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Title: Socialism In Danger — Preface Author: Elisée Reclus Date: 1894 Language: en Topics: social democracy, Germany, Marxism Source: Revtrieved on 2020/10/25 from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k21752s/f4.item Notes: Originally published as “Le Socialisme en Danger,” translated to English by Anarchia!
The work of our friend, Domela Nieuwenhuis, is the result of patient
studies and personal experiences very profoundly lived; four years were
spent writing this work. In a time like ours, in which events go by
quickly, in which the fast succession of facts makes harder and harder
the critique of ideas, four years is already a long time, and certainly,
during this period, the author has been able to observe many changes in
society, and his own spirit went through an evolution. The three parts
of the work, published at various long intervals in La Société Nouvelle,
testify of the steps traversed. Firstly, the writer studies the “various
tendencies of Social Democracy in Germany”; then, terrified by the
retreat of the revolutionary spirit which he has recognized in German
socialism, he asks himself whether socialist development is not in
danger of being confused with the innocuous demands of the liberal
bourgeoisie; finally, resuming the study of the manifestations of social
thought, he notes that there is no reason to worry, and that the
regression of a school, in which one deals more with commanding and
disciplining than with thinking and doing, is very largely compensated
by the growth of libertarian socialism, where fellow workers, without
dictators, without enslavement to a book or to a collection of formulas,
work together to build a society of equals.
The documents cited in this book are of great historical importance.
Under the thousand appearances of official policy — formulas of
diplomats, Russian visits, French genuflections, toasts of emperors,
recitations of verses and decorations of servants, — appearances which
one is often naive enough to take for history, happens the great thrust
of proletarians emerging from the counsciousness of their condition,
with the firm resolution to make themselves free, and preparing to
change the axis of social life by the conquest for all of a well-being
which is still the privilege of some. This deep movement is the real
story, and our descendants will be happy to know the twists and turns of
the struggle from which their freedom was born!
They will learn how difficult was intellectual and moral progress in our
century which consists in “curing individuals.” Certainly, a man can
render great services to his contemporaries by the energy of his
thought, the power of his action, the intensity of his devotion, but,
after having done his work, he should not pretend have become a god, and
especially that, in spite of himself, we do not consider him as such! It
would be to want the good done by the individual to turn into evil in
the name of the idol. Every man weakens one day after having struggled,
and how many of us give in to fatigue, or else to the solicitations of
vanity, to the snares laid by perfidious friends! And even if the
wrestler had remained valiant and pure until the end, some will lend him
a language which isn’t his, and even the words he spoke will be used by
diverting them from their true meaning.
So see how was treated this powerful individuality, Marx, in whose
honor, hundreds of thousands fanaticized, raise their arms to heaven,
promising to religiously observe his doctrine! A whole party, a whole
army with several dozen deputies in the Germanic Parliament, do they not
now interpret this Marxist doctrine precisely in a sense contrary to the
thought of the master? He declared that economic power determines the
political form of societies, and it is now argued in his name that
economic power will depend on a party majority in political assemblies.
He proclaimed that “the state, in order to abolish pauperism, must
abolish itself, for the essence of evil lies in the very existence of
the state!” And we devote ourselves to his shadow to conquer and rule
the state! Certainly, if Marx’s political ideas are to triumph, it will
be, like the religion of Christ, on condition that the master, adored in
appearance, is denied in the practice of things.
Readers of Domela Nieuwenhuis will also learn to fear the danger posed
by the duplicitous ways of politicians. What is the goal of all sincere
socialists? No doubt each of them will agree that his ideal would be a
society where each individual, developing fully in his strength, his
intelligence and his physical and moral beauty, will freely contribute
to the growth of human wealth. But what is the way to get to this state
of affairs as quickly as possible? “To preach this ideal, to educate
each other, to join together for mutual aid, for the fraternal practice
of any good work, for the revolution,” will say first of all the naive
and the simple like us. “Ah! what a mistake! — we are told — the way is
to collect votes and conquer the public powers .” According to this
parliamentary group, it is advisable to substitute ourselves to the
State and, consequently, to use the means of the State, by attracting
the voters by all the maneuvers which seduce them, while being careful
not to offend their prejudices. Is it not fatal that the candidates for
power, led by this policy, take part in intrigues, cabals, parliamentary
compromises? Finally, if they one day became the masters, would they not
necessarily be trained to use force, with all the apparatus of
repression and compression that we call the citizen or national army,
the gendarmerie, the police and all the rest of these filthy tools? It
is by this path so widely open since the beginning of ages that the
innovators will come to power, admitting that the bayonets do not
overturn the ballot before the happy date.
The safest way still is to remain naive and sincere, to simply say what
our energetic will is, at the risk of being called utopian by some,
abominable, monstrous, by others. Our formal, certain, unshakeable ideal
is the destruction of the State and all the obstacles that separate us
from the egalitarian goal. Let’s not play the finest with our enemies.
It is by trying to deceive that one becomes fooled.
This is the moral that we find in the work of Nieuwenhuis. Read it, all
of you who have a passion for truth and who do not seek it in a
dictator’s proclamation or in a program written by a whole council of
great men.