And what is worse than all that I have enumerated, is that the edu- cation we all receive from the State, at school and later on in o-ir litV. has so vitiated our brains that the idea of liberty itself _ y an-, is travestied into servitude.
Sad is the sight of those who believe themselves to berevoluti vowing their deepest hatred to Anarchists— because the Anarchist- 38 The State: Its Historic Rtte conception of liberty surpasses their own narrow and mean conception culled from State teaching. And yet this sight is a fact.
It is because the spirit of voluntary servitude has always been art- fully nourished in young brains, and is so still, so as to perpetuate the slavery of the subject to the State.
Libertarian philosophy is suffocated by pseudo- Roman and Catholic State philosophy. History is vitiated from the first page where it lies about the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, to its last page, on which it glorifies Jacobinism and ignoi es the people and their work in the creation of institutions. Natural sciences are perverted to the benefit of the dual idol Church and State. The psychology of the individual, and still more that of societies, is falsified in each of its assertions to justify the triple alliance of soldier, priest and executioner. Even morality, which for centuries in succession has preached obedience to the Church or to some so-called divine book, only emancipates itself to- day to pi-each servility to the State. — " You have no direct moral obli- gations towards your neighbour, not even a sentiment of solidarity; all your obligations are to the State," — we are told, we are taught by this new religion of the old Roman and Caesarian divinity. Neighbours, comrades, companions, forget them! You must know them only through the intermediary of an organ of your State. And all of you must prac- tise the virtue of being equally slaves to it.
And the glorification of State and discipline, at which Church and University, the press and political parties work, is so well preached that even revolutionists dare not look this fetish straight in the face.
The modern radical is a centralizer, a State partisan, a Jacobin to the core. And the Socialist walks in his footsteps. Like the Florentines at the end of the fifteenth century, who could only invoke the dictator- ship of the State, to save them from the patricians, the Socialists know only how to invoke the same gods, the same dictatorship and the same State, to save us from the abominations of an economic system, created by that very State I X.
If you look still deeper into all the categories of facts which have been hardly touched upon this evening, if you see the State as it was in history, and as it is in its very essence to-day, and if you consider moreover that a social institution cannot serve all aims indifferently, because, like every other organ, it is developed for a certain purpose, a'ad not for all purposes, — if you take all that into consideration, you will understand whv we desire the abolition of the State.
TKt State: Itt Historic M'U.
We see in it an institution developed in the history of human socie- ties to hinder union among men,,f local initiative, to crush existing liberties and; ration.
Arid we kno~w that an institution, which has a whole past dating some thousands of years back, cannot lend itself to a function opposed to the one for which it was developed in the course of history.
To this argument, absolutely unassailable to anyone who his redacted on history, what replies do we get?
We are answered by an almost childish argument: " The State is there," — we are told — " it exists, it represents a ready made powerful organisation. Why destroy it instead of making use of it? It works for ill, that is true, but that is due to its being in the hands of <> ers. Having fallen into the hands of the people, why should it not be utilised for a better end and for the good of the people? " Always the same dream, the dream of Schiller's Manjuis of Posa trying to make autocracy an instrument of enfranchi.-einent, or the dream of the gentle priest Peter in Zola's Rome, wishing to make the Church a lever of Socialism!...
Is it not sad to have to answer such arguments? For, those who reason in this way either have not the least notion of the real historical role of the State, or else conceive the Social Revolution under such an insignificant form, and so tame, that it has nothing more in common with Socialist aspirations.
Take a concrete example, France.
All of us, all here present, have noticed the glaring fact that the Third Republic, in spite of its republican form of government, has re- mained monarchical in its essence. Every one has repi-oached it with not having republicanised France. I do not speak of its not having done anything for the Social Revolution, but of its not having even introduced the simple republican habits and customs and spirit. Because the little that has been done during the last twenty-five years to demo- cratize customs, or to spread a little enlightenment, has been done everywhere, — even in the European monarchies, under the very pressure of the times through which we are passing. Whence comes then the strange anomaly that we have in France — a Republican Monarchy?
It conies fiom France having remained a State to the same extent it was thirty years ago. The holders of power have changed their name; but all the immense scaffolding of centralised organisation, the imita- tion of the Rome of the Caesars which had been elaborated in France, have remained. The wheels of this huge machinery continue, as of old, 40 The State: It* Historic R6le.
to exchange their fifty documents when the wind has blown down a tre* on the national route. The stamp on the documents has changed; but the State, its spirit, its organs, its territorial centralisation, and its centralisation of functions, have remained unaltered. Worse than that: like so many blood-suckers, they extend from day to day over the country.
Republicans (I speak of sincere ones) nourished the illusion that the State organisation could be utilised to operate a change in a republican sense; and here is the result. When they ought to have destroyed the old organisation, destroyed the State, and constructed a new organisa- tion, by beginning at the basis itself of society — the free village com- mune, the free workers' union, and so on — they thought to utilise '• the organisation that already existed." And for not having understood that you cannot make an historical institution go in any direction you would have it go — that it must go its own way — they were swallowed up by the institution.
And yet, in this case, there was no question of modifying the whole of the economic relations of society, as is the case with us. It was on- ly a question of reforming certain points in the political relations among men I But after this complete failure and in face of such a conclusive ex- perience, they obstinately continue to say that the conquest of power in the State by the people will suffice to accomplish the Social Revolution! That the old machine, the old organism, slowly elaborated in the course of history to mangle liberty, to crush the individual, to seat oppression on a legal basis, to lead the brain astray in accustoming it to servitude — will lend itself marvellously to new functions: that it will become the instrument, the means of making a new life germinate, that it will seat liberty and equality on an economic basis, awaken society, and march to the conquest of a better future!...What an absurdity! what a miscomprehension of history!
To give free scope to Socialism, it is necessary to reconstruct society, which is based to-day on the narrow individualism of the shopkeeper, from top to bottom. It is not only, as they have been pleased some- times to say in a vague metaphysical way, a question of returning to the worker "the integral product of his work," but a question of re- modelling in their entirety all relations among men, from those exist- ing to-day between every individual and his churchwarden or his station master,' to those existing between trades, hamlets, cities and regions. In every street, in every hamlet, in every group of men assembled about a factory or along a railroad, you must awafc»r the creative, construct- The State: lt» llittorie R6b. 41 ive, organising spirit, in order to reconstruct the whole of life in the factory, on the railroad, in the village, in the stores, in taking supplies, in production, in distribution. All relations between individuals and between human agglomnrations must begin to be remodelled on the vri -y day, at the very moment we begin to reform any part of the prrsi-iit commercial or administrative organiaation Ami tln-y rxpi-rt this iimnerine work, demanding the full and free t'xi-ivisr of popular genius, to be carried out within the: >rk of the State, within the pyramidal scale of organisation that constitutes the essence of each State! They want the State, whose very reason for existence lies in the crushing of the individual, in the destruction of all five grouping and free creation, in the hatred of initiative and in the triumph of one idea (which must necessarily be that of the medio to become the lever to accomplish this immense transformation!...They want to govern a newborn society by decrees and electoral majo- rities 1...What childishness!
Throughout the whole history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition; the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition; the authoritarian one and the libertarian one.
And again, on the eve of the great Social Revolution these two tra- ditions stand face to face.
Between these two currents, always full of life, always battling in humanity, — the current of the people and the current of the minorities which thirst for political and religious domination, — our choice is made.
We again take up the current which led men, in the twelfth century, to organise themselves on the basis of a free understanding, of free ini- tiative of the individual, of free federation of those interested. And we leave the others to cling to the Roman, Canonic, and Imperial tra- dition.
History has not been an uninterrupted evolution. At different in- tervals evolution has been broken in a certain region, to begin again elsewhere. Egypt, Asia, the banks of the Mediterranean, Central Europe have in turn been the scene of historical development. But in every case, the first phase of the evolution has been the primitive tribe, passing on into a village commune, then into that of the free city, and finally dying out when it reached the phase of the State.
In Egypt, civilization began by the primitive tribe. It reached the village community phasis, and later on the period of free cities; still 42 The StaU: fa Historic R61*.
later that of the State, which, after a flourishing period, resulted in the death of the country.
The evolution began again in Assyria, in Persia, in Palestine. Again it traversed the same phasis: the tribe, the village community, the free city, the all-powerful State, and finally the result was — death I A new civilization then sprang up in Greece. Always beginning by the tribe, it slowly reached the village commune, then the period of re- publican cities. In these cities, civilization reached its highest summits. But the East brought to them its poisoned breath, its traditions of des- potism. Wars and conquests created Alexander's empire of Macedonia. The State enthroned itself, the blood-sucker grew, killed all civilization, and then came — death!
Rome in its turn restored civilization. Again we find the primitive tribe at its origin; then, the village commune; then, the free city. At that stage, it reached the apex of its civilization. But then came the State, the Empire, and then — death!
On the ruins of the Roman Empire, Celtic, Germanic, Slavonian and Scandinavian tribes began civilization anew. Slowly the primitive tribe elaborated its institutions and reached the village commune. It re- mained at that stage till the twelfth century. Then rose the Republican cities which produced the glorious expansion of the human mind, at- tested by the monuments of architecture, the grand development of arts, the discoveries that laid the basis of natural sciences. But then came the State...
Will it again produce death? — Of course it will, unless we reconsti- tute society on a libertarian and anti-State basis. Either the State will be destroyed and a new life will begin in thousands of centres, on the principle of an energetic initiative of the individual, of groups, and of free agreement; or else the State must crush the individual and local life, it must become the master of all the domains of human activity, must bring with it its wars and internal struggles for the possession of power, its surface-revolutions which only change one tyrant for another, and inevitably, at the end of this evolution, — death!
Choose yourselves which of the two issues you prefer.
THE END.
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