Paris and the Social Revolution Part 1

Paris and the Social Revolution.

by Alvan Francis Sanborn.

PREFACE

_It was the author's original intention to let this book make shift without the conventional preface, as befitted the unconventionality of its theme. But he has learned since it was begun-what it was very stupid of him not to have known at the outset-that in the matter of heresies, ethical, social, and political as well as theological, interest is bound to pa.s.s for approval, explanation for advocacy, and sympathy, be it ever so slight, for profound belief: as if a man who showed a curiosity about and appreciation of dogs should, by that very fact, become a dog; or as if (since there may seem to be an unfortunate implication of contempt in this ill.u.s.tration) a German who attempted to expound honestly English temperament, opinions, and traditions should, by that very fact, become an Englishman._

_Once for all, then, the author is not a_ revolutionist, _though there are moments when he fancies he would like to be one, it appears such an eminently satisfying state. It takes faith to be a revolutionist; and he is, alas! mentally incapable of faith. He is not an anarchist, not a socialist, not a radical, not a "red republican," nor a_ "mangeur de pretres." _His affiliations have not been even_ Dreyfusard _in France, nor even Bryanite in America. He is a conservative of the conservatives, only prevented from being a reactionary by the fact that reaction is but another form of revolution, and the most hopeless and faith-exacting of them all. So far from being a revolutionist, he is an evolutionist only under protest_,-vi et armis, _as it were. He favours things as they are, things as they were quite as often, while things as they might be contain for him no allure. He cherishes enormously this imperfect old world as it is, still more as it was; has not the slightest desire to reconstruct it after his own formula, and would not willingly exchange it for any hypothetical world which, up to the present hour, restless human ingenuity has devised._

_He is "naturally beforehand shy of novelties, new books, new faces, new years," and is "sanguine only in the prospects of other [former] years."

He likes old cabinets, old comedies, old prints, old stuffs, old pipes, old wine, old ships, old trees, old shoes, old friends, old customs, old crotchets, and old ladies._

_He prefers infinitely-it is very wrong and foolish, perhaps, but he cannot help it-ancient hostelries to modern hotels, spontaneous neighbourliness to organised benevolence, fireplaces to furnace-heaters, and waving meadows to close-cropped lawns; a blooded aristocrat to a social struggler, a patriot to a cosmopolite, a brave drinker to a total abstinence apostle, an illiterate Breton peasant to the "smart" product of improved schools, a mediaeval cloister to a free-thinker's hall, and an easy-going priest to a nervous sceptic; beauty to utility, superst.i.tion to science, ritual to plain sense. A uniform appeals to him more than a business suit, a coquettish gown more than the most advanced hygienic bloomer, a solicitous mother and competent housewife more than a brilliant club woman. He finds more satisfaction in old-fashioned, comfortable ideas than in disquieting progressive ones. He would quite as soon be domineered over by a n.o.ble as by a parvenu or a pot-house politician, and is less shocked by the colossal pretensions of a pope than by the puerile b.u.mptiousness of a small-minded clergyman. He deplores railways, trolleys, bicycles, automobiles, and compulsory education, because they all tend to destroy native dialects, customs, and costumes, obliterate all local colour, and so render lands far separated dully alike. He resents the presumptuousness of that Reason which is so seldom reasonable, and would not shed a tear nor distil a regret if telephones, telegraphs, and psychical research were swept off the face of the earth._

_He is well aware, therefore, that there is good to be said of time-honoured inst.i.tutions: of the state; of the army, the church, and the courts of law, the props of the state; and of capitalists, the pets and proteges of the state. On occasion he could write a fervid defence of each and every one of these established things. But he is equally aware that there is good to be said of the conscientious opponents of the state, its props and its proteges. To say this good is his present business; and, if he seems to bend over backward sometimes in saying it, it should be borne in mind that they also have bent over backward-nay, turned double somersaults backward-who, prompted by terror, prejudice, intolerance, hatred, or contempt, have p.r.o.nounced unqualified condemnation on the consecrated antagonists of things as they are; and it should at least be queried whether his indiscretions may not be excused (if not altogether justified) thereby._

_No, the author is not a revolutionist, but he is acquainted with plenty of good fellows who are. "He has eaten their bread and salt; he has drunk their water and wine." He has taken pot-luck with them, witnessed their privations, and listened to the telling of their dreams. He thinks he comprehends them, he knows he loves them, and he would present them as he has found them to the world._

_This att.i.tude will be understood by all who really believe in fair play, in giving every man his innings and the devil his due; who can admit merits equally in Christians and Pagans, Jesuits and Agnostics, Cla.s.sicists and Romanticists, Greeks and Goths; who admire a beau geste alike in missionary and filibuster, condottiere and crusader, martyr and toreador, pirate and king,-in a Jeanne d'Arc and a Ravaillac, a Kitchener and a Joubert, a Sheridan and a Mosby, a Dewey and an Aguinaldo, a Hobson and a Cervera, a Makaroff and a Uryu, a Napoleon and a Musolino, a Richard Cur de Lion and a Robin Hood, a Nelson and a Cambronne. It will be understood by all those who appreciate a joke, even when it turns against themselves; who recognise the n.o.bility of straight thinking and bold speaking, the sublimity of high pa.s.sion, the regenerating force of righteous resentment and stubborn resistance, and the holiness of self-sacrifice for an ideal; who have a faculty for putting themselves in other men's places or have learned the hard lesson of calling no thing "common or unclean"; who love men because they are men, serve women because they are women, compa.s.sionate suffering because it is suffering, reverence him who hath much struggled to no apparent purpose, and pardon much, like the Christ, to him who hath much loved._

_That these persons are the few does not seriously matter. It is a great thing to be understood by a few._

ALVAN F. SANBORN.

PARIS, JANUARY, 1905.

PART I

THE PEOPLE

"_I think I hear a little bird who sings The people by and by will be the stronger: The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings So much into the raw as quite to wrong her Beyond the rules of posting,-and the mob At last fall sick of imitating Job._"

LORD BYRON.

CHAPTER I

WHAT THE ANARCHIST WANTS

"_Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits, and then Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!_"

Rubaiyat of OMAR KHaYYaM.

"Le moins de gouvernement possible."

VICTOR HUGO (Programme Politique).

_"The state is the curse of the individual."_-IBSEN.

"_Manual labour, far from being an occasion for shame, honours man. What is shameful is to use man as a vile instrument of lucre, to esteem him only in proportion to the vigour of his arms._"-Encyclical of LEO XIII.

"_Enough of these ambiguous formulas, such as 'the right to work' or 'to each the integral product of his labour.' What we proclaim is the right to a competency, to a competency for all._"-KROPOTKINE.

"_And the savants will be troubled in their knowledge, and this knowledge will appear to them like a little black point when the sun of the intelligences shall rise._"-LAMENNAIS.

"There is nothing new under the sun," and anarchism is no exception to the truth of this maxim. But the beginnings of anarchistic philosophy and the development of anarchism, however suggestive they may be, do not fall within the province of this volume. Therefore it is not necessary to expound the tenets or to trace the influence of the anarchist or semi-anarchist devotees through the ages: the Taoists of China (whose founder, Lao-Tse (600 B.C.), was a contemporary of Pythagoras and Confucius), the social prophets of Islam from Mazdak in the sixth century to the wonderful Bab in the first half of the nineteenth century, Saint Anthony of Padua and Jean Vicenza in the thirteenth century, Savonarola at the end of the fifteenth, the Anabaptists under Thomas Munzer, Mathiesen, and Jean de Leyde in the sixteenth, Razine the Cossack and the Scottish Covenanters in the seventeenth, Mandrin the brigand in the eighteenth, and the Jesuits of Paraguay in the last half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. I do not pretend to determine whether the Guelph-Ghibelline feud, which rent Europe for more than two hundred years, was or was not a struggle between despotism and religious democracy, or whether Gregory VII., Alexander III., Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Boniface VIII. were or were not revolutionary popes endeavouring to realise the social dreams of the Franciscans and Dominicans. I do not try to discover what there is of truth in the astonishing claims of certain exalted students of occultism, mysticism, and comparative religions, that anarchism found expression in the worship of the Indian Siva, the Persian Mithras, the Chaldean Baal-Moloch, and the Greek Bacchus; in the conspiracy of the Baccha.n.a.ls (described by Livy) in the first half of the second century before Christ; in the colossal extravagances of the Caesars; in the _bizarreries_ of the Nicolaites, the Cainites, the Carpocratians, the Ophites, and other Gnostics of Egypt during the first five centuries of the Christian era; in the _Consortia_ under Constantine; and in the fanaticisms of the Inquisitors, the Lollards, Flagellants, Begards, Patarins, Templars, and Devil-worshippers during the Middle Ages. I do not dwell upon nor so much as collate the anarchistic tendencies and sanctions which anarchist scholars discern in the writings or sayings of Job and the Old Testament prophets, of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Saint Francis of a.s.sisi, Plato, Jesus, Rabelais, Bourdaloue, and Bossuet, and the pre-Revolutionary Encyclopedists (especially Diderot and Rousseau).

I even pa.s.s by the far more pertinent teachings, systems, personalities, and careers of the admitted precursors of modern anarchism; of Max Stirner and Fourier, of Proudhon, the father of modern anarchist doctrine, and of "the mysterious Russian," Bakounine, the father of the modern anarchist party. I also pa.s.s by the agrarian revolt of Gracchus Babuf (guillotined by Barras in 1797); the emergence of the learned Russian Kropotkine, and of the Italians Cafiero and Malatesta; the relations between French anarchism and Russian nihilism; the struggle for Italian liberation; the founding of the _Internationale_ and of the _Federation Jurasienne_; the epic struggle for the control of the _Internationale_ between Karl Marx, representing authoritative centralisation, and Bakounine, representing anti-authoritative federalism. I neglect, in a word, the more than interesting history of the slow evolution of modern anarchism, and coming directly, without further ado, to the France of to-day, attack the questions,-What is anarchy? What does the anarchist want? And how does he hope to get it?

Of the contemporary French Encyclopedists who are preparing, or think they are preparing, the revolution of the twentieth century, three are eminently fitted by their learning, by their capacity for straight thinking and utterance, by their sense of historical perspective, their power of keen a.n.a.lysis and bold synthesis, by their breadth, their tolerance, their humanity, their integrity, and their consecration, to answer these questions. They are Pierre Kropotkine, Elisee Reclus, and Jean Grave. But Kropotkine, while the author of such epoch-making works as _La Conquete du Pain, L'Anarchie: son Ideal_, and _Les Paroles d'un Revolte_, is a Russian, not a Frenchman, by birth and breeding, and has been little in Paris of late; and Reclus[1] (one of the most learned geographers of his time), though never far away from the anarchist movement, is, by reason of his devotion to his specialty, rarely in the thick of it. Besides, he has made his home in Belgium for many years.

It is to Jean Grave, therefore, the youngest of the three, the present editor of the journal _Les Temps Nouveaux_ and author of _La Societe Mourante_, _La Societe Future_, _La Societe au Lendemain de la Revolution_, _L'Individu et la Societe_, and _L'Anarchie: son But, ses Moyens_, that it seems best to confide the delicate task of presenting the French anarchistic idea and ideal; and, because I cannot trust myself to summarise without bias the _credo_ of a sect to which I do not belong, I quote in full the comprehensive first chapter of his important doctrinal volume, _L'Anarchie: son But, ses Moyens_:-

"In spite of the fact that the idea of anarchy has emerged from the obscurity in which men have attempted to stifle it, in spite of the fact that to-day (thanks to persecution, thanks to laws of exception such as are made in the worst monarchies) the words 'anarchy' and 'anarchist' are unfamiliar to none, there are not many who know exactly what anarchy is.

"The intervention of the anarchists in the Dreyfus affair, where they were much in evidence, had the effect of bringing them into contact with bourgeois politicians, who knew absolutely nothing about them; but anarchy did not come out into a clearer light from this a.s.sociation.

"Anarchy, in the eyes of some, is robbery, a.s.sa.s.sination, bombs, a return to savagery; anarchists are only house-breakers, loafers, who would divide all wealth in order to be able to amuse themselves with doing nothing.

"In the eyes of others, anarchy is a sort of Utopia, of golden-age dream which they readily grant to be very beautiful, but a dream good at best to ill.u.s.trate books of ethics or fantastic social schemes with. The most kindly disposed regard anarchy as a vague aspiration which they do not hesitate to recognise as desirable for humanity to attain, but as so completely inaccessible that there is no reason for making any decided effort to realise it, and consider the anarchist as a species of lunatic whom it is prudent to avoid, a pitiful _illumine_ who strays from the practicable paths to lose himself in the vagueness of Utopia.

"They are very few who know that anarchy is a theory resting on rational bases, that anarchists are men who, having collated the complaints of those who suffer from the actual social order, and having saturated themselves with human aspirations, have undertaken a critique of the inst.i.tutions which control us, a.n.a.lysing them, weighing their worth, and estimating what they are capable of producing, and who, from the sum total of their observations, deduce logical natural laws for the organisation of a better society.

"Of course, the anarchists do not pretend to have invented the critique of the social order. Others had done that before them. As soon as power began to exist, there were malcontents who made no bones of railing at its acts; and, if we possessed the legends which men handed down from generation to generation before writing was known, we should probably find therein satires against the chiefs. It is quite possible to criticise the existing order of things without being an anarchist, and there are those who have done this in a successful fashion which the anarchists will never surpa.s.s.

"But what anarchists believe they have done more than the other critics, more than the existing socialistic schools or the socialistic schools which preceded them, is to have gotten their bearings in the midst of the confused ma.s.s of errors which spring from the complexity of social relations, to have remounted to the causes of misery, of exploitation, and finally to have laid bare the political error which made men place hope in good governments, good governors, good legislation, good dispensers of justice, as efficacious remedies for the ills from which humanity suffers.

"Anarchy, studying man in his nature, in his evolution, demonstrates that there cannot be good laws or good governments or faithful appliers of the laws.

"Every human law is necessarily arbitrary; for, however just it may be, and whatever may be the breadth of view of those who make it, it represents only a part of human development, only an infinitesimal fragment of the aspirations of all.

Every law formulated by a parliament, far from being the product of a great conception, is, on the contrary, only the mean of public opinion, since parliament itself, by its very manner of recruitment, represents only a very mediocre mean.

"Applied to all in the same fashion, the law becomes thus, by the very force of things, arbitrary and unjust for those who are on this side or on that side of the mean.