Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/99

 masses culminates in a successful attempt to deprive the bourgeoisie of power, this is after all effected only in appearance; always and necessarily there springs from the masses a new organized minority which raises itself to the rank of a governing class. The power conferred on the vanguard is the power to decide, and to order or decree, everything that is done with the productive forces which it personifies. Since what is done with these productive forces determines the shape of the environment in which contemporary human beings live and the activities in which they engage, the power of the vanguard is virtually absolute. —Thus the majority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the dominion of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of a vanguard. —In all times, in all phases of development, in all branches of human activity, there have been leaders.

''he program for revolutionary administration has three equally important aspects: Political—in order to spell out the aims and methods of the struggle; Economic—in order to meet people's material needs; Military—in order that the gains can be protected against hostile forces. —Both anarchism and opportunism are characteristics of this transitional period. They are two sides of the same coin, polar expressions for the same mis-understanding of the nature of the state. —Theophrastus noted long ago that the strongest desire of men who have attained to leadership in a popularly governed state is not so much the acquirement of personal wealth as the gradual establishment of their own sovereignty at the expense of popular sovereignty. —This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. —-The anarchists, who by definition have no organization, have no people that are reliable enough as far as the mass of the people are concerned to replace the government. The anarchists are unable to offer a structural program to replace the government. The anarchists feel they can just go from state to non-state,'' from a capitalist state to a "communist society where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, where society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon,