Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/250

236 of that as long as the politicians are reasonable in their demands. People who are in business know that there is quite a complete art of bribery; certain intermediaries have acquired a special skill in estimating the amount of the presents that should be offered to high officials, or to deputies who can get bills passed. If financiers are almost always obliged to have recourse to the services of specialists, there is all the more reason why the workmen, who are quite unaccustomed to the customs of this world, must need intermediaries to fix the sum which they can exact from their employers without exceeding reasonable limits.

We are thus led to consider arbitration in an entirely new light and to understand it in a really scientific manner, since, instead of allowing ourselves to be duped by abstractions, we shall explain it by means of the dominant ideas of middle-class society, who invented it, and who want to impose it on the workers. It would be evidently absurd to go into a pork butcher's shop, order him to sell us a ham at less than the marked price, and then ask him to submit the question to arbitration; but it is not absurd to promise to a group of employers the advantages to be derived from the fixity of wages for several years, and to ask the specialists what present remuneration this guarantee is worth; this remuneration may be considerable if business is expected to be good during that time. Instead of bribing some influential person the employers raise their workmen's wages; from their point of view there is no difference. As for the Government, it becomes the benefactor of the people, and hopes that it will do well in the elections; to the politician, the electoral advantages which result from a successful conciliation are worth more than a very large bribe.

It is easy to understand now why all politicians have