I. The struggle of poorer groups against rich ones. – The opposition of democracy to the division into classes. – Methods of buying social peace. – The corporative mind.

II. Illusions relating to the disappearance of violence. – The mechanisms of conciliation and the encouragement which it gives to strikers. – Influence of fear on social legislation and its consequences.

Everyone explains that discussions about socialism are exceedingly obscure; this obscurity is due, to a large extent, to the fact that contemporary socialists use a terminology which no longer corresponds to their ideas. The best known of the people who call themselves reformists do not wish to appear to be abandoning certain phrases which have for a long time served to characterize socialist literature. When Bernstein, perceiving the enormous contradiction that existed between the language of social democracy and the true nature of its activity, urged his German comrades to have the courage to appear to be the way that they were in reality and to revise a doctrine that had become false, there was a universal outcry at his audacity; and the reformists were not in the least eager to defend the old formulas; I remember hearing well-known French socialists say that they found it easier to accept the tactics of Millerand than the theses of Bernstein.

This idolatry of words plays a significant role in the history of all ideologies; the preservation of a Marxist vocabulary by people who have become estranged from the thought of Marx constitutes a great misfortune for socialism.