L. The Fear‑Sympathy Syndrome Works in the "Worldly" Bourgeois

Well do we know how the utopianism of the worldly proletarian, when inebriated by communism, makes him look with hatred at the paradise of the bourgeois from which he is excluded.

But, what does the worldly bourgeois think about the perspective of a worker's paradise? Accustomed to his goods, he does not want to let them go. Nevertheless, exhausted by class struggle and fearing the perspectives of war, revolution plunder and massacre, there are times when the possibility of peacefully integrating himself in the proletarian paradise, and perhaps keeping some small advantages, smiles at him like a lesser evil. "And then," he thinks, "who knows if this paradise will not succeed, contrary to the bourgeois society, in eliminating error, evil, and suffering? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to renounce the advantages I now enjoy in order to enter a world where no one is subject to this triple yoke." No one... not even himself who, in the intervals between his business and his pleasures, feels so vulnerable to sickness and countless other risks.

Then, with all the impetus of his desire for a paradise on earth, the worldly bourgeois begins to find himself leaning toward socialism and glimpsing possibilities of a pact with communism. A pacifist sentiment toward this terrible adversary rises in him. The irenical dialogue smiles at him... Along with fear, sympathy begins to act in him.