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Title: The Modern State
Author: Elisée Reclus
Date: 1905
Language: en
Topics: the state, sociology, anthropology, geography
Source: Retrieved on 27 of October 2020 from [[https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L%E2%80%99Homme_et_la_Terre/IV/07]]
Notes: This is a chapter from Reclus’s book “L’Homme et La Terre” which was partially translated to be published in *Anarchy, Geography and Modernity*, this is the complete translation done by Anarchia!

Elisée Reclus

The Modern State

The world is very close to unification. All lands, including even the

small islands scattered across the vast ocean, have entered into the

field of attraction of one common culture, in which the European type

predominates. Only in a few rare enclaves—in lands of caves where men

flee the light, or in very secluded places protected by walls of rock,

forests, or marshlands—have some tribes been able to remain completely

isolated, living their lives outside the rhythm of the great universal

life. However, as jealously as these peoples have hidden themselves,

forming small, self-sufficient hereditary circles, scientific

researchers have discovered them and integrated them into the whole of

humanity by studying their forms, their ways of life, and their

traditions, and by placing them in a social classification of which they

were previously an unknown member.

The instinctive tendency of all nations to take part in the common

affairs of the entire world already manifests itself in many instances

in contemporary history. For example, in 1897 we witnessed the six

greatest European powers (whatever their secret motives may have been)

claiming to seek to maintain a balance of power in Europe, while

satisfying both Turkey and Greece. [1] In the process, they fired on

some unfortunate Cretans—their “brothers in Christ”—in the name of

“public order.” Despite the disheartening spectacle of a large

deployment of force against a small people who asked only that justice

be rendered to them, it was nevertheless a completely new and telling

political phenomenon that soldiers and sailors of various languages and

nationalities could join together, grouped in allied detachments under

the orders of a leader chosen by lot among the British, Austrians,

Italians, French, and Russians. This was an event with an international

character, unprecedented in history because of the methodical precision

with which it was carried out. It was proven that Europe as a whole is

now indeed a sort of republic of states, united through class

solidarity. The financial caste that rules from Moscow to Liverpool

causes governments and armies to act with perfect discipline.

Since then, history has offered other examples of this council of

nations that forms spontaneously in all grave political situations.

Since the interests of all are at stake, each wants to take part in the

deliberations and profit from the settlement. In China, for example, the

temporary alliance that has been achieved between nations is strong

enough to unite the military representatives of all the states in a

common task of destruction and massacre. Elsewhere, notably in Morocco,

the collective machinations are limited for the time being to diplomatic

talks, but at any rate, the case is clear. States have an acute

awareness of the effects of all events throughout the world on their own

destiny, and they do their best to cope with changes in the balance of

power. Nevertheless, it is very important to stress the difference

between the solidarity of conservative states and that of peoples during

periods of revolution, in which an upsurge takes place in the opposite

direction. Whereas the year 1848 rocked the world with tremors of

liberty, fifty years later we find that England hands itself over to

representatives of the aristocracy and throws itself into a long war

behind a band of crooks. France grapples with a recrudescence of a

clerical and military mentality. Spain reestablishes the practices of

the Inquisition. America, populated by immigrants, tries to close its

ports to foreigners. And Turkey takes revenge against Greece.

A movement of convergence toward mutual understanding is occurring all

over the world. We may therefore be permitted, in order to comprehend

the transformations that will occur in the future, to take as our

starting point the state of mind and practice exhibited by the civilized

peoples of Europe in the management of their societies and the

realization of their ideal. Obviously, each group of men moving toward

the same goal will not slavishly follow the same road. It will take,

according to the position that it occupies at any given time, the path

that is determined by the sum total of all the individual wills that it

contains. So what we propose is a kind of average that is related to the

particular situation of each nation and each social element according to

the temporal and spatial milieu. But in such a study, the researcher

must carefully distance himself from any tendency toward patriotism,

that vestige of the ancient delusion that one’s nation is specially

chosen by Divine Providence for the acquisition of wealth and the

accomplishment of great things. Corresponding to this natural delusion

of all peoples that they rank first in merit and genius is another,

which Ludwig Gumplowicz called “acrochronism.” Its effect is that one is

content to suppose that contemporary civilization, as imperfect as it

may be, is nevertheless the culminating state of humanity, and that by

comparison, all past ages were barbaric. This is a “chronocentric”

egoism, analogous to the “ethnocentric” egoism of patriotism.

The “rights of man” were proclaimed for thousands of years by isolated

individuals and more than a century ago by an assembly that has drawn

the attention of peoples ever since. Yet in present-day society these

rights are still only recognized in principle, like a simple word whose

meaning one hardly begins to fathom. The brutal fact of authority

endures against rights, in the family and in society as well as in the

state. It endures while at the same time accepting its opposite and

intermingling with it in a thousand illogical and bizarre combinations.

There are now very few fanatical defenders of the kind of absolute

authority that gives to the prince the right of life and death over his

subjects, and to the husband and father the same rights over his wife

and children. Yet public opinion on such matters wavers indecisively,

guided less by reason than by one’s individual circumstances and

personal sympathies, and by the nature of the stories one hears.

Generally speaking, it can be said that man measures the strictness of

his principles of liberty by his share of personal benefits from the

outcome. He is absolutely strict when it is a question of events that

occur on the other side of the world. But when it is a question of his

own country or caste, he compromises slightly by mixing his mania for

authority with conceptions of human rights. Finally, when he is directly

affected, he is likely to let himself be blinded by passion, and he will

gladly make authoritarian pronouncements.

In certain countries—France, for example—is it not an established

custom, so to speak, that the husband has the right to kill his

unfaithful wife? It is above all within the family, in a man’s daily

relationships with those close to him, that one can best judge him. If

he absolutely respects the liberty of his wife, if the rights and the

dignity of his sons and daughters are as precious to him as his own,

then he proves himself worthy of entering the assembly of free citizens.

If not, he is still a slave, since he is a tyrant.

It has often been repeated that the family unit is the primordial cell

of humanity. This is only relatively true, for two men who meet and

strike up a friendship, a band (even among animals) that forms to hunt

or fish, a concert of voices or instruments that join in unison, an

association to realize ideas through common action—all constitute

original groupings in the great global society. Nevertheless, it is

certain that familial associations, whether manifested in polygyny,

polyandry, monogamy, or free unions, exercise a direct influence on the

form of the state through the effects of their ethics. What one sees on

a large scale parallels what one sees on a small scale. The authority

that prevails in government corresponds to that which holds sway in

families, though ordinarily in lesser proportions, for the government is

incapable of pressuring widely dispersed individuals in the way that one

spouse can pressure the other who lives under the same roof.

[Group of non-commissioned officers from military detachments stationed

in Beijing. German, French, English, Austrian, Russian, American,

Japanese, Belgian, Italian, Dutch and Chinese soldiers]

Just as familial practices naturally harden into “principles” for all

those involved, so government takes on the form of distinct political

bodies encompassing various segments of the human race that are

separated from one another. The causes of this separation vary and

intermingle. In one place, a difference in language has demarcated two

groups. In another, economic conditions arising from a specific soil,

particular products, or diverging historical paths have created the

boundaries that divide them. Then, on top of all the primary causes,

whether arising from nature or from stages of social evolution, is added

a layer of conflicts that every authoritarian society always produces.

Thus through the ceaseless interplay of interests, ambitions, and forces

of attraction and repulsion, states become demarcated. Despite their

constant vicissitudes, these entities claim to have a sort of collective

personality and demand from those under their jurisdiction that peculiar

feeling of love, devotion, and sacrifice called “patriotism.” But should

a conqueror pass through and erase the existing borders, the subjects

must, by order of that authority, modify their feelings and reorient

themselves in relation to the new sun around which they now revolve.

Just as property is the right of use and abuse, so is authority the

right to command rightly or wrongly. This is understood well by the

masters and also by the governed, whether they slavishly obey or feel

the spirit of rebellion awakening. Philosophers have viewed authority

quite differently. Desiring to give this word a meaning closer to its

original one,

which implied something like creation, they tell us that authority

resides in anyone who teaches someone else something useful, and that it

applies to everyone from the most celebrated scholar to the humblest

mother.[2] Still, none of them goes so far as to consider the

revolutionary who stands up to power as the true representative of

authority.

Everyone has the right to speak the language that they want to speak,

and to give to the words the meaning which they have personally chosen;

but it is certain that, in the popular discourse, the word “authority”

does have the same meaning as that given to it by Poseidon commanding to

the tempests : “And thus, I order ! No reason, my will suffice !” Since,

the masters never talked any other way. Is it not established that the

“cannon is the reason of kings”? And isn’t the “raison d’état”

distinguished precisely because it is not reason? It places itself

outside of vulgar humanity, it commands the just and the unjust, the

good and evil as it wishes.

In good authoritarian logic, everything belongs to the absolute monarch,

the earth as well as the life of its subjects. Was it not already by the

effect of a real condescension that, at the time of his accession to the

throne, His Siamese Majesty deigned “to authorize all his subjects to

use trees and plants, water, stones and all other substances that are in

his kingdom” [3] ? And was it not in return, on the part of the subject,

certainly daring to “lay under the soles of the sacred feet whatever was

in his possession”? For it goes without saying that everything belongs

to the master of masters, and the despot could have cut off the heads of

the daring who dared to hold such language before him, proof that,

despite the formulas of abjection, private property was beginning to

exist in the country and that the master was no longer alone. But the

political world is full of these contrasts between the principle of

absolute authority and the demands of individual freedom. Without going

so far, in despotic Asia, and even while remaining in “free England,” do

we not see in a thousand texts from the past, the meaning of which is

little understood in the present, that the prince’s authority was almost

unlimited?

There are hardly any limits to the degradation to which the subject

agrees to lend himself in his relations with the monarch. Barely a

century has passed since the Emperor Paul made all passers-by uncover

their heads to see how their hair was done and did not admit anyone into

his presence without the worshiper’s knee falling on the floor and his

kiss on the imperial hand echoing in the hall with a great noise. The

word “bald” was prohibited on pain of knout because the emperor was

bald, as was the term “camus” because the august nose was crushed like

that of a Kalmyk. Forbidden to say that the celestial stars accomplish

their “revolution,” and, in all representations, forbidden to use the

word “freedom,” which was to be replaced by that of “permission” [4].

And yet this madman, who had a method in his madness, reigned five years

and his people would have left him indefinitely on his throne: he

succumbed under the effort of a court conspiracy, which was known of his

son, the future Alexander I.

N ° 554. Autocracy, Monarchy, Republic.

[A. Countries ruled autocratically, even if the agents of despotism on

the other handbelong to a group of free citizens: Abyssinia, Congo,

Russia, etc;

B. Constitutional monarchies: Germany, Japan, Persia, etc.

C. Republics: Argentina, France, (forgotten Liberia), etc.; Canada and

New Zealand are also classified in this category of states;

D. Countries where one race has formed a monarchy or a republic and

keeps another population enslaved: Algeria, Australia, Transvaal, etc.]

And if personal power shows itself in abject sides, is it not seen

aswell in its ferocious aspect! The wars to which Napoleon left his name

were indeed his own and if what we call his “genius” had not intervened,

the mad jaunt of the Egyptian expedition would certainly not have taken

place, armies would not have merged into the atrocious war in Spain to

give Joseph Bonaparte the throne of viceroy; the appalling human

encounter which took place in central Russia, and which ended in

nameless disaster, was also the result of imperial will. Without him,

whose appearance is explained by the ignorance and petty passions of his

contemporaries, millions of human lives would have been spared.

Other devastators have succeeded to the one some have had the courage to

call the “martyr of Saint-Hélène,” and, just as many soldiers imagine

that they have the “marshal’s staff in their gibern,” thousands of

warlords hoped that Napoleon’s sword would be their heritage. The

conqueror is no longer here, but it is of him that one can speak of a

dead man to whom the living are enslaved. It is a spectacle both very

instructive and very lamentable, that of these numerous pests of society

seeking a master. The flock asks for a dog who will bark at its sides,

stick its fangs into its flesh. Multitudes invoke the Napoleons, but

these do not respond to the call, at least one can see a cult for the

boots and the whip of the deceased. We must do without reliving the

ancient servitude in all its ignominy, but it is glorified in legend, it

is into made a holy epoch, and the poets try to sing heroically the

perfidity of their ancestors. And, since the master is no longer there

in his prestigious grandeur, one can half console oneself by prostrating

before the secondary masters who most resemble him, before those who put

at the service of their ambition the essential qualities of the

dominator: total absence of scruples, the absolute contempt of men, the

ardor of pleasure always unfulfilled, intelligence refined in the

service of evil, the cruel irony which gives flavor to crime.

Thus, whatever is said by the theorists who see the state as a sort of

entity independent of men, history shows us most clearly that most of

the government still appears in its most obvious form of primitive

violence, of hoarding, of caprice, and that the representative par

excellence of the State, that is to say the sovereign, necessarily gives

it the direction that comes from the result of his passions and

interests. Not only is the king just a man, there is even every chance

that he will be a below average man, because he is surrounded by

flatterers and schemers who hide the truth from him and that the vertigo

of his privileged position exposes him to madness.

[Mssinga, King of Uganda, his two uncles, his ministers]

Lecky [5] notes that more than half of the wars that devastated Europe

originated in quarrels between closely related rulers. It is easy to

understand that this was so. The peoples had no interest in these family

discussions which hovered over them, but they found themselves drawn

into it like the water in the vortex of a lock: subject like an inert

thing to the rivalries and hatreds of their masters, they were employed

to satisfy some, to satiate others. Personal whims, family interests,

this is what is hidden under the “Grace of God”, a heritage from ancient

times bequeathed by the Merodach (Marduk), the Pharaohs and the Caesars.

Even among the current kings bound by specific constitutions and

institutions, and who, despite their desire for absolute power, feel

somewhat in the position of insects stung by a pin, contemporary history

can designate at least one in the center of Europe, on one of the

highest thrones in the world, which never misses any opportunity to

proclaim himself the chosen one of God: Most High himself, he has no

other responsibility than towards the Most High.

But, as a result of historical development, it turns out that most of

the defenders of the old regime have given up on the attack and are

standing on the defensive; they are in the process of pleading

extenuating circumstances. Just as, in a memorable period, the Republic

was maintained in France because it was the state of transition which

divided the least, so we keep the monarchy in several states because it

allows the various parties to wait in awaiting agreement on the changes

to be made. All the domestic and private virtues that the sovereign is

lucky enough to possess are counted to him as particularly exceptional

merits, and even all the favors of fate, good harvests and good days,

are considered to be due if not to his direct power, at least to some

kind of intervention. The symbol of this sovereignty of the earthly

master over the elements of the sky is still seen in China, during an

eclipse of the sun or the moon, when the Chinese mandarin, armed with

his weapons and dressed in his full uniform, orders from below in the

name of the Emperor and, to please his people, delivers the threatened

star. Recently, when Queen Victoria of England died, after a very long

reign of three quarters of a century, many of her enthusiastic subjects

almost seemed to imagine that she had had something to do with the

immense progress made around the world during her reign, the Victorian

age [6]. This is how the legends of Rama, Cyrus, and Charlemagne were

formed in the past; This is how “a look from Louis gave birth to

Corneilles.”

The state of transition between the enslavement of all to a single,

common form of monarchy, and the free and spontaneous grouping of men

functioning in harmony, the ideal form of humanity, is marked by

constitutions, charters, statutes which must necessarily change over

time, not only because the nation to which they apply evolves more or

less rapidly, but also because these conventions, promulgated with so

much solemnity, are not original works, coming from the precise will of

the people: they are mostly copies, more or less skilful, of other

documents of the same kind, and, like the laws, they always represent

the exclusive interests of the ruling class. No one criticized the

written constitutions better than the representative of the Cheroki,

speaking in a general assembly of the tribes of the Indian territory,

meeting in 1872 for the discussion of a general charter: “We must — he

said — take care of engraving institutions in the hearts of our fellow

citizens, only thus will they be lasting institutions. Write them down

on the paper, you might as well engrave them on the bark of the tree.

The forest oak grows every year, changing bark every time: so does the

Indian nation. Two things do not pass: the will of man and the heart of

the oak tree. We must hold on to the will if we are to live and last”

[7]

[Francisco Pi Y Margall 1824–1901

President of the Spanish Republic in 1873]

The name of Republic applied to certain States, as opposed to that of

Monarchy, has been given in the course of time to very diverse

organizations, but both of which tried to support a more or less

restricted group of people considering themselves free in the midst of a

population of slaves or barbarian neighbors. Unsolvable problem! For

there can be no truly free society as long as one man remains enslaved

on the terra cotta planet. And thus the citizen of Athens, the plebeian

of Rome, the shepherd of the Pyrenean valleys, even the members of the

tribe of Ova-Mbarandu, south of Cunene, whom the missionary Duparquet

depicts as intransigent republicans, living in complete freedom, without

chief, without a priest who can demand homage or tax, all these

communities have succumbed, absorbed by the servile empires which

surrounded them. But we can say that these organizations formulated more

original solutions than the republics of the twentieth century,

submitted to the government of international high finance and by it

leveled to the rank of neighboring monarchies.

The differences in title are therefore not essential, but it is

important to note them and determine their historical origin. Among the

one hundred and eighty million or two hundred million men who currently

live in a republican regime, if not without masters at least without

official kings, it is evident that the Swiss, the Americans, the French

have been ecouraged to take the same name because of very different

historical circumstances. Switzerland, which was at first a chaos of

seigneuries, fiefdoms, rural communities, had only to seek and maintain

its balance of forces to become a republican confederation; the United

States was driven by the stubbornness of England to deprive itself of

the monarchical regime to which it first wanted to remain religiously

faithful; Likewise, the Hispano-American republics, which had announced

themselves in history by the cry of “Vive Ferdinand VII,” obviously

could not come to the denial of royalty until after a long evolution of

wars and internal revolutions. The Lusitano-Brazilian republic remained

for a long time immersed in monarchical institutions, and the half-dozen

semi-republican colonies of Greater Britain [8], the Dominion or

“Strength” of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia , the “Colony” of

Cape Town, New Zealand, etc., have very ingeniously accommodated a

remainder of monarchical forms to their republican constitution. Only

France was led very directly, by the logic of things, to abolish royalty

as an infringement of human rights and to make the Republic a symbol of

Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

N ° 555. Former Republics of the Pyrenees.

[1, Republic of Andorra. 2, Bouigane or Ballongue valley. 3, Val of

Bethmale or Balamet. 4, Val of Biros. 5, Val of Azran. 6, Aure Valley.

7, Val of Gistai 8, The seven “rivers” of Lavedan; bypassing these

valleys from north to west to return to the east, we find the following

valleys successively: Surquères or Batsouriguère; Estrem de Salles;

Azun; Saint-Savin or Cauterets; Barèges, Luz or Balsan; Davantaic;

Castelloubon. 9. Aspe Valley. — Roncal in the Spanish Basque Country is

the center of a sort of small republic.]

But it is only a symbol and a symbol almost everywhere misunderstood.

The French Republic strangely becomes flexible with monarchical

survivals; even in 1870, when the continuation of the republican form in

France was voted in Parliament by a majority vote, it was tacitly

admitted that if the word was accepted, given the difficulty of finding

a king, one would remain intransigent on the background and that the old

institutions — so-called good principles — would be respectfully

safeguarded. This is indeed what happened. The Republic, good princess,

who painfully collects money from the lower layers of the poor people

for the payment of its officials, the Republic religiously continued to

pay the fees of its employees, while the latter, faithful to the

previous ones, to the routine and esprit de corps continued their

vituperation against the new regime, thanks to which they appeared

nicely to the world. Officers, magistrates, priests, even professors,

took pride in betraying the government they were supposed to respect and

serve, and even bragged about it in their speeches and circulars. During

this affair of military treason — known as the “Dreyfus affair” — which

took on an epic character in the immense whirlwind of human passions, it

was an incident of the most curious and the most significant that that

of the consultation of the students of Saint-Cyr , the Grande Military

School of France: “Do you want a change in the form of government? —

“Yes,” was the unanimous response, increased in some of the students

with violent or rude expressions. And later, when, under pressure from

part of the people, scandalized to see religious congregations gradually

taking over teaching in France and trying to knead the minds of children

to make as many little Jesuits as possible, the government finally

resolved to defend itself, did not we see all the courts unanimously

justify all the rebellions, insults, assaults of priests and their

friends, and uniformly condemn to punishments so light that they proved

the magistrates agreed with those being prosecuted? Never has there been

a more striking example of this “house divided against itself” of which

the Gospel speaks. Now, “such a house cannot stand,” reason tells us.

Every day shows us some stone falling off of the building.

Revolutions, in their multiple forms, are therefore inevitable since

evolutions are thwarted in their normal functioning. Whether the

terminal catastrophes are divided into a thousand little facts,

bankruptcies and suicides, brawls, strikes or famines, industrial ruins

or political declines, impoverishment and depopulation, or else a

political and social hurricane suddenly passes over the country leaving

behind a trail of ruins and corpses, the result is the same as a whole.

The language of history is categorical on this matter. Or death, as in

the past for Chaldea, Elam, Bactria, or the difficult, violent, painful

transformation for all modern nations, which cannot perish because they

help each other all the same, while devouring each other in vital

competition! There can be no other way out as long as the state,

represented by the personal power of one or more individuals, or even an

entire class, retains the eminent right to consider themselves as

educators of the nation, for this education will always be done in their

own interest, even with the perfect illusion of “devoting themselves to

the good of the country.” There is a division of labor that seems quite

natural to those who desire the continuation of the old prerogatives: on

the one hand the duty to govern, on the other that to obey. But those

who are responsible for “driving the state’s chariot” should know

everything, plan everything, organize everything; yet the subjects, who

also educate themselves, note the errors made by their masters,

challenge this division of labor and endeavor to abolish it.

Weren’t the July days the forced consequence of the “ordinances” and of

all the oppressive regime which brought about the conflict? Wasn’t the

Franco-German war, from shock to shock and vicissitude to vicissitude,

the natural consequence of the two Napoleonic empires overthrowing the

two French republics? And, in the first years of the twentieth century,

Russia would not have had to endure the shock of the Japanese armies if

it had not, in violation of all promises, seized a Chinese province,

laughing at the naive who could believe its word. It is therefore quite

wrong that we simply see in revolutions the effect of an instinct for

destruction which would agitate the popular masses and lead them to

destroy. Without doubt, this instinct exists, all educators have noticed

how imperious it is in children, lovers born of renewal. We must not

forget that “to live is to act,” and that “destruction is the easiest

form of action” (Anatole France); but there is more than instinct, it is

especially necessary to take into account the collective will arising

from the general conditions of society.

When it overflows, life becomes irrepressible: it is like running water,

which can be dammed, but which must find a way out, either over the dam,

by plunging into the accustomed bed, or, by a lateral depression, in a

new stream. Thus ared explained the unforeseen effects of revolutions

and violent counter-revolutions. After abrupt changes obtained by force,

life no longer manifests itself through the same acts, it feeds energies

which were asleep until then, enters new channels like water compressed

by a piston; but, whatever the transformations, the persistence of force

cannot fail but to prevail. The work is accomplished in another way, but

it is accomplished, bringing about a whole succession of unexpected

events, which weak men subjected to their effects say, according to the

circumstances, fatal or favorable, usually judging using their narrow

selfishness and their view of the moment. This is how movement turns

into heat and heat into electricity. Seeing the machine stop, it is easy

to believe that the force itself is dispersing, but suddenly it bursts,

transfigured. It is the god who vanishes and finds himself in continual

avatars. Proteus, ever-changing, took on the form of a new being.

Individuals and classes with power at their disposal—whether chiefs of

state or aristocratic, religious, or bourgeois masters—willingly

intervene with brutal force to suppress all popular initiative. In their

childish and barbaric illusion, they think themselves capable of

stopping the overflowing vitality of the masses, and of immobilizing

society for their personal profit. But they can only lift a faltering

hand. The unchanging laws of history are beginning to be understood well

enough so that even the more audacious exploiters of society do not dare

to run head-on into its movement. They must proceed with science and

skill in order to divert it onto side roads, like a train that is

switched from the main track. Up to the present, the most frequently

used means—and one that unfortunately benefits most the masters of the

people—consists of transforming all the energies of a nation into a rage

against the foreigner. The pretexts are easy to find, since the

interests of states remain different and in conflict through the very

fact of their separation into distinct artificial organisms. Beyond the

pretexts, there exist the memories of actual wrongs, massacres, and

crimes of all sorts committed in former wars. The call for revenge still

resounds, and when a new war will have passed like the terrible flames

of a fire devouring everything in its path, it will also leave the

memory of hatred and serve as leaven for future conflicts. How many

examples one could cite of such diversions! Those in power respond to

the internal problems of the government through external wars. If the

wars are triumphant and the masters take advantage of the opportunity to

profit from them through the consolidation of their regime, they will

have debased their people through the foolish vanity they call glory.

They will have made the people into shameful accomplices by inviting

them to steal, pillage, and slaughter, and this solidarity of evil will

cause the people’s former demands to languish as their cups are once

more filled with the red wine of hatred.

[Moscow, 31^(st) October 1905

Procession demanding the release of political prisoners.]

In addition to war, those who govern have at their disposal other

powerful means of protecting themselves from any threat. These include

corruption and demoralization through gambling and all forms of

debauchery: betting, horse-racing, drinking, cafés, and nightclubs. “If

they sing, they’ll pay!” The depraved, debased, and self-hating no

longer have the dignity necessary to impel them to revolt. Imagining

they have the souls of lackeys, they do themselves justice by accepting

their oppression. Thus the wars of the Republic and the burgeoning vices

and depravity that succeeded the first years of the Revolution, with its

ideals of austerity and virtue, were well timed to prepare the way for

the imperial regime and the shameful debasement of character. However,

this swing in the opposite direction was largely the result of a normal

reaction on the part of society as a whole. It is natural for men to

shift from one extreme to the other, in the same way that their lives

alternate from activity to sleep, and from rest to work. Moreover, since

a nation is composed of many classes and diverse groups, each of which

has a particular evolution within the general one, historical movements

with opposing tendencies collide and intersect, creating a complicated

web that the historian can untangle only with great difficulty.

Thus during the internal struggles of the French Revolution, the people

of the Vendée certainly represented the principle of the autonomous and

freely federated commune, in opposition to the central government.

However, through a contradiction that they were unable to grasp due to

their complete lack of education, they also became defenders of the

Church, whose goal was universal authority over souls, and of the

monarchy, which viewed all members of the commune as nothing but corvée

labor to be taxed, or even as so much meat to be sliced up on the

battlefield.[9] Through a strange naïveté that would be comic were it

not so tragic, the Negros of Haiti, struggling for their freedom against

the white planters, enthusiastically declared themselves to be subjects

of the King; and the rebels of the Spanish colonies of the New World

greeted the Catholic King of Spain with cheers! Throughout history,

those who revolted against any authority almost always did so in the

name of another authority, as if the ideal required nothing more than

changing masters. During the time of great ferment in public opinion and

of intellectual liberation that led to the revolution of 1830, those who

worked for the emancipation of language and for the free study of the

history of art and literature of all periods and all cultures (and not

only those of Greece, Rome, and the Age of Louis XIV), and those who

traced their origins back to the Middle Ages and even found ancestry

among the Germans and Slavs (in a word, the “romantics”), had for the

most part remained royalists and Christians. On the other hand, those

who championed political liberty always did so through the classical

forms of the Schoolmen, in the traditional style that is the hallmark of

the Academies. When Blanqui, blackened with powder, finally laid down

his rifle after the three victorious days in July, he simply said: “Down

with the Romantics!”[10] The revolution had disintegrated into two

elements: a political one, which aimed at toppling thrones, and a

literary one, which worked for the liberation of language and the

extension of its domain. Each of these groups of revolutionaries was

reactionary from the standpoint of the other. And each faction was quite

justified in criticizing the other’s illogic, irrelevancies,

absurdities, and stupidities.

[Saint-Petersburg, Winter Palace square

Bloodied on January 9 (22, new style), 1905.]

The historian who studies the vicissitudes of events and tries to

extract what is essential relative to progress has the most difficult

problem to resolve, that of discovering the parallelogram of forces

underlying the thousand conflicting impulses that collide on all sides.

It is easy for him to err, and he often despairs that he is witnessing a

collapse when in reality there was progress, or rather when, in the

overall assessment of losses and gains, human resources have actually

greatly increased.

But how long and difficult does the work of true revolution seem to

those who are devoted to the ideal! For if the external forms of

institutions and laws respond to the pressure of deeper changes taking

place, they cannot produce those changes: a new impetus must always come

from the interior. To begin with, it certainly appears that the adoption

of a constitution or of laws that give official expression to the

victory of that part of the nation which is demanding its rights would

ensure the progress that had been achieved. Yet it is possible that the

result will be precisely the opposite. While it is true that any charter

or laws that are agreed to by the insurgents may sanction the liberty

that has been won, it is also true that they will limit it, and therein

lies the danger. They determine the precise limit at which the victors

must stop, and this inevitably becomes the point of departure for a

retreat. For a situation is never absolutely stationary, and if movement

does not occur in the direction of progress, it will occur on the side

of repression. The immediate consequence of law is to lull those who

have imposed it during their temporary triumph, to drain from zealous

individuals the personal energy that animated them in their victorious

efforts, and to transfer it to others, to professional legislators and

to conservatives—in other words, to the very enemies of all progressive

change. Moreover, the people are conservative at heart, and the game of

revolution does not please them for long. They accept evolution because

they are not suspicious of it; since they are unaware of it, it is

unlikely to arouse their displeasure. Having become legalists, the

former rebels are in part satisfied. They enter the ranks of the

“friends of order,” and reaction regains the upper hand until the

arrival of new groups of revolutionaries who are not tied to the system,

and who, aided by the mistakes or follies of the government, smash

another hole in the ancient edifice.

As soon as an institution is established, even if it should be only to

combat flagrant abuses, it creates them anew through its very existence.

It has to adapt to its bad environment, and in order to function, it

must do so in a pathological way. Whereas the creators of the

institution follow only noble ideals, the employees that they appoint

must consider above all their remuneration and the continuation of their

employment. Far from desiring the success of the endeavor, in the end

their greatest desire is that the goal should never be achieved.[11]

[Tehran, Baharistan palace hall

where the youngest of Parliaments meets.]

It is no longer a question of accomplishing the task, but only of the

profits that it brings and the honors that it confers. For example, a

commission of engineers is in charge of investigating the complaints of

landowners who were displaced by the construction of the aqueduct of the

Avre. It would seem very simple first to study these complaints and then

to respond in all fairness. But no—they begin by taking a few years to

do a general survey of the region, a task that had already been done,

and done well at that. Time passes, expenses accumulate, and the

complaints get worse. How often has it happened that the funds allocated

for some public work are notoriously insufficient, scarcely enough to

maintain the scaffolding, yet the engineers run up fees as if useful

work were being accomplished? How many years were necessary for that

tireless association, the Loire Navigable, to obtain the authorization

to create a channel in the riverbed at its own expense by constructing

relatively inexpensive groins? The state would only consider works

costing millions, and twenty years later the matter would probably still

be under study, like so many other projects that are vital for the

intelligent use of French land.

The Law is decreed by the Parliament, which arises from the People, in

whom national sovereignty resides. The freer the country, the more

venerable its elected legislative body, and the more important the free

examination of all the implications of liberty. And no institution is

more deserving of critique than parliamentary government.

The Parliament was undeniably an instrument of progress for the nation

that gave birth to it, and one can understand the admiration that

Montesquieu developed through studying the functioning of the British

system, which is so simple, and therefore so logical. Later, during the

National Assembly of 1789 and the Convention, the Parliament passed

through its heroic period in France, and on the whole, played a rather

positive role in the history of the gradual liberation of the

individual. Since then, it has spread to all countries of the world,

including the Negro republics of Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Liberia. Only

Russia (1905), Turkey, China, the European colonies of exploitation, and

a few other states remain without national representation. The

institution has become diversified in different countries, demonstrating

shortcomings in some cases and strengths in others, but one finds

everywhere a profound divergence between the evolution of a people and

that of its legislative body.

Even if one sets aside systems with poll taxes and plural voting,

ignores the fact that with rare exceptions the feminine half of the

population is not “represented” at all, and considers only universal

suffrage that is honestly applied, one still cannot claim that the laws

voted on by the majority of the elected representatives, who are

themselves selected by the majority of the voters, express the opinion

of the majority of electors. In fact, the opposite is often true. This

defect, which is purely mathematical, might be negligible if the state

contained only two factions, since the losses and gains would balance

out on the whole, but it becomes so much more serious as life

intensifies and opinions become more diverse. Yet the Swiss are alone in

conferring on the entire electorate the final adoption or rejection of

each new law.

Except in very rare cases, the spectacle presented by countries during

an election would hardly delight a man of principles. Whether an

electoral committee drafts the candidate, or whether he violates his own

modesty, ambitions inevitably emerge, and machinations, extravagant

promises, and lies have free rein. Moreover, it is certainly not the

most honest candidate who has the best chance of winning. Since the

legislators must be knowledgeable about all sorts of problems—local and

global, financial and educational, technical and moral—no particular

ability recommends the candidate to the voters. The winner may owe his

success to a certain provincial popularity, his good-natured qualities,

his oratorical skills, or his organizational talents, but frequently he

is also indebted to his wealth, his family connections, or even the

terror that he can inspire as a great industrialist or large property

owner. Most often, he will be a man of the party; he will be asked

neither to involve himself in public works, nor to facilitate human

relations, but rather to fight against one faction or another. In short,

the composition of the legislature does not at all reflect that of the

nation. It will be generally inferior in moral qualities, since it is

dominated by professional politicians.

Once elected, the representative is in fact independent of his electors.

It is left up to him to decide on the thousand issues of each day

according to his own conscience, and if he does not take the side of his

constituents, there exists no recourse against his vote. Far from having

any accountability during the four, seven, or nine years of his mandate,

and well aware that he can now commit crimes with impunity, the elected

official finds himself immediately exposed to all sorts of seductions on

behalf of the ruling classes. The newcomer is initiated into the

legislative traditions under the leadership of the veteran

parliamentarians, adopts the esprit de corps, and is solicited by big

industry, high officials, and above all, international finance. Even if

the parliament happens to be composed of a majority of honest people, it

develops a peculiar mentality based entirely on negotiations,

compromises, recantations, dealings that must not reach the ears of the

general public, and bargaining in the corridors that is covered up by

brilliant jousting between skilled orators. All noble character is

debased, all sincere conviction contaminated, and all honest intention

destroyed.

Thus it is not surprising that so many men refuse to help sustain such

an environment by means of their vote and to cooperate in the “conquest

of state power.” The revolutionaries at least realize that the forms of

the past will endure as long as the workers support their existence and

compromise with them, even if only to modify them. They can only deplore

the naïveté of those who think that they can “make the Revolution armed

to the teeth with ballots.” In order to maintain this illusion, one must

ignore the real weakness of this allegedly sovereign parliament, closing

one’s eyes to the far more powerful institutions that gather around it,

playing with it like a cat with a mouse.

It is this complexity of government that makes any radically political

revolution extremely difficult. The old survivals have all been

confined, concentrated in so many secondary states, true octopuses that

live on the organism of the general State and at its expense: the nation

is dies off because of their prosperity. A nominal revolution can have

no effect if it does not also erode these corporations, which unite an

absolute solidarity of particular and collective interests. As soon as

one of these professions is solidly constituted as an official and

sacrosanct corporation, its inevitable tendency is to say and believe

itself infallible and to reserve to itself absolutely the discussions

and decisions which have been declared by the king, the custom or the

law as being within its purview. This is how the Church claimed not only

the monopoly of the salvation of souls but also that of science: apart

from priests or people of “clergy” that is to say people of knowledge,

no one had the right to talk about things that were meant to be beyond

their reach; the knowledge of human nature makes it possible to affirm

without fear that in a number of circumstances priests brought heresy

accusations much more out of professional jealousy than out of holy

ardor for the faith. The same infallibility can be found in other

professions, across all levels of society to the various workers’

corporations, which held to their professional privileges with patriotic

fierness, not only because of the commercial interest they had in

remaining the only suppliers of certain products, but also by virtue of

the pride they inspired in the exclusive possession of the secrets and

practices of their industry. We know that in the past one form of dough

belonged to the baker and that another form was the property of the

pastry chef. A further step in this direction, that is to say the

religious and social consecration of these divisions between

professions, jobs, trades, and caste was created in the West as in

ancient Egypt and in present-day India.

[Ottawa, the Parliament of the dominion of canada

North of the city, flows the Ottawa River.]

And yet this esprit de corps, which is one of the scourges of modern

society, had greatness in its period of evolution, when, for the

conquest or defense of independence or freedom, it demanded a sense of

duty, dedication, collective honor. Men who have become brothers are

bound by this not to be unworthy in the eyes of one another and of those

who have witnessed their pact. The bond that unites them must not be

broken, even in the sight of death. How often, in the battles of

primitive times, warriors were attached by chains, so as to form a

single body, a gigantic individual, destined to conquer or to die as a

whole! Even modern military history, which, is not even related to men

fighting for a freely chosen cause, is full of accounts which testify to

the close solidarity of courage between companions together by chance

under a same flag, in the same body, having for tradition the contempt

of death! “Make the Guard give all it has!” Such was, in various forms,

the order of the general-in-chief in the supreme struggles. A statistic,

carefully compiled for the British army, establishes that the figure of

the mortality of troops during battles, a true measure of courage in the

face of guns, increases with the traditional reputation of regiments,

with the Highlanders coming at the top of the list.

This esprit de corps of the soldier who devotes himself out of pride

forms the natural transition between the primitive feeling of free men,

who had given themselves entirely to a beloved cause, and the current

esprit de corps of companies and State administrations whose members are

united for the defense, the continuation, the increase of their

privileges. Let us judge by that the prefession which of all of them

certainly contains the highest proportion of superior men, since it

requires the most in-depth studies, requires more careful experience and

appeals the most to human sympathy, the medical profession. However, it

suffices to read the statutes of the provincial societies, by which the

“men of the art” commit themselves to one another, to see that they too

have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the esprit de corps and that

devotion to the suffering public is the least pressing of their

concerns. The doctor is at the same time a friend, this precious adviser

who knows how to read in your body and to whom affection, the sagacious

practice of the life make it possible to read also in your soul. This

doctor brings with him as much consolation and strength, as the hunter

of the sick, the speculator in treatments and drugs, the inventor and

the ingenious propagator of new defects is a dangerous accomplice. The

monopoly, not to cure but to treat at random, is claimed by him with a

singular tenacity, and if, sometimes, he is forced to welcome as a

colleague a Pasteur or some other discoverer of new paths, of what

arrogance he reject the humble rebutters, especially those who treat the

sick and wounded free of charge. However, whatever may be said, the magi

and the wizards, sons of ancient magicians and shamans, are not all

charlatans; traditional remedies, kept in a few families for the

treatment of this or that disease, are not always harmful drugs,

although no first-class pharmacist has stamped them; the herbs, the

plasters of the good old women and the savages can bring cures where the

most modern medical solutions remain impotent. Terutak, the “doctor” of

Apemama Island (Gilbert Archipelago), treats R. L. Stevenson for a cold;

what licensed scientist could act more simply and more radically, [12] a

sacred enclosure, a few magnetic passes, a deep sleep, from which the

patient wakes up cured. “The diplomas are a guarantee,” we are told, but

are they not rather a mystification, because they falsely affirm to us

the knowledge of the ignorant who knew how to recite sentences of some

manual. Examiners themselves say exams are worthless formalities.

Of these states within a state, the most august, of course, is the one

that once wanted to be absolute master and still aims for a universal

empire. It’s the clergy. It has only yielded step by step in his age-old

struggle, and step by step it would seek to regain all the lost ground,

if science did not intervene, for it loves power dearly and has the

experience of it. But, leaving it the purely spiritual character in

which we want to lock it up, there is another caste that asks only to

replace it. Although emanating directly from the State, the magistracy

does constitute a second clergy, both through the solidarity of its

members, the pride of its attitude, the supernatural character it loves

to give itself. This caste does not represent God on earth, but

personifies the Law, which is also a deity, and has taken as its symbol

tablets of stone, on which are engraved words which are said to last

forever. Nothing can erase this ancient writing traced by the lightning

itself on the Sinai or any other thundering mountain; in the same way

the judgments of the magistrates must appear infallible. The scales they

hold in their hands weigh, without mistake, to the last speck of dust,

and the edge of their sword cuts off only guilty heads. At least, that’s

what it was once believed and what they themselves still claim.

Generations go by without the pity of the people making them reform

iniquitous judgments. The majesty of justice demands that they cannot be

wrong. Moreover, the state recognizes this since they are irremovable.

But this Law which they seek to represent, and which the popular indeed

imagined as an institution of eternal origin older than man, this Law,

who are its authors? Obviously all the privileged, considered as a

whole, collaborate in the making of the legal decrees which protect

their interests and their property, but, in this work, the big part of

invention, arrangement and drafting goes to the magistrates, who are the

only custodians of the grimoire in which these things are written.

N° 556. France and its Chamber of Deputies.

[On the left, the 18 million heads of families are distributed,

according to the information from the 1901 census. On the right, are the

members of the Legislative Assembly elected in 1906: 120 landowners; 119

lawyers; 126 members of other liberal professions (46 doctors, 40

journalists and publicists, 26 professors, etc.); 93 former officials

(26 officers, 24 magistrates, 19 notaries and attorneys, etc.); 78

traders and manufacturers (12 traders, 27 industry leaders, 18

engineers, 12 workers, etc.). Fifty deputies are missing whose

occupation is not given.]

They are the ones who prepare the bills that the ministers support in

Parliament and who, when these texts are fought, take them back in the

background with the ulterior motive of not modifying their deep meaning,

while changing terms. In the discussion, they are also the ones who fix

the momentary meaning of the sentences, even if it means interpreting

them differently when the interests of the caste demand it. Moreover, in

most parliamentary assemblies the proportion of lawyers is out of all

natural relation to other classes of society. Through their former

“seated” magistrates and especially by the ambitious youth of the

lawyers, also initiated into the language and the tricks of the basoche

[13], the lawyers have the large part in the national representation.

No. 557. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its

Parliament

[This diagram is drawn up, for the population, according to the English

census of 1901 for the composition of the House of Commons, according to

the figures recorded by Ed. Demolins, ten years ago: 47 civil servants,

66 former officers, 107 members of the liberal professions, 100 traders,

131 industrialists, 132 landowners. The names of these last two

categories are instead of each other on the right of the diagram.]

A curious diagram introduced by M. Demolins in his work on the

Superiority of the Anglo-Saxons (p. 222) shows how little the so-called

“national” representation of France corresponds to the very constitution

of society and what “conventional lie” it is actually. The deputies who

did not belong to the bourgeois class from their birth are in a tiny

minority, one, two dozen, three at most. The others can be broken down

into five headings, four of which are roughly equivalent in number:

landowners, among whom delegates owning small property are rare or

non-existent; the lawyers; other members of the liberal professions

(journalists, doctors and teachers); then the retired or resigned civil

servants (officers of the land and sea armies, magistrates, diplomats),

in whose ranks one can place notaries and attorneys; finally a fifth

category, less numerous, would include financiers, manufacturers and

traders.

Thanks to the alliance of smooth talkers and rich people, who still

constitute the majority, regardless of the parliamentary seesaw game,

the laws, the incoherent set which represents this divinity called the

Law, are always guaranteed to remain in accordance with “the good

principles.” Then, after the preparatory period, comes that of the

application, and it is then that the judiciary can do wonders by

choosing from the arsenal of legal precedents the arguments that suit it

to whitewash or blacken the accused, depending on whether he is “mighty

or miserable.” Terrible prerogative that of deciding evil and good, of

classifying men at the minute among the good citizens or among the

outcasts. It is not possible that the judge, armed with this superhuman

power, is not overcome by the vertigo of his moral omnipotence. Like the

clergy, to whom he resembles so much and whom he readily supports, he

indulges in the illusion of his perfect superiority and, in his

conflicts with the other bodies of the State, he decides with serenity

in favor of his traditional interests. How much simpler is the

magistracy of Apemama Island, already cited [14]: a single official, a

first-rate shooter: King Ternbinok, both master and owner, judge and

executioner; a single warning before the ultimate sentence catches the

offender unawares and forces him to search his conscience, discharging a

repeating rifle that makes the bullet whistle in the ear and splash the

earth around!

Another caste, of recent origin, competes with priests and magistrates

for alleged infallibility. This is the class of licensed engineers. If

she possessed the majesty of duration, she would have every chance of

achieving supreme domination. Among these characters, the esprit de

corps could not be more firmly hammered, each of them ranks

hierarchically, both as a soldier, as an administrator, as a scholar,

each surrounded, so to speak, by a fort with three remparts. Raised as

soldiers in State schools, they claim to follow the rules of discipline

to demand obedience; civil servants, they speak for the government and

for the law; learned, they do not admit that their personal conceptions

be discussed: each of their words must be held to be the truth itself.

Their decisions are therefore never limited, even when they meet before

them unanimous populations, imbued with traditional experience and

perfect knowledge of the place. No doubt they must often secretly admit

that one or another of their “dear comrades” has committed some gross

blunder, but, above all, it is important not to let the public get into

the secret, to claim the wrongdoing as a masterpiece, and above all, it

is necessary to prevent at all costs that a man from outside, an

individual who did not go through the same schools, allows himself to

correct the work failed by an elected official. Although strictly closed

trades have been abolished in countries of European culture, the

monopoly has nonetheless been maintained or reconstituted in all

professions with degrees and hierarchy. As a result, critically

important work is sometimes done in a way that is absolutely contrary to

the public good. Thus in Le Havre, despite all the pilots, all the

sailors who frequent the port, the engineers, dictating their will from

Paris, have constantly refused to provide the local trade with a superb

harbor, moreover, it would easy to dike, since the very foundations

exist 3 kilometers from the current coast: it is the debris of the old

cliff, which protects an area of several hundred hectares at low tide.

Sufficiently raised and provided with quays, they would give Le Havre an

admirable outer harbor. However, engineers prefer to spend four times

the amount needed for diking, to dig inland new basins of secondary

importance compared to the harbor. [15]

But priests, magistrates, licensed engineers and other officials would

have to moderate their pride if the State, of which they are a part, did

not rely on force, this major “reason” which dispenses it from being

reasonable. In almost all European-type nations, a very considerable

part of the able-bodied youth is recruited annually from the mass of the

nation and methodically trained in the art of killing. Every measure is

taken to ensure that the great murderous machine functions at will and

always in the specific interest of the ruling classes. It is true that

the armies have not kept up with the progress of industrial organization

and that they represent in many ways a legacy of the time of Louis XIV,

with heavy and outdated forms. We can see this lack of adaptation of the

armies to modern life by comparing, for example, the military forces of

France and Central Europe to those of Switzerland, where efforts have

been made to organize the troops in truly defensive forces, without

complete interruption of their civic and industrial life. To keep up

with science, the military system would have to continuously evolve. Far

from it, each day makes the lack of balance more obvious.

[J. Kuhn, Paris.

Le Havre, entrance of the port at high tide]

Along with the terrifying power of modern weapons, so too has the

relative value of individual initiative; however, how to develop this

initiative without intelligence, and how to develop intelligence while

maintaining passive obedience? How can we prevent each soldier from

realizing, in his heart of hearts, the ridiculous flawedness of the

military organization and the futility, inanity of the efforts demanded

of him? How could he not feel more deeply every day the weight of the

sacrifice he makes by giving up work and family for three years, or even

for two years? And, as no citizen can escape personal service, how can

we prevent the certainty that the standing army has had its day from

spreading throughout the entire nation?

But, after all, has not the main goal of the army been achieved, to have

at hand obedient bayonets in unlimited numbers, less to oppose them to

the enemy than to keep at bay a people always ready to criticize, to

threaten, or even to make a revolution? The traditions of the army

demand that the chiefs always be decorative figures, distinguished as in

the Middle Ages by the abundance of feathers and embroidery, the

violence of colors. Generals in England are almost all upperclass men

with a lot of money to spend on horses, tournaments and feasts. [16]

[J. Kuhn, Paris.

The harbor of Le Havre in calm weather.]

In Germany, Austria, Russia, they are mainly lords with ancient coats of

arms; in France, most of them call themselves “sons of the Crusaders,”

and how many of them, to testify that they represent reaction in its

essence, pride themselves of belonging to the families of the foreigners

who fought against France during the First Revolution. In Switzerland

itself, the officers’ cadre, permanently retained, constitute a

veritable military aristocracy. Left to their own devices, the armies

never took sides for the liberty of a people against hereditary tyrants

or usurpers: on every occasion they put their strength in the service of

some despot. Used to passive obedience, they never understood a free

society; enslaved themselves, to leaders, they helped in the enslavement

of the civilian population.

Even when the army is not employed directly as a “great gendarmerie” to

serve against the people, either in political agitations, or in economic

crises of work and strikes, it is none the less trained to be hostile

against the crowd of unarmed citizens. The sublime contempt of

Napoleon’s officers for civilians or “pekins” is well known, and this

contempt is still found, although to a lesser degree, in all armies,

even among soldiers who readily believe in the beauty of “plume,” to the

“prestige of the uniform,” if only to try to compensate in this way for

the humiliations they have to suffer from their superiors. This contempt

breeds hatred, and how often do we not see the army, engaged in a

so-called national war, yet act in a manner completely hostile to the

interests and wishes of the nation?

Thus, during the Franco-German War of 1870, Bazaine allowed the 170,000

men entrusted to him to be locked up in Metz because he wanted to “keep

an army at the eventual disposal of his emperor.” Likewise, during the

siege of Paris, the officers commanding the forts willingly excited the

hatred and mockery of their soldiers against the armed citizens; the

army would have felt dishonored by a victory of the National Guard [17].

Finally, in peacetime, the preponderant influence of the military castes

causes pensioners and invalids to be assigned, to the great detriment of

the public service, many functions for which the army regime has not

prepared them in any way. In Algeria, in Sudan, people go so far as to

sulk, to discourage, to persecute even explorers who are wrong only not

to belong to the army or to the Church.

Regarding the crimes which occurred on various occasions in the colonial

armies and which caused a sensation of universal horror throughout the

world, it has been suggested that the influence of the tropical sun

could give rise to a special disease, “sudanite,” which would manifest

itself especially among the officers and would make them commit

abominable acts without apparent cause. This invention of a disease

peculiar to military officers, which has the great advantage of being

able to have them pardoned by the court martial, and partially even by

public opinion, recalls the discovery made for theft in novelty stores,

when it is committed by great ladies having no need of the objects they

carry:

No. 558. Monarchies of Central Africa and Sudan.

[According to Léo Frobenius — Geographische Kulturkunde, p. 9 et seq., —

in Central Africa and Sudan there is a geographical arrangement of forms

of government. In the center, the hunter in the equatorial forest, then

the area of farmers living in the communal regime, surrounded by that of

agricultural monarchies: Achanti, Dahomey, Benin, Adamaua, Zande or

Niam-Niam, Mombuttu or Mangbattu, Kassongo, Chinga, Western Baluba (MY =

Muata Yamvo), Bakuba, Eastern Baluba, Katanga. Still outside are the

pastoral peoples who, in the east, have established empires: Uganda,

Unyoro, Rwanda, Urundi, etc.]

it is then a simple case of kleptomania, which arised not from the

courts but from medicine. However, among the officers released in some

immense colonial domain, the criminal madness is easily explained

without resorting to “sudanite”: the absolute power exerted on beings

considered as being hardly men and without one having to fear the

judgment of an equal, the disapproval of a single individual whose

conscience or thought is respected, this power quickly transforms into

Roman-style imperialism or sheer villainy.

Organized for evil, the army can only function for evil. During the war,

it destroys everything with iron and fire, and the country which

maintains it, which provides it with the elements and the weapons,

spends all its present resources for it and burdens the future with as

many loans as the bankers of the world will agree to. Would not Japan

have profited from Mukden’s victory, and would the Manchurian War not be

still going (1905), if its credit had not been exhausted? It is true

that conflicts between great powers have become rare events, each of

them rightly fearing the formidable efforts that such struggles demand,

but the proud States compensate themselves by crushing here and there a

few distant enemies, too weak to resist, and, moreover, what is called

peace and which is a continual preparation for war, always remains a pit

of expenditure. The soldiers trained for exercise and maneuver are

infinitely more expensive than if they had continued to be producers of

bread or its labor equivalents. Many of them unlearn the practices of

regular work and cannot return to them upon leaving the regiment;

finally, whether in peace or in war, and perhaps even more so during

peace, the unfortunate, placed by sexual isolation in unnatural

conditions, fatally corrupt themselves and communicate their vices and

their illnesses to civilians with whom they are in contact. Have we not

seen, in the Indies, war operations completely suspended because the

regiments, ravaged by contagious diseases, could not leave their

barracks and their hospitals?

One might fear that, under the effort of military constraint, the

principle of which, obedience without question, is absolutely opposed to

any awakening, to any initiative of the people, one might fear that the

fatal destiny of European nations was complete enslavement followed by

death, if the army was strictly one in its intimate organization, as it

is according to the conferences that the soldiers are obliged to undergo

and in which each failure to comply with the instructions, the orders of

the leaders, is punctuated, like a would be mentra, with the threat of

death sentence. But the army is not one; the bottom does not hold with

the top by a desired adhesion on both sides; the whole does not form a

“big family,” as we often repeat. On the contrary, feelings of aversion

dominate between officers and “their” men. It could not be otherwise.

The overwhelming majority of officers belong to the castes of the

nobility and the bourgeoisie; they lived alien to the poor people; they

followed a special course; With some exceptions, they were never

second-class soldiers, and for a long time the most effective way to

absolutely avoid cohabitation in the barracks was even to embrace the

military career; we can say more: officers coming from the bottom ranks

do not generally achieve equal consideration to that enjoyed by their

colleagues coming from military schools. The officer dominates the

low-ranking soldier so high that cordiality becomes impossible: the

conditions of the soldier’s life are regulated by non-commissioned

officers, a hybrid class, despised by some, hated by others. Even on

warships, where, it seems, space is so limited that contact becomes

inevitable, even there, and there above all, the separation is complete

between those in command and the crew which must obey every order;

nowhere is the brutal stiffness of the caste felt more keenly: the

leaders seem to feel the need to increase moral distance to compensate

for the lack of material distance.

It is thanks to this absolute dividing line between officers and “men”

that society has nevertheless been able to develop for the better. If

war, with all its particular life of horrors and massacres, was the real

occupation of the army, the latter would find its monstrous unity

outside the social body, but fortunately great international conflicts

are rare and the duplication occurs between the two elements of the

military organization: the caste of officers is associated with the

other ruling castes, while, for its part, the troop nevertheless

gravitates towards the mass of the people from which it was drawn and

where she will return after a few hundred days of which each soldier

desirous of freedom keeps the exact count in his memory. The contrast is

sharp enough that the big bosses can’t dare to try anything, and they

are forced to endure this monstrous thing in their eyes, the

interference of civilians in their affairs. Republican symbols, flags,

songs, formulas shock them brutally, but fate forces them to put up with

it. They command, but only in appearance; they too must become flexible

to a new order of things. They believe they are free and the current

carries them towards an unknown future.

The code which governs the army, from the general to the simple soldier,

presents itself with a certain unity, but in fact, two morals, two

completely different systems, apply to the elected officials of the

higher body and to the crowd of non-officers. The latter are ruled by

terror, and the sentences which strike them are even accompanied by

traditional tortures, imposed by the pleasure of irresponsible butchers.

As for the officers, they know themselves to be gentlemen, and as

courteous colleagues, in good company, they regulate the breaches of

their peers of military duty by punishments which nevertheless remain

decorative and testify of a continuing respect for the punished officer.

Frightful dramas take place, however, following crimes, betrayals,

personal rivalries; but immediately afterwards the great leaders seek to

repair what they call “the honor of the army” which is simply the

appearance of infallibility which they must enjoy in the eyes of the

ignorant crowd. Thus, in this memorable “Dreyfus affair” where the most

serious sentence had fallen on a man certainly innocent, we saw most of

the army chiefs unite immediately, not to seek or to proclaim the truth,

but on the contrary to stifle it: at all costs, even by forgery and

murder, attempts were made to safeguard the collective honor of the

body, which required the sacrifice of a pure victim, “too happy, it was

said, to be able to serve to the salvation of a sacred institution”.

Anyway , the soul of the soldier has been revealed, and the criticism of

the observer, increasingly supported by more numerous facts, finds that

the body of the army, like that of all other bodies established in the

State at the expense of the nation, is a real canker which tends to gain

incessantly over the healthy part of the people and which can only

disappear through the effect of a decisive revolution: reforms are

insufficient in such case. You do not reform evil, you remove it.

But fear is a good advisor. The various castes know what they have to

fear in the possibly near future and band together cautiously to ward

off the danger as long as possible. In this regard, and despite the more

or less lasting setback which results from it for society as a whole, it

is to be welcomed that historical development has brought in so-called

civilized countries a more intimate alliance between governments against

peoples and, in each State, a closer complicity between the constituted

bodies, clergy, magistracy, army, against the exploitable mass of the

population: the situations have become clear and the events have taken a

logical aspect.

[Independent state of the Congo, King Zappo-Zab and the great

dignitaries of his court.]

More and more, the leaders and the ruling classes understand their

interest in the methodical oppression of the crowd of subjects, without

the abrupt upheavals of war, and their main concern is to use their

entire apparatus of defense against the people, in case it shows the

slightest hint of independence. The pastors of the peoples, those who we

have become accustomed to designate, with Octave Mirbeau, under the name

of “bad shepherds,” tend to constitute themselves in a great Council, at

the service and on behalf of the anonymous society of rich shareholders

who keep them in power. [18]

Likewise, in the various States, the organs of power, once completely

distinct and living on a background of their own traditions, locked

themselves in their jealous esprit de corps and professed a morality of

their own, all in the glorification of their special caste; but these

various hierarchies, which were jealous of each other and willingly

detested each other, felt the need to unite against the common enemy,

against the free thinker who studied and despised them, against the man

who Bossuet qualifies as heretic: “he who has an opinion of his own,

follows his own thought and his particular feeling,” and above all

against the conscious rebel, who does not abdicate his right to defend

himself, and has understood the duty to act for him and for his

companions of suffering: “Against the enemy the claim is eternal” [19]

At all times, there have been rebels, but almost always they were

unfortunate people, stupefied by poverty, who, unable to do otherwise,

blindly rushed on the master, but the latter now sees claimants rising

before him who know the reason for their misery and the means to get out

of it, “heretics” who, in the fight against routine, combine their

thought, their feeling, their science towards to collective action,

rebels who despise the vanities of power and the trivialities of wealth,

and are often genuinely superior to their bosses, not only in sheer

understanding of things but also in moral qualities.

Thus all classes of officials and rulers taking their share of the

budget are forced to give up their proud appearance of superiority to

face the danger: soldiers and priests, magistrates and parasites who

live from the exploitation of laborers ally for their common benefit,

all under the direction of the prelate, with a smooth word, with a

subtle conscience, always ready to distinguish good from evil or to mix

them skillfully.

[London, jobless workers begging with their tools]

The same phenomenon occurs on both sides: the concentration of minds and

wills around two opposing principles; on the one hand, authority, which

has its logical form in the Catholicism taught by the Jesuits, on the

other hand, freedom, which recognizes the duty of everyone to follow the

law of their own conscience. Little by little, the elements come out of

the crowd of slaves without an idea, and move towards one of these

poles; intermediate opinions, trying to reconcile the two extremes,

evaporate in the heat of controversy; they only constitute passing

forms. In politics, the parties of the “left” exfoliate, the “advanced”

groups gradually fall back and settle towards the “center,” those of the

center towards the “right,” as the popular demands become more serious

and are expressed more clearly.

All the movements for emancipation stand together, although the

insurgents are often unaware of each other, and they even hold on to

their atavistic enmities and resentments. From England and Germany to

France and Italy, there are many workers who despise one another, though

this does not prevent them from helping each another in their common

struggle against capitalist oppression. Similarly, among the women who

have thrown themselves impetuously into the battle for equality between

the sexes, there were at first a very significant number who, with their

rather patrician or high-brow tendencies, harbored a pious disdain of

the worker in his worn-out or dirty clothes. Nevertheless, since the

early days of “feminism,” we have witnessed the heroism of brave women

who go to the prostitutes to join them in solidarity to protest the

abominable treatment to which they have been subjected, and the shocking

bias of the law in favor of the corrupters and against their victims.

Risking insults and the most unsavory contacts, they dared to enter the

brothels and form an alliance with their scorned sisters against the

shameful injustice of society. Consequently, the coarse laughter and

vulgar insults that greeted their first steps gave way to a profound

admiration on the part of many who had mocked them. Here is a courage of

a different order than that of the fierce soldier who, seized with a

bestial fury, lunges with his sword or fires his rifle.

Obviously, all of the claims of women against men are just: the demands

of the female worker who is not paid as much as the male worker for the

same labor, the demands of the wife who is punished for “crimes” that

are mere “peccadilloes” when committed by the husband, and the demands

of the female citizen who is barred from all overt political action, who

obeys laws that she has not helped to create, and who pays taxes to

which she has not consented. She has an absolute right to recrimination,

and the women who occasionally take revenge are not to be condemned,

since the greatest wrongs are those committed by the privileged. But

ordinarily, a woman does not avenge herself at all. To the contrary, at

her conventions she naïvely petitions legislators and high officials,

waiting for salvation through their deliberations and decrees; however,

experience teaches women year after year that freedom does not come

begging, but rather must be conquered. It teaches them, moreover, that

in reality their cause merges with that of all oppressed people, whoever

they may be. Women will need to occupy themselves henceforth with all

people who are wronged, and not only with the unfortunate women forced

by poverty to sell their bodies. Once all are united, all the voices of

the weak and the downtrodden will thunder with a tremendous outcry that

will indeed have to be heard.

Make no mistake about it. Those who seek justice would have neither a

chance of realizing it in the future nor a single ray of hope to console

them in their misery if the league of all enemy classes had no

defections and remained as solid as the human wall of an infantry

formation. However, countless renegades leave their ranks. Some go

without hesitation to augment the camp of the rebels, while others

disperse here and there, somewhere between the ranks of the innovators

and the conservatives. In any case, they are too far from their original

position to be brought back at the moment of battle. It is perfectly

natural that organized bodies are thus weakened by a loss of their best

elements through a continual migration. The study of the interconnected

facts and laws revealed by contemporary science, the rapid

transformation of society, new conditions in the environment, and the

need for mental balance in those who are logically attracted to the

search for truth—all this creates for the young a milieu completely

different from that entailed by a traditional society with its slow and

painful evolution. It is true that the representatives of ancient

monopolies also gain recruits, especially among those who, tired of

suffering for their ideas, finally want to try out the joys and

privileges of this world, to eat when they are hungry and take their

turn living as parasites. But whatever the particular worth of a given

individual who changes his ideals and practices, it is certain that the

revolutionary offensive benefits by this exchange of men. It receives

those who have conviction and determination, young people with boldness

and will, whereas those whom life has defeated head for the camp of the

parties of reaction and bring with them their discouragement and their

faintheartedness.

The state and the various elements that constitute it have the great

disadvantage of acting according to a mechanism so regular and so

ponderous that it is impossible for them to modify their movements and

adapt to new realities. Not only does bureaucracy not assist in the

economic workings of society, but it is doubly harmful to it. First, it

impedes individual initiative in every way and even prevents its

emergence; second, it delays, halts, and immobilizes the works that are

entrusted to it. The cogs of the administrative machine work precisely

in the opposite direction from those functioning in an industrial

establishment. The latter strives to reduce the number of useless

articles, and to produce the greatest possible results with the simplest

mechanism. By contrast, the administrative hierarchy does its utmost to

multiply the number of employees and subordinates, directors, auditors,

and inspectors. Work becomes so complicated as to be impossible. As soon

as business arises that is outside the normal routine, the

administration is as disturbed as a company of frogs would be if a stone

were thrown into their swamp. Everything becomes a pretext for a delay

or a reprimand. One withholds his signature because he is jealous of a

rival who might benefit from it; another because he fears the

displeasure of a supervisor; a third holds back his opinion in order to

give the impression of importance. Then there are the indifferent and

the lazy. Weather, accidents, and misunderstandings are all used as

excuses for the results of ill will. Finally, files disappear under a

layer of dust in the office of some malevolent or lazy manager. Useless

formalities and sometimes the physical impossibility of providing all of

the desired signatures halts business, which gets lost like a parcel en

route between capitals.

The most urgent projects cannot be accomplished because the sheer force

of inertia of the bureaucracy remains insurmountable. This is the case

with the island of Ré, which is in danger of some day being split in two

by a storm. On the ocean side, it has already lost a strip of land

several kilometers wide in some places, and currently all that remains

at the most threatened point is an isthmus of less than one hundred

meters. The row of dunes that forms the backbone of the island is very

weak there. Considering all the facts, it is inevitable that one day,

during a strong equinoctial tide, a raging westerly wind will push the

waves across the peduncle of sand and open up a large strait through the

swamps and fields. Everyone agrees that it is urgent to construct a

strong seawall at the weak point on the island; however, some time ago a

small fort was built, a worthless construction now abandoned to the

bats, without even a man garrisoned there. No matter, it is in principle

under the supervision of the corps of engineers, and consequently all

public works are necessarily halted in its vicinity. This part of the

island will have to perish.

[The coast of the island of Ré near Whale Point and the Lost Marshes]

Not far from there, the waters of a gulf have intruded into the salt

marshes and changed them into a shallow estuary. It would be easy to

recover these “Lost Marshes,” and the surrounding residents have

formulated a proposal to do so. But the invasion of the sea has made

state property of the area, and the series of formalities that the

recovery of the land would entail seems so interminable that the

undertaking has become impossible. The lost land will remain lost unless

a revolution abolishes all clumsy intervention from an ignorant and

indifferent state and restores the free management of interests to the

interested parties themselves.

In certain respects, minor officials exercise their power more

absolutely than persons of high rank, who are by their very importance

constrained by a certain propriety. They are bound to respect social

decorum and to conceal their insolence, and this sometimes succeeds in

soothing them and calming them down. In addition, the brutalities,

crimes, or misdemeanors committed by important figures engage everyone’s

attention. The public becomes enthralled with their acts and discusses

them passionately. Often they even risk being removed from office

through the intervention of deliberative bodies and bringing their

superiors down with them. But the petty official need not have the

slightest fear of being held responsible in this way so long as he is

shielded by a powerful boss. In this case, all upper-level

administration, including ministers and even the king, will vouch for

his irreproachable conduct. The uncouth can give free rein to crass

behavior, the violent lash out as they please, and the cruel enjoy

torturing at their leisure. What a hellish life it is to endure the

hatred of a drill sergeant, a jailer, or the warden of a chain gang!

Sanctioned by law, rules, tradition, and the indulgence of his

superiors, the tyrant becomes judge, jury, and executioner. Of course,

while giving vent to his anger, he is always supposed to have dispensed

infallible justice in all its splendor. And when cruel fate has made him

the satrap of some distant colony, who will be able to oppose his

caprice? He joins the ranks of kings and gods.

The arrogant, do-nothing petty bureaucrat who, protected by a metal

grating, can take the liberty of being rude toward anyone; the judge who

exercises his “wit” at the expense of the accused he is about to

condemn; the police who brutally round up people or beat demonstrators;

plus a thousand other arrogant manifestations of authority—this is what

maintains the animosity between the government and the governed. And it

must be noted that these daily acts do not wrap themselves in the mantle

of the law but rather hide behind decrees, memos, reports, regulations,

and orders from the prefect and other officials. The law can be harsh

and indeed unjust, but the worker crosses its path only rarely. In

certain circumstances, he can even go through life without suspecting

that he is subject to it, as when he is unaware that he is paying some

tax. But every time he acts, he is confronted with decisions decreed by

officials whose irresponsibility differs from that of the members of

parliament. The decisions of the former are without recourse and

continually remind the individual of the guardianship that the state

exercises over him.

The number of high and low officials will naturally grow considerably,

in proportion to increases in budgetary resources and to the extent that

the treasury contrives to find new means of extracting additional

revenues from whatever may be taxed. But the proliferation of employees

and staff members results above all from what we like to call

“democracy,” that is, from the participation of the masses in the

prerogatives of power. Each citizen wants his scrap, and the main

preoccupation of those who already have an official post is to classify,

study, and annotate the applications of others who seek a position. The

budget has paid for, and possibly continues to pay for, a forest ranger

on the island of Ouessant, which has a grand total of eight trees—five

in the garden of the curé and three in the cemetery!

So much pressure is exerted on the government by the multitude of

supplicants that the acquisition of distant colonies is due in very

large part to the concern for the distribution of government positions.

One can judge the so-called colonization of many countries by the fact

that in Algeria in 1896 there were a little more than 260,000 French

residing within the territorial boundaries, of which more than 51,000

were officials of all kinds. This constitutes roughly a fifth of the

colonists,[20] yet one must also take into account the 50,000 soldiers

stationed there. This brings to mind the inscription added on a map to

the name of the “town” of Ushuaia, the southernmost urban settlement of

the Americas and of the world: “Seventy-eight inhabitants, all

officials”!

France is an example of such a “democratization” of the state since it

is managed by approximately six hundred thousand participants in the

exercise of sovereign power. But if one adds to the officials in the

strict sense those who consider themselves as such, and who are indeed

invested with certain local or temporary powers, as well as those

distinguished from the mass of the nation through titles or

distinguishing marks, such as the village policemen and the town criers,

not to mention the recipients of decorations and medals, it becomes

apparent that there are more officials than soldiers. Moreover, the

former are, as a group, much more energetic supporters of the government

that pays them. Whereas the soldier obeys orders out of fear, the

official’s motivation stems not only from forced obedience but also from

conviction. Being himself a part of the government, he expresses its

spirit in his whole manner of thinking and in his ambitions. He

represents the state in his own person. Moreover, the vast army of

bureaucrats in office has a reserve force of a still greater army of all

the candidates for offices, supplicants and beggars of favors, friends,

and relations. Just as the rich depend on the broad masses of the poor

and starving, who are similar to them in their appetites and their love

of lucre, so do the masses, who are oppressed, persecuted, and abused by

state employees of all sorts, support the state indirectly, since they

are composed of individuals who are each preoccupied with soliciting

jobs.

[The Powers in China, by Steinlein]

Naturally, this unlimited expansion of power, this minute allocation of

positions, honors, and meager rewards, to the point of ridiculous

salaries and the mere possibility of future remuneration, has two

consequences with opposing implications. On the one hand, the ambition

to govern becomes widespread, even universal, so that the natural

tendency of the ordinary citizen is to participate in the management of

public affairs.

[The Achievers, by J. Forain

”-Yes, my children, it was by depriving myself of my coffee every day

that I became a landowner”]

Millions of men feel a solidarity in the maintenance of the state, which

is their property, their affair. At the same time, the growing debt of

the government, divided into thousands of small entitlements to income,

finds as many champions as it has creditors drawing the value of their

income coupons from quarter to quarter. On the other hand, this state,

divided into innumerable fragments, showering privileges on one or

another individual whom all know and have no particular reason to admire

or fear, but whom they may even despise—this banal government, being all

too well understood, no longer dominates the multitudes through the

impression of terrifying majesty that once belonged to masters who were

all but invisible and who only appeared before the public surrounded by

judges, attendants, and executioners. Not only does the state no longer

inspire mysterious and sacred fear, it even provokes laughter and

contempt. It is through the satirical newspapers, and especially through

the marvelous caricatures that have become one of the most remarkable

forms of contemporary art, that future historians will have to study the

public spirit during the period beginning with the second half of the

nineteenth century. The state perishes and is neutralized through its

very dissemination. Just when all possess it, it has virtually ceased to

exist, and is no more than a shadow of itself.

Institutions thus disappear at the moment when they seem to triumph. The

state has branched out everywhere; however, an opposing force also

appears everywhere. While it was once considered inconsequential and was

unaware of itself, it is constantly growing and henceforth will be

conscious of the work that it has to accomplish. This force is the

liberty of the human person, which, after having been spontaneously

exercised by many primitive tribes, was proclaimed by the philosophers

and successively demanded with varying degrees of consciousness and will

by countless rebels. Presently, the number of rebels is multiplying, and

their propaganda is taking on a character that is less emotional than it

was previously and much more scientific. They enter the struggle more

convinced, more daring, and more confident of their strength, and they

find an environment that offers more opportunities to avoid the grip of

the state. Here is the great revolution that is developing and even

reaching partial fulfillment before our eyes. In the past, society has

functioned through distinct nations, separated by borders and living

under the domination of individuals and classes who claim superiority

over other men. We now see another mode of general evolution that

intermingles with the previous one and begins to replace it in an

increasingly regular and decisive manner. This mode consists of direct

action through the freely expressed will of men who join together in a

clearly defined endeavor, without concern for boundaries between classes

and countries. Each accomplishment that is thus realized without the

intervention of official bosses and outside the state, whose cumbersome

machinery and obsolete practices do not lend themselves to the normal

course of life, is an example that can be used for larger undertakings.

Erstwhile subjects become partners joining together in complete

independence, according to their personal affinities and their relation

to the climate that bathes them and the soil that supports them. They

learn to escape from the leading strings that had guided them so badly,

being in the hands of degenerate and foolish men. It is through the

phenomena of human activity in the arenas of labor, agriculture,

industry, commerce, study, education, and discovery that subjugated

peoples gradually succeed in liberating themselves and in gaining

complete possession of that individual initiative without which no

progress can ever take place.

[1] Reclus refers to Crete’s civil war of 1897 between the Greeks and

Muslims. Six major European powers (Germany, Austria, France, Italy,

Great Britain, and Russia), in addition to Greece and Turkey, became

involved in the conflict and ultimately imposed a peace agreement in

conformity with their will.

[2] Saint-Yves d’Alvaydra, La mission des Juifs, 41. [Reclus’ note]

[3] Pallegoix, Description du royaume de Siam, I, p. 263, 264. [Reclus’

note]

[4] Masson, Secret memoirs of the Court of Saint-Petersbourg, London, H.

S. Nichols. [Reclus’ note]

[5] History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, page 104.

[Reclus’ note]

[6] In English in the original text

[7] Le Temps, 30 août 1872. — A. Letourneau, Evolution de la Morale, p.

122. [Reclus’ note]

[8] In English in the original text

[9] Reclus is punning on taillable, which refers both to taxing and to

cutting.

[10] Gustave Geoffroy, L’Enfermé, 51. [Reclus’ note]

[11] Reclus cites “Herbert Spencer, Introduction to Social Science, ch.

V, 87.” There is, however, no such title. He is apparently referring to

chapter 5 of Spencer’s The Study of Sociology (Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 1961; reprint of the 1880 edition). There, Spencer

comments that “agencies established to get remedies for crying evils,

are liable to become agencies maintained and worked in a considerable

degree, and sometimes chiefly, for the benefit of those who reap income

from them” (75).

[12] In the South Seas, vol II, p. 232–235. [Reclus’ note]

[13] Old french slang for Royal Palace, from “Basilica”

[14]

R. L. Stevenson, In the South Seas, vol. II, p. 199–200. [Reclus’

note]

[15] Fernand Maurice, Le Havre et l’Endiguement de La Rade; — E. Prat,

Enrochement de la rade du Havre [Reclus’ note]

[16]

H. G. Wells, Anticipations. [Reclus’ note]

[17] The National Guard, or Guarde Nationale in French, is the armed

people of Paris, the Paris Commune started from a conflict between the

National Guard and the Army

[18] In French “société anonyme” here literally translated as “anonymous

society” actually also means “public limited company”

[19] « Adversus hostem æterna auctoritas esto. » L. Morosti, Les

Problèmes du paupérisme. [Reclus’ note]

[20] Louis Vignon, La France en Algérie. [Reclus’ note]