Michael Velli (Perlman)

III Siezure of State Power

    Without revolutionary leadership, continually changing responses to continually developing productive forces move toward chaos. Without revolutionary organization, attempts of individuals to realize their self powers to the level made possible by the productive forces move toward anarchy.

    Under what conditions can revolutionary leadership and organization be introduced into popular struggles? Under what conditions does an organization capable of seizing State power rise and succeed? Under what conditions might such an organization fail to rise? If it should fail, what alternatives would be left for the organizers who devoted their lives to this historical task?

    In the remarks and arguments that follow, I will attempt to find answers to these questions. In my desire to offer revolutionary leaders some humble testimony of my devotion, I have been unable to find anything which I hold so dear or esteem so highly as that knowledge of the deeds of great men which I have acquired through a long experience of modem events and a constant study of the past. With the utmost diligence I have long pondered and scrutinized the actions of the great, and now I offer the results. I have not sought to adorn my work with long phrases or high sounding words or any of those superficial attractions and ornaments with which many writers seek to embellish their material, as I desire no honor for my work but such as the novelty and gravity of this subject may justly deserve. Nor will it, I trust, be deemed presumptuous on the part of a man of humble and obscure condition to attempt to discuss revolutionary leadership; for in the same way that landscape painters station themselves in the valleys in order to draw mountains or high ground, and ascend an eminence in order to get a good view of the plains, so it is necessary to be a leader to know thoroughly the nature of the people, and one of the populace to know the nature of leaders.

    The present century is a period of successful seizures of State power by revolutionary leaders. A substantial part of the world's population is experiencing the social consequences of these successes. These historical successes have created the expectation that careful imitation of the deeds of the successful leaders can lead to similar results. It must be said at the outset that this expectation may be unfounded. It may happen that careful application of similar procedures does not lead to similar results. It may happen that devoted revolutionary organizers fail to realize their goal. Aspiring revolutionary leaders may find themselves faced with a situation in which almost all of the people whose interests are served by these goals, and who should be, or even are, sympathetic to revolution, neither understand the specific tasks involved in making a revolution nor participate in achieving them.

    History does not necessarily absolve all revolutionary leaders who aspire to seize State power. The fact is that the seizure of State power by a revolutionary organization may fail. In the face of the concrete possibility of failure, it becomes necessary for revolutionary leaders to rid themselves of illusions inherited from the past, and to determine with accuracy and care the real conditions for the successful seizure of State power. The assumptions of classical revolutionary theory* must be re examined in the light of contemporary practice. We must determine whether or not the conditions described by classical revolutionary theory are historically possible, whether or not they are necessary for the rise of a revolutionary organization, whether or not they suffice to assure the success of such an organization.

    *The fact that revolutionary theory is 'classical' is a peculiarity of our age. But this fact is not itself more peculiar than the fact that the main proponents of revolutionary theory are rulers, or the fact that the seizure of State power is the goal of revolutionary organizations, or the fact that leaders, officials, armies and States are revolutionary.

    The supreme condition for the seizure of State power by a revolutionary organization - a condition which has come to be regarded as self evident, as a sine qua non   is a revolutionary situation, a revolution. According to classical revolutionary theory, such a situation is not synonymous with the rise to power of a revolutionary organization; such a situation is a precondition for the organization's rise to power. Before examining how such a situation creates the field out of which a revolutionary organization can seize power, we will examine what this situation consists of.

    According to the classics, a revolution, a real, profound, a "people's" revolution, is the incredibly complicated and painful process of the death of the old and birth of the new social order, of the mode of life of tens of millions of people. It is set in motion by a mighty burst of creative enthusiasm that stems from the people themselves.  The people and the people alone are the moving force, the creators of universal history.  The masses are the real heroes  The popular masses are endowed with unlimited creative powers. They are able to organize and direct their energy to any and all the branches of human activity. They are able to deal with the task of production over its entire expanse and down to its minutest detail. According to classical revolutionary theory, such a revolution can be successfully carried out only if the majority of the population, and primarily the majority of the working people, engage in independent creative work as makers of history, and for this reason, the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.

    This independent creative work on the part of the creators of universal history is not the goal or the outcome of a revolutionary situation; according to classical revolutionary theory, this mighty burst of creative enthusiasm is the precondition for the seizure of State power by a revolutionary organization; it is the condition without which revolutionary leaders cannot succeed. According to the classics, no matter how active a group of leaders may be, their activity will amount to nothing more than the sterile efforts of a handful of individuals if it is not related to the activity of the great masses. This is why the seizure of power by revolutionary leaders must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people, upon that turning point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people Is at its height, and when the vacillations In the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. The mighty burst of creative enthusiasm that stems from the people themselves is, according to the classics, a necessary condition for the rise and success of the revolutionary organization  and not only a necessary condition, but an indestructible wall - the masses, the millions on millions of people who support the revolution with all their heart and all their thought are a wall that no force on earth can ever destroy. Before examining whether or not a revolutionary situation as depicted by classical revolutionary theory is in fact a sufficient or even a necessary condition for the rise and success of a revolutionary organization, we must first of all ask whether or not such a situation is historically possible.

    A revolutionary situation, a situation in which the majority of the working people engage in independent creative activity, is a situation of crisis for the dominant social order. The powers of the ruling authorities are sprung into the air. These powers are sprung into the air, not by the consciousness of the working people, but by their social practice. People suddenly cease to behave in accordance with the prevailing rules; they become independent and creative. The revolutionary situation consists of independent, creative acts; it consists of individual gestures of rebellion. It is known that the components of a revolutionary situation are historically possible. In fact, individual gestures of rebellion are common, everyday events in any class society. Before pondering the historical possibility of a generalized crisis, a revolutionary situation, it would undoubtedly be useful to scrutinize the Individual component of such a situation.

    An individual gesture of rebellion may consist of a simple refusal to submit to an abuse. For example, an individual may refuse to be penalized for skipping a day of work without medical or other excuses.

    If the penalty is reasonable, if it is the normal price paid by an Individual who skips a day of work, then the individual refuses to submit to a normal consequence of modern social life. By resisting the penalty, by acting as if she (or he) had the right to skip a day of work, as if she had the right to determine her own work schedule, this Individual challenges the legitimacy of the penalizer. By refusing to give up her right to determine her own work schedule, she challenges the right of a foreman, manager or owner to determine her schedule. Since the right to determine work schedules is part of the social power vested in these authorities, the individual's gesture of rebellion challenges the legitimacy of this power. The individual's gesture challenges the legitimacy of the social relations. Since this individual did not explicitly abdicate her right to determine her own work schedule to the authorities who wield this power, her refusal puts in question the origin of their legitimacy. Her refusal exposes a social relation through which the individual's decisions are made by personages to whom the Individual never gave the power to make such decisions. The fact that she was born into a social system where the power to make such decisions is lodged in specific social personages does not establish the legitimacy of the power lodged in these personages. This merely raises the further question of why previous generations submitted to these officials. Nor does the fact that others submit to the decisions of the instituted authorities establish the legitimacy of the authorities. Their submission reproduces the power of the authorities; their submission makes it difficult for her to rebel; but their submission does not legitimize the authorities. The simple gesture of this individual even unveils the appearance that the authorities wield those decision making powers that society's individuals are unable to wield. By skipping a day of work she clearly confirms her ability to decide her own work schedule. In fact, she is unable to decide her own schedule only so long as she submits to the decisions of the authorities. The powers wielded by the authorities are not a response to the individual's powerlessness, but its cause. She is unable to decide because the authorities decide, but the authorities do not decide because is not able to. Thus, though the individual's gesture of rebellion may be ever so modest and temporary, it consists of a refusal to submit to the dominant social order; it is an independent act. This modest act simultaneously exposes the legitimacy of the dominant authorities and the complicity of the submissive individual in reproducing the power of the ruling authorities. The individual gesture of rebellion is not a consciousness or an ideology but rather a practice, a form of social behavior that undermines the dominant form. This independent act might give the individual confidence in her own decision making powers, but it would not, in and of itself, make her particularly receptive to the services which can be offered by revolutionary organizations and leaders.

    An individual gesture of rebellion, even if it challenges the dominant social order in its entirety, cannot in fact move it. The gesture of an individual, no matter how 'radical' or 'revolutionary,' is not the incredibly complicated and painful process of the death of the old and birth of the new social order, of the mode of life of tens of millions of people. Furthermore, isolated individual gestures, no matter how numerous, do not constitute the mighty burst of creative enthusiasm which, according to classical revolutionary theory, is the necessary condition for the rise of a revolutionary organization.

    As a matter of fact, various types of individual rebellious gestures as well as various types of revolutionary organizations coexist with the normal functioning of the dominant social order. The coexistence of rebellious gestures with revolutionary organizations, and even the coexistence of both with the dominant social order, does not create a revolutionary situation, nor a revolution, nor the seizure of power by the revolutionary organization.

    Individual gestures of rebellion, independent creative acts, may become components of a revolutionary situation. Before determining whether or not they would then constitute a ladder for the rise to power of a revolutionary organization, we must determine the historical possibility of the mighty burst of creative activity which can lead to the death of the old and birth of the new.

    A revolutionary situation consists of a generalization of individual gestures of rebellion. But this does not mean that every generalization of individual gestures constitutes a revolutionary situation. For example, rebellion against parental authority is relatively widespread but does not constitute a revolutionary situation. Such an act can even lead to some kind of independence for an individual, without thereby creating any kind of social crisis. If an individual leaves his parents and moves in with an uncle, he does not become independent of parental authority; he merely sub�ordinates himself to a different wielder of the same authority. But in contemporary circumstances the individual who leaves his parents will probably refrain from moving in with uncles. He will cease to be subject to parental authority. If he is a sole offspring, his act will remove the authority of his parents. He will achieve relative Independence. But he does not create a crisis. His act does not remove parental authority from society. He can nevertheless become Independent of parental authority because the powers of parents are very restricted; the authority of specific parents is limited to their own offspring. Unlike the powers of Capital and the State, the powers of the parental office cannot be wielded by interchangeable occupants of the office on interchangeable subjects.

    The individual who refuses to be penalized for skipping a day of work is in a somewhat different situation. If she is joined by others, if her rebellion becomes widespread, it could lead to some kind of social disturbance. But if she remains isolated, her alternatives will be similar to those of the individual who rebels against his parents. If she continues to skip days of work, she will probably be fired. Her first alternative might be to find work in a plant where attendance regulations are not enforced. Unlike the individual who removed the authority of his parents when he left them, she would not remove the authority of the foreman in the previous plant. Like the individual who moved in with an uncle and thus ceased to be subject to the authority of his parents, she would cease to be subject to the authority of the foreman who had penalized her. She would still be subject to the authority of officials whose powers are identical to those of the official in the first plant, even though the specific wielders of these powers are more lenient in the second plant. She would still be subject to the constraint which initially gave rise to the rebellion. Her second alternative might be to leave the realm of social activity where work schedules are enforced. This is not very easy, or very common, in a society where work schedules are almost universally enforced. But it is not impossible. She might find any number of marginal activities where there are no officials to enforce work schedules. Or, if she is so disposed, she might become an entrepreneur, in which case she would determine her own work schedule as well as that of others. Like the individual who moves away from parents without moving in with uncles, she would achieve relative independence from a specific form of social constraint. But her triumph would be somewhat of a pyrrhic victory. In order to achieve this relative independence, she would have to remove herself from all the social activities in which this constraint is enforced. Her victory would not enlarge the field of social possibilities; it would not even enlarge her own field of possibilities. If we suppose that she had been aware of the other alternatives before she chose to engage her productive energy in the activity which she is now leaving, then her victory is in fact a defeat. She does not gain the right to determine her own work schedule in her chosen field of activity. She abdicates this power to the authorities who wield it. She capitulates.

    But if numerous individuals resist the punitive measures of an official, we have a new situation. For example, if numerous individuals in a given workplace simply stopped performing the operations and motions expected of them, they would not necessarily all be fired. Firing would be a likely outcome if the entire group were as replaceable as the individual who refused to comply with the official work schedule. If the group possesses certain experiences or skills, or if there is a shortage of labor, or if scabs are effectively kept out of the workplace, the group would not be easily replaceable; it would be in a situation analogous to that of a sole offspring. Just as the sole offspring can remove the authority of a parent simply by moving out from under it, this group can remove the authority of the official by ceasing to work. But if the group resumes work when the foreman or manager is replaced with a more lenient one, then their action is analogous to that of the individual who moves in with an uncle. The group removes a particular authority but fails to remove the power vested in the office. They merely replace the specific occupant of the office. Their 'victory' does not change the social relations, and their action does not create a revolutionary situation.

    If the individuals in a specific workplace resisted, not only a decision of an official, but the powers vested in the office, they would find themselves as frustrated as the isolated individual who tried to appropriate the power to determine her own work schedule. Ruling authorities have been known to grant a great deal when a workplace is occupied, but they have not been known to give away their decision making powers. Replaceable or not, workers who attempt to appropriate such powers are likely to find themselves in the street.

    But the fact that ruling authorities have not given away their decision making powers does not guarantee their continued possession of those powers. The fact that the underlying population has until today reproduced these powers does not guarantee that the population will continue to do so. There have been occasions, albeit rare, when an underlying population removed the powers of ruling authorities without asking for permission to do so. It has happened that all the individuals of a society have ceased to perform their expected roles, not during a Sunday or holiday when some forms of play are officially allowed, but during a weekday.

    It has happened that people occupied the factories, offices, schools, transportation depots, theaters, and at all these workplaces engaged in all imaginable forms of activity except the normal ones. In such cases all normal activity grinds to a halt. Such a situation constitutes a revolutionary situation as defined by classical revolutionary theory. The orders of the ruling authorities are nowhere obeyed. The authorities lose their decision making powers. The people, and the people alone become the moving force, the creators of universal history. The power of the ruling authorities is removed and nothing is put in its place. Such a situation presumably constitutes the field out of which a revolutionary organization may seize State power, since according to classical theory a revolution can be successfully carried out only if the majority of the population, and primarily the majority of Me working people, engage in independent creative work as makers of history.

    Revolutionary situations consisting of a complete work stoppage have even taken place in regions where revolutionary organizations have already seized State power. Such instances do not suggest that the revolutionary situation contributes to the revolutionary organization's maintenance of State power. On the contrary, In a situation where play has replaced serious work in the factories, offices, schools and transport depots of a society, it is not immediately apparent that the officials of a ruling revolutionary organization would be spared the embarrassments of suddenly deposed capitalist officials. It seems, rather, that the embarrassment of revolutionary officials whose organization serves the working people would be somewhat greater than that of their capitalist counterparts who do not perform such a service.

    For example, let us again examine the case of the foreman or manager who takes punitive measures against an individual who refuses to comply with the official work schedule. In normal times, when others continue to comply with the official work schedule, the manager is able to threaten the individual, fire him, expel him by force if necessary. But in a situation of universal work stoppage, prudence counsels the official not to attempt to wield his normal powers. The manager is likely to know that, even if he succeeded in entering the occupied workplace, and threatened to fire its occupants, he might be informed that he had lost this power. If in anger he tried to physically remove one or another of the occupants from 'his' plant, he would find himself outnumbered. The official would find himself in a situation where his powers are no greater than those of any other single individual in the occupied plant. The fact of having been the plant's manager would no longer magnify this individual's physical endowments. The manager is likely to find himself in the street. Although in normal times such a situation is likely to be unimaginable to most managers, in case it happens it can reasonably be expected that most managers will refrain from entering an occupied workplace, from threatening its occupants, or from attempting to remove them. The commands of a former official, like the commands of a deposed monarch, would not be executed in a situation where none submit to them. An observant official might consider it wise and prudent to pass himself off as merely one of the powerless millions until the return of better days.

    If voluntary submission to the ruling authorities ceases to reproduce the normal activity of daily life, then the normal state of affairs might be reestablished by means of involuntary submission, namely by force. The deposed officials might spend their waking hours in strategy sessions with the heads of the police and the military.

    Before examining the potential efficacy of the forces of law and order in such situations, it would be instructive to see if, prior to the last resort of calling in the armed forces, the revolutionary manager would have more advantageous alternatives than his capitalist counterpart. Let us assume that the first resort of the revolutionary manager is neither to vanish nor to turn directly to the armed forces of the Workers' State. Let us imagine that the manager whose organization officially represents the interests of the working population enters the occupied workplace in order to reason with its occupants. Let us assume that the revolutionary manager is able to enter the occupied workplace, that its occupants do not externally manifest any animosity toward this representative of the working class. We might even imagine that the exchange between the former manager and the former employees is calm and reasonable, that the occupants treat the comrade manager cordially and respectfully.

    In this friendly atmosphere, the former manager might begin by reminding the group that the occupation of the plant is an act which breaks the rules and regulations of the plant. One of the occupants could respond, in an equally cordial manner, that the occupants are aware of this fact, but that the rules and regulations mysteriously disappeared on the day of the occupation; they no longer describe the ways people do things; no one's activity corresponds to the rules anymore; furthermore, comrade manager, those rules and regulations are no longer enforceable.

    Becoming somewhat less cordial, the manager may try to reason with the occupants a second time. In a society where the revolutionary organization of the working class has triumphantly seized State power, he might point out, such an action is not only normal; it is perverse. These angry words need not necessarily put end to the peaceful exchange. Someone may point out, in a perfectly reasonable tone, that during a time when all the individuals society have stopped work, it is normal for this group to stop work as well; furthermore, in such a situation it would be abnormal and perverse for this group to continue working.

    This statement may prove to the manager that the plant's occupants are not willing to listen to reason, and he might lose his composure. He might, for example, threaten to fire them, to deprive them of their relation to the social means of production. But if the revolutionary manager makes such a threat he will find himself on same slippery path which led his capitalist counterpart to slide out to the street. Yet even this threat need not put an end to the friendly and cordial atmosphere of the meeting. The occupants may in fact pat their former manager on the back and give him three cheers for his courage.

    If the embarrassed former manager retains enough composure be able to reflect about his situation, he might conclude that the occupants refuse to listen to him because of his relatively low status the State and the Party. They would surely be more reasonable if a much higher official explained the situation to them. For example, the manager's supervisor, the minister or head of the branch of social activity of which this particular plant is a part, would certainly be able to impose his authority. The occupants would of course have no reason to object to the branch head's visit. They might even look forward to it.

    The exchange between the branch head and the occupants would undoubtedly be characterized by even greater geniality than a session with the manager. The branch head might, for example, introduce himself as a courageous fighter during the revolutionary war. He will undoubtedly be applauded; he might even be given a standing ovation. He might then be allowed to give a relatively long, uninterrupted speech on the important role 'his' branch plays in the social economy. The occupants would undoubtedly listen with interest and they might applaud again. The head might then turn to a matter at hand: 'his' branch clearly cannot perform its role in the present situation; all orderly procedures have come to an end; disorder has seized the upper hand; the occupation of the work aces is synonymous with chaos and anarchy. Without showing any overt hostility or disrespect for the former branch head, an occupant might explain that since the occupation of the workplaces, people have in general observed a marked decrease in acts of violence; that relations among people do not seem to lack mutual generosity and consideration; that consequently the branch head's conception of general disorder must be based on misinformation, possibly because the branch head's information channels have ceased functioning. As for the chaos and anarchy, another occupant might calmly point out, these words have lost their former sting; if the playful, relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere which has prevailed since the beginning of the occupations constitutes chaos and anarchy, then perhaps the state of affairs depicted by those words is not as terrible as was thought in former days.

    While the branch head loosens his tie to unbutton his shirt collar, the manager might give him a "Didn't I tell you?" glance. "Comrade workers," the branch head might continue, "this act is nothing less than sabotage of social activity."

    "Comrade Head," a worker might respond, "in a situation when all our fellow workers have stopped carrying on their former activities, would not our resumption of work be an act of sabotage of social activity?"

    This response would convince the branch head that the bizarre description given to him by the plant manager is correct: the working people have lost their reason. If this former higher official is physically impressive, he might stand up and take a deep breath before shouting: "I am going to take immediate steps to close down this plant and to send the names of the occupants to the heads of all other branches of social activity. In that case, comrade workers, you will be forced to beg in the streets for morsels of bread."

    "But Comrade Head," whispers a worker who sees no need to shout to the former official, "there's no need to take steps to close the plant. It's already closed. In fact, your whole branch is closed. And it's no longer your branch. But if you ever did close down a plant so as to punish its workers, would not that be an act of sabotage of social activity?"

    This final insult convinces the branch head that only one official in the entire society possesses a stature adequate to the matter at hand. Only one official is authoritative enough to reason with these people: the President of the Republic. Consequently, after briefing the Comrade President, the one time manager and the former branch head introduce the Head of the Economy, the State and the Army to the assembled occupants of the plant. The working people are of course flattered and honored to be visited by such an important personage.

    The President of the Republic goes straight to the point. He does not mince words. "Fellow workers! You are of course aware that this act is illegal. You are breaking the law."

    These opening words are followed by silence. None of the occupants of the plant have ever spoken publicly or even privately to such a high official. No one had ever heard such a high official contradicted in public. Several occupants appear to be ready to speak, but their lips begin to quiver, then their knees, and they remain silent. Finally one of the occupants decides to make the attempt. "Comrade President," she says to the three officials, "we are not aware that we are breaking the law."

    The President, then the Branch Head, and finally the Manager, begin to smile. They are under the impression that in the worker's words reason has at last begun to prevail.

    "The law," she continues, her words traveling through a sea of absolute silence, " the law: that's not long words and sentences written on the pages of heavy books. The law is what people do, how they behave."

    The smiles abruptly end.

    "When you say we're breaking the law, Comrade President, you must be thinking of the old law, the law that existed before the occupations began. But that law is nothing more than old books now, Comrade President. That's not how people behave now,"

    As soon as the silence is broken, it becomes evident to all that it is as possible to speak to the President of the Republic as to any other individual.

    "Our action was illegal by your former laws," adds another individual, "but your authority was illegitimate."

    The one time manager and the one time branch head look expectantly at the former President of the Republic, while their Supervisor looks anxiously for the nearest exit. With less assurance than the first time, in fact with a noticeable quiver, he says that by not resuming work immediately, the occupants of this plant are raising their interests above the interests of the Revolution, above the Interests of Society, " nay, above the interests of the Working Class."

    "But that doesn't stand to reason, Comrade President," one of the occupants insists in a tone that seems to beg the President of the Republic to listen to reason. "How can our work stoppage be against the interests of the working class if the entire working class has stopped work? If we took your advice, Comrade President, if we went back to work, we would be acting against the interests of the working class."

    At this suggestion that the former President of the Republic may be opposed to the interests of the working class, the head of all officials becomes visibly agitated. "Don't you know who I am?" he shouts at the speaker. "I am the President of the Workers' State. Do you take me for an idiot?"

    The occupants of the plant are visibly embarrassed when suggestions of laughter are distinctly heard because some individuals were unable to contain themselves.

    The one time President appears not to notice the laughter and continues shouting: "By following this perverse path, you are harming no one but yourselves!"

    "If that's the case," someone snaps back, "why is it that the Comrade Manager, the Comrade Branch Head, and you, Comrade President, are so upset about our present activity. If we are only harming ourselves, why are you shouting, Comrade President?"

    This interpretation of the former President's behavior puts an end to the peaceful exchange. The three officials take stock of their present situation. It suddenly becomes very clear to them that there are numerous working people in the society, whereas there are only a few managers, yet fewer branch heads, and only one President of the Republic. Consequently, there's only one way left to make the population respond to reason. The three authoritative personages move toward the nearest exit. But before leaving, the President of the Republic freezes the plant's occupants with his last words: "Next time I'll talk to you with words that you're going to understand - words which come out of the barrels of guns."

    In short, the last resort of the revolutionary officials is similar to that of their capitalist counterparts: the police and the military. But the resort to armed force does not put an end to the matter.

    First of all, during a time when the individuals of a society have stopped performing their normal tasks, it is not certain that the armed forces can be completely counted on. It does not take a great deal of imagination to suppose that the individuals who constitute the armed forces will not, in such a period, respond to commands as obediently and unquestioningly as in normal times. It may be that precisely at the moment when the authorities need them most, the forces of law and order will be least reliable.

    Secondly, even though the armed forces may during normal times exert extreme violence against the enemies of the ruling authorities, it is not certain that the individuals who compose these armed forces will be as ready to torture and maim people in a situation where the enemies are not isolated individuals but the entire society. After all, neighbors, friends and relatives are now among the outlaws.

    Thirdly, historical evidence does not clearly show that a modern army and police are able to subdue a population that is not passive. In a situation where political and military officials are shot at from every window of every house on every street, it is not immediately evident how the officers of the law could re-impose the deposed authorities short of bombing the city from the air. But such bombing could not yield the desired result, since the bombs would fall on the labor force as well as the productive facilities which constitute the basis of the power of the ruling authorities.

    Fourthly, even if the military could temporarily establish a hegemony over the population on the basis of its superiority of arms, it is not certain how long they could maintain the superiority of arms if the plants where armaments are designed and produced are among the places occupied by the insurgent population - not to speak of the places which produce the materials needed for the production of weapons.

    In short, it is not certain that there really is a last resort for a social order in which a comprehensive revolutionary situation develops.

    It has been shown that the generalization of certain types of individual gestures of rebellion may create a revolutionary situation, a thoroughgoing crisis in which the dominant social order may risk complete extinction. But it has not yet been shown whether or not such a situation contains elements which might contribute to the seizure of State power by a revolutionary organization. All that has been shown so far is that, although such a revolutionary situation can easily be imagined, it cannot easily be imagined how such a situation could contribute to the power of a revolutionary organization that has already seized the State apparatus.

    Undoubtedly revolutionary organizations that have already seized State power no longer need revolutionary situations. It seems obvious that such organizations can only lose their gains in case a revolutionary situation occurs after their victory. Undoubtedly a far more important question for revolutionary leaders is whether or not a revolutionary situation contributes to the seizure of State power by a revolutionary organization that has not already seized it. In order to explore this question it is necessary to classify revolutionary organizations by type and size, at least crudely, since in normal times Capitalist society contains a wide variety of revolutionary organizations, ranging in size and importance from small circles of acquaintances who meet once a month to governmental parties that command the votes of significant portions of a population.

    We may begin our examination with the type of revolutionary organization which is best known because it is very influential and is officially designated as a revolutionary organization - an organization that officially represents the working class during normal times. This official representation usually takes the form of a complete monopoly of labor union offices, and frequently the form of representing the working class in the state apparatus itself, for example through possession of the portfolios of one or several ministries and through command of a significant parliamentary minority. In short, such an organization is the official representative of the Labor Movement, the official interpreter of workers' demands, and the official negotiator between the working population and the ruling authorities.

    The question is: does a revolutionary situation pave the way to the seizure of State power for a revolutionary organization which has established itself as an official candidate for the offices of the State apparatus, and whose parliamentary and cabinet members have already acquired direct experience in the wielding of State power? Is it self evident that a universal stoppage of working activity of the type described earlier would pave the way for the seizure of State power by such an organization?

    To explore the possibility that a universal work stoppage might end up as a victorious seizure of power by the official representatives of revolution, we might try to imagine what steps a given official of the organization might take in order to secure the organization's revolutionary victory over the striking population.

    Let us imagine, for example, that the revolutionary organizer's field of activity is a plant similar in composition to the occupied plant described earlier, except that in this case the plant is located in a capitalist environment where the revolutionary organization has not yet seized State power. Let us suppose that the organizer is already inside the occupied plant; he might, in normal times, have been the union delegate of the workers in the plant.

    It is of course to be expected that the plant's official union delegate will use the public address system to speak to the workers assembled in the plant. On the first day of the occupation he might, for example, read congratulatory messages to the workers from the revolutionary cabinet ministers and members of parliament. He also might, on his own initiative, hail the great victory of the working class, its triumph against its class enemy, and its unparalleled courage during the struggle. And finally, he might speak of the great sacrifices the workers of this plant made during the struggle - sacrifices which have undoubtedly exhausted them mentally and physically. Consequently, since the plant's union committee is perfectly able to hold on to the occupied factory and to take care of the necessary business, the tired workers might do well to return to their warm homes and their waiting families until the union committee announces the next general meeting.

    The delegate's conclusion will undoubtedly relieve some of the plant's occupants and puzzle others. Those who are relieved may in fact look forward to returning to their homes and families; they may be glad that competent union officials have agreed to take care of the problems of the occupation. Those who are puzzled may also have homes and families, but their desire to leave the plant may not be great enough to overshadow certain suspicions about the delegate's conclusion.

Let us imagine that only one of the plant's occupants finds the words with which to express these suspicions.

    "If we go home now," she might ask, "what would happen to our act? The entire population has claimed its rights over everything. If we go home now, wouldn't we be giving those rights away when we've just barely won them? And to whom to union officials?"

    Another occupant might then shout toward the speakers' platform: "Some of us are determined to stay."

    Somewhat dismayed, the union delegate might at this point suggest a vote, immediately calling for a show of hands: "Will all those fellow workers who wish to aid the Strike Committee in the administration and coordination of the factory occupation by remaining inside the plant 24 hours a day raise their hands?"

    It is to be expected that the formulation of the proposition will create some confusion. But it is conceivable that a few of the occupants will raise their hands, followed by others, until gradually the hands of all the occupants are raised. At that point the union delegate will undoubtedly back away from the microphone to hold a brief strategy session with the other union officials on the speakers' platform, among whom there may be regional delegates as well as a national Party Secretary or a revolutionary member of parliament.

    While the union officials confer, one of the plant's occupants might shout to the platform: "Since the plant was occupied by the working people, why do we have to show our identification cards every time we leave or enter the plant?"

    This question may prompt the Party Secretary to take the microphone. "The fellow worker has raised a critical problem," the Secretary might explain. "This is the problem of security, the problem of defending the interests of the workers from their class enemies. This is the important function performed by the fellow Workers at the factory gates. They are charged with the task of preventing agents of management from entering the plant."

    Since it is difficult to make oneself heard without the microphone, those who wish to speak from the floor are forced to shout. This is why the next question someone shouts from the floor sounds like an insult hurled at the Party Secretary: "Are they fellow Workers or Party officials?"

    Just as the Party Secretary is about to ignore this insult, another individual shouts from the floor: "When did the Party get the right to decide who comes into the plant? Besides, what harm could the managers do now? They no longer even have the power to decide who comes into the plant?"

    The group of people on the platform look shocked when yet another individual shouts, "We don't need the Party's police at our gates!"

    The officials look at each other as if chaos had broken loose when the occupants of the plant begin to cheer.

    Following a long period of enthusiastic cheering, the district delegate calls the meeting to order. She announces that "the first item on the meeting's agenda is the democratic election of a Strike Committee" - but before she is able to propose competent candidates the shouting begins again. "What on earth for?" shouts an occupant. "Whose agenda?" shouts another.

    The following exchange, consisting of screeching shouts from the floor nearly drowned out by deafening shouts through the loudspeaker, may follow:

    MICROPHONE: The function of the Strike Committee is to hold the fort when numbers dwindle, to protect the victories won by the working population.

    FLOOR: But we're determined to stay! Unanimously!

    MICROPHONE: Furthermore, the Committee has the task of coordinating the strike.

    FLOOR: What's that if it's not what we're all doing already? Why should a small group of people do that?

    MICROPHONE: It is impossible for all the workers of a plant to negotiate highly technical questions with the plant managers, the owners and the State.

    FLOOR: I've got news for you! They've got nothing left to negotiate! Who do you want to negotiate with? The managers don't manage any more, the owners don't own, and as for State officials, they're nowhere to be found. (The shouter is interrupted by laughter and cheering.) Are you going to negotiate with those who are presently occupying the government buildings and the city hall? Haven't you heard that the people occupying those buildings are dancing, playing music and putting on plays?  

    MICROPHONE: Who will draw up your list of demands?

    FLOOR: Who can grant them?  

    MICROPHONE: What the working people want is� -

    FLOOR: Who gave you the right to interpret what the people want?

    FLOOR: Those days are gone!

    FLOOR: When did union officials get a monopoly over the public address system?

    FLOOR:...

    It is not obvious that such a situation creates a "power vacuum" which can be filled by the official revolutionary organization. It is not evident that such a situation would contribute to the seizure of State power by the official interpreters of the population's demands. All that seems evident is that a revolutionary situation of a certain magnitude and momentum would not only remove powers of the ruling authorities, but also the powers which revolutionary organization had established in the unions and the government as official representative of the Labor Movement. At first glance it seems that the authority of the official revolutionaries would not carry much more weight in such a situation than the Authority of the deposed foremen, managers, owners, branch heads, or the deposed President of the Republic.

    Independent creative activity can in fact lead to the death of the old social order. A mighty burst of creative enthusiasm, a Revolutionary situation, is a historical possibility. Classical theory assumed that such a situation was the necessary condition for the seizure of power by a revolutionary organization. We have not been able to verify this assumption. On the contrary, we have seen that in the special case of a revolutionary organization which has established positions of power and prestige within the ongoing social order, the assumption of classical revolutionary theory is false. A revolutionary situation in which the masses are the real heroes, in which they engage in independent creative work as makers of history, does not provide a fertile field for the growth of an already established revolutionary organization. In fact, the official revolutionary organization is swept away together with the rest of the old social order.

    However, the fate of an already established revolutionary organization does not destroy the classical assumption that a revolutionary situation is the necessary condition for the growth of a revolutionary organization. Despite the fact that already established revolutionary organizations are the official representatives of revolution, despite the fact that they are almost universally regarded as the spokesmen of revolutionary classes, references to such organizations in classical revolutionary literature are extremely sparse. And the few references that can be found do not in fact treat an already established revolutionary organization as a likely candidate for the seizure of power in a situation where the old social order bursts. On the contrary, such organizations are not considered really revolutionary organizations, but part and parcel of the social order in which they have already established power. Revolutionary leaders who become officials under capitalism thereby cease to be really revolutionary leaders. The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted  or rather tend to be corrupted  by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people. That is the essence of bureaucracy. Furthermore, the positions attained by these revolutionary leaders within the dominant social order are not even considered real steps along the road to the seizure of power, but rather steps away from this path: Until the capitalists have been expropriated and the bourgeoisie overthrown,
even proletarian functionaries will be inevitably 'bureaucratized.'

    Thus, despite its public importance, an already established revolutionary organization cannot validly serve as a test case for the classical assumption that a revolutionary situation is the preliminary condition for the rise of a revolutionary organization. Despite the fact that the established revolutionary organization is the official spokesman of revolution and stands ever ready to seize the bureaucratic military machine, the sparse explicit references to this type of organization in fact exclude it from the field. It is not with this aim in view that a mighty burst of creative enthusiasm stems from the people. The aim of the revolution is not, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it.

    A revolutionary situation as described by classical revolutionary theory smashes the dominant social order along with all of its bureaucrats. Before turning to the case of revolutionary leaders who have not become functionaries under capitalism, the case of revolutionary organizations which have not already established power within the dominant social order, we might examine more fully the classical description of the revolutionary situation, which is a preliminary condition for the seizure of power by a revolutionary organization. Such a situation is realized by the initiative of millions, who create a democracy on their own, in their own way.  The old centralized government gives way to the self government of the producers. This is the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor. Furthermore, according to the classics, the working people know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.  In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. - With labor emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to be a class attribute. - The political rule of the producer cannot coexist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. - What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces above all, is its own gravediggers.

    The classical theory of revolution assumes that a social situation which corresponds to the description given above is the preliminary condition for the growth of a revolutionary organization. First of all the initiative of millions is a preliminary condition because all previous historical movements were movements of minorities whereas the proletarian movement is the self conscious, independent movement of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. Without this preliminary condition, the specific project of a revolutionary organization cannot even be considered. Is it conceivable that such an organization can be created without first abolishing, destroying the state machine created by the bourgeoisie themselves? This is not conceivable in classical revolutionary theory; the precondition of any real people's revolution is the break-up, the shattering of the ready made state machinery.  Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. Without such an upsurge on the part of the great masses, the activity of no matter how active a group of leaders would be reduced to the sterile efforts of a handful of people. As soon as such a revolutionary upsurge takes place the revolutionary leaders must take power at once�otherwise a wave of real anarchy may become stronger than we are. And it is by classical revolutionary theory that the initiative of the independent creative activity of the producers also creates the sufficient condition for the revolutionary organization to power at once, namely that an organization which seizes the time and dares to win is bound to succeed: The entire history of the revolution proves that without the leadership of the working class the revolution fails, and that it succeeds with the leadership of the working class. The leadership of the working class means that revolutionary leaders can and must take state power into their own hands.

    Furthermore, classical revolutionary theory even ventures to guarantee that once revolutionary leaders have seized State power, nothing will remove them until they have taken State power over the Whole world into their own hands: Now that the class conscious workers have built up a party to systematically lay hold of this apparatus and set it in motion with the support of all the working and exploited people  now that these conditions exist, no power on earth can prevent the Bolsheviks, if they do not allow themselves to be scared and if they succeed in taking power, from retaining It until the� triumph of the world socialist revolution.

    From the standpoint of revolutionary leaders who today face the possibility of failure, it is critical to reexamine these key assumptions of the classical theory of revolution, because it is this theory and only this theory that educates the vanguard of the proletariat and makes it capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.

    Is it certain that a revolutionary organization that has no vested interest in the ruling system, that has not established posts in the Labor Movement or the government, and that cannot lose these established posts as a result of a major crisis, would be able to seize State power out of the revolutionary situation? Or might there be elements in the revolutionary situation which would obstruct the seizure of State power even by such an organization? Is the revolutionary situation a sufficient condition for the rise of such an organization in a case where the former ruling authorities are not restored?

    Let us try to imagine militants of such an organization in a revolutionary situation as described by classical theory, a situation realized by the initiative of millions, who create a democracy on their own, in their own way. Let us try to imagine if such a situation might contain elements that prevent revolutionary leaders from laying hold of the State apparatus, from setting it in motion, and from retaining it until the triumph of the world socialist revolution.

    We might follow the activities of such an organization's rank and file militants in a situation where the old regime has definitively collapsed. Streets, schools, railway stations and public buildings are filled with constant motion and with the excitement that the old order has passed and a new day is about to start. For the militants of the revolutionary organization, the revolution has begun. We might try to imagine the feelings of a long time member of the revolutionary organization as she runs toward a large group of excited people in a crowded railway station. This militant might have been a member of the organization during the dismal days when the majority of the people she spoke to, including her family and her closest non organization friends, considered her a sectarian, a true believer, even a crackpot. She had nowhere been held in high esteem, or even taken seriously, except by other members of the organization. She had been jailed for addressing crowds at public meetings; the police had raided her apartment searching for radical literature. As she runs toward the group gathered around a newly pasted wallposter, she is in a state of near euphoria as she reflects that all the 'extremist' slogans of former days have become realities.

    Former slogans, like 'Let the people decide,' 'The streets belong the people,' 'Each must make the decisions that affect his or her life,' were the organization's main slogans during the pre-revolutionary period when the population did not have power independent of the ruling authorities. However, slogans which were once appropriate for the banners of the vanguard of the revolution cannot remain the revolutionary order of the day in a situation where these slogans have become facts of daily life. Such slogans cease to be definitions of tasks ahead and become mere descriptions of the status quo. In order not to fall behind the population but to remain ahead, the organization continues to write on its banners orders of the day which point to the tasks of the future. 'Let the people decide' has been replaced by 'The time has come to build the organization of the working class.'

    As the militant works her way through the crowd, she listens for statements which might serve as introductions to her presentation of the revolutionary tasks appropriate to the present stage of the struggle. However, the fervor of the discussion and her unfamiliarity with the topics discussed create difficulties for her interruption, and might cause resentment, so she waits and listens and tries to get a notion of the subject at hand.

    The group appears to be arguing about the pros and cons of the newly posted proposal on the wall, the subject of which might be, for example, garbage collection. One person argues in favor of collection routes determined by each neighborhood; the next person snaps back in favor of a city wide network of routes. The group appears to be evenly split. It seems that the issues involved on one side are that a routing system designed by neighborhoods would lead to unnecessarily inefficient routes, while the other side insists that a citywide network would strain presently available lines of communication. One speaker tries to find a compromise between the two sides by suggesting that each method should be tried, depending on preferences of people in each neighborhood. However, a proponent of city wide collections immediately snaps back that such a compromise is a victory for the neighborhood collections, since the city wide network could hardly be efficient if the city trucks had to skirt every neighborhood that had its own collections. The clear statement of this dilemma causes people to reflect, and the brief interval of silence is the militant's opportunity to bring the attentive and lively group out of what to her seems like a petty frame of reference.

    "Comrades," she might say, "the tyrants have been struck down by the might of the working people. The people's victory has begun a new stage of human development. You are discussing garbage, comrades. All the former tyrants have been thrown into the garbage cans of history! This being the case, it is time to begin the next stage of the struggle, it is time for the working class to begin organizing its own activity. Comrades, Organization is the next order of the day. The time has come to write on our banners, 'All power to the people, All power to the Organization of the Working Class."'

    The group applauds enthusiastically, and while applauding they repeat 'All Power to the People, All Power to the Organization!' As she steps away from the wallposter and works her way out of the large circle of people, some individuals pat her on the back, others smile broadly as they shake her hand. But before she has reached the outer circumference of the crowd, people have already resumed the former discussion of city�wide versus neighborhood  wide garbage collections.

    Although the militant of the revolutionary organization might be sympathetically received by the group in the railway station, and might even succeed in introducing to these people the slogans which express the revolutionary tasks of the next stage of struggle, from the standpoint of the organization's establishment of a power base the hypothetical scene is inconclusive. Neither the group's sympathy for the militant who in normal times was considered a dangerous extremist, nor their willingness to repeat the militant's slogans, definitively demonstrate that the ground is being laid for the organization's seizure of State power. In fact the hypothetical event suggests that, at least a group of people such as the one described in the station might revert to the problem of organizing garbage collections even after the important problem of the Organization of the Working Class has been clearly communicated to them. Such a possibility might of course result from the fact that a group of people in a railway station is not in fact a working collective. To see such an outcome would not be likely in working collectives actually engaged in productive activity, we might try to imagine the organizing efforts of a different militant of the revolutionary organization  say, for example, at a construction site where building activity is actually in progress.

    In this illustration we might imagine, not a militant who drops out of the blue into a crowd of strangers, but a militant whose organizing activity is persistent and continuous. He might, for example, return to the construction site every day, and on the occasion when we observe his organizing activity he might already be known by several workers on the site. Let us assume that, in a perfectly friendly spirit, a worker once nicknamed him 'Trotsky' and those who had come to be acquainted with him greet him with 'name,' although there are no grounds for assuming that the militant's organization is in fact a Trotskyist organization, or even oriented in that direction.

    Let us assume that the fact that only a few of the construction Workers are personally acquainted with the militant is not the Militant's fault, but is due, for example, to the very same circumstances which might explain why the individuals at this particular Workplace might already be engaged in working activity. The militant's limited acquaintance with the individuals on the site might be due to the constantly changing composition of the working collective. Both the changing composition and the fact that productive activity is going on might be due to the peculiar role the construction site played during the height of the insurrection: when the military attacked, all construction sites became sources of materials and equipment for the construction of barricades. Since on numerous occasions the barricades had to be built on the spur of the moment, many individuals who had not been construction workers, many who had not previously even visited a construction site, were forced to learn to use the equipment and the materials in a hurry. Many of the individuals who had mastered these arts during the insurrection continued to frequent the construction sites after the insurrection, no longer to build barricades, but to build new houses, to build accommodations for travelers (the number of travelers would undoubtedly increase astronomically after a complete work stoppage and a successful popular insurrection of the nature described earlier), to build meeting places - in fact, to build all the imaginable places and structures to which individuals have a desire to devote their energies.

    This peculiar condition would of course disrupt the militant's organizing efforts. Some of the individuals with whom the militant had good talks and political exchanges may have stayed on the given construction site only for the number of hours or days it took them to master a particular technique or instrument. Others may merely have been traveling through the site, engaging in this particular project merely to become familiar with this realm of social activity, and moving on to other types of activity after their curiosity was satisfied. Yet others may temporarily have joined this particular project and then dropped out of productive activity altogether, either permanently or only for the time being. In short, we have reason to suppose that, of the individuals working at the construction site at any given time, the militant might have the best attendance record.

    Let us assume that the militant continues to persevere in his organizing efforts in spite of the shifting composition of the working collective he has been assigned to organize. We might, for example, observe the militant's organizing efforts on the day after a major meeting of the revolutionary organization, a meeting at which the guidelines of the current struggle were defined as moving from the February Revolution, which had established a Dual Power in society, to the October Revolution which would definitively establish the undisputed and uncontested rule of the Working Class. On this particular day, an individual operating the hoist and a person guiding a plank, both of whom are new to this site, seem at once amused and baffled by the militant's reference to February and October, but neither of them stop working.

    A construction worker who has just finished putting a steel beam into place from an extremely precarious position on the scaffolding overhears the comments, warmly greets 'Trotsky,' and climbs down from the scaffolding to relax and wipe the sweat off her forehead. She may already be well acquainted with 'Trotsky' because she is one of the few people who have been working on this site continually since the early days of the insurrection; like others she had learned to use the equipment during the days of the barricades, and after the defeat of the army she and a group of others had stayed at this site to design and build an experimental music hall in place of the office building that had formerly been scheduled to go up. She shakes his hand warmly while looking up toward her beam, and immediately takes up her critique of the revolutionary organization, a critique which the militant has by now heard several times.

    "Won't you ever realize, Trotsky, that the play you're acting in ended over half a century ago?"

    Part of her technique in ridiculing him comes from her persistence in calling him 'Trotsky,' instead of simply 'comrade' or 'fellow worker,' the designations commonly used in discussions among the militants of the revolutionary organization.

    "Can't you learn, Trotsky, that only your 'comrades' are in a play that started in February and ends in October? The rest of the population are writing a different play."

    The militant is of course aware of the irony in her tone. But though he knows she is someone who has not learned to take the revolutionary organization seriously, he nevertheless refuses to abandon an opportunity to score good points.

    "It's not a question of a spectacle but of the revolutionary practice of the proletariat. There can be no revolutionary practice without theory nor can there be revolutionary theory without practice. The revolutionary theory that corresponds to present conditions is expressed by the slogan: We must move from the February Revolution to the October Revolution. The practice that corresponds to present conditions is expressed by the slogan: We must form Workers' Councils in every mine, every factory, every construction site and every military regiment. These are the fundamental tasks of the actual political situation."

    "Bravo!" she says. "But aren't you a few historical moments too late? Now that it's leaked out to people how many and varied their alternatives are, how will you convince them to stay in a given workplace to become a permanent Council? By telling them the old play is about to begin all over again? And how on earth will you convince people to return to military regiments so as to cast them in the familiar role of the Soldiers' Councils? Weren't you there, Trotsky, when half the army disbanded and defected to the armed population behind the barricades, into the houses, and onto the streets from which the remainder of the army was simply overpowered and defeated?"

    The revolutionary militant is irritated by the fact that she first of all attributes to him a 'nickname' and then proceeds to attack him by ridiculing the military achievements of his 'nickname.' He nevertheless stands his ground and tries to trip the opponent with another approach.

    "Surely you are aware, comrade, that the highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about a dual power. Unless this is understood, we cannot advance. "

    "Why, you must be referring to the power of the population and the power of the Revolutionary Organization, isn't that so Trotsky?" she asks, blinking at the hoist operator who has approached to listen. "And everyone knows, Trotsky," (she seems almost perverse in her persistent abuse of his nickname) "that since only one of the two sides understands the question of Dual Power, the conclusion of the play is already known halfway through the first act."

    "Unless this question is understood, comrade, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution!�

    All the individuals on the construction site have stopped working. All eyes are concentrated on the revolutionary militant. This is the first time since his organizing efforts began that he has succeeded in capturing the attention of everyone on the site. He raises his fist and yells, "All Power to the Working Class. All Power to the Workers' Councils!"

    The scene at the construction site is at least as inconclusive as scene in the railway station. Even if we assume that the individuals working at the site are as sympathetic to the organization's slogans as the group in the railway station, the scene does not clarify just how the organizing activity of the revolutionary militant lays the ground for the seizure of State power by the organization.

    The scene's failure to clarify our question may be due, not to characteristics of the revolutionary organization, but to the assumptions we built into the situation itself. We did not actually prove, we merely assumed, that a productive activity as complex as construction might be possible in the total absence of either the dominant authorities removed from their offices by the work stoppage or a revolutionary organization's seizure of these offices. Such an assumption may of course be illegitimate, since what is assumed is by no means self evident. In other words, it has not been shown that, in the absence of either a Capitalist Organization at the head of society or a Revolutionary Organization at the head of society, an activity as complex as construction could nevertheless take place. After all, even if we could legitimately assume that individuals on a given construction site might be able to resume productive activity on their own, we cannot go on to assume that everything this implies would also resume 'on its own.' What this would imply is the resumption, in an �organizational vacuum,' not only of productive activity on an isolated construction site, but also the production and transportation of construction equipment and machinery; the production and delivery of construction materials such as steel, lumber and concrete; the mining and processing of the minerals and raw materials which go into the construction materials. In short, in order to assume the possibility of construction on an isolated site, we are in fact forced to assume the possibility of productive activity in virtually all other realms of social production. This might of course explain why our central question could not be conclusively answered by the scene at the construction site.

    Instead of philosophizing abstractly about the impossibility of social activity in a situation where society's decision making authorities have been removed but not replaced, we might enrich our understanding of numerous facets of this question by imagining a revolutionary organizer in yet another social situation. We might, for example, imagine a revolutionary organizer who poses precisely these questions during her lunch break; we might even suppose that this militant takes it for granted that social activity without a decision-making organization is simply impossible (since it is this assumption that accounts for her service and devotion to the revolutionary organization).

    In pre-revolutionary days the restaurant where the militant is eating was extremely expensive and catered exclusively to wealthy patrons. At the outbreak of the insurrection it was transformed into a free, self service neighborhood restaurant. After the battles at the barricades, newly built neighborhood restaurants were set up on the model of the equipment, cleanliness and quality of meals in this restaurant.

    Let us assume that the revolutionary militant, who eats at this restaurant daily because of the superior quality of its meals, never before asked herself about the structure of decision making in the restaurant itself. She might simply have assumed that the restaurant had an extremely well organized staff, namely a workers' council, as well as a council committee, namely a smaller group who coordinated and organized the well defined tasks of the various staff members. Or she might have assumed that the restaurant's activity had simply continued to be supervised and directed by some of the pre-revolutionary managers and chefs. At any rate, at this particular lunch break she decides to find out which of the two alternatives is actually the case. She decides that, after the meal, she'll enter the kitchen to get a full picture of the restaurant's political structure from the manager or director.

    Access to the kitchen is free to anyone. In fact, a poster next to the kitchen door specifically asks guests to visit the kitchen in order to learn one or another of the various arts of food preparation so as to be somewhat experienced when taking a turn preparing the meals. Of course the militant hadn't ever considered spending numerous valuable hours cooking, since her organizational tasks occupied all her working hours.

    Even on this occasion she isn't entering the kitchen in response to the poster asking for volunteer cooks, but to acquaint herself with matters that might be of interest to the Party. She hesitates at the entrance, thinking of the embarrassment she might feel if she were asked to help, but she suppresses this fear and walks up to a man rolling dough. "Could you please tell me who the manager is?"

    The man looks at her whimsically, bursts out laughing, and shouts to the others: "Here's another old timer! Can anyone tell her where the manager is?"

    A woman sprinkling cheese on frijoles refritos asks the militant, "Is that right, sister? Do you really want me to tell you where the manager is?"

    "I'm no old timer," the militant insists. "I'm a member of the revolutionary organization, and I've been a member since long before the revolution. I want to ask some important questions and I'd like to speak to the responsible person, the person in charge."

    "Go ahead and ask," says the woman with the cheese. "We can all answer questions. If I don't know the answer someone else may know."

    "That's how we do everything here," says a man who is washing dishes.

    The militant's face turns crimson and for a moment she considers running out to the street. But she manages to pull herself together. "What I want to know is," she says, turning from one person to another, "I'd like to ask about the organization of this restaurant."

    "What about it?" asks the woman.

    "Well, for example, when was the workers' council formed, when was the Council Committee elected, how many people are on it -�

    "They weren't," says the woman.

    "They what?"

    "Those things were never formed around here as far as I know," the woman answers.

    "What do you mean?"

    "Just that," answers a man who is stirring soup. "We've been disabused of all that."

    "Do you mean," the militant asks the woman with the cheese, "that the pre revolutionary organization and staff survived in this restaurant intact?"

    "I'll tell you about the pre revolutionary staff," says the man with the dishes. "They had three people who washed dishes full time and never did anything else. There were professional vegetable cleaners, a salad staff, soup specialists, two meat cutters, a full time baker, a shipping clerk with an assistant as well as a stock man, five pimps who did nothing but make arrangements, numerous professional bus boys, several staffs of waiters - meat waiters, wine waiters, as well as waiters who only bowed. None of the pre revolutionary staff have been here since. I suppose none of those people ever want to see a restaurant again."

    "Then who coordinates production, who does the planning?"

    "You mean what happened to the rest of the pre revolutionary staff? I can tell you that too. I used to deliver meat here in those days. And I used to peek out to look at the better half. They'd come here to eat in what they called 'their own' restaurant. First of all there was someone they called The Investor. It was said that he passed checks to the others while he ate. One of those he passed money to was a big shot. He was 'In Restaurants' and in lots else besides. A scrawny little man who probably hadn't ever touched dough was 'In Bread.' 'I'm in bread,' he'd say when he shook someone's hand. Another one was 'In Meats and Poultry' - "

    "We in the revolutionary organization know about all that," protests the militant.

    "No you don't," the man insists. "The one that was 'In Restaurants,' the one they called the Big Boss - he continued to come around when things started to change. The meals were free and no one raised a fuss about his eating here. He'd always sit all alone, and he'd stay at his table after everyone else had left. It seemed like he didn't want to go back out to the street. Maybe he was afraid that a crowd would start chasing him shouting 'There's that capitalist thief - shoot him!' One night when I was here baking he even came into the kitchen and asked if there might be something he could do. You don't know about all that! You don't know that the man who was 'in Restaurants,' the man who supposedly 'fed thousands of people daily,' the Big Boss as he was called - this man didn't know how to boil an egg! Apparently all he knew was how to send checks to the bank. And when the banks closed down he didn't know anything! I myself told him everyone would be happier if he didn't help in the kitchen, that no one minded his eating here. He continued coming every day when the fighting was still going on, but after the army collapsed he never came back."

    The militant is visibly annoyed, and finds that these people are extremely evasive. "Frankly," she says, "I'm not at all interested in the former, capitalist organization of this restaurant. I've studied the social relations and class structure of capitalism to the point where I'm sick of it! What I want to know is how this productive enterprise is organized now - who coordinates the activity, who orders the food, who plans the meals. In other words, how is this place run if not by a Workers' Council guided by a Council Committee?"

    "Sister," says the woman, "if one of us can't do it then it just doesn't get done."

    "That's no answer!" snaps the militant. "I don't understand your motives for being so hostile to my question, for being so evasive. I'm not so stupid as to believe that a restaurant could function for a day without an organization. I happen to know what goes into a loaf of bread! A specific person has to decide how much bread is to be baked so as to know how much flour to order. At the flour mill, in turn, someone is in charge of coordinating the mill's requirements with the agricultural authorities who supply the grain.

    "The same is true of meat and vegetables - not to speak of all the fancy equipment you've got! It all takes coordinators, organizers, planners!"

    The baker turns to her and, as if quoting a philosophical text, says slowly: "At the heart of the production process itself, where the productive forces are created, the previous forms of social activity did not exhaust the possibilities of contemporary human existence."

    "This is exasperating!" shouts the militant.

    "Can you boil an egg?" asks the man stirring soup.

    "You're all lying!" she screams. "Productive activity on such a scale simply isn't possible without regular staffs, without coordinators and organizers, without leaders. These tasks can't be left to chance! They're the proper tasks of an organization. For the sake of stability and order the development of the productive forces must be controlled."

    "But did you hear of anyone who starved," the woman with the cheese shouts back, "either during the insurrection or after? Did you hear that the food stopped growing because it had lost its managers? Did you hear that all the trucks stopped running until the coming of the organizers? Did you hear that food stopped being distributed because the coordinators hadn't arrived? Did you hear we were all so stupid that we didn't know how to get flour from the mill to the bakery?"

    "If all those things are running," shouts the militant, "then it merely proves that there must be Councils and Committees coordinating and directing it."

    "And if they aren't," snaps the woman, "we've got to go hungry until the day they do!"

    In response to this, the militant storms out of the kitchen. At the street entrance to the restaurant, she turns toward the people who are still at the tables talking. She raises her fist and shouts, angrily, "All Power to the Workers' Councils. All Power to the Council Committees!" No one turns to look at her. People simply continue their conversations.

    The scene in the restaurant still fails to clarify how a revolutionary situation lays the ground for the seizure of power by a revolutionary organization. In fact, the militant of an organization which was not an established part of the previous social or fares almost as badly as the authorities of the former social or. This may, once again, be due to the assumptions built into the scene, and thus need not alarm aspiring revolutionary leaders. The militants of all the previous scenes were presented as outsiders to the productive activity of the people they were assigned to organize. This assumption of course creates unnecessary obstacles to the successful establishment of power by the organization. If we drop this assumption, if we imagine a militant who is himself involved in the activity of his constituency, might there still be obstacles to the rise of a revolutionary organization capable of seizing power?

    We might, for example, imagine an organizer who became personally involved in the productive activity of a printing plant. He might have been assigned to the plant in order to print the organization's newspaper. Such an assignment would have been an extremely important one in the days of chaos and disorganization which immediately followed the success of the insurrection. After the fall of the old order, the revolutionary organization would undoubtedly consider it of capital importance to use all the media of communication to implant in the population the slogan 'All Power to a Organization of the Working Class.'

    Of course those early days of 'spontaneous' activity and revolutionary euphoria would not be the best time for the organization to find an individual ready to assume such a responsibility. Undoubtedly a large number of members would have been lost to the organization during the insurrection - individuals who took an active part in one or another 'spontaneous' activity and then simply stayed with the group of people with whom they had fought and worked. Let us imagine that the given militant was ready to assume the assignment because, unlike those who ran to take part in one or another 'spontaneous' struggle, he did not abandon himself to the anarchic activities taking place in his immediate vicinity. He waited until the organization developed a clear line, a coherent strategy - and as soon as the line was formulated after the fighting ended, he was not lost in an anarchic project like so many other former members. He was ready to respond to the organization's call, to assume his responsibilities.

    The period immediately after a successful insurrection would also not be the best time for an organizer to assume this particular assignment. This is due to the fact that printing plants, like construction sites and eating places, would have played a specific role during the insurrection itself. A large and once smooth running printing plant might well be in a state of total disarray as a result of a revolution. The organization member might find that there is no responsible person to whom he can give the newspaper articles. Furthermore there is no staff with a clearly defined division of labor to carry out the various steps necessary for printing the paper. The militant cannot easily learn on his own because there are no institutionalized teachers. Even if all the individuals in the plant on a given day considered it extremely important to print the organization's newspaper, there are no established procedures for determining priorities. There aren't even procedures for assigning work. This situation is a direct result of the activity which developed in the printing plant at the time of the barricades. As soon as productive activity ceased to be a source of income, almost all the former wage workers left the plant in mass and never returned. Those who replaced them had in most cases never before seen printing equipment. Since in most cases the newcomers had to disseminate information about an immediate threat, they were forced to learn on their own and in a great hurry. Some learned by leafing through manuals, some buttonholed a onetime printer to show them the essentials, and others were satisfied with barely readable results. Although hardly any of the plant's onetime printers returned after the insurrection, most of the individuals who learned to print during the insurrection returned after the victory with less hurried and more craftsmanly projects, and usually with an intense desire to master the equipment so as to experiment with its numerous possibilities. Although the equipment was probably used to a fuller extent after the insurrection than ever before, the efficiency, order and discipline of the former work force, and also the well defined division of labor, did not return. This situation created nearly insurmountable obstacles for the militant assigned to print the organization's paper.

    Thus in addition to having to print the organization's paper, the militant is saddled with the task of having to organize everyone else's activity as well. When the time comes to organize Workers' Councils in every mine, construction site and printing plant, the militant finds himself in a bizarre predicament. He is unable to gather the individuals in the plant on any given day to a meeting. This predicament is largely due to the fact that, although he is in the plant more regularly than anyone else, the unstructured nature of the teaching has prevented him from mastering any of the techniques and arts of printing. This of course affects the general appearance and readability of the organization's newspaper. It also makes it hard for this individual to talk to others about the indispensability of meeting to organize the plant into a Workers' Council. It's not that people oppose such a Council. Only a few respond with comments like, "We don't need that around here." Most individuals simply tell the militant they're too deeply involved in their work and urge him to hold the meeting without them. Since the response of others is generally, "I'll meet whenever the rest meet," the militant is left in the predicament of meeting by himself. To make matters worse, the militant suspects that several individuals think him a poor craftsman with sloppy habits and consider him an obstacle to the activities in the plant.

    The first chance to organize a Workers' Council presents itself when a group of people who did not learn to print during the insurrection come to use the plant's equipment. Since the militant is the only one in the plant who regularly receives and welcomes visitors, the new people ask the militant to help them deal with the technical problems. This gives him a pretext for calling the more experienced individuals to a meeting. "There are people here who want to consult you about using this equipment." Thus he succeeds in creating a meeting with the people in the plant on that particular day. The new people also give him a pretext for raising the question of organizing a Workers' Council. "The problems raised by the new comrades cannot be dealt with in the framework of the organizational forms that currently dominate this plant. If this plant is to serve the needs of these comrades and of all the revolutionary peoples, we must all take part in sharing the responsibilities. Only a Workers' Council provides a structure adequate to such a task."

    An individual who has printed multi color posters since the days of the barricades announces to the new people, "I think no one here has ever turned away anyone who genuinely wanted to observe and learn." After this announcement, she begins to leave the room.

    The militant fears he may have let his single chance slip away. "Is anyone opposed to a Workers' Council? Would those opposed raise their hands?"

    No one's hand is raised.

    "Unanimously approved," says the individual who spoke earlier, leaving the room, visibly annoyed. Others get up and return to their interrupted projects; some pause to ask the new people what specific technique they wanted to learn. Even the new people leave the room and join people engaged in one or another stage of the printing process. The militant is left alone. He succeeded. He puts a large sign outside the main entrance to the plant: "Council of Printing Workers."

    The successful formation of the Workers' Council does not in practice improve the militant's situation. In spite of the sign on the door, the membership of the Council varies daily and the Council never meets. The militant continues to print the organization's newspaper all by himself, and since the quality of other people's projects improves as they become increasingly familiar with the techniques and equipment, their attitude to his habits and standards becomes increasingly hostile. Although no one comments on the newspaper's contents, the militant overhears numerous references to its appearance; people seem to consider it a stack of trash paper and an enormous waste of materials. Consequently when the time comes for all productive Workers' Councils to elect delegates to Council Committees, the militant is in a worse predicament than before. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of his success in forming the Workers' Council, he designs a new strategy. He recruits two members of the organization to join him in the plant. Actually numerous organization members wanted to join him when he made a moving speech at the Organization's weekly meeting emphasizing the need to organize at the point of production, describing the low level of consciousness and apolitical behavior that results from a failure to do this, and calling for people who would represent a revolutionary force in this particular plant. Although he would have liked to return to the plant the following day with numerous comrades, it was decided that all but two of the volunteers should begin similar organizing activity at the point of production in other unorganized plants.

    After a critique and self critique of the earlier meeting at which the Workers' Council was formed, the three militants decide not to call for a general meeting to elect the Council Committee. Instead, they take the opportunity of joining a group of individuals who are taking a break and eating. The three militants present the case in favor of electing a Council Committee. No one seems to have a case against such an election. However, one of the individuals eating lunch, a regular user of the printing equipment and an outstanding photographer, says that since most people don't know what such a Committee member is supposed to do, and since he's sure most people wouldn't be willing to devote time and energy to such a Committee, why don't the three proponents of such a Committee simply elect themselves? That wouldn't be democratic, objects one of the militants. Don't worry about that, says the individual; you won't find anyone in the plant who objects to such a procedure. And sure enough, after consulting other individuals who are using one or another instrument that day, the militants find no one opposed to this scheme and consider themselves unanimously elected to the Council Committee.

    The three militants become the first regular staff in the plant since pre revolutionary days. They receive guests, collaborate on the layout and printing of the organization's paper (the quality of which improves somewhat), and they begin to enforce certain minimal regulations, like no smoking rules. Their enforcement of rules is successful only among newcomers, and then only temporarily; when the newcomers join more experienced persons and learn to execute technical processes on their own, they also learn to disregard even the most minimal rules. However, even the Council Committee doesn't last. The three member Committee decides that, to acquire the skills needed to teach newcomers and to raise the quality of the newspaper yet higher, the two new militants are to join more experienced persons to learn halftone techniques and process color printing. In a matter of days both organization members become so involved in the processes of discovery and experimentation that each decides to remain with the work group to which she and he attached themselves. And to make matters worse for the initial militant, both become visibly hostile toward their mentor.

    Our militant is again alone, and physically as well as psychologically he can no longer support his assignment. At organization meetings he regularly asks to be replaced, and on several occasions he suggests that the organization print the newspaper in another plant. He even threatens to resign from the organization. However, his resignation is undesirable in view of his service to the organization, and a public admission of his failure is undesirable because it would not serve the organization's image. Consequently, he is promoted. In the light of his earlier election to the Council Committee, namely in the light of his proven popularity among his fellow workers, he is assigned by the organization's leaders to present himself as the plant's candidate for the position of delegate to the Regional Workers' Council.

    On this occasion the militant does not attempt to gather even a few individuals in a meeting. He makes it a point to talk to every individual in the plant on a particular day. He is surprised to find that people become very friendly as soon as he mentions that he intends to leave in order to become the plant's delegate to the Regional Council. He takes their friendliness as a sign of approval, namely as a vote. Each individual nods politely as he describes the virtues of the Regional Council: it will determine priorities, coordinate all the activities of the region, allocate resources in the interests of the third world and enforce regional decisions.

    Before leaving, the militant prints the slogan 'All Power to the Regional Workers' Council' and posts it on various walls in the plant. A few days after his departure most of these signs are covered by other posters; of the rest all but one are torn down, and on the remaining sign the militant's slogan is scratched out and above it is written a slogan which corresponds to an earlier stage of the organization's struggle: 'All Power to the Workers!'

    The events in the printing plant are not very probable. Events with similarities to this sequence have occurred, but they've been rare events, unlikely exceptions. Yet if we grant that such events are possible at all, we are forced to draw at least one conclusion. The mere possibility of such a sequence suggests at least one consequence. The conclusion we are forced to draw is that, even in the absence of a restoration of the old order, a revolutionary situation is not a sufficient condition for the development of a revolutionary organization capable of seizing State power.

    This conclusion will undoubtedly be a letdown for aspiring revolutionary leaders. But there is no reason why this conclusion should prevent prospective leaders from continuing to try. Our conclusion does not prove that failure is certain, but only that it is possible. Furthermore, the circumstances underlying the imaginary scenes we have drawn suggest that the possibility of failure is very small. First of all a revolutionary situation of the type described is a historical rarity. And secondly, the resumption of productive activity on the part of the population is an even greater rarity: in the light of all previous human history such an event has extremely low probability. Only one tentative conclusion really emerges from the scenes, namely that if such extremely unusual events are possible at all, then a revolutionary organization's seizure of State power will not be the necessary outcome of an extended revolutionary situation.

    This conclusion, however limited in scope, makes our central question problematic - namely, just how does a revolutionary situation lay the ground for the seizure of State power by a revolutionary organization? If such a situation does not necessarily lead to such an outcome, then it becomes pointless to ask how it does so. It seems that we've been asking: how does one milk a bull? - Or more to the point, how can we get milk out of a beer barrel? Clearly, turning the tap one way or another or even drilling holes of a certain diameter will not yield milk; the only way we'll get milk out of a beer barrel is if we first transform it into a milk barrel. Or, with respect to our question, we should not ask how a revolutionary situation paves the path for a revolutionary organization; perhaps what we should be asking is: how must a revolutionary organization transform a revolutionary situation in order to seize power out of it. The reformulation of the question makes it clear that in the scenes drawn so far we have been tryin