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Title: Anarchism and Sovietism Author: Rudolf Rocker Language: en Topics: Russian Revolution Source: Retrieved on April 26, 2009 from http://flag.blackened.net/rocker/soviet.htm
Perhaps the reader thinks he has found a flaw in the above title and
that the soviet system and the dictatorship of the proletariat are one
and the same thing? No. They are two radically different ideas which,
far from being mutually complementary, are mutually opposed. Only an
unhealthy party logic could accept a fusion when what really exists is
an irreconcilable opposition.
The idea of “soviets” is a well defined expression of what we take to be
social revolution, being an element belonging entirely to the
constructive side of socialism. The origin of the notion of dictatorship
is wholly bourgeois and as such, has nothing to do with socialism. It is
possible to harness the two terms together artificially, if it is so
desired, but all one would get would be a very poor caricature of the
original idea of soviets, amounting, as such, to a subversion of the
basic notion of socialism.
The idea of soviets is not a new one, nor is it one thrown up, as is
frequently believed, by the Russian Revolution. It arose in the most
advanced wing of the European labour movement at a time when the working
class emerged from the chrysalis of bourgeois radicalism to become
independent. That was in the days when the International Workingmen’s
Association achieved its grandiose plan to gather together workers from
various countries into a single huge union, so as to open up to them a
direct route towards their real emancipation. Although the International
has been thought of as a broad based organisation composed of
professional bodies, its statutes were drafted in such a way as to allow
all the socialist tendencies of the day to join with the sole proviso
that they agree with the ultimate objective of the organisation: the
complete emancipation of the workers.
Naturally enough, at the time of its foundation, the ideas of this great
Association were far from being as clearly defined as they were at the
Geneva Congress in 1866 or the Lausanne in 1867. The more experienced
the International became the more it matured and spread throughout the
world as a fighting organisation, the clearer and more objective the
thinking of its adepts appeared. The practical activity arising out of
the day to day battle between capital and labour led, of itself, to a
deeper understanding of basic principles.
After the Brussels congress of 1868 the International had come out in
favour of collective ownership of the soil, the subsoil and the
instruments of labour, and the groundwork had been laid down for the
further development of the International.
At the Basel congress of 1869 the internal evolution of the great
workers’ association reached its zenith. Apart from the issue of the
soil and subsoil, freshly considered by the congress, the chief issue
was how workers’ unions were to be set up, run and used. A report on
this issue, presented by the Belgian Hins and his friends, excited a
lively interest at the congress. On this occasion, for the first time,
the tasks which the workers’ unions were to tackle as well as the
importance of those unions was set out in an utterly unmistakable way,
reminiscent, to a degree, of the thinking of Robert Owen. Thus it was
announced at Basel in clear and unmistakable terms that the trades
union, the local federation was more than a merely trades, ordinary and
temporary body whose only reason to exist was capitalist society, and
which was fated to disappear when it did. According to what Hins set
out, the state socialist view that the workers’ unions ought to confine
their activities to improving the living conditions of the workers in
terms of wages, no more and no less, was radically amended.
The report by Hins and his friends shows how the workers’ organisations
for the economic struggle can be regarded as cells of the socialist
society of the future, and that the International’s task is to educate
these local organisations to equip them to carry out their historic
mission Indeed, the congress did adopt the Belgian view; but we know
today that many delegates, especially those from the German labour
organisations, never had any wish to put the resolution into practice
within the bound of their influence.
After the Basel congress, and especially after the war of 1870, which
thrust the European social movement along quite a different route, it
became obvious that there were two tendencies inside the International,
tendencies so irreconcilably opposed to one another that this opposition
went as far as a split. Later an attempt was made to reduce their
disagreements to the level of a personal squabble between Michael
Bakunin and Karl Marx, the latter with his General Council in London.
There could not be a more mistaken, groundless account than this one,
which is based on utter ignorance of the facts. Of course, personal
considerations did have a role to play in these clashes, as they usually
do in such situations. In any event, it was Marx and Engels who resorted
to every conceivable impropriety in their attacks on Bakunin. As a
matter of fact, Karl Marx’s biographer, the author Franz Mehring, was
unable to keep silent on this fact, since, basically, it was not a
question of vain silly squabbling, but of a clash between two
ideological outlooks which did and do have a certain natural importance.
In the Latin countries, where the International found its principal
support, the workers were active through their organisations of economic
struggle. To their eyes, the state was the political agent and defender
of the possessing classes, and, this being the case, the seizure of
political power was not to be pursued in any guise for it was nothing
other than a prelude to a new tyranny and a survival of exploitation.
For that reason, they avoided imitating the bourgeoisie by setting up
yet another political party that would spawn a new ruling class
captained by professional politicians. Their objective was to get
control of machines, industry, the soil and the subsoil; and they
foresaw correctly that this approach divided them radically from the
Jacobin politicians of the bourgeoisie who sacrificed everything for the
sake of political power. The Latin internationalists realised that
monopoly of ownership had to go, as well as monopoly of power; that the
whole life of the society to come had to be founded upon wholly new
bases. Taking as their starting point the fact that “man’s domination
over his fellow man” was a thing of the past, these comrades tried to
get to grips with the idea of “the administration of things”. They
replaced the politics of parties inside the state with the economic
politics of labour. Furthermore, they realised that the reorganisation
of society in a socialist sense had to be undertaken inside industry
itself, this being the root idea behind the notion of the councils (or
soviets).
In an extremely clear and precise way, the congresses of the Spanish
Regional Federation went more deeply into these ideas of the
anti-authoritarian wing of the International, and developed them. That
is where the terms “juntas” and “workers’ councils” (meaning the same
thing as soviets) came from.
The libertarian socialists of the First International realised full well
that socialism cannot be decreed by a government, but has to grow,
organically, from the bottom up. They understood, also, that it was for
the workers alone to undertake the organisation of labour and production
and, similarly, distribution for equal consumption. This was the
overriding idea which they have opposed to the state socialism of
parliamentary politicians.
As the years have passed, and even today, the labour movements of these
Latin countries have undergone savage persecutions. This bloody policy
can be traced back to the repression of the Paris Commune in 1871.
Later, reactionary excesses of that sort spread to Spain and Italy. As a
result, the idea of “councils” has receded into the background, since
all open propaganda was suppressed and in the clandestine movements the
workers’ organisation had to set up militants were constrained to deploy
all their energies, all their resources, to fighting the reaction and
defending its victims.
The development of revolutionary syndicalism has unearthed this idea and
breathed new life into it. During the most active period of French
revolutionary syndicalism between 1900 and 1907 — the councils idea was
pursued in its most comprehensive, well defined form.
A glance at the writings of Pouget, Griffuelhes, Monatte, Yvetot and
some others, especially Pelloutier, is enough to persuade one that
neither in Russia nor anywhere else has an iota been added to what the
propagandists of revolutionary syndicalism formulated fifteen or twenty
years before the Russian events of 1917.
Throughout those years the socialist workers’ parties rejected the idea
of councils out of hand. Most of those who today are advocates of the
idea of soviets (especially in Germany) scorned it yesterday as some
“new utopia”. Lenin, no less, stated to the president of the St.
Petersburg delegates’ council in 1905 that the councils system was an
outmoded institution with which the party had nothing in common.
And so this notion of councils, the credit for which is due to the
revolutionary syndicalists, marks the most important point and
constitutes the keystone of the international labour movement, thanks to
which we shall be permitted to add that the councils system is the only
institution likely to lead to socialism becoming a reality, since any
other path will be a mistaken one. “Utopia” has won over
“sciencificism”.
Equally, it is beyond question that the council idea arises naturally
out of a libertarian socialist vision which has so taken root in a large
part of the international labour movement. as opposed to the state idea
with its wake of bourgeois ideological traditions.
bourgeoisie
That is all that can be said of dictatorship, since it is not a product
of socialist thinking. Dictatorship is no child of the labour movement,
but a regrettable inheritance from the bourgeoisie. passed into the
proletarian camp to guarantee its “happiness”. Dictatorship is closely
linked with the lust for political power, which is likewise bourgeois in
its origin.
Dictatorship is one of the forms which the state, ever greedy for Power,
is apt to assume. It is the state on a war footing. Like other advocates
of state idea, the supporters of dictatorship would — provisionally (?)
— impose their will upon the people. This concept alone is an impediment
to social revolution, the very life’s blood of which is precisely the
constructive participation and direct initiative of the masses.
Dictatorship is the denial, the destruction of the organic being, of the
natural form of organisation, which is from the bottom upwards. Some
claim that the people are not yet sufficiently mature to take charge of
their own destiny. So there has to be a ruler over the masses, tutelage
by an “expert” minority. The supporters of dictatorship could have the
best intentions in the world, but the logic of Power will oblige them
always to take the path of the most extreme despotism.
Our state socialists adopted the notion of dictatorship from that
pre-bourgeois party, the Jacobins. That party damned striking as a crime
and banned workers’ organisations under pain of death. The most active
spokesmen for this overbearing conduct were Saint-Just and Couthon,
while Robespierre operated under the same influence.
The false, onesided way that bourgeois historians usually depict the
Great Revolution has heavily influenced most socialists, and contributed
mightily to giving the Jacobin dictatorship an ill deserved prestige,
while the martyrdom of its chief leaders seems to have increased.
Generally, folk are easy prey for the cult of martyrs, which disables
them from studied criticism of ideas and deeds.
The creative labour of the French Revolution is well known — it
abolished feudalism and the monarchy. Historians have glorified this as
the work of the Jacobins and revolutionaries of the Convention, but
nonetheless, with the passage of time that picture has turned out to be
an absolute falsification of the whole history of the Revolution.
Today we know that this mistaken interpretation is based on the wilful
ignorance of historical fact, especially the truth that the bona fide
creative work of the Revolution was carried out by the peasants and the
proletariat from the towns in defiance of the National Assembly and the
Convention. The Jacobins and the Convention were always rather
vigorously opposed to radical changes, up until they were a fait
accompli, that is, until popular actions imposed such changes upon them.
Consequently, the convention’s proclamation that the feudal system was
abolished was nothing more than an official recognition of inroads made
directly by the revolutionary peasants into the old oppressive system,
in spite of the fierce opposition they had had to face from the
political parties of the day.
As late as 1792, the National Assembly had not touched the feudal
system. It was only the following year that the said revolutionary
Assembly condescended to prove “the mob of the countryside” right by
sanctioning the abolition of feudal rights, something the people had
already accomplished by popular decision. The same thing, or almost,
goes for the official abolition of the monarchy.
The first founders of a popular socialist movement in France came from
the Jacobin camp, so it is natural that the political inheritance of
1792 should weigh heavily upon them.
When Babeuf and Darthey set up the conspiracy of “The Equals”, they
aimed to turn France, by means of dictatorship. into an agrarian
communist state and, as communists. they appreciated that they would
have to set about solving the economic question if they were ever to
attain the ideal of the Great Revolution. But, as Jacobins, “The Equals”
believed they could attain their objective by reinforcing the state,
conferring vast powers on it. With the Jacobins, belief in the
omnipotence of the state reached its acme and so thoroughly permeated
them that they were incapable of conceiving any alternative scheme to
follow.
Half-dead, Babeuf and Darthey were dragged to the guillotine, but their
ideas lived on among the people, taking refuge in secret societies, like
the “Egalitarians” during the reign of Louis Philippe. Men like Barbes
and Blanqui worked along the same lines, fighting for a dictatorship of
the proletariat designed to make the aims of the communists a reality.
It was from these men that Marx and Engels inherited the notion of a
dictatorship of the proletariat, which they set out in their Communist
Manifesto. By that means they were to arrive at a central power with
uncontested capabilities, the task of which it would be to crush the
potential of the bourgeoisie through radical coercive laws and, when the
time was ripe, reorganise society in the spirit of state socialism.
Marx and Engels abandoned bourgeois democracy for the socialist camp,
their thinking profoundly shaped by Jacobin influence. What is more, the
socialist movement was, at that time, insufficiently developed to come
up with an authentic path of its own. The socialism of both of the two
leaders was more or less subject to bourgeois traditions going back to
the French Revolution.
Thanks to the growth of the labour movement in the days of the
international, socialism found itself in a position to shrug off the
last remnants of bourgeois traditions and to become entirely
independent. The concept of councils abandoned the notion of the state
and of power politics under any guise whatever. Similarly, it was
diametrically opposed to any suggestion of dictatorship. In fact, it not
only attempted to strip away the instruments of power from the forces
that possessed them and from the state, but it also tended to increase
its own sway as far as possible.
The forerunners of the council system appreciated well that along with
the exploitation of man by man would have to vanish also the domination
of man by man. They realised that the state, being the organised power
of the ruling classes, cannot be transformed into an instrument for the
emancipation of labour. Likewise, it was their view that the primary
task of the social revolution has to be the demolition of the old power
structure, to remove the possibility of any new form of exploitation and
retreat.
Let no one object that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” cannot be
compared to run of the mill dictatorship because it is the dictatorship
of a class. Dictatorship of a class cannot exist as such, for it ends
up, in the last analysis, as being the dictatorship of a given party
which arrogates to itself the right to speak for that class. Thus, the
liberal bourgeoisie, in their fight against despotism, used to speak in
the name of the “people”. In parties which have never enjoyed the use of
power, the lust for power or the desire to wield it assume an extremely
dangerous form.
Those who have recently won power are even more obnoxious than those who
possessed it. The example of Germany is illuminating in this respect:
the Germans are currently living under the powerful dictatorship of the
professional politicians of the social democracy and the centralistic
functionaries of the trade unions. They find no measure too base or
brutal to apply and subdue the members of their “own” class who dare to
take issue with them. When these gentlemen, reneging on socialism, “went
under” they tossed away even those gains made by bourgeois revolutions
guaranteeing a certain degree of freedom and personal inviolability.
What’s more they have also fathered the most horrendous police system,
going so far as to arrest anyone who is ungrateful to the authorities
and rendering him harmless for a time at least. The celebrated “lettres
de cachet” of the French despots and the administrative deportation of
the Russian tsarist system have been exhumed and applied by these unique
champions of democracy.
Needless to say, these new despots pratel on insistently about support
for a constitution that guarantees every possible right to good Germans;
but that constitution exists only on paper. Even the French republican
constitution of 1793 suffered from the same flaw — it was never put into
effect. Robespierre and his henchmen tried to explain themselves by
stating that the fatherland was in danger. Consequently, the
“Incorruptible” and his men maintained a dictatorship which led to
Thermidor, the disgraceful rule of the Directory, and, ultimately, the
dictatorship of the sword under Napoleon. At the present time we in
Germany have reached our Directory: the only thing missing is the man
who will play the role of Napoleon.
We already know that a revolution cannot be made with rosewater. And we
know, too, that the owning classes will never yield up their privileges
spontaneously. On the day of victorious revolution the workers will have
to impose their will on the present owners of the soil, of the subsoil
and of the means of production, which cannot be done — let us be clear
on this — without the workers taking the capital of society into their
own hands, and, above all, without their having demolished the
authoritarian structure which is, and will continue to be, the fortress
keeping the masses of the people under dominion. Such an action is,
without doubt, an act of liberation; a proclamation of social justice;
the very essence of social revolution, which has nothing in common with
the utterly bourgeois principle of dictatorship.
The fact that a large number of socialist parties have rallied to the
idea of councils, which is the proper mark of libertarian socialist and
revolutionary syndicalists, is a confession, recognition that the tack
they have taken up until now has been the product of a falsification, a
distortion, and that with the councils the labour movement must create
for itself a single organ capable of carrying into effect the
unmitigated socialism that the conscious proletariat longs for. On the
other hand, it ought not to be forgotten that this abrupt conversion
runs the risk of introducing many alien features into the councils
concept, features, that is, with no relation to the original tasks of
socialism, and which have to be eliminated because they pose a threat to
the further development of the councils. These alien elements are able
only to conceive things from the dictatorial viewpoint. It must be our
task to face up to this risk and warn our class comrades against
experiments which cannot bring the dawn of social emancipation any
nearer‹which indeed, to the contrary, positively postpone it.
Consequently, our advice is as follows: Everything for the councils or
soviets! No power above them! A slogan which at the same time will be
that of the social revolutionary.