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Works by Emile Pouget
The Basis of Trade
Unionism
by Emile Pouget
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"In the present, the permanent mission of the trade union is to defend itself against any reduction of vitality -- that is to say, against any reduction of wages and increase in working hours. Besides resisting attack, it must play a pro-active part and strive to increase the well-being of the union, which can only be realised by trespassing on capitalist privileges, and constitutes a sort of partial expropriation. Besides this talk of incessant skirmishes, the union is engaged in the work of integral emancipation, of which it will effectively be the agent. It will consist of taking possession of social wealth, now in the hands of the middle class, and in reorganising society on a Libertarian Communist basis, so that the maximum amount of social well-being will be achieved with a minimum of productive effort."
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(49K)
Direct Action
by Emile Pouget
| "Direct Action
. . . implies that the working class subscribes to notions of freedom
and autonomy instead of genuflecting before the principle of authority.
Now, it is thanks to this authority principle, the pivot of the modern
world - democracy being its latest incarnation - that the human being,
tied down by a thousand ropes, moral as well as material, is bereft of
any opportunity to display will and
initiative." |
(56K)
The Party of Labour
by Emile Pouget
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"The Party of Labour is what it says it is, the banding together of the
workers into one homogeneous bloc; the autonomous organisation of the
working class into an aggregate operating on the terrain of the economy;
by virtue of its origins, its essence, it shuns all compromise with
bourgeois elements . . . The Party of Labour is a party of interests. It
takes no account of the opinions of its component members: it
acknowledges and co-ordinates only the interests - be they material or
moral or intellectual - of the working class. Its ranks are open to all
of the exploited regardless of their political or religious views."
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(63K)
Sabotage
by Emile Pouget
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"Since the day a man had the criminal ability to profit by another man's
labour, since that very same day the exploited toiler has instinctively
tried to give to his master less than was demanded from him. In this
wise the worker was unconsciously doing SABOTAGE, demonstrating in an
indirect way the irrepressible antagonism that arrays Capital and Labor
one against the other."
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(93K)
What is the Union?
by Emile Pouget
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"The trade union offers itself as a school for the will: its
preponderant role is the result of its members' wishes, and, if it is
the highest form of association, the reason is that it is the
condensation of workers' strengths made effective through their direct
action, the sublime form of the deliberate enactment of the wishes of
the proletarian class."
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(24K)
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