* P. de Rousiers, La Vie ameticaine, I' Education et la sociSU, p. 19. " Fathers give very little advice to their children, and let them learn for themselves, as they say over there " (p. 14). " Not only does (the American) wish to be independent, but he wishes to be powerful " {La V ie atnSricaine: ranches, fermes et usines, p. 6).
DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES 87 without ever thinking of leading a nobleman's life for themselves, as the Rothschilds do.
In a society so enfevered by the passion for the success which can be obtained in competition, all the actors walk straight before them like veritable automata, without taking any notice of the great ideas of the sociologists; they are subject to very simple forces, and not one of them dreams of escaping from the circumstances of his condition. Then only is the development of capitalism carried on with that inevitableness which struck Marx so much, and which seemed to him comparable to that of a natural law. If, on the contrary, the middle class, led astray by the chatter of the preachers of ethics and sociology, return to an ideal of conservative mediocrity, seek to correct the abuses of economics, and wish to break with the barbarism of their predecessors, then one part of the forces which were to further the development of capitalism is employed in hindering it, an arbitrary and irrational element is introduced, and the future of the world becomes completely indeterminate.
This indetermination grows still greater if the pro- letariat are converted to the ideas of social peace at the same time as their masters, or even if they simply consider everything from the corporative point of view; while Socialism gives to every economic contest a general and revolutionary colour.
Conservatives are not deceived when they see in the compromises which lead to collective contracts, and in corporative particularism,^ the means of avoiding the Marxian revolution; ^ but they escape one danger only to 1 [This refers to the conduct of former syndicates which limited their ambitions to the interests of their own handicraft without con- cerning themselves with the general interests of the working classes. — Trans. Note.]
2 There is constant talk nowadays of organising labour, i.e. of utilising the corporative spirit by giving it over to the management of well- intentioned, very serious and responsible people, and liberating the G 88 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE fall into another, and they run the risk of being devoured by Pariiamentary Socialism.* Jaur^s is as enthusiastic as the clericals about measures which turn away the working classes from the idea of the Marxian revolution; I believe he understands better than they do what the result of social peace will be; he founds his own hopes on the simul- taneous ruin of the capitalistic and the revolutionary spirit. It is often urged, in objection to the people who defend the Marxian conception, that it is impossible for them to stop the movement of degeneration which is dragging both the middle class and the proletariat far from the paths assigned to them by Marx's theory. They can doubtless influence the working classes, and it is hardly to be denied that strike violences do keep the revolutionary spirit alive; but how can they hope to give back to the middle class an ardour which is spent?
It is here that the role of violence in history appears to us as singularly great, for it can, in an indirect manner, so operate on the middle class as to awaken them to a sense of their own class sentiment. Attention has often been drawn to the danger of certain acts of violence which compromised admirable social works, disgusted employers who were disposed to arrange the happiness of their work- men, and developed egoism where the most noble senti- ments formerly reigned. I To repay with black ingratitude the benevolence of those I who would protect the workers,2 to meet with insults the ■ homilies of the defenders of human fraternity, and to workers from the yoke of sophists. The responsible people are de Mun, Charles Benoist (the amusing specialist in constitutional law), Arthur Fontaine, and the band of democratic abbSs,...and lastly Gabriel Hanotaux!
1 Vilredo Pareto laughs at the simple middle class who are happy, because they are no longer threatened by intractable Marxians, and who have fallen into the sn^ire of the conciliatory Marxians {Systimes socialistes, tome ii. p. 453).
* Cf. G. Sorel, Insegnamenti sociali, p. 53.
DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES 8g reply by blows to the advances of the propagators of social peace — all that is assuredly not in conformity with the rules of the fashionable Socialism of M. and Mme. Georges Renard,^ but it is a very practical way of indicat- ing to the middle class that they must mind their own business and only that.
I believe also that it may be usefvil to thrash the orators of democracy and the representatives of the Government, for in this way you insure that none shall retain any illusions about the character of acts of violence. But these acts can have historical value only if they are the clear and brutal expression of the class war: the middle classes must not be allowed to imagine that, aided by cleverness, social science, or high-flown sentiments, they might find a better welcome at the hands of the proletariat.
The day on which employers perceive that they have nothing to gain by works which promote social peace, or by democracy, they will understand that they have been ill-advised by the people who persuaded them to abandon their trade of creators of productive forces for the noble profession of educators of the proletariat. Then there is some chance that they may get back a part of their energy, and that moderate or conservative economics may appear as absurd to them as they appeared to Marx. In any case, the separation of classes being more clearly accentuated, the proletarian movement will have some chance of developing with greater regularity than to-day.
The two antagonistic classes therefore influence each other in a partly indirect but decisive manner. Capital- ism drives the proletariat into revolt, because in daily 1 Mme. G. Renard has published in the Suisse of July 26, 1900, an article full of lofty psychological considerations about the workers' fete given by Millerand (Leon de Seilhac, Le Monde socialiste, pp. 307- 309). Her husband has solved the grave question as to who will drink Clos-Vougeot in the society of the future (G. Renard, Le Regime socialiste, 90 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE life the employers use their force in a direction opposed to the desire of their workers; but the future of the prole- tariat is not entirely dependent on this revolt; the work- ing classes are organised under the influence of other causes, and Socialism, inculcating in them the revolu- tionary idea, prepares them to suppress the hostile class. Capitalist force is at the base of all this process, and its action is automatic and inevitable.^ Marx supposed that the middle class had no need to be incited to employ force, but we are to-day faced with a new and very im- foreseen fact — a middle class which seeks to weaken its own strength. Must we believe that the Marxian con- ception is dead? By no means, for proletarian violence comes upon the scene just at the moment when the conception of social peace is being held up as a means of moderating disputes; proletarian violence confines employers to their role of producers, and tends to restore the separation of the classes, just when they seemed on the point of intermingling in the democratic marsh.
Proletarian violence not only makes the future r^ivolut \ tion certain, but it seems also to be the only means by \ which the European nations — at present stupefied by ^ hmnanitarianism — can recover their former energy. This kind of violence compels capitalism to restrict its attentions solely to its material role and tends to restore to it the warlike qualities which it formerly possessed. A growing ^ In an article written in September 1851 (the first of the series pubhshed under the title: Revolution and Cotinter-revohition), Marx established the following parallelism between the development of the middle class and of the proletariat: To a numerous, rich, concentrated, and powerful middle class corresponds a numerous, strong, concen- trated and intelligent proletariat. Thus he seems to have thought that the intelligence of the proletariat depends on the historical con- ditions which secured power in society to the middle classes. He says, again, that the true characters of the class war only exist in countries where the middle class has recast the Government in conformity' with its needs.
DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES gi and solidly organised working class can compel the capitalist class to remain firm in the industrial war; if a united and revolutionary proletariat confronts a rich middle class, eager for conquest, capitalist society will ( \ have reached its historical perfection. \ * Thus proletarian violence has become an essential factor of Marxism. Let us add once more that, if properly conducted, it will suppress the Parliamentary SociaUsts, who will no longer be able to pose as the leaders of the working classes and the guardians of order.
Ill The Marxian theory of revolution supposes that capitalism, while it is still in full swing, will be struck to the heart, when — having attained complete industrial efficiency — it has finally achieved its historical mission, and whilst the economic system is still a progressive one. Marx does not seem to have asked himself what would happen if the economic system were on the down grade; he never dreamt of the possibihty of a revolution which would take a return to the past, or even social conserva- tion, as its ideal.
We see nowadays that such a revolution might easily come to pass: the friends of Jaures, the clericals, and the democrats all take the Middle Ages as their ideal for the future; they would like competition to be tempered, riches Umited, production subordinated to needs. These are dreams which Marx looked upon as reactionary,^ and consequently negUgible, because it seemed to him that * " Those who, like Sismondi, would return to the just proportion of production, while preserving the existing bases of society, are re- actionary, since, to be consistent, they should also desire to re-establish all the other conditions of past times...In existing society, in the industry based on individual exchanges, the anarchy of production, which is the source of so muck poverty is at the same time the source of all progress " (Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Eng. trans., p. 41)- g2 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE capitalism was embarked on an irresistible progress; but nowadays we see considerable forces grouped together in the endeavour to reform the capitalist economic system by bringing it, with the aid of laws, nearer to the medieval ideal. Parliamentary Socialism would hke to combine with the moralists, the Church, and the democracy, with the common aim of impeding the capitaHst movement; and, in view of middle-class cowardice, that would not perhaps be impossible.
Marx compared the passage from one historical era to another to a civil inheritance; the new age inherits prior acquisitions. If the revolution took place during a period of economic decadence, would not the inheritance be very much compromised, and in that case could there be any hope of the speedy reappearance of progress in the economic system? The ideologists hardly trouble themselves at all with this question; they affirm that I ^ the decadence will stop on the day that the public Treasury is at their disposal; they are dazzled by the immense reserve of riches which would be delivered up to their pillage; what banquets there would be, what women, and what opportunities for self-display! We, on the other hand, who have no such prospect before our eyes, have to ask whether history can furnish us with any guidance on this subject, which will enable us to guess what would be the result of a revolution accompUshed in times of decadence.
The researches of Tocqueville enable us to study the French Revolution from this point of view. He very much astonished his contemporaries when, a half -century ago, he showed them that the Revolution had been much more conservative than had been supposed till then. He pointed out that most of the characteristic institutions of modem France date from the Old Regime (centralisa- tion, the issue of regulations on every possible pretext, DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES 93 administrative tutelage of the communes, exemption of civil servants from the jurisdiction of the courts); he found only one important innovation — the coexistence, which was established in the year VI 1 1., of isolated civil servants and deliberative.councils. The principles of the Old Regime reappeared in i8oq, and the old customs were received back into favour. ^ Turgot seemed to him to be an excellent type of the Napoleonic administrator, who had " the ideal of a civil servant, in a democratic society subject to an absolute government." ^ He was of the opinion that the partition of the land, which it is customary to place to the credit of the Revolution, had begun long before, and had not gone on at an exceptionally rapid pace under its influence.^ It is certain that Napoleon did not have to make any extraordinary effort to put the country once more on a monarchical footing. He found France quite ready, and had only a few corrections of detail to make in order to profit by the experience acquired since 1789. The administrative and fiscal laws had been drawn up during the Revolution by people who had applied the methods of the Old Regime; they remain in force to-day, still almost intact. The men he employed had served their apprenticeship under the Old Regime and under the Revolution; they all resemble one another; in their governmental practices they are all men of the preceding period; they all work with an equal ardour for the great- ness of His Majesty.* The real merit of Napoleon lay in his not trusting too much to his own genius, in not giving himself up to the dreams which had so often deluded men of the eighteenth century, and had led them * Tocqueville, L'Ancien Rigime et la Rivolution (idition des ceuvres computes), livre ii. chapitres i., iii., iv. pp. 89, 91, 94, 288.
* Tocqueville, Milanges. pp. 155-156.
* Tocqueville, L'Ancien Rigime et la Rivolution, pp. 35-37.
* L. Madelin also comes to this conclusion in an article in the Dibats of July 6, 1907, on the prefects of Napoleon I.
94 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE to desire to regenerate ever5rthing from top to bottom — in short, in his full recognition of the principle of historical heredity. It follows from all this that the Napoleonic regime may be looked upon as an experiment, showing clearly the enormous part played by conservation through- out the greatest revolutions.
Indeed, I think that the principle of conservation might even be extended to things military, and the armies of the Revolution and the Empire may be shown to be an extension of former institutions. In any case, it is very curious that Napoleon should have made no essential innovations in military equipment, and that it should have been the fire-arms of the Old Regime which so greatly contributed to securing the victories of the revolu- tionary troops. It was only imder the Restoration that the artillery was improved.
The ease >\dth which the Revolution and the Empire succeeded in radically transforming the country while still retaining such a large number of the acquisitions of the past, is bound up with a fact to which our historians have not always called attention, and which Taine does not seem to have noticed: industrial production was making great progress, and this progress was such that, towards 1780, everybody beUeved in the dogma of the indefinite progress of mankind.^ This dogma, which was to exercise so great an influence on modem thought, would be a bizarre and inexplicable paradox if it were not considered as bound up with economic progress and with the feeling of absolute confidence which this economic progress engendered. The wars of the Revolution and of the Empire only stimulated this feeling still further, not only because they were glorious, but also because they caused a great deal of money to enter the country, * Tocqueville, L'Ancien Regime et la Rivolution, pp. 254-262, and Melanges, p. 62. Cf. chapter IV. iv. of my study on Les Illusions du Progris.
DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES 93 and thus contributed to the development of pro- duction. * The triumph of the Revolution astonished neariy all its contemporaries, and it seems that the most intelligent, the most deliberate, and the best informed as regards political matters, were the most surprised; this was because reasons drawn from theory could not explain this paradoxical success. It seems to me that even to- day the question is scarcely less obscure to historians than it was to our ancestors. The primary cause of this triumph must be sought in the economic progress of the time; it is because the Old Regime was struck by rapid blows, while production was making great strides, that the contemporary world was born with comparatively little labour, and could so rapidly be assured of a vigorous life.
We possess, on the other hand,, a dreadful historical experience of a great transformation taking place at a time of economic decadence; I mean the victory of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire which closely followed it.
All the old Christian authors agree in informing us that the new religion brought no serious improvement in the situation of the world; corruption, oppression, and disasters continued to crush the people as in the past. This was a great disillusion for the fathers of the Church; at the time of the persecutions the Christians had believed that God would overwhelm Rome with favours on the day that the Empire ceased to persecute the faithful; now the Empire was Christian, and the bishops had become personages of the first rank, yet everything continued to go on as badly as in the past. What was still more disheartening, the immoraUty, so often >> ^ Kautsky has dwelt very strongly on the role played by the treasures which the French armies took possession of {La Lutte des classes en France en ijSg, French trans., pp. 104-106).
g6 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE denounced as the result of idolatry, had spread to the adorers of Christ. Far from imposing a far-reaching reform on the profane world, the Church itself had become corrupted by imitating the profane world; it began to resemble an imperial administration, and the factions which tore it asunder were much more moved by an appetite for power than by religious reasons.
It has often been asked whether Christianity was not the cause, or at least one of the principal causes, of the fall of Rome. Gaston Boissier combats this opinion by endeavouring to show that the decadent movement observed after Constantine is the continuation of a move- ment which had existed for some time, and that it is not possible to see whether Christianity accelerated or retarded the death of the ancient world. ^ That amounts to sa5ring that the extent of the conservation was enormous; we can, by analogy, imagine what would follow from a revolution which brought our official Socialists of to-day into power. Institutions remaining almost what they are to-day, all the middle-class ideology would be preserved; the middle-class state would dominate with its ancient abuses; if economic decadence had begim, it would be accentuated.
Shortly after the Christian conquest, the barbarian in- vasions began. More than one Christian wondered whether an order in conformity with the principles of the new rehgion was not at length to appear; this hope was all the more reasonable as the bairbarians had been converted on coming into the Empire, and because they were not accustomed to the corruption of Roman life. From the economic point of view, a regeneration might be hoped for, since the world was perishing beneath the weight of urban exploitation; the new masters, who had coarse rural manners, would not live as great lords, but as heads of large demesnes; perhaps, therefore, the earth would 1 Gaston Boissier, La Fin du paganisme, livre iv. chap. iii.
DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES 97 be better cultivated. The illusions of Christian authors contemporary with the invasions may be compared to those of the numerous Utopians who hope to see the modem world regenerated by the virtues which they attribute to the man of average condition; the re- placing of the very rich classes by new socisd strata should bring about morality, happiness, and \miversal prosperity.
The barbarians did not establish any progressive state of society; there were not many of them, and almost everywhere they simply took the place of the old lords, led the same Hfe as they did, and were devoured by urban civihsation. In France, the Merovingian royalty has been made the subject of particularly thorough investiga- tion; Fustel de Coulanges has* used all his erudition in throwing Ught on the conservative character which it assumed; its conservatism appeared to him to be so strong that he was even able to say that there had been no real revolution, and he represented the whole of the history of the late Middle Ages as a movement which had carried on the movement of the Roman Empire with a little acceleration. 1 *' The Merovingian Government," he said, " is more than three parts the continuation of that which the Roman Empire had given to Gaul." 2 The economic decadence was accentuated under these barbarian kings; no renascence could take place until very long afterwards, when the world had gone through a long series of trials. At least four centuries of barbarism had to be gone through before a progressive movement showed itself; society was compelled to descend to a state not far removed from its origins, and Vico was to find in this phenomenon an illustration of his doctrine of * Fustel de Coulanges, Origines du figime fiodal, pp. 566-567. I do not deny that there is a good deal of exaggeration in the thesis of Fustel de Coulanges, but the conservation was undeniable.
* Fustel de Coulanges, La Monarchic franque, p. 650.
gS /REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE ricoYsiy Thus a revolution which took place in a time of economic decadence had forced the world to pass again through a period of almost primitive civilisation, and had stopped all progress for several centuries.
These dreadful events have been many times invoked by the adversaries of Socialism; I do not deny the validity of the argument, but two details must be added which may perhaps appear of small importance to professional sociologists. Such events presuppose (i) an economic decadence; (2) an organisation which assures a very perfect conservation of the current system of ideas. The civilized Socialism of our professors has many times been presented as a safeguard of civilisation: I believe that it would produce the same effect as was produced by the classical education given by the Church to the barbarian kings. The proletariat would be corrupted and stultified as the Merovingians were, and economic decadence would only be more certain under the action of these pretended civilising agents.
The dangers which threaten the future of the world may be avoided, if the proletariat hold on with obstinacy to revolutionary ideas, so as to realise as much as possible Marx's conception. Everything may be saved, if the proletariat, by their use of violence, manage to re-estabhsh the division into classes, and so restore to the middle class something of its former energy; that is the great aim towards which the whole thought of men — who are not h5^notised by the event of the day, but who think * [Vice's doctrine of " reflux " {ricorsi). Civilisation comes to an end in the " barbarism of reflection " which is worse than the primitive barbarism of sensation...The mind, after traversing its course of progress, after rising from sensation...to the rational, from violence to equity, is bound, in conformity with its eternal nature, to retraverse the course, to relapse into violence and sensation, and thence to renew its upward movement, " to commence a reflux." See chap. xi. of The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, by Benedetto Croce- Eng. trans. — Trans. Note.]
DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES gg of the conditions of to-morrow — must be directed. Proletarian violence, carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of the class war, appears thus as a very fine and very heroic thing; it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civilisation; it is not perhaps the most appropriate method of obtaining immediate material advantages, but it may save the world | from barbarism.
We have a very effective reply to those who accuse Syndicalists of being obtuse and ignorant people. We may ask them to consider the economic decadence for which they are working. Let us salute the revolutionaries as the Greeks saluted the Spartan heroes who defended Thermopylae and helped to preserve the civilisation of the ancient world.
CHAPTER III PREJUDICES AGAINST VIOLENCE I. Old ideas relative to the Revolution — Change resulting from the year of 1870 and from the Parliamentary regime.
II. Drumont's observations on middle-class ferocity — The judicial Third Estate and the history of the Law Courts — Capitalism against the cult of the State.
III. Attitude of the Dreyfusards — faurts's judgments on the Revolution: his adoration of success and his hatred for the vanquished.
IV. Antimilitarism as a proof of an abandonment of middle-class traditions.
The ideas current among the outside public on the subject of proletarian violence are not founded on observation of contemporary facts, and on a rational interpretation of the present Syndicalist movement; they are derived from a comparison of the present with the past — an in- finitely simpler mental process; they are shaped by the memories which the word revolution evokes almost automatically. It is supposed that the Syndicalists, merely because they call themselves revolutionaries, wish to reproduce the history of the revolutionaries of '93. The Blanquists, who look upon themselves as the legitimate owners of the Terrorist tradition, consider that for this very reason they are called upon to direct PREJUDICES AGAINST VIOLENCE loi the proletarian movement; * they display much more condescension to the S5nidicalists than the other ParUa- mentary Socialists; they are inclined to assert that the workers' organisations will come to understand in the end that they cannot do better than to put themselves under their tuition. It seems to me that Jaur^s himself, when writing the Histoire socialiste of '93, thought more than once of the teachings which this past, a thousand times dead, might yield to him for the conduct of the present.
Proper attention has not always been given to the great changes which have taken place since 1870 in the way people judge the revolution; yet these changes must be considered if we wish to understand contemporary ideas relative to violence.
For a very long time the Revolution appeared to be essentially a succession of glorious wars, which a people famished for liberty and carried away by the noblest passions had maintained against a coalition of all the powers of oppression and error. Riots and coups d'etat, the struggles between parties often destitute of any scruple and the banishment of the vanquished, the Parhamentary debates and the adventures of illustrious men, in a word, all the events of its political history were in the eyes of our fathers only very secondary accessories to the wars of liberty.
For about twenty-five years the form of government in France had been at issue; after campaigns before which the memories of Caesar and Alexander paled the