fall into another, and they run the risk of being devoured by Parliamentary Socialism.[1] Jaurès is as enthusiastic as the clericals about measures which turn away the working classes from the idea of the Marxian revolution; I believe he understands better than they do what the result of social peace will be; he founds his own hopes on the simultaneous ruin of the capitalistic and the revolutionary spirit.
It is often urged, in objection to the people who defend the Marxian conception, that it is impossible for them to stop the movement of degeneration which is dragging both the middle class and the proletariat far from the paths assigned to them by Marx's theory. They can doubtless influence the working classes, and it is hardly to be denied that strike violences do keep the revolutionary spirit alive; but how can they hope to give back to the middle class an ardour which is spent?
It is here that the role of violence in history appears to us as singularly great, for it can, in an indirect manner, so operate on the middle class as to awaken them to a sense of their own class sentiment. Attention has often been drawn to the danger of certain acts of violence which compromised admirable social works, disgusted employers who were disposed to arrange the happiness of their workmen, and developed egoism where the most noble sentiments formerly reigned.
To repay with black ingratitude the benevolence of those who would protect the workers,[2] to meet with insults the homilies of the defenders of human fraternity, and to
- ↑ Vilredo Pareto laughs at the simple middle class who are happy, because they are no longer threatened by intractable Marxians, and who have fallen into the snare of the conciliatory Marxians (Systèmes socialistes, tome ii. p. 453).
- ↑ Cf. G. Sorel, Insegnamenti sociali, p. 53.
workers from the yoke of sophists. The responsible people are de Mun, Charles Benoist (the amusing specialist in constitutional law), Arthur Fontaine, and the band of democratic abbés, … and lastly Gabriel Hanotaux!
