A Revolutionary Experience

JUST FORTY YEARS AGO THE PARIS COMMUNE—EMPHATICALLY BUT ACCURATELY called by Jules Vallès “the great federation of suffering”—was born and died in blood. Forty years and yet we still have to combat the deplorable errors that inspired it; and the same interests, employing the same methods seem to be leading us toward a renewal of that tragedy.

History is a perpetual return of deceptions and butcheries; the one never goes without the other. Today, as in 1869, while secret intrigues are being hatched in chancelleries that will perhaps result in war tomorrow, the people, the sovereign people, infinitely credulous, infinitely naïve, prepare all unawares the arms that will serve to slaughter them. And the generals of the syndicalist and workers’ army, foreseeing the war of tomorrow, prepare the Commune of tomorrow. What do the consequences matter to them? By playing this sad game they earn notoriety, money, and glory.

This is the moment to recall the lesson of the past. But just as our preachers of revolution know how not to be hindered by logic, they aren’t hindered by cumbersome memories.

So it us up to us to fill in the gaps in their memory. Aren’t we the detestable “pure ones?” The burdensome “theoreticians?” The “metaphysical reasoners?” The ones who prevent people from dancing, feasting and yakking?

Forty years ago, Citizens, the Parisians did what you want to do. You know this and yet you continue to push the working-class cattle intoxicated by your fallacious eloquence to a similar butchery.

If the labels have changed since 1871, the chimeras have remained. After the Franco-German War the Republic, which had just been proclaimed, being threatened by a reactionary parliament, the people of Paris rose up in support of it (March 18, 1871). Republic! This sonorous term at the time meant to the ignorant and battered crowd the realization of its dreams, the end of its sufferings. The establishing of a harmonious and just city. And yet it knew that that Republic was armed with laws, was authoritarian and militarist, but it saw in it “good” authority, its laws would be “good” laws, its army a “people’s” army. We smile today at such puerilities. We smile, and people attribute the same virtues to another chimera: the Revolution. Yes, its apostles say, the Revolution must be authoritarian, militarist, armed with laws, but the Committee of Public Safety will govern for the good of all, its edicts will be inspired by the great principles of humanitarian morality, and its army will be a workers’ army. In the Year of Our Lord 1911 the grandchildren of the executed of Satory, Père Lachaise, and the Lobau barracks are the dupes of the illusions for which their grandparents fell. All that’s happened is that one word has replaced another, a word as hollow, as misleading, as dangerous as the old one. The Communards were massacred en masse for an ideal republic. What hecatombs will take place in the name of a miraculous revolution?

In a few words, let’s sum up the horrific experience of the Commune. Having taken up arms on March 18, the fédérés began by naming an insurrectionary government, which was seated at the Hotel de Ville. The first concern of the rebels was thus to give itself leaders and to charge a dozen phrasemongers, a few of whom were even sincere, to keep an eye on everything. This was logical, these republicans’ convictions consisting of nothing but grandiloquent phrases.

Naturally the new government could only reflect the general mentality. Issued from a crowd incapable of leading itself without chiefs, not knowing which way to go, lacking in energy, the government was its quintessence. And so there’s nothing surprising in the fact that it revealed itself to be as incapable as every other parliament.

The Commune, artificially established, hastened to organize militia and to endow it with a maximum of uniforms. A major concern if ever there was one! Then it decreed the tearing down of the Vendome Column. It posted guards at the Bank of France. There were stormy sittings with a parliamentary appearance, parties formed competing for a shred of power. And during this time poor devils were being killed on the ramparts; provisions were lacking; disaster approached.

Paris needed money; money could perhaps have saved it. These revolutionaries, like their successors in our time, were honest. Until the final moment they mounted guard over the treasure in the Bank of France without daring to touch it. Paris needed examples of generous and brave energy: instead, its chiefs gossiped, accusing each other of treason. The starving and demoralized city defended itself courageously, but what could it hope for at that moment? What could it hope for from an unconscious and unintelligent population, seized with enthusiasm for an imprecise dream? That it be slaughtered and nothing more. This had to be the inevitable epilogue to this very “revolutionary” adventure. And so it was. After two months of resistance the Commune was crushed. The so-called Versaillaise army—republican as well!—entered Paris and the butchery began, the veritable massacre of an infuriated but powerless crowd. Order, “Moral Order” as its defenders cynically called it, was admirably reestablished. During the last week of May nearly thirty thousand Communards perished under the balls of the patriotic military.

The Commune had been a great movement of revolt, “unthinking” like all crowd movements. Thanks to propitious circumstances all individual sufferings had coalesced, aspiring to a vast dream of calm. The “federation of suffering” was born. The race after mirages too often becomes the race to death. The firing squads dissipated the misleading fog of the dream. Too late, as always: thirty thousand lives were idiotically sacrificed for an illusion, for words, for petty interests and ambitions.

And to obtain what? We can answer this question with a brutal word, with one word alone: nothing! The Communards had only wanted and realized deplorably superficial modifications. Their defeat wiped them out. Their victory would have wiped them out as well, since they’d preserved the essence of the system of social oppression through private property and the law. Some say that even defeated insurrections have worldwide repercussions, and this is no doubt true. But does the propaganda for the spirit of revolt they spread compensate for the effects of firing squads and deportations? Do the “worldwide repercussions” and the addition of great dates to the book of history compensate a population for the loss of all its best energies? And finally, the dead and the sacrifices should also count. What compensation is there for those who lost their lives?

An explosion of rage provoked by the accumulation of rancor, sufferings, and dreams; of blood, of desperate bravery; and then disaster, death. The result: zero! Maybe worse. This is how we can sum up the history of the Paris Commune, the history of that of Cartagena, the history of the insurrections of Moscow and Barcelona. Are there any reasons to think this will change?

The clearest result of these movements is that of authorizing commemorations. The blood of the fédérés has allowed for the building of many parliamentary fortunes, as well as others. How many solemn speeches at cemeteries, at public meetings, or in the exuberance of banquets for the benefit of these cult-like comedies that have raised intriguers to popularity! How many crooked affairs and how many dupes!

And that costly experiment will probably begin again. There are a number of naïfs and double-dealers who hope for it, await it, propose it …

To be sure, acts of revolt, great movements of revolt are necessary. But in order to be fruitful they must above all be driven by clear, reflective minds. Explosions of indignation, of anger and enthusiasm resemble burning straws, as prompt to be extinguished as they flamed up. And so we are deeply skeptical concerning crowd movements, insurrections, general strikes or more peaceful demonstrations. In their ordinary state crowds of whatever kind, without labels or labeled socialist, syndicalist, or who knows what, are retrograde. It is part of their psychology to never clearly know what they want and to fear change. Crowds are fickle, puerile, credulous. They love the prestige of tinsel and the gift of gab. They are enflamed by the sight of flags and the sound of bugles. They are capable of heroism, but they can also commit monstrosities. And in all cases they need masters. We are thus justified in saying that their psychology renders them incapable of establishing a libertarian environment. And so, for us, changing an oppressive regime is a pure waste of time.

War is possible; some even say it’s probable and that it will lead to insurrection. We should remember the experiences of the past. Nothing either new or better will come from the anger of suffering crowds.

People will then ask us, what should we count on?

On the sole force capable of usefully acting, on the sole revolts inspired by consciousness and knowledge, by will and not by sentiment. Reasonably, we can only count on individual force and revolts.

Acts of revolt are needed, for the individual cannot live otherwise. Passive, he doesn’t count; he only exists through rebellion. It is in this way that individualities desirous of living are led to salutary revolt. Because the social environment can only be transformed through individual effort: education and action. Education, that is, revolt in ideas; action, that is, revolt in life.

And so we won’t accept to go to the imminent slaughters at the borders. The anarchists will answer with individual revolt: intelligent, persevering, skillful. This one will obtain results; instead of wasting lives it will save them; it will lead the crowd to think, it will frighten the masters.

War or a hypocritical and no less deadly peace, our path is laid out. Let the revolutionaries dream, and let them march dreaming of future disasters. Our role is to provoke useful revolts. Let our ever-intensified propaganda create men capable of refusing butchery, capable of resisting, of destroying and building. Men who, counting only on themselves, will no longer be victims of chimeras: individualists.

(l’anarchie, March 30, 1911)