It’s often said that the idea of a communist revolution is “Utopian”.

Is this a fair
assessment of the hopes for revolution, or is it just pessimism and ignorance of
history?

One of the arguments used against communism is that a revolution cannot be

successful because greed will always rule. “People are naturally self-interested”,
they say, “and nothing can change human nature; it’s a nice idea, but it won’t
work because a minority will take advantage or seek control.” In 1936, however,
landlords and industrialists were willingly turning their assets over for
collectivisation by anarchists as part of the war effort against Franco’s fascist
military coup. Sadly the war was lost (due to complicated factors I don’t have
space to even summarise here), denying us a more long-term historical example.
The Zapatistas, however, (of whom more later) have now maintained collective
control of resources such as land for over a decade, adding to the optimist’s
hopes that this self-interest is a product of our society rather than an immutable
human nature.

“Even if communism would work, how would we get there?”, ask the pessimists.
“People are lazy and don’t care about politics, you can’t convince them to work
together to change society”. But history has shown us time and time again that
we cannot write off the masses as unable or unwilling to make change: ordinary
workers contributed to the 1848 revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, the
Spanish Civil War, the Autumn of Nations, and many more revolutions, both
abortive and successful. Perhaps the most vivid illustrations of this lesson are the
Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 – I’ll look at the latter year.

In March of 1917, strikes and protests spread throughout Petrograd; within 4

days the Russian cabinet resigned and before the end of the month the Tsar had
abdicated. The government had been overthrown, and despite attempts to avert
revolution by politicians and generals, Russia was controlled by democratic
workers’ councils 6 months later. This revolution was clearly a “spontaneous” act
of the workers (that is, one achieved through their own actions, not imposed
from above), smashing the myth that ordinary people are naturally too apathetic
to make change. The pessimists object that the revolution led to a one-party
dictatorship; while the subsequent history of the USSR is indeed a tortuous and
unfortunate one, examples from other countries show us that this decline into
despotism is not inevitable.

In 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation declared war on the Mexican
state, in order to defend the rights of indigenous Mayans against a government
they believed to be so out of touch with the people’s desires as to be illegal.
Since 1995, they have maintained an uneasy ceasefire in order to pursue a non-
violent political programme. Far from the dictatorial tendencies of Castro, Stalin
or Mao, the Zapatistas spelled out in advance the people’s right to resist unjust
actions or interference with democracy by their armed forces. They are
renowned for their commitment to democracy. Elections are held as regularly as
every fortnight – although direct democracy is practiced too – and territory is
marked with signs reading “Here, the people give the orders and the
government obeys”.

To conclude: revolution certainly is achievable, and the optimist might say

desirable or even necessary. We are not ready for revolution now, but over time
our experience of class struggle will grow and we will learn from the past. One
thing we can ascertain so far is that we must safeguard democracy against the
bureaucrats that won power under Stalin, Mao et al. Here’s to a society where
the people give the orders.