Paris and the Social Revolution Part 11

"Every honest man ought to understand that the payment of taxes which are employed to maintain and arm soldiers, and, still more, serving in the army, are not indifferent acts, but wicked and shameful acts, since he who commits them not only permits a.s.sa.s.sination, but partic.i.p.ates in it."

In an apologue, "Too Dear," he demonstrates that law courts, prisons, and armies are alike useless to a sound civilisation. In short, Tolstoy renounces the state, and prays for its extinction, root and branch:-

"The doctrine of humility, pardon, and love, is incompatible with the state, with its arrogance, its deeds of violence, its executions, its wars. Real Christianity not only excludes the possibility of acknowledging the state, but also destroys its foundation.... The sum of all the evil possible to the people, if left to themselves, could not equal the sum of the evil actually accomplished by the tyranny of church and state."

What could a militant anarchist say more? And there is no limit to the extent to which these anarchistic utterances of Tolstoy might be multiplied.

Most French anarchists believe that the privileged will never surrender their privileges without a desperate resistance. Only a little handful of them are Tolstoyans in maintaining that simple non-resistance faithfully adhered to will alone suffice to regenerate the world. But they nearly all hold that c.u.mulative non-resistance is, under certain conditions, the most effective resistance ("_faire le vide autour des inst.i.tutions sociales est le meilleur moyen de les demolir_"); and a majority of them, probably,-certainly a majority of their more intellectual element,-esteem it by far the most important propaganda for the present hour.

The average French anarchist is forced to recognise at the outset the unpalatable truth that a good half of his customary doings are based on the government and property he opposes. He rejects the theory of money, but he must buy and sell. He abhors the state, but serves it, and uses its tax-supported inst.i.tutions; and he is constantly finding himself in situations where he must do violence to his inmost convictions, or get out of life altogether by the portals of suicide or want. There are some unorthodox doings, however, which can be avoided without incurring a martyrdom out of all decent proportion to the seriousness of the occasion.

"If the force of power crushes you to-day, if, in spite of everything, authority fetters you in your evolution, there is always a certain margin for resistance. Fill this margin without being afraid of overstepping it," advises one of the moderate advocates of the _propagande par l'exemple_.

The two forms of non-resistance oftenest enjoined by Tolstoy (namely, non-payment of taxes and refusal to serve in the army) are so disastrous in their consequences-as Tolstoy himself would have seen, had he not been born into a high estate and had he not attained a ripe age and an a.s.sured position before his revolutionary ideas completely matured-that they can hardly be said to come within this margin. And they are inculcated in France less with a view to inciting isolated individuals to put them into practice immediately than in the hope that a day may arrive when they will be suddenly put into practice simultaneously by so large a number of persons that coercion will be out of the question.

Similarly, refusal to handle money, to pay interest, to pay rent, to take oath, to testify in court, and to do jury duty, call down such speedy retribution that these, too, must be interpreted as lying in the generality of cases outside the margin mentioned above.

On the other hand, protest against parliamentarianism by abstention from voting (_la propagande abstentionniste_) is a thoroughly feasible kind of non-resistance, and is practised almost universally by the anarchists of France.

"If we seek," says Jean Grave, "to _faire le vide_ around the political machine, it is to the end of not forfeiting our right to act by and for ourselves. It is to preserve our liberty of action that we reject every compromise with the actual political order of things. It is to habituate ourselves to this liberty which is the _summum_ of our aspirations that we attempt to exercise it in our struggle against the present social state. To the individuals whom they wish to enlist under their banner, the advocates of authority say, 'Send us to the Chamber to make laws in your favour!'

"To those whom they wish to make think, the anarchists, after having exposed the facts, explain that they have no favours to expect from anybody; and that, when a thing seems to them bad, the best way to destroy it is to '_faire le vide_' about it; ... that they never await from the good pleasure of their masters the authorisation to conform their acts to their thoughts; and that they commission n.o.body to legislate as to what they should do."

Abstention from marriage (which, as ordinarily practised, the anarchist considers legalised prost.i.tution, and the theoretical indissolubility of which he regards as nothing short of blasphemy) is another thoroughly feasible kind of non-resistance. And it is rare to find an anarchist, whose marital status was not fixed before he gave in his adherence to anarchism, who deigns to consult the pleasure or implore the blessing of any authority whatsoever in a matter which, to his thinking, concerns no one but himself and the person of his choice.[22]

Malthusianism, also,-in spite of a reverence for the procreative instinct, on the part of anarchists, which Zola's _Fecondite_ does not surpa.s.s,-is in high favour in anarchistic circles. The motives for the anarchist's refusal to bring offspring into the world are set forth in Octave Mirbeau's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of disgust called out by a project of law for checking depopulation introduced by one M. Piot into the Senate:-

"I dispute that depopulation is an evil. In a social state like ours, in a social state which fosters preciously, scientifically, in special cultures, poverty and its derivative, crime; in a social state which, in spite of new investigations and in spite of new philosophies, relies solely on the prehistoric forces,-murder and ma.s.sacre,-what matters to the people-the only cla.s.s, for that matter, which still produces children-this much-discussed question of depopulation? If the people were clairvoyant, logical with their wretchedness and their servitude, they would desire, not the cessation of depopulation, but its redoubling. We are constantly being told that depopulation is the gravest danger which threatens the future of the country. In what, pray, dear Monsieur Piot, and you, also, excellent legislators, who lull us ceaselessly with your twaddle? In this, you say, that there will come inevitably a time when we shall no more have enough men to send out to be killed in the Soudan, in Madagascar, in China, in the _bagnes_, and in the barracks. You are dreaming of repeopling now, then, only for the sake of depeopling later on? Ah, no, thank you. If we must die, we like better to die at once and by a death of our own choosing."

Besides discountenancing elections and marriage, the zealous propagandist _par l'exemple_ flouts "those whose sole power lies in the obedience of cringers"; defies "those whose character he despises"; refuses to go to law or to accept interest for loans; abstains from the luxuries which the bourgeois deems indispensable; protests against insolence on the part of government functionaries, brutality, high-handed invasion of domiciles, and insults to women on the part of the police, cruelty on the part of landlords, and bulldozing on the part of foremen and employers. He violates deliberately the deep-seated social usages which, equally with the political, judicial, and economic usages, twist and warp existence; and strives to keep himself in his labour, his friends.h.i.+ps, and his domestic relations "saturated with aversion for the bourgeois, and for whatever in existence savours of capitalism and the _bourgeoisie_, and with a sentiment of solidarity towards all who are struggling for sincere living."

"There is a view [of culture]," says Matthew Arnold in his immortal essay _Sweetness and Light_, "in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminis.h.i.+ng human misery, the n.o.ble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it,-motives eminently such as are called social,-come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is, then, properly described, not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection: it is _a study of perfection_. It moves by the force not merely or primarily of the scientific pa.s.sion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social pa.s.sion for doing good."

Something of the same n.o.ble and refined philosophy underlies this insistence, by the greater anarchist teachers, on the proselyting value of truth of intercourse and of downright living and on the consequent necessity of the training and purifying of the individual as the surest means of changing a social _milieu_. In the individual refusal to live the "conventional lies" which Max Nordau (who has long trembled on the verge of anarchism) anathematised is a real disintegrating force. "We must begin with ourselves," says Jean Grave, "in our efforts at transformation." And it is sure that the saintliness of Louise Michel, the fine simplicity and modesty of Elisee Reclus, the voluntary poverty of the gentle Jean Grave, and the un.o.btrusive virtues of their obscure disciples are factors of tremendous importance to the anarchist movement. Dialectics are powerless before the blameless living of such real apostles of "sweetness and light." They may not have the whole truth,-they would be the last to claim that they have,-but there must be some shred of truth in a belief that is thus witnessed by beautiful character.

In pinning so much of their faith to the gradual modification of daily habits of thinking and acting, these anarchists reveal themselves no mean psychologists and no ordinary students of human nature; and it is regarding this relatively prosaic _propagande par l'exemple_ that the choicest anarchist spirits have spoken their most sagacious and most winning words.

Thus, the late Pierre Lavroff wrote: "There exists another form of propaganda accessible to all temperaments, provided the conviction be sincere; and many times this form, though wanting the _eclat_ which accompanies the burning word or the heroic act, proves to be the most efficacious in the life of every day.

... "The conditions of the actual social regime oppose themselves at every instant to a life in conformity with conviction more than the juridical conditions r.e.t.a.r.d the extension of advanced ideas and more than the police surveillance prevents the revolutionary agitation.

"It has often been remarked that the most considerable transformations in the ideas of society have occurred, not because the arguments which were advanced against existing forms and beliefs had acquired more force, but in consequence of an insensible modification in mental habits. During entire centuries the same arguments were repeated; but the habits of thought acted as a cuira.s.s, and repulsed for a long time all the attacks made against error. Then, at a given moment, this cuira.s.s yielded, all at once, without any apparent cause.

Religious doubt, political liberalism, the propaganda of socialism, are more or less prominent examples. The heroic acts which strike the imagination merely prepare a soil which befits these changes. The great majority lets itself-and will a long time yet let itself-be guided by habits. Arguments make no great impression upon it. It modifies its customs by imitation alone. In the case of heroic acts this imitation extends only to individuals exceptionally placed. Its veritable domain is the daily living. Every new doctrine which embraces practical moral elements must provide a series of models which may be imitated, not by an exceptional hero, but by an ordinary man. The numerous examples incorporate the new doctrine into the daily life. They are, broadly speaking, the most efficacious propagandists of new ideas. Truth realising itself in living is much more accessible than truth in a state of thought. The ideas which an individual propagates act upon a small number, upon the best prepared. A way of life is less conspicuous, but exercises a more intense action on the ma.s.ses. The propaganda carried on by the daily example is the most potent auxiliary of the spoken word. It surpa.s.ses often in influence the most energetic agitation directed against an existing evil....

"For the majority of men the _propagande par l'exemple_ is the only form which makes tangible the spoken propaganda. It alone changes the habits of thinking and living. It produces, in fact, a modification of the psychic dispositions of society; and it opens the way for society to be influenced by the energetic acts of exceptional individuals, for whom it prepares a receptive soil."

Before words of such keen observation and high moral and philosophic import from men who have not forgotten how to think because they seem sometimes to dream, only an att.i.tude of reverence is possible; and the admission is forced that some of these anarchists are not so very flighty, after all, and that some of them are "not so bent on acting and inst.i.tuting, even with the great aim of diminis.h.i.+ng human error and misery ever before their thoughts, but that they can remember that acting and inst.i.tuting are of little use, unless they know how and what they ought to act and inst.i.tute."

Another manifestation of the _propagande par l'exemple_ has been the creation, in France and abroad, of anarchist experiment stations where an effort has been made to realise on a small scale, by isolation from the world at large, the social arrangements which are, on a large scale, the anarchist dream.

The agricultural colony founded in Algeria by M. Regnier, one of the sons-in-law of Elisee Reclus, seems to have been the only really successful venture in this line; and I am not sure whether even this is still in existence.

The other anarchist colonies set up abroad-notably _La Colonie Cecilia_, which was one of the by-products of the emigration from France to South America-have all come to more or less speedy grief.

The reasons are not far to seek. The colonists were totally ignorant of the regions to which they emigrated. They looked to find easier living and well-nigh perfect liberty, and were amazed and disillusionised when they discovered that conditions were not so very different under these new civilisations from what they were under the old.

They were ignorant of each other. No selection having been exercised in forming the groups, the orthodox were overshadowed by the heterodox and by adventurers who were not anarchists at all; and many even of the orthodox were too timorous or too weary to resume, under new skies, the struggle which they fancied, in quitting Europe, they had left behind forever. Misunderstandings, disputes, and even spoliation were the natural result.

They were farther handicapped by a lack of preliminary funds for their installations, by the absence of the appliances of civilisation to which they were accustomed, and by unfamiliarity with the agriculture or other work they had to do.

But the primary reason-the reason which may indeed be said to include all the other reasons-for the failure of the French anarchist colonies in foreign lands is that the transition the colonists were called upon to make was far too abrupt. As Jean Grave has pointed out in this connection, "People cannot pa.s.s thus brusquely from a society where fighting and egoism are obligatory on every being to a society where the relations between individuals are those of love, of sympathy, of benevolence, of solidarity, where you take no heed of the faults of those who surround you, ignoring the follies of your neighbours while they ignore yours. The existing social state has in no way prepared us for solidarity and benevolence."

The French attempts to found anarchist colonies at home have fared little, if any, better than the attempts to found them abroad.

A communistic workshop, opened in Paris in 1885 by a number of anarchistic tailors whom a strike had left without employment, was closed at the end of a year; but whether by reason of internal disagreements or by reason of the intrigues of interested employers it is not easy, from the evidence, to determine. The product was divided equally among all the members of the a.s.sociation,-the unskilled, the sick, the aged, and the impotent included.

The anarchist _Commune de Montreuil_ (said to be the original of the _phalanstere_ of Descaves' and Donnay's highly successful play, _La Clairiere_) was established in 1892 at Montreuil-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris. A workshop was rented in which the members spent all the time they could spare from their regular employments in working for the benefit of those who might be in need, and Sat.u.r.day lectures were given.

The plans involved, further, hiring a piece of ground to be cultivated for a similar purpose in a similar fas.h.i.+on, a gradual cessation of working for employers as occasion permitted and results warranted, a school for children, and a library for adults. These plans were frustrated, not by the petty rivalries of the women (as in the Descaves-Donnay play), but by the dissolution of the _Commune_ by the government as a part of the wholesale anarchist repressions of 1893-94.

Some of the original members of the _Commune de Montreuil_ have since banded themselves together for an exchange of services with the idea of habituating themselves to make and utilise products "without commercial exchange, representative value, or appraisal"; but the exchangers remain in their respective homes.

At Angers, in the Maine-et-Loire, a department remote from Paris, a number of anarchist workingmen pledged themselves some time since to divide their wages at the end of each week "in order to equalise the conditions of existence."

It is impossible to draw any conclusion whatsoever from experiments that are so partial as these and that have been conducted under such unfavourable conditions.

In the two great modern industrial reform movements-trade-unionism and co-operation-the anarchist finds other fields for the _propagande par l'exemple_.

He is bound to look askance at trade-unions, and, if a purist, to hold himself aloof from them, because by the very fact of trying to raise wages they recognise the legitimacy of the wage system, and because they often resort to politics, and implore the intervention of parliament to gain their ends.

"The unions are wheels in the capitalistic machine because they are placed-if only temporarily-under the conditions of the capitalistic system," says one. "To accept discussion with one's exploiters is to confess their right to exploitation,"

says another. "The _raison d'etre_ of the union is to negotiate with the employers, to quibble over the greater or less degree of exploitation; while an anarchist should aim only at the destruction of this exploitation," says still another.

Regarding the efficiency of trade-unions as a means of permanently bettering the conditions of the working cla.s.ses, to say nothing of insuring their emanc.i.p.ation, the anarchist has no illusions. On the contrary, he does them scanter justice than even the capitalist, who, however he may antagonise them, at least pays them the sincere compliment of fearing them. The anarchist has not a particle of faith in trade-unionism as such. He is more orthodox than the most orthodox of economists as to the iron law of wages (_la loi d'airain des salaires_), the inexorableness of the operation of supply and demand, and the impotence of strikes. He maintains stoutly that a so-called trade-union victory can, in the nature of the case, be only the semblance of a victory, since gains cannot be defended, since an increase in wages cannot be maintained, against an unfavourable market, and since, even if it could be maintained, it would be counterbalanced in the long run by the increased cost of living consequent thereon. Whoever would oppose the trade-union theory and practice will find in the anarchist writings and speeches the completest possible a.r.s.enal of weapons ready forged to his hand. No apologist for things as they are can have exposed more relentlessly than he the financial foolishness of fighting millions of dollars with hundreds of dollars, and of pitting the danger of actual starvation against the relatively insignificant danger of decreased profits,-of combating strength with weakness, in a word, on the former's chosen ground.

Nevertheless, the anarchist recognises that the trade-union is a natural grouping of the proletariat; that it was the first important grouping to acknowledge, by acts, the irrepressible conflict between capital and labour, the first to boldly lift and wave the standard of industrial revolt, the first to s.h.i.+ft the attempt at enfranchis.e.m.e.nt from the political to the economic ground, and the first to appreciate the advantages of internationalism; that it is the best considerable example thus far of solidarity in action, the most favourable soil for anarchistic good seed-particularly the good seed of the _propagande par l'exemple_-within present reach, the most favourable ground for disputing the future with the socialists, and an excellent weapon of offence and defence. And he approves of strikes, with all their demonstrable financial futility, because they keep to the fore the idea of revolt, and because-a sort of left-handed reason-every unsuccessful strike is an argument in his favour, inasmuch as it shows the emptiness of partial measures that do not reach the cause.

Besides, he discerns a trend his way in the growing trade-union advocacy of the "universal strike" (_greve universelle_ or _greve generale_) which he regards as but another name for the revolution.

At the time of the memorable _greve des terra.s.siers_,[23] Gustave Geffroy contributed to _Le Journal_ a sketch ent.i.tled "_Tableau de Greve_," which is at once a vivid pen-picture and a prophecy:-

"We could easily have believed ourselves, these latter days, borne backward to the days of the siege of Paris or the weeks which followed the time of the Commune, in perceiving above the pedestrians the silhouettes of cavaliers on patrol and the hands of soldiers in campaign accoutrements in the public squares and along the banks of the Seine.... When the redoubtable question of labour and of _misere_ is the order of the day, it is anguish with silence which reigns in the street where pa.s.s the soldiers under arms.

"It has been so everywhere this week. About the stacks of arms, along the route of the cavaliers, not a cry has escaped, as if each one, by some tacit understanding, knew that destiny must not be tempted nor risks run. The public regarded without uttering a word, gazed fixedly at these sons of the soil and of the faubourg, wearing uniforms and equipped with provisions and cartridges as if they were entering on a campaign in this peaceful city. Where was the enemy? These strikers, slowly promenading, listlessly dangling their arms,-they who set forth habitually to work, and who return from work with a rapid, cadenced step,-and quite stupefied at having become idle strollers; adversaries little fierce, without arms, without their tools even, having in their favour only their patience, their pa.s.sivity, their hope, and especially their a.s.surance that sooner or later they will conquer, when all their fellows shall will it like them.

"It is this fatality of the victory of numbers which is the enemy; it is against this that the regiments and the squadrons have been sent out, against this that to-morrow they would have trundled out the artillery. All this parade of force would have been made this time, could have been made, in fact, only in pure loss.... And so it will be-we can now affirm it-on that future day when the _greve generale_ shall be interpreted in this fas.h.i.+on, when there shall be everywhere only dismaying calm, the tragic refusal to work, when the soldiers called out to guarantee order shall find only order everywhere,-placid visages and folded arms. Military display will be useless on that day. The great social change will have come by the fact of that new sort of revolution which a reactionary journalist designated very justly, the other day, by the name of the pa.s.sive revolution....

... "Ah! the good time when the people offered itself freely as a target on a pile of paving-stones in a narrow street!

"This good time is no more. The great boulevards, the broad avenues, the power of the artillery which can sweep everything from afar without the insurgents seeing anything but the quick flame, the sounding light, the cloud of smoke, were already there to a.s.sure the end of the ancient street war. It was not enough. The revolutionary tactics also have changed, in proportion as the revolutionary party has extended, has gained in force, and has become more conscious of its destinies....