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Title: The Crisis of Socialism Author: Pëtr Kropotkin Date: 1895 Language: en Topics: Marxism, authoritarian socialism Source: Retrieved on 04/12/2020 from http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/crisis-socialism-plus-rare-kropotkin-translation Notes: Originally published as “Le Crise du socialisme,” in Les Temps Nouveaux, 26 October 1895 translation by Shawn Wilbur with editing by Anarcho
Our friend Domela Nieuwenhuis published in the Societe Nouvelle of
Brussels (March and May 1894), two remarkable studies of German Social
Democracy: “The Divers Courses of the German Social Democracy,” and
“Socialism in Danger;” and he follows these two studies by a third
“Libertarian Socialism and Authoritarian Socialism,” published in the
September and October numbers of the same review.
In these articles, based entirely on what has been said and published by
the chiefs of the party themselves, and entirely divested of the element
of polemics, Nieuwenhuis has demonstrated how the party, by its very
essence, is forcibly brought to become bourgeoisist [the mere
representative of the well-to-do middle class] to abandon its
socialistic program and to become more and more the password, not of the
proletarians, but of the radical petty bourgeois. Formerly when the
Anarchists said this to their social-democratic friends they were
treated as calumniators. Today it is admitted in the official organ of
the party, by one of its most esteemed chiefs, Bebel.
In these articles Nieuwenhuis shows clearly that – to use the words of
Bebel—“this defilement and this debilitation (Verwaesserung) of the
party” necessarily results from diverse causes: the principles
themselves, enunciated in their program of Erfurt; authoritarian
organization and authoritarian principles, and finally, the economic
basis of the life of the party, – the emolument of the editors and
agitators, and the “little socialist trade” practised on a big scale,
which greatly increases numbers, but finishes by causing the petty
bourgeois to dominate. It follows that when Vollmar, the chief of the
“right” of the party, went so far as to turn completely over to
bourgeoisism, even to voting in the Bavarian diet the budget of the
government, and that an important faction of the democracy, with Bebel
at the head, wished to censure him for it, the Congress passed a sponge
over it by saying that his conduct was absolutely in conformity with the
principles enunciated at Erfurt, at that time the constitution of the
party; that it conformed in every point with all preceding parliamentary
practices.
In other words: the development into bourgeoisism was foreseen; it was
willed by the very enunciation of the principles. The moral
“considerations” were only a far-off ideal, an ornament. Let us add here
the absolute absence of the critical spirit. For fear of destroying the
unity of the party, all criticism is eliminated in advance. Whoever
dares to criticise, be it the principles or the theoretic ideas in
vogue, the tactics, or the acts of any of the “men of trust” who
constitute what has been called “the future dictatorship of the
proletariat,” is immediately torn to pieces, thrown as prey to the
journalists and orators whose capacities and degree of advancement are
measured very often (according to the just remark of Richard Calwer) by
their “venomous tongues;” (they do not discuss; they preach or they
insult; again one of the distinctive features of the party.) Also, while
economic ideas are gaining in depth, even in the bourgeois science,
under the whip of socialistic criticism, and new questions and new
perceptions are surging forward – as it always happens with science
under the official seal, the science of the party is motionless. It is
arrested at the “Communist Manifesto,” which dates fifty years back, and
at Marx’s “Capital”, which, whatever may be said of it, has had its day.
Whether there be dissensions in the German Social-Democracy or not,
whether there be divisions with outbreaks or no, scarcely interests us.
The governmental socialist party is already divided into so many warring
factions in France and England, that a division more or less would not
make any difference. The German Social-Democracy is also divided – we
are well aware of it: there are the Vollmar, Bebel, and Liebknecht
factions, and still others. Exterior unity only is maintained – above
all by the ever-renewed persecutions – and if this show of unity
disappeared also, hardly anything would be changed. The essential thing
for us, is this. This is, undoubtedly, a time of arrest in the
development of Socialism. The time has arrived when the socialistic
workers, after having been blindly ranged under this or that flag, put
to themselves the question as to the essence of socialism. And this
question, once put, they will be forced to treat it, to elucidate their
ideas, to become exact. And we are persuaded, that if political events
do not precipitate us too suddenly into the fiery furnace of wars and
revolutions – which is very possible – governmental socialism, split
everywhere into parties and divers factions, will be forced to change
its tactics completely.
We see this renovation and rejuvenation coming, and we hail it with joy.
We see, betrayed by a thousand various indications, the need of revising
throughout the fundamental principles of governmental socialism
penetrating further every day. And we are persuaded, by the thousand
little facts which we observe in the movement, by the change of language
even and the new ideas which permeate the socialist writings and
discourses, that this need is making itself felt more and more. It only
seeks its constructive formula to affirm itself in broad daylight.
Hence can we believe, can the workers believe, in this “revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat,” which formerly inspired so many
millions of workers? Vague formulas, which constituted the “Communist
Manifesto,” which they accepted in its poetic generalization without
fathoming it, and which we have seen translated in Germany by the “men
of trust,” in France by blanquisme – government, in a word, by the
secret society. Does anyone believe in it now? Incapable of bringing to
a safe harbour a single party, is this lie of a dictatorship of the
proletariat capable of inspiring the masses? No, assuredly no.
Again, do they, in Germany itself, believe in the popular parliament –
in the Volkstaat or popular State – represented by a parliament of
electors, who will seize all lands, mines, machines, railways (leaving
the inhabited houses and stores to their owners, according to the
formula, or perhaps taking possession of them also) and regulating from
Berlin the laws and customs concerning the possession of land, the price
of the possession of machines, their supply of raw materials and their
manufacture, the carrying of merchandise, exportation and foreign
commerce, sending out “armies of agricultural workers” to tear down
hedges and make the steam engine go under orders from Berlin, etc.,
etc.? Do they believe in this, as Marx and Engels believed in it in
1848, and as it was believed in in Germany after the success of the
armies of Moltke, when men new nothing of the war but what the lying
bulletins said of it? No, they believe it no longer, even in Germany.
Certainly not in the Vollmar faction, not among those who have addressed
the peasants and who have taken good care to mirror to them the ideal
formerly preached by the authoritarian communists. And certainly they no
longer believe it in Berlin where they have had a close view of what a
parliament is, what it must be from its very essence, what it would be
again after a revolution. As to France and England, the people do not
believe too much in even municipal socialism; and at Paris they are
suspicious even of the socialism of a revolutionary Commune.
---
And in the constructive economic ideal, a revolution almost as profound
has, for twenty years, been taking place among the thinkers. Twenty
years ago, not understanding any too well the terminology of Marx, one
might still speak naively of the grand discovery of “surplus value,” and
win applause by saying: “Surplus value to the worker!” But to-day he who
hazards this tirade is speedily engaged in recollecting that surplus
value means the exploitation of some one by another; that the worker
will have none of it, and that the question is to know “what to do in
order that all things may be produced in such quantities, that each may
have his necessities gratified at his discretion and luxuries to
satisfaction – that which is luxury today becoming the necessity of
tomorrow!”
Finally, in Germany itself, the belief in the popular and socialistic
state is greatly shaken. Not only is the impossibility of it perceived,
but the people commence to understand that since they have parted with
the idea of “the conquest of power” in the actual State, they will be
forced to work for the maintenance of the State in general – that is to
say, for the maintenance of the phase of civilisation which, throughout
all history, (the empire of Alexander, the Roman empire, and the modern
empires) has corresponded to the destruction of all liberties, to the
enslavement of the producer, to the formation of industrial and land
monopolies – a phase which leads, inevitably, either to Caesarism or to
the destruction of the State from top to bottom by the social
revolution; and that, in the actual conditions, the chase after power
must lead, has led, to the abandonment of socialism, to any and every
accommodation with industrial exploitation, and to political and
military servitude.
---
Well, these ideas, we say, have penetrated the masses. And this is why
it is no longer a question of one simple division more, in the womb of
the great governmental-socialist party.
Complete revision of fundamental principles is demanded. Socialism, such
as has been propagated up to our days, must change its plan entirely,
under pain of disappearing.
It must become communistic again. And since, in becoming communistic, it
cannot remain authoritarian without falling into absurdity, it must
become anarchistic.