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result of the economic contrasts and of social development; a form of revolution corresponding with the present tendencies and conditions; and it is the most modern, clearest and, finally, the most unveiled expression of the revolt of the proletariat.
The General Strike will be the result of the continually more frequent larger strikes, and therefore only the product of large industry itself; it is the weapon which capitalism forged against itself; and it will bring sure death to it.
Even after the most triumphant victory in a wage strike the working man still remains a wage slave. The modern worker, of course, is no longer the slave of an individual capitalist, but he stays his whole life long the slave of the whole capitalistic class, from whose hands he cannot free himself in the present society.
A much more definite result will the Trade Unions have made their object, when they no more are satisfied to reduce the oppression of capitalism, but will use their organisations as a weapon to do away with oppression entirely, when they write upon their banner the complete emancipation of the working people from wage-slavery. But it will also be the work of the Trade Unions in future to take production into their hands, and by this they are to be not only the element of education and the battle of the social future, but also the embryos of production and reorganisation after the death of capitalism. This great aim will undoubtedly lead thousands of new vigorous and enthusiastic workers to join the organisations in their good work.
The General Strike idea once taken up by the working people is, as even Jaures himself admitted, in itself already a power, because it is a continuous terrible dread. The threatening ghost of the General Strike alone could at times be sufficient to prevent the ruling classes from holding the reins too tight.
The absence of an answer, of a distinct answer, to the ever dark question: How?—(How in a reasonably short time can the authority of the nobility and the capitalists be extinguished?) This ever-unanswered question it is which gnaws at the confidence and the hopes of the people like a deadly consumption.
The General Strike idea puts an efficient and sure remedy in place of the craving for the "Mother of Freedom, Revolution"; in place of fruitless Social Democratic declamations about evolution in distant futures in which no one dares to believe, which seem to us like veiled ideals, suspended far distant, and which, at one time or another, after a long wait, we are told, will come to us "over the mountains"; a remedy which will remove capitalism and bring freedom and welfare for all.
Whilst the General Strike makes it impossible for the traitors and politicians who aim at dictatorship to carry out their plans, it also destroys all power once and for ever, instead of trusting it into the hands of a tyrant. It accomplishes expropriation and communalises the means of production radically from the root up, and in this way also makes counter-revolutions once and for ever impossible.
The Social General Strike is consequently the final emancipation of the workers.
