KROPOTKIN History has not been an uninterrupted evolution. At different intervals evolution has been broken in a certain region, to begin again elsewhere. Egypt, Asia, the banks of the Mediterranean, Central Europe have in turn been the scene of historical development. But in every case, the first phase of the evolution has been the primitive tribe, passing on into a village commune, then into that of the free city, and finally dying out when it reached the phase of the State. In Egypt, civilization began with the primitive tribe. It reached the village community phase, and later the period of free cities; still later that of the State, which, after a flourishing period, resulted in the death of the civilisation. The evolution began again in Assyria, in Persia, in Palestine. Again it traversed the same phase: the tribe, the village community, the free city, the all-powerful State, and finally the result was-death! A new civilization then sprang up in Greece. Always beginning by the tribe, it slowly reached the village commune, then the period of republican cities. In these cities, civilization reached its highest summits. But the East brought to them it poisoned traditions of despotism. Wars and conquests created Alexander's empire of Macedonia. The State enthroned itself, the parasite grew, killed all civilization, and then came-death! Rome in its turn restored civilization. Again we find the primitive tribe at its origin; then, the village commune; then, the free city. At that stage, it reached the apex of its civilization. But then came the State, the Empire, and then-death! On the ruins of the Roman Empire, Celtic, Germanic, Slavonian and Scandinavian tribes began civilization anew. Slowly the primitive tribe elaborated its institutions and reached the village commune. It remained at that stage till the twelfth century. Then rose the Republican cities which produced the glorious expansion of the human mind, attested by the monuments of architecture, the grand development of arts, the discoveries that laid the basis of natural sciences. But then came the State. Will it again produce death? It will, unless we reconstitute society on a libertarian and anti-State basis. 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 master of all the domains of human activity, must bring with it wars and internal struggles for the possession of power, surface-revolutions which only change one tyrant for another, and inevitably, at t~e end of this evo1ution-death ! Choose yourselves which of the two issues you prefer. 006289 Biblioteca Gino Bianco +t Fondazione Alfred ~4 Biblioteca Gino B1anoo·
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