The ripening of socialism within capitalism does not mean merely technical development. This is indispensable of course: socialism can be only an economic system based on highly developed and continually progressing productive forces; but this is one aspect of the case only. The other, a no less if not more important aspect, is the development of new moral forces within the old system; that is, the political, juridical and moral development of the working-class,[159] of that class which alone can establish a socialist society.
This was also the idea of Marx: “Marx also saw that the workingmen must acquire political and juridical capacity before they can triumph.”[160] The revolution which the working-class is pursuing is not a simple change in the personnel or in the form of the government; it is a complete overthrow of the “traditional State” which is to be replaced by the workingmen's organizations. Such a complete transformation presupposes “high moral culture” in the workingmen and a capacity for directing the economic functions of society. The social revolution will thus come only when the workingmen are “ready” for it, that is, when they feel that they can assume the direction of society. The “moral” education of the working-class, therefore, is the essential thing; Socialism will not have to “organize labor”, because capitalism will have accomplished this work before. But in order that the working-class should be able to behave like “free men” in the “workshop created by capitalism”,[161] they must have developed the necessary capacities. Socialism, therefore, reduces itself “to the revolutionary apprenticeship”[162] of the workingmen; “to teaching the workingmen to will, to instructing them by action, and to revealing to them their proper capacities; such is the whole secret of the socialist education of the people.”[163]
The workingmen can find the moral training necessary for the triumph of socialism only in the syndicats and in the experience of syndical life. The syndicats develop the administrative and organizing capacities of the workingmen. In the syndicats the workingmen learn to do their business themselves and to reject the dictatorship of “intellectuals” who have conquered the field of politics which they have made to serve their ambitions.
The greatest organizing and educating force created by the syndicalist movement is the idea of the general strike. The general strike means a complete and “absolute” revolution. It is the idea of a decisive battle between the bourgeoisie and the working-class assuring the triumph of the latter. This idea is a “social myth” and hence its tremendous historic force.
“Social myths” always arise during great social movements. The men who participate in great social movements, represent to themselves their actions in the near future in the form of images of battles assuring the triumph of their cause. These images are “myths.” The images of the early Christians on the coming of Christ and on the ruin of the pagan world are an illustration of a “social myth.” The period of the Reformation saw the rise of “social myths,” because the conditions were such as to make it necessary for the “men of heart” who were inspired by “the will of deliverance” to create “images” which satisfying their “sentiments of struggle” kept up their zeal and their devotion.
The “social myth” presupposes a social group which harbors an intense desire of deliverance, which feels all the difficulties in its way and which finds deep satisfaction in picturing to itself its future struggles and future triumph. Such images must not and cannot be analyzed like a thing; they must be taken en bloc, and it is particularly necessary to avoid comparing the real historic facts with the representations which were in circulation before the facts took place.
“Myths” are indispensable for a revolutionary movement; they concentrate the force of the rising class and intensify it to the point of action. No myth can possibly be free from utopian conceptions. But the utopian elements are not essential. The essentials are the hope back of the myth, the ideal strengthened by the myth, and the impatience of deliverance embodied in the myth.
The general strike is the “social myth” of the working-class longing for emancipation. It is the expression of the convictions of the working-class “in the language of movement,” the supreme concentration of the desires, the hopes, and the ideals of the working-class. Its importance for the future of Socialism, therefore, is paramount. The idea of the general strike keeps alive and fortifies in the workingmen their class-consciousness and revolutionary feelings. Every strike on account of it assumes the character of a skirmish before the great decisive battle which is to come. Owing to the general strike idea, “socialism remains ever young, the attempts made to realize social peace seem childish, the desertion of comrades who run over into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, far from discouraging the masses, excites them still more to revolt; in a word, the rupture (between bourgeoisie and working-class) is never in danger of disappearing.”[164]
This rupture is an indispensable condition of Socialism. Socialism cannot be the continuation of democracy; it must be, if it can be at all, a totally “new culture” built upon ideas and institutions totally different from the ideas and from the institutions of democracy. Socialism must have its own economic, judicial, political and moral institutions evolved by the working-class independently from those of the bourgeoisie, and not in imitation of the latter.
Sorel is bitter in his criticism of democracy; it is, in his view, the régime par excellence in which men are governed “by the magical power of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by formulas rather than by reasons; by dogmas the origin of which nobody cares to find out, rather than by doctrines based on observation.”[165] It is the kingdom of the professionals of politics, over whom the people can have no control. Sorel thinks that even the spread of knowledge does not render the masses more capable of choosing and of supervising their so-called representatives and that the further society advances in the path of democracy, the less effective does control by the people become.[166] The whole system of democracy, in the opinion of M. Sorel, is based on the “fiction of the general will” and is maintained by a mechanism (campaigning, elections, etc.) which can result only in demoralization. It delivers the country into the hands of “charlatans,” of office-seekers and of idle talkers who may assume the air of great men, but who are never fit for their task.