The State appears to the syndicalists as the political organization of the capitalist class. Whether monarchist, constitutional, or republican, it is one in character, an organization whose function it is to uphold and to protect the privileges of the property-owners against the demands of the working-class. The workingmen are, therefore, necessarily forced to hurl themselves against the State in their efforts toward emancipation, and they cannot succeed until they have broken the power of the State. The struggle against the State, like the struggle against the employers, must be carried on directly by the workingmen themselves. This excludes the participation of the syndicats in politics and in electoral campaigning, the parliamentary system is a system of representation opposed in principle to "direct action," and serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, for the management of which it is particularly suited. The workingmen can derive no benefit from it. The parliamentary system breeds petty, self-seeking politicians, corrupts the better elements that enter into it and is a source of intrigues and of "wire-pulling".The so-called representatives of the workingmen do not and cannot avoid the contagious influence of parliament. Their policy degenerates into bargaining, compromising and collaboration with the bourgeois political parties and weakens the class-struggle.

The syndicats, therefore, if not hostile, must remain at least indifferent to parliamentary methods and independent of political parties. They must, however, untiring pursue their direct struggle against the State. The direct method of forcing the State to yield to the demands of the workingmen consists in exerting external pressure on the public authorities. Agitation in the press, public meetings, manifestations, demonstrations and the like, are the only effective means of making the government reckon with the will of the working-class.

By direct pressure on the government the workingmen may obtain reforms of immediate value to themselves. Only such reforms, gained and upheld by force, are real. All other reforms are but a dead letter and a means of deceiving the workingmen.

The democratic State talks much about social reforms, labor legislation and the like. In fact, however, all labor laws that are of real importance have been passed only under the pressure of the workingmen. Those which owe their existence to democratic legislators alone are devised to weaken the revolutionary strength of the working-class. Among such laws are those on conciliation and arbitration, All democratic governments are anxious to have Boards of Conciliation and of Arbitration, in order to check strikes which are the main force of the working-class. Workingmen must be opposede to these reforms, which are intended to further the harmony and collaboration of classes, because the ideology of class-harmony is one of the most dangerous snares which are set for the workingmen in a democratic state*.

[*The fundamental principle of democracy is that all citizens are equal before the law and that there are no classes in the state.]

This ideology blinds the workingmen to the real facts of inequality and of class-distinctions which are the very foundations of existing society. It allures them into hopes which cannot be fulfilled and leads them astray from the only path of emancipation which is the struggle of classes.

[to be continued]