The action
aimed at is compared to the seizure of a power
station, by which a whole vast system can be paralyzed.
Such a doctrine is an appeal to force, and
is naturally met by an appeal to force on the other
side. It is useless for the Syndicalists to protest that
they only desire power in order to promote liberty:
the world which they are seeking to establish does not,
as yet, appeal to the effective will of the community,
and cannot be stably inaugurated until it does do so.
Persuasion is a slow process, and may sometimes
be accelerated by violent methods; to this extent such
methods may be justified. But the ultimate goal of
any reformer who aims at liberty can only be reached
through persuasion. The attempt to thrust liberty
by force upon those who do not desire what we consider
liberty must always prove a failure; and Syndicalists,
like other reformers, must ultimately rely
upon persuasion for success.
But it would be a mistake to confuse aims with
methods: however little we may agree with the proposal
to force the millennium on a reluctant community
by starvation, we may yet agree that much of
what the Syndicalists desire to achieve is desirable.
Let us dismiss from our minds such criticisms of
parliamentary government as are bound up with the
present system of private property, and consider
only those which would remain true in a collectivist
community.
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