to determine their fall."[18] To be sure, the syndicalists
do not lay so much emphasis on the abolition of government as do the
anarchists, but their plan leads to nothing less than that. If "the
capitalist class is to be locked out"--whatever that may mean--one must
conclude that the workers intend in some manner without the use of
public powers to gain control of the tools of production. In any case,
they will be forced, in order to achieve any possible success, to take
the factories, the mines, and the mills and to put the work of
production into the hands of the masses. If the State interferes, as it
undoubtedly will in the most vigorous manner, the strikers will be
forced to fight the State. In other words, the general strike will
necessarily become an insurrection, and the people without arms will be
forced to carry on a civil war against the military powers of the
Government.

If the general strike, therefore, is only insurrection in disguise,
sabotage is but another name for the Propaganda of the Deed. Only, in
this case, the deed is to be committed against the capitalist, while
with the older anarchists a crowned head, a general, or a police
official was the one to be destroyed. To-day property is to be assailed,
machines broken and smashed, mines flooded, telegraph wires cut, and any
other methods used that will render the tools of production unusable.
This deed may be committed _en masse_, or it may be committed by an
individual. It is when Pouget grows enthusiastic over sabotage that we
find in him the same spirit that actuated Brousse and Kropotkin when
they despaired of education and sought to arouse the people by
committing dramatic acts of violence. In other words, the _saboteur_
abandons mass action in favor of ineffective and futile assaults upon
men or property.

This brief survey of the meaning of syndicalism, whence it came, and
why, explains the antagonism that had to arise between it and
socialism.[AA] Not only was it frankly intended to displace the
socialist political parties of Europe, but every step it has taken was
accompanied with an attack upon the doctrines and the methods of modern
socialism. And, in fact, the syndicalists are most interesting when they
leave their own theories and turn their guns upon the socialist parties
of the present day. In reading the now extensive literature on
syndicalism, one finds endless chapters devoted to pointing out the
weaknesses and faults of political