The syndicat obtains better conditions not for its members alone, but for all the members of the trade and often for all the workingmen of a locality or of the country. This justifies its self-assumed leadership, because it is not struggling for selfish ends, but for the interests of all. Besides, the syndicat is not a medieval guild and is open to all. If the general mass of workingmen do not enter the syndicats, they themselves renounce the right of determining conditions for the latter. Benefiting by the struggles of the minority, they cannot but submit to its initiative and leadership.
The syndicat, therefore, is not to be compared with "cliques," "rings," "political machines," and the like. The syndicat, it must be remembered, is a group of individuals belonging to the same trade. By this very economic situation, the members of a syndicat are bound by ties of common interest with the rest of their fellow-workingmen. A sense of solidarity and an altruistic feeling of devotion to community interests must necessarily arise in the syndicat which is placed in the front ranks of the struggling workingmen. The leadership of the syndicalist minority, therefore, is necessarily disinterested and beneficent and is followed voluntarily by the workingmen.
Thus, grouping the active and conscious minority the syndicats lead the workingmen as a class in the struggle for final emancipation. Gradually undermining the foundations of existing society, they are developing within the framework of the old the elements of a new society, and when this process shall have sufficiently advanced, the workingmen rising in the general strike will sweep away the undermined edifice and erect the new society born from their own midst.
THE THEORISTS OF REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM
The writers who have contributed to the development of revolutionary syndicalism may be divided into two groups. One comprises men who, like Pelloutier, Pouget, Griffuelhes, Delesalle, Niel, Yvetot and others, either belong to the working-class, or have completely identified themselves with the workingmen. The other consists of a number of "intellectuals" who stand outside of the syndicalist movement.
The members of the first group have played the leading part in building up the syndicalist movement. Pelloutier was secretary of the Federation of Bourses from 1894 to 1901; Griffuelhes was secretary of the General Confederation of Labor from 1901 to 1908; Pouget was assistant secretary of the Confederation and editor of the _Voix du Peuple_ from 1900 to 1908; Yvetot has been one of the secretaries of the Confederation since 1902; Niel was secretary of the General Confederation for a short time in 1909, and the others now occupy or have occupied prominent places in the syndicalist organizations.