Max Nomad, Apostles of Revolution, 1939/
INTRODUCTION The nineteenth century was the age of the great hopes and promises. It saw the blossoming of the ideas of political democracy, of national independence and of social justice. The twentieth century, it was firmly believed, would bring the fulfillment of most of these aspirations.
The wars and the revolutions of the last two decades have blighted most of these hopes. The spread of democracy has not prevented the establishment of oligarchical rule of capitalist or bureaucratic cliques. Nationalism, which once spelled emancipation and independence of oppressed nationalities, has become the ideology of imperialist expansion, persecution of minorities, and racial discrimination. The socialist movement, once the promise of the horny-handed underdog, intent upon his immediate emancipation, also went the way of all flesh. In the Western countries it evolved into a political machine, a steppingstone for all kinds of labor politicians; or else it took the shape of a religion promising happiness for future generations. In the East, where its preachers had won, it developed a new system of exploitation, substituting an all-powerful hierarchy of officeholders and technicians for the dispossessed capitalists and other property-holders.
A key to the understanding of the rise and the decline of revolutionary movements may be found in the activities and ideas of some of the glamorous political figures of the past hundred years, whose careers the writer has presented in this book. The chief object of his work is to explain the ever-recurring tragic failures of all revolutionary mass movements, which invariably fall short in achieving their originally professed aims. That explanation he finds (i) in the inherent contradiction between the interests of the leading group which is striving for power, and those of the uneducated rank and file yearning for a better share of the good things of life; and (2) in the inexorable logic of every revolutionary struggle, which necessarily results in the establishment of a new aristocracy, regardless of the democratic, socialist, communist, or anarchist ideas professed by its champions.
These ideas are not the author's original discoveries. In one way or another they had been suggested to him by the concepts of various nineteenth century thinkers -- extreme Left Revolutionists on the one hand, and "pessimists" in sociology on the other. He elaborated and modified them on the basis of his own studies of revolutionary movements. He owes a particular debt to the Polish-Russian revolutionary thinker Waclaw Machajski, whose opinions he had presented in his previous book, Rebels and Renegades. In the present work the author draws his own conclusions from those ideas.
The Veil of Myths
The cool realization that the essence of all revolutionary struggles is the enthronement of a new privileged minority has come comparatively late. Karl Marx, in his Communist Manifesto, remarked that "all previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities"; but that the "proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority." History has shown that the "immense majority" has always consisted of two antagonistic groups: the educated leaders and the uneducated mass. The alliance between these two groups has been like the proverbial "pact" between the rider and the horse who united in order to combat their common enemy, the lion. "Riders" themselves, all revolutionary theorists consistently close their eyes to the unequal status of the two "allies." They assume, or pretend to assume, that the elite of the working class holds the same relation to the masses as the ruling elite to the privileged classes. They disregard the fact that the educated leaders -- as a group -- are as much above their uneducated "fellow workers" as the rider is above the horse, except that an occasional member of the mass is able to rise to the class of the "riders" -- which, although it spoils the metaphor, does not, however, change the logic of the general set-up.
Elements of self-deception and conscious fiction are invariably interwoven with all revolutionary gospels. Their success is facilitated by the fact that the masses, as a whole, are equally receptive to just criticism of existing evils and to the most fantastic fairy tales. The Spaniard who invites a man to his house says "Come into your house," the polite implication being that the host's house is at the guest's disposal. The modern revolutionist who wants power tells the worker: "This will be your power." The Spaniard understands the polite hypocrisy of the phrase; the worker who sheds his blood for "his power" does not.
Through the use of fictions as a means of propaganda, socialists of the various schools have to a certain extent become the trail-blazers for their worst competitors in the struggle for power. It must not be forgotten that the first champions of Fascism had all been active militants in the Socialist, Syndicalist, or Anarchist movements. Cynics, they had seen through the fictions and myths of their own ideologies, and they decided that a myth would be the more effective the more it catered to the deeply ingrained prejudices of the masses. If the radicals could arouse enthusiasm by their myth of human brotherhood and the vague promise of equality, the Fascists could outdo them by creating myths which appealed not to the generous sentiments but to the predatory instincts of nationalism and imperialist aggrandizement. With their myths the Fascists succeeded in deceiving not only the masses but their own powerful backers as well. The Russian Bolsheviks, leaning upon the workers for support, used the myth of the "emancipation of the working class." They dispossessed the capitalists first, and eventually enslaved the rest of the population. The Fascists, leaning upon the capitalists for support, used the myth of "national greatness." They enslaved the workers first, and later proceeded gradually to expropriate the owners of the country's wealth through excessive taxes, assessments, Government restrictions, and the like. They had found a way of having bourgeois "roast pig" without burning the barn. Both Communists and Fascists had originally faced a social system in which the capitalist property-owners held the first place, with the officeholders and other educated elements as their minor partners in the division of profits. The Communists eliminated the major partner altogether, giving all the power to a bureaucracy of their own creation. The Fascists chose a middle course: they enthroned their own bureaucracy and reduced the capitalist partners to a position of inferiority, ready to dispose of them at a later date. The capitalists prefer the Fascist way because it offers them a less violent and more distant death, with greater possibilities of adaptation in the meantime. But for the people at large both processes remain hidden behind a thick veil of fictions and myths.
Every form of class rule has its own standardized set of political fictions. Feudal power, with its crowning dynastic ornament, ostensibly rested upon the theological foundation of divine right. Capitalist privilege receives its sanction in the democratic countries from the "will of the people," that is, the consent of the majority, which the beneficiaries of the system obtain through their grip upon all the agencies controlling the minds of the masses. The coming rule of the officeholders and technicians, as exemplified by Russia, and as aspired to in the West by various brands of socialism and communism -- and the "radical" wing of international fascism as well -- rests upon the subtle fiction of "collective ownership." A fiction according to which the high-salaried expert or officeholder and the low-paid manual worker are "equally" the owners of the country's means of production! Just as under the capitalist system they are equally members of the "proletariat" because they both can be "hired and fired"!
The Two Principles The spurious and fictitious character of most political slogans has suggested to a French Anarchist the idea that there are only two principles governing all politics. First -- to get power by all means, even the vilest; and, second, to keep that power by all means, even the vilest. These two "principles," discovered by Sebastien Faure, a former pupil of a Jesuit theological seminary, have their application to revolutionary politics as well. The contradictions abounding in all revolutionary theories are due not so much to deficient logic, as to the tactical requirements of the changing political situations necessitating a different approach for the attainment of the same aim -- the capture of power. Or else they are due to the changed economic and social status of the victorious revolutionary party. Moreover, practical revolutionists, however devoted they may be to their pet principles, are sooner or later faced with the necessity of compromise, ostensibly in order to save the revolution, but actually, to use a famous phrase of Abbe Sieyes, in order to "save the revolutionists." And that is the end of the "principles."
This charge of Machiavellian lack of principle may seem a slur upon some of the noblest figures in human history. For revolutionary movements have brought forth stainless heroes untouched by the baser human passions -- greed for power or riches. Such was Karl Liebknecht among the Germans, Peter Kropotkin and Sophia Perovskaya among the Russians, Elisee Reclus and Louise Michel among the French, Errico Malatesta and Carlo Cafiero among the Italians, Buenaventura Durruti among the Spaniards. But these were revolutionary mystics, apostles, or pure heroes rather than practical revolutionists.
Personal courage, the principal virtue of the typical revolutionist, does not necessarily dwell under the same roof with other noble qualities, such as consistency, loyalty, tolerance and ordinary decency. The Bulgaro-Macedonian patriots (the "comitadjis") who during the last quarter of the past century performed miracles of heroism in their band warfare against the Turkish rulers of Macedonia, were at the same time the most consummate gangsters mutually exterminating each other in factional strife. The Russian revolutionary terrorists of the "People's Will" party, known as the "Nihilists," included the noblest and most heroic figures that ever struggled for freedom. Yet at a given point of their party's career, in 1882, they were not averse to encouraging pogroms against the Jews, in the hope that the masses, once aroused, would go further and turn their fury against their Tsarist masters as well. They were actuated by what some of the finest figures among the French revolutionary republicans of a century ago called the "supremacy of the aim" (la souverainete du but). Which was, after all, only another version of the old Jesuit tenet that the end justifies all means.
As in the case of the Jesuits, the end was certainly the salvation of mankind. But again, as in the case of those militant champions of the Church, the first phase of that salvation has always been visualized as the establishment in power of the preachers of the "true" gospel of salvation. The former heroes of the underground struggles were to become cabinet members, military leaders and officeholders, with those humble proletarians who had played the glorious part of terrorists or front-fighters usually becoming members of the secret police devoted to the extermination of all Rightist and Leftist opponents of the new status quo. Such was the ultimate fate of most Socialist and near-Socialist intellectuals and "class-conscious" workers who helped to establish an independent Poland under the leadership of the former Socialist chieftain Pilsudski. They used their freedom from the Russian yoke to oppress the various racial minorities within the new State, and eventually to establish a thinly disguised totalitarian system headed by former idealists who once professed socialist and democratic principles. Such was also the fate of the Bolshevik super-revolutionists whose well-known methods of vicious slander and mass-extermination of dissenters have pretty nearly succeeded in dishonoring the very idea of revolution. In their hands nothing was left of the original humanitarian and idealist content of socialist philosophy -- except the purely economic fact of Government ownership, a performance which is now being gradually duplicated in the fascist countries as well. It almost looks as if Lenin had his own party in mind when he wrote that "history knows transformations of all kinds" and that it is preposterous "to rely on conviction, loyalty and other superlative qualities."
Generally speaking, one could say about the bulk of victorious revolutionists of all times what the Romans had to say about the most venerable citizens of the Republic: Senatores boni viri, senatus mala bestia. Senators [may be] good men [individually], but the Senate is a vicious beast. For that vicious beast, as a body, was firmly determined to maintain its power at any price; a desire which can truly be called the "original sin" of all politics and all politicians, whether conservative or revolutionary. Mussolini, after he decided to hasten his accession to power through a change of vocabulary and tactics, expressed this idea with that characteristic mixture of cynicism and bombast -- "This is the revolution: the firm determination to keep power."
The lure of power breaks all ethical inhibitions. "He was decent up to one hundred thousand marks; nobody is decent beyond that" -- that simple philosophy of a notorious German adventuress can be applied to revolutionary politics as well. For the border-line of "100,000" is generally reached as soon as victory is in sight. And the Revolution, which is a Cross as long as the enemy still seems invincible, becomes a Bandwagon as soon as power has changed hands.
The Alternative With the time-honored processes of classical revolutions discredited by the doings of their own champions, the friends of progress are beginning to stake their hopes on the spontaneous activity of the masses. Someday, they believe, the masses will take matters into their own hands, either by direct action or by casting the right ballot. In other words, having discarded the myth of the Good Leader, these optimists eagerly accept the myth of the Wise Mass. They close their eyes upon the fact that their hopes rest upon a very shaky foundation. For the masses, whether they are called the "people" or the "working class," are at best able to sweep away an old system. They cannot create "spontaneously" new forms of society, and, least of all, a system based upon what one might call "social justice." For on the day of the Revolution, the mass, in its overwhelming majority, still consists of the same elements which only the day before were prone to mistreat racial minorities, to refuse tolerance to other beliefs, and to follow the lead of any crafty demagogue. The New York draft riots of 1861, during which a bestial mob vented its "pacifist" sentiments upon innocent Negroes; the East St. Louis massacre (1918) of colored workers by white natives and immigrants; the enthusiasm with which the German workers of the Saar and of the Sudetenland wanted to be brought under the yoke of Hitler; the readiness with which any crowd, all things being equal, will respond to an appeal to its basest instincts rather than to a voice of reason or of fair play; the almost unanimous enthusiasm of the Italian masses, at home and abroad, for the unprovoked attack upon Ethiopia; the support given by the majority to all the predatory, imperialist, colonial adventures of every Government on this planet; the voluntary servitude and self-debasement with which the masses at large submit to any dictator; the equanimity with which they stand for all the most cruel perversions of justice, whether it be the Mooney and Sacco-Vanzetti cases in America, or the Moscow "trials" in Russia; the blindness and callousness with which even "class-conscious" workers and "liberal" intellectuals defend every infamy of the Stalin regime, including the total extermination of two generations of Russian revolutionists of all political denominations; the fact that practically all the disinherited of this world were armed at the conclusion of the war in 1918, yet permitted the profiteers to keep their spoils; the spectacular progress of the American Communists ever since they began to make their obeisance to Father Divine, Joe Louis and Saint Patrick -- all this offers little comfort to those who place their hope in the spontaneity of the masses which are supposed to be by nature noble and intelligent.
Yet, given exceptionally propitious circumstances, a sudden change in the political constellation brought about by a combination of mass action and democratic procedure may blaze the trail for a thorough departure from present-day miseries and tyrannies. For occasionally the masses do give their preference to a progressive as against a reactionary, or to a democratic socialist as against a fascist or a "communist." And if the bread-and-butter problem, usually tackled last by the victorious party, is given immediate attention, then even the greatest wiles of the most cunning demagogues may prove insufficient to swerve the masses from their new allegiance. For we must remember that the masses are eager to drink blood in direct proportion to their need for bread.
However, even this optimistic contingency merely represents the substitution of an enlightened aristocracy for a despotic one, of a "good" master for a bad one. It is a step forward, but it is no solution of the social problem -- because there is no final solution. For even a socialist system of production, based upon political democracy, whose planned economy will have done away with starvation and unemployment, will maintain the immemorial inequalities in the exercise of power and the distribution of the good things of life -- the highest salaries, the best apartments, and the greatest comforts going invariably to the ever-renascent aristocracy of the most intelligent, the most gifted, the most ruthless and the most cunning. It will be the enthronement of a sort of aristocracy of intellect and energy, as against the previous aristocracies of birth and of wealth. That aristocratic millennium the French Anarchist poet Laurent Tailhade could visualize as the "blessed time when the populace will kiss the trace of the steps of the poets." ["Heureux temps d'anarchie ou la plebe baiserait la trace des pas des poetes."]
That "blessed time" will not be all adulation and poetry. Its inequalities will remain a source of never-ending struggles; for in the words of Aristotle, "inequality is the cause of all revolutions." As in the past the "poor relations" of the new masters will keep on fighting for power and courting the support of the masses anxious for a more equitable distribution of the good things of life. And that fight will go on forever. . . .
This is not a "Farewell to Revolution," nor an admission of the futility of human struggles, even though it is a renunciation of the Utopian dream of the final triumph of justice and equality. Utopian illusions may be a sweet consolation to some, just as religious mysticism is to others. But those of a stronger mold can "bear all naked truth." Champions of permanent protest, they will keep on fighting for justice, even though its full victory is not within the biological scheme. And the underdog, though he may never see the millennium, will get more out of this life if he keeps on struggling and mistrusting both his masters and his quot;emancipators."