Jean Jaurès

“ Finally, if the governing class were mad enough to lay hands on the poor liberties that have been won, the wretchedly insufficient means of action of the proletariat, if they threatened or attacked universal suffrage, if by the persecution of employers and the police they made the right to unite in trades-unions and the right to strike empty forms, then a violent general strike would be certainly the form that a labour revolt would take, it would be their final and desperate recourse, more as a means of injuring the enemy than of saving themselves. ”

“ But the working class would be the dupe of a fatal illusion and a sort of unhealthy obsession if it mistook what can be only the tactics of despair for a method of revolution. Apart from those convulsive upheavals that escape all forecast and are sometimes the final supreme resource of history brought to bay, there is only one sovereign method for Socialism—the conquest of a legal majority. ”

“ The general strike, quite powerless as a revolutionary method, is none the less in its very idea a revolutionary index of the highest importance. It is a prodigious warning to the privileged classes, rather than a means of liberation for the exploited classes. It is a dull menace in the very heart of capitalist society that, even if it comes to nothing in the end but an impotent outburst, is witness to an organic disorder that can only be healed by a great transformation. ”

“ It is toward the accomplishment of that end, towards its gradual realisation, that the proletariat is directing its organised effort. But if a great movement is to be started, it is essential that the idea of Social Revolution should be embodied in specific claims.
To bring the working class to the point of leaving the factories and of beginning a battle to the death with all the powers of the present social system, a battle full of uncertainty and peril, it is not enough to cry "Communism!" because the proletarians will immediately say, "Which Communism?" ”

“ Bourgeois society will set up a resistance proportional to the magnitude of the interests at stake. In other words, to a revolutionary general strike that will require of it the sacrifice of its very existence, it will oppose a resistance up to the limit of its powers.
Now, neither a stoppage of production and transportation, nor even extended violence to property and persons, is enough to bring about the overthrow of a society. No matter how powerful one supposes the effects of a general revolutionary strike to be, they can hardly exceed those of great wars and great invasions. ”

“ To stop the locomotives, tie up the steamers, and deprive industry of coal, is to substitute the scattered life of innumerable local groups for the unified and general life of the nation. Now this cutting-up and subdivision of life is exactly counter to the Revolution. ”

“ At the end of a few days, then, the general strike would become purely revolutionary in character. And as the capitalist power would be scattered by the very necessity of keeping watch over such a varied and widespread movement, as the army of repression would be scattered and submerged in the flood, the proletariat would be able to overcome the obstacle against which it had heretofore only beat itself in vain, and, master of the social system at last, would install labour as sovereign. ”

“ First, a tactical movement is especially dangerous when it cannot fail a single time without involving an immense disaster for the whole working class.
The partisans of the general strike, taking the words in this sense, are obliged—understand this clearly—to succeed the first time. If a general strike fails, after having had recourse to revolutionary violence, it will have left the capitalist system intact and armed it with implacable fury. The fear of the ruling classes, and even of a great part of the masses, will express itself in a long succession of reactionary years. ”

“ Because to bring about a general strike it is not necessary that the whole number of trades should be in line; it is not even necessary that in the trades that are on strike every single workman should go out. It is sufficient if those trades where the power of capital is most concentrated and the power of labour best organised, and that are therefore the key-stone of the economic system, decide on a suspension of work, and it is enough if they are backed up by such a large number of workmen that the work of those trades is stopped. ”

“ But in more modern societies, in bourgeois society itself, what prodigious upheavals! Since the last half of 1793 the society that was the creation of the Revolution has suffered and has even inflicted on itself in its own defence injuries that doubtless no general strike can equal. A considerable proportion of the most useful part of the population, one million five hundred thousand men out of a population of twenty-five millions, are torn from the fields and workshops and thrown to the frontiers. ”

“ I say that there can only be a Revolution where there is self-consciousness, and that those who construct an elaborate mechanical contrivance to convey the proletariat to the Revolution, almost without its being aware of what is happening, and fancy that they can lead it to the point desired by a sort of surprise, are going in a direction quite opposite to the real revolutionary tendency.
If the working class is not fully and definitely warned at the outset that it is going on strike for the whole Communist Revolution ”

“ The workers, in stopping exchange and production, would be starving themselves, and would therefore be forced to adopt violent methods in order to live. They would seize food and other provisions wherever they could lay hands on them. The privileged classes, threatened alike in their persons and possessions, would be shocked and frightened by the inevitable anger of the proletariat, whose time-honoured suffering would be intensified by the crisis of misery and hunger. Hence would come inevitable conflicts between the working class and the panic-stricken guardians of the capitalist system. ”

“ And if on the other hand the working class is prepared beforehand, if it is told in so many words that it is leaving its work not to go back until it has abolished capitalism, it will be warned by instinct and reflection alike that a society as complicated as ours is not revolutionised by a popular rising of a few days' duration, but by an immense continuous effort of organisation and transformation. ”

“ Consequently the proletariat, in declaring a general strike, would know that it was within its legal rights, and would go into the movement in the strength of that knowledge. Many workmen who would have been shocked at the premeditated use of force and at deliberate revolutionary action, would not hesitate to show their irritation with social injustice by a movement which would be a menace, but would not put them outside the bounds of law in the very beginning and before their blood was up. ”

“ It is a trick to entrap the working classes. It proposes to drag them in by an irresistible mechanical action, far deeper than the original programme would have given them any reason to suspect. By the attraction of certain concrete, definite, immediate reforms they are to be led to decide on the great operation of a universal strike, and it is supposed that once they have become involved in the network of the machine they will be conveyed almost automatically to the Communist Revolution. ”

“ It cannot be objected that a general strike, if this meaning be given to the phrase, is either chimerical or useless. In proportion to the growth of the labour movement, the possibility of this kind of concerted action is increased. And such action can exercise an enormous influence on the ruling class. It is no longer a single trade, no matter how important, that refuses to work, but a whole union of trades. The movement is no longer, then, a trade movement; it has become a class movement. ”

“ At one point, the conflict may, as expected, result in a revolutionary movement; at another it will keep its legal form and be extinguished in inaction. The revolutionary movement, lacking that basis and solid foundation which the deliberate free-will of men alone can give, will be delivered into the power of local events, and the machinery of revolution will not take hold everywhere in the same way. ”

“ And if bourgeois society and private property will not give way, if the great majority of citizens is opposed to the new social order that the general strike wishes to install by a coup de surprise, then bourgeois society and private property will find a way to live, to defend themselves, and gradually to rally the forces of conservatism and reaction, even in the confusion and disorder of economic life. ”

“ To delude oneself into imagining that a social revolution can result from a misunderstanding, and that the proletariat can be led on beyond its depth is, if I may be permitted to use the word, pure childishness. The transformation of all social relations cannot be the result of a manœuvre. ”

“ 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 whole social machine, it can seize a few factories and yards if it wants to, but it really possesses nothing. ”

“ The bourgeois Revolution was accomplished by groups that drew closer and closer together with Paris as a central bond. Every great revolution presupposes an exaltation of life, and this exaltation is only possible when there is that consciousness of unity produced by the ardent intercommunication of strength and enthusiasm. ”

“ They think that the general strike of the most important trades would be enough to bring on the Social Revolution, that is, the fall of the whole capitalist system, and the establishment of democratic and proletarian Communism. The economic life of the country would be suspended, railroads would be deserted, the coal necessary for industry would remain buried underground; steamers could not even get in to the docks, where no workmen would unload the merchandise. Everywhere there would be a stoppage in circulation and in production. ”

“ Every general strike will necessarily bring about disorders in economic relations; it will upset many traditions and go counter to many interests. The opinion of the mass of the nation (and even of that very considerable portion of the wage-earning class who will not have taken part in the movement) will therefore be very emphatically ranged against those on whom rests the responsibility for a prolongation of the conflict. ”

“ Great movements are never set on foot for the attainment of remote and vaguely understood ends. They need something solid to work for: they demand a clearly defined, specific issue.
The most practical representatives of the theory of the general strike are perfectly aware of this. They propose to rouse the working class to action in the first place by certain definite claims. And they hope that this movement, when it has become revolutionary in character, as it is certain to do, will expand naturally into a complete Communism. ”

“ But this opinion will not fix the responsibility on the capitalist class and will not condemn it with any force, unless the justice of the strikers' claims and the possibility of satisfying them immediately have been clearly demonstrated by an ardent and serious propaganda. It will then express itself against the selfishness of the great owners, the routine or the selfishness of public authorities, and the general strike will result in a notable success. On the contrary, if the neutral masses have not been prepared beforehand and partly won over, they will decide against the strikers. ”

“ And the proletariat will accomplish its revolution by the organisation, both in the political and economic world, of strong class representation and class action, which will penetrate and bind together all phases of their life. Division is a return to feudalism. The stoppage of transportation proposed by the supporters of the general strike would force society to revert to the conditions of an inferior civilisation. ”

“ The working class is willing to fight for definite and great ends, for positive, extended, and immediately practicable reforms. Under conditions such as these, but under no others, the signal given by the labour organisations will be obeyed.
But even if the proletariat is really roused and passionately in earnest, that is not enough. It is not enough for it to follow its own inner impulse if it has not also received a mandate from without. ”

“ Some imagine, it is true, that the general strike, breaking out at many points simultaneously, would oblige the capitalist and proprietary government to spread its armed force over such a large area that it would be practically absorbed by the Revolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Consumption and the social life of the community will if necessary be enormously reduced, and human nature will accommodate itself to tragic privations, just as at the end of a siege it accommodates itself to a régime the bare idea of which, a few months before, would have made the bravest man tremble. ”

“ To work up by artificial means a revolutionary excitement which the ordinary action of suffering, misery, and injustice has not been strong enough to produce, is a very hazardous enterprise.
It has been said that revolutions are not decreed. It may be said with still greater truth that they cannot be manufactured; and that no machinery of conflict, no matter how vast or how ingenious, can replace the revolutionary preparation of events and men's minds. ”