or less enlightened view of economic self-interest, or
rather of economic class interest. A long experience
of the workings of political democracy has shown
that in this respect Disraeli and Bismarck were
shrewder judges of human nature than either Liberals
or Socialists. It has become increasingly difficult
to put trust in the State as a means to liberty,
or in political parties as instruments sufficiently
powerful to force the State into the service of the
people. The modern State, says Sorel, ``is a body of
intellectuals, which is invested with privileges, and
which possesses means of the kind called political for
defending itself against the attacks made on it by
other groups of intellectuals, eager to possess the
profits of public employment. Parties are constituted
in order to acquire the conquest of these
employments, and they are analogous to the State.''[10]


[10] La Decomposition du Marxisme,'' p. 53.


Syndicalists aim at organizing men, not by party,
but by occupation. This, they say, alone represents
the true conception and method of the class war.
Accordingly they despise all POLITICAL action through
the medium of Parliament and elections: the kind of
action that they recommend is direct action by the
revolutionary syndicate or trade union. The battle-
cry of industrial versus political action has spread