Foreword
More than once in history have people revolted against the inequalities of life and refused to submit to the restraints of laws and creeds. They have often gone through a period of communism and red terror in the hope of realizing ultimately the Perfect State. Their leaders, undoubtedly sincere at first, espouse the utopian dream, declaring themselves the exponents of its ideals, the promised messengers of its blessings. But with the material for revolt ready at hand, and unable to resist the seductions of nascent power, they soon undergo that transformation which history identifies, often not unjustly, with demagogy, if they fail, or with autocracy, if they succeed.
In either case, by utilizing the elements of negation in Society, they become apostles of violence, proclaiming the theory of "creative destruction." But instead of creating a utopia on the ruins of their making, they only succeed in setting up, as history shows, another government, which, no matter how just and sound its foundations are in theory, soon becomes in practice more despotic and corrupt.
But the vision of the Perfect State, which awakens a people from the stupor of slavery, arouses them to revolt, fires them with dazzling promises, and leads them to self-sacrifice, to martyrdom, to destruction, continues, nevertheless, to leaven the aspirations of succeeding nations. The theory of "eternal recurrence" is inseparable, it seems, from the theory of "creative destruction."
And no matter how ambitious and sincere, or how selfish and unscrupulous are the leaders of the movements that embody this theory, no matter how ruthless and uncompromising are the apostles of equality and violence, the nation they overturn soon or late finds its balance again and, through the agencies of law and order, reestablishes on a higher plane the principles of justice and progress.
For, as a rule, a nation emerges stronger, morally and spiritually, from a revolutionary upheaval. With this single exception, however, all the movements of the world that sought to establish, by the dagger, the sword, the bayonet, the machine gun, or even by peaceful communities, a utopia on earth, have been doomed to failure.
The extremists, no matter how long and brilliant their temporary success, have gone the way of all political despots and all religious impostors. And their culpability is not in plunging a nation into anarchy and crime, but in debasing the ideals of utopia, by yoking them with the destructive agencies of negation in a people.
This is true of the ancient as well as the modern world, as I shall endeavor to show in these chapters, tracing the more prominent movements in history against the existing order of things. The only difference is in the background and the surroundings, which give the movements distinct local colors and strange sounding names.
As a rule, however, the tyranny of inequality has been at the bottom of all revolts and revolutions. Only that in the past it was embodied in religions and autocracies, today it is embodied in industrialism. The masters in the past were the kings and priests, while in our times they are the captains of industry and the labor leaders. Under either condition, however, a long-suffering and downtrodden people will be driven ultimately to extremes of materialism expressed in universal negations.