Direct Action

by Emile Pouget

The classic statement of revolutionary syndicalism. Direct Action will win small victories, strengthening and inspiring workers for the big one: destroying capitalism and rebuilding society from the bottom up.

Genres: Politics

19 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2003

About the author

Émile Pouget (12 October 1860 in Pont-de-Salars, Aveyron, now Lozère – 21 July 1931 Palaiseau, Essonne) was a French anarcho-communist, who adopted tactics close to those of anarcho-syndicalism. He was vice-secretary of the General Confederation of Labour from 1901 to 1908.

Reviews

[R. Reddebrek]

I re-read this short piece for the first time in several years. I was expecting a piece of agitprop, which it is partially. In addition to motivational arguments for direct action, this text succinctly dispels many of the ideological illusions of other branches of socialism. The Orthodox Marxist idea that capitalism will fall when objective conditions have been reached. The immiseration ideas of accelarationists, the social democratic laws on wages.

It is an inciteful blending of materialist theory with a strategy for resistance. Pouget's obscurity in Anglophone circles is a great detriment to us all.