Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/166

152 of which he spoke would constitute an irrevocable transformation, and that it would mark an absolute separation between two historical eras; he often returned to this idea, and Engels has endeavoured to show, by means of images which were sometimes a little grandiose, how economic enfranchisement would be the point of departure of an era having no relationship with the past. Rejecting all Utopias, these two founders of modern Socialism renounced all the resources by which their predecessors had rendered the prospect of a great revolution less formidable; but however strong the expressions which they employed might have been, the effects which they produced are still very inferior to those produced by the evocation of the general strike. This conception makes it impossible for us to ignore the fact that a kind of irresistible wave will pass over the old civilisation.

There is something really terrifying in all this; but I believe that it is very essential that this feature of Socialism should be insisted on if the latter is to have its full educational value. Socialists must be convinced that the work to which they are devoting themselves is a serious, formidable, and sublime work; it is only on this condition that they will be able to bear the innumerable sacrifices imposed on them by a propaganda, which can procure them neither honours, profits, nor even immediate intellectual satisfaction. Even if the only result of the idea of the general strike was to make the Socialist conception more heroic, it should on that account alone be looked upon as having an incalculable value.

The resemblances which I have just established between Marxism and the general strike might be carried still further and deeper; if they have been overlooked hitherto, it is because we are much more struck by the form of things than by their content; a large number of people find great difficulty in believing that there can be any parallelism between a philosophy based on