For the protection of its industry France maintains an army of more than 40,000 customs officials, all armed with rifles and sabres, costing the nation a sum of 26 million francs per annum. This army has a double mission: to pursue smugglers and to collect a tax of 100 to 110 million francs on imported and exported goods.
Now, who can know better than industry itself what need it has of being protected, what duties must be levied, which products merit premiums and encouragements? And as to the actual service provided by Customs, is it not evident that it is up to the interested parties to calculate its expense and not the job of Power to make it a source of emoluments for its creatures, for example by making the legislation on differential tariffs a source of revenue for its extravagances?
As long as the administration of Customs remains in the hands of government authority, the protectionist system, which by the way I do not judge per se, is bound to be defective; it will be lacking in sincerity and justice; the tariffs imposed by Customs will be extortionate, and smuggling can only be seen, in the words of the honourable M. Blanqui, as both a right and a duty.
Besides the ministries of the Cults [established religions], of Justice, of War, of international trade or of Customs, the government has accumulated others, such as the ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, the ministry of Public Works, the ministry of Public Education and above all, to juggle all of them, the ministry of Finance! Our supposed separation of powers is only the accumulation of powers, our centralisation is only an absorption.
Does it not appear to you that the farmers, already organised as they are in their confederations and associations, could well operate their centralisation and manage their general interests without passing through the hands of the State? And that the merchants, producers, manufacturers and industrialists of all kinds, with their completely open associations in the chambers of commerce, might equally, without the aid of Power, without having to await their salvation from its tender mercies or their ruin from its inexperience, organise a central administration themselves and at their own expense, debate their affairs in the general assembly, correspond with the other administrations and take all useful decisions without the signature of the president of the republic, and then entrust one of theirs, chosen by his peers to be the minister, with the execution of their wishes?
And that the public works, which concern everybody, whether in agriculture, industry, trade, the departments or the communes, should be distributed forthwith among the local and central administrations with an interest in them and no longer form a separate corporation which—as with the army, Customs, Excise Office, etc.—is completely under the control of the State with its own hierarchy, privileges and ministry, all with the purpose of permitting the State to traffic in mines, canals, railways, play the stock market, speculate on shares, hand over building projects of 99 years’ duration to friends’ companies, award works on roads, bridges, ports, sea walls, drillings, tunnels, locks, dredgings etc., etc., to a legion of entrepreneurs, speculators, usurers, corrupters and swindlers who live off the public wealth, the exploitation of artisans and workers, and the follies of the State?
Does it not seem to you that national education would be just as well UNIVERSALISED, administered and ruled; the primary and secondary school teachers, headmasters and inspectors just as well chosen; the study syllabuses just as perfectly in harmony with interests, customs and morals—if town or other local councils were authorised to appoint schoolteachers while the University only had to hand out diplomas to them; if in both public education and a military career periods of service on the lower echelons were required for promotion to the higher levels; if every grand university dignitary had had to pass through the positions of primary teacher and class monitor? Do you believe that this system, perfectly democratic, would damage school discipline, educational morality, the dignity of teaching or the security of families?
And, since money is the nerve of any administration: it is necessary that the budget is made for the country and not the country for the budget and that a tax must be freely voted for by the representatives of the people every year; this is the basic and inalienable right of the nation whether under a monarchy or under the Republic. Since both expenses and receipts must be consented to by the country before being authorised by the government, is it not clear that the consequence of this financial initiative, which has been formally recognised as pertaining to the citizens by all our constitutions, would be that the ministry of finance—all this fiscal organisation, in a word—should belong to the nation and not to its prince; that in fact it is directly answerable to those who pay the budget, not those who eat it; that there would be far less abuse in the management of the public treasury, less squandering of funds, fewer deficits, if the State had no more control of the public finances than of the churches, of justice, of the army, of customs, of public works or of public education, etc.?
Without a doubt, in the case of Agriculture, Trade, Industry, Public Works, Education and Finance, separation will not end in annihilation, in the way that we have attempted to show it will in the case of the Churches, Justice, War and Customs. In this connection one might believe that with the development of economic forces compensating—and more—the suppression of political powers, the principle of authority will gain on the one hand what it has lost on the other, and that the governmental idea will be strengthened instead of disappearing.
But who does not see that the Government that has just come to an end with the extinction of its powers meets that end in this case in the fact of their absolute independence as much as in the mode of their centralisation, the principle of which is no longer authority but contract?
What makes for centralisation in both despotic and representative States is authority, hereditary or elective, which emanating from the King, President or directory descends on the country and absorbs all its powers. But what makes for centralisation in a society of free men, associating with different groups according to the nature of their industries or their interests and by whom neither collective nor individual sovereignty is ever abdicated or delegated, is the contract. The principle, you see, has changed: from this point on the economy is no longer the same; the organism, deriving from another law, has been turned upside down. Instead of resulting, as was hitherto the case, from the agglomeration and confiscation of forces by a so-called representative of the people, social unity is the product of the free support of the citizens. In fact and in law the Government has ceased to exist as a result of universal suffrage.522
I shall not accumulate any more examples here. After what has preceded it is easy to continue the series and see the difference between centralisation and despotism, between the separation of social functions and the separation of those two abstractions that have been rather unphilosophically named the legislative power and the executive power—in the end between administration and government. Do you believe, I say, that with this truly democratic regime, with its unity at the bottom and its separation at the top, the reverse of what now exists in all our constitutions, there would not be more severity concerning expenditure, more exactitude in the services, more responsibility for the functionaries, more benevolence on the part of administrations towards the citizens, and less servility, less esprit de corps, fewer conflicts, in a word, fewer disorders? Do you believe that reforms would then appear quite so difficult; that the influence of authority would corrupt the judgement of the citizens; that corruption would serve as the basis of morals, and that being a hundred times less governed we would not be a thousand times better run as a country?
It used to be believed that in order to create national unity it was necessary to concentrate all public powers in the hands of a single authority; then, as it soon became apparent that in proceeding thus one only created despotism, it was believed possible to remedy this inconvenience by means of the dualism of powers, as if in order to prevent the government’s war against the people there were no other means than organising the war of the go
vernment against the government!
For a nation to be manifested in its unity it is necessary, I repeat, that this nation be centralised in its religion, centralised in its justice, centralised in its military force, centralised in its agriculture, its industry and commerce, centralised in its finances, centralised in all its functions and powers, in a word; it is necessary that centralisation be effected from the bottom to the top, from the circumference to the centre, and that all functions be independent and govern themselves independently.
Do you then want to make this purely economic and invisible unity more apparent to the senses by means of a special organ or by an Assembly; to preserve the image of the superannuated government for love of your traditions?
Group these different administrations by their leading representatives: you will then have your council of ministers, your executive power, which might then very well do without a State Council.
Above all that now raise a grand jury, legislature or national assembly, directly appointed by the whole country and charged, not with appointing the ministers—they will be invested in their roles by their specific electoral bodies—but with verifying the accounts, passing laws, fixing the budget, settling the differences between the administrations, all this after having heard the conclusions of the public ministry, or ministry of the interior, to which the whole government will then be reduced: and you have a centralisation which is all the stronger for your multiplying the number of centres of power, a responsibility all the more real for the separation between powers being more clean-cut: you will have a constitution which is at the same time political and social.
There, the government, the State, power—whatever name you choose to give it—brought back within its just limits, which are not to legislate nor to execute, nor even to fight or judge, but as commissioner to witness: the sermons, if there are any sermons, the debates in tribunals and parliamentary discussions, if there are any tribunals and a parliament; to supervise the generals and armies, if circumstances make it necessary to keep the armies and generals; to remind people of the meaning of the laws and warn of the contradictions involved, to see to the execution of those laws and prosecute any breaches: there, I say, government is nothing other than the head teacher of society, the sentinel of the people. Or rather, government no longer exists, since by the progress of their separation and centralisation the powers formerly gathered together by the government have all either disappeared or escaped the latter’s initiative: anarchy has given birth to order. There at last you have the liberty of the citizens, the truth of institutions, the sincerity of universal suffrage, the integrity of the administration, the impartiality of justice, the patriotism of bayonets, the submission of parties, the impotence of sects, the convergence of wills. Your society is organised, living, progressive; it thinks, speaks, acts like a man, precisely because it is no longer represented by a man, because it no longer recognises personal authority, because in it, as in any organised and living being, as in Pascal’s infinity, the centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.523
It is to this anti-governmental constitution that we are invincibly led by our democratic traditions, our revolutionary tendencies, our need for centralisation and unity, out love of liberty and equality, and the purely economic, if very badly applied, principle of all our constitutions. And it is this I would have gladly explained to the Constituent Assembly, if that Assembly, so impatient of commonplaces, had been capable of listening to something other than commonplaces; if, in its blind prejudice against any new idea, in its unfair provocations with the socialists, it had not had the empty words to say to them: I defy you to try to convince me!
But it is with assemblies as with nations: they only learn from misfortune. We have not suffered enough, we have not been sufficiently chastised for our monarchical servility and governmental fanaticism for us to come to love liberty and order so soon. Everything within us still conspires with the exploitation of man by man, the government of man by man.
Louis Blanc is in need of a strong power to do what he calls the good, which is the application of his system, and to keep down the bad, which is everything that opposes that system.
M. Léon Faucher is in need of a strong and pitiless power to contain the republicans and exterminate the socialists, to the glory of English political economy and Malthus.
MM. Thiers and Guizot are in need of a quasi-absolute power which enables them to exercise their great talents as tightrope walkers. What kind of nation is it from which a man of genius would be forced to exile himself for lack of men to govern, a parliamentary opposition to combat and intrigues to pursue with all the governments?
MM. de Falloux and Montalembert are in need of a power divine that every knee would bow to, every head incline to, every conscience prostrate itself to, in order that kings might no longer be any more than the gendarmes of the Pope, the vicar of God on earth.
M. Barrot is in need of a double power, legislative and executive, in order that there might be eternal contradiction in parliament and society never have any other end, in this life and the other, but to witness constitutional representations.
Ah! vain servile race that we are! We who pay 1,800 million francs a year for the follies of our governors and our own shame; who maintain 500,000 soldiers to machine-gun our children; who vote for fortresses for our tyrants so that they may keep us under perpetual siege; who invite nations to become independent only to abandon them to their despots; who wage war on our neighbours and allies, today for the vengeance of a preacher, yesterday for the pleasure of a courtesan; who have no esteem for any but our flatterers, no respect but for our parasites, no love but for our prostitutes, no hate but for our workers and our poor; once a race of heroes, now of hypocrites and sycophants: if it is true that we are the Christ of the nations, might we soon quaff the chalice of our iniquities to the dregs, or, if we have definitely abdicated liberty, serve by dint of distress and squalor as an eternal example to cowardly peoples and perjurers!
CHAPTER XVII
29 JANUARY 1849: BARROT-FALLOUX REACTION. DESTRUCTION OF THE GOVERNMENT
THE FUNERAL SERVICES for the powers that be got underway, with Louis Bonaparte presiding. This supreme transition was crucial if the way was to be prepared for the advent of the democratic, social republic. The situation in place prior to then and the events that followed December 10th, which are still being played out with inexorable logic, will demonstrate as much to us.
By plumping for royalty in 1830 and founding constitutional rule, the governments of the Thiers, Guizots and Talleyrands had, deliberately and of their own volition, laid down the principle of a further revolution. Like a grub instinctively sensitive to approaching metamorphosis, it had woven its own winding-sheet. By endowing itself after a nine month crisis with a president, a shadow of a king, it had uttered its Consummatum est524 and, before breathing its last, placed its final wishes on record.
The corruption of power had been the doing of the constitutional monarchy; the presidency’s mission is to lead the mourning for the authorities. Just as Cavaignac had been, and as Ledru-Rollin had been, Louis Bonaparte is merely an executor of that intent. Louis Philippe poured his poison into the old society: Louis Bonaparte escorted it to the burial ground. I will parade this lugubrious procession in front of you anon.
Take a close look at France: she is spent, done for. Life has retreated into itself: where the heart should be we have only the metallic chill of interests; where the thought should be, we have a torrent of opinions all contradicting one another and holding each other in check. A vermin-riddled corpse, one might say. You speak of freedom, honour, fatherland? France is dead: Rome, Italy, Hungary, Poland and the Rhineland kneel all around the coffin and recite the De Profundis!525 What once was the power and the glory of the French nation—monarchy and republic, Church and parliament, bourgeoisie and nobility, military glory, the sciences, letters, the fine arts—all of it is no more: everything has been mown down like a harvest, and toss
ed into the revolutionary mash. Take care not to detain this work of decomposition: don’t go mixing the living vermilion liquid with mud and sediment. That would be tantamount to killing Lazarus in the tomb a second time.
For nearly twenty years now our death has been in the making and we have occasionally thought our metamorphosis approaching its end! Nothing happened but this was interpreted by us as a sign of resurrection: the slightest sound reaching our ears rang like the trump of the Last Judgement. Yet year followed year and the big day never came. It was like the Middle Ages and their intoxicated millenarians. Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Ancona, the Quadruple Alliance, the right to search, secret societies, infernal machines, parliamentary coalitions: then came Beirut, Krakow, Pritchard, the Spanish marriages, the Russian loan; then scarcity, electoral reform, the Sonderbund and, overlaying them all, corruption!…526 Then, finally, the February Revolution, a spectacle in twelve scenes, universal suffrage, the reaction and, once again, as ever, corruption! So many occasions to make our mark if we had any sort of a heart still beating, if we were a people! Sometimes, we tried to struggle to our feet ... but the chill of death pinned us in our coffin. We have thrown away our final flames on pitchers and glasses: toasts from the dynastics, the democrats, the socialists were our only share in the history of France from July 1847 through to September 1849.
We did not cease to show, and myself first and foremost, that the government of Louis Bonaparte was unjust! The way we used to do with Louis-Philippe. The government of December 10th? It is only there to seal up the burial chamber, let me tell you; let it perform its pall-bearer’s function. Following the ghastly, unparalleled handiwork of the July monarchy, the presidency’s duty is to lay you out in your charnel-house. Thanks to power, Louis-Philippe was society’s wrecker: Louis Bonaparte will be the destroyer of what Louis-Philippe had missed, authority. The circumstances attending his election, the place he occupies in the revolutionary series, the policy his elders have foisted upon him, the use he has been induced to make of his authority, the prospects opened up in front of him: all nudging him and hurrying him forwards. It is Revolution itself that has taught Louis Bonaparte a lesson. Did not he, like Louis-Philippe, yoke together the Jesuit and the doctrinairian, only to have each of them bring disgrace upon the other? Did he not state, in his inaugural address, that he would carry on with the policies of Cavaignac, the regicide’s son? ... I tell you truthfully: the role of the President of the Republic was written in the book of fate: his calling is to de-moralise the authorities the way Carrier527 stripped the morality out of torture.
Property Is Theft! Page 59