t
of labor, and that their _sole_ function is that of repression:--

"The State, which has taken for its mission--and no other could be
conceived--the defense of existing society, could not allow its
power of command to be attacked. The social hierarchy which itself
rests upon the economic subordination of one class to another, will
be maintained only so long as the governmental power shatters every
assault victoriously, represses every initiative, punishes without
mercy all innovators and all factious persons....

"In the new order [syndicalism] there is no room for any
capitalistic attribute, even reduced to its most simple expression.
There is no longer room for a political system for safeguarding
privileges and conquering rebels. If our definition of the State is
accepted, that it is an organ of defense, always more and more
exacting because it is in a society always more and more menaced,
it will be understood that such a State is condemned to disappear
with that society....

"The State crushes the individual, and syndicalism appeals to all
the latent energies of that individual, the State suspects and
throttles organizations, and syndicalism multiplies them against
it.... All institutions created by the State for the defense of the
capitalist system are assailed, undermined by syndicalism."[176]

Here is a view of the State as far opposed as possible to that of
Kautsky, who says truly that it is "a monster economic establishment,
and its influence on the whole economic life of a nation to-day is
already beyond the power of measurement."[177] For Kautsky, the State is
primarily economic and constructive; for Louis it is purely political
and repressive. Yet Kautsky, like Louis, seems to feel that if the State
were capable of carrying out reforms of any importance to the wage
earners, or if it were admitted that it could do so, it would be
impossible to persuade the workers that a revolution is necessary and
feasible. And so both deny that "State Socialism," which they recognize
as an _intervening stage_ between the capitalism of to-day and
Socialism, is destined to give better material conditions, if less
liberty, than the present society. Both the economic and political
revolutionists are, on such grounds, often tempted to agree with the
reformists of the party and of the labor unions, in leveling their guns