(2) The sentiment of revolt which is met with in the poorer classes will henceforth be coloured by a violent jealousy. Our democratic newspapers foster this passion with considerable skill, imagining that this is the best means of dulling the minds of their readers and of keeping up the circulation of the paper; they exploit the scandals which arise from time to time among the rich; they lead their readers to feel a savage pleasure when they see shame entering the household of one of the great ones of the earth. With a really astonishing impudence, they pretend that they are thus serving the cause of the superfine morality, which they hold as much at heart, they say, as the well- being and the liberty of the poorer classes! But it is probable that their own interests are the sole motives for their actions. ^ 1 I note here, in passing, that the Petit Parisien, the importance of which as an organ of the pohcy of social reform is so great, took up strongly the case of the Princess of Saxony and the charming teacher Giron. This newspaper, which is very fond of sermonising the people, i86 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE Jealousy is a sentiment which seems to belong, above all, to passive beings. Leaders have active sentiments; with them, jealousy is transformed into a thirst to obtain, at whatever cost, the most coveted situations, and they employ to this end any means which enables them to set aside people who stand in the way of their onward march. In poUtics, people are no more held back by scruples than they are in sport, and we hear every day of cases where competitors in all kinds of contests seek to improve their chances by some trickery or other.
(3) The masses who are led have a very vague and extremely simple idea of the means by which their lot can be improved; demagogues easily get them to believe that the best way is to utilise the power of the State to pester the rich. We pass thus from jealousy to vengeance, and it is well known that vengeance is a sentiment of extraordinary power, especially with the weak. The history of the Greek cities and of the Italian republics of the Middle Ages is full of instances of fiscal laws which were very oppressive on the rich, and which contributed not a little towards the ruin of governments. In the fifteenth century, Aeneas Sylvius (later Pope Pius II.) noted with astonishment the extraordinary prosperity of the commercial towns of Germany and the great hberty enjoyed therein by the middle class, who, in Italy, were persecuted.^ If our contemporary social policy were examined closely, it would be seen that it also was steeped in ideas of jealousy and vengeance; many regulations have been framed more with the idea of pestering employers than of improving the situation of the workers. When the clericals are in a minority, they never fail to cannot understand why the outraged husband obstinately refuses to take back his wife. On September 14, 1906, it said that " she had broken with the ordinary moral code "; it may be concluded from this that the moral code of the Petit Parisien is something quite out of tlie ordinary.
* Jansen, L'Allemagne et la RSforme, French trans., tome i. p. 361.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE i»r recommend severe regulations in order to be revenged on free-thinking free-mason employers.^ The leaders obtain all sorts of advantages from these methods; they alarm the rich, and exploit them for their own personal profit; they cry louder than anybody against the privileges of fortime, and know how to obtain for themselves all the enjoyments which the latter procures; by making use of the evil instincts and the stupidity of their followers, they realise this curious paradox, that they get the people to applaud the in- equality of conditions in the name of democratic equality. It would be impossible to understamd the success of demagogues from the time of Athens to contemporary New York, if due account was not taken of the extra- ordinary power of the idea of vengeance in extinguishing reasonable reflection.
I believe that the only means by which this pernicious influence of the demagogues may be wiped out are those employed by SociaUsm in propagating the notion of the proletarian general strike; it awakens in the depths of the soul a sentiment of the sublime proportionate to the conditions of a gigantic struggle; it forces the desire to satisfy jealousy by malice into the backgroimd; it brings to the fore the pride of free men, and thus protects the worker from the quackery of ambitious leaders, hungering for the fleshpots.
B. The great differences which exist between the two general strikes (JL.e, between the two kinds of SociaUsm) become still more obvious when social struggles are com- pared with war; in fact, war also may give rise to two * The application of the social laws gives rise — in France, at least — to very singular inequalities of treatment; judicial proceedings depend on political or financial conditions. The case of the rich tailor may be remembered who was decorated by Millerand and against whom proceedings had so often been taken for infringement of the laws for the protection of work-girls.
i88 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE Opposite systems of ideas, so that quite contradictory things can be said about it, all based on incontestable facts.
War may be considered from its noble side, i.e. as it has been considered by poets celebrating armies which have been particularly illustrious; proceeding thus we find in war: (i) The idea that the profession of arms cannot compare to any other profession; — that it puts the man who adopts this profession in a class which is superior to the ordinary conditions of life, — that history is based entirely on the adventures of warriors, so that the economic life only existed to maintain them.
(2) The sentiment of glory which Renan so justly looked upon as one of the most singular and the most powerful creations of hiunan genius, and which has been of such incomparable value in history.^ (3) The ardent desire to try one's strength in great battles, to submit to the test which gives the military caUing its claim to superiority, and to conquer glory at the peril of one's life.
There is no need for me to insist on these features of war at any great length; my readers will understand the part played in ancient Greece by this conception of war. The whole of classical history is dominated by the idea of war conceived heroically: in their origin, the institu- tions of the Greek republics had as their basis the organisa- tion of armies of citizens; Greek art reached its apex in the citadels; philosophers conceived of no other possible form of education than that which fostered in youth the heroic tradition, and they endeavoured to keep the study and practice of music within bounds, because they wished to prevent the development of sentiments foreign to this discipline; social Utopias were created with a view to maintaining a nucleus of homeric warriors in the cities, * Renan, Hisioire du peuple d'Isrviel, tome iv. pp. 199-200.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE i8g etc. In our own times, the wars of Liberty have been scarcely less fruitful in ideas than those of the ancient Greeks.
There is another aspect of waf which does not possess this character of nobility, and on which the pacificists always dwell. ^ The object of war is no longer war itself; its object is to allow politicians to satisfy their ambi- tions: the foreigner must be conquered in order that they themselves may obtain great and immediate material advantages; the victory must also give the party which led the country during the time of success so great a preponderance that it can distribute great favours to its followers; finally, it is hoped that the citizens will be so intoxicated by the spell of victory they will overlook the sacrifices which they are called upon to make, and will allow themselves to be carried away by enthusiastic conceptions of the future. Under the influence of this state of mind, the people permit the Government to develop its authority in an improper manner, without any protest, so that every conquest abroad may be con- sidered as having for its inevitable corollary a conquest at home made by the party in office.
The Syndicalist general strike presents a very great number of analogies with the first conception of war: the proletariat organises itself for battle, separating itself distinctly from the other parts of the nation, and regard- ing itself as the great motive power of history, all other social considerations being subordinated to that of combat; it is very clearly conscious of the glory which will be attached to its historical role and of the heroism of its militant attitude; it longs for the final contest in which it will give proof of the whole measure of its valour. Pursuing no conquest, it has no need to make plans for utilising its victories: it coimts on expelling the capitahsts ^ The distinction between the two aspects of war is the basis oi Proudhon's book on La Guerre et la paix.
IQO REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE from the productive domain, and on taking their place in the workshop created by capitaUsm.
This conception of the general strike manifests in the clearest manner its indifference to the material profits of conquest by affirming that it proposes to suppress the State. The State has always been, in fact, the organiser of the war of conquest, the dispenser of its fruits, and the raison d'etre of the dominating groups which profit by the enterprises — ^the cost of which is borne by the general body of society.
Politicians adopt the other point of view; they argue about social conflicts in exactly the same manner as diplomats argue about international affairs; all the actual fighting apparatus interests them very little; they see in the combatants nothing but instruments. The proletariat is their army, which they love in the same way that a colonial administrator loves the troops which enable him to bring large numbers of negroes under his authority; they apply themselves to the task of training the prole- tariat, because they are in a hurry to win quickly the great battles which wiU deliver the State into their hands; they keep up the ardoiu: of their men, as the ardom: of troops of mercenaries has always been kept up, by promises of pillage, by appeals to hatred, and also by the small favours which their occupancy of a few political places enables them to distribute already. But the proletariat for them is food for cannon, and nothing else, as Marx said in 1873.* The reinforcement of power of the State is at the basis of all their conceptions; in the organisations which they at present control, the politicians are already preparing the framework of a strong, centralised and disciplined authority, which will not be hampered by the criticism of an opposition, which will be able to enforce silence, and which will give currency to its Hes.
^ L* Alliance de la dimocratie socialiste, p. 15. Marx accused his opponents of modelling their policy on Napoleonic lines.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE igi C. In Socialist literature the question of a future dictatorship of the proletariat is constantly cropping up, but nobody likes to explain it; sometimes this formula is improved and the epithet impersonal is added to the substantive dictatorships though this addition does not throw much light on the question. Bernstein pointed out a few years ago that this dictatorship would probably be that " of club orators and of literary men/' ^ and he was of opinion that the Sociahsts of 1848, when speaking of this dictatorship, had had in view an imitation of 1793, " a central, dictatorial and revolutionary authority, up- held by the terrorist dictatorship of the revolutionary clubs "; he was alarmed by this outlook, and he asserted that all the working men with whom he had had an opportimity of conversing were very mistrustful of the future.* Hence he concluded that it would be better to base Socialist policy and propaganda on a conception of modem society more in accordance with the idea of evolution. His analysis seems to me to be inadequate.
In the dictatorship of the proletariat we may first of all notice a reminiscence of the Old Regime. Socialists have for a long time been dominated by the idea that capitalist society must be Hkened to the feudal system; I scarcely know any idea more false and more dangerous. They imagine that the new feudalism would disappear beneath the influence of forces analogous to those which * Bernstein evidently had in mind here a well-known article by Proudhon, from which, moreover, he quotes a fragment on page 47 of his book. This article closes with imprecations against the Intellectuals: " Then you will'know what a revolution is, that has been set going by lawyers, accomplished by artists, and conducted by novelists and poets. Nero was an artist, a lyric and dramatic artist, a passionate lover of the ideal, a worshipper of the antique, a collector of medals, a tourist, a poet, an orator, a swordsman, a sophist, a Don Juan, a Lovelace, a nobleman full of wit, fancy, and fellow-feeling, overflowing with love of life and love of pleasure. That is why he was Nero " (RepreserUant du peuple, April 29, 1848).
* Bernstein, SocicUisme thiorique et social-dimocraiie pratique, pp. 298 ig2 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE ruined the old feudal system. The latter succumbed beneath the attacks of a strong and centralised power, imbued with the conviction that it had received a mandate from God to employ exceptional measures against the evil. The kings of the new model ^ who estabhshed modem monarchical system were terrible despots, wholly destitute of scruples; but great historians have absolved them from all blame for the acts of violence they committed, because they lived in times when feudal anarchy, the barbarous manners of the old nobles and their lack of culture, joined to a want of respect for the ideas of the past,^ seemed crimes against which it was the duty of the royal power to act energetically. It is probably then with a view to treating the leaders of capitalism with a wholly royal energy that there is so much talk nowadays of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Later on, royalty relaxed its despotism and constitu- tional government took its place. It is said that the dictatorship of the proletariat will also weaken at length, and will disappear, and that finally an anarchical society will take its place; but how this will come about is not explained. The regal despotism did not fall by itself or by the goodness of sovereigns; one must be very simple to suppose that the people who would profit by the demagogic dictatorship would wiUingly abandon its advantages.
Bernstein saw quite plainly that the dictatorship of the proletariat corresponds to a division of society into masters and servants, but it is curious that he did not 1 Cf. Gervinus, Introduction d, I'histoire du XI X' siicle, French trans., * The history of the papacy very much embarrasses modern writers; some of them are fundamentally hostile to it on account of their hatred of Christianity; but many are led to condone the greatest faults of the papal policy in the Middle Ages on account of the natural sympathy which inclines them to admire all the efforts made by theorists to tyrannise the world.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE igj perceive that the idea of the political strike (which he now, to a certain extent, accepts) is connected in the closest manner with this dictatorship of politicians which he fears. The men who had managed to organise the proletariat in the form of an army, ever ready to obey their orders, would be generals who would set up a state of siege in vanquished society; we should therefore have, on the day following the revolution, a dictatorship exercised by those poHticians who in the society of to-day already form a compact group.
I have already recalled what Marx said about the people who reinstated the State by creating in con- temporary society an embryo of the future society of masters. The history of the French Revolution shows us how these things happen. The revolutionaries made arrangements whereby their administrative staff was ready to take possession of authority immediately the old administration decamped, so that there was no break of continuity in the domination of a governing class. There are no bounds to Jaures's admiration for these operations, which he describes in the course of his Histoire socialiste; he does not exactly understand their significance, but he guesses the analogy they bear to his own con- ceptions of social revolution. The fiabbiness of the men of that time was so great that sometimes the substitution of the old by the new officials was accomplished under conditions bordering on farce; we always find a super- numerary state — an Etat postiche'^ (artificial state), to use * One of the ludicrous comedies of the Revolution is that related by Jaur^s in La Convention, pp. 1386-1388. In the month of May 1793 an insurrectionary committee was set up at the Bishop's palace, which formed an £tat postiche (see above), and which on May 31 repaired to the town-hall and declared that the people of Paris withdrew all powers from every constituted authority; the general council of the Commune, having no means of defence, " was forced to give in," but not without assuming an air of high tragedy: pompous speeches, embracings all round, " to prove that there was neither wounded vanity on the one part, nor pride of dofnination on the other "; finally, this buffoonery was 194 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE the expression of that time — ^which is organised in advance by the side of the legal State, which considers itself a legitimate before it has become a legal power, and which profits by some slight incident to take up the reins of government as they sUp from the feeble hands of the constituted authorities.
The adoption of the red flag is one of the most singular and the most characteristic episodes of that time. This signal was used in times of disaffection to give warning that martial law was about to be set up; on August lo, 1792, it became the revolutionary symbol, in order to proclaim " the martial law of the people against rebels to the executive power.*' Jaur^ comments on this incident in these terms: " It is we, the people, who are now the law...We are not rebels. The rebels are in the Tuileries, and it is against the factions of the court and the party of the constitutional monarchy that we raise, in the name of the country and of Uberty, the flag of legal repressions." ^ Thus the insurgents began by pro- claiming that they held legitimate authority; they are fighting against a State which has only the appearance of legitimacy, and they take the red flag to S5miboUse the re-estabhshment by force of the real order. As conquerors, they will treat the conquered as conspirators, and will demand that their plots be pimished. The real conclusion to all these fine ideas was to be the massacre of the prisoners in September.
All this is perfectly simple, and the general political strike would develop in the same way with similar occurrences. In order that this strike should succeed, the greater part of the proletariat must be members of terminated by an order which reinstated the council which had just been dismissed. Jaur^s is delightful here: the revolutionary committee, he says, " freed (the legal authority) from all the fetters of legality." This happy thought is a reproduction of the well-known phrase of the Bonapartists: " Sortir de la 16galite pour rentrer dans le droit." » Jaur^s, LtgislaXive, p. 1288.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE igs syndicates which are under the thumb of political com- mittees; there must be a complete organisation made up of the men who will take over the Government, so that it will only be necessary to make a simple transmutation in the personnel of the State. The organisation of the itat postiche would have to be more complete than it was at the time of the Revolution, because the conquest of the State by force does not seem so easy to accomplish as formerly; but the principle would be the same. It is even possible that, since the transmission of authority operates nowadays in a more perfect fashion, thanks to the new resources at the disposal of the Parliamentary system, and since the proletariat would be thoroughly well organised under the official S5mdicates, we should see the social revolution culminate in a wonderful system of slavery.
IV IV The study of the political strike leads us to a better imderstanding of a distinction we must always have in mind when we reflect on contemporary social questions. Sometimes the terms force and violence are used in speak- ing of acts of authority, sometimes in speaking of acts of revolt. It is obvious that the two cases give rise to very different consequences. I think it would be better to adopt a terminology which would give rise to no ambiguity, and that the term violence should be employed only for acts of revolt; we should say, therefore, that the object of force is to impose a certain social order in which the minority governs, while violence tends to the destruction of that order. The middle class have used force since the beginning of modem times, while the proletariat now reacts against the middle class and against the State by violence.
For a long time I was convinced that it is very ig6 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE important that the theory of social forces should be thor- oughly investigated — in a large measure, the forces may be compared to those acting on matter; but I was not able to perceive the capital distinction in question here until I had come to consider the problem of the general strike. Moreover, I do not think that Marx had ever examined any other form of social constraint except force. In my Saggi di critica del marxismo I endeavoured, a few years ago, to sum up the argmnents of Marx with respect to the adaptation of man to the conditions of capitalism, and I presented these argimients in the following manner, on " (i) There is a social system which is to a certain extent mechanical, in which man seems subject to true natural laws: classical economists place at the beginning of things that automatism which is in reality the last product of the capitalistic regime. ' But the advance of capitalist production,' says Marx,^ ' develops a more and more numerous class of workers who, by education, tradi- tion, and habit, look upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of nature.' The interven- tion of an intelligent will in this mechanism would appear as an exception.
" {2) There is a regime of emulation and of keen com- petition which impels men to set aside traditional obstacles, to seek constantly for what is new, and to imagine con- ditions of existence which seem to them to be better. According to Marx, it is in this revolutionary task that the middle class excelled.
" (3) There is a regime of violence, which plays an important part in history, and which assumes several distinct forms: ** {a) On the lowest level, we find a scattered kind of violence, which resembles the struggle for life, which acts through economic conditions, and which carries out a 1 Capital, English translation edit, by Engels, p. 76.
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 197 slow but sure expropriation; violence of this character works especially \^ith the aid of fiscal arrangements.^ " (b) Next comes the concentrated and organised force of the State, which acts directly on labour, ' to regulate wages, i.e. force them within the limits suitable to surplus value making, to lengthen the working day, and to main- tain the labourer himself in the normal degree of depend- ence; this is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation. 2 '* (c) We have, finally, violence properly so called, which occupies so great a place in the history of primitive acciunulation, and which constitutes the principle subject of history."
A few supplementary observations may be useful here.
We must first of all observe that these different phases are placed in a logical sequence, starting from states which most resemble an organism, and in which no independent will appears, and ending in states in which individual minds bring forward their considered plans; but the historical order is quite the contrary of this order.
At the origin of capitalist accumulation we find some very distinct historical facts, which appear each in its proper time, with its own characteristics, and under conditions so clearly marked that they are described in the chronicles. We find, for instance, the expropriation of the peasants and the suppression of the old legisla- tion which had constituted *' serfdom and the indus- trial hierarchy." Marx adds: " The history of this ^ Marx points out that in Holland taxation was used to raise the price of necessities artificially; this was the application of a principle of government: this system had a vicious effect on the working class and ruined the peasant, the artisan, and the other members of the better-paid workers; but it secured the absolute submission of the workers to their masters, the manufacturers {Capital, Eng. trans, p. 781).
* Capital, Eng. trans, p. 761.
ig8 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE expropriation is not a matter of conjecture; it is in- scribed in the annals of humanity in indehble letters of blood and fire/' ^ Farther on Marx shows how the dawn of modem times was marked by the conquest of America, the en- slavement of negroes and the colonial wars: " The different methods of primitive accumulation which the capitaUst era brought about are divided in a more or less chrono- logical order first of all [between] Portugal, Spain, France and England, imtil the latter combined the lot, during the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, into a systematic whole, embracing simultaneously the colonial system, public credit, modem finance and the protec- tionist system. Some of these methods are backed by the employment of brute force; but all, without excep- tion, exploit the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, in order to precipitate violently the passage from the feudal economic order to the capitalist economic order, and to shorten the phases of the transition." It is on this occasion that he com- pared force to a midwife, and says that it multipUes the social movement. 2 Thus we see that economic forces are closely bound up with political power, and capitalism finally perfects itself to the point of being able to dispense with any direct appeal to the public force, except in very exceptional cases. " In the ordinary run of things, the worker can be left to the action of the natural laws of production, i.e. to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from 1 Capital, Eng. trans, p. 738.
* Capital, Eng. ttans. p. 776. The German text says that force is an oekonomische Potenz {Kapiial. 4th edition, p. 716); the French text says that force is an agent iconomique. Fourier calls geometric progressions puissancielles {Nouveau Monde industriel et societaire, p. 376). Marx evidently used the word Potenz in the sense of a multiplier; cf. in Capital, p. 176, col. i, the term travail puissanci^ for labour of a multiplied productivity. [The English translation has economic power. — Trans. Note.]
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE igg guaranteed, and perpetuated by the very mechanism of production." ^ When we reach the last historical stage, the action of independent wills disappears, and the whole of society resembles an organised body, working automatically; observers can then estabUsh an economic science which appears to them as exact as the sciences of physical nature. The error of many economists consisted in their ignorance of the fact that this system, which seemed natural or primitive to them,^ is the result of a series of transformations which might not have taken place, and always remains a very unstable structure, for it could be destroyed by force, as it had been created by the inter- vention of force; moreover, contemporary economic literature is full of complaints respecting the intervention of the State, which has thereby upset natural laws.