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 melancholy conclusion: that right and wrong, between which we formerly thought we were able to distinguish dogmatically, 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 which it is impossible for us to hve, I say that the Revolution created all its principles; that these principles, unknown to us, 'rule and uphold us, but while at the bottom of our hearts affirming them, we shrink from them through prejudice, and it is this infidehty to ourselves that makes our moral poverty and servitude."* He ^ Proudhon, De la justice dans la revolution ei dans I'eglise vol. i.
* Proudhon, loc. cit. p. 74. By juridical faith Proudhon here understands a triple faith, wliich dominates the family, contracts, and political relations. The first is " the conception of the mutual dignity (of husband and wife) which, raising them above the level of the senses, renders them more sacred to the other even than dear, and makes their fertile community a rehgion for them, sweeter than love itself " — the second " raising the mind above egoistical appetites, is made happier 2S4 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE maintains the possibility of bringing light to our minds, of presenting what he calls *' the exegesis of the Revolution "; in order to do this, he examines history, showing how humanity has never ceased to strive tow^ards Justice, how religion has been the cause of corruption, and how *' the French Revolution by bringing about the predominance of the juridical principle (over the religious principle) opens a new epoch, an entirely contrary order of things, the different elements of which it is now our task to determine. ' ' ^ Whatever may happen in the future to our worn-out race, he says at the end of this discourse, '* posterity will recognise that the third age of humanity ^ has its start in the French Revolution; that an understanding of this new law has been given to some of us in all its fulness; that we have not been found quite wanting in the practice of it; and that to perish in this sublime childbirth was, after all, not without grandeur. At that hour the Revolution became clear, then it lived. The rest of the nation (i.e. those who had not understood the Revolution) does not think at all. Will that part which lives and thinks he suppressed by that which does not? "^ I said in the preceding chapter that the whole doctrine of Proudhon was subordinated to revolutionary enthusiasm and that this enthusiasm has been extinct since the Church has ceased to be formidable; thus there is nothing astonishing in the fact that the undertaking which Proudhon considered so easy (the creation of a moraUty absolutely free from all rehgious belief) seems very uncertain to many of our contemporaries. I find a proof by respect for the right of another than by its own fortune " — without the third " citizens submitting to the attraction of indiWdualism could not form, whatever they did, an>'thing other than a mere aggregate of incoherent and repulsive existences that the first wind will disperse like dust " {loc. cit. pp. 72-73). In the strict sense of the word, juridical faith would be the second of these three.
* Proudhon, loc. cit. p. 93.
* The two first epochs are those of paganism and of Christiamty.
* Proudhon, loc. cU. p. 104.
of this way of thinking in a speech by Combes delivered during a discussion of the budget of PubHc Worship, January 26, 1903: *' At the present moment we look upon the moral ideas taught by the Church as necessary ideas. For my part I find it difficult to accept the idea of a society composed of philosophers like M. Allard,^ whose primary education would have sufficiently guaranteed them against the perils and trials of life." Combes is not the kind of man to have ideas of his o^^'n; he reproduced an opinion current in his circle.
This declaration created a great commotion in the Chamber. All the deputies who prided themselves on their knowledge of philosophy took part in the debate; as Combes had referred to the superficial and narrow instruction of our primary schools, F. Buisson felt that as the leading pedagogue of the third Republic, he ought to protest: " The education that we give to the child of the people," he said, "is not a half education, it is the very flower and fruit of civilisation gathered during the centuries, from among many peoples, in the religions and legal systems of all ages and of all mankind." An ethic of this abstract kind must be entirely devoid of efficacy. I remember having read, in a manual by Paul Bert, that the fundamental principles of morahty are based on the teachings of Zoroaster, and the Constitution of the year III. These do not seem to me the kind of principles * This deputy had made a very anticlerical speech irom which I quote this curious idea that " the Jewish religion was the most clerical of all religions, possessing the most sectarian and narrowest type of clericalism." A little before this he said, "I mj'^elf am not an anti-Semite, and only make one reproach to the ]evrs, that of ha\Tng poisoned Aryan thought, so elevated and broad, with Hebraic monotheism." He demanded the introduction of the history of religions into the curriculum of the primary schools in order to ruin the authority of the Church. According to him the Socialist party saw in " the intellectual emancipation of the masses the necessary preface to the progress and social evolution of societies." Is it not rather the contrary which is true? Does not this speech prove that there is an anti-Semitism in free-thinking circles quite as narrow and badly informed as that of the clericals?
2^6 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE which would be powerful enough to influence a man's conduct.
It might be imagined that the University had arranged its present programme in the hope of imposing moral conduct on its pupils by means of the repetition of precepts; moral courses are multiplied to such an extent that one might ask oneself if (with a sHght difference) the weUknown verse of Boileau might not be appHed: Aimez-vous la muscade? On en a mis partout.* I do not think that there are many people who share the naive confidence of F. Buisson and the members of the University in this ethic. Exactly like Combes, G. de Molinari believes that it is necessary to have recourse to religion, which promises men a reward in the other world, and which is thus, " the surety of justice...It is religion which in the infancy of humanity, raised the edifice of morality; it is religion which supports and which alone can support it. Such are the functions which religion has filled and which it continues to fill and which, unpleasant as it may be to the apostles of independent morality, constitute its usefulness." ^ " We must look for help to a more powerful and more active instnunent than the interests of society, to effect those reforms demonstrated by political economy to be necessary, and this instrument can only be found in the religious sentiment associated with the sentiment of justice." ^ G. de Molinari expresses himself in intentionally vague terms; he seems to regard religion as do many modem Catholics (of the Bruneti^re type); that is, as a means of social Government, which must be suited to the needs of the different classes; people of the higher classes have always considered that they had less need of moral discipline than their subordinates, and it is by making this * So do like musk? It has been put everywhere. " G. de Molinari, Science et religion, p. 94. » G. de Molinari, op, cit. p. 198.
fine discovery the basis of their theology that the Jesuits have had so much success in contemporary middle classes. Our author distinguishes four motive forces capable of assuring the accompHshment of duty — "the power of society invested in the Governmental organism, the power of public opinion, the power of the individual conscience, and the power of reUgion "; and he considers that this spiritual mechanism perceptibly lags behind the material mechanism.^ The two first motive forces may have some influence on capitalists, but none in the workshop; for the workers the last two motive forces are alone effective, and they will become every day more important on account of " the growth of responsibihty in those who are charged with the direction and surveillance of the working of machinery/* ^ g^t according to Molinari we could not conceive the power of the individual conscience without that of religion.3 I believe, then, that G. de Molinari would be inclined to approve of the employers who protect religious institutions; he would only, however, like it done with a Uttle more circumspection than Chagot used at Monceaules Mines.* The Socialists for a long time have been greatly prejudiced against morality, on account of these CathoUc institutions that the large employers estabUshed for their workpeople. It seemed to them that, in our capitalist society, morality was only a means of assuring the docihty of workmen, who are kept in the fear created by superstition. The literature which the middle class have admired for so long describes conduct so outrageous, so scandalous even, that it is difficult to credit the rich 1 G. de Molinari, op. cit. p. 61.
' G. de Molinari, op. cit. p. 54.
» G. de Molinari, op. cit. pp. 87 and 93.
« I have already mentioned that in 1 883 Y. Guyot violently denounced the conduct of Chagot, who placed his workmen under the direction of the priests, and forced them to go to Mass {Morale, p. 183).
classes with sincerity when they speak of inculcating moraUty in the people.
The Marxists had a particular reason for showing themselves suspicious in all that concerned ethics; the propagators of social reforms, the Utopists and the democrats, had so abused the idea of Justice that it was only reasonable to consider all discussions on such a subject as an exercise in rhetoric, or as sophistry intended to mislead those who were interested in the working-class movement. This is why, several years ago, Rosa Luxemburg called the idea of Justice " this old post horse, on which all the regenerators of the world, deprived of surer means of locomotion, have ridden; this imgainly Rosinante, moimted on which so many Quixotes of history have gone in search of the great reform of the world, bringing back from these journeys nothing but black eyes." ^ From these sarcasms about a fantastic Justice springing from the imagination of Utopists, they often used to pass, too easily, to coarse f acetiousness about the most ordinary moraUty; ^ rather sordid selection could easily be made of paradoxes supported by the official Marxists on this subject. Lafargue distinguishes himself particularly from this point of view.'
The principal reason which prevented the Socialists from studying ethical problems as they deserved was the democratic superstition which has dominated them for so long and which has led them to beUeve that above everything else the aim of their actions must be the acqvdsition of seats in poUtical assemblies.
* Sec, for example, the Socialiste of June 30, 1901. " As in a communist society the morals which clogs the brains of the tivilised will have vanished like a frightful nightmare, perhaps to be replaced by another ethic, which will incite women to flutter about like butterflies, to use Ch. Fourier's expression, instead of submitting to being the property of a male...In savage tribes and among barbarous communists women are much more honoured when they distribute their favours to a great number of lovers."
From the moment one has anything to do with elections, it is necessary to submit to certain general conditions which impose themselves unavoidably on all parties in every country and at all times. If one is convinced that the future of the world depends on the electoral programme, on compromises between influential men and on the sale of privileges, it is not possible to pay much attention to the moral constraints which prevent a man going in the direction of his most obvious interests. Experience shows that in all countries where democracy can develop its nature freely, the most scandalous corruption is displayed without any one thinking it even necessary to conceal his rascality. Tammany Hall of New York has always been cited as the most perfect type of democratic life, and in the majority of our large to\\Tis politicians are found who ask for nothing better than to follow the paths of their confreres in America. So long as a man is faithful to his party he only commits peccadilloes, but if he is unwdse enough to abandon it, he is immediately discovered to have the most shameful vices. It would not be difficult to show, by means of well-known examples, that our Parliamentary Socialists practise this singular morality with a certain amount of cynicism.
There is a great resemblance between the electoral democracy and the Stock Exchange; in one case as in the other it is necessary to work upon the simplicity of the masses, to buy the co-operation of the most important papers, and to assist chance by an infinity of trickery. There is not a great deal of difference between a financier who puts big sounding concerns on the market which come to grief in a few years, and the politician who promises an infinity of reforms to the citizens which he does not know how to bring about, ^ and which resolve * On June 21, 1907, Clemenceau, replying to Millerand, told hira that in introducing the bill to establish old age pensions, without concerning himself with where the money was to come from, he had not themselves simply into an accumulation of Parliamentary papers. Neither one nor the other know anything about production, and yet they manage to obtain control over it, to misdirect and exploit it shamelessly; they are dazzled by the marvels of modem industry, and it is. their private opinion that the world is so rich that they can rob it on a large scale without causing any great outcry among the producers; the great art of the financier and the politician is to be able to bleed the taxpayer without bringing him to the point of revolt. Democrats and business men have quite a special science for the purpose of making the deUberative assemblies approve of their swindling; the ParUaments are as packed as shareholders' meetings. It is probable that they both imderstand each other as perfectly as they do because of prof oimd psychological affinities resulting from these methods of operation; democracy is the paradise of which unscrupulous financiers dream.
The disheartening spectacle presented to the world by these financial and political parasites ^ explains the success which anarchist writers have had for so long; these latter founded their hopes of the regeneration of the world on the intellectual progress of individuals; they never ceased urging the workmen to educate themselves, to realise more fully their dignity as men, and to show their devotion to their comrades. This attitude acted as " a statesman nor even as a responsible person." Millerand's reply is quite characteristic of the pride of the political parvenu: " Don't talk about things that you know nothing about." Of what then does he himself speak?
* I am pleased here to be able to support myself in the incontestable authority of Gerault-Richard who in the Petite Repuhlique on March 19, 1903, denounced the " intriguers, people who wish to get on at all costs, starvelings and ladies' men (who) are only after the spoils " and who at that time were trying to bring about the fall of the Combes ministry. From the following number we see that he is speaking of Waldeck-Rousseau's friends, who, like him, were opposed to the destruction of the congregations.
was imposed on them by their principles: in fact, how was the formation of a society of free men conceivable if it was not taken for granted that individuals had not already acquired the capacity of guiding themselves? Politicians assert that this is a very naive idea, and that the world will enjoy all the happiness it can desire on the day when messengers of the new Gospel are able to profit from the advantages that power procures; nothing will be impossible for a State which turns the editors of HumanitS into princes. If in that time it is considered useful to have free men, they will be manufactured by a few good laws; but it is doubtful if the friends and shareholders of Jaur^s will find that necessary; it will be sufficient for them if they have servants and taxpayers.
The new school is rapidly differentiating itself from official Socialism in recognising the necessity of the improvement of morals.^ It is thus customary for the dignitaries of Parliamentary Socialism to accuse it of anarchical tendencies; for my part, I should not object to acknowledge myself as an anarchist in this respect, since Parliamentary Socialism professes a contempt for morality equalled only by that which the vilest representatives of the stockbroking middle class have for it.
The new school also has sometimes been reproached with returning to the dreams of the Utopists. This criticism shows how much our adversaries misunderstand the works of the old Socialists as well as the present situation. The aim of the early Socialists was to build up ethical ideas capable of influencing the feelings of the upper classes, in such a way as to make them sympathise with those who in pity are called " the disinherited classes," and of inducing them to make some sacrifice in favour of their unfortunate brethren. The writers of * This is what Benedetto Croce pointed out in the Critica of July 17, 1907, PP- 317-319- This writer is well known in Italy as a remarkably acute critic and philosopher.
that time picture the manufactory of the future in a very different light from that which it may have in a society of proletarians carrying on industry in a technically progressive and inventive way; they suppose that it might resemble drawing-rooms in which ladies meet to do embroidery; in this way they gave a middle-class setting to the mechanism of production. Finally, they credited the proletariat with feelings closely resembling those which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers attributed to savages — goodness, simplicity, and an anxiety to imitate a superior race of men. With such hypotheses it was an easy matter to conceive an organisation of peace and happiness; it was only necessary to make the rich better and the poorer class more enlightened. These two operations seemed easily realisable, and then the fusion of the drawing-room and the factory, which has turned the heads of so many Utopists, would be brought about. ^ The *' new school *' never conceives things on an idyllic, Christian, and middle-class model; it knows that the process of production requires entirely different qualities from those met with in the upper classes; it is only on account of the moral qualities, which are necessary to improve production, that it deals so much with ethical questions.
The new school, then, resembles the economists much more than the Utopists; hke G. de Molinari, it considers that the moral progress of the proletariat is as necessary as material improvement in machinery, if modem industry is to be hfted to the increasingly higher levels that technical science allows it to attain; but it descends farther than this author does into the depths of this problem, and does not content itself with vague recommendations about religious duty.^ In its insatiable ^ In the New-Harmony colony founded by R. Owen the work done was little and bad, but amusements were abundant; in 1826 the Duke of Saxe-Weimar was dazzled by the music and the balls (Dolleans, Robert Owen, pp. 247-268).
» G. de Molinari appears to believe that a natural religion like that desire for reality, it tries to arrive at the real roots of this process of moral perfection and desires to know how to create to-day the ethic of the producers of the future.
II At the beginning of any research on modem ethics this question must be asked. Under what conditions is regeneration possible? The Marxists are absolutely right in laughing at the Utopists and in maintaining that morality is never created by mild preaching, by the ingenious constructions of theorists, or by fine gestures. Proudhon, having neglected this problem, suffered from many illusions about the persistence of the forces which gave life to his own ethics; experience was soon to prove that his imdertaking was to remain fruitless. And if the contemporary world does not contain the roots of a new ethic what will happen to it? The sighs of a whimpering middle class will not save it, if it has for ever lost its moraUty.
Very shortly before his death Renan was much engrossed with the ethical future of the world: " Moral values decline, that is a certainty, sacrifice has almost disappeared; one can see the day coming when everything will be syndicalised,^ when organised selfishness will take the place of love and devotion. There will be strange upheavals. The two things which alone until now have resisted the decay of reverence, the army * and the Church, will soon be swept away in the universal torrent. * ' ^ Renan showed a remarkable insight in writing this at the very of J. J. Rousseau or Robespierre would suflSce. We know to-day that such means have no moral efl&cacy.
1 Renan is complaining that the corporative associations dominate society too much. It is clear that he had none of the veneration for the corporative spirit that so many contemporary idealists display.
* He did not foresee that his son-in-law would agitate violently against the army in the Dreyfus affair.
moment when so many futile intellects were announcing the renascence of idealism and foreseeing progressive tendencies in a Church that was at length reconciled with the modem world. But all his life Renan had been too favoured by fortime not to be optimistic; he believed, therefore, that the evil of the future would consist simply in the necessity of passing through a bad period, and he added: "No matter, the resources of humanity are infinite. The eternal designs will be fulfilled, the springs of life ever forcing their way to the surface will never be dried up."
He had finished, several months before, the fifth volume of his History of the People of Israel, and this voliune, having been printed from the unaltered manuscript, contains a more imperfect expression of his ideas on this subject; (it is known that he corrected his proofs very carefully). We find in this the most gloomy presentiments; the author even questions whether humanity will ever attain Its real end. " If this globe should happen not to fulfil its purpose, there will be others to carry on to its final end the programme of all life — Light, Reason, and Truth." ^ The times to come frightened him. " The immediate future is dark. The triumph of Light is not assured." He dreaded SociaUsm, and there is no doubt that by Socialism he meant the humanitarian idiocy which he saw emerging in the stupid middle-class world; it was, in this way, that he came to think that Catholicism might perhaps be the accomplice of Socialism. ^ On the same page he speaks of the divisions which may exist in a society, and this is of considerable importance. " Judea and the Greco-Roman world were like two imiverses revolving one beside the other under opposing influences...The history of humanity by no means synchronises in its various parts. Tremble! At this * Renan, Histoire du peuple d' Israel, vol. v. p. 421. * Renan, Iqc. cit. p. 42a.
moment perhaps the religion of the future is being created...and we have no part in it. I envy wise Kimri who saw beneath the earth. It is there that everything is prepared, it is there that we must look." There is in these words nothing that the theorists of the classwar could not approve of; in them I find the commentary to what Renan said a little later on the subject of " the springs of life ever forcing their way to the surface '*; regeneration is being brought about by a class which works subterraneously, and which is separating itself from the modem world as Judaism did from the ancient world.
Whatever the official sociologists may think, the lower classes are by no means condemned to live on the cnunbs which the upper classes let fall; we are glad to see Renan protest against this imbecile doctrine. Syndicalism claims to create a real proletarian ideology, and whatever the middle-class professors say of it, historical experience, as proclaimed by the mouth of Renan, tells us that this is quite possible, and that out of it may come the salvation of the world. The syndicalist movement is really being developed underground; the men who devote themselves to it do not make much noise in the world; what a difference between them and the former leaders of democracy, whose sole aim was the conquest of power!
These men were intoxicated by the hope that the chances of life might some day make them republican princes. While waiting for the wheel of fortune to turn to their advantage in this way, they obtained the moral and material advantages that celebrity procures for all virtuosi, in a society which is accustomed to paying well those who amuse it. The chief motive force behind many of them was their immeasurable pride, and they fancied that, as their name was bound to shine with singular brilliancy in the annals of humanity, they might buy that future glory by a few sacrifices.
None of these motives for action exist for the SyndicaUsts of to-day; the proletariat has none of the servile instincts of democracy; it no longer aspires to walk on all fours before a former comrade who has become a chief magistrate, or to swoon for joy before the toilettes of ministers' wives.* The men who devote themselves to the revolutionary cause know that they must always remain poor. They carry on their work of organisation without attracting attention, and the meanest hack who scribbles for L'Humanite is much better known than the miUtants of the Confederation du Travail;^ for the great majority of the French public, Griffuelhes will never have the notoriety of Rouanet;^ and in the absence of the material advantages, which they could hardly expect, they have not even the satisfaction that celebrity can give. Putting their whole trust in the movements of the masses, they have no * The essence of democracy is concentrated in the wo/ attributed to Mme. Flocon. "It is we who are the princesses." The democracy is happy when it sees a ridiculous creature like F61ix Faure, whom Joseph Reinach compared to the bourgeois gentilhomme, treated with princely honours {Histoire de I' affaire Dreyfus, vol. iv. p. 552).
* Parliamentary Socialism is very keen on good manners, as we can assure ourselves by consulting Gerault-Richard's numerous articles. I quote at random several specimens. On June i, 1903, he declared in the Petite Ripublique that Queen Nathalie of Servia should have been called to order " for having listened to the preaching of P. Coube at Aubervilles, and he demands that she be admonished by the police commissary of her district." On September 26 he is roused to indignation by the coarseness and the ignorance of good manners exhibited by Admiral Marechal. The socialist code has its mysteries; the wives of socialists are sometimes called ladies and sometimes citizenesses; in the society of the future there will evidently be disputes about the order of precedence as there were at Versailles. On July 30, 1903, Cassagnac makes great fun in the A utorite of his having been taken to task by Gerault-Richaurd, who had given him lessons in good manners.
* Griffuelhes, who had been a shoemaker, was at one time secretary of the Confederation du Travail; he was remarkably intelUgent; cf. a pamphlet by him entitled Voyage revolutionnaire.
[Rouanet was Malon's principal disciple; he was for some time a deputy, very much opposed to the Marxists, naturally a great adversary of the Confederation du Travail, a type of socialist politician who occupies a considerable place in journalism and in Parliament, but who does not count at all intellectually. — Trans.]
expectation of a Napoleonic glory, and they leave the superstition of great men to the middle classes.
It is well that it is so, because the proletariat will be able to develop itself much more surely if it organises itself in obscurity; Socialist politicians shun occupations which do not provide celebrity (and which are consequently not profitable); they are, then, not at all disposed to trouble themselves with the work of the syndicates, the object of which is to remain proletarian; they make a show on the Parliamentary stage, but that, as a rule, does not amount to much. The men who do participate in the real working-class movement are an example of what have always been looked upon as the greatest virtues; they cannot, in fact, acquire any of those things which the middle classes regard as especially desirable. If, then, as Renan asserts,^ history rewards the resigned abnegation of men who strive uncomplainingly, and who accomplish, without profit, a great historical work, we have a new reason for believing in the advent of Socialism, since it represents the highest moral ideal ever conceived by man. This time it is not a new religion which is shaping itself imderground, without the help of the middle-class thinkers, it is the birth of a virtue, a virtue which the middle-class Intellectuals are incapable of understanding, a virtue which has the power to save civilisation, as Renan hoped it would be saved — but by the total elimination of the class to which Renan belonged.