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p The attitude of the ideologists of the radical Left to violence invites the general conclusion that when it comes to their interpretation of the historical process and the process of social creativity their stand is fundamentally idealist.

p For a start they absolutise violent forms of struggle. Postulating the "total repressiveness" of the institutions and relations which exist in bourgeois society they make of violence an end in itself and search for ways of extending the scale of the application of violence rather than avoiding violence altogether.  [192•*  "Resort to violence at the first opportunity!" is the message of their “revolutionary” principles. Violence leading to revolt, not revolution in all the flexible diversity of its forms, they would make the revolutionary’s raison d’etre. In this respect the ideology of the radical Left is the product of a society founded on violence.

p It is perfectly clear that violence is regarded by the " philosophers of revolt" as a purely political phenomenon. Yet in this case politics is either completely divorced from economics and culture, or is presented as the all-important factor, the "controlling power". As a result the question of revolution as a historical upheaval involving profound changes in the development of human civilisation and culture is turned into a question of revolt, a purely political change which is almost automatically followed by other changes.

p There is no doubt that the problem of violence, since it affects relations between classes, peoples and states, is a political problem. Yet Marxists, who have never overlooked this side of the question, have at the same time always made a point of approaching political problems in close connection with economic and cultural ones. After stating that "force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one", Marx, there and then adds: "It is itself an economic power.”  [192•**  Engels for his part criticised Eugen Diihring for attempting 193 to present violence as something self-contained. Lenin links historical development not with “naked” violence but with "material force": "No major historical issue has ever been decided otherwise than by ’material force’.”  [193•* 

p The problem of violence proves to be not just a political problem but also a cultural one in the very widest sense of that word that cannot be reduced merely to a question of literacy and erudition, but which embraces all spheres of man’s social being, the whole environment that has been created by his labour.

p The agent of violence, if he is really concerned with the welfare of society, and not merely anxious to find a vent for unreleased energy, must decide where he stands on this question, and to what extent his emotional attitude to this or that social group is justified by its actual role in the contemporary cultural-historical process, whether, as he perpetrates political violence, he is helping to preserve or destroy the cultural heritage that is his, and, most important of all, he must decide whether he is ready to provide a force capable of furthering cultural development.

p For the revolutionary class this problem involves the limits of freedom and historical creativity: the question as to whether this class after interrupting the course of history is capable of purposefully guiding history into a new channel, which would correspond to its conceptions of more complete forms of human society.

p These two aspects—the break with the old order and the “guiding” of history into a new channel are not just closely linked with each other. In the historical process they are synchronous, since the act of the “break” is the moment of creativity which “programmes” the contours of the society to follow. Depending upon how, when and by whom this break was effected the new society created by the subject of historical creativity acquires distinct historical features.

p However history conceals within its fabric a “trick” long since noted by philosophers, which manifests itself first and foremost in the fact that the framework of social creativity is not so rigid as to rob the subject of independent choice of the path he follows and, in particular, of the chance to choose 194 such an alternative as contradicts the logic of all previous historical process, and therefore of such decisions (and the associated actions) which a posteriori can be regarded as unjustified. Precisely this “plasticity” of social reality has always provided, and continues to provide, rich soil on which countless varieties of historical voluntarism flourished in the past and flourish today.

p Today the individual in developed capitalist society is keenly aware of the contradictory nature of the position in which he has been placed by history: the limits of his mastery of Nature have been extended beyond measure in comparison with what they used to be in the past, but the individual himself has started to become more keenly aware of his dependence on society, on the social organism, and of his lack of freedom reflected in his transformation into an object of manipulation and violence, a transformation that is effected by the ruling class with the help of the very technology which enables the individual to tame Nature. The attempt to find a way out of this tragic situation for certain “marginal” groups has led the radical Left to regard absolute violence as a means of bringing man’s history into line with the level of his mastery of Nature and utilisation of his technological and economic potential.

p The radical Left assumes that if it were able today to effect a violent break with existing social structures without waiting for the material prerequisites to take shape, then tomorrow it would be able to steer history along the desired channel and arbitrarily construct a "brave, new world”.

p Meanwhile the radicals prefer to overlook the fact that revolutionary violence is only historically justified when it is resorted to in situations, where the essential prerequisites for such a course of action have already taken shape, and where in view of the whole earlier course of history it emerges as necessary. They also ignore the fact that even the possibility of an “easy” break with the past does not guarantee an equally easy course of events to follow, or, to be precise, the formation of social relations of a new type. This applies still more to violence which proves historically unjustified. History will eventually reveal the "fatal a posteriori" to the social gambler. At the constructive stage which inevitably 195 follows after the interruption of gradual historical progression, history wreaks revenge on the social gambler for the violence perpetrated against it. What the social gambler took for the “plasticity” of reality, i.e., the opportunity arbitrarily to change and mould reality, on closer examination proves to be none other than the chance to make a choice within the confines of a given range of possibilities. What the social gambler took to be the growing extent of that “plasticity” of reality proves to be the increasing expansion of the range of opportunities from one historical stage to the next.

p Events following after the premature “break” can take different courses. Revolt may find itself in deep water fairly early on, while the "old order" may be reestablished with greater or smaller losses for the rebels. The movement of the radical Left may give rise to reaction from forces of the extreme Right, who in favourable conditions may even come to power. Finally, in a third set of circumstances, thanks to the existence of a definite mass base, the movement may succeed in maintaining its new gains for some time, yet the revolutionary subject has to act despite his own expectations and despite the plan he had formerly envisaged. This was the very situation to which Engels referred in connection with the peasant war in Germany: "The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government at a time when society is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the measures which that domination implies.... Thus, he necessarily finds himself in an unsolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous actions and principles, and the immediate interests of his party, and what he ought to do cannot be done. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whose domination the movement is then ripe. In the interests of the movement he is compelled to advance the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with talk and promises, and with the asseveration that the interests of that alien class are their own interests.”  [195•* 

p This situation clearly brings out the deceptiveness of the seeming plasticity of social reality. Although history allows 196 “unjustified" violence to be inflicted upon it, it nevertheless does not suffer the development of those forces and trends which serve as the mechanism of its movement to be cut short, it only suffers this development to be steered into a new channel and moulded in new forms.

p The ideologists of the radical Left whose arguments are based on "negative dialectics" assume that it is possible to shake off the "old order" complete with all its hypostases all the quicker, the more resolutely all threads linking them with that order are torn in the course of revolt.

p The more “radical” the ill-timed break, the more probable it is that the old order will be reinstated, albeit in a different form. Here the situation cannot be saved by appealing to morals, to moral substantiation of already accomplished violence, for it is not abstract morals but socio-historical consequences of accomplished political acts which pronounce the final sentence passed on violence.

p The Marxist attitude to violence is free of all dogmatic absolutism so typical of the radical Left’s Utopianism. Marxists defend the realistic approach to revolutionary violence, but that is realism which demands considerable skill in the understanding of dialectics.

p The Marxist only urges the masses to engage in armed violence when such violence is, from his point of view (that is from the point of view of the Party) historically necessary, i.e., when it has been prepared for by the whole course of previous social development.

p At the same time necessity (realism) or non-necessity ( utopianism) of this or that social act of the masses can only be ascertained by means of concrete analysis that takes into account the existing alignment of class forces, and the trends to be observed in changes in that alignment, etc. If such analysis results in the conclusion that in the given conditions violence could not produce any results, then the Marxist is obliged to hold back the masses from engaging in armed violence even when he is accused of “dogmatism” or “ apostasy”, reproaches which the “left” revolutionary is bound to level at him. It goes without saying that if the situation changes the Marxist should take into account new factors and review his previous assessment of the expediency of engaging in violence in the new conditions.

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p Yet a much more complex situation can develop, when the suppressed classes (or groups) take up the struggle ( including the armed variety) in conditions, which, from the Marxist’s viewpoint, offer no real hope for success, and when such a struggle does not appear justified according to the logic of all earlier social development. In such conditions what kind of approach could be regarded as realistic from the Marxist standpoint?

p No doubt in this situation as well no single recipe is possible, that is one that would be valid for all times and for all peoples—this fact reflects once again the approach to politics as an art. After weighing up all the pros and cons the Marxist can, if he sees the evolving embryonic movement as a threat to the very existence of revolutionary forces, attempt to avert premature action before the latter assumes a wide scale and embraces the masses, namely before it has become irreversible.

p Yet if the masses’ spontaneous urge to overthrow capitalist domination takes the form of a broad movement, then the Marxist comes out in support of such a movement. In the revolutionary shaping of history it is after all the masses who have the final say,  [197•*  and if their experience and the circumstances in which they have been placed by the ruling classes compel them to resort to non-peaceful methods of struggle for liberation, the Marxist unavoidably becomes involved in the movement. He introduces into the mass revolutionary tide an element of organisation, commitment (which the radicals see of course as none other than an attempt to "establish control over the masses") which is essential if a movement which perhaps, according to preliminary analysis, had no chance of success, is to move on to victory. This is not an abandonment of realism, but the manifestation of its complex and contradictory character, which 198 distinguishes Marxist dialectics from the positivist’s shallow approach to facts.

p An example of this dialectical approach to mass movements we find in Marx’s assessment of the Paris Commune. On the eve of the uprising of the Paris communards Marx regarded armed uprising on the part of the proletariat as a hopeless undertaking in the conditions then prevailing.  [198•*  Yet while in September 1870 when it was still possible to avert the “folly” Marx was warning the French working people not to act prematurely, in April 1871, without in any way abandoning his realistic standpoint, "when he saw the mass movement of the peoples, he watched it with the keen attention of a participant in great events marking a step forward in the historical revolutionary movement”.  [198•** 

p The reason for Marxist support of the Paris communards who had "stormed the heavens^^1^^’ should on no account be explained as fear on the part of the revolutionary of losing "his prestige", of losing face in the eyes of the .working people, and hence his readiness to support any mass movement. As pointed out earlier, we are dealing here with movements that are developing in line with progressive trends in social history and which deserve support for the simple reason that, in the first place, they represent a manifestation of the masses’ historical initiative, a part of historical creativity  [198•*** , which educates the masses themselves, and also clears the way for future victories (even in cases when they do not triumph themselves) and in the second place, if we 199 do not make a mystery of necessity, i.e., do not approach historical necessity from the theological point of view, we cannot with real confidence determine the potential of this or that wide mass movement until it has manifested itself in concrete historical practice.

p When analysing the reasons for Marx’s support of the Paris Commune Lenin wrote that Marx "realised that to attempt in advance to calculate the chances with complete accuracy would be quackery or hopeless pedantry. What he valued above everything else was that the working class heroically and self-sacrificingly took the initiative in making world history. Marx regarded world history from the standpoint of those who make it without being in a position to calculate the chances infallibly beforehand.”  [199•* 

p Lenin calls attention to Marx’s stern rebuke directed at Ludwig Kugelmann, who "apparently replied to Marx expressing certain doubts, referring to the hopelessness of the struggle and to realism as opposed to romanticism.. .”.  [199•**  Marx’s rebuke, to which Lenin refers is well known: "World history would indeed be very easy to make if the struggle were taken up only on condition of infallibly favourable chances. It would on the other hand be of a very mystical nature, if ‘accidents’ played no part. These accidents naturally form part of the general course of development and are compensated by other accidents. But acceleration and delay are very much dependent upon such ‘accidents’.”  [199•*** 

p Here Marx expresses the essence of an important tenet of materialist dialectics. In society necessity as a trend, as a law exists in logically “cleansed” or “complete” form only in the mind of the theoretician, on the ideal plane. In the empirical historical process, the end products of which cannot be foreseen in advance and calculated with mathematical precision, “accident” emerges as a form of existence and an ingredient of necessity. The accidental nature of the spontaneously evolving mass movement is not something external in relation to history, but is history itself; it itself, 200 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1975/PR246/20090731/246.tx" as Marx remarked, forms "part of the general course of development”.

p If at the same time it be remembered that in social history the social movement as a structural and integral phenomenon is unique and never repeats itself and that at the same time it is impossible to divine in advance with "infallible precision" which of the “accidental” social movements possesses true revolutionary potential, i.e., can lead directly to success, it then follows that it is necessary to make use of any social and progressive movement, including those of the Utopian variety, as soon as they emerge and show themselves to be irreversible.

p Armed violence can acquire a necessary character in the course of the very movement of the masses. Until the emergence of the Paris Commune the victory of a mass movement that could emerge at that period did not appear as a necessity. Yet at the same time the existence of the Paris Commune did not predetermine its defeat from the very beginning, in so far as its emergence was linked with that of the revolutionary situation and, within the fabric of French society itself, at that time there already existed objective prerequisites for the transition to a new type of social relations. The defeat of the Commune only became inevitable after it had made a number of major miscalculations which it could have avoided.

p This explains why until the appearance of the Commune Marx and Engles considered that the use of violence by the French proletariat would be wrong in the conditions of that time, whereas analysing later the reasons for the defeat of the Commune, they, on the contrary, saw the Communards’ mistake to lie in the fact that the latter were too indecisive and inconsistent in their application of armed violence. In a letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht of April 6, 1871, Marx wrote: "It seems the Parisians are succumbing. It is their own fault, but a fault which really was due to their too great decency. The Central Committee and later the Commune gave ... Tillers time to centralize hostile forces, in the first place by their folly of not wanting to start a civil war—as if Thiers had not already started it by his attempt at the forcible disarming of Paris, as if the National Assembly, summoned to decide the question of war or peace 201 with the Prussians, had not immediately declared war on the Republicl ... in order that the appearance of having usurped power should not attach to them they lost precious moments (they should immediately have advanced on Versailles after the defeat (Place Uendome) of the reaction in Paris) by the elections of the Commune, the organisation of which, etc., cost yet more time.”  [201•*  Engels also shared this point of view ’as can be seen, for example, from his letter to Carlo Terzaghi dated January 14 (15), 1872: "I know of nothing more authoritarian than a revolution and when men impinge their will on others by means of bombs and bullets, as happens in any revolution, then, it seems to me, an authoritarian act is carried out. It was the lack of centralisation and authority that cost the Paris Commune its life. Do what you like with authority, etc., after victory, but for the struggle we must rally all our strength and concentrate it at one and the same point of attack. When people talk to me of authority and centralisation as two things which should be condemned in all circumstances, then I feel that those who talk in this vein either do not know what revolution is, or are only revolutionaries in word.”  [201•** 

p The dialectics of the Marxist realistic approach to the question of the application of revolutionary violence therefore consists in the fact that the Marxist politician, aware of all the implications of the historical responsibility he bears, does not adopt an a priori dogmatic position on this point. He attempts to avert violence which is not of a necessary character in the given socio-political conditions. Yet at the same time, if the masses spontaneously embark on a struggle involving armed violence, a struggle whose forms and dynamics express the trend of historical development in the given period, the proletarian revolutionary sees himself obliged to support that movement, to try to render it victorious or at least to make of it a "point of growth" for the subsequent revolutionary struggle, use it as an example for the masses as he prepares them for new confrontations.  [201•***  The Paris 202 Commune in this respect was a classical example. It came to represent a major factor in the preparation of subsequent revolutionary battles waged by the proletariat. Over thirty years after the uprising of the Communards Lenin was to write: "In the present movement we all stand on the shoulders of the Commune.”  [202•*  Yet at the same time the experience of the Paris Commune gave Marx, Engels and Lenin historical grounds for a number of highly important theoretical conclusions concerning patterns of social development and laws of the revolutionary process; in particular the measures carried out by the Commune enabled the founders of Marxism to find an answer to the question as to what the bourgeois state machine, that was to be destroyed by the proletariat, should be replaced by.

p The dialectical approach which Marxists adopt in relation to the question of the use of revolutionary violence and support for spontaneous anti-capitalist movements whose tactics involve non-peaceful methods of struggle, in no way implies, however, that Marxists support the present predilection for armed violence found in any spontaneously evolving anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist movement, and support any ’movement of such a kind. There is even less truth in the assertion that Marxists urge the anti-capitalist masses to take up armed struggle when neither the latter nor the objective conditions are ready for it—it is here that the fundamental difference between Marxism and the ideas of the radical Left lies.

p The attitude adopted by Marx, Engels and Lenin to the Paris Commune reveals the dialectics of the Marxist approach to revolutionary violence in connection with such movements as do not only possess a mass, primarily proletarian character, do not only testify to the proletariat’s growing organisation and the increase in its sense of commitment, but which also in the course of struggle effect such measures (this 203 applies first of all to the demolition of the bourgeois state machine) which actually served to undermine the dictatorship of the ruling class, to open the way for the proletariat’s assumption of power and to create broad vistas for the subsequent development of the revolutionary process.

p For this reason it would be a mistake to draw a parallel, as do certain historians and sociologists of the bourgeois left, between the uprising of the Paris Communards and the New Left movement, above all the May movement in France.

p The ideologists of the radical Left, the leaders and their supporters (above all Sartre, Cohn-Bendit and others) accused French communists of not rallying the working class of Paris and France to the "decisive struggle" in support of the extremist groups among French students and intellectuals, i.e., they did not appeal to the working class to engage in violence against the bourgeois state, in socialist revolution and thus after all they let slip the opportunities of this "revolutionary situation”.

p French communists did indeed fail to appeal to the proletariat in May 1968 to overthrow the government and carry out a socialist revolution. However they had good reasons for this, reasons which were overlooked by the ideologists of the radical Left.

p Without carrying out a detailed analysis of the May events we shall point out here merely the main factors which serve to elucidate the essence of that situation and in particular the principal difference between those events and the Paris Commune.

p In the first place, the students in revolt did not constitute politically, socially and ideologically united force. While a certain part of the student body—the extremist wing, that followed the ideologists of the radical Left, focussed its attention on the application of armed violence, the others did not adopt any definite stand in this respect. The common_;. aim—the overthrow of the establishment—remained abstract, producing no shared slogans or shared revolutionary programme. On this occasion there was not even a shadow of that single-mindedness shown by the Paris Communards.

p Secondly, the members of the New Left in May 1968, unlike the Communards, and contrary to what the ideologists of the radical Left were later to contend, did not undermine 204 even one of the institutions of power, they did not bring about the emergence of a revolutionary situation in Paris, let alone the provinces.

p In these conditions what the French proletariat would have had to do was not “continue” and “consolidate” the work begun by the students, but rather carry out from the beginning to the end all the work required for the accomplishment of revolution. But to this end it is essential that there be to hand such conditions as the readiness of the working masses to engage in decisive struggle to overthrow the regime, and that the objective prerequisites be at hand for the successful implementation of this struggle, i.e., the crisis or inability of the bourgeois state to defend and uphold the Establishment as had been the case in all victorious revolutions. However in May 1968 no such situation existed. Assertions from the radical Left to the effect that the army was ready to support those in revolt and the police had been rendered more or less powerless by its battle with the students, in a word that the authorities were "sprawled helpless on the streets" and could have been overpowered, had nothing in common with the actual situation existing in Paris and also throughout France, as was pointed out by French communists in their analysis of the May events.  [204•* 

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p To urge the proletariat in those conditions to use violence would have been to “foist” upon it such forms of revolutionary action as would not have met with mass support from the ranks of the proletariat, being bereft of any real prospects for future development.

p Communists have always regarded it as their duty to wage an unrelenting struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionarism and see to it that their party does not indulge in any leftist adventures. Today that task is a particularly relevant one, more so than it was yesterday. Revolution cannot of course cut out all risk, but the measure of risk must be checked against the measure of the threat that real gains might be lost, gains that were wrested from the bourgeoisie by earlier generations of the working class. Moreover, in the conditions of today when radical political changes in this or that country (or region) constitute an important factor in the struggle between the two world systems, the degree of historical responsibility borne by each national detachment of communists also grows, for while plotting the course of their political behaviour (particularly in critical situations), they have to weigh up the gains scored by the whole international communist movement.

p The conceptions of violence elaborated by the radicals reflect one of the typical features of the New Left’s political outlook—revolutionary romanticism and Utopianism, which are characteristic of non-proletarian anti-capitalist movements in general, especially those in which the bulk of the participants consists of young people.

p This is a contradictory phenomenon—a mixture of revolutionary integrity and reckless ventures, heroic self- sacrifice and political naivete, a sincere endeavour to do away immediately with social and national oppression and a nihilistic attitude to the enormous political experience of the proletariat, confidence in the revolutionary’s ability to "move mountains" and reluctance to engage in long, routine, “hard” revolutionary work.

This provides the background to the Marxists’ attitude to this phenomenon. It is no use at all when it comes to evolving the strategy and tactics for the revolutionary party of the proletariat, but it does incorporate one important element, namely, the moral climate in which anti-conformist

206 forces develop and in a certain sense the initial stage through which have passed in their time those who later, after overcoming early misconceptions, embrace the revolutionary principles of the working class and manage to combine considerable moral stature and faith in man’s capacity to "work miracles" with the ability to make a sober assessment of the situation in which they find themselves and to carry out persevering routine work. In a conversation with J. Friis Lenin pointed out: "It goes without saying that we cannot do without romanticism altogether. Too much is better than too little. We have always sympathised with revolutionary romantics, even when we have disagreed with them. For example, we have always refrained from resorting to individual acts of terror. Yet we have always expressed our deep admiration for the personal courage of the terrorists and their readiness for sacrifice.”  [206•*  While sympathising with the revolutionary romantics the Marxist proletarian revolutionary remains at the same time very far removed from the rebel who on the "spur of the moment" can rise up to take part in unprepared struggle. The proletarian revolutionary acts in such a way as to make sure his struggle is commensurate with the trends which are taking shape within the fabric of social history. His slogan is not revolt, but social revolution.