💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › petr-kropotkin-revolutionary-government.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:23:04. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Revolutionary Government Author: Pëtr Kropotkin Date: 1892 Language: en Topics: classical, history, revolution, social revolution, the State Source: Retrieved on March 1st, 2009 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/revgov.html Notes: From Freedom, A Journal of Anarchist Communism, Translated from “La Revolte” and reprinted from “The Commonweal,” proofread version retrieved on January 2, 2020, from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=410.
That the Governments at present existing ought to be abolished, so that
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity should no longer be empty words but
become living realities, and that all forms of government as yet tried
have only been so many forms of oppression, and ought to be replaced by
a new form of grouping, so far all who have a brain and temperament ever
so little revolutionary unanimously agree. In truth one does not need to
be much of an innovator in order to arrive at this conclusion; the vices
of the governments of today, and the impossibility of reforming them,
are too evident to be hidden from the eyes of any reasonable observer.
And as regards overturning governments, it is well-known that at certain
epochs that can be done without much difficulty; there are times when
governments crumble to pieces almost of themselves, like houses of
cards, before the breath of the people in revolt. That has been seen
clearly seen clearly in 1848 and in 1870; and will soon be seen again.
To overturn a government — this for a revolutionary middle-class man is
everything, for us it is only the beginning of the Social Revolution.
The machine of the State once out of gear, the hierarchy of
functionaries disorganized and not knowing in what direction to take a
step, the soldiers having lost confidence in their officers — in a word
the whole army of the defenders of capital once routed — then it is that
the grand work of destruction of all the institutions which serve to
perpetuate economic and political slavery will become ours. The
possibility of living freely being attained, what will revolutionists do
next?
To this question the Anarchists alone give the proper answer, “No
Government, Anarchy!” All the others say “A Revolutionary Government!”
and they only differ as to the form to be given to that government. Some
decide for a government elected by universal suffrage in the State or in
the Commune; others decide on a Revolutionary Dictator.
---
A Revolutionary Government! These are two words which sounds very
strange in the ears of those who really understand what the Social
Revolution means, and what a government means. The words contradict each
other, destroy each other. We have seen of course many despotic
governments — it is the essence of all government to take the side of
the reaction against the Revolution, and to have a tendency toward
despotism — but such a thing as a revolutionary government has never
been seen, and the reason is that the Revolution — synonym of “disorder”
of upsetting and overthrowing of venerated institutions in a few days,
meaning the demolition by violence of the established forms of property,
the destruction of castes, the rapid transformation of received ideas
about morality, or rather about the hypocrisy which takes the place of
it, individual liberty and freedom of action — is precisely the
opposite, the very negation, of government, this being the synonym of
“established order,” of conservatism, of the maintenance of existing
institutions, the negation of free initiative and individual action. And
yet we continually hear this white blackbird spoken of, as if a
“revolutionary government” were the simplest thing in the world, as
common and as well-known to all as Royalty, the Empire and the Papacy!
That the so-called revolutionists of the middle-class should preach this
idea is nothing strange. We know well what they understand by
Revolution. They understand by it a bolstering up of their republic, the
taking possession by the so-called republicans of the lucrative
employments reserved today for the Bonapartists or Royalists. It means
at the most the divorce of Church and State, replaced by the concubinage
of the two, and above all for that of the future administrators of these
goods; perhaps it may mean the referendum, or some other political
machinery of the same kind. But that revolutionary socialists should
make themselves the apostles of such an idea — we can only explain by
supposing one of two things. Either they are imbued with prejudices
which they have imbibed without knowing it from literature and above all
from history, written to suit middle-class ideas; and still possessed
with the spirit of servility, product of ages of slavery, they cannot
even imagine themselves free. Or else they do not really desire this
Revolution which they have always on their lips, they would be content
with a simple plastering up of present institutions, provided that they
would secure power for themselves, leaving to the future to decide what
they should do to satisfy “the beast” called the People. They only go
against the Governors of the present time in order to take their places.
With these people we care not to argue. We will then only speak to those
who honestly deceive themselves.
Let us begin with the first of the two forms of “Revolutionary
Government” which is advocated — the elected government.
---
The power of Royalty or some other we will suppose has just been
overturned, the army of the defenders of capital is routed; everywhere
there is fermentation, discussion of public affairs, everywhere a desire
to march onward — new ideas arise, the necessity of important changes is
perceived — it is necessary to act, it is necessary to begin without
pity the work of demolition, in order to prepare the ground for the new
life. But what do they propose to us to go? To convoke the people to
elections, to elect at once a government and confide to it the work
which we all of us, and each of us, should undertake of our own
initiative.
This is what Paris did after the 18^(th) of March 1871. “I will never
forget,” said a friend to us, “these delightful moments of deliverance.
I came down from my upper chamber in the Latin Quarter to join that
immense open-air club which filled the Boulevards from one end of Paris
to the other. Everyone talked about public affairs; all mere personal
preoccupations were forgotten; no more was thought of buying or selling;
all felt ready body and soul to advance toward the future. Men of the
middle-class even, carried away by the general enthusiasm saw with joy a
new world opened up. ‘If it is necessary to make a social revolution,’
they said, ‘make it then. Put all things in common; we are ready for
it.’ All the elements of the revolution were there, it was only
necessary to set them to work. When I returned to my lodging at night I
said to myself “How fine is humanity after al, but no one knew it; it
has always been calumniated;’ Then came the elections, the members of
the Commune were named — and then little by little the ardor of
devotion, and the desire for action were extinguished. Everyone returned
to his usual task saying to himself “Now we have an honest government,
let it act for us’” — what followed everyone knows.
Instead of acting for themselves, instead of marching forwards, instead
of advancing in the direction of a new order of things, the people,
confiding in their governors, entrusted to them the charge of taking the
initiative — this was the first consequence of the inevitable result of
elections. Let us see now what these governors did who were invested
with the confidence of all.
---
Never were elections more free than those of March, 1871. The opponents
of the Commune admit it themselves. Never was the great mass of electors
more influenced with the desire to place in power the best men, men for
the future, true revolutionists. And so they did. All well-known
Revolutionists were elected by immense majorities; Jacobins, Blanquists,
Internationals, all the three revolutionary divisions were represented
in the Council of the Commune. No election could give a better
government.
But what was the result of it? Shut up in the City Mansion, charged to
proceed after the forms established by preceding governments, these
ardent revolutionists, these reformers found themselves smitten with
incapacity and sterility. With all their good will and their courage
they did not even know how to organize the defense of Paris. Of course
people now blame the men, the individuals for this; but it was not the
men who were the cause of this failure — it was the system carried out.
In fact universal suffrage, when it is quite free, can only produce, at
best, an assembly which represents the average of the opinions which at
the time are held by the mass of the people; and this average at the
outbreak of the Revolution, has only a vague idea of the work to be
accomplished, without understanding at all how they ought to undertake
it. Ah, if the bulk of the nation, of the Commune, could only understand
before the movement what was necessary to be done as soon as the
government should be overturned! If this dream of the utopians of the
chair could be realized we never would have had bloody revolutions; the
will of the bulk of the nation once expressed the rest would submit to
it with a good grace. But this is not how things are done. The
Revolution bursts out long before a general understanding has been come
to, and those who have a clear idea of what should be done the next day
are only a very small minority. The great mass of the people have as yet
only a general idea of the end which they wish realized, without knowing
much how to advance toward that end, nor much confidence in the
direction to follow. The practical solution will not be found, will not
be made clear until the change will have already begun; it will be the
product of the Revolution itself, of the people in action — or else it
will be nothing, the brain of a few individuals being absolutely
incapable of finding solutions which can only spring from the life of
the people.
This is the situation which is reflected in the body elected by
universal suffrage, even if it had not all the vices inherent in
representative governments in general. The few men who represent the
revolutionary idea of the epoch find themselves swamped among the
representatives of the revolutionary schools of the past, and of the
existing order of things. These men who would be so necessary among the
people, particularly in the days of the Revolution, to sow and broadcast
their ideas, to put the mass in movement, to demolish the institutions
of the past — find themselves shut up in a Hall, vainly discussing how
to wrest concessions from the moderated, and how to convert their
enemies, while there is really only one way of inducing them to accept
the new idea — namely to put it in execution. The government becomes a
parliament with all the vices of a middle-class parliament. Far from
being a “revolutionary” government it becomes the greatest obstacle to
the Revolution, and at last the people finds itself compelled to put it
out of the way, to dismiss those that but yesterday it acclaimed as its
chosen. But it is not so easy to do so. The new government which has
hastened to organize a new administration in order to extend its
domination and make itself to be obeyed, does not understand giving up
so easily. Jealous of maintaining its power, it clings to it with all
the energy of an institution which has not yet had time to fall into
senile decay. It decides to oppose force with force, and there is only
one means then to dislodge it, namely, to take up arms, to make another
revolution in order to dismiss those in whom the people had placed all
their hopes.
There you see the Revolution divided against itself! After losing
precious time in delays, it now loses its strength in intestine
divisions between the friends of the new government, and those who see
the necessity of dissolving it. And all this happens because it has not
been understood that a new life requires new forms; that it is not by
clinging to ancient forms that a revolution can be carried out! All this
for not having understood the incompatibility of revolution and
government, for not having seen that the one is, under whatever form it
presents itself, the negation of the other, and that outside of Anarchy
there is no such thing as revolution.
It is just the same with regard to that other form of “revolutionary
government” so often extolled — a Revolutionary Dictatorship.
The dangers to which the Revolution is exposed when it allows itself to
be controlled by an elected government, are so evident that a whole
school of Revolutionists renounce entirely the idea of it. They
understand that it is impossible for a people in insurrection to give
themselves, by means of elections, any government but one that
represents the past, and which must be like leaden shoes on the feet of
the people, above all when it is necessary to accomplish that immense
regeneration, economic, political and moral which we understand by the
Social Revolution. They renounce then the idea of “legal” government at
least during that period which is a revolt against legality, and they
advocate a “revolutionary dictator.”
“The party,” they say, “which will have overturned the government will
take the place of it of course. It will seize upon power and proceed in
a revolutionary manner. It will take the measures necessary to secure
the success of the insurrection; it will demolish the old institutions;
it will organize the defense of the country. As for those who will not
recognize its authority, why the guillotine will settle them, whether
they belong to the people or the middle-class, if they refuse to obey
the orders necessary for the advance of the Revolution — The guillotine
still in action! See how these budding Robespierres argue, who know
nothing of the grand epic of the century but its period of decline, men
who have never learned anything about it except from speeches of the
hangers-on of the republic.
---
For us Anarchists the dictator of an individual or of a party (at bottom
the very same thing) has been finally condemned. We know that Revolution
and Government are incompatible; one must destroy the other, no matter
what name is given to government, whether dictator, royalty, or
parliament. We know that what makes the strength and the truth of our
party is contained in this fundamental formula — “Nothing good or
durable can be done except by the free initiative of the people, and
every government tends to destroy it;” and so the very best among us, if
their ideas had not to pass through the crucible of the popular mind,
before being put into execution, and if they should become masters of
that formidable machine — the government — and could thus act as they
chose, would become in a week fit only for the gallows. We know whither
every dictator leads, even the best intentioned, — namely to the death
of all revolutionary movement. We know also in fine, that this idea of
dictator is never anything more than a sickly product of governmental
fetish-worship, which like religious fetish worship has always served to
perpetuate slavery.
But we do not now address ourselves to Anarchists. We speak to those
governmental Revolutionists, who, led astray by the prejudices of their
education, honestly deceive themselves, and ask nothing better than to
discuss the question. We therefore speak to them from their own point of
view.
---
And to being with one general observation; those who preach dictator do
not in general perceive that in sustaining this prejudice they only
prepare the way for those who later on will cut their throats. There is
however one word of Robespierre’s which his admirers would do well to
remember. He did not deny the dictator in principle; but “have good care
about it” he answered abruptly to Mandar when he spoke to him of it,
“[Jacques Pierre] Brissot would be the Dictator!” Yes, Brissot, the
crafty girondin, deadly enemy of the leveling tendencies of the people,
furious defender of property (though he once called it theft) Brissot,
who would coolly have consigned to the Abbaye Prison Hebert, Marat, and
all the moderate Jacobins!
Now this was said in 1792! And this time France had already been three
years in Revolution! In fact Royalty no longer existed, it only awaited
its death stroke; the feudal regime was actually abolished. And yet even
at this time, when the Revolution rolled its waves untrammeled, it was
still the counter-revolutionist Brissot who had the best chance to be
made dictator! And who would it have been previously, in 1789? [Honoré
Gabriel Riqueti, comte de] Mirabeau is the man would have been
acknowledged as the head of the government! The man who made a bargain
with the king to sell to him his eloquence — this is the man who would
have been thrust into power at this time, if the insurgent people had
not imposed its sovereignty sustained by its pikes, and if it had not
proceeded by the accomplished facts of the Jacquerie, in making illusory
every government constituted at Paris or in the departments.
But governmental prejudice blinds so thoroughly those who speak of
dictator, that they prefer the dictator of a new Brissot or a Napoleon
to abandoning the idea of giving another master to men who are breaking
the chains of their slavery!
---
The secret societies of the time of the Restoration and of
Louis-Philippe contributed powerfully to maintain this prejudice of
dictator. The middle-class Republicans of the time aided by the workers
made a long series of conspiracies, with the object of overturning
Royalty and proclaiming the Republic. Not understanding the profound
change that would have to be effected in France before even a republican
regime could be established, they imagined that by means of a vast
conspiracy, they would some day overturn Royalty, take possession of
power and proclaim the Republic. For more than thirty years these secret
societies never ceased to work with a devotion unlimited, and a heroic
courage and perseverance. If the Republic resulted from the insurrection
of 1848, it was thanks to these societies, and thanks to the propaganda
by deed made by them for thirty years.
Without their noble efforts the Republic would, up the present, have
been impossible.
---
The end they had in view was to get possession of power themselves and
to install a republican dictator. But of course they never succeeded. As
ever, from the very nature of things, a conspiracy could not overturn
Royalty. The conspirators had indeed prepared the way for its fall. They
had spread widely the republican idea; their martyrs had made it the
ideal of the people. But the final effort which definitely overturned
the king of the bourgeoisie was much greater and stronger than any that
could come from a secret society; it came from the mass of the people.
The result is known. The party which had prepared the way for the fall
of royalty found itself thrust aside from the steps of the Government
House. Others, too prudent to run the risks of conspiracy, but better
known, more moderate also, lying in wait for the opportunity of grasping
power, took the place which the conspirators hoped to conquer at the
point of they bayonet. Journalists, lawyers, good talkers who worked
hard to make a name for themselves while the true republicans forged
weapons or expired in jail, took permission of power. Some of them
already well-known were acclaimed by the people; others pushed
themselves forward and were accepted because their name represented
nothing more than a program of agreement with everybody.
It is useless to tell us that this happened because of a want or
practical spirit in the party action, and that other will be able to do
better in future — No, a thousand times no! It is a law as immutable as
that which governs the movement of the stars, that the party of action
must be thrown aside, and the intriguers and talkers seize upon power.
They are always better known to the great mass that makes the final
effort. They get more votes, because with or without voting papers, by
acclamation or by the ballot-box, at the bottom it is always a kind of
tacit election which is made in such cases by acclamation. They are
acclaimed by everybody and above all by the enemies of the Revolution,
who prefer to put forward nobodies, and thus by acclamation those men
are accepted as rulers who are really either enemies of the movement or
indifferent toward it.
The man who more than any other was the incarnation of this system of
conspiracy, the man who by a life spent in prison for his devotion to
this system, on the eve of his death uttered these words, which of
themselves make an entire program — “Neither God nor Master!”
To imagine that a government can be overturned by a secret society, and
that the secret society can take its place, is an error into which have
fallen all the revolutionary organizations which sprang to life in the
bosom of the republican middle-class since 1820. And yet facts abound
which prove what an error it is. What devotion, what abnegation, what
perseverance was not displayed by the republican secret societies of the
Young Italy Party! And yet all this immense work, all these sacrifices
made by the youth of Italy, before which even those of the Russian
Revolutionary youth pale, all the corpses piled up in the casemated of
Austrian fortresses, and under the knife and bullets of the executioner
— all this only brought into power the crafty, robbing middle-class and
royalty!
It was the same in Russia. It is difficult to find in history a secret
organization which has obtained, with such limited means, results so
immense as those attained by the Russian youth, or which has shown such
energy or such powerful activity as their executive committee. It has
shaken a colossus which appeared invulnerable — Czarism; and it has
rendered autocratic government henceforth impossible in Russia. And
still it is only simple fools who imagine that the Executive Committee
will get into power when the crown of Alexander III is dragged in the
more. Other men — the prudent ones, who strove to make a name for
themselves while the revolutionists laid and spring mine or perished in
Siberia, these others — the intriguers, the talkers, the lawyers, the
journalists who now and again shed a few tears very soon dried up, on
the tomb of the heroes, and make believe they are friends of the people
— these are the men who will come and take the place left vacant by the
Government, and will shout “stand back” to those “unknown persons” who
will have prepared they way for the Revolution.
---
It is inevitable, it cannot be otherwise. For it is not secret societies
nor even Revolutionary organizations that can give finishing blown to
governments. Their functions, their historic mission is to prepare men’s
minds for the Revolution and then when men’s minds are prepared and
external circumstances are favorable, the final rush is made, not by the
group that initiated the movement, but by the mass of the people
altogether outside of the society. On the 31^(st) of August Paris was
deaf to the appeals of Blanqui. Four day later he proclaimed the fall of
the government; but then the Blanquists were no longer the initiators of
the movement; it was the people, the millions who dethrone the man of
December, and proclaimed the humbugs whose names for two hears had
resounded in their ears. When a Revolution is ready to burst out, when
the movement is felt in the air, when its success is already certain,
then a thousand new men, on whom the organization has never exercised
any direct influence, come and join the movement, like birds of prey
coming to the field of battle to feed on the victims. These help to make
the final effort, but it is not in the ranks of the sincere and
irreconcilable conspirators, it is among the men on the fence that they
look for their leaders. The conspirators who still are possessed with
the prejudice of a dictator work then unconsciously to put into power
their own enemies.
---
But if all this that we have just said is true with regard to political
revolutions or rather outbreaks, it is much more true with regard to the
Revolution we desire — the Social Revolution. To allow any government to
be established, a strong and recognized power, it is to paralyze the
work of the Revolution at once. The good that this government could do
is nil, and the evil immense.
For what is it we have on hand? What do we understand by Revolution? It
is not a simple change of governors. It is the taking possession by the
people of all social wealth. It is the abolition of all the forces which
have so long hampered the development of Humanity. But is it by decrees
emanating from a government that this immense economic revolution can be
accompolished? We have seen in the past century the Polish revolutionary
dictator Kosciusko decree the abolition of personal servitude, yet the
servitude continued to exist for eighty years after this decree. We have
the Convention, the omnipotent Convention, the terrible Convention as
its admirers call it, decree the equal division per head of all he
Communal lands taken back from the nobles. Like so many other this
decree remained a dead letter because in order to carry it out it was
necessary that the proletarians of the rural districts should make an
entirely new Revolution, and Revolutions are not made by the force of
decrees. In order that the taking possession of social wealth should
become an accomplished fact it is necessary that the people should have
their hands free, that they would shake off the slavery to which they
are too much habituated, that they act according to their own will, and
march forward without waiting for orders from anyone. And it is this
very thing which a dictator would prevent however well integrated it
might be, while it would be incapable of advancing in the slightest
degree the march of the Revolution.
---
But if government, were it even an ideal Revolutionary government,
creates no new force and is of no use whatever in the work of demolition
which we have to accomplish, still less can we count on it for the work
of reorganization which must follow that of demolition. The economic
change which will result from the Social Revolution will be so immense
and so profound, it must so change all the relations based today on
property and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual
to elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the
society of the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be
made by the collective work of the masses. To satisfy the immense
variety of conditions and needs which will spring up as soon as private
property shall be abolished, it is necessary to have the collective
suppleness of mind of the whole people. Any authority external to it
will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must
be accomplished, and beside that a source of discord and hatred.
But it is full time to give up this illusion so often proved false and
soften dearly paid for, of a Revolutionary Government. It is time to
admit, once and for all, this political axiom that a government cannot
be revolutionary. People talk of the convention, but let us not forget
that the few measures taken by the Convention, little revolutionary
though they were, were only the sanction of action accomplished by the
people who at the time trampled under foot all governments. As Victor
Hugo has said, Danton pushed forward Robespierre, Marat watched and
pushed on Danton, and Marat himself was pushed on by Cimourdain — this
personification of the clubs of wild enthusiasts and rebels. Like all
the governments that preceded it and followed it, the Convention was
only a drag on the action of the people
---
The facts which history teach us are so conclusive in this respect, the
impossibility of a Revolutionary Government and the injurious effect of
that which is called by the name are so evident, that it would seem
difficult to explain the determination with which a certain school
calling itself Socialist maintains the idea of a government. But the
explanation is very simple. It is that Socialists though they say they
are the followers of this school, have an entirely different conception
from ours of the Revolution which we have to accomplish. For them, as
for them idle-class Radicals, the Social Revolution is rather an affair
of the future about which we have not to think much at present. What
they dream of in their inmost thoughts, though they don’t dare to
confess it, is something entirely different. It is the installation of a
government like that of Switzerland or the United States, making some
attempts at appropriation in favor of the State of what they call
“public services.” It is something after the ideal of Bismark. It is a
compromise made in advance between the Socialistic aspirations of the
masses and the series of the middle class. They would indeed wish the
appropriation to be complete, but they have not courage to attempt it;
so they put it off to the next century, and before the battle they enter
into negotiation with the enemy.
For us who understand that the moment is near for giving a mortal blow
to the middle-class, that the time is not far off when the people will
be able to lay their hands on all social wealth and reduce the class of
exploiters to a state of impotence, for us I say there can be no
hesitation in the matter. We fling ourselves body and soul into the
Social Revolution, and as on the road we follow, a government, whatever
may be its device, is an obstacle, we will sweep from our path all
ambitious men, however they shall come to thrust themselves upon us as
governors of our destinies.
Away with Governments; make room for the People, and Anarchy!