whenever it
wanted to. If working people want to be united and effective, he
concluded, they must have the fullest freedom of action. This would
always pay in the end.

In view of the great advance in the organization and fighting spirit of
labor secured by this new kind of industrial warfare, some
revolutionary unionists even expect it to do more to bring about
Socialism than the Socialist parties themselves. Indeed, a few have gone
so far as to regard these parties as almost superfluous. Many of the new
revolutionary unionists, though Socialists by conviction, attach so
little importance to political action that they have formed no
connection with the Socialist parties, and do not propose to do so.
Others feel the necessity of some political support, and contend that
any kind of an exclusively labor union party, even if it represents
anti-revolutionary unions like most of those of the Federation of Labor,
would serve this purpose better than the Socialist Party, which belongs
less exclusively to the unionists.

An American revolutionary unionist and Socialist, the late Louis Duchez,
like many of his school, not only placed his faith chiefly in the
unskilled workers, either excluding the skilled manual laborers and the
brain workers, or relegating them to a secondary position, but wanted
the new organizations to rely almost entirely on their economic efforts
and entirely to subordinate political action. The hours of labor are to
be reduced, child labor is to be abolished, and everything is to be done
that will tend to diminish competition between one workingman and
another, he argued, with the idea of securing early control of the labor
market. Through labor's restriction of output, production is to be cut
down and the unemployed are to be absorbed. Thus, he declared, "_a
partial expropriation of capital is taking place_" and "_this
constructive program is followed until the workers get all they
produce_."[259]

Here is an invaluable insight into the underlying standpoint of some of
these anti-political "syndicalists," to use a term that has come to us
from France. Nothing could possibly be more alien to the whole spirit of
revolutionary Socialism than these conclusions. The very reason for the
existence of Socialism is that Socialists believe that the unions cannot
control the labor market in present society. The Socialists' chief hope,
moreover, is that economic evolution will make possible and almost
inevitable