MEDITATION ON OBEDIENCE AND LIBERTY

The submission of the greater number to the smaller—that fundamental characteristic of nearly every form of social organization—still continues to astonish all who reflect a little. In nature, we see how what is heavier triumphs over what is lighter, how the more prolific species overwhelm the rest. In the case of men, these so clearly marked relations seem to be reversed. Certainly, we know from daily experience that man is not just a fragment of nature, that every day there are kinds of miracles being produced by what is highest in man—will, intelligence and faith. But that is not what we are dealing with here. There is nothing spiritual about that pitiless necessity which has kept, and goes on keeping, the masses of slaves, the masses of poverty-stricken creatures, the masses of underlings on their knees; it corresponds to everything that is brutal in nature. And yet it is apparently exercised in virtue of laws which are contrary to those of nature; as if, in the social balance, the gramme were heavier than the kilogramme.

Nearly four centuries ago, the question was posed by the youthful La Boétie, in his Contra-un. He did not answer it. With what moving illustrations could we not support his little book, we who see at the present time, in a country covering a sixth of the globe, a single man bleeding an entire generation! It is when death stalks abroad that the miracle of obedience strikes one so forcibly. That a number of men should submit themselves to a single man through fear of being killed by him is astonishing enough; but what are we to make of it when they remain submissive to him to the point of dying at his orders? When there are at least as many risks attached to obedience as there are to rebellion, how is obedience maintained?

Knowledge of the material world in which we live was able to develop from the moment when Florence, after producing so many other marvels, brought mankind, through Galileo, the notion of force. It was then also only that the equipping of the material side of life by industry could be undertaken. And we, who claim to set about equipping the social side of life, will not have even the crudest knowledge of it as long as we have not formed a clear notion of social force. Society cannot have its engineers as long as it has not first had its Galileo. Is there at the present time, over the whole of the earth’s surface, a single mind which can conceive even vaguely how it is that one man in the Kremlin has the power to cause any head whatever to fall within the confines of the Russian frontiers?

Marxists have not helped towards forming a clear view of the problem by picking out economics as the key to the social riddle. If one considers a society as a collective being, then this great beast, like all other beasts, can principally be defined by the way in which it makes sure of its food, sleep, shelter from the elements—in short, its life. But society considered in its relation to the individual cannot be defined simply by the methods of production. However much you may resort to all kinds of subtleties to show that war is an essentially economic phenomenon, it is palpably obvious that war is destruction and not production. Obedience and command are also phenomena for which the conditions of production do not provide a sufficient explanation. When an old working man, unemployed and left to starve, dies quietly in the street or some slum, this submission which extends to the very point of death cannot be explained by the play of vital necessities. The massive destruction of wheat and of coffee during the crisis furnishes a no less clear example. The notion of force and not that of need is the key to an understanding of social phenomena.

Galileo had no cause to congratulate himself, as far as he personally was concerned, for having put so much genius and so much integrity into deciphering nature; but at any rate he only found himself up against a handful of powerful men specialized in the interpretation of the Scriptures. The study of the social mechanism, on the other hand, is hampered by passions that are found in all and each of us. There is hardly anyone who does not desire either to overthrow or to preserve the present relations between the functions of command and submission. Both of these desires befog the mind’s scrutiny and prevent one from perceiving the lessons of history, which everywhere shows us the masses under the yoke and a few raising the lash.

Some—those on the side which addresses its appeal to the masses—wish to show that such a situation is not only iniquitous, but also impossible, at any rate in the near or distant future. Others—on the side which wants to preserve order and established privileges—wish to show that the yoke is light, or even that it is consented to. On both sides, a veil is thrown over the fundamental absurdity of the social mechanism, instead of looking this apparent absurdity fairly in the face and analysing it so as to discover in it the secret of the machine. Whatever may be the subject under investigation, there is no other method for thinking about it. Wonder is the father of wisdom, Plato said.

Since the many obey, and obey to the point of allowing suffering and death to be inflicted on them, while the few command, this means that it is not true that number constitutes a force. Number, whatever our imagination may lead us to believe, is a weakness. Weakness is on the side where people are hungry, exhausted, where they implore and tremble, not on the side where they live comfortably, bestow favours, and issue threats. The masses are not in subjection despite the fact of their being number, but because they are number. If there is a street fight between one man against twenty, the man will probably be left on the ground for dead. But at a sign from a white man, twenty Annamite coolies can be flogged, one after the other, by one or two foremen,

The contradiction is perhaps only apparent. No doubt on all occasions those who command are fewer than those who obey. But precisely because they are few they form a whole. The others, precisely because they are too many, are one plus one plus one, and so on. Thus the power of an infinitesimal minority is based, in spite of everything, on the force of number. This minority is far stronger in number than each one of those who go to form the herd of the majority. It must not be concluded from this that organization of the masses would reverse the relation; for such is impossible. It is only possible to establish cohesion between a limited number of men. Beyond that, there is no longer anything but a juxtaposing of individuals—that is to say weakness.

There are, however, certain moments when it is not so. At certain moments in history, a great rush of wind sweeps over the masses; their breath, their words, their movements are merged together. Then nothing is able to resist them. The mighty know in their turn, at last, what it is to feel alone and defenceless; and they tremble. Tacitus, in a few immortal pages describing a military mutiny, analysed the matter perfectly. “The principal sign that it was a deep-seated movement, impossible to quell, was that they were not scattered about or controlled by a few individuals, but flared up as one man, fell silent as one man, with such unanimity and constancy that one would have thought they were acting upon a word of command.” We all witnessed a miracle of this kind in June 1936, and the impression it made has not yet been effaced.

Such moments do not last, although the downtrodden ardently hope to see them last for ever. They cannot last, because that unanimity which is produced in the heat of a quickening and general emotion is incompatible with any form of methodical action. Its effect is always to suspend all action and arrest the daily course of life. This temporary stoppage cannot be prolonged; the course of daily life has to be taken up again, the daily tasks have to be performed. The mass dissolves once more into individuals, the memory of its victory fades, the erstwhile situation, or its equivalent, is gradually re-established; and although it may be that in the interval there has been a change of masters, it is always the same ones who have to obey.

The powerful have no interest more vital than to prevent this crystallization of the subject masses, or at any rate, for they cannot always prevent it, to make it as rare as possible. It often happens in the natural course of things that a great many of the downtrodden are swept by the same emotion at the same time; but as a rule this emotion has barely had the time to awaken when it is repressed by the feeling of an irremediable impotence. The first article of skilful policy on the part of the masters is to foster this feeling of impotence.

The human mind is incredibly flexible, prompt to imitate, to bow to outside circumstances. The man who obeys, whose movements, pains, pleasures are determined by the word of another, feels himself to be inferior, not by accident, but by nature. At the other end of the scale there is a like feeling of superiority, and these twin illusions reinforce each other. It is impossible for the most heroically staunch mind to preserve the consciousness of an inward value when there is no external fact on which this consciousness can be based. Christ himself, when he found himself abandoned by everybody, mocked, despised, his life counted for naught, lost for a moment the feeling of his mission. What other meaning can be attached to the cry: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It seems to those who obey that some mysterious inferiority has predestined them to obey from all eternity, and every mark of scorn—even the tiniest—which they suffer at the hands of their superiors or their equals, every order they receive, and especially every act of submission they themselves perform confirms them in this feeling.

Everything that contributes towards giving those who are at the bottom of the social scale the feeling that they possess a value is to a certain extent subversive. The myth of Soviet Russia is subversive in so far as it can give the communist factory worker who is sacked by his foreman the feeling that, in spite of all, he has behind him the Red Army and Magnitogorsk, and thus enable him to preserve his pride. The myth of the historically inevitable revolution plays the same, though a more abstract, role; it is something, when one is lonely and miserable, to have history on one’s side. Christianity, too, when it first began, was dangerous to the established order. It did not inspire the poor, the slaves, with the desire for power and the goods of this world—quite the opposite; but it gave them the feeling of an inner value which put them on the same level as or higher than the rich, and that was enough to place the social hierarchy in danger. It very quickly mended its ways, learnt how to make the proper distinction between the marriage and burial ceremonies for the rich and those for the poor, and to relegate the unfortunate to the back seats.

Social force is bound to be accompanied by lies. That is why all that is highest in human life, every effort of thought, every effort of love, has a corrosive action on the established order. Thought can just as readily, and on as good grounds, be stigmatized as revolutionary on the one side, as counter-revolutionary on the other. In so far as it is ceaselessly creating a scale of values “that is not of this world”, it is the enemy of the forces which control society. But it is no more favourably disposed towards undertakings which tend to disrupt or transform society, and which, before ever they have succeeded, must necessarily imply for those who pursue them the subjection of the many to the few, the disdain of the privileged for the anonymous masses, and the handling of lies. Genius, love, holiness, fully deserve the reproach that is often levelled at them of tending to destroy what is without building up anything in its place. As for those who want to think, love, and transpose in all purity into political action what their mind and heart inspire them with, they can only perish murdered, forsaken even by their own people, vilified after their death by history, as happened to the Gracchi.

Such a state of things results in profound and irremediable spiritual torture for every man with the public welfare at heart. Participation, even from a distance, in the play of forces which control the movement of history is not possible without contaminating oneself or incurring certain defeat. Nor is it possible, without great lack of conscientiousness, to take refuge in indifference or in an ivory tower. Thus there remains the formula of the “lesser evil”, so discredited by the use which the social-democrats have made of it, as the only one applicable, provided it be applied with the coldest lucidity.

The social order, though necessary, is essentially evil, whatever it may be. You cannot reproach those whom it crushes for undermining it as much as they can; when they resign themselves to it, it is not through strength of character but, on the contrary, as the result of a humiliation which extinguishes the virile qualities in them. Neither can you reproach those who organize it for defending it, or make them out to be forming a conspiracy against the general welfare. The struggles between fellow citizens do not spring from a lack of understanding or goodwill; they belong to the nature of things, and cannot be appeased, but can only be smothered by coercion. For anyone who loves liberty, it is not desirable that they should disappear, but only that they should remain short of a certain limit of violence.