Revolution in Danger

by Victor Serge

  We fight for the destruction of all state-imposed frontiers and boundaries. We declare that the whole earth must belong to all men and to all peoples!

  This is certainly a splendid statement which very clearly sums up the ideal of all Communists (including those who have never borne any name other than that of Bolsheviks). But how can this ideal be achieved, how can we set to work on it straightaway, in 1920, in the context of present events? Merely to invoke the ideal in this way means founding propaganda on utopianism. I am obliged to agree that Bukharin did much better—though less poetically—in his ABC of Communism, where he outlined the theory of the withering away of the state and of all authority by means of the normal functioning of communist economic institutions.

  This critical utopian position, made very weak by the fact that those who defend it now advocate no practical action, is that of the Anarchist Youth Federation, of the Moscow Union and of most of the small groups.

  The Ukrainian Anarchist Confederation of the Nabat (Alarm Bell) is also situated in the center, with more practical sense and a much stronger theory, thanks to a very valuable activist, Voline (Eichenbaum). A number of the Nabat comrades accept the dictatorship of the working-class, but deny the need for a defined period of transition between capitalism and communism. The revolution cannot stop; it must continue until the establishment of complete communism which can only be libertarian. Any attempt to found a “communist state” which is halfway between the old system and the new society is in their eyes pernicious. The revolution must be on a worldwide scale. The creative forces of the masses will play the vital role in it. Everything comes from the masses, and all that is needed is constantly to appeal to them. The masses organize themselves into local soviets which will spontaneously federate and form militias or more precisely groups of insurgents (I am translating the Russian word povstantsi) which have the potential of becoming a volunteer army. This means that Nabat is intransigently opposed to any centralization from above and to military service imposed by a central authority. In the Ukraine this ideology has encountered great success. If it had not come up against the Marxist Communism of the Great Russians, it seems, according to well-informed witnesses, that it might have been able to produce positive results, that is, a distinctly original orientation for the social revolution in the Ukraine. The Nabat confederation still enjoys a certain prestige among anarchists throughout Russia because of the epic aspects of the struggle in the Ukraine. But in reality it has only a local significance and value.

  3.

  The “Soviet” anarchists who believe that at the present time they have a duty to work with the Bolshevik Communist Party and even to go over to it completely. Indeed, numerous comrades have joined the party, believing that the present time was not one for philosophical reservations, and that its program was the only practical and feasible one to safeguard the gains of the October revolution. Without joining the party, the comrades of the anarcho-syndicalist group Golos Truda (Moscow and Petrograd) have in practice made common cause with it, going so far as to approve of the militarization of labor (Grossman-Roshchin, late 1919).

  They recognize, admittedly in rather confused terms, the need for a revolutionary dictatorship during the transition period, but not the necessity for a political party.

  At the same time as this group we should mention that of the anarchist-universalists, recently founded in Moscow, which accepts centralization with all its logic in a revolutionary period. “On all tactical questions,” one of its militants told me in 1920, “we are in agreement with the Bolsheviks.”5

  To sum up, the insignificance of the anarchist influence, despite the role played by anarchist militants in all the revolutionary struggles, is striking throughout Russia, with the exception of the Ukraine. In my view this can be explained by the following factors:

  First of all by the fact that Bolshevism, at least in its earlier phases of destruction and struggle, is working for future anarchy, of which it has absorbed those principles which are feasible at present; secondly, by the fact that to a great extent Bolshevism is no more than the (inevitable) result of the action of laws which govern the development of any revolution (so that no room is left for alternative methods); finally, to a much lesser extent, because of the attachment to tradition on the part of anarchists who have failed to face up to events in a practical fashion. Even in Russia most of them have not yet taken a clear position in face of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

  Centralization and Jacobinism

  Thus the revolution develops by virtue of rigorous laws whose consequences are not open to discussion. We have to counteract them and modify them within the limits of our powers, and our criticism may be usefully exercised in this direction. But such criticism must not make us lose sight of the fact that we are often dealing with unchangeable necessities—that it is a question of the internal logic of any revolution and that, as a result, it would be absurd to put the blame for particular facts (however deplorable) on the wishes of a group of men, on a doctrine or on a party. Rather than being molded by men, doctrines and parties, the revolution molds them. Only those who conform to its necessities are granted the appearance of being superior to events; the others are cast aside or broken. That is doubtless why the anarchists, unskilled in adapting themselves to new circumstances, have generally been carried away by the storm—and sacrificed; while the Marxists, being more prudent realists, bravely adapted to the necessities of the hour. Their supreme merit in so doing was never to lose sight of the final goal.

  The suppression of so-called freedoms; dictatorship backed up if necessary by terror; the creation of an army; the centralization for war purposes of industry, food supplies and administration (whence state control and bureaucracy); and finally, the dictatorship of a party. In this fearsome chain of necessities, there is not a single link which is not rigorously conditioned by the one that precedes it and which does not in turn condition the one that follows it.

  In 1917–1920 in Russia, as in 1789–1797 in France, these were the consequences of a struggle to the death by a revolutionary minority against a reactionary minority; consequences—of the disintegration of the old society, of the crisis of industry, of famine, of the breakdown of the moral incentives which held individual egoisms in check, of the clash of enthusiasms and fanaticisms—in short, of the class war, at home and on an international scale, transforming the whole country into an entrenched camp where, in the last resort, there is no longer any law except martial law.

  In an article called “Anarchist criticism and the necessities of the revolution”n I have examined the main aspects of these questions at some length. As I do not believe it is necessary to develop further an argument of which the main features have already been adequately set out, I shall confine myself to a few observations on centralization and the action of the Communist Party.

  The anarchist tradition is, with good reason, one of decentralization. It fights centralization in the name of individual initiative. It presents federalism as an alternative. All well and good. But today can we be satisfied with the traditions of the Jura Federation? o Should we not rather discriminate, probe more deeply, state more precisely. Indeed we should—and perhaps it is not very difficult. The pernicious form of centralization, that which kills initiative, is authoritarian centralization. For it is self-evident that even in the most libertarian communist society, at least certain industries (let us say by way of example) must be run on the basis of a single plan, according to an overall picture and on the basis of precise statistics, etc. It is even more accurate to say that industry as a whole will have to have, over and above the millions of brains which give it life, a single brain. But the function of this center will be to manage on the basis of science and not of authority; it will impose itself because it will be the beneficial result of the efforts of all the bodies involved in production and not because it is feared; it will stimulate, enlighten, co-ordinate and use the free initiatives of autonomous groups and of individuals
which it will not aspire to dominate by means of coercion. In short, what is pernicious in the principle of centralization as it understood at the present time is the authoritarian spirit. If this spirit is set aside, all that remains is co-ordination. The future will doubtless eliminate, although not without great struggles, the authoritarian spirit, the last trace of the spirit of exploitation. To aspire towards this, in revolutionary periods, anarchists can no longer deny the need for a certain degree of centralization, and nonetheless they have a contribution to make, a contribution that they alone can make. What they must say is as follows:

  Centralization, agreed. But not of an authoritarian type. We may have recourse to the latter from necessity, but never from principle. The only revolutionary form of organization is: free association, federation, co-ordination. It does not exclude the centralization of skills and information; it excludes only the centralization of power, that is, of arbitrariness, of coercion, of abuse. It must spring from the masses and not be sent down to them in order to control them.

  In this respect, we must hope that in more culturally advanced countries, where the masses have more experience of organization and self-discipline, the bitter experiences of Russia will not be repeated. In Russia the dictatorship of the proletariat had to apply an authoritarian centralization which became ever fuller. We may and should deplore this. Unfortunately I do not believe it could have been avoided. The lack of organization, the generally low level of culture of the Russian people, the shortage of men, the great quantity of mistakes and abuses, the immense danger—all these compelled the revolution increasingly to monopolize power in the hands of its most experienced leaders. We have seen this experience developing before our very eyes. The “local autonomous powers” committed so many mistakes—and sometimes worse than mistakes—that the transfer of authority to the capital produced a sigh of relief.

  This question is closely linked to that of revolutionary organization before and during the period of the decisive struggles. The considerations set out above are relevant to this. But historical experience and logic lead us here to two conclusions as to the inevitability of Jacobinism. Excellent revolutionaries claim that “the dictatorship of the proletariat must not be that of a party,” and it is difficult not to agree with them immediately, if we are looking at what should, that is at what ought to, be the case. Perhaps, in other historical conjunctures, the various ideological currents of the revolutionary movement will achieve a certain balance, which is of course wholly desirable for the subsequent development of the new society. But it seems doubtful. For it appears that by force of circumstances one group is obliged to impose itself on the others and to go ahead of them, breaking them if necessary, in order then to exercise an exclusive dictatorship. That was the experience of the Jacobins of the Mountain who crushed first the Girondins and then the Commune. That was the experience of the Bolsheviks, obliged to overcome in turn the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries and the anarchists. Any other organization—even if it had been libertarian—would have had to do the same in their situation. For at such moments, the opposition, whatever it may be, becomes in practice the ally of the external counter-revolution; for intolerance is raised to its highest pitch by the very development of revolutionary psychology.

  In certain countries, the trade unions—and as a result the revolutionary syndicalist minority—seem destined to play an absolutely decisive role in the coming revolutionary crises. If one day they lay hold of the means of production, they will have to break the resistance of the reformist elements; and the minority taking the initiative, the conscious minority leading the movement, will have to organize itself to exercise a moral control over the unions themselves, in order to purge them and to thwart any plots: for example, if the minority in question is libertarian, it will have no option but to fight (and it will not always be able to choose what means to use) against the plots of the authoritarians!!! The Russian Communists shrank from the necessity of accepting exclusive power until the day when the attempt by the Left Social Revolutionaries to seize power by force (the Moscow insurrection of July 7–8, 1918) compelled them to do so. Until that date both parties held power. On July 7, 1918 the Social Revolutionaries rose up, and took over the postal and telegraphic services in order to let the country know that “henceforth they would rule on their own”; cannons were fired at the Kremlin, where the People’s Commissars were residing. They were defeated; and then it was the Bolsheviks who ruled alone. It is highly dubious whether parties and groupings in other countries will, in similar circumstances, be better able to resist the temptation to control events on their own, and thus behave more moderately. For who is not capable of risking everything in order to achieve their ideal in full? The formation of a Jacobin party and the exclusivity of the dictatorship do not therefore appear inevitable; and everything henceforth depends on the ideas which inspire it, on the men who apply these ideas, and on the reality of control by the masses.

  The pitiless logic of history seems hitherto to have left very little scope for the libertarian spirit in revolutions. This is because human freedom, which is the product of culture and of the raising of the level of consciousness, cannot be established by violence; precisely the revolution is necessary to win—by force of arms—from the old world of oppression and exploitation the possibility of an evolution that hopefully will be peaceful and which will lead us to spontaneous order, to the free association of free workers, to anarchy.

  So it is all the more important, throughout all these struggles, to preserve the libertarian spirit. And in this respect we may nourish high hopes. The countries which will now be the next to take the revolutionary road will no longer have to fear the protracted ordeals of the Russian Revolution, the assault of two imperialisms, stretched out for years, the blockade and all the distress it produced; from the very first hour they will have a powerful ally in the Russian Revolution which has taken on their behalf the first and the most difficult steps.

  The revolution is a sacrifice to the future

  These are indeed “harsh truths.” But such is the reality of revolutions. It really is too easy to label oneself a revolutionary without taking the trouble to study the historical experience of more than a century. In the eyes of the anarchist in particular, the spectacle of revolutions no longer has anything idyllic about it.

  To all that is terrible in the words “civil war,” “dictatorship,” “intolerance,” “terror,” must be added the unleashing of anti-social instincts, the almost total cessation of scientific and artistic production, an apparent regression in morality, abuses of all sorts; just think of the victims, victims too many to count.

  But others have said it before us: the more violent the storm, the shorter it will be. How many are the victims of the social peace that exists under capitalism? By poverty, by social diseases (tuberculosis, syphilis, alcoholism, crime, prostitution), by economic and moral crises, how many lives does it sacrifice (imperceptibly, for we are so used to living in a poisoned atmosphere) every single day to the domination of the rich? As for wars, an inevitable consequence of the capitalist system, how many victims do they create? Certain single days of slaughter in the recent war may have cost humanity more lives than were lost by three years of revolution in a country of 140 million inhabitants.

  Every revolution is a sacrifice of the present to the future. What is at stake is the future of humanity. Made necessary by the previous economic and psychological evolution, this sacrifice conditions future progress. And it would be wholly accurate to say that it does not add to the total of the victims of what is called order, of what is in reality domination, both hypocritical and violent, by the powers of conservatism. For none of those who fall on the road of revolution—none, except a few privileged people who belong to the ruling class—would have been spared by poverty, by war, by the calamities of the capitalist order.

  The danger of state socialism

  From what has gone before, one conclusion stands out. The revolution is l
eading us irresistibly towards state socialism (state capitalism).

  Determined opponents of state power, the Russian Bolshevik Communists have nonetheless taken their decision in this situation. They are founding a state. They have an army, a police, a judicial system, a diplomatic service, ambassadors. And they are seeking to find the most effective means of destroying the state. The Communist plan provides for it to wither away rapidly. This clear awareness of the aim, preserved throughout the most varied adaptations to the different aspects of the struggle, indicates strength and will.

  But it obliges us to ask the most important question. Can the state die a natural death, to be replaced by free associations of producers? Lenin asserts it (State and Revolution); Bukharin (The ABC of Communism) attempts to prove it by showing how the normal functioning of the soviet regime gradually abolishes the old apparatus of compulsion that is known as the state by appealing to the energy of the masses. The full achievement of the Bolshevik Communist program would lead us to libertarian communism, to anarchy.

  The danger of state communism—even when conceived of and carried out with such a program—is that the state may obstinately persist in surviving. If we work on the basis of the historical method, that seems in fact to be probable. Never have we seen an authority voluntarily disappear. The socialist state, which has become omnipotent through the fusion of political and economic power, served by a bureaucracy which will not hesitate to attribute privileges to itself and to defend them, will not disappear of its own accord. The interests clustered around it will be too strong. In order to uproot and destroy it, the Communists themselves may need to resort to profoundly revolutionary activity which will be long and difficult. Any revolutionary government is, by its very nature, conservative and hence reactionary. Power exerts on those who exercise it a pernicious influence, which is often expressed in the form of deplorable professional deformations. It has an irresistible attraction for profiteers, careerist politicians, born authoritarians (a type of exploiter on the psychological level) and crooks. This mob of essentially counter-revolutionary elements automatically excludes from power free spirits, proud and simple characters, men who are disgusted by plotting and careerism. This corruption of power could be observed in France under the Directory and the Consulate.p Russian militants know how hard it is to fight it.