Renan asked what was it that moved the heroes of great wars. " The soldier of Napoleon was well aware that he would always be a poor man, but he felt that the epic in which he was taking part would be eternal, that he would live in the glory of France. ' ' The Greeks had fought for glory; the Russians and the Turks seek death because they expect a chimerical paradise. "A soldier is not made by promises of temporal rewards. He must have immor- Eglises gothiques, p. 17), but what meaning had these inscriptions for the people of the town? They could only be of interest to artists who came later on to work in the same edifice and who were familiar with the traditions of the schools.
THE ETHICS OF THE PRODUCERS 2g3 tality. In default of paradise, there is glory, which is itself a kind of immortality/' ^ Economic progress goes far beyond the individual life, and profits future generations more than those who create it; but does it give glory? Is there an economic epic capable of stimulating the enthusiasm of the workers. The inspiration of immortality which Renan considered so powerful is obviously without efficacy here, because artists have never produced masterpieces under the influence of the idea that their work would procure them a place in paradise (as Turks seek death that they may enjoy the happiness promised by Mahomet). The workmen are not entirely wrong when they look on reUgion as a middle- class luxury, since, as a matter of fact, the emotions it calls up are not those which inspire workmen with the desire to perfect machinery, or which create methods of accelerating labour.
The question must be stated otherwise than Renan put it; do there exist among the workmen forces capable of producing enthusiasm equivalent to those of which Renan speaks, forces which could combine with the ethics of good work, so that in our days, which seem to many people to presage the darkest future, this ethic may acquire all the authority necessary to lead society along the path of economic progress.
We must be careful that the keen sentiment which we have of the necessity of such a morality, and our ardent desire to see it realised does not induce us to mistake phantoms for forces capable of moving the world. The abimdant " idyllic ** literature of the professors of rhetoric is evidently mere chatter. Equally vain are the attempts made by so many scholars to find institutions in the past, an imitation of which might serve as a means of * Renan, Histoire du peupie d' Israel, vol. iv. p. 191. Renan seems to me to have identified too readily glory and immortality; he has fallen a victim to a figure of speech.
294 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE disciplining their contemporaries; imitation has never produced much good and often bred much sorrow; how absurd the idea is then of borrowing from some dead and gone social structure, a suitable means of controlling a system of production, whose principal characteristic is that every day it must become more and more opposed to all preceding economic systems. Is there then nothing to hope for?
Morahty is not doomed to perish because the motive forces behind it will change; it is not destined to become a mere collection of precepts as long as it can still vivify itself by an alliance with an enthusiasm capable of conquer- ing all the obstacles, prejudices, and the need of immediate enjoyment, which oppose its progress. But it is certain that this sovereign force will not be found along the paths which contemporary philosophers', the experts of social science, and the inventors of far-reaching reforms would make us go. There is only one force which can produce to-day that enthusiasm without whose co-operation no morality is possible, and that is the force resulting from the propaganda in favour of a general strike. The pre- ceding explanations have shown that the idea of the general strike (constantly rejuvenated by the feehngs roused by proletarian violence) produces an entirely epic state of mind, and at the same time bends all the energies of the mind to that condition necessary to the realisation of a workshop carried on by free men, eagerly seeking the betterment of the industry; we have thus recog- nised that there are great resemblances between the sentiments aroused by the idea of the general strike and those which are necessary to bring about a continued progress in methods of production. We have then the right to maintain that the modem world possesses that prime mover which is necessary to the creation of the ethics of the producers.
I stop here, because it seems to me that I have accom- THE ETHICS OF THE PRODUCERS 293 plished the task which I imposed upon myself; I have, in fact, established that proletarian violence has an en- tirely different significance from that attributed to it by superficial scholars and by politicians. In the total ruin of institutions and of morals there remains something which is powerful, new, and intact, and it is that which constitutes, properly speaking, the soul of the revolutionary proletariat. Nor will this be swept away in the general decadence of moral values, if the workers have enough energy to bar the road to the middle-class corrupters, answering their advances with the plainest brutality.
I beUeve that I have brought an important contribu- tion to discussions on Socialism; these discussions must henceforth deal exclusively with the conditions which allow the development of specifically proletarian forces, that is to say, with violence enlightened by the idea of the general strike. All the old abstract dissertations on the Socialist rSgime of the future become useless; we pass to the domain of real history, to the interpretation of facts — to the ethical evaluations of the revolutionary movement.
The bond which I pointed out in the beginning of this inquiry between Socialism and proletarian violence appears to us now in all its strength. It is to violence that Socialism owes those high ethical values by means of which it brings salvation to the modem world.
u APPENDIX APOLOGY FOR VIOLENCE Men who make revolutionary speeches to the people are bound to set before themselves a high standard of sincerity, because the workers imderstand their words in their exact and Uteral sense, and never indulge in any symbolic inter- pretation. When in 1905 I ventured to write in some detail on proletarian violence I understood perfectly the grave responsibility I asstmied in trying to show the historic bearing of actions which our ParUamentary Socialists try to dis- simulate, with so much skill. To-day I do not hesitate to assert that Socialism could not continue to exist without an apology for violence.
It is in strikes that the proletariat asserts its existence. I cannot agree with the view which sees in strikes merely something analogous to the temporary rupture of commercial relations which is brought about when a grocer and the whole- sale dealer from whom he buys his dried plums cannot agree about the price. The strike is a phenomenon of war. It is thus a serious misrepresentation to say that violence is an accident doomed to disappear from the strikes of the future.
The social revolution is an extension of that ware in which each great strike is an episode; this is the reason why Syndi- caUsts speak of that revolution in the language of strikes; for them Socialism is reduced to the conception, the expecta- tion of, and the preparation for the general strike, which, hke he Napoleonic battle, is to completely annihilate a con- demned regime.
Such a conception allows none of those subtle exegeses in which Jaur^s excels. It is a question here of an over- throw in the course of which both employers and the State would be set aside by the organised producers. Our 298 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE Intellectuals, who hope to obtain the highest places from democracy, would be sent back to their literature; the Parliamentary Socialists, who find in the organisations created by the middle classes means of exercising a certain amount of power, would bec(Jme useless.
The analogy which exists between strikes accompanied by violence and war is prolific of consequences. No one doubts (except d'Estournelles de Constant) that it was war that provided the republics of antiquity with the ideas which form the ornament of our modem culture. The social war, for which the proletariat ceaselessly prepares itself in the syndi- cates, may engender the elements of a new civilisation suited to a people of producers. I continually call the attention of my young friends to the problems presented by Socialism considered from the point of view of a civiUsation of pro- ducers; I assert that to-day a philosophy is being elaborated according to this plan, whose possibiUty even was hardly suspected a few years ago; this philosophy is closely bound up with the apology for violence.
I have never had that admiration for creative hatred which Jaur^s has devoted to it; I do not feel the same indulgence towards the guillotiners as he does; I have a horror of any measure which strikes the vanquished under a judicial disguise. War, carried on in broad daylight, without hypocritical attenuation, for the purpose of ruining an irreconcilable enemy, excludes all the abominations which dishonoured the middle-class revolution of the eighteenth century. The apology for violence in this case is particularly easy.
It would serve no purpose to explain to the poor that they ought not to feel sentiments of jealousy and vengeance against their masters; these feelings are too powerful to be suppressed by exhortations; it is on the widespread prevalence of these feelings thai democracy chiefly founds its strength. Social war, by making an appeal to the honour which develops so naturally in all organised armies, can eliminate those evil feelings against which morality would remain powerless. If this were the only reason we had for attributing a high civihs- ing value to revolutionary SyndicaUsm, this reason alone would, it seems to me, be decisive in favour of the apologists for violence.
The conception of the general strike, engendered by the practice of violent strikes, admits the conception of an irre- vocable overthrow. There is something terrifying in this APPENDIX 2gg which will appear more and more terrifying as violence takes a greater place in the mind of the proletariat. But, in under- taking a serious, formidable, and sublime work, Socialists raise themselves above our frivolous society and make them- selves worthy of pointing out new roads to the world.
Parhamentary Socialists may be compared to the officials whom Napoleon made into a nobility and who laboured to strengthen the State bequeathed by the Ancien Regime. Revolutionary Syndicalism corresponds well enough to the Napoleonic armies whose soldiers accomplished such heroic acts, knowing all the time that they would remain poor. What remains of the Empire? Nothing but the epic of the Grande Arm^e. What will remain of the present Socialist movement will be the epic of the strikes.
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