Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/215

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTION
203

Even in our country, as early as 1883, it appeared in anarchist "Principles," the second, third, and sixth articles of which read as follows:

"Establishment of a free society based upon coöperative organization of production.

"Free exchange of equivalent products by and between the productive organizations without commerce and profit-mongery.

"Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between the autonomous (independent) communes and associations resting on a federalistic basis."

Neither in the literature nor in many conversations, have I ever got the slightest convincing intimation as to how these "loosely federated unions" are to work in the indispensable exchange of products in the world market, The highly trained expert, we are told, is to play a great part. These skilled persons in the various industries are to "represent" such social organization as exists. This revives an idea on which publicists have speculated for a half century—"representation by interests,"—schoolmasters, manufacturers, farmers, miners, etc., each to choose its own representative. It is a conception, if largely conceived, which points to a possible political structure of far higher order, but nothing could so surely defeat it as the fighting methods of Syndicalism based on the "class war" as conceived by American Syndicalists. The harsh aggressiveness with which our I. W. W. insist upon this leaves every constructive feature almost a burlesque.

For example, on the basis of Trautmann's pamphlet, One Big Union, a chart has been drawn of the future