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Kropotkln,  Petr  Alekseevich, 
kniaz1 

The  state 


FREEDOM 


PRICE    TWOPENCE. 


THE  STATE: 

Its  Historic  Role. 


PETER    KROPOTKIN. 


LONDON 

4 'Freedom"  Office,  127  Ossulston  Street  N.W.. 
;   Uso  at  Hendersons,  66  Charing-  Cross  Road,  W.C, 


197 


THE  STATE :  ITS  HISTORIC  ROLE. 

IKK    KK  IN. 

(A  lecture  which  should  h( i  -is,  on  Mnrrh  1,    ! 

in  tin'.   M ill»-  I  'olonitvx  IlitlL.) 
I- 

TN  taking  as  subject  for  this  1<>,  i  tin-  p«l 

1      in  history  I  thought  it  would  ivsp..nd  t- 

at  this  moment :   that  of  thoroughly  examining  tkd   very   idea  of 
the  State,  of  studying  its  essence,  its  rfile  in  the  past,  and    th»- 
may  he  called  upon  to  play  in  the  future. 

It  is  especially  on  the  "State"  question  that    Socialists   are   di 
Amidst  the  number  of  fractions  existing  among  us   and   correspoii 
to  different  temperaments,  to  different  ways  of  thinking,  and  especially 
to  the  degree  of  confidence  in  the  coming  Revolution,  two  main  currents 
can  be  traced. 

On  the  one  hand,  there  are  those  who  hope  to  accomplish  the  Social 
Revolution  by  means  of  the  State  :  by  upholding  most  of  its  fund; 
by  even  extending  them  and  making  use  of  them   for  the   Revolution 
And  there  are  those  who,  like  us,  see  in  the  State,  not  only  in  its  actual 
form  and  in  all  forms  that  it  might  assume,  but  in  its  very  essence 
obstacle  to  the  Social  Revolution  :  the  most  serious  hindrance   to   the 
budding  of  a  society  based  on  equality  and  liberty  ;  the    historic   form 
elaborated  to  impede  this  budding — and    who   consequently    work  to 
abolish  the  State,  and  not  to  reform  it. 

The  division,  as  you  see,  is  deep.  It  corresponds  to  two  divergent 
currents  which  clash  in  all  philosophy,  literature,  and  action  of  our 
times.  And  if  the  prevalent  notions  about  the  State  remain  as  obscure 
as  they  are  today,  it  will  be,  without  doubt,  over  this  question  that 
the  most  obstinate  struggles  will  be  entered  upon,  when — as  I  hope 
soon — Communi&t  ideas  will  seek  for  their  practical  realisation  in  the 
life  of  societies. 

It  is  therefore  of  consequence,  after  having  so  often  criticised  the  pre- 
sent State,  to  seek  the  cause-  of  its  appearance,  to  investigate  the  part 
played  by  it  in  the  past,  to  compare  it  with  the  institutions  which  it 
superseded. 

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

There  is,  as  you  know,  the  German  school  that  likes  to  confuse  the 
State  with  Society.  This  confusion  is  to  be  met  with  even  among  the 
best  German  thinkers  and  many  French  ones,  who  cannot  conceive 
.society  without  State  concentration  ;  and  thence  arises  the  habitual  re- 


4  The  State  :  It*  Historic  R6b. 

proach  cast  on  Anarchists  of  wanting  to  "  destroy  society "  and  of 
44  preaching  the  return  of  perpetual  war  of  each  against  all." 

Yet  to  reason  thus  is  to  entirely  ignore  the  progress  made  in  the 
domain  of  history  during  the  last  thirty  years ;  it  is  to  ignore  that  men 
have  lived  in  societies  during  thousands  of  years  before  having  known 
the  State  ;  it  is  to  forget  that  for  European  nations  the  State  is  of  recent 
origin — that  it  hardly  dates  from  the  sixteenth  century ;  it  is  to  fail  to 
recognise  that  the  most  glorious  epochs  in  humanity  were  those  in  which 
the  liberties  and  local  life  were  not  yet  destroyed  by  the  State,  and  when 
masses  of  men  lived  in  communes  and  free  federations. 

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

On  the  other  hand,  the  State  has  also  been  confused  with  government. 
As  there  can  be  no  State  without  government,  it  has  been  sometimes 
said  that  it  is  the  absence  of  government,  and  not  the  abolition  of  the 
State,  that  should  be  the  aim. 

It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  State  and  government  represent  two 
ideas  of  a  different  kind.  The  State  idea  implies  quite  another  idea  to 
that  of  government.  It  not  only  includes  the  existence  of  a  power 
placed  above  society,  but  also  a  territorial  concentration  and  a  concentra- 
tion of  many  functions  of  the  life  of  society  in  the  hands  of  a  few  or  even 
of  all.  It  implies  new  relations  among  the  members  of  society. 

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

To  really  understand  the  State,  there  is,  in  fact,  but  one  way: 
it  is  to  study  it  in  its  historical  development,  and  that  is  what  I  am  go- 
ing to  endeavour  to  do. 

The  Roman  Empire  was  a  State  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  Up 
till  now  it  is  the  ideal  of  the  students  of  law. 

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


The  StaU :  It*  Historic  R6le.  5 

Even  at  present,  the  students  of  law  and  the  authoritarian*  altogether 
admire  the  unity  of  that  Empire,  the  spirit  of  unity  of  those  laws,  the 
beauty — they  say — the  harmony  of  that  organisation. 

But  the  internal  decomposition  furthered  by  barbarian  invasion — the 
death  of  local  life,  henceforth  unable  to  resist  attacks  from  without,  and 
the  gangrene  spreading  from  the  centre — pulled  that  empire  to  piece*, 
and  on  its  ruins  was  established  and  developed  a  new  civilisation,  which 
is  ours  to-day. 

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

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

II. 

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

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

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

The  fact  is  that  all  animals,  save  some  beasts  and  birds  of  prey,  and 
a  few  species  that  are  in  course  of  extinction,  live  in  societies.  In  the 
struggle  for  existence  it  is  the  sociable  species  that  get  the  better  of 
those  who  are  not.  In  every  class  of  animals  they  occupy  the  top  of 
the  ladder,  and  there  cannot  be  the  least  doubt  that  the  first  beings  of 


6  The  State  :  Its  Ffistoric  Role. 

human  aspect  already  lived'  in  societies.     Man  did  not  create  society; 
society  is  anterior  to  man. 

We  also  know  today— anthropology  has  clearly  demonstrated  it — that 

the  starting  point  of  humanity  was  not  the  family,    but  the  clan,   the 

tribe.    The  paternal  family  such  as  we  have  it,  or  such  as  is  depicted  in 

.  Hebrew  tradition,  appeared   only  very  much  later.     Men  lived  tens  of 

thousands  of  years  in  the  stage  of  clan  or  tribe,   and  during  that  first 

;  stage — let  us  call  it  primitive  or  savage  tribe,  if  you  will — man  already 

developed  a  whole  series  of  institutions,  habits,  and  customs,  far  anterior 

to  the  paternal  family  institutions. 

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

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

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

Far  from  professing  contempt  for  human  life,  these  primitive  indi- 
viduals had  a  horror  of  blood  and  murder.  Shedding  blood  was 
considered  a  deed  of  such  gravity  that  each  drop  of  blood  shed — not 
only  the  blood  of  men,  but  also  that  of  certain  animals — required  that 
the  aggressor  should  lose  an  equal  quantity  of  blood. 

In  fact,  a  murder  within  the  tribe  itself  was  a  deed  absolutely  wn- 
knoivn\  you  may  see  it  till  now,  among  the  Inoi'ts  or  Esquimaux — those 
survivors  of  the  stone  age  that  inhabit  the  Arctic  regions.  But  when 
tribes  of  different  origin,  colour,  or  tongue  met  during  their  migrations, 


The  State :  It*  Historic  KMe.  1 

war  was  often  the  result.  It  is  true  that  then  already  men  tried  to 
mitigate  the  effect  of  these  shocks.  Already  then,  an  ha*  ao  well  been 
demonstrated  by  Maine,  Post,  Nys,  the  tribes  agreed  upon  and  respected 
certain  rul.-s  and  limitation^  <>t  war  which  contained  the  germ*  of  what 
was  to  become  international  law  later  on.  For  example,  a  village  waa 
not  to  be  attacked  without  -jiving  warning'  t<>  th»-  inhabitants.  Never 
would  anyone  have  dared  to  kill  on  a  path  trodden  by  women  going  to 
the  well.  And,  to  come  to  terms,  tin-  balance  of  the  men  killed  on  both 
sides  had  to  be  paid. 

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

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

Primitive  individuals  had,  no  doubt,  temporary  leaders.  The  sorcerer, 
the  rain-maker — the  scientist  of  that  epoch — sought  to  profit  by  what 
they  knew,  or  thought  they  knew  about  nature,  to  rule  over  their  fel- 
low men.  Likewise,  he  who  could  best  remember  proverbs  and  songs, 
in  which  tradition  was  embodied,  became  powerful.  And,  since  then, 
these  "  educated  "  men  endeavoured  to  secure  their  ralership  by  only 
transmitting  their  knowledge  to  the^lect.  All  religions,  and  even  afr 
arts  and  crafts,  have  begun,  you  know,  by  "  mysteries." 

Also  the  brave,  the  bold,  and  the  cunning  man  became  the  tem- 
porary leader  during  conflicts  with  other  tribes,  or  during  migrations. 
But  an  alliance  between  the  "law"  bearer,  the  military  chief  and  the 
witch-doctor  did  not  exist,  and  there  can  be  no  more  question  of  a  State 
with  these  tribes  than  there  is  in  a  society  of  bees  or  ants,  or  among 
our  contemporaries  the  Patagonians  or  the  Esquimaux. 

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


8  The  State  :  Its  Historic  Pole. 

In  the  first  centuries  of  our  era,  immense  migrations  took  place 
among  the  tribes  and  confederations  of  tribes  that  inhabited  Central 
and  Northern  Asia.  A  stream  of  peoples,  driven  by  more  or  less  civil- 
ised tribes,  came  down  from  the  table-lands  of  Asia  -  pi  obably  driven 
away  by  the  rapid  drying-up  of  those  plateaux — inundated  Europe,  im- 
pelling one  another  onward,  mingling  with  one  another  in  their  over- 
flow towards  the  West. 

During  these  migrations,  when  so  many  tribes  of  diverse  origin  were 
intermixed,  the  primitive  tribe  which  still  existed  among  them  and  the 
primitive  inhabitants  of  Europe  necessarily  became  disaggregated.  The 
tribe  was  based  on.  its  common  origin,  on  the  worship  of  common  ances- 
tors; but  what  common  origin  could  be  invoked  by  the  agglomerations 
that  emerged  from  the  hurly-burly  of  migrations,  collisions,  wars  be- 
tween tribes,  during  which  we  see  the  paternal  family  spring  up  here 
and  there — the  kernel  formed  by  some  men  appropriating  women  they 
had  conquered  or  kidnapped  from  neighbouring  tribes  ? 

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

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

Henceforth,  the  village  community,  composed  partly  or  entirely  of 
separate  families — all  united,  nevertheless,  by  the  possession  in  common 
of  the  land — became  the  necessary  bond  of  union  for  centuries  to  come. 

On  the  immense  stretches  of  land  in  Eastern  Europe,  Asia  and 
Africa,  it  still  exists  to-day.  The  barbarians  who  destroyed  the  Roman 
empire—Scandinavians,  Germans,  Celts,  Slavs,  etc. — lived  under  this 
kind  of  organization,  And,  in  studying  the  ancient  barbarian  codes, 
as  well  as  the  laws  and  customs  of  the  confederations  of  village  com- 
munes among  the  Kabyles,  Mongols,  Hindoos,  Africans,  etc.,  which  still 
exi.^t,  it  become  possible  to  reconstitutes  in  its  entirety  that  form  of 
-society,  which  was  the  starting  point  of  our  present  civilization. 

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


The  State  :  Its  Historic  K6k.  9 

III. 
The  village  community  was  composed,  as  <-parate  t 

a  village  p088es.se>  1 
looked  up-  '-011111101]  | 

the  size  of  tli<-  II  iindi  • 

Astern  ii.  :  Kuropi-,  I  ndw 

that  J'  nts  have  e>taMi>h«- 

them  free  to  occupy  tin 
best. 

At  i' . :  common,  and 

m  still  ()})tains  in  many   j-l.-n- 
l;ni«l.      A 

.-trUftin'l    of    Li 

served  n,  th«-\ 

•i  million^  of  ]  .  •  ill  tin      \\ 

tf   t'lHToacllI.1' 

••••iily  took  place  by  family      • 
kitchen  garden  and  provisions;  th 
unulated  i>y  iiiheiitai.' 
In  all  its  linsiiu-ss.  i!:»»  vi!!.  _ 
was  law  aiul  the  plenary  council  of  ail  c-iiii-lV  oi 
men — was  jud^re,   the  only  ju-li:.'.  in  civil  and  ci  iiuina! 
one  of  the  inhabitants,  complaining  of  aiu>: 
ground  at  the  spot  where  the  commune  \va- 

mime  had  to  "  h'nd  the  sentence"  accoidii;_  ;    the 

fact  had  been  proved  by  the  jurors  of  boti 


Time  would  fail  me  were  I  to  tell  you 
by  this  stage.     Suffice  it  for  uie  to  observe  that  a/7  in-Tituti. 

^  took  possession  of  later  on  for  the  benefit  of  DJ  a  all  notions 

lit,  which  we  lind  in  onr   codes    (mutilated    to    t)i»- 
minorities),  an<l  all  forms  of  judicial  i 
guarantees  to  th*.1  individual,  had  th«-; 
Thus, 

the  jury,  for  ex.Minple.  —we  )ia\-j  ojily  rotui 

barbarians,  after  having  modified   it    to    the  advantage    of    th^ 
classes.      Human  law  was  only  sup-.M-p-  law. 

The  sentiment  of  national  unity  was  d<-\- 
-t  free  fedeiv.f  ions  of  vil'a^.'  >:ummuni 


•1  on  the  possessio1  ;  y  often  ou  LJ 

in  common,  sovereign  as  judge  and   K-tris'atur  of  oustomary 
vrllage  commncity  sati 


10  The  State :  Its  Historic  R6le. 

But  not  all  his  needs :  there  were  still  others  to  be  satisfied.  How- 
ever, the  spirit  of  the  age  was  not  for  calling  upon  a  government  as  soon 
as  a  new  need  was  felt.  It  was,  on  the  contrary,  to  take  the  initiative 
oneself,  to  unite,  to  league,  to  federate,  to  create  an  understanding, 
great  or  small,  numerous  or  restricted,  which  would  correspond  to  the 
new  need.  And  society  of  that  time  was  literally  covered,  as  by  a  net- 
work, with  sworn  fraternities,  guilds  for  mutual  support,  "con-jura- 
tions,"  within  and  without  the  village,  and  in  the  federation.  We  can 
observe  this  stage  and  spirit  at  work,  even  to-day,  among  many  a  bar- 
barian federation  having  remained  outside  modern  States  modelled  on 
the  Roman  or  rather  the  Byzantine  type. 

Thus,  to  take  an  example  among  many  others,  the  Kabyles  have  re- 
tained their  village  community  with  the  poweis  I  have  just  mentioned. 
But  man  feels  the  necessity  of  action  outside  the  narrow  limits  of  his 
hamlet.  Some  like  to  wander  about  in  quest  of  adventures,  in  the  ca- 
pacity of  merchants.  Some  take  to  a  craft,  "  an  art "  of  some  kind. 
And  these  merchants  and  artisans,  unite  in  "fraternities,"  even  when 
they  belong  to  different  villages,  tribes  and  confederations.  There  must 
be  union  for  mutual  help  in  distant  adventures  or  to  mutual!}'  transmit 
the  mysteries  of  the  craft — and  they  unite.  They  swear  brotherhood, 
and  practice  it  in  a  way  that  strikes  Europeans :  in  deed  and  not  in 
words  only. 

Besides,  misfortune  can  overtake  anyone.  Who  knows  that  to- 
morrow, perhaps,  in  a  brawl,  a  man,  gentle  and  peaceful  as  a  rule,  will 
not  exceed  the  established  limits  of  good  behaviour  and  sociability  ? 
Very  heavy  compensation  will  then  have  to  be  paid  to  the  insulted  or 
wounded ;  the  aggressor  will  have  to  defend  himself  before  the  village 
council  and  prove  facts  on  the  oath  of  six,  ten  or  twelve  "con-jurors." 
This  is  another  reason  for  belonging  to  a  fraternity. 

Moreover,  man  feels  the  necessity  of  talking  politics  and  perhaps 
even  intriguing,  the  necessity  of  propagating  some  moral  opinion  or 
custom.  There  is,  also,  external  peace  to  be  safeguarded  ;  alliances 
to  be  concluded  with  other  tribes;  federations  to  be  constituted  far  off; 
the  idea  of  intertribal  law  to  be  propagated.  Well,  then,  to  satisfy  all 
these  needs  of  an  emotional  and  intellectual  kind  the  Kabyles,  the 
Mongols,  the  Malays  do  not  turn  to  a  government :  they  have  none. 
Men  of  customary  law  and  individual  initiative,  they  have  not  been 
perverted  by  the  corrupted  idea  of  a  government  and  a  church  which 
would  be  supposed  to  do  everything.  They  unite  directly.  They  con- 
stitute sworn  fraternities,  political  and  religious  societies,  unions  of 
crafts  -guilds  as.-they  were  called  in  the  Middle  Ages,  sofs  as  Kabyles 
call  them  to-day. '  'And  these  sofs  go  beyond  the  boundaries  of  hamlets; 
they  flourish  far  out  in  the  desert  and  in  foreign  cities ;  and  fraternity 


Tht  State :  Its  Historic  RAk.  1 1 

is  practised  in  these  unions.  To  refuse  to  help  a  member  of  your  sof, 
even  at  the  risk  of  losing  all  your  belongings  and  your  life,  is  an  act 
of  treason  to  the  fraternity  and  exposes  the  traitor  to  be  treated  as  the 
murderer  of  a  "  brother." 

What  we  find  to-day  among  Kabyles,  Mongols,  Malays,  etc.,  wag  the 
very  essence  of  life  of  so-called  barbarians  in  Europe  from  the  fifth  to 
the  twelfth,  even  till  the  fifteenth  century.  Under  the  name  of  yuiUl*, 
friendships,  universitates,  etc.,  unions  M\  armed  for  mutual  defence  and 
for  solidarily  avenging  offences  against  each  member  of  the  union  :  for 
substituting  compensation  instead  of  the  vengeance  of  an  "eye  for  an  eye," 
followed  by  the  reception  of  the  aggressor  into  the  fraternity  ;  for  the 
exercise  of  crafts,  for  helping  in  case  of  illness,  for  the  defence  of 
territory,  for  resisting  the  encroachments  of  nascent  authority,  for  com- 
merce, for  the  practice  of  "good  neigh bourship;"  for  j  .  ia,  for 
everything,  in  a  word,  that  the  European,  educated  by  the  Roimo  of 
the  Caesars  and  the  Popes,  asks  of  the  State  to-day.  It  is  even  very 
doubtful  that  there  existed  at  that  time  one  single  man,  free  or  serf 
(save  those  who  were  outlawed  by  their  own  fraternities),  who  did  not 
belong  to  some  fraternity  or  guild,  besides  his  commune. 

Scandinavian  Soyas  sing  their  exploits.  The  devotion  of  sworn 
brothei-s  is  the  theme  of  the  most  beautiful  of  these  epical  songs;  whereat 
the  Church  and  the  rising  kings,  representatives  of  Byzantine  or  Roman 
law  which  reappears,  hurl  against  them  their  anathemas  and  decrees, 
which  happily  remain  a  dead  letter. 

The  whole  history  of  that  period  loses  its  significance,  and  becomes 
absolutely  incomprehensible,  if  we  do  not  take  the  fraternities  into  ac- 
count— these  unions  of  brothers  and  sisters  that  spring  up  everywhere 
to  satisfy  the  multiple  needs  of  both  economic  and  emotional  life  of  man. 


Nevertheless,  black  spots  accumulate  on  the  horizon.  Other  unions 
— those  of  ruling  minorities — are  also  formed ;  and  they  endeavour,  little 
by  little,  to  transform  these  free  men  into  serfs,  into  subjects.  Rome 
is  dead,  but  its  tradition  revives;  and  the  Christian  Church,  haunted 
by  Oriental  theocratic  visions,  gives  its  powerful  support  to  the  new 
powers  that  are  seeking  to  constitute  themselves, 

Far  from  being  the  sanguinary  beast  that  he  is  represented  to  be,  in 
order  to  prove  the  necessity  of  ruling  over  him,  man  has  always  loved 
tranquility  and  peace.  He  fights  rather  by  necessity  than  by  ferocity, 
and  prefers  his  cattle  and  his  land  to  the  profession  of  arms.  There- 
fore, hardly  had  the  great  migration  of  barbarians  begun  to  abate, 
hardly  had  hordes  and  tribes  more  or  less  cantoned  themselves  on  their 
respective  lands  than  we  sec  the  care  of  the  defence  of  territory: "against 
new  waves  of  immigrants  rniitidi'd  to  a  man  who  i-n^igcs  ft  smn1. 


/•*" 

12  The  State  :  Its  Historic  Role. 

.  of  adventurers,  men  hardened  in  wars,  or  brigands,  to  be  his  follov 
I   while  the  grea-t  mass  raises  cattle  or  cultivates  the  soil.      And  this   de- 
fender soon  begins  to  arnass  wealth.     He  gives    a    horse    and    armour 
t  (very  dear  at  that  time)  to  the  poor  man,  and  reduces  him  to  ser\ii 
-   he  begins  to  conquer  the  germ  of  military  power.     On  the  other  i 
Jittle    by  little,  tradition,   which  constituted  law  in  those  times,  is 
.  i'tten    by  the  masses.       There  hardly  remains  an  old  man  who  i: 
••^siory  keeps    the  verses  and  songs  which  tell  of  the  "precedents, 
which    customary   law  consists,    *md  recites  them  on  great  }'<•- ;  ival 
before  the  commune.     And,  little  by  little,  some  families  made  a 
.  transmitted  from  father  to  son,  of  retaining  these  songs  and  v< 
memory  and  of    preserving  "the  law"  in  its  purity.     Tot 
J'pply  to   judge  differences  in  intricate  cases,  especially  \\ 
TWO  vill  tges  or  confederations  refuse  to  accept  the  decisions  of  arl- 
-  taken  from  their  midst. 

Tbe  germ  of  princely  or  royal   authority  is  already  sown   in 
families;  and  the  more  I  study  the  institutions  of  that  time,  the 
!  see  that  the  knowledge  of  customary  law  did  far   more  to  co 
that  authority  than  the  power  of  the  sword.      Man  allowed    hi 

<Misla\t'd    far  more  by  his  desire  to  "punish  according  to  law"  than 
lirec-t  military  conquest. 

And  gradually  the  first  "concentration  of  powers,"  the   first   in 
insurance  for  domination  —  that  of  the  judge  and   the   military  chief — 
grew  to 'the  detriment  of  the  village  commune.      A  single  man  assu 
these  two  functions,    lie  surrounded  himself  with  armed  men  to  put  his 
judicial  decisions  into  execution  ;   lie  fortified  himself  in  his   turret;  lie 
accumulated  the  wealth  of  the  epoch,  viz.  bread,  cattle  and  iron,  for  his 
family;  and  little  by  little  he  forced  his   rule    upon    the   neighbouring 
-ants.     The  scientific  man  of  the  age,  that  is  to  >ay.  the  witch-doctor 
or    priest,    lost    no    time   in  bringing  him  his  support  and    in   sharing 
his  domination;  or  else,  adding  the  sword  to  hi-  power  of   redoub; 
gician,  he  seized  the  domination  for  his  own  account. 


A  course  of  lectures,  rather  than  a  simple  lecture,  would   be  u- 
to  deal  thoroughly  with  this  subject,  so  full  of  new  teachings,   ainl  to 
tell  how  free  men  became  gradually  se  i  to  work  for  the 

clerical  lord  of  the  manor:  how  authority  f.  -instituted,  in  a  ten 
way,  ove»  village^,  and  boroughs ;  how  -  -  leagued,  revolted,  ? 
*gled  to  .fight  the  advancing  dominate  they  sucr-inni  • 

those  struggles  aga:  iong  castle  v,.,;  -     _      .~-^;i>  men  in  ai .-,•.     .: 

to  .defended  tli-. 

8uf£co  it  for  vie  "  <  :          tentli  uii*l  vlw'}\v\i  crni  -i  .•  5, 

;'ution  of 


n.-  Stab:  7>.v  ///.</.,•-  13 

barbarous  kingdom*  such  ai 

bei  n    th. .  •  which   u- 

could   not    take  placr   ii:   a   day;    l)Ut  the  i,'ei  : 

;ui<l  tho.se  little  tli.-.u-iacies  were  .-re'  deve 

inert-  Mini  in-. 

Happily,  the  "barbarian**  spirit 

Sliiv      that   had  led  inch  for  *DOU1  -k    for 

•i.-l'action  of  their  needs  in  individual  inn  ; tve  agree- 

>f  fraternities  and  guilds     happily  iliat   spnir   .-till    liv< 
villagi-.s    and     boroughs.        Th«-    barbarian-    all 
enslaved,    they    worked  toi   I  mit  t  h.-ir  >pirit  o(   : 

inent  was  not  yet    corrupt .-1.       Thei: 
more   than   ev?er,  and  the  ci; 
in  tlu>  West. 

Then  the  revolution  of  the  commui:<- 

fcdcrati\ v  spirit  and  born  of  the  union   of   sxvorn    \  u    the 

village  community,  burst  forth  in   the  twelfth   century  with  a  >t liking 
spontaneity  all  over  Europe. 

This  revolution,  which  the  mass  of  university  histoi 
ignore,  saved  Europe  from  the  calamity  with  which  it  w, 
arrested  the  evolution  of  theocratic  and  despot;.  -  in  which 

our  civilisation  would  probably  have  gone  down  after  a  te\\-  e-enn; 
pompous  expansion,  as  the  civilisations  of  Mesopotamia,    A- 
Babylon  had  done.  This  revolution  opened  up  a  new  pha^e  ot'  life — that 
of  the  free  communes. 


IV. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  why  modern  historians,  nurtured  as  they  are 
in  the  spirit  of  the  Roman  law,  and  accustomed  to  look  to  Roman 
law  for  the  origin  of  every  political  institution,  are  incapable  of  under- 
standing the  spirit  of  the  communalist  movement  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury. This  manly  affirmation  of  the  rights  of  the  Individual,  who 
managed  to  constitute  Society  through  the  federation  of  individuals, 
villages  and  towns,  was  an  absolute  negation  of  the  centralising  spirit 
of  ancient  Rome,  which  spirit  penetrates  all  historical  conceptions  of 
the  present  day  university  teaching 

The  uprising  of  the  twelfth  century  cannot  even  oe  attributed  to  nay 
personality  of  mark,  or  to  any  central  institution.  It  is  a  rrwnral,  t-n 
thropological  phasis  of  human  development;  and,  as  such,  it  belongs  oa 
human  evolution  like  the  tribe  and  the  village -com  in  unity  periods,  but 
belongs  to  no  nation  in  particular,  to  no  special  region  of  Kurope,  is  the 
work  of  no  special  hero. 


14  The  State  :  Its  Historic  Role. 

This  is  why  University  science  which  is  based  upon  Roman  law,  cen- 
tralisation and  hero-worship,  is  absolutely  incapable  of  understanding 
the  substance  of  that  movement  which  came  from  beneath. 

In  France,  Augustin  Thierry  and  Sismondi,  who  both  wrote  in  the 
first  half  of  this  century  and  who  had  really  understood  that  period, 
have  had  no  followers  up  to  the  present  time;  and  only  now  M.  La- 
chaire  timidly  tries  to  follow  the  lines  of  research  indicated  by  the  great 
historian  of  the  Merovingian  and  the  communalist  period  (Augustin 
Thierry).  This  is  why  in  Germany,  the  awakening  of  studies  of  this 
period  and  a  vague  comprehension  of  its  spirit  are  only  just  now  coming 
to  the  front.  And  this  is  why,  in  this  country,  one  finds  a  true  com- 
prehension of  the  twelfth  century  in  the  poet  William  Morris  rather 
than  amongst  the  historians, — Green  having  been  only  the  one  who 
was  capable  (in  the  later  part  of  his  life)  of  understanding  it  at  all. 


The  Commune  of  the  middle  ages  takes  its  origin,  on  the 
one  hand,  from  the  village  community,  on  the  other  from  those 
thousands  fraternities  and  guilds  which  were  constituted  outside  terri- 
torial unions.  It  was  a  federation  of  these  two  kinds  of  unions,  deve- 
loped under  the  protection  of  the  fortified  enclosure  and  the  turrets  of 
the  city. 

In  many  a  region  it  was  a  natural  growth.  Elsewhere — and  this  is 
the  rule  in  Western  Europe, — it  was  the  result  of  a  revolution.  When 
the  inhabitants  of  a  borough  felt  themselves  sufficiently  protected  by 
their  walls,  they  made  a  "con-juration".  They  mutually  took  the  oath 
to  put  aside  all  pending  questions  concerning  feuds  arisen  from  insults' 
assaults  or  wounds,  and  they  swore  that  henceforth  in  the  quarrels  that 
should  arise,  they  never  again  would  have  recourse  to  personal  revenge  or 
to  a  judge  other  than  the  syndics  nominated  by  themselves  in  the  guild 
and  the  city. 

It  was  long  since  the  regular  practice  in  every  art  or  good- 
neighbourship  guild,  in  every  sworn  fraternity.  In  every  village 
commune,  such  had  formerly  been  the  custom,  before  bishop  or  kinglet 
had  succeeded  in  introducing^-and  later  in  enforcing — his  judge. 
Now  the  hamlets  and  the  parishes  which  constituted  the  borough,  as 
well  as  all  the  guilds  and  fraternities  that  had  developed  there,  con- 
sideied  themselves  a  single  amitas.  They  named  their  judges  and  swore 
permanent  union  between  all  these  groups. 

A  charter  was  hastily  drawn  up  and  accepted.  In  case  of  need  they 
sent  for  the  copy  of  a  charter  to  some  small  neighbouring  commune, 
(we  know  hundreds  of  these  charters  to'day,)  and  the  commune  was 
constituted.  The  bishop  or  prince,  who  had  up  till  then  been  judge  of 
the  commune  and  had  often  become  more  or  less  its  master,  had  only 


Tfa  State :  Its  Uittoric  Kole.  15 

to  recognize  the  accomplished  fact — or  else  to  fight  the  young  "con- 
juration"  by  force  of  arms.  Often  the  king — that  is  to  Hay  the  princa 
who  tried  to  gain  KUJMJI -ioi -ity  over  other  princes,  and  whose  coffers  were 
always  empty, — "granted"  the  charter,  for  ready  nn»n.-y.  H«-  th us  re- 
nounced imposing  /</*  judge  on  the  commune,  whil»-  giving  him** 
portance  before  other  feudal  lords.  But  it  was  in  nowise  tlie  rule : 
hundreds  of  communes  lived  without  any  other  sanction  th.-m  their 
good  pleasure,  their  ruin  parts  and  their  lances. 


In  a  hundred  years  this  movement  spread,  with  striking  unity,  to  the 
whole  of   Europe, — by   imitation,  observe  well, — including   Scotland, 
France,  the  Netherlands,  Scandinavia,  Germany,  Italy,  Spain,  Poland 
and  Russia.     And  to-day,  when  we  compare  the  charters  and  internal 
organisation  of  French,  English,  Scotch,  Iri-h.  S. •  mdinavian,  German, 
Bohemian,  Russian,  Swiss,  Italian  and  Spanish  communes,  we  are  •( 
with  the  almost  complete  sameness  of  these  charters,  and  of  the  or 
sation  which  grew  up  under  the  shelter  of  these  "  social  contracts."  What 
a  striking  lesson  for  Romanists  and  Hegelists   who  know  no   other 
means  to  obtain  similarity  of  institutions  than  servitude  before  tli 

From  the  Atlantic  to  the  middle  course  of  the  Volga,  and  fmn 
way  to  Italy,  Europe   was  covered   with   similar  communes— some  be- 
coming populous  cities  like  Florence,  Venice,  Nuremberg  or  Novgorod, 
otheis  remaining  boroughs  of  a  hundred  or  even  twenty  families,  and 
nevertheless  treated  as  equals  by  their  more  or  less  prosperous  sisters. 

Organisms  full  of  vigour,  the  communes  evidently  grew  dissimilar  in 
their  evolution.  The  geographical  position,  the  character  of  external 
commerce,  the  obstacles  to  be  vanquished  outside,  gave  every  commune 
its  own  history.  But  for  all,  the  principle  was  the  same.  Pskov  in 
Russia  and  Brugge  in  Flanders,  a  bcotch  borough  of  three  hundred  in- 
habitants and  rich  Venice  with  its  islands,  a  borough  in  the  North  of 
Fiance  or  in  Poland,  and  Florence  the  Beautiful  represent  the  same* 
amitas.  The  same  fellowship  of  village  communes  and  of  ast* •« 
guilds;  the  same  constitution  in  its  general  outline. 


Generally,  the  town,  whose  enclosure  grows  in  length  and  breadth 
with  the  population  and  surrounds  itself  with  higher  and  higher  towers, 
erected,  each,  by  such  and  such  a  parish  or  such  guild,  and  having  its 
own  individual  character, — generally,  I  say,  the  town  is  divided  into 
four,  five  or  six  districts  or  sections  which  radiate  from  the  citadel  to  the 
ramparts.  In  preference  these  districts  are  inhabitated,  each,  by  one 
"art"  or  craft,  whereas  new  trades — the  "young  arts" — occupy  the 
suburbs,  which  will  soon  be  enclosed  in  a  new  fortified  circle. 

The  street  or  parish,  represents  a  territorial  unit,  corresponding  to 


16  The  State  :  Its  Historic 

the  ancient  village  community.  Each  street  or  parish  has  its  popular 
assembly,  its  forum,  its  popular  tribunal,  its  elected  priest,  militia, 
banner,  and  often  its  seal  as  a  symbol  of  sovereignty.  It  is  federated 
with  other  streets,  but  it  nevertheless  keeps  its  independence. 

,^he  professional  junit,  which  often  corresponds,  or  nearly  so,  with 
ttje.  district,  or. ..section,  is  the  guild — the  trade  union.  This  union  also 
retains  its  saints,  its  assembly,  its  forum,  its  judges.  It  has  its  treasury, 
its  landed  property,  its  militia  and  banner.  It  also  has  its  seal  and  it 
remains  sovereign.  In  case  of  war,  should  it  think  right,  its  militia 
will  march  and  join  forces  with  those  of  other  guilds,  and  it  will  plant 
its  banner,  side  by  side  with  the  great  banner,  or  carosse  (cart)  of  the 
city. 

And  lastly  the  city  is  the  union  of  districts,  streets,  parish* 
guilds,  aud  it  has  its  plenary  assembly  of  all  inhabitants  in  the  large 
forum,  its  great  belfry,  its  elected  judges,  its  banner  for  rallying  the 
militia  of  the  guilds  and  districts.  It  negociates  as  a  sovereign  with 
other  cities. federates  with  whom  it  likes,  concludes  national  and  foreign 
alliances.  ^l>k«s  the  English  "  Cinque  Ports  "  round  Dover  are  fede- 
rated with-  French  and  Xrtherland  ports  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Channel;  th<#- Russian  Novgorod  is  the  ally  of  Scandinavian,  Germanic 
Hans.i,  and  MW-ti  'In  r  i  ii  relations,  every  city  possesses  all  the 

prerogatives  of  the  modern  State,  and  from  that  time  forth  is  consti- 
tuted, by  free  contrasts,  that  body  of  agreements  which  later  on  became 
known  as  International  law,  and  was  placed  under  the  sanction  of 
public  opinion  of  all'-'xiities^  while  it  was  more  often  violated  than  res- 
pected by  the  States  later  oi>. 

How  often  a  city,  not  being  able  to  decide  a  dispute  in  a  complicated 
case,  sends  for  "finding  the  sentence"  to  a  neighbouring  city  !  How 
'often  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  time — arbitration,  rather. than  the  judge's 
authority — is  manifested  in  tLe  fact  of  twt.  c  .nniuuhes  taking  a  thiid 
as  arbitrator  ! 


Trade  unions  behave  in  the  same  way.  They  carry  on  their  com- 
mercial and  trade  affairs  beyond  the  cities  and  make  treaties,  without 
taking  their  nationalities  into  account.  And  when,  in  our  ignorance, 
we  talk  boast  i  ugly  of  our  international  workers' congresses,  we  forget 
that  international  trade  congresses  and  even  apprentice  congresses  were 
already  held  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

Lastly,  the  city  either  defends  itself  against  aggressors  and  wages  its 
own  stubborn  wars  against  neighbouring  feudal  lords,  nominating  each 
year  one  or  rather  two  military  commanders  of  its  militias;  or  else  it 
accepts  a  "military  defender" — a  prince  or  duke,  who  is  chosen  by  the 
city  for  a  year,  and  whom  it  can  dismiss  when  it  pleases.  It  usually 


. 
idi.-r.-:  hut   it 

'  '•  -     •  ' 

idal     VtlM 

nent  military  prol 

lint-  in   1 1 

authority  sli:tll  n.  ' 
.     It   will 

know  ti; 

Jam!  cannot  •  city  of  1. 

on. 

>tild  like  to  s;  oak  •  about  tl  'ife  of 

I 

-1  ihat  it  woul< 
....•«  rk    that    internal 
«;uilds  -  not  by  isolai 

•  it  only 

ints1  j^niltl  later  on,  ami  stil!  lat»  . 
wa-  any  \\-«>rk  done  on  Sunday  or  01   S 

\  that  the  city  purchased  tho  cl  'ife  of 

;;al)it:ints    (corn,  coal,  etc.)  and  deli' 

That  custom  of  th< 

;ained  in  Switzerland  till  the  middle  of  01 

is  proved  by  a  mass  of  documents  of  all  kinds,  that  him  -  never 

known,  neither  before  nor  after,  a  period  of  relativ 
t't-ctly  assured  to  all,  as  existed  in   the  citi. 
I  resent  poverty,  insecurity  and  over-work  were  a 
then. 

V. 

With  these  elements — liberty,  organisation   from   sin.i  :;plex, 

production  and  exchange  by    trade-unions    (guilds),    i  with 

foreign  parts  carried  on  by  the  city  itself,  and  the  !•• 

-  by   the  city — with    the>e    elements,    the   town-    of  the  M 

•  luring  the  first  two  centuries  of  their  free  lit. 
well-being  for  all  the  inhabitant*.     They  were  centres  of  opt. 
li/Mtion,  such  as  we  have  not  seen  since  then. 

Consult  documents  that  allow  of  establishing  the    rat. 
work,  compared   to   the   price   of   provisions, — ROL  it  for 


18  The  State :  Its  Historic  Role. 

England  and  a  great  number  of  writers  have  done  it  for  Germany, — 
and  we  see  that  the  work  of  the  artisan,  and  even  of  a  simple  day-la- 
bourer, was  remunerated  at  the  time  by  a  wage  not  even  reached  by 
skilled  workmen  nowadays.  The  account-books  of  the  University  of 
Oxford  and  certain  English  estates,  also  those  of  a  great  number  of 
German  and  Swiss  towns  are  there  to  testify  to  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  consider  the  artistic  finish  and  the  quantity  of 
decorative  work  which  a  workman  of  those  days  used  to  put  into  the 
beautiful  work  of  art  he  did.  as  well  as  in  the  simplest  thing  of  dom- 
estic life, — a  railing,  a  candelstick,  an  article  of  pottery — and  you  see 
at  once  that  he  did  not  know  the  pressure,  the  hurry,  the  overwork  of 
our  times;  he  could  forge,  sculpture,  weave,  embroider  at  his  leisure — 
as  but  a  very  small  number  of  artist- workers  can  do  nowadays.  And  if 
we  glance  over  the  donations  to  the  churches  and  to  houses  which  be- 
longed to  the  parish,  to  the  guild  or  to  the  city,  be  it  in  works  of  art — 
in  decorative  panels,  sculptures,  cast  or  wrought  iron  and  even  silver 
works — or  in  simple  mason's  or  carpenter's  work,  we  understand  what 
degree  of  well-being  those  cities  had  realized  in  their  midst.  We  can 
conceive  the  spirit  of  research  and  invention  that  prevailed,  the  breath 
of  liberty  that  inspired  their  works,  the  sentiment  of  fraternal  solidari- 
ty that  grew  in  those  guilds  in  which  men  of  a  same  craft  were  united, 
not  only  by  the  mercantile  and  technical  side  of  a  trade  but  also  by 
bonds  of  srciability  and  fraternity.  Was  it  not,  in  fact,  the  guild-law 
that  two  brothers  were  to  watch  at  the  bedside  of  every  sick  brother  ? 
or  that  the  guild  would  take  care  of  burying  the  dead  brother  or  sister 
—a  custom  which  called  for  devotion,  in  those  times  of  contagious  dis- 
eases and  plagues, — follow  him  to  the  grave,  and  take  care  of  his  widow 
and  children  ? 

Black  misery,  depression, the  uncertainty  of  to-morrow  for  the  greater 
number,  which  characterize  our  modern  cities,  were  absolutely  unknown 
in  those  "  oases  sprung  up  in  the  twelfth  century  in  the  middle  of  the 
feudal  forest."  In  those  cities,  under  the  shelter  of  their  liberties 
acquired  under  the  impulse  of  free  agreement  and  free  initiative,  a  whole 
new  civilization  grew  up  and  attained  such  expansion,  that  the  like  has 
not  been  seen  up  till  now. 

All  modern  industry  comes  to  us  from  those  cities.  In  three  centu- 
ries, industries  and  arts  developed  there  to  such  perfection  that  our  cen- 
tury has  been  able  to  surpass  them  only  in  rapidity  of  production, 
but  rarely  in  quality,  and  very  rarely  in  beauty  of  the  produce.  In  the 
higher  arts  which  we  try  to  revive  in  vain  to-day,  have  we  surpassed 
the  beauty  of  Raphael  ?  the  vigour  and  audacity  of  Michel  Angelo  ?  the 
science  and  art  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  ?  the  poetry  and  language  of 
Dante  ?  or  the  architecture  to  which  we  owe  the  cathedrals  of  Laon, 


The  State :  Ii$  Historic  Role.  19 

,  Cologne—"  the  people  were  its  masons  "  Victor  Hugo  h*s  aaid 

so  \v«'ll — the  treasures  of  beauty  of  Florence  and  V»-;  u  ImlU 

of  Bremen  anil  IVa^im,  the  towers  of  Nuremberg  ami  l'i.-a,  ami  ao  on 
a<l  in  fin  itn  in  t  All  these  great  conquests  of  ait  were  the  product  of 
that  period. 

Do  you  wish  to  measure  the  progress  of  tint  civilization  «t  a  glance? 
Compare  the  Dome  of  St.  Marc  in  \'.-ni««-  t«»  tl  >?  Nor- 

mauds,  Raphael's  pictures  to  the  naiv<-  pin'hn.id.-i  !••- ami  carpet*  of 
K-INVUX,  the  mathematical  and  phy.-ir.il  instrument  -  .md  clocks  ot  Nur- 
emberg to  the  sand  clocks  of  the  preceding  cent'  i  •  Dante's  sonorous 
language  to  the  barbarous  Latin  of  the  tenth  century.  A  new  world 
has  opem-d  up  between  the  two  ! 

Never,  with  the  exception  of  that  other  glorious  period  of  ancient 
Greece— free  cities  again — had  humanity  inadi-  such  a  stride  forwards. 
Never  in  two  or  three  centuries,  had  man  undergone  so  profound  a 
change  nor  so  extended  his  power  over  the  forces  of  nature. 

You  perhaps  may  think  of  the  progress  of  civilisation  in  our  own 
century  which  is  ceaselessly  boasted  of  ?  But  in  each  of  its  mai 
tions  it  is  hut  the  child  of  the  civilization  which  grew  up  in  th»- 
of  free  communes !  All  the  great  discoveries  which  have  made  modern 
science,— the  compass,  the  clock,  the  watch,  printing,  the  maritime  dis- 
coveries, gunpowder,  the  law  of  gravitation,  the  law  of  atmospheric 
pressure,  of  which  the  steam-engine  is  but  a  development,  the  rudi- 
ments of  chemistry,  the  scientific  method  already  pointed  out  by  Roger 
Bacon,  and  practised  in  Italian  universities, —where  does  that  all  come 
from,  if  not  from  the  free  cities  which  developed  under  the  shelter  of 
communal  liberties  ? 

But  3'ou  may  say  perhaps,  that  I  forget  the  conflicts,  the  internal 
struggles  of  which  the  history  of  these  communes  is  full ;  the  street 
tumults,  the  ferocious  battles  sustained  against  the  landlords;  the  in- 
surrections of  "  young  arts  "  against  the  "  ancient  arts  "  ;  the  blood  that 
was  shed  and  the  reprisals  which  took  place  in  these  struggles .... 

I  forget  nothing.  But,  like  Leo  and  Botta,  the  two  historians  of 
medieval  Italy,  like  Sismondi,  like  Ferrari,  Gino  Capponi,  and  so  many 
others,  I  see  that  these  struggles  were  the  guarantee  itself  of  free  life 
in  a  free  city.  I  perceive  a  renewal  of  and  a  new  flight  towards  pro- 
gress after  each  one  of  these  struggles.  After  having  described  these 
struggles  and  conflicts  in  detail,  and  after  having  measured  the  immen- 
sity of  progress  realized  while  these  struggles  stained  the  streets  with 
blood,  viz:  well-being  assured  to  all  the  inhabitants.  :md  a  renovation 
of  civilization,  Leo  and  Botta  concluded  by  this  thought,  so  true,  that 
so  often  comes  to  my  mind  : 


20  The  State  :  Its  Historic  Role. 

"  A  commune,"  they  said,  "  only  then  represents  the  picture  of  a 
moral  whole,  only  then  appears  universal  in  its  behaviour,  like  the 
human  mind  itself,  when  it  has  admitted  conflict  and  opposition  in  its- 
midst" 

Yes,  conflict,  freely  thrashed  out,  without  an  external  power,  tin* 
State,  throwing  its  immense  weight  into  the  balance,  in  favor  of  one  of 
the  struggling  forces. 

Like  those  two  authors,  I  also  think  that  "  far  more  misery  has  often 
been  caused  by  imposing  peace,  because  in  such  cases  contradictory 
things  were  forcibly  allied  in  order  to  create  a  general  politic  order,  and 
by  sacrificing  individualities,  and  little  organisms,  in  order  to  absorb 
them  in  a  vast  body  without  colour  and  without  life." 

This  is  why  the  communes, — so  long  as  they  themselves  did  not 
strive  to  become  States  and  to  impose  submission  around  them,  so  as  to 
create  "  a  vast  body  without  colour  or  life  " — always  grew  up,  always 
came  out  younger  and  stronger  after  every  struggle;  this  is  why 
they  flourished  at  the  sound  of  arms  in  the  street,  while  two  centu- 
ries later  that  same  civilization  was  crumbling  at  the  noise  of  wars 
brought  about  by  Star 

In  the  commune,  the  struggle  was  for  the  conquest  and  maintenance 
of  the  liberty  of  the  individual,  for  the  principle  of  federation,  for  the 
right  to  unite  and  act ;  whereas  the  wars  of  the  States  aimed  to  des- 
troy these  liberties,  to  subjugate  the  individual,  to  annihilate  free 
agreement,  to  unite  men  in  one  and  the  same  servitude  before  the  king, 
the  judge,  the"  priest,  and  the  State. 

There  lies  all  the  difference.  There  are  struggles  and  conflicts  that 
kill.  And  there  are  those  that  launch  humanity  forwards. 


VI. 

In  the  course  of  the  sixteenth  century,  modern  barbarians  come  and 
destroy  the  whole  civilization  of  the  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages.  These 
barbarians  do  not  completely  annihilate  it ;  they  cannot  do  so,  but  they 
check  it,  at  least,  in  its  progress  for  two  or  three  centuries.  They  drive 
it  in  a  new  direction. 

They  fetter  the  individual,  they  take  all  his  liberties  away,  they  order 
him  to  forget  the  unions  which  formerly  were  based  on  free  initiative 
and  free  agreement,  and  their  aim  is  to  level  the  whole  of  society  in  the 
same  submission  to  the  master.  They  destroy  all  bonds  between  men, 
by  declaring  that  State  and  Church  alone  must  henceforth  constitute 
the  union  between  the  subjects  of  a  State;  that  only  Church  and  State 
have  the  mission  of  watching  over  industrial,  commercial,  judiciary 


• 

i   ]i:i>-iuli:il   il,'  •  P     which 

had  heen  wont  to  uiiih-  din  dlv. 

.And    who  are  those   1)  irli.n  i.,:    -   '        I  ' 

•  t'    tin-    iniiir..!. 

the  three  forming  a  mutual  in-  three 

united  iii    one  power  th.it  will  command  in  tin-  f 

::d   will  cni:sh   ' 

',aturai!y 

.    foriliei  \\ 

iiKpieM   from  f 

That  strength,  they  tir-4  of  a!i    foMnd    in    the  vi\\ 
communes  of  anciei  \vh<i  .lid  • 

t  li«  M  iii' 

:  •  tiino    at 

•  •:trly    ••\t-r\\\-! 
:   an  a  Hi-  LI 

folk  to  help  in  his  enfranchisement.     Ouir 
of  Italy,    Spain  a.ir.l  (Ji-rniMny  ftin 
lords.     Prodigies  of  heit>i8XB    and 

iii  that  war  against  the  feudal  < 

in*-  niastrrs  of  tile  castles  of  feudalism  and  to  ("it  dou  i, 
•   that  eiivelopod  thfin. 
But  they  only  half  •  d.     Then,  tired  of  war,   th-  peace 

he  head  of  tin-  peas;iL! .     'I'o   boy    [  e 
ant  up  to  the  lord,  cmteid  rit«n-y    \vliii-i: 

coinnniTie.      In  Italy  an<l  ( Ji-i-jnany  they  even  ei;d>- -1 
lord  as  fellow  citizen    on    condition    that    lie    should    reside    with, 
commune.     In  other  parts  they  ended  l>y  sharing  his   «!  :i  over 

the  peasant.     And  the  lord  avenged    himself    on  these  common  people, 
whom  he  hated  and  despised,  l>y  drenching  their  >treets  in  l.lood  during 
the  struggles    and    acts  of    revenge   of    nohle    families,    th. 
carried  before  communal  judges  and  syndics,  whom  the  noble 
but  were  settled  by  the  sword  in  the  >u . 

The  nobles   demoralised    the   towns   by   their   munith  ir  in- 

trigues,  their  great  style  of   living,   by  their  education 
bishop's  or  the  king's  court.     They  made  the  ci; 

ily  struggles.     And  the  citizen  ended    hy    imitating   the    lord,    and  be- 
came a  lord  in  his  turn,  enriching  himself,    he  too.    by    the    lahour   of 
Fs  encamped  in  the  villa L  v  walls. 

After  which,  the  peasant  lent  a 

and  to  Popes,  when  they  began   to  build  their  k;  and  to 


22  The  State:  Its  Historic  Role. 

bring  the  towns  under  subjection.  When  not  marching  by  their  orders, 
the  peasant  left  them  free  to  act. 

It  is  in  the  country,  in  a  fortified  castle,  situated  in  the  midst  of 
rural  populations,  that  royalty  was  slowly  constituted.  In  the  twelfth 
century  it  existed  but  in  name,  and  to-day  we  know  what  to  think  of 
the  rogues,  chiefs  of  little  bands  of  brigands,  who  adorned  themselves 
with  this  title,  which  after  all — Augustin  Thierry  has  so  well  demons- 
trated it — had  very  little  meaning  at  that  time;  in  fact  the  Norse 
fishermen  had  their  "  Nets'  Kings,"  even  the  beggars  had  their  "iKings" 
— the  word  having  then  simply  the  signification  of  "  temporary  leader." 

Slowly,  tentatively,  a  baron  mora  powerful  or  more  cunning  than  the 
others,  succeeded  here  and  there  in  rising  above  the  others.  The  Church 
no  doubt  bestirred  itself  to  support  him.  And  by  force,  cunning, 
money,  sword,  and  poison  in  case  of  need,  one  of  these  feudal  barons  be- 
came great  at  the  expense  of  the  others.  But  it  was  never  in  one  of 
the  free  cities,  which  had  their  noisy  forum,  their  Tarpeian  rock,  or  their 
river  for  the  tyrants,  that  royal  authority  succeeded  in  constituting 
itself  :  it  was  always  in  the  country  in  the  village. 

After  having  vainly  tried  to  constitute  this  authority  in  Rheims  or 
in  Lyons,  it  was  established  in  Paris, — an  agglomeration  of  villages  and 
boroughs  surrounded  by  a  rich  country,  which  had  not  yet  known  the 
life  of  free  cities;  it  was  establisehd  in  Westminster,  at  the  gates  of  po- 
pulous London  City;  it  was  established  in  the  Kremlin  which  was  built 
in  the  midst  of  rich  villages  on  the  banks  of  the  Moskva,  after  having 
failed  at  Souzdal  and  Vladimir, — but  never  in  Novgorod  or  Pskov,  in 
Nuremberg  or  Florence  could  royal  authority  be  consolidated. 

The  neighbouring  peasants  supplied  them  with  grain,  horses  and  men; 
and  commerce — royal,  not  communal — increased  the  wealth  of  the  grow- 
ing tyrants.  The  Church  looked  after  their  interests.  It  protected  them, 
came  to  their  succour  with  its  treasure  chests;  it  invented  a  saint  and 
miracles  for  their  royal  town.  It  encircled  with  its  veneration  Notre-Dame 
of  Paris  or  the  Virgin  of  Iberia  at  Moscow.  And  while  the  civilization 
of  free  cities,  emancipated  from  the  bishops,  took  its  youthful  bound, the 
Church  worked  steadily  to  reconstitute  its  authority  by  the  interme- 
diary of  nascent  royalty,  it  surrounded  with  its  tender  care,  its  incense 
and  its  ducats,  the  family  cradle  of  the  one  whom  it  had  finally  chosen, 
in  order  to  rebuild  with  him,  and  through  him,  the  ecclesiastical  autho- 
rity. In  Paris,  Moscow,  Madrid  and  Pi-ague,  you  see  the  Church  bend- 
jng  over  the  royal  cradle,  a  lighted  torch  in  its  hand. 

Hard  at  work,  strong  in  its  State  education,  leaning  on  the  man  of 
will  or  cunning  whom  it  sought  out  in  any  class  of  society,  learned  in  in- 
trigue as  well  as  in  Roman  and  Byzantine  law — you  see  the  Church 
marching  without  respite  towards  its  ideal :  the  Hebrew  King,  absolute* 


The  State :  Its  Historic  R6k.  23 

but  obeying  the  high  priest — the   simple   secular   arm   of  ecclesiastic*! 
power. 

In  the  sixteenth  century,  the  long  work  of  the  two  conspirator*  ia 
already  in  full  force.  A  king  already  rules  over  the  barons,  his  rivals, 
and  that  force  will  alight  on  the  free  cities  to  crush  them  in  their  turn. 

Besides,  the  towns  of  the  sixteenth  century  were  not  what  they  were 
in  the  twelfth,  thirteenth  or  fourteenth  centuries. 

They  were  born  out  of  a  libertarian  revolution.  But  they  had  not 
the  courage  to  extend  their  ideas  of  equality,  neither  to  the  neighbour- 
ing rural  districts  nor  even  to  those  citizens  who  had  later  on  estab- 
lished themselves  in  their  enclosures,  refuges  of  liberty,  there  to  create 
industrial  arts.  A  distinction  between  the  old  families  who  had  made 
the  revolution  of  the  twelfth  century — or  curtly  "the  families" — and 
the  others  who  established  themselves  later  on  in  the  city,  is  to  be  met 
with  in  all  towns.  The  old  "  Merchant  Guild  "  had  no  desire  to  receive 
the  new-comers.  It  refused  to  incorporate  the  "  young  arts  "  for  com- 
merce. And  from  simple  clerk  of  the  city,  it  became  the  go-between, 
the  intermediary,  who  enriched  himself  by  distant  commerce,  and  who 
imported  oriental  ostentation.  Later  on,  the  "  Merchant  Guild  "  allied 
itself  to  the  lord  and  the  priest,  or  it  went  and  sought  the  support 
of  the  nascent  king,  to  maintain  its  monopoly,  its  right  to  enrichment. 
Having  thus  become  personal,  instead  of  communal,  commerce  killed  the 
free  city. 

Besides,  the  guilds  of  ancient  trades,  of  which  the  city  and 
its  government  were  composed  at  the  outset,  would  not  recognise  the 
same  rights  to  the  young  guilds,  formed  later  on  by  the  younger  trades. 
These  had  to  conquer  their  rights  by  a  revolution.  And  that  is  what 
they  did  everywhere.  But  while  that  revolution  became,  in  most  big 
cities,  the  starting  of  a  renewal  of  life  and  aits  (this  is  so  well  seen  in 
Florence),  in  other  cities  it  ended  in  the  victory  of  the  richer  f  or<fera 
over  the  poorer  ones— of  the  "  fat  people  "  (popolo  grasso)  over  tlie  "  low 
people  (popolo  basso) — in  a  despotic  crushing  of  the  masses,  in  number- 
less transportations  and  executions,  especially  when  lords  and  priesta 
took  part  in  it. 

And — need  we  say  it  ? — it  was  "  the  defence  of  the  poorer  orders  " 
that  the  king,  who  had  received  Macchiavelli's  lessons,  took  later  on  aa 
a  pretext  when  he  came  to  knock  at  the  gates  of  the  free  cities ! 

And  then  the  cities  had  to  die,  because  the  ideas  themselves  of  men  had 
changed.  The  teaching  of  canonical  and  Roman  law  had  perverted 
them. 

The  twelfth  century  European  was  essentially  a  federalist.     A  man. 


24  The  State:  Its  Historic  Rok. 

of  free  initiative,  of  free  agreement,  of  unions  freely  consented  to.  He 
saw  in  the  individual  the  starting  point  of  all  society.  -  He  did  not  seek 
salvation  in  obedience;  he  did  not  ask  for  a  savior  of  society.  The., idea 
of  Christian  or  Roman  discipline  was  unknown  to  him. 

But  under  the  influence  of  the  Christian  Church— always  fond  of 
authority,  always  zealous  to  impose  its  rule  on  the  souls  and  especially 
on  the  arms  of  the  faithful;  and  on  the  other  hand,  under  the  influence 
of  Roman  law,  which  already,  since  the  twelfth  century,  invaded  the 
courts  of  the  powerful  lords,  the  kings  and  the  popes,  and  soon  became 
a  favorite  study  in  the  universities— under  the  influence  of  these  two 
teachings,  which  agreed  so  well  although  they  were  enemies  at  the  begin- 
ning,— minds  grew  depraved  in  proportion  as  priest  and  legist  tri- 
umphed. 

Men  became  enamoured  of  authority.  If  a  revolution  of  the  lower 
trades  was  accomplished  in  a  commune,  the  commune  called  in  a  saviour. 
It  gave  itself  a  dictator,  a  municipal  Caesar,  and  it  endowed  him  with 
full  powers  to  exterminate  the  opposite  party.  And  the  dictator  pro- 
fited by  it,  with  all  the  refinement  of  cruelty  that  the  Church  or  the 
examples  which  were  brought  from  the  despotic  kingdoms  of  the  East 
inspiied  him  with. 

The  Church,  of  course,  supported  that  C?esar.  Had  it  not  always 
dreamt  of  the  biblical  king,  who  kneels  before  the  high  priest,  and  is 
his  docile  tool  ?  Had  it  not,  with  all  its  might,  hated  the  ideas  of  ra- 
tionalism which  inspired  the  free  towns  during  the  first  Renaissance, — 
that  of  the  Twelfth  century — as  also  those  "  pagan  "  ideas  which  brought 
man  back  to  Nature  under  the  influence  of  the  rediscovery  of  Greek 
civilisation?  as  also,  later  on,  those  ideas  which  in  the  name  of  primitive 
Christianity  incited  men  against  the  Pope,  the  priest  and  Faith  in  gen- 
eral ?  Fire,  wheel,  gibbet— these  weapons  so  dear  to  the  Church  in  all 
times — were  put  into  play  against  those  heritics.  And  whoever  was  the 
tool,  pope,  king  or  dictator,  it  was  of  little  importance  to  the  Church, 
so  long  as  the  wheel  and  the  gibbet  worked  against  heretics.  .  .  . 

And  under  the  twofold  teaching  of  the  Roman  legist  and  the  priest, 
the  old  federalist  spirit,  the  spirit  of  free  initiative  and  free  agreement, 
was  dying  out  to  make  room  for  the  spirit  of  discipline,  organisation 
and  pyramidal  authority.  The  rich  and  the  poor  alike  asked  for  a 
saviour. 

And  when  the  saviour  presented  himself;  when  the  king,  who  had 
become  enriched  far  from  the  Forum's  tumult,  in  some  town  of  his  crea- 
tion, leaning  on  the  wealthy  Church,  and  followed  by  vanquished  nobles 
and  peasants,  when  the  king  knocked  at  the  city  gates,  promising  the 
"  lower  orders  "  his  mighty  protection  against  the  rich,  and  to  the  obe- 
dient rich  his  protection  against  the  revolting  poor— the  towns,  which 


'•b. 

'  -i  min.'d  : 

: 

a  thr  tliii  ' 

ader  th.-  i 

and  p 

and  powerful     -  ,  ; 

W  ".xtre- 
inity, 

•r  powerful   Kmpn  <  -                               ragon, 

supported  by  tli«'  I;  the  sword  and 

ttes,  the  little 
were,  inevitably  doe«n,fd  tu  »•«•  swallowed  14.  l»y  the  big  ones.... 


VII. 

victory  of  the  State  i»v«-r  the  comm::  : he  federalist  insti- 

tutions of  the   Middle   AU>-S   did   not  tnke  {>!;;  Atone 

time  the  S  tat  t-  was  so  threatened  fchai  i'  -  vic\  •ubtful. 

A   -i.Mt   popular  movement—  .  in  form  ajid  expression,  bat 

eminently  communistic  in- its  adpipations  ami  >tri\  —  ori- 

ginated in  the  towns  and  rural  p; 

Already  in  the  t'ourri-iMith  t-t-i.tuiy  (in  l.">.'»,s  in  J-YMIUV  and  in  1381  in 
tnd),  two  great  siuiilai  movHuients  had  taken  place.     Two  power- 
•voits,  that  of  the  Jacquerie  nnd  that  of   Wat  Tyler  had  shaken 
society  to  its  foundations.    Both, however,  had  been  principally  directed 
-•  feudal  lords.      Both   were    deff:iU-d  :   but    the    peasant  revolt  in 
England  completely  put  an  end  to  serfdom,  and  the  Jacquerie  in  I 
so  checked  it  in  its  development  that  henceforth  the  institution  of  serf- 
dom could  only  vegetate,  without  ever  attaining  the  development  it 
subsequently  attained  in  Germany  and  in  Eastein  Europe. 

Now,  in  the  sixteenth  cemtury.  a  similar  movement  took  place  in 
central  Europe.  Tinder  the  name  of  "  Mu>>ite"  in  Bohemia,  "Ana- 
baptist ''  in  (4ermany,  in  Switzerland  and  in  the  Netherlands,  and  of 
"Troubled  Times"  in  Russia  (;it  the  beginning  of  the  next  centur 
was  over  and  above  a  struggle  against  feudal  lords — a  complete  revolt 
against  Church  and  State,  against  Canonic  and  Roman  law.  in  tlu'  name 
of  primitive  Christianity. 


26  The  State:  Its  Historic  Role. 

This  movement  which  is  hardly  just  beginning  to  be  understood,  was 
for  many  years  travestied  by  State  and  ecclesiastical  historians. 

The  absolute  liberty  of  the  individual — who  must  only  obey  the  com- 
mandments of  his  conscience — and  Communism,  were  the  watchwords 
of  this  revolt.  And  it  was  only  later,  when  Church  and  State  succeeded 
in  exterminating  its  most  ardent  defenders,  and  juggled  with  it  to 
their  own  profit,  that  this  movement,  diminished  and  deprived  of  its 
revolutionary  character,  became  Luther's  Reformation. 

It  began  by  Communist  Anarchism  preached,  and  in  some  places, 
practised.  And  if  we  set  aside  the  religious  formulae,  which  are  a  tri- 
bute to  that  epoch,  we  find  in  it  the  very  essence  of  the  current  of  ideas 
which  we  represent  to-day :  the  negation  of  all  law,  both  State  or  di- 
vine ;  the  conscience  of  each  individual  thus  being  his  one  and  only  law; 
the  commune — absolute  master  of  its  destinies,  retaking  its  Innds  from 
feudal  lords,  and  refusing  all  personal  or  monetary  service  to  the  State. 
In  fact,  Communism  and  equality  put  into  practice.  Moreover  when. 
Denck,  one  of  the  philosophers  of  the  Anabaptist  movement,  was  asked 
if  he  did  not  at  least  recognise  the  authority  of  the  Bible,  he  answered 
that  the  only  obligatory  rule  of  conduct  is  the  one  that  each  individual 
finds,  for  himself,  in  the  Bible.  And  yet  these  very  formulae,  so  vague, 
borrowed  from  ecclesiastical  slang, — this  authority  "of  the  book  "  from 
which  it  is  so  easy  to  borrow  arguments  for  and  against  Communism, 
for  and  against  authority,  and  so  uncertain  when  it  comes  to  clearly 
define  what  liberty  is, — these  very  religious  tendencies  of  the  revolt,  did 
they  not  already  contain  the  germ  of  an  unavoidable  defeat  ? 

Originating  in  towns,  the  movement  soon  spread  to  the  country.  The 
peasants  refused  to  obey  anybody,  and  planting  and  old  shoe  on  a  pike 
by  way  of  a  flag,  they  took  back  the  lands  which  the  lords  had  seized 
from  the  village  communities ;  they  broke  their  bonds  of  serfdom,  drove 
away  priest  and  judge,  and  constituted  themselves  into  free  communes. 
And  it  was  only  by  the  stake,  the  wheel,  the  gibbet — it  was  only  by 
massacring  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  peasants  in  a  few  years,  that 
royal  or  imperial  power,  allied  to  the  papal  or  reformed  church", — 
Luther  inciting  to  massacre  peasants  more  violently  even  than  the  Pope, 
— put  an  end  to  these  risings  that  had  for  a  moment  threatened  the 
constitution  of  nascent  States. 

Born  of  popular  Anabaptism,  the  Lutheran  Reformation,  leaning  on 
the  State,  massacred  the  people  and  crushed  the  movement  from  which 
it  originally  had  derived  its  strength.  The  survivors  of  this  immense 
wave  of  thought  took  refuge  in  the  communities  of  the  "  Moravian 
Brothers."  who,  in  their  turn,  were  destroyed  by  Church  and  State. 
Those  among  them  who  were  not  exterminated,  sought  shelter,  some  in 


The  State:  It*  Historic  R6b.  2T 

the  South-East  of  Russia,  others  in  Greenland,  where  to  thin  day  they 
have  been  able  to  live  in  communities  and  to  refuse  all  service  to  th» 
State. 

Henceforth,  the  State's  existence  was  secure.  The  lawyer,  the  priest 
and  the  soldier-lord,  having  constituted  a  solidary  ;i!li;mce  around  th» 
thrones,  they  could  carry  on  their  work  of  annihilation. 


How  many  lies  have  been  accumulated  by  State-paid  historians,  con- 
cerning that  period  I 

In  fact,  have  we  not  all  learned  at  school  that  the  State  rendered 
great  service  in  constituting  national  unions  on  the  ruins  of  feudal  so- 
ciety; unions  made  impracticable  in  earlier  times  by  the  rivalry  of 
cities  ?  Wo  have  all  learned  it  in  school  and  we  have  all  believed  it  in 
manhood. 

And  nevertheless,  to-day  we  learn  that  in  spite  of  all  rivalries,  me- 
dieval cities  had  already  worked  during  four  centuries  to  constitute 
these  unions  by  federation,  freely  consented  to,  and  that  they  had  fully 
succeeded  in  that  work  of  consolidation. 

The  Lombard  union,  for  example,  included  the  cities  of  Upper  Italy 
and  had  its  federal  treasury  in  safe  keeping  in  Genoa  and  Venice^ 
Other  federations,  such  as  the  Tuscan  Union,  the  Rhenan  Union  (com- 
prising sixty  towns),  the  federations  of  Westphalia,  of  Bohemia,  of 
Servia,  of  Poland,  and  of  Russian  towns  covered  Europe.  At  the  same 
time,  the  commercial  union  of  the  Hansa  included  Scandinavian,  Ger- 
man, Polish,  and  Russian  towns  throughout  the  basin  of  the  Baltic. 

All  the  elements  were  there  already,  as  well  as  the  fact  itself,  of  large 
human  agglomerations,  freely  constituted. 

Do  you  wish  for  a  living  proof  of  these  groups  ? — You  have  it  in 
Switzerland  !  There  the  union  asserted  itself  first  between  village 
cominnnes  (the  old  Cantons),  in  the  same  way  as  it  was  constituted  in 
France  in  the  Laonnais.  And  as  in  Switzerland  the  separation  between 
town  and  village  was  never  so  great  as  it  was  for  towns  carrying  on  an 
extensive  and  distant  commerce,  the  Swiss  towns  lent  a  hand  to  the 
peasant  insurrections  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the  union  encom- 
passed both  towns  and  villages,  and  constituted  a  federation  that  still 
exists  to-day. 

But  the  State,  by  its  very  essence,  cannot  tolerate  free  federation;, 
because  the  latter  represents  this  nightmare  of  the  legist :  "  The  State- 
within  the  State."  The  State  does  not  recognize  a  freely  adopted  union, 
working  within  itself.  It  only  deals  with  siityects.  The  State  alone 
and  its  prop,  the  Church,  arrogate  to  themselves  the  right  of  being  the 
connecting  link  between  men. 

Consequently  the  State  must  perforce  annihilate  cities  based  on  direct 


M  The  State :  Its  Historic  Role. 

union  between  citizens.     It  must  abolish  all  union  in  the  cit 
the  city  itself , abolish  all  direct  union  between  cities.    To  the  federative 
principle  it  must  substitute  the  principle  of  submission   and   discipline, 
Submission  is  its  substance.     Without  this  principle  it  leaves  ot.; 
the  State  :  it  becomes  a  federation. 

And  the  sixteenth  century — century  of  carnage  and  wars — is  entirely 
summed  up  in  this  war  waged  by  the  growing  States  against  tlb 
and  their  federations.     The  towns  are  besieged,  taken   by   assault,  pil- 
laged; their  inhabitants  are  decimated   or  transported.     The  State  is 
victorious  all  along  the  line.     And  the  consequences  are  these. 


In  the  fifteenth  century,  Europe  w,as  covered  by  rich  cities.  \ 
artisans,  masons,  weavers  and  carvers,   produced  marvels  of  art, 
universities  laid  the   foundations   of  science,  whose  caravan.-*  travelled 
over  continents,  and  whose  vessels  ploughed  rivers  and  seas. 

What  was  left  of  them   two  centuries  later  ? — Towns  that  had  num- 
bered fifty  and  a  hundred  thousand  inhabitants  and  that  had  po- 
(it  was  so  in  Florence)  more  schools,  and,   in   the  communal   hospitals, 
more  beds  per  inhabitant   than  are  possessed   to-day  by  the  towns  best 
endowed  in  this  respect,  had  become  rotten  boroughs.     Their  inhabit- 
ants having  been  massacred  or  transported,  the  State  and  Church  were 
seizing  tli «r  riches.     Industry  was  fading  under  the  minute  tutt-: 
State  officials.     Commerce  was  dead.     The  very  roads  that  formerly 
united  the  cities,  had  become  absolutely  impracticable  in  the  seventieth 
century 

The  State  spelt  warfare,  and  wars  were  devastating  Europe  and 
completing  the  ruin  of  those  towns,  which  the  State  had  not  yet  ruined 
direct.  But — had  not  the  villages,  at  least,  gained  by  State  centralisa- 
tion ? — Certainly  not ! — Read  what  historians  tell  us  about  the  style  of 
living  in  the  rural  districts  of  Scotland.  Tuscany,  and  Germany  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  and  compare  their  descriptions  of  that  time  with 
the  misery  in  England  at  the  beginning  of  1648,  in  France  under  the 
"sun -king  "  Louis  XIV,  in  Germany,  in  Italy,  everywhere  after  hun- 
dred years  of  State  domination. 

Misery  everywhere.  All  unanimously  recognize  it  and  point  it  out. 
Wherever  serfdom  had  been  abolished,  it  was  reconstituted  in  a  hun- 
dred different  forms;  wherever  it  had  not  yet  been  destroyed,  it  was 
shaped,  under  State  protection,  into  a  ferocious  institution,  bearing  all 
the  characteristics  of  antique  slavery,  or  even  worse. 

And  could  anything  else  evolve  out  of  this  State-produced  misery,  as 
the  State's  <.,hief  anxiety  was  to  annihilate  the  village  community  after 
the  town,  to  destroy  all  bonds  existing  between  peasants,  to  give  up 


The  State:    r  'fo. 

land-  to  be  pillaged  by  the  rich,  and  to  tmbject  them, 

dually,  to  tin-  functionary,  tin-  j.ri.M  ami  tin-  1 


\  III. 


t  lie  indi  : 
ch  guilds  ;    t" 
and  i  din  it  :    I 

-  all    ma: 
riu  "f  functionaries;  ;.n<l  1  < 

6  ilj'on  local  mill! 
•ixh  tlu-  \veak  liy  taxation  fur  tin 

- 

••ations  in  the 
The  •  ntly  t-iiii 

:  uined    tlu«    peasai,  ' 

pinii'i-  '"iiimoii  lands. 

••niaiis  and  economic-  paid  by  li 
that  the  village  coinnr.iiM1,    having   become    an 

-licultural  }>\ 

lion  of  natural  economic  forces.      Politicians  and  1 
do  not  tire  of  repeating  this  even  nowadays,    and    ' 
.nd    socialists    (those  who  pretend  to 
;i-;«riH'<l  in  school. 

lions  falsehood  has    never  been  athi  i  .      A 

deliberate  falseho*  d,  for  history  -warms  with  docun 

-i  wish  to  know-  .for  France  it    would   ahm»' 

Palloz  —  that  the  village  commune  was  first  of  all  deprr.  -  ..i-ivi- 

y  the  State,  of  its  independence,  of  its  juridical 
-,;  nnd  that  later  on  its  lands  were,  either   Minply 
ri,-}i  uiKler  ^tate  I'i'.tvctioii.  or  el.-  ;ted  by  ti 


'••  .  trly  as  the   sixteenth   <• 

grew  apace  in  the  following  century.      A-    • 
the  communes  under  its  superior   protection   and 
Louis  XI  V  s  edict  of  1667  to  learn  what  plundering  of  « 
took  place  at  that  period.  —  *'  Men   have  taken  posse- 
it  suited  them...  lands  have  been  divided....   in  order  to 

unes  fictitious  debts  have  been  devised,"  —  said  th« 
in  this  edict...  and  two  years  later  he  confiscated  for  lr 


30  The  State:  Its  Historic  R61*. 

all  the  revenues  of  the  communes. — This  is  what  is  called  a  "  natural 
death  "  in  so-called  scientific  language. 

In  the  following  century  it  is  estimated  that  at  least  half  the  com- 
munal lands  were  simply  appropriated  by  the  aristocracy  and  the  clergy 
under  State  patronage.  And  yet  communes  continued  to  exist  till  1787. 
The  village  council  met  under  the  elm,  granted  lands,  appointed  taxes 
—the  documents  relating  to  this  are  to  be  fouud  in  Babeau  (Le  village 
•sous  I'ancien  regime).  Turgot,  in  the  province  of  which  he  was  govern- 
or, found  however  the  village  councils  "  too  noisy  "  and  abolished  them 
during  his  governorship,  substituting  for  them  assemblies  elected 
^mong  the  well-to-do  of  the  village.  In  1787,  on  the  eve  of  the  Revo- 
lution, the  State  made  this  measure  general  in  its  application.  The  mir 
was  abolished  and  thus  communal  affairs  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  few 
-syndics,  elected  by  the  richest  bourgeois  and  peasants.  The  "  Consti- 
tuante  "  sanctioned  this  law  in  December  1789.  and  the  bourgeois,  sub- 
stituting themselves  for  the  nobles,  plundered  what  remained  of  com- 
munal lands.  Many  a  peasant  revolt  was  necessary  to  force  the  "  Con- 
vention" in  1792  to  sanction  what  the  rebellious  peasants  had  accom- 
plished in  the  Eastern  part  of  France.  That  is  to  say,  the  Convention 
•ordered  the  restitution  of  communal  lands  to  the  peasants.  This  only 
•took  place  there,  when  the  land  had  already  been  retaken  by  revolutionary 
means.  It  is  the  fate  of  all  revolutionary  laws  to  be  put  into  action 
when  they  are  already  an  accomplished  fact. 

Nevertheless  the  Convention  tainted  this  law  with  bourgeois  gall.  It 
decreed  that  lands  retaken  from  nobles  should  be  divided  into  equal 
parts  among  "  active  citizens  "  only — that  is  to  say  among  the  village 
bourgeois.  By  one  stroke  of  the  pen  it  thus  dispossessed  "  passive  citi- 
zens," that  is  to  say  the  mass  of  impoverished  peasants,  who  had  most 
need  of  these  communal  lands.  Upon  which,  fortunately,  the  peasants 
^again  revolted  and  in  1793  the  Convention  passed  a  new  law  decreeing 
the  division  of  communal  lands  among  all  inhabitants.  This  was  tever 
,put  into  practice  and  only  served  as  an  excuse  for  new  thefts  of  com- 
munal lands. 

Would  not  such  measures  suffice  to  bring  about  what  these  gentlemen 
•call  "  the  natural  death  "  of  communes  ?  Yet  communes  still  existed. 
On  August  24th  1794,  the  reaction,  being  in  power,  struck  the  final 
blow.  The  State  confiscated  all  communal  lands  and  made  of  them  a 
.guarantee  fund  for  the  public  debt,  putting  them  up  to  auction  and 
selling  them  to  its  creatures  the  "  Thermidorians." 

This  law  was  happily  repealed  on  Prairal  2nd,  in  the  year  V,  after 
being  in  force  for  three  years.  But  at  the  same  time,  communes  were 
^abolished,  and  replaced  by  cantonal  councils  in  order  that  the  State 


The  State:  It*  Hitturic  R<>1'.  31 

might  the  more  easily  fill  them  with  its  creatures.  This  lasted  till  1801 
when  village  communes  wers  revived;  but  then  the  government  took  it 
upon  itself  to  appoint  mayors  and  syndics  in  each  of  the  36,000  com- 
ittunrs  !  And  this  absurdity  lasted  till  the  revolution  of  July  1830, 
after  which  the  law  of  1789  was  again  put  into  force.  And  in  the  in- 
terval communal  lands  were  again  wholly  confiscated  by  the  State  in 
1813  and  plundered  anew  during  three  years.  What  remained  of  them 
was  only  returned  to  the  communes  in  1816. 

This  was  oy  no  means  the  end.  Every  new  regime  saw  in  communal 
lands  a  source  of  reward  for  its  supporters.  Therefore  at  three  different 
intervals  since  1830 — the  first  time  in  1837  and  the  last  under  Napo- 
leon 1 1 1  laws  were  promulgated  tojorce  peasants  to  divide  what  they 
possessed  of  forests  and  common  pasture-lands,  and  three  times  the 
government  was  compelled  to  abrogate  this  law  on  account  of  the  peas- 
ants resistance.  All  the  same  Napoleon  the  third  was  able  to  profit  by 
it  and  bag  several  large  estates  for  his  favorites. 

These  are  facts,  and  this  is  what,  in  scientific  language,  these 
gentlemen  call  the  "natural  death"  of  the  communal  landed  property 
under  the  influence  of  economic  laws  ?  As  well  call  the  massacre  of  a 
hundred  thousand  soldiers  on  a  battlefield  "  natural  death." 

What  happened  in  France  happened  also  in  Belgium,  England,  Ger- 
many, Austria;  in  fact  everywhere  in  Europe,  Slav  countries  excepted. 

Strange  that  the  periods  of  plundering  communes  should  correspond 
in  all  Western  Europe.  The  methods  alone  vary.  Thus  in  England 
they  did  not  dare  to  enact  sweeping  measures ;  they  preferred  passing 
several  thousands  of  separate  enclosure  acts  by  which,  in  each  special 
case,  parliament  sanctioned  the  confiscation  of  land — it  does  so  still — 
and  gave  to  the  squire  the  right  of  keeping  common  lands  he  had  fenced 
in.  And  notwithstanding  that  nature  has  up  till  now  respected  the 
narrow  furrows  by  which  communal  fields  were  temporarily  divided 
among  families  in  the  villages  of  England,  and  that  we  have  clear  des- 
criptions of  this  form  of  landed  property  at  the  beginning  of  the  centu- 
ry in  the  books  of  a  certain  Marshall,  scientific  men  (such  as  Seebohm, 
worthy  emulator  of  Fustel  de  Coulanges)  are  not  wanting  to  maintain 
and  teach  that  communes  have  never  existed  in  England  save  in  the 
form  of  serfdom ! 

We  find  the  same  thing  going  on  in  Belgium,  Germany,  Italy  and 
Spain.  And  in  one  way  or  another  personal  appropriation  of  lands 
formerly  communal  was  almost  brought  to  completion  towards  the  fif- 
ties in  this  century.  Peasants  have  only  kept  scraps  of  their  common 
lands.  This  is  the  way  in  which  the  mutual  assurance  of  lord,  priest. 


32  The  State:  Its  Historic  Rok. 

soldier  and  judge — the  State — has  behaved  towards  peasants  in  ordei 
to  despoil  them  of  their  last  guarantee  against  misery  and  economic 
servitude. 

But  while  organising  and  sanctioning  this  pluuder,  could  the  State 
respect  the  institution  of  the  commune  as  an  organ  of  local  life  ? 

— Evidently  not. 

To  allow  citizens  to  constitute  a  federation  among  themselves  in  order 
to  appropriate  some  functions  of  the  State  would  have  been  a  contra- 
diction oF  principle'  The  State  demands  personal  and  direct  submis- 
sion vi  its  subjects  without  intermediate  agents;  it  requires  equality  in 
servitude;  it  cannot  allow  the  State  within  the  State. 

Therefore  as  soon  as  the  State  began  to  constitute  itself  in  the  six- 
teenth i.'onUiry  it  set  to  work  to  destroy  all  bonds  of  union  that  existed 
among  citizens,  both  in  towns  and  villages.  If  under  the  name  of  mu- 
nicipal institutions  it  tolerated  any  vestiges  of  autonomy — never  of  in- 
dependenoe, — it  was  only  with  a  fiscal  aim.  to  lighten  the  central  bud- 
get-as far  as  possible;  or  else  to  allow  the  provincial  well-to-do  to 
enrich  themselves  at  the  people's  expense,  as  was  the  case  in  England 
up  till  now,  and  is  so  still  in  institutions  and  in  customs. 

Tli 5s  is  -.usily  understood.  Customary  law  is  naturally  pertaining  to 
local  li't-  -,\\.\  Roman  law  to  centralisation  of  power.  The  two  cannot 
live  ;•>><!••  '•;>  side  and  the  one  must  kill  the  other. 

Thai  I,*  •  hy  under  French  rule  in  Algeria,  when  a  Kabyle  djemmah 
— a  vili.-igf  commune — wants  to  plead  for  its  lands,  every  inhabitant 
of  th«-  ontmiune  must  bring  his  isolated  action  before  the  judge,  vrlio 
will  h-Mi  ii!  i,v  or  two  hundred  isolated  actions  sooner  than  hear  the  col- 
lect! •  "  siur  of  the  djemmah.  The  Jacobin  code  of  the  Convention 
(known  ;:i"ier  the  name  of  Code  Napoleon)  does  not  recognize  custom- 
ary IJMV.  j;  «>nly  recognizes  Roman  law,  or  rather  Byzantine  law. 

Tlutt  is  \viiy  in  France  when  the  wind  blows  down  a  tree  on  the  Na- 
tion:.! highway,  or  a  peasant  prefers  giving  a  stonebreaker  two  or  three 
franct,  r.»  rio  unpleasant  task  of  repairing  the  communal  road  himself, 
it  is  n-'.-r^.ii-y  for  twelve  or  fifteen  employees  of  the  home  office  and 
treasury  fro  be  put  in  motion,  and  for  more  than  fifty  documents  to  be 
exchange*  1  ^tween  these  austere  functionaries,  before  the  tree  can  be 
sold,  or  ili-  peasant  receives  permission  to  deposit  two  or  three  francs 
into  th»  c(0:  munal  treasury. 

Should  ;.  vii  have  any  doubts  about  it  you  will  find  these  fifty  docu- 
ments v« -Capitulated  and  duly  numbered  by  M.  Tricoche  in  the  Journal 
des  Htcoiwmiti&s. 

This  under  the  third  Republic,  be  it  understood,  for  I  do  not  speak 
of  the  barbarous  methods  of  the  ancient  regime  that  limited  itself  to 


• 

, 

lid     milli- 
The  "t"  a  vili... 

•:lp«'ll«'d    V 

- 

and  JM'!-.';    :hat    inn-'    - 

st  apply  in  tlu-  >H<:ular  way 
Thus  till  l.^S.'J  it  u-;is  yrv«Mvly  forbidden  tu  the.  vi. 

re  it  only  to  buy  rheiim-a!  iiiiinur- 
-  only  in  56  i-liat  the  ilepiibh 

the  law  on  ui.-icjiK,  ban 
atnl  (>1»(;K'1«'. 

An«l  \vo  with  our  farultit-s  blunted  by  Si 

<S  ai-coinplishrd   by  Ji^ricull  \\ 

the  idea  that  this  riirht  of  union  of  « 
:  >r  ceuturies  bflon^ed  to  them  witho-  I 
ery  man — free  or  serf. 

f  (l«?uiocracy.'' 
This  is  tlie  pitch  of  stupidity  we  hav. 

education,  and  by  our  own  ^ 


— "  If  you  have  ai 
:urch  and   rl;.    g 

.'•»iiu-   in  ;^  di !•••<•-.  ivay  t<j  s^.tJe  ma1  - 

inuirt  re« 

!y  in  an  e<  -d  III,  ]'•<- 

r.-ntuiy.   we   rea<l   • 

-    .  - 

mid  masons,  will   Jiencefoi-L 
:"eafc  oi  the  towns  ,iii  1  ipui 

i.  ve  bpofeen  was  comploi 

'•ais  (guilds.  iVatcrnities,  et^i.)  v/'-. 

':«*!,  ;uid  .:nni  '  .'Jtn. 

•pi,..  -     r    _  •  ,       f 


34  The  State :  Its  Historic  Rdle. 

showing  every  step  of  that  annihilation.  Little  by  little  the  State  laid 
hands  on  all  guilds  and  fraternities.  It  pressed  them  closely,  abolished 
their  leagues,  their  festivals,  their  aldermen  and  replaced  them  by  its 
own  functionaries  and  tribunals,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  under  Henry  VIII,  the  State  simply  confiscated  everything 
possessed  by  the  guilds  without  further  ado.  The  heir  to  the  great 
protestant  king  finished  his  father's  work.1 

It  was  robbery  carried  on  in  open  daylight,  "  without  excuse "  as 
Thorold  ]><6j&rs  has  so  well  put  it.  And  it  is  this  robbery  which  the 
so-called  '"Scientific '  economists  represent  as  the  "  natural "  death  of  the 
-guilds  under  the  influence  of  economic  laws  ! 


In  truth,  wai  it  possible  for  the  State  to  tolerate  a  guild  or  corpor- 
ation of  a  trade,  with  its  tribunal,  its  militia,  its  treasury,  its  sworn 
organisation  ?  It  was  for  the  statesmen  "  a  State  within  the  State  "  1 
The  State  was  to  destroy  the  guild,  and  it  destroyed  it  everywhere  :  in 
England,  in  France,  in  Germany,  in  Bohemia,  preserving  only  the 
semblance  of  the  guild  as  an  instrument  of  the  exchequer,  as  a  part  of 
the  vast  administrative  machine. 

And — should  we  be  astonished  that  guilds,  trade-unions  and  warden - 
ships,  deprived  of  everything  that  was  formerly  their  life  and  placed 
under  royal  functionaries,  became  in  the  eighteenth  century  nought 
but  encumbrances  and  obstacles  to  the  development  of  industry,  after 
having  been  the  very  life  of  progress  four  centuries  before  ?  The  State 
liad  killed  them. 

In  fact  it  did  not  content  if  self  with  destroying  the  autonomous  organ- 
isation which  was  necessary  i'oi-  the  very  life  of  the  guilds  and  impeded 
the  encroachments  of  the  State;  it  did  not  content  itself  with  confiscat- 
ing all  riches  and  property  of  the  guilds :  it  appropriated  for  itself  all 
their  economical  functions  as  well. 

In  a  city  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  interests  conflicted  in  a  trade, 
or  when  two  guilds  disagreed,  there  was  no  other  appeal  than  to 
the  city.  They  were  forced  to  settle  matters,  to  find  some  compromise, 
.as  all  guilds  were  mutually  allied  in  the  city.  And  a  compromise  was 
always  arrived  at — by  calling  in  another  city  to  artitrate,  if  necessary. 

Henceforth  the  only  arbitrator  was  the  State.  All  local  disputes, 
.sometimes  of  the  most  insignificant  kind,  in  the  smallest  town  of  a  few 
hundred  inhabitants,  had  to  be  piled  up  in  the  shape  of  useless  docu- 
ments in  the  offices  of  king  arid  parliament.  We  see  the  English  parlia- 
ment literally  inundated  with  these  thousands;  of  petty  local  squabbles.  It 
ithen  became  necessary  to  have  thousands  of  f  unctionaries  in  the  capital 

1  Re*'  Toulimn  Smith's  work  on  Guilds. 


Tht  State :  IU  Hittaric  Hole.  35 

(venal  for  the  greater  part)  to  classify,  read,  judge  all  these  documents, 
to  pass  judgment  on  every  detail;  to  regulate  the  way  to  forge  a  horse's 
hoof,  bleach  linen,  salt  herrings,  make  a  barrel,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum... 
and  the  tide  still  rose ! 

But  this  was  not  all.  Soon  the  State  laid  hands  on  exportation.  It 
saw  in  this  commerce  a  means  of  enrichment, — and  seized  upon  it. 
Formerly,  when  a  dispute  arose  between  two  towns  about  the  value  of 
exported  cloth,  the  purity  of  woo^jic  the  capacity  of  barrels  of  herrings, 
the  two  towns  made  remon6tranoeB*l»e*ofc  other.  If  the  dk  -<ite  lasted 
long,  they  addressed  themselves  to  a  third  town  to  step  in  asTtrbitrator 
(this  happened  constantly);  or  else  a  congress  of  guilds  of  weavers  and 
coopers  was  convened  to  regulate  internationally  the  quality  and  value 
of  cloth  or  the  capacity  of  barrels. 

Now,  however,  the  State  had  stepped  in  and  taken  upon  itself  to  re- 
gulate all  these  contentions  from  the  centre,  in  Paris  or  in  London. 
Through  its  functionaries  it  regulated  the  capacity  of  barrels,  specified 
the  quality  of  cloth,  ordered  the  number  of  threads  and  their  thickness 
in  the  warp  and  the  woof  and  interfered  in  the  smallest  details  of  each 
industry. 


You  know  the  result.  Industry  under  this  control  was  dying  out  in 
the  eighteenth  century. 

What  had  in  fact  become  of  Benvenuto  Cellini's  art  under  State  tutel- 
age?— Vanished. — And  the  architecture  of  those  guilds  of  masons  and 
carpenters  whose  works  of  art  we  still  admire  ? — Only  look  at  the  hideous 
monuments  of  the  State  period,  and  at  one  glance  you  will  know  that 
architecture  was  dead,  so  dead  that  up  till  now  it  has  not  been  able  to 
recover  from  the  blow  dealt  it  by  the  State. 

What  became  of  the  fabrics  of  Bruges,  of  the  cloth  from  Holland  ? 
What  became  of  those  blacksmiths,  so  skilled  in  manipulating  iron,  and 
who,  in  each  European  borough,  knew  how  to  turn  this  ungrateful 
metal  into  the  most  exquisite  decorations  ?  What  became  or  those 
turners,  those  clock-makers,  those  fitters. who  had  made  Nuremberg  one 
of  the  glories  of  the  Middle  Ages  by  their  instruments  of  precision  ? 
Speak  of  them  to  James  Watt  who  for  his  steam  engine,  looked  in  vain 
during  thirty  years  for  a  man  who  could  make  a  fairly  round  cylinder, 
and  whose  machine  remained  thirty  years  a  rough  model  for  want  of 
workmen  to  construct  it ! 

Such  was  the  result  of  State  interference  in  the  domain  of  industry. 
All  that  the  State  managed  to  do  was  to  tighten  the  screw  on  the 
worker,  depopulate  the  land,  sow  misery  in  the  towns,  reduce  thousands 
of  beings  to  the  state  of  starvelings  and  impose  industrial  slavery. 

And  it  is  these  miserable  wrecks  of  «m.u»nt    guilds,  those  organisms^ 


36  Tlie  State  :  Its  Historic  Rule. 

mangled  and  oppressed  by  the  State  tha-t   "  scientific"  economists 
the  ignorance  to  confound  with  the  guilds  of  the  Middle  Ages !      What 
the  great  Revolution  swept  away  as  harmful   to  industry   was   not  the 
guild,  nor  even  the  trade-union;  it  was  a  piece  of  machinery  both 
less  and  harmful. 


But  what  the  Revolution  took  good  care  not  to  sweep  away — was  the 
power  of  the  State  over  industry  and  over  the'factory-serf. 

Do  you  remember  the  discussion,  which  took  place  at  the  Convention — 
at  the  terrible  Convention — about  a  strike  ?  To  the  grievances  of  the 
strikers  the  Convention  answered  (I  quote  from  memory)  :  •'  The  State 
alone  has  a  right  to  watch  over  the  interests  of  all  citizens.  In  striking, 
you  are  organising  a  coalition,  you  are  creating  a  State  within  the  5 
Therefore— death !  " 

In  this  answer  we  see  the  bourgeois  character  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. But — has  that  answer  not  a  still  deeper  meaning?  Does  it  not 
summarize  the  attitude  of  the  State  that  found  its  most  complete  and 
logical  expression  towards  the  whole  of  society  in  the  Jacobinism  of  1 793  ? 

'•  If  you  have  a  grievance,  complain  to   the   State!     It  alone  L. 
right  to  redress  its   subjects'  grievances.      As   to   combining   to   protect 
yourselves — never!"     It  was  in  this  sense  that  the   Republic  called  it- 
self one  and  indivisible. 

Does  not  the  modern  Jacobin-Socialist  think  the  same  ?  .1  las  nut  the 
Convention  expressed  the  depth  of  his  th"M<j-',:,  with  the  severe  logic 
peculiar  to  it  ? 

In  this  answer  of  the  Convention  is  summed  up  the  attitude  of  all 
States  towards  all  combinations  and  all  private  societies,  whatever  be 
cheii  aim. 

As  to  a  strike  it  is  even  now  in  Russia  considered  a  crime  of  high 
treason  against  the  State.  In  a  great  measure  too  in  Germany,  where 
young  William  said  the  other  day :  "Appeal  to  me;  but  if  yo" 
allow  yourselves  to  take  action  on  your  own  behalf,  you  will  ma - 
acquaintance  of  my  soldiers'  bayonets  !  "  It  is  still  almost  always  the 
case  in  France.  And  even  in  England,  it  is  only  after  struggling  a 
hundred  years  by  means  of  secret  societies,  dagger  thrusts  for  traitors 
and  masters,  explosive  powder  under  machinery  (not  further  back  than 
I860),  emery  thrown  into  axle-boxes,  and  so  forth,  that  English  work- 
men have  begun  to  conquer  the  right  to  strike;  aiid  they  will  soon  have 
it  entirely,  if  they  do  not  fall  into  the  traps  that  the  State  is  already 
laying  for  them  in  trying  to  impose  its  obligatory  arbitration 
'•bang"}  for  an  eight-horn-  r.uv. 

5fore  than  a  ceiftnry   of   r./MTible  gt :  A.?:<1    what  sufle 


Its  ///*/</, 


How  many  men  have  died  jr.  pii-on-,  bo^  ive  been  * 

ustralia,  shot  nhd  :  bo  n-ciin.jii.M-  tin-  ri^lit  of  c 

which  (I  .-mi  i  •i-'-atini:)   e  n,   free  01 

freely.  lu'fore  the  State  had  laid  it,s  heav\    hand  ui. 


. 


Hut  was  it  the  workman  only  who  was  treated  in  thi>  fa>hi 
Think  of  the  ,-t  rii^ul'1-  the  bourgeoisie    itself    had  to  c.' 

ite  in  order  to  conquer  the  right  of  constituting    ' 
commercial  societies;   a  right  which  the  State  only  conci-d-d  I 

ed  in  it  au  ea-v  method  of    < 

of  it.-  cr-Miuie.-  and  to  re  till  ny.      And   M 

right    to    write,  to  speak.    01  .-imply  to  t  hink  ditl»-rent  !v  fr -m    \\  i 
orders  through  its  academies,  univei  - 
for  the  ri«rht  to  teach,   be  it  only 
reserves  to  itself  without   making  u» 
even  to  obtain  the  right  of  amusing  oneself  in  < 

wars  which  would  still  have  to  be  fought  for  conquering  th 
to  c  hoose  one's  judge  or  one  s  law  (a  thing  which  \\.>  _io\\t;. 

of  the  State  of  daily  occurenee),  or  the  strugirle>   tl 

the  day  when  they  will  burn  the  book  of  infamous  pM.ii-hment-,  invent 
ed  by  the  spirit  of  the  inquisition    and    of   the    de-potic    empire-  of   the 
East,  and  known  under  the  name  of  penal  code! 


Then  look  at  taxation,  an  institution  of  purely  State  origin,  that  for- 
midunle  weapon  which  the  State  makes  use  of   in   Europe  a.s  wel 
young  societies  in  the  United  States  to  keep  the  m:is.-es  under  it- 
to  favour  friends,  to  ruin  the  greater  number  t»  the  advantage  of  th«>>e 
who  govern,  and  to  uphold  the  old  divisions  and  c.->- 

Then  take  the   wars,   without    which   St.-r  -;itute 

themselves  nor  stand — wars  that  become  fatal,  inevitaM.  a>  w- 

admit  tliat  a  certain  region    (because   it   is  a   State)   c  in  have  in' 
opposed  to  those  of  its  neighbours      Think  of  pa.-t  wars  ainl  of  tho.-» 
we  are  threatened  with  before  the  conquered    races   will  be  admr 
breathe  freely;  of  wars  for  commercial    market>;    of  war*  to 
onial  empires.     And  in  Fi-ance   we  only   know  too  well  what   servitude 
each  war,  whether  victoriou>  or  not,  brings  in  its  train. 

And  what  is  worse  than  all  that  I  have  enumerated,  is  that  the  edu- 
cation we  all  receive  from  the  State,  at  school  and  later  on  in  o-ir  litV. 
has  so  vitiated  our  brains  that  the  idea  of  liberty  itself  _  y  an-, 

is  travestied  into  servitude. 

Sad  is  the  sight  of  those  who  believe  themselves  to  berevoluti 
vowing  their  deepest  hatred  to  Anarchists— because  the  Anarchist- 


38  The  State :  Its  Historic  Rtte 

conception  of  liberty  surpasses  their  own  narrow  and  mean  conception 
culled  from  State  teaching.  And  yet  this  sight  is  a  fact. 

It  is  because  the  spirit  of  voluntary  servitude  has  always  been  art- 
fully nourished  in  young  brains,  and  is  so  still,  so  as  to  perpetuate  the 
slavery  of  the  subject  to  the  State. 

Libertarian  philosophy  is  suffocated  by  pseudo- Roman  and  Catholic 
State  philosophy.  History  is  vitiated  from  the  first  page  where  it  lies 
about  the  Merovingian  and  Carlovingian  dynasties,  to  its  last  page,  on 
which  it  glorifies  Jacobinism  and  ignoi  es  the  people  and  their  work  in  the 
creation  of  institutions.  Natural  sciences  are  perverted  to  the  benefit 
of  the  dual  idol  Church  and  State.  The  psychology  of  the  individual, 
and  still  more  that  of  societies,  is  falsified  in  each  of  its  assertions  to 
justify  the  triple  alliance  of  soldier,  priest  and  executioner.  Even 
morality,  which  for  centuries  in  succession  has  preached  obedience  to 
the  Church  or  to  some  so-called  divine  book,  only  emancipates  itself  to- 
day to  pi-each  servility  to  the  State. — "  You  have  no  direct  moral  obli- 
gations towards  your  neighbour,  not  even  a  sentiment  of  solidarity;  all 
your  obligations  are  to  the  State," — we  are  told,  we  are  taught  by  this 
new  religion  of  the  old  Roman  and  Caesarian  divinity.  Neighbours, 
comrades,  companions,  forget  them  !  You  must  know  them  only  through 
the  intermediary  of  an  organ  of  your  State.  And  all  of  you  must  prac- 
tise the  virtue  of  being  equally  slaves  to  it. 

And  the  glorification  of  State  and  discipline,  at  which  Church  and 
University,  the  press  and  political  parties  work,  is  so  well  preached  that 
even  revolutionists  dare  not  look  this  fetish  straight  in  the  face. 

The  modern  radical  is  a  centralizer,  a  State  partisan,  a  Jacobin  to  the 
core.  And  the  Socialist  walks  in  his  footsteps.  Like  the  Florentines 
at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  who  could  only  invoke  the  dictator- 
ship of  the  State,  to  save  them  from  the  patricians,  the  Socialists  know 
only  how  to  invoke  the  same  gods,  the  same  dictatorship  and  the  same 
State,  to  save  us  from  the  abominations  of  an  economic  system,  created 
by  that  very  State  I 

X. 

If  you  look  still  deeper  into  all  the  categories  of  facts  which  have 
been  hardly  touched  upon  this  evening,  if  you  see  the  State  as  it  was  in 
history,  and  as  it  is  in  its  very  essence  to-day,  and  if  you  consider 
moreover  that  a  social  institution  cannot  serve  all  aims  indifferently, 
because,  like  every  other  organ,  it  is  developed  for  a  certain  purpose, 
a'ad  not  for  all  purposes, — if  you  take  all  that  into  consideration,  you 
will  understand  whv  we  desire  the  abolition  of  the  State. 


TKt  State  :  Itt  Historic  M'U. 

We  see  in  it  an  institution  developed  in  the  history  of  human  socie- 
ties to  hinder  union  among  men,  ,f  local 
initiative,  to  crush  existing  liberties  and  ;  ration. 

Arid  we  kno~w  that  an  institution,  which  has  a  whole  past  dating 
some  thousands  of  years  back,  cannot  lend  itself  to  a  function  opposed 
to  the  one  for  which  it  was  developed  in  the  course  of  history. 


To  this  argument,  absolutely  unassailable  to  anyone  who  his  redacted 
on  history,  what  replies  do  we  get  ? 

We  are  answered  by  an  almost  childish  argument :  "  The  State  is 
there," — we  are  told — "  it  exists,  it  represents  a  ready  made  powerful 
organisation.  Why  destroy  it  instead  of  making  use  of  it  ?  It  works 
for  ill,  that  is  true,  but  that  is  due  to  its  being  in  the  hands  of  <> 
ers.  Having  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  people,  why  should  it  not  be 
utilised  for  a  better  end  and  for  the  good  of  the  people  ?  " 

Always  the  same  dream,  the  dream  of  Schiller's  Manjuis  of  Posa 
trying  to  make  autocracy  an  instrument  of  enfranchi.-einent,  or  the 
dream  of  the  gentle  priest  Peter  in  Zola's  Rome,  wishing  to  make  the 
Church  a  lever  of  Socialism  !... 

Is  it  not  sad  to  have  to  answer  such  arguments  ?  For,  those  who 
reason  in  this  way  either  have  not  the  least  notion  of  the  real  historical 
role  of  the  State,  or  else  conceive  the  Social  Revolution  under  such  an 
insignificant  form,  and  so  tame,  that  it  has  nothing  more  in  common 
with  Socialist  aspirations. 

Take  a  concrete  example,  France. 

All  of  us,  all  here  present,  have  noticed  the  glaring  fact  that  the 
Third  Republic,  in  spite  of  its  republican  form  of  government,  has  re- 
mained monarchical  in  its  essence.  Every  one  has  repi-oached  it  with 
not  having  republicanised  France.  I  do  not  speak  of  its  not  having 
done  anything  for  the  Social  Revolution,  but  of  its  not  having  even 
introduced  the  simple  republican  habits  and  customs  and  spirit.  Because 
the  little  that  has  been  done  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  to  demo- 
cratize customs,  or  to  spread  a  little  enlightenment,  has  been  done 
everywhere, — even  in  the  European  monarchies,  under  the  very  pressure 
of  the  times  through  which  we  are  passing.  Whence  comes  then  the 
strange  anomaly  that  we  have  in  France — a  Republican  Monarchy  ? 

It  conies  fiom  France  having  remained  a  State  to  the  same  extent  it 
was  thirty  years  ago.  The  holders  of  power  have  changed  their  name ; 
but  all  the  immense  scaffolding  of  centralised  organisation,  the  imita- 
tion of  the  Rome  of  the  Caesars  which  had  been  elaborated  in  France, 
have  remained.  The  wheels  of  this  huge  machinery  continue,  as  of  old, 


40  The  State  :  It*  Historic  R6le. 

to  exchange  their  fifty  documents  when  the  wind  has  blown  down  a  tre* 
on  the  national  route.  The  stamp  on  the  documents  has  changed  ;  but 
the  State,  its  spirit,  its  organs,  its  territorial  centralisation,  and  its 
centralisation  of  functions,  have  remained  unaltered.  Worse  than 
that:  like  so  many  blood-suckers,  they  extend  from  day  to  day  over 
the  country. 

Republicans  (I  speak  of  sincere  ones)  nourished  the  illusion  that  the 
State  organisation  could  be  utilised  to  operate  a  change  in  a  republican 
sense;  and  here  is  the  result.  When  they  ought  to  have  destroyed  the 
old  organisation,  destroyed  the  State,  and  constructed  a  new  organisa- 
tion, by  beginning  at  the  basis  itself  of  society — the  free  village  com- 
mune, the  free  workers'  union,  and  so  on — they  thought  to  utilise  '•  the 
organisation  that  already  existed."  And  for  not  having  understood 
that  you  cannot  make  an  historical  institution  go  in  any  direction  you 
would  have  it  go — that  it  must  go  its  own  way — they  were  swallowed  up 
by  the  institution. 

And  yet,  in  this  case,  there  was  no  question  of  modifying  the  whole 
of  the  economic  relations  of  society,  as  is  the  case  with  us.  It  was  on- 
ly a  question  of  reforming  certain  points  in  the  political  relations 
among  men  I 

But  after  this  complete  failure  and  in  face  of  such  a  conclusive  ex- 
perience, they  obstinately  continue  to  say  that  the  conquest  of  power  in 
the  State  by  the  people  will  suffice  to  accomplish  the  Social  Revolution  ! 
That  the  old  machine,  the  old  organism,  slowly  elaborated  in  the  course 
of  history  to  mangle  liberty,  to  crush  the  individual,  to  seat  oppression 
on  a  legal  basis,  to  lead  the  brain  astray  in  accustoming  it  to  servitude 
— will  lend  itself  marvellously  to  new  functions :  that  it  will  become 
the  instrument,  the  means  of  making  a  new  life  germinate,  that  it  will 
seat  liberty  and  equality  on  an  economic  basis,  awaken  society,  and 
march  to  the  conquest  of  a  better  future !...  What  an  absurdity  !  what 
a  miscomprehension  of  history  ! 

To  give  free  scope  to  Socialism,  it  is  necessary  to  reconstruct  society, 
which  is  based  to-day  on  the  narrow  individualism  of  the  shopkeeper, 
from  top  to  bottom.  It  is  not  only,  as  they  have  been  pleased  some- 
times to  say  in  a  vague  metaphysical  way,  a  question  of  returning  to 
the  worker  "the  integral  product  of  his  work,"  but  a  question  of  re- 
modelling in  their  entirety  all  relations  among  men,  from  those  exist- 
ing to-day  between  every  individual  and  his  churchwarden  or  his  station 
master,'  to  those  existing  between  trades,  hamlets,  cities  and  regions. 
In  every  street,  in  every  hamlet,  in  every  group  of  men  assembled  about 
a  factory  or  along  a  railroad,  you  must  awafc»r  the  creative,  construct- 


The  State :  lt»  llittorie  R6b.  41 

ive,  organising  spirit,  in  order  to  reconstruct  the  whole  of  life  in  the 
factory,  on  the  railroad,  in  the  village,  in  the  stores,  in  taking  supplies, 
in  production,  in  distribution.  All  relations  between  individuals  and 
between  human  agglomnrations  must  begin  to  be  remodelled  on  the 
vri -y  day,  at  the  very  moment  we  begin  to  reform  any  part  of  the 
prrsi-iit  commercial  or  administrative  organiaation 

Ami  tln-y  rxpi-rt  this  iimnerine   work,  demanding  the   full  and   free 
t'xi-ivisr  of  popular  genius,  to  be  carried  out  within  the   :  >rk  of 

the  State,  within  the  pyramidal  scale  of  organisation  that  constitutes 
the  essence  of  each  State  !  They  want  the  State,  whose  very  reason  for 
existence  lies  in  the  crushing  of  the  individual,  in  the  destruction  of  all 
five  grouping  and  free  creation,  in  the  hatred  of  initiative  and  in  the 
triumph  of  one  idea  (which  must  necessarily  be  that  of  the  medio 
to  become  the  lever  to  accomplish  this  immense  transformation!... 
They  want  to  govern  a  newborn  society  by  decrees  and  electoral  majo- 
rities 1 ...  What  childishness  ! 


Throughout  the  whole  history  of  our  civilisation,  two  traditions,  two 
opposed  tendencies,  have  been  in  conflict :  the  Roman  tradition  and  the 
popular  tradition ;  the  imperial  tradition  and  the  federalist  tradition; 
the  authoritarian  one  and  the  libertarian  one. 

And  again,  on  the  eve  of  the  great  Social  Revolution  these  two  tra- 
ditions stand  face  to  face. 

Between  these  two  currents,  always  full  of  life,  always  battling  in 
humanity, — the  current  of  the  people  and  the  current  of  the  minorities 
which  thirst  for  political  and  religious  domination, — our  choice  is  made. 

We  again  take  up  the  current  which  led  men,  in  the  twelfth  century, 
to  organise  themselves  on  the  basis  of  a  free  understanding,  of  free  ini- 
tiative of  the  individual,  of  free  federation  of  those  interested.  And 
we  leave  the  others  to  cling  to  the  Roman,  Canonic,  and  Imperial  tra- 
dition. 


History  has  not  been  an  uninterrupted  evolution.  At  different  in- 
tervals evolution  has  been  broken  in  a  certain  region,  to  begin  again 
elsewhere.  Egypt,  Asia,  the  banks  of  the  Mediterranean,  Central 
Europe  have  in  turn  been  the  scene  of  historical  development.  But  in 
every  case,  the  first  phase  of  the  evolution  has  been  the  primitive  tribe, 
passing  on  into  a  village  commune,  then  into  that  of  the  free  city,  and 
finally  dying  out  when  it  reached  the  phase  of  the  State. 

In  Egypt,  civilization  began  by  the  primitive  tribe.  It  reached  the 
village  community  phasis,  and  later  on  the  period  of  free  cities;  still 


42  The  StaU :  fa  Historic  R61*. 

later  that  of  the  State,  which,  after  a  flourishing  period,  resulted  in  the 
death  of  the  country. 

The  evolution  began  again  in  Assyria,  in  Persia,  in  Palestine.  Again 
it  traversed  the  same  phasis :  the  tribe,  the  village  community,  the  free 
city,  the  all-powerful  State,  and  finally  the  result  was — death  I 

A  new  civilization  then  sprang  up  in  Greece.  Always  beginning  by 
the  tribe,  it  slowly  reached  the  village  commune,  then  the  period  of  re- 
publican cities.  In  these  cities,  civilization  reached  its  highest  summits. 
But  the  East  brought  to  them  its  poisoned  breath,  its  traditions  of  des- 
potism. Wars  and  conquests  created  Alexander's  empire  of  Macedonia. 
The  State  enthroned  itself,  the  blood-sucker  grew,  killed  all  civilization, 
and  then  came — death  ! 

Rome  in  its  turn  restored  civilization.  Again  we  find  the  primitive 
tribe  at  its  origin;  then,  the  village  commune;  then,  the  free  city.  At 
that  stage,  it  reached  the  apex  of  its  civilization.  But  then  came  the 
State,  the  Empire,  and  then — death  ! 

On  the  ruins  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Celtic,  Germanic,  Slavonian  and 
Scandinavian  tribes  began  civilization  anew.  Slowly  the  primitive  tribe 
elaborated  its  institutions  and  reached  the  village  commune.  It  re- 
mained at  that  stage  till  the  twelfth  century.  Then  rose  the  Republican 
cities  which  produced  the  glorious  expansion  of  the  human  mind,  at- 
tested by  the  monuments  of  architecture,  the  grand  development  of 
arts,  the  discoveries  that  laid  the  basis  of  natural  sciences.  But  then 
came  the  State... 

Will  it  again  produce  death  ? — Of  course  it  will,  unless  we  reconsti- 
tute society  on  a  libertarian  and  anti-State  basis.  Either  the  State  will 
be  destroyed  and  a  new  life  will  begin  in  thousands  of  centres,  on  the 
principle  of  an  energetic  initiative  of  the  individual,  of  groups,  and  of 
free  agreement;  or  else  the  State  must  crush  the  individual  and  local 
life,  it  must  become  the  master  of  all  the  domains  of  human  activity, 
must  bring  with  it  its  wars  and  internal  struggles  for  the  possession  of 
power,  its  surface-revolutions  which  only  change  one  tyrant  for  another, 
and  inevitably,  at  the  end  of  this  evolution, — death  ! 

Choose  yourselves  which  of  the  two  issues  you  prefer. 

THE   END. 


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kniazi 

The  state