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VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
one of them turned in despair from the movement. Cobden,
Bonaparte, Clemenceau, the Empire, the "new monarchy,"
or a comfortable berth, claimed in the end every
one of these impatient middle-class intellectuals, who
never had any real understanding of the actual labor
movement. And, if the union of democracy and socialism
has saved the movement from reactions such as
these, it has also saved it from the desperation that gives
birth to individual methods, such as the Propaganda of
the Deed and sabotage. That is what the inseparableness
of democracy and socialism has done for the movement
in the past; and it has in it an even greater service yet
to perform. It has the power of salvation for society
itself in the not remote future, when it will be face to
face, throughout the world, with an irresistible current
toward State socialism. Industrial democracy and political
democracy are indissolubly united ;
their union cannot
be sundered except at the cost of destruction to them
both.
In adopting, then, the methods of education, of organization,
and of political action the socialists rest their case
upon the decision of democracy. They accept the weapons
that civilization has put into their hands, and they
are testing the word of kings and of parliaments that
democracy can, if it wishes, alter the bases of society.
And in no small measure this is the secret of their immense
strength and of their enormous growth. There
is
nothing strange in the fact that the socialists stand
almost alone to-day faithful to democracy. It simply
means that they believe in it even for themselves, that
is to say, for the working class. They believe in it for
industry as well as for politics, and, if they are at war
with the political despot, they are also at war with the
industrial despot. Everyone
is a socialist and a demo-