Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/60



The minority organization of the French trade union militants is the Revolutionary Syndicalist Committee, or C. S. R. as it is more popularly known. It is composed of the various revolutionary elements, including left-wing Socialists, Anarchists, Syndicalists, and Communists. Its political conceptions and policies vary from place to place and industry to industry, according as one or another of its groups predominate. In the main, however, the Syndicalists control it and map out its activities. The alliance of the four groups in the minority organization is one of expediency; they all have a common interest in standing together to overthrow the yellow bureaucracy. This necessitates that they bury their differences and get along together as best they can. The tendency is to suppress the doctrinal and tactical points upon which they do not agree and to concentrate on those policies which all hold in common. Nevertheless, considerable jangling goes on, notably between the Syndicalists and the Communists. This is serious, and unless it is kept in check it may eventually result in destroying the revolutionary minority bloc, which of course would amount to a great victory for Jouhaux and his coterie.

The C. S. R. is a practical organization. It has no cartwheel chart (such as American industrial unionists dote upon) according to which it must reorganize the labor movement. Its breath of life is to meet issues as they crop up in the daily struggle and to solve them according to general revolutionary principles—not to work arbitrarily according to some intellectual’s blue print. Characteristically, Monatte says: