Chapter II: Significance of this Movement--Nature of Political Passions

What is the significance of this movement? Of what simple and profound human tendency does it show the progress and triumph? The question comes down to inquiring what is the nature of political passions, of what more general and more essential state of mind are they the expression, what--as the schools say--is their psychological foundation?

It seems to me that these passions can be reduced to two fundamental desires: (_a_) The will of a group of men to get hold of (or to retain a hold on) some _material_ advantage, such as territories, comfort, political power and all its material advantages; and (_b_) the will of a group of men to become conscious of themselves as _individuals_, insofar as they are _distinct_ in relation to other men. It may also be said that these passions can be reduced to two desires, one of which seeks the satisfaction of an _interest_, the other of a _pride_ or self-esteem. These two desires enter into political passions in very different proportions, according to which passion is involved. It appears that racial passion, insofar as it is not one with national passion, is chiefly based on the will of a group of men to set themselves up as distinct from others; the same thing may be said of religious passion, if we consider it in its pure state. On the other hand, class passion, at least as we see it in the working classes, apparently consists solely in the will to obtain possession of material advantages. The desire to feel himself distinct, which George Sand and the apostles of 1848 had begun to inculcate in the working man, now seems to be abandoned by him, at least in his utterances. National passion contains both factors. The patriot wants to obtain material advantages and he wants to set himself up as distinct from others. This is the secret of the evident superiority in strength of this passion (when it is really a passion) over all other passions, especially over Socialism. A passion whose sole motive is interest is too weak to contend with another which combines interest and pride. This too is one of the weaknesses of Socialism when opposed to class passion as exerted by the bourgeoisie, for the bourgeois wants both to possess material advantages and to feel himself distinct from others. I shall add to this that in my opinion the relative strengths of these two passions (one based on interest and the other on pride or self-esteem) are very unequal, and that the more powerful of the two is not that which tries to satisfy interest.

Now, when I come to ask what is signified in their turn by these fundamental desires of political passions, I find they appear to me as the two essential composites of man’s will to situate himself _in real life_. To want real life is to want (_a_) To possess some material advantages, and (_b_) to be conscious of oneself as an individual. Every life which despises these two desires, every life which pursues only spiritual advantage or sincerely asserts itself in the universal, situates itself _outside the real_. Political passions, especially national passions insofar as they unite the two desires mentioned, seem to me essentially _realist_ passions.

Here many persons will protest: ‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘the desires which make up political passions are realist desires, but the individual shifts these desires from himself to the group of which he is a part. The working man wants to obtain possession of material advantages for his class, not for his own limited person. The patriot wants to possess territories for his nation, not for his own narrow ego; he wants to be distinct from other men through his nation. Do you apply the term “realist” to passions which imply such a transfer from the individual to the collective body?’ Is it necessary to reply that when the individual transfers these desires to the body of which he is a part, he does not thereby alter their nature? And that all he does is simply to increase their dimensions immeasureably? To wish to possess material advantages _in one’s nation_, to want to feel distinct from other men _in one’s nation_, is still the desire to possess material advantages, still the desire to feel distinct from other men. It only means that, if you are a Frenchman, you want to possess Brittany, Provence, Guyenne, Algeria, Indo-China; and you want to feel yourself distinct from other men in Jeanne d’Arc, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Racine, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Pasteur. Add to this that at the same time you attach these desires, not to a transitory and precarious single existence, but to an ‘eternal’ existence, and feel them in that way. Not only does national egotism not cease to be egotism because it is national, but it becomes ‘sacred’ egotism.[24] Let me complete my definition by saying that political passions are realism of a particular quality, which is an important element of strength in them: They are _divinized_ realism.[25]

If, therefore, we desire to express this perfecting of political passions which I have described, in terms of a more profound and essential order of things, we may say that men to-day are displaying, with a hitherto unknown knowledge and consciousness, the desire to situate themselves in the _real_ or practical manner of existence, in opposition to the _disinterested_ or _metaphysical_ manner. Moreover, it is remarkable to see how political passions to-day more and more expressly assert their derivation from this realism and from it alone. On the one hand we have a Socialism which constantly declares that it has no interest in universal man, no interest in procuring justice for him or any other ‘metaphysical phantom’, but solely desires to obtain possession of material advantages for the benefit of its class. On the other hand we have the nationalist mind which everywhere takes a pride in being purely realistic. The French people who fought in the past to carry to other nations a doctrine they believed would bring happiness (I say the people, for its rulers never shared in that simple-minded belief) would now blush to have it even suspected that they would fight ‘for principles’.[26] Is it not suggestive to observe that the only wars of the past which, to some extent, brought into play passions that were a little disinterested--the wars of religion--are the only wars from which humanity has freed itself?[27] And that immense idealistic upheavals like the crusades (idealistic at least with humble people) should now be something which makes the modern man smile, like the spectacle of children at play? Is it not also significant that the national passions (which I have shown are the most perfectly realist of all political passions) should be those which I have been able to point out have most absorbed all other passions?[28] Let me add to this, that these passions, insofar as they are the will of a group of men to set themselves up as distinct from others, have attained a hitherto unknown degree of consciousness.[29] Finally, the supreme attribute we have discovered in political passions, i.e. the divinization of their realism, is now openly admitted, with a plainness never seen before. The State, Country, Class, are now frankly God; we may even say that for many people (and some are proud of it) they alone are God.[30] Humanity, by its present practice of political passions, thereby declares that it has become more realist, more exclusively and more religiously realist than it has ever been.