Syndicalism in France

In the decade before the Great War shattered Europe, a radical experiment in worker power was unfolding in France. Revolutionary syndicalism, with its audacious belief that the working class could seize control of production through direct action and the general strike, represented perhaps the most militant alternative to orthodox socialism ever devised. Lewis Lorwin's landmark 1914 study remains the essential English-language guide to this contentious movement. He traces the rise of the General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.), analyzes the philosophical foundations of Syndicalist thought, and examines the fierce debates that divided French workers between reform and revolution. This is a primary document in its own right, capturing a moment when labor imagined a world beyond capitalism. For anyone seeking to understand the roots of radical labor politics, the tensions between anarchist and socialist strategy, or the historical currents that preceded the twentieth century's great upheavals, Lorwin's analysis is indispensable.