Kropotkin: Will the Revolution be Collectivist?

And a happy new year for everyone. Better late than never. While 2016 personally was great, globally it was a bit of a bummer. Not least Carrie Fisher at the year’s end. George Michael’s was sad: never was a big Wham! fan (or, indeed, any sort of fan as a lot of the early stuff was terrible) but musically some of his songs were good and he had an excellent voice (the only person I could see replacing Freddie in front of Queen – as shown by "Somebody to Love"). However, post his "little incident" (and "Outside" is a great disco song), I became more of a fan — not least for his concerts for NHS staff, general acts of kindness and his anti-war comments (never expected to utter the words "if only the Prime Minister had listened to the lead-singer of Wham! things would be a lot better"). Which shows you why liberty and equality is so important – people should not be forced to hide who they are. So Xmas could have been better…

And a happy new year for everyone. Better late than never. While 2016 personally was great, globally it was a bit of a bummer. Not least Carrie Fisher at the year’s end. George Michael’s was sad: never was a big Wham! fan (or, indeed, any sort of fan as a lot of the early stuff was terrible) but musically some of his songs were good and he had an excellent voice (the only person I could see replacing Freddie in front of Queen – as shown by "Somebody to Love"). However, post his "little incident" (and "Outside" is a great disco song), I became more of a fan — not least for his concerts for NHS staff, general acts of kindness and his anti-war comments (never expected to utter the words "if only the Prime Minister had listened to the lead-singer of Wham! things would be a lot better"). Which shows you why liberty and equality is so important – people should not be forced to hide who they are. So Xmas could have been better…

And the horror of Trump is clear for all to see. I did not blog about him during the campaign as I thought it unlikely (but not impossible) that he would win. He was saying anything to get votes, contradicting himself sometimes mid-paragraph, so clearly of the 1% (so not in need of lobbying to get elite policies through!) that – I assumed that the lesser of two-evils would be obvious to most. Well, that was true he did not win the popular vote (and funny how Trump’s appreciation of the Electoral College flipped so!). And his actions since the election (incidently, as many have noted, 8 November 2016 was… 18 Brumaire – how appropriate) has been as bad as you would have predicted from the campaign.

I guess we will have to wait for the tax-cuts for the 1% (I notice the deficit is not troubling the Republicans, again). Meanwhile the double-think of the right is funny to watch if it were not so serious (seeing them proclaim it is not a “Muslim ban” while simultaneously proclaiming that he was fulfilling his promise on the campaign trail… of a Muslim ban – and best not dwell on the farce of their war against objective reality in terms of inauguration numbers, etc.) As it an obviously counter-productive move on his part as it feeds into the extreme-conservative islamistic perspective (these people are not “radical” Muslims, they are deeply conservative). Still, the protests are a good sign – and shows the world that this narrative is false (just as the anti-war marched back in 2003 did). And that is how we change things – by protest, direct action, solidarity. As Kropotkin noted in 1904:

“They will understand that the best fighter in Parliament is good only so long as there is the clamour of the crowd in the street to spur him on” (The Coming Revival of Socialism)

I wrote along the same lines when Obama got elected in 2008 – if people do not organise outside of parliament to pressurise the new government (as they did in the 1930s) then the only influences Obama will face will be from the right, from business and from the state machine. This will mean he will be Bill Clinton mark-two (so, for exampling, signing in the republican negotiated NAFTA into law – and now used by Republicans like Trump to present himself as being on the side of the working-person!). And so it came to pass…

I mention this and quote a somewhat unknown English-language Kropotkin pamphlet because I suggested to AK Press the idea of a new book, namely a collection of Kropotkin’s pamphlets – a more complete collection than Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Pamphlets both in the terms of actual pamphlets (that collection misses many – like The Coming Revival of Socialism) and in terms of text (it edits a lot – as I noted in my last blog, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal is missing around 25% of the original text, as is Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles). It think it would be a useful thing to have but we will see if AK Press agree or not.

Anyways, regardless of the merits (or lack) of Clinton, the ironic thing is that if it were an actual job interview Trump would not even have been invited to an interview…

The people of America have a fight on their hands – not least in challenging those who voted for that orange-muppet and winning them over to a real solution for the problems Trump and the Republicans scapegoat others for (problems their own economic and political policies created, of course). That means organising on class issues and on a class basis – while not, of course, ignoring other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. – as was needed when fascism arose in Italy.

(and just to be clear, if Clinton had been elected then the people of America would also have a fight on their hands – although probably just the normal level of fight. Trump is Bush II – “the decider” (remember?) – on steroids, a concentration of standard Republicanism rather than something completely different. The key thing is that leaving public affairs to a few people – elected or not – and the associated, essential, bureaucratic machine is not a wise idea. When petty autocratic narcissists like Trump get into office it becomes more obvious! So no matter who gets in, we always need to build a counter-power is our communities and workplaces – so we can defend our interests until we get rid of all rulers, political, economic or personal.)

(Which I must note was also Malatesta’s argument as well – as discussed in the first edition of his collected works that has just appeared – volume 3, A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898. This is a great read, btw, and I urge you to read it – along with the reader that came out previously.).

The neo-liberal crowd (the Economist, etc.) are somewhat horrified by the “protectionism” and nationalism Trump is expressing – the latter we can agree with although for partly different reasons (as it turns what are class issues into scapegoats and dead-ends of where you are born or skin-colour or religion, etc.). There is a distinctly fascistic feel to it all – but remember that Bush II was equally praised for his strong-leader qualities.

As for protectionism, all these people seem to forget that America – like almost all nations – industrialised behind tariff walls.

Will it benefit workers as Trump proclaims? The model for free trade, as postulated by Ricardo, is an abstract model based on producers exchanging the product of their labour – the output of the factory is exchanged for the output of the fields. In a non-capitalist economy, one based on workers owning their own means of production, it can be said that (ignoring economies of scale – which is a big assumption!) that specialised production and corresponding exchange between the worker and the peasant would benefit both – for both gain the benefits of any trade. As the worker exchanges products with the farmer, both benefit by specialising.

Not so in a capitalist economy – there are four parties involved (ignoring externalities – again, a big assumption): worker, boss, farmer, landlord. While there may be a net increase in products due to the specialisation implied by free trade, who benefits from that increase is a moot point. As I discussed a while ago in relation to Paul Krugman, free trade can easily see the relative power of the parties shift (as goods flood into one country, making the indigenous producers bankrupt and so increasing unemployment, shifting power to the bosses and so the benefits, etc.). This is ignored by the neo-classical models just as it was by Ricardo.

The same applies to productivity gains – as the last 30-40 years show with its continually rising productivity but stubbornly stagnant wages (which some use to explain brexit and Trump). Productivity improvements, in theory, should benefit the worker (as their working day will buy more products) but, as Adam Smith suggested long ago, under capitalism the worker must “share” the product of their labour with the employer (and the landlord). So there is no guarantee that the benefits of productivity gets reflected in higher wages – regardless of the claims of neo-classical economics. Thus the current soaring inequality is not a “market failure” – it is how wage-labour works. No coincidence, then, that wages used to grow in-line with productivity – until the unions were put in their place.

In brexit-land, we have had the Prime Minister suggest (following the path well-beaten by racists for many decades) that immigration was the sole source of weak wages in Britain – nothing to do with the most draconian anti-union laws in the free world. Regulate unions and strikes and you regulate the labour market – and as Adam Smith argued long ago “Whenever the law has attempted to regulate the wages of workmen, it has always been rather to lower them than to raise them.” That those who implemented (and now wish to tighten) think themselves as being “free market” is funny…

As regards to protectionism, as noted capitalism was born behind the sheltered walls of protectionism in America as elsewhere. Indeed, the tariff regime was one of the causes of the US Civil War – the capitalist North wanted high tariffs to protect them from cheaper UK and European products, the Slaver South wanted free trade – slavery was not really an issue until it looked like the North was losing (and retrospectively its importance has grown immensely). So the higher prices for goods meant that the American consumer subsidised the profits of the capitalist, allowing them to invest in machinery, etc. (and if Trump thinks a tariff on Mexican imports means Mexico pays for “the wall” he is wrong – working class Americans will pay for it by the higher prices).

Will this happen again? Will protectionism lead to a reinvestment in America? Well, the higher prices for American consumers on imports will mean higher profits for firms but that need not lead to increased investment (it can – and has in the neo-liberal era – go into the pockets of the 1%, the stock market, etc. rather than actual capital goods). But any industrialisation will come from the pockets of 99% US population – and the profits will flow into the pockets of the 1% (and, needless to say, Trump’s promise to invest in much-needed infrastructure will just turn into funnelling state-monies into the hands of favoured corporations).

Ultimately, as long as capitalism exists – as long as workers do not own and control their own means of production (whether under mutualism selling the product of their own labour or under communism – libertarian, of course – of free distribution) then we working class will pay for whatever policies are pursued, whether as producers or consumers. Our labour is the source for investment funds along with the riches of the few – whether it is unpaid labour within production or higher prices within consumption. So in terms of “protectionism” it may, indirectly, result in some re-industrialisation – but we will pay the price while the few benefit and some of us may get some “trickle-down” after the flood upwards (better just to invest directly in building workers’ co-operatives) and need I mention the intensive union organising drives, strikes, genuine populist movements, etc. of the protectionist era which sought to speed up and increase any “trickle-down” going on in the Gilded Age? That will be required again – regardless of the policies being pursued. Nothing is granted from above, it is always won from below.

After all, we recently had commentators pondering why wages were not rising as the economy got better after the self-inflicted unnecessary imposition of Austerity by the Coalition. Nothing difficult there – they did not do so because there was no pressure from the workers for them to do it thanks to the anti-union laws and the servile mentality they have helped produced (the road to serfdom, indeed!). The same with the UK’s low productivity – labour is so cheap and servile that bosses don’t need to invest in machinery (and all the Tories want to do is make it more so – as can be seen by their ignoring the poor-performance of Southern Rail [nothing they can do, they claim, it is a private company] and their quick calls to ban strikes when workers stood up for themselves – and Kropotkin was noting something very similar in Modern Science and Anarchy, btw).

And, of course, the rise of Trump and other far-right developments settles the old “debate” fostered by the neo-liberals like von Mises and von Hayek who blamed the rise of fascism on socialism. Here we have no socialist movements of any significance and the application of extensive neo-liberal reforms – which produce massive inequality and… a right-wing authoritarian “populist” backlash! However, I’m sure that their ideological descendants will no more draw the obvious conclusion than they did, namely that it is the “liberal” system which undermines its own basis and ends in fascism or close developments (and, of course, the vons did support non-racist forms of fascism when it suited them). Maybe they will suggest Obama really was a Kenyan Muslim-Socialist after all…

After all, von Hayek being completely wrong about the impact of trade unionism does not seem to stop his ideological followers repeating it.

So now we have the somewhat Orwellian-entitled “Great Repeal Bill” – which turns all EU laws and regulation into UK laws, that is repealing none of the terrible regulations crushing the UK economy. Which, in terms of agriculture, the most terrible appears to be the requirement of putting a 6 foot billboard up if a famer received a certain amount of EU funds (this is, after all, the first – and presumably – the most important item in Leadsom’s three – yes, three! – point list of terrible EU regulations she would be getting rid of).

And need I note the irony that the Brexit Whitepaper refutes the case for Brexit by noting that the UK often as better (on-paper) rights than the EU minimum, so showing that the UK Parliament had substantial powers (which it uses to, say, regulate and control workers’ unions) — as it states: "Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that"! And there is at least as much non-EU immigration than EU immigration, so showing that “controlling our borders” may not be successful given that the numbers the State does “control” have not been controlled… In terms of rising rents, house-prices, transport and health crises, etc., the roots of these all go back to Thatcher and are predominantly homegrown (thanks to Tory underfunding, privatising, centralising funding and banning local councils from, say, building council housing, etc. — btw, Kropotkin was very keen on municipal activities, viewing it as an example of libertarian trends within capitalism which point to beyond it, for valid reasons). And best not mention the attempts of those proclaiming the necessity for leaving the EU to ensure “parliamentary sovereignty” trying to avoid Parliament having any sort of say in Brexit (Brexit means invoking the relic of feudalism called the royal prerogative…). and that these "voice of the people" people are completely opposed to a second referendum once the terms of leaving are known.

As it stands, I was slightly wrong in the run-up to the vote. I assumed that the Tories would, in light of a leave vote, go for a Norway-style deal (I was not wrong in that it would be a Tory-Brexit and empower them in their extreme neo-liberal agenda – no "left" Brexit was ever likely as has been more than confirmed and every yes vote has been used as if it were cast for UKIP-style policies). Although I expect this is what most Tories want, I had not realised then how tied to the far-right of the party they would be (thanks to the very small working majority – turned into a landslide by the Tory press! – they won in 2015 thanks to the predictable and predicted collapse of the LibDem vote) – that and, like the decision to have the referendum itself, be so concerned to avoid UKIP stealing some votes (I realised that a right-wing coup was in the offing on the morning of the 24th). So they are, yet again, placing the narrow needs of their party over “the nation” and, apparently, sizeable sections of the business class (which shows the relative autonomy of the State, as anarchists argue against the class-reductionism of Marxism). It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Given that it was a slight majority (now turned into “the voice of the people” and other such tropes), a Norway-style agreement would better reflect what most people wanted (particularly as leaving the single-market was usually dismissed as nonsense from “project fear” by leave campaigners). But the referendum has confirmed Proudhon’s fears in General Idea of the Revolution – the people may have spoken, but the ruling few set the question and get to interpret and implement the result.

(and as an aside, the Labour leaderships imposition of a three-line whip was wrong and silly. Silly because when MPs ignored it, the media would portray this as “weak” leadership, “divided party”, etc. – and you lose some of the Shadow Cabinet). Wrong because the better line would have been to say that MP’s should vote as the constituencies they represented voted for on June 23rd. This would be far more democratic than a false unity and the corresponding ignoring of 48% of the population. Then they could attack the Tories for not representing the views of their constituents while also not blocking the implementation of Article 50.)

(and as for the invocation of Edmund Burke’s “representative and not delegate” comments, well, first, that is the product of an inflated sense of self-worth and deeply undemocratic – why should the “representative” not conclude that the views of the electorate when they vote him out are wrong and in his better judgement he should remain their ruler, sorry representative. That was the Bolshevik line, after all, so showing its links to liberalism than the genuine socialist tradition. Interesting that, when I was growing up we were told that our system was better than the USSR because our government reflected the views of the people – these days, the need for “hard decisions” and ignoring the views of the people is what counts. Unless those “views” can be utilised to bolster the power of the state and the wealth of the few, of course.)

And if we want to limit the damage caused by Brexit we need to organise and take more effective action than marching from A-to-B or holding a nice home-made witty placard (useful as these both may be) – we need to be thinking of direct action: strikes, occupations, and so on, making solidarity a reality to limit the State and government from below. As Kropotkin put it in 1904:

‘Nor will the British labourers trust – so we hope, at least to the debilitating theories of the German Social Democrats.

‘They will not fold their hands in the expectation of a “historic process” which is supposed to destroy some day later on the capitalists […] And they will know that “to keep their powder dry” is better than to trust to all sorts of middle-class professors. Force can only be met with force. Only slaves trust to a goddess that shall bring them freedom, while freemen take it themselves. […] the spell has been broken. From beneath – not from above! From the village, the township – not from Westminster!

‘From individual, local action (insurrectional and constructive) – not from party legislation, pacific and destructive of good! This is the teaching of the last few years, the lesson given to the patient crowd by the Upper Ten burglars. The coming revival will have to take all these currents into consideration. And it will have to come to that necessary generalisation – Expropriation.

But how? Through Acts of Parliament? Through party legislation? No – through Local Action: peaceful, if peaceful it can be: and insurrectional if the nation cannot break otherwise the privileges and the monopolies bequeathed to it by its fathers.’ (The Coming Revival of Socialism)

So I am back to Kropotkin (and so much, incidentally, for Woodcock’s claim be became reformist while in the UK). What we anarchists do now matters – as Kropotkin stresses in the pamphlet below, freshly translated by my good-self. I have been revising previous translations for Modern Science and Anarchy and thought I would try my hand at something never before translated into English. It appeared in 1913 and seems to be the second-last pamphlet by Kropotkin published by Les Temps Nouveaux (the last was “The Anarchist Principle” which is included in Direct Struggle Against Capital).

It makes interesting reading, not least in its clear rejection of the fatalism usually attributed to Kropotkin (this rejection appears in many works – for example, The State: Its Historic Role ends with the word Choisissez! [Choose!] somewhat amusing translated previously as “The choice lies with you!”) plus the awareness that anarchist-communism won’t be created complete and whole instantly – the degree of both depends on the numbers and activities of anarchists in the here and now, in the lead up to and during the earliest stages of the revolution.

Some of what he says assumes a level of understanding which may be lost on some readers today – his comments on how Marxists have appropriated anarchist ideas assumes a lot (on the debates on the general strike in social democracy, what is meant be “public services” [see No Gods, No Masters], etc.) but it is true: much of what passes for “Marxism” was first advocated by anarchists. This appropriation continued after 1913, most obviously in 1917 with the newly found appreciation of workers’ councils (soviets) by the Bolsheviks, their championing of factories committees, etc. (albeit in a much limited form than anarchists did – worker’ supervision of bosses as opposed to workers management of production, soviets as a means of the party seizing power as opposed to their management of society, etc., etc., etc. – see section H of AFAQ for details).

Where he is most obviously wrong is in not predicting the substantial state repression the Bolsheviks used against the left-wing opposition during the Revolution – the Bolshevik regime did impose pretty much what Social-Democracy had long suggested was "socialism" (that is, the State as universal employer combined with centralised, top-down economic planning – but without the "labour-notes" marked with so many hours and minutes for prices and wages). Elsewhere he warns of the dangers of State socialism and the threat to liberty (and equality!) it means (as Emma Goldman reported in My Disillusionment in Russia, if I remember correctly, Kropotkin said to her why be surprised by how bad the Bolshevik regime was as we anarchists had predicted this for a long time so why be surprised now). However, the aim of the pamphlet was to stress the role of anarchists in shaping the future in a libertarian socialist fashion so it is understandable that this element of the critique of Marxism was not mentioned.

Anyway, here is the new translation – it will be included in the pamphlets book if AK Press agree. And I should mention that Modern Science and Anarchy is getting there. It has been fully revised bar five chapters of “The Modern State” and the “Explanatory Notes” – which is being added to with lots of entries about the (living) people Kropotkin mentions in passing and were, presumably, well-known at the time). Everything has been translated, so the revision of these six things should be do-able by March plus adding appropriate footnotes (which may be a bit of work). Then the introduction… And I have to say, Kropotkin’s critique of capitalism in that work seems just as relevant as when it was written (seriously, you will be surprised by how much of what he writes about have their parallels with the neo-liberal era as well as the flaws of the “socialist” alternatives being raised then and now).

Anyway, here is Kropotkin’s La révolution sera-t-elle collectiviste? in English for the first time as far as I am aware. Enjoy.

Until I blog again, be seeing you!

Will the Revolution be Collectivist?

Peter Kropotkin (1913)

Very often we hear, from anarchists themselves, that Anarchy is a very distant ideal; that it has no chance of being realised in the near future; that probably the next revolution will be collectivist and that we will have to go through a workers State before reaching a communist society without a government.

This reasoning appears completely wrong to us. It contains a fundamental error of appreciation concerning the course of history in general and the role of the ideal in history.

The individual can be guided in his actions by a single ideal. But a society consists of millions of individuals, each with his own idea, more or less conscious and settled; so that at a given moment we find in society the most varied conceptions – that of the reactionary, the Catholic, the monarchist, the admirer of serfdom, the “free contract” bourgeois, the socialist, the anarchist. However, none of these conceptions will be realised in their entirety precisely because of the variety of conceptions existing at a given moment and the new conceptions which arise long before any of the previous ones has attained its realisation in life.

Every step forward of society is the outcome of all the currents of ideas that exist at a given moment. And to affirm that society will realise such-and-such an ideal first, then another, is to misunderstand the whole course of history. Accomplished progress always bears the stamp of all the conceptions that exist in society in proportion to the energy of thought and action of each party. This is why the society that will arise from the Revolution will not be a Catholic society nor a bourgeois society (too many forces and the whole history of humanity are working to demolish these two kinds of society) nor a workers State by the very fact there exists an anarchist current of ideas and anarchists are sufficiently powerful as a force of action and as a force of initiative.

Indeed, look at history. The Republicans of 1793 past dreamt of a Republic built on the model of the republics of antiquity. Their dream of a universal republic and to make this new Rome or Sparta triumph in France was killed in the snows of the Alps, on the plains of Belgium, Italy and Germany.

Did they achieve the Republic? No! Not only did the old regime, throwing on its full weight on them, pull them backwards. But new ideas have pushed society forwards. And when their dream of the universal Republic is one day realised, this Republic will be more socialist than anything they dared to dream and more anarchist than anything Diderot dared to conceive of in his writings. It will no longer be a Republic: it will be a union of more or less anarchist peoples.

Why? Because before the republicans had attained their ideal of the egalitarian republic (of citizens equal before the law, free and tied by bonds of fraternity), new conceptions, almost imperceptible before 1789, arose and grew. Because this very ideal of freedom, equality and fraternity is unrealisable as long as there is economic servitude and misery, as long as there are republics – States – necessarily driven to rivalries, to divisions within and outwith.

Because the ideal of the Republicans of 1793 was but a small part of the ideal of Equality and Freedom which re-emerges today under the name of Anarchy.

Or take the communists of the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century.

Their ideal was Christian communism, governed by a hierarchy of elders and scholars. This ideal had an immense repercussion. But this communism was not realised – and will never again be achieved. The ideal was false, incomplete, obsolete. And when communism begins to develop in the coming revolution, it will no longer be Christian nor Statist. It will be a libertarian communism at the very least, based not on the gospel, not on hierarchical submission, but on the understanding of the individual’s needs for freedom. It will be more or less anarchist for the simple reason that as the current of ideas expressed by Louis Blanc worked to create a Jacobin State with socialist tendencies – new currents of anarchist ideas were already emerging – currents whose spokesmen were Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Coeurderoy and even Max Stirner.

And it will be the same for the ideal of the Workers State of the Social-Democrats. This idea can no longer be achieved: it is already outdated.

The ideal was born of Jacobinism. It inherited from the Jacobins its confidence in the governmental principle. It still believes in representative government. It still believes in the centralisation of the various functions of human life in the hands of a government.

But long before this ideal came close to its practical realisation, a conception of society – the anarchist conception – appeared, proclaimed itself and grew. A conception which sums up a popular distrust of government, which awakens individual initiative and proclaims this principle which had become more and more evident: “No free society without free individuals” and this other principle proclaimed throughout our century: “Temporary free agreement as the basis of any organisation or grouping.”

And whatever society may emerge from the European Revolution, it will no longer be republican in the sense of 1793, it will no longer be communist in the sense of 1848, and it will no longer be a Workers State in the sense of social democracy.

The number of anarchists is always increasing. And even today Social-Democracy is obliged to reckon with them. The dissemination of anarchist ideas is made not only by the action of anarchists but – furthermore – independently of our action. Examples – the anarchist philosophy of Guyau, the philosophy of the history by Tolstoy, and the anarchist ideas we encounter every day in literature and of which the Supplement of La Révolte and Les Temps Nouveaux is a living testimony.

Finally the effect of the anarchist conception on the ideal of social democracy is evident; and this effect depends only in part on our propaganda; it mainly results from the anarchist tendencies which appear in society of which we are only the spokesmen.

Let us recall only the rigidly Jacobin centralising ideal of the social-democrats before the Paris Commune. At that time it was the anarchists who talking about the possibility of the independent Commune, of the communalisation of wealth, of independent, internationally organised trades [unions]. Well, those points are now accepted by the social-democrats themselves. Today the communalisation of the means of production – not nationalisation – is acknowledged and politicians can be seen seriously discussing the issue of municipalising the London docks. “Public services,” the other idea which the anarchists previously had to sustain so many battles against the centralising Jacobins in the Congresses of the International, today it makes the possibilists pale.

Or else, take the general strike for which we were treated as crazy and anti-militarism for which we were treated like criminals by social-democracy…

What is today for us ancient history and which evokes in us no more than a dreamy smile like an old faded flower found in an old book – makes up the bulk of the current programmes of social democracy, so much so that it can be said without exaggeration that all the progress of ideas which has been accomplished by social-democracy during the last twenty years has been merely to collect the ideas which anarchy dropped on its way, as it was still growing. Only re-read the Jura [Federation] reports on public services, Idées sur l’organisation sociale [Ideas on Social Organisation by James Guillaume], etc. for which the learned scholars of socialism treated the “Bakuninists” as enraged madmen. It is from these sources that social-democracy drinks at this moment.

Thus Anarchy has already changed the ideal of the social-democrats. It changes it every day. It will change it again during the Revolution. And whatever comes out of the Revolution – it will no longer be the Workers State of the collectivists. It will be something else – a result of our efforts, combined with those of all socialists.

And this outcome will be all the more anarchist as the anarchists develop more energy – more force, as they say in mechanics – in their direction. Plain and simple, the more they put individual and collective, mental and muscular energy, will and commitment at the service of their ideal; plain and simple, the less they seek compromise, the more clearly they affirm by word and their life the Communist ideal and the anarchist ideal – will the outcome all the more tilt towards Communism, towards Anarchy.