# Socialism and Politics

Original published in Freedom February-May, 1903
FREEDOM PAMPHLETS. No. 14.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
SOCIALISM AND POLITICS.
BY
PETER KROPOTKIN.
LONDON:
"FREEDOM" OFFICE, 127 OSSULSTON STREET, N. W.
1903.
page
POLITICS AND SOCIALISM.
I.
It was in 1871—immediately after the defeat of France by the Germans, and of the Paris proletarians by the French middle classes—that a conference of the International Working Men's Association, secretly convoked by Marx and Engels, instead of the usual annual Congress, and the composition of which had been cleverly manipulated for the purpose, met at London. This conference decided that the Working Men's Association, which had hitherto been a revolutionary association for organising the international struggle of labour against capitalism, should become henceforward a series of national organisations for running Social-Democratic candidates in the different parliaments.
Thirty years have passed since this step was taken. And we can fully appreciate by this time the results of the new tactics.
The main argument in favour of it was that the working men were not prepared to accept the ideas of Socialism: that consequently a long preparatory period was required in order to spread these ideas: and that —to say nothing of the prestige of Members of Parliament—periods of elections, when everyone's interest in public affairs is awakened, are the best moments for spreading broadcast Socialist ideas.
To this the working men, especially those of France and Spain, replied that the International Working Men's Association, such as it was, had already been excellent for the propaganda of Socialism. In less than three years it had awakened the conscience of the workers' interests all over Europe; it had done more for the theoretical elaboration of the principles of Socialism, and for the practical application of Socialistic principles, than fifty years of theoretical discussions. It had immensely contributed to the spreadimg of the idea of international solidarity of interest amongst the workers of all nations, and of an international support of their strikes: of International Labour opposed to International Capitalism. Besides, the strikes, especially when they attain great dimensions and are ​supported internationally, awake general attention, and are infinitely better opportunities for spreading broadcast Socialist ideas than electoral meetings, in which, for the very success of the election, Socialists will often be compelled to compromise with the middle classes—"to parliament, and to pactise" with them. In the struggles for political power Socialism would soon be forgotten—it was foretold—for some spurious teachings in which Radical political reforms would be mixed up with some palliative legislation in favour of labour, thus creating a confusion in the minds, from which the middle classes only would profit; while palliative laws (hours of labour, condensation for accidents, and so on) might be enforced upon the Parliaments in a much more effective form if the labour unions took everywhere the great extension which an International propaganda in this direction could give them.
It is for a good reason that we are here re-stating those arguments at such a length. Every one of them has had, within the last thirty years, its full confirmation.
See what has become of theoretical Socialism—not only in this country, but in Germany and Belgium as well—owing to the extension taken by the party which takes part in the elections under the etiquette of Socialism. There is less of it left than there ever was in a Fabian pamphlet. Who speaks now of Socialism, with the exception of the Anarchists, who precisely therefore are described as Utopians, if not as fools!
In the years 1869–71 you could not open one single Socialist paper without finding on its very first page this discussion:—whether we must, and if we must—how shall we expropriate the owners of factories, the mines, the land? Then—and this was especially important—every legislative measure, every political event was discussed from the point of view, whether it was leading to, or leading away from, the aim in view—the Social Revolution. Of course, everyone was extremely interested in obtaining shorter hours and better wages for every branch of trade; everyone passionately took the part of strikers all over the world: the International was indeed a permanent international strike—an international conspiracy, if you like, for reducing hours, increasing wages, obtaining respect for the ​workers' freedom, and limiting the powers of Capital in every direction. Of course, everyone was passionately interested, too, in widening political liberties, and this is why the International was frankly anti-Imperialist. But it was also something else.
It undertook, above all, the spreading of those ideas and the conquest of those rights which neither the old type trade unions nor the political Radicals sufficiently cared for. The labour party, thirty years ago, had its own special functions, in addition to Trade-unionism and Radicalism, and these were Socialism—the preparation of the Social Revolution. But where is this now? All gone! What is now described as Socialism—all of them are Socialists now!—is the most incoherent mixture of Trade-unionism, which trusts no more to itself. an looks for a John Gorst to make its business, with Toryism (the paternal State to whom you must look for every improvement of your conditions), with State capitalism (State monopoly of railways, of banks, of the sale of spirits, of education, etc., is preached and fought for by the Socialist party of free Switzerland), with Fabianism—nay, even occasionally with Imperialism, when Socialists declare in the German Reichstag that let the State only wage a war, they will all fight as well as the Junkers!
Add to this all sorts of theories built up with bits of metaphysics for persuading the workers that a Social Revolution is bosh: that Socialism is only good for a hundred years hence, and those who talk about it now are dangerous Utopians: that all capitals must first be concentrated in a few hands—which every intelligent man sees they never will—and that the peasant-owners must disappear, and all become even more miserable than they are now, before Socialism becomes possible. This is what has now taken the place of the distinctly expressed idea: "The land, the mines, the factories, everything that is wanted for living, must return to the community, which by local action and free agreement, must organise free communistic life and free communistic production."—Is this progress?
If the working men of Europe and America had only the so-​called Socialist and Social-Democratic parties to rely upon for the triumph of the Socialist idea, the general position would be really desperate. We certainly are the first to recognise that the Social-Democratic party in Germany is doing excellent Republican propaganda, and that, as a Republican party, it splendidly undermines the authority of the petulant William. We gladly acknowledge that the Parliamentary Socialists in France are thorough Radicals, and that they do excellent work for the support of Radical legislation, thus continuing the work of Clémenceau and Rank, with the addition of some genuine interest in the working classes: they are Radicals, sympathetic to the workers. But who is doing work in the Socialist direction? Who is working for bringing the masses nearer and. nearer to the day when they will be able to take hold of ail that is needed for living and producing? Who contributes to the spreading of the spirit of revolt, among the slaves of the wage-system?
Surely not the parliamentarian!
There is only one possible reply to this question: It is the labour movement in France, in Spain, in America, in England, in Belgium, and its beginnings in Germany, and the Anarchists everywhere, who, despite all the above-mentioned dampers, despite all the confusion that is being sown in the ranks of Labour by clever bourgeois, despite all the propaganda of quietness and all the advices of deserting their fighting brothers, continue the old, good, direct fight against the exploiters.
The great and desperate colliers' strike in America has done more to shake the authority of trusts, and to show the way to fight them, than all the talk in the talking assemblies. The attempts at general strikes in Belgium (despite the opposition of the politicians), at Milan (despite the treason of the leaders), at Barcelona, at Geneva, and in Holland, have done much more for spreading conviction in the necessity of the expropriation of the exploiters than anything that has been said in or out of a parliament by a parliamentary leader. The refusal of 400 Geneva militia soldiers to join the ranks, and the attitude of those fifteen who have been bold enough to tell the martial Court that they would never join the ranks of their battalions ​for fighting against their brother workers—such facts of revolt are doing infinitely more for the spreading of true Socialism than anything that has been, or will ever be, said by those Socialists who seek their inspirations in economical metaphysics. Of course, it is those Anarchists whom the would-be Socialists hate so much for not having followed them in their middle-class "evolution"; of course, it is those blessed Anarchists who have their hand in these labour movements, and go to prison like Bertoni in Geneva and scores of our brothers in France and in Spain. Yes. it is true they have a hand in these labour movements, and 8,000 workers on strike in Madrid shouted, the other day: Long live Anarchism! This is true. But they are proud to see that the workers trust them more than they trust their gloved "representatives."
II.
We have seen in our last article how Socialism has been circumscribed and minimized since it became the watchword of a political party, instead of as formerly, the popular labour movement. Nowaday, when Socialism is spoken of. all that is meant is: State railways. State monopoly of banks and spirits, perhaps, in a remote future, State mines, and plenty of legislation intended to slightly protect Labour—without doing the slightest, harm to Capitalism—and at the same time bringing Labour as much as possible into a complete submission to the present middle-class Government of the State. State arbitration, State control of the Trade Unions. State armies for working the railways and the bakeries in the case of strikes, and like measures in favour of the capitalists, are, as is known, necessary aspects of "Labour legislation,'"' in accordance with the well-known programme of Disraeli, John Gorst, "The People," and like Tory Democrat swindlers.
To understand Socialism, as it was understood thirty years ago,—that is, as a deep revolution which would free man by reconstructing the distribution of wealth, consumption and production on a new basis,—is now described by the "Neo-Socialists" as sheer nonsense. We have now "scientific Socialism," and if you would know all about it, read a few ​"authorised version" pamphlets, in which the guessings which Fourierists, Owenites, and Saint- Simonians used to make sixty years ago concerning the concentration of capital, the coming self-annihilation of capitalism, and like naive predictions—retold in a far less comprehensible language by Engels and Marx—are represented as so many great scientific discoveries of the German mind. Only, alas, owing to these would-be discoveries, the teaching which formerly, by its Communistic aspirations, inspired the masses and attracted the best minds of the nineteenth century, has become nothing but a mitigated middle-class State capitalism.
To speak now of the Social Revolution is considered by the "scientific" Socialist a crime. Vote and wait! Don't trouble about the revolution; revolutions are mere inventions of idle spirits! Only criminal Anarchists talk of them now. Be quiet, and vote as you are told to. Don't believe these criminals who tell you that owing to the facilities of exploitation of the backward races all over the world, the numbers of capitalists who climb on the necks of the European working man are steadily growing. Trust to the Neo-Socialists, who have proved that the middle-classes are going to destroy themselves, in virtue of a "Law of self-annihilation," discovered by their great thinkers. Vote! Greater men than you will tell you the moment when the self-annihilation of capital has been accomplished. They will then expropriate the few usurpers left, who will own everything, and you will be freed without ever having taken any more trouble than that of writing on a bit of paper the name of the man whom the heads of your fraction of the party told you to vote for!
To such shameful nonsense the politician Socialists have tried to reduce the Great Revolution which calls for the energies of all the lovers of freedom and equality.
And in the meantime reaction tries to take the fullest advantage of these suicidal preachings. It concentrates its forces all over the world. Why should it not? Where is the revolutionary party which might be capable of appealing to the people against its oppressors? And so it takes hold of all the ​channes of power which the present State provides for the ruling middle classes.
Look at education! They destroy with a sure and clever hand all that had been done in 1800–1875 for wresting instruction out of the hands of the clergy. Why should they not, when it was the once menacing but now tamed Socialist politicians who have helped at the last election the Conservatives to be so powerful in Parliament? The School Board teacher had ceased to tell the poor, "Suffer, it's the will of the creator that you should be poor." On the contrary, he told them: "Hope; try yourselves to shake off your misery!" The slum mother began to get into the habit of going to the School Board teacher to tell of her needs and sorrows, instead of going to the parson, as she formerly did.—Down, then, with the School Boards! And why not? Why should they not dare anything when they know that it was the Socialists, the politicians who had helped them to win such a power in Parliament! Even in France, where they ostensibly fight to free the schools from the clergy, the best and largest colleges are in the hands of the Jesuits—within a stone's throw of the Chamber of Deputies. Everywhere the middle class return to religion, everywhere they work to bring the clergyman, with his ignorance and his eternal fire, back to the school—and the working men are told to take no interest in these matters, to laisser faire and to study John Gorst's program of paternal State legislation.
There was in the years 1800–1875 a powerfully destructive force at work—the materialistic philosophy. It produced the wonderful revival of sciences, and led to the wonderful discoveries of the last quarter of a century, it induced men to think. It freed the minds of the workers ….. "Down, then, with Materialism." is now the outcry of the middle classes. "Long live metaphysics, long live Hegel, Kant, and the Dialectic method!" Why not? They know that in this direction, too, the reaction will find no opposition from the Neo-Socialists. They are also dialecticians, Hegelians, they also worship economic metaphysics, as has been so well shown by Tcherkesoff in his "Pages of Socialist History."
Happily enough, there is one element in the present life ​of Europe and America which has not yielded to political corruption. It is the labour movement, so far as it has hitherto remained strange to the race for seats in Parliament. It may be that here and there the workers belonging to this movement give support to this or that candidate for a seat in a parliament or in a municipalily—but there are already scores of thousands of working men in Spain, in Italy, in France, in Holland, and probably in England too, who quire consciously refuse to take any part, even for fun, in the political struggle. Their main work lies in quite another direction. With an admirable tenacity they organise their unions, within each nation and internationally, and with a still more admirable ardour they prepare the great coining struggle of Labour against Capital: the coming of the international general strike.
One may judge of the terror which this movement, unostensibly prepared by the workers, inspires in the middle classes, by the terrible prosecutions—which have not stopped even at torture—which they have carried on against the revolutionary trade unions in Spain. One may judge of that terror by the infamous repression of the Milan insurrection which was ordered by King Humbert, or by the measures which were going to be taken against railway strikers in Holland. These measures, as is known, were prevented by the splendid act of international solidarity accomplished by the British Dock Labourers' Union, and immediately followed by the menacing declarations of the General Union of the French Syndicates. It hardly need be said that all the Parliamentary Socialists of France, Germany, Spain, &c, headed by the famous Millerand and Jaurès (one year ago this last, was for the general strike—now he writes long articles against it), bitterly oppose this idea of a general strike. But the movement spreads every month, and every month it gains new support and wins new sympathies.
III.
Our first intention was to conclude this series of articles by a general review of the so-called Labour-protecting legislation in different countries, and to show how tar this legislation is due to the Socialist politicians on the one side, and to the ​direct pressure exercised by the Labour agitation on the other.
Such a study would have been deeply interesting. Not that we should attribute to this legislation more importance than it deserves. We have often proved that any such law, even if it introduces some partial improvement; always lays upon the worker some new chain, forged by the middle-class State. We prefer the ameliorations which have been imposed by the workers upon their masters in a direct struggle: they are less spurious. However, it is also easy to prove that even those little and always poisoned concessions which have been made by the middle classes to the workers, and which are now represented as the very essence of "practical, scientific" Socialism, stand in no relation to the numerical forces of the political Socialist parties. Such concessions as the limitation of the hours of labour, or of child labour, whenever they represent something real, have always been achieved by the action of the trade-unions—by strikes, by labour revolts, or by menaces of a labour war. They are labour victories—not political victories.
If there was a work in which the conditions of labour and the recent labour legislation were given for each country, it would have been easy to prove the above assertion by a crushing evidence of data. But no such work exists, and consequently we have to mention but a few striking facts.
Our readers will see on another page what a substantial reduction of the hours of labour in the mines was achieved by the great miners' strike of Pennsylvania, and, by the way, the effect which the strike has had upon other branches of American industry. That such long hours as twelve hours, every day of the week (including Sundays), should have existed in Pennsylvania, we need not wonder when we are reminded that every year the Eastern States receive thousands of fresh immigrant miners from Germany and Austria, where, notwithstanding the presence of so many Democrat-Socialists in Parliament, the hours of labour are outrageously long. But precisely because there are no such political go-betweens in the United States the Pennsylvania strike could last long enough to end in a ​substantial victory for the labourers. The twelve hours' day exists no more in the mines of Pennsylvania.
The same applies to Britain. All the little victories which the working men have won for the last fifty years, were won by the force of their trades unions, and not of Socialist politicians. Of coarse, it would not be fair to compare the conditions of labour in Britain and in Germany; two countries, one of which has no Social-Democratic party in its Parliament, but has a number of strongly-organised trade unions, while the other has no less than fifty-three Social-Democratic representatives in the Reichstag, and boasts of two million Social-Democratic electors, but is only just beginning yo develop (in opposition to the politicians) its trade-union movement.
It would not be fair to insist upon the incomparably better conditions of labour in this country, because the labour movement and the industry itself are so much older in England. But still, we can ask, what results have the numerous Social-Democratic deputies obtained from Parliament for the protection and personal emancipation of the labourer in Germany? The nullity of such results is simply striking, especially in comparison with the promises which have been made, and the hopes which were cherished by many sincere working men.
Everyone remembers the Eight Hours' Day Movement which was started in Europe in 1889–1890. Beginning at Chicago, in 1887, where it cost the lives of five of our best Anarchist brothers, it came to Europe in the shape of a First of May demonstration—a sort of one-day general strike of all working men, which had to be made for the propaganda of an eight hours' day. The enthusiasm of the first demonstration in Hyde Park on May 1st, 1890, must be fresh in the minds of many, and by this time we surely would have been in a fair way towards the realisation of that demand, were it not for the political Socialists who saw in the eight hours' movement a plank to step on for getting into Parliament, and did their best to nip the movement in the bud.
The attitude of the German Socialist politicians at the time was most typical. They were hi mortal fear lest the eight ​hours' movement should become a labour movement, over which they would have no control; they hated the very idea of a general strike for the purpose of reducing the hours of labour, and they hammered into the workers' heads, "legal eight hours! legal eight hours!" They said, "Only vote for us, and for those whom we shall recommendto you ! Discipline! And then you will see. In 1891 you will have the eleven hours' day, in such a year a ten hours' day, then a nine hour's day, and in 1903 you will have the eight hours' day, without having all the troubles and the sufferings of the strikes." This is what Engels and Liebnecht promised them and printed plainly in their papers.
Well, up to now they have not yet got even the nine hours' day and the weekly half-holiday! … In Russia, the despotic Government of the Tsar, under the pressure of strikes, has passed directly from a thirteen and fourteen hours' working day to one of eleven hours', even though it still treats strikes as rebellions. … But where is the eight hours' law in Germany? As distant in the future as it is in Russia! Much more distant, at any rate, than it is in Spain, which has only a handful of impotent Social-Democrats in Madrid, but has, in, return, powerful labour organisations in all its leading industries.
Spain is especially instructive on this account. Since the times of the foundation of the International, it has had strong labour organisations in Catalonia, keeping in close touch with the Anarchists, and always ready to support their demands by strikes, and sometimes by revolts. Everyone remembers, of course, the continual strikes—labour wars would even be more correct—which took place so many times at Barcelona, the desperate measures to which the Government resorted against the Catalonian working men during the Montjuich tortures, and the latest attempts at a general strike.
Now, the result of all this is that the eight hours' day has been fought for long since (more than ten years ago) and introduced in all the building trades of Barcelona, and although it was lost during the Montjuich prosecutions, it was recovered again two years ago, and is nearly general now in these and several other trades. Moreover we have read during the past ​few days in the daily telegrams that in Arragonia the nine hours' day, now in force there, is to undergo a further reduction. Does it not compare favourably with the promised legal nine hours' day in Germany?
Happily enough, the German workers begin to lose faith in the promises of the politicians. Their trade unions, which were formerly so bitterly opposed by the Marxists, are meekly courted by them now, since they number over 1,000,000 men (this is the figure given by the Reformer's Year Book), and they seem to be so little under the influence of the Social-Democratic leaders that, after all they have heard from them about the uselessness of strikes and the wickedness of a general strike, they sent the other day their hearty congratulations and promises of support to their Dutch brothers who had proclaimed the general strike in Holland. As to the intellectual and social movement which is going on in connection with the more advanced trade unions in Germany, it seems to be a subject of deep interest.
Striking facts could be mentioned from the labour history of France, to show how the young labour organisations, the strikes, and the labour revolts were instrumental in wresting from the middle class rulers a number of concessions; but space forbids us to mention more than one fact.
Up to 1883, trade unions and all sorts of associations of more than nineteen persons were strictly forbidden in France. Only in 1883, the restriction was abolished by the law of the syndicates, and from that time began the present labour movement, the agricultural syndicates (1,500,000 members now), the Labour Exchanges, and the rest. And if you ask any politician. What induced, in 1883, the Opportunist Ministry to take this far-reaching step? you will be told that it was the Anarchist movement at Lyons (for which fifty of us were imprisoned in 1882), the unemployed processions in Paris under the black flag, during one of which Louise Michel "pillaged" a baker's shop, and perhaps above all that, the secret labour organisations which sprang up and rapidly spread among the miners of Montceau-les-Mines and in all the mining basin, and resulted in a series of explosions. …. Guesde and his friends, at that time, were ​still most hopelessly putting forward their candidatures after each strike.
The conclusion is self-evident. We saw what results Socialist politics have given for the theoretical propaganda. Just as the name of "Republic," which formerly meant social equality, after it was taken up by middle class politicians, was gradually deprived by them of its social meaning, and was shaped into a sort of middle class rule, so also the word "Socialism" has become in the hands of the Socialist politicians the preaching of some sort of mitigated middle class exploitation. They are all Socialists now, but Socialism is gone, and the most confused ideas prevail now among the Social-Democrats concerning the sense of this great war-cry of the workers.
And now we find that although parliamentary action has always been represented as the means for obtaining small concessions to the advantage of the worker, these concessions, however insignificant they may be, have been won, all of them, by strikes (such as the match girls', the miners', the dock labourers', and so on), and by the standing menace of still more serious labour wars. The presence of a number of more or less Socialistic deputies in the parliaments does not, it appears now, dispense the working man in the least maintaining his trade organisations in full mental and material readiness for war. On the contrary, it is only by the constant menace of a declaration of war, and by real war—and in proportion to this readiness—that the workers have won any victories; while the tactics of the politicians have always been to weaken the anti-capitalist labour organisations, under the pretext of political concentration and discipline. As to this country, by their abominable tactics, prompted by Engels and Marx, of arraying at election times all their forces against the Radicals and the Liberals, which was equal to supporting the Conservatives, they have done their best to pave the way for the present Imperialism, and they have got their heavy share of responsibility for the heavy blows which the Conservative Government has struck lately at the security of the labour organisations. It is never too late to mend; but it takes some time to mend the harm that has been done by mistaken politicians.
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This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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