Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/140

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CHAPTER IV

THE PROLETARIAN STRIKE

  I. The confusion in Parliamentary Socialism and the clearness of the general strike—Myths in history—The value of the general strike proved by experience.

 II. Researches made to perfect Marxism—Means of throwing light upon it, starting from the point of view of the general strike: class war; preparation for the revolution and absence of Utopias; irrevocable character of the revolution.

III. Scientific prejudices against the general strike; doubts about science—The clear and the obscure parts in thought—Economic incompetence of Parliaments.

I

Every time that we attempt to obtain an exact conception of the ideas behind proletarian violence we are forced to go back to the notion of the general strike; and this same conception may render many other services, and throw an unexpected light on all the obscure parts of Socialism. In the last pages of the first chapter I compared the general strike to the Napoleonic battle which definitely crushes an adversary; this comparison will help us to understand the part played by the general strike in the world of ideas.

Military writers of to-day, when discussing the new methods of war necessitated by the employment of troops infinitely more numerous than those of Napoleon, equipped with arms much more deadly than those of his time, do

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