Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/169

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THE PROLETARIAN STRIKE
155

sidered as a perfected means to knowledge, but only as a recipe for procuring certain advantages.[1]

I have said that Marx rejected all attempts to determine the conditions of a future society; too much stress cannot be laid on this point, for it shows that he took his stand outside middle-class science. The doctrine of the general strike also repudiates this science, and many professors consequently accuse the new school of having negative ideas only; their own aim, on the other hand, is the noble one of constructing universal happiness. The leaders of social democracy, it seems to me, have not been very Marxian on this point; a few years ago, Kautsky wrote a preface to a somewhat burlesque Utopia.[2]

I believe that among the motives which led Bernstein to part from his old friends must be counted the horror which he felt for their Utopias. If Bernstein had lived in France and had known our revolutionary Syndicalism, he would soon have perceived that the latter was on the true Marxian track; but neither in England nor in Germany did he find a working-class movement which could guide him; wishing to remain attached to realities, as Marx had been, he thought that it was better to carry on a policy of social reform, pursuing practical ends, than to lull himself to sleep to the sound of fine phrases about the happiness of future humanity.

The worshippers of this useless pseudo science did not allow themselves to be stopped by the objection, legitimate in this case, that their methods of calculation were entirely inadequate of their means of determination. Their conception of science, being derived from astronomy, supposes

    capital enlists the aid of science, the rebel hand of labour always learns how to be tractable" (Capital, Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 188, col. 2).

  1. To use the language of the new school, science was considered from the point of view of the consumer and not from the point of view of the producer.
  2. Atlanticus, Ein Blick in den Zukunftsstaat. E. Seillière reviewed this book in the Débats of August 16, 1899.