Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/296

282 Kautsky's hypothesis; he seems to have been aware that the motive force of the revolutionary movement must also be the motive force of the ethic of the producers; that is a view quite in conformity with Marxist principles, but the idea must be applied in quite a different way from that in which he applied it. It must not be thought that the action of the syndicates on work is direct, as he supposes; this influence of the syndicates on labour should result from complex and sometimes distant causes, acting on the general character of the workers rather than from a quasi-military organisation. This is what I try to show by analysing some of the qualities of the best workmen.

A satisfactory result can be arrived at, by starting from the curious analogies which exist between the most remarkable qualities of the soldiers who took part in the wars of Liberty, the qualities which engendered the propaganda in favour of the general strike, and those that will be required of a free worker in a highly progressive state of society. I believe that these analogies constitute a new (and perhaps decisive) proof, in favour of revolutionary syndicalism.

In the wars of Liberty each soldier considered himself as an individual having something of importance to do in the battle, instead of looking upon himself as simply one part of the military mechanism committed to the supreme direction of a leader. In the literature of those times one is struck by the frequency with which the free men of the republican armies are contrasted with the automatons of the royal armies; this was no mere figure of rhetoric employed by the French writers; I have convinced myself as a result of a thorough first-hand study of one of the wars of that time, that these terms corresponded perfectly to the actual feelings of the soldiers.

Battles under these conditions could, then, no longer be likened to games of chess in which each man is comparable to a pawn; they became collections of heroic