Reflections on Violence/Chapter 7

by Georges Sorel

CHAPTER VII

THE ETHICS OF THE PRODUCERS

  I. Morality and religion—Contempt of democracies for morality—Ethical preoccupations of the "new school."

 II. Renan's uneasiness about the future of the world—His conjectures—The need of the sublime.

III. Nietzsche's ethics—The rôle of the family in the genesis of morality; Proudhon's theory—The ethics of Aristotle.

 IV. Kautsky's hypothesis—Analogies between the spirit of the general strike and that of the wars of Liberty—Fear inspired in the Parliamentarians by this spirit.

  V. The artisan employed in progressive and inventive production, the artist and the soldier in the wars of Liberty: desire to surpass previous models; care for exactitude; abandonment of the idea of exact recompense.

I

Fifty years ago Proudhon pointed out the necessity of giving the people a morality which would fit new needs. The first chapter of the preliminary discourses placed at the beginning of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church is entitled "The State of Morals in the Nineteenth Century. Invasion of moral scepticism; society in danger. What is the remedy?" There one reads these noteworthy sentences: "France has lost its morals. Not that, as a matter of fact, the men of our generation are worse than their fathers. … When I say that France has lost its morals I mean that it has ceased to believe in the very principles of morality, a very different thing. She has no longer moral intelligence 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 reality arbitrary."^[1]

However, he did not think that contemporary society was mortally wounded; he believed that since the Revolution, humanity 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 fundamental idea of contemporary official Socialism, which sneers at morality. "This juridical faith … this science of right and duty, which we seek everywhere in vain, that the Church has never possessed, and without which it is impossible for us to live, 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 infidelity to ourselves that makes our moral poverty and servitude."^[2] He 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 towards 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."^[3] 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^[4] 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?"^[5]

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 morality absolutely free from all religious belief) seems very uncertain to many of our contemporaries. I find a proof of this way of thinking in a speech by Combes delivered during a discussion of the budget of Public 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,^[6] 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 own; 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 morality are based on the teachings of Zoroaster, and the Constitution of the year III. These do not seem to me the kind of principles 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 slight difference) the well-known verse of Boileau might not be applied:

Aimez-vous la muscade? On en a mis partout.^[7]

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."^[8] "We must look for help to a more powerful and more active instrument 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."^[9]

G. de Molinari expresses himself in intentionally vague terms; he seems to regard religion as do many modern Catholics (of the Brunetière 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 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 accomplishment 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 religion"; and he considers that this spiritual mechanism perceptibly lags behind the material mechanism.^[10] 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 responsibility in those who are charged with the direction and surveillance of the working of machinery."^[11] Vut according to Molinari we could not conceive the power of the individual conscience without that of religion.^[12]

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 little more circumspection than Chagot used at Monceaules Mines.^[13]

The Socialists for a long time have been greatly prejudiced against morality, on account of these Catholic institutions that the large employers established for their workpeople. It seemed to them that, in our capitalist society, morality was only a means of assuring the docility 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 classes with sincerity when they speak of inculcating morality 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 ungainly Rosinante, mounted 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."^[14] From these sarcasms about a fantastic Justice springing from the imagination of Utopists, they often used to pass, too easily, to coarse facetiousness about the most ordinary morality; a 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.^[15]

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 believe that above everything else the aim of their actions must be the acquisition of seats in political assemblies.

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 towns politicians are found who ask for nothing better than to follow the paths of their confrères in America. So long as a man is faithful to his party he only commits peccadilloes, but if he is unwise 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,^[16] and which resolve 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 modern 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 deliberative assemblies approve of their swindling; the Parliaments are as packed as shareholders' meetings. It is probable that they both understand each other as perfectly as they do because of profound 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^[17] 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 was imposed on them by their principles: in fact, how as 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 naïve 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 Humanité 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 Jaurès 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.^[18] 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 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.^[19] 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; like G. de Molinari, it considers that the moral progress of the proletariat is as necessary as material improvement in machinery, if modern industry is to be lifted 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.^[20] In its insatiable 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 modern 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 undertaking 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 morality.

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,^[21] 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^[22] and the Church, will soon be swept away in the universal torrent."^[23] Renan showed a remarkable insight in writing this at the very 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 modern world. But all his life Renan had been too favoured by fortune 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 volume, 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."^[24] The times to come frightened him. "The immediate future is dark. The triumph of Light is not assured." He dreaded Socialism, 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.^[25]

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 universes revolving one beside the other under opposing influences. … The history of humanity by no means synchronises in its various parts. Tremble! At this 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 class-war 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 modern 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 crumbs 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 Syndicalists 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.^[26] 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'Humanité is much better known than the militants of the Confédération du Travail;^[27] for the great majority of the French public, Griffuelhes will never have the notoriety of Rouanet;^[28] 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 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,^[29] 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 underground, 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.

Let us now consider closely the reasons which made Renan dread a decadence of the middle-class;^[30] he was 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 believing 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?"^[31]

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;^[32] 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 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"^[33] 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 official 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.^[34] The winding-up of the Dreyfus affair, which the Dreyfusards, to the great indignation of Colonel Picquart,^[35] 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.

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 fundamental 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, return to the simplicity of mind of a wild beast, become once more triumphant 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 Bâle, and that his reputation began with a book devoted to the glorification of the Hellenic genius (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 life, 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?^[36]

It was certainly to the type of classic Greek that Nietzsche alluded when he wrote "the moral judgments of the warrior aristocracy are founded 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."^[37]

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 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 humanity. … (Then) appeared Napoleon, isolated and belated example though he was."^[38]

I believe 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.^[39] 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."^[40] The profound 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," 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."^[41] 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.^[42]

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 the 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 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:^[43] 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 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 modern 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.^[44] 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 rôle 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 conjugal right, 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."^[45]

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: (1) 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 instrument of Justice. … To produce Justice is the higher aim of the bisexual division; generation, and what follows from it, only figure here as accessory."^[46] "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."^[47]

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 rôle of women.

C. Finally we have to examine the values which escape Nietzsche's classification and 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 living, 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 community, 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."^[48] 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."^[49] This clearly expresses the point of view of the urban consumer, who finds it very tiresome to be obliged to pay any attention whatever to the conditions of production.^[50]

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.^[51]

It is quite easy to see that during a considerable period the moderns 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 instruments who do not need to think. Revolutionary Syndicalism would be impossible if the world of the workers were under the 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

The problem that we shall now try to solve is the most difficult of all those which a Socialist 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 straying 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 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.^[52] 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 by resolutions, inspected by police, and subject to the sanction of tribunals dealing out rewards or imprisonment. The discipline would be an exterior 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.^[53] When one thinks of the peculiarities 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 mœurs"; 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 régime. Experience shows that the discipline of the capitalist workshops is greatly superior to that maintained by the police, 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 disposal.^[54]

I think that there is one good point, however, in 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 quasi-military organisation. This is what I try to show by analysing some of the qualities 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, and those that will be required of a free worker in a highly progressive state of society. I believe that these analogies constitute a new (and perhaps decisive) proof, in favour of revolutionary syndicalism.

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 literature 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 likened to games of chess in which each man is comparable to a pawn; they became collections of heroic exploits accomplished by individuals under the influence of an extraordinary enthusiasm. Revolutionary literature is not entirely false, when it reports so many grandiloquent phrases said to have been uttered by the combatants; doubtless none of these phrases were spoken by the people to whom they are attributed, their form is due to men of letters used to the composition of classical declamation; but the basis is real in this sense, that we have, thanks to these lies of revolutionary rhetoric, a perfectly exact representation of the aspect under which the combatants looked on war, a true expression of the sentiments aroused by it, and the actual accent of the truly Homeric conflicts which took place at that time. I am certain that none of the actors in these dramas ever protested against the words attributed to them; this was no doubt because each found beneath these fantastic phrases, a true expression of his own deepest feelings.^[55]

Until the moment when Napoleon appeared the war had none of the scientific character which the later theoretists of strategy have sometimes thought it incumbent on them to attribute to it. Misled by the analogies they discovered between the triumphs of the revolutionary armies and those of the Napoleonic armies, historians imagined that generals anterior to Napoleon had made great plans of campaign; such plans never existed, or at any rate had very little influence on the course of operations. The best officers of that time were fully aware that their talent consisted in furnishing their troops with the suitable opportunities of exhibiting their ardour; and victory was assured each time that the soldiers could give free scope to all their enthusiasm, unfettered by bad commissariat, or by the stupidity of representatives of the people who looked upon themselves as strategists. On the battle-field the leaders gave an example of daring courage and were merely the first combatants, like true Homeric kings; it is this which explains the enormous prestige with the young troops, immediately gained by so many of the non-commissioned officers of the ancien régime, who were borne to the highest rank by the unanimous acclamations of the soldiers at the outset of the war.

If we wished to find, in these first armies, what it was that took the place of the later idea of discipline, we might say that the soldier was convinced that the slightest failure of the most insignificant private might compromise the success of the whole and the life of all his comrades, and that the soldier acted accordingly. This presupposes that no account is taken of the relative values of the different factors that go to make up a victory, so that all things are considered from a qualitative and individualistic point of view. One is, in fact, extremely struck by the individualistic characters which are met with in these armies, and by the fact that nothing is to be found in them which at all resembles the obedience spoken of by our contemporary authors. There is some truth then in the statement that the incredible French victories were due to intelligent bayonets.

The same spirit is found in the working-class groups who are eager for the general strike; these groups, in fact, picture the Revolution as an immense uprising which yet may be called individualistic; each working with the greatest possible zeal, each acting on his own account, and not troubling himself much to subordinate his conduct to a great and scientifically combined plan. This character of the proletarian general strike has often been pointed out, and it has the effect of frightening the greedy politicians, who understand perfectly well that a Revolution conducted in this way would do away with all their chances of seizing the Government.

Jaurès, whom nobody would dream of classing with any but the most circumspect of men, has clearly recognised the danger which threatens him; he accuses the upholders of the general strike of considering only one aspect of social life and thus going against the Revolution.^[56] This rigmarole should be translated thus: the revolutionary Syndicalists desire to exalt the individuality of the life of the producer; they thus run counter to the interests of the politicians who want to direct the Revolution in such a way as to transmit power to a new minority; they thus undermine the foundations of the State. We entirely agree with all this; it is precisely this characteristic which so terrifies the Parliamentary Socialists, the financiers, and the ideologists, which gives such extraordinary moral value to the notion of the general strike.

The upholders of the general strike are accused of anarchical tendencies; and as a matter of fact, it has been observed during the last few years that anarchists have entered the syndicates in great numbers, and have done a great deal to develop tendencies favourable to the general strike.

This movement becomes understandable when we bear the preceding explanations in mind; because the general strike, just like the wars of Liberty, is a most striking manifestation of individualistic force in the revolted masses. It seems to me, moreover, that the official Socialists would do well not to insist too much on this point; they would thus avoid some reflections which are not altogether to their advantage. We might, in fact, be led to ask if our official Socialists, with their passion for discipline, and their infinite confidence in the genius of their leaders, are not the authentic inheritors of the traditions of the royal armies, while the anarchists and the upholders of the general strike represent at the present time the spirit of the revolutionary warriors who, against all the rules of the art of war, so thoroughly thrashed the fine armies of the coalition. I can understand why the Socialists approved, controlled, and duly patented by the administrators of Humanité, have not much sympathy for the heroes of Fleurus,^[57] who were very badly dressed, and would have cut a sorry figure in the drawing-rooms of the great financiers; but everybody does not adapt his convictions to suit the tastes of M. Jaurès's shareholders.

 

V

I want now to point out some analogies which show how revolutionary syndicalism is the greatest educative force that contemporary society has at its disposal for the preparation of the system of production, which the workmen will adopt, in a society organised in accordance with the new conceptions.

A. The free producer in a progressive and inventive workshop must never evaluate his own efforts by any external standing; he ought to consider the models given him as inferior, and desire to surpass everything that has been done before. Constant improvement in quality and quantity will be thus assured to production; the idea of continual progress will be realised in a workshop of this kind.

Early socialists had had an intuition of this law, when they demanded that each should produce according to his faculties; but they did not know how to explain this principle, which in their Utopias seemed made for a convent or for a family rather than for modern industrial life. Sometimes, however, they pictured their workers as possessed by an enthusiasm similar to that which we find in the lives of certain great artists; this last point of view is by no means negligible, although the early Socialists hardly understood the value of the comparison.

Whenever we consider questions relative to industrial progress, we are led to consider art as an anticipation of the highest and technically most perfect forms of production, although the artist, with his caprices, often seems to be at the antipodes of the modern worker.^[58] This analogy is justified by the fact that the artist dislikes reproducing accepted types; the inexhaustibly inventive turn of his mind distinguishes him from the ordinary artisan, who is mainly successful in the unending reproduction of models which are not his own. The inventor is an artist who wears himself out in pursuing the realisation of ends which practical people generally declare absurd; and who, if he has made any important discovery is often supposed to be mad; practical people thus resemble artisans. One could cite in every industry important improvements which originated in small changes made by workmen endowed with the artist's taste for innovation.

This state of mind is, moreover, exactly that which was found in the first armies which carried on the wars of Liberty and that possessed by the propagandists of the general strike. This passionate individualism is entirely wanting in the working classes who have been educated by politicians; all they are fit for is to change their masters. These bad shepherds^[59] sincerely hope that it will be so; and the Stock Exchange people would not provide them with money, were they not convinced that Parliamentary Socialism is quite compatible with financial robbery.

B. Modern industry is characterised by an ever-growing care for exactitude; as tools get more scientific it is expected that the product shall have fewer hidden faults, and that in use its quality shall be as good as its appearance.

If Germany has not yet taken the place in the economic world which the mineral riches of its soil, the energy of its manufacturers and the science of its technicians ought to give it, it is because its manufacturers for a long time thought it clever to flood the markets with trash; although the quality of German manufactures has much improved during the last few years, it is not yet held in any very great esteem.

Here again it is possible to draw a comparison between industry in a high state of perfection and art. There have been periods in which the public appreciated above all the technical tricks by which the artist created an illusion of reality; but these tricks have never been accepted in the great schools, and they are universally condemned by the authors who are accepted as authorities in matters of art.^[60]

This honesty which now seems to us to-day as necessary in industry as in art, was hardly suspected by the Utopists;^[61] Fourier, at the beginning of the new era, believed that fraud in the quality of merchandise was characteristic of the relations between civilised people; he turned his back on progress and showed himself incapable of understanding the world which was being formed about him; like nearly all professional prophets this sham seer confused the future with the past. Marx, on the contrary, said that "deception in merchandise in the capitalist system of production is unjust," because it no longer corresponds with the modern system of business.^[62]

The soldier of the wars of Liberty attached an almost superstitious importance to the carrying out of the smallest order. As a result of this he felt no pity for the generals or officers whom he saw guillotined after a defeat on the charge of dereliction of duty; he did not look at these events as the historians of to-day do; he had no means of knowing whether the condemned had really committed treason or not; in his eyes failure could only be explained by some grave error on the part of his leaders. The high sense of responsibility felt by the soldier about his own duties, and the extreme thoroughness with which he carried out the most insignificant order, made him approve of rigorous measures taken against men who in his eyes had brought about the defeat of the army and caused it to lose the fruit of so much heroism.

It is not difficult to see that the same spirit is met with in strikes; the beaten workmen are convinced that their failure is due to the base conduct of a few comrades who have not done all that might have been expected of them; numerous accusations of treason are brought forward; for the beaten masses, treason alone can explain the defeat of heroic troops; the sentiment, felt by all, of the thoroughness that must be brought to the accomplishment of their duties, will therefore be accompanied by many acts of violence. I do not think that the authors who have written on the events which follow strikes, have sufficiently reflected on this analogy between strikes and the wars of Liberty, and, consequently, between these acts of violence and the executions of generals accused of treason.^[63]

C. There would never have been great acts of heroism in war, if each soldier, while acting like a hero, yet at the same time claimed to receive a reward proportionate to his deserts. When a column is sent to an assault, the men at the head know they are sent to their death, and that the glory of victory will be for those who passing over their dead bodies enter the enemy's position. However, they do not reflect on this injustice, but march forward.

The value of any army where the need of rewards makes itself actively felt, may be said to be on the decline. Officers who had served in the campaigns of the Revolution and of the Empire, but who had served under the direct orders of Napoleon only in the last years of their career, were amazed to see the fuss made about feats of arms which in the time of their youth would have passed unnoticed: "I have been overwhelmed with praise," said General Duhesne, "for things which would not have been noticed in the army of Sambre-et-Meuse."^[64] This theatricality was carried by Murat to a grotesque degree, and historians have not taken enough notice of the responsibility of Napoleon for this degeneracy of the true warlike spirit. The extraordinary enthusiasm which had been the cause of so many prodigies of valour on the part of the men of 1794 was unknown to him; he believed that it was his function to measure all capacities, and to give to each a reward exactly proportionate to what he had accomplished; this was the Saint-Simonian principle already coming into practice, and every officer was encouraged to bring himself forward. Charlatanism^[65] exhausted the moral forces of the nation whilst its material forces were still very considerable. Napoleon formed very few distinguished general officers and carried on the war principally with those left him by the Revolution; this impotence is the most absolute condemnation of the system.^[66]

The scarcity of the information which we possess about the great Gothic artists has often been pointed out. Among the stone-carvers who sculptured the statues in the cathedrals there were men of great talent who seem always to have remained anonymous; nevertheless they produced masterpieces. Viollet-le-Duc was surprised that the archives of Notre Dame had preserved for us no detailed information about the building of this gigantic monument and that, as a rule, the documents of the Middle Ages say very little about the architects; he adds that "genius can develop itself in obscurity, and that it is its very nature to seek silence and obscurity."^[67] We might even go farther and question whether their ontemporaries suspected that these artists of genius had raised edifices of unperishable glory; it seems very probable to me that the cathedrals were only admired by the artists.

This striving towards perfection which manifests itself, in spite of the absence of any personal, immediate, and proportional reward, constitutes the secret virtue which assures the continued progress of the world. What would become of modern industry if inventors could only be found for those things which would procure them an almost certain remuneration? The calling of an inventor is much the most miserable of all, and yet there is no lack of inventors. How often in workshops have little modifications introduced by ingenious artisans into their work, become by accumulation fundamental improvements, without the innovators ever getting any permanent or appreciable benefit from their ingenuity! And has not even simple piece-work brought about a gradual but uninterrupted progress in the processes of production, a progress which, after having temporarily improved the position of a few workers and especially that of their employers, has proved finally of benefit chiefly to the consumer?

Renan asked what was it that moved the heroes of great wars. "The soldier of Napoleon was well aware that he would always be a poor man, but he felt that the epic in which he was taking part would be eternal, that he would live in the glory of France." The Greeks had fought for glory; the Russians and the Turks seek death because they expect a chimerical paradise. "A soldier is not made by promises of temporal rewards. He must have immortality. In default of paradise, there is glory, which is itself a kind of immortality."^[68]

Economic progress goes far beyond the individual life, and profits future generations more than those who create it; but does it give glory? Is there an economic epic capable of stimulating the enthusiasm of the workers. The inspiration of immortality which Renan considered so powerful is obviously without efficacy here, because artists have never produced masterpieces under the influence of the idea that their work would procure them a place in paradise (as Turks seek death that they may enjoy the happiness promised by Mahomet). The workmen are not entirely wrong when they look on religion as a middle-class luxury, since, as a matter of fact, the emotions it calls up are not those which inspire workmen with the desire to perfect machinery, or which create methods of accelerating labour.

The question must be stated otherwise than Renan put it; do there exist among the workmen forces capable of producing enthusiasm equivalent to those of which Renan speaks, forces which could combine with the ethics of good work, so that in our days, which seem to many people to presage the darkest future, this ethic may acquire all the authority necessary to lead society along the path of economic progress.

We must be careful that the keen sentiment which we have of the necessity of such a morality, and our ardent desire to see it realised does not induce us to mistake phantoms for forces capable of moving the world. The abundant "idyllic" literature of the professors of rhetoric is evidently mere chatter. Equally vain are the attempts made by so many scholars to find institutions in the past, an imitation of which might serve as a means of disciplining their contemporaries; imitation has never produced much good and often bred much sorrow; how absurd the idea is then of borrowing from some dead and gone social structure, a suitable means of controlling a system of production, whose principal characteristic is that every day it must become more and more opposed to all preceding economic systems. Is there then nothing to hope for?

Morality is not doomed to perish because the motive forces behind it will change; it is not destined to become a mere collection of precepts as long as it can still vivify itself by an alliance with an enthusiasm capable of conquering all the obstacles, prejudices, and the need of immediate enjoyment, which oppose its progress. But it is certain that this sovereign force will not be found along the paths which contemporary philosophers, the experts of social science, and the inventors of far-reaching reforms would make us go. There is only one force which can produce to-day that enthusiasm without whose co-operation no morality is possible, and that is the force resulting from the propaganda in favour of a general strike. The preceding explanations have shown that the idea of the general strike (constantly rejuvenated by the feelings roused by proletarian violence) produces an entirely epic state of mind, and at the same time bends all the energies of the mind to that condition necessary to the realisation of a workshop carried on by free men, eagerly seeking the betterment of the industry; we have thus recognised that there are great resemblances between the sentiments aroused by the idea of the general strike and those which are necessary to bring about a continued progress in methods of production. We have then the right to maintain that the modern world possesses that prime mover which is necessary to the creation of the ethics of the producers.

I stop here, because it seems to me that I have accomplished the task which I imposed upon myself; I have, in fact, established that proletarian violence has an entirely different significance from that attributed to it by superficial scholars and by politicians. In the total ruin of institutions and of morals there remains something which is powerful, new, and intact, and it is that which constitutes, properly speaking, the soul of the revolutionary proletariat. Nor will this be swept away in the general decadence of moral values, if the workers have enough energy to bar the road to the middle-class corrupters, answering their advances with the plainest brutality.

I believe that I have brought an important contribution to discussions on Socialism; these discussions must henceforth deal exclusively with the conditions which allow the development of specifically proletarian forces, that is to say, with violence enlightened by the idea of the general strike. All the old abstract dissertations on the Socialist régime of the future become useless; we pass to the domain of real history, to the interpretation of facts—to the ethical evaluations of the revolutionary movement.

The bond which I pointed out in the beginning of this inquiry between Socialism and proletarian violence appears to us now in all its strength. It is to violence that Socialism owes those high ethical values by means of which it brings salvation to the modern world.

1. Proudhon, De la justice dans la révolution et dans l'eglise vol. i. p. 70.
2. Proudhon, loc. cit. p. 74. By juridical faith Proudhon here understands a triple faith, which 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 religion for them, sweeter than love itself"—the second "raising the mind above egoistical appetites, is made happier by respect for the right of another than by its own fortune"—without the third "citizens submitting to the attraction of individualism could not form, whatever they did, anything 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.
3. Proudhon, loc. cit. p. 93.
4. The two first epochs are those of paganism and of Christianity.
5. Proudhon, loc. cit. p. 104.
6. This deputy had made a very anticlerical speech from 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 myself am not an anti-Semite, and only make one reproach to the Jews, that of having 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?
7. So do like musk? It has been put everywhere.
8. G. de Molinari, Science et religion, p. 94.
9. G. de Molinari, op. cit. p. 198.
10. G. de Molinari, op. cit. p. 61.
11. G. de Molinari, op. cit. p. 54.
12. G. de Molinari, op. cit. pp. 87 and 93.
13. I have already mentioned that in 1883 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).
14. Mouvement socialiste, June 15, 1889, p. 649.
15. See, for example, the Socialiste of June 30, 1901. "As in a communist society the morals which clogs the brains of the civilised 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."
16. On June 21, 1907, Clemenceau, replying to Millerand, told him that in introducing the bill to establish old age pensions, without concerning himself with where the money was to come from, he had not 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?
17. I am pleased here to be able to support myself in the incontestable authority of Gérault-Richard who in the Petite République 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.
18. 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.
19. 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 (Dolléans, Robert Owen, pp. 247–268).
20. G. de Molinari appears to believe that a natural religion like that of J. J. Rousseau or Robespierre would suffice. We know to-day that such means have no moral efficacy.
21. 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.
22. He did not foresee that his son-in-law would agitate violently against the army in the Dreyfus affair.
23. Renan, Feuilles détachées, p. 14.
24. Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israël, vol. v. p. 421.
25. Renan, loc. cit. p. 420.
26. The essence of democracy is concentrated in the mot attributed to Mme. Flocon. "It is we who are the princesses." The democracy is happy when it sees a ridiculous creature like Fé1ix Faure, whom Joseph Reinach compared to the bourgeois gentilhomme, treated with princely honours (Histoire de l'affaire Dreyfus, vol. iv. p. 552).
27. Parliamentary Socialism is very keen on good manners, as we can assure ourselves by consulting Gérault-Richard's numerous articles. I quote at random several specimens. On June 1, 1903, he declared in the Petite République that Queen Nathalie of Servia should have been called to order "for having listened to the preaching of P. Coubé 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 Maréchal. 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 Autorité of his having been taken to task by Gérault-Richaurd, who had given him lessons in good manners.
28. Griffuelhes, who had been a shoemaker, was at one time secretary of the Confédération du Travail; he was remarkably intelligent; cf. a pamphlet by him entitled Voyage révolutionnaire.

    [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 Confédération 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.]

29. Renan, op. cit. vol. iv. p. 267.
30. 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 détachées, p. 10). A restlessness of this kind (which puts on nowadays a sociological, socialist, or humanitarian air) is a sure sign of anæmia.
31. Renan, Feuilles détachées, pp. 17–18.
32. Brunetière addressed this reproach to. French literature: " If you wish to know why Racine or Molière, 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" (Évolution des genres, 3rd edition, p. 128).
33. Questions de morale (lectures given by several professors) in the Bibliothèque des sciences sociales, p. 328.
34. 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.
35. 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.
36. Nietzsche, Généalogie de la moral, trad, franç., pp. 57–59.
37. Nietzsche, op. cit. p. 43.
38. Nietzsche, op. cit. pp. 78–80.
39. 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 qualities 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 américaine: ranches, fermes, et usines, pp. 8–9; cf. p. 261).
40. De Rousiers, La Vie américaine: l'éducation et la société, p. 325.
41. De Rousiers, La Vie américaine: ranches, fermes, et usines, pp. 303–305.
42. J. Bourdeau, Les Maîtres de la pensée contemporaine, p. 145. The author informs us on the other hand that "Jaurès 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 Jaurès; let us hope that he will some day publish it, for our amusement.
43. It is always necessary to remember that the resigned Jew of the Middle Ages was more like the Christians than his ancestors.
44. Epistle to the Ephesians, v. 25–31.
45. Proudhon is alluding sarcastically to the frequently very comic nullifications of marriage, pronounced by the Roman courts, for physiological reasons. Proudhon, op. cit. vol. vi. p. 39. We know that the theologians do not like curious people to consult ecclesiastical writings about conjugal duty and the legitimate method of fulfilling it.
46. Proudhon, loc. cit. p. 212.
47. Proudhon, Œuvres, 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.
48. Aristotle, Politics, book i. chap. vii. 4–5.
49. Aristotle, op. cit. book i. chap. v. 13, 14.
50. 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. 1); 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 (Leçon du 19 avril 1907): 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 of an old Greek. Plato suits them much better since he is more of an aristocrat, and consequently more detached from production.
51. Aristotle, op. cit. book i. chap. v. 9 and 11.
52. Karl Kautsky, La Révolution sociale, French translation, p. 153.
53. 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.
54. 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.
55. This history has also been burdened by a great number of adventures, which have been fabricated by imitating real ones, and which are very like those which later on The Three Musketeers rendered popular.
56. Jaurès, Études socicalistes, pp. 117–118.
57. [The battle of Fleurus, won in 1794 by General Jourdain, was one of the first decisive triumphs of the revolutionary army. The Chant du Départ was written by J. M. Chénier shortly before this battle.—Trans.]
58. When we speak of the educative value of art, we often forget that the habits of life of the modern artist, founded on an imitation of those of a jovial aristocracy, are in no way necessary, and are derived from a tradition which has been fatal to many fine talents. Lafargue appears to believe that the Parisian jeweller might find it necessary to dress elegantly, to eat oysters, and run after women in order to be able to keep up the artistic quality of his work (i.e. in order to keep his mind active; the artistic quality of his work, destroyed by the wear of daily life in the workshop, will be reconstituted by the gay life he leads outside) (Journal des économistes, September 1884, p. 386). He gives no reasons to support this paradox; we might moreover point out that the mentality of Marx's son-in-law is always obsessed by aristocratic prejudices.
59. [This is an allusion to a play by Octave Mirbeau with that title.—Trans.]
60. See the chapter in Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture entitled "Lamp of Truth."
61. It must not be forgotten that there are two ways of discussing art; Nietzsche attacks Kant for having "like all the philosophers meditated on art and the beautiful as a spectator instead of looking at the esthetic problem from the point of view of the artist, the creator" (op. cit. p. 178). In the time of the Utopists, esthetics was merely the babbling of amateurs, who were delighted with the cleverness with which the artist had been able to deceive the public.
62. Marx, Capital, French translation, vol. iii., first part, p. 375.
63. P. Bureau has devoted a chapter of his book on the Contrat de Travail to an explanation of the reasons which justify boycotting of workmen who do not join their comrades in strikes; he thinks that these people merit their fate because they are notoriously inferior both in courage and as workmen. This seems to me very inadequate as an account of the reasons which, in the eyes of the working classes themselves, explain these acts of violence. The author takes up a much too intellectualist point of view.
64. Lafaille, Mémoires sur les campagnes de Catalogne de 1808 à 1814, p. 336.
65. The charlatanism of the followers of Saint Simon was as disgusting as that of Murat; moreover, the history of this school is unintelligible if we do not compare it with its Napoleonic models.
66. General Donop strongly insists on the incapacity of Napoleon's lieutenants who passively obeyed instructions that they never tried to understand, and the fulfilment of which was minutely overlooked by their master (op. cit. pp. 22–29 and 32–34). Napoleon's armies were valued in proportion to the exactitude with which they carried out the orders of their master; initiative being little valued, it was possible to estimate the conduct of the generals like the ability of a good pupil who has learnt his lessons well; the Emperor gave pecuniary rewards to his lieutenants, proportionate to the measure of merit he recognised in them.
67. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française, vol. iv. pp. 42–43. This does not contradict what we read in the article "Architect." From that we learn that the builders often inscribed their names in the cathedrals (vol. i. pp. 109–111); from that it has been concluded that these works were not anonymous (Bréhier, Les Églises gothiques, p. 17), but what meaning had these inscriptions for the people of the town? They could only be of interest to artists who came later on to work in the same edifice and who were familiar with the traditions of the schools.
68. Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israël, vol. iv. p. 191. Renan seems to me to have identified too readily glory and immortality; he has fallen a victim to a figure of speech.