The failure of the German and Hungarian revolutions. The difficulties of the Russian Revolution

Three empires destroyed and, in Germany alone, 23 crowns of great and small potentates swept away in the storm!

And yet today we can say that in Germany and Austria-Hungary the revolution has failed and that, while this is not yet the case in Russia, the revolution is encountering serious difficulties and is in extreme distress.

The uprisings that swept away the potentates were purely political in nature; imperial, tsarist, or simply princely etiquette gave way to republican etiquette, but the old regime continues, with much the same bureaucracy, the same administrative machinery, and under the same tyranny in social life.

That is true, strictly true, alas, for Central Europe; and, although in Russia it was not just a simple political uprising, but a veritable social revolution, what remains, after two years of revolution, of the social freedoms of the beginning, under what has been christened the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," but which, for us, is nothing more than a caricature of the proletarian revolution and the dawn of a future of well-being and freedom for all.

When the Bastille fell in 1789, peasants in several regions of France had already begun attacking feudal castles; and as soon as the peasants east of the Elbe and throughout Germany follow suit, more than a century ago by France, we will consider the economic revolution to have begun in the German Empire.

It cannot be denied that in Hungary, both in the countryside and in the capital, the revolution had an economic and social character that far exceeded anything achieved in Germany. But it is for this very reason that the movement failed, and it is precisely the causes of its failure that interest us here.

In Russia, where the social revolution has been as profound as in Hungary, the Bolshevik armies are still holding their own against the counterrevolutionary troops. The forces of resistance to the Revolution there are provided more by peasants ready to vigorously defend the land formerly owned by their masters than by the urban proletariat, exhausted by poverty and currently held — we are not talking about the first months of the Bolshevik Revolution — under economic and political control as rigorous as that of the old regime.

Is socialism being achieved in the Russian countryside?

As for the peasants, moreover, the question is whether the goal they are fighting for is really the realization of what socialists and communists have always imagined when they thought of an agrarian revolution in Russia!

When, before the war, Russian revolutionaries spoke of the social revolution and addressed the rural proletariat, they were aiming for the socialization of land and its transition from private ownership to communist ownership, based on the model of the ancient Mir, which was still maintained in many regions of the country.

They were contradicted in this propaganda only by the Marxists, largely the same people who currently present themselves under the name of Bolsheviks, and whose dogma foresaw the transition from the current small rural property to capitalist property, and the expropriation of small peasants by city usurers, before it was time—according to the same dogma—to consider the socialization of land.

Communist conceptions of land ownership were mainly represented by the "revolutionary socialists" (Chernov's program). But they were ousted because the Bolsheviks knew better than them how to outbid them and lend themselves to the majority tendencies of the masses. And when, in the midst of the army's debacle, the moujiks returned from the front in their tens of thousands, carrying rifles and machine guns, hurrying for fear of not arriving early enough in their villages, the new Bolshevik government forgot all socialist principles and let the peasants take the land as they wished. And wherever the old institution of the Mir was not deeply rooted in customs, the "division of land" took the same turn in Russia as it did in France at the beginning of the Great Revolution. This was so true that a few months later, fighting broke out in several regions between the "rich peasants" and the "poor peasants," the latter being, for the most part, urban proletarians who had arrived too late to receive their share of the spoils. The Bolshevik governments then most often took sides against the rich peasants. What an irony of history to see these Marxists, who had condemned the small peasant to ruin, collaborate in the creation of tens of millions of small peasant livelihoods!

For us, libertarian communists, this is a bitter disappointment, a real failure, which we attribute, on the one hand, to the selfishness and lack of communist education of the rural proletarian masses of Russia, and on the other hand to the unshakeable will of the Bolsheviks to remain in power at all costs, even if it meant sacrificing both their own theory and the fundamental principles of socialism!

Disillusionment in industries

In the industrial sector, the disillusionment was no less profound. According to the news that reached us, the "takeover" of industries by workers took two forms at the beginning of the economic revolution: In the most primitive form, workers took over companies without realizing what it means to run an industry; tramway staff divided up the the revenue without even thinking about the necessary repairs or the depreciation of the equipment, and in turn defended themselves against passengers who refused to pay. Under the other form of taking possession of production, the workers demanded only "control" of the factories, large workshops, railways, etc., often forcing the manufacturer to remain in his position as technical director of their establishment.

But soon the Russian press and comrades returning from Russia reported that even this latest method was not producing satisfactory results: either workers' control had no influence, with the boss remaining, in effect, omnipotent, or else it was the workers' committee that replaced the "capitalist" of old and acted like him. It was then that the "organization" of industries by the top Bolshevik government began, that is, a regime of extreme "industrial centralization" according to sacred Marxist theories, which transformed an industry after another into a state-owned enterprise. industrial centralization" according to sacred Marxist theories, which transformed one industry after another into "state enterprises."

Thus, at a railroad company in southern Russia, "worker control" exercising control through a joint commission was replaced by the appointment of a "dictator." (Account of one of the company's directors.)

During this period, we were astonished by Moscow's official reports, which revealed an appalling lack of technical knowledge and real social science.

We have the "measures taken by the Russian Supreme Council of Social Economy," which were reproduced by Vorwärts in Berlin, in its July 16, 1918 issue; we also have two reports by Larine, first People's Commissar for Labor, who later became the driving force behind the aforementioned "Supreme Council." These reports were published by the official organ of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, Izvestia, issues of March 20 and April 17, 1918 (translated into French by the Russian Information Bureau in issues 37 (Nov. 19, 1918) and 44 (Dec. 24, 1918). nbsp;1918).

However, the lightness with which the officials of the Superior Council of Social Economy enacted in their provisions the nationalization of banks in the midst of war; the nonchalance that led them to "open credit to all companies within the framework of the state budget," or replacing "cash" with "bank transfers and bills of exchange" in the delivery of raw materials; the dogmatic tenacity that drove them to want to organize, in Moscow, a state monopoly for all industries and for the entire country, with the creation of "central command offices"; etc.—this levity, this nonchalance, and this dogmatic tenacity are beyond measure and suggest a complete lack of responsibility.

After reading and rereading the aforementioned provisions of the Superior Council, we first came to the following conclusion: The individuals who drafted these provisions, we said, do not have a clear understanding of what an industrial enterprise is, nor of the conditions that such an enterprise must meet — whatever form of company it may be — in order to be able to produce without loss and to deserve to be preserved. These individuals also have no idea of the role of money and the conditions under which "cash" can be replaced by paper money, so that the farmer freely gives his cow or his wheat in exchange for a banknote.

But when, later on, we read Larine's reports, our astonishment turned frankly into hostility: "The nationalization of banks," he said, for example (2nd Report), "must be achieved by combining the current accounts of 'each enterprise' into a single account." Even if such "nationalization" (read: state monopoly) were feasible, it would be nothing less than the appalling enslavement of an entire industrial population under state bureaucracy! The mere idea of seeing every industrial enterprise in the vast country of Russia forced to deposit its current accounts in the same state bank in Moscow is enough to condemn a regime that claims to be a liberating revolution and to label it counterrevolutionary.

Ah, that statist and centralizing Marxism!

At present, the Soviet government, after the harsh lessons that experience has taught it, has had to call upon its services related to supply, transport, the most immediate needs of social life, to a prominent capitalist, who reigns as a veritable "dictator," distributing corporate profits and, in return, unscrupulously violated all labor protection legislation.

And the workers? A friend of Kropotkin's, who recently arrived in Paris, tells us that an excerpt from one of our venerable friend's books, published in tens of thousands of copies, sold out in three days, with the labor unions buying up the entire print run. After so many failures, the workers are more eager than ever to "read, to learn what to do to avoid further disappointments."

The gains of the Russian Revolution

Fortunately, there are also enormous advantages to be gained, treasures of inestimable value to the people and to humanity as a whole, to the credit of the Russian Revolution, and the same is true of the revolutions in Central Europe.

The happiest of all, the essential result, is that minds have been awakened and that the former servile docility of the masses has given way to a joyful liveliness and wonderful initiatives.

For the first time in history, Russian peasants and workers feel like free men, equal to their former masters. The same cannot be said of the German peasant; in this respect, the Russian Revolution was entirely different from the German Revolution.

The current state of mind in Russia is full of promise for the future, provided that the working masses are not driven to despair by being led from one mistake to another!

For the main reasons for the disillusionment and failures that resulted from the Russian Revolution are to be found, on the one hand, in the complete ignorance and lack of culture among the masses and, on the other hand, in the fact that the few thousand individuals who presented themselves as representatives of the people were themselves ignorant and uneducated. the lack of culture among the masses and, on the other hand, in the fact that the few thousand individuals who presented themselves as "dictators of the proletariat" (the term is apt in two different senses) have too little knowledge of real life and are too dogmatically narrow-minded to be able to preside over the destinies of large populations.

The lack of capable men is an obstacle everywhere, even in large centers.

In Germany, as in Hungary and Russia, it was an obstacle to the success of the revolutionary movement, and this factor should further deter the apostles of the Revolution from going too far and encourage them to seriously consider how far we can go, where they should stop, and how they could reach agreement among comrades in the struggle at a time of danger.

Should we spare the Bolsheviks from criticism?

Is it useful to discuss here, at this moment in time, the failures of the revolutions in Russia and Central Europe? The Bolsheviks are, after all, our own flesh and blood. They seriously attempted to achieve socialism, and their mistakes are still largely due to their outdated dogma, dating back to Marx himself, some eighty years ago.

One could argue that at a time when the reactionary powers of the Entente are attempting, through their criminal blockade, to subdue these Russian populations by starvation, the Russian populations they have been unable to defeat by force of arms, that at this moment the only words that should be spoken are those of solidarity and praise for the Bolshevik regime.

Well, that is not our view, at least not as long as we are not called upon to act ourselves, and unity is imposed by the necessity of effective struggle. Until then, on the contrary, honest and reasonable criticism is essential. We, as revolutionary internationalists, side with the Bolsheviks if we have to choose between them and the reactionaries, the Kolchak-Denikin-Yudenich, who aim to restore the old regime.

But we must not forget the immense mistakes made by the Bolsheviks, for it is precisely these mistakes that have been and still are the best fuel for international reaction, and would be so again if tomorrow the same mistakes the same errors were committed in Western Europe tomorrow.

Comrades attending the numerous revolutionary public meetings held in Paris are concerned about the verbiage, the chatter that fills these meetings, and the flippancy with which they talk about the proletariat taking possession of all production, without ever hearing any mention of all the difficulties involved in managing a single factory or a single railway network.

"Long live the Soviets!" "Long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!" The comrades who shout these slogans do not realize that the two terms are mutually exclusive, that the vote of the Soviets must exclude the very idea of the existence of a dictatorship, and that the "Dictatorship" exercised by a few hundred individuals in the name of the proletariat, as well as the military dictatorship, which is increasingly replacing the former in Russia, excludes the possibility of obeying the will of the Soviets. Insofar as the opinion of the workers' soviets is still sought in Russia, these bodies are dissolved as soon as the Bolsheviks no longer have a majority in them.

"Long live Communism!" For several months now, the Bolsheviks have insisted on calling themselves communists, in accordance with the terms of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto. However, in Marx's time, the words "communist" and "collectivist" had meanings that were completely opposite to their current meanings, with "communists" being the parliamentary centralizers and "collectivists" being the parliamentary centralizers. communists" were the parliamentary centralizers and the "collectivists" were what we now call libertarian communists.

And now, in France, forty years after the Paris Commune, which was anything but a centralizing movement, is imitating even the terminology of the Russian Social Democrats, without stopping to consider for a moment that democratic life after a whole century would be, in France as in England and the United States, incompatible with the political and social centralization dreamed of by the Bolsheviks, and with the "dictatorship" of any group of individuals.

Certainly, it is not only permissible, but absolutely necessary to enlighten minds and criticize the dogmas and errors of Bolshevism—before it is too late.