From “The State: Its Historic Rôle.”

THROUGHOUT the whole history of our civilization, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition; the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition; the authoritarian one and the libertarian one….

  History has not been an uninterrupted evolution. At different intervals evolution has been broken in a certain region, to begin again elsewhere. Egypt, Asia, the banks of the Mediterranean, Central Europe, have in turn been the scene of historical development. But in every case, the first phase of the evolution has been the primitive tribe, passing on into a village commune, then into that of the free city, and finally dying out when it reached the phase of the state.

  In Egypt civilization began by the primitive tribe. It reached the village community phasis, and later on the period of free cities; still later that of the state, which, after a flourishing period, resulted in the death of the country.

  The evolution began again in Assyria, in Persia, in Palestine. Again it traversed the same phasis: the tribe, the village community, the free city, the all-powerful state, and finally the result was—death!

  A new civilization then sprang up in Greece. Always beginning by the tribe, it slowly reached the village commune, then the period of republican cities. In these cities civilization reached its highest summits. But the East brought to them its poisoned breath, its traditions of despotism. Wars and conquests created Alexander’s empire of Macedonia. The state enthroned itself, the bloodsucker grew, killed all civilization, and then came—death!

  Rome in its turn restored civilization. Again we find the primitive tribe at its origin; then the village commune; then the free city. At that stage it reached the apex of its civilization. But then came the state, the empire, and then—death!

  On the ruins of the Roman Empire, Celtic, Germanic, Slavonian, and Scandinavian tribes began civilization anew. Slowly the primitive tribe elaborated its institutions and reached the village commune. It remained at that stage till the twelfth century. Then rose the republican cities which produced the glorious expansion of the human mind, attested by the monuments of architecture, the grand development of arts, the discoveries that laid the basis of natural sciences. But then came the state….

  Will it again produce death? Of course it will, unless we reconstitute society on a libertarian and anti-imperial basis. Either the state will be destroyed and a new life will begin in thousands of centres, on the principle of an energetic initiative of the individual, of groups, and of free agreement; or else the state must crush the individual and local life, it must become the master of all the domains of human activity; must bring with it its wars and internal struggles for the possession of power, its surface revolutions which only change one tyrant for another, and inevitably, at the end of this evolution,—death!

  Choose yourselves which of the two issues you prefer.