Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/90

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
86
JEAN JAURÈS

fought against the crushing power of Capital, but was not conscious toward what end it was straining, it has now a definite aim. Jaurès gives the honour to Marx of having brought Socialism and the workers together. [1]"From that time on, Socialism and the proletariat became inseparable."

So, to the question of how Socialism is to be brought about Jaurès makes first the general answer: [1]"By the growth of the proletariat … This is the first and essential answer, and whoever does not accept it wholly and in its true sense necessarily places himself outside Socialist life and thought.… But what is certain is that the evolution is hastened, the forward movement vivified, enlarged and deepened by everything that increases the intellectual, economic, and political power of the proletariat."

So that when Jaurès again asks what will be the definite means by which the workers will push forward to Socialism, it is already obvious that he is not going to answer this question as Marx did. Marx had the thought of the great French Revolution and of those that followed it before his eyes, and it seemed to him that the change to a Socialist order was not possible without a revolutionary upheaval.

But Jaurès saw very clearly that if a democracy were not ready for the movement towards

  1. 1.0 1.1 Studies in Socialism. Trans. by M. Minturn.