I. Use made of the syndicats by politicians. – Pressure on parliaments. – The general strikes in Belgium and Russia.

II. Differences in the two currents of ideas corresponding to the two conceptions of the general strike: class struggle; the State; the aristocracy of thought.

III. Jealousy fostered by politicians. – War as a source of heroism and of pillage. – Dictatorship of the proletariat and its historical antecedents.

IV. Force and violence. – Marx's ideas about force. – Necessity of a new theory in the case of proletarian violence.

Politicians are people whose wits are singularly sharpened by their voracious appetites and in whom the hunt for fat jobs develops the cunning of apaches. They hold purely proletarian organizations in horror and discredit them as much as they can; frequently they even deny their efficacy, in the hope of alienating the workers from groups which, they say, have no future. But when they perceive that their hatred is powerless, that their abuse does not hinder the working of these detested organizations and that they have become strong, then they seek to turn to their own profit the forces which the proletariat has created.

The cooperative societies were for a long time denounced as useless to the workers; since they have prospered, more than one politician has cast languishing eyes on their cash box and would like to see the party supported from income from the bakery and the grocery, as the Israelite administrative councils in many countries live off the dues from the Jewish butchers.