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Title: The Revolutionary Ideas of Bakunin Author: Anarcho Date: 07/24/2008 Language: en Topics: Mikhail Bakunin, introductory Source: Retrieved on 2020-08-24 http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/the-revolutionary-ideas-of-bakunin
Undoubtedly, Bakunin is one of the key anarchist thinkers and activists
of the 19^(th) century.
Building upon the federalist and libertarian socialist ideas of his
friend Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as well as those in the European labour
movement, Bakunin shaped anarchism into its modern form. His
revolutionary, class struggle based anarchism soon became the dominant
form of anarchism in the First International. He combated the state
socialism of Marx and Engels and laid the foundations for both
communist-anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism. His predictions about
Marxism have been confirmed and his critique of capitalism, the state
and religion as just as valid as when they were first expounded. Both
the Russian and Spanish revolutions have confirmed the power of his
ideas on revolution.
Yet Bakunin’s ideas are less well known than they should be outside the
anarchist movement. This is due to the fact that Marxists hate him while
liberals cannot understand him. Their combined distortions of his ideas
have ensured that many radicals have failed to read him and see for
themselves the power of his theories. So why should we be interested in
what a dead Russian had to say in the 1860s and 1870s?
Bakunin’s revolutionary ideas where rooted in materialism. For him,
“facts are before ideas” and the ideal was “but a flower, whose root
lies in the material conditions of existence.” From this base he
produced a coherent defence of individual freedom and its basis in a
free society and co-operation between equals. Rejecting the abstract
individualism of liberalism and other idealist theories, he saw that
real freedom was possible only when economic and social equality
existed: “No man can achieve his own emancipation without at the same
time working for the emancipation of all men around him. My freedom is
the freedom of all since I am not truly free in thought and in fact,
except when my freedom and my rights are confirmed and approved in the
freedom and rights of all men who are my equals.”
For Bakunin, “man in isolation can have no awareness of his liberty ...
Liberty is therefore a feature not of isolation but of interaction, not
of exclusion but rather of connection.” As capitalist ideology glorifies
the abstract individual, it “proclaims free will, and on the ruins of
every liberty founds authority.” This was unsurprising, as every
development “implies the negation of its point of departure.” Thus “you
will always find the idealists in the very act of practical materialism,
while you see the materialists pursuing and realising the most grandly
ideal aspirations and thoughts.” This is obvious today when the
“libertarian” right’s defence of individual liberty never gets far from
opposing taxation while defending “the management’s right to manage” to
maximise profits. Abstract individualism cannot help but justify
authority over liberty. Anarchism, however, “denies free will and ends
in the establishment of liberty.”
This meant that anarchism “rejects the principle of authority.” While
Engels never could understand what Bakunin meant by this, the concept is
simple. For Bakunin, “the principle of authority” was the “eminently
theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always
incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the
benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another,
is imposed from above.” Instead of this, Bakunin advocated what latter
became known as “self-management.” In such an organisation “hierarchic
order and advancement do not exist” and there would be “voluntary and
thoughtful discipline” for “collective work or action.” “In such a
system,” Bakunin stressed, “power, properly speaking, no longer exists.
Power is diffused to the collectivity and becomes the true expression of
the liberty of everyone, the faithful and sincere realisation of the
will of all ... this is the only true discipline, the discipline
necessary for the organisation of freedom.”
Freedom, as Bakunin argued, is a product of connection, not of
isolation. How a group organises itself determines whether it is
authoritarian or libertarian. By the term “principle of authority”
Bakunin meant hierarchy rather than organisation and the need to make
agreements. He rhetorically asked “does it follow that I reject all
authority?” and answered quite clearly: “No, far be it from me to
entertain such a thought.” He acknowledged the difference between being
an authority — an expert — and being in authority. Similarly, he argued
that anarchists “recognise all natural authority, and all influence of
fact upon us, but none of right.” He stressed that the “only great and
omnipotent authority, at once natural and rational, the only one we
respect, will be that of the collective and public spirit of a society
founded on equality and solidarity and the mutual respect of all its
members.”
Given his love of freedom and hostility to hierarchy, Bakunin also
rejected the state, capitalism and religion. In essay “God and the
State” Bakunin argued the necessity of atheism, arguing that “if God is,
man is a slave; now, man can and must be free, then, God does not exist”
for the “idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice;
it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends
in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and in practice.” Not
mincing his words, he stated that “if God really existed it would be
necessary to abolish him.”
As well as opposing divine authority, he rejected more concrete ones as
well. The state, he argued, is an instrument of class rule. It “is the
organised authority, domination and power of the possessing classes over
the masses” and “denotes force, authority, predominance; it presupposes
inequality in fact.” This inequality in power is required to maintain
class society and so the state has evolved a hierarchical and
centralised structure: “Every state power, every government, by its
nature places itself outside and over the people and inevitably
subordinates them to an organisation and to aims which are foreign to
and opposed to the real needs and aspirations of the people.” For
Bakunin, a popular or truly democratic state was impossible as every
state meant “the actual subjection of ... the people ... to the minority
allegedly representing it but actually governing it.”
His critique of capitalism built upon Proudhon’s. Under capitalism “the
worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time” and “concluded
for a term only and reserving to the worker the right to quit his
employer, this contract constitutes a sort of voluntary and transitory
serfdom.” Property meant for the capitalist “the power and the right,
guaranteed by the State, to live ... by exploiting the work of someone
else.” For Bakunin, the consistent libertarian must also be a socialist,
as “only associated labour, that is, labour organised upon the
principles of reciprocity and co-operation, is adequate to the task of
maintaining ... civilised society.”
His opposition to oppression was not limited to just the economy. He
opposed sexism and supported the equality and liberty of women. His
opposition to imperialism is well known. Unlike Marx and Engels, who
happily supported imperialism against “backward” peoples, for Bakunin
“every people, like every person, ... has a right to be itself.”
Bakunin was no passive critic of the existing system. In his eyes there
were three methods to escape the misery of capitalism: the pub, the
church and social revolution. The first was “debauchery of the body,”
the second “of the mind.” Only the last offered genuine hope and so he
took part in the First International and saw collective class struggle
and organisation as the means of both fighting for improvements today
and as the means of creating a free society. “Organise the city
proletariat in the name of revolutionary Socialism,” he argued, “and in
doing this unite it into one preparatory organisation together with the
peasantry.” Prefiguring anarcho-syndicalism, he stressed that anarchists
should take an active part in the labour movement for “to create a
people’s force capable of crushing the military and civil force of the
State, it is necessary to organise the proletariat.”
The strike played a key role in his ideas, as it was “the beginnings of
the social war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie” and “awaken”
in the masses “the feeling of the deep antagonism which exists between
their interests and those of the bourgeoisie” and establishes “very fact
of solidarity.” They “create, organise, and form a workers’ army, an
army which is bound to break down the power of the bourgeoisie and the
State, and lay the ground for a new world.” Bakunin supported the
general strike, for “with the ideas of emancipation that now hold sway
over the proletariat, a general strike can result only in a great
cataclysm which forces society to shed its old skin.”
His activity in the First International brought him into conflict with
Marxism. He rejected Marx’s ideas for numerous reasons. He opposed the
participation of radicals in bourgeois elections, correctly predicting
that when “the workers ... send common workers ... to Legislative
Assemblies ... The worker-deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois
environment ... will in fact cease to be workers and, becoming
Statesmen, they will become bourgeois.” The descent of Marxist
social-democracy into reformism and opportunism confirmed Bakunin’s
worse fears.
Instead of political action, Bakunin argued for “the social (and
therefore anti-political) organisation and power of the working masses
of the cities and villages.” This meant that the “proletariat ... must
enter the International [Workers’ Association] en masse, form factory,
artisan, and agrarian sections, and unite them into local federations”
for “the sake of its own liberation.” Anarchism, however, “does not
reject politics generally. It will certainly be forced to involve itself
insofar as it will be forced to struggle against the bourgeois class. It
only rejects bourgeois politics ... [as it] establishes the predatory
domination of the bourgeoisie.”
As for Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat,” Bakunin rejected it for
two reasons. Firstly, if taken literally, the term at the time meant a
dictatorship by a minority. As Marx himself admitted, the peasantry and
artisans made up the majority of the working masses in every European
country bar the UK. This meant Marx’s vision of “revolution” excluded
the majority of working people. Bakunin objected that this was “nothing
more or less than a new aristocracy, that of the urban and industrial
workers, to the exclusion of the millions who make up the rural
proletariat and who ... will in effect become subjects of this great
so-called popular State.”
Secondly, he doubted whether the whole proletariat would actually govern
in the new state. Rather “by popular government” the Marxists “mean
government of the people by a small number of representatives elected by
the people. So-called popular representatives and rulers of the state
elected by the entire nation on the basis of universal suffrage ... is a
lie behind which lies the despotism of a ruling minority is concealed.”
Lenin’s regime proved him right, quickly becoming the dictatorship over
the proletariat.
Bakunin’s opposition to the “workers’ state” had nothing to do with
organising or defending a revolution, as Marxists claim. Bakunin was
well aware of the need for both after destroying the state and
abolishing capitalism. For him, the anarchist abolition of the state did
not mean the workers (to quote Marx) “lay down their arms.” Bakunin was
clear that “in order to defend the revolution ... volunteers will ...
form a communal militia.” These would “federate... for common defence.”
The communes would “organise a revolutionary force capable of defeating
reaction” and “it is the very fact of the expansion and organisation of
the revolution for the purpose of self-defence among the insurgent areas
that will bring about the triumph of the revolution.”
No, Bakunin’s opposition to Marxism rested on the question of power. If
working class emancipation was to be genuine, the state had to be
destroyed. For if “the whole proletariat ... [are] members of the
government ... there will be no government, no state, but, if there is
to be a state there will be those who are ruled and those who are
slaves.” Thus anarchists do “not accept, even in the process of
revolutionary transition, either constituent assemblies, provisional
governments or so-called revolutionary dictatorships; because we are
convinced that revolution is only sincere, honest and real in the hands
of the masses, and that when it is concentrated in those of a few ruling
individuals it inevitably and immediately becomes reaction.”
Instead of a “revolutionary” government ruling the masses from above in
a centralised state, an anarchist revolution would be based on a
federation of communes and workers’ councils. The very process of
collective class struggle would, for Bakunin create the basis of a free
society. The “federative Alliance of all working men’s [sic!]
associations ... [would] constitute the Commune” and so the “future
social organisation must be made solely from the bottom upwards, by the
free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then
in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation,
international and universal.” The councils from bottom to top would be
composed of “delegates ... vested with plenary but accountable and
removable mandates.”
The basic structure created by the revolution would be based on the
working classes own combat organisations, as created in their struggles
within, but against, oppression and exploitation. And these, not a
ruling party, would make the decisions: “Since revolution everywhere
must be created by the people and supreme control must always belong to
the people organised in a free federation of agricultural and industrial
associations ... organised from the bottom upwards by means of
revolutionary delegation.” The revolutionary group “influences the
people exclusively through the natural, personal influence of its
members, who have not the slightest power” within popular organisations.
Yet Bakunin’s vision of revolution was not purely directed at the state,
it was directed also against capitalism. A free society was based on
“the land, the instruments of work and all other capital” becoming “the
collective property of the whole of society and be utilised only by the
workers, in other words by the agricultural and industrial
associations.” Thus one of the firsts act of the revolution was the
workers making “a clean sweep of all the instruments of labour, every
kind of capital and building.” For “no revolution could succeed ...
unless it was simultaneously a political and a social revolution.” The
social revolution to be, at the same time, the abolition of the state
and of capitalism.
The new, free, society would be organised “from the bottom-up,” as a
“truly popular organisation begins from below, from the association,
from the commune. Thus starting out with the organisation of the lowest
nucleus and proceeding upward, federalism becomes a political
institution of socialism, the free and spontaneous organisation of
popular life.” Economically, wage slavery would be replaced by
co-operative production, which would “flourish and reach its full
potential only in a society where the land, the instruments of
production, and hereditary property will be owned and operated by the
workers themselves: by their freely organised federations of industrial
and agricultural workers.”
In this way, “every human being should have the material and moral means
to develop his humanity.” Bakunin’s anarchism was about changing society
and abolishing all forms of authoritarian social relationship, putting
life before the spirit-destroying nature of the state and capitalism.
For the anarchist “takes his stand on his positive right to life and all
its pleasures, both intellectual, moral and physical. He loves life, and
intends to enjoy it to the full.”
Bakunin’s ideas of what to replace capitalism with are still valid, as
are his suggestions on how to achieve socialism. The Paris Commune was a
striking confirmation of many of his ideas, as were the soviets of the
Russian Revolution and the collectives of the Spanish. His critique of
Marxism has been proven right: Social democracy became as reformist as
he predicted while Bolshevism was as authoritarian. These suggest that
Bakunin’s ideas are worth considering today. Not, though, to mindless
repeat but to built on and development.
Of course there are many aspects of Bakunin’s ideas which are not
discussed here, both positive and negative. His bigotry against Jews and
Germans are examples of the latter, as is his fondness for secret
societies. For all that, Bakunin is rightfully considered a key
anarchist thinker. This is because anarchists are not “Bakuninists” and
can reject the personal flaws and failings of any important anarchist
thinker. Anarchists agree that in many aspects of his ideas and life
Bakunin was wrong. This does not detract from the positive ideas he
contributed to the development of anarchist theory and practice.
The Anarchist Federation’s pamphlet “Basic Bakunin” is a good, cheap and
short introduction to the ideas of Bakunin. Those looking for a more
substantial account of his life and ideas then “Bakunin: The Philosophy
of Freedom” by Brian Morris is highly recommended. The best (and most
expensive) acount of Bakunin’s ideas is Richard B. Saltman’s “The Social
and Political Thought of Michael Bakunin.”
However, reading Bakunin’s writings first hand is always the best.
Freedom Press’ “Marxism, Freedom and the State” is a good, short,
collection of texts. “Bakunin on Anarchism” is a comprehensive
collection of his works while “The Basic Bakunin” contains some
important essays from the late 1860s and early 1870s. Bakunin’s classic
essay “God and the State” is still available and is highly recommended
while his only book “Statism and Anarchy” is worth reading (but the
critique of Marxism within it is only a very small part of the whole).
Volume one of the anarchist anthology “No Gods, No Masters” contains a
representative collection of his key anarchist works.