trades: mining, iron and
steel, cotton, and so on. British trade-unionism, it seems to me, has
erred in conceiving labor and capital as both permanent forces, which
were to be brought to some equality of strength by the organization of
labor. This seems to me too modest an ideal. The ideal which I
should wish to substitute involves the conquest of democracy and
self-government in the economic sphere as in the political sphere, and
the total abolition of the power now wielded by the capitalist. The
man who works on a railway ought to have a voice in the government of
the railway, just as much as the man who works in a state has a right
to a voice in the management of his state. The concentration of
business initiative in the hands of the employers is a great evil, and
robs the employees of their legitimate share of interest in the larger
problems of their trade.

French syndicalists were the first to advocate the system of trade
autonomy as a better solution than state socialism. But in their view
the trades were to be independent, almost like sovereign states at
present. Such a system would not promote peace, any more than it does
at present in international relations. In the affairs of any body of
men, we may broadly distinguish what may be called questions of home
politics from questions of foreign politics. Every group sufficiently
well-marked to constitute a political entity ought to be autonomous in
regard to internal matters, but not in regard to those that directly
affect the outside world. If two groups are both entirely free as
regards their relations to each other, there is no way of averting the
danger of an open or covert appeal to force. The relations of a group
of men to the outside world ought, whenever possible, to be controlled
by a neutral authority. It is here that the state is necessary for
adjusting the relations between different trades. The men who make
some commodity should be entir