Page:The Social General Strike - Arnold Roller (1912).djvu/7

 first time that the ruling classes will understand and feel what it means to be hungry.

This is the beginning—the introduction. According to the opinion of the Latin comrades, as well as according to the experience gained in previous strikes, the General Strike will not have such a peaceful conclusion as the beginning indicated. We saw in Spain that the movement entered a period of conflict as soon as they put before the working class the question how to satisfy its hunger, and saw no other way to do so but to take food where it could be found, and of course that was in the warehouses where it was piled up.

The proletarians can stop production, but they cannot stop consumption. In this way they would during the transition do the same thing as the ruling classes have done uninterruptedly for thousands of years—that is, "consume without producing." This action of the ruling classes the working class calls "exploitation"; and if the proletarians do it, the possessing classes call it "plundering," and Socialists call it "expropriation."

Hunger forces even the most timid ones to take bread wherever it is. So it has been evident in all revolutions and rebellions that the women, who were politically the most reactionary, were now, as it was necessary to satisfy the hunger of their little ones, the most revolutionary and desperate in the plundering of bakeries and butchers shops.

The battle would become still more intense as soon as the workers tried to gain possession of the means of production. In this way the General Strike is not only the introduction of the revolution, but is the social revolution itself.

It is, however, not the revolution in the traditional form, such as the bourgeoisie of 1789 and 1848 fought for. The heroic times of the battle on the barricades have gone by. In place of the narrow, winding lanes in which a barricade could be erected quickly and defended easily, we now have in all large cities broad, long streets, in which the columns of an army can easily operate and take the barricades. Lastly, it is impossible to build barricades in a large city, because the material for them is not on hand. Wooden blocks and asphalt have taken the place of paving stones in the main streets, and such material is not fit for building barricades. Therefore it would be foolish for the people to begin a revolution, relying upon such insufficient means of defence.

Entirely different, however, is the condition in the General Strike. The immense advantage of the General Strike is that it begins entirely lawfully and without any danger for the workers, and for this reason thousands will take part who never would have thought of taking part in a revolution, but would have stayed at home beside the stove, and by that would have weakened the revolution, or even made it impossible.

Those who stay at home to-day for reasons of cowardice, or for fear of the deeds of the strikers, or partly for fear of being involved in the revolts on the streets in any way, support in the best manner the General Strike by their doing so.

Other masses of the working people, who never paid any attention to this matter, who never have been aroused by the ballot, and who would never have followed the call of the revolution, because their life