Paris and the Social Revolution / A Study of the Revolutionary Elements in the Various Classes of Parisian Society

by Alvan F. Sanborn

At the time of the memorable grève des terrassiers,[23] Gustave Geffroy contributed to Le Journal a sketch entitled “Tableau de Grève,” which is at once a vivid pen-picture and a prophecy:—

“We could easily have believed ourselves, these latter days, borne backward to the days of the siege of Paris or the weeks which followed the time of the Commune, in perceiving above the pedestrians the silhouettes of cavaliers on patrol and the hands of soldiers in campaign accoutrements in the public squares and along the banks of the Seine.... When the redoubtable question of labour and of misère is the order of the day, it is anguish with silence which reigns in the street where pass the soldiers under arms.

“It has been so everywhere this week. About the stacks of arms, along the route of the cavaliers, not a cry has escaped, as if each one, by some tacit understanding, knew that destiny must not be tempted nor risks run. The public regarded without uttering a word, gazed fixedly at these sons of the soil and of the faubourg, wearing uniforms and equipped with provisions and cartridges as if they were entering on a campaign in this peaceful city. Where was the enemy? These strikers, slowly promenading, listlessly dangling their arms,—they who set forth habitually to work, and who return from work with a rapid, cadenced step,—and quite stupefied at having become idle strollers; adversaries little fierce, without arms, without their tools even, having in their favour only their patience, their passivity, their hope, and especially their assurance that sooner or later they will conquer, when all their fellows shall will it like them.

“It is this fatality of the victory of numbers which is the enemy; it is against this that the regiments and the squadrons have been sent out, against this that to-morrow they would have trundled out the artillery. All this parade of force would have been made this time, could have been made, in fact, only in pure loss.... And so it will be—we can now affirm it—on that future day when the grève générale shall be interpreted in this fashion, when there shall be everywhere only dismaying calm, the tragic refusal to work, when the soldiers called out to guarantee order shall find only order everywhere,—placid visages and folded arms. Military display will be useless on that day. The great social change will have come by the fact of that new sort of revolution which a reactionary journalist designated very justly, the other day, by the name of the passive revolution....

... “Ah! the good time when the people offered itself freely as a target on a pile of paving-stones in a narrow street!

“This good time is no more. The great boulevards, the broad avenues, the power of the artillery which can sweep everything from afar without the insurgents seeing anything but the quick flame, the sounding light, the cloud of smoke, were already there to assure the end of the ancient street war. It was not enough. The revolutionary tactics also have changed, in proportion as the revolutionary party has extended, has gained in force, and has become more conscious of its destinies....

“Seek not elsewhere than in a profound transformation of the human mind the cause of the tranquillity of a strike in which we behold the placid confrontation of the workingman and the soldier. For all observers endowed with reason and sang-froid, to whatever party they belong, the spectacle is that of the toiling mass reconnoitring the ground and testing its strength. Nothing less than a pacific and irresistible transformation is announced. Of course, the grève générale can be realised only by an understanding throughout an organisation far-seeing and complete, and then, only, thanks to a certain combination of circumstances; but this is not saying it cannot be realised.

“It is easy to brand such a programme as tainted with Utopia and struck with sterility. But to do so is to refuse to recognise the sense of facts and especially the power of a unique idea. Bear in mind that this idea of the grève générale has already thousands of adherents, not only in France, but in Germany, in England, in America, and you will have some chance of appreciating the significance of the strike of to-day, so different from the strike of yesterday, in spite of a few traditional incidents into which the strikers and the government have been betrayed.”

Geffroy, the writer of the above, is not an anarchist, but a socialist. Few anarchists see in the grève générale, as he does, a purely passive revolution, which will prevail without the shedding of a drop of blood or any other violence whatsoever. Most of its anarchist advocates regard it, “not as a strike of folded arms, but as a general revolt of the proletariat, outside of all political lines, for the conquest of the means of production and for complete emancipation.”

The grève générale apart, the anarchist who enters the trade-union[24] does it, incidentally, perhaps, to rid the union of the curse of politics and to score over the socialists, but primarily to transform it by the influence of precept (and, still more, of example) from “a reform movement for the defence of the material and moral interests of the workers, and especially the satisfaction of such immediate desires as the amelioration of salaries and the diminution of the working day,” into “an economic movement of the working class against the capitalistic class for the suppression of the latter and of the régime which they represent.”