The metamorphosis of French syndicalism is easy enough to discern. At
the end of the nineteenth century, in the Bourses du Travail and the
Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), workers
talked openly about revolution. Employers and the government took them
seriously, as they took themselves seriously. After all, French labor had a long
and impressive revolutionary pedigree, and throughout the fin de siècle
the working class kept adding to its scars as it continued to engage in frequent
and violent confrontations with the forces of order. Thus the proletariat primed
itself for the decisive showdown: the general strike, the heroic and largely
spontaneous episode that would finish off bourgeois society and bring workers to
power. This was the revolutionary “myth” that propelled the labor
movement forward.
