Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets - Libcom

18.., KROPOTKIN'S REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS
political organization.
Serfdom and absolute monarchy have
always marched hand-in-hand. The one rendered the other
a necessity. The same is true of capitalist rule, whose political
form is representative government, either in a republic
or in a monarchy. This is why socialism cannot utilize representative
government as a weapon for liberating labor, just
as it cannot utilize the church and its theory of divine right.
or imperialism and Cresarism. with its theory of hierarchy of
functionaries, for the same purpose.
A new form of political organization has to be worked out
the moment that socialist principles shall enter into our life.
And it is self-evident that this new form will have to be mere
popular, more decentralized, and nearer to the folk-mote set/­
government than representative government can ever be.
Knowing this, we cannot see a guarantee of progress in a
still greater submission of all to the State. We seek progress
in the fullest emancipation of the individual from the authority
of the State; in the greatest development of individual
initiative and in the limitation of all the governmental functions,
but surely not in their extension. The march forward
in political institutions appears to us to consist in abolishing
in the first place the State authority which has fixed itself
upon society and which now tries to extend its functions
more and more ; and in the second place, in allowing the
broadest possible development for the principle of free agreement,
and in acknowledging the independence of all possible
associations formed for definite ends, embracing in their
federations the whole of society. The life of society itself we
understand, not as something complete and rigid, but as
something never perfect--something ever striving for new
forms, and ever changing these forms in accordance with the
needs of the time.
This is what life is in nature.
Such a conception of human progress and of what we think
desirable in the future (what, in our opinion, can increase the
sum of happiness) leads us inevitably to our own special
tactics in the struggle. It induces us to strive for the greatest
possible development of personal initiative in every indi-
MODERN SCIENCE AND ANARCHISM
vidual and group, and to secure unity of action, not through
discipline. but through the unity of aims and the mutual
confidence which never fail to develop when a great number
of persons have consciously embraced some common idea.
Then we assert and endeavor to prove that it devolves upon
every new economic form of social life to develop its own
new form of political relations. It has been so in the past,
and so it undoubtedly will be in the future. New forms are
already germinating all round.
Feudal right and autocracy, or at least the almost unlimited
power of a czar or a king, have moved hand in hand in his·
tory. They depended on each other in this development.
Exactly in the same way the rule of the capitalists has evolved
its own characteristic political order-representative government-both
in strictly centralized monarchies and in repub.
lics.
Socialism. whatever may be the form in which it will appear,
and in whatever degree it may approach to its unavoidable
goal,-communism.-will also have to choose its Q'Uln
form of political structure. Of the old form it cannot make
use no more than it could avail itself of the hierarchy of the
chch or of autocracy. The State bureaucracy and centralization
are as irreconcilable with socialism as was autocracy
with capitalist rule. One way or another, socialism must
become more popular, more communalistic, and less dependent
upon indirect government through elected representatives.
It must become more self-gaverning.
Besides, when we closely observe the modern life of France,
Spain, England and the United States, we notice in these
countries the evident tendency to form into groups of entirely
independent communes, towns and villages, which would
combine by means of free federation, in order to satisfy innumerable
needs and attain certain immediate ends. In actual
life this tendency manifests itself in thousands of attempts
at organization outside the State, fully independent
of it; as well as in attempts to take hold of various functions
which had been previously usurped by the State and