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Title: On Synthesis
Author: Voline
Date: 1924
Language: en
Topics: synthesis anarchism, anarchism without adjectives, translation, truth, life, reality, creativity, construction, social, individualism, struggle, work, movement, revolution, science, organisation, organization, phenomena, knowledge, necessity, practice, praxis
Source: Articles appearing in numbers 25 and 27, March and April 1924, of the Revue anarchiste. Retrieved on December 2nd, 2017 from https://www.anarchisms.info/2016/10/29/voline-on-synthesis-1924/]
Notes: Sources: Working translation by Shawn P. Wilbur

Voline

On Synthesis

[First Article]

I.

Legend maintains that Jesus Christ gave no response to the question of

Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?” And it is very likely that in these

tragic moments he hardly had the heart to concern himself with

philosophical arguments. But even if he had had the time and the desire

to engage in a controversy concerning the essence of truth, it would not

have been easy for him to respond in a definitive manner.

Many centuries have passed since then. Humanity has made more than one

step toward knowledge of the world. The question of Pontius Pilate has

troubled humanity, it has made people think, work and seek in all

directions, and it has brought suffering to a great number of minds. The

ways and methods of the search for truth have varied many times… Yet the

question always remains without an answer.

---

Three principal obstacles arise along the path we follow to seek and

establish objective truth, no matter in what direction or in what region

we hope to find it.

The first of these obstacles is impressed with a purely theoretical and

philosophical character. In fact, the truth is the great existing All:

everything that exists in reality. To know the truth means to know what

is. But to know what is, to know the veritable truth, the essence of

things (“things in themselves”) would appear to be, for several reasons,

impossible at this time, and perhaps it will always be so. The essential

reason for that impossibility is the following: The world would never be

for us anything but the idea that we fashion of it. it presents itself

to us, not as it is in reality, but as it is depicted to us by our (or

more) poor, false senses, and by our incomplete and crude methods of

knowing things. Both are very limited, subjective and fickle. Here is an

example drawn from the domain of the senses: as we know, there exists in

nature, in reality, neither light, nor colors, nor sounds (there exists

only what we believe to be movements, oscillations); however, we have

above all an impression of the monde consisting of light and colors

(oscillations collected and transformed with the aid of our visual

organs) and sounds (movements collected and transformed by our auditory

apparatus.) Let us also not that a whole series of phenomena

unquestionably taking place in nature elude the organs of our senses. To

serve as an example in the domain of knowledge, it is enough to indicate

the fact that, constantly, certain theories are rejected to be replaced

by others. (A very recent example is that of the famous theory of

Einstein on relativity tending to “devastate” all our systems of

knowledge.) The only thing that I know immediately is that I exist

(cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am) and that there exists some

reality outside of me. Without knowing it exactly, I know nonetheless

that it exists: first, because it I exist, there must exist some reality

that has created me; second, because some entity that is found outside

of me communicates to me certain impressions. It is that reality, the

essence of which I do not know, that I call world and life; and it is

that reality that I seek to know as much as it will lend itself to the

knowing.

Obviously, if we wanted to always consider that obstacle, it would only

remain for us to say once and for all: everything that we think we know

is only lies, deception, illusion; we cannot know the essence of things,

for our means of knowing are far too imperfect… And on that basis, we

would have to renounce every sort of scientific labor, every work in

search of the truth and of knowledge of the world, considering every

attempt of that sort perfectly useless and destined to never succeed.

However, in the overwhelming majority of our scientific acts, acts of

thought as well as practice—if we set aside the domain of purely

philosophical speculation—we hardly consider that obstacle: first,

because if we did, we would truly have to renounce all scientific

activity, every search for the truth (something which, for many reasons,

is entirely unacceptable to us); and then, for we have certain reasons

to believe that our impressions reflect all the same, up to a certain

point, reality such as it is, and that our understanding comes closer

and closer to knowledge of that reality, to knowledge of the truth. It

is this last argument in particular, together with other impetuses, that

leads us to widen and deepen without ceasing our work of research.

Taking as data, — that is as having for us a real, concrete meaning,

common to us all, — our impressions and especially our knowledge of the

world and of life; taking as given the milieu, concrete for us, in which

we live, work and act, — we think and we seek on the bases and within

the limits of that reality as it presents itself: a subjective and

conventional reality.

The question of truth is equally posed within the limits of that

reality. And, above all, to decipher that reality, accessible to our

understanding and our impressions, as well as to pursue the continual

widening of its knowable limits — this already appears to us as a

problem of the highest importance.

But, in this case as well, we see loom up before us, and the path of

research and of the establishment of truth, two other obstacles, of a

concrete character as well.

Second obstacle. — Like life, truth is undivided. Truth (like life) is

the great All. To know this or that part of the truth still cannot mean

that we know the Truth (although it is sometimes necessary to go from

knowledge of the parts to the knowledge of the whole). To know the truth

— this means, to be precise, to know all the universe in its entirety:

all of existence, all of life, all the paths of life, as well as all its

forces, all its laws and tendencies, for all times and all terms, in all

its different secrets, in all its phenomena and separate details, as

well as in its entirety. Now, even if it was only within the limits of

the world intelligible to our faculties of impression and understanding,

— to embrace the universe, to know life and penetrate its inner meaning

appears to us impossible at present, and perhaps it will never be

possible.

Third obstacle. – The most characteristic trait of life is its eternal

and uninterrupted movement, its changes, its continual transformations.

Thus, there exists no firm, constant and determined truth. Or rather, if

there exists a general, complete truth, its defining quality would be an

incessant movement of transformation, a continual displacement of all

the elements of which it is composed. Consequently, the knowledge of

that truth supposes a complete knowing, a clear definition, an exact

reduction of all the laws, all the forms, all the combinations,

possibilities and consequences of all these movements, of all these

changes and permutations. Now, such a knowledge, so exact an account of

the forces in infinite movement and oscillation, of the continually

changing combinations,—even if there exists a certain regularity and an

iterative law in these oscillations and changes,—would be something

nearly impossible.

II.

To know the Truth—that means to know life as it is, to know the true

essence of things.

We do not know that true life, [so] we do not know the Truth.

However, we possess some knowledge of it.

As we receive impressions of life and we learn to know it through the

testimony of our senses and through the means of knowing that we find at

our disposal, precisely as we run up against the obstacles indicated,—we

learn, first, that life is some great synthesis, as reality as well as

personal feeling: some resultant of a quantity of diverse forces and

energies, of factors of all sort.

We also learn that this synthesis is subject to a continuous movement,

to incessant variations; we know that that resultant is never found at

rest, but that, on the contrary, it oscillates and varies without

ceasing.

To know the Truth—that would mean to embrace, know and understand the

whole of this global synthesis in all of its details, in all its

entirety and in all its eternal movement, in all its combinations and

its uninterrupted variations.

If we know life in its details, in its entirety and in its movements, we

will know the Truth. And that truth will be the resultant, constantly in

movement, of a quantity of forces: a resultant of which we should also

know all the movements.

---

We know neither the true life, nor its synthesis; we know neither its

reality, nor its meaning, nor its movements. For us, life in its

entirety is the great enigma, the great mystery. We only manage, from

time to time, to pluck some fragments of its synthesis from the air…

We do not know the authentic truth, the objective truth of things. Not

only have we still not managed to discover the truth, but we do not know

if we will ever discover it. We only succeed, from time to time, in

finding some isolated grains of the truth—dispersed and brilliant

sparkles of precious gold, from which it is still impossible for us to

form anything whole…

But—we seek the truth (or to put it better, some of us do.) We have

sought it for centuries and thousands of years. We scan on all sides, in

all directions—obstinately, offering all our forces to the search,

painfully, sorrowfully.

And if we know that life is a great synthesis, we know, consequently,

that the search for truth is the search for synthesis; that the path of

truth is that of synthesis; that in seeking the truth, it is important

to always remember the synthesis, to always aspire to it.

And since we know that life is a continuous movement, we should, in

seeking the truth, constantly consider that fact.

III.

The field of interest that particularly interests us is not that of pure

philosophy and speculation. The circle within which our interests, our

aspirations and our attempts principally move is the much more concrete

and accessible one of the problems of biology and above all of

sociology.

Seeking to establish some social conception, to intervene actively in

social life and to influence it in a certain direction, we wish to

discover in that concrete domain the guiding truth.

What do we do to find it?

Generally we take up certain phenomena in the given domain of life, we

analyze them, we seek to know them and penetrate their meaning.

It often happens that we succeed in drawing the exact assessment from

some phenomenon and that, consequently, we manage to put our finger on a

coin, on a part, on a fragment of the truth.

Four fundamental errors are very frequent—and very characteristic—in

these cases.

• Human analysis is not infallible. It does not lead directly to the

exact and indubitable, absolute truth. In every analysis, in every human

research, we inevitably encounter, along with some scraps of truth

grasped on the spot, more or less great errors, lapses, sometimes

oversights and clumsy false judgments—thus, [we make] assertions not in

conformity with the truth. We generally forget that this is the case,

and instead of seeking to establish and to eliminate these errors, to

find and apply the necessary corrections, we disregard them or else we

do still worse—we consider our errors as an expression of the truth, so

that we disfigure it and distort its value.

• Save for very rare exceptions, we are generally inclined to exaggerate

the significance, sometimes very minuscule, of the bit of truth found by

us, to generalize it, to make of it the whole truth, to extend it, if

not to life in its entirety, at least to phenomena of much larger and

more complicated order, and at the same time to reject other elements of

the truth we seek.

• We let ourselves be carried away by the analysis and a generalization,

erroneous from its immediate results, we constantly forget to consider

the second moment—and that is the most essential one—necessary to the

search for the truth: of the true and accurate way of generalization; of

the necessity,—the analysis once made and a phenomenon, a fragment of

truth grasped and understood,—not to take hold of that bit and raise it

to the rank of keystone, by making it the entire truth, but, on the

contrary, to remember other phenomena relating to the same order of

ideas, to seek to fathom their meaning as well, to compare them with the

bit of truth discovered and to do everything in order to establish a

correct synthesis. This problem of the second degree generally escapes

us. We forget that life is a synthesis of a great number of factors.

• We forget at each step that movement and variability never cease; we

forget that there exists no apathetic truth, that in life “everything

flows,” that life and truth are the dynamics par excellence. Habitually,

we do not account for this factor of an extreme importance and value:

the uninterrupted dynamism of life and truth. However, just as it would

be erroneous to take the form adopted at a certain moment by an amoeba

in motion for its constant form, it would be a mistake to suppose a

similar rigidity in the essence of truth: what has just been (or what

could have been) truth moment a moment ago—is not longer truth in the

following moment. The synthesis itself is not immutable. It is only a

resultant constantly in motion, which sometimes comes closer to one of

the factors and sometimes to another, and never remains close to one or

the other for long. We do not take sufficient account of this singularly

important fact. [1]

The errors indicated have a particularly harmful importance pour for the

domain of the human sciences, for the comprehension and study of our

social life, which represents an exceptionally complicated synthesis of

particularly numerous factors, the majority of which are of a special

order, a movement and a series of combinations—both exceptionally

complicated—of the most diverse elements (which, moreover, are far from

being solely mechanical.)

It is precisely in this domain that the most serious errors most often

take place. It is especially the numerous followers of the seekers of

truth who are guilty of this. The mission to reexamine their “truths,”

to redress their errors and make the necessary corrections later falls

to others.

Here are some examples that could serve as an illustration: the

definition made by Marx-Engels, and especially by their followers, of

the role of the economic factor in history (the so-called “historical

materialism”)—that excellent but unilateral (and consequently not

precisely correct) analysis, and—the exaggerated and “firm”

(consequently quite inexact) deductions that have been drawn from it;

the theory of classes of Karl Marx and his followers—that analysis, just

as brilliant, but narrow and insufficient (and thus erroneous on many

points), and the perverse deductions that have been made from it; the

“law” of the struggle for existence (Ch. Darwin and also, and

especially, his supporters in the various branches of science) with all

its errors and exaggerations; the unilateral individualist theory of Max

Stirner (and especially of his followers) and so many others.

The economic doctrine of Marx and his theory [of] classes, the

individualist conception of Stirner, as well as the law of the struggle

for existence de Darwin, etc., etc., are always admirable analyses—well

directed and called to give some important results—of one of the

factors, of one of the elements of the complicated and vital synthesis,

but in order to approach the truth of the synthesis, all these theories

are lacking one essential thing: the understanding of the necessity of

juxtaposing them with the analysis of other elements and other factors,

with the deductions that can be made from the results of these other

analyses. They lack the desire to account for phenomena of a different

order, the aspiration to seek the synthesis. We forget that real life is

a synthesis of different series of phenomena; that that synthesis is

moreover the moving and variable outcome of these series, series that

are also constantly in movement. We lose sight of the real and moving

synthetic nature of life and the necessity of a corresponding synthetic

character in scientific knowledge. This is the source of the errors of

generalization and deduction. Instead of approaching the truth, we

distance ourselves from it.

---

This erroneous attitude with regard to the phenomena examined, to the

bits of truth discovered, causes considerable damage to all our attempts

at social construction, for they cause us to wander very far from the

road leading to a precise solution of the problems that loom up before

us.

Indeed, if in each truth found by us we inevitably find mixed an alloy

of non-truth; if every partial truth established by us is never the

entire truth; if truth, like life itself, is always synthetic and

moving,—then in our constructions we approach the truth, we reckon and

understand vital phenomena and processes that much more correctly and

exactly to the extent that we verify more meticulously the bit of truth

found, to the extent that we compare it with other phenomena and bits of

truth discovered in the same domain, to the extent that we approach

synthesis and that we constantly recall the essential fact of the

uninterrupted movement of all things. And we distance ourselves from the

truth, from a proper understanding of life, from a correct

conception—that much more as we concern ourselves less with verifying,

comparing and contrasting, to the extent, finally, that we distance

ourselves from synthesis and the idea of movement.

It is very probable that we will never attain the knowledge of a correct

and complete synthesis. But the principle that must guide us is a

constant effort to approach it to the greatest extent possible.

Each time that we close our eyes to the defects and the vices of the

bits of truth found by us, we distance ourselves from the result sought.

The proper method consists, on the contrary, to carefully account for

these errors and of seeking their correction.

Each time that we take a fragment of truth found by us for the whole and

only truth, and we reject the other fragments, sometimes without even

taking the trouble of examining them closely—we distance ourselves from

the correct solution. The correct method consists of juxtaposing each

fragment found with others, to strive to discover some always new parts

of the truth and to seek to make them agree, so that they form one

single whole. That is the only way that we can reach our goal.

Each time that we limit ourselves to drawing the appraisal of our

analysis made from a single aspect of the question, and we forget the

necessity of continuing our work of research by aspiring to accomplish

its synthesis with the other aspects—we distance ourselves more from the

goal, however brilliant and exact our work of analysis has been. Each

time that we forget to take into account the constant factors of

movement and variability, and we take the bit of truth found by us for

something stable, firm, “petrified,”—we distance ourselves from the

truth. The true path is to always account for the multiplicity of

factors that all find themselves engaged in a continuous movement and to

seek the resultant (also moving itself) of these factors.

IV.

If we would consider anarchism and its aspirations, we must also note,

to our keen regret, that we find there, and at each step, the same

errors, demanding the same work of rectification; that there as well we

are still very distant from correct methods of seeking the truth and,

consequently, from correct conceptions.

Here also our habitual method remains the same: after having found and

established a certain bit of truth (often even long since discovered),

we begin by closing our eyes to the errors and defects mixed in there,

we do not seek to understand and eliminate them, then we begin to

proclaim that bit as being a crown of creation, constant and

unshakeable, we hasten to consider it as an immutable and complete

truth, we forget the necessity of moving to a work of synthesis and end

up neglecting to account for movement in its capacity as major function

of vital development, especially in the domain of social creativity.

This is also why we habitually entrench ourselves, with pettiness and

blindness, in some very small nook of truth, defending ourselves

furiously from the desire to enter into other corners, even [when]

perfectly well lit,—and this instead of setting ourselves to work

seeking synthesis embracing the work in its entirety.

I read, for example, the articles of comrade Maximoff (“Benchmarks”, in

the Russian paper from America, Golos Truzhenika) and I see that he is

concerned with establishing, in the most meticulous manner, not just the

general plan, but even the most minute details to be adopted by the

future social structure in the course of the social revolution. I say to

myself: “All of that is very good and has already been sufficiently

dwelt upon. But how does comrade Maximoff think that he can usefully

stuff or pile the complicated, hectic ensemble of life, all that

enormous, lively synthesis, within the cold margins of his dried-out

plan made on paper?” I know that life will refuse to introduce itself

into this scheme; I know that this scheme will only contain some few

bits of truth, surpassed by numerous faults and gaps. And to the extent

that comrade Maximoff means to make of his formula a finished thing,

polished and solid, in so far as he pretend that this formula (or any

other similar in its place) contains the sole and only truth, and that

everything that is not that truth must be criticized and condemned,—I

am, myself, of the opinion that it (or any other precise schematizing)

only exaggerates the importance of the factor of organization, correct

by itself and having great significance, but far from being the only

factor, and imbued with certain defects for which it is indispensable to

account, without which and apart from the synthesis with other factors

of an equal importance it would lose all significance.

When the “anarcho-syndicalists” say that syndicalism (or

anarcho-syndicalism) is the single, only way of salvation and reject

with indignation everything not adapted to the standard established by

them, I am of the opinion that they exaggerate the importance of the bit

of truth in their possession, that they do not want to account for the

defects inherent in that bit, nor for the other elements forming, in

concert with it, the correct truth, nor for the necessity of synthesis,

nor for the factor of vital, creative movement. I am, then, of the

opinion that they distance themselves from the truth. And I greatly fear

that they will find themselves in no state, when necessary, to resist

the temptation to impose and inculcate by force their scholastic

opinion, which the true life will refuse to accept as being opposed to

its vital truth.

When the “communist-anarchists” open the question by the same process

and, admitting only their own truth, immediately reject syndicalism (or

anarcho-syndicalism), they deserve the same reproach.

When the “individualist anarchist,” thumbing their nose at syndicalism

and communism, only admits their “self” as reality and truth, and when

they mean to reduce to this little “self,” the whole of the great vital

synthesis, they still commit the same error.

When I read in the article “The Unique Means” (cf. Анархический вестник

/ Anarkhicheskii Vestnik, no. 1, July 1923) that the internal perfection

of the personality and the reasonable of conscious personalities in

agricultural community forms the one and only truth and the only path to

salvation, I think of the anarcho-syndicalists and of their “unique

means” too; and I realize that all these people, instead of seeking the

truth in synthesis, each peck at their little grain of millet without

ever being satiated.

And if it is “makhnovists” who believe that the only true form of the

movement is their own and who reject everything that is not it, they are

as distant from the truth as the others.

And when I hear it said that the anarchists should only do work of

critique and destruction and that the study of positive problems does

not fall within the domain of anarchism, I consider that assertion a

grave error in relation to the synthetic character [synthèticité]

indispensable to our research and ideas.

However, it is precisely the anarchists who more than anyone must

constantly recall the synthesis and the dynamism of life. For it is

precisely anarchism as a conception of the world and life that, by its

very essence, is profoundly synthetic and deeply imbued with the living,

creative and motive principle of life. It is precisely anarchism that is

called to begin—and perhaps even to perfect—the social scientific

synthesis that the sociologists are always in the process of seeking,

without a shadow of success, the lack of which leads, on the one hand,

to the pseudo-scientific conceptions of “marxism,” of an “individualism”

pushed to the extreme and to various other “isms,” all more narrow,

stuffier, and more distant from truth that the last, and, on the other

hand, to a number of recipes for conceptions and practical attempts of

the most inept and most absurd sort.

The anarchist conception must be synthetic: it must seek to become the

great living synthesis of the different elements of life, established by

scientific analysis and rendered fruitful by the synthesis of our ideas,

our aspirations and the bits of truth that we have succeeded in

discovering; it must do it if it wishes to be that precursor of truth,

that true and undistorted factor, not bankrupting of human liberation

and progress, which the dozens of sullen, narrow and fossilized “isms”

obviously cannot become.

I am not an enemy of syndicalism: I only speak out against its

megalomania; I protest against the tendency (of its non-worker

personalities) to make a dogma of it, unique, infallible and

ossified—something of the sort of marxism and the political parties.

I am not an enemy of communism (anarcho-communism, naturally): I only

speak out against all sectarian narrowness of views and intolerance; I

protest against its dogmatic perversion and against its mortification.

I am not an enemy of individualism: I only speak out against its

egocentric blindness.

I am not an enemy of the moral perfection of the self: but I do not

accept that it be recognized as the “unique means.”

I am not an enemy of organization: but I do not want anyone to make a

cage of it.

I find that the work of the emancipation of humanity demands by equal

title: the idea of free communism as the material basis of a healthy

life in common; the syndicalist movement as one of the indispensable

levers à the action of the organized masses; the “makhnovstchina” as an

expression of the revolutionary uprising of the masses, as insurrection

and élan; the wide circulation of individualist ideas that reveal to us

radiant horizons, that teach us to appreciate and cultivate the human

personality; and the propaganda of aversion towards violence that must

put the Revolution on its guard against the possible excesses and

deviations…

It seems to me that each of these ideas, that each of these phenomena

contain a granule of truth that will manifest itself clearly one bright

day, as well as faults, errors and perversions; and the exaggerations

will be rejected.

It seems to me that all these granules—all these phenomena and these

ideas—will find sufficient place under the wide wings of anarchism,

without there being any need of mutually making a bitter war. It is

enough to want [to] and to know [them] to unite and unify them.

In order to attain that goal, the anarchists must begin by raising

themselves above the prejudices imported from outside into their milieu

and absolutely foreign to the essence of the anarchist conception of the

world and life, from the prejudices of human narrowness, from a petty

exclusivity and from a repulsive egocentricity; it is indispensable that

all put themselves to work,—each in no matter what sphere of ideas and

phenomena, in conformity to their situation, their temperament, their

preferences, their convictions and their faculties,—closely linked and

united, and respecting the liberty and personality of the others; it is

necessary to work hand in hand, seeking to mutually lend aid and

assistance, demonstrating a friendly tolerance, respecting the equal

rights of each of the comrades and admitting their liberty to work in

the chosen direction, according to their tastes and their way of

seeing—the liberty to fully develop every conviction. This posed, the

task will fall to us to decide on forms that this unified collaboration

should adopt.

It is only on such a basis that an attempt could be made at true union

between the workers of anarchism, at the unification of the anarchist

movement. For, it seems to me, it will only by on that basis that our

antinomies, our exaggerations pushed to the extreme, our sharpness and

our sourness could be mellowed, that our errors and deviations could be

rectified, and that, tightening more and more our ever vaster ranks,

crystallizing in living form, burning with an ever more ardent flame,

appearing always more clearly and with ever greater grandeur—the Truth.

VOLINE.

[Second Article]

In the preceding article, we stopped at the question of the method of

the search for truth, the general manner of theoretically considering

the problem.

We have expressed the opinion that this manner must be synthetic, that

instead of persisting in a single recognized part of the complete truth,

thus disfiguring it and distancing us from it, we must, on the contrary,

seek to know and embrace as many parts of it as possible, bringing

ourselves as a result as close to the true truth as possible. In the

opposite case, instead of a coordinated and fraternal labor, expanding

and productive, we will surely get bogged down in interminable and

absolutely senseless disputes and disagreements. We will always fall

into those coarsest errors, which inevitably accompany exclusivism,

narrowness, intolerance and sterile, doctrinaire dogmatism.

Let us now address, also in broad strokes, another essential question.

Who, what forces will bring about the social revolution,—especially

these immense creative tasks? And how? What will be the essence,

character and forms of this whole magnificent process?

First of all, it is incontestable that the social revolution will be, in

the final account, an extremely vast and complicated creative

phenomenon, and that only the great popular masses, working freely and

independently, organized in one manner or another, could resolve the

gigantic problem of social reconstruction happily and fruitfully.

Whatever we mean by the process of social revolution, however we imagine

the content, the forms and the immediate results of the great future

social transformation,—all of our tendencies must reach agreement on

certain essential points: an anarcho-syndicalist, anarchist-communist,

an individualist and the representatives of other libertarian currents

will inevitably fall into agreement that the process of the social

revolution will be an phenomenon [that is] infinitely extensive,

many-sided and complex, that it will be a most fundamentally creative

social act, and that it cannot be realized without an intense action

from the vast, free, independent and organized masses, in whatever form,

united in one manner or another, linked among themselves and acting as a

whole .

So what will these great masses do in the social revolution? How will

they create? How will they resolve the task, so vast and so complex, of

the new construction?

Will they concern themselves directly, precisely and uniquely, with

building anarchist communes? Certainly not. It would be absurd to

suppose that the only path and the only form of social and revolutionary

action will be the construction of the communes, that those communes

alone will be the foundations and instruments of the new construction,

the creative cells of the new society.

In their revolution, will the masses follow exactly and uniquely the

“syndicalist” path? Of course not. It would be no less absurd to think

that the syndicates, and the workers’ organizations in general, would

alone be called to achieve the great social reconstruction, and that

precisely and uniquely they will be the levers and cells of the future

society.

It would be as absurd to believe that the tasks of the social revolution

will be resolved solely by some individual efforts by some isolated,

conscious personalities and [by] their associations of ideas, which

alone out of such unions, associations or grouping by ideological

community will serve as the bases for the coming world.

It would be generally absurd to imagine that this enormous, formidable

work of the social revolution—this creative and living act—could be

channeled into one uniform path, that this form, that method, or some

particular aspect of struggle, organization, movement, or activity would

be the only “true” form, the sole method, the unique face of the social

revolutionary process.

The fecund social revolution, advancing with a firm step, truly

triumphant, will be executed by the oceanic masses driven to its

necessity by the force of things, launched in this powerful movement,

seeking widely and freely the new forms of social life, devising and

creating them fully and independently. Either this will occur, or the

creative tasks of the revolution will remain unresolved, and it will be

sterile, as were all the previous revolutions. And if this is the case,

and we imagine for a moment this whole gigantic process, this enormous

creative movement of the vastest masses and its innumerable points of

application, it will then appear absolutely clear that that they will

move along a broad front, that they will create, that they will act,

that they will advance in multiple ways at once—ways that are diverse,

bustling, and often unexpected by us. The reconstruction by the great

masses of all the social relations—economic, social, cultural, etc.,

given also the variety of localities, that of the composition of the

populations, of the immediate requirements of the character and aims of

the economic, industrial and cultural life of the various regions (and

perhaps countries),—such a task will certainly demand the creation,

application and creative coordination of the most varied forms and

methods.

The great revolution will advance by a thousand routes. Its constructive

tasks will be accomplished through a thousand forms, methods and means,

intertwining and combining. The syndicates, the professional unions, the

factory committees, the organizations of productive workers, etc., with

their branches and federations in the cities and industrial regions, the

cooperatives and all sorts of connecting associations [organes de

liaison], perhaps also the soviets and every other potential

organization that is living and mobile, the peasant unions in the

countryside, their federations with the workers’ organizations, the

armed forces for defense, the truly libertarian communes, the individual

forces and their ideological unions,—all these forms and methods will be

at work; the revolution will act through all these levers; all these

streams and torrents will spring up and flow in a natural fashion,

forming the vast general movement of the great creative process. It is

through all their measures, through all their forces and instruments

that the vast working masses engaged in the true revolutionary process

will act. We are convinced that even the present reformist and

conservative workers’ organizations will inevitably and rapidly

“revolutionize” in the course of this process, and, having abandoned

their recalcitrant leaders and the political parties acting behind the

scenes, will take their place there, will reunite with the other

currents of the impetuous, creative revolutionary torrent.

This movement will not be, naturally, a simple pulverization of society;

it will not have the character of a rout and a general disorganization.

It will aspire, on the contrary, naturally and inevitably, to a harmony,

a reciprocal liaison of the parties, to a certain unity of organization

to which, as well as to the creation of the forms in themselves, it will

be driven urgently by the vital, immediate tasks and needs. This unity

will be a living and mobile combination of the varied forms of creation

and action. Certain of these forms will be rejected, others will be

reborn, but all will find their place, their role, their necessity,

their destination, amalgamating gradually and naturally into a

harmonious whole. Provided that the masses remain free in their action;

provided that a “form” destroying all creation is not restored: power.

On the thousand local (and other) conditions will depend the

circumstances and the creative forms that will emerge will be rejected

or gain a foothold. In any case, there will not be place for only one

single form, much less for an immutable and rigid form, or even for a

single process. From different localities, diverse conditions and varied

necessities will arise as many varied forms and methods. And as for the

general creative torrent of life, de the construction and the new unity

of society, it will be a living synthesis of these forms and methods.

(It is in this way that we understand, among others, a true federation,

living and not formal. We believe that the icons that we quite often

make in our federalist milieus, especially among the

“anarcho-syndicalists,” of a uniform means, method or economic and

social form of organization, absolutely contradict the true notion of a

federation as a free union, exuding all the fullness and multiplicity of

life, not molded, and, consequently, creative and progressive, natural

and mobile, of social cells [that are] naturally varied and mobile.)

The economic essence of this synthesis will certainly be the successive

realization, evolution and strengthening of the communist principle. But

its constituent elements, its means of construction and its vital

functions will be multiples, just as multiple as the cells, organs and

functions of the body, that other living synthesis. Just as it would be

absurd to affirm that it is precisely the nervous or muscular cells, the

digestive or respiratory organs that alone are the creative, active and

“true” cells and organs of a living organism, without accounting for the

fact that the organism is a living synthesis of cells and organisms of

various types and purposes, just so it would be absurd to believe that

precisely one or another method and form would be the only “true” method

and form of the future social construction, of the new, emerging social

ensemble.

The true social life, the social creation and the social revolution are

phenomena of plurality in synthesis, that plurality and that synthesis

being made up of living, mobile, variable elements. (It is,

particularly, the social life [that is] currently musty, stationary and

fashioned by force, that inspires in so many among us, thoughtlessly,

this erroneous point of view that the revolution must advance along some

specific, unique and determined path. It is as if we do not know how to

free ourselves from this anemic, miserable and colorless existence. It

holds our thoughts, our ideas in a vise that involuntarily mold the

future. But once that modeled existence is rejected, and the sources of

a vast creative movement open, the true revolution will transform social

life precisely in the direction of a spectacular general movement, of

the greatest variety and its living synthesis.) We must resolutely

account for this circumstance, that is to say, we must no longer trip

ourselves up with a single model, but to seek to count on that plurality

and begin as much as possible that synthesis (without forgetting the

mobility of the elements), if we want our aspirations and our social

constructions to match the veritable ways of true emancipation and

become a real force, called to aid these means and aspirations to be

clarified and realized.

---

Thus, also, from the purely practical point of view, we come to note

that the plurality and its living synthesis are the true essence of

things and the fundamental foundation stone necessary for our reasoning

and our constructions.

The answer to the questions posed at the beginning is:

The social revolution will be accomplished by the great masses with the

aid of a connection and of a combined action of different forces,

levers, methods, means and forms of organization born from diverse

conditions and necessities. In its essence, in its character and its

forms, this whole magnificent process will consequently be

“plural-synthetic.”

What good then to squabble endlessly and break lances over the question,

if it is the workers’ syndicates, the communes or the individual

associations, if it is the “class-based organizations” or the “groups of

sympathy” and the “revolutionary organizations” that will bring about

the social revolution, which will be the “true” forms and instruments of

the revolutionary action and creation, the cells of the future society?

We see in these disputes absolutely no reason to exist. In the light of

what has come before, the object of these quibbles seems completely void

of sense. For we are convinced that the syndicates, the workers’ unions,

the communes, the individual associations, the class-based

organizations, the sympathetic groups, the revolutionary organizations,

etc.,—will all take part, each in its own sphere, in proportion to their

strength and impact, in the construction of the new society and the new

life.

Now, it is enough to note attentively our press, our organizations, to

lend an ear to our discussions in order to see that it is for this empty

question, rather than for some purely philosophical differences, that a

bitter struggle takes place in our ranks, that we deck ourselves out,

and that we highlight by dividing in this way our forces still more,

with all sorts of labels: “anarcho-syndicalists,”

“anarchist-communists,” “anarchist-individualists,” etc., and that our

movement is thus crushed and broken in a senseless manner.

We believe that it is high time that the anarchists of different

tendencies recognize, in this regard, the absence of any serious

foundation for these scissions and divisions. A great step forward

toward our rapprochement will have been made when we recognize this

fact. There will be one less pretext for dissensions. Each can give

preponderance to some particular factor, but admit at the same time the

presence and significance of other factors, recognizing, as a

consequence, the same right for other anarchists to give the

preponderance to other factors. It is in this way that the comrades will

take a step towards knowing how to work hand-in-hand in the same

organization, in the same organ, in a common movement, by each

developing their ideas and activity in the direction that interests

them, by struggling ideologically, by confronting their convictions in a

common camaraderie and not between hostile camps excommunicating one

another. To establish such relations would provide a solid cornerstone

to the edifice of the unified anarchist movement.

VOLINE.

[1] This phenomenon of the “constant variability of the resultant,” as

well as the importance of its application to the study of the facts of

human history, will be examined in detail in another work.