Men who address revolutionary words to the people are bound to submit themselves to high standards of sincerity, because the workers understand these words in their exact and literal sense and never indulge in any symbolic interpretation. When in 1905 I ventured to write in some detail on proletarian violence I was fully aware of the grave responsibility I assumed in trying to show the historic bearing of acts that our parliamentary socialists try to cover up with so much skill. Today I do not hesitate to declare that socialism could not continue to exist without an apology for violence.

It is through strikes that the proletariat asserts its existence. I cannot be persuaded to see in strikes something analogous to the temporary rupture of commercial relations which is brought about when a grocer and his supplier of prunes cannot agree about the price. The strike is a phenomenon of war; it is therefore a serious misrepresentation to say that violence is an accidental feature destined to disappear from strikes.

The social revolution is an extension of this war in which each great strike is an episode; this is why the syndicalists speak of this revolution in the language of strikes; for them socialism is reduced to the conception, the expectation of and the preparation for the general strike, which, like the Napoleonic battle, is to annihilate completely a condemned regime.