Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Propaganda By The Deed / 153
wait to take part in a movement which appears with the label of official socialism on
it. Every popular movement already carries with it the seeds of the revolutionary socialism:
we must take part in it to ensure its growth. A clear and precise ideal of revolution
is formulated only by an infinitesimal minority, and if we wait to take part in a
struggle which appears exactly as we have imagined it in our minds-we shall wait
fo rever. Don't imitate the dogmatists who ask fo r the fo rmula before anything else:
the people carry the living revolution in their hearts, and we must fight and die with
them.
And when the supporters oflegal or parliamentary action come and criticize us
fo r not having anything to do with the people when they vote, we shall reply to them:
"Certainly, we refuse to have anything to do with the people when they are down on
their knees in front of their god, their king, or their master; but we shall always be
with them when they are standing upright against their powerful enemies. For us, abstentionfrom
politics is not abstention from revolution; our refusal to take part ;n any parliamentary,
legal or reactionary action is the measure of our devotion to a violent and anarchist
revolution, to the revolution of the rabble and the poor. "
45. Kropotkin: Expropriation (1885)
Kropotkin's 1885 collection of articles, Words of a Rebel (Montreal: Black Rose Books,
1992), contains some of his most revolutionary writings fro m Le Revolte, the anarchist paper
Kropotkin helped fo und in 1879. In this passage from the chapter on revolutionary government,
translated by Nicolas Walter, Kropotkin argues, much as Varlet had beJore him
(Selection 5), that "revolution01Y government" is a contradiction in terms:
TO OVERTHROW A GOVERNMENT-this is everything fo r a bourgeois revolutionary.
For us, it is only the beginning of the Social Revolution. Once the machine of the
State is out of order, the hierarchy of officials fa llen into disarray and no longer
knowing which direction to move in, the soldiers losing confidence in their leaders-in
a word, once the army of the defenders of Capital is put to flight-it is then
that the great work of the destruction of the institutions which serve to perpetuate
economic and political slavery arises before us. The possibility of acting freely is acquired-what
are the revolutionaries going to do
To this question it is only the anarchists who reply: "No government, anarchy!"
All the others say: "A revolutionary government!" They differ only over the form to
give this government. Some want it elected by universal suffrage, as a State or as a
Commune; others declare fo r a revolutionary dictatorship. A "revolutionary government!"
These two words sound very strangely to those who realize what the Social