hich was sufficiently well demonstrated by events....

"But these Utopians of the present moment, these champions of a
limitless adaptation to circumstances, are destined to lose ground
more and more, according as Syndicalism expresses better and better
the independent action of the organized proletariat.

"In its totality the Socialism of the world is as anti-governmental
as Syndicalism, and in this is shown the identity of the two
movements, for it is difficult to distinguish the field of action
of the one from that of the other."[268]

We see here that the central idea of syndicalism, which is undoubtedly,
as Louis says, a revolutionary action against existing governments, is
not on this account anti-political; the foundation of this point of view
is that labor union action is bound sooner or later to evolve into
syndicalism, which in its essence is an effort to put industry in the
immediate control of the non-propertied working classes, without regard
to the attitude taken towards this movement by governments;--

"Those who have long imagined that some kind of cooerdination would
be brought about between old economic and social institutions and
the union organizations which would then be tolerated, those who
thought they could incorporate these industrial groups in the
mechanism of production and political society, were guilty of the
most stupefying of errors. They were ignorant both of the nature of
the State and of the essence of unionism; they were attempting the
squaring of the circle or perpetual motion; they had not analyzed
the process of disintegration which humanity is undergoing, which,
accelerated by the stream of industrialism, has given origin to
hostile classes subordinated to one another, incapable of
coexisting in a lasting equilibrium."[269]

We see here a complete agreement with the position of the revolutionary
majority among the Socialists. If syndicalism differs in any way from
other tendencies in the Socialist movement, it does so through a
difference of emphasis rather than a difference of kind. It undoubtedly
exaggerates the possibilities of economic action, and underestimates
those of political action. Louis, for example, says that the working
people are the subjects of capital, but the masters of production, that
they cannot live without suffering in the factory, but that society
ca