Revolution in Danger

by Victor Serge

  In short, the reform of anarchism that I should like to advocate is as follows: instead of being a subjective doctrine which is too inexorable and indeed largely Utopian, it should be brought back to the reality of the class struggle and its practical necessities, though without losing anything of its ethical value for the individual or for the social movement (quite the reverse should be the case). It must cease being the privileged possession of tiny sectarian groupings and contribute to the fullness and richness of the vast working-class movement destined to carry through social transformation by passing through the necessary stage of communism.

  After a year of fresh experiences, many things should be added to this work which is too short and condensed. But since I am not able to revise it, I address it as it stands to the comrades. In its general outline it seems to me to be more true and more accurate today than it was a year ago; for it is all the more topical in that, in several countries, a number of anarchist militants believe they are obliged to adopt a sharply hostile attitude towards the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, generally revealing thereby a lack of experience and an attachment to tradition which are fraught with danger. The elementary truths set out here are therefore well worth repeating: we have to give birth to the new anarchism which, in the forthcoming revolutionary struggles, instead of complicating situations and making the internal upheavals of the revolution even worse, will contribute to elevating, ennobling and enlightening the spirit of the communism of the future.

  The libertarian movement abroad must avoid repeating the catastrophe of Russian anarchism, which was so overtaken by events, so unable to rise to their level, despite the fine resources it could count on.

  Finally we must ask all anarchists to be willing to discuss calmly, without prejudice and without dogmatism, the experience of the Russian Revolution. And we ask them not to adopt and endorse the malicious “criticisms” (if they deserve that name!) that the bourgeois press of both hemispheres has directed unceasingly against the instigators of the first social revolution. They must not forget that the defeat of a revolution for the success of which men have done all that it was humanly possible to attempt (men who certainly, like all men, are not free of mistakes nor free from blame) would be a terrible disaster for the whole of humanity, a disaster which to a considerable extent could be blamed on those revolutionaries who, by their narrow sectarianism, had helped to divide and demoralize the vanguard of the working-class at the time of greatest danger.

  Petrograd, June 5, 1921

  The need to revise our ideas

  After the experience of war and revolution, revolutionary ideology, whether socialist, syndicalist or anarchist, cannot confine itself to the old formulae, any more than we can confine ourselves to the old forms of propaganda and action in the period of large-scale struggles that we have now entered. The bankruptcy of intellectuals and pacifists; the bankruptcy of parliamentary socialist parties; the bankruptcy of bureaucratic syndicalism; and the bankruptcy too of anarchist action—which on the whole was more or less negligible, while certain anarchist militants also lost their lucid understanding of things. Such is the balance-sheet of the war, from a revolutionary point of view. Nonetheless the war verified and tragically confirmed all our predictions. We did not need to see the world in the grip of total madness to know what disasters the old society based on capital and authority was leading its servile masses towards. And so, from the catastrophe in which so many people and organizations were destroyed, the essential ideas emerged strengthened. All the more so since the social revolution, victorious in Russia, temporarily suppressed in central Europe, on the point of setting alight southern Europe—Spain, Italy, the Balkans—has for the last three years been announcing the real power of ideas which so recently were no more than ideas.

  Thus not one of the concepts, not one of the words which we used before the war and the revolution has ceased to be necessary for us: on the contrary, a number of those which at that time were only words now refer to realities; but there is not a single one of them which can be used in precisely the same way as previously. All the words, we are aware, all the concepts, have in some small way acquired a new meaning. It’s an obvious fact. Just consider for one moment the ideas of direct action, of the general strike, of communism, as they were understood in 1914 and in 1920—and you will see how they have evolved!

  And then we shall be surprised to see just how difficult it is for men, even the militants who are, after all, at the head of the masses, to recognize such an obvious fact. From a sense of tradition, from routine, from self-interest, from inertia, from an incapacity to distinguish words (the old words) and things, from a sad lack of a sense of reality, there are some who return to the notions of yesteryear and confine themselves to repeating them. There are revolutionaries who, during these magnificent and terrible years, have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. What is terrible is that in these conditions they can do nothing more than they did in the past.

  If we wish to get ourselves out of the stagnation in which the revolutionary movement in various countries is floundering, to draw from it all the active forces it contains, to understand the present moment and to fulfill our task, then I believe that an inescapable duty is presented to the conscience of every militant:

  After the experience of the war and the revolution, we must initiate a complete and systematic revision of all our ideas. We must have no fear of laying an irreverent hand on old dogmas which are greatly respected. We must have no fear of stepping off the established paths which seemed so certain—and which led us to fateful dead-ends. But, with a clear knowledge of what we want and of what we are, we must confront reality, examine it calmly and with determination, in order to understand it, to draw our conclusions, and to act.

  The new reality in history

  The new reality in the social history of our age is that in 1917 the first social—and socialist—revolution took place in Russia. The possessing class was expropriated by the non-possessing class of the exploited. The bourgeois state was smashed. The old social hierarchies collapsed. A new order began to come to birth, whose principles are: collective ownership of the means of production, the requirement that all citizens should work, the elimination of industrial competition within society.

  This is a new starting-point in the history of the world. From the moment when the victory of the October revolution on the streets of Petrograd and Moscow (in suffering and poverty, it’s true; using violence, it’s true; but that was inevitable) laid the foundations of the new society, all events were to acquire a new meaning and a new direction, for the social revolution is not limited to one area. The victory of soviet power in Petrograd and Moscow made the earth shake in Washington, Paris, Tokyo and all the great cities of the world. Countless economic, ideological and moral bonds link people from one end of the world to the other: and the appeal, emanating from Russia, to the deepest interests, to the class interests of the poor, cannot fail to find a formidable resonance. And the revolutionary tide is spreading out from Vladivostok to Berlin, where Liebknecht died; to Munich, where Landauer and Leviné died, to Budapest, to the Ruhr, to Cologne, to Florence, to Turin, to Milan! Might it stop at the banks of the Rhine? It would be madness to think so. Revolutions have never respected frontiers. But they take their own time: if we can be sure that they will not stop before going right round the world, we cannot predict the number of years, or of generations, that they will need to do their work. The great revolution which finished off the Middle Ages and opened up modern times, the Reformation—the affirmation of religious freedom against the corrupt ossified Catholic dogma—devastated Europe for more than a century and by one of its distant repercussions it led to the establishment of the United States of America.2

  Likewise, the victory of the social revolution in Russia is doubtless opening up a revolutionary century. Given the fact of the interdependence of all civilized countries, it is not possible for two different social organizations to exist side by side, in neighbor
ing countries, the one based on private property, the other on the collective ownership of the means of production. Capitalist imperialism and communism cannot coexist. One must destroy the other. But having reached the absurd final stage of its evolution, culminating as a result of its internal contradictions in war and collapse, capitalist society bears within it the forces which are destined to overthrow it. Cut to pieces by the great slaughter which, precisely, gave birth to the revolution, it stands condemned. We can say with confidence that social transformation is now only a question of years, or, at the very most, of decades, for the countries of Europe and America. Moreover, the existence of a revolutionary republic creates everywhere psychological conditions which are extremely favorable to the revolt of the masses. By the legendary qualities which it already displays, by the enthusiasm which it inspires, by the example of its heroism and its capacity for suffering, Russia is an inexhaustible source of revolutionary energy. It embodies the future; and the past has no means of resisting it; for guns are plainly no longer able to kill the immense idealism which has been born into the world. Those who fought in the streets of Moscow, of Petrograd, of Yaroslavl and of Vladivostok, those who today are fighting on the various front lines of Soviet Russia, those who are carrying out the humble, melancholy, dangerous—and sometimes immoral—tasks of the revolution, those who are sacrificing themselves to it, are thus working for all humanity and for the whole of the future. When their lives are at stake the fate of humanity is at stake.

  The Russian Revolution is opening up a new epoch. It is only the first episode of the great revolution which is going to transform the civilized world. Its repercussions will continue for decades, because it is moving towards a radical transformation of the economic and moral conditions of life for the peoples of the world.

  This is a truth of vital importance which today seems to be established beyond argument.

  A definition of Bolshevism

  Such as it is, the social revolution in Russia—and everywhere else that it has begun—is in large part the work of Bolshevism.

  Like all historical judgments, this one is in some ways unfair. By formulating it in this way, we seem to be refusing to recognize the enormous and magnificent efforts of all those who, before the time of Bolshevism, actually practiced revolution: Social Revolutionary propagandists and terrorists, whose courage was unstinting; anarchists and Mensheviks, whom no persecution could stop. Later on, when we rewrite the history of these troubled times, we shall have to do justice to all. But in the meantime, life rewards only those who have succeeded. To survive and to conquer are the greatest virtues. And all the others were found wanting or took the wrong road at the last moment; the Bolsheviks were the ones who dared. And that is all that counts.

  It is well-known that the Russian word Bolshevik simply means those in the majority. Within the Marxist Social Democratic party, which contained Plekhanov and Martov, the Bolsheviks were the majority, the advocates of revolutionary intransigence. Until the Russian Revolution, they remained in relative obscurity. It was after the fall of Tsarism that they emerged and that their slogans won the enthusiasm of the masses.

  In reality, it was a new movement, although its dogged pioneers went back many years. It was the result of the development of socialism to the left. It became prominent at Zimmerwald and at Kienthal.m Reviled and betrayed by the opportunists, by the parliamentarians and the moderates, the socialism which expressed the conscious aspirations of a militant elite, and the still vague aspirations of the masses, became insurrectionary, active, impatient, domineering; and it began to speak a language which hitherto none but the anarchists had spoken.

  It is no bad thing to recall the fact. Until the October revolution and for some time afterwards, only the anarchists called themselves communists and declared themselves clearly hostile to state power. The official propagandists of socialism never mentioned the passages in Marx and Engels which dealt with the pernicious nature of the state and the need for it to disappear. Lenin, Zinoviev and Bukharin, by declaring the ideas of communism and the state to be incompatible, were renewing the revolutionary tradition of socialism which, before the remarkable success of their propaganda, had been carried forward only by the various anarchist currents. Before Bolshevism, only the anarchists had rejected bourgeois democracy and patriotism. They alone advocated revolution, that is, the immediate expropriation of the possessing class (see Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread). They alone publicly recognized the need to use violence and the principle of terrorism,3 and there were good reasons why, in the interval between the two revolutions of February and October 1917, Russian Bolsheviks and anarchists co-operated in a fraternal fashion. During the decisive days of July and October, they both initiated action.

  For the first time, during the October revolution, words and actions came together. What had so often been spoken of was put into practice. The unity of thought and action gave Bolshevism its original power; without entering into doctrinal questions, we can define Bolshevism as a movement to the left of socialism—which brought it closer to anarchism—inspired by the will to achieve the revolution immediately.

  The will for revolution: the essence of Bolshevism is summed up in these four words.

  Lessons of the revolution

  Until the present period it was possible to idealize revolution, or, even worse, to talk about it without believing in it. This is no longer possible. It is being carried out before our very eyes in half of Europe, and it is imminent in the other half. On pain of being no more than dreamers and metaphysicians, militants must henceforth envisage it as it really is. It is a great lesson. In the course of a century we had managed to more or less forget the lessons of the French revolution. The Russian Revolution brings them back to mind, and provides a vigorous fulfillment of them. So what is a revolution, and what new law does it bring us?

  First of all, it is never the epic festival promised us by historians, who in truth were poets rather than historians. It is a storm in which no one is spared, which uproots the strongest, and where the unforeseen triumphs. From the point of view of those who are making it, it is a rough and dangerous task, sometimes a dirty task for which you have to wear knee-length boots and roll up your sleeves, not fearing things that will make you sick. The earth has to be cleansed of the decay of the old world. Filth has to be carried away by the spadeful, and in that filth there is plenty of blood. All the selfishness, the slavishness, the cowardice, the stupidity which lies at the heart of the human beast will be laid bare at certain moments. And no splendid sacrifice, no glorious victory, no stoical idealism in the hearts of the best can eradicate this display of the weaknesses of past humanity from the minds of those who have witnessed them.

  The revolution is relentless. Relentless in the deprivations and the trials which it imposes on everyone, which means in the first instance on the weakest. The first inevitable consequence of civil war is always the disruption of production. The labor force is diverted from its peaceful occupations and wasted on the fields of battle. In the workshops, building sites and factories, where the old discipline of wage labor has disappeared and the new mentality has not yet been established, a profound moral disorder is bound to be rampant. To this are added the disorganization of transport, the damage caused by speculation, and the abuses committed by people fishing in troubled waters. The revolution is relentless towards the defeated who fall into two groups: on the one hand defenders of the old regime whom only terror can finally destroy; on the other hand, disoriented, hesitating, sentimental revolutionaries. The latter, often as a result of a narrow party mentality, from an inability to adapt to the terrible necessities of the moment, from moral scruples in face of the urgent demands of struggle, sometimes find themselves excluded from action, still fortunate if ironic fate does not transform them from being the liberators of yesterday into the counter-revolutionaries of today.

  This concept of revolution as a reality, hard and unrelenting toil, as opposed to the revolution of myth, i
s, for the militant, the first and one of the most important psychological gains of the years which have just passed. It is such as it is, with all its formidable consequences, with all the risks it entails and the sacrifices that it makes necessary, that we must will the revolution because it is inevitable and necessary; because it is the precondition for the subsequent evolution of humanity—for the great rebirth of humankind.

  The theoretical experience gained from contemporary revolutions requires us to accept several other concepts:

  1: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

  Revolution implies violence. All violence is dictatorial. All violence imposes the power of a will by breaking resistance. Since the expropriation of the possessing class is at stake, the revolutionary violence which must accomplish this task can only be that of the non-possessing class, that is, of the most advanced minority of the proletariat.

  Strengthened and hardened in the revolutionary melting-pots of the great industrial centers, toughened by repeated economic struggles, victim of crises and unemployment, witness of the blatant injustice which allows the same cities to contain the palaces of the parasites and the slums of the workers, the proletariat, whose elite has become clearly aware of its tasks and its duties, is certainly (in contrast to the narrow-minded, conservative peasant, moved by petty interest and often religious) the revolutionary class, and consequently the only class whose violence can put an end to the social war.

  I confess that I cannot imagine how anyone could be a revolutionary (other than in a purely individualist fashion) without recognizing the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

  There has never been, in history, a revolution without revolutionary dictatorship. Never. Cromwell’s England had the dictatorship of the Roundheads. France between 1789 and 1793 had that of the Commune of Paris, then that of the Jacobins. From the day when working-class militants of any tendency, leading the masses, overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie, then even if they are libertarians they will immediately have to organize supplies for the great cities, internal and external defence against the counter-revolution, in short, all the complex mechanisms of modern society. And they cannot rely on the consciousness, the goodwill or the determination of those they have to deal with; for the masses who will follow them or surround them will be warped by the old regime, relatively uncultivated, often unaware, torn by feelings and instincts inherited from the past.