1. Use made of the syndicates by politicians—pressure on parliaments—the general strike in Belgium and Russia.
II. Differences in the two currents of ideas corresponding to the two conceptions of the general strike: Class War; the State; the Aristocracy of Thought.
III. Jealousy fostered by politicians—war as a source of heroism and as pillage—dictatorship of the proletariat and its historical antecedents.
IV. Force and violence—Marx’s ideas about force—necessity of a new theory in the case of proletarian violence.
POLITICIANS ARE people whose wits are singularly sharpened by their voracious appetites, and in whom the hunt for fat jobs develops the cunning of Apaches. They hold purely proletarian organisations in horror, and discredit them as much as they can; frequently they even deny their efficacity, in the hope of alienating the workers from groups which, they say, have no future. But when they perceive that their hatred is powerless, that their abuse does not hinder the working of these detested organisations, and that these have become strong, then they seek to turn to their own profit the forces which the proletariat has created.
The co-operative societies were for a long time denounced as useless to the workers; since they have prospered, more than one politician has cast languishing eyes on their cash-box, and would like to see the party supported by the income from the bakery and the grocery, as the Israelite consistories in many countries live on the dues from the Jewish butchers.209
The syndicates may be very useful in electoral propaganda; a certain amount of skill is needed to utilise them profitably, but politicians do not lack lightness of finger. Guérard, the secretary of the railway syndicate, was once one of the most ardent revolutionaries in France; in the end, however, it was borne in upon him that it was easier to play with politics than to prepare for the general strike;210 he is to-day one of those men in whom the Direction du Travail has most confidence, and in 1902 he went to a great deal of trouble in order to secure the return of Millerand to Parliament. There is a very large railway station in the constituency which the Socialist minister sought to represent, and, without the support of Guérard, Millerand would probably have been defeated. In the Socialiste of September 14, 1902, a Guesdist denounced this conduct, which seemed to him doubly scandalous since, in the first place, the congress of railway workers had decided that the syndicate should not enter into politics and, secondly, because a former deputy, a Guesdist, was Millerand’s opponent. The author of the article feared that “the corporative groups were on the wrong track, and that, although they started out to utilise politics, they might finally find themselves the tools of a party.” He was quite right; in any deals between the representatives of the syndicates and politicians, it will always be the latter who will reap the greater advantage.
Politicians have more than once intervened in strikes, desiring to destroy the prestige of their adversaries and to capture the confidence of the workers. The Longwy dock strikes, in 1905, arose out of the efforts of a Republican federation which attempted to organise the syndicates that might possibly serve its policy as against that of the employers;211 the business did not quite take the turn desired by the promoters of the movement, who were not familiar enough with this kind of operation. Some Socialist politicians, on the contrary, possess consummate skill in combining instincts of revolt into electoral forces. It was inevitable, therefore, that a few people should be struck by the idea that the great movements of the masses might be used for political ends.
The history of England affords more than one example of a Government giving way when numerous demonstrations against its proposals took place, even though it was strong enough to repel by force any attack on existing institutions. It seems to be an admitted principle of Parliamentary Government that the majority cannot persist in pursuing schemes which give rise to popular demonstrations of too serious a kind. It is one of the applications of the system of compromise on which this regime is founded; no law is valid when it is looked upon by a minority as being so oppressive that it rouses them to violent opposition. Great riotous demonstrations are an indication that the moment is not far off when an armed revolt might break out; Governments which are respectful of the old traditions give way before such demonstrations.212
Between the first simple threat of trouble and a riot a general political strike might take place, which might assume any one of a large number of forms: it might be peaceful and of short duration, its aim being to show the Government that it is on the wrong track, and that there are forces which could resist it; it might also be the first act of a series of bloody riots.
During the last few years Parliamentary Socialists have not been so sure that they would soon come into power, and they have recognised that their authority in the two Houses is not destined to increase indefinitely. When there are no exceptional circumstances to force the Government to buy their support with large concessions, their Parliamentary power is very much reduced. It would therefore be a great advantage to them if they could bring outside pressure to bear on recalcitrant majorities which would appear to threaten the Conservatives with a formidable insurrection.
If there were in existence rich working-class federations, highly centralised and in a position to impose a strict discipline on their members, Socialist deputies would not have very much trouble in inflicting their leadership occasionally on their Parliamentary colleagues. All that they would have to do would be to take advantage of an opportunity that was favourable to a movement of revolt, in order to stop some branch of industry for a few days. It has more than once been proposed that the Government should be brought to a standstill in this fashion by a stoppage in the working of the mines or of the railways.213 For such tactics to produce the full effect desired, the strike must break out unexpectedly at the word of command of the party; and must stop when the latter has signed a compact with the Government. It is for these reasons that politicians are so very much in favour of the centralisation of the syndicates, and that they talk so much about discipline.214 It is to be understood, of course, that this discipline is one which must subject the proletariat to their command. Associations which are very decentralised and grouped into Bourses du Travail would offer them far fewer guarantees of success; so that all those who are not in favour of a solid concentration of the proletariat round the party leaders are regarded by the latter as anarchists.
The political general strike has this immense advantage, that it does not greatly imperil the precious lives of the politicians; it is an improvement on the moral insurrection which the “Mountain” made use of in the month of May 1793, in order to force the Convention to expel the Girondists from its midst; Jaurès, who is afraid of alarming his clients, the financiers (just as the members of the “Mountain” were afraid of alarming the Departments), admires exceedingly any movement which is free from the violent acts that distress humanity;215 he is not, therefore, an irreconcilable opponent of the political general strike.
Recent events have given a very great impetus to the idea of the general political strike. The Belgians obtained the reform of the Constitution by a display which has been decorated, perhaps rather ambitiously, with the name of general strike. It now appears that these events did not have the tragic aspect they have been sometimes credited with: the ministry was very pleased to be put in a position to compel the House to accept an electoral bill which the majority disapproved of; many Liberal employers were very much opposed to this ultra-clerical majority; what happened, therefore, was something quite contrary to a proletarian general strike, since the workers served the ends of the State and of the capitalists. Since those already far-off times there has been another attempt to bring pressure to bear on the central authority, with a view to establishing a more democratic system of suffrage; this attempt failed completely; the ministry, this time, was no longer secretly on the side of the promoters of the bill, and they did not force its adoption. Many Belgians were very much astonished at their failure, and could not understand why the king did not dismiss his ministers to please the Socialists; he had formerly insisted on the resignation of his clerical ministers in face of a display of Liberal feeling; in fact, this king in their opinion understood nothing of his duties, and, as was said at the time, he was only a pasteboard king.
This Belgian incident is not without interest, because it brings home to us the fact that the proletarian general strike and the political general strike are diametrically opposed to one another. Belgium is one of the countries where the Syndicalist movement is weakest; the whole Socialist organisation is founded on the bakers’, grocers’, and haberdashers’ shops that are run by committees of the party; the worker, accustomed from of old to a clerical discipline, remains an inferior, who believes himself obliged to follow the leadership of people who sell him the commodities he needs at a slight reduction, and who din catholic or socialistic speeches into his ears. Not only do we find grocery set up as a priestcraft, but it is also from Belgium that we get the well-known theory of public services against which Guesde wrote such a violent pamphlet in 1883, and which Deville called in the same year a Belgium imitation of collectivism.216 The whole of Belgian Socialism tends towards the development of State industrialism and the constitution of a class. of State-workers who would be firmly disciplined under the iron hand of leaders accepted by democracy. 217 It is quite natural, therefore, that in such a country the general strike should be conceived in a political form; in such conditions the only aim of popular insurrection must be to take the power from one group of politicians and to hand it over to another—the people still remaining the passive beast that bears the yoke.218
The recent troubles in Russia have helped to popularise the idea of the general strike among professional politicians. Many people were surprised at the results produced by great concerted stoppages of work; but what really happened and what followed from these disturbances is not very well known. People who are acquainted with the country believe that Witte was hand in glove with many of the revolutionaries, and that he was delighted at being able to obtain, by terrifying the Czar, the dismissal of his enemies and the grant of institutions which, in his opinion, would put obstacles in the way of any return to the old regime. It is very remarkable that for a long time the Government seemed paralysed, and in the administration anarchy was at its height, while, from the moment Witte thought it necessary in his personal interests to act vigorously, repression was rapid; that day arrived (as several people had foreseen) when the financiers needed to revive Russian credit. It seems hardly probable that previous insurrections ever had the irresistible power attributed to them; the Petit Parisien, which was one of the French newspapers that had advertised219 the fame of Witte, said that the great strike of October 1905 came to an end on account of the hunger of the workers; according to this newspaper, the strike had even been prolonged for a day in the hope that the Poles would take part in the movement, and would obtain concessions as the Finns had done; then it congratulated the Poles for having been wise enough not to budge, and for not having given a pretext for German intervention (Petit Parisien, November 7, 1905).
We must not allow ourselves, therefore, to be too much dazzled by certain descriptions, and Ch. Bonnier was right when, in the Socialiste of November 18, 1905, he cast doubt on the truth of the account which had been given of the course of events in Russia; he had always been an irreconcilable opponent of the general strike, and he pointed out that there was no resemblance at all between what had happened in Russia and what the “genuine Syndicalists in France” look forward to. In his opinion, the strike in Russia had merely been the consummation of a very complex process, one method out of the many employed, which had succeeded owing to the exceptionally favourable circumstances in which it had developed.
We have here, then, a criterion which will serve to distinguish two kinds of movement generally designated by the same name. We have studied a proletarian general strike, which is one undivided whole; now we have to consider the general political strike, which combines the incidents of economic revolt with many other elements depending on systems foreign to the industrial system. In the first case, no detail ought to be considered by itself; in the second, everything depends on the art with which heterogeneous details are combined. In this case the parts must be considered separately, their importance estimated, and an attempt made to harmonise them. One would think that such a task ought to be looked upon as purely Utopian (or even quite absurd) by the people who are in the habit of bringing forward so many practical objections to the proletarian general strike; but if the proletariat, left to itself, can do nothing, politicians are equal to anything. Is it not one of the dogmas of democracy that the genius of demagogues can overcome all obstacles?
I will not stop here to discuss what chances of success these tactics have, and I leave it to the stock-jobbers who read L’Humanité to discover how the general political strike may be prevented from degenerating into anarchy. My only concern in the following pages will be to throw full light on the difference between the two conceptions of the general strike.
We have seen that the idea of the Syndicalist general strike contains within itself the whole of proletarian Socialism; not only are all its real elements found therein, but they are moreover grouped in the same way as in social struggles, and their movements are exactly those proper to their nature. It would be impossible to find any image which would represent equally well the political form of Socialism, and which could be contrasted with the proletarian conception of its as represented by the general strike; yet, by making the political general strike the pivoting point in the tactics of those Socialists who are at the same time revolutionary and Parliamentary, it becomes possible to obtain an exact notion of what it is that separates the latter from the Syndicalists.
A. To begin with, we perceive immediately that the political general strike does not presuppose a class war concentrated on a field of battle in which the proletariat attacks the middle class; the division of society into two antagonistic armies disappears, for this class of revolt is possible with any kind of social structure. In the past many revolutions were the result of coalitions between discontented groups; Socialist writers have often pointed out that the poorer classes have more than once allowed themselves to be massacred to no purpose, save to place power in the hands of new rulers who, with great astuteness, had managed to utilise for their own advantage a passing discontent of the people against the former authorities.
It seems, indeed, that the Russian Liberals had hoped to see something of the kind happen in 1905; they were delighted at the number of peasant and working-class insurrections; it has even been asserted that they heard with great satisfaction of the reverses of the army in Manchuria.220 They believed that the Government, getting alarmed, would have recourse to their enlightenment; as there is a large number of sociologists among them, the little science would thus have obtained a huge success; but it is probable that the people would have been left to twiddle their thumbs.
It is, I suppose, for much the same kind of reason that the capitalistic shareholders of L’Humanité are such ardent admirers of certain strikes; they look upon the proletariat as a very convenient instrument with which to clear the ground, and they feel certain from their study of history that it will always be possible for a Socialist Government to bring rebels to reason. Moreover, are not the laws against anarchists, made in an hour of madness, still carefully preserved on the Statute books? They are stigmatised as rascally laws; but they may yet serve to protect capitalist-socialists.221
B. (1) Further, under the influence of this conception it would no longer be true to say that the whole organisation of the proletariat was contained within revolutionary Syndicalism. Since the Syndicalist general strike would no longer be the entire revolution, other organisations would have been created side by side with the syndicates; as the strike could only be one detail cunningly dovetailed into many other incidents which must be set going at the propitious moment, the syndicates would have to await the word of command of the political committees, or at least work in perfect unison with the committees which represent the superior intelligence of the Socialist movement. In Italy Ferri has symbolised this unison in a rather comical manner, by saying that Socialism has need of two legs; this figure of speech was borrowed from Lessing, who little thought that it might become one of the principles of sociology. In the second scene of Minna von Barnhelm, the innkeeper says to Just that a man cannot stand on one glass of brandy any more than he can walk on one leg; he also adds that all good things are three in number, and that a rope of four strands is all the stronger. I am not aware that sociology has made any use of these other aphorisms, which are worth just as much as the one Ferri misused.
(2) If the Syndicalist general strike is connected with the idea of an era of great economic progress, the political general strike calls up rather that of a period of decadence. Experience shows that classes on the downgrade are more easily captured by the fallacious harangues of politicians than classes on the upgrade, so that there seems to be a close relation between the political perspicacity of men and the conditions under which they live. Prosperous classes may often act very imprudently, because they have too much confidence in their own strength; they face the future with too much boldness, and they are overcome for the moment by a frenzied desire for renown. Enfeebled classes habitually put their trust in people who promise them the protection of the State, without ever trying to understand how this protection could possibly harmonise their discordant interests; they readily enter into every coalition formed for the purpose of forcing concessions from the Government; they greatly admire charlatans who speak with a glib tongue. Socialism must be exceedingly careful if it is not to fall to the level of what Engels called bombastic antisemitism,222 and the advice of Engels on this point has not always been followed.
The political general strike presupposes that very diverse social groups shall possess the same faith in the magical force of the State; this faith is never lacking in social groups which are on the downgrade, and its existence enables windbags to represent themselves as able to do everything. The political general strike would be greatly helped by the stupidity of philanthropists, and this stupidity is always a result of the degeneration of the rich classes. Its chances of success would be enhanced by the fact that it would have to deal with cowardly and discouraged capitalists.
(3) Under such conditions it would no longer be possible to ignore plans of the future state of society; these plans on which Marx poured ridicule, and which the Syndicalist general strike ignores, would become an essential element of the new system. A political general strike could not be proclaimed until it was known with absolute certainty that the complete framework of the future organisation was ready. That is what Jaurès intended to convey in his articles of 1901 when he said that modern society “will recoil from an enterprise as indeterminate and as empty (as the Syndicalist strike) as one draws back from a precipice.”223
There are plenty of young barristers, briefless and likely to remain so, who have filled enormous note-books with their detailed projects for the social organisation of the future. If we have not yet been favoured with the breviary of the revolution which Lucien Herr announced in 1900, we know at least that regulations have been framed for the establishment of the book-keeping branch of collectivist society, and Tarbouriech has even gone into the question of the printed forms to be recommended for the use of the future bureaucracy.224 Jaurès is continually bewailing the fact that so many lights are condemned to remain hidden under the capitalist bushel; and he feels convinced that the revolution depends very much less on the conditions Marx had in mind than on the efforts of unknown geniuses.
C. I have already called attention to the terrible nature of the revolution as conceived by Marx and the Syndicalists, and I have said that it is very important that its character of absolute and irrevocable transformation should be preserved, because it is that which gives Socialism its high educational value. The comfort-loving followers of our politicians could not view with any approval the profoundly serious work which is being carried on by the proletariat; the former desire to reassure the middle class, and promise not to allow the people to give themselves up entirely to their anarchical instincts. They explain to the middle class that they do not by any means dream of suppressing the great State machine, but wise Socialists desire two things: (1) to take possession of this machine so that they may improve its works, and make them run to further their friends’ interests as much as possible, and (2) to assure the stability of the Government, which will be very advantageous for all business men. Tocqueville had observed that, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the administrative institutions of France having changed very little, revolutions had no longer produced any very great upheavals.225 Socialist financiers have not read Tocqueville, but they understand instinctively that the preservation of a highly centralised, very authoritative and very democratic State puts immense resources at their disposal, and protects them from proletarian revolution. The transformations which their friends, the Parliamentary Socialists, may carry out will always be of a very limited scope, and it will always be possible, thanks to the State, to correct any imprudences they may commit.
The general strike of the Syndicalists drives away from Socialism all financiers in quest of adventures; the political strike rather pleases these gentlemen, because it would be carried out in circumstances favourable to the power of politicians, and consequently to the operations of their financial allies.226
Marx supposes, exactly as the Syndicalists do, that the revolution will be absolute and irrevocable, because it will place the forces of production in the hands of free men, i.e. of men who will be capable of running the workshop created by capitalism without any need of masters. This conception would not at all suit the financiers and the politicians whom they support, for both are only fit to exercise the noble profession of masters. Therefore, the authors of all enquiries into moderate Socialism are forced to acknowledge that the latter implies the division of society into two groups: the first of these is a select body, organised as a political party, which has adopted the mission of thinking for the thoughtless masses, and which imagines that, because it allows the latter to enjoy the results of its superior enlightenment, it has done something admirable.227 The second is the whole body of the producers. The select body of politicians has no other profession than that of using its wits, and they find that it is strictly in accordance with the principles of immanent justice (of which they are sole owners) that the proletariat should work to feed them and furnish them with the means for an existence that only distantly resembles an ascetic’s.
This division is so evident that generally no attempt is made to hide it: the officials of Socialism constantly speak of the party as of an organism having a life of its own. At the International Socialist Congress of 1900, the party was warned against the danger it ran in following a policy which might separate it too much from the proletariat; it must inspire the masses with confidence if it desires to have their support on the day of the great battle.228 The great reproach which Marx levelled at his adversaries in the Alliance was this separation of the leaders and the led, which had the effect of reinstating the State—and which is to-day so marked in Germany—and elsewhere.
A. We will now carry our analysis of the ideas grouped round the political strike a little farther, and enquire first of all what becomes of the notion of class.
(1) It will no longer be possible to distinguish the classes by the place occupied by their members in capitalistic production; we go back to the old distinction between rich groups and poor groups—such was the division between the classes as it appeared to those older Socialists who sought to reform the iniquities of the actual distribution of riches. The “social Catholics” take up this position also, and endeavour to improve the lot of the poor, not only by charity, but also by a large number of institutions which aim at a mitigation of the wretchedness caused by the capitalist industrial system. It seems that even today things are considered from this point of view in circles that admire Jaurès as a prophet; I have been told that the latter sought to convert Buisson to Socialism by making an appeal to the goodness of his heart, and that these two soothsayers had a very ludicrous discussion as to the best way to remedy the defects of society.
The masses believe that they are suffering from the iniquitous consequences of a past which was full of violence, ignorance, and wickedness; they are confident that the genius of their leaders will render them less unhappy; they believe that democracy, if it were only free, would replace a malevolent hierarchy by a benevolent hierarchy.
The leaders, who foster this sweet illusion in their men, see the situation from quite another point of view; the present social organisation revolts them just in so far as it creates obstacles to their ambition; they are less shocked by the existence of the classes than by their own inability to attain to the positions already acquired by older men; when they have penetrated far enough into the sanctuaries of the State, into drawing-rooms and places of amusement, they cease, as a rule, to be revolutionary and speak learnedly of “evolution.”
(2) The sentiment of revolt which is met with in the poorer classes will henceforth be coloured by a violent jealousy. Our democratic newspapers foster this passion with considerable skill, imagining that this is the best means of dulling the minds of their readers and of keeping up the circulation of the paper; they exploit the scandals which arise from time to time among the rich; they lead their readers to feel a savage pleasure when they see shame entering the household of one of the great ones of the earth. With a really astonishing impudence, they pretend that they are thus serving the cause of the superfine morality, which they hold as much at heart, they say, as the well-being and the liberty of the poorer classes! But it is probable that their own interests are the sole motives for their actions.229
Jealousy is a sentiment which seems to belong, above all, to passive beings. Leaders have active sentiments; with them, jealousy is transformed into a thirst to obtain, at whatever cost, the most coveted situations, and they employ to this end any means which enables them to set aside people who stand in the way of their onward march. In politics, people are no more held back by scruples than they are in sport, and we hear every day of cases where competitors in all kinds of contests seek to improve their chances by some trickery or other.
(3) The masses who are led have a very vague and extremely simple idea of the means by which their lot can be improved; demagogues easily get them to believe that the best way is to utilise the power of the State to pester the rich. We pass thus from jealousy to vengeance, and it is well known that vengeance is a sentiment of extraordinary power, especially with the weak. The history of the Greek cities and of the Italian republics of the Middle Ages is full of instances of fiscal laws which were very oppressive on the rich, and which contributed not a little towards the ruin of governments. In the fifteenth century, Aeneas Sylvius (later Pope Pius II.) noted with astonishment the extraordinary prosperity of the commercial towns of Germany and the great liberty enjoyed therein by the middle class, who, in Italy, were persecuted.230 If our contemporary social policy were examined closely, it would be seen that it also was steeped in ideas of jealousy and vengeance; many regulations have been framed more with the idea of pestering employers than of improving the situation of the workers. When the clericals are in a minority, they never fail to recommend severe regulations in order to be revenged on free-thinking free-mason employers 231
The leaders obtain all sorts of advantages from these methods; they alarm the rich, and exploit them for their own personal profit; they cry louder than anybody against the privileges of fortune, and know how to obtain for themselves all the enjoyments which the latter procures; by making use of the evil instincts and the stupidity of their followers, they realise this curious paradox, that they get the people to applaud the inequality of conditions in the name of democratic equality. It would be impossible to understand the success of demagogues from the time of Athens to contemporary New York, if due account was not taken of the extraordinary power of the idea of vengeance in extinguishing reasonable reflection.
I believe that the only means by which this pernicious influence of the demagogues may be wiped out are those employed by Socialism in propagating the notion of the proletarian general strike; it awakens in the depths of the soul a sentiment of the sublime proportionate to the conditions of a gigantic struggle; it forces the desire to satisfy jealousy by malice into the background; it brings to the fore the pride of free men, and thus protects the worker from the quackery of ambitious leaders, hungering for the fleshpots.
B. The great differences which exist between the two general strikes (i.e. between the two kinds of Socialism) become still more obvious when social struggles are compared with war; in fact, war also may give rise to two opposite systems of ideas, so that quite contradictory things can be said about it, all based on incontestable facts.
War may be considered from its noble side, i.e. as it has been considered by poets celebrating armies which have been particularly illustrious; proceeding thus we find in war:
(1) The idea that the profession of arms cannot compare to any other profession—that it puts the man who adopts this profession in a class which is superior to the ordinary conditions of life,—that history is based entirely on the adventures of warriors, so that the economic life only existed to maintain them.
(2) The sentiment of glory which Renan so justly looked upon as one of the most singular and the most powerful creations of human genius, and which has been of such incomparable value in history.232
(3) The ardent desire to try one’s strength in great battles, to submit to the test which gives the military calling its claim to superiority, and to conquer glory at the peril of one’s life.
There is no need for me to insist on these features of war at any great length; my readers will understand the part played in ancient Greece by this conception of war. The whole of classical history is dominated by the idea of war conceived heroically: in their origin, the institutions of the Greek republics had as their basis the organisation of armies of citizens; Greek art reached its apex in the citadels; philosophers conceived of no other possible form of education than that which fostered in youth the heroic tradition, and they endeavoured to keep the study and practice of music within bounds, because they wished to prevent the development of sentiments foreign to this discipline; social Utopias were created with a view to maintaining a nucleus of homeric warriors in the cities, etc. In our own times, the wars of Liberty have been scarcely less fruitful in ideas than those of the ancient Greeks.
There is another aspect of war which does not possess this character of nobility, and on which the pacificists always dwell.233 The object of war is no longer war itself; its object is to allow politicians to satisfy their ambitions: the foreigner must be conquered in order that they themselves may obtain great and immediate material advantages; the victory must also give the party which led the country during the time of success so great a preponderance that it can distribute great favours to its followers; finally, it is hoped that the citizens will be so intoxicated by the spell of victory they will overlook the sacrifices which they are called upon to make, and will allow themselves to be carried away by enthusiastic conceptions of the future. Under the influence of this state of mind, the people permit the Government to develop its authority in an improper manner, without any protest, so that every conquest abroad may be considered as having for its inevitable corollary a conquest at home made by the party in office.
The Syndicalist general strike presents a very great number of analogies with the first conception of war: the proletariat organises itself for battle, separating itself distinctly from the other parts of the nation, and regarding itself as the great motive power of history, all other social considerations being subordinated to that of combat; it is very clearly conscious of the glory which will be attached to its historical role and of the heroism of its militant attitude; it longs for the final contest in which it will give proof of the whole measure of its valour. Pursuing no conquest, it has no need to make plans for utilising its victories: it counts on expelling the capitalists from the productive domain, and on taking their place in the workshop created by capitalism.
This conception of the general strike manifests in the clearest manner its indifference to the material profits of conquest by affirming that it proposes to suppress the State. The State has always been, in fact, the organiser of the war of conquest, the dispenser of its fruits, and the raison d’être of the dominating groups which profit by the enterprises—the cost of which is borne by the general body of society.
Politicians adopt the other point of view; they argue about social conflicts in exactly the same manner as diplomats argue about international affairs; all the actual fighting apparatus interests them very little; they see in the combatants nothing but instruments. The proletariat is their army, which they love in the same way that a colonial administrator loves the troops which enable him to bring large numbers of negroes under his authority; they apply themselves to the task of training the proletariat, because they are in a hurry to win quickly the great battles which will deliver the State into their hands; they keep up the ardour of their men, as the ardour of troops of mercenaries has always been kept up, by promises of pillage, by appeals to hatred, and also by the small favours which their occupancy of a few political places enables them to distribute already. But the proletariat for them is food for cannon, and nothing else, as Marx said in 1873.234
The reinforcement of power of the State is at the basis of all their conceptions; in the organisations which they at present control, the politicians are already preparing the framework of a strong, centralised and disciplined authority, which. will not be hampered by the criticism of an opposition, which will be able to enforce silence, and which will give currency to its lies.
C. In Socialist literature the question of a future dictatorship of the proletariat is constantly cropping up, but nobody likes to explain it; sometimes this formula is improved and the epithet impersonal is added to the substantive dictatorship, though this addition does not throw much light on the question. Bernstein pointed out a few years ago that this dictatorship would probably be that “of club orators and of literary men.”235 and he was of opinion that the Socialists of 1848, when speaking of this dictatorship, had had in view an imitation of 1793, “a central, dictatorial and revolutionary authority, upheld by the terrorist dictatorship of the revolutionary clubs”; he was alarmed by this outlook, and he asserted that all the working men with whom he had had an opportunity of conversing were very mistrustful of the future.236 Hence he concluded that it would be better to base Socialist policy and propaganda on a conception of modern society more in accordance with the idea of evolution. His analysis seems to be inadequate.
In the dictatorship of the proletariat we may first of all notice a reminiscence of the Old Regime. Socialists have for a long time been dominated by the idea that capitalist society must be likened to the feudal system; I scarcely know any idea more false and more dangerous. They imagine that the new feudalism would disappear beneath the influence of forces analogous to those which ruined the old feudal system. The latter succumbed beneath the attacks of a strong and centralised power, imbued with the conviction that it had received a mandate from God to employ exceptional measures against the evil. The kings of the new model237 who established modern monarchical system were terrible despots, wholly destitute of scruples; but great historians have absolved them from all blame for the acts of violence they committed, because they lived in times when feudal anarchy, the barbarous manners of the old nobles and their lack of culture, joined to a want of respect for the ideas of the past,238 seemed crimes against which it was the duty of the royal power to act energetically. It is probably then with a view to treating the leaders of capitalism with a wholly royal energy that there is so much talk nowadays of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Later on, royalty relaxed its despotism and constitutional government took its place. It is said that the dictatorship of the proletariat will also weaken at length, and will disappear, and that finally an anarchical society will take its place; but how this will come about is not explained. The regal despotism did not fall by itself or by the goodness of sovereigns; one must be very simple to suppose that the people who would profit by the demagogic dictatorship would willingly abandon its advantages.
Bernstein saw quite plainly that the dictatorship of the proletariat corresponds to a division of society into masters and servants, but it is curious that he did not perceive that the idea of the political strike (which he now, to a certain extent, accepts) is connected in the closest manner with this dictatorship of politicians which he fears. The men who had managed to organise the proletariat in the form of an army, ever ready to obey their orders, would be generals who would set up a state of siege in vanquished society; we should therefore have, on the day following the revolution, a dictatorship exercised by those politicians who in the society of to-day already form a compact group.
I have already recalled what Marx said about the people who reinstated the State by creating in contemporary society an embryo of the future society of masters. The history of the French Revolution shows us how these things happen. The revolutionaries made arrangements whereby their administrative staff was ready to take possession of authority immediately the old administration decamped, so that there was no break of continuity in the domination of a governing class. There are no bounds to Jaurès’s admiration for these operations, which he describes in the course of his Histoire socialiste; he does not exactly understand their significance, but he guesses the analogy they bear to his own conceptions of social revolution. The flabbiness of the men of that time was so great that sometimes the substitution of the old by the new officials was accomplished under conditions bordering on farce; we always find a supernumerary state—État postiche239 (artificial state), to use the expression of that time—which is organised in advance by the side of the legal State, which considers itself a legitimate before it has become a legal power, and which profits by some slight incident to take up the reins of government as they slip from the feeble hands of the constituted authorities.
The adoption of the red flag is one of the most singular and the most characteristic episodes of that time. This signal was used in times of disaffection to give warning that martial law was about to be set up; on August 10, 1792, it became the revolutionary symbol, in order to proclaim “the martial law of the people against rebels to the executive power.” Jaurès comments on this incident in these terms: “It is we, the people, who are now the law. . . . We are not rebels. The rebels are in the Tuileries, and it is against the factions of the court and the party of the constitutional monarchy that we raise, in the name of the country and of liberty, the flag of legal repressions.”240 Thus the insurgents began by proclaiming that they held legitimate authority; they are fighting against a State which has only the appearance of legitimacy, and they take the red flag to symbolise the re-establishment by force of the real order. As conquerors, they will treat the conquered as conspirators, and will demand that their plots be punished. The real conclusion to all these fine ideas was to be the massacre of the prisoners in September.
All this is perfectly simple, and the general political strike would develop in the same way with similar occurrences. In order that this strike should succeed, the greater part of the proletariat must be members of syndicates which are under the thumb of political committees; there must be a complete organisation made up of the men who will take over the Government, so that it will only be necessary to make a simple transmutation in the personnel of the State. The organisation of the État postiche would have to be more complete than it was at the time of the Revolution, because the conquest of the State by force does not seem so easy to accomplish as formerly; but the principle would be the same. It is even possible that, since the transmission of authority operates nowadays in a more perfect fashion, thanks to the new resources at the disposal of the Parliamentary system, and since the proletariat would be thoroughly well organised under the official syndicates, we should see the social revolution culminate in a wonderful system of slavery.
The study of the political strike leads us to a better understanding of a distinction we must always have in mind when we reflect on contemporary social questions. Sometimes the terms force and violence are used in speaking of acts of authority, sometimes in speaking of acts of revolt. It is obvious that the two cases give rise to very different consequences. I think it would be better to adopt a terminology which would give rise to no ambiguity, and that the term violence should be employed only for acts of revolt; we should say, therefore, that the object of force is to impose a certain social order in which the minority governs, while violence tends to the destruction of that order. The middle class have used force since the beginning of modern times, while the proletariat now reacts against the middle class and against the State by violence.
For a long time I was convinced that it is very important that the theory of social forces should be thoroughly investigated—in a large measure, the forces may be compared to those acting on matter; but I was not able to perceive the capital distinction in question here until I had come to consider the problem of the general strike. Moreover, I do not think that Marx had ever examined any other form of social constraints except force. In my Saggi di critica del marxismo I endeavoured, a few years ago, to sum up the arguments of Marx with respect to the adaptation of man to the conditions of capitalism, and I presented these arguments in the following manner, on pages 38-40:—
“(1) There is a social system which is to certain extent mechanical, in which man seems subject to true natural laws: classical economists place at the beginning of things that automatism which is in reality the last product of the capitalistic regime. ‘But the advance of capitalist production,’ says Marx,241 ‘develops a more and more numerous class of workers who, by educations, tradition, and habit, look upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of nature.’ The intervention of an intelligent will in this mechanism would appear as an exception.
“(2) There is a regime of emulation and of keen competition which impels men to set aside traditional obstacles, to seek constantly for what is new, and to imagine conditions of existence which seem to them to be better. According to Marx, it is in this revolutionary task that the middle class excelled.
“(3) There is a regime of violence, which plays an important part in history, and which assumes several distinct forms:
“(a) On the lowest level, we find a scattered kind of violence, which resembles the struggle for life, which acts through economic conditions, and which carries out a slow but sure expropriation; violence of this character works especially with the aid of fiscal arrangements.242
“(b) Next comes the concentrated and organised force of the State, which acts directly on labour, ‘to regulate wages,’ i.e. force them within the limits suitable to surplus value making, to lengthen the working day, and to maintain the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence; this is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation.243
“(c) We have, finally, violence properly so called, which occupies so great a place in the history of primitive accumulation, and which constitutes the principle subject of history.”
A few supplementary observations may be useful here.
We must first of all observe that these different phases are placed in a logical sequence, starting from states which most resemble an organism, and in which no independent will appears, and ending in states in which individual minds bring forward their considered plans; but the historical order is quite the contrary of this order.
At the origin of capitalist accumulation we find some very distinct historical facts, which appear each in its proper time, with its own characteristics, and under conditions so clearly marked that they are described in the chronicles. We find, for instance, the expropriation of the peasants and the suppression of the old legislation which had constituted “serfdom and the industrial hierarchy.” Marx adds: “The history of this expropriation is not a matter of conjecture; it is inscribed in the annals of humanity in indelible letters of blood and fire.”244
Farther on Marx shows how the dawn of modern times was marked by the conquest of America, the enslavement of negroes and the colonial wars: “The different methods of primitive accumulation which the capitalist era brought about are divided in a more or less chronological order first of all [between] Portugal, Spain, France and England, until the latter combined the lot, during the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, into a systematic whole, embracing simultaneously the colonial system, public credit, modern finance and the protectionist system. Some of these methods are backed by the employment of brute force; but all, without exception, exploit the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, in order to precipitate violently the passage from the feudal economic order to the capitalist economic order, and to shorten the phases of the transition.” It is on this occasion that he compared force to a midwife, and says that it multiplies the social movement.245
Thus we see that economic forces are closely bound up with political power, and capitalism finally perfects itself to the point of being able to dispense with any direct appeal to the public force, except in very exceptional cases. “In the ordinary run of things, the worker can be left to the action of the natural laws of production, i.e. to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from guaranteed, and perpetuated by the very mechanism of production.”246
When we reach the last historical stage, the action of independent wills disappears, and the whole of society resembles an organised body, working automatically; observers can then establish an economic science which appears to them as exact as the sciences of physical nature. The error of many economists consisted in their ignorance of the fact that this system, which seemed natural or primitive to them.247 is the result of a series of transformations which might not have taken place, and always remains a very unstable structure, for it could be destroyed by force, as it had been created by the intervention of force; moreover, contemporary economic literature is full of complaints respecting the intervention of the State, which has thereby upset natural laws.
Nowadays economists are little disposed to believe that these natural laws are in reality laws of Nature; they are well aware that the capitalist system was reached but slowly, but they consider that it was reached by a progress which should enchant the minds of all enlightened men. This progress, in fact, is demonstrated by three remarkable facts: it has become possible to set up a science of economics; laws can be stated in the simplest, surest, and most elegant formulas, since the law of contract dominates every country of advanced capitalism;248 the caprices of the rulers of the State are no longer so apparent, and thus the path towards liberty is open. Any return to the past seems to them a crime against science, law, and human dignity.
Socialism looks upon this evolution as being a history of middle-class force, and it only sees differences of degree where the economists imagine that they are discovering difference of kind. Whether force manifests itself under the aspect of historical acts of coercion, or of fiscal oppression, or of conquest, or labour legislation, or whether it is wholly bound up with the economic system, it is always a middle-class force labouring with more or less skill to bring about the capitalist order of society.
Marx endeavoured to describe the details of this evolution very carefully; he gave very little detail, however, about the organisation of the proletariat. This gap in his work has often been explained. He found in England an enormous mass of materials concerning the history of capitalism, which was fairly well arranged, and which had already been discussed by economists ; he was therefore able to investigate thoroughly the different peculiarities of middle-class evolution, but he was not very well furnished with matter on which he could argue about the organisation of the proletariat; he was obliged, therefore, to remain content with an explanation, in very abstract formulas, of his ideas on the subject of the path which the proletariat must take, in order to arrive at the final revolutionary struggle. The consequence of this inadequacy of Marx’s work was that Marxism has deviated from the path assigned to it by its real nature.
The people who pride themselves on being orthodox Marxians have made no attempt to add anything essential to what their master has written, and they have always imagined that, in order to argue about the proletariat, they must make use of what they had learned from the history of middle-class development. They have never suspected, therefore, that a distinction should be drawn between the force that aims at authority, endeavouring to bring about an automatic obedience, and the violence that would smash that authority. According to them, the proletariat must acquire force just as the middle class acquired it, use it as. the latter used it, and end finally by establishing a Socialist State which will replace the middle-class State.
As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions which abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State which should abolish capitalism. The workers should therefore sacrifice everything to one end alone —that of putting into power men who promise them solemnly to ruin capitalism for the benefit of the people; that is how a Parliamentary Socialist party is formed. Former militant Socialists provided with modest jobs, middle-class people, educated, frivolous, and eager to be in the public eye, and Stock Exchange speculators imagine that a golden age might spring up for them as the result of a cautious—a very cautious—revolution, which would not seriously disturb the traditional State. Quite naturally, these future masters of the world harbour the thought of reproducing the history of middle-class force, and they are organising themselves so that they may be able to draw the greatest possible profit from this revolution. Quite a number of such people might find a place in the new hierarchy, and what Paul Leroy Beaulieu calls the “Fourth Estate” would become really a lower middle class.249
The whole future of democracy might easily depend on this lower middle class which hopes to make use of the strength of the really proletarian organisations for its own great personal advantage.42 The politicians believe that this class will always have peaceful tendencies, that it may be organised and disciplined, and that since the leaders of such sane syndicates understand equally with the politicians the action of the State, this class will form an excellent body of followers. They would like to make use of it to govern the proletariat; it is for this reason that Ferdinand Buisson and Jaurès are in favour of syndicates of the minor grades of civil servants, who, entering the Bourses du Travail, would inspire the proletariat with the idea of imitating their own feeble and peaceful attitude.
The political general strike concentrates the whole of this conception into one easily understood picture: it shows us how the State would lose nothing of its strength, how the transmission of power from one privileged class to another would take place, and how the mass of the producers would merely change masters. These new masters would very probably be less able than those of to-day; they would make more flowery speeches than the capitalists, but there is every evidence that they would be much harder and much more insolent than their predecessors.
The new school approaches the question from quite another point of view: it cannot accept the idea that the historical mission of the proletariat is to imitate the middle class; it cannot conceive that a revolution as vast as that which would abolish capitalism could be attempted for a trifling and doubtful result, for a change of masters, for the satisfaction of theorists, politicians, and speculators—all worshippers and exploiters of the State. It does not wish to restrict itself to the formulas of Marx; although he gave no other theory than that of middle-class force, that, in its eyes, is no reason why it should confine itself to a scrupulous imitation of middle-class force.
In the course of his revolutionary career, Marx was not always happily inspired, and too often he followed inspirations which belong to the past; he even allowed from time to time a quantity of old rubbish which he found in the Utopists to creep into his writings. The new school does not in the least feel itself bound to admire the illusions, the faults, and the errors of the man who did so much to work out revolutionary ideas; it endeavours to separate what disfigures the work of Marx from what will immortalise his name; its attitude is thus the reverse of that of official Socialists, who admire especially in Marx that which is not Marxian. We shall therefore attach no importance whatever to the numerous extracts which may be quoted against us to prove that Marx often understood history as the politicians do.
We know now the reason for his attitude: he did not know the distinction, which appears to us nowadays so obvious, between middle-class force and proletarian violence, because he did not move in circles which had acquired a satisfactory notion of the general strike.250 We now possess sufficient material to enable us to understand the Syndicalist strike as thoroughly as we do the political strike; we know what differentiates the proletarian movement from the older middle-class movement; we find in the attitude of the revolutionaries towards the State a means of elucidating ideas which were still very confused in Marx’s mind.
The method which has served us to mark the difference which exists between middle-class force and proletarian violence may also serve to solve many questions which crop up in the course of researches about the organisation of the proletariat. In comparing attempts to organise the Syndicalist strike, and attempts to organise the political strike, we may often judge what is good and what is bad, i.e. what is specifically socialistic and what has middle-class tendencies.
Popular education, for example, seems to be wholly carried on in a middle-class spirit; history shows us that the whole effort of capitalism has been to bring about the submission of the masses to the conditions of the capitalist economic system, so that society might become an organism; the whole revolutionary effort tends to create free men, but democratic rulers adopt as their mission the accomplishment of the moral unity of France. This moral unity is the automatic discipline of the producers, who would doubtless be happy to work for the glory of their intellectual leaders.
It may be said, too, that the greatest danger which threatens Syndicalism would be an attempt to imitate democracy; it would be better for it to remain content for a time with weak and chaotic organisations rather than that it should fall beneath the sway of syndicates which would copy the political forms of the middle class.
The revolutionary Syndicalists have never yet made that mistake, because those who seek to lead them into an imitation of middle-class methods happen to be adversaries of the Syndicalist general strike, and have thus stood confessed as enemies.