The belief here appears that a steady, continuous, and marked improvement in the position of the working class would necessarily lead to its overtaking automatically the rapidly increasing power of capitalism. If this were so, it would indeed be true, as Louis contends, that no revolutionary movement could begin, except when all beneficial labor reforms and other working-class progress had ended. I shall quote (Part III, Chapter V) a passage where Louis indicates that syndicalism, like Socialism itself, is directed in the most fundamental way against all existing governments. He takes the further step of saying that existing governments can do nothing whatever for the benefit of labor, and that their _sole_ function is that of repression:-- "The State, which has taken for its mission--and no other could be conceived--the defense of existing society, could not allow its power of command to be attacked. The social hierarchy which itself rests upon the economic subordination of one class to another, will be maintained only so long as the governmental power shatters every assault victoriously, represses every initiative, punishes without mercy all innovators and all factious persons.... "In the new order [syndicalism] there is no room for any capitalistic attribute, even reduced to its most simple expression. There is no longer room for a political system for safeguarding privileges and conquering rebels. If our definition of the State is accepted, that it is an organ of defense, always more and more exacting because it is in a society always more and more menaced, it will be understood that such a State is condemned to disappear with that society.... "The State crushes the individual, and syndicalism appeals to all the latent energies of that individual, the State suspects and throttles organizations, and syndicalism multiplies them against it.... All institutions created by the State for the defense of the capitalist system are assailed, undermined by syndicalism."[176]