GIOVANNI BALDELLI these countries from the French of 1789 and the Russian of February 1917 is their encompassing military character, their being more Iike a war than a revolution, their not coming so much from below as Iaterally, from territories and a State apparatus, however embryonic, firmly in the bands of «revolut1onary» cadres, until victory is achieved, and revolution is then carried ·out from above, in typical Stalinist manner, with all the features of downright despotism, however well-intentioned. Obviously for anarchists there can be no genuine revolution except from below. One main tenet of anarchist doctrine is that there be no above and no below; so the only anarchist act that could corne from above is the above coming down and canceling itself as above. Slmilarly any liberation coming laterally is satisfactory in anarchist terms only when the liberator goes back where he came from without leaving any puppet government or other agency to do his bidding. A REVOLUTION bas two moments. The first is the overthrow of an exploiting class and the destruction of its repressive apparatus. This we shall call its catabolic or negative moment. The second is a work of construction, the setting up of new institutions, the creation of a new society, and the flowering of new ways of life, be it through discipline and education or effortlessly as a natural consequence of the death sentence pronounced on the repressive and exploitative system. Thts we shall call the anabolic, positive moment. Now anarchist theory and practice differs from those of revolutionaries of other descriptions in what they make of these two moments. For anarchists the two are not separated in time, while if special organizations have to be created, none of them is to be entrusted with both a catabolic and an anabolic function. Anarchists are against any transition period, it having been historically proven, quite apart from theoretical reasons, that once any such period is inaugurated it tends to last indefinitely as its inaugurators and regulators make its lasting their main concern. The catabolic moment of revolution requires the use of violence or force, but if any organizatlon which is equipped wlth the means of exercizing either should take lt upon itself to exercize a would-be anabolic function, that could only mean that force or violence is used to make the very people for whose sake revolution is allegedly made yleld what they do not want to yield, and do what they do not want to do. Such an organiza114
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