lCROPOTKIN Those who reason in this way either have not the least notion of the real historical role of the State, or else conceive the Social Revolution under such a tame and insignificant form, that it has nothing more in common with Socialist aspirations. Take a concrete example, France. All of us have perceived that the Third Republic, in spite of its republican form of government, has remained monarchical in its essence. Everyone has reproached it with not having republicanised France. I do not speak of· its not having done anything for the Social Revolution, but of its not having even introduced the simple republican habits and customs and spirit. For the little that has been done during the last twenty-five years to democratize customs, or to spread a little enlightenment, has been done everywhere--even in the European monarchies-under the pressure of the times through which we are passing. Whence comes then the strange anomaly that we have in France-a Republican Monarchy? It comes from France having remained as much a State as it was thirty years ago. The holders of power have changed their name; but all the immense scaffolding of centralised organisation, the imitation of the Rome of tl_ieCresars which had been elaborated in France, has remained. The wheels of this huge machinery continue to exchange their fifty documents when the wind has blown down a tree on the national route. The stamp on the documents has changed; but the State, its spirit, its organs, its territorial centralisation, and its centralisation of functions, have remained unaltered. Worse than that; they extend from day to day over the country. Sincere Republicans nourished the illusion that the State organisation could be utilised to operate a change in a republican sense; and here is the result. When they ought to have destroyed the old organisation, destroyed the State, and constructed a new organisation, by beginning at the very basis of society-the free village commune, the free workers' union, and so on-they thought to utilise "the organisation that already existed." 1\nd for not having understood that you cannot make an historical institution go in any direction you would have it, that it must go its own way, they were swallowed up by the institution. Yet in this case there was no question of modifying the whole of the economic relations of society, as is the case with us. It was merely a question of reforming certain points in the political relations among men! But, after this complete failure and in face of such a conclusive experience, they obstinately continue to say that the conquest of power in the State by the people will suffice to accomplish the Social Revolution; that the old machine, slowly elaborated in the course of history to mangle liberty, to crush the individual, to. seat oppression 42 Biblioteca G,no Bianco
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