Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/174

124 proprietary classes, these proprietors, the capitalists both great and small, and the angry shopkeepers would be capable even of a very vigorous use of force.

And what would the Revolution be doing all this time? In those regions where it would have seemed victorious at first, it would only be able to eat its heart out on the spot, and exhaust itself in useless violence. The liberal revolutions of 1830 and 1848 had a very definite end in view—to overthrow the existing government and to replace it. The revolutionary blows of Blanqui were always calculated to strike at the head and heart. He did not waste his strength; on the contrary, he concentrated it to attack one or two vital parts of the political system of government.

The revolutionary method of the general strike is the exact opposite. Precisely because it gives an economic turn to the combat in the beginning, it does not supply the working-class forces with a single central aim on which they can unite. They will stay on the spot, at the mouth of the deserted pit, on the threshold of the abandoned factory. Or if the proletarians take possession of the mine and the factory, it will be a perfectly fictitious ownership. They will be embracing a corpse, for the mines and factories will be no better than dead bodies while economic circulation is suspended and production is stopped. So long as a class does not own and govern the