Nowadays every government, the despotic as well as the most liberal, has become what Herzen has so cleverly termed a Genghis Khan with a telegraphic equipment, that is, with an organization of violence, having for basis nothing less than the most brutal tyranny, and converting all the means invented by science for the inter-communication and peaceful activities of free and equal men to its own tyrannous and oppressive ends.
The existing governments and the ruling classes no longer care to present even the semblance of justice, but rely, thanks to scientific progress, on an organization so ingenious that it is able to inclose all men within a circle of violence through which it is impossible to break. This circle is made up of four expedients, each connected with and supporting the other like the rings of a chain.
The first and the oldest expedient is intimidation. It consists in representing the actual organization of the State, whether it be that of a liberal republic or of an arbitrary despotism, as something sacred and immutable, which therefore punishes by the most cruel penalties any attempt at revolution. This expedient has been put into practice recently wherever a government exists: in Russia against the so-called nihilists, in America against the anarchists, in France against the imperialists, monarchists, communists, and anarchists. Railroads, telegraphs, telephones, photography, the improved method of disposing of criminals by imprisoning them in solitary confinement for the remainder of their lives in cells, where, hidden from human view, they die forgotten, as well as numerous other modern inventions upon which governments have the prior claim, give them such power, that if once the authority fell into certain hands, and the regular and secret police, administrative officials, and all kinds of procureurs, jailers, and executioners labored zealously to support it, there would be no possibility whatsoever of overthrowing the government, however cruel or senseless it might be.
The second expedient is bribery. This consists in taking the property of the laboring classes by means of taxation and distributing it among the officials, who, in consideration of this, are bound to maintain and increase the bondage of the people. The bribed officials, from the prime ministers to the lowest scribes, form one unbroken chain of individuals, united by a common interest, supported by the labor of the people, fulfilling the will of the government with a submission proportionate to their gains, never hesitating to use any means in any department of business to promote the action of that governmental violence on which their well-being rests.
The third expedient I can call by no other name than hypnotism. It consists in retarding the spiritual development of men, and, by means of various suggestions, influencing them to cling to the theory of life which mankind has already left behind, and upon which rests the foundation of governmental authority. We have at the present time a hypnotizing system, organized in a most complex manner, beginning in childhood and continued until the hour of death. This hypnotism begins during the early years of a man's life in a system of compulsory education. Children receive in school the same ideas in regard to the universe which their ancestors entertained, and which are in direct contradiction to contemporary knowledge. In countries where a State religion exists, children are taught the senseless and sacrilegious utterances of church catechisms, with the duty of obedience to authorities; in the republics they are taught the absurd superstition of patriotism, and the same obligation of obedience to the government. In maturer years this hypnotizing process is continued by the encouragement of religious and patriotic superstition. Religious superstition is encouraged by the erection of churches built from money collected from the people, by holidays, processions, painting, architecture, music, by incense that stupefies the brain, and, above all, by the maintenance of the so-called clergy, whose duty consists in befogging the minds of men and keeping them in a continual state of imbecility, what with the solemnity of their services, their sermons, their intervention with the private lives of men in time of marriage, birth, and death. The patriotic superstition is encouraged by the governments and the ruling classes by instituting national festivals, spectacles, and holidays, by erecting monuments with money collected from the people, which will influence men to believe in the exclusive importance and greatness of their own State or country and its rulers, and encourage a feeling of hostility and even of hatred toward other nations. Furthermore, autocratic governments directly forbid the printing and circulation of books and the delivery of speeches that might enlighten men; and those teachers who have the power to rouse the people from its torpor are either banished or imprisoned. And every government, without exception, conceals from the masses all that would tend to set them free, and encourages all that would demoralize them,—all those writings, for instance, that tend to confirm them in the crudeness of their religious and patriotic superstition; all kinds of sensual pleasures, shows, circuses, theaters; and all means for producing physical stupor, especially those, like tobacco or brandy, which are among the principal sources of national income. Even prostitution is encouraged; it is not only recognized, but organized by the majority of governments. Such is the third expedient.
The fourth expedient consists in this: certain individuals are selected from among the mass of enslaved and stupefied beings, and these, after having been subjected to a still more vigorous process of brutalization, are made the passive instruments of the cruelties and brutalities indispensable to the government. This state of brutality and imbecility is produced by taking men in their youth, before they have yet had time to gain any clear conception of morality; and then, having removed them from all the natural conditions of human life, from home, family, birthplace, and the possibility of intelligent labor, by shutting them up together in barracks, where, dressed in a peculiar uniform, to the accompaniment of shouts, drums, music, and the display of glittering gewgaws, they are daily forced to perform certain prescribed evolutions. By these methods they are reduced to that hypnotic condition when they cease to be men and become imbecile and docile machines in the hands of the hypnotizer. These physically strong young men thus hypnotized (and at the present time, with the general conscription system, all young men answer to this description), supplied with murderous weapons, ever obedient to the authority of the government, and ready at its command to commit any violence whatsoever, constitute the fourth and the principal means for subjugating men. So the circle of violence is completed.
Intimidation, bribery, and hypnotism force men to become soldiers; soldiers give power and make it possible to execute and to rob mankind (with the aid of bribed officials), as well as to hypnotize and to recruit men who are in their turn to become soldiers.
The circle is complete, and there is no possibility of escape from it.
If some men believe that deliverance from violence, or even a certain abatement of its energy, may be the result of its overthrow by the oppressed, who will then replace it by a system which will require no such violence and subjugation, and if, so believing, they attempt to bring this about, they only deceive themselves and others. So far from improving the position, these attempts will only render things worse.
The activity of such men only strengthens the despotism of governments by giving the latter a convenient pretext for increasing their defenses. For even when, following a train of circumstances highly demoralizing to the government,—take the case of France in 1870, for example,—a government is overthrown by violence and the authority passes into other hands, this new authority is by no means likely to be less oppressive than the former. On the contrary, obliged to defend itself from its exasperated and overthrown enemies, it will be even more cruel and despotic than its predecessor, as has ever been the case in periods of revolution.