with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no
sentiment, he rages like a mad dog, and combines with his theoretical
objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with
him. This is the genesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism.

But whether we think that the bad in democracy predominates over the
good, or the good over the bad, a question which I shall not attempt to
decide, the popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real
conviction. The upper class has never believed in it; the middle class
has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. But how about the lower
class, in whose interests the whole machine is supposed to have been set
going? The working man has no respect for either democracy or liberty.
His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his
own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage
would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in
constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under
threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his
object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those
who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists;
they are well able to start factories for themselves and work them for
their own exclusive profit. But they find it more profitable to hold the
nation to ransom by blockading the supply of the necessaries of life.
The new labourer despises productivity for the same reason that the old
robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make it. The
most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their contempt for and
rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the irreconcilable
contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are right. Democracy
postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are
absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems to be growing, is
the antipodes of socialism, but, like socialism, it can make no terms
with democracy. 'If syndicalism triumphs,' says its chief prophet Sorel,
'the parliamentary regime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be at an
end.' 'The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy;
the vast unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the
minority wishes to act so as to benefit it.'[5] 'The effect of political
majorities,' says Mr. Levine, 'is to hinder advance,' Accordingly,
political methods are rejected