Victor Serge 1944
Source: Victor Serge, Carnets, 1936–1947. Agone, Masseilles, 2012;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2019.
November 25, 1944. — Many socialists continue to pose problems in strictly traditional, if not routine terms. The schemas they have in mind are those of 1917–1918, and even of 1871! As if events were going to repeat themselves. (They could reproduce themselves fragmentarily, but the entire context being different the big picture will be profoundly different.) The extraordinary power of tradition, attaining a kind of blindness; also take into account the painful difficulty of mastering a new situation, full of pitfalls and disappointments; the spirit of objective investigation retreats and gives up rather than advancing towards discoveries it is not certain of being able to master and which, it foresees, may put in question the former foundations of its faith. But the error thus committed risks being catastrophic. The publications of the English Independent Labour Party present the problem from this obsolete viewpoint: reaction and revolution are confronting each other in Europe. Two adversaries are present, and this is certainly false: there are three: conservatism, socialism, and Stalinist totalitarianism, engaged in a fight to the death. Conservatism, weakened on the continent by the fascisms it gave birth to and which are dying, has much real and potential support in the democratic nations, and it will go as far as forms of neototalitarianism, if it can.
Stalinist totalitarianism is on the offensive everywhere, probably because it feels so threatened by its internal weaknesses and by an international situation so critical that all it can do is exploit as far as it can its rivals’ indecision and lack of comprehension. It plays both the revolutionary and the conservative cards: “Conservatives: I am order, hierarchical society, and social peace, and I know how to gun down troublemakers! Workers, peasants, intellectuals: I am the red star, the legend of Lenin, the nationalization of industries, agrarian reform, and security against unemployment! Businessmen: I am profitable deals. Literati: I am huge print runs!” It talks this double language with a certain cynical sincerity because reality justifies it. The Russian totalitarian system is revolutionary in relation to traditional capitalism and reactionary in relation to liberal humanism and socialist aspirations. But what can aspirations do, even the most justified, even the most necessary – and I think they are – against well-organized state machinery?
Between these two tendencies, that of socialism (and of American and European mass democracy), though firmly rooted and capable of (weakly) mobilizing greater numbers, is nearly disarmed due to its lack of institutions it controls and of clear ideas. The tiny minority that represents its clear ideas has few material means or support. In truth, it can only fully manifest itself in the United States, and even there it is extremely weak. A situation of immense European civil war is being created with three unequal parties committed one against another in such a way that each of the three parties must aim at neutralizing one of the two others or at seeking an alliance. If socialism doesn’t vigorously maintain its democratic and libertarian (in the etymological and not anarchist sense of the word) physiognomy it will be torn apart and crushed. Its worst enemy, the most destructive one at this moment, is the totalitarianism of postrevolutionary Russia, Bolshevism transformed into absolute totalitarianism of a type analogous to that of reactionary totalitarianisms.
The sole natural allies of socialism are among the democratic masses of the countries where bourgeois democracy lives on with traditions predating big capitalism, England and the United States. The movement that followed World War I cannot be reproduced under such conditions, except to bring about results immediately worse than those of the revolutionary victory in Russia and the defeat of European socialism. In any case, there are neither large parties nor cadres nor an ideology capable of reproducing them. This results in a confused and dangerous situation. I’m inclined to think that Europe’s fate can only be decided when Stalinist totalitarianism has been limited or destroyed in the new conflicts that it necessarily begins. (That it capitulates; that it is transformed or abolished by wished-for and quite probable internal shakeups; that it creates a state of heightened conflict with its rivals/ allies of today.) – (Or that it victoriously imposes its hegemony over most of Europe and Asia, which will herald a Third World War.) In the meanwhile, the socialist left contents itself with illusions and involuntary demagogy, its eyes blindfolded by grand principles.
The comrades I see here dream of a little Comintern of their own; dream of being carried along by the waves of the masses. They remain isolated and the most clear-sighted see no alternative to the blackest pessimism while affecting a “Marxist” optimism. Dialogue with Narcís Molins i Fàbregas: Me: If the socialist left, which, with all its weaknesses, is the most idealistic element of socialism, isolates itself into a tiny sect it will end up exterminated by the totalitarian Communists. Its only salvation and its only chance to be useful are in rallying along with the old (moderate) socialist movements and the democratic masses. There it would be a beneficial leavening and would find natural defenses. Narcís Molins: Do you think so? As soon as we opened our mouths in a socialist party the old opportunists and the Stalinized would gag us or throw us out. And the socialist parties, of which we would be members, would calmly allow us to be assassinated by the Stalinists. I can’t deny that this is possible-in the near future-but I think it’s not certain, and that healthier reactions are also possible if not probable among the democratic masses, educated by so many experiences. In any case, I don’t see what else we can try.
N.M.: We might as well be killed without abdicating anything we believe in, while clearly posing the questions. I don’t answer him that the questions have precisely not been well or clearly posed. A suicidal tactic can be a good one only in completely hopeless situations, and deep down I’m the less pessimistic of the two of us.
This conversation reminds me of what Bukharin said to Kamenev about Stalin in 1928: “If we follow him he’ll drag the country into the abyss and we’ll perish, and the revolution will perish along with him. If we denounce him he’ll accuse us of treason and we’ll perish.” Bukharin and Kamenev chose to follow while denouncing, to denounce while following, to acclaim – obligatorily – while grumbling, and suffered ten years of psychological torture before perishing, as they predicted. We were right against them in adopting the intransigent attitude they called political suicide, but which was also forging ahead regardless, the most courageous and perhaps the most rational one on battlefields. (This is currently Stalin’s attitude in international politics.) Dwight Macdonald, in Politics, interpreting a correct observation (that in France and elsewhere social consciousness had made perhaps immense progress) thinks that the Communist movement can outflank its totalitarian leaders and fulfill a healthy function. I answer that he is seriously in error and that “the Communist apparatus controls perfectly and mercilessly all the movements it influences ... This apparatus, with its functional, police, and psychological mechanisms, is an enormous new fact in history whose deadly importance has not yet been measured. You live in too free a country to imagine this ...” “I fear that we’ll soon see arising in various countries Communist totalitarian condottieri of the Mao Zedong and Tito type, cynical and convinced, who’ll be ‘revolutionaries’ and counterrevolutionaries, or both at once, according to the orders they receive, and capable of turning about face from one day to the next.”
Last updated on 6 May 2020