ealings with them. The same decision had been made at
The Hague in 1872, again in 1889 at the international congress at
Paris, then in 1891 at Brussels, again in 1893 at Zurich, and finally at
London in 1896.

The anarchists that returned to Paris from the London congress were not
slow in taking their revenge. They had already threatened in London to
take the workers of the Latin countries out of the socialist movement,
but no one apparently had given much heed to their remarks. In reality,
however, they were in a position to carry out their threats, and the
insults which they felt they had just suffered at the hands of the
socialists made them more determined than ever to induce the unions to
declare war on the socialist parties of France, Italy, Spain, and
Holland. Plans were also laid for the building up of a trade-union
International based largely on the principles and tactics of what they
now called "revolutionary syndicalism."

The year before (1895) the General Confederation of Labor had been
launched at Limoges. Except for its declaration in favor of the general
strike as a revolutionary weapon, the congress developed no new
syndicalist doctrines. It was at Tours, in 1896, that the French unions,
dominated by the anarchists, declared they would no longer concern
themselves with reforms; they would abandon childish efforts at
amelioration; and instead they would constitute themselves into a
conscious fighting minority that was to lead the working class with no
further delay into open rebellion. In their opinion, it was time to
begin the bitter, implacable fight that was not to end until the working
class had freed itself from wage slavery. The State was not worth
conquering, parliaments were inherently corrupt, and, therefore,
political action was futile. Other means, more direct and revolutionary,
must be employed to destroy capitalism. As the very existence of society
depends upon the services of labor, what could be more simple than for
labor to cease to serve society until its rights are assured? Thus
argued the French trade unionists, and the strike was adopted as the
supreme war measure. Partial strikes were to broaden into industrial
strikes, and industrial strikes into general strikes. The struggle
between the classes was to take the form of two hostile camps, firmly
resolved upon a war that would finish only when the one or the other of
the antagonists had been utterly crushed. When John Brown marched w