ABSTRACT
For any just appreciation of the social forces at work in the world to-day, there is no fact more essential to grasp than the broadening and deepening demand of the organised workers for the “control of industry.” This demand is made, not in one country or in one form alone, but in nearly every country in which the industrial system is strongly established, and in as many forms as there are different national temperaments and traditions. Nor is the demand new; for it has appeared, at least occasionally, throughout the history of the Labour Movement, in the “Owenite” Trade Unionism of the thirties in Great Britain, among anarchists and communists on the Continent of Europe, and among the early revolutionaries and reformers of the United States. But its character at the present time differs from any that it has possessed before, not only because it is more universal and has struck far deeper roots, but because it is now based firmly on the positive achievements of working-class organisation, and is no longer purely Utopian, but constructive and practical.
