e seen to have been futile. The contention between
Socialists and capitalists will then be reduced to its essential
elements:--

Is progress under capitalism as great as it might be under Socialism?

Is capitalist progress making toward Socialism by improving the position
of the non-capitalists _when compared with that of the capitalists_, or
is it having the opposite effect?

Even the "syndicalists," little interested as they are in reform, seem
to fear, as Kautsky does, that so long as considerable changes for the
better are possible, progress towards Socialism, which in their case
also implies revolution, is impossible. I have shown that Lagardelle
denies that Labor and Capital have any interest whatever in common.
Similarly, a less partisan writer, Paul Louis, author of the leading
work on French unionism ("Histoire du Movement Syndicate en France"),
while he notes every evil of the coming State Socialism, yet ignores its
beneficent features, and bases his whole defense of revolutionary labor
unionism on the proposition that important reforms, even if aided by
friendly Socialist cooeperation or hostile Socialist threats, can no
longer be brought about under capitalism:--

"The Parliamentary method was suited by its principle to the reform
era. Direct action corresponds to the syndicalist era. Nothing is
more simple.

"As long as organized labor believes in the possibility of amending
present society by a series of measures built up one upon the
other, it makes use of the means that the present system offers it.
It proceeds through intervening elected persons. It imagines that
from a theoretical discussion there will arise such ameliorations
that its vassalage will be gradually abolished."

The belief here appears that a steady, continuous, and marked
improvement in the position of the working class would necessarily lead
to its overtaking automatically the rapidly increasing power of
capitalism. If this were so, it would indeed be true, as Louis contends,
that no revolutionary movement could begin, except when all beneficial
labor reforms and other working-class progress had ended.

I shall quote (Part III, Chapter V) a passage where Louis indicates that
syndicalism, like Socialism itself, is directed in the most fundamental
way against all existing governments. He takes the further step of
saying that existing governments can do nothing whatever for the benefi