ance of the capitalistic régime, would willingly abolish inheritance like the followers of Saint Simon.[1]
The idea of the general strike destroys all the theoretical consequences of every possible social policy; its partisans look upon even the most popular reforms as having a middle-class character; so far as they are concerned, nothing can weaken the fundamental opposition of the class war. The more the policy of social reforms becomes preponderant, the more will Socialists feel the need of placing against the picture of the progress which it is the aim of this policy to bring about, this other picture of complete catastrophe furnished so perfectly by the general strike.
B. Let us now examine, with the aid of the conception of the general strike, certain very essential aspects of the Marxian Revolution.
(1) Marx says that on the day of the Revolution the proletariat will be disciplined, united, and organised by the very mechanism of production. This exceedingly concentrated formula would not be very intelligible if we did not read it in connection with its context; according to Marx, the working class is bowed beneath a system in which "abject poverty, oppression, slavery, degradation, and exploitation increase," and against which it is organising an ever-increasing resistance until the day when the whole social structure breaks up.[2] The accuracy of this description has been many times disputed; it seems indeed to be more suited to the Manifesto period (1847) than to the time when Capital was published (1867); but this objection must not stop us, and it may be thrust on
- ↑ P. de Rousiers was very much struck by the way rich fathers in the United States forced their sons to earn their own living; he often met "Frenchmen who were profoundly shocked by what they called the egoism of American fathers. It seemed revolting to them that a rich man should leave his son to earn his own living, that he did nothing to set him up in life" (La Vie américaine, l'éducation et la société, p. 9).
- ↑ Capital, vol. i. p. 342, col. 1.
