The political general strike has this immense advan- tage, that it does not greatly imperil the precious lives of the pohticians; it is an improvement on the moral in- surrection which the " Mountain " made use of in the month of May 1793, in order to force the Convention to expel the Girondists from its midst; Jaures, who is afraid of alarming his clients, the financiers (just as the members 1 In 1890 the National Congress at Lille of the Guesdist party passed a resolution by which it declared that the general strike of the miners was actually possible, and that a general strike of the miners by itself would bring about the results that are expected in vain from a stoppage of every trade.
* " There may be room in the party for individual initiative, but the arbitrary fancies of the individual must be put down. The safety of the party lies in its laws; we must steadfastly abide by them. It is the constitution freely chosen by ourselves which binds us together, and which will enable us to conquer together or to die." Thus spoke a learned exponent of Socialism at the National Council (Socialiste, October 7, 1905). If a Jesuit expressed himself thus, there would be an outcry about monkish fanaticism.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 173 of the " Mountain " were afraid of alarming the Depart- ments), admires exceedingly any movement which is free from the violent acts that distress humanity; ^ he is not, therefore, an irreconcilable opponent of the political general strike.
Recent events have given a very great impetus to the idea of the general political strike. The Belgians obtained the reform of the Constitution by a display which has been decorated, perhaps rather ambitiously, with the name of general strike. It now appears that these events did not have the tragic aspect they have been sometimes credited with: the ministry was very pleased to be put in a position to compel the House to accept an electoral bill which the majority disapproved of; many Liberal employers were very much opposed to this ultra-clerical majority; what happened, therefore, was something quite contrary to a proletarian general strike, since the workers served the ends of the State and of the capitalists. Since those already far-off times there has been another attempt to bring pressure to bear on the central authority, with a view to establishing a more democratic system of suffrage; this attempt failed completely; the ministry, this time, was no longer secretly on the side of the promoters of the bill, and they did not force its adoption. Many Belgians were very much astonished at their failure, and could not under- stand why the king did not dismiss his ministers to please the Socialists; he had formerly insisted on the resignation of his clerical ministers in face of a display of Liberal feeling; in fact, this king in their opinion understood nothing of his duties, and, as was said at the time, he was only a pasteboard king.
This Belgian incident is not without interest, because it brings home to us the fact that the proletarian general 174 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE strike and the political general strike are diametrically opposed to one another. Belgium is one of the countries where the Sjmdicalist movement is weakest; the whole Socialist organisation is founded on the bakers', grocers', and haberdashers' shops that are run by committees of the party; the worker, accustomed from of old to a clerical discipline, remains an inferior, who believes him- self obliged to follow the leadership of people who sell him the commodities he needs at a slight reduction, and who din catholic or socialistic speeches into his ears. Not only do we find grocery set up as a priestcraft, but it is also from Belgium that we get the well-known theory of public services against which Guesde wrote such a violent pamphlet in 1883, and which Deville called in the same year a Belgian imitation of collectivism. ^ The whole of Belgian Socialism tends towards the development of State industrialism and the constitution of a class of State- workers who would be firmly disciplined under the iron hand of leaders accepted by democracy.* It is quite natural, therefore, that in such a coimtry the general strike should be conceived in a political form; in such conditions the only aim of popular insurrection must be to take the power from one group of politicians and to hand it over to another — the people still remaining the passive beast that bears the yoke.'
The recent troubles in Russia have helped to popularise 1 Deville, Le Capital, p. lo.
* Paul Leroy-Beaulieu recently proposed to call the whole body of Government employees " the Fourth Estate," and those in private employment " the Fifth Estate "; he said that the first tended to form hereditary castes {Dilats, November 28, 1905). As time goes on, the distinction between the two groups will grow more pronounced; the first group is a great source of support to Socialist politicians, who desire to transform it into a perfectly disciplined corporation capable of taking the lead in the working-class movement; thus, by the inter- mediacy of the employees of the State, the Parliamentarians would govern the more easily the workers in private industry.
» This does not prevent Vandervelde from comparing the future world to the Abbey of Thelema, celebrated by Rabelais, where every- THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 175 the idea of the general strike among professional politicians. Many people were surprised at the results produced by great concerted stoppages of work; but what really happened and what followed from these disturbances is not very well known. People who are acquainted with the country believe that Witte was hand in glove with many of the revolutionaries, and that he was dehghted at being able to obtain, by terrifying the Czar, the dismissal of his enemies and the grant of institutions which, in his opinion, would put obstacles in the way of any retrnn to the old regime. It is very remarkable that for a long time the Government seemed paralysed, and in the adminis- tration anarchy was at its height, while, from the moment Witte thought it necessary in his personal interests to act vigorously, repression was rapid; that day arrived (as several people had foreseen) when the financiers needed to revive Russian credit. It seems hardly probable that previous insurrections ever had the irresistible power attributed to them; the Petit Parisien, which was one of the French newspapers that had advertised ^ the fame of Witte, said that the great strike of October 1905 came to an end on account of the hunger of the workers; accord- ing to this newspaper, the strike had even been prolonged for a day in the hope that the Poles would take part in the movement, and would obtain concessions as the Finns had done; then it congratulated the Poles for having been wise enough not to budge, and for not having given a pre- text for German intervention {Petit Parisien, November 7, body did as he pleased, and from saying that he aspires to an " anarchist community " (Destree and Vandervelde, Le Socialisme en Belgiqvte, p. 289). Oh, the magic of big words!
I Many French papers advertised the merits of the Russian minister, Witte, exactly as they advertised cures made by patent medicines. The French press receives at all time large subventions from the Russian embassy, but in this period Witte spent much more than usual, in order to secure his continuance in office by quoting French opinion.
lyt REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE We must not allow ourselves, therefore, to be too much dazzled by certain descriptions, and Ch. Bonnier was right when, in the Socialiste of November i8, 1905, he cast doubt on the truth of the account which had been given of the course of events in Russia; he had always been an irreconcilable opponent of the general strike, and he pointed out that there was no resemblance at all between what had happened in Russia and what the " genuine Syndicalists in France " look forward to. In his opinion, the strike in Russia had merely been the con- summation of a very complex process, one method out of the many employed, which had succeeded owing to the exceptionally favourable circumstances in which it had developed.
We have here, then, a criterion which will serve to distinguish two kinds of movement generally designated by the same name. We have studied a proletarian general strike, which is one undivided whole; now we have to consider the general political strike, which combines the incidents of economic revolt with many other elements depending on systems foreign to the industrial system. In the first case, no detail ought to be considered by itself; in the second, everything depends on the art with which heterogeneous details are combined. In this case the parts must be considered separately, their importance estimated, and an attempt made to harmonise them. One would think that such a task ought to be looked upon as purely Utopian (or even quite absurd) by the people who are in the habit of bringing forward so many practical objections to the proletarian general strike; but if the proletariat, left to itself, can do nothing, poU- ticians are equal to anjrthing. Is it not one of the dogmas of democracy that the genius of demagogues can over- come all obstacles?
I will not stop here to discuss what chances of success THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 177 these tactics have, and I leave it to the stock-jobbers who read L'Humanite to discover how the general political strike may be prevented from degenerating into anarchy. My only concern in the following pages will be to throw full light on the difference between the two conceptions of the general strike.
II We have seen that the idea of the S5mdicalist general strike contains within itself the whole of proletarian Socialism; not only are all its real elements found therein, but they are moreover grouped in the same way as in social struggles, and their movements are exactly those proper to their nature. It would be impossible to find any image which would represent equally well the political form of Socialism, and which could be contrasted with the proletarian conception of it as represented by the general strike; yet, by making the political general strike the pivoting point in the tactics of those Socialists who are at the same time revolutionary and Parliamentary, it becomes possible to obtain an exact notion of what it is that separates the latter from the Syndicalists.
A. To begin with, we perceive immediately that the political general strike does not presuppose a class war concentrated on a field of battle in which the proletariat attacks the middle class; the division of society into two antagonistic armies disappears, for this class of revolt is possible with any kind of social structure. In the past many revolutions were the result of coalitions between discontented groups; SociaUst writers have often pointed out that the poorer classes have more than once allowed themselves to be massacred to no purpose, save to place power in the hands of new rulers who, with great astuteness, had managed to utilise for their own 178 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE advantage a passing discontent of the people against the former authorities.
It seems, indeed, that the Russian Liberals had hoped to see something of the kind happen in 1905; they were delighted at the nmnber of peasant and working-class insurrections; it has even been asserted that they heard with great satisfaction of the reverses of the army in Manchuria. 1 They beUeved that the Government, getting alarmed, would have recourse to their enhghtenment; as there is a large niunber of sociologists among them, the litUe science would thus have obtained a huge success; but it is probable that the people would have been left to twiddle their thumbs.
It is, I suppose, for much the same kind of reason that the capitalistic shareholders of UHumaniti are such ardent admirers of certain strikes; they look upon the proletariat as a very convenient instnmient with which to clear the ground, and they feel certain from their study of history that it will always be possible for a Socialist Government to bring rebels to reason. Moreover, are not the laws against anarchists, made in an hour of madness, still care- fully preserved on the Statute books? They are stigma- tised as rascally laws; but they may yet serve to protect capitalist-socialists.^ B. (i) Further, imder the influence of this conception it would no longer be true to say that the whole organisa- tion of the proletariat was contained within revolutionary * The correspondent of the DibcUs, in the issue of November 25, 1906, related how the members of the Duma had congratulated a Japanese journalist on the victories of his compatriots. (Cf. the Dibats, December • We may also ask how much the old enemies of military justice desire the abolition of the courts martial. For a long time, the National- ists were able to maintain viith some show of reason that they were retained in order that Drejrfus, if the Court of Cassation ordered a third trial, should not be brought up before a Court of Assizes; a court martial can be more easily packed than a jury.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE ijg Syndicalism. Since the Syndicalist general strike would no longer be the entire revolution, other organisations would have been created side by side with the syndicates; as the strike could only be one detail cunningly dovetailed into many other incidents which must be set going at the propitious moment, the syndicates would have to await the word of command of the political committees, or at least work in perfect unison with the committees which represent the superior intelligence of the Sociahst move- ment. In Italy Ferri has symbolised this unison in a rather comical manner, by saying that Socialism has need of two legs; this figure of speech was borrowed from Lessing, who Httle thought that it might become one of the principles of sociology. In the second scene of Minna von Barnhelm, the innkeeper says to Just that a man cannot stand on one glass of brandy any more than he can walk on one leg; he also adds that all good things are three in niunber, and that a rope of four strands is all the stronger. I am not aware that sociology has made any use of these other aphorisms, which- are worth just as much as the one Ferri misused.
(2) If the SyndicaUst general strike is connected with the idea of an era of great economic progress, the political general strike calls up rather that of a period of decadence. Experience shows that classes on the downgrade are more easily captured by the fallacious harangues of pohticians than classes on the upgrade, so that there seems to be a close relation between the political perspicacity of men and the conditions imder which they hve. Prosperous classes may often act very imprudently, because they have too much confidence in their own strength; they face the future with too much boldness, and they are overcome for the moment by a frenzied desire for renown. Enfeebled classes habitually put their trust in people who promise them the protection of the State, without ever trying to understand how this protection could possibly i8o REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE harmonise their discordant interests; they readily enter into every coaUtion formed for the purpose of forcing concessions from the Government; they greatly admire charlatans who speak with a glib tongue. Socialism must be exceedingly careful if it is not to fall to the level of what Engels called bombastic antisemitism.^ and the advice of Engels on this point has not always been followed.
The political general strike presupposes that very diverse social groups shall possess the same faith in the magical force of the State; this faith is never lacking in social groups which are on the downgrade, and its existence enables windbags to represent themselves as able to do everything. The political general strike would be greatly helped by the stupidity of philanthropists, and this stupidity is always a result of the degeneration of the rich classes. Its chances of success would be enhanced by the fact that it would have to deal with cowardly and discouraged capitalists.
(3) Under such conditions it would no longer be possible to ignore plans of the future state of society; these plans on which Marx poured ridicule, and which the Syndicalist general strike ignores, would become an essential element of the new system. A political general strike could not be proclaimed until it was known with absolute certainty that the complete framework of the future organisation 1 Engels feared that the Socialists, in order to gain adherents in the electoral struggles rapidly, would make promises which were contrary to Marxist doctrine. The antisemites told the peasants and the small shopkeepers that they would protect them from the development of capitalism. Engels thought that an imitation of this procedure would be dangerous, since, in his opinion, the social revolution could only be realised when capitalism had almost completely destroyed the small proprietors and small industries; if the Socialists, then, endeavoured to hinder this evolution, they would ultimately compromise their own cause. Engels did not know that the French Socialists (whose agrarian programme he was criticising) had often made such promises, and that several Socialist deputies were very friendly with Drumont. Engels, "La Question agraire et le Socialisme," in the Mouvement socialistem October 15, 1900, p. 462. Cf. pp. 458-459 and p. 463.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE i8i was ready. That is what Jaur^s intended to convey in his articles of 1901 when he said that modem society " will recoil from an enterprise as indeterminate and as empty (as the Syndicalist strike) as one draws back from a precipice." ^ There are plenty of young barristers, briefless and likely to remain so, who have filled enormous note-books with their detailed projects for the social organisation of the future. If we have not yet been favoured with the breviary of the revolution which Lucien Herr announced in 1900, we know at least that regulations have been framed for the estabUshment of the book-keeping branch of collectivist society, and Tarbouriech has even gone into the question of the printed forms to be recommended for the use of the future bureaucracy.^ Jaur^s is con- tinually bewailing the fact that so many lights are con- demned to remain hidden imder the capitalist bushel; and he feels convinced that the revolution depends very much less on the conditions Marx had in mind than on the efiEorts of imknown geniuses.
C. I have already called attention to the terrible nature of the revolution as conceived by Marx and the SyndicaHsts, and I have said that it is very important that its character of absolute and irrevocable transformation should be preserved, because it is that which gives SociaUsm its high educational value. The comfort-loving followers of our politicians could not view with any approval the pro- foimdly serious work which is being carried on by the proletariat; the former desire to reassure the middle * Many idiotically serious things like thj*' may be found in Tarbouriech's CiU future. People who call themselves well-informed say that Arthur Fontaine, Directeur du Travail, has some astonishing solutions of the social question in his portfolios, and that he will reveal them on the day he retires. Our successors will bless him for having saved up for them pleasures we shall not know.
i89 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE class, and promise not to allow the people to give them- selves up entirely to their anarchical instincts. They explain to the middle class that they do not by any means dream of suppressing the great State machine, but wise SociaHsts desire two things: (i) to take possession of this machine so that they may improve its works, and make them nm to further their friends* interests as much as possible, and {2) to assure the stability of the Government, which will be very advantageous for all business men. Tocqueville had observed that, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the administrative institutions of France having changed very Uttle, revolutions had no longer produced any very great upheavals.^ SociaUst financiers have not read Tocqueville, but theyimderstand instinctively that the preservation of a highly centraUsed, very authori- tative and very democratic State puts immense resources at their disposal, and protects them from proletarian revolution. The transformations which their friends, the Parhamentary Socialists, may carry out will always be of a very limited scope, and it will always be possible, thanks to the State, to correct any imprudences they may conunit.
The general strike of the Syndicalists drives away from SociaUsm all financiers in quest of adventures; the political strike rather pleases these gentlemen, because it would be carried out in circumstances favourable to the power of politicians, and consequently to the operations of their financial allies.^ * Tocqueville, VAricien RSgime et la R^olution, p. 297.
* In the Avant-Garde of October 29, 1905, may be read the report of Lucien Rolland to the National Council of the Unified Socialist Party on the election at Florae of Louis Dreyfus, a speculator in grain and shareholder of L'HumaniU. " I was greatly pained," says Rolland, " to hear one of the rois de I'ipogue (kings of the time) speak in the name of our Internationale, of our red flag, of our principles, and cry, ' Long live the social republic! ' " Those whose only knowledge of this election has been gained from the official report published in the Socialiste of October 28, 1905, will have gained a singularly false idea of it.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 183 Marx supposes, exactly as the Syndicalists do, that the revolution will be absolute and irrevocable, because it will place the forces of production in the hands oifree men, i.e. of men who will be capable of running the workshop created by capitaUsm without any need of masters. This conception would not at all suit the financiers and the politicians whom they support, for both are only fit to exercise the noble profession of masters. Therefore, the authors of all enquiries into moderate Socialism are forced to acknowledge that the latter implies the division of society into two groups: the first of these is a select body, organised as a political party, which has adopted the mission of thinking for the thoughtless masses, and which imagines that, because it allows the latter to enjoy the results of its superior enlightenment, it has done some- thing admirable.^ The second is the whole body of the producers. The select body of politicians has no other profession than that of using its wits, and they find that it is strictly in accordance with the principles of immanent justice (of which they are sole owners) that the proletariat should work to feed them and furnish them with the means for an existence that only distantly resembles an ascetic's.
This division is so evident that generally no attempt is made to hide it: the officials of Socialism constantly speak of the party as of an organism having a life of its own. At the International SociaUst Congress of 1900, the party was warned against the danger it ran in f oUow- Of&cial Socialist documents should be mistrusted. I do not believe that, during the Dreyfus case, the friends of the general stafE ever distorted truth so much as the ofi&cial Socialists did on this occasion.
The fourieriste Tousseil published in the reign of Louis-Philippe a book entitled Les Juifs rois de I'epoque, in which he attacked the great speculators. Holland is alluding to this, and wishes to recall the fact that L. Dreyfus was a large speculator in corn.
1 The Intellectuals are not, as is so often said, men who think: they are people who have adapted the profession of thinking, and who take an aristocratic salary on account of the itobility of this profession.
i84 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE ing a policy which might separate it too much from the proletariat; it must inspire the masses with confidence if it desires to have their support on the day of the great battle.^ The great reproach which Marx levelled at his adversaries in the Alliance was this separation of the leaders and the led, which had the effect of reinstating the State — and which is to-day so marked in Germany — and elsewhere.
Ill A. We will now carry our analysis of the ideas grouped round the political strike a little farther, and enquire first of all what becomes of the notion of class.
(i) It will no longer be possible to distinguish the classes by the place occupied by their members in capital- istic production; we go back to the old distinction between rich groups and poor groups — such was the division between the classes as it appeared to those older Socialists who sought to reform the iniquities of the actual distribu- tion of riches. The ** social Catholics " take up this position also, and endeavour to improve the lot of the poor, not only by charity, but also by a large number of institutions which aim at a mitigation of the wretchedness caused by the capitahst industrial system. It seems that even to-day things are considered from this point of view in circles that admire Jaures as a prophet; I have been told that the latter sought to convert Buisson to SociaHsm by making an appeal to the goodness of his heart, and that these two soothsayers had a very ludicrous discussion as to the best way to remedy the defects of society.
» For example, Vaillant says: " Since we have to fight this great battle, do you think that we can win it if we have not the proletariat behind us? We must have the proletariat; and we shall not have it if we have discouraged it, if we have shown it that the Party no longer represents its interests, no longer represents the war of the working class against the capitalist class " {Cahiers de la Quinzaine, i6« de la II« serie, pp. 159-160). This number contains the shorthand note of the proceedings at the Congress.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 185 The masses believe that they are suffering from the iniquitous consequences of a past which was full of violence, ignorance, and wickedness; they are confident that the genius of their leaders will render them less unhappy; they believe that democracy, if it were only free, would replace a malevolent hierarchy by a benevo- lent hierarchy.
The leaders, who foster this sweet illusion in their men, see the situation from quite another point of view; the present social organisation revolts them just in so far as it creates obstacles to their ambition; they are less shocked by the existence of the classes than by their own inability to attain to the positions already acquired by older men; when they have penetrated far enough into the sanctuaries of the State, into drawing-rooms and places of amusement, they cease, as a rule, to be revolutionary and speak learnedly of " evolution."