The propaganda of the idea is a chimera. Ideas result from deeds, not the latter from the former, and the people will not be free when they are educated, but will be educated when they are free.
The libertarian atmosphere affected Albert Camus who associated with French and Spanish anarchists and syndicalists, and studied anarchist history and philosophy. Although he was critical of Stirner and Bakunin in his L’Homme révolté (1951), he was even more critical of authoritarian communism. The work shows that he was moving towards a form of anarcho-syndicalism.
Malatesta voiced the concern of many anarchist communists that syndicalism had too simple a conception of class struggle and placed too much confidence in the general strike — a ‘pure utopia’ which could degenerate into a ‘general famine’. Syndicalism should be considered only as a means to anarchy, not the sole one.
What distinguished the French anarcho-syndicalists from other trade unionists was their insistence that the movement should be completely independent of political parties and their refusal to participate in conventional politics. As the anarchist Emile Pouget succinctly put it, ‘The aim of the syndicates is to make war on the bosses and not to bother with the politics.’
In Switzerland during the First World War a group of artists, pacifists and radicals, including Hugo Ball and Richard Huelsenbeck, met in Zürich and launched the Dada movement, a unique blend of art and anarchy.
Dada aimed at destroying through art the entire social order and to achieve through art total freedom. Marcel Duchamp was among the leading exponents of Dada in France before leaving for the United States. Many Dadaists became involved in the Berlin rising of 1918, calling for a Dadaist Revolutionary Central Council on the basis of radical communism and progressive unemployment.