1.

When we observe human societies in terms of their essential characteristics, leaving aside the secondary and temporary manifestations, we realise that the political regime to which they submit is always an expression of the economic regime which exists at the heart of the society. Political organization does not change at the will of legislators. It can, indeed, change its name, can present itself today under the guise of a monarchy, tomorrow under that of a republic, but it does not undergo an equivalent modification in substance; it continues to be shaped by the economic system, of which it is always the expression and, at the same time, the consecration and the sustaining force.

Sometimes, in the process of its evolution, the political regime of a country finds itself lagging behind the economic changes that are taking place, and in that case it will abruptly be set aside and remodelled in a way appropriate to the economic regime that has been established. But if on the other hand the political regime during a revolution goes beyond the economic changes, it will remain a dead letter, a formula, inscribed in the charters but without any real application. Thus the Declaration of the Rights of Man, whatever may have been its place in history, survived as no more than a historic document, and those fine words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, remain a dream, or at most an inscription on the walls of churches, and prisons, while neither liberty nor equality will become the foundation of real economic relations. Universal suffrage would indeed have been inconceivable in a society based on serfdom, just as despotism would be in a society that is based on what is called the freedom of transactions but is more truly the freedom of exploitation.

The working classes of western Europe know this very well. They know or divine that our societies will continue to suffocate within existing political institutions so long as the contemporary capitalist system is not overthrown. They know that these institutions, no matter how they may be refurbished with fine names, still represent the corruption and domination of the most powerful transformed into a system that means the suppression of all freedoms and all progress; they know that the only way of shaking off these fetters would be to establish economic relations according to a new system, that of collective property. They know, in sum, that to accomplish a political revolution that is both deep and lasting, there must be an economic revolution.

But, by reason of the intimate links that exist between the political regime and the economic regime, it is evident that a revolution in the mode of production and the distribution of products could not operate if it did not occur parallel to the profound modification of those institutions that one generally describes as political. The abolition of individual property and the consequent end of exploitation, the establishment of a communist and collective system, would be impossible if we wanted to retain our parliaments or our kings. A new economic system calls for a new political regime, and that truth is so well understood by everyone that in fact the intellectual process going on among the proletarian masses at the present time oscillates indecisively between the two sides of the question that has to be resolved. Discussing the economic future, they think also of the political future, and as well as the words Collectivism and Communism we hear also the words: Workers' State, Free Commune, Anarchy, or, equally often, Authoritarian Communism or The Anarchist Collective Commune.

"General rule: Do you want to study fruitfully? Begin by shedding one by one the thousand prejudices that have been taught you!" These words, with which a celebrated astronomer used to start off his course, apply equally in all the branches of human knowledge, and even more in the social than in the physical sciences because, from our very first step into their domain we find ourselves faced by a mass of prejudices inherited from the past, of absolutely false ideas disseminated to deceive the people, of sophisms carefully elaborated to confuse popular judgment. We have thus a great preliminary task to undertake before we can proceed with any certainty.

But among these prejudices there is one that especially merits our attention, not only because it is the basis of all our modern political institutions, but also because we find its influence at work on almost all the social theories advanced by the reformers. It is that which consists in putting one's faith in representative government, which is government by proxy.

Towards the end of the last century the French people overthrew the monarchy, and the last of the absolute kings expiated on the scaffold not only his own crimes, but also those of his predecessors.

At that time, when all that the revolution contains of good and great and durable was accomplished by the initiative and energy of individuals or groups and, thanks to the disorganization and weakness of the central government, it seemed that the people had no wish to resume the yoke of a new authority, based on the same principles as the old and all the stronger because it was not rotted by the faults of the fallen regime.

Far from it. Under the influence of governmental prejudices and deceived by the apparent freedom and well-being offered -- as they were told -- by the English and American constitutions, the French hastened to give themselves a constitution, and then more constitutions which they kept on changing, varying them infinitely in detail but always basing them on a single principle: representative government.

Monarchy or Republic -- it mattered little -- the people was not governing itself; it was ruled by representatives, well or badly chosen. It may have proclaimed its sovereignty, but it has hurried to abdicate it. It elects -- for better or worse -- deputies who assume the regulation of the immense variety of intertwining interests, of human relations so complex in their entirety, over the whole surface of France!

Later on, the whole of continental Europe followed the same evolution. All countries overthrew their absolute monarchies and set out on the parliamentary route. Even the despotisms of the Orient are following the same route: Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia are experimenting with constitutional regimes; even in Russia they are trying to shake off the chains of a camarilla, and replace them by the easier yoke of a delegate assembly.

What is worse is that France itself, which seemed to be opening new vistas, has continued to lapse into the same error. Disgusted by the sad experience of a constitutional monarchy, the people one day (in 1848) overthrew its government, but on the morrow it hastened to elect an assembly, merely changing its name and confiding to it the cares of government, which it would sell to a brigand The "brigand" to whom Kropotkin refers is of course Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, grandson of Napoleon I, who was elected president in 1848, and in 1852 elevated himself to the rank of Emperor with the title of Napoleon III. Trans. ⁴⁰ who would provoke the invasion of the fair fields of France by foreign armies.

Twenty years later (1871) it would fall into the same error once again. Seeing the city of Paris free of the troops and authorities who had deserted it, the people did not set about experimenting with a fresh approach that would facilitate the establishment of a new economic regime. Happy at having subsumed the word Empire in the word Republic, and the latter in the word Commune, the people hastened to apply once again, in the heart of the Commune, the representative system and to falsify its new ideal by evolving the worm-eaten heritage of the past. It abdicated its own initiative into the hands of an assembly of people elected more or less at random, and it confided to them the responsibility for that complete reorganization of human relationships which alone could have given strength and life to the Commune.

So the constitution is periodically torn into shreds that fly like dead leaves scattered on the river by an autumn wind! No matter; the people always seems to return to its first love; when the sixteenth constitution has been torn up they will remake it a seventeenth time!

And so, we see reformers who, dealing in economic theory, do not hesitate before a complete reshaping of existing forms, and propose to change from top to bottom both production and exchange and abolish the capitalist system, yet as soon as it is a matter of stating their political theory, they do not dare to touch the representative system; under the form of workers' State or free commune, they seek always to maintain, whatever the cost, this government by proxy. Whole peoples, whole races still cling obstinately to this system.

Fortunately the day of reckoning on this subject is approaching. Representative government is now applied in countries of which we know nothing. It functions or has functioned here on the great arena of western Europe in all its varieties from limited monarchy to the revolutionary Commune, and one notices that, hailed first with great hopes, it has become everywhere an instrument of intrigue, of personal enrichment, of hindrance to popular initiative and ongoing development. One begins to learn that the creed of representation projects the same values as those of aristocratic superiority and royal personage. More than that, one begins to understand that the faults of representative government do not depend only on social inequalities; applied in a setting where all men had an equal right to capital and work, it would produce the same disastrous results. One can easily foresee the day when that institution, born -- according to the apt saying of John Stuart Mill -- from the desire to protect ourselves against the beak and claws of the king of vultures -- will give place to a political organization born of the true needs of humanity and from the realization that the best way of being free is not to be represented, not to abandon affairs -- all affairs -- to Providence or to the elected ones, but to handle them ourselves.

This conclusion will also be reached -- we hope -- by you, the reader, when we have studied the intrinsic faults of the representative system, whatever may be the name or the size of the human group within which it is applied.