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Title: The Issues of Tomorrow Author: Marie Isidine Date: July 1919 Language: en Topics: class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, Marxism, maximalism, Russian revolution, syndicalism Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/the-issues-of-tomorrow-marie-isidine/ Notes: Published in Les Temps Nouveaux.
The old issue of maximalism and minimalism takes on nowadays a
completely different aspect than the one it had a few years ago. Partly
because of a lack of faith in the realisation of the socialist ideal in
a conceivable future, partly for tactical reasons, the socialist parties
had then elaborated minimum programmes, and had finally made them the
only real content of their everyday action. The anarchists rose up
against this reformism and this possibilism, convinced that nothing
could replace action towards the whole ideal and that any breaking down
of this action could only be harmful. And the conflict between those two
views filled the whole history of the socialist movement, from the
International to our time.
But now the situation has dramatically changed, because of the
revolutions which have broken out in European countries which, only a
few years ago, were the most backward. The distinctly social character
of these revolutions indicates that the fall of bourgeois domination is
no longer a subject of theoretical propaganda or historical predictions:
it it tomorrowâs reality. In Russia, Austria, and Germany, the movement
drags the great masses; it already makes the bourgeoisie shiver in
countries which have not yet been contaminated. Once again, the issue of
maximalism and minimalism is raised. Among the militants of the
socialist and syndicalist movements, some welcome with joy any attempts
at economic emancipation and work to make them spread; others stop,
hesitatingly, in front of the hugeness of the task at hand and wonder
whether they will be equal to the task; they would like to avoid this
responsibility, or even choose a favourable time for the mass movement.
They think the masses are not ready, and they would like to gain time,
if only a couple of years more, to prepare them, and in order to do so,
they need to give the movement a quieter course, to give it as an
objective some perfecting of workersâ rights or simple corporatist
demands.
In order to choose between these two opposite views, it is not enough to
let ourselves be guided by our revolutionary sentiment, or even by our
devotion to our ideal. We must look for the teachings from history, we
must rein in our feelings by critique, we must reach back to the
fundamental principles of our doctrine.
As we start publishing Les Temps Nouveaux again, in these completely new
conditions, we must, from the start, from our first issue, give a clear
answer to this vital question. On this answer depends our attitude
towards future events.
Letâs remind ourselves of our conception of the march of great social
movements, a conception which is entirely different from the one which
inspires the parties which divide their objectives between a final goal
and immediate goals.
How did the great emancipatory movement unfurl in the past? The fight
against the existing class order first only starts among a small
minority whose circumstances made them feel both their oppression and
the hope to put an end to it â more than among the great masses. Among
the masses, oppression is too heavy for the number of them who manage to
free themselves mentally to be, at first, consequent. But the
revolutionary minority fights at its own risks, without wondering about
whether others are following. Little by little, it starts to grow; it
can be seen, if not in facts, at least in spirit. The brave struggle of
some diminishes the fear of others; the spirit of revolt grows. We donât
always understand clearly what is the goal of people in revolt, but we
understand against what they are fighting, and this elicits sympathy for
them. Then the moment arrives at last when an event, sometimes
insignificant in itself, a flagrant act of violence or arbitrary power,
sparks the revolutionary explosion. Events are precipitated, new
experience is had every day, among the intense agitation of minds, ideas
develop in leaps and bounds among the masses. The gap between the mass
and the revolutionary minority shrinks.
After the revolutionary period â whether the revolution be victorious or
crushed â the general mentality has reached such a level which had never
been reached by long years of patient propaganda efforts. The
revolutionary minorityâs ideal is not fully realised, but what is
realised (either in facts or in peopleâs minds) is getting closer, the
more conviction and the less compromise this minority had expressed in
its action. What has been realised is part of its programme; what is
left will be the inheritance of the new generation, the watchword of the
new era opened by the revolution. Because a revolution is not only the
conclusion of a preceding evolution, it is also the starting point of
the following evolution which will precisely be concerned with the
realisation of the ideas which, during the revolution, have not found a
wide enough resonance.
Even when a revolution is vanquished, the principles it has put forward
never die. Every revolution in the 19^(th) century has been defeated,
but each one of them has been a step closer to victory. The 1848
revolution, which betrayed workersâ hopes, definitely dug, in the Days
of June, an abyss between workers and the republican bourgeoisie; it
also took away the mystical and religious character of socialism and
linked it to the actual social movement. The Paris Commune, drowned in
blood, blew away the cult of state centralisation and proclaimed the
principles of autonomy and federalism. What about the Russian
revolution? Whatever the future holds, it will have proclaimed the fall
of capitalist domination and the rights of labour; in a country where
the oppression on the masses was more revolting than anywhere else, it
proclaimed that it is those masses who must now be master of their
lives. And whatever the future, nothing will take away this idea from
future struggles: the reign of the owning classes has virtually ended.
These general considerations will dictate the answer to the question: do
we meet the conditions for social revolution? Every discussion about
knowing whether the mass is âreadyâ or ânot yet readyâ is always
misguided, whether it is pessimistic or optimistic. We have no way to
evaluate every factor which determines that a social group is ready.
What do we call âbeing readyâ? Would we wait for most people to have
become socialists? But we fully know that is impossible in our present
condition. If we could create a radical transformation of concepts,
feelings and of the whole mentality among the masses by propaganda and
education alone, why want a violent revolution, with all its suffering?
At any given time, the mass is never âreadyâ for the future and will
never be: a revolutionary uprising will have happened sooner.
Revolutionaries donât have the power to choose their time, to prepare
everything and spark the revolution at will, like lighting fireworks.
People who always consider large movements premature usually use the
grid of the realisation of some âobjective historical conditionsâ: the
degree of capitalist development, state of the industry, development of
the productive forces, etc. But they do not see these dogmas crumble
before their eyes â just like their minimum programmes crumbled â under
the pressure of life. The most confident Marxists have to admit that the
social revolution started not in a country where capitalism was
advanced, but in a mostly agrarian country where it was poorly
developed, and that, consequently, there are other factors at stake than
the development of productive forces. And if they had wished to study
this issue further, they could have drawn this conclusion from Marxism
itself, turning it into its opposite: into a theory of active progress,
realised by the efforts of individuals. There is, in Marx, a precious
quote: âMankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solveâ1 In
other words, if an ideal is conceived among a community, it is that the
necessary conditions to its realisation are there. Following this idea,
we will say that from that moment on, from the moment an ideal is
formulated by the vanguard minority, its realisation is only a question
of a balance of strength between present forces: the past, which has had
its time, and an inescapable future. Gradually, at the cost of hard
struggle and innumerable sacrifices, the balance tilts towards the
future. At present, after a century-old struggle for economic equality,
after a century of socialist propaganda, we are witnessing a large-scale
attempt at its realisation. It will still know some setbacks,
backtracking, both in its fight against is enemies and in its internal
development, and we shouldnât believe that we will find ourselves
tomorrow in the anarchist society we wish for. But we can only reach a
better life if we try to get it; experiment is the only way which leads
to it, and there is no other. Instead of asking: are the conditions
ripe? Are the masses ready? We should ask: are we ready? What can we
offer as concrete, practical measures âthe day after our victory, in
order to achieve our socialism, communism, by organising outside and
against any state? What are the measures to elaborate, the conditions to
study beforehand?â This is where our main preoccupation must lie; what
we must do is not be overwhelmed by events, but actively prepare
ourselves now, always remembering that an ideal is realisable only
insofar as people believe in its realisation and put their energy to it.
The realisation of socialism has left the realm of dreams and
theoretical propaganda; it has approached, and has even become an urgent
matter. And if it is important to answer the question of what methods
lead to this realisation, and are the most likely to gain victory, it is
even more important to get a clear picture of what we need to do after
the victory for the revolution to bring the greatest increase in
happiness, with the least suffering possible.
The âdictatorship of the proletariatâ seems attractive to many people
these days. It seems to mean that workers would now be masters of social
life, masters of their own destiny, without exploiters, nor oppressors
above them. It seems to be the direct and immediate realisation of
socialism. In France, especially, where the workersâ movement has not
been penetrated by Marxist theory and terminology, this phrase is the
cause of misunderstandings. It holds in itself a contradiction: a
dictatorship âis always the unlimited powerâ of one or of a small group;
what could be the dictatorship of a whole class? It is obvious that a
class can only hold power through its representatives, by someone who it
delegated or who, more simply, believes they can act in its name. In the
end, a new power is being established, the power of the socialist party
or of its most influential faction, and this power takes charge of
managing the fate of the working class. And this is not an abuse or a
sophistication of the idea of the âdictatorship of the proletariatâ, it
is its essence itself. It follows from Marxist theory, from the way this
theory conceives the evolution of societies. Letâs remind ourselves how
it goes.
By definition, political power is in every period in the hands of the
economically dominant class. The bourgeoisie, after it replaced feudal
powers in the economy, also replaced them politically, at least in the
most advanced countries in Europe and America. Since then the entire
political activity of the bourgeois class aims to safeguard its
interests and strengthen its domination. But then during the economic
development, proletariat takes the place of the bourgeoisie as the class
most apt to develop productive forces; therefore, political power must
also be its. The new state, the proletarian state, will then only be
preoccupied with the interests of that class, which becomes the dominant
class. That is the dictatorship of the proletariat. A natural objection
appears: a dominant class supposes a dominated class; however, economic
exploitation being abolished by the crowning of the most exploited
class, the existence of classes itself becomes impossible. This
contradiction is resolved thanks to the Marxist concept of how a
transformation towards socialism can be operated. It starts with the
socialist party seizing power; what can the socialist government do
then?
Marxist literature is not plentiful when it comes to projections into
the future: social-democrats have too much of a phobia of utopia for
these. But the few things we know about it are enough to let us know
that socialism will have to be realised gradually, over a whole
historical period. During this period, classes will not have ceased to
exist, and capitalist exploitation will not have ended: it will only
have been softened, attenuated in favour of the proletariat. It is now
the class which is protected by the state, while the situation for the
bourgeoisie is made harder and harder. This is how, at the dawn of
Marxism, Marx, in the Communist manifesto, listed the gradual measures
that the socialist government should adopt: (âŠ)
Putting this programme into effect will be done peacefully or violently,
according to the circumstances, and, in any case, thanks to a strong
political power. As it defines political power as âthe organised power
of a class towards the oppression of anotherâ, Marxism therefore
envisions, as an ultimate goal, a society which is only a âhuman
associationâ, without power. It is a path to anarchy cutting through its
opposite: an all-powerful state.
50 years later, Kautzky2, in the âSocial Revolutionâ, claims that âthe
conquest of political power by a class oppressed until then, that is, a
political revolution, constitutes the essential aspect of the social
revolution.â; he then indicates as series of legislative measures aimed
at operating gradually, with or without compensation, the âexpropriation
of expropriatorsâ: progressive taxes on income and property,
anti-unemployment measures, nationalisation of transport and of large
estates, etc. What is the possible regime of this âdictatorship of the
proletariatâ? A stronger state than ever, since it holds in its hands
the entire economy of the country; it is master of food distribution and
can literally take away bread from any citizen any time it wants. As a
way to stifle any opposition, it is very efficient. Workers are
employees of this state; it is by the state that they must have their
rights recognized. The fight against this gigantic boss becomes very
difficult; strikes become political crimes. Maybe some workersâ control
can be put in place, but it will only work insofar as the boss-state
accepts it. It is possible that workers enjoy, in exchange, other
advantages, political ones, such as exclusive voting rights, for
example, or privileges in product distribution. But, if we think about
it, these advantages are hardly progress, since they bring in their
social life no justice, and only serve to feed some hatreds. Instead of
abolishing the bourgeoisie as a class and placing each bourgeois in a
situation where they could work usefully, they are allowed (be it
âtemporarilyâ) to live off of othersâ work, but they are punished for it
by taking away some things they have a right to as human beings.
The bourgeoisie must be put in a situation where they are unable to hurt
anyone; it must be deprived of its armed forces and everything which
constitutes its economic domination. Repressive measures against
individual bourgeois are unnecessary vengeance. It is also a slippery
slope: you believe you are doing revolutionary work, while youâre not
bringing anything to building a new life. More than that: this civil war
against the interior enemy, as an evil which had been removed, leaving
the root, makes the prestige of the military grow, of the military group
leaders of any kind who are fighting on any side. The fight become
solely an issue of military force. Very naturally, the building of
tomorrowâs society is pushed back to quieter days. But the moment is
gone, the people are tired and the danger of the reaction growsâŠ
That is why, to the method of decrees, we oppose, in order to make
socialism a reality, a different method.
The opposition between these two views dates back once again from the
International, from the battle between Marx and Bakunin. It is Bakunin
who, first, proclaimed in his âPolicy of the Internationalâ that real
socialism differs from âbourgeois socialismâ since the first claims that
the revolution must be âa direct and immediate application of full
social liquidationâ, while the latter claims that âpolitical
transformation most precede economic transformationâ. The faction which
followed the tradition of the federalist International â our faction â
developed and detailed in the following years this idea of direct
economic revolution. In Le Révolté first, then in La Révolte, Kropotkin
showed through historical examples that human progress is achieved
through the spontaneous action of the people and not through the action
of the state; at the same time, he developed a programme for a free
communism, since the principle of âto each according to their needsâ was
alone compatible with a society managing itself without a state. He also
showed that the economic revolution cannot be realised little by little
and partially, that this only leads to disorganising the economy without
allowing it to be rebuilt on a new basis; that communist distribution
must be, in the interest of the revolution, started straight after
victory. He opposed the âconquest of breadâ to the âconquest of powerâ
and showed the necessity, for socialists, to find new ways outside of
the old forms.
The whole anarchist movement was inspired by these fundamental ideas.
Their field of action mostly spread from the moment when the workersâ
movement in France, which had slowed down after the fall of the Commune,
started getting a revolutionary spirit. Under the influence of F.
Pelloutier first, then of many anarchists who had joined unions, this
great revolutionary syndicalist movement was born which, in the early
20^(th) century, carried within it all the hopes of workersâ
emancipation. Syndicalism appropriated the idea of immediately taking
control of production, and it developed it: the organs which are called
to implement it already exist: the trade unions. The general strike,
prelude to expropriation, became the final goal of the CGT. Letâs remind
ourselves that its preparation seemed at some point such an important
and urgent task that La Voix du Peuple opened (around 1902, if I am not
mistaken) a column in which unions were invited to write what each one
would do after the victory in order to ensure continuous production in
their domain, how they would link up with other unions and consumers
etc. This initiative, which didnât get enough feedback, was of great
importance; it would be even more important to pick it up again now that
we are closer to practical achievements.
That was, from that time until the war, the fundamental character of
revolutionary syndicalism. From France, it reached other countries,
other workersâ movements. Anarcho-syndicalist ideas reached to the
writings of sociologists, lawyers, economists; scientists outside the
workersâ movement started to realise that the renewal of economic life
based on a free association of producers was maybe not simply a utopia,
that it could be the way to overthrow capitalism and inaugurate a new
form of political existence, without the state.
The war put an end to this evolution, and changed the course of events.
The state was suddenly strengthened, its reach extended; workersâ
organisations, on the other hand, were slowed in their action or
directed it, because of practical difficulties, towards more immediate
achievements. The reformist element became most important.
The revolutionary spirit reappeared throughout the world with the
Russian revolution, but under a different form: the form of statist
socialism.
The time has not yet come to draw definitive conclusions from the
experiment attempted in Russia; there are many things we donât know and
it would be hard to evaluate the role of different factors in successes
and failures. But we can say this: what we do know cannot change our
fundamental ideas. We do not intend to develop here all the arguments
which make us think that the government apparatus is inapt to realise a
social revolution, which can only be done by workersâ groups, once they
have become producersâ groups. This demonstration has often been made in
our literature. However, we deem it useful to repeat their general
conclusions.
We believe, as we have always believed, that peasantsâ and workersâ
organisations taking control of the land and means of production and
managing economic life is more likely to ensure the material well-being
of society than decrees from the government.
We believe that this mode of transformation is better equipped to disarm
conflicts and avoid civil war (because it allows for more freedom and
more variety in forms of organisation) than introducing by authority one
reform across the board.
We believe that the direct participation of the people in building the
new economic forms makes the victories of the revolution more stable and
ensures better their defence.
We believe, finally, that this allows us to prepare, on top of economic
and political victories, a higher stage of civilisation, both
intellectually and morally.
French workersâ communities have inherited enough ideas and experience
of struggles to follow the path which leads more directly to complete
emancipation. To proclaim the fall of capitalism and the reign of
socialism is a great thing, and for that we can thank the Russian
socialist government. But we also wish for socialism to be put in
practice, for a new era for humankind to dawn and for no weapon to be
offered the reaction by the socialistsâ faults. For that, we who work on
French soil, we must use effectively the time we have to study what
workersâ organisations can and should do directly after the revolution.
We consider as something of the greatest importance to have the most
serious and most complete discussion possible about the issues of the
economy once the workers have conquered it. This is not a debate, or
propaganda, but a study. We can no longer just say that something is
desirable, nor even try to prove it: we must show practical measures
which can be immediately put into practice with the means we have at our
disposal.
This is the task we call for our comrades to accomplish.
The forms which production and distribution will take are at the front
of all our visions of the future: on them will depend the entire
character of the society which replaces the capitalist regime. The
question is not new, but the answer becomes urgent; also, the experience
of the Russian revolution gives us precious information confirming or
contradicting concepts formulated previously in a purely theoretical
fashion.
To resolve these issues concretely, that is, to organise an economic
organisation plan for âthe day afterâ, to indicate the frameworks and
the institutions which must be created to put it into practise, is a
task which goes way beyond the abilities not only of the author of this
article, but in general of such a publication as Les Temps Nouveaux. It
is the work of specialists: workers, technicians of all trades, directly
preoccupied by production; only their professional organisations and
groups can discuss what measures to take, now and in the future,
intelligently. But any socialist, any group of propagandists can and
should establish for themselves and their comrades a general view, to
think about the experience happening in front of their eyes, and to draw
some general lines along which they would want to see the more competent
thoughts of specialists work. Such considerations make up this article.
Among current ideas on the mode of production and organisation of a
socialist society, nationalisation is the most common and accessible.
The societyâs take-over of the means of production is conceived in the
programmes of all the state socialist parties as the state taking over,
since society is, by definition, represented by the state. Whatever
forms the state takes, be it parliamentarian, soviet, or other: it is
always the organisation holding political power which is also the owner
of natural resources, means of production and organs of product
distribution.
We can see how much the state is strengthened. As well as political
power, it holds every source of life. The dependence of its subjects
reaches its maximum. The boss-state is a very authoritarian boss, as
they all are. He wants to be master in his own business and does not
tolerate workersâ meddling if he can avoid it. Where the economy is
concerned, the state does not even want to be a constitutional monarch:
it always tends to be an autocrat. JaurĂšsâs3 idea: gradual
democratisation, through the state, of the economy, comparable to the
political democratisation operated in the past, appears to be only a
utopia now more than ever. Under capitalism, state employees and workers
are the most dependent of all, and at the other end of the spectrum of
social organisation, in the bolsheviksâ collectivist regime, it is still
the case: workers gradually lose both their rights of control and their
factory committees, even their best means of struggle: their right to
strike. And, on top of all that, they are submitted to mobilisation at
work, to workersâ âarmiesâ ruled with military discipline. And this is a
fatal flaw: no power restricts itself if nothing forces it to, and when
people in power follow an idea, when they are convinced it can only be
realised through coercion, they will behave even more unflinchingly,
even more absolutely in their right to dispose of the citizensâ lives.
It is generally through the need to increase production that suppressing
all workersâ individual and collective rights is justified. This is how
the bolshevik power explains the compulsory work armies. However,
outside any judgement on principle, the issue of the expediture, in
labour and in money, demanded by a large bureaucracy â a necessary
condition for the extension of state power â shows that this calculation
is misguided. In Russia, bureaucratic management of the factories
absorbs most of their revenue, not counting the number of people it
keeps away from useful work. And the results they wished for is far from
being obtained. The boss-state is ill equipped to fight this decrease in
productivity in labour which necessarily follows great catastrophes such
as war, starvation, lack of resources, etc. Also, the socialist
government of the bolsheviks has not found any other solutions to fight
these problems than well-known measures, which have long been fought by
socialists and workers of all countries: piecework, bonus pay system,
Taylorism, etc. This is how across the board, hourly wages become
piecework, 12-hour days replace 8-hour days, the age of compulsory work
has decreased from 16 to 14. And, lastly, this mobilisation of labour (a
measure which, a few years ago, we would have thought any socialist
party incapable of) which reminds us of the time of serfdom.
If socialists, who certainly do not aim to degrade workers and only take
such measures with a heavy heart, find themselves forced to go so far
against all their ideas, it is because in their field of action, which
is exclusively framed by the state and can only use the state, there are
no other solutions. And yet here is a fact, a small fact in itself, but
meaningful. During the harsh struggle led by the soviet government
against disorder in the industry, only one measure was taken which was
efficient. It was voluntary work on Saturdays.
âThe Communist Party made it compulsory for its members to join the
Saturday voluntary work scheme⊠Every Saturday, in different regions of
the Soviet republic, barks and carriages of fuel are unloaded, rail
tracks repaired, wheat, fuel and other commodities destined to the
people and to the front are loaded, carriages and locomotives are
repaired, etc. Slowly the great mass of workers starts to join the
âSaturday workersâ, to help the Soviet government, to contribute through
voluntary work to fight the cold, hunger and general economic
disorder.â4 From other sources we learnt that productivity in voluntary
work far exceeds the productivity of paid work in factories. There is no
need to point out how instructive this example is. Among all the
measures by which workers where either attracted by high wages,
according to the principles of classic capitalism, or submitted to
military discipline, only one proved efficient: the call for free and
conscious work of people who know they are doing something useful. This
is a striking example of the truth that the most âutopianâ solutions are
also the most practical, and that if we want to obtain âresultsâ
nowadays, the surest way is still to start from the final goal.
But these considerations proceed from a state of mind foreign to the
idea of the state and of compulsory work in its service.
Here is another formula, at first sight more attractive. It is the
companies being taken over by their workers or their corresponding
industrial organisations. It is the system which, in France, is
expressed by the phrase âthe mine to the minersâ. During the first year
of the Russian revolution, before even the bolsheviks gained power,
there were a number of examples of this take-over of factories by
workers. It was easy, since the bosses, at that time, wanted nothing
better than leave their companies. Later, bolsheviks introduced
âworkersâ controlâ in every factory, but this control was only a half
measure without practical effect: where the workers were weak and badly
organised, it didnât have any effect; where they were conscious of their
rights, they claimed â very logically â that they had no need to leave
them to their former owners. And they took them over, claiming them as
property of the people working there. But it was still the ownership of
a group of people replacing the ownership of a single bourgeois person.
This could lead, at most, to a cooperative of production. The collective
owner was only preoccupied â like the bourgeois owner used to be â about
their own interests; like the other, they tried to get orders from the
state, etc. Selfishness and greed, although they were now shared among a
group, were still no less strong.
Another consideration, a practical one this time, makes impossible the
extension of such a system to the entire society. There are some
companies which make a lot of profit: those which produce widely
consumed goods, or transport companies; the workers there who become
owners are, in this sense, privileged. But there are many others which
make no profit at all, although they demand continuous spending:
schools, hospitals, road repairs, street cleaning, etc. What would be
the situation of people employed in those branches? What would they live
off if those companies became their property? What means would they use
to keep them working and who would pay their wages? Obviously, the
principle of workersâ ownership must be modified for them. We can
imagine, itâs true, that consumers would pay; but this would be a step
back instead of progress, since one of the best results of economic
development is the fact that some conquests of civilisation are free:
hospitals, schools, bridges, water pipes, wells, and a few other things.
Making them a paid-for service would be adding a few new privileges to
the owners and taking away from the non-owners ways to fulfil most
essential needs.
All the considerations â and a few others â make such a system not very
desirable. In the Russian practice â to which we must always look as the
only socialist experiment made at present â the disadvantages of this
system, introduced from the start of the bolshevik era, pushed the
soviet government to adopt, as the only solution, nationalisation.
A third way should have been sought, by going along a very different
path; but bolsheviks were too infused with social-democratic and statist
ideas for that, which only pointed to the well-known system of
nationalisation. And this is what they chose.
Letâs try, for our part, to look for this third way: a regime which
would give the workers the management of economic life, but without the
disadvantages of industrial ownership. And, first of all, letâs get back
to our fundamental principle: our communism, real communism and not this
1848 communism, already outdated, which bolsheviks recently rediscovered
and which they adopted as a name for their party to dispose of the name
âsocial-democratâ, which was too dishonoured by compromises. Letâs try,
in the light of this principle, to examine a bit more clearly the issues
at hand.
If we do not recognise the nationalisation in the hands of the state nor
the formula âthe mine to the minersâ, what form can this take-over of
the means of production by the workersâ organisations (unions, soviets,
factory committees or others) take?
First of all, the means of production cannot become the property of
these organisations: they must only have the use of them. The wind or
the water which make the blades or the wheel of a mill turn are no-oneâs
property; they are only used for work. In the same way, land must be
no-oneâs property; the people who cultivate it use it, but it belongs to
the collectivity, that is, no-one in particular. In the same way, work
instruments built by human hands: they are common property, or
collective wealth, used by those who use them at some given time. How,
this being accepted, can we envision first the organisation of
production, then the organisation of distribution?
Obviously, only the sum of concerned industrial organisations can manage
a branch of production; these professional organisations will group
indiscriminately the workers themselves and more knowledgeable
specialists â engineers, scientists, etc. Each branch of production is
closely linked on the one hand with the branches which give it raw
materials, and on the other with the organisations or the public who
consume its products. And, since, in these relationships, the most
important role is to know the needs and possibilities, there must be
some groups, committees who will concentrate the necessary statistical
teachings. Their role must be strictly limited to that of purveyors of
statistical data; the use which will then be made of this data does not
concern them. They cannot emit any decree; the decisions belong solely
to the professional organisations. The advice of these statistical
committees is no more coercive than the information given by an
architect, the advice of a dietician, a teacher, etc. As for the
different branches of production, the modes of organisation can be very
varied depending on the technical peculiarities of each one: some can
admit a complete autonomy of particular groups, others can demand a
perfectly coordinated action of all. All that is desired is that there
is, in each speciality, not just one central organisation managing
everything, but a large number of specialised organisations, with
clearly delimited tasks. We cannot, obviously, predict the different
modalities that this organisation of work might offer. Adapting it to
current needs might not be an exceedingly difficult task.
But there are more difficult questions, which demand continuous
innovation, since nothing similar has ever been attempted. Who would be
the owner of these means of production, which will be managed by the
workersâ organisations, and of the objects produced, that is, of all
collective wealth? If it is neither the state nor the industrial
branches, then who? What does the sentence âthe means of production
belong to the collectivityâ represent concretely? Who will represent
this collectivity? Who will dispose of the products and on what ground?
Who will gain profit from their sale? Who will pay wages?
This is when we must have our communist idea in mind, our great
principle âfrom each according to their ability, to each according to
their needsâ, and draw all the conclusions from it.
âWho will dispose of the produce of labour?â These products must
constitute collective wealth offered for everyone to consume, if they
are immediately consumable goods, or offered for the workersâ
organisation to use (if they are raw materials or tools). Individuals or
organisations will draw from these stocks as they need them, and, in
case of insufficient quantities, after an agreement with other consumers
and interested organisations. No-one truly owns these products, except
the workers in distribution who will try to satisfy orders.
In the same way, the question âwho would get the profit from the sale?â
is answered. There will be no profit, because there would be no sale,
because products are not commodities, but only consumable goods, equally
accessible to all. Communism does not recognise the distinction between
consumable goods â private property â and the means of production â
collective property. It doesnât even recognise between those any
difference in nature; coal, for example, which is it? It is an
indispensable element in production, and it also is one of the most
needed objects of individual consumption. The aim in communism is to
make everything free. Everyone will recognize that housing, food,
necessary clothes, heating, etc. must be available to all in the same
way as medical care or street lighting, which are even offered in
capitalist society. Any human being is entitled to these first necessity
objects by the mere fact of their existence, and no-one can deprive them
of those. The individual part in social consumption can be determined by
many individual and social factors: first, by the needs of each person
for everything that is abundant; alas! in modern Europe, instead of an
abundance of products, there are shortages, and this will have to be
noted. A necessary minimum (calculated as much as possible on average
consumption in normal times) will have to be established and rationing
put in place, of a common accord. Rations can and must be different
according to categories of people. These categories should be based in
the difference in needs; age would have to be taken into account, as
well as health, endurance, etc. Many considerations will have to be
envisioned, also, in the distribution of products: the needs of the
community, the need to make reserves for the future and to keep some for
exchanges with other communities, etc. There is only one factor we
refuse to take into account in these calculations: it is the amount of
work expended by each individual.
We can hear some protests. The spectacle of todayâs society, where those
who produce less consume more, revolts our sense of justice and makes us
say first of all: everything to labour and to each proportionally to the
work done.
But, despite this natural tendency, we think that it is not along this
principle â as legitimate as it appears compared to the obvious
injustice of our time â that must be founded the future society.
Vengeance exercised by the people against their oppressors at the time
of the revolution is fair, too, but it is not on this vengeance that the
reign of the people can be based after the victory, but on human
solidarity. The same goes for issues of distribution. And let no-one
tell us that we first need to repress the bourgeoisie and that the
victory of the working class must first lead to a mode of distribution
which puts labour in the place it deserves. The class struggle ends with
the workersâ victory and the distinction between workers and parasites
no longer exists. The possibility of free work in a free society is
given to all, and the number of people who refuse it will be so small
that it will not be sufficient to create a new class of parasites under
the form of a large caste of bureaucrats, and in the next generation the
traces of the old parasitism will have disappeared.
To give to each proportionally to their work is, if you wish, a fair
principle; but it is a lower type of justice, like the idea of rewarding
merit or punishing vice. We wonât go into details about all the
philosophical reasons which make us reject this. What would we be adding
to the arguments which P. Kropotkin gave when he laid the foundation of
anarchist communism? Letâs just say that â for the comrades you wouldnât
know this â at the other end of socialist thought, Marx accepted the
same views when he said that only when retribution for work will have
been replaced by distribution according to everyoneâs needs âcan the
narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entiretyâ5. We
precisely want to go beyond bourgeois rights and bourgeois-inspired
justice. Every one is entitled to their existence simply in virtue of
being human. Then, and also because they are human, a living being
living in a society, they will apply themselves to do their share of
work for the common good. This is the only possible guarantee against a
new form of exploitation and endless conflicts.
We reject therefore the idea itself of a wage; we dissociate the two
issues of production and of consumption, leaving between them only the
link which results from the fact that the total quantity of produced
goods must be indexed on the consumption needs. This is the only order
of things compatible with a regime in which workersâ organisations
manage production without being the owners of the means of production.
It is also the only one compatible with a free society, freed from the
coercive power of a state.
We do not hope, obviously, that, as soon as the next day after the
revolution, everything will fall into place nicely without conflict,
without a mixture of bourgeois elements from the past. We know that it
is very unlikely that this communism, complete and pure, could be
realised in one fell swoop. But we also know that it is to the extent
that the builders of the future will be inspired by it that their work
will be fruitful. That is why it appears so important, so infinitely
desirable, that this is the spirit in which the milestones of the future
are laid.