From the notebooks of Victor Serge, the revolutionary, novelist and journalist:
13 September 1944. Second meeting of the Commission of independent socialists to study the political document drafted by Marceau Pivert, Gironella and Wilebaldo Solano. It is a kind of rudimentary Communist Manifesto, rehashing all the old phrases of that genre. I criticize it harshly—thinking that texts of this sort can do nothing but discredit the handful of men who take responsibility for them. They listen to me with interest and silent resentment. I say that we cannot improvise such documents today, as all terms, all ideas are being subject to revision in face of new realities, in the midst of a raging tempest. A confused and rather painful discussion. In passing, I said that the Workers’ and Peasants’ Socialist Party (PSOP) dissolved at the beginning of the war; Marceau Pivert, visibly irate, insists that it ‘exists and is a force’ and declares himself better informed than I, he who left France before the war. I argue that it is false to write that the working class, in bourgeois democracies, has only its chains to lose;that it enjoys—formerly enjoyed, in Europe—a real well-being and meaningful freedoms. Pivert speaks of mass malnutrition in France before the war! I say that the state has changed its nature and is no longer the armed body of one class for the domination of another, as Engels had it, with the exception of the totalitarian regimes; the modern state is also the organization of communications, of schools, of public health, etc. Indignation of Pivert, Gironella, Jean Malaquais: for a moment, I sense that they might cry treason!
I point out dim-witted naiveties in the text like ‘the complete organization of the world’; comical incoherences such as the affirmation of the ‘full sovereignty’ of all the colonial peoples, the rejection of ‘any hypocritical notion of guardianship towards them’, and the suggestion of providing them with ‘economic, moral and military aid’. They do not say much in response but I can see that I offended those sentiments which can only express themselves in this poor phraseology. (My thesis: that the emancipation of the colonial peoples can only be the result of a close collaboration with the industrial nations—the metropoles—socially reorganized, marching towards greater justice and humanity . . . greeted coldly without discussion). Narcís Molins i Fabregàs says that ‘we want to get down to action’ and not merely to ‘engage in discussions that are academic even if very interesting.’ What action, if not that of the typewriter; and ideas, accurate views, are they not also in a certain sense actions?
Malaquais finally reproaches me for not speaking of ‘the proletariat and the dictatorship of the proletariat’! (When did he ever speak of it himself? Another story.) At one point in the discussion, I felt exactly as I did in a Russian party cell in 1927, when we refuted, against all the clamour, the already blood-stained stupidities of ‘socialism in one country’ and denounced the Thermidor that was then unfolding. . .The psychological phenomenon of the Politburo repeats itself ad infinitum. At root: idealists caught by the sclerosis of doctrines, of circumstances, and dominated by their convictions and their emotional attachments, in short by fanaticism. In such conditions, those who trouble the inner security of others appear as loathsome heretics. Molins i Fabregàs, Gorkín, Pivert reproach me for putting in doubt convictions which they do not doubt themselves, hence their feeling of superiority.
The core of the debate, independent of the poor quality of the proposed [manifesto] text:
Their extremely optimistic and schematic conviction is that the Russian Revolution is going to repeat itself shortly in Europe. ‘The workers will occupy the factories’ (Pivert), they will take power (Gironella), then the European revolution will form a socialist Federation. New cadres will form themselves everywhere, the underground resistance movements already show the power of the masses. The Spaniards think they will be in Spain in six months and at the head of great movements. Pivert: ‘The PSOP continues!’ and he takes out a newspaper clipping which reports that the Lyons comrades’ underground paper has called for ‘the formation of a red army’ in France, which is the height of absurdity: to do such a thing when powerless, at the risk of one’s life, is to play into the hands of the reactionaries and the Stalinists.
My theses: that this war differs profoundly from that of 1914–18, of which it is the successor, and that it notably involves aspects of an international civil war (strong objections from Pivert). That the economic structure of the world has changed, traditional capitalism giving way to a planned economy, thus with a collectivist bent, which could be that of monopolies, of totalitarian parties—or of democracies of a new type, if they succeeded in coming into being (strong objections from Pivert). That the defeats of European socialism are not solely attributable to the inadequacy of leaders, although that is of some significance, but can be better explained in terms of the decline of the working class and of socialism as a result of modern technology—chronic unemployment, declassing of the jobless, tremendous increase in the productive capacity of machines, with less human labour required; greater influence of technicians. (Pivert rejects the entirety of these views without attempting to refute them; to speak of the weakening of the working class as a class appears sacrilegious to all; what can I do if it is the truth? A good Old Bolshevik, one of those who expelled and imprisoned us only to go before the firing squads themselves, would have given me this answer: there is no truth that
can prevail over the interests of the party.)That we are being carried along by the current of an immense revolution, but that the Russian Revolution will not repeat itself except in episodes of secondary importance. That socialism must renounce all ideas of dictatorship and of working-class hegemony and make itself the representative of the great masses among whom a socialistic consciousness is germinating, obscure and without doctrinal jargon. That the essential thing for the immediate future will be the restoration of traditional democratic rights, precondition for the rebirth of the workers’ and socialist movement; that we must try to break out of the void we are now in, to seek out the support and sympathy of the democratic masses wherever they are, make ourselves understood by them, bring our ideas up to date. That Stalinism, which has formed and nurtured armed resistance movements in France, Yugoslavia, Greece and elsewhere, constitutes the worst danger, the mortal danger that we would be crazy to claim we can face alone. That the years to come will be ones of confused struggles in which the socialist movement can do no more than re-establish itself—if it does not commit suicide through insurrectional demagogy. That it should seek influence on the terrain of democracy, in the Constituent Assemblies and elsewhere, accepting compromise in an intransigent spirit. That if the socialist left mires itself in an extremism bereft of influence, with a language barely intelligible to people and an out-dated ideology dating from 1920, the Stalinists will confect a fake socialism, subtle and without scruple, which might very well prevail.
No matter what I say, agreement is impossible, and the discussion difficult and sterile. Those who possess inner flexibility will change under the cudgel-blows of events; the others will vegetate in groupuscules on the margins of life (which offers many satisfactions) or will be crushed.
(accessed online at https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii82/articles/victor-serge-mexican-notebooks-1940-1947)
