Peter Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel , 1885.

XVIII
Theory and Practice

When we discuss the order of things which, in our view, should emerge from the coming revolution, we are often told: "All that is theory, with which we should not be concerning ourselves. Put it aside, and let us think of practical things. (Electoral questions, for example). Let us prepare for the coming to power of the working class. And later we shall see what will emerge from the revolution."

Yet there is something that tends to make us doubtful about the rightness or even the sincerity of such reasoning. It is that in putting it forward those who do so already have their own theories on the way of organizing society on the morrow or even the very day of the revolution; far from making light of such theories, they propagate them, and all that they do now is a logical extension of their ideas. In the end those words: -- "Let us not discuss theoretical questions" really mean: "Do not subject our theory to discussion, but help us put it into execution."

In fact there is not a single newspaper article into which the author does not introduce his ideas about the organization of society, as he sees it. Consider the words they use: "Workers' State"; "organization of production and consumption by the State"; "collectivism" (limited to collective ownership of the means of production and repudiating the communalization of the products); "party discipline," etc. -- all those phrases a crop up constantly in newspaper articles as well as in pamphlets. Those who make a pretence of attaching no importance to "theories" do everything possible to propagate their ideas and also their errors, against which one day we shall have to struggle. To cite only one example, it is enough to mention merely the Quintessence of Socialism by Schaeffle,74 a book written by an Austrian ex-minister who, under the pretence of defending socialism, has no other real aim than saving the bourgeois order from collapse. It is true that this book has not had much success among French and German workers; nevertheless, its ideas, peppered with a few revolutionary phrases to build up indignation, are propagated every day.

But that is all quite natural. It is repugnant to the human mind to plunge into a task of demolition without having some idea -- even if only in relation to the essential outlines -- of what might replace the structures that are being demolished. "We will establish a revolutionary dictatorship," say some. "We will nominate a government chosen from among the workers and will confide to them the organization of production," say others. "We will put everything in common within the insurgent communes, say a third group." But all, without exception, have some conception of the future to which they more or less hold; and that idea reacts, consciously or unconsciously, on their mode of action in the present preparatory period.

Thus we gain nothing by avoiding these "questions of theory"; on the contrary, if we wish to be "practical," we must of necessity, from today onwards expound, and discuss under all its aspects our ideal of anarchist communism.

Besides, if we are not now -- in this period of relative calm through which we are passing -- to expound, discuss and propagate that idea -- when are we to do it?

Will it be on the day when, in the smoke of the barricades, among the debris of the overthrown structure [of the State], we must throw open on the battlefield the gates to a new future? But by that time we must already have made a resolution and have a firm intention of putting it into operation. There will no longer be time for discussion. We must act, on the spot, in one way or another.

The reason why preceding revolutions did not give the French people all they had a right to expect, was not that these people had talked excessively about the aims of the revolution which they felt approaching. The task of determining that aim and seeing to its achievement has always been left to the leaders, who have invariably betrayed the people, as one might expect of them. It was not that the people ever had a readymade theory that prevented them from acting; they had none at all.

The bourgeoisie, in 1848 and 1871, knew very well what it was going to do when the people overthrew the government. It knew that it would seize power, gain approval through elections, and arm the petty bourgeoisie against the people; controlling the army, the artillery, the means of communication and the monetary funds, it would be able to throw its mercenaries against the workers on the day they dared demand their rights. It knew exactly what it would do on the day of the revolution.

But the people knew nothing like this. On the political question they repeated in 1848, imitating the bourgeoisie, "Republic and Universal Suffrage," and in 1871 they said, with the petty bourgeoisie, "The Commune!" But neither in 1848 nor in 1871 did they have any precise idea of what must be done to solve the question of bread and work. "The organization of work," that slogan of 1848 (a phantom recently resuscitated by the Germany collectivists), was a term so vague that it said nothing; the same was the case with the equally vague collectivism of the International in France during 1869. If, in March 1871, one had questioned all those who worked to bring about the Commune on what should be done to solve the question of bread and work -- what a terrible cacophony of contradictory answers one would have received! Must we take possession of the workshops in the name of the Commune of Paris? Can we lay our hands on houses and declare them property of the insurgent city? Is it necessary to take possession of all the provisions and organize rationing? Should one proclaim all the riches piled in Paris to be the common property of the French people, and apply these powerful means to the liberation of the whole nation? On none of these questions did the mass of the people form any opinion. Preoccupied by the necessities of the immediate struggle, the International itself neglected a thorough discussion of such matters. "You are indulging in fantasy and theory," was the answer to those who brought them up; and when the social revolution was mentioned the discussion was limited to defining it by other words just as vague, such as Liberty, Equality, Solidarity.

It is far from our intent to elaborate a detailed programme to be put into operation in the event of a revolution. Such a programme would do nothing but inhibit action; many would profit from the occasion to be guided by sophisms like this: "Since we cannot realize our programme, let us do nothing and save our previous blood for a better occasion."

We know very well that any popular movement is a step towards the social revolution. It awakens the spirit of revolt, it makes men accustomed to seeing the established order (or rather the established disorder) as eminently unstable. One needs the stupid arrogance of a German parliamentarian to ask: "What was the use of the Great Revolution or the Commune?" If France is in the avant garde of the revolution, if the French people is revolutionary by spirit and temperament, it is because it has made so many of these revolutions now disowned by doctrinaires and fools.

But what is important for us to determine is the aim which we ourselves propose to attain. And not only to decide on it, but also to make it known, by words and deeds, in such a way as to make it notably popular, so popular that on the day of action it will be on everybody's lips. It is a task much greater and much more necessary than is generally imagined; for if the objective has taken on life in the minds of a small number, such is not the case with the great mass of the people, worked on as they are in every way by the press -- whether it be bourgeois, liberal, communalist, collectivist, etc.

On that objective depends our way of action in the present and future. The difference between the anarchist-communist, the authoritarian collectivist, the Jacobin and the communalist-authoritarian, lies not wholly in their conceptions of a more or less distant ideal. Not merely will it be felt on the day of the revolution, but it is evident even today, in every act and in every judgment, no matter how slight it be. On the day of the revolution, the statist-collectivist will hurry to install himself in the Hotel de Ville of Paris, whence he will issue his decrees on the system of property; he will do his best to establish a powerful government that will poke its nose everywhere, even so far as gathering statistics and issuing decrees on the chickens reared in Fouilly-les-Oies. The communistautonomist will also hasten to the Hotel de Ville and, instituting his rival government, will try to repeat the history of the Commune, forbidding anyone from touching the sacred institution of property if the Council of the Commune has not decided it is opportune to do so. But the anarchistcommunist will immediately take possession of the workshops, houses, granaries and the whole of social wealth, and organize within each commune and group community of production and consumption, so that all their needs can be provided for.

The same differences extend to the smallest manifestations of our daily life and activity. Since every man seeks to establish a harmony between his aims and his actions, it follows that the anarchist-communist, the statist-collectivist and the autonomist-communalist will find themselves in disagreement on all points where immediate action is concerned.

This difference exists; do not let us try to ignore it. On the contrary, let each of us frankly express our purpose, and the discussion that goes on continually, every day and at each moment in the groups, on too personal a level to find a place in the newspapers, will develop among the popular masses a common idea to which the majority will one day be able to rally.

As far as the immediate present is concerned, we have a number of areas of common action, on which the various groups can act in agreement. There is the area of struggle against capital, and that against the sustainer of capital -- government. Whatever may be our ideas on the future organization of society, there is one point to which all socialists adhere: the expropriation of capital must result from the coming revolution. Therefore any struggle that prepares for that expropriation should be sustained in unanimity by all the socialist groups, to whatever shading they belong. And the more the various groups encounter each other on this common terrain, and on all levels to which shared circumstances lead us, the sooner a common understanding of what must be done during the revolution will establish itself.

But let us always keep in mind that if we expect a more or less general idea of what is to be done to emerge among the masses on the day of conflagration, we must not neglect to constantly expose our concept of the society that must emerge from the revolution. If we want to be practical, let us continue to discuss what the reactionaries of all kinds have always described as "Utopias and theories." Theory and practice must become one if we are to succeed.


Notes

74. Albert Schaeffle (1831-1903) was briefly the Austrian minister of commerce and agriculture (1871). He was a radical reformist rather than a radical, and had a considerable influence on social welfare legislation in both Austria and Germany. Trans.