Proposed Roads To Freedom

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PROPOSED ROADS
TO FREEDOM

BY
BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I.
HISTORICAL

I. MARX AND SOCIALIST DOCTRINE
II. BAKUNIN AND ANARCHISM
III. THE SYNDICALIST REVOLT

PART II.
PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE

IV. WORK AND PAY
V. GOVERNMENT AND LAW
VI. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
VII. SCIENCE AND ART UNDER SOCIALISM
VIII.THE WORLD AS IT COULD BE MADE

INTRODUCTION

THE attempt to conceive imaginatively a better
ordering of human society than the destructive and
cruel chaos in which mankind has hitherto existed
is by no means modern: it is at least as old as Plato,
whose ``Republic'' set the model for the Utopias of
subsequent philosophers. Whoever contemplates the
world in the light of an ideal--whether what he seeks
be intellect, or art, or love, or simple happiness, or
all together--must feel a great sorrow in the evils
that men needlessly allow to continue, and--if he be
a man of force and vital energy--an urgent desire to
lead men to the realization of the good which inspires
his creative vision. It is this desire which has been
the primary force moving the pioneers of Socialism
and Anarchism, as it moved the inventors of ideal
commonwealths in the past. In this there is nothing
new. What is new in Socialism and Anarchism, is
that close relation of the ideal to the present
sufferings of men, which has enabled powerful political
movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers.
It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism
important, and it is this that makes them dangerous
to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously
upon the evils of our present order of society.

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary
times, pass through life without ever contemplating
or criticising, as a whole, either their own
conditions or those of the world at large. They find
themselves born into a certain place in society, and
they accept what each day brings forth, without any
effort of thought beyond what the immediate present
requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of
the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of
the moment, without much forethought, and without
considering that by sufficient effort the whole
conditions of their lives could be changed. A certain
percentage, guided by personal ambition, make the effort
of thought and will which is necessary to place
themselves among the more fortunate members of the
community; but very few among these are seriously
concerned to secure for all the advantages which they
seek for themselves. It is only a few rare and exceptional
men who have that kind of love toward mankind
at large that makes them unable to endure
patiently the general mass of evil and suffering,
regardless of any relation it may have to their own
lives. These few, driven by sympathetic pain, will
seek, first in thought and then in action, for some
way of escape, some new system of society by which
life may become richer, more full of joy and less
full of preventable evils than it is at present. But
in the past such men have, as a rule, failed to interest
the very victims of the injustices which they wished
to remedy. The more unfortunate sections of the
population have been ignorant, apathetic from excess
of toil and weariness, timorous through the imminent
danger of immediate punishment by the holders of
power, and morally unreliable owing to the loss of
self-respect resulting from their degradation. To
create among such classes any conscious, deliberate
effort after general amelioration might have seemed
a hopeless task, and indeed in the past it has
generally proved so. But the modern world, by the
increase of education and the rise in the standard of
comfort among wage-earners, has produced new
conditions, more favorable than ever before to the
demand for radical reconstruction. It is above all
the Socialists, and in a lesser degree the Anarchists
(chiefly as the inspirers of Syndicalism), who have
become the exponents of this demand.

What is perhaps most remarkable in regard to
both Socialism and Anarchism is the association of a
widespread popular movement with ideals for a better
world. The ideals have been elaborated, in the
first instance, by solitary writers of books, and yet
powerful sections of the wage-earning classes have
accepted them as their guide in the practical affairs
of the world. In regard to Socialism this is evident;
but in regard to Anarchism it is only true with some
qualification. Anarchism as such has never been a
widespread creed, it is only in the modified form of
Syndicalism that it has achieved popularity. Unlike
Socialism and Anarchism, Syndicalism is primarily
the outcome, not of an idea, but of an organization:
the fact of Trade Union organization came first, and
the ideas of Syndicalism are those which seemed
appropriate to this organization in the opinion of
the more advanced French Trade Unions. But the
ideas are, in the main, derived from Anarchism, and
the men who gained acceptance for them were, for
the most part, Anarchists. Thus we may regard
Syndicalism as the Anarchism of the market-place
as opposed to the Anarchism of isolated individuals
which had preserved a precarious life throughout the
previous decades. Taking this view, we find in
Anarchist-Syndicalism the same combination of ideal
and organization as we find in Socialist political
parties. It is from this standpoint that our study
of these movements will be undertaken.

Socialism and Anarchism, in their modern form,
spring respectively from two protagonists, Marx and
Bakunin, who fought a lifelong battle, culminating
in a split in the first International. We shall begin
our study with these two men--first their teaching,
and then the organizations which they founded or
inspired. This will lead us to the spread of Socialism
in more recent years, and thence to the Syndicalist
revolt against Socialist emphasis on the State
and political action, and to certain movements outside
France which have some affinity with Syndicalism--
notably the I. W. W. in America and Guild
Socialism in England. From this historical survey
we shall pass to the consideration of some of the
more pressing problems of the future, and shall try
to decide in what respects the world would be happier
if the aims of Socialists or Syndicalists were
achieved.

My own opinion--which I may as well indicate
at the outset--is that pure Anarchism, though it
should be the ultimate ideal, to which society should
continually approximate, is for the present impossible,
and would not survive more than a year or two
at most if it were adopted. On the other hand, both
Marxian Socialism and Syndicalism, in spite of many
drawbacks, seem to me calculated to give rise to a
happier and better world than that in which we live.
I do not, however, regard either of them as the best
practicable system. Marxian Socialism, I fear,
would give far too much power to the State, while
Syndicalism, which aims at abolishing the State,
would, I believe, find itself forced to reconstruct a
central authority in order to put an end to the
rivalries of different groups of producers. The BEST
practicable system, to my mind, is that of Guild
Socialism, which concedes what is valid both in the
claims of the State Socialists and in the Syndicalist
fear of the State, by adopting a system of federalism
among trades for reasons similar to those which
are recommending federalism among nations. The
grounds for these conclusions will appear as we
proceed.

Before embarking upon the history of recent
movements In favor of radical reconstruction, it will
be worth while to consider some traits of character
which distinguish most political idealists, and are
much misunderstood by the general public for other
reasons besides mere prejudice. I wish to do full
justice to these reasons, in order to show the more
effectually why they ought not to be operative.

The leaders of the more advanced movements
are, in general, men of quite unusual disinterestedness,
as is evident from a consideration of their careers.
Although they have obviously quite as much ability
as many men who rise to positions of great power,
they do not themselves become the arbiters of
contemporary events, nor do they achieve wealth or the
applause of the mass of their contemporaries. Men
who have the capacity for winning these prizes, and
who work at least as hard as those who win them,
but deliberately adopt a line which makes the winning
of them impossible, must be judged to have an
aim in life other than personal advancement;
whatever admixture of self-seeking may enter into the
detail of their lives, their fundamental motive must
be outside Self. The pioneers of Socialism, Anarchism,
and Syndicalism have, for the most part,
experienced prison, exile, and poverty, deliberately
incurred because they would not abandon their
propaganda; and by this conduct they have shown that
the hope which inspired them was not for themselves,
but for mankind.

Nevertheless, though the desire for human welfare
is what at bottom determines the broad lines of such
men's lives, it often happens that, in the detail of
their speech and writing, hatred is far more visible
than love. The impatient idealist--and without some
impatience a man will hardly prove effective--is
almost sure to be led into hatred by the oppositions
and disappointments which he encounters in his
endeavors to bring happiness to the world. The more
certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth
of his gospel, the more indignant he will become when
his teaching is rejected. Often he will successfully
achieve an attitude of philosophic tolerance as
regards the apathy of the masses, and even as regards
the whole-hearted opposition of professed defenders
of the status quo. But the men whom he finds it
impossible to forgive are those who profess the same desire
for the amelioration of society as he feels himself,
but who do not accept his method of achieving this
end. The intense faith which enables him to withstand
persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes
him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that
any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest,
and must be actuated by some sinister motive
of treachery to the cause. Hence arises the spirit of
the sect, that bitter, narrow orthodoxy which is the
bane of those who hold strongly to an unpopular
creed. So many real temptations to treachery exist
that suspicion is natural. And among leaders,
ambition, which they mortify in their choice of a
career, is sure to return in a new form: in the desire
for intellectual mastery and for despotic power
within their own sect. From these causes it results
that the advocates of drastic reform divide
themselves into opposing schools, hating each other with
a bitter hatred, accusing each other often of such
crimes as being in the pay of the police, and demanding,
of any speaker or writer whom they are to
admire, that he shall conform exactly to their
prejudices, and make all his teaching minister to their
belief that the exact truth is to be found within the
limits of their creed. The result of this state of
mind is that, to a casual and unimaginative attention,
the men who have sacrificed most through the
wish to benefit mankind APPEAR to be actuated far
more by hatred than by love. And the demand for
orthodoxy is stifling to any free exercise of intellect.
This cause, as well as economic prejudice, has made
it difficult for the ``intellectuals'' to co-operate prac-
tically with the more extreme reformers, however they
may sympathize with their main purposes and even
with nine-tenths of their program.

Another reason why radical reformers are
misjudged by ordinary men is that they view existing
society from outside, with hostility towards its
institutions. Although, for the most part, they have
more belief than their neighbors in human nature's
inherent capacity for a good life, they are so
conscious of the cruelty and oppression resulting from
existing institutions that they make a wholly
misleading impression of cynicism. Most men have
instinctively two entirely different codes of behavior:
one toward those whom they regard as companions or
colleagues or friends, or in some way members of the
same ``herd''; the other toward those whom they
regard as enemies or outcasts or a danger to society.
Radical reformers are apt to concentrate their
attention upon the behavior of society toward the
latter class, the class of those toward whom the
``herd'' feels ill-will. This class includes, of course,
enemies in war, and criminals; in the minds of those
who consider the preservation of the existing order
essential to their own safety or privileges, it includes
all who advocate any great political or economic
change, and all classes which, through their poverty
or through any other cause, are likely to feel a
dangerous degree of discontent. The ordinary citizen
probably seldom thinks about such individuals or
classes, and goes through life believing that he and
his friends are kindly people, because they have no
wish to injure those toward whom they entertain no
group-hostility. But the man whose attention is
fastened upon the relations of a group with those
whom it hates or fears will judge quite differently.
In these relations a surprising ferocity is apt to be
developed, and a very ugly side of human nature
comes to the fore. The opponents of capitalism
have learned, through the study of certain historical
facts, that this ferocity has often been shown by the
capitalists and by the State toward the wage-earning
classes, particularly when they have ventured to
protest against the unspeakable suffering to which
industrialism has usually condemned them. Hence
arises a quite different attitude toward existing
society from that of the ordinary well-to-do citizen:
an attitude as true as his, perhaps also as untrue,
but equally based on facts, facts concerning his
relations to his enemies instead of to his friends.

The class-war, like wars between nations,
produces two opposing views, each equally true and
equally untrue. The citizen of a nation at war,
when he thinks of his own countrymen, thinks of them
primarily as he has experienced them, in dealings
with their friends, in their family relations, and so
on. They seem to him on the whole kindly, decent
folk. But a nation with which his country is at
war views his compatriots through the medium of a
quite different set of experiences: as they appear
in the ferocity of battle, in the invasion and subjugation
of a hostile territory, or in the chicanery of a
juggling diplomacy. The men of whom these facts
are true are the very same as the men whom their
compatriots know as husbands or fathers or friends,
but they are judged differently because they are
judged on different data. And so it is with those who
view the capitalist from the standpoint of the
revolutionary wage-earner: they appear inconceivably
cynical and misjudging to the capitalist, because the
facts upon which their view is based are facts which
he either does not know or habitually ignores. Yet
the view from the outside is just as true as the view
from the inside. Both are necessary to the complete
truth; and the Socialist, who emphasizes the outside
view, is not a cynic, but merely the friend of the
wage-earners, maddened by the spectacle of the needless
misery which capitalism inflicts upon them.

I have placed these general reflections at the
beginning of our study, in order to make it clear to
the reader that, whatever bitterness and hate may
be found in the movements which we are to examine,
it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their
mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who
torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it
is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of
outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which
are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.
If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by
Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in
this from their opponents; and in the source of their
inspiration they have shown themselves superior to
those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the
injustices and oppressions by which the existing
system is preserved.

PROPOSED ROADS
TO FREEDOM

SOCIALISM, ANARCHISM AND SYNDICALISM

PART I

HISTORICAL

CHAPTER I

MARX AND SOCIALIST DOCTRINE

SOCIALISM, like everything else that is vital, is
rather a tendency than a strictly definable body of
doctrine. A definition of Socialism is sure either to
include some views which many would regard as not
Socialistic, or to exclude others which claim to be
included. But I think we shall come nearest to the
essence of Socialism by defining it as the advocacy
of communal ownership of land and capital. Communal
ownership may mean ownership by a democratic
State, but cannot be held to include ownership
by any State which is not democratic. Communal
ownership may also be understood, as Anarchist
Communism understands it, in the sense of
ownership by the free association of the men and
women in a community without those compulsory
powers which are necessary to constitute a State.
Some Socialists expect communal ownership to arrive
suddenly and completely by a catastrophic revolution,
while others expect it to come gradually, first
in one industry, then in another. Some insist upon
the necessity of completeness in the acquisition of
land and capital by the public, while others would
be content to see lingering islands of private ownership,
provided they were not too extensive or powerful.
What all forms have in common is democracy
and the abolition, virtual or complete, of the present
capitalistic system. The distinction between Socialists,
Anarchists and Syndicalists turns largely upon
the kind of democracy which they desire. Orthodox
Socialists are content with parliamentary democracy
in the sphere of government, holding that the evils
apparent in this form of constitution at present
would disappear with the disappearance of capitalism.
Anarchists and Syndicalists, on the other
hand, object to the whole parliamentary machinery,
and aim at a different method of regulating the political
affairs of the community. But all alike are
democratic in the sense that they aim at abolishing
every kind of privilege and every kind of artificial
inequality: all alike are champions of the wage-
earner in existing society. All three also have much
in common in their economic doctrine. All three
regard capital and the wages system as a means of
exploiting the laborer in the interests of the possessing
classes, and hold that communal ownership, in one
form or another, is the only means of bringing freedom
to the producers. But within the framework
of this common doctrine there are many divergences,
and even among those who are strictly to be called
Socialists, there is a very considerable diversity of
schools.

Socialism as a power in Europe may be said
to begin with Marx. It is true that before his time
there were Socialist theories, both in England and in
France. It is also true that in France, during the
revolution of 1848, Socialism for a brief period
acquired considerable influence in the State. But
the Socialists who preceded Marx tended to indulge
in Utopian dreams and failed to found any strong or
stable political party. To Marx, in collaboration
with Engels, are due both the formulation of a coherent
body of Socialist doctrine, sufficiently true or
plausible to dominate the minds of vast numbers of
men, and the formation of the International Socialist
movement, which has continued to grow in all
European countries throughout the last fifty years.

In order to understand Marx's doctrine, it is
necessary to know something of the influences which
formed his outlook. He was born in 1818 at Treves
in the Rhine Provinces, his father being a legal
official, a Jew who had nominally accepted
Christianity. Marx studied jurisprudence, philosophy,
political economy and history at various German
universities. In philosophy he imbibed the doctrines
of Hegel, who was then at the height of his fame,
and something of these doctrines dominated his
thought throughout his life. Like Hegel, he saw in
history the development of an Idea. He conceived
the changes in the world as forming a logical development,
in which one phase passes by revolution into
another, which is its antithesis--a conception which
gave to his views a certain hard abstractness, and a
belief in revolution rather than evolution. But of
Hegel's more definite doctrines Marx retained nothing
after his youth. He was recognized as a brilliant
student, and might have had a prosperous career as
a professor or an official, but his interest in politics
and his Radical views led him into more arduous
paths. Already in 1842 he became editor of a newspaper,
which was suppressed by the Prussian Government
early in the following year on account of
its advanced opinions. This led Marx to go to Paris,
where he became known as a Socialist and acquired
a knowledge of his French predecessors.[1] Here in the
year 1844 began his lifelong friendship with Engels,
who had been hitherto in business in Manchester,
where he had become acquainted with English Socialism
and had in the main adopted its doctrines.[2] In
1845 Marx was expelled from Paris and went with
Engels to live in Brussels. There he formed a German
Working Men's Association and edited a paper
which was their organ. Through his activities in
Brussels he became known to the German Communist
League in Paris, who, at the end of 1847, invited him
and Engels to draw up for them a manifesto, which
appeared in January, 1848. This is the famous
``Communist Manifesto,'' in which for the first time
Marx's system is set forth. It appeared at a fortunate
moment. In the following month, February,
the revolution broke out in Paris, and in March it
spread to Germany. Fear of the revolution led the
Brussels Government to expel Marx from Belgium,
but the German revolution made it possible for him
to return to his own country. In Germany he again
edited a paper, which again led him into a conflict
with the authorities, increasing in severity as the
reaction gathered force. In June, 1849, his paper
was suppressed, and he was expelled from Prussia.
He returned to Paris, but was expelled from there
also. This led him to settle in England--at that
time an asylum for friends of freedom--and in England,
with only brief intervals for purposes of agitation,
he continued to live until his death in 1883.

[1] Chief among these were Fourier and Saint-Simon, who
constructed somewhat fantastic Socialistic ideal commonwealths.
Proudhon, with whom Marx had some not wholly friendly relations,
is to be regarded as a forerunner of the Anarchists rather
than of orthodox Socialism.

[2] Marx mentions the English Socialists with praise in ``The
Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847). They, like him, tend to base
their arguments upon a Ricardian theory of value, but they
have not his scope or erudition or scientific breadth. Among
them may be mentioned Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869), originally
an officer in the Navy, but dismissed for a pamphlet critical
of the methods of naval discipline, author of ``Labour Defended
Against the Claims of Capital'' (1825) and other works;
William Thompson (1785-1833), author of ``Inquiry into the
Principles of Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human
Happiness'' (1824), and ``Labour Rewarded'' (1825); and
Piercy Ravenstone, from whom Hodgskin's ideas are largely
derived. Perhaps more important than any of these was Robert
Owen.

The bulk of his time was occupied in the composition
of his great book, ``Capital.''[3] His other
important work during his later years was the formation
and spread of the International Working Men's
Association. From 1849 onward the greater part
of his time was spent in the British Museum, accumulating,
with German patience, the materials for his
terrific indictment of capitalist society, but he
retained his hold on the International Socialist movement.
In several countries he had sons-in-law as
lieutenants, like Napoleon's brothers, and in the
various internal contests that arose his will generally
prevailed.

[3] The first and most important volume appeared in 1867;
the other two volumes were published posthumously (1885 and
1894).

The most essential of Marx's doctrines may be
reduced to three: first, what is called the material-
istic interpretation of history; second, the law of the
concentration of capital; and, third, the class-war.

1. The Materialistic Interpretation of History.--
Marx holds that in the main all the phenomena of
human society have their origin in material conditions,
and these he takes to be embodied in economic
systems. Political constitutions, laws, religions,
philosophies--all these he regards as, in their broad
outlines, expressions of the economic regime in the
society that gives rise to them. It would be unfair
to represent him as maintaining that the conscious
economic motive is the only one of importance; it
is rather that economics molds character and opinion,
and is thus the prime source of much that appears
in consciousness to have no connection with them.
He applies his doctrine in particular to two revolutions,
one in the past, the other in the future. The
revolution in the past is that of the bourgeoisie
against feudalism, which finds its expression, according
to him, particularly in the French Revolution.
The one in the future is the revolution of the wage-
earners, or proletariat, against the bourgeoisie,
which is to establish the Socialist Commonwealth.
The whole movement of history is viewed by him as
necessary, as the effect of material causes operating
upon human beings. He does not so much advocate
the Socialist revolution as predict it. He holds, it
is true, that it will be beneficent, but he is much more
concerned to prove that it must inevitably come.
The same sense of necessity is visible in his exposition
of the evils of the capitalist system. He does
not blame capitalists for the cruelties of which he
shows them to have been guilty; he merely points out
that they are under an inherent necessity to behave
cruelly so long as private ownership of land and
capital continues. But their tyranny will not last
forever, for it generates the forces that must in the
end overthrow it.

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