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Title: Transition period Author: Marie Isidine Date: 1922 Language: en Topics: Transition, Russian revolution Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/transition-period-a-few-words-on-a-fuzzy-notion-marie-isidine/ Notes: Published in Les Temps Nouveaux.
In the innumerable discussions which the Russian revolution sparked in
the socialist and revolutionary milieus, the idea of a “transition
period”, succeeding the victorious revolution, always appears; it might
be the notion most commonly abused in order to justify indefensible
behaviours and betrayals. It is generally thought that even the most
advanced countries are not ready for an integral realisation of
socialism (and, even more, of anarchist socialism); from this, some
advocate half-socialist, half-radical blocs, or a “workers’ government”
which, instead of socialism, will only realise the minimum programme of
the congress; others advocate a forceful strike which will give the
revolutionaries dictatorial power, which they will use to serve the
interests of the working-class, mainly by terrorising the bourgeoisie.
Bolsheviks, in particular, (and those of the anarchists who followed
them) tell us: “Do you really believe in the possibility of achieving
anarchist communism right now? The masses are not ready and socialism
still has too many enemies; as long as they remain, the state will be
necessary. You must accept a transitory period of dictatorship.”
As long as we accept discussion on those terms, making our opinion
depend on our – optimistic or pessimistic – appreciation of the degree
of readiness of the workers, it will be impossible to answer the
question clearly and in accordance with our principles. And this is
understandable: the question must be asked completely differently.
Whether our ideal is or isn’t realisable “straight away” can in no way
influence our actions. We know that only the historian, considering,
after the facts, the acquired results, will one day establish for which
achievements our times were ripe; as for our contemporaries, they always
get this wrong, depending on their mentality. We do not believe in
predetermined phases of evolution, identical for every people. We know
that the general march of human development leads mankind better to use
the strengths of nature and better to ensure within its ranks the
liberation of individuals and social solidarity. On this path, there can
be stops, and even retreats, but no definitive backtracking. And the
closer the communion between different peoples is achieved, the faster
the ones which are further engaged on this path will help the
latecomers. Everything else, the rapidity of the movement, its peaceful
or violent forms, what conquests are gained where and when, all of that
depends on a number of factors and cannot be predicted. Among these
factors, one of the most decisive has always been and always will be the
action of individuals and their groups. The ideas which will inspire the
most energetic action will have the most chances of being put into
practice; life will follow the net force of forces applied. In
consequence, the more efforts we will make towards our ideal without any
compromise, the closest to our ideal the result will be.
In discussions in which we talk about a “transitional period”, people
usually swim in a sea of confusion and understand each other poorly,
since it refers to two very different notions. On the one hand, any time
is a time of transition towards a higher stage of evolution, since, as
some hopes are realised, new ones emerge. Always, there are some
dominant problems which preoccupy everyone who is able to think, and
others, future ones, which only preoccupy an advanced minority. This is
the socialist dilemma: on the one hand, how to abolish capitalist
exploitation and organise an egalitarian economic society is in our
times on the agenda of immediate realisation; but how to give this
society a libertarian form and ensure a real development of human beings
remains an ideal shared by a small number of people, the anarchists.
When will this ideal in turn come to the front of the stage, and lead
the majority? Only the future will tell; it is certain that until it is
realised as we conceive it, we will go through a series of transitional
stages.
But people also mean something else by transitional period: it is the
time immediately following a revolution, where old forms have not yet
fully disappeared, the enemies, the defenders of the past are still to
be feared, and the new order of things is being born in the middle of
the fight and of the worst difficulties. And then, by considering only
that moment, separated from the past and, especially, from the future,
people end up, like the bolsheviks, justifying any odd means, even the
most dangerous, generally borrowed from the old world, among which
dictatorship comes first to mind. Or else people propose, like Kautsky
and the other social-democrats, a temporary regime, in which socialists
hold the power, but will push back to an indeterminate time the
realisation of their socialist programme. Our conception of things is
totally different from either of those: we refuse to be hypnotised by
this idea of transition. That progressive victories, partial
realisations, must precede the total realisation of our ideal, is
possible, even probable, but for these successive stages to be accepted
by us as positive, they must lead us towards this ideal, and not in the
diametrically opposed direction. The path towards a society free of any
constraint by the state and founded on the free grouping of individuals
can only go through social forms in which the part of free initiative
increases and the part of authority decreases. But if, under the guise
of a transitional period towards a free community, we are offered a
complete annihilation of any freedom, we answer that this is no
transition, but a step back. We were not brought up on Hegelian
dialectics, which envision the transformation of something into its
opposite as a natural phenomenon; our minds are imprinted much more
strongly by the principle of evolution, which says that each stage of
development not only is not opposed to the last, but also proceeds from
it. Anarchist society will never proceed from dictatorship; it will only
be born from the elements of freedom which will have subsisted and will
have spread despite any state constraint. For a social form to be
considered as a step toward an ideal, it must contain more elements of
this ideal and never less; if not, it is a step back and not progress.
The Paris Commune, for example, was not aiming at an anarchist society;
but anarchists of all countries highly appreciate it for its large-scale
federalism. In the same way, during the Russian revolution, anarchists
have welcomed with sympathy the institution of free soviets, in the way
they emerged from popular thought, of course, and not from the official
organs which, nowadays, are a mere caricature; they saw there a form of
political organisation preferable to classic parliamentarianism, which
allowed more development of collective initiative and action among the
people.
A sympathetic attitude towards everything which gets us closer to our
ideal is something natural; the notion of a “transitional period” cannot
add anything to it. It only serves the purpose of obscuring the
discussion and giving an excuse for some minds to “revise” our ideas,
which means, in truth, to abandon what is essential to them. The
revolutionary moment is really the time when prudence, the fear of
utopia, of the ‘impossible’ are less necessary; it sweeps away, on the
contrary, the limits of all hope. Let us not be intimidated by the
advice based on fake historical wisdom which is contradicted by all the
experience of history.