Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Socialism and Politics (1903).djvu/6

 6 called Socialist and Social-Democratic parties to rely upon for the triumph of the Socialist idea, the general position would be really desperate. We certainly are the first to recognise that the Social-Democratic party in Germany is doing excellent Republican propaganda, and that, as a Republican party, it splendidly undermines the authority of the petulant William. We gladly acknowledge that the Parliamentary Socialists in France are thorough Radicals, and that they do excellent work for the support of Radical legislation, thus continuing the work of Clémenceau and Rank, with the addition of some genuine interest in the working classes: they are Radicals, sympathetic to the workers. But who is doing work in the Socialist direction? Who is working for bringing the masses nearer and. nearer to the day when they will be able to take hold of ail that is needed for living and producing? Who contributes to the spreading of the spirit of revolt, among the slaves of the wage-system?

Surely not the parliamentarian!

There is only one possible reply to this question: It is the labour movement in France, in Spain, in America, in England, in Belgium, and its beginnings in Germany, and the Anarchists everywhere, who, despite all the above-mentioned dampers, despite all the confusion that is being sown in the ranks of Labour by clever bourgeois, despite all the propaganda of quietness and all the advices of deserting their fighting brothers, continue the old, good, direct fight against the exploiters.

The great and desperate colliers' strike in America has done more to shake the authority of trusts, and to show the way to fight them, than all the talk in the talking assemblies. The attempts at general strikes in Belgium (despite the opposition of the politicians), at Milan (despite the treason of the leaders), at Barcelona, at Geneva, and in Holland, have done much more for spreading conviction in the necessity of the expropriation of the exploiters than anything that has been said in or out of a parliament by a parliamentary leader. The refusal of 400 Geneva militia soldiers to join the ranks, and the attitude of those fifteen who have been bold enough to tell the martial Court that they would never join the ranks of their battalions