💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › michail-bakunin-letter-to-albert-richard.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:30:41. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Letter to Albert Richard Author: Michail Bakunin Date: 1870 Language: en Topics: history Source: Retrieved on February 24th, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1870/albert-richard.htm Notes: Source: Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971.
The ill-fated uprising in Lyons of September 5, 1870, led by Bakunin,
Richard, and other members of the secret vanguard organization the
Alliance, occurred shortly before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian
War (July 19, 1870-January 28, 1871).
The “Letter to Albert Richard”, written shortly before the Lyons
uprising, is important primarily because it deals with the crucial
question of the relationship between the revolutionary minority and the
masses. It is also relevant because of relevance to the development of
the Russian Revolution and because it sums up Bakunin’s alternative to
what he saw as authoritarian revolutions.
Albert Richard (1846–1925) was a French anarchist from Lyons, where he
was an active member of the Alliance and a pioneer organizer of the
International. Bakunin accused him of betraying the Lyons uprising by
collaborating with the provisional government. After the fall of the
Paris Commune of May 1871 in which he fought, Richard wrote a pamphlet
urging the restoration of Napoleon III.
Whether Bakunin’s concept of “invisible collective dictatorship”
contradicts his libertarian principles is a matter of controversy. His
early non-anarchist writings favored a Blanquist-type dictatorship, but
his mature anarchist writings are clearly opposed to Blanquist
“vanguardism”. G. D. H. Cole stressed:
“Bakunin agreed with Marx in advocating a dictatorship of the
proletariat over the exploiting classes; but he held that this
dictatorship must be a spontaneous dictatorship of the entire uprisen
working class, and not by any body of leaders set in authority over
them.”
Bakunin’s well-known predilection for the establishment of tightly
organized secret hierarchical organizations, for which he worked out
elaborate statutes in the style of the Freemasons and the Carbonari, can
be attributed partly to his romantic temperament and partly to the fact
that all revolutionary and progressive groups were forced to operate
secretly. Bakunin’s secret organizations were actually quite informal
fraternities of loosely organized individuals and groups connected by
personal contact and correspondence, as preferred by his closest
associates who considered his schemes for elaborate, centralized secret
societies incompatible with libertarian principles.
You keep on telling me that we both agree on fundamental points. Alas!
my friend, I am very much afraid that we find ourselves in absolute
disagreement... . I must, more than ever, consider you as a believer in
centralization, and in the revolutionary State, while I am more than
ever opposed to it, and have faith only in revolutionary anarchy, which
will everywhere be accompanied by an invisible collective power, the
only dictatorship I will accept, because it alone is compatible with the
aspirations of the people and the full dynamic thrust of the
revolutionary movement!
Your revolutionary strategy could be summed up as follows: as soon as
the revolution breaks out in Paris, Paris organizes the Provisional
Revolutionary Commune. Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, and other large cities
revolt at the same time, immediately send their revolutionary
delegations to Paris, and set up a sort of national assembly, or
People’s Committee of Public Safety for all of France. This committee
decrees the revolution for all of France. This committee decrees the
revolution, the abolition of the old state and social liquidation of all
exploitative institutions, be they governmental, religious, or economic.
The committee also decrees, at the same time, the collectivization of
property and the organization of a new revolutionary state with
dictatorial power in order to suppress internal and external reaction:
Is this not your idea?
Our idea, our plan is exactly the opposite — there is no reason to
assume that the revolutionary uprising must necessarily begin in Paris.
It may well begin in the provinces. But let us assume that the
revolution, as usual, begins in Paris. It is our conviction that Paris
should then play only a negative role, i.e., initiate the destruction of
the old order, but not organize the new order (in the rest of France).
If Paris itself stages a successful uprising, it would then have the
obligation and the right to call for solidarity in the complete
political, juridical, financial, and administrative liquidation of the
State, and of political and privately owned or controlled (but not
strictly) personal property; the demolition of all the functions,
services, and powers of the State; the public burning of all public and
private legal documents and records. Paris will immediately and to the
greatest possible extent organize itself in a revolutionary manner. The
newly formed workers’ associations would then take possession of all the
tools of production as well as all buildings and capital, arming and
organizing themselves into regional sections made up of groups based on
streets and neighborhood boundaries. The federally organized sections
would then associate themselves to form a federated commune. And it will
be the duty of the commune to declare that it has neither the right nor
the desire to organize or govern all of France. This commune, on the
contrary, will appeal to all the people, to all the communes, and to
what up till now was considered foreign territory, to follow its
example, to make its own revolution in as radical a manner as possible
and to destroy the state, juridical institutions, privileged ownership,
and so forth.
Paris will then invite these French or foreign communes to meet either
in Paris or in some other place, where their delegations will
collectively work out the necessary arrangements to lay the groundwork
for equality, the indispensable precondition for all freedom. They will
formulate an absolutely negative program which will stress what must be
abolished, organize the common defense and propaganda against the
enemies of the Revolution, and develop practical revolutionary
solidarity with its friends in all lands.
The constructive tasks of the Social Revolution, the creation of new
forms of social life, can emerge only from the living practical
experience of the grass-roots organizations which will build the new
society according to their manifold needs and aspirations.
The provinces, at least such main centers as Lyons, Marseilles,
Saint-Étiénne, Rouen, and others do not have to wait for decrees from
Paris before organizing the Revolution. They must revolt and, like
Paris, make the negative, i.e., the destructive phase of the Revolution.
They must organize themselves spontaneously, without outside
interference, so that the Revolutionary Federal Assembly or Provincial
and Communal Delegations do not attempt to govern and regulate all of
France; the Revolutionary Assembly is, on the contrary, the creation of
local and spontaneous organizations in each of the revolutionary centers
of France. In short, the Revolution emanating from all points should
not, and must not, depend on a single directing center. The center must
not be the source, but the product; not the cause, but the effect of the
revolution.
There must be anarchy, there must be — if the revolution is to become
and remain alive, real, and powerful — the greatest possible awakening
of all the local passions and aspirations; a tremendous awakening of
spontaneous life everywhere. After the initial revolutionary victory the
political revolutionaries, those advocates of brazen dictatorship, will
try to squelch the popular passions. They appeal for order, for trust
in, for submission to those who, in the course and in the name of the
Revolution, seized and legalized their own dictatorial powers; this is
how such political revolutionaries reconstitute the State. We, on the
contrary, must awaken and foment all the dynamic passions of the people.
We must bring forth anarchy, and in the midst of the popular tempest, we
must be the invisible pilots guiding the Revolution, not by any kind of
overt power but by the collective dictatorship of all our allies
[members of the anarchist vanguard organization International Alliance
of Social Democracy], a dictatorship without tricks, without official
titles, without official rights, and therefore all the more powerful, as
it does not carry the trappings of power. This is the only dictatorship
I will accept, but in order to act, it must first be created, it must be
prepared and organized in advance, for it will not come into being by
itself, neither by discussions, nor by theoretical disputations, nor by
mass propaganda meetings...
If you will build this collective and invisible power you will triumph;
the well-directed revolution will succeed. Otherwise, it will not! ! If
you will play around with welfare committees, with official
dictatorship, then the reaction which you yourself have built will
engulf you ... who are already talking yourselves into becoming the
Dantons, the Robespierres, and the Saint-Justs of revolutionary
socialism, and you are already preparing your beautiful speeches, your
brilliant “coups d’états,” which you will suddenly foist on an
astonished world...