Nowadays economists are little disposed to beheve that these natural laws are in reality laws of Nature; they are well aware that the capitalist system was reached but slowly, but they consider that it was reached by a progress which should enchant the minds of all enlightened men. This progress, in fact, is demonstrated by three remarkable facts: it has become possible to set up a science of economics; laws can be stated in the simplest, surest, and most elegant formulas, since the law of contract dominates every country of advanced capitaUsm; ^ the caprices of the rulers of the State are no longer so apparent, and thus the path towards liberty is open. Any return * Natural, in the Marxian sense, is that which resembles a physical movement as opposed to the idea of creation by an intelligent will; for the deists of the eighteenth century, natural was that which had been created by God, and which was both primitive and excellent; this is still, it seems, the view of G. de Molinari.
» In a very advanced capitalist regime questions of agricultural rights, women's dowries, the division of landed property go into the back- ground; the first place is occupied by commercial associations, bills of exchange, sale of stocks and shares, etc.
O 200 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE to the past seems to them a crime against science, law, and human dignity.
SociaHsm looks upon this evolution as being a history of middle-class force, and it only sees differences of degree where the economists imagine that they are discovering difference of kind. Whether force manifests itself under the aspect of historical acts of coercion, or of fiscal oppres- sion, or of conquest, or labour legislation, or whether it is wholly bound up with the economic system, it is always a middle-class force labouring with more or less skill to bring about the capitaUst order of society.
Marx endeavoured to describe the details of this evolu- tion very carefully; he gave very little detail, however, about the organisation of the proletariat. This gap in his work has often been explained. He found in England an enormous mass of materials concerning the history of capitalism, which was fairly well arranged, and wliich had already been discussed by economists; he was there- fore able to investigate thoroughly the different peculiari- ties of middle-class evolution, but he was not very well furnished with matter on which he could argue about the organisation of the proletariat; he was obliged, therefore, to remain content with an explanation, in very abstract formulas, of his ideas on the subject of the path which the proletariat must take, in order to arrive at the final revolu- tionary struggle. The consequence of this inadequacy 6f Marx's work was that Marxism has deviated from the path assigned to it by its real nature.
The people who pride themselves on being orthodox Marxians have made no attempt to add anything essential to what their master has written, and they have always imagined that, in order to argue about the proletariat, they must make use of what they had learned from the history of middle-class development. They have never suspected, th efore, that a distinction should be drawn between the force that aims at authority, endeavouring THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 201 to bring about an automatic obedience, and the violence that would smash that authority. According to them, the proletariat must acquire force just as the middle class acquired it, use it as the latter used it, and end finally by establishing a Socialist State which will replace the middle- class State.
As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions which abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State which should abolish capitalism. The workers should therefore sacrifice every- thing to one end alone — that of putting into power men who promise them solemnly to ruin capitalism for the benefit of the people; • that is how a Parliamentary Socialist party is formed. Former militant Socialists provided with modest jobs, middle-class people, educated, frivolous, and eager to be in the public eye, and Stock Exchange speculators imagine that a golden age might spring up for them as the result of a cautious — a very cautious — revolution, which would not seriously disturb the traditional State. Quite naturally, these future masters of the world harbour the thought of reproducing the history of middle-class force, and they are organising themselves so that they may be able to draw the greatest possible profit from this revolution. Quite a number of such people might find a place in the new hierarchy, and what Paul Leroy Beaulieu calls the *' Fourth Estate " would become really a lower middle class. ^ The whole future of democracy might easily depend 1 In an article in the Radical (January 2, 1906), Ferdinand Buisson shows that those classes of workers who are more favoured at the present time will continue to rise above the others; the miners, the railway workers, employees in the State factories or municipal services who are well organised form a " working-class aristocracy," which succeeds all the more easily because it has continually to discuss all kinds of affairs with corporative bodies who " stand for the recognition of the rights of man, national supremacy, and the authority of universal suffrage." Beneath this nonsense is to be found merely the recognition of the relationship existing between politicians and obsequious followers.
202 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE on this lower middle class, which hopes to make use of the strength of the really proletarian organisations for its own great personal advantage.^ The pohticians believe that this class will sdways have peaceful tendencies, that it may be organised and discipUned, and that since the leaders of such sane syndicates understand equally with the politicians the action of the State, this class will form an excellent body of followers. They would like to make use of it to govern the proletariat; it is for this reason that Ferdinand Buisson and Jaures are in favour of syndicates of the minor grades of civil servants, who, entering the Bourses du Travail, would inspire the proletariat with the idea of imitating their own feeble and peaceful attitude.
The poHtical general strike concentrates the whole of this conception into one easily imderstood picture: it shows us how the State would lose nothing of its strength, how the transmission of power from one privileged class to another would take place, and how the mass of the producers would merely change masters. These new masters would very probably be less able than those of to-day; they would make more flowery speeches than the capitalists, but there is every evidence that they would be much harder and much more insolent than their predecessors.
The new school approaches the question from quite another point of view: it cannot accept the idea that the historical mission of the proletariat is to imitate the middle class; it cannot conceive that a revolution as vast as that which would abolish capitaUsm could be attempted for a trifling and doubtful result, for a change of masters, for the satisfaction of theorists, politicians, 1 " A portion of the nation throwing in its lot with the proletariat to demand its just rights," says Maxime Leroy, in a book devoted to the defence of the S5aidicates o£ civil servants {Les Transformations de la puissance publique, p. 216).
THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE 203 and speculators — all worshippers and exploiters of the State. It does not wish to restrict itself to the formulas of Marx; although he gave no other theory than that of middle-class force, that, in its eyes, is no reason why it should confine itself to a scrupulous imitation of middle- class force.
In the course of his revolutionary career, Marx was not always happily inspired, and too often he followed inspirations which belong to the past; he even allowed from time to time a quantity of old rubbish which he found in the Utopists to creep into his writings. The new school does not in the least feel itself bound to admire the illusions, the faults, and the errors of the man who did so much to work out revolutionary ideas; it endeavours to separate what disfigures the work of Marx from what will immortalise his name; its attitude is thus the reverse of that of official Socialists, who admire especially in Marx that which is not Marxian. We shall therefore attach no importance whatever to the numerous extracts which may be quoted against us to prove that Marx often under- stood history as the politicians do.
We know now the reason for his attitude: he did not know the distinction, which appears to us nowadays so obvious, between middle-class force and proletarian violence, because he did not move in circles which had acquired a satisfactory notion of the general strike.^ We now possess sufficient material to enable us to imderstand the Syndicalist strike as thoroughly as we do the political strike; we know what differentiates the proletarian movement from the older middle-class movement; we find in the attitude of the revolutionaries towards the * The inadequacy of, and the errors contained in Marx's work in respect to everything concerning the revolutionary organisation of the proletariat may be cited as memorable examples of that law which prevents us from thinking anything but that which has actual bases in life. Let us not confuse thought and imagination.
204 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE State a means of elucidating ideas which were still very confused in Marx's mind.
The method which has served us to mark the difference which exists between middle-class force and proletarian violence may also serve to solve many questions which crop up in the course of researches about the organisation of the proletariat. In comparing attempts to organise the Syndicalist strike, and attempts to organise the political strike, we may often judge what is good and what is bad, i.e. what is specifically socialistic and what has middle-class tendencies.
Popular education, for example, seems to be wholly carried on in a middle-class spirit; history shows us that the whole effort of capitalism has been to bring about the submission of the masses to the conditions of the capitalist economic system, so that society might become an organ- ism; the whole revolutionary effort tends to create/r^^ w^«, but democratic rulers adopt as their mission the accom- plishment of the moral unity of France. This moral imity is the automatic discipline of the producers, who would doubtless be happy to work for the glory of their intel- lectual leaders.
It may be said, too, that the greatest danger which threatens Syndicalism would be an attempt to imitate democracy; it would be better for it to remain content for a time with weak and chaotic organisations rather than that it should fall beneath the sway of syndicates which would copy the political forms of the middle class.
The revolutionary Syndicalists have never yet made that mistake, because those who seek to lead them into an imitation of middle-class methods happen to be adver- saries of the Syndicalist general strike, and have thus stood confessed as enemies.
CHAPTER VI THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE I. Observations of P. Bureau and of P. de Rousiers — The era of martyrs — Possibility of maintaining the cleavage with very little violence, thanks to a catastrophic myth.
II. Old habits of brutality in schools and workshops — The dangerous classes — Indulgence for crimes of cunning — Informers.
III. Law of 1884 passed to intimidate Conservatives — Part played by Millerand in the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry — Motives behind present ideas on arbitration.
IV. Search for the sublime in morality — Proudhon — No moral development inTrade Unionism — The "sublime " in Germany and the catastrophic conception.
I There are so many legal precautions against violence, and our upbringing is directed towards so weakening our tendencies towards violence, that we are instinctively inclined to think that any act of violence is a manifestation of a return to barbarism. Peace has always been con- sidered the greatest of blessings and the essential condition of all material progress, and it is for this reason that industrial societies have so often been contrasted favour- ably with military ones. This last point of view explains why, almost uninterruptedly since the eighteenth century, economists have been in favour of strong central authori- ties, and have troubled little about political Hberties. Condorcet levels this reproach at the followers of Quesnay, 2o6 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE and Napoleon III. had probably no greater admirer than Michel Chevalier.^ It may be questioned whether there is not a little stupidity in the admiration of our contemporaries for gentle methods. I see, in fact, that several authors, remarkable for their perspicacity and their interest in the ethical side of every question, do not seem to have the same fear of violence as our official professors.
P. Bureau was extremely surprised to find in Norway a rural population which had remained profoundly Christian. The peasants, nevertheless, carried a dagger at their belt; when a quarrel ended in a stabbing affray, the police enquiry generally came to nothing for lack of witnesses ready to come forward and give evidence.
The author concludes thus: "In men, a soft and effeminate character is more to be feared than their feeling of independence, however exaggerated and brutal, and a stab given by a man who is virtuous in his morals, but violent, is a social evil less serious and more easily curable than the excessive profligacy of young men reputed to be more civilised." ^ I borrow a second example from P. de Rousiers, who, like P. Bureau, is a fervent CathoHc and interested especially in the moral side of all questions. He narrates how, towards i860, the country of Denver, the great mining centre of the Rocky Mountains, was cleared of the bandits who infested it; the American magistracy being impotent, courageous citizens undertook the work. " Lynch law was frequently put into operation; a man accused of murder or of theft might be arrested, con- demned and hanged in less than a quarter of an hour, if 1 " One day Michel Chevalier came beaming into the editorial room of the louvnal des dibats. His first words were: ♦ I have achieved liberty! ' Everybody was all agog; he was asked to explain. He meant the liberty of the slaughter-houses " (Renan, Feuilles ditachies, * P. Bureau, Le Paysan des fjords de Norwige, pp. 114 and 115.
THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 207 an energetic Vigilance Committee could get hold of him. The American who happens to be honest has one excellent habit — he does not allow himself to be crushed on the pretext that he is virtuous. A law-abiding man is not necessarily a craven, as is often the case with us; on the contrary, he is convinced that his interests ought to be considered before those of an habitual criminal or of a gambler. Moreover, he possesses the necessary energy to resist, and the kind of life which he leads makes him capable of resisting effectively, even of taking the initiative and the responsibility of a serious step when circumstances demand it...Such a man, placed in a new country, full of natural resources, wishing to take advantage of the riches it contains and to acquire a superior situation in life by his labour, will not hesitate to suppress, in the name of the higher interests he represents, the bandits who compromise the future of this country. That is why, twenty-five years ago at Denver, so many corpses were dangling above the little wooden bridge thrown across Cherry Creek." ^ This is a considered opinion of P. de Rousiers, for he returns elsewhere to this question. " I know," he says, " that lynch law is generally considered in France as a symptom of barbarism...; but if honest virtuous people in Europe think thus, virtuous people in America think quite otherwise." ^ He highly approved of the Vigilance Committee of New Orleans which, in 1890, " to the great satisfaction of all virtuous people," hanged maffiosi acquitted by the jury.^ In Corsica, at the time when the vendetta was the regular means of supplying the deficiencies or correcting the action of a too halting justice, the people do not appear to have 1 De Rousiers, La Vie americaine: ranches, fermes et usines, pp.
* De Rousiers, La Vie amirioaine, VedMcation et la sociiU, p. 218. » De Rousiers, loc. cit. p. 221.
2o8 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE been less moral than to-day. Before the French conquest, Kabylie had no other means of punishment but private vengeance, yet the Kabyles were not a bad people.
It may be conceded to those in favour of mild methods that violence may hamper economic progress, and even, when it goes beyond a certain Umit, that it is a danger to morality. This concession cannot be used as an argument against the doctrine set forth here, because I consider violence only from the point of view of its influence on social theories. It is, in fact, certain that a great development of brutality accompanied by much blood-letting is quite imnecessary in order to induce the workers to look upon economic conflicts as the reduced facsimiles of the great battle which will decide the future. If a capitalist class is energetic, it is constantly affirming its determination to defend itself; its frank and con- sistently reactionary attitude contributes at least as greatly as proletarian violence towards keeping distinct that cleavage between the classes which is the basis of all Sociahsm.
We may make use here of the great historical example provided by the persecutions which Christians were obUged to suffer during the first centuries. Modem authors have been so struck by the language of the Fathers of the Church, and by the details given in the Acts of the Martyrs, that they have generally imagined the Christians as out- laws whose blood was continuedly being spilt. The cleavage between the pagan world and the Christian world was extraordinarily well marked; without this cleavage the latter would never have acquired all its characteristic features; but this cleavage was maintained by a combination of circumstances very different from that formerly imagined.
Nobody believes any longer that the Christians took refuge in subterranean quarries in order to escape the THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 209 searches of the police; the catacombs were dug out at great expense by communities with large resources at their disposal, under land belonging generally to powerful families which protected the new cult. Nobody has any doubt now that before the end of the first century Christianity had its followers among the Roman aristo- cracy; "in the very ancient catacomb of Priscilla...has been found the family vault in which was buried from the first to the fourth century the Christian line of the Acilii/' ^ It seems also that the old belief that the number of the martyrdoms was very great must be abandoned.
Renan still asserted that the literature of martyrdom should be taken seriously. *' The details of the Acts of the Martyrs," he said, ** may be false for the most part; the dreadful picture which they unroll before us was nevertheless a reality. The true nature of this terrible struggle has often been misconceived, but its seriousness has not been exaggerated." ^ The researches of Hamack lead to quite another conclusion: the language of the Christian authors was entirely disproportionate to the actual importance of the persecutions; there were very few martyrs before the middle of the third century. Tertullian is the writer who has most strongly indicated the horror which the new rehgion felt for its persecutors, and yet here is what Harnack says: "If, with the help of the works of Tertullian, we consider Carthage and Northern Africa we shall find that before the year 180 there was in those regions no case of martyrdom, and that from that year to the death of Tertullian (after 220), and adding Numidia and the Mauritanias, scarcely more than two dozen could be counted." ^ It must be remembered that at that time there was in Africa a rather large number of Montanists. who extolled the glory of martyrdom, ^ p. Allard, Dix lepons sur le martyre, p. 171. * Renan, i.glise chritienne, p. 137.
210 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE and denied that any one had the right to fly from persecution.
P. Allard combats Hamack's proposition with argu- ments which seem to me somewhat weak.^ He is unable to understand the enormous difference which probably exists between the reality of the persecutions and the conceptions which the persecuted formed of them. " The Christians," says the German professor, *' were able to complain of being persecuted flocks, and yet such persecu- tion was exceptional; they were able to look upon them- selves as models of heroism, and yet they were rarely put to the proof; and I call attention to the end of this sentence: " They were able to place themselves above the grandeurs of the world, and yet at the same time to make themselves more and more at home in it." * There is something paradoxical at first sight in the situation of the Church, which had its followers in the upper classes, who were obliged to make many concessions to custom, and who yet could hold beliefs based on the idea of an absolute cleavage. The inscriptions on the catacomb of Priscilla prove " the continuance of the faith through a series of generations of the Acilii, among whom were to be found not only consuls and magistrates of the highest order, but also priests, priestesses, even children, members of illustrious idolatrous colleges, reserved by privilege for patricians and their sons." ^ If the Christian system of ideas had been rigorously based on actual facts, such a paradox would have been impossible.
The statistics of persecutions therefore play no great part in this question; what was of much greater import- ance than the frequency of the torments were the remark- able occurrences which took place during the scenes of * Revue des questions historiques, July 1905.
* P. Allard, op. cit. p. 142. Cf >vhat I have said in Le Systiihr hisiorique de Renan, pp. 312-315.
THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 211 martyrdom. The Christian ideology was based on these rather rare but very heroic events; there was no necessity for the martyrdoms to be numerous in order to prove, by the test of experience, the absolute truth of the new religion and the absolute error of the old, to establish thus that there were two incompatible ways, and to make it clear that the reign of evil would come to an end. " In spite of the small number of martyrs,*' says Hamack, " we may estimate at its true value the courage needed to become a Christian and to live as one. Above all else we ought to praise the conviction of the martyr whom a word or a gesture could save, and who preferred death to such freedom." ^ Contemporaries who saw in martyrdom a judicial proof ^ testifying to the honour of Christ,^ drew from these facts quite other conclusions than those which a modem historian, whose mind runs in modem grooves, might draw from them; no ideology was ever more remote from the facts than that of the early Christians.
The Roman administration dealt very severely with any one who showed a tendency to disturb the public peace, especially with any accused person who defied its majesty. In striking down from time to time a few Christians who had been denounced to it (for reasons which have generally remained hidden from us) it did not think that it was accomplishing an act which would ever interest posterity; it seems that the general pubhc itself hardly ever took any great notice of these punishments; and this explains why the persecutions left scarcely any trace on pagan literature. The pagans had no reason to attach to martyrdom the extraordinary importance which the faithful and those who already sympathised wdth them attached to it.
This ideology would certainly not have been formed * G. Sorel, Le Systime historique de Renan, pp. 33'5-336.
212 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE in so paradoxical a manner had it not been for the firm beUef that people had in the catastrophes described by the numerous apocalypses which were composed at the end of the first century and at the beginning of the second; it was the conviction of all that the world was to be delivered up completely to the reign of evil, and that Christ would then come and give the final victory to His elect. Any case of persecution borrowed from the mythology of the Antichrist something of its dread dramatic character; instead of being valued on its actual importance as a misfortune which had befallen a few individuals, a lesson for the community, or a temporary check on propaganda, it became an incident of the war carried on by Satan, prince of this world, who was soon to reveal his Anti- christ. Thus the cleavage sprang at the same time from the persecutions and from the feverish expectation of a decisive battle. When Christianity had developed suffi- ciently, the apocalyptic hterature ceased to be cultivated to any extent; although the root idea contained therein still continued to exercise its influence, the Acts of the Martyrs were drawn up in such a way that they might excite the same feelings that the apocalypses excited; it may be said that they replaced these: ^ we sometimes find in the literature of the persecutions, set down as clearly as in the apocalypses, the horror which the faithful felt for the ministers of Satan who persecuted them.^ It is possible, therefore, to conceive Socialism as being perfectly revolutionary, although there may only be a few short conflicts, provided that these have strength enough to evoke the idea of the general strike: all the ^ It is probable that the first ChrisLian generation had no clear idea of the possibility of replacing the apocalypses imitated from Jewish literature by the Acts of the Martyrs; this would explain why we possess no accounts prior to the year 155 (letter of Smx-rniotes telling of the death of Saint Polycarpe), and why all memory of a certain number of very ancient Roman martyrs has been lost.
THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 213 events of the conflict will then appear under a magnified form, and the idea of catastrophe being maintained, the cleavage will be perfect. Thus one objection often urged against revolutionary Socialism may be set aside — there is no danger of civilisation succumbing under the con- sequences of a development of brutality, since the idea of the general strike may foster the notion of the class war by means of incidents which would appear to middle- class historians as of small importance.
When the governing classes, no longer daring to govern, are ashamed of their privileged situation, are eager to make advances to their enemies, and proclaim their horror of all cleavage in society, it becomes much more difficult to maintain in the minds of the proletariat this idea of cleavage which without Socialism cannot fulfil its historical role. So much the better, declare the worthy progressives; we may then hope that the future of the world will not be left in the hands of brutes who do not even respect the State, who laugh at the lofty ideas of the middle class, and who have no more admiration for the professional expounders of lofty thought than for priests. Let us therefore do more and more every day for the disinherited, say these gentlemen; let us show ourselves more Christian, more philanthropic, or more democratic (according to the temperament of each); let us unite for the accomplish- ment of social duty. We shall thus get the better of these dreadful Socialists, who think it possible to destroy the prestige of the Intellectuals now that the Intellectuals have destroyed that of the Church. As a matter of fact, these cunning moral combinations have failed; it is not difficult to see why.
The specious reasoning of these gentlemen — the pontiffs of " social duty ** — supposes that violence cannot increase, and may even diminish in proportion a.s the Intellectuals unbend to the masses and make platitudes 214 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE