Reflections on Violence/Chapter 2

by Georges Sorel

CHAPTER II

VIOLENCE AND THE DECADENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES

  I. Parliamentarians, who have to inspire fear—Parnell's methods—Casuistry; fundamental identity of the Parliamentary Socialist groups.

 II. Degeneration of the middle class brought about by peace—Marx's conceptions of necessity—Part played by violence in the restoration of former social relationships.

III. Relation between revolution and economic prosperity—The French Revolution—The Christian conquest—Invasion of the Barbarians—Dangers which threaten the world.

I

It is very difficult to understand proletarian violence as long as we think in terms of the ideas disseminated by middle-class philosophers; according to their philosophy, violence is a relic of barbarism which is bound to disappear under the influence of the progress of enlightenment. It is therefore quite natural that Jaurès, who has been brought up on middle-class ideology, should have a profound contempt for people who favour proletarian violence; he is astonished to see educated Socialists hand in hand with the Syndicalists; he wonders by what miracle men who have proved themselves thinkers can accumulate sophistries in order to give a semblance of reason to the dreams of stupid people who are incapable of thought.^[1] This question worries the friends of Jaurès considerably, and they are only too ready to treat the representatives of the new school as demagogues, and accuse them of seeking the applause of the impulsive masses.

Parliamentary Socialists cannot understand the ends pursued by the new school; they imagine that ultimately all Socialism can be reduced to the pursuit of the means of getting into power. Is it possible that they think the followers of the new school wish to make a higher bid for the confidence of simple electors and cheat the Socialists of the seats provided for them? Again, the apologia of violence might have the very unfortunate result of disgusting the workers with electoral politics, and this would tend to destroy the chances of the Socialist candidates by multiplying the abstentions from voting! Do you wish to revive civil war? they ask. To our great statesmen that seems mad.

Civil war has become very difficult since the discovery of the new firearms, and since the cutting of rectilinear streets in the capital towns.^[2] The recent troubles in Russia seem even to have shown that Governments can count much more than was supposed on the energy of their officers. Nearly all French politicians had prophesied the imminent fall of Czarism at the time of the Manchurian defeats, but the Russian army in the presence of rioting did not manifest the weakness shown by the French army during our revolutions; nearly everywhere repression was rapid, efficacious, and even pitiless. The discussions which took place at the congress of social democrats at Jena show that the Parliamentary Socialists no longer rely upon an armed struggle to obtain possession of the State.

Does this mean that they are utterly opposed to violence? It would not be in their interest for the people to be quite calm; a certain amount of agitation suits them, but this agitation must be contained within well-defined limits and controlled by politicians. When he considers it useful for his own interests, Jaurès makes advances to the Confédération Générale du Travail;^[3] sometimes he instructs his peaceable clerks to fill his paper with revolutionary phrases; he is past master in the art of utilising popular anger. A cunningly conducted agitation is extremely useful to Parliamentary Socialists, who boast before the Government and the rich middle class of their ability to moderate revolution; they can thus arrange the success of the financial affairs in which they are interested, obtain minor favours for many influential electors, and get social laws voted in order to appear important in the eyes of the blockheads who imagine that these Socialists are great reformers of the law. In order that all this may come off there must always be a certain amount of movement, and the middle class must always be kept in a state of fear.

It is conceivable that a regular system of diplomacy might be established between the Socialist party and the State each time an economic conflict arose between workers and employers; the two powers would settle the particular difference. In Germany the Government enters into negotiations with the Church each time the clericals stand in the way of the administration. Socialists have even been urged to imitate Pamell, who so often found a means of imposing his will on England. This resemblance is all the greater in that Pamell's authority did not rest only on the number of votes at his disposal, but mainly upon the terror which every Englishman felt at the bare announcement of agrarian troubles in Ireland. A few acts of violence controlled by a Parliamentary group were exceedingly useful to the Pamellian policy, just as they are useful to the policy of Jaurès. In both cases a Parliamentary group sells peace of mind to the Conservatives, who dare not use the force they command.

This kind of diplomacy is difficult to conduct, and the Irish after the death of Pamell do not seem to have succeeded in carrying it on with the same success as in his time. In France it presents particular difficulty, because in no other country perhaps are the workers more difficult to manage: it is easy enough to arouse popular anger, but it is not easy to stifle it. As long as there are no very rich and strongly centralised trade unions whose leaders are in continuous relationship with political men,^[4] so long will it be impossible to say exactly to what lengths violence will go. Jaurès would very much like to see such associations of workers in existence, for his prestige will disappear at once when the general public perceives that he is not in a position to moderate revolution.

Everything becomes a question of valuation, accurate estimation, and opportunism; much skill, tact, and calm audacity are necessary to carry on such a diplomacy, i.e. to make the workers believe that you are carrying the flag of revolution, the middle class that you are arresting the danger which threatens them, and the country that you represent an irresistible current of opinion. The great mass of the electors understands nothing of what passes in politics, and has no intelligent knowledge of economic history; they take sides with the party which seems to possess power, and you can obtain everything you wish from them when you can prove to them that you are strong enough to make the Government capitulate. But you must not go too far, because the middle class might wake up and the country might be given over to a resolutely conservative statesman. A proletarian violence which escapes all valuation, all measurement, and all opportunism, may jeopardise everything and ruin socialistic diplomacy.

This diplomacy is played both on a large and small scale; with the Government, with the heads of the groups in Parliament, and with influential electors. Politicians seek to draw the greatest possible advantage from the discordant forces existing in the political field.

Parliamentary Socialists feel a certain embarrassment from the fact that at its origin Socialism took its stand on absolute principles and appealed for a long time to the same sentiments of revolt as the most advanced Republican Party. These two circumstances prevent them from following a party policy like that which Charles Bonnier often recommended: this writer, who has long been the principal theorist of the Guesdist party, would like the Socialists to follow closely the example of Parnell, who used to negotiate with the English parties without allowing himself to become the vassal of any one of them; in the same way it might be possible to come to an agreement with the Conservatives, if the latter pledged themselves to grant better conditions to the proletariat than the Radicals (Socialiste, August 27, 1905). This policy seemed scandalous to many people. Bonnier was obliged to dilute his thesis. He then contented himself with asking that the party should act in the best interests of the proletariat (September 17, 1905); but how is it possible to know where these interests he when the principle of the class war is no longer taken as your unique and absolute rule?

Parliamentary Socialists believe that they possess special faculties which enable them to take into account, not only the material and immediate advantages reaped by the working classes, but also the moral reasons which compel Socialism to form part of the great Republican family. Their congresses spend their energies in putting together formulas designed to regulate Socialist diplomacy, in settling what alliances are permitted and what forbidden, in reconciling the abstract principle of the class war (which they are anxious to retain verbally) with the reality of the agreements with politicians. Such an undertaking is madness, and therefore leads to equivocations, when it does not force deputies into attitudes of deplorable hypocrisy. Each year problems have to be rediscussed, because all diplomacy requires a flexibility which is incompatible with the existence of perfectly clear statutes.

The casuistry which Pascal scoffed at so much was not more subtle and more absurd than that which is to be found in polemics between what are called the Socialist schools. Escobar would have some difficulty in finding his bearings amid the distinctions of Jaurès; the moral theology of responsible Socialists is not one of the least of the buffooneries of our time.

All moral theology can be split up into two tendencies: there are casuists who say that we must be content with opinions having a slight probability, others that we should always adopt those that are strictest and most certain. This distinction was bound to be met with among our Parliamentary Socialists. Jaurès prefers the soft and conciliatory method, provided that means are found to make it agree, somehow or other, with first principles. and that it has behind it a few respectable authorities; he is a probabilist in the strongest sense of the term—or even a latitudinarian (laxist).^[5] Vaillant recommends the strong and belligerent method, which alone, in his opinion, is in accordance with the class war, and which has in its favour the unanimous sanction of all the old authorities; he is a tutiorist and a kind of Jansenist.

Jaurès no doubt believes that he is acting for the greatest good of Socialism, just as the more easy going type of casuists believed themselves the best and most useful defenders of the Church; they did, as a matter of fact, prevent weak Christians from falling into irreligion, and led them to practise the sacraments—exactly as Jaurès prevents the rich intellectuals who have come to Socialism by way of Dreyfusism from drawing back in horror before the class war, and induces them to take up the shares of the party journals. In his eyes, Vaillant is a dreamer who does not see the reality of the world, who intoxicates himself with the chimeras of an insurrection which has now become impossible, and who does not understand the great advantages which may be got from universal suffrage by a boastful politician.

Between these two methods there is only a difference of degree, and not one of kind as is believed by those Parliamentary Socialists who call themselves revolutionary. On this point Jaurès has a great intellectual superiority over his adversaries, for he has never cast any doubt upon the fundamental identity of the two methods.

Both of these methods suppose an entirely dislocated middle-class society—rich classes who have lost all sentiment of their class interest, men ready to follow blindly the lead of people who have taken up the business of directing public opinion. The Dreyfus affair showed that the enlightened middle class was in a strange mental state; people who had long and loudly served the Conservative party co-operated with anarchists, took part in violent attacks on the army, or even definitely enrolled themselves in the Socialist party; on the other hand, newspapers, which make it their business to defend traditional institutions, dragged the magistrates of the Court of Cassation in the mire. This strange episode in our contemporary history brought to light the state of dislocation of the classes.

Jaurès, who was very much mixed up in all the ups and downs of Dreyfusism, had rapidly judged the mentality of the upper middle class, into which he had not yet penetrated. He saw that this upper middle class was terribly ignorant, gapingly stupid, politically absolutely impotent; he recognised that with people who understand nothing of the principles of capitalist economics it is easy to contrive a policy of compromise on the basis of an extremely broad Socialism; he calculated the proportions in which it is necessary to mix together flattery of the superior intelligence of the imbeciles whose seduction was aimed at, appeals to the disinterested sentiments of speculators who pride themselves on having invented the ideal, and threats of revolution in order to obtain the leadership of people void of ideas. Experience has shown that he had a very remarkable intuition of the forces which exist at this present moment in the middle-class world. Vaillant, on the contrary, is very little acquainted with this world; he believes that the only weapon that can be employed to move the middle class is fear; doubtless fear is an excellent weapon, but it might provoke obstinate resistance if you went beyond a certain limit. Vaillant does not possess those remarkable qualities of suppleness of mind, and perhaps even of peasant duplicity, which shine in Jaurès, and which have often caused people to say that he would have made a wonderful cattle-dealer.

The more closely the history of these last years is examined, the more the discussions concerning the two methods will be recognised as puerile: the partisans of the two methods are equally opposed to proletarian violence, because it escapes from the control of the people engaged in Parliamentary politics. Revolutionary Syndicalism cannot be controlled by the so-called revolutionary Socialists of Parliament.

II

The two methods favoured by official Socialism presuppose this same historical datum. The ideology of a timorous humanitarian middle class professing to have freed its thought from the conditions of its existence is grafted on the degeneration of the capitalist system; and the race of bold captains who made the greatness of modern industry disappears to make way for an ultra-civilised aristocracy which asks to be allowed to live in peace. This degeneration fills our Parliamentary Socialists with joy. Their role would vanish if they were confronted with a middle class which was energetically engaged on the paths of capitalistic progress, a class that would look upon timidity with shame, and which would find satisfaction in looking after its class interests. In the presence of a middle class which has become almost as stupid as the nobility of the eighteenth century, their power is enormous. If the stultifying of the upper middle class progresses in a regular manner at the pace it has taken for the last few years, our official Socialists may reasonably hope to reach the goal of their dreams and sleep in sumptuous mansions.

Two accidents alone, it seems, would be able to stop this movement: a great foreign war, which might renew lost energies, and which in any case would doubtless bring into power men with the will to govern;^[6] or a great extension of proletarian violence, which would make the revolutionary reality evident to the middle class, and would disgust them with the humanitarian platitudes with which Jaurès lulls them to sleep. It is in view of these two great dangers that the latter displays all his resources as a popular orator. European peace must be maintained at all costs; some limit must be put to proletarian violence.

Jaurès is persuaded that France will be perfectly happy on the day on which the editors of his paper, and its shareholders, can draw freely on the coffers of the public Treasury; it is an illustration of the celebrated proverb: "Quand Auguste avait bu, la Pologne était ivre." A socialist government of this kind would without doubt ruin any country, if it was administered with the same care for financial order as l'Humanité has been administered; but what does the future of the country matter, provided that the new régime gives a good time to a few professors, who imagine that they have invented Socialism, and to a few Dreyfusard financiers?

Before the working class also could accept this dictatorship of incapacity, it must itself become as stupid as the middle class, and must lose all revolutionary energy, at the same time that its masters will have lost all capitalistic energy. Such a future is not impossible; and a great deal of hard work is being done to stupefy the worker for this purpose. The Direction du Travail and the Musée Social are doing their best to carry on this marvellous work of idealistic education, which is decorated with the most pompous names, and which is represented as a means of civilising the proletariat. Our professional idealists are very much disturbed by the Syndicalists, and experience shows that a strike is sometimes sufficient to ruin all the work of education which these manufacturers of social peace have patiently built by years of labour.

In order to understand thoroughly the consequences of the very singular régime in the midst of which we are living, we must hark back to Marx's conceptions of the passage from capitalism to Socialism. These conceptions are well known, yet we must continually return to them, because they are often forgotten, or at least undervalued by official Socialist writers; it is necessary to insist on them strongly each time that we have to argue about the anti-Marxist transformation which contemporary Socialism is undergoing.

According to Marx, capitalism, by reason of the innate laws of its own nature, is hurrying along a path which will lead the world of to-day, with the inevitability of the evolution of organic life, to the doors of the world of tomorrow. This movement comprises a long period of capitalistic construction, and it ends by a rapid destruction, which is the work of the proletariat. Capitalism creates the heritage which Socialism will receive, the men who will suppress the present regime, and the means of bringing about this destruction, at the same time that it preserves the results obtained in production.^[7] Capitalism begets new ways of working; it throws the working class into revolutionary organisations by the pressure it exercises on wages; it restricts its own political basis by competition, which is constantly eliminating industrial leaders. Thus, after having solved the great problem of the organisation of labour, to effect which Utopians have brought forward so many naive or stupid hypotheses, capitalism provokes the birth of the cause which will overthrow it, and thus renders useless everything that Utopians have written to induce enlightened people to make reforms; and it gradually ruins the traditional order, against which the critics of the idealists had proved themselves to be so deplorably incompetent. It might therefore be said that capitalism plays a part analogous to that attributed by Hartmann to The Unconscious in nature, since it prepares the coming of social reforms which it did not intend to produce. Without any co-ordinated plan, without any directive ideas, without any ideal of a future world, it is the cause of an inevitable evolution; it draws from the present all that the present can give towards historical development; it performs in an almost mechanical manner all that is necessary, in order that a new era may appear, and that this new era may break every link with the idealism of the present times, while preserving the acquisitions of the capitalistic economic system.^[8]

Socialists should therefore abandon the attempt (initiated by the Utopians) to find a means of inducing the enlightened middle class to prepare the transition to a more perfect system of legislation; their sole function is that of explaining to the proletariat the greatness of the revolutionary part they are called upon to play. By ceaseless criticism the proletariat must be brought to perfect their organisations; they must be shown how the embryonic forms which appear in their unions^[9] may be developed, so that, finally, they may build up institutions without any parallel in the history of the middle class; that they may form ideas which depend solely on their position as producers in large industries, and which owe nothing to middle-class thought; and that they may acquire habits of liberty with which the middle class nowadays are no longer acquainted.

This doctrine will evidently be inapplicable if the middle class and the proletariat do not oppose each other implacably, with all the forces at their disposal; the more ardently capitalist the middle class is, the more the proletariat is full of a warlike spirit and confident of its revolutionary strength, the more certain will be the success of the proletarian movement.

The middle class with which Marx was familiar in England was still, as regards the immense majority, animated by their conquering, insatiable, and pitiless spirit, which had characterised at the beginning of modern times the creators of new industries and the adventurers launched on the discovery of unknown lands. When we are studying the modern industrial system we should always bear in mind this similarity between the capitalist type and the warrior type; it was for very good reasons that the men who directed gigantic enterprises were named captains of industry. This type is still found to-day in all its purity in the United States: there are found the indomitable energy, the audacity based on a just appreciation of its strength, the cold calculation of interests, which are the qualities of great generals and great capitalists.^[10] According to Paul de Rousiers, every American feels himself capable of "trying his luck" on the battlefield of business,^[11] so that the general spirit of the country is in complete harmony with that of the multi-millionaires; our men of letters are exceedingly surprised to see these latter condemning themselves to lead to the end of their days a galley-slave existence, without ever thinking of leading a nobleman's life for themselves, as the Rothschilds do.

In a society so enfevered by the passion for the success which can be obtained in competition, all the actors walk straight before them like veritable automata, without taking any notice of the great ideas of the sociologists; they are subject to very simple forces, and not one of them dreams of escaping from the circumstances of his condition. Then only is the development of capitalism carried on with that inevitableness which struck Marx so much, and which seemed to him comparable to that of a natural law. If, on the contrary, the middle class, led astray by the chatter of the preachers of ethics and sociology, return to an ideal of conservative mediocrity, seek to correct the abuses of economics, and wish to break with the barbarism of their predecessors, then one part of the forces which were to further the development of capitalism is employed in hindering it, an arbitrary and irrational element is introduced, and the future of the world becomes completely indeterminate.

This indetermination grows still greater if the proletariat are converted to the ideas of social peace at the same time as their masters, or even if they simply consider everything from the corporative point of view; while Socialism gives to every economic contest a general and revolutionary colour.

Conservatives are not deceived when they see in the compromises which lead to collective contracts, and in corporative particularism,^[12] the means of avoiding the Marxian revolution;^[13] but they escape one danger only to fall into another, and they run the risk of being devoured by Parliamentary Socialism.^[14] Jaurès is as enthusiastic as the clericals about measures which turn away the working classes from the idea of the Marxian revolution; I believe he understands better than they do what the result of social peace will be; he founds his own hopes on the simultaneous ruin of the capitalistic and the revolutionary spirit.

It is often urged, in objection to the people who defend the Marxian conception, that it is impossible for them to stop the movement of degeneration which is dragging both the middle class and the proletariat far from the paths assigned to them by Marx's theory. They can doubtless influence the working classes, and it is hardly to be denied that strike violences do keep the revolutionary spirit alive; but how can they hope to give back to the middle class an ardour which is spent?

It is here that the role of violence in history appears to us as singularly great, for it can, in an indirect manner, so operate on the middle class as to awaken them to a sense of their own class sentiment. Attention has often been drawn to the danger of certain acts of violence which compromised admirable social works, disgusted employers who were disposed to arrange the happiness of their workmen, and developed egoism where the most noble sentiments formerly reigned.

To repay with black ingratitude the benevolence of those who would protect the workers,^[15] to meet with insults the homilies of the defenders of human fraternity, and to reply by blows to the advances of the propagators of social peace—all that is assuredly not in conformity with the rules of the fashionable Socialism of M. and Mme. Georges Renard,^[16] but it is a very practical way of indicating to the middle class that they must mind their own business and only that.

I believe also that it may be useful to thrash the orators of democracy and the representatives of the Government, for in this way you insure that none shall retain any illusions about the character of acts of violence. But these acts can have historical value only if they are the clear and brutal expression of the class war: the middle classes must not be allowed to imagine that, aided by cleverness, social science, or high-flown sentiments, they might find a better welcome at the hands of the proletariat.

The day on which employers perceive that they have nothing to gain by works which promote social peace, or by democracy, they will understand that they have been ill-advised by the people who persuaded them to abandon their trade of creators of productive forces for the noble profession of educators of the proletariat. Then there is some chance that they may get back a part of their energy, and that moderate or conservative economics may appear as absurd to them as they appeared to Marx. In any case, the separation of classes being more clearly accentuated, the proletarian movement will have some chance of developing with greater regularity than to-day.

The two antagonistic classes therefore influence each other in a partly indirect but decisive manner. Capitalism drives the proletariat into revolt, because in daily life the employers use their force in a direction opposed to the desire of their workers; but the future of the proletariat is not entirely dependent on this revolt; the working classes are organised under the influence of other causes, and Socialism, inculcating in them the revolutionary idea, prepares them to suppress the hostile class. Capitalist force is at the base of all this process, and its action is automatic and inevitable.^[17] Marx supposed that the middle class had no need to be incited to employ force, but we are to-day faced with a new and very unforeseen fact—a middle class which seeks to weaken its own strength. Must we believe that the Marxian conception is dead? By no means, for proletarian violence comes upon the scene just at the moment when the conception of social peace is being held up as a means of moderating disputes; proletarian violence confines employers to their role of producers, and tends to restore the separation of the classes, just when they seemed on the point of intermingling in the democratic marsh.

Proletarian violence not only makes the future revolution certain, but it seems also to be the only means by which the European nations—at present stupefied by humanitarianism—can recover their former energy. This kind of violence compels capitalism to restrict its attentions solely to its material role and tends to restore to it the warlike qualities which it formerly possessed. A growing and solidly organised working class can compel the capitalist class to remain firm in the industrial war; if a united and revolutionary proletariat confronts a rich middle class, eager for conquest, capitalist society will have reached its historical perfection.

Thus proletarian violence has become an essential factor of Marxism. Let us add once more that, if properly conducted, it will suppress the Parliamentary Socialists, who will no longer be able to pose as the leaders of the working classes and the guardians of order.

III

The Marxian theory of revolution supposes that capitalism, while it is still in full swing, will be struck to the heart, when—having attained complete industrial efficiency—it has finally achieved its historical mission, and whilst the economic system is still a progressive one. Marx does not seem to have asked himself what would happen if the economic system were on the down grade; he never dreamt of the possibility of a revolution which would take a return to the past, or even social conservation, as its ideal.

We see nowadays that such a revolution might easily come to pass: the friends of Jaurès, the clericals, and the democrats all take the Middle Ages as their ideal for the future; they would like competition to be tempered, riches limited, production subordinated to needs. These are dreams which Marx looked upon as reactionary,^[18] and consequently negligible, because it seemed to him that capitalism was embarked on an irresistible progress; but nowadays we see considerable forces grouped together in the endeavour to reform the capitalist economic system by bringing it, with the aid of laws, nearer to the medieval ideal. Parliamentary Socialism would like to combine with the moralists, the Church, and the democracy, with the common aim of impeding the capitalist movement; and, in view of middle-class cowardice, that would not perhaps be impossible.

Marx compared the passage from one historical era to another to a civil inheritance; the new age inherits prior acquisitions. If the revolution took place during a period of economic decadence, would not the inheritance be very much compromised, and in that case could there be any hope of the speedy reappearance of progress in the economic system? The ideologists hardly trouble themselves at all with this question; they affirm that the decadence will stop on the day that the public Treasury is at their disposal; they are dazzled by the immense reserve of riches which would be delivered up to their pillage; what banquets there would be, what women, and what opportunities for self-display! We, on the other hand, who have no such prospect before our eyes, have to ask whether history can furnish us with any guidance on this subject, which will enable us to guess what would be the result of a revolution accomplished in times of decadence.

The researches of Tocqueville enable us to study the French Revolution from this point of view. He very much astonished his contemporaries when, a half-century ago, he showed them that the Revolution had been much more conservative than had been supposed till then. He pointed out that most of the characteristic institutions of modern France date from the Old Régime (centralisation, the issue of regulations on every possible pretext, administrative tutelage of the communes, exemption of civil servants from the jurisdiction of the courts); he found only one important innovation—the coexistence, which was established in the year VIII., of isolated civil servants and deliberative councils. The principles of the Old Régime reappeared in 1800, and the old customs were received back into favour.^[19] Turgot seemed to him to be an excellent type of the Napoleonic administrator, who had "the ideal of a civil servant, in a democratic society subject to an absolute government."^[20] He was of the opinion that the partition of the land, which it is customary to place to the credit of the Revolution, had begun long before, and had not gone on at an exceptionally rapid pace under its influence.^[21]

It is certain that Napoleon did not have to make any extraordinary effort to put the country once more on a monarchical footing. He found France quite ready, and had only a few corrections of detail to make in order to profit by the experience acquired since 1789. The administrative and fiscal laws had been drawn up during the Revolution by people who had applied the methods of the Old Régime; they remain in force to-day, still almost intact. The men he employed had served their apprenticeship under the Old Régime and under the Revolution; they all resemble one another; in their governmental practices they are all men of the preceding period; they all work with an equal ardour for the greatness of His Majesty.^[22] The real merit of Napoleon lay in his not trusting too much to his own genius, in not giving himself up to the dreams which had so often deluded men of the eighteenth century, and had led them to desire to regenerate everything from top to bottom—in short, in his full recognition of the principle of historical heredity. It follows from all this that the Napoleonic régime may be looked upon as an experiment, showing clearly the enormous part played by conservation throughout the greatest revolutions.

Indeed, I think that the principle of conservation might even be extended to things military, and the armies of the Revolution and the Empire may be shown to be an extension of former institutions. In any case, it is very curious that Napoleon should have made no essential innovations in military equipment, and that it should have been the fire-arms of the Old Régime which so greatly contributed to securing the victories of the revolutionary troops. It was only under the Restoration that the artillery was improved.

The ease with which the Revolution and the Empire succeeded in radically transforming the country while still retaining such a large number of the acquisitions of the past, is bound up with a fact to which our historians have not always called attention, and which Taine does not seem to have noticed: industrial production was making great progress, and this progress was such that, towards 1780, everybody believed in the dogma of the indefinite progress of mankind.^[23] This dogma, which was to exercise so great an influence on modern thought, would be a bizarre and inexplicable paradox if it were not considered as bound up with economic progress and with the feeling of absolute confidence which this economic progress engendered. The wars of the Revolution and of the Empire only stimulated this feeling still further, not only because they were glorious, but also because they caused a great deal of money to enter the country, and thus contributed to the development of production.^[24]

The triumph of the Revolution astonished nearly all its contemporaries, and it seems that the most intelligent, the most deliberate, and the best informed as regards political matters, were the most surprised; this was because reasons drawn from theory could not explain this paradoxical success. It seems to me that even to-day the question is scarcely less obscure to historians than it was to our ancestors. The primary cause of this triumph must be sought in the economic progress of the time; it is because the Old Régime was struck by rapid blows, while production was making great strides, that the contemporary world was born with comparatively little labour, and could so rapidly be assured of a vigorous life.

We possess, on the other hand,, a dreadful historical experience of a great transformation taking place at a time of economic decadence; I mean the victory of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire which closely followed it.

All the old Christian authors agree in informing us that the new religion brought no serious improvement in the situation of the world; corruption, oppression, and disasters continued to crush the people as in the past. This was a great disillusion for the fathers of the Church; at the time of the persecutions the Christians had believed that God would overwhelm Rome with favours on the day that the Empire ceased to persecute the faithful; now the Empire was Christian, and the bishops had become personages of the first rank, yet everything continued to go on as badly as in the past. What was still more disheartening, the immorality, so often denounced as the result of idolatry, had spread to the adorers of Christ. Far from imposing a far-reaching reform on the profane world, the Church itself had become corrupted by imitating the profane world; it began to resemble an imperial administration, and the factions which tore it asunder were much more moved by an appetite for power than by religious reasons.

It has often been asked whether Christianity was not the cause, or at least one of the principal causes, of the fall of Rome. Gaston Boissier combats this opinion by endeavouring to show that the decadent movement observed after Constantine is the continuation of a movement which had existed for some time, and that it is not possible to see whether Christianity accelerated or retarded the death of the ancient world.^[25] That amounts to saying that the extent of the conservation was enormous; we can, by analogy, imagine what would follow from a revolution which brought our official Socialists of to-day into power. Institutions remaining almost what they are to-day, all the middle-class ideology would be preserved; the middle-class state would dominate with its ancient abuses; if economic decadence had begun, it would be accentuated.

Shortly after the Christian conquest, the barbarian invasions began. More than one Christian wondered whether an order in conformity with the principles of the new religion was not at length to appear; this hope was all the more reasonable as the barbarians had been converted on coming into the Empire, and because they were not accustomed to the corruption of Roman life. From the economic point of view, a regeneration might be hoped for, since the world was perishing beneath the weight of urban exploitation; the new masters, who had coarse rural manners, would not live as great lords, but as heads of large demesnes; perhaps, therefore, the earth would be better cultivated. The illusions of Christian authors contemporary with the invasions may be compared to those of the numerous Utopians who hope to see the modern world regenerated by the virtues which they attribute to the man of average condition; the replacing of the very rich classes by new social strata should bring about morality, happiness, and universal prosperity.

The barbarians did not establish any progressive state of society; there were not many of them, and almost everywhere they simply took the place of the old lords, led the same life as they did, and were devoured by urban civilisation. In France, the Merovingian royalty has been made the subject of particularly thorough investigation; Fustel de Coulanges has-used all his erudition in throwing light on the conservative character which it assumed; its conservatism appeared to him to be so strong that he was even able to say that there had been no real revolution, and he represented the whole of the history of the late Middle Ages as a movement which had carried on the movement of the Roman Empire with a little acceleration.^[26] "The Merovingian Government," he said, "is more than three parts the continuation of that which the Roman Empire had given to Gaul."^[27]

The economic decadence was accentuated under these barbarian kings; no renascence could take place until very long afterwards, when the world had gone through a long series of trials. At least four centuries of barbarism had to be gone through before a progressive movement showed itself; society was compelled to descend to a state not far removed from its origins, and Vico was to find in this phenomenon an illustration of his doctrine of ricorsi.^[28] Thus a revolution which took place in a time of economic decadence had forced the world to pass again through a period of almost primitive civilisation, and had stopped all progress for several centuries.

These dreadful events have been many times invoked by the adversaries of Socialism; I do not deny the validity of the argument, but two details must be added which may perhaps appear of small importance to professional sociologists. Such events presuppose (1) an economic decadence; (2) an organisation which assures a very perfect conservation of the current system of ideas. The civilised Socialism of our professors has many times been presented as a safeguard of civilisation: I believe that it would produce the same effect as was produced by the classical education given by the Church to the barbarian kings. The proletariat would be corrupted and stultified as the Merovingians were, and economic decadence would only be more certain under the action of these pretended civilising agents.

The dangers which threaten the future of the world may be avoided, if the proletariat hold on with obstinacy to revolutionary ideas, so as to realise as much as possible Marx's conception. Everything may be saved, if the proletariat, by their use of violence, manage to re-establish the division into classes, and so restore to the middle class something of its former energy; that is the great aim towards which the whole thought of men—who are not hypnotised by the event of the day, but who think of the conditions of to-morrow—must be directed. Proletarian violence, carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of the class war, appears thus as a very fine and very heroic thing; it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civilisation; it is not perhaps the most appropriate method of obtaining immediate material advantages, but it may save the world from barbarism.

We have a very effective reply to those who accuse Syndicalists of being obtuse and ignorant people. We may ask them to consider the economic decadence for which they are working. Let us salute the revolutionaries as the Greeks saluted the Spartan heroes who defended Thermopylae and helped to preserve the civilisation of the ancient world.

1. This is apparently the way in which the proletarian movement is spoken of in the fashionable circles of refined Socialism.
2. Cf. the reflections of Engels in the preface to the new edition of articles by Marx which he published in 1895 under the title, Struggles of the Classes in France from 1848 to 1850. This preface is wanting in the French translation. In the German edition a passage has been left out, the social democratic leaders considering certain phrases of Engels not politic enough.
3. According to the necessities of the moment he is for or against the general strike. According to some he voted for the general strike at the International Congress of 1900; according to others he abstained.
4. Gambetta complained because the French clergy was "acephalous"; he would have liked a select body to have been formed in its midst, with which the Government could discuss matters (Garilhe, Le clergé séculier français au XIXᵉ siècle, pp. 88–89). Syndicalism has no head with which it would be possible to carry on diplomatic relations usefully.
5. [The writers on moral theology who maintain that our actions should be guided only by absolutely sure maxims were called tutiorists; opposed to them were the laxists. In the Provinciales Pascal defends the tutiorist position, the Jesuits he attacks are laxists.—Trans. Note.]
6. Cf. G. Sorel, Insegnamenti sociali, p. 388. The hypothesis of a great European war seems very far fetched at the moment.
7. This notion of revolutionary preservation is very important; I have pointed out something analogous in the passage from Judaism to Christianity (Le Système historique de Renan, pp. 72–73, 171–172, 467).
8. Cf . what I have said on the transformation; which Marx wrought in Socialism, Insegnamenti sociali, pp. 179–186.
9. [The French is sociétés de résistance. What is meant is the syndicate, considered principally as a means of combining workmen against the employers.—Trans. Note.]
10. I will come back to this resemblance in Chapter VII. iii.
11. P. de Rousiers, La Vie américaine, l'éducation et la société, p. 19. "Fathers give very little advice to their children, and let them learn for themselves, as they say over there" (p. 14). "Not only does (the American) wish to be independent, but he wishes to be powerful" (La Vie américaine: ranches, fermes et usines, p. 6).
12. [This refers to the conduct of former syndicates which limited their ambitions to the interests of their own handicraft without concerning themselves with the general interests of the working classes.—Trans. Note.]
13. There is constant talk nowadays of organising labour, i.e. of utilising the corporative spirit by giving it over to the management of well-intentioned, very serious and responsible people, and liberating the workers from the yoke of sophists. The responsible people are de Mun, Charles Benoist (the amusing specialist in constitutional law), Arthur Fontaine, and the band of democratic abbés, … and lastly Gabriel Hanotaux!
14. Vilredo Pareto laughs at the simple middle class who are happy, because they are no longer threatened by intractable Marxians, and who have fallen into the snare of the conciliatory Marxians (Systèmes socialistes, tome ii. p. 453).
15. Cf. G. Sorel, Insegnamenti sociali, p. 53.
16. Mme. G. Renard has published in the Suisse of July 26, 1900, an article full of lofty psychological considerations about the workers' fête given by Millerand (Léon de Seilhac, Le Monde socialiste, pp. 307–309). Her husband has solved the grave question as to who will drink Clos-Vougeot in the society of the future (G. Renard, Le Régime socialiste, p. 175).
17. In an article written in September 1851 (the first of the series published under the title: Revolution and Counter-revolution) , Marx established the following parallelism between the development of the middle class and of the proletariat: To a numerous, rich, concentrated, and powerful middle class corresponds a numerous, strong, concentrated and intelligent proletariat. Thus he seems to have thought that the intelligence of the proletariat depends on the historical conditions which secured power in society to the middle classes. He says, again, that the true characters of the class war only exist in countries where the middle class has recast the Government in conformity with its needs.
18. "Those who, like Sismondi, would return to the just proportion of production, while preserving the existing bases of society, are reactionary, since, to be consistent, they should also desire to re-establish all the other conditions of past times. … In existing society, in the industry based on individual exchanges, the anarchy of production, which is the source of so muck poverty is at the same time the source of all progress" (Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Eng. trans., p. 41).
19. Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (édition des œuvres complètes), livre ii. chapitres i., iii., iv. pp. 89, 91, 94, 288.
20. Tocqueville, Mélanges. pp. 155–156.
21. Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, pp. 35–37.
22. L. Madelin also comes to this conclusion in an article in the Débats of July 6, 1907, on the prefects of Napoleon I.
23. Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, pp. 254–262, and Mélanges, p. 62. Cf. chapter IV. iv. of my study on Les Illusions du Progrès.
24. Kautsky has dwelt very strongly on the role played by the treasures which the French armies took possession of (La Lutte des classes en France en 1789, French trans., pp. 104–106).
25. Gaston Boissier, La Fin du paganisme, livre iv. chap. iii.
26. Fustel de Coulanges, Origines du régime féodal, pp. 566–567. I do not deny that there is a good deal of exaggeration in the thesis of Fustel de Coulanges, but the conservation was undeniable.
27. Fustel de Coulanges, La Monarchie franque, p. 650.
28. [Vico's doctrine of "reflux" (ricorsi). Civilisation comes to an end in the "barbarism of reflection" which is worse than the primitive barbarism of sensation…. The mind, after traversing its course of progress, after rising from sensation … to the rational, from violence to equity, is bound, in conformity with its eternal nature, to retraverse the course, to relapse into violence and sensation, and thence to renew its upward movement, "to commence a reflux." See chap. xi. of The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, by Benedetto Croce. Eng. trans.—Trans. Note.]