Destruction as a Means of Struggle
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Author : Anton Pannekoek

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Published: in Persdienst van de Groep van Internationale Communisten, no. 7, 1933.[1]Source: Endpage.com.Transcription/Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive; reformatted by Micah Muer, 2019.Reformatting/Proofreading: Micah Muer, 2019.

The assessment of the burning of the Reichstag in the left
communist press once again leads us to raise other questions. Can destruction be
a means of struggle for workers?

First of all, it must be said that no one will cry over the disappearance of
the Reichstag. It was one of the ugliest buildings in modern Germany, a pompous
image of the Empire of 1871. But there are other more beautiful buildings, and
museums filled with artistic treasures. When a desperate proletarian destroys
something precious in order to take vengeance for capitalist domination, how
should we assess this?

From a revolutionary point of view, his gesture appears valueless and from
different points of view one could speak of a negative gesture. The bourgeoisie
is not the least bit touched by it since it has already continually destroyed so
many things where it was a matter of its profits, and it places money-value
above all else. Such a gesture especially touches the more limited social strata
of artists, amateurs of beautiful things, the best of whom often have
anti-capitalist feelings, and some of whom (like William Morris and Herman
Gorter) fought at the side of the workers. But in any case, is there any reason
to take vengeance on the bourgeoisie? Does the bourgeoisie have the task of
bringing socialism instead of capitalism?

It is its role to maintain all the forces of capitalism in place; the
destruction of all that is the task of proletarians. It follows that if anybody
can be held responsible for the maintenance of capitalism, it is as much the
working class itself which has neglected the struggle too much. Lastly, from
whom does one remove something by its destruction? From the victorious
proletarians who one day will be masters of all of it.

Of course, all revolutionary class struggle, when it takes the form of civil
war, will always provoke destruction. In any war it is necessary to destroy the
points of support of the enemy. Even if the winner tries to avoid too much
destruction, the loser will be tempted to cause useless destruction through pure
spite. It is to be expected that towards the end of the fight the decadent
bourgeoisie destroys a great deal. On the other hand, for the working class, the
class which will slowly take over, destruction will no longer be a means of
struggle. On the contrary it will try to pass on a world as rich and intact as
possible to its descendants, to future humanity. This is not only the case for
the technical means which it can improve and perfect, but especially for the
monuments and memories of past generations which cannot be rebuilt.

One might object that a new humanity, the bearers of an unequaled liberty
and fraternity, will create things much more beautiful and imposing than those
of past centuries. And moreover that newly liberated humanity will wish to cause
the remainders of the past, which represented its former state of slavery, to
disappear. This is also what the revolutionary bourgeoisie did - or tried to do.
For them, all of past history was nothing but the darkness of ignorance and
slavery, whereas the revolution was dedicated to reason, knowledge, virtue and
freedom. The proletariat, by contrast, considers the history of its forebears
quite differently. On the basis of marxism which sees the development of society
as a succession of forms of production, it sees a long and hard annexation of
humanity on the basis of the development of labor, of tools and of forms of
labor towards an ever increasing productivity, first through simple primitive
society, then through class societies with their class struggle, until the
moment when through communism man becomes the master of his own fate. And in
each period of development, the proletariat finds characteristics which are
related to its own nature.

In barbarian prehistory: the sentiments of fraternity and the morality of
solidarity of primitive communism. In petty-bourgeois manual work: the love of
work which was expressed in the beauty of the buildings and the utensils for
everyday use which their descendants regard as incomparable masterworks. In the
ascendant bourgeoisie: the proud feeling of liberty which proclaimed the rights
of man and was expressed in the greatest works of world literature. In
capitalism: the knowledge of nature, the priceless development of natural
science which allowed man, through technology, to dominate nature and its own
fate.

In the work of all of these periods, these imposing character traits were
more or less closely allied to cruelty, superstition and selfishness. It is
exactly these vices which we fight, which are an obstacle to us and which we
therefore hate. Our conception of history teaches us that these imperfections
must be understood as natural stages of growth, as the expression of a struggle
for life by men not yet fully human, in an all powerful nature and in a society
of which the understanding escaped them.

For liberated humanity the imposing things which they created in spite of
everything will remain a symbol of their weakness, but also a memorial of their
strength, and worthy of being carefully preserved. Today, it is the bourgeoisie
which possesses all of it, but for us it is the property of the collectivity
which we will set free to hand on to future generations as intact as
possible.

Note

[1]. This article was apparently first published in Persdienst van de Groep van Internationale Communisten, no.7, 1933, at the same time as the article Individual Acts (a.k.a. The Personal Act). This translation has been made from the French translation in Echanges, No.90 Spring/Summer 1999. For the background to the article see Chapter Six of La Gauche Communiste Germano-Hollandaise - des origines à 1968 by Philippe Bourrinet, available in PDF format at this http://www.left-dis.nl/f/gch/6.pdf.


     From : Marxists.org

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