Antonio Gramsci 1917
The Russian Maximalists
Initialled A.G., Il Grido del Popolo, 28 July 1917.
The Russian maximalists are the Russian revolution itself.
Kerensky, Tseretelli, Chernov - these men are the present
expression of the revolution, they have brought about an initial
social balance, a resultant of forces in which the moderates
still have an important part to play. The maximalists are the
continuity of the revolution - they are its rhythm, and hence
they are the revolution itself.
The maximalists embody the idea of socialism taken to its
limits: they want socialism in its entirety. And they
have this task before them: they must prevent any final compromise
being reached between the age-old past and this idea; they must be
the living symbol of the goal to be achieved; they must prevent
the immediate problem that has to be resolved today from growing
to the point where it becomes the revolution's sole preoccupation,
a spasmodic frenzy erecting insurmountable barriers to later
possible achievements.
For this is the supreme danger in all revolutions: people
become more and more convinced that a particular instant in the
new life is definitive, and that they must halt to look behind
them, to consolidate what has been achieved, to rejoice at last in
their own success. To have a moment of rest. A revolutionary
crisis rapidly wears men out. They tire rapidly. And one can
understand their state of mind. Russia, however, has had this good
fortune - it has been free of Jacobinism. Hence the lightning
dissemination of all ideas has been possible, and numerous
political groups have formed as a result, each one more audacious
than the last, not wanting to call a halt, believing that the
definitive stage to be reached is not yet at hand, is still far
off. The maximalists, the extremists, are the last logical link in
this revolutionary chain of development. Hence the struggle
continues, advances are made; the whole society advances because
there is always at least one group that wants to advance and is
working among the masses, tapping new sources of proletarian
energy and organizing new social forces, which threaten the weary
and oversee them and show them that they can be replaced and
eliminated if they do not renew themselves and pluck up the
courage to go forward. Thus the revolution never pauses, and never
completes the circle. It devours its men, it replaces one group by
another more audacious group and, by virtue of this instability,
this never-achieved perfection is truly and solely revolution.
The maximalists in Russia are the enemies of the laggards. They
spur on the lazy. Up to this point, they have frustrated all
attempts to stem the revolutionary tide, and have prevented
stagnant pools and backwaters from forming. This is why they are
hated by the western bourgeoisies, and why the newspapers in
Italy, France and England defame and seek to discredit them, to
suffocate them under a mountain of calumnies. The Western
bourgeoisies were hoping that the enormous effort of thought and
action that the achievement of the new life demanded would be
followed by a crisis of mental laziness, by a decline in the
revolutionaries' dynamic activity, and that this would become the
basis for a definitive stabilization of the new state of
affairs.
But in Russia there are no Jacobins. The group of moderate
socialists who have held power have not sought to destroy the
vanguard elements, to suffocate them in blood. In the socialist
revolution, Lenin has not met the fate of Babeuf. He has been able
to convert his thought into a meaningful historical force. He has
released energies that will never die. He and his Bolshevik
comrades are convinced that socialism can be achieved at any
time. They are nourished on Marxist thought. They are
revolutionaries, not evolutionists. And revolutionary thought does
not see time as a progressive factor. It denies that all
intermediate stages between the conception of socialism and its
achievement must have absolute and complete confirmation in time
and place. It holds that it is enough that these stages be
realized in thought for the revolution to be able to proceed
beyond them. On the other hand, consciousness must be cured of its
laziness, it must be conquered. And this is what Lenin and his
comrades have been able to do. Their conviction has not remained
audacious in thought alone. It has been embodied in individuals,
in many individuals; it has borne fruit in activities. It has
created the very group that was necessary to oppose any final
compromises, any settlement which could have become
definitive. And the revolution is continuing. Every aspect of life
has become truly revolutionary: it is an ever-present activity, a
continual exchange, a continuous excavation into the amorphous
block of the people. New energies are released, new ideas which
become historical forces are propagated. At last men - all men -
are the makers of their own destinies. It would be impossible for
a despotic minority to form. The people are ever alert to such
tendencies. The revolution by this stage is a ferment ceaselessly
dissolving and reforming social groupings and preventing
crystallizations, preventing life from basking in momentary
success.
Lenin and his most prominent comrades could be swept away by
the onset of the storms they have themselves stirred up. But not
all their followers would disappear. By now there are too many of
them. And the revolutionary fire is spreading, scorching new
hearts and minds, turning them into glowing torches of new light,
new flames, devouring all laziness and fatigue. The revolution
will move forward until its consolidation is total. The time is
still far off when there can be a period of relative calm. And
life is always revolution.