Man must instinctively and of his own accord be drawn towards brotherhood, fellowship and concord, and he must be drawn towards them despite immemorial sufferings of his nation, despite the barbarous brutality and ignorance which have become rooted in the nation, despite age-old slavery and foreign invasions. The need for brotherly fellowship must, in fact, have its being in the nature of man, he must be born with it or else have acquired the habit of it from time immemorial.
What would this brotherhood consist in if expressed in rational and conscious language? In each particular individual without constraint or gain to himself saying to society: “We are strong only when we are all together, therefore take the whole of me if you need me, do not think of me when you pass your laws, do not worry in the slightest, I am handing all my rights over to you, and please dispose of me as you wish.
It is the height of happiness for me to sacrifice everything to you and in such a way that you do not suffer any loss in consequence. I shall fade away and merge with the completely uniform mass, only let your brotherhood remain and flourish…” And the brotherhood, on the other hand, must say: “You are giving us too much. We have no right to refuse what you have to give, since you yourself say that therein consists the whole of your happiness; but what can we do, since we too care unceasingly for your happiness?
You too, then, must take everything from us. We shall always do all we can that you might have as much personal freedom and as much independence as possible. You need no longer fear any enemies, either men or nature. You have the support of all of us, we all guarantee your safety and have your interests at heart night and day, because we are brothers of yours and there are many of us and we are strong. Therefore, do not worry, be of good cheer, fear nothing and put your trust in us.”
After this, there will be no necessity for sharing things out, they will all share themselves out automatically. Love one another and all these things will be added unto you. What a Utopia this is, really! It is all based on sentiment and on nature, and not on reason. Surely this is humiliating for reason. What do you think? Is this Utopia or not?
But then what can a socialist do if the principle of brotherhood is absent from Western man, who recognizes, on the contrary, the individual and personal principle which always insists on isolation and on demanding rights sword in hand? Because there is no brotherhood, he wants to create it, to build it up. To make jugged hare you must begin by having a hare. But there is no hare, there is, in other words, no nature capable of brotherhood, no nature with a belief in brotherhood or drawn towards brotherhood!
In desperation, the socialist begins to make and define the future brotherhood, weighs and measures it, throws out the bait of personal advantage, explains, teaches and tells people how much advantage each person will obtain out of this brotherhood, how much each will gain; he determines the utility and cost of each individual, and works out in advance the balance of this world’s blessings: how much each individual deserves them and how much each individual must voluntarily contribute to the community in exchange for them at the cost of his own personality. But how can there possibly be any brotherhood if it is preceded by a distribution of shares and by determining how much each person has earned and what each must do?
However, a formula was proclaimed which said: “Each for all and all for each”. Nothing better than this could naturally be thought up, particularly as the whole formula was lifted in its entirety from a well-known book. But then the brethren began to apply this formula in practice and about six months later brought an action against the founder of the brotherhood, Cabet.* The Fourierists have, it is said, spent the last 900,000 francs of their capital, but are still trying to organize a brotherhood. The results are nil.
Of course it is very tempting to live according to purely rational, if not brotherly, principles, that is, to live well, when you are guaranteed by everyone and nothing is demanded of you except your consent and your work. But here again there is a curious paradox.
A man is offered full security, promised food and drink, and found work, and as against this he is merely required to give up a tiny grain of his persona; freedom for the sake of the common good – just a tiny, tiny grain. But man does not want to live on these conditions, he finds even the tiny grain too irksome. He thinks that he is being put in jail, poor fool, and that he would be better off by himself, because then he would have full freedom.
And when he is free he is knocked about and refused work, he starves to death and has no real freedom. But all the same, the strange fellow still prefers his own freedom. Naturally enough, the socialist is simply forced to give him up and tell him that he is a fool, that he is not ready yet, not ripe enough to understand what is good for him; that a dumb little ant, a miserable ant is more intelligent than he is, because everything is so lovely in an ant hill, so well-ordered, no one goes hungry and all are happy, everyone knows what he has to do; in fact, man has a long way to go before he can hope to reach the standards of an ant hill.
In other words, though socialism is possible, it is possible anywhere but in France.
And so, in final despair, the socialist proclaims at last: liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort.* Then there is no more to be said, and the bourgeois is completely triumphant.
And if the bourgeois is triumphant it means that Sieyès’ formula has come true literally and to the last detail. And so the bourgeois is everything. Why then is he shy and retiring, what does he fear? Everyone has collapsed, none has proved capable of standing up to him.
In the old days, at the time of Louis-Philippe* for example, the bourgeois was not as shy and timid, and yet he reigned then too. Indeed, he still fought then, sensed that he had an enemy and finally defeated him on the June barricades with the aid of rifle and bayonet.
But when the battle was over, the bourgeois suddenly realized that he was alone in the world, that there was nothing better than himself, that he was the ideal and that, instead of trying as hitherto to convince the whole of humanity that he was the ideal, all that was left for him to do was simply to pose with quiet dignity in the eyes of humanity as the last word in human beauty and perfection. A ticklish situation, say what you will.
Salvation came from Napoleon III.* For the bourgeois he was the gift of the gods, the only way out of the difficulty, the only possibility available at the time. From that moment on the bourgeois begins to prosper, pays a frightful lot for his prosperity and fears everything just because he has attained everything. When one attains everything it is hard to lose everything. Whence follows, my friends, that he who fears most prospers most. Don’t laugh please. For what is a bourgeois these days?
7
Continuation of the Preceding
AND WHY ARE THERE so many flunkeys among the bourgeois, and of such noble appearance as that? Please don’t blame me and don’t exclaim that I am exaggerating or being libellous or spiteful. What or whom is my spite directed against? Why should I be spiteful? The fact is simply that there are many flunkeys.
Servility seeps increasingly into the very nature of the bourgeois and is increasingly taken for virtue. And that’s how it should be in present circumstances. It is their natural consequence. But the main thing, ah, the main thing is that Nature itself lends a hand. It isn’t only that the bourgeois has a strong, innate propensity for spying, for instance. I am, in fact, convinced that the extraordinary development of police spying in France – and not just ordinary spying, but spying which is both a skill and a vocation, an art in itself – is due to their innate servility in that country.
What ideally noble Gustave, provided only he has not yet accumulated any possessions, will not immediately hand over his lady love’s letters in exchange for ten thousand francs and will not betray his mistress to her husband? Maybe I am exaggerating, but perhaps my words have a certain basis in fact.
The Frenchman loves attracting the attention of authority in order to suck up to it, and he does it in a completely disinterested sort of way, with no thought of an immediate reward; he does it on credit, on account. Think, for example of all those job-seekers every time there was a change of regime, formerly so frequent in France. Think of all the tricks they were up to and to which they themselves admitted. Think of one of Barbier’s iambics* on that score.
I remember in a café once, looking at a newspaper dated 3rd July. It
