[157] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_ (Paris, 1910), p. 249.
[158] G. Sorel, _L'Avenir Socialiste des Syndicats_, pp. 3-4.
The ripening of socialism within capitalism does not mean merely technical development. This is indispensable of course: socialism can be only an economic system based on highly developed and continually progressing productive forces; but this is one aspect of the case only. The other, a no less if not more important aspect, is the development of new moral forces within the old system; that is, the political, juridical and moral development of the working-class,[159] of that class which alone can establish a socialist society.
This was also the idea of Marx: "Marx also saw that the workingmen must acquire political and juridical capacity before they can triumph."[160] The revolution which the working-class is pursuing is not a simple change in the personnel or in the form of the government; it is a complete overthrow of the "traditional State" which is to be replaced by the workingmen's organizations. Such a complete transformation presupposes "high moral culture" in the workingmen and a capacity for directing the economic functions of society. The social revolution will thus come only when the workingmen are "ready" for it, that is, when they feel that they can assume the direction of society. The "moral" education of the working-class, therefore, is the essential thing; Socialism will not have to "organize labor", because capitalism will have accomplished this work before. But in order that the working-class should be able to behave like "free men" in the "workshop created by capitalism",[161] they must have developed the necessary capacities. Socialism, therefore, reduces itself "to the revolutionary apprenticeship"[162] of the workingmen; "to teaching the workingmen to will, to instructing them by action, and to revealing to them their proper capacities; such is the whole secret of the socialist education of the people."[163]
[161] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, pp. 289-5.
[163] G. Sorel, _Preface_ to Pelloutier's _Histoire des Bourses du Travail_.
The workingmen can find the moral training necessary for the triumph of socialism only in the syndicats and in the experience of syndical life. The syndicats develop the administrative and organizing capacities of the workingmen. In the syndicats the workingmen learn to do their business themselves and to reject the dictatorship of "intellectuals" who have conquered the field of politics which they have made to serve their ambitions.