Jean Jaurès

“ Destined for the benefit of all, it must be prepared and accepted by almost all, practically indeed by all; because the hour inevitably arrives when the power behind an immense majority discourages the last efforts to resist its will. The noblest thing about Socialism is precisely that it is not the regime of a minority. ”

“ And even in France, in a more modest degree, the capitalist class is ever on the alert. It is not from indifferent and drowsy classes, but from active, foresighted, and bold classes that the proletariat must wring its privileges. How can it do this if it has not the nation on its side? If the mass of the nation is hostile, it will be crushed. And if it is only distrustful, the manœuvres of the capitalist class will soon change that distrust to hostility. ”

“ In the first place, the Socialist minority is not opposed to an inert and passive mass. In the hundred and twenty years that have passed since the Revolution, human energy, already excited by the Reformation and the Renaissance, has developed a prodigious animation. In all classes and in all conditions of life we find active wills, forces in motion. Everywhere the individual has become self-conscious. Everywhere greater and greater efforts are being made. The working class has shaken off its drowsiness and passivity. But the lower middle-class is also active. ”

“ A minority that, having taken part in the elections and having accepted them as a gauge, should then attempt to go against the will of the majority by violence, would be in an utterly false position. And it would be opposed by a majority that, armed with the consciousness of its own force which the authentic figures of the ballot would give, would not only not yield but in all probability would rally to its standard many elements from the revolting minority.
Further, the Socialist party does not limit its demand to the establishment of universal suffrage in all countries. ”

“ All the social forces that were either refractory or inert would be such a drag on Socialist production, and would use up so much energy and elasticity in numberless jars and frictions, that the whole system would end in disaster. It can only succeed by the general and almost unanimous desire of the community. ”

“ The Socialist Revolution, on the contrary, must not rest content after it has abolished capitalism; it must create the new type under which production is to be carried on and the relations of property are to be regulated. ”

“ Imagine that all capitalistic claims on production cease, that the ledger of the public debt is destroyed, that tenants pay no more rent, that tenant-farmers pay no land-rent, that farmers who hold land as métayers are no longer required to hand over half their produce to the bourgeois proprietor, that all ground-rent, all commercial profit, all dividends and industrial profits are abolished ”

“ In spite of the often crushing weight of the present economic system, it is not altogether subdued; it is constantly making an effort to better itself. And if it often seeks its deliverance by the most reactionary ideas, the most detestable politics, and the most sterile and degrading jingo patriotism, it is none the less an active and passionate power. ”

“ In the Socialist order, discipline and the smooth co-operation of individual wills will not be maintained by the authority of one class over another, but will come as the result of the free will of associated guardians of the peace. ”

“ But to ask for minority representation is to ask that each force, each tendency in the country should constantly make public its exact numerical strength. It is to wish that the share of electoral and parliamentary influence of each party should be exactly calculated on its actual strength in the country. It is, then, to proclaim all legislation arbitrary that does not emanate from the true majority. *⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠* According to the admission of every section of the party, then, the Socialist Revolution will be brought about by the will of all, the power of a majority. ”

“ They have begun to hold municipal office, they know that they make the deputies, the members of the provincial legislatures, and the senators, and they would have no tolerance for a great social movement in which they took no part.
I think it extremely short-sighted to say that if the peasants are neutral, that will be enough, that all Socialism asks of them is to stand aside passively. No social force can remain neutral when a great movement is on foot. If they are not with us, they will be against us. ”

“ They know their power and they are not going to let it drop from their hands. Even the economic initiative they have shown for several years, the spirit of progress that animates them, everything, points to the fact that they would not allow their share in great social events to be a purely passive one, when those events will have an immediate reaction on their own lives. ”

“ The adhesion of the peasant proprietors is the more necessary because in comparison with them the number of large rural proprietors is constantly decreasing. But their adhesion is not to be won by a sudden movement, whose effects they have not been able to calculate. They will only support a movement that has been fully discussed with them, and one that, by constantly raising their productive power and standard of life, will reassure them completely as to the end and object of Socialist action. ”

“ There are no longer dormant masses that a vigorous push can shake into life. There are everywhere centres of force which would quickly become centres of resistance and points of reaction, if they were not moving gradually in the direction of the new society of their own accord. *⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠* In the second place, the transformation of property that Socialism wishes and ought to accomplish is much vaster, more far-reaching, and much more subtle than that accomplished one hundred and ten years ago by the revolutionary middle class. ”

“ And, anyway, since the Collectivist system presupposes the co-operation of the peasants (for example, they must be willing to sell their produce at the common shop) their passive resistance would be enough to starve and defeat the Revolution. ”

“ The privileged classes have to-day infinitely more authority, and therefore more power, than the privileged classes before 1789. The industrial middle-class has retained a vital force. It has followed the laws of scientific progress. It is constantly adopting new methods of production and renewing and improving its machinery. ”

“ It cannot, therefore, and ought not to be imposed by a minority. *⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠* I must add, further, that the long exercise of universal suffrage has made it more and more difficult, if not impossible, for the minority alone to carry through any enterprise successfully. Universal suffrage, indeed, is constantly throwing light on the respective strength of the different parties. It is perpetually and publicly taking their measure. For a minority to attempt any independent movement when all the country knows, and it knows itself, that it is in the minority, is, then, extremely difficult. ”

“ It forms leagues, and in Paris it holds the Republican and Socialist democracy in check. That is to say, it will oppose a resistance that may be effective, to any social movement to which it has not been gradually converted, at least to a certain degree. In the same way the small peasant-proprietors have played a great rôle ever since the Revolution, sometimes on the side of reaction, sometimes on that of liberty. ”

“ Save for some glorious and fairly numerous exceptions, they took fright at the idea of the Red Terror in 1851, and contributed to the success of the coup d'état and the Empire. Since then they have been gradually won over by the Republic and have become one of the living forces back of it. They are perfectly conscious of their political power. ”

“ It is of course true that the titles that represent it are very far from being as widely dispersed as the made-to-order optimism of bourgeois political-economists would have us believe. But it is true that they are not reserved to any given category of titular proprietors and that they are fairly generally distributed. There are small property-owners even in the villages. ”

“ What a contrast between the activity of a great prelate under the ancien régime, and a great modern capitalist! Some of these, like certain American millionaires, seem to have inherited the activity of Napoleon. ”