The Psychology of Revolution Part 27

This hatred of superiority, the most prominent element in the modern progress of Socialism, is not the only characteristic of the new spirit created by democratic ideas.

Other consequences, although indirect, are not less profound. Such, for example, are the progress of "statism," the diminution of the power of the bourgeoisie, the increasing activity of financiers, the conflict of the cla.s.ses, the vanishing of the old social constraints, and the degradation of morality.

All these effects are displayed in a general insubordination and anarchy. The son revolts against the father, the employee against his patron, the soldier against his officers. Discontent, hatred, and envy reign throughout.

A social movement which continues is necessarily like a machine in movement which accelerates its motion. We shall therefore find that the results of this mentality will become yet more important. It is betrayed from time to time by incidents whose gravity is daily increasing-railway strikes, postmen's strikes, explosions on board ironclads, &c. A propos of the destruction of the Liberte, which cost more than two million pounds and slew two hundred men in the s.p.a.ce of a minute, an ex-Minister of Marine, M. de Lanessan, expresses himself as follows:-

"The evil that is gnawing at our fleet is the same as that which is devouring our army, our public administrations, our parliamentary system, our governmental system, and the whole fabric of our society. This evil is anarchy-that is to say, such a disorder of minds and things that nothing is done as reason would dictate, and no one behaves as his professional or moral duty should require him to behave."

On the subject of the catastrophe of the Liberte, which followed that of the Iena, M. Felix Roussel said, in a speech delivered as president of the munic.i.p.al council of Paris:-

"The causes of the evil are not peculiar to our day. The evil is more general, and bears a triple name: irresponsibility, indiscipline, and anarchy."

These quotations, which state facts with which everyone is familiar, show that the staunchest upholders of the republican system themselves recognise the progress of social disorganisation.[12] Everyone sees it, while he is conscious of his own impotence to change anything. It results, in fact, from mental influences whose power is greater than that of our wills.

[12] This disorder is the same in all the Government departments Interesting examples will be found in a report of M. Dausset to the Munic.i.p.al Council:-

"The service of the public highways, which ought above all to be noted for its rapid execution, is, on the contrary, the very type of red-tape, bureaucratic, and ink-slinging administration, possessing men and money and wasting both in tasks which are often useless, for lack of order, initiative, and method-in a word, of organisation.

Speaking then of the directors of departments, each of whom works as he pleases, and after his own fashion, he adds:-

"These important persons completely ignore one another; they prepare and execute their plans without knowing anything of what their neighbours are doing; there is no one above them to group and co-ordinate their work." This is why a road is often torn up, repaired, and then torn up again a few days later, because the departments dealing with the supply of water, gas, electricity, and the sewers are mutually jealous, and never attempt to work together. This anarchy and indiscipline naturally cost enormous sums of money, and a private firm which operated in this manner would soon find itself bankrupt.

3. Universal Suffrage and its Representatives.

Among the dogmas of democracy perhaps the most fundamental of all and the most attractive is that of universal suffrage. It gives the ma.s.ses the idea of equality, since for a moment at least rich and poor, learned and ignorant, are equal before the electoral urn. The minister elbows the least of his servants, and during this brief moment the power of one is as great as the others.

All Governments, including that of the Revolution, have feared universal suffrage. At a first glance, indeed, the objections which suggests themselves are numerous. The idea that the mult.i.tude could usefully choose the men capable of governing, that individuals of indifferent morality, feeble knowledge, and narrow minds should possess, by the sole fact of number, a certain talent for judging the candidate proposed for its selection is surely a shocking one.

From a rational point of view the suffrage of numbers is to a certain extent justified if we think with Pascal.

"Plurality is the best way, because it is visible and has strength to make itself obeyed; it is, however, the advice of the less able."

As universal suffrage cannot in our times be replaced by any other inst.i.tution, we must accept it and try to adapt it. It is accordingly useless to protest against it or to repeat with the queen Marie Caroline, at the time of her struggle with Napoleon: "Nothing is more dreadful than to govern men in this enlightened century, when every cobbler reasons and criticises the Government."

To tell the truth, the objections are not always as great as they appear. The laws of the psychology of crowds being admitted, it is very doubtful whether a limited suffrage would give a much better choice of men than that obtained by universal suffrage.

These same psychological laws also show us that so-called universal suffrage is in reality a pure fiction. The crowd, save in very rare cases, has no opinion but that of its leaders. Universal suffrage really represents the most limited of suffrages.

There justly resides its real danger. Universal suffrage is made dangerous by the fact that the leaders who are its masters are the creatures of little local committees a.n.a.logous to the clubs of the Revolution. The leader who canva.s.ses for a mandate is chosen by them.

Once nominated, he exercises an absolute local power, on condition of satisfying the interests of his committees. Before this necessity the general interest of the country disappears almost totally from the mind of the elected representative.

Naturally the committees, having need of docile servants, do not choose for this task individuals gifted with a lofty intelligence nor, above all, with a very high morality. They must have men without character, without social position, and always docile.

By reason of these necessities the servility of the deputy in respect of these little groups which patronise him, and without which he would be no one, is absolute. He will speak and vote just as his committee tells him. His political ideal may be expressed in a few words: it is to obey, that he may retain his post.

Sometimes, rarely indeed, and only when by name or position or wealth he has a great prestige, a superior character may impose himself upon the popular vote by overcoming the tyranny of the impudent minorities which const.i.tute the local committees.

Democratic countries like France are only apparently governed by universal suffrage. For this reason is it that so many measures are pa.s.sed which do not interest the people and which the people never demanded. Such were the purchase of the Western railways, the laws respecting congregations, &c. These absurd manifestations merely translated the demands of fanatical local committees, and were imposed upon deputies whom they had chosen.

We may judge of the influence of these committees when we see moderate deputies forced to patronise the anarchical destroyers of a.r.s.enals, to ally themselves with anti-militarists, and, in a word, to obey the most atrocious demands in order to ensure re-election. The will of the lowest elements of democracy has thus created among the elected representatives manners and a morality which we can but recognise are of the lowest. The politician is the man in public employment, and as Nietzsche says:-

"Where public employment begins there begins also the clamour of the great comedians and the buzzing of venomous flies... . The comedian always believes in that which makes him obtain his best effects, in that which impels the people to believe in him. To- morrow he will have a new faith, and the day after to-morrow yet another... . All that is great has its being far from public employment and glory."

4. The Craving for Reforms.

The craze for reforms imposed suddenly by means of decrees is one of the most disastrous conceptions of the Jacobin spirit, one of the formidable legacies left by the Revolution. It is among the princ.i.p.al factors of all the incessant political upheavals of the last century in France.

One of the psychological causes of this intense thirst for reforms arises from the difficulty of determining the real causes of the evils complained of. The need of explanation creates fict.i.tious causes of the simplest nature. Therefore the remedies also appear simple.

For forty years we have incessantly been pa.s.sing reforms, each of which is a little revolution in itself. In spite of all these, or rather because of them, the French have evolved almost as little as any race in Europe.

The slowness of our actual evolution may be seen if we compare the princ.i.p.al elements of our social life-commerce, industry, &c.-with those of other nations. The progress of other nations-of the Germans especially-then appears enormous, while our own has been very slow.

Our administrative, industrial, and commercial organisation is considerably out of date, and is no longer equal to our new needs. Our industry is not prospering; our marine is declining. Even in our own colonies we cannot compete with foreign countries, despite the enormous pecuniary subventions accorded by the State. M. Cruppi, an ex-Minister of Commerce, has insisted on this melancholy decline in a recent book. Falling into the usual errors, he believed it easy to remedy this inferiority by new laws.

All politicians share the same opinion, which is why we progress so slowly. Each party is persuaded that by means of reforms all evils could be remedied. This conviction results in struggles such as have made France the most divided country in the world and the most subject to anarchy.

No one yet seems to understand that individuals and their methods, not regulations, make the value of a people. The efficacious reforms are not the revolutionary reforms but the trifling ameliorations of every day acc.u.mulated in course of time. The great social changes, like the great geological changes, are effected by the daily addition of minute causes. The economic history of Germany during the last forty years proves in a striking manner the truth of this law.

Many important events which seem to depend more or less on hazard-as battles, for example-are themselves subject to this law of the acc.u.mulation of small causes. No doubt the decisive struggle is sometimes terminated in a day or less, but many minute efforts, slowly acc.u.mulated, are essential to victory. We had a painful experience of this in 1870, and the Russians have learned it more recently. Barely half an hour did Admiral Togo need to annihilate the Russian fleet, at the battle of Tsushima, which finally decided the fate of j.a.pan, but thousands of little factors, small and remote, determined that success. Causes not less numerous engendered the defeat of the Russians-a bureaucracy as complicated as ours, and as irresponsible; lamentable material, although paid for by its weight in gold; a system of graft at every degree of the social hierarchy, and general indifference to the interests of the country.

Unhappily the progress in little things which by their total make up the greatness of a nation is rarely apparent, produces no impression on the public, and cannot serve the interests of politicians at elections. These latter care nothing for such matters, and permit the acc.u.mulation, in the countries subject to their influence, of the little successive disorganisations which finally result in great downfalls.

5. Social Distinctions in Democracies and Democratic Ideas in Various Countries.

When men were divided into castes and differentiated chiefly by birth, social distinctions were generally accepted as the consequences of an unavoidable natural law.

As soon as the old social divisions were destroyed the distinctions of the cla.s.ses appeared artificial, and for that reason ceased to be tolerated.

The necessity of equality being theoretical, we have seen among democratic peoples the rapid development of artificial inequalities, permitting their possessors to make for themselves a plainly visible supremacy. Never was the thirst for t.i.tles and decorations so general as to-day.

In really democratic countries, such as the United States, t.i.tles and decorations do not exert much influence, and fortune alone creates distinctions. It is only by exception that we see wealthy young American girls allying themselves to the old names of the European aristocracy. They are then instinctively employing the only means which will permit a young race to acquire a past that will establish its moral framework.

But in a general fashion the aristocracy that we see springing up in America is by no means founded on t.i.tles and decorations. Purely financial, it does not provoke much jealousy, because every one hopes one day to form part of it.

When, in his book on democracy in America, Toqueville spoke of the general aspiration towards equality he did not realise that the prophesied equality would end in the cla.s.sification of men founded exclusively on the number of dollars possessed by them. No other exists in the United States, and it will doubtless one day be the same in Europe.

At present we cannot possibly regard France as a democratic country save on paper, and here we feel the necessity, already referred to, of examining the various ideas which in different countries are expressed by the word "democracy."

Of truly democratic nations we can practically mention only England and the United States. There, democracy occurs in different forms, but the same principles are observed-notably, a perfect toleration of all opinions. Religious persecutions are unknown. Real superiority easily reveals itself in the various professions which any one can enter at any age if he possesses the necessary capacity. There is no barrier to individual effort.

In such countries men believe themselves equal because all have the idea that they are free to attain the same position. The workman knows he can become foreman, and then engineer. Forced to begin on the lower rungs of the ladder instead of high up the scale, as in France, the engineer does not regard himself as made of different stuff to the rest of mankind. It is the same in all professions. This is why the cla.s.s hatred, so intense in Europe, is so little developed in England and America.

In France the democracy is practically non-existent save in speeches. A system of compet.i.tions and examinations, which must be worked through in youth, firmly closes the door upon the liberal professions, and creates inimical and separate cla.s.ses.

The Latin democracies are therefore purely theoretical. The absolutism of the State has replaced monarchical absolutism, but it is no less severe. The aristocracy of fortune has replaced that of birth, and its privileges are no less considerable.