people to say that he would have made a wonderful cattle-dealer.
The more closely the history of these last years is examined, the more the discussions concerning the two methods will be recognised as puerile: the partisans of the two methods are equally opposed to proletarian violence, because it escapes from the control of the people engaged in Parliamentary politics. Revolutionary Syndicalism cannot be controlled by the so-called revolutionary Socialists of Parliament.
II
The two methods favoured by official Socialism presuppose this same historical datum. The ideology of a timorous humanitarian middle class professing to have freed its thought from the conditions of its existence is grafted on the degeneration of the capitalist system; and the race of bold captains who made the greatness of modern industry disappears to make way for an ultra-civilised aristocracy which asks to be allowed to live in peace. This degeneration fills our Parliamentary Socialists with joy. Their role would vanish if they were confronted with a middle class which was energetically engaged on the paths of capitalistic progress, a class that would look upon timidity with shame, and which would find satisfaction in looking after its class interests. In the presence of a middle class which has become almost as stupid as the nobility of the eighteenth century, their power is enormous. If the stultifying of the upper middle class progresses in a regular manner at the pace it has taken for the last few years, our official Socialists may reasonably hope to reach the goal of their dreams and sleep in sumptuous mansions.
Two accidents alone, it seems, would be able to stop this movement: a great foreign war, which might renew
