Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/156

142 the preconceived and premature ideas which observers may unwittingly have put into their observations will be certain to neutralize each other. In this way only can the bare materiality of the known facts be exposed to view." Finally, what Bergson calls an integral experience is obtained.

Thanks to the new principle, people very soon came to recognise that the propositions which in their opinion contained a complete statement of Socialism were deplorably inadequate, so that they were often more dangerous than useful. It is the superstitious respect paid by social democracy to the mere text of its doctrines that nullified every attempt in Germany to perfect Marxism.

When the new school had acquired a full understanding of the general strike, and had thus obtained a profound intuition of the working-class movement, it saw that all the Socialist theories, interpreted in the light of this powerful construction, took on a meaning which till then they had lacked; it perceived that the clumsy and rickety apparatus which had been manufactured in Germany to explain Marx's doctrines, must be rejected if the contemporary transformation of the proletarian idea was to be followed exactly; it discovered that the conception of the general strike enabled them to explore profitably the whole vast domain of Marxism, which until then had remained practically unknown to the big-wigs who professed to be guiding Socialism. Thus the fundamental principles of Marxism are perfectly intelligible only with the aid of the picture of the general strike, and, on the other hand, the full significance of this picture, it may be supposed, is apparent only to those who are deeply versed in the Marxian doctrine.

A. First of all, I shall speak of the class war, which is the point of departure for all Socialistic thought, and which stands in such great need of elucidation,