THESTATE Its Historic Role FRE:EDOPMRE.SS ONE SHILLING
l . Biblioteca Gino Bianco
THE STATE Its Historic Role; by Peter Kropotkin F!1EEDOM PRESS' Biblioteca Gino Bianco Fondazione Alfryd Lewtn Bibli9teca Gino Bianco Fondo Gino Bianco
Pim Publi.ihed 1903 Reviled Edition Jt1ly 1943 Reprinted November. 1946 Published by FREEDOM PRESS ' 27 Red Lion Street, London, W.C.l. Primed i11 Great Britai11 by The Express Printers, London. ; BibliotecaGino Bianco
Introduction The State: Its Historic Role was written originally as a lecturer. intended to be delivered at the Milles Colonnes Hall in Paris' on March 7,, 1896. For some reason, the lecture was not given, aruf it was later printed in pamphlet form. An English translation was published by Freedom Press in 1903, and reprinted in 1920. The present edition is a somewhat drastic revision of that translation. The State was written in the third period of Kropotkin's active life, the period of mature reflection and creative elucidation of social knowledge which followed his scholastic youth and his revolutionary manhood. In 1886 Kropotkin was released from the French prison to which he had been consigned for his activities in connection witli the French anarchist movement and the reconstituted International. He attempted to settle· in Paris with Elie Redus, like himself a scientist of considerable ability whose research into the life of hUIJlllllity and the evolution· of human · institutions had forced him ;rresistably along th~ road to anarchism. But the French authorities would have nothing- to do with a man they considered· to be so dangerous a revolutionary, and Kropotkin was expelled from France. He found a home in England, which at the time still gave refuge to a· great many of the exiled revolutionaries of the continent. Cut off from the scene of active revolutionary work, he did not give up interest and fall into the lethargy and disillusionment which had submerged so many rebels under similar circumstances. Instead, he applied his scholastic gifts, his scientific training ancj,his revolutionary enthusiasm to the task of erecting a· body of anarchist theoretical writing, and during the next thirty years he lived quietly in his cottage at Harrow, · among his . home-made furniture, cultivating his own garden and producing a· great mass of theoretical books and pamphlets which not only .became classics of revolutionary writing but also had a great influence on the development 9f sociological thought since Kropotkin's day. The influence of Mutual Aid, indeed, went beyQBd both politics and sociology an!i. was probaply ihe major influence in the. recent changes in eyolutionary theory which have tended to .dis~ · credit the Huxleyan and neo-Malthusiarqendency of early DarwWsm, with its emphasis on the bloody struggle for existence, and to accept in its place an evolutionary theory much nearer to that enunciated by Kropotkin. . . · · • Indeed, it might be said.of ~qpotkin, as_Hazlitt saicj,of Godwin, that 'his works are standarq in m~_history of. tl!~ gitellep',- jU~tilS they 3 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
INTRODUCTION live and maintain their vital influence in the growth of revolutionary thought among mankind. · At the time when The State was produced, Kropotkin had Alreadywritten some of his most important works. The Conquest of Bread appeared in 1888, In Russian and French Prisons in 1887 and by the time of the composition of The State, Mutual Aid has already been completed and had appeared in the form of a series of articles in The Nineteenth Century. The State and Mutual Aid were, therefore, composed at the same period, and the theories that dominated Mutual Aid are evident also in the smaller work. Indeed, The State might well be described as an application of the mutual aid theory to a particular human institution. Kropotkin shows how human communities based on mutual aid were successful and prosperous, and how, when they deserted that principle and accepted instead the domination of authority, they failed ,and eventually died while the individuals within them lived progressively ibore unhappily under the domination of the State. Much of this pamphlet repeats in condensed form the information .and arguments to be found in Mutual Aid, and readers would do well .to supplement it by reading the larger work, if they have not already done so. '.'"(kwas•published by Penguin Books at 9d, and a few copies may still be available). But The State differs from Mutual Aid in that, while in the latter book Kropotkin set out deliberately to make a .completely dispassionate exposition of mutual aid as a scientific and social fact, without drawing any political conclusions or xnaking any declaration for anarchism, in The State he draws such conclusions from an examination of the evolution of human institutions and shows that anarchy, the· society without a state, is the only sociai form in complete accordance with the beneficial and life-giving principles of social co-operation. Thus, The State can in-a way be regarded as the fipal chapter of Mutual Aid. The State contains a description of the free societies, primitive and media:val, which existed before the development of centralised power (or which, in the case of certain primitive societies in Kropotkin's own day, even contrived to exist in a world for the most part do.,minatedby such centralised power), an analysis of the disintegration of these free societies under the impact of the rising power of the .State, and a warning of the social death. and the new dark age that lie at the end of the fatal evolution of the State-:-unlcss that evolution is broken beforehand by the_in~crventionof the forces of freedom. 'Either the State will be· destroyed and a new life will begin in thousands of centres, on the principle of an energetic initiative of the individual, of groups, and of free agreement, or else the State must crush the individual and local life, it must become the xnastcr of all the domains of human activity, must bring with it' its wars and 4 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
THE STATE internal struggles for the possession of power, its surface revolutions which only change one tyrant for another, and inevitably, at the en<:{ of this evolution-death! ' To-day we can find little fault in the forecast that culminated Kropotkin's essay. Indeed, for us the warning is more real than for the people to whom it was spoken, for we have experienced a large measure of its fulfilment-in a world of centralised national states that during the past fifty years have travelled with gathering impetus down the primrose path to social destruction. · The degree and rapidity of this evolution can be seen by a comparison of the national states of Kropotkin's day with those of our own. We might even take his own country, Russia. · Tzarist Russia was one of the most tyrannical States of its time, a State that lived by terror and murder, by the secret police and the knouting Cossacks. Yet even within that terrible State there were many surprising interstices in which freedom and free co-operation could live and even thrive. Among the peasants the dominant social form was still the Mir, a kind of village commune which united co-operatively the lives of the villagers. As Kropotkin reveals in this very pamphlet, ·under the tyrannical Tzarist system the peasants were allowed to occupy Siberia in just such a manner as they thought fit and to establish the communistic institutions which they desired. Without wishing to minimise in any way the hard, toiling, oppressed nature of the peasant's life under the Tzars, we can say safely that in spite of this he enjoyed more real freedom than he does now under the Bolsheviks who turned to their own ends the revolution which the peasants made possible. The forced collectivisations, requisitioning of crops, the persecution of independent peasants and the deportation and virtual murder of some millions of the peasant population in the Arctic death camps are crimes beside which the crimes of the Tzarist nobility and police officialsseem milk-and-water. Again, we might compare intellectual life of Tzarist Russia with that of Soviet Russia to-day. In the latter half of the nineteenth century considerable independence of thought flourished among the Russian intelligentsia, and ·even men like Tolstoy, who denounced the State, were often left untouched so long as they attempted no serious political conspiracy. It is, moreover, impossible to deny the richness of the achievement in writing, in music, even in science, of the Russian intelligentsia of the time, an achievement which could not have been reached without at least some freedom of expression and a cultured and independent-minded public. When the new Russian State, however, appeared in 1917, these very intelligentsia were taken away literally in tens of thousands to the prisons which the Bolsheviks took over from the Tzars. The State instituted a system of standards to which art must conform-not only so far as its political content s Biblloteca Gino Bianco
INTR6DUCTION went; but also in the matter of form. All art must be propagandist, and all art must administer its propaganda by the same technique. The consequence was that Russia declined to a State in which the official standard of kitsch journalism kept all art down to the same level of mediocrity. The Soviet ruling class denominated fine art what 'even_the Western bourgeoisie would have used only as advertisement dope. Artists who would no~ conform disappeared, like Boris Pasternak, into the dungeons of the G.P.U.. Conscientious artists who. attempted to conform found tlae conflict between inspiration and party loyalty unbearable and many, like Y essenin and Mayakovsky, committed suicide. . What can be said of the influence of the State towards peasants and artists in Russia can be said of its influence in every other respect. The regime of the new bureaucracy exceeds ·the Tzarist government perhaps not in the degree of its brutality, but in the fact that while the brutality of the Tzars was sporadic and inefficient in its attacks on the individual, that of the Bolsheviks is thorough and efficient, and tends steadily to reduce the means by which the individual can live any kind of life outside the State. The State has extended its scope from political govemment to economic government, and in this way the two forms of power which in the previous phase of the State still existed apart have coalesced into the total State governed by.a united .class of officials which regulates every aspect of the communal life ana steadily advances its net of regulation about the life of the individuals within it. Russia is only one and by no means an extreme example of political development in the world to-day. In Germany, in Italy, in Japan, in China, the growth of State power into the totalitarian dominion of the bureaucrats is obvious and open. But in those countries which still make some pretence to democracy this dev.elopment is no less evident to those who make even a general study of political events and social tendencies. Recently James Burnham, the Americail political writer, published a book called The Managerial Revolution which caused a considerable stir in advanced circles on bodi sides of the Atlantic. Burnham's thesis was. that capitalism i& in a state of decline, that the capitalist class is rapidly losing all real power, 'and that virtual control is passing into the hands of a new ruling class, 'the managers', by whom he means the administratorsof industry ana government. There is no possibility, lie contends of bld-style capitalism persisting. The managerial revolution which bu already passed through its early stages, will dominate world society. This is ·a modern version of Kropotkin's theme, support~ by a .capable analysis of the development of this revob,ition in the form of the 'State. Toe State, as both ~potkin and Buiiiliafu show, bil aitercd into its Didst complete and Headly fonn. The primary 'forin 6 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
\ \ I of the· State ·was the monl!,rchjcalor aristocratic State of the 17th or 18w c~~tury, i~ ~ccondary stage was the capitalist 'liberal' state of tbe 19.thcenµizy, and its tertiary and fatal stage is the total State of the2oth century. The way in which .the power of the State has extended since· Kropotkin's day can be seen by a reference to the condition of the various peoples, such as Malays, Kabyles, etc., whom he mentions as. living in a manner based on the principles of mutual aid and opposite. to the life .of the great States of his day. These statements are· obsolete, but this very fact is a proof of his contentions, for the·. Malays, the l&byles, etc. no longer live this independent life becausethe spread of the various great European states has brought these: peoples more and more under the domination of colonial imperialism. and has in this way destroyed their independent communal ways of living. The new states spread their tentacles over the whole face of the earth, bringing within the orbits of their centralised power all races and kim;lsand spreading their oppression and interference with. person;1Iliberties into the remotest comers of the earth . . Where, however, Burnham and many others of his kind differ from Kropotkin and the anarchists is in their pessimistic acceptanceof the inevitability of the triumph of the State in its extreme form. The determinism that dominates their idea is, indeed, hardly tenableon any grounds of logic or social experience. Nothing is inevitable: in s_ociety,either managerial revolution or social revolution. Onlyt~dencies can be described, and the tendency towards the social. revolution is just as much alive to-day, if less apparent, as that towards. the final consummation of the State. The State may have gained control of all the power centres of society through the operation of the managers and the bureaucrats. But the real control rests, at the last resort, in the hands of the: workers who carry on industry, transport and other social functions. Without the co-operation of a section of the workers and the tacit. acquiescence of the majority, no industrial society can continue in its. existing form. If and when the workers become aware of this fact and 'decide to take their destiny into their own hands, without trusting: to leaders, then the total State will vanish just as the liberal State· and the old-style capitalism are vanishing to-day. The consolidation. of the State and the social death that will follow thereon will never be completed if the workers once become aware of their power and! kill the State by the paralysis of direct economic action, to which it will be more vulnerable than any society before. The struggle against the state is the great task of mankind to-day. A great controversy between the socialists and the anarchists in the past centred round the fact that the socialists declared capitalism to be the chief enemy of the workers whereas the anarchists declared 7· Biblioteca Gino Bianco
INTRODUCTION that the chief enemy was the State. E-ventshave proved the rightness •of the anarchist contention. To-day capitalism is dying, not from :the action of the workers, but from the action of the State. The ·expropriators are indeed being expropriated; but not quite in the way . Marx foresaw. But the State, gaining strength from its absorption ,of economic power, becomes more menacing, oppressive and destructive than ever before. And gradually, as the power of the State in- -creases, so do we find the organs of political and reformist action -lining themselves up beside it, becoming part of its very fabric. The ,trade unions become the State organisations for the regulation of Jabour, the co-operative societies dovetail into the state-controlled :schemes of distribution, the Labour Party and the Communist Party become the mouths through which the State attempts to speak to the ·workers. The struggle against the State is one which the workers must ·fight for themselves. Leaders will only lead them back into the old :governmental ambushes. Only by their own attack on authority, by using the power controls of society, the means of production and dis- ·ttibution which in reality lie in their hands, can the workers defeat :and destroy the State. And when they have destroyed it, their course ,of action must lie not in the directions laid down by political parties, ,,of a centralised ' workers' ' State governed by a party bureaucracy, 'Which will bring back all the evils of government and exploitation in .ilfl aggravated •form, but in the direction pointed out by Kropotkin :and the other anarchists, towards a free society based on 'the principle ,of an energetic initiative of the individual, of groups and of free :agreement.' G.W. 8 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
The State Its Historic Role I. IN TAKING AS subject the State and the part it played in history I thought it would respond to a need which is greatly felt at this moment : that of thoroughly examining the very idea of the State, of studying its essence, its role in the past, and the part it may be called upon to play in the future. It is especially on the "State" question that Socialists are divided. Amidst the number of factions existing among us and corresponding to different temperaments, to different ways of thinking, and especially to the degree of confidence in the coming Revolution, two main currents can be traced. On the one hand, there are those who hope to accomplish the Social Revolution by means of the State: by upholding most of its functions, even by extending them and making use of them for the Revolution. And there are those who, like us, see in the State, not only in its actual form and in all forms that it might assume, but in its very essence, an obstacle to the Social Revolution, the most serious hindrance to the growth of a society based on equality and liberty, the historic form elaborated to impede this growth-and who consequently work to abolish the State, and not to reform it. The division, as you see, is deep. It corresponds to two divergent currents which clash in all the philosophy, literature, and action of our time. And if the prevalent notions about the State remain as obscure as they are to-day, it will, without doubt, be over this question that the most obstinate struggles will be entered upon, when-as I hope soon-Communist* ideas seek their practical realisation in the life of societies. •In order to avoid a certain confusion that may arise from Kropotkin's use of the terms Communism and Socialism, it is necessary to point out that the application of these words has changed considerably in the last fifty years. Communism, in Kropotkin's day, meant the theory of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the sharing of the -work and goods of society on the basis of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". This theory of Communism was adhered to by the Anarchists. The authoritarian Socialists of Kropotkin'• day were not communist but collectivist, and stood for the ownership of the means of production by the State, and the remuneration of the workers by • a system of wages based on the supposed social value of various types of work. The term Socialism, however, was. used to embrace all the various types of social theory which envisaged the replacement of individual capitalism by some form of collective ownership and included both anarchism and the various schools of Marxist social democracy. To-day, of course, it is .applied almost exclusively to the various parties advocating State ownership, The present confusion regarding the term Communism arises from Lenin's appropriation of the term from the Anarchist-Communists, to covet the essentially collectivist Bolshevik Party.-ED. 9 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
JtROPOl'KIN It is therefore important, after having so often criticised the present State, to seek the cause of its appearance, to investigate the part played by it in the past, to compare it with the institutions which it superseded.. Let us first agree as to what we mean by the word State. There is the German school that likes to confuse the State with Society. This confusion is to be met even among the best German. thinkers and many French ones, who cannot conceive society without State concentration; and thence arises the habitual reproach cast 01?- Anarchists of wanting to "destroy society" and of "preaching the return of perpetual war of each against all." · Yet to reason thus is entirely to ignore the progress made in the· domain of history during the last thirty years; it is to ignore that men have lived in societies for thousands of years before having known the State; it is to forget that for European nations the State is of recent origin-that it hardly dates from the sixteenth century; it is to fail to recognise that the most glorious epochs in humanity were those in which the liberties and local life were not yet destroyed by the State, and when masses of men lived in communes and free federations. The State is but one of the forms taken by society in the course of his~ory. How can one be confused with the other? On the other band, the State has also been confused with government. As there can be no State without government, it bas been sometimes said that it is the absence of government, and not the abolition of the State, that should be the aim. It seems to. me, however, that State and government represent two ideas of a different kind. The State not only includes the exist- ~ce of a power placed above society, but also a territorialconcentration and a concentrationof many or even all functions of t!Jelife of society in the hands of a few. It implies new relations among die members of society. • This characteristic distinction, which perhaps escapes notice at first sight, appears clearly when the origin of the State is studied. To really urtderstand· the State, there is, in fact, but one way: it is to study it in its historical development, and that is what I shall endeavour to do. . The Roman Empire was a State in the true sense of the word. Up till now ~t is the ideal of the studc;!ltSof law. . . Its organs covered a vast domain with a close network. Everything flo~ed towards Rome :_ economic life, military life, judicial -.relations, riches, education, even religion. From Rome came laws, P13gistrates',legions to defend their territory, governors to rule dje provinces, gods. The whole life of the Empire could be traced back to the Senate; later on. to the Ca:sar, the _omnipotent,omniscient, t4e god of the Empire. Every province, every district bad frs mmiiture 10 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
THE STATE Capitol, its little share of Roman sovereignty to direct its· whole life, 'One law, the -law 'imposed by Rome, governed the Empire; and that Empire did not represent a confederation of citizens : it was only a flock of subjects. Even now, the students of law and the authoritarians admire the unity of that Empire, the spirit of unity of those laws, the beauty-' they say-the harmony of that organisation. But the internal decomposition furthered by barbarian invasion-- the death of local life, henceforth unable to resist attacks from with- • out, and the gangrene spreading from the centre-pulled that empire to pieces, and on its ruins was established and developed a new civilisation, which is ours to-day. If, putting aside antique empires, we study the origin and development of that young· barbarian civilisation till the time when it 1 gave birth. to our modem States, ·we shall be able to grasp the essence of the State. We shall do it better than we should have done, if we had launched ourselves in the· study of the Roman Empire, or the empire of Alexander, or the despotic Eastern monarchies. In taking these powerful barbarian destroyers of the Roman Empire as a starting point, we can retrace the evolution of all civilisa• • tlon from its origin till it reaches the stage of the State. II. Most of the philosophers of the last century had conceived very elementary notions about the origin of societies. At the beginning, they said, men lived in small, isolated families, and perpetual war among these families represented the normal con• dition of,existence. But one fine day, perceiving the drawbacks of these endless struggles, they decided to form a society. A social contract was agreed upon among scattered families, who willingly submitted to an authority, which authority became the starting point and the initiative -0f all progress. Must I add, a'.syou have been told in school, that our present governments have impersonated the noble part of ~t of the earth, the pacifiers and civilisers of humanity? This conception, which was born at a time wheri little was known about the origin of man, prevailed in the last century; and we must say that in the hands of the encyclopedists and of Rousseau, the idea bf a "social contract" became a powerful weapon with which to fight roylilty and divine .right. Nevertheless, in spite of services it ma)' &averendered in the past, that theory must now be recognised as false, The fact is that all animals, save some beasts and birds of pn:y; lind a few species in course of extinction, live in societies. In the strt1ggle for existence it is the sociable species ,that gtt the bett~ of. the unsociable. In. every class of anirlia'ls they occupy the top of the ladder, and there can be no doubt that the first beings of human aspect already lived in societies. Man did not create society·; societt 11 Biblioteca Gino Bianco · A1~--ed 1,ew1:u t<'onactZiCih.e ~J. • Uiblioteca Gin~ .61en()G
KROPOTKUl is anterior to man. We also know to-day-anthropology has clearly demonstrated it ~that the starting point of humanity was not the family, but the clan, the tribe. The paternal family as we have it, or as depicted in Hebrew tradition, appeared very much later. Men lived teiµ; of thousands of years in the stage of clan or tribe, and during that first stage-let 11 s call it the primitive tribe-man already developed a whole seriesof jnstitutions, habits, and customs, far anterior to the paternal family • institutions. In those tribes, the separate family existed no more than it exists among so many other sociable mammals. Divisions in the tribe itself were formed by generations; and since the earliest periodsof tribal life limitations were establishe!f to hinder marriage relations between divers generations, while they were freely practised between JD.embersof the same generation. Traces of that period are still extant in certain contemporary tribes, and we find them again in the Janguage, customs and superstitions of nations who were far more advanced in civilisation. The whole tribe hunted and harvested in common, and when they were satisfied they gave themselves up to their dramatic dances. ,:,.lowadayswe still find tribes, very near this primitive phase, driven back to the least accessible regions of our world. The accumulation of private property could not take place, because each thing that had been the personal property of a member of the tribe was destroyed or burned where his corpse was buried. This is still done by gypsies in England, and the funeral rites of the "civilised" bear its traces: the Chinese bum paper models of what uie dead possessed; and we lead the military chief's horse, and carry }rissword and decorations as far as the grave. The meaning of the institution is lost : only the form survives. Far from professingcontempt for human life, these primitive men pad a horror of blood and murder. Shedding blood was considereda deed of such gravity that each drop shed-not only the·blood of men, but also that of certain animals-required that the aggressor should Josean equal quantity of blood. In fact, murder within the tribe itself was absolutely unknown; you may see this even now, among the Inoits or Esquimaux-those ~ivors of the stone age who inhabit the Arctic regions. But when tribes of different origin, colour, or tongue met during their migrations, war was often the result. It is true that men already tried to mitigate the effect of these shocks. Already, as has been demonstrated by ,Maine,*Post, and Nys, the tribes agreed upon and respected certain rules and limitations of war which contained the germs of what was later to become international law. For example, a village must not l'Maine's Ancient Law, a 19th century sociological classic, •is issued in the Everyman Library.-ED. 12 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
THli . STATE be attacked widtout warning to the inhabitants. No-one would have' dared to kill on a path trodden by women going to the well. And, to come to terms, the balance of the men killed on both sides had to be paid. . However, from that time forward, a general law overruled all others. "Your people have killed or wounded one of ours, therefore we have the right to kill one of yours, or to inflict an absolutelysimilat wound on one of yours"-never mind which, as it is always the tribe that is responsible for every act of its members. The well-known biblical verses, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," (but no more !) thence derive their origin. It was their conception of justice, and, we have no reason to boast, for the principle of "a life for a life'' which prevails in our codes is but one of its numerous survivals. . As you see, a whole series of institutions and a whole code of tribal morals was already elaborated during this primitive stage. To maintain this kernel of social customs, habit and tradition sufficed. There \\'.asno.authority to im.poseit. . Primitive individuals had, no doubt, temporary leaders. The sorcerer, the rain-maker-the scientist of that epoch-sought to profit by what they knew (or thought they knew) about nature, in order td rule over their fell1>wmen. Likewise, he who could·best remember proverbs and songs, in which tradition was embodied, became power" ful. Later, these "educated" men endeavoured to secure their ruler" ship by transmitting their knowledge only to the elect. AUreligions, . and even all arts and crafts began in "mysteries." Also the brave, bold, and cunning man became the temporary leader during conflicts with other tribes, or during migrations. But an alliance between the "law" bearer, the military chief and the witch-doctor did not exist, and there can be no more question of a State with these tribes thap, there is in a society of bees or ants, ot among our contemporariestlie Patagoni~ or Esquima9x,. This stage, however, la~ed thousands of years, and the· barbarians who invaded the Roman empire had hardly emerged from it. In the first centuries of our era, immense migrations took place among the tribes and confederations of tribes that inhabited Centr:tl and Northern Asia. ~ A;stream of peoples, driven by more or less civilised tribes, came down from the table-lands of Asia (probably driven away by the rapid drying-up of those plateaux) and inundated Europe, impelling one another .onward, mingling with one another irt their overflowtowards the West. . . During, these migrations, when so many tribes of diverse origirt were intermixed;·tlie ·prfuiitive·Jtiil:ie·w, hich,still existed among them and the primitive inhabitants of Europe, necessarilybecame disaggregated. The tribe was based on its common origin, on the worship of common ancestors; but what common origin could be invoked by the agglomerations that emerged from the hurly-burly of migrations, 13 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
KROPOTKIN collisions, w~rs between tribes, during which we see the paternal family spring up here and there-the kernel formed by men. appropriating women they had conquered or kidnapped from neighbouring tribes? Ancient ties were rent asunder, and under the threat of a general preakup (that took place, in fact, for many tribes which disappeared from history) it was essential that new ties should spring up. They were found in the communal possession of land, on which such an agglomeration settled down. ·The possession in common of a certain territory, of certain valleys, plains or mountains, became the basis of a new agreement. Ancient gods had Jost all meaning; and the local gods of valley, river 1md forest gave the religious consecration to the new agglomeration, ~ubstituting themselves for the gods of the primitive tribe. Later on, Christianity, alway~ ready to accommodate itself to pagan survivals, jllade local saints of them. Henceforth, the village community, composed partly or entirely of separate families-all united, nevertheless, ·by. the possession in common of the land-became the necessary bond of union for centuries to come. On the immense stretches of land in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, it still exists to-day. The barbarians who· destroyed the ;Roman empire-Scandinavians, Germans, Celts, Slavs, etc.-lived tinder this kind of organization. And, in studying the ancient barbarian codes, as well as the laws and customs of the confederations of village communes among the Kabyles, Mongols, Hindus, Africans, etc., which still exist, it became possible to reconstruct that form of society, which was the starting point of our present civilization. Let us therefore, examine that institution. III. The village community was composed, as it still is, of separate families; but the .families of a village possessed the land in common. They looked upon it as their common patrimony. and allotted it according to the size of the families. Hundreds of millions of men still live under this_system in Eastern Europe, India, Java, etc. It is the same system as Russian peasants have established nowadays, when the State left them free to occupy the immense Siberian territory as they thought best.* At first the cultivation also was done in common, and this custom still obtains partially. in many places. As to deforestation and clearings made in the woods, construction of bridges, building of fortlets •Kropotkin is referring to the Tsarist state and not to the more highly organised Bolshevik state, under which such action would be more unlikely. .-ED. 14 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
THE STATE and turrets which served as refuge in case of invasion, they were done in common-as hundreds of millions of peasants _stilldo wherever the village commune has resisted State encroachments. But consumption, to use a modem expression, already took place by family-each having its own cattle, kitchen garden and provisions; the means of hoarding and transmitting wealth accumulated by inheritance already existed. In all its business, the village commune was s~vereign. Local custom was law and the plenary council of all chiefs of families- "4'.llenand women-was the only judge, in civil and criminal affairs. When one of the inhabitants, complaining of another, planted his knife in the ground where the commune was wont to assemble, the commune had to "find the sentence" according to local custom, after the fact had been proved by the jurors of both litigant parties. All institutions of which States later took possession for the benefit of minorities, all notions of right which we find in our ·codes • (mutilated to the advantage of minorities), and all forms of judicial procedure, in so far as they offer guarantees to the individual, had their origin in the village community. Thus, when we imagine we have made great progress-in introducing the jury, for example--we have only returned to the institution of the barbarians, after having modified it to the advantage of the ruling classes. Roman law was only superimposed on customary law._ The sentiment of national unity was_developingat the same time, by great free federations of village communes. Based on the possession, and very often on the cultivation of the soil in common, sovereign as judge and legislator of customary lawthe village community satisfied most needs of the social being. But not all his needs : there were still others to be satisfied. However, the spirit of the age was not to call upon a government as soon as a new need was felt. It was, on the contrary, to take the initiative oneself, to unite, to league, to federate, to create an understanding, great or small, numerous <irrestricted, which would correspond to the new need. Society at that time was covered by a network of sworn fraternities, guilds for mutual support, "con-jurations," within and without the village, and in the federation. We can observe this stage and spirit at work, even to-day, among many a barbarian federation which has remained outside modern States modelled on the Roman, or rather the Byzantine type. Thus, to take one example among many, the Kabyles have retained their village community with the powers I have just mentioned. But man feels the necessity of action outside the narrow limits of his hamlet. Some like to wander in quest of adventures, in the ,;:apacityof merchants. Some take to a craft, "an art" of some kind. And these merchants and artisans unite in "fraternities," even when they belong to different villages, tribes and confederations. There must be union for .mutual help in distant adventures or to transmit 15 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
KROPOTKIN mutually the mysteries of the craft-and they unite. They swear brotherhood, and practice it in a manner that strikes Europeam: in deed and not in words only. Besides, misfortune can ovenake anyone. A man, gentle and peaceful as a rule may, in a brawl, exceed the established limits of good behaviour and sociability. Heavy compensation will then have to be paid to the insulted or wounded; the aggressor will have to defend himself before the village council and prove facts on the oath of six, ten or twelve "con-jurors." This is another reason for belong.- ing to a fraternity. Moreover, man feels the necessity of talking politics and perhaps even intriguing, the necessity of propagating moral opinions or customs. There is, moreover, external peace to be safeguarded; alliances to be concluded with other tribes; federations to be constituted far off; the idea of intenribal law to be propagated. To satisfy all these needs of an emotional and intellectual kind the Kabyles, the Mongols, the Malays do not tum to a government: they have none.• Men of customary law and individual initiative, they have not been pervened by the corrupted idea of a government and a church supposed to do everything. They unite directly. They constitute sworn fraterni.ties, political and religiou~ societies, unions of crafts-guz1ds as they were called in the Middle Ages, so/s as Kabyles call them today. These sofs go beyond the boundaries of hamlets; they flourish far out in the desen and in foreign cities; and fraternity is practised in them. To refuse to help a member of your so/, even at the risk of losing belongings and life, is an act of treason to the fraternity and exposes the traitor to be treated as the murderer of a "brother". What we find to-day among Kabyles, Mongols, Malays, etc., was the essence of the life of so-called barbarians in Europe from the fifth to the twelfth and even the fifteenth century. Under the name of guilds, friendships, univer.sitates, etc., unions abounded for mutual defence and for solidarily.avenging offences against each member of the union : for substituting compensation, followed by the reception of the aggressor into the fraternity, instead of the vengeance of an "eye for an eye"; for the exercise of crafts, for helping in case of illness, for the defence of territory, for resisting the encroachments of nascent authority, for commCI:CC,for the practice of "good neighbourship," for propaganda, for everything, in a word, that the European, educated by the Rome of the Ca:sars and the Popes, asks of the State to-day. It is even doubtful if there existed at that time any man, free or serf save those outlawed by their own fraternities, who did not belong to some fraternity or guild, besides his commune. •In Kropotkin's day European Imperialism had not yet reached its zenith, and many primitive peoples which have since come more or Jess under white administration were still allowed to live according to their customary Jaw.-BD. 16 B blioteca Gino Bianco
THE STATE Scandinavian Sagas sing their exploits. The devotion of sworn brothers is the theme of the most beautiful of these epical songs; whereas the Church and the rising kings, representatives of reappearing Byzantine or Roman law, hurl against. them anathemas and decrees which happily remain ineffectual. The whole history of that period loses its significance, and becomes incomprehensible, if we do not take into account these unions of brothers and sisters that spring up everywhere to satisfy the multiple nc~ds of the economic and emotional life of man. Nt;vertheless, clouds gather on the horizon. Other unions-those of ruling minorities-are formed; and they endeavour, little by little, to transform these free men into serfs and subjects. Rome is dead, but its tradition revives; and the Christian Church, haunted by Oriental theocratic visions, gives its powerful support to the new powers that seek to constitute themselves. Far from being the sanguinary beast that he is represented in order to prove the necessity of ruling over him, man has always loved tranquility and peace. He fights rather from necessity than ferocity, and prefers his cattle and his land to the profession of arms. Therefore, hardly had the great migration of barbarians begun to abate, hardly had hordes and tribes more or less cantoned themselves on their respective lands, than we see the care of the defence of territory against new waves of immigrants confided to a man who engages a small band of adventurers, men hardened in wars, or brigands, to be his followers; while the great mass raises cattle or cultivates the soil. This· defender soon begins to amass wealth. He gives a horse and armour (very dear at that time) to the poor man, and reduces him to servitude; he begins to conquer the germ of military power. On the other hand, little by little, tradition, which constituted law in those times, is forgotten by the masses. There hardly remains an old man who keeps in his memory the verses and songs which tell of the "precedents," of which customary law consists, and recites them before the commune on great festival days. Little by little, some families made a speciality, transmitted from father to son, of retaining these songs and verses in their memory and of preserving "the law" in its purity. To them villagers apply to judge differences in intricate cases, especially when two villages or confederations refuse to accept the decisions of arbitrators taken from their midst. The germ of princely or royal authority is already sown in these families; and the more I study the institutions of that time, the more I see that the knowledge of customary law did far more to constitute that authority than the power of the sword. Man allowed himself to be enslaved far more by his desire to "punish according to law" than by direct military conquest. Gradually the first "concentration of powers," the first mutual insiirance for domination-that of the judge and the military chief17 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
KROPOTKIN grew to the detriment of the village commune. A single man assumed these two functions. He surrounded himself with armed men to put his judicial decisions into execution; he fortified himself in his turret; he accumulated the wealth of the epoch, bread, cattle and iron, for his family; and little by little he forced his rule upon the neighbouring peasants. The scientific man of the age, the witch-doctor, or priest, lost no time in bringing him support and in sharing his domination; or else, adding the sword to his power of redoubtable magician, he seized the domination for his own benefit. Much space would be needed to deal thoroughly with this subject and to tell how free men became gradually serfs, forced to work for the lay or clerical lord of the manor; how authority was constituted, in a tentative manner, over villages and boroughs; bow peasants leagued, revolted, struggled to fight the advancing domination, and how they succumbed in those struggles against the strong castle walls, and the men in armour who defended them. Suffice it for me to say, that towards the tenth and eleventh centuries, Europe seemed to be drifting towards the constitution of such barbarous kingdoms as we now discover in the heart of Africa, or ,hose Eastern theocracies which we know through history.- This could not take place in a day; but the germs of those little kingdoms a:id those little theocracies were already there and were developing. Happily, the "barbarian" spirit, Scandinavian, Saxon, Celt, German, Slav, which had led men for about seven or eight centuries 10 seek for the satisfaction of their needs in individual initiative and ir:. free agreement of fraternities and guilds, still lived in the villages and boroughs. The barbarians allowed themselves to be enslaved, they worked for a master, but their spirit of free action and free agreement was not yet corrupted. Their fraternities flourished more than ever, and the crusades only roused and developed them in the West. Then the revolution of the commune, long prepared by that federative spirit and born of the union of sworn fraternity with the village community, burst forth in the twelfth century wit:1 a s'i:riking spontaneity all over Europe. This revolution, which the mass of university historians prefer to ignore, saved Europe from the calamity with which it was menaced. It arrested the evolution of theocratic and despotic monarchies in_ which our civilisation would probably have gone down after a few centuries of pompous expansion, as the civilisations of Mesopotamia, Assyria and Babylon had done. This revolution opened up a new phase of life-that of the free communes. IV. It is easy to understand why modern historians, nurtured as they are in the spirit of the Roman law, and accustomed to look to Roman 18 Biblioteca G no Bianco
THE STATE law for the origin of every political institution, are incapable of under~ standing the spirit of the co=unalist movement of the twelfth century. This virile affirmation of the rights of the Individual, who managed to constitute Society through the federation of individuals, villages and towns, was an absolute negation of the centralising spirit -0f ancient Rome, which spirit penetrates all historical conceptions of me present day university teaching. The uprising of the twelfth century cannot even be attributed to any personality of mark, or to any central institution. It is a natural phase of human development; and, as such, it belongs to human ,evolution like the tribe and the village-co=unity periods, but to no nation in particular, to no special region of Europe, and is the ~ork of no special hero. This is why University science, which is based upon Roman law, .centralisation and hero-worship, is incapable of understanding the substance of this movement which grew from below. In France, Augustin Thierry and Sismondi, who both wrote in the first half of the 19th century and who had really understood the co=unalist period, have had no followers up to the present time; and only now M. Lachaire timidly attempts to follow the lines of research indicated by the great historian of the Merovingian and the co=unalist period, Augustin Thierry. This is why in Germany, the awakening of studies of this period and a vague comprehension of its spirit are only now appearing, and why, in this country, one finds a true comprehension of the twelfth century in the poet William Morris rather than among the historians-Green alone having been .capable (in the later part of his life) of understanding it at all.* The Co=une of the middle ages takes its origin, on the one hand, from the village co=unity, on the other from those thousands of fraternities and guilds constituted outside territorial unions. It was .a federation of these two kinds of unions, developed under the protection of the fortified enclosure and the turrets of the city. In many regions it was a natural growth. Elsewhere-and this is the rule in Western Europe-it was the result of a revolution. When the inhabitants of a borough felt themselves sufficiently protected by their walls, they made a "con-juration". They mutually took the oath to put aside all pending questions concerning feuds arisen from insults, assaults or wounds, and they swore that henceforth in the quarrels that might arise they would never again have recourse to personal revenge or to a judge other than the syndics nominated by themselves in the guild and the city. This had Jong been the regular practice in every art or good- •Works by Thierry, Sismondi and Green are published in the Everyman Library. A representative view of Morris's social theories can be gained ·from the selection of his works published by the Nonesuch Press.-Eo. 19 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
KRO·POTKIN neighbourship guild, in every sworn fraternity. In every village commune, such was the custom before bishop or kinglet succeeded in introducing-and later in enforcing-his judge. Now the hamlets and the parishes which constituted the borough, as well as all the guilds and fraternities that had developed there, considered themselves a single amitas. They named their judges and swore permanent union between all these groups. A charter was drawn up and accepted. In case of need they sent for the copy of a charte_rto some neighbouring commune, (we know hundreds of these charters to-day,) and the commune was constituted. The bishop or prince, who had up till then been judge of the commune and had often become more or less its master, had only to recognize the accomplished fact-or else to fight the young "con-juration" by force of arms. Often the king-that is to say the prince who tried to gain superiority over other princes and whose coffers were always .empty-"granted" the charter for ready money. He thus renounced imposing his judge on the commune, while giving himself importance before other feudal lords. But it was by no means the rule: hundreds of communes lived without any other sanction than their good pleasure, their ramparts and their lances. In a hundred years this movement spread by imitation to the whole of Europe, including Scotland, France, the Netherlands, Scan- .dinavia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Russia. And to-day, when we compare the charters and internal organisation of French, English, Scottish, Irish, Scandinavian, German, Bohemian, Russian, Swiss, Italian and Spanish communes, we are struck by the almost complete similarity of these charters and of the organisation which grew up under the shelter of these "social contracts". What a striking lesson for Romanists and Hegelists who know no other means to obtain similarity of institutions than servitude before the law! From the Atlantic to the middle course of the Volga, and from Norway to Italy, Europe was covered with similar communes-some becoming populous cities like Florence, Venice, Nuremberg or Novgorod, others remaining boroughs of a hundred or even twenty families, and nevertheless treated as equals by their more or less prosperous sisters. Organisms full of vigour, the communes grew dissimilar in their evolution. Geographical position, the character of external commerce, the obstacles to be vanquished outside, gave every commune its own history. But for all that, the principle was the same. Pskov in Russia and Bruges in Flanders, a Scottish borough of three hundred inhabitants and rich Venice with its islands, a borough in the North of France or in Poland, and Florence the Beautiful represent the same amitas. The same fellowship of village communes and of associated jllilds; the same constitution in its general outline. Generally the town, whose enclosure grows with the population 20 Biblioteca G.no Bianco
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