Anarchism and SocialismPlekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich
Philosophy
Anarchism and Socialism
Plekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich
Anarchism; Socialism
This is exactly what we have said--only in slightly different words.
Louise Michel has forgotten to say that revolts, causing the bloodshed
of the people, figured at the head of the Anarchists' programme, until
the Anarchists became convinced, not that these partial risings in no
way serve the cause of the workers, but that the workers, for the most
part, will not have anything to do with these risings.
Error has its logic as well as truth. Once you reject the political
action of the working-class, you are fatally driven--provided you do not
wish to serve the bourgeois politicians--to accept the tactics of the
Vaillants and the Henrys. The so-called "Independent" (Unabhängige)
members of the German Socialist Party have proved this in their own
persons. They began by attacking "Parliamentarism," and to the
"reformist" tactics of the "old" members they opposed--on paper, of
course--the "revolutionary struggle," the purely "economic" struggle.
But this struggle, developing naturally, must inevitably bring about the
entry of the proletariat into the arena of political struggles. Not
wishing to come back to the very starting-point of their negation, the
"Independents," for a time, preached what they called "political
demonstrations," a new kind of old Bakounist riots. As riots, by
whatever name they are called, always come too late for the fiery
"revolutionists," there was only left to the Independents to "march
forward," to become converts to Anarchy, and to propagate--in words--the
propaganda of deed. The language of the "young" Landauers and Co. is
already as "revolutionary" as that of the "oldest" Anarchists.
"Reason and knowledge only thou despise
The highest strength in man that lies!
Let but the lying spirit bind thee,
With magic works and shows that blind thee,
And I shall have thee fast and sure."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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