Curzio Malaparte - Coup d’Etat - The Technique Of Revolution (2004).pdf

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The Technique
Of Revolution
by
Curzio Malaparte
Morris Productions
Aurora, Il
FOREWORD
In 1931, Italian journalist and political writer, Curzio Malaparte, published
a book in Italy entitled TECHNIQUE DU COUP D'ÊTAT. This work was based
on his own personal observation of the activities in Russia at the time of the
Revolution, Poland at the time of the Bolshevik invasion of 1920 and Berlin
during the Kapp putsch. Malaparte was an early supporter of Mussolini and had
first-hand knowledge of the means by which Il Duce had come to power in 1922.
His observations into the means by which power is acquired are acute and
accurate but it is interesting to note that in 1931, he dismisses Adolf Hitler as a
“fat Austrian” and little more than a second-hand imitator of Benito Mussolini.
Malaparte’s work studied the successful, and unsuccessful, coups d’Etat or
seizure of power and his work was both seminal and topical for a European
audience of the 1930s. However, when this book was translated into English and
released in America in 1932, it appeared at the most serious time of the world-
wide depression when millions of angry Americans had been thrown out of
work; seen their life savings vanish, reduced to humiliating poverty and unable
to provide for their families. Herbert Hoover was president and he had made no
visible public efforts to address the growing and bitter frustrations in the United
States.
Malaparte’s book, showing the relative ease with which a modern nation
could be conquered by a handful of determined men, was not well received in
the corridors of power in America and the book was soon viewed as dangerous
and in essence, banned. In a democracy, books are never banned; only officially
ignored which amounts to the same thing.
This is a very important work that should prove to be of interest to any
student of both politics and history.
What is past is prologue to the future.
PREFACE
Although it is my plan to demonstrate how a modern State is captured
and defended, which was, more or less, the subject treated by Machiavelli, this
book is in no sense an imitation of The Prince-not even a modern imitation,
which would be something necessarily remote from Machiavelli. In the age from
which Machiavelli drew his arguments, his examples and the matter for his
reflections, public and private liberties, civic dignity, and the self-respect of men
had fallen so low, that I should fear to be insulting my readers in applying any of
the teachings of the famous book to the urgent problems of modern Europe.
At first sight the whole political history of the last ten years may seem to
he the tale of the operation of the Treaty of Versailles, of the economic
consequences of the war, and of the attempts of Governments to ensure the peace
of Europe. The true explanation is, however, different, and is to be found in the
struggle between the defenders of liberty and democracy, and of the
parliamentary State, against the adversaries of those principles. The attitudes of
the various parties are political aspects of this struggle. To understand many
events of recent years, and to foresee the future of politics within various
European States the behavior of political parties must be considered from this
point of view and this alone. In nearly every country there are on the one hand
parties out to defend the parliamentary State and to apply the Liberal and
democratic method of preserving an internal balance of power. Among these I
count every kind of Conservative, from Right Wing Liberals to Left Wing
Socialists. And on the other hand there are the parties whose view of the State is
revolutionary, parties of the extreme Left and the Extreme Right, Fascists and
Communists, modern Catilines. The Catilines of the Right are concerned with the
preservation of order. They accuse the Governments of weakness, incapacity and
irresponsibility. They proclaim the necessity of a strongly organized State, with a
severe control of political, social, economic life. They are the worshippers of the
State, the advocates of an absolute State. They see the only guarantee of order
and liberty against the peril of Communism in a State which shall take control
from the center, and shall be authoritative, anti- liberal, and anti- democratic.
Mussolini’s doctrine is “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State,
nothing against the State.” The Catilines of the Left seek to capture the State to
install dictatorship of the workers and the peasants. “Where there is liberty there
is no State” is Lenin’s doctrine.
The examples of Mussolini and Lenin are of great importance in the
development of the struggle between the Catilines of the Right and the Left and
the defenders of the Liberal and Democratic State.
Of course Fascist tactics are one thing and Communist tactics another. As
yet, however, neither the Catilines nor the defenders of the State appear to have
recognized what those tactics are, or to define them in such a way as to show up
their differences or their similarities, if any. The tactics of Bela Kun are utterly
unlike those of Bolsheviks. The attempts of Kapp, Primo dc Rivera and Pilsudski
seemed to have been planned in accordance with rules quite different from those
of Fascist tactics. Perhaps Bela Kun displayed the most modern tactics, and,
being more expert than the other three at the job, was a more dangerous person.
Yet he too in setting out to capture the State proved his ignorance not only
of modern tactics of insurrection but also of a modern method of capturing the
State.
Bela Kun fancied he was imitating Trotsky. He did not notice that he had
got no further than the rules laid down by Karl Marx as a result of the Commune
in Paris. Kapp planned to finish off the Parliament of Weimar on the lines of the
eighteenth Brumaire. Primo de Rivera and Pilsudski supposed that to overcome
the modern State you have only to depose constitutional government with a
show of violence.
Neither the Governments nor the Catilines – this much is clear – have ever
seriously studied whether there is a modern science of coup d’ Etat or what its
general rules are. While the Catilines pursue their revolutionary tactics, the
Governments continue to oppose them by defensive police measures, Thus
showing their absolute ignorance of the elementary principles of conquering and
defending the modern State. Such ignorance is dangerous, as I intend to show by
reciting events of which I have been a witness, in which indeed I have played a
certain part myself, the events of the revolutionary season which began in
February 1917 in Russia and seems not yet to have ended in Europe.
The Author
CONTENTS
Chapter One
The Bolshevik’s Coup D’Etat and Trotsky’s tactics
Page
Chapter Two
A Coup D’Etat that Failed: Trotsky vs. Stalin
Page
Chapter Three
1920- Poland’s Experience: Order Reigns in Warsaw
Page
Chapter Four
Kapp or Mars vs. Marx
Page
Chapter Five
Bonaparte- On the first Modern Coup D’Etat
Page
Chapter Six
Primo De Rivera and Pilsudski: A Courtier and a Socialist General
Page
Chapter Seven
Mussolini
Page
Chapter Eight
A Would-Be Dictator: Hitler
Page

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