Man or the state?

Front matter

Class.

Book.-

Copyright N^_

Introduction

" The great events of the day occupy my thoughts much at present. The old illusory France has collapsed; and as soon as the new, real Prussia does the same, we shall be with one bound in a new age. How ideas will then come tumbling about our ears ! And it is high time they did. Up till now we have been living on nothing but the crumbs from the revolutionary table of last century, a food out of which all nutriment has long been chewed. The old terms require to have a new meaning infused into them. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer the things they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. That is what the politicians will not understand; and therefore I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions — revolutions in externals, in politics, etc. But all this is mere trifling. What is all-important is the revolution of the spirit of man."

Thus in 1870 wrote Ibsen, greatest in his day of the rare originative geniuses who " carry in their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's or century's civilization." And now at last, after nearly fifty years, the fulfilment of that prophecy is at hand. Not Prussia merely, but the most of monarchist Europe has collapsed. The old ideas are tumbling about our ears at a rate which possibly Ibsen himself did not foresee. Even that hoariest and most impregnable of them all, the idea of the absolute State, though propped and buttressed during the past five years as never before in history, is everywhere visibly tottering — where it has not already tumbled. A new age is indeed upon us !

Probably no proof of failure less complete and terrible than the recent cataclysm could have shaken man's mystic devotion to the State. However it has oppressed, impov-

vii viii INTRODUCTION

crished, impeded him^ he has for the most part always regarded it as an inevitable and indispensable part of the divine machinery, as remote from his control as gravitation or th,e weather. All through the centuries he has blindly acceded to its insatiable demands, blindly conformed to its endless inhibitions, blindly sacrificed himself and his possessions to its alleged interests. Fed so long on this monotonous diet of subserviency, the State came quite naturally to imagine that there existed no law of God or man to which it was not superior — of which fatal delusion the consequences are today writ large in blood and fire across half the world.

The great underlying principle of English law, according to Dickens, is to make business for itself. The great underlying principle of the State, it might be said with equal truth, is to make power for itself. As Renan pointed out, " it knows but one thing — how to organize egotism." So preoccupied with this task has it been that it long ago forgot, if indeed it ever knew, that such a thing as the human soul exists. But now at last, aroused to rebellion by almost intolerable afflictions, the human soul begins to assert its supremacy. Of that duel the ultimate issue is certain and near at hand. The servant who has so long usurped the master's place must return below stairs; the instrument must finally yield to its creator.

But for all its crimes against humanity, the time is not yet when we can abolish the State entirely, as Ibsen urged, and " make willingness and spiritual kinship the orlv essentials in the case of a union." Eventually, unless moral progress is an illusion, that ideal will be realized. Mankind, however, has yet to serve a long and rigorous novitiate before it can be worthy of such a consummation. Philosophic anarchism is a creed that postulates too much nobility, too much self-restraint and self-abnegation, in common human nature to be immediately practicable. For a few decades (perhaps even a few generations) longer, Man must con-

INTRODUCTION ix

tinue to bear as best he may with those accusing symbols of his moral imperfection, the policeman and the soldier.

If, then, the State cannot at once be dispensed with, the alternative is reform, revision, melioration of the State idea. Here we shall at least be sure of a multitude of counsellors, each with his favorite State-theory or State-pattern to urge for adoption. It would be well to dismiss at the start those slightly anachronistic physicians who invariably prescribe more centralization as a cure for the ailments of our overcentralized State. Their ideal is pre-war Prussia, though they will not often admit it. But of Prussia as a working model of State-theory we might say, as Talleyrand said of the English public school system, " It is the best we have ever seen; and it is abominable." The earnest seeker for light will turn with far more of hope and interest to stormswept Russia. Out of the Soviet experiment, and out of the ideas of the Guild Socialists in England, is evolving what may well prove to be the State-norm of the immediate future — or something very like it.

But it should never be forgotten that the problem of the State is essentially a spiritual one. Political forms and institutions, legal systems, legislative enactments, all the charters and codes and statutes in Christendom, are valid and stable only as they tend to assure freedom and justice to individuals. Political freedom is of value only as it leads to moral freedom, and there can be no public justice that does not find its ultimate sanction in private conscience. The State, if it is to endure at all, must devote itself henceforth to the organization of altruism rather than egotism; it must slough off completely its old predatory and repressive character, and embrace the ideals of brotherhood and association. Above all, it must respect and preserve inviolate at whatever cost the principle of individual freedom. Not freedom to prey upon others, which was really the essence of the old individualism, but freedom from being preyed upon. Not the shadow of freedom, but its substance: not political free-

X INTRODUCTION

dom merely, but moral and economic freedom. If a government cannot permanently exist half slave and half free_, how much less so can a human being!

More than this I shall not venture by way of prophecy. My purpose has been simply to indicate the problem_, to accentuate the need of reform. Definite solutions I must leave to abler intellects. My present appearance is in the lowly capacity of Editor, and as such I fall back upon the precedent established or at least invoked by Carlyle : " Editors are not here, foremost of all, to say How. . . . An Editor's stipulated work is to apprise thee that it must be done. The ' way to do it,' — is to try it, knowing that thou shalt die if it be not done. There is the bare back, there is the web of cloth; thou shalt cut me a coat to cover the bare back, thou whose trade it is. ' Impossible ? ' Hapless Fraction, dost thou discern Fate there, half unveiling herself in the gloom of the future, with her gibbet-cords, her steelwhips, and very authentic Tailor's Hell, waiting to see whether it is ' possible ' ? Out with thy scissors, and cut that cloth or thy own windpipe ! "

In considering the problem of the State the great thing, as Ibsen has pointed out, is not to allow one's self to be frightened by the venerableness of the institution. For those inclined to be thus frightened, as well as for a good many others, I have thought that a useful purpose might be served by bringing together a group of essays, written by some of the foremost thinkers of our time, which at least make plain that in neither its history nor its workings is the State a sacrosanct affair; that it is by no means an inerrant or irreproachable, even a reasonably efficient, social instrument; that under some other collective administrative arrangement humanity might achieve a far nobler and happier existence. The authors of these essays are of widely various, even directly antagonistic, social creeds ; yet in the main points of their indictment against the State they are at one.

INTRODUCTION xi

A certain congruity of selection and arrangement will, I hope, be apparent in the contents of this volume. Kropotkin's essay deals with the origin and historic evolution of the State. The chapter from Buckle, one of the greatest of philosophic historians, records the State's notable failure as a legislative agent. The three following papers constitute the challenge of the higher Individualism, as embodied in Emerson's serene and optimistic generalities, looking toward a society perfected from within; in Thoreau's keen eloquence, asserting the supremacy of personal Conscience over all other autliority; in Herbert Spencer's clear-cut logic arguing the right of freedom from external control as an inevitable corollary to his " first principle " of social ethics — that " Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." In the next essay Tolstoy pleads the case for Christian anarchism, or social salvation through individual self-perfection combined with passive resistance to the State. Finally, we have Oscar Wilde's glowing and trenchant statement of the manner of life that would be possible in a really free society.

If this little book did no more than make generally available, as it does, the first of these essays, I should feel that its existence were sufficiently justified. Prince Kropotkin's avowed position as an apostle of philosophic anarchism will of course repel those numerous persons who, like crows, invariably take flight with much raucous cawing from the verbal bugaboos which they are too timid or too stupid to investigate. But it need alarm no others. Despite his faith in a society based upon " willingness and spiritual kinship " rather than upon coercion, Kropotkin holds a secure place among those of our time whose work has left a permanent impress upon human thought. Every reader of his " IMutual Aid " knows how deeply and widely he has explored the origins of society, — upon what a vast range of data his conclusions are based. The essay here reprinted is a proxii INTRODUCTION

duct of the same study, though of course restricted to a narrower field, that went to the making of " Mutual Aid."

The reader may wonder, particularly in view of several references in this Introduction, why Ibsen is not represented in the main contents of the compilation. But my plan has been to include only complete, or fairly complete, essays; and unfortunately, Ibsen's appearances in what he calls ^ " my capacity as state-satirist " are in the way of brief and [ scattered glimpses rather than in any sustained exposition. j Yet no one else, save possibly Thoreau, pierces so directly to i the heart of the matter, — as witness this final quotation: " The State is the curse of the individual. With what is the strength of Prussia as a State bought? With the merging of the individual in the political and geographical concept. The waiter makes the best soldier. Now, turn to the Jewish nation, the nobility of the human race. How has it preserved itself — isolated, poetical — despite all the barbarity from without? Because it had no State to burden it. Had the Jewish nation remained in Palestine, it would long since have been ruined in the process of construction, like all the other nations. . . . The State has its roots in Time: it will have its culmination in Time. Greater things than it will fall; all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions of morality nor those of art are eternal. To how much are we really obliged to pin our faith? Who will vouch for it that two and two do not make five up in Jupiter? "

Waldo R. Browne

V p. KROPOTKIN

(b. 1842) THE STATE: ITS HISTORIC ROLE ^

In taking as subject for this lecture the State and the part it has played in history I thought it would respond to a need which is greatly felt at this moment. It is of consequence, after having so often criticized the present State, to seek the cause of its appearance, to investigate the part played by it in the past, and to compare it with the institutions which it superseded.

Let us first agree as to what we mean by the word State.

There is, as you know, the German school that likes to confuse the State with Society. This confusion is to be met with even among the best German thinkers and many French ones, who cannot conceive of Society without State concentration. Yet to reason thus is entirely to ignore the progress made in the domain of history during the last thirty years; it is to ignore the fact that men have lived in societies during thousands of years before having known the State; it is to forget that for European nations the State is of recent origin — that it hardly dates from the sixteenth century; it is to fail to recognise that the most glorious epochs in humanity were those in which liberties and local life were not yet destroyed by the State, and when masses of men lived in communes and free federations.

1 Published in 1898. The text used here is that of the edition issued in two-penny tract form from the oflfice of " Freedom," London. It is evidently a translation from the French, poorly done and wretchedly printed; for the present purpose it has undergone careful and thorough revision. A few passages more particularly propagandistic than historical in substance, amounting altogether to perhaps one-seventh of the entire essay, are omitted here.

The State is but one of the forms taken by Society in the course of history. How can one be confused with the other?

Oti the other hand, the State has also been confused with Government. It seems to me, however, that State and Government represent two ideas of a different kind. The State idea implies quite another idea to that of Government. It not only includes the existence of a power placed above Society, but also a territorial concentration and a concentration of many functions of the life of Society in the hands of a few or even of all. It implies new relations among the members of society.

This characteristic distinction, which perhaps escapes notice at first sight, appears clearly when the origin of the State is studied.

Really to understand the State there is, in fact, but one way: it is to study it in its historical development, and that is what I am going to endeavor to do.

The Roman Empire was a State in the true sense of the word. To the present day it is the ideal of students of law.

Its organs covered a vast domain with a close network. Everything flowed towards Rome, economic life, military life, judicial relations, riches, education, even religion. From Rome came laws, magistrates, legions to defend their territory, governors to rule the provinces, gods. The whole life of the Empire could be traced back to the Senate; later on to the Caesar, the omnipotent and omniscient, the god of the Empire. Every province and every district had its miniature Capitol, its little share of Roman sovereignty to direct its whole life. One law, the law imposed by Rome, governed the Empire; and that Empire did not represent a confederation of citizens, — it was only a flock of subjects.

Even at present, the students of law and the authoritarians altogether admire the unity of that Empire, the spirit of unity of those laws, the beauty (they say), the harmony of that organisation.

But the internal decomposition furthered by barbarian invasion, the death of local life, henceforth unable to resist

KROPOTKIN S

attacks from without, and the gangrene spreading from the centre, pulled that Empire to pieces, and on its . ruins was established and developed a new civilisation^ which is ours today.

And if, putting aside antique empires, we study the origin and development of that young barbarian civilisation till the time when it gave birth to our modern States, we shall be able to grasp the essence of the State. We shall do it better than we should have done if we had launched ourselves into the study of the Roman Empire, of the empire of Alexander, or else of despotic Eastern monarchies.

In taking these powerful barbarian destroyers of the Roman Empire as a starting point, we can retrace the evolution of all civilisation from its origin till it reaches the stage of the State.

II

Most of the philosophers of the last century had conceived very elementary notions about the origin of societies.

At the beginning, they said, men lived in small, isolated families, and perpetual war among these families represented the normal condition of existence. But one fine day, perceiving the drawbacks of these endless struggles, they decided to form a society. A " social contract " was agreed upon among scattered families, who willingly submitted to an authority, which authority (need I tell you?) became the starting point and the initiative of all progress. Must I add, as you have already been told in school, that our present governments have ever since impersonated the noble role of salt of the earth, the pacifiers and civilisers of humanity.^

This conception, which was born at a time when little was known about the origin of man, prevailed in the last century; and we must say that in the hands of the Encyclopaedists and of Rousseau the idea of a " social contract " became a powerful weapon with which to fight royalty and divine right. Nevertheless, in spite of services it may have rendered in the past, that theory must now be recognised as false.

The fact is that all animals, save some beasts and birds of prey and a few species that are in course of extinction, live in societies. In the struggle for existence it is the sociable species that get the better of those that are not. In every class of animals the former occupy the top of the ladder, and there cannot be the least doubt that the first beings of human aspect already lived in societies. Man did not create society; society is anterior to man.

We also know to-day — anthropology has clearly demonstrated it — that the starting point of humanity was not the family but the clan, the tribe. The paternal family such as we have it, or such as it is depicted in Hebrew tradition, appeared only very much later. Men lived tens of thousands of years in the stage of clan or tribe, and during that first stage — let us call it primitive or savage tribe, if you will — ^man already developed a whole series of institutions^ habits, and customs, far anterior to the paternal family institutions.

In those tribes the separate family existed no more than it exists among so many other sociable mammalia. Divisions in the midst of the tribe itself were formed by generations; and since the earliest periods of tribal life limitations were established to hinder marriage relations between different generations, while they were freely practiced between members of the same generation. Traces of that period are still extant in certain contemporary tribes, and we find them again in the language, customs, and superstitions of nations who were far more advanced in civilisation.

The whole tribe hunted and harvested in common, and when they were satisfied they gave themselves up with passion to their dramatic dances. Nowadays we still find tribes very near to this primitive phase, driven back to the outskirts of the large continents, or in Alpine regions, the least accessible of our globe.

The accumulation of private property could not take place, because each thing that had been the personal property of a member of the tribe was destroyed or burned on the spot where his corpse was buried. This is done even now by gipsies in England, and the funeral rites of the " civilised " still bear its traces: the Chinese burn paper models of what the dead possessed; and we lead the military chief's horse, and carry his sword and decorations, as far as the grave. The meaning of the institution is lost; only the form survives.

Far from professing contempt for human life, these primitive individuals had a horror of blood and murder. Shedding blood was considered a deed of such gravity that each drop of blood shed — not only the blood of men, but also that of certain animals — required that the aggressor should lose an equal quantity of blood. In fact, a murder within the tribe was a deed absolutely unknown; it is so to this day among the Inoits or Esquimaux — those survivors of the Stone Age that inhabit the Arctic regions. But when tribes of different origin, color, or tongue met during their migrations, war was often the result. It is true that already men had tried to mitigate the effect of these shocks. Even thus early, as has been so well demonstrated by Maine, Post, and Nys, the tribes agreed upon and respected certain rules and limitations of war, which contained the germs of what was to become international law later on. For example, a village was not to be attacked without warning to the inhabitants ; and no one would have dared to kill on a path trodden by women going to the well.

However, from that time forward one general law overruled all others : " Your people have killed or wounded one of ours, therefore we have the right to kill one of yours, or to inflict an absolutely similar wound on one of yours '* — never mind which, as it is always the tribe that is responsible for every act of its members. The well-known biblical verses, " Blood for blood, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a wound for a wound, a life for a life," — but no more ! — thence derive their origin, as was so well remarked by Koenigswarter. It was their conception of justice; and we have not much reason to boast, as the principle of " a life for a life " which prevails in our codes is but one of its numerous survivals.

As you see, a whole series of institutions, and many o-thers which I must pass over in silence^ — a whole code of tribal morals, — was already elaborated during this primitive stage. And habit, custom, tradition sufficed to maintain this kernel of social customs in force; there was no authority to impose it.

Primitive individuals had, no doubt, temporary leaders. The sorcerer and the rain-maker (the scientist of that epoch) sought to profit by what they knew, or thought they knew, about nature, to rule over their fellow men. Likev/ise, he who could best remember proverbs and songs in which tradition was embodied became powerful. And, since then, these " educated " men have endeavored to secure their rulership by transmitting their knowledge only to the elect. All religions, and even all arts and crafts, have begun, as you know, by " mysteries." Also, the brave, the bold, and the cunning man became the temporary leader during conflicts with other tribes or during migrations. But an alliance between the " law bearer," the military chief, and the witch-doctor did not exist, and there can be no more question of a State with these tribes than there is in a society of bees or ants or among our contemporaries the Patagonians or Esquimaux.

This stage, however, lasted thousands upon thousands of years, and the barbarians who invaded the Roman Empire had just passed through it, — in fact, they had hardly emerged from it.

In the first centuries of our era, immense migrations took place among the tribes and confederations of tribes that inhabited Central and Northern Asia. A stream of people, driven by more or less civilised tribes, came down from the table-lands of Asia — probably driven away by the rapid drying-up of those plateaux — and inundated Europe, impelling one another onward, mingling with one another in their overflow towards the West.

During these migrations, when so many tribes of diverse origin were intermixed, the primitive tribe which still existed among them and the primitive inhabitants of Europe necessarily became disaggregated. The tribe was based on its common origin, on the worship of common ancestors.

ICROPOTKIN 7

But what common origin could be invoked by the agglomerations that emerged from the hurly-burly of migrations^ collisions, wars between tribes, during which we see the paternal family spring up here and there — the kernel formed by some men appropriating women they had conquered or kidnapped from neighboring tribes ?

Ancient ties were rent asunder, and under pain of a general break-up (that took place, in fact, for many a tribe, which then disappeared from history) it was essential that new ties should spring up. And they did spring up. They were found in the communal possession of land — of a territory, on which such an agglomeration ended by settling down.

The possession in common of a certain territory, of certain valleys, plains, or mountains, became the basis of a new agreement. Ancient gods had lost all meaning; and the local gods of a valley, river, or forest gave the religious consecration to the new agglomeration, substituting themselves for the gods of the primitive tribe. Later on, Christianity, always ready to accommodate itself to pagan survivals, made local saints of those gods.

Henceforth, the village community, composed partly or entirely of separate families — all united, nevertheless, by the possession in common of the land — became the necessary bond of union for centuries to come. On the immense stretches of land in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, it still exists to-day. The barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire — Scandinavians, Germans, Celts, Slavs, etc. — lived under this kind of organization. And in studying the ancient barbarian codes, as well as the laws- and customs of the confederations of village communes among the Kabyles, Mongols, Hindoos, Africans, etc., which still exist, it becomes possible to reconstitute in its entirety that form of society which was the starting point of our present civilization.

Let us, therefore, cast a glance on that institution.

Ill

The village community was composed, as it still is, of separate families; but the families of a village possessed the land in common. They looked upon the land as their common patrimony^ and allotted it according to the size of the families. Hundreds of millions of men still live under this system in eastern Europe, India, Java, etc. It is the same system that Russian peasants have established nowadays, when the State left them free to occupy the immense Siberian territory as they thought best.

At first, also, the cultivation of the land was done in common, and this custom still obtains in many places — at least, the cultivation of certain plots of land. As to deforestation and clearings made in the woods, construction of bridges, building of forts and turrets which served as refuge in case of invasion, the work was done in common, — as it still is by hundreds of millions of peasants, wherever the village commune has resisted State encroachments. But consumption, to use a modern expression, already took place by family — each having its own cattle, kitchen garden, and provisions; the means of hoarding and transmitting wealth accumulated by inheritance already existed.

In all its business, the village commune was sovereign. Local custom was law, and the plenary council of all chiefs of families — men and women — was judge, the only judge, in civil and criminal affairs. When one of the inhabitants, complaining of another, planted his knife in the ground at the spot where the commune was wont to assemble, the commune had to " find the sentence " according to local custom, after the fact had been proved by the jurors of both litigant parties.

Time would fail me were I to tell you everything of interest presented by this stage. Suffice it for me to observe that all institutions which States took possession of later on for the benefit of minorities, all notions of right which we find in our codes (mutilated to the advantage of minorities), and all forms of judicial procedure, in as far as they offer guarantees to the individual, had their origin in the village community. Thus, when we imagine we have made great progress — in introducing the jury, for example, — we have only returned to the institution of the barbarians, after having modified it to the advantage of the ruling classes. Roman law was only superposed upon customary law.

The sentiment of national unity was developing at the same time, by great free federations of village communes.

Based on the possession and very often on the cultivation of the soil in common, sovereign as judge and legislator of customary law, the village community satisfied most needs of the social being. But not all his needs, — there were still others to be satisfied. However, the spirit of the age was not for calling upon a government as soon as a new need was felt. It was, on the contrary, to take the initiative oneself, to unite, to league, to federate, to create an understanding, great or small, numerous or restricted, which would correspond to the new need. And society at that time was literally covered, as by a network, with sworn fraternities, guilds for mutual suport, " con-jurations," within and without the village, and in the federation.