he war. Everything was to wait for the general
strike; after adequate preparation, one day the whole proletariat
would unanimously refuse to work, the property owners would
acknowledge their defeat, and agree to abandon all their privileges
rather than starve. This is a dramatic conception; but love of drama
is a great enemy of true vision. Men cannot be trained, except under
very rare circumstances, to do something suddenly which is very
different from what they have been doing before. If the general
strike were to succeed, the victors, despite their anarchism, would be
compelled at once to form an administration, to create a new police
force to prevent looting and wanton destruction, to establish a
provisional government issuing dictatorial orders to the various
sections of revolutionaries. Now the syndicalists are opposed in
principle to all political action; they would feel that they were
departing from their theory in taking the necessary practical steps,
and they would be without the required training because of their
previous abstention from politics. For these reasons it is likely
that, even after a syndicalist revolution, actual power would fall
into the hands of men who were not really syndicalists.

Another objection to a program which is to be realized suddenly at
some remote date by a revolution or a general strike is that
enthusiasm flags when there is nothing to do meanwhile, and no partial
success to lessen the weariness of waiting. The only sort of movement
which can succeed by such methods is one where the sentiment and the
program are both very simple, as is the case in rebellions of
oppressed nations. But the line of demarcation between capitalist and
wage-earner is not sharp, like the line between Turk and Armenian, or
between an Englishman and a native of India. Those who have advocated
the social revolution have been mistaken in their political methods,
chiefly because they have not realized how many people there are in
the community whose sympathies and interests lie half on the side of
capital, half on the side of labor. These people make a clear-cut
revolutionary policy very difficult.

For these reasons, those who aim at an economic reconstruction which
is not likely to be completed to-morrow must, if they are to have any
hope of success, be able to approach their goal by degrees, through
measures which are of some use in themselves, even if they should not
ultimately lead to the d