A widespread dishonesty therefore prevails in the CathoUc world, which leads the devout to believe that economic conditions depend chiefly on the caprices of the people who hold the purse. Everybody who has profited by an imexpected gain — and all profit from capital is an unexpected gain to them * — ought to share the profit with those people who have a right to his affection or to his esteem: first of all the priests,* and then their parishioners. If he does not respect this obhgation, he is a rascal, a freemason, or a Jew; no violence is too great to be used against such an imp of Satan. When priests, then, are heard using revolutionary language, we need not take them literally and believe that these vehement orators have socialistic sentiments. It simply indicates that the capitalists have not been sufficiently generous.
Here again, then, there is a case for arbitration; recourse * I do not think that there exists a class less capable of understanding the economics of production than the priests.
« In Turkey when a high palace dignitary receives a bribe, the Sultan takes the money and then gives a certain proportion of it back to his employe; what proportion is given back depends on the Sultan's disposition at the moment. The Sultan's ethical code in these matters is also that of our Catholic social reform group.
240 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE must be had to men with great experience of Ufe in order to ascertain exactly what sacrifices the rich must submit to on behalf of the poor dependants of the Church.
IV The study we have just made has not led us to think that the theorists of ** social peace " are on the way to an ethic worthy of acknowledgment. We now pass to a counterproof and enquire whether proletarian violence might not be capable of producing the effect in vain expected from tactics of moderation.
First of all, it must be noticed that modem philosophers seem to agree in demanding a kind of sublimity from the ethics of the future, which will distinguish it from the petty and insipid morality of the CathoHcs. The chief thing with which the theologians are reproached is that they make too great use of the conception of probabilism; nothing seems more absurd (not to say more scandalous) to contemporary philosophers than to count the opinions which have been emitted for and against a maxim, in order to find out whether we ought to shape our conduct by it or not.
Professor Durkheim said recently, at the Societi francaise de philosophic (February ii, 1906), that it would be impossible to suppress the rehgious element in ethics, and that what characterised this element was its incom- mensurability with other human values. He recognised that his sociological researches led him to conclusions very near those of Kant; he asserted that utilitarian morality had misunderstood the problem of duty and obligation. I do not want to discuss these here; I simply cite them to show to what point the character of the sublime impresses itself on authors who, by the nature of their work, would seem the least inclined to accept it.
No writer has defined more forcibly than Proudhon THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 241 the principles of that morality which modem times have in vain sought to realise. " To feel and to assert the dignity of man," he says, " first in everything in con- nection with ourselves, then in the person of our neighbour, and that without a shadow of egoism, without any con- sideration either of divine or communal sanction — therein lies Right. To be ready to defend that dignity in every circumstance with energy, and, if necessary, against one- self, that is Justice." ^ Clemenceau, who doubtless can hardly be said to make a personal use of this morality, expresses the same thought when he writes: " Without the dignity of the human person, without independence, liberty, and justice, life is but a bestial state not worth the trouble of preserving" {Aurore, May 12, 1905).
One well-founded reproach has been brought against Proudhon, as well as against many others of the great moralists; it has been said that his maxims were admir- able, but that they were doomed to remain ineffective. And, in fact, experience does prove, unfortunately, that those precepts which the historians of ideas call the most elevated precepts are, as a rule, entirely ineffective. This was evident in the case of the Stoics, it was no less remark- able in Kantism, and it does not seem as if the practical influence of Proudhon has been very noticeable. In order that a man may suppress the tendencies against which morality struggles, he must have in himself some source of conviction which must dominate his whole consciousness, and act before the calculations of reflection have time to enter his mind.
It may even be said that all the fine arguments by which authors hope to induce men to act morally are more hkely to lead them down the slope of probabilism; as soon as we consider an act to be accomplished, we are led to ask ourselves if there is not some means of escaping 1 Proudhon, De la justice dans la revolution et datis I'eglise, vol. i.
242 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE the strict obligations of duty. A. Comte supposed that human nature would change in the future and that the cerebral organs which produce altruism (?) would destroy those which produce egoism; in saying this he very likely bore in mind the fact that moral decision is instantaneous, and, like instinct, comes from the depth of man's nature.
At times Proudhon is reduced, like Kant, to appeal to a kind of scholasticism for an explanation of the paradox of moral law. " To feel himself in others, to the point of sacrificing every other interest to this sentiment, to demand for others the same respect as for himself, and to be angry with the unworthy creature who sufEers others to be lacking in respect for him, as if the care of his dignity did not concern himself alone, such a faculty at first sight seems a strange one...There is a tendency in every man to develop and force the acceptance of that which is essentially himself — ^which is, in fact, his own dignity. It results from this that the essential in man being identical and one for all humanity, each of us is aware of himself at the same time as individual and as species; and that an insult is felt by a third party and by the offender himself as well as by the injured person, that in consequence the protest is common. This precisely is what is meant by Justice." * Religious ethics claim to possess this source of action which is wanting in lay ethics,^ but here it is necessary to make a distinction if an error, into which so many authors have fallen, is to be avoided. The great mass of Christians do not carry out the real Christian ethic, that which the philosopher considers as really pecuUar to their reUgion; worldly people who profess Catholicism are chiefly preoccupied with probabiUsm, mechanical * Proudhon, loc. cit. pp. 216-217.
* Proudhon thinks that this was also lacking in pagan antiquity: " During several centuries, polytheistic societies had customs, but no ethics. In the absence of a morality solidly based on principles, the customs gradually disappeared " {loc. cU. p. 173).
THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 243 rites and proceedings more or less related to magic and which are calculated to assure their present and future happiness in spite of their sins.^ Theoretical Christianity has never been a religion suited to worldly people; the doctors of the spiritual life have always reasoned about those people who were able to escape from the conditions of ordinary life. " When the Council of Gangres, in 325," said Renan, '* declared that the Gospel maxims about poverty, the renunciation of the family and virginity, were not intended for the ordinary Christian, the perfectionists made places apart where the evangelical life, too lofty for the common run of men, could be practised in all its rigour. ' ' He remarks, moreover, very justly, that the " monastery took the place of martyrdom so that the precepts of Jesus might be carried out somewhere," * but he does not push this comparison far enough; the lives of the great hermits were a material struggle against the infernal powers which pursue them even to the desert,^ and this struggle was to continue that which the martyrs had waged against their adversaries.
These facts show us the way to a right understanding of the nature of lofty moral convictions; these never depend on reasoning or on any education of the individual will, but on a state of war in which men voluntarily partici- pate and which finds expression in well-defined myths. In Catholic countries the monks carry on the struggle against the prince of evil who triumphs in this world, and would subdue them to his will; in Protestant countries * Heinrich Heine claims that the Catholicism of a wife is a very good thing for the husband, because the wife is never oppressed by the burden of her sins; after confession she begins again " to chatter and laugh." Moreover, there is no danger of her relating her sin {L'Allemagne, 2nd edition, vol. ii. p. 322).
» Catholic saints do not struggle against abstractions but often against apparitions which present themselves with all the signs of reality. Luther also had to fight the Devil, at whom he threw his inkpot.
244 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE small fanatical sects take the place of the monasteries.^ These are the battle-fields which enable Christian morality to hold its own, with that character of sublimity which to-day still fascinates many minds and gives it sufficient lustre to beget in the community a few pale imitations.
When one considers a less accentuated state of the Christian ethic, one is struck by seeing to what extent it depends on strife. Le Play, who was an excellent Catholic, often contrasted (to the great scandal of his co-religionists) the solidity of the religious convictions he met with in countries of mixed religions, with the spirit of inactivity which prevails in the countries ex- clusively submitted to the influence of Rome. Among the Protestant peoples, the more vigorously the Established Church is assailed by dissident sects the greater the moral fervour developed. We thus see that convictioa is founded on the competition of communions, each of which regards itself as the army of truth fighting the armies of evil. In such conditions it is possible to find sublimity; but when religious warfare is much weakened, probabilism, mechanical rites having a certain re- semblance to magic, take the first place.
We can point out quite similar phenomena in the history of modem Liberal ideas. For a long while our fathers regarded from an almost religious point of \dew the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which seems to us now- adays only a colourless collection of abstract and con- fused formulas, without any great practical bearing. This was due to the fact that formidable struggles had been imdertaken on account of the institutions which originated in this docmnent; the clerical party asserted that it would demonstrate the fundamental error of Liberalism; everywhere it organised fighting societies intended to enforce its authority on the people and on the Government; it boasted that it would be able to destroy THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 245 the defenders of the Revolution before long. At the time when Proudhon wrote his book on Justice, the conflict was far from being ended; thus the whole book is written in a warUke tone astonishing to the reader of to-day: the author speaks as if he were a veteran in the wars of Liberty; he would be revenged on the temporary conquerors who threaten the acquisitions of the Revolu- tion; he announces the dawn of the great revolt.
Proudhon hopes that the duel will be soon, that the forces will meet with their whole strength, and that there will be a Napoleonic battle, finally destroying the opponent. He often speaks in a language which would be appropriate to an epic. He did not perceive that when later on his belligerent ideas had disappeared, his abstract reasonings would seem weak. There is a ferment all through his soul which colours it and gives a hidden meaning to his thought, very far removed from the scholastic sense.
The savage fury with which the Church proceeded against Proudhon's book shows that the clerical camp had exactly the same conception of the nature and con- sequences of the conflict as he had.
As long as the " sublime " imposed itself in this way on the modern spirit, it seemed possible to create a lay and democratic ethic; but in our time such an enterprise would seem almost comic. Everything is changed now that the clericals no longer seem formidable; there are no longer any Liberal convictions, since the Liberals have ceased to be animated by their former warlike passions. Nowadays everything is in such confusion that the priests claim to be the best of democrats; they have adopted the Marseillaise as their party hymn, and if a little persuasion is exerted they will have illuminations on the anniversary of August 10, 1792. Sublimity has vanished from the ethics of both parties, giving place to a morality of extraordinary meanness.
246 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE Kautsky is evidently right when he asserts that in our time the advancement of the workers has depended on their revolutionary spirit. At the end of a study on social reform and revolution he says, ** It is hopeless to try, by means of moral homiUes, to inspire the English workman with a more exalted conception of life, a feeling of nobler effort. The ethics of the proletariat spring from its revolu- tionary aspirations, these are what give it the greatest force and elevation. It is the idea of revolution which has raised the proletariat from its degradation." ^ It is clear that for Kautsky morahty is always subordinate to the idea of sublimity.
The Socialist point of view is quite different from that of former democratic hterature; our fathers believed that the nearer man approached Nature the better he was, and that a man of the people was a sort of savage; that consequently the lower we descend the more virtue we find. The democrats have many times, in support of this idea, called attention to the fact that during revolutions the poorest people have often given the finest examples of heroism; they explain this by taking for granted that these obscure heroes were true children of Nature. I explain it by saying that, these men being engaged in a war which was bound to end in their triumph or their enslavement, the sentiment of sublimity was bound to be engendered by the conditions of the struggle. As a rule, during a revolution the higher classes show themselves in a particularly unfavourable Hght, for this reason, that, belonging to a defeated army, they experience the feelings of conquered people, suppliant, or about to capitulate.
When working-class circles are reasonable, as the * Karl Kautsky, La Revolution sociale, French trans., pp. 123-124. I have pointed out elsewhere that the decay of the revolutionary idea in the minds of former militants who have become moderate seems to be accompanied by a moral decadence that I have compared to that which as a rule one finds in the case of a priest who has lost his faith {Insegna- mente socicUi, pp. 344-345)- THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 247 professional sociologists wish them to be, when conflicts are confined to disputes about material interests, there is no more opportunity for heroism than when agri- cultural sjmdicates discuss the subject of the price of guano with manure merchants. It has never been thought that discussions about prices could possibly exercise any ethical influence on men; the experience of sales of live stock would lead to the supposition that in such cases those interested are led to admire cunning rather than good faith; the ethical values recognised by horse-dealers have never passed for very elevated. Among the im- portant things accomplished by agricultural s^Tidicates, De Rocquigny reports that in 1S96, " the municipality of Marmande ha\'ing wanted to impose on beasts brought to the fair a tax which the cattle-breeders considered iniquitous...the breeders struck, and stopped supply- ing the market of Marmande, with such effect that the municipahty found itself forced to give in.^ This was a very peaceful procedure which produced results profitable to the peasants; but it is quite clear that nothing ethical was involved in such a dispute.
When politicians intervene there is, almost necessarily, a noticeable lowering of ethical standards, because they do nothing for nothing and only act on condition that the favoured association becomes one of their customers. We are very far here from the path of sublimity, we are on that which leads to the practices of the political- criminal societies.
In the opinion of many well-informed people, the transition from xiolence to cunning which shows itself in contemporary strikes in England cannot be too much admired. The great object of the Trades Unions is to obtain a recognition of the right to employ threats * De Rocquigny, op. cit. pp. 379-3S0. I am curious to know how exactly a tax can be iniquitous. These worthy progressives speak a sjjecial language.
R 948 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE disguised in diplomatic formulas; they desire that their delegates should not be interfered with when going the round of the workshops charged with the mission of bringing those workmen who wish to work to understand that it would be to their interests to follow the directions of the Trades Unions; they consent to express their desires in a form which will be perfectly clear to the listener, but which could be represented in a court of justice as a solidarist^ sermon. I protest I cannot see what is so admirable in these tactics, which are worthy of Escobar. In the past the Catholics have often employed similar methods of intimidation against the Liberals; I understand thus perfectly well why so many worthy pro- gressives admire the Trades Unions, but the morahty of the worthy-progressives does not seem to me very much to be admired.
It is true that for a long time in England violence has been void of all revolutionary character. Whether corporative advantages are pursued by means of blows or by craft, there is not much difference between the two methods; yet the pacific tactics of the Trades Unions indicate an h5rpocrisy which would be better left to the " wdl intentioned progressives." In a coimtry where the conception of the general strike exists, the blows ex- changed between workmen and representatives of the middle classes have an entirely different import, their consequences are far reaching and they may beget heroism.
I am convinced that in order to understand part, at any rate, of the dislike that Bernstein's doctrines rouse in German social democracy we must bear in mind these conclusions about the nature of the sublime in ethics. The German has been brought up on subUmity to an * [This is a reference to the " solidarista " doctrine, invented by Buisson; the interests of the classes are not opposed, and the more wealthy have their duties toward the poorer. — Trans. Note.]
THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 249 extraordinary extent, first by the literature connected with the wars of independence,^ then by the revival of the taste for the old national songs which followed these wars, then by a philosophy which pursues aims very far removed from sordid considerations. It must also be remembered that the victory of 1871 has considerably contributed toward giving Germans of every class a feeling of confidence in their strength that is not to be found to the same degree in this country at the present time; compare, for instance, the German Catholic party with the chicken-hearted creatures who form the cHent^le of the Church in France! Our clergy only think of humiliating themselves before their adversaries and are quite happy, provided that there are plenty of evening parties during the winter; they have no recollection of services which are rendered to them.* The German Socialist party drew its strength particu- larly from the catastrophic idea everywhere spread by its propagandists, and which was taken very seriously as long as the Bismarckian persecutions maintained a warlike spirit in the groups. This spirit was so strong in the masses that they have not yet succeeded in understanding thoroughly that their leaders are anything but revolutionaries.
* Renan even wrote: " The war of 18 13 to 18 15 is the only one of our century that had anything epic and elevated about it...[it] corresponded to a movement of ideas and had a real intellectual signific- ance. A man who had taken part in this great struggle told me that, awakened by the cannonade on the first night that he passed with the volunteer troops collected in Silesia, he felt that he was witnessing an immense divine service " {JEssais de morale et de critique, p. 116). Com- pare Manzoni's ode entitled " Mars 1821," dedicated to " the illustrious memory of Theodore Koemer, poet and soldier of German independence and killed on the field of battle at Leipzig, a name dear to all those peoples who are struggling to defend or to reconquer their fatherland." Our own wars of Liberty were also epic, but they have not been so well written up as the war of 181 3.
* Drumont has often denounced this state of mind of the fashionable religious world.
250 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE When Bernstein (who was too intelligent not to know what was the real spirit of his friends on the directing committee) announced that the grandiose hopes which had been raised must be given up, there was a moment of stupefaction; very few people understood that Bernstein's declarations were courageous and honest actions, intended to make the language of Socialism accord more with the real facts. If hereafter it was necessary to be con- tent with the policy of social reform, the parliamentary parties and the ministry would have to be negotiated with — that is, it would be necessary to behave exactly as the middle classes did. This appeared monstrous to men who had been brought up on a catastrophic theory of Socialism. Many times had the tricks of the middle class politicians been denoimced, their astuteness contrasted with the candour and disinterestedness of the SociaHsts, and the large element of artificiality and expediency in their attitude of opposition pointed out. It could never have been imagined that the disciples of Marx might follow in the footsteps of the Liberals. With the new poUcy, heroic characters, sublimity, and convictions dis- appear! The Germans thought that the world - was turned upside do\vn.
It is plain that Bernstein was absolutely right in not wanting to keep up a revolutionary semblance which was in contradiction with the real state of mind of the party; he did not find in his own country the elements which existed in France and Italy; he saw no other way then of keeping SociaUsm on a basis of reaUty than that of suppressing all that was deceptive in a revolutionary programme which the leaders no longer believed in. Kautsky, on the contrary, wanted to preserve the veil which hid from the w^orkmen the real activity of the Socialist party; in this way he achieved much success among the poUticians, but more than any one else he has helped to intensify the Socialist crisis in Germany. The THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE 251 ideas of Socialism cannot be kept intact by diluting the phrases of Marx in verbose commentaries, but by con- tinually adapting the spout of Marx to facts which are capable of assuming a revolutionary aspect. The general strike alone can produce this result at the present day.
One serious question must now be asked. " ^Vhy is it that in certain countries acts of violence grouping them- selves round the idea of the general strike, produce a SociaHst ideology capable of inspiring subUmity, and why in others do they seem not to have that power? " Here national traditions play a great part; the examination of this problem would perhaps help to throw a strong light on the genesis of ideas; but we will not deal with it here.
CHAPTER VII THE ETHICS OF THE PRODUCERS I. Morality and religion — Contempt of democracies for morality — Ethical preoccupations of the " new school."
II. Renan's uneasiness about the future of the world — His con- jectures— The need of the sublime.
III. Nietzsche's ethics — The rdle of the family in the genesis of morality; Proudhon's theory — The ethics of Aristotle.
IV. Kautsky's hypothesis — Analogies between the spirit of the general strike and that of the wars of Liberty — Fear in- spired in the Parliamentarians by this spirit.
V. The artisan employed in progressive and inventive production, the artist and the soldier in the wars of Liberty: desire to surpass previous models; care for exactitude; abandon- ment of the idea of exact recompense.
Fifty years ago Proudhon pointed out the necessity of giving the people a morality which would fit new needs. The first chapter of the preliminary discourses placed at the beginning of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church is entitled " The State of Morals in the Nineteenth Century. Invasion of moral scepticism; society in danger. What is the remedy? " There one reads these noteworthy sentences: " France has lost its morals. Not that, as a matter of fact, the men of our generation are worse than their fathers...When I say that France has lost its morals I mean that it has ceased to THE ETHICS OF THE PRODUCERS 253 believe in the very principles of morality, a very difEerent thing. She has no longer moral inteUigence or conscience, she has almost lost the idea of morals itself; as a result of continual criticism we have come to this melan- choly conclusion: that right and wrong, between which we formerly thought we were able to distinguish dogmatic- ally, are now vague and indeterminate conventional terms; that all these words. Right, Duty, Morality, Virtue, etc., of which the pulpit and the school talk so much, serve to cover nothing but pure hypotheses, vain Utopias, and unprovable prejudices; that thus ordinary social behaviour, which is apparently governed by some sort of human respect or by convention, is in reaUty arbitrary." ^ However, he did not think that contemporary society was mortally wounded; he believed that since the Revolution, hmnanity had acquired an idea of Justice which was sufficiently clear to enable it to triumph over temporary lapses; by this conception of the future he separated himself completely from what was to become the most fundamentad idea of contemporary ofl&cial Socialism, which sneers at moraUty. " This juridical faith...this science of right and duty, which we seek everywhere in vain, that the Chiu-ch has never possessed, and without