Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/165

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Strike and Revolution
115

a sort of surprise, are going in a direction quite opposite to the real revolutionary tendency.

If the working class is not fully and definitely warned at the outset that it is going on strike for the whole Communist Revolution; if, when it leaves the mines, the railroads, the factories, the yards, it does not know that it is not to re-enter them until it has accomplished the whole Social Revolution; if it is not prepared and resolved to the very centre of its being, and from the very beginning, it will be upset during the progress of the movement by the tardy revelation of a programme that was not submitted to its decision before the initial action was taken. And no artifice, no conjurer's trick, will be able to substitute the hidden aim suddenly discovered for the aim that had been avowed at the outset.

To delude oneself into imagining that a social revolution can result from a misunderstanding, and that the proletariat can be led on beyond its depth is, if I may be permitted to use the word, pure childishness. The transformation of all social relations cannot be the result of a manœuvre.

And if on the other hand the working class is prepared beforehand, if it is told in so many words that it is leaving its work not to go back until it has abolished capitalism, it will be warned by instinct and reflection alike that a society as complicated as ours is not revolutionised by a popular rising of a few days' duration, but by an immense continuous effort of organisation and transforma-