Let us now consider closely the reasons which made Renan dread a decadence of the middle-class; ^ he was 1 Renan, op. cit. vol. iv. p. 267.
* Renan pointed out one symptom of decadence, on which he did not insist enough and which does not seem to have particularly impressed his readers; he was irritated by the restlessness, the claims to originality, and the naive rivalry of the young metaphysicians: " But, my dear fellows, it is useless to give oneself so much headache, merely to change from one error to another" {Feuilles detachces, p. 10). A restlessness of this kind (which puts on nowadays a sociological, socialist, or humanitarian air) is a sure sign of anaemia.
struck by the decay of religious ideas: "An immense moral, and perhaps intellectual, degeneracy will follow the disappearance of religion from the world. We, at the present day, can dispense with religion, because others have it for us. Those who do not believe are carried along by the more or less beUeving majority; but on the day when the majority lose this impulse, the men of spirit themselves will go feebly to the attack." It is the absence of the sentiment of sublimity which Renan dreaded; like all old people in their days of sadness, he thinks of his childhood, and adds, '' Man is of value in proportion to the religious sentiment which he preserves from his first education and which colours his whole life." He himself had lived all his life under the influence of the sentiment of sublimity inculcated in him by his mother; we know, in fact, that Madame Renan was a woman of lofty character. But the source of sublimity is dried up: " Religious people live on a shadow. We live on the shadow of a shadow. On what will those who come after us live? " ^ Renan, as was his wont, tried to mitigate the gloom of the outlook which his perspicacity presented to him; he is like many other French writers who, wishing to please a frivolous public, never dare to go to the bottom of the problems that life presents; ^ he does not wish to frighten his amiable lady admirers, so he adds, therefore, that it is not necessary to have a religion burdened with dogmas, such a religion, for example, as Christianity; the religious sentiment should suffice. Since Renan, there has been no lack of chatter about this vague religious sentiment which " should suffice " to replace the positive 1 Renan, Feuilles detachees, pp. 17-18.
* Bruneti^re addressed this reproach to. French literature: " If you wish to know why Racine or Moh^re, for example, never attained the depth we find in a Shakespeare or a Goethe...cherchez la femme, and you will find that the defect is due to the influence of the salons, and of women " {^volution des genres, 3rd edition, p. 128).
religions which are coming to grief. F. Buisson informs us that " no religious doctrines will survive, but only religious emotions, which, far from contradicting either science, art, or morality, will steep them in a feeling of profound harmony with the life of the Universe/' ^ This, unless I am unable to see beyond my nose, is the merest balderdash.
" On what will those who come after us live? " This is the great problem posed by Renan and which the middle classes will never be able to solve. If any doubt is possible on this point, the stupidities uttered by the ofl&cial moralists would show that the decadence is henceforth fatal. Speculations on the harmony of the Universe (even when the Universe is personified) are not the kind of thing which will give men that courage which Renan compared to that of the soldier in the moment of attack. Sublimity is dead in the middle classes, and they are doomed to possess no ethic in the future.^ The winding-up of the Dreyfus affair, which the Dreyfusards, to the great indignation of Colonel Picquart,' knew how to put to such good account, has shown that middle-class sublimity is a Stock Exchange asset. All the intellectual and moral defects of a class tainted with folly showed themselves in that affair.
* Questions de morale (lectures given by several professors) in the Bibliothdque des sciences sociales, p. 328.
* I must call attention to the extraordinary prudence shown by Ribot in his Psychologie des sentiments in dealing with the evolution of morality; it might have been expected that, on the analogy of the other sentiments, he would have come to the conclusion that there was an evolution towards a purely intellectual state and to the disappearance of its efficacy; but has not dared to draw this conclusion for morality as he did for religion.
* I refer to an article published in the Gazette de Lausanne, April 2, 1906, from which the Libre Parole gave a fairly long extract (cf. Joseph Reinach, op. cit. vol. vi. p. 36). Several months after I had written these lines Picquart was himself the object of exceptionally favourable treatment; he had been conquered by the fatalities of Parisian life, which have ruined stronger men than he.
III III Before examining what qualities the modern industrial system requires of free producers, we must analyse the component parts of morality. The philosophers always have a certain amount of difficulty in seeing clearly into these ethical problems, because they feel the impossibility of harmonising the ideas which are current at a given time in a class, and yet imagine it to be their duty to reduce everything to a unity. To conceal from themselves the fimdamental heterogeneity of all this civilised morality, they have recourse to a great number of subterfuges, sometimes relegating to the rank of exceptions, importations, or survivals, everything which embarrasses them — sometimes drowning reality in an ocean of vague phrases and, most often, employing both methods the better to obscure the problem. My view, on the contrary, is that the best way of understanding any group of ideas in the history of thought is to bring all the contradictions into sharp relief I shall adopt this method and take for a starting-point the celebrated opposition which Nietzsche has established between two groups of moral values, an opposition about which much has been written, but which has never been properly studied.
A. We know with what force Nietzsche praised the values constructed by the masters, by a superior class of warriors who, in their expeditions, enjoying to the full freedom from all social constraint, retiun to the simpHcity of mind of a wild beast, become once more triimiphant monsters who continually bring to mind " the superb blond beast, prowling in search of prey and bloodshed," in whom " a basis of hidden bestiality needs from time to time a purgative." To understand this thesis properly, we must not attach too much importance to formulas which have at times been intentionally exaggerated, but should examine the historical facts; the author tells us that he has in mind " the aristocracy of Rome, Arabia, Germany, and Japan, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian vikings."
It is chiefly the Homeric heroes that we must bear in mind in order to understand what Nietzsche wished to make clear to his contemporaries. We must remember that he had been professor of Greek at the University of Bale, and that his reputation began with a book devoted to the glorification of the Hellenic genius {The Origin of Tragedy). He notices that, even at the period of their highest culture, the Greeks still preserved a memory of their former character of masters. " Our daring," said Pericles, " has traced a path over earth and sea, raising everywhere imperishable monuments both of good and evil." It Was of the heroes of Greek legend and history that he was thinking when he speaks of " that audacity of noble races, that mad, absurd, and spontaneous audacity, their indifference and contempt for all security of the body, for Hfe, for comfort." Does not *' the terrible gaiety and the profound joy which the heroes tasted in destruction, in all the pleasures of victory and of cruelty," apply particularly to Achilles? ^ It was certainly to the type of classic Greek that Nietzsche alluded when he wrote " the moral judgments of the warrior aristocracy are foimded on a powerful bodily constitution, a flourishing health without forgetfulness of what was necessary to the maintenance of that overflowing vigour — war, adventure, hunting, dancing, games, and physical exercises, in short, everything implied by a robust, free, and joyful activity." ^ That very ancient type, the Achaean type celebrated by Homer, is not simply a memory; it has several times reappeared in the world. " During the Renaissance there was a superb reawakening of the classic ideal of the » Nietzsche, Genicdogie de la moral, trad, frang., pp. 57-59. * Nietzsche, op. cit. p. 43.
aristocratic valuation of all things; and after the Revolution " the most prodigious and unexpected event came to pass, the antique ideal stood in person with unwonted splendour before the eyes and consciousness of hmnanity...(Then) appeared Napoleon, isolated and belated example though he was." ^ I beUeve that if the professor of philology had not been continually cropping up in Nietzsche he would have perceived that the master type still exists under our own eyes, and that it is this type which, at the present time, has created the extraordinary greatness of the United States. He would have been struck by the singular analogies which exist between the Yankee, ready for any kind of enterprise, and the ancient Greek sailor, sometimes a pirate, sometimes a colonist or merchant; above all, he would have established a parallel between the ancient heroes and the man who sets out on the conquest of the Far West.* P. de Rousiers has described the master type admirably. " To become and to remain an American, one must look upon life as a struggle and not as a pleasure, and seek in it, victorious effort, energetic and efficacious action, rather than pleasure, leisure embellished by the cultivation of the arts, the refinements proper to other societies. Everywhere— we have seen that what makes the American succeed, what constitutes his type — is character, personal energy, energy in action, creative energy.'* ^ The profoimd contempt which the Greek had for the Barbarian is matched by that of the Yankee for the foreign worker who makes no effort to become truly American. " Many of these people would be better if we took them in hand," * Nietzsche, op. cit. pp. 78-80.
* P. de Rousiers observes that everywhere in America approximately the same social environment is found, and the same type of men at the head of big businesses; but "it is in the West that the quahties and defects of this extraordinary people manifest themselves with the greatest energy \...it is there that the key to the whole social system is to be found " {La Vie amiricaine: ranches, fermes, et usines, pp. 8-9; cf. p. 261).
» De Rousiers, La Vie amiricaine: Education et la sociiti, p. 325.
an old colonel of the War of Secession said to a French traveller, but we are a proud race; a shopkeeper of Pottsville spoke of the Pennsylvania miners as " the senseless populace." ^ J. Bourdeau has drawn attention to the strange likeness which exists between the ideas of A. Carnegie and Roosevelt, and those of Nietzsche, the first deploring the waste of money involved in maintaining incapables, the second urging the Americans to becoming conquerors, a race of prey.^ I am not among those who consider Homer's Achaean type, the indomitable hero confident in his strength and putting himself above rules, as necessarily disappearing in the future. If it has often been believed that the t3^e was bound to disappear, that was because the Homeric values were imagined to be irreconcilable with the other values which spring from an entirely different principle; Nietzsche committed this error, which all those who believe in the necessity of unity in thought are bound to make. It is quite evident that liberty would be seriously compromised if men came to regard the Homeric values (which are approximate the same as the Cornelian values) as suitable only to barbaric peoples. Many moral evils would for ever remain unremedied if some hero of revolt did not force the people to become aware of their own state of mind on the subject. And art, which is after all of some value, would lose the finest jewel in its crown.
The philosophers are little disposed to admit the right of art to support the cult of the " will to power "; it seems to them that they ought to give lessons to artists, instead ?
1 De Rousiers, La Vie arnericaine: ranches, fermes, et usines, pp. 303- * J. Bourdeau, Les Maitres de la pensie contetnporaine, p. 145. The author informs us on the other hand that " Jaur6s greatly astonished the people of Geneva by revealing to them that the hero of Nietzsche, the superman, was nothing else but the proletariat " (p. 139). I have not been able to get any information about this lecture of Jaurds; let us hope that he will some day publish it, for our amusement.
of receiving lessons from them; they think that only those sentiments which have received the stamp of the Universities have the right to manifest themselves in poetry. Like industry, art has never adapted itself to the demands of theorists; it always upsets their plans of social harmony, and humanity has found the freedom of art far too satisfactory ever to think of allowing it to be controlled by the creators of dull systems of sociology. The Marxists are accustomed to seeing the ideologists look at things the wrong way round, and so, in contrast to their enemies, they should look upon art as a reality which begets ideas and not as an application of ideas.
B. To the values created by the master type, Nietzsche opposed the system constructed by sacerdotal castes — the ascetic ideal against which he has piled up so much invective. The history of these values is much more obscure and complicated than that of the preceding ones. Nietzsche tries to connect the origin of asceticism with psychological reasons which I will not examine here. He certainly makes a mistake in attributing a preponderating part to the Jews. It is not at all evident that antique Judaism had an ascetic character; doubtless, like the other Semitic religions, it attached importance to pilgrimages, fasts, and prayers recited in ragged clothes. The Hebrew poets sang the hope of revenge which existed in the heart of the persecuted, but, until the second century of our era, the Jews looked to be revenged by arms: ^ on the other hand, family life, with them, was too strong for the monkish ideal ever to become important.
Imbued with Christianity as our civilisation may be, it is none the less evident that, even in the Middle Ages, it submitted to influences foreign to the Church, with the result that the old ascetic values were gradually transformed. The values to which the contemporary * It is always necessary to remember that the resigned Jew of the Middle Ages was more like the Christians than his ancestprs.
world clings most closely, and which it considers the true ethical values, are not realised in convents, but in the family; respect for the human person, sexual fidelity and devotion to the weak, constitute the elements of morality of which all high - minded men are proud; morality, even, is very often made to consist of these alone.
When we examine in a critical spirit the numerous writings which treat, to-day, of marriage, we see that the reformers who are in earnest propose to improve family relations in such a way as to assure the better realisation of these ethical values; thus, they demand that the scandals of conjugal life shall not be exposed in the law courts, that unions shall not be maintained when fidelity no longer exists, and that the authority of the head of the family shall not be diverted from its moral purpose to become mere exploitation, etc.
On the other hand, it is curious to observe to what extent the modem Church misunderstands the values that classico-Christian civilisation has produced. It sees in marriage, above all, a contract directed by financial and worldly interests; it is unwilling to allow of the union being dissolved when the household is a hell, and takes no account of the duty of devotion.^ The priests are wonderfully skilful in procuring rich dowries for impoverished nobles, so much so, indeed, that the Church has been accused of considering marriage as a mating of noblemen living as " bullies " with middle-class women reduced to the role of the women who support such men. When it is ^heavily recompensed, the Church finds unexpected reasons for divorce, and finds means of annulling inconvenient unions for ridiculous motives. Proudhon asks ironically: " Is it possible for a responsible man of a serious turn of mind and a true Christian to care for the love of his wife?...If the husband seeking divorce, or the wife seeking separation, alleges the refusal of the * Epistle to the Ephesians, v. 25-31.
conjugal fight, then, of course, there is a legitimate reason for a rupture, for the service for which the marriage is granted has not been carried out." ^ Our civilisation having come to consider nearly all morality as consisting of values derived from those observed in the normally constituted family, two serious consequences have been produced: (i) it has been asked if, instead of considering the family as an application of moral theories, it would not be more exact to say that it is the base of these theories; (2) it seems that the Church, having become incompetent on matters connected with sexual union, must also be incompetent as regards morality. These are precisely the conclusions to which Proudhon came. " Sexual duality was created by Nature to be the instnmient of Justice...To produce Justice is the higher aim of the bisexual division; generation, and what follows from it, only figure here as accessory." ^ " Marriage, both in principle and in purpose, being the instrument of human right, and the living negation of the divine right, is thus in formal contradiction with theology and the Church." 3 Love, by the enthusiasm it begets, can produce that sublimity without which there would be no effective morality. At the end of his book on Justice, Proudhon has written pages, which will never be surpassed, on the role of women.
C. Finally we have to examine the values which escape * Proudhon is alluding sarcastically to the frequently very comic nullifications of marriage, pronounced by the Roman coiu-ts, for physiological reasons. Proudhon, op. cit. vol. vi. p. 39. We know that the theologians do not Hke curious people to consult ecclesiastical writings about conjugal duty and the legitimate method of fulfilling it.
« Proudhon, he. cit. p. 212.
* Proudhon, (Euvres, vol. xx. p. 169. This is extracted from the memoir he wrote in his own defence, after he had been condemned to three years in prison for his book on Justice. It is worth while noting that Proudhon was accused of attacking marriage! This affair is one of the shameful acts which dishonoured the Church in the reign of Napoleon III.
Nietzsche's classification an^ which treat of civil relations. Originally magic was much mixed up in the evaluation of these values; among the Jews, until recent times, one finds a mixture of hygienic principles, rules about sexual relationships, precepts about honesty, benevolence and national solidarity, the whole wrapped up in magical superstitions; this mixture, which seems strange to the philosopher, had the happiest influence on their morality so long as they maintained their traditional mode of Uving, and one notices among them even now a particular exactitude in the carrying out of contracts.
The ideas held by modern ethical writers are drawn mainly from those of Greece in its time of decadence; Aristotle, living in a period of transition, combined ancient values with values that, as time went on, were to prevail; war and production had ceased to occupy the attention of the most distinguished men of the towns, who sought, on the contrary, to secure an easy existence for themselves; the most important thing was the establishment of friendly relations between the better educated men of the commimity, and the fundamental maxim was that of the golden mean. The new morality was to be acquired principally by means of the habits which the young Greek would pick up in mixing with cultivated people. It may be said that here we are on the level of an ethic adapted to consumers; it is not astonishing then that Catholic theologians still find Aristotle's ethics an excellent one, for they themselves take the consumer's point of view.
In the civilisation of antiquity, the ethics of producers could hardly be any other than that of slave-owners, and it did not seem worth developing at length, at the time when philosophy made an inventory of Greek customs. Aristotle said that no far-reaching science was needed to employ slaves: " For the master need only know how to order what the slaves must know how to execute. So, as soon as a man can save himself this trouble, he leaves it in the charge of a steward, so as to be himself free for a political or philosophical life." ^ A little farther on he wrote: '* It is manifest, then, that the master ought to be the source of excellence in the slave; but not merely because he possesses the art which trains him in his duties." 2 This clearly expresses the point of view of the urban consumer, who finds it very tiresome to be obUged to pay any attention whatever to the conditions of production.^ As to the slave, he needs very limited virtues. " He only needs enough to prevent him neglecting his work through intemperance or idleness." He should be treated with " more indulgence even than children," although certain people consider that slaves are deprived of reason and are only fit to receive orders.* It is quite easy to see that during a considerable period the modems also did not think that there was anything more to be said about workers than Aristotle had said; they must be given orders, corrected with gentleness, like children, and treated as passive instnunents who do not need to think. Revolutionary Syndicalism would be impossible if the world of the workers were under the * Aristotle, Politics, book L chap. vii. 4-5.
* Aristotle, op. cit. book i. chap. v. 13, 14, * Xenophon, who represents in everything a conception of Greek life very much earlier than the time in which he lived, discusses the proper method of training an overseer for a farm {Economics, pp. 12-14). Marx remarks that Xenophon speaks of the division of labour in the workshop, and that appears to him to show a middle-class instinct {Capital, vol. i. p. 159, col. i); I myself think that it characterises an observer who understood the importance of production, an importance of which Plato had no comprehension. In the Memorabilia (book ii. p. 7) Socrates advises a citizen who had to look after a large family, to set up a workshop with the family; J. Flach supposes that this was something new {Legon du ig* avril igoy): it seems to me to be rather a return to more ancient Customs. The historians of philosophy appear to me to have been very hostile to Xenophon because he is too much oi an old Greek. Plato suits them much better since he is more of an aristocrat, and consequently more detached from production.
* Aristotle, op. cit. book L chap. v. 9 and 11.
influence of such a morality of the weak. State Socialism, on the contrary, could accommodate itself to this morality perfectly well, since the latter is based on the idea of a society divided into a class of producers and a class of thinkers applying results of scientific investigation to the work of production. The only difference which would exist between this sham Socialism and Capitalism would consist in the employment of more ingenious methods of procuring discipline in the workshop.
At the present moment, officials of the Bloc are working to create a kind of ethical discipline which will replace the hazy religion which G. de Molinari thinks necessary to the successful working of capitalism. It is perfectly clear, in fact, that religion is daily losing its efficacy with the people; something else must be found, if the intellectuals are to be provided with the means of living on the margin of production.
IV IV The problem that we shall now try to solve is the most difficult of all those which a SociaHst writer can touch upon. We are about to ask how it is possible to conceive the transformation of the men of to-day into the free producers of to-morrow working in manufactories where there are no masters. The question must be stated accurately; we must state it, not for a world which has already arrived at Socialism, but solely for our own time and for the preparation of the transition from one world to the other; if we do not limit the question in this way, we shall find ourselves sti:a3mig into Utopias.
Kautsky has given a great deal of attention to the question of the conditions immediately following a social revolution; the solution he proposes seems to me quite as feeble as that of G. de Molinari. If the syndicates of to-day are strong enough to induce the workmen of to-day T 2So /REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE to abandon their workshops and to submit to great sacrifices, during the strikes kept up against the capitalists, he thinks that they will then doubtless be strong enough to bring the workmen back to the workshops, and to obtain good and regular work from them, when once they see that this work is necessary for the general good.^ Kautsky, however, does not seem to feel much confidence in the value of his own solution.
Evidently no comparison can be made between the kind of discipline which forces a general stoppage of work on the men and that which will induce them to handle machinery with greater skill. The error springs from the fact that Kautsky is more of a theorist than he is a disciple of Marx; he loves reasoning about abstractions and believes that he has brought a question nearer to solution when he manages to produce a phrase with a scientific appearance; the underlying reality interests him less than its academic presentment. Many others have committed the same error, led astray by the different meanings of the word discipline, which may be applied both to regular conduct founded on the deepest feelings of the soul or to a merely external restraint.
The history of ancient corporations furnishes us with no really useful information on this subject; they do not seem to have had any effect whatever in promoting any kind of improvement, or invention in technical matters; it would seem rather that they served to protect routine. If we examine English Trade Unionism closely, we find that it also is strongly imbued with this industrial routine springing from the corporative spirit.
Nor can the examples of democracy throw any light on the question. Work conducted democratically would be regulated ty resolutions, inspected by police, and subject to the sanction of tribunals dealing out rewards or imprisonment. The discipline would be an exterior * Karl Kautsky, La Rivolution sociale, French translation, p. 153.
compulsion closely analogous to that which now exists in the capitalist workshops; but it would probably be still more arbitrary because the committee would always have their eye on the next elections.^ When one thinks of the pecuHarities found in judgments in penal cases one feels convinced that repression would be exercised in a very unsatisfactory way. It seems to be generally agreed that light offences cannot be satisfactorily dealt with in law courts, when hampered by the rules of a strict legal system; the establishment of administrative councils to decide on the future of children has often been suggested; in Belgium mendicity is subject to an administrative arbitration which may be compared to the ** police des moeurs "; it is well known that this police, in spite of innumerable complaints, continues to be almost supreme in France. It is very noticeable that administrative intervention in the case of important crimes is continually increasing. Since the power of mitigating or even of suppressing penalties is being more and more handed over to the heads of penal establishments^ doctors and sociologists speak in favour of this system, which tends to give the police as important a function as they had under the ancien regime. Experience shows that the discipline of the capitalist workshops is greatly superior to that maintained by the pohce, so that one does not see how it would be possible to improve capitalist discipline by means of the methods which democracy would have at its dispos2d.* I think that there is one good point, however, in 1 The managers of manufactories would constantly be busying themselves with how to ensure the success of the government party at the next election. They would be very indulgent to workmen who were influential speakers, and very hard on men suspected of lack of electoral zeal.
» We might ask if the ideal of the relatively honest and enlightened democrats is not at the present moment the discipline of the capitalist workshop. The increase of the power given to the mayors and State governors in America seems to me to be a sign of this tendency.
Kautsky's hypothesis; he seems to have been aware that the motive force of the revolutionary movement must also be the motive force of the ethic of the producers; that is a view quite in conformity with Marxist principles, but the idea must be applied in quite a different way from that in which he applied it. It must not be thought that the action of the syndicates on work is direct, as he supposes; this influence of the syndicates on labour should result from complex and sometimes distant causes, acting on the general character of the workers rather than from a qu£Lsi-mihtary organisation. This is what I try to show by analysing some of the quaUties of the best workmen.
A satisfactory result can be arrived at, by starting from the curious analogies which exist between the most remarkable qualities of the soldiers who took part in the wars of Liberty, the qualities which engendered the propaganda in favour of the general strike, ajid those that will be required of a free worker in a highly progressive state of society. I beUeve that these analogies constitute a new (and perhaps decisive) proof, in favour of revolutionary S5mdicaUsm.
In the wars of Liberty each soldier considered himself as an individual having something of importance to do in the battle, instead of looking upon himself as simply one part of the military mechanism committed to the supreme direction of a leader. In the hterature of those times one is struck by the frequency with which the free men of the republican armies are contrasted with the automatons of the royal armies; this was no mere figure of rhetoric employed by the French writers; I have convinced myself as a result of a thorough first-hand study of one of the wars of that time, that these terms corresponded perfectly to the actual feelings of the soldiers.
Battles under these conditions could, then, no longer be hkened to ^ames of chess in which each man is comparable to a pawn; they became collections of heroic