1.

That all present governments should be abolished, so that freedom, equality and fraternity are no longer vain words and become living realities; that all forms of government attempted up to our day have been no better than various forms of oppression and must be replaced by a new form of social arrangement: on these points all those who have an outlook and a temperament even slightly revolutionary are in agreement. One does not even have to be very innovatory to reach that conclusion; the vices of actual governments and the impossibility of reforming them are too striking not to spring to the attention of any reasonable observer. As to overthrowing governments, it is generally known that at certain periods this can be done without much difficulty. There are moments when governments collapse almost of their own accord, like houses of cards, under the breath of the people in revolt. This happened in 1848 and 1870; we shall see it again soon.

To overthrow a government -- for the revolutionary bourgeoisie that is the task completed. For us it is only the beginning of the social revolution. The machine of the State has been derailed, the hierarchy of bureaucrats has become disorganized and knows no longer what direction to take, the soldiers have lost confidence in their commanders, in other words the army of the defenders of capital has been thrown into confusion, and it is at this point that there rises before us the great work of demolishing all the institutions that serve to perpetuate economic or political enslavements. The possibility of acting freely has been acquired. What will the revolutionaries do with it?

On that question it is only the anarchists who answer, "No government at all! Anarchy!" All the others say: "A revolutionary government!" They only differ on the form that government should take when it is elected by universal suffrage, except for those who pronounce themselves in favour of revolutionary dictatorship.

"A revolutionary government!" These are two words that echo very strangely in the ears of those who know the meaning of both social revolution and government. They are two words that contradict and cancel each other out. We have of course seen plenty of despotic governments (for it is in the nature of all government to favour reaction against revolution and to tend towards despotism), but we have never seen a revolutionary government, and with good reason. It is because revolution, synonymous with "disorder," confusion, the overthrow in a few days of secular institutions, the violent annihilation of the established forms of property, the destruction of social castes, the rapid transformation of accepted ideas about morality (or rather about the hypocrisy that takes its place) into individual liberty and spontaneous action -- is precisely the opposite, the negation of government, which is synonymous with the "established Order," with conservatism, with the maintenance of existing institutions, with the negation of initiative and individual action. Nevertheless we continually hear about this "white blackbird," as if a "revolutionary government" were the most simple thing in the world, as common and familiar as kingdoms, empires or papacies.

Let the self-styled bourgeois revolutionaries teach this idea -- that is appropriate. We know what they mean by the revolution. It is nothing more than the patching up of the bourgeois republic; it is the taking over by self-styled republicans of the lucrative positions that today are reserved for Bonapartists or Royalists. It is above all the divorce of the Church and State, followed by their concubinage. This is all very well for the bourgeois revolutionaries. But that socialist revolutionaries should make themselves the apostles of such an idea can be explained, it seems to me, only by supposing one of two things. Either those who accept it are imbued with the bourgeois prejudices they have absorbed, without realising it, through the literature and above all the history created by bourgeois writers for the use of the bourgeoisie, and remain permeated by the spirit of servility, the product of centuries of enslavement, from which they cannot imagine liberating themselves; or, they really want nothing of that revolution whose name has always been on their lips; they would be content with renovating existing institutions, so long as they themselves are carried to power, when they will be prepared to decide later on what must be done to calm the "beast," that is to say, the people. They hold no grudges against those in power so long as they can take their places. With such individuals there is no point in arguing. We will speak only with those who have been honestly deceived, often by themselves.

Let us begin with the first of the two forms of "revolutionary government" that are so much praised -- elective government. Let us suppose that the government -- royal or other -- has been overthrown, and the army of the defenders of capital is in retreat; everywhere opinion is in a ferment, public affairs are being discussed, people feel the desire to move forward. New ideas are springing up and the need for serious change is understood: we must act, we must begin a pitiless work of demolition so as to clear the ground for a new life. But what are they proposing that we should do? Call the people to elections, and afterwards choose a government, and then confide to it the work that all and each of us should be doing on his or her own initiative.

This is what Paris did, after the 18th of March, 1871. "I shall always remember," a friend told us, "those beautiful moments of deliverance. I went down from my attic room on the Latin quarter to join in that immense open air club which filled the boulevards from one end of Paris to the other. Everyone was discussing public concerns; personal preoccupations were forgotten; nobody was interested in buying or selling; everyone was ready to propel himself body and soul into the future. Even the bourgeoisie, carried away by the universal ardour, looked on joyfully as the new world unfolded itself. If it is necessary to carry out the social revolution -- very well, let's do it; let us put everything in common; we are ready for that!" The elements of the revolution were in place; it was only necessary to put them into operation. Going back to my room that evening, I said to myself: "How wonderful humanity is! I always condemned it in the past because I never understood it!" Then came the elections and the members of the Commune were named -- and then the strength of devotion and the zeal for action were slowly extinguished. Everyone went back to his accustomed task, saying to himself: "Now we have an honest government. Let it look after things." And one knows what followed from that.

Instead of acting on its own initiative, instead of marching forward, instead of throwing itself boldly into a new order of things, the people, confident of its rulers, delegated to them the power of taking initiatives. Here was the first consequence -- and indeed the fatal result -- of elections. What in fact did these rulers do, who had been invested with the confidence of everyone?

Never were elections more free than those of March 1871. The adversaries of the Commune themselves recognized it. Never was the great mass of the electors so imbued with the desire to send to power the best men, men of the future, revolutionaries. And this is just what they did. All the well-known revolutionaries were elected by formidable majorities; Jacobins, Blanquists, Internationalists -- the three revolutionary fractions -- all found their places in the Council of the Commune. The election could not have provided a better government.

We know the result. Shut up in the Hotel de Ville, with the mission of proceeding according to the forms established by preceding governments, these ardent revolutionaries, these reformers found themselves struck by incapacity and sterility. With all their good will and courage, they were not even able to organize the defence of Paris. It is true that today individual men are being blamed for this failure, but it was not individuals who were responsible for this setback, but the system they applied.

In fact, universal suffrage, when it is free, can produce an assembly more or less representing the mean of the opinions that circulate at the moment among the masses; and that mean, at the beginning of the revolution, reveals only a very vague idea of the work to be accomplished, quite apart from how to carry it out. If only the greater part of the nation, of the Commune, could reach an understanding before it happened, on what would have to be done when the government was overthrown! If this dream of closet Utopians could be realized, we would never have had bloody revolutions: the will of the greater part of the nation having been expressed, the rest would submit to it with a good grace. But things do not happen in this way. The revolution breaks out well before a general understanding has been able to establish itself, and those who have a clear idea of what must be done on the morrow of the movement are at this moment only a tiny minority. The great mass of the people has only a general idea of the objective it would like to see realized, without having much knowledge of how to proceed to that objective, or much awareness of the procedure that must be followed. The practical solution will not be found, nor will it become clear until the change has already begun: it will be the product of the revolution itself, of the people in action -- or else it will be nothing, for the brains of a few individuals are absolutely incapable of finding the solutions that can only be born out of practical life.

The latter is the situation reflected in a body that is elected by suffrage, even if it does not have all the faults that are generally inherent in representative governments. The few men who represent the revolutionary ideas of the epoch find themselves outnumbered by the representatives of past revolutionary schools or of the order of existing things. These men, whose place -- especially during the days of revolution -- should be among the people, spreading their ideas widely, setting the masses in motion, demolishing the institutions of the past -- find themselves pinned down in a hall, endlessly arguing so as to wring concessions "out of the moderates and convert their enemies, when in fact there is only a single means of leading them to the new idea -- that of putting it into execution. The government changes into a parliament with all the faults of bourgeois parliaments. Far from being a "revolutionary" government, it becomes the greatest obstacle to the revolution, and if the people is to cease marking time it will be forced to dismiss it, and to deprive of office those who only yesterday it acclaimed as the elected. But that is not so easy. The new government, which has hurried to organize an entirely new ladder of administration to extend its rule and make itself obeyed, will not be willing to give place easily. Jealous of its power, it will cling on to it with all the vigour of an institution that has not yet had the time to fall into decay. It will be determined to oppose force to force, and to dislodge it there will be only one means, that of taking up arms, repeating the revolution, and sending on their way those in whom we had placed all our hopes.

And here we have the revolution divided! After having wasted precious time on delays and hesitations, it will lose its strength in internecine divisions between the friends of the new government and those who have seen the need to get rid of it! And all that will come from not having understood that a new life demands new forms; it is not by clinging to outdated concepts that one sets revolution on its course! It will come from not having understood the incompatibility of revolution and government, from not having perceived that -- under whatever form it is presented -- the one is always the negation of the other, and that, apart from anarchy, there can be no revolution.

It is the same for that other form of "revolutionary government" about which they will boast to you -- revolutionary dictatorship.