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Title: The Crisis of Power
Author: Alexander Schapiro
Date: September 1917
Language: en
Topics: Russian Revolution, anarcho-syndicalism
Source: Retrieved on 09.02.22 from https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/alexander-schapiro-anarchosyndicalism-and-anarchist-organization/
Notes: Published September 8, 1917, in Golos Truda [The Voice of Labour], a Russian anarcho-syndicalist paper.

Alexander Schapiro

The Crisis of Power

The last scenes of the first act of the crisis of power are playing

themselves out at a feverish pace. And there is only one possible

outcome: the removal of the bourgeoisie from any interference in the

affairs of the working class. This is now the principal condition for

achieving fundamental social changes in the life of the country, the

more so as the bourgeoisie is marching openly and defiantly hand in hand

with the Kornilovs and other conspirators against the revolution.

But we must not close our eyes to the approaching second act, when

Russia must decide whether to introduce a socialist government, as

demanded by the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. If this

should happen, the form of power would doubtless be different, but the

root of the evil, the essence, would stay the same. For as long as power

exists, a small circle of men will have in their hands the right to

decide the fate of the whole people; and even if these rulers are

socialists of the most decent and honourable sort, a clash between them

and the people is unavoidable, and their relations after each conflict

will grow more and more intense and antagonistic. The new authority will

use as much force as the present authority against its enemies, and the

struggle for socialism, the struggle for the rights of man, the struggle

for liberty, equality and fraternity, will be as ferocious as it has

been until now.

Anticipating this new crisis of socialist power, we come to the

conclusion that there is only one way out: the removal of all

governmental interference in the affairs of the toiling masses. There

must first occur a fundamental decentralization of power to the point of

its final disappearance as a factor in the life of the Russian people.

The people must not allow themselves to be muzzled again – not even with

the muzzle of socialist production – so that they will have to fight

once more for the elementary rights of free men.

The transfer of authority to the hands of a Central Executive Committee

is not the answer to the crisis of power. It can only slow down the

development of this crisis, not resolve it. The only way out of the

present situation is to transfer administrative tasks to local

organizations – in other words, complete decentralization and the

broadest self-direction of local organizations. In this work the local

soviets of workers’ and peasants’ deputies can and must play an

important role in regulating the course of everyday life and

guaranteeing the local population the widest development of freedom.

Only the spread of self-determination and local self-rule will

definitively resolve the crisis of power.