The general strike is the "social myth" of the working-class longing for emancipation. It is the expression of the convictions of the working-class "in the language of movement," the supreme concentration of the desires, the hopes, and the ideals of the working-class. Its importance for the future of Socialism, therefore, is paramount. The idea of the general strike keeps alive and fortifies in the workingmen their class-consciousness and revolutionary feelings. Every strike on account of it assumes the character of a skirmish before the great decisive battle which is to come. Owing to the general strike idea, "socialism remains ever young, the attempts made to realize social peace seem childish, the desertion of comrades who run over into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, far from discouraging the masses, excites them still more to revolt; in a word, the rupture (between bourgeoisie and working-class) is never in danger of disappearing."[164] [164] G. Sorel, _Réflexions sur la Violence_, p. 179. This rupture is an indispensable condition of Socialism. Socialism cannot be the continuation of democracy; it must be, if it can be at all, a totally "new culture" built upon ideas and institutions totally different from the ideas and from the institutions of democracy. Socialism must have its own economic, judicial, political and moral institutions evolved by the working-class independently from those of the bourgeoisie, and not in imitation of the latter. Sorel is bitter in his criticism of democracy; it is, in his view, the régime _par excellence_ in which men are governed "by the magical power of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by formulas rather than by reasons; by dogmas the origin of which nobody cares to find out, rather than by doctrines based on observation."[165] It is the kingdom of the professionals of politics, over whom the people can have no control. Sorel thinks that even the spread of knowledge does not render the masses more capable of choosing and of supervising their so-called representatives and that the further society advances in the path of democracy, the less effective does control by the people become.[166] The whole system of democracy, in the opinion of M. Sorel, is based on the "fiction of the general will" and is maintained by a mechanism (campaigning, elections, etc.) which can result only in demoralization. It delivers the country into the hands of "charlatans," of office-seekers and of idle talkers who may assume the air of great men, but who are never fit for their task. [165] G. Sorel, _Illusions du Progrès_ (Paris, 1911), p. 10. [166] G. Sorel, _Illusions du Progrès_, p. 59.