I. Difficulty
of Understanding the Real Essense of Association
II. Exchange the Fundamental Phenomenon of Association
III. Exchange the Fundamental Phenomenon of Life
IV. Spoliation the fundamental Phenomenon of Death
V. Conclusion
The American Journal of Sociology Volume XXIII ; November 1917 ; Number 3 ; Pp. 289—349 ; Translated by Sophia Heesch Otis
* Former Vice-President of the International Institute of Sociology; Author of War and Its Pretended Benefits, Conflicts between Human Societies and Their Successive Phases, A Criticism of Social Darwinism, Social Consciousness and Will, etc.
* * *
Jacques Novicow (the Russian form of his name was Yakov Aleksandrovich Novicov) was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1849. His father was a wealthy manufacturer of cordage, a business which Novicow also carried on during the greater part of his life. He traveled widely, spending much of his time in France and publishing most of his books in the French language. He early became interested in social questions and identified himself with the liberal movement in Russia; but it was not until 1893 that he published his first notable book, Les Luttes entre les soctitts humaines et leurs phases successives. This work went through several editions and has remained Novicow's best-known book. But Novicow produced in rapid succession a number of other remarkable sociological studies based upon the leading ideas of his first work. Among these may be mentioned La Guerre et ses pretendus bienfaits (1894), Conscience et volonte sociales (1896), La Justice et I'expansion de la vie (1905), La Critique du Darwinism social (1910). He was one of the first members of the International Institute of Sociology and was at one time its vice-president. He died on May 21, 1912.
The book here translated was among tie last which Novicow produced. It was written in 1911, and published in 1912 as a number of the Bibliolhique Sociologique Internationale. In many ways it is the ripest of his works. It deserves to rank as a sociological classic, and, I believe, will soon come to be universally recognized as such. In the simplest language it sets forth some of the most, fundamental truths of sociology and social ethics, principles of human living together which the world just now sadly needs to recognize. Many others had stated these principles before Novicow, but no one has given them a clearer statement or a more convincing demonstration.
Certain criticisms may, of course, be made of the book; but they do not detract from its fundamental value. Thus Novicow was a utilitarian in ethics; but his "hedonism" may be entirely eliminated without affecting his argument in any wise. A more serious error occurs when he calls his system of "mutualism" by the name of "individualism" and speaks of socialism as though it were all of a revolutionary character. A book which finds the essence of normal social life to consist in the mutual exchange by individuals, classes, and nations, of goods, services, and sacrifices, can scarcely be said to advocate "individualism" as that term is ordinarily understood. It is rather a primer in human solidarity.
CHARLES A. ELLWOOD University of Missouri
We live in the midst of human association, yet few, either laymen or professional sociologists, understand its mechanism.
There is a strange contrast between the natural and the social sciences. We use in vain microscopes of the latest invention and of the highest power and are unable still to discover the atoms that in numberless combinations and variety of movements constitute chemical bodies. In the same way, no matter what kind of an instrument we may use to aid the eye, probably we shall never see how the vibrations of the protoplasm in the brain are converted into thoughts. Above us the stars are whirled in space in vertiginous vortices, but we are not gifted with the power to see the mysterious ether that is undoubtedly the cause of their behavior. So in every field of natural science, as we plunge into the realms of the infinitely little or the infinitely remote, the phenomena we are studying vanish from our sight in an oppressive darkness where nothing can be seen or understood.
Such is not the case with social phenomena, which are never of microscopic dimensions, which can be seen always with the [291] naked eye. One can study them directly, without difficulty and without instruments. The field of sociology does not lie in the realm of the infinitely little and in darkness, but in a region where it is possible to observe facts, in a region where there is full light.
But in spite of these contrasts, so unfavorable to the natural sciences, those who study them can give more accurate accounts of the actual essence of the phenomena they are investigating than can the sociologists. The fields of astronomy, physics, and chemistry are extensive; that of sociology is limited, yet these sciences are more advanced than sociology.
The reason that sociology is still in an embryonic stage is because a great number of social phenomena have not yet been observed at all. If they could all be studied accurately, sociology would become an exact science.
Now when one fails to see an object that is perfectly visible, the chances are that he is not taking the trouble to see it. And as long as this carelessness or lack of attention exists, the object that is not observed is exactly in the same situation as the object that is actually invisible. It comes to the same thing whether we fail to see a fact because it occurs in the realm of the infinitely little, and is therefore inaccessible, or whether we do not take the trouble to see it; in either case that fact is unobserved, hence mysterious and incomprehensible.
In the physical world the realm of the invisible is becoming smaller and smaller as a result of man's discovery of the microscope and his improvements of it.
Something analogous to the invention of the microscope has occurred in the realm of the social sciences. New methods have been invented which rid us of our carelessness and which permit us to observe that multitude of small facts which, when woven together, constitute the warp of our social life. Modern sociology, then, if we may thus express it, penetrates into the realm of the microscopic. It studies the millions of phenomena which occur every minute before our eyes, but which have hitherto escaped all scientific investigation, just because of the frequency of their occurrence. [292] In proportion as our methods are improving the realm of the invisible in sociology is diminishing, just as it decreased in the field of the natural sciences with the improvement of the microscope.001
An understanding of the actual essence of association is of great importance for our welfare, for therein lies the solution of problems that are agitating our generation so much and that have agitated preceding generations. If it were possible to understand the mechanism of human association scientifically, we would have neither international anarchy nor socialism. There would result a federation of the human species and a closer union of capital and labor within the state. Human societies would then enter a period of sane development, where the demand for labor would constantly exceed the supply. Social problems would be limited to the sick and the defective. Having thus become stronger, societies would then be able to fight successfully against these morbid elements found in their midst. Archimedes claimed that he could hold up the earth on one point of support. One could say, likewise, that poverty could be abolished if the mechanism of human association were properly understood.
Exchange is the essential phenomenon of association. This is a truth that appears very commonplace, a mere trifle, and yet at present it is greatly misunderstood by a majority of the people. Some believe that we can have association without exchange; others think that we can have exchange without association. The social bond is created by exchange. If that is absent we have no association. A bank of oysters does not make a society, because there is no exchange between the individuals composing it, though they are packed close together. In order that we may understand the real mechanism of human association we must carefully analyze this complex phenomenon, which we call exchange, and study it in all of its various manifestations.
[293] In a general way exchange presents the following combinations:
Exchange of commodities for commodities |
Commerce |
Exchange of commodities for modifications of the external environment |
Services |
I have enumerated above the most important classes, but it goes without saying that others exist.
Exchange of commodities constitutes commerce, which is such a well-known activity that it is useless to speak of it here. All other exchanges come in the class of service. The facts in this class are very complex, so that they must be analyzed very carefully in order to be understood. Exchange of commodities for economic betterment is exemplified in the payment of wages for manual labor. The entrepreneur gives certain commodities (food, clothing, etc.)002 and receives in exchange a modification of the physical environment. As a matter of fact all economic and industrial production can be reduced to a change of environment. The man who digs a ditch for a railroad changes the environment. The weaver who weaves a piece of cloth modifies the environment, because the act of weaving cloth involves the changing of the position of the thread. The exchange of commodities for a change of position involves a series of changes. The traveler gives something, a sum of money usually, for being conveyed from one place to another.
Exchange of a commodity for a physiological state is effected, for example, when we pay a surgeon for replacing a dislocated limb, or a doctor for curing a disease, or a masseur for massaging the skin.
The exchange of commodities for psychical states includes a large class of pedagogical and artistic transactions: the money we pay for a lecture, for a lesson, to hear an artist, to see a picture, etc. [294] It is an extremely long series. The sum of these exchanges brings about mental changes. The brain of a man who has pursued a certain course of studies is no longer exactly what it was; it contains more knowledge. Neither is our soul the same after we have heard a symphony. And besides the immense exchange of commodities for service there goes on an exchange of service for service. For example, a man may exchange lessons for medical treatment. Here I might point out a fact the importance of which we shall have occasion to appreciate later. It is that certain mental exchanges can take place at a distance without direct contact between the participants.
There are then three main kinds of exchange: exchange of commodities for commodities, of commodities for service, and of service for service. Man cannot create matter; he can at best only modify it according to his needs. What does it mean when Peter gives Paul two loaves of bread in exchange for the latter's digging a ditch two cubic meters in size? The production of the two loaves of bread involves a series of external changes, such as the sowing and grinding of wheat and the baking of bread. The production of bread is then the result of a series of activities. Now Peter exchanges one series of activities (production of bread) for another (digging the ditch). But since activities placed at the disposal of another man are service, these men really exchange services, some of which are in the form of commodities. Now since the social bond can only be established through exchange, we can see that the social bond really reduces itself to reciprocity of services. But let us push our analysis still further, that we may get to the very bottom of the phenomenon.
What really happened when Peter gave Paul two loaves of bread and when Paul dug a ditch for Peter? Simply this, that Peter enabled Paul to derive a certain amount of enjoyment—that which he had in eating the bread—and that he himself got a certain amount of enjoyment from Paul—the fatigue that Paul spared him in digging the ditch. All exchange comes back, finally, to that of enjoyments. For enjoyment is, in fact, the main condition of life. If a living creature is subjected to suffering exceeding a certain reasonable limit it dies. On the other hand, the more [295] enjoyment a human being has, the more intense his life, the more alive does he.become, if we may thus express it. Life is then enjoyment; but enjoyment comes from exchange, since life itself comes from exchange. This conclusion is perfectly correct from all points of view, as I shall try to show in the following section. Here I shall simply restate the important fact that social life being impossible without exchange, society and exchange are, from a certain point of view, synonymous terms.
I might point out here another important fact that plays a considerable part in the formation of societies, namely, that traveling from place to place is also a form of exchange, first, of course, from a material point of view. When an American disembarks at Havre and boards the train to Paris, he gives a commodity, his money, for a service, the transportation. Consequently so long as the American is in Paris he exchanges commodities for commodities, such as for the food he obtains in the restaurants, or for clothing. Nobody could live in a foreign country without consuming, hence without exchanging.
The exchanges that take place between the natives of a country and the travelers who come there usually escape our notice. When the French send a cargo of sardines to the United States, that cargo passes through the custom-house and its admittance affects the social consciousness, but the exchange effected when American tourists eat a cargo of sardines in small quantities in the French restaurants passes unnoticed.
The exchanges of commodities for commodities or of commodities for service are always visibly connected with the objects involved; they are effected in full light. It is not the same, however, with exchange of services for services, especially those of a mental order. A professor living in London may write a letter to one in Buenos Aires imparting some very useful information. Exactly the same result is obtained by sending a book. The letter and the book are material objects, but they are, if I may so put it, of a materiality reduced to a minimum. Even more so is that of thoughts transmitted through the telegraph with or without the wire. The psychical phenomenon is evident in that case. The material exchange (letters, books, telegrams) cannot be seen, so to [296] speak. The social bond can therefore be formed at great distances almost without any visible material contact.
Now one last remark. Man comes in contact with the environment through his nervous system. All impressions from the outer world are first of all sensations, then they change into images and ideas. All exchange terminates, in the last analysis, in a psychic phenomenon, in a certain group of ideas in the brain, or in a certain condition of the mind, if we wish to generalize still further. All of man's activities affecting his environment are, in turn, the result of a certain condition of the brain. If a man is thinking of freezing the foodstuffs of the Argentines, for instance, in order to send them to London, the idea of a refrigerator boat necessarily precedes its construction. The two poles of life, the action of the environment upon the organism and the reaction of the organism upon the environment, originate and end in exchange. A series of antecedent exchanges produces certain ideas in the nerve centers; these ideas cause other exchanges, and so on indefinitely.
After this general analysis let us now come to concrete facts. Here are two human groups. If they do not practice some sort of exchange, then no association is possible between them. Such was the condition of the Peruvians and the Spaniards before the discovery of America. Suppose we admit the existence of men on Mars. The human beings on that planet and those on our planet form two absolutely distinct groups. But if it were possible for us to communicate with the men on Mars, for instance, through some sign, there would result an interchange of ideas and of knowledge. If the Martians should happen to be more progressive than we are, they could help us to advance several stages in our civilization. They would, in that case, render us a very valuable service. In teaching us the best methods of agriculture the Martians would enable us to obtain more food with less work, thus helping us to transform our planet according to our needs. In other words, they would increase our wealth. The transmission of knowledge from Mars to our brains would constitute an exchange. That exchange would fasten the bonds between the Martians and ourselves, and the two human groups, heretofore two completely separate societies, would henceforth form a single vast society. [297]
Should intellectual exchanges take place between the Martians and ourselves, we would form a single society. On the other hand, should there exist a country on our planet which could have no communication with other countries the inhabitants of that country would form a completely separate society.
Let us now consider the facts from every conceivable angle. We may imagine the smallest possible group, but if it is a group at all it is only because exchanges take place between the individuals composing it. The fact of exchange among the individuals who compose it alone renders the aggregation a group.
Suppose now we take the most restricted social natural group, the family, that is, a man, a woman, and their child. If there is no exchange between them, these individuals are as completely strangers as if they lived on opposite sides of the globe. Exchange is a continuous process in the family. The father contributes the fruits of his labor and the mother the work incident to the care of the family. The child gives his parents purely moral pleasure at first—the pleasure of loving it and being loved by it in return— pleasures which, just because they are so subtle, are often the most precious.003
We may now consider more extensive groups. Here are two neighboring villages. If there were no exchange between them, the villages could remain as completely isolated as if they were situated on two different planets. If they do not remain isolated, it is only because there is exchange between them.
We can hardly imagine a situation in which men would consent not to go beyond a certain fixed radius. If they had no other motives to prompt them to go beyond the supposed boundary, they would have curiosity, which is a very powerful motive, because its satisfaction is a pleasure, and pleasure is the essence of life. Lower animals, as well as man, experience curiosity. Continuous contemplation of the same thing causes ennui, and ennui is a form [298] of suffering. In order to spare himself that suffering man is ever in search of variety. He explores his surroundings; he undertakes voyages of discovery. If he encounters other human groups in these voyages, some sort of exchange necessarily takes place between the newcomers and the natives, since the latter must at least provide the strangers with food. If the amount of services of that sort increases, and if they last some time, then societies formerly isolated are made into one.
But there is another important group of phenomena which brings about the extension of human groups, that is, division of labor. Division of labor can never become profitable except through exchange. An individual may consent to make nothing but shoes, but only when he can exchange them for bread, food, etc. If the shoemaker were unable to exchange the products of his labor for food, he would quickly die of starvation. Division of labor is therefore realized only through exchange.
Now, in a general way, division of labor is first established between agriculture and industry. Some people obtain their living from the soil, others devote themselves to trades or professions. The latter group is massed in urban centers. Something of a natural exchange is then established between the country and the town. The townspeople could not subsist without the daily contributions of provisions from the country; the people in the country could not live without the commodities manufactured in the city. Urban centers usually begin to develop on a very small scale because the handicrafts are undeveloped in primitive civilizations, but the industries develop in proportion as mankind increases the sum of its technical inventions. When urban centers begin to grow, their radius of supplies is also widened. That is, a hamlet the industry in which consists of a blacksmith, a shoemaker, and a few other artisans could be fed by the farmers living within a radius of, say, two kilometers. London, with its population of 7,000,000, must be supplied with food by farmers living within a radius of several thousand kilometers, reaching as far as California and Siberia. This process of extending the radius of the food supply of cities, because of industrial development, is a natural process occurring in all countries and in all times. [299]
To this first fundamental differentiation of labor, between agriculture and industry, there is added a partial differentiation due to local advantages. A certain commodity can be produced with more facility in one place than in another. The manufacturing of that commodity would be abandoned in the least favored localities in order that its production could be carried on more successfully in the more favored localities. It could then be transported to those places where it cannot be produced. That would give rise to a greater number of exchanges, while the radius within which these exchanges operate would be greatly extended. Finally, a last differentiation arises from the physical environment. Certain edible plants grow in one country while they do not grow in another; certain metals are found in one region while being absent in another. Such conditions are responsible for a great number of exchanges between the remotest regions.
Primitive societies were formed exactly as they are formed in our own day. The theory of efficient causation is as true in sociology as it is in geology. We can see very dearly how human associations are created. A group of colonists leave their home and occupy a deserted region. They cultivate the land, that is, they make the newly occupied soil yield them the necessaries of life. The colonists cannot immediately break the bonds which attach them to their native village because of the industrial activities there, without which they cannot exist. For some tune colonization appears to be simply an extension of the food area of an older town. Then a new urban center is formed in the newly colonized regions, and so on indefinitely. Through consecutive migrations from district to district new societies become simply extensions of older societies. The process is analogous to the spreading of a grease spot or the bursting of new buds into bloom.
Let us imagine a series of contiguous villages which we will call A, B, C, D, etc., to Z. At the expiration of a certain number of years colonization is still going on. Village Z is situated far from village A, from which came the first colonists who settled the villages B, C, D, etc. No exchange could take place between A and Z, but that would not prevent intermediate exchanges between A and B, B and C, and so on. There are no contiguous [300] social groups in the world which do no practice exchange with each other. Normally, that is, as long as society is in a healthy condition, absolute separation is impossible and would be a true miracle if it should exist. It would also be a contradiction, presupposing as it would motionless living beings, that is, living creatures, who are not alive. Moreover, besides the fact that curiosity would impel the people to visit neighboring villages, a thousand circumstances of all sorts would render it advantageous at times to offer a certain article for sale at one particular market place in preference to another.
Moreover, the question of boundaries goes far to show the impossibility of suppressing exchange between neighboring groups. Should commerce cease between two groups the urban centers of which are two or twelve kilometers distant? But then why not five or twenty kilometers? Everyone understands that it is absolutely impossible to fix any limits beyond which exchange should cease to operate between men whom nothing would ordinarily prevent from communicating.
I set forth here the phenomena in their most incipient stages. Later on, when the people have become more civilized and have improved to some extent their means of communication, they would establish colonies farther away from their large cities. The Milesians of the seventh century before the Christian era had built countinghouses north of the Euxine bridge, traces of which are still found in that country. The English in 1838 had colonized New Zealand at the other end of the globe. But these very complex phenomena still retain their simplest fundamental characteristics, and even exaggerate them at times. Thus, the exchanges that obtain at the present time between England and New Zealand are more intense in character than those that took place in olden times between two regions two hundred or three hundred kilometers apart. Consequently the union between the metropolis and the colonies is closer in our day than it was twenty or thirty centuries ago.
The sum of exchanges both material and intellectual arising from the exchange of commodities, of industrial products, of men and ideas, we shall call vital circulation. Admitting that society [301] is really nothing but a group of individuals who practice exchange, then the boundaries of society coincide with those of the vital circulation. Should a vital communication exist between A and Z, the two, from the sociological standpoint, would form a single society. They would be two different societies if no such communication existed between them.
Now, normally vital circulation does not stop at any fixed point. There are always many individuals who through curiosity or love of gain leave their old homes in search of new ones. From that proceeds a very important truth which we cannot emphasize enough, that is, that social boundaries are capable of indefinite extension. If it were possible to reduce human societies to the dimension of an amoeba, we should find there phenomena analogous to those observed among the amoebas. The latter have no fixed abode. Their protoplasmic substance is either expanded or contracted. Sometimes it forms an excrescence on one side, sometimes on the other; now it shrinks on one side, now on the other. The amoeba is, in a word, the very image of instability.
Human societies partake largely of the nature of the amoeba. Every moment finds thousands of people leaving their countries in search of new homes. Thousands of tons of merchandise are transported from one region to another. That vital traffic is especially becoming more and more active in our day. Human societies are the image of mobility. We must do away with our static conception of matter, because such a conception is purely an illusion originating in the coarseness of our senses. Even a bar of steel is an agglomeration of atoms moving with incredible rapidity. But these atoms are so small that we cannot see them. A bar of steel is then a very unstable compound; how much more so is a living creature who is made up of protoplasmic matter, the most unstable of all chemical compounds.
Societies being agglomerations of units, each possessing considerable power of locomotion, constitute organisms the mobility of which is greater than we might possibly suspect.
We see, therefore, the utter impossibility of fixing the exact limits of human associations. There is constantly an interpene-tration between societies due to migration and to transportation of [302] products. But, as we may well imagine, this vital traffic varies from the highest degree to complete absence of all relationship About 1450 we find a very intense vital traffic between the different Italian states, between Venice and Florence, Rome and Florence, Rome and Naples. The traffic was less extensive between Rome and Pekin, and entirely absent between Rome and Cuzco, because Peru was yet unknown to Europeans. Resemblance between different social groups increases or diminishes according to the degree of intimacy between them. If there is no relationship, then completely independent centers of civilization are formed which develop solely through their own resources. Such has been the case with the culture of the Aztecs and the Incas.
Exchange therefore marks the boundaries of civilizations. When human groups cultivate, in preference, certain branches of economic and physical activity, and then exchange their material and intellectual productions, they enrich one another. Let us take an example in the field of art. After the Puritan revolution the English school of music, very brilliant in the Middle Ages, was suddenly paralyzed. If the English at the present day depended entirely on the works of native composers, they would be very poor; they would, in other words, have few of the joys of music. But such is not the case. The works of Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Gounod, have penetrated into England and have, so to speak, enriched and added much to the musical treasure of the English. The civilization of England has from that point of view especially become greater and stronger. Let us, for example, generalize the case given here. The French have such a highly intellectual culture because of what they acquired from Germany, England, Russia, etc. The Germans enjoy the things that have come to them from the French, the English, etc. In a word, not only do the boundaries of exchange mark the limits of civilization, but we may safely say that exchange is one of the greatest factors of civilization, that the latter would be impossible without exchange. Exchange is also the creator of the state and of justice. That is self-evident. The idea of justice necessarily involves three conditions: two subjects and an object. Justice is impossible when one of these conditions is absent. Suppose we do away with [303] the object, what would happen? Here is Peter before Paul. In order that one may react upon the other, it is necessary that the transferring of some object take place. If there is no such transfer, then there can be no reaction. But, it may be urged, Peter could sing a song for Paul, who in return might recite a poem. That would constitute exchange without the transfer of an object. Yes, if men were spirits they might really be contented with exchanging purely spiritual states; but since they must eat they are compelled most of the time to exchange material objects. Those objects create the greater part of relationships among men. Without them human intercourse would have no reason at all for existing; in fact, there would be no intercourse at all.
Equally impossible is it to leave out of our notion of justice the condition of the second subject. In fact, if there were only one man in the world, then human intercourse would be impossible; there would exist only intercourse between the one man and the inanimate objects around him. For justice means precisely a reciprocal relationship between two men. Robinson Crusoe could say, "That stone is mine," but the stone could not say, "Robinson is mine," because the stone cannot think. There are therefore no reciprocal relations between men and inanimate objects; hence intercourse between them does not establish justice. When an individual says, "That field is mine," meaning, in other words, "I have a right of property in that field," he is referring to a third party. It means, in substance, that no other people may place themselves in the same position in which he is regarding the field. There is no jurisdictional relationship between the field and the proprietor, but only between divers individuals with respect to the field.
Justice involves exchange between two or more persons. Hence it is perfectly legitimate to say that exchange creates law. That is true from another point of view. Exchange leads, to social organization, and social organization is really political life, that is, the state. A disorganized society cannot be considered a state. For a state cannot exist without some sort of organization or unless the mass of people included within its boundaries has some kind of social organization.
[304] But where does social organization originate? Manifestly in exchange. The first function that appears in society is the bringing together of all foodstuffs to some fixed place—the market. If that phenomenon does not occur, we have no society, since each family can manage to live on its own resources without coming in contact with any of the neighboring families. The exchange of products gives rise to an enormous number of various institutions which gradually increase until they embrace all humanity in the meshes of their network.
We have, first of all, the necessity of constructing roads and of keeping them in repair. A large group of serviceable institutions comes thus into existence, ending in the modern systems of bridges, highways, railroads. Later it becomes necessary to lay out certain places where the practice of exchange may be carried on; warehouses and inns are built. And finally, as navigation progresses, there are built harbors. Now all this enormous stock of tools which commerce004 renders indispensable must, of course, be produced by somebody.
Organizations are formed in society whose purpose it is to furnish those who shall produce these tools. A certain proportion of the stock of tools is created by private individuals, but there'are not always enough of them for the work; so the concerted action of the entire community is often needed. The activities of the community in public works mark the beginning of political organization. Municipal works, such as street paving, street sweeping, street lighting, are political functions, on a small scale to be sure, but political functions none the less, because it is difficult to determine just where municipal functions end and state functions begin. The opera house in Paris is subsidized by the city. Exchange leads successively to the invention of transfers, legal tender, drafts. Then appear banks, chambers of commerce, paper money, etc. All these finally become a group of very complex institutions.
Exchange creates the state yet in another way, that is, through law. In order to acquire the highest degree of efficiency, commerce must needs compel the observance of certain customs among the [305] traders. For instance, the merchants of London and those of Odessa have an agreement among themselves by which cargoes of corn must not contain more than 4 per cent of foreign matter. If that rate is exceeded, the English merchant has a perfect right not to accept the corn sent him by the Russian exporter. Millions of such cases are known to occur constantly in the business world. These agreements are finally condensed in a code of law. But by law we mean organization, and when we say organization we really mean the state. It may happen, for instance, that it is deemed necessary and useful to put a certain commodity on sale on a fixed day and in a place previously determined, and to sell another commodity in a different place. In order to notify those interested in these resolutions, we must have organization. The sum of such organizations constitutes the state.
How could it really be otherwise? Let us consider a perimeter of territory, of, say, ten thousand square kilometers, where business is transacted in the most orderly manner. What have we in that territory? We have lawful relations among the people who live there. And the term "lawful" is of necessity implied in the statement, "Business is transacted in the most orderly manner." There could be no order if one individual were to infringe on the rights of others. Now, in respecting those rights the people who thus carry on business together live in a legal atmosphere. And a group of individuals living in a legal environment on a certain fixed territory necessarily constitute a state.
But it may be argued that the foregoing is not a true statement of the situation, that exchanges may be made between individuals united purely through family ties and forming what is called in sociology a clan or a tribe, and that an association at that stage could not be called a state. Such a way of reasoning is decidedly erroneous. It is not the business of science to consider social phenomena on the basis of the subjective view of the individuals who compose the group that is being investigated. Science must study facts objectively. A group of individuals may think that they are united by the bond of kinship alone and that they form a tribe. If those individuals are mistaken, and are really united by a territorial bond, science must still affirm that they form a state.
[306] Another very important conclusion that arises out of the preceding analysis is that the effects of the economic factors of exchange alone are sufficient for the organization of the state. The theories in vogue at the present day contend that the state can only be formed by coercion. Such theories, however, will not bear the most elementary analysis. A single argument is sufficient to refute them completely; that is, that the chief factors of coercion, such as wars, conquests, etc., usually occur at more or less protracted intervals.005 Economic factors, on the contrary, are constantly at work. We have had exchanges from the very moment that the simplest division of labor took place among men—and that was hundreds of centuries ago. Moreover, since man cannot live without food, the influence of economic factors in society never wanes for a moment. If economic factors alone, therefore, are sufficient for the formation of the state, and if human life is impossible without the economic factors, the latter necessarily constitutes the state, whether or not there is coercion. We can easily imagine human life without brigandage and conquests, but we cannot imagine it without economic production.
We know that some countries have existed many years without invasions. But history does not cite a single fantastic and impossible example of a country that was able to exist a day without economic production and without exchange. Exchange invariably leads to political organization. And now we can easily see how false is a method that neglects to observe millions of daily universal facts, and which, clinging to a sporadic and rare phenomenon— conquest—attributes the origin of the state to that single abnormal fact. Moreover, the most superficial study of contemporaneous events would show such a theory to be false. Innumerable desert regions have been colonized hi our own day. After a lapse of some time the new populations have adopted some form of political organization and have formed states. In this manner have been formed in the great North American federation the Dakotas, Oregon, Colorado; and in Canada, Manitoba, Alberta, etc. That which occurs under our very eyes at the present day also took place [307] in olden times; for economic production was the basis of human life then as it is now, and economic production invariably brings about exchange, therefore organization.
On the other hand, that which-promises to be some day a federation of all Europe is in the making now as a result of innumerable exchanges which escape our observation because of their frequency and multiplicity. Every business transaction between individuals of different countries is, so to speak, a microscopic event to which nobody pays any attention. It simply escapes our consciousness. But millions and millions of small sales of that nature, repeated uninterruptedly for years, weave the cloth of European federation, as Gladstone has so happily said. First, because exchange brings about division of labor. The Germans have specialized in industry, the Russians in agriculture. Here we have the old specialization between the country and the town, only repeated on an infinitely greater scale. And just as the town cannot exist without the food that comes from the country, so it is that Germany cannot live without the agricultural products of Russia. It is said that the German soil can support only forty-two million people. But Germany (1910) has a population of sixty-five millions. Therefore twenty-three millions of Germans must starve unless they receive food from Russia and other countries.
The exchanges which have become indispensable between European nations have given rise to a system of various juridical institutions, such as consular agreements, laws regulating international transportation, post-offices, telegraphs, etc. It would take pages just to enumerate them. That system of juridical institutions forms at all tunes the legislation of the European federation. We see repeated on a larger scale what happened when the colonists, having settled a new country, instituted certain laws to meet the demand of their economic life. As a result of some mental aberrations coming from sources of which I shall speak later the Europeans are still hostile to one another. But sociology, which must study facts objectively, is obliged to show that in reality Europe already constitutes a single economic unit, and that consequently its political unification, in the domain of civil law, is also in a very advanced stage.
[308] After having shown that vital circulation, exchange, in other words, produces civilization and originates the state, it devolves upon me equally to show that it also forms nationalities.
Theoretically each human family006 living in a state of isolation speaks a different language. When Alexander Selkirk, the sailor who has served as the prototype of Robinson Crusoe, was discovered by the crew of the "Duke" after four years of isolation, he had almost forgotten his native tongue, and the sailors could with difficulty understand him. We see how quickly the process of differentiation operates. We can observe a great diversity of idioms among the South American savages. That is natural. Being uncivilized, they possess very primitive means of communication. They cannot take long trips. Hence the area within which their exchanges take place is limited, and, there being no contact between the groups, the language becomes differentiated.
How does it happen that the English language is able to preserve its unity in countries so far from one another as New Zealand, Canada, and Rhodesia? That is due to the travelers, the books, and the newspapers that leave England daily. Should communications be stopped for a single century, differentiation would immediately follow and new dialects would appear.
Large numbers of popular local dialects are to be found in the larger European countries. They are an index of the economic circulation of the country. I have spoken above of the natural separation between the urban centers and the country districts. That separation is followed by another process just as inevitable: the subordination of those urban centers. Certain towns more favorably situated than others become a much frequented thoroughfare. A point of attraction is then formed in that region, which centralizes all activities and which forms a most important market place. After that there is much more intercourse between the various divisions of that region and its center than between the divisions themselves. For instance, more people travel between Toulouse and Paris on the one hand, and between Lyon and Paris on the other, than between Toulouse and Lyon. Consequently, in [309] proportion as people gather more frequently in the principal town so will the speech of that town necessarily extend over the whole region. And that is, in fact, what we find. Thus the Milanese dialect in Italy radiates around Milan, the Venetian dialect around Venice, the Bergamese around Bergamo.
And the same is true of the great literary languages, which also radiate around a nucleus. The dialect of the "Ile-de-France," having become literary French, has gradually spread from Flanders to Gascony, and from Brittany to Dauphiny. Now when we examine social phenomena closely we find that the diffusion of languages, both popular dialect and literary idiom, is due to exchange. It is due solely to exchange, and not to some mysterious and miraculous process, that the dialect of Saxony has become literary German and has spread from the Alps to the Baltic. There was needed a continuous circulation of men on the German territory to teach and compel populations which -formerly spoke a great number of local dialects to speak a single central dialect.
We must bear in mind first that the most extensive voyages are those undertaken for commercial purposes. Even after simple pleasure trips and the transportation of officials and educators (preachers, school teachers, professors, etc.) have become more common, that still reverts to exchange, since, as I have shown earlier hi this chapter, the strangers must be fed and often paid by the natives. Miracles do not happen in this world; and the Provencals could not have learned the French language if someone from the "Ile-de-France" had not taught them the language. The activities of people giving such instruction constitute what we have termed vital circulation. Now that particular kind of circulation reduces itself to exchange of services for material objects. But it may be argued that a language can be learned without teachers, through books only. That is true in a certain sense, but the transportation of books from one place to another also constitutes exchange.
In the eighteenth century the use of the French language became very common in Russia. That was possible only because of a very extensive circulation of people and merchandise between Russia and France, without which the French language could not [310] have come into Russia, just as the spread of Spanish in Peru was impossible before the discovery of America.
Since it is exchange that makes possible the diffusion of languages over large areas, it is evident that exchange gives rise to nationalities. Of course language and nationality are not synonymous terms, but language is, without doubt, one of the main factors in the making of a nationality. There are many other factors, such as similarity of ideals, of culture, of customs, of religious beliefs, of law, etc. But we must understand dearly that all those similarities also come from exchange. Similarity is the result of imitation, and we cannot imitate men whom we have never seen. Now human intercourse results from the necessity of exchanging commodities and services.
To sum up, exchange is the main factor in human association. Association is impossible without it, and the boundaries of human groups coincide, in fact, with the limits within which exchange operates.
It is necessary to push our analysis still further. Exchange not only produces association, but is the source of life itself. No creature could live a moment without constantly interchanging matter with its environment. Plants absorb carbon dioxid from the air and give off oxygen. If the plant is placed in a position where it cannot perform that exchange, it dies in a short tune. The same is true of animals. They inhale oxygen and exhale carbon with every breath they draw. If that exchange is arrested, death ensues immediately. Life and exchange are in that case indissolubly united. This is true also from another and larger point of view which may be formulated in the following proposition: the intensity of life is determined by exchange.
The Metazoa are organisms composed of cells ranging from one or more to an association of many trillion cells, as is the case with the human body. But, like the human, the biological association is possible only through the mechanism of exchange. The various groups of cells in an organism are united by the exchange of matter [311] and service that operates between them. The liver receives the influx of blood that has been worked over by a number of organs, and in turn it works on the bile which it pours into the body. We have here exchange of product for product. The heart receives the blood that nourishes its cells, and in return pours it out into all the limbs to nourish the membranes composing them. This is an exchange of product for service. The same may be said of the nervous system which, receiving the blood, renders in return the service of guiding the individual in the outside world and of co-ordinating his activities with his environment. Differentiation of organs could not take place, and if it did, would be of no use whatever without the exchange of matter and services within the organism. From that point of view we may say that life and exchange are so intimately connected that one may be identified with the other.
We may now lay down as an incontestable truth the following two propositions: first, that a living being is such only because it is a society, and it is a society because exchange operates within it;007 secondly, that all animal and human societies are living beings because exchange operates within them.
We must now consider association, not only from the point of view of life, but also from that of the intensity of life. In doing this we enter a great field, hitherto not very seriously explored by sociologists.
Chemical substances are condensed ether. By condensation we mean here the formation of a system; that is to say, the transformation of linear into circular movements, the substitution of closed for open curves. Many comets are not a part of our solar system because they travel in parabolic and hyperbolic curves. But as soon as a comet describes an ellipse, that is, a closed curve, it becomes a part of our sidereal system.
[312] All bodies, therefore, exist only through forming closed curves. In the same way all association is established through the formation of a closed curve. A gives a certain article to B, who in exchange gives him something else or renders him a service. Using the graphic method we get the following figure:
By virtue of a back-and-forth movement indefinitely repeated there is formed an ellipse, which is a closed curve. Consequently A and B form a system, that is, they form an association.
In nature, however, we have, not only the formation of systems, but also their disintegration, which is the substitution of an open for a closed trajectory. In biology such disintegration is called dissociation. Complete dissociation may be represented graphically as follows:
In this diagram A gives all while B gives nothing in exchange. That is absolute antagonism. But absolute antagonism must necessarily put an end to association. As a matter of fact two conditions arise out of this situation. The party that does not receive anything (the injured party) will, if possible, try to escape from such a disadvantageous situation. Then each goes his way and the association is dissolved. But if the injured party cannot escape that exploitation he succumbs. The victor is then alone and the association ceases to exist.
But there are a number of intermediate stages between absolute inequality and the most perfect equality. A might render a certain amount of service, which B could repay in service, but in a smaller quantity. Though unequal, we would still have exchange here. The following diagram illustrates this point:
Here A gives B something worth five units, and B returns something worth three units. In a certain measure B exploits A, but A and B continue to form an association because the tie is not broken, although the association assumes a peculiar character. [313] Millions of associations of that nature exist both in human societies and in the animal world. Indeed, we may safely say that such cases are the most common.
It seems that from the very nature of things there can be no association between the lion and the gazelle, only absolute unmitigated antagonism, since the death of the lion means life for the gazelle, and the death of the latter means life for the lion. Nevertheless that point of view is not absolutely correct. There is intercourse between the lion and the gazelle, though such intercourse is entirely one-sided. It makes no difference to the lion whether he has any birds or not, but it does make a difference whether or not he has gazelles.008 Hence there really exists a bond between the lion and the gazelle—though the bond is not a social one because there is no exchange. The gazelle gives all, the lion nothing. Now the transition from absolutely one-sided, therefore anti-social, intercourse, to partially one-sided, therefore semi-social, intercourse, is imperceptible. Such, for instance, is the relationship between man and the domestic animals destined for his food. When we kill an ox for food we do exactly what the lion does when he kills a gazelle in order to devour it. The ox gives everything, man nothing. Yet the relations between man and the ox are already slightly different from those between the lion and the gazelle. The lion does not give the gazelle anything before he kills it, while we do give the ox something before we slay it. First, we give protection—or the possibility to live. Without man the bovine race could not have spread over the earth as it has. Besides protecting it, we feed the ox; we store hay for the whiter, and we care for it in many other ways.
A somewhat more advanced stage is found in the Middle Ages between the serf and his master, the lord. The serf gives his master a part of what he produces—it little matters whether directly or by means of money—and the lord protects him in return. Now what does that protection really signify? It means simply the quantity of food that the serf may keep for himself by virtue of the fact that his master prevents the serf's enemies from [314] taking it from him. That quantity may be very considerable at times, constituting 100 per cent of the serf's profit, since the enemy might very often carry off all his crops. In the same way the master gave the ancient slave food, clothing, and shelter for his labors. All this, of course, of a more inferior quality than was justly his due. One-sided as this relationship between the ancient slave and his master was, it was yet a social relationship, because it had in it the elements of exchange.
The class that gives little and receives much lives at the expense of its victim; hence it lives the life of a parasite. Perfect parasitism is, of course, impossible in society. Such a conception is purely theoretical. But there are different degrees of parasitism. A perfect state of human association is shown by the following diagram:
Here A gives five units (the units being represented by the number of bars) and receives five units in exchange. That is perfect equilibrium, and, in social terms, perfect justice. Such perfect equilibrium gives an impetus to a very large number of activities.
As a matter of fact, when exchange is unjust, the injured party puts forth a great deal of resistance which diminishes the activities of both. But when there is no injustice there is no resistance, and the activities can be increased to the greatest possible limit. Let us consider injustice in its simplest form: The imposter A asks a hundred francs for his goods, though B knows well that the goods are worth no more than fifty. To avoid being cheated, B commences to bargain, and enters upon long discussions which consume a great deal of time. Then A and B, instead of making at least thirty transactions, make only fifteen. Their movements are slackened; in other words, their commercial activity is diminished.
If violence, a worse form of injustice, is employed, movement is slackened still more. Nobody wants to give up the fruits of his labors without receiving their equivalent; everyone tries to protect himself against spoliation. Consequently the activities of every producer are divided into two parts. A certain number of hours are devoted 'to the production of necessaries of life, another number of hours are taken up in the preparation of the means of despoiling [315] one's fellow or the means of preventing the latter from despoiling one's self. In this last stage A and B make only fifteen transactions, because the quantity of articles each could bring to market has been decreased by cutting down the hours of production to six instead of twelve.009
We see then that the maximum of social movement is in direct proportion to the equity entering into exchange. That is to say, the intensity of our social life is in direct proportion to the justice that reigns in society. But social life is nothing but the sum total of individual lives, and when we say that the intensity of social life is in direct proportion to the sum of justice, we really mean that the fulness of each individual life is directly proportionate to the sum of justice in society. The term justice, therefore, reduces itself to intensity of life; in other words, to life itself, because the most intense life is the fullest life.
Now I have just shown that increase in social activities is due to the fact that we can operate a considerable number of exchanges (of products and services) at the same time. Intensity of life— life, in short, to express one's self in the briefest possible manner —also comes back to exchange. That is exactly what I wished to demonstrate in this chapter.
All that has been stated can be summed up in the following formula. The world presents a number of categories of social bonds representing very diverse quantities of justice. The minimum of justice corresponds to the minimum of life, that is, to death; while the maximum of justice corresponds to the maximum of life, that is, to happiness.
Let us for a moment imagine the world inhabited by two individuals only, A and B. If A kills B, A remains alone in the work of changing the environment according to his needs, and the rate of his adaptation is reduced by half. If A threatens B without killing him, he makes him lose tune. The more time A compels B to lose, the poorer do both become. In other words, the more injustice there is in the world, the greater is the misery therein.
If we examine things carefully, we find that not only .life, but existence itself, is impossible without association. All chemical [316] bodies are the result of affinity. But affinity is the beginning of association. Everything in the universe is association. The isolated atom does not exist.
After the general we come to the particular biological fact that association and the intensity of life are parallel phenomena. Cells unite to form animals, animals to form societies. The physiological process is followed without any discontinuity by the sociological process, because both spring from the same principle, namely, the tendency of all living creatures to flee from pain and to search for pleasure; in other words, to enrich and intensify their life.
When all the Germans became united, each German was much better off than when they were divided. Similarly, each European will profit by it when Europe is made into one. Association produces well-being. But to desire the maximum of life, of happiness, without expecting a corresponding extension in the area of association, is pure contradiction. It would be as well to wish for a maximum and a minimum of vital intensity at the same tune. Association, the most powerful means of increasing the vital intensity of the individual, does at no step lose that virtue. It is as much a process of intensification for ten individuals as. for a thousand, for fifty million as for the whole of humanity.
But if the extension of the area of association is always an advantage, then the improvement of the means of communication makes that extension possible. It has always been thus. The sailboat united all the people of Egypt into a single society. The invention of the chariot probably did much toward uniting the demes of Attica. The railroad and telegraph are, in our day, uniting the nations of Europe. This evolution has been going on for centuries, very slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, and it is continually becoming a more rapid process.
Now, as we have seen, association can, in the last analysis, be reduced to exchange. Belgium contributes iron, Russia grain, and, because of the association thus formed between them, the life of both is enriched.
We can now understand how grossly those individuals deceive themselves who consider commerce nothing but a combat, a struggle. But commerce is not a combat; it is the most important [317] factor of association, hence of life. Combat consists of a group of activities leading to total or partial death010 of the vanquished. Commerce, however, is exactly the opposite, being an activity that leads to an increase in the vitality of all those concerned. It-is absurd to call combat an activity that increases the well-being of all, when the very nature of combat is the wish of the conqueror alone to win. Combat necessarily presupposes a loser; commerce does not necessarily imply anything of that sort. There is no commerce unless all the parties who exchange gain something.
The public and the scientists have of late turned their attention to conflicts in the biological world. But the field of those conflicts is not so great as we might imagine. Antagonism is, of course, irreducible between an animal which is the pursuer and one which is the game. And yet, while surely the death of all the lions would bring life to the antelopes, the opposite is not true. The death of all the antelopes would mean, not life, but death to the lions. Hence the lion is interested in the life of the antelopes, and if he understood his interests clearly he would protect the antelopes from other carnivora. If some sort of solidarity is, therefore, possible between the devourer and his victim, we can see that a solidarity of a much higher order can be established between two traders which would equally benefit both in then- transactions. Commerce has then nothing in common with conflict. But it is the main factor in human association, that is, the main factor in vital intensity, and finally in life itself.
I have shown in the preceding chapters that exchange creates association and even life itself. We can reach a very important conclusion from that proposition, namely, that the boundaries of association extend in reality quite as far as does the vital circulation. Association is impossible without exchange, and as soon as we have exchange we also have association.
We must now put the great question which holds almost our whole happiness in suspense. How does it happen that appearances never coincide with reality? More vital intercourse exists [318] between London and Paris than between the latter and Toulouse. Why then do the Parisians and Toulousians feel that they are members of the same association, while the Parisians and Londoners consider themselves members of two different associations? In a word, why do not the real boundaries of society coincide with those which we consider the social boundaries?
This is the result of what might be termed the "spoliation illusion." Throughout the ages people have imagined, as they still imagine, that one can become wealthy much faster through plunder than through honest labor. Production and spoliation are the two fundamental phenomena found in the human species. Production leads to association and life; spoliation leads to dissociation and death; production is a sane and normal condition; spoliation is abnormal and pathological. The human species has for thousands and thousands of years been revolving around these two poles. But the social question will be solved only when we realize definitely that spoliation is fatal to the despoiler.
I have already spoken of the fundamental phenomenon of spoliation by showing that we find in nature, not only formation of atomic and other systems, but also disintegration of systems.011 Complete spoliation is illustrated by the following diagram:
Here A takes all and gives nothing in exchange. It is the diagram of complete dissociation. It is evident that when A gives B nothing for that which he took from him he finds it profitable not to do so. He would not do it if he found it unprofitable. It is just hi that idea that we find the "spoliation illusion." The only really profitable transaction for A is represented by the diagram of justice.
The only profitable combination is that which would give B the equivalent of that which was taken from him. A misunderstanding of this elementary truth has been the determining factor in the [319] destiny of the human species for hundreds of centuries. And yet that truth is self-evident. As a matter of fact, the combination
where A has taken everything from B and gives him nothing in exchange, that is, when he robs him completely, is unrealizable both from the biological and from the social point of view. Biologically we condemn a man to death012 when we deprive him of everything he has produced. Now if all men killed each other in the practice of complete spoliation, the human race would soon become extinct. The object of spoliation is to procure profits for the individual who practices it, that is, to enrich his life. But the attempt to enrich life by methods which destroy life is absolutely unrealizable and borders on the absurd. No doubt nobody claims that spoliation is of any advantage to the victim. But a great majority of men live, nevertheless, in the gross illusion that spoliation in general is profitable. In arriving at that conclusion they fail to see two facts: first, that there must of necessity be a victim in order that there may be spoliation. Hence, the number of those who are plundered must equal at least the number of the plunderers. If spoliation is advantageous for only half of the human race, then the profit is already reduced by half. But then they fail to see another still more important thing; that is, that, given a reign of plunder, no one can tell at any given time whether he is the plunderer or the victim. If one is the plunderer, well and good; but if one is the victim, then where is the general advantage of spoliation? Is it not rather in the nature of a vulgar joke to maintain that, spoliation in general being advantageous, he who has just been robbed of all his goods and thrown into the street must also find it very profitable?
We forget also that, were spoliation profitable, everybody would find it so and would wish to practice it. But if everybody should wish to rob his neighbor, then all would, in turn, have to be robbed. [320] If we find it profitable to seize the territory of our neighbor, then the whole world ought to find it so. Every state might wish to make conquests, but for that very reason must all the states run the danger of being conquered—which would be a bad thing in any case, because it would mean the fear of death constantly hanging over most people. Such a complete absence of security would mean a limitation of vital exuberance, a limitation of happiness. The attempt to create life by means of death is therefore naturally unrealizable. So much for spoliation from the biological point of view.
Let us now pass on to the sociological point of view. I have shown above (p. 312) that the combination
where A takes all and gives nothing in return, thus practicing spoliation, necessarily puts an end to association. In nature we constantly see the formation and disintegration of chemical, biological, and social groups. The union of vital units, in order to form a vital whole of a higher and more complex order, is called association; the disruption of vital units, breaking up an organized and complex whole, is called dissociation. Exchange forms associations; spoliation tends to break them up. While the farmer produces corn, the tailor makes clothes, and they exchange. It is as if the farmer were to help the tailor make clothes and the tailor were to help the farmer produce corn. But in spoliation we have diametrically opposed activities. There it is exactly as if the farmer were preventing the tailor from making clothes and the latter preventing the farmer from producing corn. As a matter of fact neither fully consents to a combination that does not appear advantageous to him. The fact that nobody ever consents to be despoiled proves that no one finds it profitable. And in order not to submit to such an unprofitable procedure people resist. The time used up in resisting can no longer be employed in useful production. In that case, instead of working twelve hours a day in his field in order to produce corn, the farmer would first have to work three hours in order to protect himself from the predatory [321] advances of the tailor. In the same way the tailor would have to protect himself from the farmer. Each would, in a certain measure, keep the other from producing. I should add also that each would need time, not only for protection, but also in order to attack the other. As soon as an individual decides to pillage his neighbors, or, if he is chief of a state, to conquer a kingdom, he must undertake a great deal of work preparatory to his expedition.
We see therefore that spoliation, hi any of its aspects, is opposed to co-operation. Co-operation enables man to adapt his environment to his needs in the shortest possible time; spoliation prevents him from accomplishing that end. Co-operation, that is to say, association, permits a maximum of vital intensity; association is accordingly life; spoliation prevents the attainment of that maximum. Association is life; spoliation is death.
When a man finds himself in the presence of another who is seeking to rob him of his life, there can be no question of association between them. No union is possible between the wolf and the lamb. And when a man comes hi contact with another who wants to rob him there can be no association between them. Those men are enemies; they must either destroy each other or separate.013
The fundamental phenomena of biology obtrude themselves with such force that man cannot, for a single instant, misunderstand them. Man has always been aware, therefore, of the absolute incompatibility of life and association with spoliation. And yet he has at the same tune always cherished the absurd notion which has led him to consider plunder as one of the most profitable of all his activities. How have we managed to get rid of that formidable contradiction? Simply by tracing an imaginary line between this side where we have considered spoliation disadvantageous, therefore criminal, and the other side where we have thought of spoliation as profitable, therefore meritorious.
It is evident that when an individual lives in a house with his wife and children he does so in the belief that his wife and children do not intend to kill him and steal his possessions. If the father [322] had any such idea, he would flee from them and the family would be dissolved. Similarly, man can hardly live a single hour without some guaranty of security within a certain radius no matter how limited. Spoliation must therefore necessarily be eliminated from that place. The most superficial observer will confirm what has just been said. There have always existed groups of people within which man could not practice spoliation. If, by chance, a member of a group did practice it, he was regarded as a criminal and punished accordingly.
We may now restate more accurately the proposition put at the beginning of this chapter. The real social boundaries coincide with those of vital circulation, but the apparent social boundaries coincide with the limits within which spoliation begins to appear profitable. It is spoliation that fixes the political frontier, the frontier of the state. A state is a territory within which the citizens find that it does not pay to rob one another. He who respects the laws is called a compatriot, a fellow-citizen; he who is suspected of predatory intentions is called an ah'en. The state ends where war begins.
I have said that human intercourse is greater between London and Paris than between Toulouse and Paris. It has been some time (happily it seems to be over forever) since there has been any war between London and Paris, whereas war between Paris and Toulouse is not even anticipated. Yet London and Paris are continually equipping armies and navies with which to attack each other, while Paris and Toulouse do not even think of engaging in such activities. The coincidence of war and that which appears to form the boundaries of association may be taken as proof and counterproof. When two political organizations which have heretofore waged war cease later to wish it, the social consciousness carries the social frontier back to the very extremities of the two bodies. Thus, when James IV of Scotland ascended the throne of England under the title of James I and became sovereign of the two kingdoms, he no longer tried to carry over provinces from one part of his kingdom to the other. From that moment on, the inhabitants of Great Britain felt their solidarity and carried back the boundaries of their society from Sutherland to Cornwall. On [323] the other hand, when the Spanish possessions in America were broken up into several states, each tried occasionally to take the territories of its neighbors. Consequently Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia have not felt the inclination to form a single society, but have formed several. So that man considers compatriots those whom he does not find it profitable to plunder; those whom he thinks it profitable to plunder he looks upon as aliens.
These boundaries are fixed in a completely subjective and arbitrary manner. As a matter of fact we pretend that race, culture, religion, customs, etc., are instrumental in the establishment of objective boundaries between societies, but that contention does not coincide with the reality of things. Within countries inhabited by people of the same race, having the same religion and customs, there are formed political states which are constantly at war with each other, which find it profitable, therefore, to rob one another, and which entertain a systematic hatred toward each other. It is possible, on the other hand, to have perfectly unified states formed by men of different race, language, and religion.014 In a word, the social boundaries fixed by public opinion are entirely arbitrary and subjective, and do not rest on any real incontestable fact.
Suppose spoliation had not appeared profitable, then nobody would ever practice it. There would be no fundamental distinction between those whom we consider fit for spoliation and others whom we think worthy of being spared. There would be no aliens and no compatriots. The conduct of men mining in contact with each other would be that of men among their fellow-countrymen. In which case, of course, the limits of what we should call "our" association would coincide with the limits of vital circulation, and the external facts would correspond with our ideas of them. We would abandon all our mistaken ideas and see the truth. It is therefore the spoliation idea that prevents the real social boundaries from coinciding with those which we trace in our imagination.
That is true, in the first place, because the advantages of spoliation are purely imaginary. It would be different if there were any real profit in seizing the fruits of other people's labor. It is really profitable, for instance, to kill the ox in order to eat him, because [324] we could not do our work unless we did eat. But it is not the same with men. Whatever men are, if they unite, their alliance immediately increases the vital intensity of the members of the new group, no matter how large the latter may be. It is enough to understand this commonplace truth in order to realize that when men combine for purposes of exchange they form a single association. And it is because we do not see this truth that we trace boundaries between human groups instead. But the misconception of a truth is a subjective mental fact, and not an objective fact existing in nature. It is evident, therefore, that the boundaries which we assign to society differ with our various conceptions of them at different times. Hence the boundaries which change with our ideas of them are purely imaginary. Whatever may be the subjective opinions of men, they put all the Alps and all the Pyrenees on the same plane, because the Alps and the Pyrenees are objective and real facts. But political frontiers are not. For Louis XIV, for instance, there existed Pyrenees as long as a Hapsburg sat on the Spanish throne, but they no longer existed when the throne was occupied by a Bourbon.
I shall now analyze one of the objections most commonly opposed to my theory. Spoliation, they say, is the form in which the universal law of the struggle for existence is found among men. But a universal law cannot be suppressed; therefore spoliation has always existed; therefore groups plunder one another; hence there will forever exist boundaries to mark off the various contending associations. And, no matter what the vital circulation produced by exchange may be, the frontiers fixed by antagonism will continue forever.
But just a few preliminary remarks. We generally term the struggle for existence in human society " war." Nevertheless, I am perfectly justified in substituting the term "spoliation" for the term "war" because the two are synonymous. War is not an end, but a means. Nobody wages war for the sake of war. People fight only for the purpose of plundering their neighbors, whether they rob them of their personal property by exacting tributes or of their real property, that is, their land. War is a means, not an end, even among the lower animals. The wolf does not kill the [325] lamb solely for the pleasure of killing it (if it were so, he" would abandon his victim as soon as it is dead), but he kills in order to obtain food, that is to say, the act is a necessity. Among men appropriation is also the end; the struggle is nothing but a means with which they would willingly dispense.
Yes, certainly, the struggle for existence is a natural phenomenon, fatal, inevitable, conforming to the order of things, since the creatures in the entire animal world could not live without devouring one another. It is greatly to be regretted that animals cannot subsist directly on mineral substances as do the plants. It is regrettable, but it is so; consequently the struggle for existence, a sad fact, is a fact nevertheless.
It would be absurd to deny truths that are thus evident. But there is another truth equally indisputable, and that is that association is as concrete and positive a fact as is the struggle for existence. There are in the world millions of Metazoa all of which are forms of association. There are on the face of the earth millions of animal and human societies. It is then impossible to deny that association is quite as universal a phenomenon as is the struggle for existence.
The whole problem reverts to the question whether the relations among men, in spite of the natural objective order of things, are like the co-operations between the cells of the Metazoa, or if they resemble the relations between individuals who use one another as game—a condition of irreducible antagonism. That is a question we must analyze very carefully, for there lies the gist of the whole problem.
Is highway robbery (that is spoliation) a natural, therefore inevitable, phenomenon? Yes, it is so considered by the individuals who practice it. But, as a matter of fact, highway robbery is fatal even to the individual who practices it; therefore, it is in reality nothing but an error of the mind, consequently perfectly evitable and transitory. People have really considered the advantages of plunder both as an undeniable truth and as an error no less undeniable, since they have always made a distinction between fellow-countrymen, or those whose rights they considered it profitable to respect, and aliens, or those whose rights they found [326] it profitable to violate. War among men is not a biological fact, or a form of the struggle for existence; it is a social phenomenon originating in certain ideas.
As soon as we enter the domain of human sociology it behooves us to consider the facts as they are in the human organism, and not as they are found in the sponges or the echinoderms. Now every human action is preceded by an idea, and no action is possible unless it is so preceded. When a man decides to build a house he must first have an idea of that structure in mind. On the other hand, all social acts must also be preceded by ideas. The desire to plunder comes from lust. It is first necessary to see an object the possession of which promises pleasure. Then one may reason thus: "I will have more pleasure by taking that object that my neighbor has just made, than if I were to manufacture it myself." The act itself comes afterward. But if the idea, "I will have more pleasure by taking the object that my neighbor has just made," is not there, then there can be no robbery.
But what right have we to think that the idea that one can have more pleasure by taking something from his neighbor conforms more to the fundamental laws of the universe than the idea that one can have more pleasure from producing that commodity himself? The first idea ends in the famous struggle for existence, the second in association; and the second idea occurs quite as frequently as the first, because man always feels that there exist associates whose rights he is obliged to respect.
The idea, "I will have more pleasure by taking the property of my neighbor," is manifestly false. How can it be proved that man's behavior must necessarily continue to be based upon an error? If his conduct does rest upon an error, then he works against his own interests; yet we know that men everywhere act according to their interests. It may be argued that man has never understood that robbery is a pernicious practice. But such is not exactly the case, for, as soon as we are able to formulate the proposition that robbery is against the interests of the one who practices it, it means that certain individuals have already grasped that truth, and since those individuals are men, it follows that all men are able to comprehend that truth. And though not all [327] understand it as yet, it is impossible to find an argument which will prove that if a truth is grasped at any given time by, say, a million men, that truth may not at some other time be understood by another million men. History proves, on the contrary, that truth has indomitable force and is capable of indefinite growth.
Robbery, spoliation, war, originate therefore in a desire which is first a psychic then a social act. Spoliation will be practiced as long as certain ideas are held. Spoliation is exactly like religious intolerance. Under the dominance of certain ideas intolerance is found useful and is practiced; then the ideas change, religious intolerance becomes obnoxious, it ceases to be practiced. The inquisition was based on an error; it was abolished when the error disappeared. International anarchy is based upon an error, and once the error disappears the institution will also fall. What right have we to suppose that the spoliation error alone is privileged to exist forever? Truth alone is unchangeable, because its strength lies in itself. But an error can by no means be placed in the same category. It may be said that the illusion about spoliation is held by a great number of minds. That shows only that it has had an unusually long reign,015 but not that it will exist forever. The long duration of a falsehood will never make it a truth.
Let us sum up briefly the preceding discussion. If plunder really enriches the plunderer, then human intercourse is on the same plane as the intercourse between the wolf and the lamb in the animal world, and war is the form which the universal law of the struggle for existence assumes in human society. But plunder does not enrich the plunderer; it impoverishes him instead. Human relationships are therefore similar to the relationships between the cells in the Metazoa, and association is the natural, normal, and sane state of the human species. When two creatures which are able to associate, and thus increase their vital intensity, fail to associate, there results a decrease in their vitality, therefore a pathological condition, therefore a step toward death. A condition whereby preference is given to an arrangement allowing a minimum of vital intensity over a condition permitting a maximum of vital intensity is sheer madness; it is therefore a pathological condition.
[328] There assuredly exist creatures among which the struggle is fatal, as between the wolf and the lamb. It does not follow from that, however, that there is fatal struggle among all creatures. That is manifestly a false conclusion. Men are evidently able to associate, and that association is advantageous. But for the very reason of their being able to associate must we consider dissociation a pathological fact. For if we deny that dissociation is a pathological condition (which we do when we affirm that massacre among men has useful results), we affirm that association is a pathological condition. That is, of course, a contradiction, since association is a phenomenon which increases vitality and which, therefore, leads to health. Increase in vitality comes from association. Now all exploitation, all violence, all violations of the rights of others lead to disruption. To hope ever to obtain greater vitality through disruption is as absurd as to hope to obtain light by means of darkness.
Parasitism is a universal phenomenon in nature. In a general way the herbivora are the parasites of plants, the carnivora the parasites of the herbivora, and therefore, secondarily, the parasites of plants. And yet alongside of parasitism there exists the phenomenon of symbiosis. When parasitism arises in a group, the association between its members comes to an end. The whole vital economy is based on the understanding that members of one group may not feed on each other, but that they may feed on members of other groups. As soon as the members of a group assume parasitic relations they weaken their individuality. Certainly parasitism is a natural phenomenon, but it remains yet to be seen whether the natural condition among men is one of parasitism (spoliation, robbery) or of symbiosis. If parasitism increases vitality, then parasitism is a natural condition. But inasmuch as parasitism does not increase but rather weakens the vitality of the human individual, it is not a natural result of human intercourse, but is an unnatural condition arising out of a mental error, the "spoliation illusion." Everybody admits as much as long as it is a question of the relation between citizens within the state, but all are reluctant to admit it when it concerns citizens of other states. But in showing at the beginning of this section that the distinction [329] between fellow-countrymen and aliens is oftentimes imaginary I have also shown at the same time that parasitism is disadvantageous, and that symbiosis in all its phases is profitable.
The fundamental principle of society, according to jurists, is that man cannot be an object, but only a subject, of the law. As soon as a man becomes the object or property of another, society progresses more slowly; therefore the master is the member of a diseased society, and, there being less happiness, his life becomes less intense. He too becomes ill. That is because the slave cannot develop his faculties to their fullest capacity.016
Now all non-productivity is a weakness in society, since non-productivity is synonymous with death (those who produce no food starve to death). All decrease in production is then a step toward death, a disease, a shortening of life. A doctor may be discovering a cure for tuberculosis. There comes a war, and X kills the doctor, in doing which X really kills a man who might cure him should he become ill. In a way that is just as if X were committing suicide, for he may, at any moment, develop tuberculosis. It is therefore impossible to violate the rights of one's fellow-men without at the same time violating one's own rights. To express this idea in biological terms we may say that it is absolutely impossible to diminish the vital intensity of one's associates without decreasing one's own vitality. Now, from the true biological point of view, all men are associates because they are capable of mutually serving each other. The Chinaman who plants tea and the Australian who shears his sheep are mutually serving each other when they exchange their products. All the time employed in hurting others through spoliation is lost to us so far as our welfare is concerned.
What we must finally understand is that all that which is antisocial is also anti-vital and anti-individual. Individualism consists in the development of one's own faculties, and not in the preventing of one's neighbor from developing his. If Peter's individualism [330] consists in suppressing that of Paul, there can be no individualism, for they will mutually suppress each other. Thus all sorts of contradictory ideas spring from the "spoliation illusion."
In order that the individual development of all may go on simultaneously, there must be absolute respect for the person and property of our neighbors, hence justice, hence association, or order, and not disruption and anarchy. To place obstacles in the way of the full development of the personality of our neighbor is to violate his rights. That is not individualism; it is rather the negation of individualism. And our neighbor could behave in a similar manner toward us, in which case there would be mutual negation of individualism, therefore its suppression by means of despotism and anarchy. We must not forget that man is surrounded by other men whom he cannot annihilate, but must necessarily accept as realities. The superman of Nietzsche even could not exist unless there were undermen in the world.
The preceding considerations have verified my main assumption, which is that spoliation causes morbid phenomena, hence partial death, in society. I say "partial" because societies may be considered immortal from our individual standpoint. But the fact that spoliation is a morbid phenomenon in societies is accepted by very few people. Thus when I said some years ago that international anarchy was a violation of individual liberty there was a cry of "paradox." Yet nothing could be more strictly true. International anarchy is a regime which permits each state to attack its neighbor when it sees fit, in order to capture provinces, therefore in order to despoil. International anarchy is therefore a synonym for the power to rob, hence a synonym for spoliation. Everybody will admit, on the other hand, that when the people of a state can be despoiled with impunity, whether by their fellow-citizens or by the government, that that state is in a pathological condition. We may, therefore, rightly assume that a regime which sanctions a constant violation of the rights of its citizens by citizens of other states is altogether a pathological regime.
"The earth," says Mr. C. O. Bunge, "is inhabited by many families, peoples, and races, all having unlimited tendencies towards expansion, and the habitable regions of our planet are [331] limited; its productivity is limited. Therefore, struggle is as fatal among human groups as it is among the lower animals. To suppress the struggle would be to suppress life itself."017
It would be difficult to find a passage where the true mechanism of human association is so little appreciated. That is the more surprising since Mr. Bunge is not a Prussian country squire smitten with militarism and buried in family traditions. Mr. Bunge is an Argentinian; he is professor in the University of Buenos Aires; he belongs to a young nation where sanctimonious fetishism for ancient idols is still unknown. At times Mr. Bunge expresses very liberal ideas in the book I have just mentioned, ideas to which I willingly subscribe.
Now, I ask Mr. Bunge, what does "struggle " mean? The term evidently means spoliation. When Paul gives Peter a hectoliter of wheat, and the latter gives 20 francs in exchange, there is no fight between them. Is there a possibility of struggle arising at any moment? Yes, it could arise if Peter, refusing to pay a sum of money equivalent to the wheat received, should employ violence in order to compel Paul to accept those unjust terms. In a word, the struggle begins with spoliation. Now it is clear that spoliation suppresses exchange. If Paul knew in advance that he would be robbed, he would not carry his produce to market; he would lock it up at home. In general, so long as there is no certainty of receiving the equivalent of that which one gives up there can be no exchange, and commerce is completely arrested. But what does Mr. Bunge say? "To suppress the struggle is to suppress life itself." In other words, to do away with spoliation, to establish exchange, is equivalent to suppressing life! That is a contradiction pure and simple; for, as I have shown, exchange is life, both in the biological and in the sociological world.
Complete spoliation or, in other words, a struggle to the death, would be the complete death of societies. If all men were to rob one another of the means of subsistence, nobody would have anything to eat, and all would starve. Certainly that would not be life! We might as well contend that if all men would slay one another there would be more life.
[332] Complete spoliation is a theoretical assumption. It is impossible. But partial spoliation is not impossible. The diagram
has certainly been practiced from time immemorial. Commerce is never entirely arrested by the different forms of robbery which men practice. But commerce can be diminished and exchange lessened. Now at every decrease in exchange there is a corresponding decrease in economic activity, a languishing of social life, a diminution of life in general. The more the struggle, that is, spoliation, is suppressed, or the more justice reigns, the more is life intensified. Mr. Bunge deceives himself entirely in believing the contrary, and his mistake is the more strange coming as it does from a jurist. Justice is life, because justice is association; spoliation is death because spoliation is dissociation.
"The illusion about equality is the more evident," says Mr. Bunge again, "when it is a question of different races. There can be no equal rights and needs between a Bushman and a Londoner, because there is not even the vaguest resemblance in their psycho-physical consciousness."018 Without raising the question of race, and admitting the complete psychical inequality between the Bushman and the Londoner, does that mean that the latter could have the least prerogative to violate the rights of the Bushman?
Violating rights is the same as despoiling. That comes back to saying that the Londoner is privileged to give the Bushman one franc for a product worth two francs. But as soon as the Bushman suspects that he will be cheated he will not bring his produce to market, and social activity will accordingly slacken. If we may generalize here, it is not to the interest of the Londoner to violate the rights of the Bushman because, by virtue of the mechanism of exchange, all blows directed at the rights of our neighbors are, on the whole, blows directed at our own rights. We cannot impoverish others without impoverishing ourselves. And a rEgime under which we can be impoverished (that is, a regime of national and international anarchy) is a r6gime which violates our rights.
[333] What has been said of the Bushman applies equally to all races. Even admitting that the Negroes will always be inferior to the Whites, it does not at all follow that white Americans in the United States have the prerogative of infringing upon the rights of Negroes, since all such violation will ultimately resolve itself in a decrease of production, and hence in impairment of the vitality of American society.
Mr. Bunge sums up thus the ideas on right and might contained in his book: "Ethics ought to moderate and curb aversion for the associate and sympathy for the stranger." Only complete ignorance of the true mechanism of human association could cause one to set up such a false and destructive doctrine. The associate is every man with whom we exchange. The Negro who gathers rubber in the forests of the Congo performs a service to the New York multimillionaire who rides in his magnificent automobile, while the latter, in turn, serves the Negro by indirectly paying him for the rubber. Moreover, the aversion toward the stranger is absurd no matter how we look at it. In fact that dislike is either purely theoretical or it is simply childish, and it means loss of tune even to consider it. But that hatred may well have practical applications, in which case it ends in the despoiling of the stranger. But despoiling a stranger really means despoiling ourselves. Hence this hatred is absurd, since it is a sentiment which makes us do harm to ourselves.
"The fighting instinct, provided that it does not degenerate into violence," says Mr. Schantzer,019 "helps in the formation of character which is today effeminate and well-nigh destroyed."
The idea expressed by that author is pretty generally accepted throughout the world. It is said that without conflict there would be no energy; degeneration would set in in the human species, and that would end all culture. But I would ask of Mr. Schantzer also, what does he understand by the "fighting instinct"? He has evidently the same idea as Mr. Bunge. Either the fighting instinct does not express itself in action, in which case it is a purely metaphysical abstraction, or it does involve action, and then it means spoliation of one's neighbor. The "fighting instinct" is [334] then, systematic violation of the rights of others, that is, suppression of vital intensity. How a weakening of social life could create "energy" is something I find it absolutely impossible to understand. All the countries where justice is constantly violated, Turkey or Russia, for instance, live in decline and poverty; all the countries where justice is dealt out in the most satisfactory manner, as in Switzerland and England, live in the midst of great activity and wealth. And conflict is demanded to arouse "energy"!
Let us examine the reason for that idea more carefully, and dissect it if we may. Energy may be employed against things or against men. It cannot be used against men except to violate the rights of one's fellow-men. But as soon as it is used for that purpose, energy brings about social decomposition and disruption, therefore death. It is said that we may employ energy against people when we have to defend our rights. That proposition is not entirely true because it is one-sided. We can defend our rights only when they are being attacked by others; in which case the other people are using energy to violate the rights of their fellow-men. If nobody would attack, there would be no occasion for anyone to defend himself. And a condition when nobody would attack could come about when all would believe it to be to their interest scrupulously to respect the rights of their fellow-men, or, in other words, not to give their energy full play as far as their fellow-men are concerned. For, we may as well admit it, "energy" is also a euphemism for "violence."
It is said that it is often advisable to display energy in politics, in combating administrative routine, for instance, in order to carry out other plans that would benefit society more. Then energy, although directed against men, appears useful. That is false reasoning. It is not at all necessary that administrations should proceed by routine, and it would be a thousand times better if the people were not placed in a position where they have to fight. It is not the energy to combat certain practices that is most useful, but rather the absence of those practices.
Yes, of course, it is of immense value to man that he knows how to make use of his energy in the conflict with nature. The engineers who dig tunnels, who exploit the deep mines, run great risks at [335] every step. It is right that they should possess the most indomitable energy. Strangely enough, however, that energy, so useful, so beneficent to the human species, is not included in the "fighting instinct." As understood by the greater part of contemporaneous writers, "struggle" is a term applied to intercourse among men; it is not extended to the relations between humanity and the physical environment. It is said of certain nations that they have become effeminate because they have given up fighting, though having an immense economic production. In other words, they are fighting the physical environment very successfully, for economic production is, on the whole, nothing but conflict with the environment.
Social phenomena are extremely complex. With economic problems are mixed race questions, and from that mixture we get a series of new errors with very grave results. Let us take up again Mr. Bunge's statement: "The earth is inhabited by many families, peoples, and races; .... struggle is, then, as fatal between human groups as it is between animal species. To suppress the struggle would be to suppress life itself." This statement characterizes in a very typical manner what Auguste Comte justly calls the metaphysical phase of science. Mr. Bunge thinks in terms of the abstract; he is in the clouds. But social phenomena take place on earth, and if we would understand them it is here on earth in concrete reality that we must study them, come dose to them, touch them with our fingers.
In order to have a fight, individuals must come in contact with one another. We cannot fight the inhabitants of Mars because we cannot touch them. Now contact between men may be limited to the following categories: (1) temporary intercourse for commercial purposes, (2) peaceful immigrations, and (3) military invasions.
Men do not all belong to the same race. There are between them considerable morphological differences which breed aversion. The sight of a Negro, or even of a Chinese or a Japanese, gives some people a disagreeable feeling, and the wish to be rid of that feeling is natural. Even when there is no physical antipathy, if sympathy is lacking there is less pleasure, therefore more suffering. A white man may not feel any particular antipathy for a Negro [336] woman, but he is very much attracted by a white woman. Compel an Englishman to live alone in a group of Negro women, and his joy in life will be considerably diminished. And, given these racial antipathies, it is said that the human families can never amalgamate. The struggle between them is therefore fatal, and to suppress it is to suppress life itself.
All that may be very well as rhetoric, but let us consider facts. Let us analyze one by one the various forms of intercourse that may obtain among men: First, between an Englishman and a Chinese merchant. The Englishman goes to Hongkong,020 and, giving a Chinaman a pound of silver, receives in exchange a few pounds of tea. The transaction completed, the Englishman returns home. These two individuals having effected a mutually profitable exchange—without which the exchange would not have been accomplished—are not fighting, but are, on the contrary, allies and associates. They might have felt the most profound racial antipathy for each other, but that did not prevent them from doing a profitable business together. Now people who can transact business together profitably are not at war. It is only when there is a desire to do harm that war is declared. The case of the Englishman and the Chinaman was given as an example here and could be generalized and extended to embrace all commerce. Whatever may be the race differences, all profitable commerce is a bond, an association; it is not antagonism and conflict. Economic conflicts come, not from exchange, but from the obstacles opposed to exchange—in other words, from exploitation. Whenever one wishes to give less than he has received and uses violence to enforce his unjust claims, there is war. Yet all commerce could be carried on on a very equitable basis if every nation would refrain from activities that are likely to bring on war. It goes without saying that commercial activity would, under such conditions, increase considerably. But since commerce augments economic activity, therefore vital activity, it follows that Mr. Bunge contradicts himself when he claims that suppression of conflict (in this case suppression of all injustice in the commercial world) would necessarily mean suppression of life itself. On the contrary, the abolition [337] of conflict in that sense would mean exaltation and intensification of life.
Let us now pass on to the second form of human intercourse, peaceful infiltrations. Such infiltrations may take place between equal or unequal races, with invaders of either. I do not wish to discuss here the question of superior or inferior races. I use the terms "superior" and "inferior" in the sense in which they are generally used by white people.
As long as migrations take place between equal races there is no cause for conflict; on the contrary, that is one of the strongest factors of association. Twenty millions of Europeans have emigrated to the United States in the course of the nineteenth century. Thanks to that great invasion, America is today a powerful state of nearly one hundred million people. Without that invasion America would hardly have fifty millions. But instead of leading to conflict between the members of the equal races such infiltration does just the opposite. In a struggle there is always an attempt to resist the attack, while in peaceful infiltrations the invaded call the invaders and build golden bridges in order to attract them. Mr. Bunge, who is an Argentinian, knows better than anyone else of the efforts his country is making to attract European immigration. And it is just on that kind of immigration that the future of Argentina rests. Now it is absurd to regard purely as a struggle a group of activities that are capable of augmenting the prosperity of a country. The presence of European colonists cannot suppress life in the Argentines, while their absence might do it. The so-called "vanquished" hi the struggle that arises from immigration become wealthier and stronger. Here is a complete reversal of all our ideas. We have become accustomed to think that the "conquered" always lose, that they never profit. In which case the "struggle" arising from peaceful migrations must be a very peculiar one indeed.
We shall now consider the migration of a superior race upon the soil of an inferior race.
I might, however, first make a few general remarks. If contact with a member of an inferior race is distasteful to one of a superior race, the reciprocal of that is not at all true. The opposite [338] is generally the rule. A white woman experiences a feeling of revulsion, often an insurmountable one, at the idea of marrying a Negro, while the Negro, on the contrary, is extremely happy if he "can live with a white woman. The Negro repels the white woman; the latter, on the contrary, pleases the Negro immensely. In the same way, members of the yellow race are not repelled by white people, while the latter are often repelled by the yellow.
Given such conditions, we see that when a superior race invades peacefully the territory of an inferior race the latter experiences no physiological antipathy, while the reciprocal is not the case. The coming of the English among the Zulus produces no suffering among the latter from the racial point of view. And since there is no suffering there can be no struggle, but, on the contrary, there is alliance.
There remains now the third category, the infiltration of a race considered inferior upon the territory of a superior race. That is, of course, fatal to the superior race. The American nation will some day be in danger of invasion by hundreds of millions of Chinese. It is, therefore, to the interest of the Americans to prevent this, just as it is to the interest of the Chinese to colonize the United States. We have here a real concrete conflict, a struggle in the true sense of the term. But considering the impossibility of coming to an agreement, or of amalgamating, it is to the interest of the two parties to solve the difficulty by a compromise; to limit the immigration in some way. The white and the yellow races ought to divide the earth between them. By thus eliminating the race conflict they would both attain greatest vital exuberance. They will never attain that end by mutual extermination.
Suppose we regard the problem from the physiological point of view. Yes, there are considerable differences between white and black and yellow people, insurmountable differences, it appears. And it does not seem as if any of them could be eliminated very easily. But even were that the case, where is really the danger as long as the Negroes inhabit Africa, the Mongolians Asia, the Caucasians Europe and America? That has been going on for centuries and may continue for an indeterminate number of centuries. And yet that irreducibility is less complete than [339] appears on first thought, for the reason that it is very often nothing but a matter of subjective ideas.
The Negroes of Brazil are as different from the Portuguese as are the American Negroes from the' English people. With the abolition of slavery the prejudice against the Negro has also disappeared. The white and the black populations mix freely. Soon they will amalgamate and the Negro race will entirely disappear. In the United States, however, there is a much deeper prejudice against the Negro, and fusion of the two races is a much slower process. But they are nevertheless amalgamating. Even during the slavery period the fact that a Negro woman was the property of her white master did not prevent the latter from having relations with her, which resulted in the birth of a great number of half-breeds. Now, after slavery has been abolished, relations are still taking place between whites and blacks, partly because the Negro women are willing to have these relations continue. When prejudice will disappear in the United States as it has disappeared in Brazil—and prejudice is purely a psychical fact arising from social conditions—the fusion between Negroes and Americans will be accomplished in a few hundred years.
If such conditions obtain for the most diverse human races, the black and the white, we may reasonably conclude that amalgamation is possible. And it does in fact occur constantly between the less distant races. The difference between the Mongolian and the White is often a matter of degree, and is at times almost entirely absent. There are also many intermediate shades. When the Chinese and the Japanese shall have adopted Western civilization, in reality and not in appearance only, then intermarriage between Mongolians and Whites will be perfectly possible.
We are unable to tell now whether or not all the human races will some day become one because of the increase in the faculties for intercourse between them. One thing is certain, however, and that is that the life of the human species will be more intense when they are amalgamated than if they remain differentiated. Once more, in that case as in all others, it will be the suppression of the struggle, and not its continuance, as is believed today, that will perpetuate life.
[340] There remains now for consideration only the last form of human contact, the armed invasion. To affirm, even in a general way, that the suppression of armed invasions or wars could mean suppression of life is simply contradictory. It has been calculated that without the wars of the Revolution and the Empire France would now have eight million more inhabitants than its actual present population. Who would dare to maintain that the "struggle" has in that instance augmented the life of the French nation? As well claim that if all the French people, up to the last one, were killed French society would reach the zenith of its vital exuberance.
Military conquests, like peaceful migrations, can bring about only two conditions: contact between equal or between unequal races. In the last case there are again two possibilities: the invasion is undertaken either by a superior or by an inferior race. We must observe that there is considerable similarity between peaceful migrations and military invasions for still another reason. That is, that in order to be effective all military conquests must be accompanied by peaceful migrations. If the conqueror obtains complete submission after a very decisive battle, but returns home, he has gained almost nothing. In order to conquer he must remain on the hostile territory. Later, after hostilities have ceased, the masters become peaceful citizens. Some, in taking the place of the dispossessed population, become farmers, others become managers, still others enter the field of industry. From the purely economic standpoint the situation would be exactly the same if those individuals had come into the new country through peaceful migration and not through conquest.
If the conquering nation has not a sufficiently large population to undertake a peaceful migration after a conquest, it quickly loses itself in the conquered population which, after the transient storm, again resumes the regular course of its existence. Conditions are then as they were before the war.
Let us now consider all the various combinations possible after armed invasions. It would be difficult to prove that they are ever productive of much good even when they occur between equal races. A conquest is always accompanied by war, for when two [341] nations unite voluntarily, we cannot call that a conquest, but an alliance.
War brings death to many men pn the battle field and in the hospitals; it also kills some indirectly through the diseases contracted during the campaign. Furthermore, those men might have had children; as it is, they leave none. Hence there is considerable decrease in human beings. Now Mr. Bunge speaks in vain. It is impossible that a decrease in the number of the living can at the same tune mean increase of life. We must add also that the economic waste resulting from war only increases the misery and consequently the mortality. The population diminishes, growth is arrested. And there we have a further suppression of life arising from conflict.
The main argument, however, is not alone the number of the living, but also the way in which they live. A man in prison may live for a number of years, but his existence is reduced to a minimum. But happiness and perfection consist exactly in living with the greatest possible intensity. It may rightly be said that a society where economic and intellectual activity is reduced to almost nothing, as is true of Asia Minor today, is a dead society.
Now it is evident that all conquests between equal races involves a diminution in their economic and intellectual activities. The fact is that if the conquerors want profits, they must exploit, that is, rob their victims; they must, in other words, be unjust and despotic. But as soon as a country is governed in an unjust and despotic manner there is a decrease in its economic and intellectual productivity; the country falls into a morbid, languishing condition. The vitality of its citizens is impaired. All these facts are well known. They show peremptorily that struggle between equal races has not the favorable effect upon life that we are taught today to believe, but that it rather enfeebles life; in other words, it partially suppresses it.
We may now pass on to the question of conquest of an inferior by a superior race. I have already shown that though the inferior race affects the superior race unpleasantly, the opposite is not true. An inferior race experiences no painful physiological derangements, therefore no suffering on being conquered by a superior race. But [342] besides the physiological, there are economic and political relations. If the conquerors maintain an equitable attitude in their dealings with the vanquished, the latter really profit by the conquest; if the conquerors are unjust, they derive no benefit, and that for a very simple reason which, nevertheless, very few people understand. The prosperity of every human being in the world comes from the productivity of the human species as a whole. Suppose the output of bread in the world were unlimited. We would then have as much bread to eat as we now have air to breathe. The problem of hunger would be practically solved. It is said that the French soil yields annually products worth 25 milliards of francs ($5,000,000,000). The output of the whole human species would perhaps be worth 250—350 milliards of francs annually. The happiness of every one of us depends on that figure. The larger the figure the more of the necessities of life we have, the lower it is the less we have, the more languishing our life the nearer to death we come. Entire abolition of agriculture would mean death to the human species.
Now as soon as a superior people violates the rights of an inferior people whose land it has taken, there is a diminution of productivity, the conquering people becomes poor, its exuberance of life diminishes. But if the superior people does not violate the rights of the inferior race, the conquest becomes futile as such, and peaceful migration would accomplish the same end. No people refuses to admit the stranger who comes to do business honestly.021
Thus we see in contacts between superior and inferior races that if the former practice spoliation to any extent they injure one another, and if they do not, then there is no struggle. How then is it possible to claim that conflict adds anything to the fulness of life?
What is mainly responsible for that erroneous idea is the fact that savage peoples are strongly opposed to peaceful immigration of civilized peoples, so that the latter must needs conquer the territory if they would do any business there. But here the fact is lost sight of that it is the savages who take the initiative in the [343] struggle which is said to bring about greater vital exuberance. For if the natives would not attack the others, then peaceful immigration into farthest Africa would be as easy as is immigration to the United States. Here again conflict prevents exchange, thus interfering with life. I may add also that quite frequently it is those so-called "civilized" people who initiate the most cruel massacres, in which case the behavior of the savages is simply imitation of their civilized brothers. Once more, if the civilized people would not despoil the savages, life would be fuller and richer for them all.
There remains only the last combination: conquest of a superior by an inferior race. We all understand that such an event is a disaster. It is nevertheless a struggle hi the most accepted sense of the term. Suppose the Negroes could succeed some day in exterminating the white race; the world would revert to barbarism as a result of that conflict. But barbarism means ignorance; the latter again signifies decrease in agricultural, industrial, and intellectual productivity.022 Decrease in productivity means a weakening, never a strengthening, of Hie.
We must be able to see all that has been said so far. When we descend from the clouds and from abstractions and examine social phenomena closely, we cannot but understand that spoliation leads, not to life, but to death. It is exchange without obstacle and without injustice that leads to agreement among men, to association, therefore to life.
Thus, after a rather lengthy analysis, we must conclude that were it not for the "spoliation illusion" the limits of association would always coincide in the eyes of men with those of exchange, or, in other words, with those of vital circulation. Human intercourse is continually expanding over the entire globe. Were it not for the belief in the advantages of spoliation, the human race would already be conscious of its unity, and would form a political alliance. Now, as association is the means by which the individual human life of the constituent units becomes fuller and richer, so association of the entire human species would mean for each of us [344] a maximum of life. We can see then that spoliation is the fundamental phenomenon which restricts life; it is 'therefore the fundamental phenomenon of death.
Let us sum up briefly all that has been said in the preceding chapters. We find operating in nature forces that are both constructive and destructive. The constructive forces in the social world are law and order, which make for health and life; the destructive forces are anarchy and disorder, which make for disease and death. The destructive forces bring about dissociation, which in turn leads to death. And indeed it could not be otherwise, since life comes from association.
In the social as well as in the biological organism it is found that these forces, health and disease, show parallel development. In general, the constructive forces have aided the human groups in their extension over the earth. There is actually a state on the globe that possesses 32 million square kilometers and 430 million inhabitants—the British Empire. Such an extensive empire would have been an impossibility a hundred years ago, since some of the states included within its territory would have been as little known as the moon. The extension of the British Empire shows that from the point of view of communication a union of the entire human species is now perfectly possible.
Destructive forces in society may come from within or from without. They may even come from a central authority, in which case they are known by the collective name of "despotism." But whatever their source, these forces are produced by covetousness, which leads to spoliation; and a force must be considered destructive when it brings about spoliation. Consequently it is all one whether we renounce conquests and proclaim the principle of nationality, or uphold the idea that man can never be an object of the law, and that the federation of the human species is the end of all political activity. Life cannot be created by means of such disruptive institutions as conquests, slavery, despotism; life can be augmented only through association. Or, to put it differently, life cannot be created by dissociation and death. And, from [345] another point of view, we must again emphasize strongly that anarchy is servitude and organization is liberty.023 Consequently liberty, security, and organization are based on association. The constructive or ascending series comprehends the terms, exchange, association, life; the destructive or descending series includes the terms spoliation, dissociation, death. Right is association and association is life; therefore every violation of right is a dissociation leading to death. Since in its search for happiness every living creature flees from pain, the federation of the human race is a natural condition of the species. To flee from pain is to search a deeper, richer life, and since the human individual cannot attain the latter except through association with his fellow-men, that association is for the individual the highest possible state on earth.
There can be no doubt that association is life. It follows, therefore, that the business of the day for all civilized Europe should now be the suppression of the abject international anarchy in which we have been immersed for centuries.
We see now the importance of a study of the true mechanism of human association for the daily political life of states. Diplomats have up to the present time been basing their work on the childish ideas of the Roman senate and of Machiavelli, in the belief that the end of all political activity is the maintenance and expansion of the state. Now growth and expansion mean conquest, therefore robbery and international anarchy. But international anarchy means death. Hence in following the politics of the ancients we must say that the end toward which all living beings (citizens of states) should strive is death!
In order to be able to speak of politics hi a rational and intelligent manner it is necessary to understand the true nature of social phenomena. Alas, how far we still are from that ideal. In 1899 the illustrious Mommsen, to the applause of a majority of the German people, defined the Hague Conference as "a false conception of universal history."
What an ocean of ignorance does such a statement reveal! And it came from one of the greatest historians of one of the most civilized peoples in Europe. The Hague Conference of 1899 was [346] an attempt to curb international anarchy with a view of taking the initial steps in the organization of the human species. That organization is the aim toward which life itself is striving, yet the "illustrious" Mommsen calls it a "false conception." In what profound darkness did that man live! He does not appear to have ever suspected that association is life; he was therefore incapable of observing one of the most universal phenomenon found in nature.
Whether the state originates in force, as the Darwinians claim, or owes its existence to purely economic factors, a hypothesis nobody disputes, the fact remains that the state is an organization. But it is an organization only as the result of exchange, for without exchange there is no human intercourse, and without the latter there can be no organization. Now as exchange leads to organization, and as the former obtains at present among all the nations of the world, these nations could form a single organization. And, as a matter of fact, organization is being effected more and more in the treaties which nations are continually making regarding various subjects, and which the different governments are signing. The newspapers call attention to these facts, but we scarcely read of them and promptly forget about them. They thus escape the social consciousness. The warp of union is steadily though imperceptibly being woven.
International organization, as yet very loose and imperfect, will be completely realized through the play of biological forces. It will some day attain such a high degree of development that its machinery will be plainly visible to all, just as the machinery of government is today. The day will come when the men who govern empires will abandon the spoliation idea. The federation of all mankind will become an accomplished fact when we are all convinced that conquest is fatal to the conqueror, and it is exactly the spoliation illusion that holds us in the belief that conquests are profitable.
I have stated in the beginning of this work024 that if the true mechanism of human association were understood there would be no international anarchy and no socialism in the world. Properly speaking, however, to understand the true mechanism of human association and to abandon the spoliation illusion are identical.
[347] As I have just shown, we can have a federation of all humanity as soon as the spoliation idea disappears in the realm of international relations. As for internal affairs, a very cursory analysis will show that there also the spoliation illusion dominates, and produces as much unhappiness and disaster as it does in international relations. Far from being identical notions, socialism and the well-being of the masses are really contradictory ideas. It is not a question of good intentions—those of socialism are excellent —but in so far as they are intentions they do not at all differ from those of liberalism. The goal of liberalism is also the greatest good to the greatest possible number. Socialism and liberalism differ only in the matter of the means each would employ to attain its end. Socialism must not be set in opposition to despotism, whose aim is luxury for the privileged few and poverty for all the rest; socialism must rather be opposed to individualism. Now, as soon as we leave the domain of individualism, we enter that of spoliation, or, to say the least, that of the "spoliation illusion." As long as each individual is allowed to keep all the fruits of his labor, we live on an individualistic basis. In order to have a socialistic regime, or one of collectivism, which is the same thing, we must have spoliation. What then will be the "great day" the extremists are always talking about? A confiscation pure and simple like those practiced by oriental monarchs. Peter has saved money, and he is about to build a factory. Suddenly the "great day" dawns, and his employees take away all he possesses without indemnifying him at all. If that is not spoliation, I should like to know what spoliation is.
Let us also consider the resources of the working class. As long as those resources are the result of saving and of the operations of the savings banks, which have been so greatly perfected at the present day, we are on individualistic ground. When, then, can we say that we have passed on to collectivism? From the moment that Peter, receiving nothing himself, gives a part of his earnings toward a pension for Paul, who has not earned it. For if everybody should get the same income, which would be true justice, it would really be as if no one were receiving anything. We must not confuse compulsory savings, that is, saving through legislation, with a [348] collectivistic regime. The law could, under a true individualistic regime, compel a man to save a portion of his income just as people are compelled at the present tune to send their children to school. Collectivism does not consist of such laws compelling people to save as have been passed in many European countries under the pretentious title of "social legislation." No, that which really constitutes collectivism is the fact that the profits of one citizen can be taken away and given to another. In a word, collectivism differs from individualism in that the first is based on spoliation, the second on justice, since the second would give every man the full products of his labors.
The problem of pensions is similar to that of the protective tariff. If the benefits which the tariff guarantees an industry are equal to the taxes imposed for the protection of other industries, then the protection is valueless. As a matter of fact, when the mill owner gains, say, a thousand francs as a result of the protective tariff on thread, he must expend an equal sum for the protection of some other industry. In this case the two taxes balance each other; in other words, they are justly proportionate, and nobody is exploited. But as soon as customs duties are just, they are entirely useless. In order to be profitable, customs duties must make it possible for certain privileged individuals to draw benefits worth a thousand francs while they support a charge of only five hundred francs. But somebody must pay that five hundred francs; they represent the spoliation of somebody. Likewise, if all the citizens are paying each other pensions proportionate to their income, that is really the same as if the pensions came from the people's own savings. Hence there would be no spoliation, but neither would there be collectivism. The result would again be complete individualism.
The illusion that drives people toward collectivism springs from the idea that the rich have a sufficient amount of wealth to reward all the poor. Stated arithmetically this assumption rests on the following problem: There are three hundred million families in the world. To insure their well-being each family should have at least enough of the prime necessities of life for which an annual income of ten thousand francs would suffice. It is consequently necessary that the total annual output in the world should be three [349] hundred milliards of articles of consumption. But that much is already being carried annually to the markets of the world. The evolution of agriculture and industrial science has made it possible for us to produce enough for everybody; wealth should therefore be universal. If poverty does exist, it must be due to an unequal distribution of the things produced. Some individuals succeed in cornering more than their share of the world's goods, hence others do not get enough. The social question will be solved only when the state will take over the profits of those who monopolize things and will distribute them to those who do not know how to monopolize.
But the socialists neglect one thing. That is, that in order that the sum of the world's production should equal three hundred milliards of francs annually it is necessary that every family produce annually ten thousand francs' worth of commodities. But it is exactly because every human family does not produce that much annually that we have poverty in the world. If people produced enough of the necessities of life nobody would lack anything. But what must be done in order to have the greatest possible output of the necessaries of life? We must naturally give men the freedom to devote all their time to the production of utilities. But that is impossible when spoliation is a factor in our life. As long as we have spoliation, human activity divides itself into two parts: the production of wealth and the preservation of that wealth against the attacks of others. Externally those attacks manifest themselves as raids, tributes, conquests, and internally as privileges, despotism, paternalism, state monopoly of industries, collectivism, etc. It is evident then that no matter what form spoliation assumes, or even if there is only a tendency in that direction, production diminishes immediately. But spoliation and ignorance of the true mechanism of human association are synonymous terms. I am therefore right when I maintain that a knowledge of the nature of association would abolish international anarchy and socialism. But since an increase in wealth would necessarily result from the suppression of the practice of spoliation, we may say that a knowledge of the true mechanism of human association and the solution of the social problem are identical notions.
001 I
have used this instrument quite extensively as a symbol. It goes without saying
that just as in the realm of the natural sciences the scientific point of view
has enabled us to investigate a number of facts formerly neglected.
002 He does not give them directly,
but indirectly in the form of a certain sum of money, but everyone knows that
it comes to the same thing in spite of the circuit the money makes.
003 Peculiar as it may appear,
there is reciprocity of service even between the mother and the nursing infant.
The mother feeds her child, but the child in turn gives her the pleasure that
comes from being rid of her milk. The life of the infant, during the nursing
period, depends on that of the mother, but the life of the mother also depends
on that of the child.
004 There are at the present
day more than a million kilometers of railroad tracks in the world.
005 Egypt, for instance, was
not subjected to an invasion for 668 years, from its occupation by Augustus
until the arrival of the Arabs.
006 I understand-family here
in the precise, literal meaning of the term: father, mother, and children.
007 What of the Protozoa, it
may be asked? We must answer, first, that the number of metazoans in the world
is so very great-they probably form the majority of living creatures-that to
consider them alone is to begin on a sufficiently solid foundation. But there
is another consideration. Even the Protozoa are societies. The cell is a world
in itself. It is composed of a series of very small vital units which have for
a long time been invisible, but which we are now beginning to see with the aid
of the ultramicroscope.
008 The reader will understand
that the term "gazelle" is used here to mean all the different species of animals
on which the lion subsists.
009 See further, pp. 320 f.
010 By "partial death" is meant
entire weakening of the vitality of the individual.
011 See p. 312.
012 A man may produce either
food for his own use, or other commodities that he can exchange for food. In
either case, if we would continually take from the worker everything he produced,
without giving him anything in exchange, he would starve to death.
013 There is really a third
combination: the modus vivendi, compromise, partial spoliation (see diagram
on p. 332), but that is the beginning of mutual respect for one another's rights,
therefore the beginning of association.
014 Switzerland, for instance.
015 Its reign has been a very
long one, since it has existed for millions of years.
016 Slavery is illustrated by
the diagram
where the slave gives everything and
the master very little.
017 Justice Is Force. Translated
by E. Desplanque, p. 442. Paris: Schleicher Bros. Date unknown.
018 Op. cit., pp. 445.
019 Nuota Antologia, June, 1911.
020 Or perhaps the Chinaman
goes to London.
021 Many Italian merchants are
now doing good business in the interior of Africa. But they go there without
exercising any violence at all.
022 For the processes that yield
the greatest possible return both in agriculture and in industry are impossible
without vast scientific knowledge.
023 Because political organization
guarantees the life and property of its citizens.
024 See p. 292.