Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/210

 196 important that the theory of social forces should be thoroughly investigated—in a large measure, the forces may be compared to those acting on matter; but I was not able to perceive the capital distinction in question here until I had come to consider the problem of the general strike. Moreover, I do not think that Marx had ever examined any other form of social constraint except force. In my Saggi di critica del marxismo I endeavoured, a few years ago, to sum up the arguments of Marx with respect to the adaptation of man to the conditions of capitalism, and I presented these arguments in the following manner, on pages 38–40:—

"(1) There is a social system which is to a certain extent mechanical, in which man seems subject to true natural laws: classical economists place at the beginning of things that automatism which is in reality the last product of the capitalistic régime. 'But the advance of capitalist production,' says Marx, 'develops a more and more numerous class of workers who, by education, tradition, and habit, look upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of nature.' The intervention of an intelligent will in this mechanism would appear as an exception.

"(2) There is a régime of emulation and of keen competition which impels men to set aside traditional obstacles, to seek constantly for what is new, and to imagine conditions of existence which seem to them to be better. According to Marx, it is in this revolutionary task that the middle class excelled.

"(3) There is a régime of violence, which plays an important part in history, and which assumes several distinct forms: "(a) On the lowest level, we find a scattered kind of violence, which resembles the struggle for life, which acts through economic conditions, and which carries out a