The Basic Discrepancy. The falsehood of the representative system rests upon the fiction that the executive power and the legislative chamber issuing from popular elections must, or even can for that matter, represent the will of the people. The people want instinctively, want necessarily, two things: the greatest material prosperity possible under the circumstances and the greatest liberty in their lives, liberty of movement and liberty of action. That is, they want better organization of their economic interests and complete absence of all power, of all political organization -- [2l8] since every political organization inevitably ends in negation of liberty of the people. Such is the essence of all popular instincts.
Gulf Between Those Who Govern and Those That Are Governed. But the instinctive aims of those who govern -- of those who frame the laws of the country as well as of those who exercise the executive power, are, because of their exceptional position diametrically opposed to the instinctive popular aspirations. Whatever their democratic sentiments and intentions may be, viewing society from the high position in which they find themselves, they cannot consider this society in any other way but that in which a schoolmaster views his pupils. And there can be no equality between the schoolmaster and the pupils. On one side there is the feeling of superiority necessarily inspired by a superior position; on the other side there is the feeling of inferiority induced by the attitude of superiority on the part of the teacher exercising executive or legislative power. Whoever says political power says domination. And where domination exists, a more or less considerable section of the population is bound to be dominated by others. So it is quite natural that those who are dominated detest those who dominate them, while those who do the dominating necessarily must repress and consequently oppress those who are subject to their domination.
Change of Perspective Induced By Possession of Power. Such has been the eternal history of political power ever since that power wb established in this world. It is that also which explains why and how men who were democrats and rebels of the reddest variety when they were a part of the mass of governed people, became exceedingly moderate when they rose to power. Usually these backslidings arc attributed to treason. That, however, is an erroneous idea; they have for their cause the change of position and perspective.
Labor Government Subject to the Same Change. Permeated this truth, I can express without fear of being contradicted the convi that if there should be established tomorrow a government or a legislative council, a Parliament made up exclusively of workers, those very workeo who are now staunch democrats and Socialists, will become determiM aristocrats, bold or timid worshipers of the principle of authority, and also become oppressors and exploiters.
The Example of the Most Radical Political Democracy. In S' land, as in all other countries, much as the equalitarian principles have embodied in its political constitutions, it is the bourgeoisie that go' and it is the people, the workers, peasants included, who obey the made by the bourgeoisie. The people have neither the leisure nor necessary education to occupy themselves with the matters of go' ment. The bourgeoisie, possessing both, has in fact if not by exclusive privilege of governing. Therefore political equality in land, as in all other countries, is only a puerile fiction, an utter lie. [219]
The Popular Will as Refracted Through the Bourgeois Prism. But being so far removed from the people by the conditions of its economic and social existence, how can the bourgeoisie give expression in the government and in the laws, to the feelings, the ideas, and the will of the people? This is an impossibility, and daily experience proves to us in effect that in legislation as well as in carrying on the government, the bour- geoisie is guided by its own interests and its own instincts without con- cerning itself much with the interests of the people.
True, all the Swiss legislators, as well as the members of the governments of the various Swiss cantons, are elected, directly or indirectly, by the people. True, on election days even the proudest bourgeois who have any political ambitions are forced to court His Majesty -- The Sovereign people. They come to Him with their hats off and seemingly have no other will but that of the people. This, however, is for them only a brief interlude of unpleasantness. On the day after the elections every one goes back to his daily business: the people to their work, and the bourgeoisie to their lucrative affairs and political intrigues. They do not meet and they do not know each other any more.
How can the people -- who are crushed by their toil and ignorant of most of the questions at issue -- control the political acts of their elected representatives? And is it not evident that the control supposedly exercised by the electors over their representatives is in reality nothing but sheer fiction? Since popular control in the representative system is the sole guarantee of popular liberty, it is clear that this liberty itself is nothing but pure fiction.
The Referendum Comes Into Being. In order to obviate this inconvenience, the Radical-Democrats of the Zurich canton devised and put into practice a new political system -- the referendum, or direct legislation by the people. But the referendum itself is only a palliative, a new illusion, a falsehood. In order to vote, with full knowledge of the issue in question and with the full freedom required for it, upon laws proposed to the people or which the people themselves are induced to propose, it is necessary that the people have the time and the education needed to study those proposals, to reflect upon them, to discuss them. The people must become a vast Parliament holding its sessions in the open fields.
But this is rarely possible, and only upon grand occasions when the proposed laws arouse the attention and affect the interests of everyone. Most of the time the proposed laws are of such a specialized nature that one has to accustom oneself to political and juridical abstractions to grasp their real implications. Naturally they escape the attention and comprehension of the people, who vote for them blindly, believing implicitly their favorite orators. Taken separately, every one of those laws appears too insignificant to be of much interest to the masses, but in their totality they form a net which enmeshes them. Thus, in spite of the referendum, [220] the so-called sovereign people remain the instrument and the very humble servant of the bourgeoisie.
We can well see then that in the representative system, even when improved upon with the aid of the referendum, popular control does not exist, and since no serious liberty is possible for the people without this control, we are driven to the conclusion that popular liberty and self-government are falsehoods.1
Municipal Elections Are Nearer to the People. The people, owing to the economic situation in which they still find themselves, are inevitably ignorant and indifferent, and know only those things which closely affect them. They well understand their daily interests, the affairs of daily life. But over and above these there begins for them the unknown, the uncertain, and the danger of political mystification. Since the people possess a good deal of practical instinct, they rarely let themselves be deceived in municipal elections. They know more or less the affairs of their municipality, they take a great deal of interest in those matters, and they know how to choose from their midst men who are the capable of conducting those affairs. In these matters control by the people is quite possible, for they take place under the very eyes of the electors and touch upon the most intimate interests of their daily existence. That is why municipal elections are always and everywhere the best, conforming in a more real manner to the feelings, interests, and will of the people.2
But Even in Municipalities the People's Will Is Thwarted. The greater part of the affairs and laws which have a direct bearing upon the well-being and the material interests of the communes, are consummated above the heads of the people, without their noticing it, caring about it, or intervening in it. The people are compromised, committed to certain courses of action, and sometimes ruined without even being aware of it. They have neither the experience nor the necessary time to study all that, and they leave it all to their elected representatives, who naturally serve the interests of their own class, their own world, and not the world of the people, and whose greatest art consists in presenting their measures and laws in the most soothing and popular character. The system of democratic representation is a system of hypocrisy and perpetual lies. It needs the stupidity of the people as a necessary condition for its existence, and it bases its triumphs upon this state of the people's minds.3
Bourgeois Republic Cannot Be Identified With Liberty. The bourgeois republicans are quite wrong in identifying their republic with liberty. Therein lies the great source of all their illusions when they find themselves in opposition, -- and likewise the source of their deceptions and inconsistencies when they have the power in their hands. Their rcpublic is based entirely upon this idea of power and a strong government, of a government which has to show itself the more energetic and powerful because it sprang from a popular election. And they do not want to [221] understand this simple truth, one that is confirmed by the experience of all times and all peoples, that every organized, established power necessarily excludes the liberty of the people.
Since the political State has no other mission but to protect the exploitation of the labor of the people by the economically privileged classes, the power of that State can be compatible only with the exclusive liberty of those classes whom it represents, and for this very reason it is bound to run contrary to the liberty of the people. Who says the State says domination, and every domination presumes the existence of masses who are dominated. Consequently the State can have no confidence in the spontaneous action and free movement of the masses, whose most cherished interests militate against its existence. It is their natural enemy, their invariable oppressor, and although it takes good care not to avow it openly, it is bound to act always in this capacity.
It is this that most of the young partisans of the authoritarian or bourgeois republic do not understand so long as they remain in the opposition, inasmuch as they themselves have not yet had a taste of this power. Because they detest the monarchic despotism from the depth of their hearts, with all the passion of which their paltry, enervated, and degenerate natures are capable, they imagine that they detest despotism in general. Because they would like to have the power and the courage to subvert the throne, they believe themselves to be revolutionaries. And they do not even suspect that it is not despotism that they hate but only its monarchic form, and that this very despotism, when it takes on the guise of a republican form, will have found in them the most zealous adherents.
Radically There Is Little Difference Between Monarchy and Democracy. They do not know that despotism resides not so much in the form of the State or of power as in the very principle of the State and political power, and that consequently the republican State is bound by its very essence to be as despotic as a State governed by an Emperor or a King. There is only one real difference between the two States. Both have for their essential basis and aim the economic enslavement of the masses for the benefit of the possessing classes. What they do differ in is that in order to attain this aim the monarchic power, which in our days inevitably tends to be transformed into a military dictatorship, deprives every class of liberty, even the class which it protects to the detriment of the people. . . . It is compelled to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, but it does so without permitting that class to interfere in any serious manner in the govcrnment of the affairs of the country. . . .
From Revolution to Counter-Revolution. Bourgeois republicans are the most rabid and passionate enemies of the Social Revolution. In moments of political crisis, when they need the powerful hand of the people to subvert the throne, they stoop to promise material improvements to this "so very interesting" class of workers; but since they are at [222] the same time animated with the most firm resolve to preserve maintain all the principles, all the sacred foundations, of existing society, and to preserve all those economic and juridical institutions which have for their necessary consequence actual slavery of the people -- it stands reason that their promises dissolve like smoke into thin air. Disillusioned, the people murmur, threaten, revolt, and then, in order to hold back the explosion of the people's discontent, they -- the bourgeois revolutionists -- see themselves forced to resort to all-powerful repression by the State. Hence it follows that the republican State is altogether just as oppressive as the monarchic State; only its oppression is directed not against the possessing classes but exclusively against the people.
Republic the Favorite Form of Bourgeois Rule. Accordingly no form of government was ever so favorable to the interests of the bourgeoisie nor was it ever so beloved by the bourgeoisie as the republic; and it would always remain so if only, in the present economic situation of Europe, the republic had the power to maintain itself against the ever more threatening Socialist aspirations of the masses of workers.4
The Moderate and Radical Wings of the Bourgeoisie. There is no substantial difference between the Radical Party of republicans and the moderate doctrinaire party of constitutional liberals. Both spring from the same source, differing only in temperament. Both put as the basis of the social organization: the State, and family law, with the resulting inheritance law and personal property, that is, the right of the propertied minority to exploit the labor of the propertyless majority. The difference between the two parties consists in that the doctrinaire liberals want to concentrate all the political rights exclusively in the hands of the exploiting minority, whereas radical liberals want to extend those rights to the exploited masses of the people. The doctrinaire liberals view the State as a fortress chiefly created for the purpose of securing to the privileged minority the exclusive possession of political and economic rights, while the radicals, on the contrary, uphold the States before the people as a defender against the despotism of the very same minority.
Democratic State a Contradiction in Terms. One must admit that logic and all historical experience are on the side of the doctrinaire liberals. So long as the people, by their toil, feed, maintain, and enrich rhc privileged groups of the population -- until that time the people, incapable of self-government because of being compelled to work not for themselves but for others, invariably will be ruled and dominated by the exploiting classes. This cannot be remedied even by the broadest democratic constution, because the economic fact is stronger than political rights, which can have meaning and actuality only inasmuch as they rest upon economic fact.
And, finally, equality of political rights, or a democratic State, constitute in themselves the most glaring contradiction in terms. The State, [223] or political right, denotes force, authority, predominance; it presupposes inequality in fact. Where all rule, there are no more ruled, and there is no State. Where all equally enjoy the same human rights, there all political right loses its reason for being. Political right connotes privilege, and where all are equally privileged, there privilege vanishes, and along with it goes political right. Therefore the terms "democratic State" and "equality of political rights" denote no less than the destruction of the State and abolition of all political right.5
The term "democracy" denotes government of the people, by the people, and for the people, with the latter denoting the whole mass of citizens -- and nowadays one must add: citizenesses -- who form a nation.
In this sense we certainly are all democrats.
Democracy As 'Rule of People' an Equivocal Concept. But at the same time we have to recognize that this term -- democracy -- is not sufficient for an exact definition, and that, viewed in isolation, like the term liberty, it can lend itself only to equivocal interpretations. Have we not seen the planters, the slave owners of the South and all their partisans in the North of the United States, calling themselves democrats? And modern Caesarism, hanging like a terrible threat over all humanity in Europe, does it not likewise name itself as democratic? And even the Muscovite and Saint Petersburg imperialism, this "State pure and simple," this ideal of all the centralized, military, and bureaucratic powers, was it not in the name of democracy that it recently crashed Poland?
Republic in Itself Holds No Solution For Social Problems. It is evident that democracy without liberty cannot serve as our banner. But what is this democracy based upon liberty if not a republic? The union of freedom with privilege creates a regime of constitutional monarchy, but its union with democracy can be realized only in a republic. . . . We are all republicaas in the sense that, driven by the consequences of an inexorable logic, forewarned by the harsh but at the same time salutary lessons of history, by all the experiences of the past, and above all by the events that have cast their gloom over Europe since 1848, as well as by the dangers threatening us today, we have all equally arrived at this conviction -- that monarchic institutions are incompatible with the reign of peace, justice, and liberty.
As for us, gentlemen, as Russian Socialists and as Slavs, we hold it our duty to declare openly that the word "republic" has only an altogether negative value, that of subverting and eliminating the monarchy, and that not only does the republic fail to elate us but, on the contrary, every time that it is represented to us as a positive and serious solution of all the questions of the day, and as the supreme end toward which all our efforts tend -- we feel that we have to protest.
We detest monarchy with all our hearts; we do not ask anything better than to see it overthrown all over Europe and the world, and like [224] you we are convinced that its abolition is the indispensable condition of the emancipation of humanity. From this point of view we are frankly republicans. But we do not believe that it is sufficient to overthrow the monarchy in order to emancipate the people and give them justice and peace. We are firmly convinced of the contrary, namely: that a great military, bureaucratic, and politically centralized republic can become and necessarily will become a conquering power in its relation to other powers and oppressive in regard to its own population, and that it will prove incapable of assuring to its subjects -- even when they are called citizens -- well-being and liberty. Have we not seen the great French nation twice constitute itself as a democratic republic, and twice lose its liberty and let itself be drawn into wars of conquest?6
Social Justice Incompatible With Existence of the State. The State denotes violence, oppression, exploitation, and injustice raised into a system and made into the cornerstone of the existence of any society. The State never had and never will have any morality. Its morality and only justice is the supreme interest of self-preservation and almighty power -- an interest before which all humanity has to kneel in worship. The Statte is the complete negation of humanity, a double negation: the opposite of human freedom and justice, and the violent breach of the universal solidarity of the human race.
The World State, which has been attempted so many times, his always proved to be a failure. Consequently, so long as the State exists, there will be several of them; and since every one of them sets as its only aim and supreme law the maintenance of itself to the detriment of the others, it follows that the very existence of the State implies perpetual war -- the violent negation of humanity. Every State must conquer or be conquered. Every State bases its power upon the weakness of other powers and -- if it can do it without undermining its own position -- upon their destruction.
From our point of view it would be a terrible contradiction and a ridiculous piece of naivete to avow the wish to establish international justice, freedom, and perpetual peace, and at the same time to want to retain the State. It would be impossible to make the State change its nature, for it is such only because of this nature, and in foregoing the latter would cease to be a State. Thus there is not and there could not good, just, and moral State.
All States are bad in the sense that by their nature, that is, by conditions and objectives of their existence, they constitute the opposite of human justice, freedom, and equality. And in this sense, ever one may say, there is not much difference between the barbarous Russian Empire and the most civilized States of Europe. What diffirence there is consists in the fact that the Tsar's Empire does openly what others do in an underhanded, hypocritical way. And the frank, despotic [225] and contemptuous attitude of the Tsar's Empire toward everything humane constitutes the deeply hidden ideal toward which all European statesmen aim and which they admire so greatly. All the European States do the same things that Russia does. A virtuous State can be only an impotent State, and even that kind of State is criminal in its thoughts and aspirations.
Universal Federation of Producers Upon the Ruins of the State Urged. Thus I come to the conclusion: He who wants to join with us in the establishment of freedom, justice, and peace, he who wants the triumph of humanity, and the full and complete emancipation of the masses of the people. should also aim toward the destruction of all States and the establishmcnt upon their ruins of a Universal Federation of Free Associations of all the countries in the world.7