INDIVIDUAL MORALITY AND COLLECTIVE IMMORALITY
Men, who would be deeply offended if their Morality were called into
question, quite coolly investigate the problem as to whether the State
in its actions and omissions is bound by the same moral laws as the
individual, and the majority of them come to the conclusion that in its
relation to other States, the State must not be guided, that is to say,
hampered, by moral considerations. They go further than this and not
only liberate the State in its dealings with other countries from the
trammels of Morality, but claim for the government the privilege of
standing beyond and above the moral law in the conduct of public
affairs, because to their mind both foreign and home politics move on a
different plane to that of ethics. If anyone objects to this shameless
contention, its advocates contemptuously dismiss him with the disdainful
remark: "That is the drivel of a layman, and no man of science would
waste his time on it." And if you were to reply: "Your views are those
of gaolbirds who try after the event to hatch a theory justifying their
misdeeds," they would probably shrug their shoulders and murmur
scornfully: "The man is obviously mad."
Professorial wisdom has formulated pedantically what practical
politicians, the heads of states and leading ministers have thought,
said and done. Napoleon remarked at St. Helena to Count de Las Cases,
who respectfully notes the fact in his "_Mémorial de Sainte Hélène_":
"The actions of a ruler who labours for the community, must be
distinguished from those of a private individual who is free to indulge
his feelings; policy permits, nay, commands, the one to do what in the
case of the other would often be inexcusable." Perhaps it was under the
influence of this remark, with which he, no doubt, was familiar, that
Professor Nisard one day in a lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris
propounded the theory that there was a dual Morality, one public or
political, the other private, and that these two did not follow the same
rules. That was shortly after the Coup d'Etat of Napoleon III, and it
was easy to descry, in the words of the celebrated professor of literary
history, obsequiousness towards the new Emperor and the effort of a
courtier to excuse the violence which the Emperor had just done to the
constitution he had sworn to uphold. Nisard was one of the ornaments of
the university, a teacher of youth, who was as popular as he was
respected. But the sound ethical feeling of his hearers revolted against
the depravity of the principles he had just enunciated, and the violent
expression of their indignation drove him in shame and disgrace from his
chair and out of the lecture hall.
Macchiavelli is the most famous advocate of the Immorality of the State
and the right of politics to be unethical, and his name is identified
with this infamous theory. An enormous amount has been written about
the Florentine statesman, his book of the "Prince" and the doctrines he
advances in it; among these works those in which his theories are
endorsed preponderate to a horrifying extent over those which oppose and
refute them. Mohl and Paul Janet have furnished us with the best
abstracts of these very numerous writings, and I refer the reader to
them. Here I can only dwell on the main points of the investigation.
Macchiavelli writes: "A man who wishes to be perfectly good is without
doubt in danger among those who are not good. It is therefore advisable
that a prince should learn not always to be good, so as to be able to
put these rules of life into practice, or not, as circumstances may
demand." "A prince cannot maintain loyalty to a treaty if it become
dangerous to his interests." In short, the prince not only may, but
must, do what is in his own interests. He need not stop to think whether
his actions are honest. The only measure of their worth and
appropriateness is the profit they promise. Their success always
justifies them, only their failure proves them to be bad.
The most revolting thing in the arguments of the "Prince" is the
equanimity with which the author adduces them. Never does he let slip a
word of excitement, never does an indication of feeling appear. He
treats his subject not as an investigation of principles to which one
adopts a mental attitude and which one should approve or disapprove, but
as a description of existing facts which arouse one's emotions as little
as, for instance, the enumeration of the qualities and characteristics
of a mineral. It has been said in his defence that his book is a
concrete study, the presentation of the character of Cæsar Borgia, of
his psychology and of his principles of government; and that
Macchiavelli wished to give an objective account of the philosophy of
the events he had observed, but did not wish to judge them subjectively;
and this, if for no other reason, because an expression of his own
opinion would have been too dangerous for him. It is further urged that
his personal views are revealed in the treatise on Livy.
This defence, however, is far from convincing. In the "Prince"
Macchiavelli maintains the same unconcerned and cool note that prevails
in his account of the treacherous assassinations perpetrated in
Senigaglia by his hero Cæsar Borgia. The only personal feeling, which
peeps out occasionally in both works, is a certain perverse, æsthetic
satisfaction, experienced by the artist with the eye of a connoisseur
who lingers over a work of nature, perfect in its way, and delights in
the harmony of actions which, with absolute logic, almost with
mathematical precision, result from the definite premise supplied by a
certain character. Des Esseintes, the ideal æsthete invented by Joris
Karl Huysmans, may appraise the worth of a monster solely by its beauty,
without a thought for its morality. But by such appraisement he cuts
himself off from the community of men, though he, in his arrogance,
being morally insane, may abuse them as philistines.
Since it first appeared, Macchiavellism has found disciples and admirers
in every age; and these, in liberating politics from all fetters of
Morality, go further than its originator. The German jurist of the
century of the Reformation, Schoppe (1576-1649), declares sententiously
that politics differ from Morality and have their own principles, just
as Morality has: he considers that the chief difference between them is
that the latter takes as its subject of study that which should be; the
former, that which is. For this one phrase this pedant, who has
otherwise rightly deserved oblivion, has some claim to be remembered.
For here he consigns Morality to the realm of pure thought, of
theoretical and meditative idealism, while for politics he claims the
sphere of practical reality and shows the first dim dawning of that
practical policy (_Realpolitik_) which, two hundred and fifty years
later, was to be as the light of the sun to statesmen.
The Frenchman, Gabriel Naudé, almost a contemporary of Schoppe's,
constituted himself the champion of Coups d'Etat, if they promised
political advantages; further, he justifies and praises the Night of
Saint Bartholomew, a very energetic measure taken in his lifetime to put
an end to the religious strife which was weakening France and causing
the government much embarrassment; his only regret is that the happy
idea of slaughtering all the Huguenots was not carried out more
completely; in other words, that the massacre of the obnoxious
Protestants was not continued until they had been completely wiped out.
Even in Descartes, who confessed to a somewhat shady opportunism in
questions of state and, for instance, concedes reasonable and moral
justification to Absolutism, we find the depressing statement: "Against
the enemy one is, so to speak ('_quasi_'), permitted to do anything," a
conscious and determined denial of the Christian commandment "Love thine
enemies," which perhaps demands too much of the average man and can only
be expected from saints, but which, anyway, contains an exhortation for
all the world at least to be just to one's enemies and act according to
the dictates of Morality.
D'Holbach does not beat about the bush, but declares roundly: "In
politics the only crime is not to succeed." Even Macchiavelli did not
express it as baldly as that. To quote the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, he
at least pays virtue the compliment of hypocrisy, for he gives this
advice: "Do (the evil which is profitable) and excuse it afterwards."
This is a paraphrase of the old advice given by a pettifogging lawyer
for the benefit of the criminal: "If you have done it, deny it," and of
the well-known phrase of Frederick the Great which runs something like
this: "If I have a desire for a foreign country, I begin by seizing it,
then I send for lawyers who prove that I had a right to it." This, then,
was the opinion of that king who wrote an "Anti-Macchiavelli," of whom,
however, Paul Janet neatly remarks: "Nothing is more typical of
Macchiavellism than as heir presumptive to the throne to refute
Macchiavelli's principles, and then as ruling monarch to apply them with
the more determination."
For the sake of the incorruptible Morality which Kant defends in his
little work "_Vom ewigen Frieden_" ("Of Eternal Peace"), he may be
forgiven for his weakly worldly wisdom in following up the "Critique of
Pure Reason" with the "Critique of Practical Reason." In "_Vom ewigen
Frieden_" he bravely demands harmony between Politics and Morality. More
sweepingly than the English proverb, "Honesty is the best policy," he
demonstrates that honesty is better than policy. It is an old tradition
of all governments, and especially of diplomacy, to affect secrecy,
since their inavowable intrigues shun the light of day and the eye of
outsiders. To-day the democracy in all constitutional states demands
that foreign policy should be given full publicity. Kant expressed his
opinion shortly and sharply a hundred and fifty years ago: "All
political actions which cannot be made public are unjust." In the
eighteenth century, in which he lived and which began with the war of
the Spanish Succession, went on to the wars of Frederick the Great, and
ended with the war of the Coalition against the French Revolution, he
does not dare to make a definite claim that force should be expelled
from inter-state relations and Law put in its place, but he does say, if
somewhat timidly, that one may "dream of" an ideal in which the quarrels
of nations are adjusted, like those of private persons, by laws which
have been framed and approved by all. Kant is a comforting exception
amid the many teachers of constitutional law who are almost unanimously
Macchiavellian in their attitude, and who regard his point of view with
contemptuous and condescending leniency because he was an unworldly
philosopher, a theorist in politics.
The English and Scottish moral philosophers, from Locke to J. S. Mill
and Herbert Spencer, are all untainted by Macchiavellism and recognize
only one Morality for the state as for the individual, for political as
for private action. But it must be admitted that their doctrines have
not yet been generally assimilated by the consciousness of their own
people. Now, as ever, it is a fundamental principle of English law that
"the king can do no wrong." That means that the king, the embodiment and
epitome of the state, as the source of Law is Law itself, and is
superior to all the laws of the country, which is a still more drastic
paraphrase of the doctrine of the Digest: "_quod principi placuit legis
habet vigorem_"; every whim of the potentate has the force of law, and
the English have coined the horrible phrase, "My country, right or
wrong," a dictum which allows ruthless deceivers of the people and
destroyers of their country to hide their most appalling misdeeds
beneath the mask of patriotism and to disguise deeds worthy of a
criminal in the habiliments of virtue.
Real patriotism demands that a true citizen and an honourable man should
with might and main, even at the price of his life, oppose any injustice
about to be committed by his government and his misguided compatriots;
and, further, that he should strive to maintain his country in the path
of Right and Morality even if, as sometimes happens, in a dispute
between his nation and a foreign one the latter has Right and Morality
on its side. On the plea of inevitable partiality a judge may refuse to
try a case in which a near relative of his is involved. That is a
permissible concession to that human imperfection which causes reason
to fall silent when feeling raises its voice; and justice does not
suffer, for there are other judges who can take the seat that has been
voluntarily vacated. No citizen has the right to evade the duty of
judging his country, because, if he fails, there is no other judge who
can be put in his place and fulfil his duty. Every citizen is personally
responsible for the just and moral behaviour of his community,
responsible to his own conscience, to his nation, to the world, to the
present and to the future; and if he is powerless to prevent depravity
and misdeeds, he must at least solemnly and loudly condemn them, as this
is his only means of avoiding joint responsibility for the infamy. If he
fails to do this, the public crime becomes his personal crime as well.
The elder Brutus, so much and so justly admired by the Romans, is an
example to all, for without mercy he handed his own flesh and blood over
to the executioner, when according to the law his life was forfeit. The
state has no greater claim to indulgence and mercy than had Brutus's
son, if knowingly and intentionally it indulges in vice. For if you
allow the dictum, "Right or wrong, my country," to be valid, then you
must also apply it to the state of filibusterers that once existed in
the Antilles, and must demand of its citizens that their patriotism
should approve and defend theft, piracy, rape and assassination, for the
systematic perpetration of which their state was founded.
In contrast with this wretched "My country, right or wrong," the
inflexible dictum of the ancients stands out: "_Fiat justitia, pereat
mundus!_" (Let justice be done though the world perish!). And what does
most honour to the French Revolution is the phrase so often mocked by
political profiteers: "Sooner shall the colonies perish than a
principle!" That was the standpoint of the prophets of Israel, who truly
did not love their people less than do the wretched scoundrels who shout
"hurray!" and yell songs, when their country deals Morality and Right a
brutal blow, because the leaders think that this will profit the
country, or themselves.
Frederick the Great and Napoleon, as heads of the state, acted in
accordance with Macchiavelli's views. At their time this was expressed
by saying that they were guided by the necessities of the state. In the
second half of the nineteenth century Macchiavellism received the name
of practical policy (_Realpolitik_). The despisers of Morality, who call
the misdeeds of the state _Realpolitik_, apparently do not know that
this one word implies a very comprehensive admission. To their idea
_Realpolitik_ is a policy which reckons only with realities, not with
desires, yearnings or hope, or as Schoppe brutally expresses it: with
that which is, not with that which ought to be. It is active in the
domain of facts, not in that of principles.
But, according to the advocates of _Realpolitik_, facts and realities
mean nothing but the sole rule of interest, selfishness, ruthlessness,
force, cunning and contempt for all foreign rights; whereas fairness,
justice, the curbing and suppression of one's own desires, consideration
for one's neighbour, love of mankind--all these are phrases, or let us
rather say ideals, which are to be found, not in the world, but in the
brains of a small minority of enthusiasts without influence. He who
confesses to such views, to whom the worst impulses alone are real,
while he relegates Morality to the sphere of the unreal, of visions far
from reality, is a pessimist as long as his convictions remain theory;
but if he puts them into practice, or urges the leaders of the state to
do so, then he is an evildoer who breaks the moral law as soon as it
appears unaccompanied by the police, the prison and the gallows. In
private life a man with such views is a criminal who obeys his evil
instincts whenever he may hope to evade the law of the state. The
bandit, who is clever enough to manage so that police and court of
justice cannot touch him, is a practical politician, for the riches he
acquires by theft, robbery and murder are realities; the criminal code
is but a scrap of paper, something visionary, as long as its minions do
not seize him by the collar.
The immorality of politics, the way in which the foundations of Morality
are ignored by the state, is the natural consequence of the power of
rulers; for in them all the original instincts of the human beast still
untamed by moral law are exaggerated by the intense realization of their
loftiness, the glory and the illustriousness of their position, and they
are not forced by wholesome fear of the means of coercion wielded by the
moral administration to control themselves, to exercise and develop
their organic powers of inhibition. The elevation of this fact of the
Immorality of the state to a theory that the state is not bound by moral
law, is derived from the conception which philosophers of all ages,
from ancient times to the present day, have formed of the character and
the purpose of the state. Plato, in the Republic, maintains the
omnipotence of the state, which nothing and no one can limit; and
Aristotle, not rising to such heights of error as his master, says more
soberly: "It is a grave mistake to believe that every citizen is his own
master." The Italian philosopher Filangieri considers the guiding
principle and motive power of the state to be "love of power," which a
fool three centuries later called the "will to power," whereupon other
fools declared this to be a brand-new discovery.
Hegel goes farthest of all in his idolatry of the state; according to
him the state is not alone moral, but Morality itself, just as God is
according to the theologians. As it would be arrogant blasphemy to
characterize anything that God ordains as immoral, as it would be
nonsensical to wish to impose upon God a moral law from outside, not
emanating from Him, to which He would have to submit even against His
will, so it is reprehensible to judge the actions of the state by the
standard of individual Morality; and it is equally absurd to admit any
moral coercion imposed on the state from outside, any guiding principle
other than the law of its necessities and the logic which indicates the
means needed to attain the necessary end.
According to Treitschke the state is the highest form of human
existence; nothing higher than the state exists. He has never asked
himself the question whether, after all, humanity itself is not superior
to the state which is the form, a form, of its existence and therefore
not its essence.
From his conviction that the state is the highest thing existing,
Treitschke concludes that certain moral duties, e.g. that of
self-sacrifice, cannot possibly exist for the state. "The individual is
to sacrifice himself for the sake of a higher community of which he is a
member; but the state is itself the highest thing in the outer community
of mankind, therefore it can never be confronted with the duty of
self-destruction."
How obvious that seems! How grossly mistaken it is all the same! First
of all the state is not the highest thing; there is something higher,
and that is humanity; if then we recognize a moral duty of
self-sacrifice for humanity, theoretically this duty may arise just as
much for the state as for the individual.
Secondly, the idea that owing to Morality the state might one day
actually be in such a position as to be forced to sacrifice itself is
the most shocking nonsense. How could that possibly be? If the state
always acts with strict Morality towards its citizens and foreign
states, it is simply impossible that it should have to sacrifice its
existence in the fulfilment of some task; for tasks only arise when, and
as long as, the state exists. Once it is disintegrated there can be no
task, either theoretically or practically, for it to accomplish,
therefore it cannot have to sacrifice itself for such a task. But if the
Immorality of another state, or of a minority of its citizens, should
endanger it, threaten it with an unjust attack from within or without,
then there is no rule of Morality that can forbid it to defend itself
to the last, and its self-sacrifice could then only be a result of its
complete annihilation in a justifiable war of necessity. On the other
hand, even the most unscrupulous practical politicians do not possess
any absolute guarantee against defeat, though they declare a war of
aggression to be permissible, whether waged on account of an itching for
power, for purposes of conquest, for the winning of prestige,
predominance or economic advantages.
Thirdly and lastly, the duty of self-sacrifice for the state can only be
envisaged and seriously discussed, if the state be conceived as a person
to whom the duty of Morality applies in every way; but this conception
is mystic anthropomorphism, not sober, sensible recognition of realities
such as the practical politicians love to boast of.
For, as a matter of fact, the state is not a person but a concept, an
institution created by man in the interests of one individual, of a few,
of many or of all; an organization of habits and interests, a relation
in which individuals live together. The mysticism of the weak-minded has
transformed it into a person with human features, with the qualities,
desires, duties, and aims of an individual; these men are intellectually
incapable of penetrating to the fundamental facts underlying the
concept, and cling entirely to word-pictures which are mere verbalism.
Scholasticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was chiefly occupied
in a quarrel about Nominalism and Realism. It was allowed to drop and
was not fought out to a decision. Perhaps because it is impossible to
convince these superficial babblers who take a name or a word for an
object actually existent in time and space, that they are in error. The
fight between Abelard and Roscelet and that between the two of them and
Duns Scotus ought to be taken up again. Above all, one ought to knock it
into the heads of those who make a fetish of the state that it is a mere
word, the famous "_flatus vocis_" of the Nominalists, which they
worship, to which they build altars and make human sacrifices.
This humiliating form of idolatry is practised by the school of
sociologists known as organicistic, as well as by the practical
politicians. This school maintains that the individual has no
independent existence at all, that he continues to exist only in the
community, by the community, as a totally subordinate, dependent and
incomplete fraction of the community; that the only real thing in the
species is society, the state; that this must be regarded as a living
organism, in which the individual human being is merely a cell which in
solitude, outside the community and detached from it, is as little
capable of life and has as little significance as a cell separated from
a highly differentiated creature, such as a man or some other mammal. In
my book "_Der Sinn der Geschichte_" (The Meaning of History), I threw as
much light as I possibly could on this superstition, and I pointed out
in detail its lack of sense as well as its dangers. I can, therefore,
content myself here with a résumé and a few indications.
There is nothing mysterious or supernatural about the historic or even
the prehistoric origin of the state; part we can learn from reliable
documentary evidence, part we can gather with certainty from obvious
facts. From the primitive human family, which more probably consisted of
a pair than of a man and several women, there arose the formless horde,
a crowd of individuals of all ages, connected by blood; this developed
into a tribe in which age, strength, courage and intelligence were
appreciated in a certain order, and thereby were produced the beginnings
of discipline, co-operation and regularized mutual relations; that is to
say, of organization. This embryo of later formations, this sketchy
beginning of an economic and political community, evolved more definite
and differentiated forms when the wandering huntsmen and shepherds,
seeking prolific hunting grounds and pasture lands, and later on arable
land too, came upon other groups of men and fought with them for the
possession of the desired domain. In the conflict strong and brave men
came to the front, and the victor became the natural, and for the most
part willingly recognized, leader and master of his companions, while
any who opposed him were reduced by force to submit to his authority.
The state crystallized around this war-hero, and by all its members its
aim was clearly and obviously recognized to be defence and the increase
of property outside the state; that is, the warding off of attacks by
foreign robbers and acquisitive invasions of neighbouring domains--wars
of defence and conquest, but always war; and within the state the
maintenance of a certain measure of safety for individuals. This safety,
however, had to be purchased dearly by the limitation, often enough the
complete surrender, of the right of self-determination, of independence
of will and freedom; so dearly, in fact, that the price was far higher
than the value of the advantages acquired.
The leader in warfare became the ruler and bequeathed his privileges to
his descendants. The state was he himself, the land his property, the
people his family in the old sense of the word--that is, his kindred,
his servants, his slaves. His comrades in arms who had most
distinguished themselves became an aristocracy of the sword, the
supporters and tools of his power, though often enough they became his
rebellious rivals and overthrew him. Defeated enemies were robbed of all
their possessions and slaughtered; later on they were degraded to serfs,
a position little better than that of beasts of burden. A regular
parasitism developed, by means of which the ruler and his companions in
arms exploited the subjugated and productive masses for their own
profit.
The acute form of this parasitism was warfare in its chronic form, its
prolongation in times of peace, the extortion of contributions and
duties, the imposition of taxes and forced labour from the people. The
ruler was clever enough to provide himself with a moral right to his
exercise of brute force, by inventing a divine origin for his person and
power, and making worship of his person an essential tenet of the
national religion. The systematic suppression of the masses without
rights became the universal practice of the ruler and of the instruments
of his power, and this gradually spread to the higher classes who could
still play the master to the lower strata, but were of no more account
than the vulgar herd in the eyes of the ruler, having to bow their
proud heads beneath the same yoke. A very few races followed a different
course of development from the primitive horde to an organized state.
They remained free members of the community with equal rights, they
allowed no hereditary ruler from among themselves to become their
superior, and governed themselves as republicans, who nevertheless also
waged war without exception, either forced thereto by the attacks of
greedy neighbours or lured into doing so by the example of the
monarchies within their purview or by lust for booty. In warfare they
won slaves and subjects, and changed into oligarchies, most often into
despotic states, and before they ultimately declined to the parasitism
of a single man and his aids fell victims to a collective parasitism
which gave the conquered and subjugated population up to the spoliation
of the victors.
Up till modern times the state preserved the character of a private
domain belonging to the ruler and his house. Wars were waged in the
interests of dynasties, and as late as the eighteenth century the
succession in Spain and in certain provinces of Austria was the origin
and purpose of various campaigns. The French Revolution first wrought a
change in this. Since this great event it has been impossible to plunge
any European state into war in order to support the claims to property,
more or less legally justified, made by its ruling house. The people
have taken the place of princes, and now the principle of nationalities
furnishes the reason or excuse for bloody conflicts between states; and
this has become a factor in modern politics and history merely because
dynasties had built up their realms regardless of the origin and
language of the inhabitants of the districts which they had conquered,
stolen, bought, or acquired by exchange, by marriage or by inheritance,
and were indifferent to the national unity of their subjects as long as
they could gain possession of the country and the people.
From the time of its first vague beginnings up till the rise of modern
democracy, the state has been nothing but a means of parasitism in the
hands of the ruling person or group, and an instrument for the
preparation for, and the waging of, war. All the state's tasks, which
apparently lie outside the sphere of war, if they are carefully
examined, will be found, after all, to aim at efficiency in war, and it
has gradually selected these tasks from the simple consideration that
their execution increases the guarantees of success in warfare and in
government.
The deification of the ruler in Asiatic and Egyptian lands, the
unconditional identification of the realm with his person, the uniform
enslavement of the whole people, its naïve exploitation for the sole
benefit of the sovereign and his assistants are no longer possible in
Europe at the present day. The development of the nations to a higher
plane of civilization and a clearer consciousness of their own worth
forced the state to alter its constitution to a certain extent and to
devote itself, at least theoretically, more to the interests of its
citizens than the service of its prince. The intellectual constructions
of the eighteenth century correspond to no historical reality. The
Social Contract, the inception of which J. J. Rousseau described so
graphically, was never made. Hutcheson, who had expressed the idea long
before the enthusiast of Geneva, conceived it only as the epitome of the
principles which the state should embody; according to Hume, the
relations of the citizens to each other and to the state are a tacit
contract which need not be explicitly formulated, because it originates
in human nature; and Fichte even assures us that Rousseau himself did
not mean his Social Contract to be taken literally. According to him it
was only an idea. But societies must act in pursuance of this idea, and
they were founded, if not actually, yet legally upon an unwritten
contract. Anyway, the ideas of Hutcheson, Hume and Rousseau have
nowadays been assimilated by the general consciousness. The masses
believe in the natural, inborn rights of man, some of which he certainly
has surrendered in favour of the community; they demand and expect of
the state that it should serve their just interests, and they are no
longer ready to be made use of by the ruler and a powerful, often very
small, minority, for purposes which are foreign to them, which they do
not know, and for which they do not care.
Those who juggle with words, who talk dark and mysterious nonsense about
the concept of the state, or dogmatize fanatically on the subject,
contemptuously call this conception of the nature of the state and the
relation of its citizens to it shallow rationalism, and from the heights
of their supposed knowledge they look down disdainfully upon arguments
which they libellously call the laymen's babble. They are only in part
bumptious fools who pretend that uncritical, parrotlike repetition of
traditional formulæ is erudition and confused thought is profundity, and
who declare the clear-headed men who mock their silly mysticism, their
superstitious dread of word phantoms, to be simply incapable of
understanding their depth. Partly they are very sly toadies, very
cunning sycophants of power, or ruthless egoists, unscrupulous
freebooters, who pretend to be enthusiastic and devout apostles of the
divinity of the state and demand the most humble submission, adoration
and unconditional devotion in order that, as priests in its temple, they
may grind their own axes at its altars.
Such are those folk who maintain the double thesis that the state is
everything, the individual nothing, the former the sole reality, the
latter without any separate existence, and that the state, as mankind's
highest form of existence, need recognize nothing as superior to itself,
neither right nor law, and may therefore take as sole guide for its
actions its own interests and not Morality.
You cannot maintain a single one of these contentions unless you and all
men are deprived of reasoning power; they crumble away instantly in the
light of Reason. It is not true that the state alone is real and that it
is superior to the individual, not only because of the forces at its
disposal, the complex of which it represents, but also as an entity, as
a thought, a principle. The individual alone in the species, that is,
living, feeling, thinking and acting man, is real. The individual
created the state out of himself. He can also destroy it. The practical
politicians above all people should be of this opinion; as he can do
it, he may do it; as he has the power to do it, he has the right to do
it. The individualist will not make this a question of law, but will
simply assert that, though the individual is the father of the state,
yet he has no reasonable grounds for destroying it, so long as it makes
no murderous attacks on its creator. The individual did not create the
state consciously, intentionally and formally by means of a social
contract, but naturally and organically, under pressure of
circumstances. It is clearly to his interests to maintain it, to furnish
the necessary means for its existence and efficiency, but always on the
one condition that the state should really protect and promote the
interests of the individual, lighten his burdens in the struggle for
existence, and make that prosperity, comfort and happiness possible
which he cannot secure unaided in his struggle with the hostile forces
of Nature and with rival fellow-men.
But if the state oppresses the individual with burdens and duties which
he feels no inner necessity to fulfil, if it confiscates him, body and
soul, instead of respecting his freedom and his right to
self-determination, then the assumption falls to the ground; the state
is no longer an institution which benefits the individual; it is
inimical to the individual, hinders him in his struggle for existence,
destroys his happiness; and he obeys his primitive instinct for
self-preservation if he turns against it, masters it as he would a
monster, draws its teeth and claws, and forces it back to the place it
was meant to occupy, that of a docile and industrious servant of the
individual, not of one individual who aspires to rule the others, but of
all individuals who are of the people that make up the state.
I consider it unnecessary and a little ridiculous to quote authorities
in support of the statement that twice two are four; what is reasonable
and clear is convincing without further recommendation; nevertheless, it
is a fact that may be worthy of mention that some of the best intellects
of all nations have sided with the individual against the state. On the
one side we have Plato, whose ideal is Sparta and who would like to see
the despotism of this model state and its communal meals completed by
the addition of community of property, of wives, and of children; we
have Hegel, who has gone farther than any one in his idolatry of the
state; we have Auguste Comte, who, in his zeal for his newly founded
science of Sociology, conceives society as an organism biologically
superior to the individual, and thereby has become the father of the
Organicists. But against these we can put the Englishman, Jeremy
Bentham, the embodiment of sound common sense, whom the muddle-headed
fools that pose as deep thinkers have good reason to hate and fear, and
whom they try to depreciate as vulgar and shallow; further, his
compatriot, Herbert Spencer, who is his kindred spirit; the Frenchman,
Frédéric Bastiat, whose writings sparkle with flashes of wit; the
German, Wilhelm Humboldt, who bravely and successfully combated the
state tyranny defended by Fichte. All these are convinced individualists
who adduce irrefutable reasons for their views. We may also include
Kant among them, as he gave utterance to this decisive sentence: "Man is
his own aim and end, and must never be a mere means"; consequently it is
never permissible to sacrifice the sovereignty of one's own person to
that of the state, or make use of it for the realization of political
aims by disregarding, and doing violence to, one's right of
self-determination. Harald Höfding contends that progress should be
measured by the extent to which, in Kant's sense of the words, man is
recognized to be his own aim and end; but that is not only a measure of
progress, it is the measure of all civilization.
For civilization, to my idea, means a state worthy of man, implying his
mental, moral and material independence of all motive forces other than
those of his own nature; its aim is the most complete attainment
possible of this independence; its measure the extent to which the
individual determines his own fate and is able to ward off from it
undesired outside influences. At the first awakening of his
consciousness primitive man was aware of being exposed to unknown forces
which controlled him at will and against which his will was powerless.
From the very beginning, at first dimly and then more and more clearly,
man has felt this to be unworthy and intolerable. The best of the
species have always laboured with all their strength to liberate
themselves, and the great ambition of man throughout his development has
always been not submissively to accept whatever fate was accorded him,
but to work out his destiny according to his needs and his own ideas.
The anguish caused by wretched dependence upon external forces is the
origin of religion as of superstition, which both spring from the same
root. With the anthropomorphism peculiar to the earliest stages of
thought, man personified the mysterious powers which ruled his fate. He
created gods for himself, and then, as far as his knowledge permitted,
he sought some relation between himself and them, and tried to get at
them by every means available. He imagined them like unto himself, that
is, vain, capricious, greedy, easily frightened by dark threats, and
then, very reasonably on this hypothesis, he importuned them with
prayers, sacrifices, hymns of praise and vows, as well as magic formulæ
and incantations, always with the inflexible intention of making them
serve his purposes, not of serving theirs. The contrite Jewish prayer:
"Thy will be done, Lord, Thy will, not mine," is a new trait in the
religious thought of man. The heathen always strives to have his will
done in opposition to that of the gods, and to divert them from their
decisions if he dislikes them.
In a state of advanced development theological thought gave way before
the scientific. Man learnt to conceive Nature's rule, not
transcendentally, but intrinsically. He recognized that the forces
around him, which so often crossed his purpose, are not to be influenced
by prayer and sacrifice, but that it is expedient and possible to
discover their character and the conditions of their activity. By dint
of long-sustained efforts he has succeeded in effectively standing up to
hostile Nature and in warding off her undesired interference in his
destiny. If the tribulations, which formerly suddenly brought his
schemes to nought and often destroyed him, are not entirely overcome, it
is merely because his practice does not conform closely enough to the
directions evolved by his theoretical knowledge, because he is too
careless or too clumsy to make proper use of the weapons against the
elements with which science has armed him.
But this same man, who has learnt to be a match for Nature, his creator,
is powerless against his creature, the state. He can neither evade it
nor escape from it. The state disposes of him without his consent,
against his most obvious interests, in spite of his powerless
opposition; it hurls him hither and thither, annihilates him, crushes
him by its will and is unmoved by the will of the individual.
True, man has sought to maintain his right of self-determination against
the forces of politics, as against all others that broke his will and
intervened in his life without his consent. For thousands of years all
state development has tried to protect the modest individual, lost in
the crowd and featureless, but nevertheless a person, that is, a world
to himself, against the arbitrariness of rulers or leading statesmen.
That is the one unchanging tendency which leads from Harmodius and
Aristogeiton, the slayers of a tyrant, the rebellion of the elder
Brutus, the murder of Cæsar, by way of the Revolt of the Netherlands and
the execution of Charles I of England, to the great Revolution, the
risings of 1848 and the struggle for constitutional government in all
states of the Old World and the New. The formula has long been
discovered whereby the individual can maintain the dignity of his
sovereign personality and his own responsibility for the shaping of his
destiny. It is civil freedom, constitutionalism, sovereignty of the
people. There are arrangements, carefully thought out, nicely weighed,
cleverly worked out to the smallest detail, by which the individual is
fitted into his place in the community without being deprived of the
management of his own affairs, by which the sacrifices needful for the
fulfilment of collective tasks are exacted without his being reduced to
a condition of slavery, by which the independence of the individual is
safeguarded and yet a state of chaos and anarchy is avoided.
But this formula fares as do the doctrines of science: hitherto it has
remained a theory everywhere. The franchise, representation of the
people, responsibility of ministers, constitutional limitation of the
ruler's power, are infallibly effective weapons or instruments, but no
people has yet learnt how to handle them rightly. That is why pessimists
speak of the bankruptcy of civilization, that is why the aim of
civilization, the liberation of the person and the enforcement of its
sovereignty, has nowhere been attained, that is why, to quote Napoleon I
in his interview with Goethe at Erfurt, "In our times the power of fate
is politics." And yet all these institutions of a modern constitutional
state, from the ballot-paper and the voting of taxes in Parliament to
the enforced resignation of the ministry on a vote of censure and the
oath of the ruler to observe the constitution, recognize the rights of
the individual as opposed to the state, and at least theoretically give
the lie to the bold declaration that the state is everything and the
individual nothing.
It is no less untrue to say that the state is superior to Morality and
is not bound by it. In order to prove this we need only be brave enough
not to be intimidated by the mysterious mien and gestures and the dark,
pompous phrases of the mystics who worship the state, and to penetrate
to the real, conceptual idea of the word.
The hocus pocus that the worshippers of the state perform around their
idol puts one in mind of Kempelen, who created a sensation with his
automaton in the beginning of the nineteenth century. This figure, got
up as a Turkish woman, gave rise to astonishment and, among not a few,
to superstitious fear. It played chess, and so well, too, that it almost
always succeeded in winning, even against its most skilled opponents.
People cudgelled their brains to solve the riddle, all sorts of
explanations were suggested, one more impossible than the other, but
still the mystery remained dark, until the owner, having made enough
money and sick of the part of an itinerant swindler, revealed the trick.
In the hollow figure there sat a clever chess player who worked its
hands and with them carried out the moves on the board.
This anecdote can be applied literally to the state. Simpletons, drunk
with phrases, and cunning cheats contend that the state is a
supernatural creation in which the "spirit of the universe," the "spirit
of history" takes shape, and through which it realizes its aims; these
aims, utterly transcending the understanding of the individual, are
unintelligible to man. Such overwhelming phrases strike the simple,
credulous hearer dumb and send cold shudders of awe up his spine. But
let us look at the inside of this magic machine whose works are driven
by the "spirit of the world" and with whose help this spirit fulfils its
impenetrable designs. What do we find? Men, quite ordinary mortals, who
sit in the machine and work its levers; men whose intellectual powers
are only in rare cases superior to those of their enslaved subjects
bereft of will; men who are, as a rule, of average intelligence and not
seldom even below the average.
These men are the rulers, ministers who cling to office, high officials,
party leaders and professional politicians who would like to become
ministers, generals who seek to make themselves conspicuous, publicists
who hope to derive personal profit by dint of bowing and scraping before
the men in power, by flattering the stupidest and most despicable
prejudices of the masses, or even by implanting such prejudices with
persuasive talk and purposely leading them astray. These men are formed
on the same model as all individuals of the species and are therefore
full of human weaknesses, a prey to all human desires, moved by all
human impulses. They are selfish, vain, the sport of likes and dislikes,
of self-deception as to the value of their ideas, opinions and
judgments, disputatious, arrogant, greedy of possessions, power and
pleasure, spurred by the instinct to magnify and swell their personality
and impose it upon others. And these men are to be liberated from the
discipline of the moral law? They are to be superior to the moral law?
For whom, then, was the moral law created and developed if not for these
men--whose actions, although they spring from the same motives and
aspire to the same satisfaction of self as those of all other men, can
be fraught with consequences incomparably more evil, because they make
use of the state machine for their purposes. Through the force and
momentum given by the machinery of the state these actions are
boundlessly augmented, their range being indefinitely increased and
their results multiplied a thousandfold. The simplest logic shows that
these men within the state machine, rendered so specially dangerous by
their terrible armament and weapons, far from being liberated from the
coercion of moral law, ought to be subjected to it with extraordinary
severity, a severity which should be greater than that which suffices
for the average man, in proportion as their power to do harm is greater
than that of the man in the street.
Now all this time, rather carelessly, or at any rate weakly, I am making
a concession to the pious devotees of the religion of the state, by
speaking of the state machine,--a dubious expression, coined to deceive
by rousing superstitious ideas. The phrase is a picture, a rhetorical
figure that one must be careful not to take literally. There is no state
machine. There is only a relation of men to one another and to
traditional habits, organized rules of command, obedience and equable
conduct--habits into which the community of men has fallen in accordance
with the law of least resistance, in order to promote their own
interests, at least theoretically, without being forced to exert
themselves continually to form new judgments, decisions and
arrangements which the ever-shifting, ever-changing conditions of life
render necessary.
Here again, behind the word, we find men, always only men. Just as those
who command, from whose will all state action emanates, are men, so also
the instruments by which they carry out their decisions are only
metaphorically speaking, levers and wheels, parts of a machine of steel
and iron; in reality they are officials, soldiers and policemen, they
are judges and bailiffs; in short, they are men. And these men, who in
all private relations with their fellow men are sternly required to
submit to the dictates of Morality and the demands of the Law, are the
same on whom other men, the leaders of the state, impose the duty of
breaking all these precepts and laws; as ambassadors they must deny and
dishonour the signatures to treaties; as leaders or paid servants of the
press bureau they must systematically spread lies; as attorneys of the
state they must persecute and maltreat those who tell the truth; as
policemen they must tear the fathers of families from wife and children
and hunt them into the barracks; as soldiers they must invade a foreign
land, murder unknown and innocent men, rob them of their property, burn
down their houses, lay waste their lands, in a word, do everything that
is punishable with prison and gallows; they must perpetrate all crimes
which the aim and end of Morality and Law are to prevent and condemn. If
one defends such action, where can one find the courage and the
justification to require these men at one time to honour the Ten
Commandments and at another to disregard them, to be criminals in the
name of the state in the morning and to be moral private persons and
law-abiding citizens in the afternoon? After all, they only have one
nature, one mind, one character and one set of perceptive faculties.
To realize the monstrosity of this doctrine of twofold Morality, public
and private, and of the non-compulsoriness of moral law for the state,
it suffices to refer again to the fundamental concepts of Morality.
Individuals have banded themselves together in a community in order to
be able to live more easily, or to live at all, under the present
conditions obtaining on our planet. Lest society should be disintegrated
by the quarrels of its members, and the latter should find themselves
exposed single-handed to a hopeless struggle for existence, a limitation
of their unfettered whims and desires, the curbing of their selfishness,
control of their impulses and the exercise of consideration for their
neighbours have been imposed upon them.
This coercion is Morality, and society can enforce it by vigorous
measures; but for the most part this is unnecessary, for society has
inculcated in its members the faculty of urging upon themselves in every
situation the dictates of the community and of insisting on obedience to
them. This faculty is conscience. The means by which conscience,
inspired and assisted by reason, determines the will to keep in check or
to suppress organic impulses and inclinations, desires and appetites, is
inhibition; moreover, the development and strengthening of inhibition
does not alone promote the aims of the community, but is of the highest
biological importance to the individual himself, apart from his
relations to society, as it renders him stronger and more efficient,
differentiates him more subtly, and raises him to a higher level of
development.
Now the state is a special development of society; it owes its existence
to the same necessities as the latter, its task is to minimize the
struggle for existence for the individual, to protect him from avoidable
dangers and to ensure the safety of his life, the fruits of his labour
and that measure of freedom which is compatible with life in a
community. But if the state puts an end to the coercion instituted by
the community and therefore by the state itself; if it does away with
Morality for itself, that is, for a number of individuals, be they few
or many, that act in its name; if it allows selfishness, appetites and
ruthlessness to have the same free play as with creatures of a lower
order than man, or as with men before they formed themselves into
communities; if in the pursuit of its plans beyond the bounds of
Morality it intensifies the struggle for existence in a tragic manner,
exposes men to the most terrible dangers, brutally destroys their
liberty, gravely threatens their life and property or even devotes them
to ruin--why, then it destroys the assumptions on which the state itself
is based, denies its own aim, deprives itself of any right to existence,
and the individuals have thenceforward but one interest, namely, to
drive away this bogey of the state and with all possible means to force
the men, who make use of it and the superstitions clinging to it, to
respect the moral law which the community has created to overwhelm
anti-social, immoral individuals, to render them harmless and if
necessary to destroy them.
One point there is on which the Machiavellian or practical politicians
are particularly fond of talking nonsense, and that is the state's
loyalty to treaties. Is the state bound by a treaty? Must it honour its
signature? Must it perform what it has undertaken to do? The detestable,
unanimous answer is "No. A treaty cannot hinder the state from doing
what its interest demands." Prince Bismarck is often cited on this
point, as he once said: "The only sound foundation for the state is
state egoism." And another time: "A treaty is only valid _rebus sic
stantibus_, if the situation is the same as when it was concluded; if
the circumstances change, it becomes invalid by the very fact." Such
views are revolting, however great a name be appended to them. Contract,
or treaty, is the basis of the law. Whoever breaks it is dishonoured,
and doubly dishonoured is he who from the beginning enters upon it with
the idea at the back of his mind of deriving every possible advantage
from it and of breaking it when the time comes to fulfil obligations.
The phrase, "sound egoism," whether it refer to a private person or to
the state, must make every decent man blush for shame. Egoism may be
sound, but it is always the contrary of moral. It is just as convenient
for the individual as for the state to think only of his own advantage
and unhesitatingly to sacrifice his neighbour's rights to it; but
Morality arose and was constituted a rule of human relations in order
to break the back of this selfishness and to teach man consideration for
his neighbour. It is no valid excuse to say that state egoism is no sin,
but a virtue and a merit, that it is different in character from the
egoism of the individual. That is not true. It is not different in
character. It is of exactly the same character as in private life. The
responsible leader of the state who is guilty of a breach of treaty
makes believe to himself and others that he does not do it for his own
sake, but in the interests of the state. But who is the state? I have
already given the answer to this. The state consists of men, the
interests served by a breach of treaty are those of men, not, as a rule,
of all, not even of many members of the state, but of a few, of a class,
a group, perhaps of only one family whose power, wealth and reputation
it is intended to increase. So-called state egoism is in actual fact the
private egoism of many individuals, who break the law, or tolerate and
condone a breach of the law, for the sake of pocketing ill-gotten gains;
and no one is so stupid as to let himself be bamboozled into believing
that the shameful crime of breaking a treaty for the purpose of "sound"
egoistic grabbing becomes moral when it is perpetrated not by one
individual but by thousands or millions of individuals.
The _reservatio mentalis_, too, of "_rebus sic stantibus_" is an
unwarrantable and wicked reservation. Nothing prevents a decent man when
making a contract from adding a clause reserving the right to terminate
it if the essential conditions should change. If the other party to the
contract does not agree to this, well, then the contract cannot be
concluded. But to sign it with the mental reservation that one will
disavow one's signature if the obligations undertaken become irksome,
that is swindling. There is one consideration so simple that it is
inconceivable that those who break contracts do not realize it. In some
concrete case the leader of the state judges it to be profitable to the
state to disregard good faith. What guarantee has he that his judgment
is right? He is a man, and no man is infallible. But all mankind have
made good faith the foundation of their life in communities, and if a
single man has the temerity to draw a conclusion violating the immutable
convictions and doctrines of all mankind, he must be mad not to see that
most probably he is wrong and that all mankind in every age and every
clime is right. I have left out of consideration the fact that any
possible advantage arising from the breach of faith would not excuse him
morally, and setting aside the ethical aspect of the case, I dwell only
on the logical argument.
There is one case and one only in which a contract is not binding,
either on the state or on the private individual, and that is when the
signatory was forced to enter upon it with a knife at his throat.
Obligations which a victor imposes on his defeated and disarmed opponent
are by their very nature invalid. The old cry of Brennus: "_Vae
victis!_" is might and cannot constitute a right. Civil law calls this
kind of thing compulsion and decrees that it invalidates any contract.
Only a pedantic mind, stupid and depraved, immersed in hair-splitting
trickery and incapable of a straight thought, could complacently
maintain in the face of all common sense that might and compulsion, far
from doing away with right, are the source of all right. The silly
formula coined for this is: "Might is right." Might may be a fact, but
it is not right. The source of right is not might but Morality, which
might disavows and destroys. The necessary condition of any obligation
which is to be valid is freedom. Kant proved this, but his proof was
unnecessary, for it is self-evident. A forced treaty is no treaty, for
it is the victor's fist which has guided the hand of the vanquished, and
it is he who wrote the latter's signature under the document. The will,
the consciousness of the seeming signatory were absent at the time.
But the worst and most immoral action of the state, beside which a
breach of treaty for selfish reasons pales to insignificance, is the war
of aggression for purposes of profit, that is, for the conquest of
territory, extortion of money, increase of power, or fame. War is the
quintessence of all crimes against life and property, against the body
and mind of a person, the prevention of which is the aim and object of
all Morality and all laws derived from it. Any means are permissible
whereby this wickedness may be prevented; the war of defence, waged by
the party attacked, is not only justified but sacred, as are the
functions of the institutions that society has developed to hunt down
and punish those who do not respect Morality and Law. And just as it is
the duty of every society to maintain courts of justice, police and
prisons, so it is the duty of every state to be well armed, well versed
in the use of weapons and strong, so long as it must count on the fact
that there are practical politicians who do not recognize Morality as
binding the state, and nations that are ready on the first hint of their
leaders to perpetrate every crime that conscience, the Ten Commandments
and penal law forbid.
It is idle, in my opinion, to discuss the question whether war will ever
disappear from the world. It serves no purpose to contradict those who
declare it to be eternal. It is possible that it will continue to exist
as long as there is vice, sin and crime; and I do not believe that these
will ever be completely exterminated. Among mankind there will probably
never be a lack of sick and depraved people whose selfishness is
monstrously exaggerated, whose instincts urge them with stormy violence,
whose powers of inhibition are scantily developed or altogether wanting,
who suffer from anæsthesia of the feelings and are therefore incapable
of any sympathy with their fellow men and who are mentally too weak to
foresee the results of their actions. Individuals of this kind are born
criminals whose existence society will probably never be able to prevent
and against whom it is obliged to protect itself. Now war arises from
the same psychic conditions as the antisocial actions of these born
criminals, and therefore the pessimists may be right in maintaining that
it can never be abolished. But it is one thing to assert the existence
of a deplorable fact and quite another to glorify it. To say that war is
a part of the universe constituted by God is blasphemy, even though the
saying emanates from Moltke. To extol war ecstatically and to sing hymns
of praise to it, to declare that it evokes the highest virtues of man is
a panegyric of crime, a thing anticipated and punishable in the penal
code.
I am not here attempting to solve the problem of what practical measures
can be taken whereby right may be set in the place of might in
inter-state relations, and instead of ruthless selfishness, Morality,
that is, self-control, consideration and respect for the just claims of
one's fellow men and love of one's neighbour. That is as far beyond the
scope of this work as is the investigation of the methods of education,
criminal justice, police organization or prison conditions intended to
deal with the tide of crime and to stem it as far as possible. I am
concerned with moral philosophy, and from that point of view I show that
all Morality is rooted in the desire of men to live together peaceably
in a society, to have greater security of life and property, greater
possibilities of happiness, and that the same needs must impose the
rules of Morality upon states in their relations to one another.
According to Hobbes the primitive condition of mankind is that of a war
of every man against all other men, and only the creation of society
makes an end of it. But if the state unleashes the dogs of aggressive
warfare it hurls mankind back into its primitive condition and destroys
the work it was created to do. The Stoic Seneca says: "_Homo sacra res
homini_," "Man is sacred to man." The practical politicians who praise
war repeat with Hobbes: "_Homo homini lupus_," "Man is a wolf to man."
The moral man demands a return from Hobbes to Seneca. If it has been
possible in the state to tame the wolfish instincts of the individual
and to make him bow down before Custom and Law, it must be equally
possible to do so in the relations of states to one another. He who
denies this in principle disavows Morality altogether, not only for the
state but also for the individual; he who admits it in principle but in
practice scornfully disregards it is a bandit, and it is desirable to
treat him like any other robber and murderer who, to satisfy his wolfish
appetites, tramples on Morality and Right and acts like a wild beast.
To this, however, the Moralist will object sadly, and the practical
politician with scornful superiority, that the state has created
institutions for suppressing the bandit, but that there are none such to
control bandit states, and that self-defence alone, the only means of
self-protection for man in Hobbes's primitive condition, can gain a
footing between them. Clearly only the party attacked is in a state of
self-defence, but the bandit who has a sufficient sense of humour to
play the pettifogging lawyer can always maintain that attack is also
self-defence, the preventive form of self-defence. The answer to this
is: if society has managed to provide judges and police in order to
secure peace, then mankind will for the same purpose learn how to
provide courts of justice and a police force to deal with the bandits of
practical politics who endanger peace among nations. But that is a
practical question, not a theoretical one, not a principle of moral
philosophy. The latter shows irrefutably that there is only one
Morality, not a private one and a public one which is its negation, not
one kind for the individual and another for politics, for the state.
He who defends the thesis of a twofold Morality merely shows that he
does not possess simple Morality.