Marx supposes, exactly as the Syndicalists do, that the revolution will be absolute and irrevocable, because it will place the forces of production in the hands of free men, i.e. of men who will be capable of running the workshop created by capitalism without any need of masters. This conception would not at all suit the financiers and the politicians whom they support, for both are only fit to exercise the noble profession of masters. Therefore, the authors of all enquiries into moderate Socialism are forced to acknowledge that the latter implies the division of society into two groups: the first of these is a select body, organised as a political party, which has adopted the mission of thinking for the thoughtless masses, and which imagines that, because it allows the latter to enjoy the results of its superior enlightenment, it has done something admirable.[1] The second is the whole body of the producers. The select body of politicians has no other profession than that of using its wits, and they find that it is strictly in accordance with the principles of immanent justice (of which they are sole owners) that the proletariat should work to feed them and furnish them with the means for an existence that only distantly resembles an ascetic's.
This division is so evident that generally no attempt is made to hide it: the officials of Socialism constantly speak of the party as of an organism having a life of its own. At the International Socialist Congress of 1900, the party was warned against the danger it ran in follow-
- ↑ The Intellectuals are not, as is so often said, men who think: they are people who have adopted the profession of thinking, and who take an aristocratic salary on account of the nobility of this profession.
Official Socialist documents should be mistrusted. I do not believe that, during the Dreyfus case, the friends of the general staff ever distorted truth so much as the official Socialists did on this occasion.
The fourieriste Tousseil published in the reign of Louis-Philippe a book entitled Les Juifs rois de l'époque, in which he attacked the great speculators. Rolland is alluding to this, and wishes to recall the fact that L. Dreyfus was a large speculator in corn.
