💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › carlo-cafiero-action.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:24:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Action
Author: Carlo Cafiero
Date: 25 December 1880
Language: en
Topics: direct action, propaganda of the deed, violence
Source: https://sovversiva.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/carlo-cafiero-action/

Carlo Cafiero

Action

There’s no reason for scholars to shrug their shoulders so much, as if

they had to bear the weight of the whole world: it wasn’t they who

invented the revolutionary idea. It was the oppressed people, who by

their often unconscious attempts to shake off the yoke of their

oppressors drew the attention of scholars to social morality; and it was

only later that a few rare thinkers managed to find this insufficient,

and later still that others agreed to find it completely false.

Yes, it is the blood split by the people which ends by forming ideas in

scholars’ heads. ‘Ideals spring from deeds, and not the other way

round,’ said Carlo Pisacane in his political testament, and he was

right. It is the people who make progress as well as revolution: the

constructive and destructive aspects of the same process. It is the

people who are sacrificed every day to maintain universal production,

and it is the people again who feed with their blood the torch which

lights up human destiny.

When a thinker who has carefully studied the book of the sufferings of

mankind defines the formula of popular aspiration, – conservatives and

reactionaries of all kinds all over the world begin shouting at the top

of their voices: ‘It’s a scandal!’

Yes, it is a scandal: and we need scandals; for it is by the force of

scandal that the revolutionary idea makes its way. What a scandal was

stirred up by Proudhon when he cried: ‘Property is theft!’ But today

there is no man of sense or feeling who does not think that the

capitalist is the worst scoundrel among thieves; more than that, – the

only true thief. Armed with the most terrible instrument of torture,

hunger, he torments his victim, not for a moment but for a lifetime: he

torments not only his victim, but also the wife and children of the man

he holds in his power. The thief risks liberty and often life, but the

capitalist, the real thief, risks nothing, and when he steals he takes

not just a part but the whole of the wealth of the worker.

But it is not enough to find a theoretical formula. Just as the deed

gave rise to the revolutionary idea, so it is the deed again which must

put it into practice.

At the first Congress of the International, there were only a few

workers in the French proletariat who accepted the idea of collective

property. It needed the light which was thrown on the whole world by the

incendiaries of the Commune to bring to life and to spread the

revolutionary idea, and to bring us to the Hague Congress, which by the

votes of 48 representatives of the French workers recognised free

communism as the goal. And nevertheless we still remember that certain

authoritarian dogmatists, full of seriousness and wisdom, repeated only

a few years ago that the Commune had checked the socialist movement by

giving rise to the most disastrous of reactions. Facts have shown the

soundness of the opinions of these ‘scientific socialists’ (most of them

knowing no science) who tried to spread among socialists the well-known

‘politics of results’.

So it is action which is needed, action and action again. In taking

action, we are working at the same time for theory and for practice, for

it is action which gives rise to ideas, and which is also responsible

for spreading them across the world.

But what kind of action shall we take?

Should we go or send others on our behalf to Parliament, or even to

municipal councils?

No, a thousand times No! We have nothing to do with the intrigues of the

bourgeoisie. We have no need to get involved with the games of our

oppressors, unless we wish to take part in their oppression. ‘To go to

Parliament is to parley; and to parley is to make peace,’ said a German

ex-revolutionary, who did plenty of parleying after that.

Our action must be permanent rebellion, by word, by writing, by dagger,

by gun, by dynamite, sometimes even by ballot when it is a case of

voting for an eligible candidate like Blanqui or Trinquet. We are

consistent, and we shall use every weapon which can be used for

rebellion. Everything is right for us which is not legal.

‘But when should we begin to take our action, and open our attack?’

friends sometimes ask us. ‘Shouldn’t we wait until our strength is

organised? To attack before you are ready is to expose yourself and risk

failure.’

Friends, if we go on waiting until we are strong enough before

attacking, – we shall never attack, and we shall be like the good man

who vowed he wouldn’t go into the sea until he had learnt to swim. It is

precisely revolutionary action which develops our strength, just as

exercise develops the strength of our muscles. True, at first our blows

will not be deadly ones; perhaps we shall even make the serious and wise

socialists laugh, but we can always reply: ‘You are laughing at us

because you are as stupid as those who laugh at a child falling down

when it learns to walk. Does it amuse you to call us children? All right

then, we are children, for the development of our strength is still in

its infancy. But by trying to walk, we show that we are trying to become

men, that is to say, complete organisms, healthy and strong, able to

make a revolution, and not scribbling editors, old before their time,

constantly chewing over a science which they can never digest, and

always preparing in infinite space and time a revolution which has

disappeared into the clouds.’

How shall we begin our action?

Just look at an opportunity, and it will soon appear. Everywhere that

rebellion can be sensed and the sound of battle can be heard, that is

where we must be. Don’t wait to take part in a movement which appears

with the label of official socialism on it. Every popular movement

already carries with it the seeds of the revolutionary socialism: we

must take part in it to ensure its growth. A clear and precise ideal of

revolution is formulated only by an infinitesimal minority, and if we

wait to take part in a struggle which appears exactly as we have

imagined it in our minds, – we shall wait for ever. Don’t imitate the

dogmatists who ask for the formula before anything else: the people

carry the living revolution in their hearts, and we must fight and die

with them.

And when the supporters of legal or parliamentary action come and

criticise us for not having anything to do with the people when they

vote, we shall reply to them: ‘certainly, we refuse to have anything to

do with the people when they are down on their knees in front of their

god, their king, or their master; but we shall always be with them when

they are standing upright against their powerful enemies. For us,

abstention from politics is not abstention from revolution; our refusal

to take part in any parliamentary, legal or reactionary action is the

measure of our devotion to a violent and anarchist revolution, to the

revolution of the rabble and the poor.’