It arose out of labor's disappointment in the efforts it had expended politically. Labor had found that its representatives sitting in state councils rife with the doctrines and influences of a capitalist society, gradually lost the point of view of those whom they were there to represent. It found also that political action, delegating, as it does of necessity, all action to representatives, offered the mass of the workers little if any opportunity for experience or initiative in the solution of their own problems. Direct actionists claim that the object of the labor movement is to minimize the delegation of power and to increase the power of the mass of the workers, individually and collectively. The plaint of labor is, in fact, that one group of people has assumed the direction and management of affairs of another group, that capital manages and speaks for labor, with a consequent weakness to labor of unused or enslaved powers.
Labor can only learn to do by doing, is the idea back of direct action.
Representation gives labor no exercise and no opportunities to develop. What labor wants above all else is to gain in strength, the strength to do, and this is in itself more important than all the material advantages which might accrue through a Socialist state or a benevolent plutocracy. This is the gist of the theory of direct action, and, unmodified, is the theory of anarchism, which is opposed in principle to delegated power. But all direct actionists do not oppose political action, and many indorse it. All direct actionists see or feel the necessity of organizations of labor which provide a large measure of latitude for initiative of the workers in their struggle with capital, of organizations which provide for the maximum amount of mass action.