erature of
syndicalism teems with attacks on democracy. "Syndicalism and
Democracy," says Emile Pouget, "are the two opposite poles, which
exclude and neutralize each other.... Democracy is a social superfluity,
a parasitic and external excrescence, while syndicalism is the logical
manifestation of a growth of life, it is a rational cohesion of human
beings, and that is why, instead of restraining their individuality, it
prolongs and develops it."[37] Democracy is, in the view of Sorel, the
regime _par excellence_, in which men are governed "by the magical power
of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by formulas rather than by
reasons; by dogmas, the origin of which nobody cares to find out, rather
than by doctrines based on observation."[38] Lagardelle declares that
syndicalism is post-democratic. "Democracy corresponds to a definite
historical movement," he says, "which has come to an end. Syndicalism is
an anti-democratic movement."[39] These are but three out of a number
of criticisms of democracy that might be quoted. Although natural enough
as a consequence of syndicalist antagonism to the State, these ideas are
nevertheless fatal when applied to the actual conduct of a working-class
movement. It means that the minority believes that it can drive the
majority. We remember that Guerard suggested, in his advocacy of the
general strike, that, if the railroad workers struck, many other trades
"would be compelled to quit work." "A daring revolutionary minority
conscious of its aim can carry away with it the majority."[40] Pouget
confesses: "The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of
democracy--the inert, unconscious mass is not to be taken into account
when the minority wishes to act so as to benefit it...."[41] He refers
in another place to the majority, who "may be considered as human zeros.
Thus appears the enormous difference in method," concludes Pouget,
"which distinguishes syndicalism and democracy: the latter, by the
mechanism of universal suffrage, gives direction to the unconscious ...
and stifles the minorities who bear within them the hopes of the
future."[42]

This is anarchism all over again, from Proudhon to Goldman.[43] But,
while the Bakouninists were forced, as a result of these views, to
abandon organized effort, the newest anarchists have attempted to
incorporate these ideas into the very constitution of the French
Confederation of Labor. And at present they are, in fact, a little