In the first place, the army upholds the government's rule against external assaults. It protects it against having the rule taken from it by another government.[1015] War is nothing but a contest of two or more governments for the rule over their subjects. It is "impossible to establish international peace in a rational way, by treaty or arbitration, so long as the insensate and pernicious subjection of nations to governments continues to exist."[1016] In consequence of this importance of armies "every State is compelled to increase its army to face the others, and this increase has the effect of a contagion, as Montesquieu observed a hundred and fifty years since."[1017]
But, if one thinks armies are kept by governments only for external defence, he forgets "that governments need armies particularly to protect them against their oppressed and enslaved subjects."[1018] "In the German Reichstag lately, in reply to the question why money was needed in order to increase the pay of the petty officers, the chancellor made the direct statement that reliable petty officers were necessary for the combating of Socialism. Caprivi merely said out loud what everybody knows, carefully as it is concealed from the peoples,—the reason why the French kings and the popes kept Swiss and Scots, why in Russia the recruits are so introduced that the interior regiments get their contingents from the frontiers and the frontier regiments theirs from the interior. Caprivi told, by accident, what everybody knows or at least feels,—to wit, that the existing order exists not because it must exist or because the people wills its existence, but because the government's force, the army with its bribed petty-officers and officers and generals, keeps it up."[1019]
3. The rule in the State is based on the physical force of the ruled.
It is peculiar to government that it demands from the citizens the very force on which it is based, and that consequently in the State "all the citizens are their own oppressors."[1020] The government demands from the citizens both force and the supporting of force. Here belongs the obligation, general in Russia, to take an oath at the czar's accession to the throne, for by this oath one vows obedience to the authorities,—that is, to men who are devoted to violence; likewise the obligation to pay taxes, for the taxes are used for works of violence, and the compulsory use of passports, for by taking out a passport one acknowledges his dependence on the State's institution of violence; withal the obligation to testify in court and to take part in the court as juryman, for every court is the fulfilment of the commandment of revenge; furthermore, the obligation to police service which in Russia rests upon all the country people, for this service demands that we do violence to our brother and torment him; and above all the general obligation to military service,—that is, the obligation to be executioners and to prepare ourselves for service as executioners.[1021] The unchristianness of the State comes to light most plainly in the general obligation to military service: "every man has to take in hand deadly weapons, a gun, a knife; and, if he does not have to kill, at least he does have to load the gun and sharpen the knife,—that is, be ready for killing."[1022]
But how comes it that the citizens fulfil these demands of the government, though the government is based on this very fulfilment, and so mutually oppress each other? This is possible only by "a highly artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress, in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they cannot free themselves. At present this circle consists of four means of influence; they are all connected and hold each other, like the links of a chain."[1023] The first means is "what is best described as the hypnotization of the people."[1024] This hypnotization leads men to "the erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being upheld."[1025] The hypnotization is accomplished "by fomenting the two forms of superstition called religion and patriotism";[1026] it "begins its influence even in childhood, and continues it till death."[1027] With reference to this hypnotization one may say that State authority is based on the fraudulent misleading of public opinion.[1028] The second means consists in "bribery; that is, in taking from the laboring populace its wealth, by money taxes, and dividing this among the officials, who, for this pay, must maintain and strengthen the enslavement of the people."[1029] The officials "more or less believe in the unchangeability of the existing order, mainly because it benefits them."[1030] With reference to this bribery one may say that State authority is based on the selfishness of those to whom it guarantees profitable positions.[1031] The third means is "intimidation. It consists in setting down the present State order—of whatever sort, be it a free republican order or be it the most grossly despotic—as something sacred and unchangeable, and imposing the most frightful penalties upon every attempt to change it."[1032] Finally, the fourth means is to "separate a certain part of all the men whom they have stupefied and bewitched by the three first means, and subject these men to special stronger forms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that they become will-less tools of every brutality and cruelty that the government sees fit to resolve upon."[1033] This is done in the army, to which, at present, all young men belong by virtue of the general obligation to military service.[1034] "With this the circle of violence is made complete. Intimidation, bribery, hypnosis, bring men to enlist as soldiers. The soldiers, in turn, afford the possibility of punishing men, plundering them in order to bribe officials with the money, hypnotizing them, and thus bringing them into the ranks of the very soldiers on whom the power for all this is based."[1035]
II. Love requires that a social life based solely on its commandments take the place of the State. "To-day every man who thinks, however little, sees the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto lived, and the necessity of determining new forms of life."[1036] "The Christian humanity of our time must unconditionally renounce the heathen forms of life that it condemns, and set up a new life on the Christian bases that it recognizes."[1037]
1. Even after the State is done away, men are to live in societies. But what is to hold them together in these societies?
Not a promise, at any rate. Christ commands us to make "no vows,"[1038] to "promise men nothing."[1039] "The Christian cannot promise that he will do or not do a particular thing at a particular hour, because he cannot know what the law of love, which it is the meaning of his life to obey, will demand of him at that hour."[1040] And still less can he "give his word to fulfil somebody's will, without knowing what the substance of this will is to be";[1041] by the mere fact of such a promise he would "make it manifest that the inward divine law is no longer the sole law of his life";[1042] "one cannot serve two masters."[1043]
Men are to be held together in societies in future by the mental influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced. "Mental influence is such a way of working upon a man that by it his wishes change and coincide with what is wanted of him; the man who yields to a mental influence acts according to his own wishes."[1044] Now, the force "by which men can live in societies"[1045] is found in the mental influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced, in the "characteristic of little-thinking men, that they subordinate themselves to the directions of those who stand on a higher level of knowledge."[1046] In consequence of this characteristic "a body of men put themselves under the same rational principles, the minority consciously, because the principles agree with the demands of their reason, and the majority unconsciously, because the principles have become public opinion."[1047] "In this subordination there is nothing irrational or self-contradictory."[1048]
2. But in the future societary condition how shall the functions which the State at present performs be performed? Here people usually have three things in mind.[1049]