THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM
515
The most difficult task is and will continue to be, to break away
from the traditional formulae whose value is only emotional. The
myths of the "historic mission of the working class" and the "hege–
mony of the proletariat" have had their day; the equitable and ra–
tional organization of society must become the common cause of the
majority in whose rank the workers form only an essential component.
No one knows what garments will clothe the social struggles of the
future, but experience shows that the seizure of power by civil war
is a burden to the victors themselves, and leads to a dictatorship,
opposed by its very nature to the fulfillment of socialist humanism.
We realize clearly that the principal care of the Spanish socialists–
and anarchists-in bringing about the downfall of Franco, is to shed
a minimum of blood. Modern techniques of war make victory through
the classic type of insurrection difficult to imagine-so long as it risks
encountering a determined adversary. No socialist movement, no
matter how insignificant, aspires any longer to the "dictatorship of
the proletariat," which turned out so badly in Russia. We see, on the
contrary, the inseparability of socialism and democracy. The Red
Guard, occupying the Russian factories in 1917, was able to get them
running with an untrained personnel. We cannot imagine the in–
surgents of our day making the synthetic chemical plants function.
As for the rest, what can be built on the ruins? The old reformism
is no less outmoded than insurrection. Socialist action is by definition,
neith~r
exceptionally timid nor exceptionally violent, but it seems
that it has to be both transformer and liberator, or else disintegrate.
The socialist movements- of Europe aro influential; they are in–
dispensable to the democratic reconstruction of the old continent, but
they are divided, poor, and wedged between the uneasy animosity
of the former ruling classes come to terms with Nazism, the hostility
of American capitalism, and Stalinist totalitarianism. This last enemy
is undeniably the most dangerous. The Stalinists can gain the respect
of the local reactionary forces. They could probably acquire tho sym–
pathy of the American masses. Against the incessant totalitarian
Communist intervention, provided with funds, cadres, arms, ministers
who are secret agents, and secret agents who are ministers, the social–
ist movements are dangerously unarmed. Despite the concentration
camps of the USSR, the Moscow
trials,
the Hitler-Stalin pact, the
tragedies of Poland, the Balkans and Manchuria, the attachment to
the glorious legend of the Russian Revolution continues so firmly
entrenched that
all
hypocrisies are accepted and
all
crimes pardoned.
I have shown above the psychological root of this.
