Bertrand de Jouvenel

COMMAND AS A CAUSE

It is a mistake with far-reaching consequences to postulate, as so many authors do, that the great political formation, the State, results naturally from human sociability. This would seem to be self-evident, since this is undoubtedly the principle of society, a fact of nature. But this natural society is small. And you cannot go from a small society to a large one by the same process. A coagulating factor is needed here, which in the vast majority of cases is not the instinct to associate, but the instinct to dominate. It is to the instinct to dominate that the large group owes its existence.

The Nation did not first give rise to its leaders, for the good reason that, until leaders appeared, there was not, either in fact or in feelings, a Nation. So, let's not have the binding and coordinating energy explained to us by some ectoplasm sprung from the depths of the human group. On the contrary, in the history of great ensembles, that dominating energy is a primary cause, and we cannot go beyond that reality. As if to prove the point, the energy most often comes from outside.

 

THE FIRST ASPECT OF COMMAND

The principle behind the formation of vast aggregates is none other than conquest. This is sometimes the work of one of the component societies within the whole, but frequently of a warrior band from afar. In the first case, a city commands many cities; in the second, a small group of people commands many peoples. Whatever distinction must be made when moving into the realm of concrete history, there can be no doubt that the notions of capital and nobility owe part of their psychological content to these ancient phenomena.

The instruments chosen by Fate to carry out this ‘synthetic activity’, as Auguste Comte calls it, are amongst the most ferocious. Thus, the modern States of Western Europe must acknowledge as their founders those Germanic tribes of whom Tacitus, despite his favourable prejudice as over-civilised man for the barbarian, painted a frightening portrait. The Franks, from whom the French take their name, should not be thought of as anything better than the Goths, whose plundering and devastating wanderings Ammianus Marcellinus describes in gripping pages.

The Normans who founded the kingdom of Sicily, those adventurers who were companions of William the Bastard, are too close to us to be mistaken about their real character.

It is a very familiar image, that of the greedy horde setting sail from the shores of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme and who, on reaching London, will have the country carved up among themselves by a victorious bandit chief, seated on a throne of stone.

Without doubt, they are not, strictly speaking, the unifiers of territories, but they have supplanted others who had done the work of unification and who were very much like themselves.

The Romans, those illustrious unifiers, were no different in their early days. Saint Augustine had no illusions about this:

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If perverse men join it, this evil increases to such a degree that it seizes places where it establishes the seat of its domination, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples. Then it assumes the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. (The City of God, Book IV, Chapter IV)

 

COMMAND FOR ITS OWN SAKE

Thus the ‘State’ is essentially the result of the success of a ‘band of brigands’ superimposed on small individual societies, a band which, itself organised into a society as fraternal and just as will please this band of thieves, behaves like pure Power towards the vanquished, the submissive.

This power has no claim to legitimacy. It pursues no just end; its only concern is to exploit the defeated, the subjugated, the subjects, for its own profit. It lives off the dominated populations.

When William divided England into sixty thousand fiefdoms of knights, this meant exactly that sixty thousand human groups would each have to support one of the conquerors with their labour. This was the only justification, in the eyes of the conquerors, for the existence of the subjugated populations. If they could not be made useful in this way, there would be no reason to let them live. And it is remarkable that in places where more civilised conquerors would not do so, they would end up unintentionally exterminating populations that were useless to them, as in North America and Australia. The natives survived better under the domination of the Spaniards, who enslaved them.

History, as implacable witness, shows no instance of a spontaneous relationship between the victors, who were members of the State, and their vanquished, other than that of exploitation.

When the Turks settled in Europe, they lived off the tribute (Kharadj) paid by non-Muslims, those whose different dress showed that they were not part of the conquerors. It was a sort of an annual ransom, like the price demanded for letting live those who could very well have been killed.

The Romans didn't see things any differently. They went to war for immediate profits, precious metals and slaves: a triumph was all the more acclaimed because more treasures were carried, and the consul was followed by more raided victims. Relations with the provinces were essentially based on the collection of tributes. The Romans regarded the conquest of Macedonia as the moment when it became possible to live entirely off ‘provincial’ taxes, i.e. those paid by the subjugated peoples.

Even democratic Athens considered it unworthy of a citizen to pay taxes. It was the tributes of the ‘allies’ that filled the coffers, and the most popular rulers endeared themselves by increasing these charges. Cleon raised them from six hundred to nine hundred talents, Alcibiades to one thousand two hundred.

Everywhere, the great whole, the ‘State’, appears to us to be characterised by the parasitic domination of a small society over an aggregate of other societies.

And whether the internal regime of the small society is republican as in Rome, democratic as in Athens, egalitarian as in Sparta, the relationship of the victors with the subjugated society offers us the same exact image of command for its sake and for its fruits.