ABSTRACT
The history of socialist thought has been punctuated by recurrent controversy over the role and function of violence in creating socialism. The identification of socialism with democracy stemmed from the fact that both currents were steeped in a rationalist tradition according to which all men being creatures of reason are amenable to persuasion. Violent activity in the present would only harm the prospects for socialism, lose votes, play into the hands of the reactionaries and would be likely to incur governmental retribution in the form of a re-enactment of the Anti-Socialist Laws — perhaps worse. Socialism in the guise, according to critics on the left, became a new methodism, a corporative anodyme for the violent passions produced by industrial society. It provided for many socialists a satisfying theoretical justification for the violent conflict inherent in French ideas of society and history as the arena of class war.
