Peter Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel , 1885.

XV
Revolutionary Government

1.

That all present governments should be abolished, so that freedom, equality and fraternity are no longer vain words and become living realities; that all forms of government attempted up to our day have been no better than various forms of oppression and must be replaced by a new form of social arrangement: on these points all those who have an outlook and a temperament even slightly revolutionary are in agreement. One does not even have to be very innovatory to reach that conclusion; the vices of actual governments and the impossibility of reforming them are too striking not to spring to the attention of any reasonable observer. As to overthrowing governments, it is generally known that at certain periods this can be done without much difficulty. There are moments when governments collapse almost of their own accord, like houses of cards, under the breath of the people in revolt. This happened in 1848 and 1870; we shall see it again soon.

To overthrow a government -- for the revolutionary bourgeoisie that is the task completed. For us it is only the beginning of the social revolution. The machine of the State has been derailed, the hierarchy of bureaucrats has become disorganized and knows no longer what direction to take, the soldiers have lost confidence in their commanders, in other words the army of the defenders of capital has been thrown into confusion, and it is at this point that there rises before us the great work of demolishing all the institutions that serve to perpetuate economic or political enslavements. The possibility of acting freely has been acquired. What will the revolutionaries do with it?

On that question it is only the anarchists who answer, "No government at all! Anarchy!" All the others say: "A revolutionary government!" They only differ on the form that government should take when it is elected by universal suffrage, except for those who pronounce themselves in favour of revolutionary dictatorship.

"A revolutionary government!" These are two words that echo very strangely in the ears of those who know the meaning of both social revolution and government. They are two words that contradict and cancel each other out. We have of course seen plenty of despotic governments (for it is in the nature of all government to favour reaction against revolution and to tend towards despotism), but we have never seen a revolutionary government, and with good reason. It is because revolution, synonymous with "disorder," confusion, the overthrow in a few days of secular institutions, the violent annihilation of the established forms of property, the destruction of social castes, the rapid transformation of accepted ideas about morality (or rather about the hypocrisy that takes its place) into individual liberty and spontaneous action -- is precisely the opposite, the negation of government, which is synonymous with the "established Order," with conservatism, with the maintenance of existing institutions, with the negation of initiative and individual action. Nevertheless we continually hear about this "white blackbird," as if a "revolutionary government" were the most simple thing in the world, as common and familiar as kingdoms, empires or papacies.

Let the self-styled bourgeois revolutionaries teach this idea -- that is appropriate. We know what they mean by the revolution. It is nothing more than the patching up of the bourgeois republic; it is the taking over by self-styled republicans of the lucrative positions that today are reserved for Bonapartists or Royalists. It is above all the divorce of the Church and State, followed by their concubinage. This is all very well for the bourgeois revolutionaries. But that socialist revolutionaries should make themselves the apostles of such an idea can be explained, it seems to me, only by supposing one of two things. Either those who accept it are imbued with the bourgeois prejudices they have absorbed, without realising it, through the literature and above all the history created by bourgeois writers for the use of the bourgeoisie, and remain permeated by the spirit of servility, the product of centuries of enslavement, from which they cannot imagine liberating themselves; or, they really want nothing of that revolution whose name has always been on their lips; they would be content with renovating existing institutions, so long as they themselves are carried to power, when they will be prepared to decide later on what must be done to calm the "beast," that is to say, the people. They hold no grudges against those in power so long as they can take their places. With such individuals there is no point in arguing. We will speak only with those who have been honestly deceived, often by themselves.

Let us begin with the first of the two forms of "revolutionary government" that are so much praised -- elective government. Let us suppose that the government -- royal or other -- has been overthrown, and the army of the defenders of capital is in retreat; everywhere opinion is in a ferment, public affairs are being discussed, people feel the desire to move forward. New ideas are springing up and the need for serious change is understood: we must act, we must begin a pitiless work of demolition so as to clear the ground for a new life. But what are they proposing that we should do? Call the people to elections, and afterwards choose a government, and then confide to it the work that all and each of us should be doing on his or her own initiative.

This is what Paris did, after the 18th of March, 1871. "I shall always remember," a friend told us, "those beautiful moments of deliverance. I went down from my attic room on the Latin quarter to join in that immense open air club which filled the boulevards from one end of Paris to the other. Everyone was discussing public concerns; personal preoccupations were forgotten; nobody was interested in buying or selling; everyone was ready to propel himself body and soul into the future. Even the bourgeoisie, carried away by the universal ardour, looked on joyfully as the new world unfolded itself. If it is necessary to carry out the social revolution -- very well, let's do it; let us put everything in common; we are ready for that!" The elements of the revolution were in place; it was only necessary to put them into operation. Going back to my room that evening, I said to myself: "How wonderful humanity is! I always condemned it in the past because I never understood it!" Then came the elections and the members of the Commune were named -- and then the strength of devotion and the zeal for action were slowly extinguished. Everyone went back to his accustomed task, saying to himself: "Now we have an honest government. Let it look after things." And one knows what followed from that.

Instead of acting on its own initiative, instead of marching forward, instead of throwing itself boldly into a new order of things, the people, confident of its rulers, delegated to them the power of taking initiatives. Here was the first consequence -- and indeed the fatal result -- of elections. What in fact did these rulers do, who had been invested with the confidence of everyone?

Never were elections more free than those of March 1871. The adversaries of the Commune themselves recognized it. Never was the great mass of the electors so imbued with the desire to send to power the best men, men of the future, revolutionaries. And this is just what they did. All the well-known revolutionaries were elected by formidable majorities; Jacobins, Blanquists, Internationalists -- the three revolutionary fractions -- all found their places in the Council of the Commune. The election could not have provided a better government.

We know the result. Shut up in the Hotel de Ville, with the mission of proceeding according to the forms established by preceding governments, these ardent revolutionaries, these reformers found themselves struck by incapacity and sterility. With all their good will and courage, they were not even able to organize the defence of Paris. It is true that today individual men are being blamed for this failure, but it was not individuals who were responsible for this setback, but the system they applied.

In fact, universal suffrage, when it is free, can produce an assembly more or less representing the mean of the opinions that circulate at the moment among the masses; and that mean, at the beginning of the revolution, reveals only a very vague idea of the work to be accomplished, quite apart from how to carry it out. If only the greater part of the nation, of the Commune, could reach an understanding before it happened, on what would have to be done when the government was overthrown! If this dream of closet Utopians could be realized, we would never have had bloody revolutions: the will of the greater part of the nation having been expressed, the rest would submit to it with a good grace. But things do not happen in this way. The revolution breaks out well before a general understanding has been able to establish itself, and those who have a clear idea of what must be done on the morrow of the movement are at this moment only a tiny minority. The great mass of the people has only a general idea of the objective it would like to see realized, without having much knowledge of how to proceed to that objective, or much awareness of the procedure that must be followed. The practical solution will not be found, nor will it become clear until the change has already begun: it will be the product of the revolution itself, of the people in action -- or else it will be nothing, for the brains of a few individuals are absolutely incapable of finding the solutions that can only be born out of practical life.

The latter is the situation reflected in a body that is elected by suffrage, even if it does not have all the faults that are generally inherent in representative governments. The few men who represent the revolutionary ideas of the epoch find themselves outnumbered by the representatives of past revolutionary schools or of the order of existing things. These men, whose place -- especially during the days of revolution -- should be among the people, spreading their ideas widely, setting the masses in motion, demolishing the institutions of the past -- find themselves pinned down in a hall, endlessly arguing so as to wring concessions "out of the moderates and convert their enemies, when in fact there is only a single means of leading them to the new idea -- that of putting it into execution. The government changes into a parliament with all the faults of bourgeois parliaments. Far from being a "revolutionary" government, it becomes the greatest obstacle to the revolution, and if the people is to cease marking time it will be forced to dismiss it, and to deprive of office those who only yesterday it acclaimed as the elected. But that is not so easy. The new government, which has hurried to organize an entirely new ladder of administration to extend its rule and make itself obeyed, will not be willing to give place easily. Jealous of its power, it will cling on to it with all the vigour of an institution that has not yet had the time to fall into decay. It will be determined to oppose force to force, and to dislodge it there will be only one means, that of taking up arms, repeating the revolution, and sending on their way those in whom we had placed all our hopes.

And here we have the revolution divided! After having wasted precious time on delays and hesitations, it will lose its strength in internecine divisions between the friends of the new government and those who have seen the need to get rid of it! And all that will come from not having understood that a new life demands new forms; it is not by clinging to outdated concepts that one sets revolution on its course! It will come from not having understood the incompatibility of revolution and government, from not having perceived that -- under whatever form it is presented -- the one is always the negation of the other, and that, apart from anarchy, there can be no revolution.

It is the same for that other form of "revolutionary government" about which they will boast to you -- revolutionary dictatorship.

2.

The perils to which the revolution is exposed should it allow itself to be managed by an elected government are so evident that a whole school of revolutionaries has completely renounced that idea. They understand that it is impossible for an insurgent people to give itself by electoral means a government that does not represent the past, a government that does not act like fetters around the ankles of the people, above all when it sets out to accomplish that immense economic, political and moral regeneration we mean when we talk of the social revolution. So they renounce the idea of a "legal" government, at least for the period of revolt against legality, and they call for "revolutionary dictatorship."

"The party which has overthrown the government -- they say -- will forcefully take its place. It will seize power and proceed in a revolutionary manner. It will take the measures needed to secure the success of the insurrection; it will demolish old institutions; it will organize the defence of the territory. As for those who do not want to recognize its authority -- the guillotine! And for those, people or bourgeoisie, who do not wish to obey the orders it will issue to regulate the progress of the revolution -- the guillotine as well! That is how the budding Robespierres reason -- those who have retained from the great epoch of the past century only its declining phase, who have learnt nothing from it but the speeches of the public prosecutors.

For us, the dictatorship of one individual or one party -- and basically it is the same thing -- can be judged without hesitation. We know that a social revolution is not directed by the ideas of a single man or group. We know that revolution and government are incompatible; the one must destroy the other, no matter what name one gives to the government: dictatorship, monarchy or parliament. We know that what makes the strength and originality of our party lies in its fundamental formula: "Nothing good and lasting is made except by the free initiative of the people, and all power tends to kill it." That is why the best among us, if his ideas are not accepted by the people as fit to be applied, and if he becomes master of the formidable engine of government that allows him to act out his own fantasies, will in a week be fit only to be struck down. We know where every dictatorship -- even the best intentioned of them -- leads: to the death of the revolution. And we know finally that this idea of dictatorship is never more than an unwholesome product of that governmental fetichism which, in the same way as a religious fetichism, has always perpetuated slavery.

But today it is not to the anarchists that we are addressing ourselves. We speak to those among the governmentalist revolutionaries who, misled by the bias of their education, sincerely deceive themselves and are open for discussion. We will approach them from their own viewpoint.

To begin with, a general observation. Those who preach dictatorship do not generally perceive that in sustaining this attitude they only prepare the ground for the successors who will swallow them up. There is even a saying of Robespierre which his admirers would do well to remember. He of course never denied the principle of dictatorship. But he brusquely told Mandar, who talked to him of the matter, "watch out for Brissot!⁶² He would like to be dictator!" Yes, Brissot, the cunning Girondin, bitter enemy of the egalitarian tendencies of the people, furious defender of property (which he has formerly described as theft), Brissot, who had calmly incarcerated in the Abbaye prison Hubert, Marat and all the moderantists among the Jacobins!

But that remark dated from 1792! At that epoch, France was already three years into its revolution. Royalty, in fact, existed no longer; it only remained to give it the final blow, while the feudal regime was already abolished. And yet, even at that epoch, while the revolution still rolled freely on its waves, the counter-revolutionary Brissot already had every opportunity of being acclaimed dictator. And what had been the situation before that, in 1789? It was Mirabeau⁶³ who was then regarded as the centre of power. The man who made a deal with the king to sell his eloquence -- it was he who would have been carried to power at that time, if the insurgent people had not imposed its sovereignty, supported by pikes, and sustained the achievements of the peasant uprising, by making illusory all power established in Paris or in the provinces.

But the predisposition to government so completely blinds those who talk about dictatorship, that they would prefer to further the dictatorship of a new Brissot or Napoleon rather than renounce the idea of giving another master to men who break their chains.

The secret societies that sprang up during the Restoration period and the reign of Louis-Phillipe contributed to sustaining this cult of dictatorship. The middle class republicans of the period, supported by the workers, initiated a long series of conspiracies which aimed at overthrowing royalty and proclaiming the Republic. Failing to take into account the profound transformations that would have to take place in France, even to enable a bourgeois republican regime to be established, they imagined that by means of a vast conspiracy they would in a single day overthrow the monarchy, seize power, and proclaim the Republic. For nearly thirty years these secret societies continued to work with boundless devotion and heroic perseverance and courage. If the Republic emerged naturally from the insurrection of February 1848 it was thanks to such societies, thanks to the propaganda of the deed they carried on for thirty years. Without their noble efforts, the Republic would even now have been impossible.

Their aim was thus to seize power for themselves, to install themselves as a republican dictatorship. But of course they never reached their goal. As always, through the inevitable course of events, it was not a conspiracy that overthrew the kingdom. The conspirators had indeed prepared for the event. They had spread broadly the republican idea; their martyrs had offered an ideal to the people. But the last thrust, which finally overthrew the bourgeois king, was much broader and much stronger than anything that could come from a secret society; it came from the popular masses.

The result is well known. The party which had prepared the downfall of the monarchy was pushed to the side on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. Others, too prudent to run the risks of conspiracy, but better known and also more moderate, watched for the moment to seize power, and assumed the position which the conspirators thought they had conquered to the sound of the cannonade. Journalists, lawyers, glib talkers who had worked at making names for themselves while the true republicans forged their arms or died in the prisons, seized hold of power. Some were acclaimed by the boobies because they were already celebrated; others pushed themselves forward, and were accepted because their names represented nothing or at best a programme of being all things with all men.

Let no one stand up and tell us that it was a lack of practical intelligence on the side of the party of action -- that others could have done better. No, a thousand times no! It is a law, like that of the movement of the stars, that the party of action stays on the outside, while the intriguers and the talkers take over power. They gather more votes, with or without ballots, by acclamation or through the intervention of the voting booths, because basically it is always a kind of tacit election that takes place even when there is only acclamation. Those chosen are acclaimed by everyone, and especially by the enemies of the revolution who like to push forward nonentities, and in this way acclamation recognizes as leaders those who, basically, are foes of the movement or indifferent to it.

The man who more than any other was the incarnation of the system of conspiracy, the man who paid by a life in prison for his devotion to that system, uttered on the eve of his death these words which are a whole programme: "Neither God nor Master!"⁶⁴

3.

To imagine that the government can be overthrown by a secret society, and that this society can take the government's place, is an error into which have fallen all the revolutionary organizations born in the heart of the republican bourgeoisie of France since 1820. But other facts abound which give added witness to that error. What devotion, what abnegation, what perseverance did not the secret republican societies of Young Italy⁶⁵ display -- yet all this immense work, all these sacrifices made by young people in Italy, before which even those of Russian revolutionaries seem to pale, all these corpses piled up in the casemates of Austrian fortresses and under the axe and bullets of the executioners -- all of it became the inheritance of the rascals of the bourgeoisie and the hangers-on of royalty.

It is the same with Russia. It is rare to find in history a secret organization that with such scanty means obtained results as immense as those attempts by Russian youth, which proved itself so powerfully in the energy and action of the Executive Committee.⁶⁶ It has shaken that colossus which seemed invulnerable, Tsarism, and it has made autocratic government henceforward impossible in Russia. Yet only the naive can imagine that the Executive Committee will become the master of power when the crown of Alexander III is trailed in the mud. Others -- those who worked to make a name for themselves while the revolutionaries laid their mines or perished in Siberia, the intriguers, the talkers, the lawyers, the scribblers who from time to time shed a quickly wiped tear on the tombs of the heroes and posed as friends of the people -- these will come forward to take the place made vacant by the disintegration of the government and to shout "Step back!" to the "unknowns" who have prepared the revolution.

This is inevitable, it is a matter of fate, and it cannot be otherwise. For it is not secret societies, or even revolutionary organizations, that give the fatal blow to governments. Their function, their historic mission, is to prepare people's minds for the revolution. And when the peoples' minds are prepared -- with the help of external circumstances, the last push comes, not from the initiating group but from the masses that have remained outside the society. On the 31st of August Paris remained deaf to Blanqui's⁶⁷ calls. Four days later it proclaimed the downfall of the government; but then it was no longer the Blanquists who were the initiators of the movement: it was the people, the millions, who dethroned the "Citizen King," and acclaimed the comedians whose names had been resounding for a couple of years in their ears. When a revolution is ready to break out, when the impulse can be felt on the air, when success has already become certain, then a thousand new men, over whom the secret organization has never wielded a direct influence, arrive to join the movement, like the birds of prey which appear on a battlefield to take their part in tearing apart the victims. They help in giving the final push, and it is not from the puppets on the seesaw that they will take their leaders, so convinced they are by the idea that a leader is necessary.

The conspirators who sustain the superstition of dictatorship thus work unwittingly at bringing to power their own enemies. But if what we have just said is true in relation to revolutions which are really political disturbances, it is even more true in relation to the revolution which we desire -- the social revolution. To allow any kind of government -- a power that is strong and demands obedience -- to establish itself is to put the brakes on the revolution from the very beginning. The good that this government might do is nil, and the evil immense.

In fact, what is it that we understand by revolution? It is not a simple change of rulers. It is the seizing by the people of all social wealth. It is the abolition of all those powers that have not ceased to hobble the development of humanity. But is it in fact by decrees emanating from a government that such an immense economic revolution can be accomplished? In the last century we saw the Polish dictator Ksciuzko⁶⁸ decreeing the abolition of personal servitude, but serfdom continued to exist for eighty years after that decree. We saw the Convention, the omnipotent Convention, the terrible Convention, as its admirers called it -- decreeing the sharing out according to the need of all the communal lands regained from the lords. Like so many others, the decrees remained a dead letter, because, in order to put it into execution, it would have needed a new revolution made by the proletarians of the countryside, and revolutions are not made by decree.

For the repossession of the social wealth by the people to become an accomplished fact, the people itself must feel its elbows free, must shake off the servitude to which it is no longer bound, must use its collective intelligence and march ahead without heeding the orders of anyone. For it is precisely this which will frustrate the dictatorship, even if it is the worst intentioned in the world, incapable of advancing the revolution by a single inch.

But if the government -- however it may strive for the revolutionary ideal -- creates no new force and does not further the work of demolition which we have to accomplish, even less can we count on it for the work of reconstruction that must follow the demolition of the old order. The economic changes that will result from the social revolution will be so immense and so profound, they will so alter all the relations based on property and exchange, that it will be impossible for one or even a number of individuals to elaborate the social forms to which a further society must give birth. This elaboration of new social forms can only be the collective work of the masses. To satisfy the immense variety of conditions and needs that will emerge on the day when property is swept away, we shall need the flexibility of the collective spirit of the community. Any kind of external authority will be merely an obstacle, a hindrance to the organic work that has to be accomplished; it will be no better than a source of discord and of hatreds.

But it is surely time to abandon that illusion, so often dismissed -- and also so often paid for dearly -- of a revolutionary government. It is time to say once and for all -- and adopt it as a political axiom -- that a government cannot be revolutionary. People talk about the Convention,⁶⁹ but we must not forget that the few measures of even a slightly revolutionary character taken by the Convention were the confirmation of acts accomplished by the people who at that moment advanced over the heads of all governments. As Victor Hugo said in his flamboyant manner, Danton pushed Robespierre, Marat watched and pushed Danton, and Marat himself was pushed by Cimourdain, that personification of the clubs, of the rebels and enrages. Like all the governments preceding and following it, the Convention was no better than a ball-and-chain on the feet of the people.

The facts that history has to teach us are so conclusive in this direction; the impossibility of a revolutionary government and the harmfulness of what is proposed under this name are so evident, that it would seem difficult to explain the stubbornness which a certain school of selfstyled socialists puts into maintaining the idea of a government. But the explanation is very simple. However much they may call themselves socialists, the adepts of that school have a quite different conception from ours of the revolution which it is incumbent on us to accomplish. For them -- as for all the bourgeois radicals -- the social revolution is a matter not to be thought of today. What they dream of in the depths of their hearts without daring to admit it, is something quite different. It is the institution of a government similar to that of Switzerland or the United States, making a few attempts at State appropriation of what they ingeniously call "public services." It has something in it of the ideas of Bismarck and of the tailor who became president of the United States.⁷⁰ It is a compromise, reached in advance, between the socialist aspirations of the masses and the appetites of the bourgeoisie. They would like a complete expropriation, but they do not feel in themselves the courage to attempt it, so they put it off for the next century, and before the battle takes place they have already entered into negotiations with the enemy.

For us, who realize that the moment is getting near to strike a mortal blow at the bourgeoisie; that the time is not far away when the people will be able to put their hands on the whole of social wealth and reduce the exploiting class to impotence; for us, I say, there can be no hesitation. We will throw ourselves body and soul into the Social revolution; once that path has been taken any government, no matter what headgear it wears, will be an obstacle, and we shall reduce to powerlessness and sweep away whoever is ambitious enough to try and impose himself on us to control our destinies.

Enough with governments! Make way for the people! Make way for anarchy!

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Notes

62. Jacques-Pierre Brissot (1754-1793) was a leader of the moderate Girondins during the French Revolution, and active opponent of slavery. Falling into rivalry with Robespierre, he was guillotined, as the other Girondin leaders had been, on the 31st October, 1793. Robespierre would follow him 7 months later. Trans.

63. Mirabeau. See note 21. Trans.

64. Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), the personification of French conspiratorial revolutionism, spent more than 33 of his 75 years in gaol and knew the insides of 30 prisons. He founded or joined a whole series of secret societies, fomented a number of revolts and was at least once condemned to death. He remained active until his death by apoplexy in 1881. Trans.

65. Young Italy (Giovoni Italia), was founded by the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini in 1831. Its propaganda was successful, but its attempts at insurrection failed. In 1848 it was absorbed into Mazzini's Italian National Committee. Trans.

66. The Executive Committee was the activist core of Narondnay Volya, the People's Will, a terrorist group founded in 1879 by militants disillusioned with the failure of gradualist policies. It was the Executive Committee that planned and carried out the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Trans.

67. Blanqui. See note 64. Trans.

68. Tadeusz Kosciuzko was a Polish officer who fought with distinction on the side of the rebels in the American War of Independence, and then, returning to Poland, led in 1794 an uprising against Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the powers that had divided his country between them. He lived out his life in France, the United States and Switzerland, where he died. Trans.

69. After an insurrection in August 1792, a National Convention was elected, which abolished the kingdom of France and established the First Republic. Trans.

70. "The tailor who became president of the United States" was Andrew Johnson (18081875) who succeeded on Lincoln's assassination in 1865. His reconstruction programmes, attempting to repair the damage of the Civil War, were mostly failures, and he was actually impeached by his opponents, though he continued in office to 1869, the end of his term. Trans.