Federalism, Socialism and Anti-Theologism

A Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom

I. Federalism

We are pleased to be able to declare that this principle [of federalism] has been unanimously acclaimed by the Geneva Congress. Switzerland itself, which, moreover, practices it today with such success, adhered to it without any reservation and accepted it in all its implications Unfortunately, in the resolutions of the Congress, this principle has been poorly formulated and is only indirectly mentioned, first in connection with the League that we are to establish, and later, in relation to the newspaper we are to publish under the title “United States of Europe”, whereas it should, in our opinion, have occupied the foremost place in our declaration of principles.

This is a most regrettable gap which we must hasten to fill. In accordance with the unanimous sentiment of the Geneva Congress, we must proclaim:

1. That to make freedom, justice, peace triumph in the international relations of Europe, to make civil war impossible between the different peoples that make up the European family, there is only one way: to establish the United States of Europe.

2. That the [United] States of Europe will never be formed with States as they are constituted today, given the monstrous inequality that exists between their respective forces.

3. That the example of the defunct Germanic Confederation has proved in a definitive manner that a confederation of monarchies is a mockery; that it is powerless to guarantee either the peace or the freedom of peoples.

4. That no centralised, bureaucratic and thereby militaristic State, even if it called itself a republic, can seriously and sincerely enter into an international confederation. By its constitution, which must always be an overt or covert negation of freedom within, it would necessarily be a permanent declaration of war, a threat against the existence of neighbouring countries. Essentially founded upon an ulterior act of violence, conquest, or what in private life is called breaking and entering - an act blessed by the Church of any religion, consecrated by time and thereby transformed into historic right - and relying upon this divine consecration of triumphant violence as an exclusive and supreme right, every centralised State thereby posits itself as an absolute negation of the rights of all other States, recognising them in the treaties it concludes with them only out of political interest or helplessness.

5. That all members of the League must therefore strive with all their efforts to reconstitute their respective homelands, in order to replace their old organisation founded, from top to bottom, on violence and on the principle of authority, with a new organisation based solely upon the interests, the needs and the natural attractions of populations, nor any other principle than the free federation of individuals into communes, of communes into provinces[1], of provinces into nations, and finally of nations into the United States of Europe first and later of the entire world.

6. Consequently, the absolute abandonment of everything called the historic right of States; all questions relating to natural, political, strategic, commercial borders must henceforth be considered as belonging to ancient history and energetically rejected by all members of the League.

7. Recognition of the absolute right of every nation, large or small, of every people, weak or strong, of every province, of every commune, to complete autonomy, provided that its internal constitution is not a threat or a danger to the autonomy and freedom of neighbouring countries.

8. The fact that a country has been part of a State, even if it joined it freely, does not in any way entail an obligation for it to remain attached to it forever. No perpetual obligation can be accepted by human justice, the only one that can have authority amongst us, and we will never recognise other rights, nor other duties than those founded upon freedom. The right of free union and of equally free secession is the first, the most important of all political rights: without which the confederation would never be more than a masked centralisation.

9. It follows from all of the above that the League must openly proscribe any alliance of any national faction of the European democracy with monarchical States, even if this alliance had the aim of regaining the independence or freedom of an oppressed country; - such an alliance, which can only lead to disappointments, would at the same time be a betrayal of the revolution.

10. By contrast, the League, precisely because it is the League for Peace, and because it is convinced that peace can only be conquered and founded upon the closest and fullest solidarity of peoples in justice and in freedom, must loudly proclaim its sympathies for any national insurrection against any oppression, whether foreign or native, provided that this insurrection is made in the name of our principles and in the political as well as the economic interests of the masses, but not with the ambitious intent of founding a powerful State.

11. The League will wage a relentless war against all that is called glory, grandeur, and power of States. To all these false and malevolent idols to which millions of human victims have been sacrificed, we will oppose the glories of human intelligence manifested in science and of a universal prosperity founded upon labour, justice, and freedom.

12. The League will recognise nationality as a natural fact, having an incontestable right to a free existence and development, but not as a principle - every principle having to bear the characteristic of universality and nationality being on the contrary only an exclusive, separating fact. This so-called principle of nationality, as it has been posed in our time by the governments of France, Russia and Prussia, and even by many German, Polish, Italian, and Hungarian patriots, is merely a diversion opposed by the reaction to the spirit of revolution: eminently aristocratic in essence, to the point of despising the dialects of uneducated peoples, implicitly denying the freedom of provinces and the real autonomy of communes, and supported in all countries not by the popular masses, whose real interests it systematically sacrifices to a so-called public good, which is never anything but that of the privileged classes - this principle expresses nothing but the alleged historical rights and ambitions of States. The right of nationality can therefore never be considered by the League as anything other than a natural consequence of the supreme principle of freedom, ceasing to be a right the moment it is posed either against freedom, or even merely outside freedom.

13. Unity is the goal towards which humanity irresistibly strives. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the prosperity of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed outside of freedom, either by violence or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. Patriotism which tends toward unity outside of freedom is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve, a friend, often unwittingly, of reaction - an enemy of the revolution, that is to say of the emancipation of nations and men. The League can recognise only one unity: that which will be freely constituted by the federation of autonomous parts within the whole, so that this, ceasing to be the negation of particular rights and interests, ceasing to be the graveyard where all local prosperities must inevitably be buried, will instead become the confirmation and the source of all these autonomies and all these prosperities. The League will therefore vigorously attack any religious, political, economic and social organisation that is not thoroughly permeated by this great principle of freedom; without it, there is no intelligence, no justice, no prosperity, no humanity.

These are, gentlemen, in our opinion and without doubt also in yours, the necessary developments and consequences of this great principle of Federalism which the Geneva Congress so emphatically proclaimed. These are the absolute conditions for peace and for freedom.

Citizens and slaves - such was the antagonism in the ancient world, as in the slave states of the new world. Citizens and slaves, that is, forced workers, slaves not in law but in fact - such is the antagonism of the modern world. - And just as the ancient States perished through slavery, so too will modern States perish through the proletariat.

It is futile to try to console ourselves with the idea that this is a fictitious rather than a real antagonism, or that it is impossible to establish a line of demarcation between the owning classes and the dispossessed classes, [as] these two classes merge with each other by a number of intermediate and elusive distinctions. In the natural world these lines of demarcation do not exist either; in the ascending series of beings, it is impossible for example to indicate the point where the vegetable kingdom ends and the animal kingdom begins, where bestiality ceases and humanity begins. Nevertheless, there is a very real difference between plant and animal, between the latter and man. Similarly, in human society, despite the intermediate positions that form an imperceptible transition from one political and social existence to another, the difference between classes is nevertheless very marked, and everyone can distinguish the noble aristocracy from the financial aristocracy, the upper bourgeoisie from the petty bourgeoisie, and the latter from the proletariat of the factories and cities; as well as the great landowner, the rentier, the peasant landowner who cultivates the land himself, the farmer from the simple proletarian of the countryside.

All these different political and social existences can today be reduced to two main categories, diametrically opposed to each other, and natural enemies of each other: the privileged classes, composed of all those privileged in land or capital, or even only from bourgeois education[2] - and the working classes dispossessed of both capital and land, and deprived of all education and all instruction.

One would have to be a sophist or blind to deny the existence of the abyss that separates these two classes today. As in the ancient world, our modern civilisation, comprising a comparatively very small minority of privileged citizens, is based upon the forced labour (by hunger) of the immense majority of the population, [who are] inevitably condemned to ignorance and to brutality.

It is also futile to try to persuade ourselves that this abyss can be bridged merely by diffusing knowledge amongst the masses. It is all very well to establish schools for the people; we must still ask whether the man of the people, living from day to day and feeding his family by the labour of his hands, himself deprived of education and leisure, and forced to be worn down and stupefied by work in order to provide his family with bread for tomorrow — we must ask ourselves whether he only has the thought, the desire and even the possibility of sending his children to school and supporting them throughout their education? Will he not need the help of their feeble hands, their child labour, to provide for all the needs of his family? It would be a lot if he pushes the sacrifice to making them study for a year or two, barely giving them enough time to learn to read, write and count, and allow their minds and hearts to be poisoned by the Christian catechism, which is deliberately and profusely distributed in the official public schools of all countries. Would this meagre education ever be able to raise the working masses to the level of bourgeois understanding? Would it bridge the abyss?

It is obvious that the vital question of popular instruction and education depends upon the solution of this other far more difficult question of a radical reform in the current economic conditions of the working classes. - Improve working conditions, return to labour all that according to justice belongs to labour, and thereby give the people security, comfort, leisure, and then, believe me, they will educate themselves; they will create a civilisation broader, saner, higher than yours.

It is also futile to say with the economists that the improvement in the economic situation of the working classes depends upon the general progress of industry and commerce in each country and their complete emancipation from the supervision and protection of the State. The freedom of industry and of commerce is certainly a great thing and one of the essential foundations of the future international alliance of all the peoples of the world. Friends of freedom regardless, of all freedoms, we must also be friends of this. But on the other hand, we must recognise that as long as the present States exist and as long as labour continues to be the serf of property and of capital, this freedom, by enriching a tiny portion of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the immense majority, will produce only one benefit: that of frustrating and demoralising the small number of the privileged, of increasing the misery, the grievances, and the just indignation of the working masses, and thereby hastening the hour of the destruction of States.

II. Socialism

In general, regulation was the common passion of all the socialists before 1848, except one: Cabet, Louis Blanc, Fourierists, Saint-Simonists, all had a passion for indoctrinating and organising the future; all were more or less authoritarians.

But then Proudhon appeared: son of a peasant, and in act and instinct a hundred times more revolutionary than all these doctrinaire and bourgeois socialists, he armed himself with a critique as profound and penetrating as it was merciless to destroy all their systems. Opposing freedom to authority, against these state socialists, he boldly proclaimed himself an anarchist, and in defiance of their deism or their pantheism, he had the courage to call himself simply an atheist or rather, with Auguste Comte, a positivist.

His own socialism, based upon both individual and collective freedom, and on the spontaneous action of free associations, obeying no laws other than the general laws of social economy, discovered or yet to be discovered by social science, outside of all governmental regulation and all protection of the State, subordinating politics to the economic, intellectual, and moral interests of society, was later and by a necessary consequence to lead to federalism.

The exclusively political republican is a stoic; he recognises no rights, only duties; or, as in Mazzini’s republic, he accepts one right only: that of eternally devoting and sacrificing himself to the homeland, living only to serve it, and gladly dying for it, as in the song M. Alexander Dumas bestowed upon the Girondins: “To die for one’s homeland is the finest, the most enviable fate.” The socialist, on the contrary, draws upon his positive rights to life and to all pleasures of life, intellectual, moral, and physical. He loves life, and he wants to enjoy it to the fullest. His convictions being a part of himself, and his duties toward society being indissolubly linked to his rights, to remain faithful to both, he will know how to live in accordance with justice, like Proudhon, and if necessary die like Babeuf; but he will never say that the life of humanity must be a sacrifice, nor that death is the sweetest fate. [...]

A republic? But which republic? Political only, or democratic and social?[3] Are the people still socialist? Yes, more than ever.

What succumbed in June 1848 was not socialism in general, it was only state socialism, authoritarian and regimented socialism, that which had believed, hoped, that full satisfaction of the needs and the legitimate aspirations of the working classes would be provided by the State, and that it, armed with its plenipotence, wanted and could inaugurate a new social order. It was therefore not socialism that died in June, on the contrary it was the State which declared bankruptcy in the face of socialism and, proclaiming itself incapable of paying the debt it had incurred with it, tried to kill it to free itself from this debt in the easiest way possible. It did not succeed in killing it, but it did kill the faith that socialism had placed in it, and at the same time, annihilated all the theories of authoritarian or doctrinaire socialism, some of which, like Cabet’s “L’Icarie” and like Louis Blanc’s “L’Organisation du Travail”, had advised the people to rely in all things upon the State - whose worthlessness others had demonstrated through a series of ridiculous experiments. Even Proudhon’s bank, which under more favourable circumstances could have prospered, crushed by the censure and the general hostility of the bourgeoisie - succumbed.

We do not propose to you, gentlemen, this or that socialist system. What we ask of you is to proclaim anew that great principle of the French Revolution: that every man must have the material and moral means to develop his full humanity, a principle which, according to us, translates itself into the following challenge:

To organise society in such a manner that every individual, male or female, entering life finds roughly equal means for the development of their various faculties and for their utilisation through their labour; to organise a society which, by rending it impossible for any individual, whoever they may be, to exploit the labour of others, only allows to partake in the enjoyment of social wealth, which is in reality never produced except by labour, except to the extent that they have directly contributed to its production by his own labour.

[...] We are making no proposals on this subject, just as we generally refrain from making any proposals regarding this or that problem of social science and policy, convinced that all these questions must become the subject of serious and thorough discussion in our journal. - Today, therefore, we will limit ourselves to proposing the following statement:

“Convinced that the serious realisation of freedom, justice and peace in the world will be impossible as long as the vast majority of the population remains dispossessed of all property, deprived of education and condemned to political and social nullity and to a de facto, if not de jure, slavery by poverty as well as by the necessity in which they find themselves to toil without respite or leisure, producing all the wealth of which the world boasts today and obtaining so little from it that it is barely enough to secure their bread for the next day;

“Convinced that for all these peoples, so horribly mistreated through the ages, the question of bread is that of intellectual emancipation, of freedom and of humanity;

“That freedom without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality;

“The League loudly proclaims the need for a radical social and economic reform, aimed at the liberation of the people’s labour from the yoke of capital and proprietors, based on the strictest justice, not legal, nor theological, nor metaphysical, but simply human, on positive science and on the most absolute freedom.

“At the same time, it decides that its Journal will open widely its columns to all serious discussions on economic and social questions, when they are sincerely inspired by the desire for the broadest possible popular emancipation, both materially and from a political and intellectual perspective.”

III. Anti-Theologism

Gentlemen, we are convinced that no great political and social transformation has taken place in the world without it being accompanied and often preceded by a similar movement in the philosophical and religious ideas that guide the consciousness of both individuals and society.

No offence to all the semi-philosophers, to all the so-called religious thinkers: The existence of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice, it is the negation of human freedom and necessarily leads to a slavery that is not only theoretical but actual.

Therefore, unless we desire slavery, we cannot and must not make the slightest concession to theology, because in this mystical and rigorously consistent alphabet, whoever begins with A will inevitably arrive at Z, and whoever wishes to worship God will have to renounce their freedom and their human dignity.

Whether internally federated or not, each State, under penalty of perishing, must therefore seek to become the most powerful. It must devour in order not to be devoured, conquer in order not to be conquered, enslave in order not to be enslaved - for two powers, similar yet foreign to one another, cannot coexist without destroying each other.

The State is therefore the most blatant, cynical and complete negation of humanity. It breaks the universal solidarity of all people on earth, and associates only a portion in order to destroy, conquer and enslave the rest. It extends its protection only to its own citizens, recognising human rights, humanity, civilisation only within its own borders; recognising no rights outside of itself, it logically arrogates to itself the right to the most ferocious inhumanity against all foreign populations, whom it can plunder, exterminate or enslave at will. If it appears generous and humane towards them, it is never out of duty; because it has duties only to itself first, and then to those of its members who freely formed it, who continue to constitute it freely or even, as always happens in the long run, who have become its subjects. Since international right does not exist, and since it could never exist in a serious and real way without undermining the very foundations of the principle of the absolute sovereignty of States - the State cannot have duties towards foreign populations. Therefore if it treats a conquered people humanely, if it only half plunders and exterminates them and does not reduce them to the utmost degree of slavery, it will be for political reasons and prudence perhaps, or out of pure magnanimity, but never out of duty - for it has the absolute right to dispose of them as it pleases.

This blatant denial of humanity, which constitutes the very essence of the State, is from the point of view of the State the supreme duty and the greatest virtue: it is called patriotism, and constitutes the entire transcendent morality of the State. We call it transcendent morality because it ordinarily surpasses the level of human morality and justice, whether shared or private, and thereby usually contradicts them. Thus, to offend, oppress, despoil, plunder, murder or enslave one’s neighbour, according to ordinary human morality, is considered a crime. In public life on the contrary, from the point of view of patriotism, when it is done for the greater glory of the State, to preserve or even to expand its power, all this becomes duty and virtue. And this virtue, this duty, is obligatory for every patriotic citizen; each one is supposed to exercise them, not only against foreigners, but against his fellow citizens themselves, members or subjects like him of the State, whenever the salvation of the State demands it.

This explains why, from the very beginning of history, that is, from the birth of State, the world of politics has always been and continues to be the stage for high knavery and sublime brigandage - brigandage and knavery are, moreover, highly honoured, since they are commanded by patriotism, by transcendent morality and by the supreme interest of the State. This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern States is nothing but a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and all countries, statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats and warriors, if judged from the point of view of simple morality and human justice, have a hundred times, a thousand times deserved the gallows or the galleys; for there is no horror, cruelty, sacrilege, perjury, imposture, infamous transaction, cynical theft, brazen plunder, or foul treason that has not been, or is being, committed daily by the representatives of States, with no other excuse than that elastic expression, at once so convenient and so terrible: reason of State!

Any logical and sincere theory of the State is essentially founded upon the principle of authority, that is to say on that eminently theological, metaphysical, political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must at all times submit to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed on them from above. But imposed in the name of what and by whom? Authority recognised and respected as such by the masses can only have three sources: force, religion, or the action of a superior intelligence. We will postpone discussion of States founded on the dual authority of religion and force, because as long as we are discussing the theory of the State founded upon the free contract, we must disregard both. So for the moment we only have left the authority of superior intelligence, always represented, as we know, by minorities.

What do we indeed see in all States past and present, even those endowed with the most democratic institutions, such as the United States of North America and Switzerland? Self-government of the masses, despite the apparatus of popular omnipotence, remains for most part a fiction. It is always, in reality, minorities who govern. In the United States, up to the recent war of liberation [of the slaves] and even partly now - indeed even the entire party of the current president [Andrew] Johnson - they were and still are the so-called democrats, the supporters of slavery and the ferocious oligarchy of the [Southern] planters, demagogues without faith or conscience, capable of sacrificing everything to their greed, to their malignant ambition, and who, through their detestable actions and influence, exercised practically without hindrance for almost fifty successive years, have greatly contributed to the corruption of political morality in North America. Today, a truly intelligent, generous minority - but still and always a minority - the Republican party, is successfully combating their pernicious policies. Let us hope that its triumph will be complete, let us hope so for the good of all humanity; but however sincere this party of liberty may be, however grand and generous the principles it professes, let us not expect that, once in power, it will renounce this exclusive position of a governing minority, to merge with the mass of the nation, and for popular self-government to finally become a reality. For that to happen, a revolution far more profound than any that has shaken the old and new worlds so far will be necessary.

Let it not be thought that by this we want to criticise democratic government in favour of monarchy. We are firmly convinced that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy, because at least in a republic there are moments when the people, although continually exploited, is not oppressed, whereas in monarchies they always are. And besides the democratic regime gradually raises the masses to public life, which the monarchy never does. But while we prefer the republic, we are nevertheless forced to recognise and proclaim that, whatever the form of government, as long as human society remains divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will always be exclusive government and the inevitable exploitation of majorities by minorities.

The State is nothing other than this domination and this exploitation regulated and systematised. [...]

End Notes

[1] The illustrious Italian patriot, Giuseppe Mazzini, whose republican ideal is none other than the French Republic of 1793, recast in the poetic traditions of Dante and in the ambitious memories of Rome, sovereign of the world, then revised and corrected from the point of view of a new theology, half rational and half mystical - this eminent patriot, ambitious, passionate and always exclusive, despite all the efforts he made to rise to the level of international justice, and who always preferred the greatness and power of his country to his own well-being and freedom - Mazzini has always been a staunch opponent of provincial autonomy, which he believed would naturally disrupt the strict uniformity of his grand Italian State. He claimed that the autonomy of the communes would suffice to counterbalance the omnipotence of the strongly constituted republic. He was mistaken: no isolated commune would be able to resist the power of this formidable centralisation; it would be crushed. To avoid succumbing in this struggle, it should therefore federate with all neighbouring communes for the purpose of common resistance, that is to say that it should form an autonomous province with them. Furthermore, since the provinces will not be autonomous, they will have to be governed by functionaries of the State. There is no middle ground between rigorously consistent federalism and a bureaucratic regime. From this it follows that the republic desired by Mazzini would be a bureaucratic and, consequently, militaristic State, founded for external power and not for international justice nor internal freedom. In 1793, under the Reign of Terror, the communes of France were recognised as autonomous, which did not prevent them from being crushed by the revolutionary despotism of the Convention, or rather by that of the Commune of Paris, which Napoleon naturally inherited.

[2] In the absence of any other asset, this bourgeois education, with the help of the solidarity which links all members of the bourgeois world, assures anyone who has received it an enormous privilege in the remuneration of their work - the work of the most mediocre bourgeois almost always being paid three, four times more than that of the most intelligent worker.

[3] A reference to the demand of the 1848 revolution for a democratic and social republic, that is a republic with substantial socio-economic reforms of a socialist nature. This terminology was popular with most socialists of the time, including Proudhon. (Translator)