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VISIONS OF VICTORY
353
history of the last fifty years, have the socialists, after
tremendous agitation, gigantic mass meetings, and widespread
social unrest, marched their followers to the polls
with results positively pitiful. A dozen votes out of
thousands have in more cases than one marked their
relative power. There is no other example in the world
of such faith, courage, and persistence in politics as that
of the socialists, who, despite defeat after defeat, humiliation
after humiliation, have never lost hope, but on every
occasion, in every part of the modern world, have gone
up again and again to be knocked down by that jury.
And let it be said to their credit that never once anywhere
have the socialists despaired of democracy. "Socialism
and democracy
. . .
belong to each other,
round out each other, and can never stand in contradiction
to each other. Socialism without democracy is
pseudo-socialism, just as democracy without socialism is
pseudo-democracy. The democratic state is the only possible
form of a socialized society." (9) The inseparableness
of democracy and socialism has served the organized
movement as an unerring guide at every moment
of its struggle for existence and of its fight against the
ruling powers. It has served to keep
its soul free from
that cynical distrust of the people which is evident in
the writings of the anarchists and of the syndicalists
— in
Bakounin, Nechayeff, Sorel, Berth, and Pouget. It has
also served to keep
it from those emotional reactions
which have led nearly every great leader of the directactionists
in the last century to become in the end an
apostate. Feargus O'Connor, Joseph Rayner Stephens,
the fierce leaders of Chartism ; Bakounin, Blanc, Richard,
Jaclard, Andrieux, Bastelica, the flaming revolutionists of
the Alliance; Briand, Sorel, Berth, the leading propagandists
and philosophers of modern syndicalism; every