Page:The State Its Historic Role.djvu/41

 We see in it an institution developed in the history of human societies to hinder union among men, to obstruct the development of local initiative, to crush existing liberties and prevent their restoration.

And we know that an institution, which has a whole past dating some thousands of years back, cannot lend itself to a function opposed to the one for which it was developed in the course of history.

To this argument, absolutely unassailable to anyone who has reflected on history, what replies do we get?

We are answered by an almost childish argument: "The State is there,"—we are told—"it exists, it represents a ready made powerful organisation. Why destroy it instead of making use of it? It works for ill, that is true, but that is due to its being in the hands of exploiters. Having fallen into the hands of the people, why should it not be utilised for a better end and for the good of the people?"

Always the same dream, the dream of Schiller's Marquis of Posa trying to make autocracy an instrument of enfranchisement, or the dream of the gentle priest Peter in Zola's Rome, wishing to make the Church a lever of Socialism!…

Is it not sad to have to answer such arguments? For, 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 an insignificant form, and so tame, that it has nothing more in common with Socialist aspirations.

Take a concrete example, France.

All of us, all here present, have noticed the glaring fact that the Third Republic, in spite of its republican form of government, has remained monarchical in its essence. Every one 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. Because 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 very 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 a State to the same extent 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 the Caesars which had been elaborated in France, have remained. The wheels of this huge machinery continue, as of old,