In Thinking about Revolution Dave Stratman and I propose
that a key part of our vision for a better society, and one of the chief goals
of democratic revolution, is to remove the present dictatorship of the rich
from power and to create a genuine democracy based on the principle of
voluntary federation.
This raises the question, “Is it realistic to think that
voluntary federation can quickly replace the status quo after a revolution?” If
it is not realistic, then revolutionaries would need to think about
less-than-ideal transitional ways of achieving the social order that people
will understandably want. And if such a less-than-ideal transitional form of
government is necessary in the short term, it raises the question that perhaps
it is necessary in the longer term as well, and where does this leave the idea
of voluntary federation as a practical notion?
I believe that the experience of Europe in the 20th
century, as discussed by Hannah Arendt in her book, On Revolution [online at http://www26.us.archive.org/stream/OnRevolution/ArendtOn-revolution_djvu.txt
], provides strong evidence that
voluntary federation can very quickly replace the status quo in a revolutionary
situation.
To start with, let’s briefly say what is meant by ‘voluntary
federation.” Voluntary federation, as we use the term in Thinking about
Revolution, means that local assemblies are the only bodies that make laws.
Local assemblies are meetings open to all adults in the community who support
the principles of equality and mutual aid and democracy, and at which all have
equal status in decision-making. Social order on a larger than local scale is
achieved by local assemblies making voluntary agreements, facilitated by
sending delegates to larger-region bodies (and these in turn sending delegates
to even larger-region bodies) to craft proposals (not laws) for the
local assemblies to accept or reject as they wish. Large-scale agreements are
thus arrived at by negotiation among local assemblies.
What follows are excerpts from On Revolution that describe how voluntary federation, or at least
something very similar to it, spread rapidly in Europe. A key sentence of
Arendt’s is this one:
The most striking aspect of
these spontaneous developments is
that in both instances it took
these independent and highly dis-
parate organs no more than a few weeks, in the case of Russia,
or a few days, in the case of
Hungary, to begin a process of
co-ordination and integration
through the formation of higher
councils of a regional or
provincial character, from which finally
the delegates to an assembly
representing the whole country
could be chosen.
Please read the excerpted text below, and I think you will
see that, based on the actual experiences of Europeans not that many years ago,
it is perfectly reasonable to expect voluntary federation to replace the status
quo after a revolution in a matter of weeks.
[full text from On
Revolution starting at page 261 and continuing to page 267 begins here:]
Hence,
no tradition, either revolutionary or pre-revolutionary,
can
be called to account for the regular emergence and re-
emergence
of the council system ever since the French Revo
lution.
If we leave aside the February Revolution of 1848 in
Paris,
where a commission pour les travailleurs, set up by the
government
itself, was almost exclusively concerned with ques-
tions
of social legislation, the main dates of appearance of these
organs
of action and germs of a new state are the following:
the
year 1870, when the French capital under siege by the Prus-
sian
army 'spontaneously reorganized itself into a miniature
federal
body', which then formed the nucleus for the Parisian
Commune
government in the spring of 1871; 75 the year 1905,
when
the wave of spontaneous strikes in Russia suddenly de-
veloped
a political leadership of its own, outside all revolution-
ary
parties and groups, and the workers in the factories organ-
ized
themselves into councils, Soviets, for the purpose of repre-
sentative
self-government; the February Revolution of 1917 in
Russia,
when 'despite different political tendencies among the
Russian
workers, the organization itself, that is the soviet, was
not
even subject to discussion'; 76 the years 1918 and 1919 in
Germany,
when, after the defeat of the army, soldiers and wor-
kers
in open rebellion constituted themselves into Arbeiter- und
Soldatenrate,
demanding, in Berlin, that this Ratesystem be-
come
the foundation stone of the new German constitution,
and
establishing, together with the Bohemians of the coffee
houses,
in Munich in the spring of 1919, the short-lived Bavarian
Rdterepubli\'^
the last date, finally, is the autumn of 1956, when
the
Hungarian Revolution from its very beginning produced the
council
system anew in Budapest, from which it spread all over
the
country 'with incredible rapidity'. 78
The
mere enumeration of these dates suggests a continuity
that
in fact never existed. It is precisely the absence of con-
tinuity,
tradition, and organized influence that makes the same-
ness
of the phenomenon so very striking. Outstanding among
the
councils' common characteristics is, of course, the spontaneity
of
their coming into being, because it clearly and flagrantly con-
tradicts
the theoretical 'twentieth-century model of revolution -
planned,
prepared, and executed almost to cold scientific exact-
ness
by the professional revolutionaries'. 79 It is true that wher-
ever
the revolution was not defeated and not followed by some
sort
of restoration the one-party dictatorship, that is, the model
of
the professional revolutionary, eventually prevailed, but it
prevailed
only after a violent struggle with the organs and insti-
tutions
of the revolution itself. The councils, moreover, were
always
organs of order as much as organs of action, and it was
indeed
their aspiration to lay down the new order that brought
them
into conflict with the groups of professional revolution-
aries,
who wished to degrade them to mere executive organs of
revolutionary
activity. It is true enough that the members of
the
councils were not content to discuss and 'enlighten them-
selves'
about measures that were taken by parties or assemblies;
they
consciously and explicitly desired the direct participation of
every
citizen in the public affairs of the country, 80 and as long as
they
lasted, there is no doubt that 'every individual found his
own
sphere of action and could behold, as it were, with his own
eyes
his own contribution to the eyents of the day'. 81 Witnesses
of
their functioning were often agreed on the extent to which
the
revolution had given birth to a 'direct regeneration of
democracy',
whereby the implication was that all such regenera-
tions,
alas, were foredoomed since, obviously, a direct handling
of
public business through the people was impossible under
modern
conditions. They looked upon the councils as though
they
were a romantic dream, some sort of fantastic Utopia come
true
for a fleeting moment to show, as it were, the hopelessly
romantic
yearnings of the people, who apparently did not yet
know
the true facts of life. These realists took their own bear-
ings
from the party system, assuming as a matter of course that
there
existed no other alternative for representative government
and
forgetting conveniently that the downfall of the old regime
had
been due, among other things, precisely to this system.
For
the remarkable thing about the councils was of course
not
only that they crossed all party lines, that members of the
various
parties sat in them together, but that such party mem-
bership
played no role whatsoever. They were in fact the only
political
organs for people who belonged to no party. Hence,
they
invariably came into conflict with all assemblies, with the
old
parliaments as well as with the new 'constituent assemblies',
for
the simple reason that the latter, even in their most ex-
treme
wings, were still the children of the party system. At this
stage
of events, that is, in the midst of revolution, it was the
party
programmes more than anything else that separated the
councils
from the parties; for these programmes, no matter how
revolutionary,
were all 'ready-made formulas' which demanded
not
action but execution - 'to be carried out energetically in
practice',
as Rosa Luxemburg pointed out with such amazing
clearsightedness
about the issues at stake. 82 Today we know
how
quickly the theoretical formula disappeared in practical
execution,
but if the formula had survived its execution, and
even
if it had proved to be the panacea for all evil s, social and
political,
the councils were bound to rebel against any such
policy
since the very cleavage between the party experts who
'knew'
and the mass of the people who were supposed to
apply
this knowledge left out of account the average citizen's
capacity
to act and to form his own opinion. The councils,
in
other words, were bound to become superfluous if the spirit
of
the revolutionary party prevailed. Wherever knowing and
doing
have parted company, the space of freedom is lost.
The
councils, obviously, were spaces of freedom. As such,
they
invariably refused to regard themselves as temporary or-
gans
of revolution and, on the contrary, made all attempts at
establishing
themselves as permanent organs of government.
Far
from wishing to make the revolution permanent, their ex-
plicitly
expressed goal was 'to lay the foundations of a republic
acclaimed
in all its consequences, the only government which
will
close forever the era of invasions and civil wars'; no para-
dise
on earth, no classless society, no dream of socialist or com-
munist
fraternity, but the establishment of 'the true Republic'
was
the 'reward' hoped for as the end of the struggle. 83 And
what
had been true in Paris in 1871 remained true for Russia
in
1905, when the 'not merely destructive but constructive' inten-
tions
of the first Soviets were so manifest that contemporary wit-
nesses
'could sense the emergence and the formation of a force
which
one day might be able to effect the transformation of the
State'.
8 *
It
was nothing more or less than this hope for a transforma-
tion
of the state, for a new form of government that would per-
mit
every member of the modern egalitarian society to become
a
'participator* in public affairs, that was buried in the disasters
of
twentieth-century revolutions. Their causes were manifold
and,
of course, varied from country to country, but the forces
of
what is commonly called reaction and counter-revolution are
not
prominent among them. Recalling the record of revolution in
our
century, it is the weakness rather than the strength of these
forces
which is impressive, the frequency of their defeat, the
ease
of revolution, and - last, not least - the extraordinary insta-
bility
and lack of authority of most European governments res-
tored
after the downfall of Hitler's Europe. At any rate, the role
played
by the professional revolutionaries and the revolutionary
parties
in these disasters was important enough, and in our
context
it is the decisive one. Without Lenin's slogan, 'All power
to
the soviets\ there would never have been an October Revolu-
tion
in Russia, but whether or not Lenin was sincere in pro-
claiming
the Soviet Republic, the fact of the matter was even
then
that his slogan was in conspicuous contradiction to the
openly
proclaimed revolutionary goals of the Bolshevik party
to
'seize power', that is, to replace the state machinery with the
party
apparatus. Had Lenin really wanted to give all power to
the
Soviets, he would have condemned the Bolshevik party to
the
same impotence which now is the outstanding characteristic
of
the Soviet parliament, whose party and non-party deputies
are
nominated by the party and, in the absence of any rival
list,
are not even chosen, but only acclaimed by the voters. But
while
the conflict between party and councils was greatly
sharpened
because of a conflicting claim to be the only 'true*
representative
of the Revolution and the people, the issue at
stake
is of a much more far-reaching significance.
What
the councils challenged was the party system as such,
in
all its forms, and this conflict was emphasized whenever the
councils,
born of revolution, turned against the party or parties
whose
sole aim had always been the revolution. Seen from the
vanguard
point of a true Soviet Republic, the Bolshevik party
was
merely more dangerous but no less reactionary than all the
other
parties of the defunct regime. As far as the form of govern-
ment
is concerned - and the councils everywhere, in contradis-
tinction
to the revolutionary parties, were infinitely more interested in the political
than in the social aspect of revolution 85 - the
one-party
dictatorship is only the last stage in the development
of
the nation-state in general and of the multi-party system in
particular.
This may sound like a truism in the midst of the
twentieth
century when the multi-party democracies in Europe
have
declined to the point where in every French or Italian elec-
tion
'the very foundations of the state and the nature of the
regime'
are at stake. 86 It is therefore enlightening to see that in
principle
the same conflict existed even in 1871, during the
Parisian
Commune, when Odysse Barrot formulated with rare
precision
the chief difference in terms of French history between
the
new form of government, aimed at by the Commune, and
the
old regime which soon was to be restored in a different, non-
monarchical
disguise : 'En tant que revolution sociale, 1871 pro-
cede
directement de 1793, qu'il continue et qu'il doit achever.
...
En tant que revolution politique, au contraire, 1871 est re-
action
contre 1793 et un rct o u J" a 1789 • • • H a efface du pro-
gramme
les mots "une et indivisible" et rejette l'idee autoritaire
qui
est une idee toute monarchique . . . pour se rallier a l'idee
federative,
qui est par excellence l'idee liberale et republicaine'* 1
(my
italics [Arendt’s, not J.S.’s.]).
These
words are surprising because they were written at a
time
when there existed hardly any evidence - at any rate not for
people
unacquainted with the course of the American Revolu-
tion
- about the intimate connection between the spirit of
revolution
and the principle of federation. In order to prove
what
Odysse Barrot felt to be true, we must turn to the Febru-
ary
Revolution of 1917 in Russia and to the Hungarian Revolu-
tion
of 1956, both of which lasted just long enough to show in
bare
outlines what a government would look like and how a
republic
was likely to function if they were founded upon the
principles
of the council system. In both instances councils or
Soviets
had sprung up everywhere, completely independent of
one
another, workers*, soldiers', and peasants' councils in the
case
of Russia, the most disparate kinds of councils in the case
of
Hungary : neighbourhood councils that emerged in all resi-
dential
districts, so-called revolutionary councils that grew out
of
fighting together in the streets, councils of writers and artists
born
in the coffee houses of Budapest, students' and youths'
councils
at the universities, workers' councils in the factories,
councils
in the army, among the civil servants, and so on. The
formation
of a council in each of these disparate groups turned
a
more or less accidental proximity into a political institution.
The
most striking aspect of these spontaneous developments is
that
in both instances it took these independent and highly dis-
parate
organs no more than a few weeks, in the case of
Russia,
or
a few days, in the case of Hungary, to begin a process of
co-ordination
and integration through the formation of higher
councils
of a regional or provincial character, from which finally
the
delegates to an assembly representing the whole country
could
be chosen. 88 As in the case of the early covenants, 'cosocia-
tions',
and confederations in the colonial history of North
America,
we see here how the federal principle, the principle of
league
and alliance among separate units, arises out of the
elementary
conditions of action itself, uninfluenced by any
theoretical
speculations about the possibilities of republican
government
in large territories and not even threatened into
coherence
by a common enemy. The common object was the
foundation
of a new body politic, a new type of republican
government
which would rest on 'elementary republics' in such
a
way that its own central power did not deprive the constituent
bodies
of their original power to constitute. The councils, in
other
words, jealous of their capacity to act and to form opinion,
were
bound to discover the divisibility of power as well as its
most
important consequence, the necessary separation of powers
in
government.
