Title: The Moral Face of the Revolution Date: March 15, 1925 Source: [[http://mariegoldsmith.uk/archives][Marie Goldsmith Project]]. Translated from Isidine, M. “Le visage moral de la révolution [The Moral Face of the Revolution].” *Plus Loin* [*Further*], March 15, 1920. Notes: Translated by Christopher Coquard. Edited by Søren Hough & Christopher Coquard.
*This article is part of a translated collection published in 2023 by Authors: M Isidine Published: 2023-07-18 07:05:19Z
the Marie Goldsmith Project. These articles were translated by Alexandra
Agranovich (Russian) and Christopher Coquard (French) and then edited by
Christopher Coquard and Søren Hough with the goal of preserving
Goldsmith’s original meaning and stylistic emphases. Modern footnotes by
the translator or editors are prefaced “Ed:” while all other footnotes
are from Marie Goldsmith. This translation was originally published in
[[https://irp.cdn-website.com/3fa68967/files/uploaded/BlackFlag-vol3-no2.pdf][Black
Flag Vol. 3 No. 2]].*
Among all the questions that those who foresee a forthcoming and
profound social transformation are currently asking themselves, there is
one that is extremely painful for the consciousness of humanity: it is
the question of violence, of the right of the leaders of the revolution
to impose their decisions by force on the masses, of dictatorship and
revolutionary terror. This question is discussed everywhere, but there
is one country where it has already passed from the realm of ideas into
that of realization, where experience has been made of a social
revolution using dictatorship as its weapon — that is Russia.
That is why everything that can make the results of this experience
known, both material and moral, deserves the greatest attention; as do
all the opinions formed on this subject under the influence of life
among the militants of the Russian revolution. They have infinitely more
authority than what we, who did not live this experience of socialist
dictatorship, can say here.
That is why we thought it would be useful to make known in France a
book, recently published but written for the most part in 1920, and
whose author is a member of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party.[1]
The title of this book is *The Moral Face of the Revolution* and bears
this dedication that prejudges its spirit:
To the Kronstadt sailors of 1921, who on the icy plains of the Gulf of
Finland defended the October Revolution, sustained a deadly struggle,
and did not dishonor it with a terror of revenge, I dedicate this
book.[2]
The author shows us the great disillusionment that the results of the
revolution brought to the workers. “Never,” he says, “has the
contradiction between what the people saw in the red blaze of the
revolution and the heavy weight, like lead, that now oppresses them in
their daily lives, been so glaring and so visible.” Terrible misery
kills the intellectual and moral life of the masses which have only just
awakened; the bonds of solidarity between people are loosened, the
feelings of hatred and distrust develop and paralyze all creative work.
The misfortunes of the external war and the civil war, the material
misery, are not enough to explain this state of affairs: there is a
deeper moral cause. “The soul of the revolutionary people is seriously
ill”; it is in the grip of an anguish that compromises the whole future
of the revolution, because it kills faith and enthusiasm. And the cause
is that the people feel outraged by the *methods* used by the leaders of
this revolution in which they had put all their hopes.
The author’s assessment of this is in complete agreement with everything
we have always said about the distinctions made by the programs of the
various parties between “political revolution” and “economic
revolution,” between the “minimum program” and our “final goal.” Like
us, he sees the *popular* revolution as a phenomenon that cannot be
dissected in this way. Revolution is obviously the result of material
suffering, but it is more than that. The people bring to it their need
for *justice*, their own *moral* ideals — admittedly vague and
imprecise, but tending to a *new* life, absolutely different from the
old one. This is why its revolutionary action extends to all areas of
life and spirit: the political and economic regime, religious and moral
conceptions, and family life. And if, instead of realizing justice,
revolutionary practice proves to be unjust, immoral, and oppressive, the
people become troubled and end up losing interest in the revolution.
This is precisely what happened when, in 1918, systematic violence and
terror entered into the revolutionary mores and became so
well-entrenched that its contagion now reaches almost all revolutionary
circles in other countries.
In his critique of Bolshevist terror, Steinberg does not take a purely
moral standpoint, repudiating all violence; he admits violence in
certain cases and within certain limits. But he criticizes the system of
terror because of the damage it causes to the very goal it pursues.
Socialism, he says (and in this we agree with him once again), is not
only an economic idea; it aims at a certain organization of production,
but also at a more just way of life for humanity. It must therefore
choose its means. The Marxists, following the Jesuits and the Jacobins,
say: the end justifies the means. This may be true when one considers
only *external* success, but this success does not prove that the goal
has been reached; for it to be *truly* reached, it requires certain
means, to the exclusion of others.
Socialism wants the happiness not of an abstract “humanity,” but of the
real, concrete individual, and no formula justifies the crushing of this
individual. “We fight, not for the proletarian or the peasant, but for
the oppressed person. We fight, therefore, not the landowner or the
bourgeois, but the regime of exploitation.”
And what were the consequences of forgetting these truths? Governmental
centralization and political oppression have made it so that “everywhere
the popular masses have remained indifferent; the workers *do not
create*: they carry out drudgery.” This is why nothing succeeds for the
government: all its measures, economic and political, fail.[3] The
productivity of labor depends not only on economic but also on moral
reasons; the system of terror has dealt it a mortal blow. Instead of
emulation in work, it gives rise to fear, fraud, and egoism. “Not one of
the millions of inhabitants cares to create anything socially useful or
valuable in the long-term.” To the extent that a revolutionary power is
allowed to appeal to self-interest, it must show the advantages of
solidarity and understanding; otherwise, misery provokes the struggle of
each against all, which is the most deplorable of economic systems and
conflicts between the various categories of the dispossessed.
In the moral domain, the same failure occurs. Systematic terror leads to
police rule, provokes perpetual revolts, and makes people hate the
government. And if reaction has failed in Russia, despite all the armies
raised with the help of the Allies, it is thanks to the hostility of the
people in the countryside and in the cities to everything that tries to
restore the old regime, and purely thanks to terror.
To defend the revolutionary terror, various arguments are put forward
which the Russian author refutes one by one. We will stop and focus on
only one: the allegation that this is the will of the popular masses
themselves. First of all, even if it were the case, it still would not
be binding for us, but it is in fact false. At the beginning of the
Russian revolution, from February–March 1917, and also after October,
there were acts of popular violence directed against representatives of
the old regime: policemen, gendarmes, and officers. But this popular
anger was short-lived and, as soon as the people felt their oppressors
were well-defeated, they had only contempt or pity for them. If the
ruling party had taken advantage of this little resentment in the
popular soul to direct the revolution in the way of concord, the events
would have taken another turn. But instead, it saw fit to stir up
hatred, to set an example by way of reprisals; from 1918 on, terror
became an official system with its Cheka, its shootings, its armed
expeditions against the peasants, etc.[4] From then on, terror came only
from *above*, while the workers more than once showed feelings of
humanity (for example when they acted as judges in the People’s Courts).
It is therefore slander to blame the Russian people for so much
bloodshed.
Up to now we have agreed completely with this Russian author. But there
is a weak point in his argumentation: it is impossible for him to find a
criterion to differentiate between acceptable and non-acceptable
violence. He admits it himself. As long as it is a question of civil war
or barricade fighting, violence is justified by the fact that the two
armed opponents are fighting as equals. The same is true of the
terrorist act against a representative of power: not to mention the fact
that revolutionaries only ever resort to this means when pushed to the
limit; the very fact that the murderer, in killing, deliberately gives
his life means that we do not allow any comparison between him and the
executioner. But there are other cases. Steinberg’s faction does not
refuse to use power and does not deny governmental violence, while at
the same time placing quite strict limits on it. Thus our author accepts
that the bourgeois be deprived of political rights, and, if he
repudiates in an absolute way the death penalty, he admits that
political enemies can be imprisoned or banished. Now, when will
political persecution ever stop if we do not immediately address it in
principle? And won’t these persecutions, even if they are less
ferocious, have the same demoralizing effect? To these questions, he
does not and cannot give any answer. It is absolutely necessary to find
a criterion that will allow us to justify or condemn this or that way of
acting.
No social transformation has been achieved without struggles; no step
forward has been made without sacrifices. Violence has been, in history,
a necessary evil; it must be considered *as such*, and no more. What
makes it necessary is that the dominant and exploiting classes have
always defended their privileges with all the strength that the power of
the State puts in their hands. But, once the road is cleared, once the
armed domination of the old order of things is thrown down by the
insurrection, violence ceases to be a *necessary* evil and becomes the
very evil itself. It can exert no creative action; the best social
regime, if introduced and maintained by coercion, quickly degenerates
into the worst. Once it has resorted to force, it is incapable of doing
without it.
Whether violence is exercised by power in the name of divine right, or
of the majority, or of the working class — the result is the same.
That’s why we prefer not to ask “*In whose hands* lies the weapon?” but:
“*Against whom* is it directed?” If it is against the armed forces, it
is a right of self-defense that cannot be denied to anyone; if it is
against yesterday’s enemy, now disarmed, or against the adversary of
ideas, we refuse to recognize any right to violence.
A dangerous confusion is often made here. We are told: “The revolution
is not made without bloodshed; it is impossible to prevent acts of
revenge by the oppressed. By condemning the ‘Red Terror,’ you condemn
the revolution itself.”[5] We must not play on words. One thing is
- popular* anger, another thing is government terror. A government, no
matter how scrupulously it wants to represent the people, will never
represent anything but their interests, or perhaps their opinions, but
never their feelings, their despair, and their anger. Whatever price we
attach to human life we excuse the popular mass even in its so-called
“excesses” — because of the accumulation of past sufferings. But there
is no excuse for the cold, thoughtful, and calculated violence of a
government.
Hence this criterion, in our opinion, is the only acceptable one:
violence can only be justified at the hands of the weak, the oppressed,
from those who have before them a superior armed force; in the wake of
victory, it is entirely without excuse and fatal to the cause it
defends.
[1] This party, not very numerous, but of very combative spirit, places
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[2] Ed: *Нравственный лик революции* (*The Moral Face of the
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[3] The “NEP,” the New Economic Policy admitting private capital again,
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[4] Ed: The secret police of the Soviet Union who were primarily
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[5] Ed: Red Terror (1918 – 1922), a violent political campaign against
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