IV.
If the coming Revolution is to be a Social Revolution it will be distinguished from all former uprisings not only by its aim, but also by its methods. To attain a new end new means are required.
The three great popular movements which we have seen in France, during the last hundred years, differ from each other in many ways, but they have one common feature.
In each case, the people strove to overturn the old régime, and spent their heart's-blood for the cause. Then, after having borne the brunt of the battle, they sank again into obscurity. A government, composed of men more or less honest, was formed and undertook to organise—the Republic in 1793, Labor in 1848, and the Free Commune in 1871.
This government was filled with Jacobin ideas, and concerned almost exclusively with political questions, such as the reorganisation of the machinery of government, the purifying of the administration, the separation of Church and State, civic liberty and such matters. It is true the workmen's clubs kept an eye on the members of the new government, and often imposed their ideas on them. But even in these clubs, whether the leaders belonged to the middle or to the working classes, it was always middle-class ideas which prevailed. They discussed various political questions at great length, but forgot to discuss the question of bread.
At such times great ideas sprang up, ideas that have moved the world; words were spoken which still stir our hearts, at the interval of a century. But the people were starving in the streets.
From the very commencement of the Revolution industry stopped of necessity, the circulation of produce was checked, and capital was withdrawn. The master—the employer—had nothing to fear at such times, he battened on his dividends, if indeed he did not speculate on the wretchedness around; but the wage-earner was reduced to live from hand to mouth. Wane knocked at the door.
Famine was abroad in the land—such famine as had hardly been seen under the old régime.
"The Girondists are starving us!" was the cry in the workmen's quarters in 1793, and thereupon the Girondists were guillotined, and full powers were given to "the Mountain" and to the Commune. The Commune indeed concerned itself with the question of bread, and made heroic efforts to feed Paris. At Lyons, Fouché and Collot d'Herbois established plenty of granaries, but the sums spent on filling them were woefully insufficient. The town-councils made great efforts to procure corn; the bakers who bearded flour were hanged—and still the people lacked bread.
Then they turned on the royalist conspirators and laid the blame at their door. They guillotined a dozen or fifteen a day—servants and duchesses alike, especially servants, for the duchesses had gone to Coblentz. But if they had guillotined a hundred dukes and viscounts a day it would have been equally futile.
The want only grew. For the wage-earner cannot live without his wage, and the wage was not forthcoming. What difference could a thousand corpses more or less make to him?
Then the people began to grow weary. "So much for your vaunted Revolution! You are more wretched than ever before," whispered the reactionary in the ears of the worker. And little by little the rich took courage, emerged from their hiding-places, and flaunted their luxury in the face of the starving multitude. They pranked themselves out in fantastic fashions, and bade the worker have done with his folly—with this Revolution which had left him worse off than before. "It is time to make an end," they said.
Sick at heart and weary of patience in vain, the revolutionary had at last to admit to himself that the cause was lost once more. He retreated into his hovel and awaited the worst.
Then Conservatism returned with flying colours. The political right-about-face was accomplished. The Revolution was dead. Nothing remained now but to spurn its corpse and trample it under foot.
The White Terror began. Blood flowed like water, the guillotine was never idle, the prisons were crowded, while the pageant of rank and fashion resumed its old course, and went on merrily as before.
That picture is typical of all our revolutions. In 1848 the workers of Paris placed "three months of starvation" at the service of the Republic, and then, having reached the limit of their powers, they made one last desperate effort—an effort which was drowned in blood. In 1871 the Commune perished for lack of combatants. It had taken measures for the separation of Church and State, but it neglected, alas, until too late, to take measures for providing the people with bread. And so it came to pass in Paris that exquisites and fine gentlemen could spurn the confederates, and bid them go sell their lives for a miserable pittance, and leave their "betters" to feast at their ease in fashionable restaurants.
At last the Commune saw its mistake, and opened communal kitchens. But it was too late. Its days were already numbered, and the troops of Versailles were on the ramparts.
"Bread, it is bread that the Revolution needs!"
Let others spend their time in issuing pompous proclamations, in decorating themselves lavishly with official gold lace, and in ranting about political liberty! …
Be it ours to see, from the first day of the Revolution to the last, in all the provinces fighting for freedom, that there is not a single man who lacks bread, not a single woman compelled to stand with the weariful crowd outside the bakehouse-door, that haply a coarse loaf may be thrown to her in charity, not a single child pining for want of food.
It has always been the middle-class idea to harangue about "great principles"—great lies rather!
The idea of the people will be to provide bread for all. And while middle-class citizens and workmen infested with middle-class ideas admire their own rhetoric in the "Talking Shops," and "practical people" are engaged in endless discussions on forms of government, we, the "Utopian dreamers"—we must consider the question of daily bread.
We have the temerity to declare that all have a right to bread, that there is bread enough for all, and that with this watchword of Bread far All the Revolution will triumph.