The struggle of the present and the combat of the future imply the initiative, the example and the leadership of a conscious and energetic minority ardently devoted to the interests of its class. The experience of the labor movement has proven this beyond all doubt. The mass of workingmen, like every large mass, is inert. It needs an impelling force to set it in motion and to put to work its tremendous potential energy. Every strike, every labor demonstration, every movement of the working-class is generally started by an active and daring minority which voices the sentiments of the class to which it belongs.
The conscious minority, however, can act only by carrying with it the mass, and by making the latter participate directly in the struggle. The action of the conscious minority is, therefore, just the opposite of the action of parliamentary representatives. The latter are bent on doing everything themselves, on controlling absolutely the affairs of the country, and are, therefore, anxious, to keep the masses as quiet, as inactive and as submissive as possible. The conscious minority, on the contrary, is simply the advance-guard of its class; it cannot succeed, unless backed by the solid forces of the masses; the awareness, the readiness and the energy of the latter are indispensable conditions of success and must be kept up by all means.
The idea of the "conscious minority" is opposed to the democratic principle. Democracy is based upon majority-rule, and its method of determining the general will is universal suffrage. But experience has shown that the "general will" is a fiction and that majority-rule really becomes the domination of a minority--which can impose itself upon all and exploit the majority in its own interests. This is inevitably so, because universal suffrage is a clumsy, mechanical device, which brings together a number of disconnected units and makes them act without proper understanding of the thing they are about. The effect of political majorities when they do make themselves felt is to hinder advance and to suppress the progressive, active and more developed minorities.
The practice of the labor movement is necessarily the reverse of this. The syndicats do not arise out of universal suffrage and are not the representatives of the majority in the democratic sense of the term. They group but a minority of all workingmen and can hardly expect ever to embrace the totality or even the majority of the latter. The syndicats arise through a process of selection. The more sensitive, the intellectually more able, the more active workingmen come together and constitute themselves a syndicat. They begin to discuss the affairs of their trade. When determined to obtain its demands, the syndicat enters into a struggle, without at first finding out the "general will." It assumes leadership and expects to be followed, because it is convinced that it expresses the feelings of all. The syndicat constitutes the leading conscious minority.