The Psychology of Socialism
Book 3: Socialism As Affected By Race
Chapter 4: The Latin Conception of the State
Gustave Le Bon
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I. How the conceits of a people become fixed :-A nation must submit to its traditions, and at the same time must afterwards be able to free itself from their yoke-Few nations have possessed the plasticity necessary to realise the double condition of variability and fixity-Impossibility of escaping the yoke of tradition when too firmly fixed-Power of the principles of authority among the Latins-Political and religious authority-Why the Latin peoples have not suffered from their submission to the traditional dogmas of authority until modern times, and why they are suffering from it to-day-The inevitable instability of their governments-The conception of the State is the same in every part of France. 2. The Latin conception of the State : The ancien régime-The Revolution introduced only very slight changes -Details of administration under the old system-Constant intervention of the State in the most trifling matters under the old system -Various examples-The present development of Socialism among the Latins is the outcome of their past institutions and their conception of the State.
I. HOW THE CONCEPTS OF A PEOPLE BECOME FIXED.
WE have just seen, in our study of the psychology of the Latin peoples, that their character has favoured the development of certain institutions among them. We have now to discover how these institutions became fixed, and how, having become causes in their turn, they have finally produced certain effects.
We have already seen that a civilisation can he born only on condition' that a people submits itself for a long time to the yoke of a tradition. At the period of a
141) people's formation, when the elements gathered together are dissimilar, and have different and fluctuating interests, those institutions and beliefs which are stable have a considerable importance.[1] It is important that these beliefs and institutions should be in agreement with the needs and mental characteristics of the people they are required to rule, and also that they should be sufficiently rigid. This latter point is of fundamental importance, and I have already insisted on it. But, after showing that all nations must for a long time be subjected to the yoke of tradition, I have also pointed out the fact that they progress only on condition of their ability to free themselves slowly from this yoke.
They never free themselves by violent revolutions. Revolutions are always ephemeral. Societies, like animal species, are transformed only by the hereditary addition of small successive changes.
Few peoples have possessed the plasticity of nature necessary to realise this double condition of fixity and variability. Without a sufficient fixity no civilisation can establish itself ; without a sufficient variability no civilisation can progress.
We must always consider the institutions of a nation as effects, which in their turn become causes. After they have been maintained for a certain number of generations they render completely fixed those psychologic
(142) characters which at first were a little uncertain and fluctuating. A lump of clay, at first plastic, quickly becomes less so, and ends by acquiring the hardness of stone, when it will break rather than change its form. It is often difficult enough for a people to acquire a stable and coherent mass of sentiments and thoughts, but it is far more difficult for it to modify this mass afterwards.
When, by heredity, the yoke of tradition has been too long imposed on the national mind, a nation can free itself from this yoke only by great efforts, and most often it cannot free itself at all. We know what violent convulsions agitated the Western world at the time of the Reformation, when the northern nations strove to set themselves free from the religious centralisation and the dogmatic authority which forbade them all independence, and against which their reason revolted more and more.
The Latin peoples, they also, wished to set themselves free from the yoke of the Past. Our great Revolution had no other end in view. But it was too late. After a few years of convulsions the ties of the past resumed their empire. These bonds were indeed too powerful, and had left too profound an imprint on the mind, to be broken in a day.
Imbued with the necessity of the principle of authority, the governments of the Latin peoples had for centuries prevented them from thinking, willing, and acting, and all education had as its aim the maintenance of this triple interdiction. Why should the men of the Latin races have thought and reasoned ?-religion forbade them. Why should they have willed and acted ?-the heads of the State willed and acted for them. In the long run the Latin mind has bent itself to these necessities ; men have acquired the habit of submitting themselves without discussion to the dogmas of a Church supposed to be infallible, and of kings by Divine right, and equally
(143) infallible. They have left the entire direction of their thoughts and actions to their political and religious chiefs. This submission was the necessary condition of their unity. At certain periods it has endowed them with great strength. When the Latins have had men of genius at their head they have been extremely brilliant, but they have been brilliant only at such times.
The Latin peoples had not so very much to suffer from this absolute submission to authority before the economic evolution of the world came to overturn the old conditions of existence. So long as the means of communication were very imperfect, and the progress of industry almost imperceptible, the nations remained isolated from one another, and, in consequence, entirely in the hands of their governments, which then were able completely to control the acts of the life of nations. By means of such regulations as those of Colbert they were able to direct the least details of industry as easily as they regulated the beliefs and institutions of their country.
The scientific and industrial discoveries which have so profoundly modified the conditions of national existence have also to an equal degree transformed the action of governments, and have further and further reduced the possible limits of this action. Industrial and economic questions have become preponderant; steam and the telegraph, by suppressing distances, have made the whole world a single market, impossible of control. The Governments, accordingly, have been obliged to renounce totally their old ambition to regulate industry and commerce.
In those countries in which individual initiative had been long developed, and in which the action of the Government had become more and more restrained, the consequences of the present state of economic evolution have been easily supported. Those countries, on the
(144) other hand, in which the initiative of the citizen did not exist, found themselves disarmed, and were forced to implore the aid of those masters who for so many centuries had thought and acted for them. It is for this reason that some Governments are obliged, in continuance of their traditional rôle, to conduct so many industrial enterprises. But as, for many reasons, which we shall very soon perceive, those products of which the production is directed by the State are obtained slowly and expensively, those nations which have left to the State the execution of those enterprises which they should have undertaken themselves are now in a position inferior to that of the other nations.
Far from seeking, as in the past, to direct one and all things, it is plain that the Latin Governments are anxious to direct as few things as possible, but it is also evident that it is now the people who demand imperiously to be governed. In examining the evolution of Socialism among the Latins we shall see how their craving for control increases day by day. The State has accordingly continued to control, protect, and rule, simply because it could not do otherwise. It is a task which is always becoming heavier and more difficult, which calls for very superior, and, therefore, very rare abilities. To-day the least error of Governments has infinite reverberations. Hence the great instability of Governments and the perpetual revolutions to which the Latin peoples have devoted themselves for the last century.
But we do not find in reality any instability of régime corresponding with this instability of government. At first sight France would seem divided into many parties; but all these parties, whether republican, monarchical, or Socialist, have the saint conception of the Stab. All clamour for the extension of its functions. Under all these different labels, then, there is only one party, the
(145) Latin party, and this is the reason why all these changes of Government labels have never produced any real change of régime.
2. THE LATIN CONCEPTION OF THE STATE. HOW THE PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM IS THE NATURAL OUTCOME OF THE EVOLUTION OF THIS CONCEPTION.
In determining the manner in which the fundamental concepts of the Latin peoples become fixed I sufficiently indicated the nature of their conception of the State. We shall now perceive that the advance of Socialism is the natural consequence of the evolution of the Latin conception of the State.
To the characteristics of the Latin peoples, and of the French especially, which are investigated in the foregoing pages, might be added this : that there are perhaps no peoples who have raised more revolutions, and yet none that are more obstinately attached to their past institutions. It might be said of the French that they are at once the most revolutionary and the most conservative nation in the world. Their most bloody revolutions have never had any other object than to rechristen the most superannuated institutions.
The gist of the matter is this : it is easy to unroll theories, to make speeches, to excite revolutions, but it is not possible to change the established mind of a nation. New institutions certainly can be imposed on it, momentarily, and by force, but it quickly reverts to those of the past, because those alone are in agreement with the necessities of its mental constitution.
Superficial minds may still imagine that the Revolution effected a kind of renovation of our institutions, that It created, on every hand, new principles, and a new society. In reality, as Tocqueville long ago pointed out, all that it
(146) did was to dash violently to the ground those elements of the old society which were already worm-eaten, and must have fallen a few years later by sheer old age. But the institutions which had not yet grown old, which were in agreement with the sentiments of the race, were touched not at all by the Revolution, or at most but for a moment. A few years later the very men who had sought to abolish them re-established them under other names. It is no easy thing to change the inheritance of twelve centuries.
Above all, the Revolution did not change and could not have changed the conception of the State ; it could not affect the perpetual increase of its functions, nor the perpetual straitening of the limits of the citizen's power of initiative : that increasing limitation which is the very foundation of modern Socialism. And if we would comprehend how deeply this tendency to place everything in the hands of the Government, and consequently to multiply the public functions, is rooted in the soul of the race, we have only to go back to a few years before the Revolution. The action of the central Government was then almost as comprehensive as to-day.
" The cities," writes Tocqueville, " can neither establish an octroi, nor levy a tax, nor hypothecate, nor sell, nor sue, nor farm their possessions, nor administrate them, nor make use of their surplus receipts, without the intervention of a decree of the Council, following the report of the Intendant. All their works are carried out according to the plans and estimates approved by decree of the Council, which are adjudicated before the Intendant or his subordinates, and are usually executed by the State engineer or architect. This will greatly surprise those who imagine that all they see in France is new . . . . It was necessary y to obtain a dccrcc of the Council to repair the damage caused by the wind to a church roof, or to prop up a rickety vicarage wall. The country parish
(147) furthest from Paris was subjected to this rule as well as the nearest. I have seen parishes demand of the Council the right to expend twenty-five pounds."
Then, as to-day, the local life of the provinces had long been extinguished by the progressive centralisation arising not from the autocratic power of the sovereign, but from the indifference of the citizen. Tocqueville says further :
" One is astonished at the surprising ease with which the Constituent Assembly was able to destroy, at one blow, all the ancient provinces of France, many of which were older than the monarchy; and methodically to divide the kingdom into eighty-three distinct portions, as though the virgin soil of the New World were in question. Nothing more surprised, and even terrified, the rest of Europe, which was not prepared for such a spectacle. It was, said Burke, the first time one had beheld men cut their native land into morsels in such a barbarous manner. It seemed, indeed, as if they were rending living bodies ; they were only dismembering the dead."
It was this disappearance of provincial life that facilitated the progressive centralisation of the ancien régime.
" Let us no longer marvel," says Tocqueville, " at seeing with what astonishing facility centralisation was reestablished in France at the beginning of this century. The men of '89 had overthrown the edifice, but its foundations remained, even in the minds of its destroyers, and on these foundations they were able to build it anew, of a sudden, and more solidly than it was ever built before."
Under the ancien régime the progressive absorbing powers of the State necessitated, as to-day, an increasing number of functionaries, and the zeal of the citizen in getting himself nominated as such was unequalled.
148)
" In 1750, in a provincial town of medium size, 129 persons were employed in administrating justice, and 126 were charged with executing the decrees of the former, all of these being townsfolk. The zeal of the citizens in filling these situations was really unequalled. As soon as one of them became possessed of a little capital, instead of employing it in commerce he at once expended it in buying a place. This wretched ambition did more to hinder the progress of agriculture and commerce in France even than monopolies and taxation."
We are not living to-day, as is so often repeated, according to the principles of 1789. We are living according to the principles set up by the ancien régime, and the development of Socialism is only the final blossoming of these principles, the ultimate consequence of an ideal which has been pursued for centuries. Formerly, no doubt, this ideal was of great utility in a country so divided as ours, and which could be unified only by strenuous centralisation. But, unhappily, when once this unity was effected the mental habits thus established could not change. When once the local life of the provinces and the initiative of the citizen were destroyed the latter could not spring up again. The mental constitution of a people is slow to establish itself, but it is also very slow to change when once established.
For the rest, everything, institutions as well as education, has contributed to this absorption of functions by the State, of which we shall presently show the lamentable effects. Our system of education alone would be enough utterly to annihilate the most perdurable of nations.
