Revolutionaries? Yes, but in What Way?

DISCUSSION IS DIFFICULT, DEMANDING KNOWLEDGE AND FORCING YOU INTO argumentation. This is why our usual enemies prefer slandering, mocking, and declaiming to refuting our theses. One of the epithets they like to apply to us without discussion is that of nonrevolutionary, if not antirevolutionary.

To hear them speak, we individualists profess a profound aversion for everything revolutionary. Some so well feign belief in this that, in contrast to us, they have baptized themselves revolutionary anarchists.

Well then, let’s talk about this one more time. Do we not have to ceaselessly reexamine these questions so that they are finally clear to a few people of good faith?

Every anarchist is, by definition, revolutionary.

In the realm of philosophy we say we are for free investigation. In these times of faith and dogmatism, is this not already something bold and daring?

In the realm of ethics we have developed a new morality based on life itself as it presents itself to each individual. In these times of convention and legalism, is this not true recklessness?

In the social realm we demand the freedom to work, to tackle issues, to join together with each other or not; we demand individual independence. In these times of enslavement, how can this boldness be described?

But this is not yet the essential thing. If we were to content ourselves with making these demands in speech or writing we wouldn’t be overly dangerous. Luckily, no ambiguity is possible. On several occasions we have affirmed our contempt for vain theory. We consider anarchism to be, above all, a way of life.

And so all of our ideas are subversive and irreconcilable with the established order. However strong our desire might be to avoid clashes—and there is none among us who doesn’t want to avoid them—sooner or later a moment arrives when we are forced to choose between abdication and the act of revolt.

And the choice is made in advance.

We are revolutionaries because of our ultimate goal.

But one can be so in two ways.

By admitting the hypothesis of a revolution.

By not admitting it.

For one can be in permanent rebellion against the authoritarian environment without believing that a day will inevitably come when, the revolt having become generalized, it carries off a definitive victory.

Or one can revolt for oneself and one’s own people—anarchist for the anarchists—without bothering oneself with the sufferings of lords and serfs.

In both cases the anarchist individualist revolutionizes the environment, carries out a labor of social transformation, “creates new values.”

And it is precisely here that the confusion is often created, many people having an interest in creating it: the individualists are revolutionaries but don’t believe in the revolution.

Not believing it doesn’t mean denying it’s possible. That would be absurd. We deny that it is probable for a long time to come, and we add that if a revolutionary movement was produced at present, even a victorious one, its reforming value would be minuscule.

And we have no difficulty in proving this.

In writing his beautiful book on “Evolution, Revolution, and the Anarchist Ideal,” Élisée Reclus so magisterially proves this that years later we have nothing to add to or subtract from it.

Read this book or pamphlet. From the first pages you’ll be struck by the definition Reclus gives the words “evolution” and “revolution.”

“It can be said,” he writes, “that evolution and revolution are two successive acts of the same phenomenon, evolution preceding revolution and the latter preceding a new evolution. Is it possible for a change to occur without bringing with it sudden displacements in life’s equilibrium? Mustn’t revolution necessarily succeed evolution in the same way that the act succeeds the will to act? They differ from each other only in the time of their appearance.”

Starting from these premises, Reclus develops his ideas: “Before the revolution takes to the streets it must first be made in people’s minds” We have never said anything different.

Some have contradicted Reclus, have laughed at him while invoking him, have accommodated his well-defined notions and ideas to who knows what demagogy. It wasn’t the individualists who did this, but the leaders of the CGT, “official” revolutionaries, and well-known insurrectionists.

When you’ve read Reclus’s work, open Pataud and Pouget’s novel How We’ll Make the Revolution. Skim Malato’s pamphlet on social classes. Be brave and heroically read Victor Méric’s pamphlet How They’ll Make … etc.

He speaks there of riots, of shooting, of wireless telegraphy, of dictatorship, of catastrophes. He speaks there of the evolution that is a necessary precondition of every revolution. Au contraire! He has things backward: it’s no longer a matter, as the scientists understood it, of a violent social transformation made inevitable by the progress of intelligence; it’s actually a matter of a revolution that must first be made so that minds can evolve afterwards!

It is interesting to place these two concepts alongside each other; all the more interesting in that the demagogues of revolution proclaim themselves to be anarchists.

The scientist demonstrates that revolutions produce themselves. They, for their part, say that they will make the revolution.

The scientist wants to prepare it through intellectual evolution (educational work). For their part, they intend to prepare it buy organizing the masses under the rule of an adventurous minority.

I could continue, but what would be the use?

The revolutionism that we combat is not that of the scientist, it’s not that of Reclus. We believe it is true, and it is surely so every time it is supported by history. It is probably so when, informed by the past, it tries to predict the future. We note that the evolution of intelligence that is the precursor of great social upheavals has barely begun. We deduce from this that the revolution is still far off and, thinking that the joys of life are in the present we think it unreasonable to dedicate our efforts to this future.

And moreover, can we do anything better for the future than to fight in the present? Not for an insurrection doomed to failure, but to be anarchists?

(l’anarchie, December 14, 1911)