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 CHAPTER III

PREJUDICES AGAINST VIOLENCE

I

ideas current among the outside public on the subject of proletarian violence are not founded on observation of contemporary facts, and on a rational interpretation of the present Syndicalist movement; they are derived from a comparison of the present with the past—an infinitely simpler mental process; they are shaped by the memories which the word revolution evokes almost automatically. It is supposed that the Syndicalists, merely because they call themselves revolutionaries, wish to reproduce the history of the revolutionaries of '93. The Blanquists, who look upon themselves as the legitimate owners of the Terrorist tradition, consider that for this very reason they are called upon to direct