I. The confusion of parliamentary socialism and the clarity of the general strike. – Myths in history. – Experimental proof of the value of the general strike.

II. Research carried out to perfect Marxism. – Means of throwing light upon it, starting from the general strike: class struggle; – preparation for the revolution and absence of utopias; – irrevocable character of the revolution.

III. Scientific prejudices against the general strike; doubts about science. – The clear and obscure parts in thought. – Economic incompetence of parliaments.

Every time that we attempt to obtain an exact conception of the ideas behind proletarian violence we are forced to go back to the notion of the general strike; but this same notion may provide many other services and throw an unexpected light on all the other obscure parts of socialism. In the last pages of the first chapter I compared the general strike to the Napoleonic battle which definitively crushes an adversary; this comparison will help us to understand the ideological role of the general strike.

When today's military writers discuss the new methods of war necessitated by the employment of troops infinitely more numerous than those of Napoleon and equipped with weapons much more deadly than those of the time, they nevertheless imagine that wars will be decided in Napoleonic battles. The new tactics proposed must fit into the drama Napoleon had conceived; no doubt the detailed development of the combat will be quite different from what it used to be; but the end must always be the catastrophic defeat of the enemy.