SOURCE: “Road to Revolution,” in Jean Grave and the Anarchist Tradition in France, The Caslon Company, 1995, pp. 79-89.

[In the following excerpt, Patsouras investigates the theoretical views of the anarcho-communist Jean Grave.]

The theoretical views of [Jean] Grave and anarchism in certain key areas—criticism of bourgeois society, revolution, and other related topics—are the focus of this section. More developed restatements are needed in order to better understand the anarchist position.

Grave's thought is greatly indebted to Proudhon, Bakunin, contemporary anarcho-communism (Kropotkin's and Elisée Reclus' influence is obvious), and to Marx(ism), especially in its view of the capitalist economic structure and primacy attached to class struggle. In fact, there are many similarities between anarcho-communism and Marxism and from a general theoretical perspective, the two are closely related. With respect to Grave's thought one cannot but be impressed by its rich familiarity with past utopian and socialist thinkers, the Enlightenment philosophes (Diderot was his favorite), the English Classical Economists, and contemporary sociology, economics, literature, and so forth. His erudition is reflected in such major works as La Société au lendemain de la révolution (1893), La Société mourante et l’anarchie (1893); La Société future (1895), L’Individu et la société (1897), and Réformes révolution (1910).

In La Société mourante et l’anarchie Grave postulated that anarchism's major struggle was against authority:

Anarchy is the negation of authority. Authority, however, pretends to justify its existence by its necessary defense of existing social institutions: the family, religion, property, and so forth, and has thus created a complex of machinery to buttress its power and legitimacy. It has founded the law, the courts, legislative power, the executive, and so forth. In confronting this situation anarchism should attack all social prejudice, examine in depth all human understanding, and finally demonstrate that its conceptions conform to the physiological and psychological nature of man, while showing that the present social organization, established contrary to all logic and good sense, has brought about unstable and revolutionary-prone societies from the accumulated hatred of those oppressed by its arbitrary institutions.¹

This multifaceted concept not only encompassed oppressive economic, social, political, and religious structures associated with class society, but also such concomitant cultural attitudes as patriotism and racism. Before examining authority in detail, we shall observe its relationship to scarcity and mutual aid.

Grave interlaced authority with the concept of scarcity when he argued that a parsimonious nature was an element in promoting social disharmony in certain social constructs. (Scarcity was a factor in the social thought of many other thinkers, including Marx/Engels and Jean-Paul Sartre, noted libertarian Marxist and Existentialist.) This problem for Grave and Marxism was not the critical one, however, in regarding social development because for revolutionary leftists, the class struggle was the key factor in history.²

The underlying factor for the destruction of authority was mutual aid, a sociobiological concept developed by Kropotkin, embodying something stronger than love, the need to cooperate for survival. In the evolution of animal life, he postulated that within species cooperation was more important than competition in the struggle for existence. As applied to the human condition, he saw mutual aid as its key element, which unfortunately was weakened by the advent of civilization and concomitant rise of class society and social oppression. In the present period the basic depository of mutual aid (although in vitiated form) resided in the working masses, while their rulers embodied authority through domination and exploitation. His hope was that the mutual-aid component in the life of the workers and peasants would so succeed in strengthening itself that the class struggle would intensify to the point where it would lead to their victory over the ruling groups. For Grave, this too was the expectation.³

According to Grave, the present general historical tendency was propitious for achieving anarchism through mutual aid. The masses had ameliorated their position from slavery to serfdom to civil freedom with extensive political rights under capitalism. These rights, now acquired, would be the weapons to bring about final emancipation and full realization of mutual aid for anarchism. In fact, the progressive advance of mutual aid has now so weakened authority that it only continues with the consent of the people themselves.⁴ From a practical perspective mutual aid mandated that the individual's moral aversion to social injustice coalesce with that of others to liberate humanity from the chains of oppression. Grave's suggestions to combat state authority included evasion of military draft, refusal to pay taxes, joining unions and utopian colonies, and doing propaganda work which also involved criticism of bourgeois ideologues.⁵ An example of the last was his rejection of Malthus' thesis in Essay on Population which asserted that the poor were responsible for their own misery; Grave saw this based on rank social prejudice and as a shallow attempt to justify the status quo.⁶

For Grave, the strengthening of mutual aid would necessarily propel the revolution forward. In fact, this was necessary because the human personality needed freedom and equality; lacking them it would not be at peace with itself, but engage in destructive individual and collective acts. Indeed, without the strengthening of mutual aid at the expense of authority greater disasters would engulf humanity. This line of thought is reminiscent of Christian millenerianism in which a small minority (for the anarchists, a small revolutionary elect; for the Christians, the pure remnant) knows the truth leading to the promised land.⁷

Grave's anthropological views should shed further light on the basic underlying assumptions of his thought. He postulated that man through evolution was progressing to a higher plane, in which as an active and creative agent he changed himself by altering his “conditions of life.” At first, however, man was “more animal than man,” signifying that his moral sense as yet was not fully developed. Early man lived in associative groups of general equality, but competitive elements were stronger than those of solidarity. In time, as groups became larger, inequality arose due to differences in strength and intelligence. Yet he mentioned that some tribes did not develop “authority,” indicating that before the advent of civilization there was equality and fraternity; this was at a later stage of human development than the earlier one when man was “more like an animal.”⁸ In viewing early man as cooperative and competitive—although the former element was dominant—he was aware of contradiction. In this schema, Grave synthesized the anthropological views of Bakunin and Kropotkin: from the former, he borrowed the competitive element, linking it to a deficient moral sense; from the latter he stressed the importance of mutual aid.⁹

The rise of organized authority, presumably with civilization, was tied by Grave to the development of private property which he considered the greatest bulwark of bourgeois society and the root cause of inequality and social misery. Like Proudhon, he regarded it as theft whose roots originated in early history when, as competition developed, the more ruthless were able to appropriate the labor of others.¹⁰ To counter this inequality, Grave advanced the following arguments. First, man was basically equal in essential qualities and if differences existed in the matter of strength or intelligence, they were minimal.¹¹ Second, since it took eons to form the world's natural resources, they should be the equal birthright of all.¹² Third, because humanity is the recipient of the accumulated knowledge and achievements of past generations (present day technology and what has been built are thus a common heritage) and because there is more extensive labor division since the advent of large industry, making for ever greater interdependence in the processes of production, no one should profit from these realities; this despite the fact that some individuals are more intelligent than others.¹³ These arguments of Grave (and Kropotkin) have both moral and rational components.

The institution of private property spawned the state and its different arms (bureaucracies, court systems, police, and armies, among others). The state itself was in the hands of elites, especially those controlling the larger segments of property (the bourgeoisie in the contemporary period); thus the state was not an impartial umpire between rich and poor. (This interpretation is also that of Marxism.) Indeed, the fall of the bourgeoisie would necessarily lead to the demise of the state.¹⁴

For Grave, religion completed the triad of authority. Anarchism, representing atheism, could not but be antithetical to a Christianity based on defending the master class, which rationalized social oppression by admonishing the poor to accept their difficult lot in life for future reward, thus reinforcing their feelings of passivity. Following general anthropological views, Grave situated the origins of religion in man's dependence on and fear of an incomprehensible nature and asserted that with increasing mastery of science, religion would disappear.

In rejecting traditional religion, Grave replaced it with a humanistic anarchist philosophy, which accepted the finality of individual death, but which did not succumb to the despair of the life-is-absurd syndrome. Life had its own validity without being tied to the supernatural. Indeed, every generation was of critical importance in the chain of life—both culturally and biologically.¹⁵ (Grave is not entirely correct in viewing religion as a reactionary force. In the United States, for example, the Protestant Social Gospel was highly influenced by Walter Rauschenbusch, a fundamentalist and socialist).¹⁶

Grave's criticism of bourgeois society reached a fairly large audience. For instance, his most widely known work, La Société mourante et l’anarchie was translated into many languages, including English as The Dying Society and Anarchy. In this and other works he mentioned such obvious failings of the present society as chronic unemployment, armaments races between the great powers, war, colonialism and its corollary of racism, the parasitical military, civil, and other bureaucracies, the deadening effects of extensive labor division which reduced workers to be “machines of machines,” the barbarous behavior of governments toward the labor movement, and the general social misery of the people as contrasted to the opulence and privileges of the rulers. For instance, a fuller statement of the last: for the governors there are “joys and abundance,” for the masses there is “misery, privation, and anomie.”¹⁷ In this cruel and pitiless world, irony and paradox dominated. Every advance in mechanical invention enriched the bourgeoisie at the expense of the proletariat whose insecurity and misery would increase by further unemployment. Labor itself was reduced to a mere commodity in the market place which became the new arbiter of value.¹⁸

Before proceeding further, let us for the moment focus on one of the most important malignancies of bourgeois society which Grave commented on, racism. Is it not of interest to note that in Grave's La Société mourante et l’anarchie there is a chapter entitled “There Are No Inferior Races.” Perceptively, Grave tied Western racism to colonialist exploitation of subject people and added that those who talk of “inferior races” wish to justify the crimes of the “superior races.”¹⁹

In a world of deep socioeconomic division characterized by authority, a key Marxist concept to describe a basically limited and unfree human condition is “alienation,” one that has been widely used in the last two centuries to explain man's tragic fate. Although many commentators use “alienation” to portray man's awareness of his finite existence, or the impossibility to approach the perfection and power of God, others use it to signify that man's full human potential is thwarted by an oppressive society. Certainly, when Rousseau in Discourse on the Origins of Inequality isolated the rise of private property as the cause of social oppression and general unhappiness, he was aware of the latter use of alienation. The brilliant German philosopher, Georg F. W. Hegel in various works (The Phenomenology of the Mind, for example) commented on the alienated human condition by contrasting the lord and slave. it was Marx, however, who in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and Capital, among other works, systematically and concretely tied alienation to class oppression that inexorably pitted the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. He condemned capitalism for its alienating socioeconomic structures: it doomed the worker to be not only a mere “machine” in the capitalist mechanism, but “the more value he [worker] creates the more worthless he becomes.” Also, he added that work is often so mechanical and repetitive, so difficult and arduous that one “feels himself to be freely active only in his animal functions—eating, drinking and procreating.”²⁰

Grave, no less than Marx, was aware of the many facets of alienation in describing workers as “machines of machines,”²¹ who labored in an increasingly sophisticated technology under capitalist control, which was at once characterized by the twin tendencies of greater labor division and more unemployment.²² That this alienation is an inherent part of bourgeois ideology is apparent thus: bourgeois political economists from Smith in the eighteenth century to Keynes in the twentieth have regarded the worker as a mere factor in the cost of production or in other words a commodity. Grave was not opposed to modern technology, but he insisted that it not be used by one segment of the community to exploit the other.²³ In Grave's literary work alienation is conspicuous; the example of Caragut in La Grand famille is the most noteworthy. To summarize with respect to alienation: both Grave and Marx advocated that for its abolition the present bourgeois society should be replaced by a socialist one of free, equal and creative individuals.²⁴

Before exploring in greater detail Grave's views of the class struggle and revolution, in which he rejected voting and reform, it would be useful to briefly examine the larger historical context which influenced him. Grave was in the vanguard of a Parisian working class whose revolutionary experiences in 1789-94, 1830, 1848, and 1871 led it increasingly to prefer class struggle and revolution to fickle and uncertain social reform as portrayed by the representative parliamentarism of the Third Republic. Grave's antipathy to this republic was based on: (1) its domination by conservative bourgeois and aristocratic elites, who not only played the leading role in destroying the Paris Commune of 1871, but who opposed basic social reform; (2) its inheritance of a society sharply divided by classes—the farmers and workers, comprising more than eighty percent of the people, carried the heavy burden of sustaining the privileged groups. Because of these circumstances, social compromise in Grave's perspective was impossible. For him, therefore, only by waging an incessant class struggle would the working class, including independent artisans, with the aid of the peasantry, be able to overthrow the bourgeois and aristocratic oligarchs.

For Grave, following Bakunin and Marx, the class struggle was the principal historical engine to effect change, to overcome the power of the ruling classes—in the Middle Ages between the serfs and the nobility, while after the industrial revolution, between the bourgeoisie and the workers. The class struggle itself, involved in the multifarious elements of life, occurred at once in the economic, social, political and cultural spheres, but the economic one dominated the others for any dislocation in this area would exacerbate tensions in the others.²⁵

The importance that Grave attached to the economic aspect resided in the fact that capitalism made for a state of interdependence in production in which any breakdown might shatter the entire mechanism. Grave's scenario in this respect is basically Marxian. Class antagonism was sharpened by economic crises thus: ever motivated by profit, capitalism had an inherent tendency to increase the use of labor-saving machinery, which in turn tended to depress wages and increase unemployment; even the use of colonies as outlets for goods could not for long delay this progression. Succeeding depressions would eliminate small enterprise, until finally the few wealthy capitalists would be overthrown by the proletarianized majority that would inaugurate socialism.²⁶

In Grave's revolutionary model, like Marx's, the spearhead of the industrial workers would be aided by the majority of the peasantry. For Grave and other anarchists, the revolutionary potential of most of the peasantry resided in their being part of the exploited masses. Indeed, the anarchist program for the peasantry allowed for ownership of land directly used, although the ideal was to have voluntary collectivization.²⁷

Grave and Marx also agreed that in the relationship between masses and leadership to effect revolution, although the first element was more important, the second was also essential in providing necessary direction. (Marx has been erroneously accused by many of overstressing leadership.) They disagreed, however, on the organizational structure of the two factors.²⁸ Disdaining formal organization, Grave envisaged leadership in his Bakuninist phase in the form of small, clandestine groups committing propaganda by deed, while in his reformist-revolutionary phase, he counseled militants to concentrate on education and propaganda. For Marx, however, the leaders of the workers' party would direct the revolution.²⁹

In the actual revolutionary change, some fighting would occur between the revolutionaries and the bourgeoisie because Grave did not believe that any ruling class would voluntarily relinquish its privileges. Once in motion, the revolution would rapidly destroy state authority and its various appendages (the military, civil administration, and so forth) along with exploitative private property within a few months.³⁰

Grave, well aware of the international implications of a proletarian-led revolution in France, replayed the model of the French Revolution when, on the one hand, he expected foreign bourgeois government intervention, but, on the other hand, hoped it would spark revolution throughout the world.³¹

The Gravian model of imminent revolution, opposed to any reform within a capitalist structure, regarded reform as inefficacious—as a dampening influence on the revolutionary temper of the people.³² At the turn of the last century, Grave, however, rather cautiously at first, superimposed a layer of reformism on his pattern of imminent revolution, which over the years became significant. In agreement with many other socialists, including Marxists, Grave finally realized that capitalism would endure for a lengthy period of time since the expected revolution did not materialize. This was due to the basic apathy of the people themselves, who in large measure still supported the aspirations and assumptions of capitalism, and their habits of subservience imposed by economic insecurity. It was, however, still possible to effect piecemeal reform through the exertions of the majority for pressing socioeconomic needs. Grave postulated that although most people were literally ignorant as to the basic causes of social oppression, they could well understand the need for urgent and specific reform.³³

With the postponement of revolution, what were Grave's ideas about the possible peaceful transition from capitalism to anarchism? He was acquainted with, but largely rejected, the Proudhonian mutualist vision which theorized a long period of evolutionary change from capitalism to anarchism through cooperatives. This was a basic difference between mutualists and anarcho-communists. Although Grave admitted that producers' cooperatives might bring about some economic amelioration, he was fearful that capitalist influences within them, especially the profit motive, might intensify with economic success. In this respect, he was not overly sanguine then concerning the fact that sections of the proletariat could resist the temptations of embourgeoisement. This view had affinity to Lenin's thesis (later modified) that proletarian consciousness did not go much beyond union activity. As for consumers' cooperatives, in a more optimistic vein, Grave saw their educating workers to defend their purchasing power, but he remained cautious, opining that they should always be motivated by the ideals of anarchism. In this analysis, he was not dogmatic, and even saw the remote possibility of producers' cooperatives becoming important institutions to achieve anarchism.³⁴

Even after Grave became a “reformist,” he did not view reform as an end in itself, but as a necessary and integral part of the revolutionary spirit that continued to operate even within the confines of democratic political structures. With respect, for example, to the most significant political reform in nineteenth-century Europe, universal male suffrage, he envisioned it, on the one hand, as a delaying tactic of the status quo to deflect the popular revolutionary temper, but, on the other hand, admitted to its usefulness as a mechanism for further reform, which at a critical juncture might lead to revolution. In fact, in La Société future, Grave argued that it was perfectly possible for social tensions to intensify from greater social equality due to reform, a pattern analagous to that in de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. In general, Grave still feared that while reform could expand both liberty and the general welfare, it also contained the seeds to further pacify the people by instilling a false consciousness with respect to the authoritarian nature of capitalism. This view is analagous to Marcuse's distinction between the “repressive tolerance” of democratic and class-ridden societies and the genuine tolerance of those based on equality. Ultimately, Grave's ambivalence to reform indicated his unrelenting hope for imminent revolution; in this vein, he was still, for example, against voting.³⁵

Although Grave accepted the importance of reform, he partially rejected Proudhon's insistence in De La capacité politique des classes ouvrières for the proletariat to establish both a countersociety through cooperatives and a counterculture through newspapers and other informational organs to do battle with the bourgeoisie. Grave opposed Proudhonian countersociety, but actively engaged in the counterculture aspect through his newspaper work, theoretical speculations, and in participating to establish an anarchist school for children. Grave's interest in the formation of a proletarian counterculture has its counterpart in the communist movement: Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party and principal inspirer of contemporary Eurocommunism, advocated the creation of such mass proletarian institutions as workers' councils and the establishment of popularly based communist parties to engage the bourgeoisie in a protracted war of position by challenging their cultural hegemony.³⁶

For Grave, sooner or later, the revolution would still erupt: at a certain critical juncture of events, one involving economic and other related crises (similar to the imminent revolutionary model), the workers would overthrow the bourgeoisie for socialism.³⁷ Since, Grave, however, had allowed for a lengthy period of reform before revolution, which presumably would have mitigated social bitterness, revolutionary violence would be minimal.³⁸

From a general perspective concerning the immediacy of revolution, Grave and anarcho-communism were more hopeful than the Marxists and other socialists of the Second International. By the eighteen-eighties and nineties, Western European Marxists had basically rejected revolution for reformist politics, while Grave and his comrades maintained their purist revolutionary stance through electoral abstention. When the expected revolution, however, did not occur, Grave became pessimistic, and predicted in La Société future, for example, that it was generations away.³⁹

The question arises why anarcho-communists like Grave were more revolutionary than the Marxists in such parties as the German Social Democratic Party and the French Unified Socialist Party? Individual temperament in a given sociohistorical environment undoubtedly played a role; the anarchists tended to be more idealistic and thus not willing to compromise. Grave, for example, as has been noted, may be regarded, at least during his younger years, as a “true believer.” There is usually enough dissatisfaction in most societies that individuals like Grave are not unknown.⁴⁰ At any rate this very utopianism and talk of revolution, added to the terrorism and crime of a few anarchists, led a distinguished Italian criminologist at the turn of the last century, Cesare Lombroso, to characterize anarchists as belonging to the criminal type—thus, their revolutionary bent.⁴¹

Although few in number, anarchists were more politically conscious and active than their counterparts in the other socialist groups, allowing for the widespread dissemination of their ideas. They were concentrated in urban areas and were in many occupations, although, as one commentator stated, they were often in occupations where one could often talk. A Le Matin article in 1894, partly based on a police report, had about five hundred anarchists in Paris in the early eighteen-nineties. Leading occupations and numbers included 10 journalists, 25 typographers, 17 tailors, 16 shoemakers, 15 mechanics, 12 hairdressers and barbers, 15 cabinetmakers, 10 bricklayers, 3 grocers, an architect, and an insurance agent. The same article estimated about eight thousand anarchists in France, of whom twenty-five hundred were in the Paris area, two thousand in Lyons, and one thousand in Marseilles. Jean Maitron, undoubtedly the foremost authority on French anarchism, was much more conservative as to the number of anarchists in France during the nineties: he calculated that there were only about one thousand active anarchists concentrated in about forty or so groups, supported by an inactive element of between five to ten thousand; and, if there were an anarchist party, it might have received about one hundred thousand votes. Grave's Mouvement Liberataire was very optimistic in estimating twenty thousand French anarchists in 1914.⁴²

A brief postscript concerning Grave's later thought in which one can find a few aberrations. To begin with, he rejected the concept of class:

Classes no longer exist. There are only people, many of whom are not capitalists, who in trying to survive do so very well in the society of today. Others, who live very poorly, nevertheless defend existing society. Others, who do not know any better, support it. Then, there is a group that wishes to do away with capitalism: it includes some members of the bourgeoisie.⁴³

Too, his reformism became more pronounced. Change would come basically in piecemeal fashion in which shifting groups would temporarily merge to support specific reforms. Indeed, because society had made progress, advancing from slavery to serfdom to political freedom, the possibility of continued reform might occur without cataclysm. Thus, he emphasized the importance of speech and press freedoms to insure this.⁴⁴ To be sure, the anarchists, as a conscious minority, would have their usual important role as propagandists and as disinterested spokesmen for the ideals of humanism.⁴⁵ As for organization, he continued to unalterably oppose it.

For Grave, association was normal for man was a social animal; but if he once admitted any formal organization, man, like Sisyphus, would be doomed to climb forever the mountain of authority. Therefore, Grave still condemned the syndicalist position that society be organized through the various unions.⁴⁶ As for anarchism's future, he hoped that it would remain receptive to the exigencies and demands of a changing world.⁴⁷

Notes

1. Grave, La Société mourante pp 1-2. Octave Mirbeau's preface hailed the work as a “masterpiece of logic full of enlightenment”.

2. Cf ibid, pp 39-48, concerning scarcity, technology, and class oppression with the generally similar views of Jean Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), I, 200ff. [this work was translated into English as Critique of Dialectical Reason (London: NLB, 1976), to be referred to in the future as Critique] and Marx, Capital, I, 91-92.

3. On mutual aid, see Jehan Le Vagre [Jean Grave], La Révolution et l’autonomie selon la science (Paris: A. Bataille, 1885), pp 5-11. The key work on mutual aid is by Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid; A Factor in Evolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919), pp 1-10 are especially interesting.

4. Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, p 11ff. On the historical tendency comments, see Jean Grave, “Il n’y a pas plus de raison de se décourager que de s’illusioner,” Publications, No. 28 (August 10, 1924), pp 4-14.

5. Grave, L’Anarchie, son but, ses moyens, pp 207-08; Grave, La Société mourante, pp 45-71; and Karl Marx, Theses on Feurbach in Lewis S. Feuer, ed. Marx and Engels; Basic Writings in Politics and Philosophy (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1959), pp 243-45.

6. Grave, La Société future, pp 19-20 and 46-49. Jean Grave, Les Scientifiques (Paris: Les Temps Nouveaux, 1913), pp 2ff.

7. Cf Grave, L’Anarchie, son but, ses moyens, pp 11-12, 17-18 and Grave, L’Individu et la société, pp 145-71 with Norman Cohen, The Pursuit of the Millenium; Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements, pp 272-306.

8. Grave, L’Individu et la société, pp 23-25.

9. Grave, La Société mourante, pp 44-47; Grave, L’Individu et la société, pp 23-25; Maximoff, Bakunin, p 94.

10. Grave, La Société mourante, pp 49ff. Other who regarded private property as the root cause of social misery, for example, are Rousseau and Winstanley.

11. Ibid., p 51 and 58.

12. Ibid., pp 50-51.

13. Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, p 7 and p 11.

14. Cf Grave, La Société mourante, pp 83ff and his Réformes, révolution, p 44 with Frederick Engels, Socialism; Utopian and Scientific (New York: International Publishers, 1935), pp 69ff. Both saw the state under bourgeois control.

15. On Grave and religion, see his La Société mourante, pp 43-44, 51, and 115-16; L’Individu et la société, pp 50-53, 260-74; L’Anarchie, son but, ses moyens, p 19. Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion, pp 21ff stated that Christianity developed authoritarian attitudes when it became a state religion—obedience and submission are the hallmarks of this authoritarianism. Also, the teachings and life of Christ are seen as essentially humanistic, wherein “joy” not “sorrow” or “guilt” is stressed. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1941), pp 10ff posits that Calvinistic predestination that emphasizes man's wickedness is basically authoritarian.

16. See, for example, Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1914), pp 44-142.

17. Cf Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, pp 11-12 with Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class; An Economic Study of Institutions, intro. C. Wright Mills (New York: A Mentor Book, 1957), pp 21ff—both see that power and wealth are exalted at the expense of poverty, weakness, and virtue.

18. Grave, La Société mourante, pp 56-59 and 126ff.

19. Ibid., pp 183-97. On Gobineau, Chamberlain and the linkage of racism with slavery and imperialism, see Georg Lukacs, La Destruction de la raison (2 vols.; Paris: L’Arche, 1958), II, 233-74. Elisée Reclus was another pioneer in attacking racism—Fleming, The Anarchist Way, pp 48-50.

20. Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man; With a Translation from Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, by T. B. Bottomore (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961), pp 93ff. The first manuscript titled Alienated Labor, pp 93-109 states that the worker, considered as a commodity of production under capitalism, despised his work for that very reason. The quotations are on page 97. On Hegel's progressive thought, see Jacques d’Hondt, Hegel et son temps (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1968). Also, see Erich Fromm (ed.), Socialist Humanism; An International Symposium (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), Part III: “On Alienation.”

21. Cf Marx, Alienated Labor in Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man with Grave's La Société au lendemain de la révolution, p 113 in which the worker is seen as essentially being a robot.

22. See Grave, La Société au lendemain de la révolution, pp 108ff, and Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, pp 11ff and p 70.

23. Grave, La Société au lendemain de la révolution, p 113.

24. On Marx's basic egalitarianism, see Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme: With Appendices by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, ed. by C. P. Dutt (New York: International Publishers, 1938), pp 8ff and V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution (New York: International Publishers, 1932), pp 35ff.

25. On Gravian determinism (there are certain social “laws”), see Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, p 116. Grave's use of the term “people” indicated its broad nature—ibid., p 139. On the general historical pattern discussed, see Grave, La Société future, pp 21-24.

26. Cf the revolutionary pattern of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York: International Publishers, 1948), pp 9-21, with Grave, La Société mourante, pp 269ff and Grave, L’Individu et la société, pp 226-27 and pp 295-96. For a similar anarchist view, see Pierre Kropotkine, L’Action anarchiste dans la révolution (Paris: Les Temps Nouveaux, 1914), pp 2ff Fleming, The Anarchist Way, pp 187-93 saw the Marxian connection in Elisée Reclus' revolutionary pattern.

27. On Grave and the peasantry, see Grave L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, pp 307-24. Also, see Elisée Reclus, A Mon frère le paysan (Amiens: Editions de Germinal, 1905), pp 1-8; and Errico Malatesta, Entre paysans (Paris: Les Temps Nouveaux, 1901), pp 1-32. All three authors have similar views.

28. Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, p 37 and pp 193ff. Peter Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1909), pp 11-15 insisted that mass movements make revolution. On Marx and revolution by the masses, see Michael Harrinton, Socialism (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), pp 36ff.

29. On the role of a conscious revolutionary elite, see Jean Grave, L’Entente pour l’action (Paris: Les Temps Nouveaux, 1911), pp 11ff; Grave, Réformes, révolution, p 86; Grave, L’Individu et la société, pp 250ff; and Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, p 19.

30. Grave, La Société future, p 207; Grave, La Société au lendemain de la révolution, pp 14ff. On p 35, Grave even envisaged a transitory period (he does not specify the time frame) after the revolution in which anarchists do not hold power—probably other socialists hold it.

31. Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens, p 14, pp 202-03. Grave, La Société au lendemain de la révolution, pp 14ff.

32. On Grave's advocacy of immediate revolution, see Grave, L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens (1899), pp 107ff. For a Gravian blast against reformism, see Jean Grave, Si J’avais à parler aux électeurs (Paris: Les Temps Nouveaux, 1911), p 3.

33. Cf the Grave for immediate revolution in L’Anarchie; son but, ses moyens (1899), pp 107ff with the more patient one in Réformes, révolution (1910), p 40. There was not any exact year with reference to this change; for example, in La Société future (1895), pp 1-5, revolution would take generations. Generally, after 1900, Grave was more patient with respect to revolution. On the ignorance of the people as to the cause of their social misery, see Jean Grave, La Panacée-Révolution (Paris: Les Temps Nouveaux, 1898), p 14.

34. On Grave and cooperatives, see Réformes, révolution, pp 145-62; and A. D. Bancel, Le Coopératisme devant les écoles sociales, préface Jean Grave (Paris: Bibliothèque Artistique et Littéraire, 1897), pp i-iii. On Lenin's ideas concerning the tendency of workers to stay at the stage of mere union activity, see Thomas H. Hammond, Lenin on Trade Unions and Revolution, 1893-1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), pp 17ff.

35. On pacification of the masses, see Grave, L’Anarchie; son but; ses moyens, p 136. Grave's view that social tensions increase with the approach of equality in La Société future, pp 1-5 is similar to that of Alexis de Tocqueville, Republic of the United States of America and Its Political Institutions, trans. Henry Reeves (2 vols. in 1; New York: A. S. Barnes, 1867), I, 9. This work is more well known as Democracy in America. Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance” in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965) pp 81-123.

36. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, De la Capacité politique des classes ouvrières (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1924). On Gramsci's life and ideas, see Guiseppe Fiori, Antonio Gramsci; Life of a Revolutionary (New York: Dutton, 1971). Also, see Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (editors and translators), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp 228-45 on the great resiliency of Western capitalism which necessitated that revolutionaries adopt a more patient stance.

37. For an example of revolutionary violence, see Grave, La Société au lendemain de la révolution, p 18. On peaceful transition to socialism in Marx and Engels, see George Lichtheim, Europe in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Praeger, 1972), p 139.

38. This is implied in Grave's work during the last twenty years of his life. More on this later.

39. Grave, La Société future, pp 1-5.

40. On the mind set of the revolutionary fanatic and the socioeconomic background, see Eric Hoffer, The True Believer; Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: A Mentor Book, 1958), pp 51ff; Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium, pp 307-19. André Malraux's La Condition humaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1946) has an excellent example of the revolutionary fanatic—Tchen.

41. Cesare Lombroso, Les Anarchistes (Paris: Flammarion, 1896), pp 59ff saw anarchists as belonging to the criminal type.

42. Le Matin, “Contré l’anarchie,” March 5, and 9, 1894; HMA, pp 115-24 and 432ff; Mouvement libertaire, p 287.

43. On Grave's attack, on Capital, see his “Le Capital de Karl Marx,” Publications, No. 24 (Dec. 25, 1923), pp 8-15; and, “A Travers nos lectures,” ibid., No. 28 (Aug. 10, 1924), pp 15-16 on Marx. The quotation in the text is from p 15 of the first citation.

44. That peaceful reform may replace the revolutionary syndrome to achieve anarchism, see Grave, Publications, No. 7 (1921); pp 4-11.

45. Ibid.

46. AM, letter, Grave to Nettlau, July 24, 1934. Jean Grave, “Un monde qui ne différerait guère de l’autre,” Publications, No. 90 (Dec., 1934), pp 3-6.

47. Jean Grave, “A propos d’une ânerie,” ibid., No. 54 (June 20, 1928), pp 3-6.