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Title: The Heretic Author: Max Nomad Date: 1939 Language: en Topics: Mikhail Bakunin, biography Source: Retrieved on 9th November 2020 from http://www.ditext.com/nomad/apostles/bakunin.html Notes: Apostles of Revolution, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939.
A Russian nobleman of royal ancestry, he was the most eloquent champion
of the peasants in revolt against their feudal and semi-feudal masters.
Born to wealth, he preferred the life of a homeless wanderer living on
the bounty of his friends and followers. A despot and authoritarian by
nature, he was the teacher of a gospel that rejected all authority, all
compulsion. An internationalist in the scope of his activities, he was
at heart a Slavic chauvinist who hated and loathed the Germans and the
Jews. A self-confessed disciple of Karl Marx, he was his most bitter
enemy. More famous and influential than his teacher during his lifetime,
he was to shrink to the stature of a mere icon of a dying sect. The real
grandfather and precursor of Bolshevism, he has been denied by his
grandchildren, who even begrudge him a monument. An apostle who inspired
religious devotion in countless Spanish and Italian workers, he was to
become skeptical of his own beliefs during the last years of his life. A
hero of revolutionary uprisings all over Europe, twice condemned to
death, and buried alive in Russia’s most horrible dungeons — yet dying
peacefully as a broken old man in a Swiss hospital. Such was the life of
this Russian of genius, whose courage was as boundless as his body was
gigantic; this titanic adolescent who, born in another period, might
have become a legendary hero of popular folksongs, the founder of a
militant religion, like Mohammed, or the God-Emperor of an authoritarian
State, like Lenin.
Michael Bakunin was born in 1814 in a village of the Tver province in
Central Russia. His father, a landed nobleman, was a man of culture who
had seen Europe in the diplomatic service of his country. To a certain
extent a man of Western ideas, he never let them interfere with the
ownership of his thousand “souls,” as the serfs were called in those
days. When his eldest son Michael was fourteen years old, he sent him to
the Saint Petersburg Artillery School to prepare for the usual career of
a scion of the Russian nobility.
Young Bakunin graduated at the age of eighteen. He did not show much
enthusiasm for his studies and actually “flunked” a post-graduate
examination. As a result, he was sent to serve in a small garrison in
the West, in what is now Lithuania. He showed even less enthusiasm for
the life the other officers were leading and took the first opportunity
to quit the service.
Thus at the age of twenty-one he was at the end of his military career.
As a substitute, he was now offered the possibility of becoming an
official in the secret service. This too failed to arouse his
enthusiasm. Hazily he longed for a life on a higher plane; a life of
noble adventure rather than military laurels; a life devoted to the
acquisition of knowledge rather than to social duties and the usual
diversions of the younger set. This handsome giant was adored by the
fair sex — yet throughout his life he seems to have had no erotic
interests whatsoever.
Having left the army, he yielded to his predilection for philosophical
speculation. To teach that sublime subject, to enter upon an academic
career, now became his great ambition. It is not a mere curious
coincidence that both Bakunin and Marx, who later were to become
champions and antagonists in the revolutionary arena of Europe, started
with the same goal before their eyes. In those years every man who was
ahead of his time felt crushed between the weight of police omnipotence
on the one hand and the hopeless ignorance and passivity of the masses
on the other. Philosophy was the escape of the pioneer type of
intellectual who found no taste in the vulgar pleasures of the ruling
set. It also gave him an opportunity to discover his own superiority to
the real masters, who were more interested in ephemeral realities than
in eternal truths.
In the Thirties, Russia, like Germany and Austria, was still passing
through that period of pan-European reaction which had been inaugurated
by the Holy Alliance after the fall of Napoleon. In Russia this reaction
was strengthened by the memory of the “Decembrist” conspirators, those
liberal aristocrats of 1825 whose uprising, if successful, would have
greatly hastened Russia’s progress along the road of Westernization.
Liberal- constitutionalist sentiment had not died out among the most
enlightened sections of the upper classes. But it found expression
chiefly in literary or philosophical discussions conducted in private
circles.
In Russia, just as in Germany, Hegel was at that time the philosopher
who enjoyed general recognition among all educated people, no matter
what their stand might be with regard to the existing conditions. He was
the final authority on all matters, just as Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas
had been during previous epochs, or as in certain circles of the
advanced intelligentsia Hegel’s disciple Marx was to become half a
century later.
Hegel’s philosophy could be interpreted both as a defense of the status
quo and as a justification of the opposition to it. The Russian
biographer of Bakunin, Steklov, is apparently right in his assumption
that, in the mood of helplessness then prevailing among the
intellectuals of Russia, Hegel’s justification of what existed
(“everything that is real is reasonable”) was a sop to those who, though
dissatisfied with the regime of Nicholas I, felt quite powerless to
challenge it. In fact, to Bakunin this philosophy became more than a
sop. For a while he seems to have accepted it wholeheartedly in the
sense of “a reconciliation with reality in all relations and in all ways
of life.” In other words, the young ex-officer, turned seeker after
truth, had at first become a conservative, at least with his head. With
his temperament, however, he was more inclined to oppose that “reality”
which his mind had told him to accept. Witness his aversion towards
those “Slavophile” intellectuals who meekly submitted to the powerful
machine of Asiatic despotism and found a compensation for their sense of
inferiority in thun-derings against the “decaying” West. Though he too
was imbued with the spirit of Slavic nationalism, he preferred the
company of those courageous individuals who came out openly in favor of
Westernization.
In 1840 Bakunin felt that his hunger for deeper penetration into the
mysteries of philosophy could no longer be satisfied in his native
country. He left for Berlin, the center of philosophical thought on the
European Continent. At the University of Berlin the brilliant Russian
ex-ensign soon attracted the attention of the German professors. But
Bakunin himself soon lost interest in pure speculation. He had come in
contact with some of Hegel’s Left Wing disciples, the Young Hegelians,
who would argue that if what was “real” (that is, what existed) was
reasonable, then the opposition or contradiction called forth by that
which existed was likewise reasonable. For all things were in a state of
flux. Thus revolution against the status quo found its philosophical
justification and could cover itself with the mantle of Hegel.
Philosophical radicalism contributed towards turning Bakunin’s interest
to the study of the more earthly subjects, such as economics, history,
and politics.
He began to read about the socialist and communist movements in France.
Did the revolutionary movement then brewing in most European countries
turn his mind definitely from metaphysics toward active participation in
the historical process? Did his personal tragedy, the sense of
inferiority which he felt by reason of his emotional inadequacy, play a
certain part in his sudden determination to imprint the stamp of his
personality upon the fate of humanity at large? A letter to his family,
dated November 4, 1842, contains the following telling passage: “I have
a great future before me. My forebodings cannot deceive me. If I can but
succeed in fulfilling only a small part of that which swells my breast,
I do not want anything more. I do not want happiness, I do not think of
happiness; I want work, stern work, sacred work. There is a wide field
before me, and my lot will not be a small one.”
The first step in his revolutionary career was an article entitled
“Reaction in Germany,” which appeared in 1842 in the Deutsche Jahrbücher
(German Yearbooks), published by the Young Hegelian, Arnold Ruge. He was
the same German writer who later was to be associated with Karl Marx’s
first venture in revolutionary literature. That article of Bakunin’s was
published under a French pseudonym. Couched in highly technical
philosophical language, it was an inspired defense of revolution, and
contained the exclamation which has since become historic: “The Urge of
destruction is at the same time a creative urge!” The censor did not
understand what it was all about and let the article pass. But that
famous saying contributed its part in giving Bakunin that reputation of
an “Apostle of Pan-Destruction” which a sensational press for many years
attached to his name. In reality, however, it was merely his way of
expressing his groping ardor for a thoroughgoing change in the direction
of more democracy, more freedom, more social justice.
Early in 1843 Bakunin went to Switzerland. In Zurich he made his first
contact with the communist movement, as represented by the following of
the German tailor, Wilhelm Weitling.[1] The Russian truth-seeker was
impressed by the picturesque personality of the new prophet, but he was
not attracted to his system which he visualized as “a forcibly organized
herd of cattle pursuing exclusively material interests and entirely
disregarding the spiritual aspects of life.”
Weitling was soon arrested by the Swiss authorities and later delivered
into the hands of the Prussian police. Bakunin’s name was mentioned in
some of the papers found in the home of the German revolutionist and
from now on the Russian Government was fully aware of the “bad company”
the black sheep of its nobility was keeping. He was officially summoned
to return to his country. When he refused he was deprived of his title
of nobility, condemned to hard labor in Siberia and to confiscation of
his property, should he ever inherit his father’s estate.
Apprised that the Zurich authorities intended to arrest him, Bakunin
left for Brussels, one of the centers for the political refugees and
exiles of the period. There he met Joachim Lelewel, Polish historian and
patriot, who had participated in the national uprising of 1831. This
meeting to a certain extent marks the beginning of that period of
Bakunin’s life — it lasted more than twenty years — during which his
activities and his thoughts were devoted to the cause of the democratic
emancipation of the Slavic races. For, strange as it may sound, the
father of modern international anarchism was a nationalist the greater
part of his life. Nationalism, it is true, was in those years closely
connected with democratic and revolutionary ideas. It was only during
the last decade of his life that his interests turned exclusively toward
the labor movement and the spread of those ideas which were to become
known as anarchism.
From Brussels he went to Paris. In 1843 the capital of France was the
gathering point of liberals and radicals of various schools. Of these,
two made the greatest impression upon Bakunin: Proudhon, usually called
the father of anarchism, and Karl Marx, the father of modern socialism
and communism. Bakunin did not meet the great conspirator Blanqui, who
was in prison at the time. Nor did he ever meet him in later years.
At that time Marx was known only to a small group of German radicals,
while Proudhon had an established reputation as the brilliant author of
What Is Property? Bakunin was attracted to both of them. With Marx he
had in common his training in German philosophy; from Proudhon he
eagerly accepted his libertarian outlook, his “negation” of the State.
With Marx he turned against the purely idealistic conceptions of their
former master Hegel. He was inclined to accept the young German
radical’s materialistic interpretation of history, then in the process
of elaboration. In fact, Marx’s great antagonist of twenty years later
was one of the first non-German “Marxists,” so to speak. Nearly thirty
years later, in a book published in 1873, Bakunin wrote that “No doubt
there is much truth in the merciless criticism directed by him [Marx]
against Proudhon; Proudhon, in spite of all his efforts to stand on firm
ground, has remained an idealist and a metaphysician. His point of
departure is the abstract idea of right; from the right he proceeds to
the economic fact; while Mr. Marx, in contrast to Proudhon, has spoken
out and proved that incontestable truth which has been confirmed by the
entire past and present history of human society, peoples and states,
that the economic fact has always preceded the juridical and political
right. The presentation and proof of this constitutes one of the main
scientific merits of Mr. Marx.”
Bakunin had expressed similar ideas three years before, in a letter
written in 1870. “As a thinker,” he wrote, “Marx is on the right road.
He has established the principle that all religious, political,
juridical developments in history are not the causes but the effects of
economic developments. This great and fruitful thought was not
excogitated by him; it was foreseen, partly even expressed by many
others. But at bottom it is his merit to have given it a solid
foundation and to have made it the basis of his whole economic system.
On the other hand, Proudhon understood and felt liberty much better than
Marx did. Whenever Proudhon does not fall into dogmatism and metaphysics
he has the real instinct of a revolutionist; he adores Satan and
preaches anarchy. It is quite possible that Marx could rise
theoretically to a still more rational system of liberty than Proudhon,
but he lacks Proudhon’s instinct.” [2] It was apparently on account of
this “instinct” that Bakunin felt personally closer to Proudhon. The
French writer’s “an-archy,” that is, “no-government,” appealed to his
emotional craving for the absolute, for the millennium, or, politically
speaking, for a “maximum program.” At the same time, Proudhon’s
insistence upon decentralization, which in the non-English languages is
usually referred to as “federalism,” answered to a certain extent
Baku-nin’s need for a “minimum program” which could be carried out
immediately.
In another respect, however, Marx was bound to appeal to the Russian
much more than did Proudhon. Living in France, under a
near-constitutional regime which granted political liberties giving some
leeway to opponents of the regime, Proudhon could have some hope —
justified or not — that peaceful persuasion might bring about the
changes which he desired. Not so Marx. At that time he was a
revolutionist in the literal sense of the word: that is, he believed
that the existing scheme of things would yield only to a violent
uprising of the dissatisfied masses. This was natural in his case, not
only because he had a better insight into the depth of the social
antagonisms, but also because he came from absolutist, semifeudal
Germany, where only a naive dreamer could expect the ruling nobility and
bureaucracy to relinquish their privileges without a violent struggle.
Still less could a peaceful solution be expected in semi-Asiatic,
despotic Russia.
In 1845 Bakunin made his first public appearance in the French press. In
an article printed in the liberal paper La Refonne he attacked the
Tsarist system, the institution of serfdom, the absolute lack of any
political liberty, the oppression of its national minorities. The
article won Bakunin the sympathies of the numerous Polish emigrants in
Western Europe. Two years later he was invited by them to speak at a
banquet commemorating the Polish uprising of 1831. That speech was
published and aroused the great ire of the Russian Ambassador. Unable to
strike at Bakunin in any other way, he resorted to the infernal device
of destroying his character in the eyes of the radical public. In a most
insidious way the Russian diplomat and his agents began to spread the
rumor that Bakunin had been employed in their secret service and had
been discharged by them. They also hinted at financial irregularities.
The stories were believed — particularly by the Poles. To them a Russian
who sympathized with their cause was an enigma anyhow. Moreover,
Bakunin’s means of support were unknown — his family certainly could not
send him anything if his opposition to the regime was genuine. He had no
occupation or any other source of income, and so again people were ready
to believe the worst. The fact was that he lived in great poverty most
of his life — by borrowing money from various friends. He always had a
number of admirers or sympathizers who were ready to keep him from
starvation.
While spreading these rumors, the Russian Ambassador at the same time
used diplomatic pressure to have the dangerous agitator expelled from
France. Bakunin left for Brussels, where he remained for a few months,
until the Revolution of February, 1848, enabled him to return to Paris.
The sight of revolutionary Paris intoxicated him. For days he imbibed
its spirit. He stayed, ate and slept in one of the capital’s barracks
and talked to the “Montagnards.” This was the name of the heroic elite
of the proletarian barricade fighters, who had been rewarded with
picturesque uniforms and the steady pay of a new revolutionary police
force.
The record of those days, as set down in his Confession, written three
years later, is poetical prose of the first order. It is filled with
retrospective melancholy at the thought of the miserable fate of that
Revolution. “If those people,” he wrote, “if those French workers had
found a leader worthy of them, capable of understanding them and of
loving them, that leader would have accomplished miracles with them.”
Did he have visions of himself as such a miracle man, had he been a
Frenchman, or at least a Corsican?
It may seem that to a certain extent the new masters of the country
sensed his potential powers. Caussidiere, the new Chief of the Police,
who for years had been a conspirator against the monarchy, expressed the
apprehension felt by the enthroned republican aristocracy in the famous
words, “What a man! What a man! A jewel on the first day of the
Revolution, but he should be shot on the next!” For to Bakunin the
Republic was not the end, but merely the beginning of the Revolution.
What he was preaching at that time was a combination of the most extreme
equalitarian anarchist socialism for the civilized West with a
democratic nationalism for the backward Slavic East.
However, a revolution in the East was nearer to his heart. A radical
member of the new French Cabinet advanced two thousand francs from the
Treasury to get him out of the country. Bakunin went to Germany to take
up his quarters somewhere on the eastern border. There he could help the
Poles to rise against Prussia, Austria, and Russia. He could also
contribute to the spread of the revolutionary contagion to the various
Slavic races living under the German and Hungarian domination of the
Hapsburg monarchy. And he could dream of the miracle of a revolution in
Russia as well. Bakunin went to Bres-lau in Silesia, the
southeasternmost section of Prussia. His hopes of getting in touch with
Polish emigrants came to naught. The Poles did not trust him. They had
heard of the rumors spread by the Russian Embassy in Paris and were
inclined to believe them.
From the Poles Bakunin turned to the Slavs of Austria, particularly to
the Czechs. It was among them that he hoped to find his Archimedean
“place to stand” from which he could “move the earth.” The Revolution of
March, 1848, in Vienna, and the revolutionary events in Hungary had
aroused the hopes of the Slavs living under the dual monarchy. Soon
enough, however, the Czechs and the Slovaks in the North and the Croats
in the South realized that the German-Austrian and Hungarian democrats
had no intention of releasing their grip upon those races which had
lived in subjection to Hapsburg rule. These strange German-Austrian
fighters for liberty found it quite consistent with their democratic
ideals to send troops for combating the Italian patriots who wanted
independence from the dual monarchy — just as the democratic German
Parliament at Frankfort, likewise a child of the Revolution of March,
1848, took a typically nationalistic attitude toward the Polish uprising
in the Prussian province of Posen.
Naturally enough, the middle classes of the Slavic races reciprocated.
With the connivance of the reactionary spheres they were now out to turn
the tables on their German and Hungarian would-be masters. They devised
the idea of a reorganized Hapsburg Empire in which the Slavic privileged
groups would be on top. In order to further this idea they called a
Congress of the Slavic Nationalities to be held in Prague in the middle
of May, 1848.
Bakunin decided to participate in that Congress. He wanted to offer the
assembled delegates a higher ideal of Slavic liberation. What he aimed
at was nothing less than the destruction of the Austrian Empire, after
which all the Slavic races would form a federated Slavic Republic —
stretching apparently from the Pacific to the very heart of Europe. It
was a large order, calling for a series of revolutions that would turn
half of Europe upside-down, but this was exactly what Bakunin’s soul was
longing for. That Slavic pipe-dream had a few non-Slavic flaws: the
German Sudeten minority was to remain within the orbit of Prague; the
Hungarians, the Rumanians, and the Greeks were to lose their
independence because their lands were merely small islands surrounded by
the great Slavic sea; and half-Turkish, half-Greek Constantinople was to
become the capital of the great Slavic Federation. The dream had some
similarities to the Pan-Slavic ambitions of the Tsarist statesmen —
except, of course, that the object of Bakunin’s aspirations was to be a
democratic republican federation, which would do away with all the
remnants of feudalism.
Needless to say, the delegates at the Slavic Congress were not
interested in the grandiose scheme of the lone Russian romantic — even
though that dreamer was a greater realist than these politicians, for he
foresaw and warned them that the Haps-burgs would bear them no
gratitude, and that, having finished with the German-Austrian and the
Hungarian rebels, they would again reduce the Slavs to the same old
thraldom. In that difficult situation he was trying to find a way that
would reconcile the ambitions of the German and Hungarian democrats with
those of the Slavs.
Bakunin’s ideas struck a responsive chord among a few Slovaks,
Moravians, Serbs and Croats. With them he founded a secret organization
called “the Slavic Friends.” But before Bakunin’s organization had any
chance of extending its activities, an uprising took place in Prague.
Organized by the Czech university students and one of the radical Czech
parties, that revolt reflected the mood of the dissatisfied poorer
sections of the Czech population. Bakunin had not been initiated into
the plans; but when the fight started he took a rifle and fought on the
barricades. When the struggle was nearing its end, he advised the
students to depose the Czech Provisional Government which was
negotiating with the Austrian military commander, and to establish a
“military committee with dictatorial powers.” His advice was accepted,
but before anything could be done the fight was over. The defeat of the
uprising led to the dispersion of the delegates to the Slavic Congress
and to the disappearance of Bakunin’s short-lived Slavic Friends.
Bakunin succeeded in escaping to Germany.
The victory of the Austrian Army over the insurgents of Prague in the
middle of June, 1848, was one of the symptoms of the impending doom of
revolution on the Continent. Bakunin saw it coming and he blamed it
largely on the blind selfishness of the German democrats. For only a
united front of all races of Central and Southern Europe could have
prevented a comeback of monarchist reaction.
His growing anti-German sentiment was greatly intensified by a personal
injury done him by a German democratic publication, the daily Neue
Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, which was edited by Karl Marx. The author
of the Communist Manifesto, who was now a member of the Left Wing of the
German Democratic Party, was well aware of the shortcomings of the
German democrats. But German national feeling was strong enough in him
to render him even more hostile to Bakunin’s revolutionary Pan-Slavism
than to the simple chauvinism of the German democrats. He doubtless felt
that Bakunin’s aims were part and parcel of the Tsarist Pan-Slavic
policy, which was out to conquer all the Slavic territories in Central
and Southern Europe. In the issue of July 6, 1848, his newspaper
inserted a little note saying: “With regard to the Slavic propaganda, we
were informed yesterday that George Sand is in possession of papers
seriously compromising the reputation of the Russian exile, M. Bakunin.
They represent him as a tool or a newly-engaged Russian agent who is
chiefly responsible for the recent arrests among the unfortunate Poles.
George Sand has shown these papers to some of her friends.” George Sand
had not shown these papers to anybody, because she never had them, and
she sent an energetic protest to Marx’s paper testifying to the
soundness of Bakunin’s character. Marx, who apparently had been misled
by gossip-mongers, published her letter — not, however, without patting
himself on the back for the two performances: “We have thus fulfilled
the duty of the press to watch public characters rigorously,” he wrote,
“and at the same time we have given Mr. Bakunin an opportunity to dispel
a suspicion which certainly had been raised in Paris in certain
circles.” It was a peculiar way of showing his concern over the good
name of Bakunin.
Bakunin knew that the slander had originated in the Russian Embassy. He
had suffered from it greatly during the crucial months of 1848, when it
raised a barrier of suspicion between him and other revolutionists. The
repetition of the same stories by Marx, even though followed by a
retraction, left a deep scar in his personal relations with his future
rival for revolutionary leadership.
He was not permitted to stay long in Prussia. Expelled from both Berlin
and Breslau, he went to Dresden, but eventually had to settle in the
small principality of Anhalt — a sort of ultra-liberal oasis surrounded
by the Prussian conservative desert. Here, from a quiet vantage-point,
he could watch the gradual advance of reaction through Central Europe,
and particularly the march of a pro-Hapsburg Croatian army against
democratic Vienna. The clever game of the Austrian dynasty, in using the
Slavs against the democratic but chauvinistic Germans and Hungarians,
was bearing fruit. A rapprochement between the Slavs and their opponents
was necessary in order to avoid a complete triumph of the
counterrevolution. Bakunin wrote a pamphlet published in German and
entitled Appeal to the Slavs, which stressed the necessity for an
understanding with the German and Hungarian democrats. The pamphlet
found a very friendly reception in Prague, and helped Bakunin to renew
his connections with the Czech democrats.
These connections were now of great importance to him. The German
democrats were now preparing for a general uprising which was slated for
the spring of 1849. The Hungarians were asserting their independence,
arms in hand. Bakunin hoped his followers in Prague would stir up a
popular uprising in Bohemia that would be the link between the German
and Hungarian revolutions.
Bohemia was at that time economically more advanced than most of the
other sections of the dual monarchy. It had a large number of industrial
workers. These, in Bakunin’s opinion, were “the predestined recruits of
democratic propaganda.” Bakunin had stayed long enough in France to
understand that in the West at least a successful revolution was
unthinkable without the support of the industrial workers.
“I aspired,” he says in his Confession, “to an absolute, radical
revolution in Bohemia, in short, to a revolution which, even if it were
suppressed, would succeed in upsetting everything. I wanted to take
advantage of the favorable circumstance that the entire nobility in
Bohemia and the entire class of rich property-holders were composed
exclusively of Germans, in order to exile all the noblemen and the
hostile clergy; and, after the estates of the feudal lords had been
seized, one part of them would be distributed among the poor peasants in
order to win them over to the revolution, while the remainder would be
used for creating extraordinary revenues for the revolution. It was my
intention to destroy all castles, to burn all administrative records and
all titles of the feudal lords, to declare null and void all mortgages,
as well as other debts not exceeding a certain amount, for instance, one
thousand or two thousand gulden. In short, the revolution which I
planned was ... to be directed against institutions [things] rather than
against human beings.” Bakunin goes on to explain that this revolution
would not have been limited to one race, that it would soon have
embraced all Slavs; that it would have contributed to inciting a mass
revolution in Germany. It would also have led to the fall of the
Hapsburg monarchy by lending assistance to the Hungarians fighting for
independence, and by uniting all Slavic peoples in a Slavic federation.
Pursuing his idea, Bakunin turns to the political aspects of his
revolution. “The government was to be established in Prague; it was to
be provided with unlimited dictatorial powers ... the entire Austrian
administration was to be definitely abolished and the functionaries were
to be removed. Only some of the most important and best informed among
them would have been kept in Prague, to serve as advisers and to furnish
statistical information. All clubs, all newspapers, all the
manifestations of a gabbing anarchy would likewise have been suppressed.
Everything was to be subjected to a dictatorial power. [Italics mine, M.
N.] The youth and all the capable men, divided into categories according
to their character, their capacities, and their personal inclinations,
would have been distributed throughout the country in order to assure it
a provisional, revolutionary and military organization. The masses would
have been divided into two groups; those of the first group, armed in
one way or another, were to remain at home to protect the new order; if
need be they could be used for guerilla warfare. On the other hand, all
the young people, all poor men able to carry arms, the unemployed
industrial workers and artisans, as well as a large part of the educated
bourgeois youth, would have constituted an army — not an army of
partisans, but a regular army, formed with the help of former Polish
officers, and retired Austrian soldiers and non-commissioned officers
who could be raised to the various higher ranks in accordance with their
capacity and their zeal. The expenditures would have been enormous, but
I expected to cover them partly from the proceeds of the confiscations
and from extraordinary revenues, as well as by ‘assignats’ similar to
those issued by Kossuth.”
All this has a very familiar ring. With a few changes all of these
revolutionary dreams of young Bakunin — he was thirty-four years old
when he conceived the plan — were to be carried out on a much larger
scale seventy years later by Lenin, a Russian nobleman like himself, and
particularly by Trotsky, one of those Jewish intellectuals whom Bakunin
so despised. Similar methods were at that time identified with the name
of Blanqui, and shortly after those events Marx likewise was to come out
in favor of extreme measures of this kind. But Bakunin, though strongly
influenced by Marx — who at that moment did not take such a radical
position as yet — was an admirer of Proudhon and considered himself an
Anarchist, that is, an enemy of all organized government. But he could
not escape that tragic situation which confronts every radical school
advocating the complete abolition of oppression and exploitation. For
between the capitalist hell of wage slavery and the socialist,
communist, syndicalist or anarchist heaven of social and economic
equality, there stands the inevitable transitional phase with its
dictatorial or democratic bureaucracy, its military officers and its
technical experts, all of whom will insist upon the necessity of a
strong government and of higher emoluments and softer jobs for the
owners of superior brains. And the transitional phase becomes
“transitional” only in a cosmic sense, for its beneficiaries will use
their newly acquired power for the purpose of perpetuating that uphase,”
until a new revolution ushers in a new transitional phase, with another
set of “transitional” officeholders.
An “anarchism” of the same kind Bakunin had in store for his own country
as well. Speaking of the form of government which the victorious
revolution would introduce in Russia, he says: —
I believe that in Russia, more than elsewhere, a strong dictatorial
power will be necessary, a power which will be exclusively preoccupied
with raising the education of the masses; a power free in its tendencies
and in its spirit, but without parliamentary forms; printing books of a
free content, but without liberty of the press; a power surrounded by
partisans, enlightened by their advice, strengthened by their free
collaboration, but not limited by anything or anybody. I told myself
that the difference between this dictatorship and the monarchist power
would consist exclusively in this: that the former, in accordance with
the spirit of its principles, ought to have the tendency towards
rendering its own existence superfluous [italics mine — M. N.], for it
would have no other aim than freedom, independence, and the progressive
maturity of the people, while the monarchist power would, on the
contrary, always endeavor to render its own existence indispensable, and
would consequently be obliged to keep its subjects in a perpetual
condition of ignorance. I did not know what would follow the
dictatorship, and I thought that nobody could foresee it.
(The Anarchist historian and biographer of Bakunin, Max Nettlau, was
decidedly embarrassed by the passages which show that Bakunin was the
true spiritual father of the Bolsheviks with their cant about the
eventual voluntary abdication of dictatorship, the Marxian “withering
away of the State,” and the like. So in his notes to the Confession (p.
325) he writes quite naively: “This passage has been quoted in order to
build up the legend that Bakunin was in favor of a dictatorship.
However, simple fairness should enable the reader to see that what he
[Bakunin] desired was, so to speak, the technical dictatorship of the
bootblack, of soap and of the broom, of elementary intellectual, moral
and social hygiene, for a country that has been the victim of enormous
neglect.” In a similar way Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in their Soviet
Communism — A New Civilization? denied that there was any dictatorship
in Russia at all, presenting Stalin’s Genghis-Khan despotism as the
purest form of democracy.)
To bring about that revolution, Bakunin suggested to his followers in
Prague the formation of a secret society that would embrace all of
Bohemia. In fact, there were to be three secret organizations: —
One for the lower middle classes, one for the youth, and one for the
rural regions. Each of them would be subjected to a strict hierarchy and
to absolute discipline.... These societies were to be limited to a small
number of persons, but would include, as far as possible, all men of
talent, knowledge, intelligence and influence, who, while obeying a
central authority, would in turn exert a sort of invisible sway over the
masses. These three societies would be integrated by a Central Committee
composed of three or at most five members: myself, Arnold [Bakunin’s
chief agent in Prague], and others.... After the success of the
revolution my secret society would not be dispersed; on the contrary, it
would be strengthened ... and gradually it would embrace all Slavic
lands; I hoped it would likewise furnish the men for the various tasks
of the revolutionary hierarchy. Finally, I hoped with its help to be
able to create and consolidate my influence in Bohemia: for, without the
knowledge of Arnold, I had at the same time entrusted a young German
student from Vienna with the organization, according to the same plan,
of a society among the Germans of Bohemia of which I would be the secret
chief without at first being ostensibly a member of its Central
Committee. Thus, if my plan had been realized, all the essential threads
of the movement would have been concentrated in my hands, and I would
have been sure that the revolution, planned for Bohemia, would never
have deviated from the path which I had mapped out for it. As regards
the revolutionary government, ... I did not know whether I would take
part in it openly, but it seemed to me certain that I would participate
in a direct and intensive way.[3]
(The same principle of organization and revolutionary government is
found in the statutes of Bakunin’s secret societies of the later Sixties
during the more outspoken phase of what is called his “Anarchism.”)
In the spring of 1849 Bakunin went illegally to Dresden, the capital of
Saxony, in order to be in closer contact with his followers in Bohemia.
He expected his Czech fellow-conspirators to call him at any moment to
Prague, where he could take charge of the uprising. But a peculiar
unlucky star seemed to hang over his plans. Quite unexpectedly the
revolution, instead of breaking out where he wanted it, occurred in the
very city in which he was staying. The uprising in Dresden was caused by
the refusal of the King of Saxony to approve the Constitution adopted by
the National Assembly in Frankfort. By dismissing the Saxon Diet which
had voted for it the King aroused the respectable middle class
democrats, who took up arms and established a Provisional Government.
The uprising started on May 3, 1849. It was eventually subdued by
Prussian troops which came to the assistance of the Saxon dynasty. By
his participation in this struggle alone Bakunin has earned an honorable
place among the noblest revolutionary figures of modern times. It was
not his revolution; he did not have a high opinion of the German
liberals and democrats; their struggle for democracy and national unity
was marred by their German nationalism which took it for granted that
the “inferior” races should be kept “in their place” — and Bakunin
himself belonged to one of those despised inferior races. His own
revolution which he contemplated in Bohemia was in immediate need of his
leadership; and it had, so he was convinced, a much greater chance of
success than an uprising in Germany. For he was skeptical of the
rebellious virtues of a people whom he thought to be a race of
“flunkeys.”
Yet he decided to remain in Dresden and to risk his life — out of
considerations of pure chivalry. To act otherwise, he said in his
Confession, would have been cowardice. He saw how the uprising was
bungled by incompetents or cowards; and he felt honor bound to lend his
assistance to the one member of the Provisional Government who, though
very moderate in his views, was made of the same heroic stuff as Bakunin
himself. That man had decided to remain at his post, while most of the
other leaders were trying to save their skins.
Bakunin’s advice to the Provisional Government, valuable though it was,
was unable to save a hopeless situation. His participation in the
uprising, both as a military expert and as a combatant on the
barricades, has earned him the reputation, somewhat exaggerated, of
“dictator” of the Saxon capital during those five days. Yet his part was
considerable enough to gain him the recognition of Marx and Engels, who
certainly were not his friends, and who in their Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in Germany referred to him as the “able and
cool-headed commander” of the insurgents. There are also those who, like
Bernard Shaw, believe that Richard Wagner, himself a participant in the
uprising, and personally acquainted with Bakunin, was inspired by the
memory of the fearless Russian in creating his Siegfried.
Bakunin was arrested shortly after the superior forces of the Prussians
had broken all resistance. The subsequent twelve years of his life
formed a chain of sufferings such as few men of his time had to go
through. Condemned to death by the Saxon Government, he was a year later
handed over to the Austrian authorities, which, in turn, condemned him
to death for his participation in the Prague uprising of 1848. But as
the Hapsburgs owed a debt of gratitude to Tsar Nicholas I for his
military assistance against the Hungarian revolution, Bakunin was given
over to the Russian authorities. He had been chained to the wall in the
Austrian prison at Olmutz. He was now placed in the dungeons of the
Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, where he expected the
torturer’s rack and the firing squad.
But the Tsar reserved for him another kind of torture. He had heard much
of the revolutionary fame of this ex-ensign of his own artillery. He now
wanted to enjoy the sadistic pleasure of tearing more than the mere
flesh and breaking more than the mere bones of so distinguished an
enemy. So he sent to him his aide-de-camp with the polite invitation to
make a clean breast of his past and to submit to the Emperor the
confession of a repentant sinner facing his spiritual father. The Tsar,
it must not be forgotten, was the religious leader of all orthodox
Russians.
Bakunin accepted. For two months he was busy working on a sort of
autobiography which began with his entrance into the artillery school
and ended with his arrest in Saxony after the breakdown of the Dresden
uprising. It was a long-winded spiritual self-castigation which reached
the dimensions of a sizeable book. In fact, it was perhaps the only book
which he really finished; for practically all of his other writings — in
spite of their enormous cumulative volume — have remained unfinished
fragments; just as his life, as he once put it, was only a fragment.
By friend and foe alike that Confession has been accepted as a sincere
and authentic record of his opinions and actions up to the moment of his
imprisonment; and so the ideas contained in it may be taken at their
face value. But the historical and autobiographical gold contained in
the document is heavily alloyed with the very base metal of humility and
repentance, a manner of approach which was indispensable if the
Confession was to be submitted to the man for whom it was written.
That tone of repentance makes very depressing reading for those who
cannot help admiring the Promethean figure of the great rebel — much as
they may disagree with his ideas or be repelled by many of his
attitudes. However, it has often been pointed out that he certainly
would not have assumed that tone if he had any chance of being tried
publicly. Then he would have courageously defied his judges and paid
with his life for the heroic gesture. But there was not going to be any
trial. He had been tried and convicted in his absence many years before.
And he was destined either to die quickly or to rot away slowly, his
sufferings remaining unknown to the world at large. So he thought to
outwit the enemy by pretending contrition — for a chance to have his
penalty alleviated, that is to be sent to Siberia, whence he hoped to
escape.
It was a compromise which later generations of Russian revolutionists
did not consider honorable. Even before that time heroic revolutionists
of nineteenth-century France, such as Barbes, had insisted that there
could be no conversation between captor and captive; that they belonged
to two different species, between whom there could be no demand for
mercy. But the situations were not strictly analogous. There was the
publicity of the trials in the France of Barbes, and there was also a
strong republican movement which would keep up the French rebel’s
“morale.” On the other hand, Russia in those days was steeped in
Oriental despotism, and Bakunin was a solitary radical while practically
all the other Russian intellectuals of the time were still cowering in
fear and passive submission.
Despite these attenuating circumstances, however, that humiliation would
perhaps have ruined his reputation among his contemporaries had it
become known at the time. But the Confession remained in the Tsarist
archives for seventy years before it was discovered and published by the
Bolsheviks. True, during a later period of Bakunin’s revolutionary
activities, after his flight from Siberia, the Tsarist authorities
thought for a while of using that document to compromise the great
rebel; they even prepared a pamphlet with extracts from it, but at the
last moment they changed their plans. In Max Nettlau’s opinion they were
apparently afraid that a Confession couched in such humiliating terms
might evoke the suspicion that it was obtained by torture. In the
nineteenth century, strange as it may seem, the beneficiaries of Russian
despotism somehow stood in awe of the public opinion of the civilized
world. Unlike their Bolshevik successors, they did not have at their
service an army of “liberal” and “radical” sympathizers ready to defend
their worst ignominies.
However, the Confession remained without effect. Bakunin had at the very
outset refused to mention any names, to render any services to the
Tsar’s police department. He insisted upon confessing merely his own
“sins,” not those of others. True, he attempted to cater to the Tsar’s
prejudices by emphasizing his dislike of and his contempt for the
Germans[4] — but these were his real sentiments. He also spoke
disparagingly of parliamentary methods — and here again his conceptions
coincided with those of the Emperor, the difference being that Bakunin
preferred his own anti-parliamentary dictatorship to that of the
Romanovs. But to Nicholas he remained an unrepentant sinner as long as
he did not turn informer.
Bakunin remained six years in the most terrible seclusion — four years
in the Peter and Paul Fortress and two years in the dungeons of
Schlusselburg. In 1857 his mother obtained for him the permission to
write a request for a pardon to the new Tsar, Alexander II, the later
“Emancipator.” That letter was the greatest humiliation in Bakunin’s
life; it was couched in terms of the most sickening servility and
self-abasement, the work of a man whom mental and physical sufferings
had all but broken. A Hercules and an Apollo only a few years before, he
was now, at forty-three, a sick old man, disfigured and altogether
toothless. Scurvy, the traditional curse of the old Tsarist prisons, had
done its work.
That letter eventually opened the doors of his prison. He was brought to
Western Siberia, where he settled in Tomsk, then only a small town. It
was freedom of a sort, except that he was thousands of miles removed
from what was his life element — political activity and struggle for
power. He did not resign himself to his fate and never ceased hoping for
an opportunity which would enable him to return to Europe.
The opportunity came soon enough. Eastern Siberia was at that time
governed by Count Nicholas Muraviev-Amursky — the last name having been
added in recognition of his merits in “acquiring” from China all the
territory north and east of the Amur River. He was a sort of
Empire-builder, combining some Western near-liberal ideas with the truly
despotic brutality of an Asiatic conqueror. A second cousin of the great
rebel, he met the black sheep of his family when on his trip across
Siberia he stopped at Tomsk. The two men immediately took a liking to
each other. The high-placed satrap enabled Bakunin to settle in Irkutsk,
the administrative capital of Eastern Siberia, where the famous exile
was in close contact with the powerful governor.
The period of Bakunin’s friendship with Count Muraviev-Amursky throws a
curious light upon the Jekyll-Hyde nature of his character. Politically
there had always been two souls in the breast of the great rebel. That
part of him which soared to the stars dreamed of a thorough world
revolution which would leave no stone of the old system unturned so that
a new and better humanity might arise from the bloody welter of
destruction. This was the Bakunin of the “Apostle of Pan-Destruction”
legend, the Bakunin who became the father of revolutionary anarchism,
the Bakunin who felt that it takes chaos to produce a dancing star — to
use the expression of a German philosophical anarchist who was more
outspoken in his aristocratic leanings than was the Russian nobleman.
But there was also another Bakunin; the Bakunin who was a Russian
nationalist, who idealized the Slavs as endowed with all the
revolutionary virtues, and who dreamed of a modernized Slavic World
Empire, not headed by a crowned despot or figurehead, but by a
“republican” dictator; a Bakunin who hated the Germans and despised the
Jews; a Bakunin, in short, who was a cross between a Fascist and a
“Communist” dictator. The second Bakunin was very hard to kill; and it
was only during the last years of his life that the Doctor Jekyll of
international revolutionary socialism, erroneously called “anarchism,”
overpowered the Mr. Hyde, who had the upper hand during most of his
life-span.
Muraviev was not an ordinary Tsarist governor-general, to be sure. He
was a man of vision, a “liberal” of a sort, who opposed serfdom and
advocated a number of other reforms, short of parliamentary rule,
however, which would have modernized the Empire. His sentiments and his
dreams coincided to a large extent with those of Bakunin. He hated the
Germans and hoped for a war with Austria and Turkey which would bring
the Western and Southern Slavs into a great Slavic federation — under
Russian hegemony, of course. His success as an Empire-builder in Eastern
Asia doubtless evoked in his imagination a picture of himself in a
similar role in Central Europe as well. As the victor in a war with
Austria, he would have become the most powerful man from the Pacific to
the Danube. Was he ever perfectly frank with his cousin about his
supreme ambitions? At any rate, Bakunin saw in him the strong man with
progressive ideas who was fit to become dictator of an immense Slavic
realm; an enlightened dictator, of course, influenced by the ideas of
the rebel who had had similar ambitions in i848, but who, for the time
being at least, was ready to play second fiddle. This vista made Bakunin
close his eyes to Muraviev’s arbitrary methods of administration, which
were opposed by practically all political exiles then in Eastern
Siberia.
The liberty which Bakunin enjoyed in Siberia, even after Muraviev had
left his post, eventually enabled him to escape. He succeeded in
boarding an American vessel which was bound for Japan, and, after
crossing the Pacific, the American Continent and the Atlantic, he
arrived in London at the end of 1861.
In London Bakunin found himself in the closest contact with Alexander
Herzen and Nicholas Ogarev, Russia’s veteran exiles and men of great
literary merit. Both admired their friend’s courage, but did not share
his exuberant optimism. Moderate Liberals, they looked forward to a
gradual Europeanization of Russia, but did not have much faith in
violent attempts at hastening the process. The only point where their
sentiments coincided with those of the fiery rebel was in their dislike
for the Germans and their aversion to Karl Marx and his circle. That
dislike was mutual. It had its roots not in the fact that Herzen’s
revolutionism was of a “bourgeois” tinge, while Marx’s brand was
“proletarian,” as the official historians of modern socialism would have
it. It derived chiefly from the clash of nationalist sentiments which
were equally strong on both sides. Some of the things Marx and Engels
had written in 1848–1849 equalled — and even exceeded; yes, exceeded! —
in contempt for the various Slavic nationalities anything that a
militant Pan-Germanist or Nazi could have written several decades later.
To be sure, those stylistic exaggerations, which to this day make Slavic
Marxists feel uneasy and apologetic, were prompted by a laudable
eagerness to defend German democracy. But the Slavs, quite naturally,
saw the facts and not the intentions. And nationalism being one of the
original sins of man, they sinned in the same direction. In 1862, at the
time when Marx was all immersed in the study of the mechanism of modern
capitalism, Bakunin’s chief hatred, as expressed in his letters written
in 1862, was still concentrated upon the Germans.[5]
Bakunin’s dislike for Marx was intensified by the memory of the attack
printed in Marx’s paper in 1848, and also by a chain of
misunderstandings which led him to the belief that Marx was responsible
for various slanderous remarks published in the British press while he
was in prison. Marx was actually innocent in the matter, but he was not
innocent of a certain Russophobia which even in his later years made him
say that “With a few exceptions, all Russians who live abroad are agents
of Pan-Slavism, and that Herzen was likewise such a Pan-SIavistic
agent.”[6]
The accumulation of old facts and new misunderstandings reopened the
never completely healed wound, and during that year and a half, while
Bakunin was staying in London, he never once visited the famous German
rebel. He devoted himself exclusively to the cause of Slavic
emancipation, the pet idea that had occupied all his thoughts in the
late Forties.
The two pamphlets he wrote during 1862 contain little to foreshadow the
proletarian internationalist of six years later. The first of them,
entitled To My Russian, Polish and All Slavic Friends, dwells upon his
dreams of a federated Republic embracing all Slavs, every single Slavic
nationality enjoying its autonomy as an equal among equals. Shortly
afterwards, Bakunin turned to practical questions concerning not the
Slavic world at large but his own country. Russia had just gone through
two of the most momentous events of its nineteenth century history: the
humiliating Crimean War of 1855, and the “Emancipation” of the serfs of
1861. The latter was partly a consequence of the great wave of
dissatisfaction that swept the country after the war. The reform did not
satisfy anybody. Revolutionary elements among the lower middle-class
intelligentsia, and liberal elements among the land-holding nobility and
the propertied middle-classes became more and more outspoken in their
demand for a National Assembly. Apprised of what was going on in Russia,
Bakunin decided to talk like a practical politician who demands only
what is possible and uses all those materials which are at his disposal.
The outcome of this “practical” turn was the second pamphlet, The Cause
of the People. Romanov, Pugachev or Pestel. Pugachev and Pestel had been
famous revolutionists of the eighteenth and of the early nineteenth
century, respectively. Bakunin, apparently under the influence of his
liberal friends Herzen and Ogarev, appealed to the Tsar to forestall the
alternative of a bloody revolution, and to call a Constituent Assembly
that would initiate a radical transformation of the country. “Due to
human stupidity bloody revolutions are sometimes necessary; yet they are
an evil, a great evil and a terrible disaster, not only to their victims
but also to the purity and complete realization of the aim for whose
sake they are accomplished. This was shown by the French Revolution.” It
was also in pursuance of these peaceful tendencies that Bakunin
participated in the agitation for tendering to the Tsar a popular mass
petition urging him to call a Constituent Assembly.
About a year after Bakunin’s arrival in London, the Poles rose against
Russian rule. The event was not unexpected. The radical and liberal
elements among the Russians sympathized with the cause of their Western
Slavic cousins, who had lost their national independence. Even Herzen,
in spite of his moderation, championed their cause in his paper, Kolokol
(Bell), both before and during the insurrection. It was a point of honor
with every Russian progressive to take toward Poland an attitude similar
to that which any decent Englishman would take toward the cause of
Ireland.
Bakunin, like the other Russian revolutionists, saw in the Polish rising
an opportunity to embarrass the Tsarist regime, to weaken it and thus
prepare the ground for an uprising in Russia as well. He visualized the
Polish insurrection as a peasant uprising which, he hoped, would spread
to the Russian lands as well. But to the Polish patriots the idea of a
peasant rising was more terrible than the continuation of Tsarist rule.
On this point there was full agreement between the two wings of Polish
patriotism: the “Whites” who represented the higher aristocracy and its
hangers-on, and the “Reds” who were the party of the lower nobility and
the intelligentsia. These Polish rebels were even opposed to a peasant
rising in Russia proper, for fear that it might spread to the Ukraine,
which the Poles claimed as their own, and even to Poland itself. They
themselves hoped to win with the support of Western Europe, particularly
of France. True, there were those of them who, like the heroic General
Ludwik Mieroslawski, the Polish Garibaldi, did not oppose an uprising of
the Russian peasants as a means of weakening the Russian Government. But
the same Mieroslawski, once he became leader of the insurgents,
threatened to shoot anyone who dared to give similar advice to the
Polish peasants whose lot was not different from that of the Russian
mujiks.
When the Polish insurrection broke out in January, 1863, Bakunin was
eager to join the fight. A number of Russian officers of the Warsaw
garrison were radicals at heart. With their assistance, Bakunin hoped to
create a Russian legion that would help the insurrection. But the Polish
National Central Committee was not anxious to have him in Poland. Not
that they still distrusted his political honesty, as they had in 1848.
But they were afraid that his presence would discredit them with the
European powers for whose intervention they hoped. They were also afraid
of the potentialities of his active collaboration. His old ideas of a
Slavic federation, of self-determination of all Slavic nationalities,
coupled with the possibility of a Russian revolution, meant a deathblow
to their own cherished dream of a vast Polish empire that would include
a number of subject races — another instance of that well-nigh
biological egoism and greed, so characteristic of every nationalist and
revolutionary group, which brazenly denies to other groups the liberties
and the rights which it claims for itself.
Though rebuffed by the leaders of the uprising, Bakunin did not give up
hope of playing a part in the events which were now unfolding. In
February, 1863, he went to Sweden, where he would be nearer to Poland
and to Russia. In Stockholm he learned that an international legion,
composed largely of Poles, had sailed from London shortly after his
departure. He intended to join that expedition as soon as it reached
Sweden. But the plan of the troop to cross over to the Russian coast of
the Baltic, in order to start a guerrilla warfare behind the Russian
lines, never materialized. Bakunin as well as the other members of the
expedition remained stranded in Sweden.
Soon it became apparent that the Polish insurrection was a hopeless
venture. Bakunin decided to return to Western Europe. However, there was
no point in resuming his residence in London. He was not interested in
English politics, and his relations with his friend and benefactor,
Herzen, were strained. Herzen, who only a few months before had been the
most influential figure in the liberal circles of Russia’s privileged
classes, was now thoroughly discredited in his own country. The
underground circulation of his Kolokol shrank to one fifth of the
original figure, and he blamed it on Bakunin, who had induced him to
take a definite stand in favor of the insurgent Poles. For the latter
had not shown themselves worthy of Russian liberal sympathies. They had
coupled their struggle for independence with a claim for Lithuanian,
Ukrainian and White-Ruthenian territories which, while not Russian in an
ethnical sense, were “Polish” only by the historical “right” of ancient
conquests. As between Polish and Russian imperialism, the Russian
liberal was quite naturally inclined to favor his native brand. Russian
reaction triumphed and Herzen was stranded — ideologically speaking. He
had many merciless words for Bakunin’s romantic enthusiasms.
Bakunin decided to settle in Italy, where the climate was healthier, and
where it was possible to live on next to nothing, though he was very
hazy about how to get even that. But such problems never worried him.
Somehow he would always find some generous “creditor” who would postpone
his financial crisis for another few months, and then there would be
somebody else.
His choice of Italy marked a change in his political climate as well.
The Polish adventure had given a great jolt to his enthusiasm for
revolutionary nationalism. The Poles looked with hatred and contempt
upon every Russian, even the most devoted friend of their liberation.
They had their reasons, of course, for their “emancipation” implied to
them among other things their own right to oppress other races. “Even
the best Pole,” Bakunin wrote to Herzen, “is hostile to us because we
are Russians.” There was apparently no reason for a Russian radical to
make common cause with such revolutionists. Nor were the Austrian Slavic
nationalists a much better lot. They abhorred a real revolution just as
much as they hated the Germans. They merely preferred the
Russian-Tsarist whip to that of their German and Hungarian masters....
During his stay in Italy, first in Florence and later in Naples, Bakunin
gradually began to abandon that vague revolutionism that was ready to
identify itself with all “good causes,” such as revolutionary
Pan-Slavism, or national independence, or liberalism, or even a sort of
pro-Romanov Caesarism, provided the latter consented to take the
initiative in improving the lot of the downtrodden Russian masses.
The breakdown of his hopes in the East no doubt stimulated this
evolution. The revolutionary movement in Russia — still in its incipient
stage — had been largely suppressed. Its best men had been arrested. Cut
off from the Slavic revolutionary world, Bakunin turned to the West.
National independence, except for Ireland, was no longer a problem
there. Italy was practically unified, now that her foreign oppressors
had been driven from her soil. But it was only a small minority of
property-owners, army officers, politicians and bureaucrats who had
reaped the fruits of victory. There remained that countless army of
educated “outs,” the proverbial lawyers without clients, physicians
without patients, college graduates without positions and undergraduates
without prospects. Not to speak of the still greater army of the
altogether wretched workers and peasants, mostly illiterate.
Prompted by his hunger for action, Bakunin began to realize that it was
these elements which held the key to the doors of the revolution. But
that realization did not come all at once. During the four years between
1864 and 1868, he was still occasionally to fall back upon the old
illusions that made him appeal to all men of good will among the
well-to-do middle classes.
The condition of turmoil which during the past few years he had
encountered everywhere convinced him that man was by nature endowed with
“revolutionary instincts,” that a spark sufficed to set the masses in
motion, and that there was no need for a long preliminary education and
propaganda. That spark was the secret organization of determined
revolutionists. Italy had had a long tradition of secret organizations
ever since the invasion by Napoleon. These secret organizations had been
the leaven of the struggles against foreign domination. They had also
inspired the struggle for democracy in other countries of Europe.
However, as his biographer, Max Nettlau, puts it, Bakunin also “realized
that the masses have always been falling into the hands of new leaders.”
As a remedy for this “lack of experience,” which prevented the masses
from choosing the right path, Bakunin proposed his own “secret
organization working invisibly among the masses.” With that
self-centered naivete typical of political leaders, the Russian rebel
(and his German biographer) innocently believed — or pretended? — that
the leaders of his own secret organization, being “invisible,” could not
possibly take advantage of the masses for the enthronement of a new
aristocracy.
Bakunin’s non-Slavic activities began in 1864. At that time the
International Workingmen’s Association (usually called the First
International) had just been founded, with Karl Marx as one of its most
active leaders. Shortly after its founding, Bakunin made a visit to
London, which was the seat of the organization. On that occasion he saw
Marx for the first time in sixteen years. He apparently made a good
impression upon the German scholar, who was almost misanthropic in his
judgments about other revolutionists. In a letter to his friend and
collaborator, Engels, Marx had only praise for the old Russian rebel,
whom he found to have progressed intellectually instead of sliding back.
Bakunin had told him of his decision to devote himself, from now on, to
the socialist movement in the West. Marx expected Bakunin to work for
the newly founded International, and particularly to counteract the
influence of Mazzini, the great Italian patriot whose nationalism,
religious mysticism, and spurious socialism were still dominating the
minds of Italy’s intellectuals.
Little that is definite is known about the ideological and
organizational purport of Bakunin’s activities during the first two
years of his stay in Italy, where he soon transferred his domicile from
Florence to Naples. He was apparently still working out his philosophy.
His magnetic personality never failed to attract friends and admirers
wherever he went. For there was an element of fascination in him which
in another period would have been attributed to witchcraft. These
friends formed a group of followers, first in Florence — with an
exclusively Italian membership — and later, in 1866, in Naples. The
group in Naples, chiefly Italian, included Poles and Russians as well.
It was constituted as a secret organization and called the International
Brotherhood. The Brotherhood later accepted into membership a few active
French revolutionists and a Spaniard.
By the time the International Brotherhood was formed Bakunin had worked
out its program and its bylaws. The program is known as the
Revolutionary Catechism.[7] The bylaws were published under the title of
Organization. Written by Bakunin at the mature age of fifty-two, these
two manuscripts were the secret gospel of the first courageous apostles
of modern anarchism, usually designated during its first phase as
revolutionary or “anti-authoritarian” socialism. Yet these original
scriptures are at the same time an unwitting refutation of the
theoretical basis of anarchism as a political theory, an unwitting
lampoon on the almost incredible lack of intellectual consistency in the
founder of modern anarchism.
Max Nettlau admits that the Catechism of 1866 “is an immediate program
of destruction and reconstruction which does not claim to show an
anarchist society in its fullest completeness.” In other words, it
presents a system, such as the followers of Bakunin thought of
establishing as a result of a victorious world revolution; a system that
would form a transition from the various present-day forms of
exploitation and oppression to the new system of collectivism and
anarchism which would be built “on the basis of liberty, reason, justice
and work.””
That a “transition” would be necessary to bridge the gulf between the
discomforts of the present and the delights of the faraway future is
reasonable enough. But Bakunin’s “transitional” system differs in no
important respect from any system that a party of democratic socialists
would try to establish after a victorious revolution. It proclaims the
abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic. It
introduces equality of political rights for men and women and insists
expressly upon universal suffrage. It does away with appointed
officeholders, judges, and so on: “All public, judicial and civil
functionaries, as well as all national, provincial and municipal
representatives, are to be elected immediately and directly by the
people.” There are laws, penalties and prisons. To be sure, the latter
word is not mentioned; but it is implied in the “abolition of all
penalties of ... too long duration, which leave no hope, no possibility
of a real rehabilitation,” and so on. There is a far-reaching political
decentralization with the greatest possible autonomy of the provinces
within the nation, and of the communes (municipalities) within the
provinces.
In short, the whole political and economic organization was to be built
up “from the bottom, to the top and from the periphery to the center
according to the principle of free association and federation.” To which
Nettlau adds the timid comment that the words “below — top, periphery —
center” are “in contradiction to present-day anarchist sentiment which
prefers not to know of any ‘top’ or ‘center.’ “ All of which shows that
what is commonly designated as “anarchism” is merely a camouflaged form
of decentralized democracy. At any rate, as far as the political
structure is concerned, there is no difference of principle between the
anarchist gospel according to Bakunin and the socialist gospel according
to Marx. It is not a conflict as to “No-State” versus “State”; or
“No-Authority” versus “Authority.” It was merely a difference of degree
in the question of local autonomy or administrative centralization; and,
as will be seen later, of tactics and of personal ambitions.
As regards the economic aspects of Society “on the morrow of the
revolution,” Bakunin’s conceptions, as expressed in the Catechism, are a
sort of anticipation of what is known as the NEP period of the Russian
Revolution. The land was to be given over to those who cultivated it,
which meant simply its distribution among the peasants, or possibly also
the socialization of certain large estates. “The soil with its natural
wealth is the property of all, but will be only in the possession of
those who cultivate it.” The forests and the subsoil, as this passage is
interpreted by Max Nettlau, would be socialized. The industries,
however, would not be expropriated — they would be left in the hands of
those who run them. As is well known to all students of the Russian
Revolution, industry and commerce — except for the heavy industry and
foreign trade — were likewise left to private enterprise from 1921 to
1928.
In Bakunin’s opinion, the transition to socialism — or “collectivism,”
as he preferred to call it — would come about through the development of
workers’ producers’ co-operatives and through the abolition of the right
of inheritance. The latter would establish for everybody “equality at
the point of departure.” In another passage the Catechism insists that,
even after the elimination of the “inequality resulting from the right
of inheritance, there will remain, though considerably reduced, that
inequality which flows from the difference in the ability, strength and
productive energy of every single individual.” The insistence upon
inequality of rewards in accordance with a person’s abilities,
productive energy and so on, has a familiar ring to those who know
Stalin’s pronouncements upon the same subject, pronouncements which were
inspired by certain passages of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme.
The document called Organization is to a certain extent even more
revealing than the Revolutionary Catechism. It deals with the
organization of the revolutionary forces and distinguishes two different
organizations: “The International Family properly speaking, and the
National Families; the latter to be organized everywhere in such a way
as to remain always subordinated to the absolute guidance of the
International Family.”
The International Family was to consist of “International Brothers,” of
whom, in turn, there were two categories — “Honorary Brothers” and
“Active Brothers.” The Honorary Brothers were what nowadays would be
called “angels,” while the Active Brothers were the militants. The
organization was secret, and all members were subject to strict
discipline. However, it was the duty of the secret organization to build
up open organizations wherever this was possible, the task of the latter
being to win sympathizers.
The International Brothers constituted the higher aristocracy among the
conspirators of Bakunin’s organization. They were, so to speak, the
“Bakuninists of the first rank” in the terminology of the Blanquist
societies of the same period. Bakunin believed that about one hundred
International Brothers would suffice for organizing the world
revolution. The “second rank” consisted of the National Families, which
“constitute a degree of apprenticeship as compared with the great
International Family. The object of this subordinate organization is, as
far as possible, to connect the revolutionary elements available
everywhere with the universal enterprise of the International Brothers.”
Moreover, “The National Family of each country is formed in such a way
as to be subject to absolute and exclusive control by the International
Society.” Furthermore, “All members of the national Junta are appointed
by the central directorate, to which the national Junta owes absolute
obedience in all cases.” Thus obedience, discipline, subordination, and
penalties for infractions of the rules constitute the leitmotiv of this
famous classic of ... Anarchism.
It so happens that all of these methods and principles now form the
basis of the organization of the Russian Communist Party and
particularly of the Communist International. The complete subservience
of all the national Communist Parties to the Executive Committee of the
Communist International in Moscow; the arbitrary changes in party
leadership by orders from Moscow; the nomination of all local party
officials from above and not by election — it is all part and parcel of
a preposterous paradox: that the unheard-of tyranny now exercised by the
leadership of the Russian Communist Party is the intellectual child of a
man who has gone down in history as the great enemy of all authority.
(In fact the Bolshevik historian, Steklov, admits that Bakunin’s
insistence upon the importance of a body of professional revolutionists
was a sort of anticipation of Lenin’s methods of organization.)
There were others before Bakunin who had used similar methods. Among
them were the Italian Carbonari, and later the followers of Mazzini,
democratic-nationalist conspirators for the unification and liberation
of their country. Bakunin was well-informed about Babeuf’s Conspiracy of
the Equals in 1796, the first modern attempt at the establishment of a
dictatorship of revolutionary politicians, undertaken under the slogans
of communism. The tradition of Babeuf, as handed down by Fi-lippo
Buonarroti, the famous survivor of that conspiracy, was still very much
alive during the Forties, when Bakunin was in Paris.
But there was also another source for his inspiration. He never boasted
about it — but that source is unmistakably evident in that episode of
his life which is dealt with in the chapter about Nechayev. It was the
activity of the Jesuits, the “International Brothers,” as it were, of
the Catholic Church, the brains and driving force of the greatest
international organization in human history. Neither Michael Bakunin nor
Ignatius Loyola need suffer by this comparison. Both were idealists in
their own way, and the guiding passion of each of them was the salvation
of mankind by the exercise of his “invisible” authority.
A letter written on February 7, 1870, contains a significant passage.
“Did you ever ponder,” he writes, “over the principal reason for the
power and vitality of the Jesuit Order? Shall I tell you the reason?
Well, it consists in the absolute extinction of the individual in the
will, the organization, and the action of the community. And I am asking
you: is this so great a sacrifice for a really strong, passionate and
earnest man? It means the sacrifice of the appearance for the sake of
reality, of the empty halo for the sake of real power, of the word for
the sake of action. This is the sacrifice which I demand from all our
friends, and in which I am always ready to set the first example. I do
not want to be I, I want to be We. For, I repeat it a thousand times,
only on this condition will we win, will our idea win. Well, this
victory is my only passion.” Coming from the father of modern anarchism,
at the height of his anarchist activity, these ideas sound rather
strange. Nowadays one is accustomed to hear such noble sentiments
extolled only by the Fascists and the “Communists.”
There was one question which Bakunin left open, both in the Catechism
and in the Organization: the question of power after the victorious
revolution. There are courts, there are prisons, there are parliaments,
there are functionaries, there are elections — but there is no
government. For, while all the attributes of the government are readily
accepted by Bakunin as inevitable, the words “government” or “power”
seem to be taboo with him. He never tires of protesting against the
establishment of a revolutionary government — in fact, he protests too
much. In Bakunin’s conception, the place of the nonexistent government
is taken by the “invisible dictatorship” of the International and
National Brothers who “are to keep the revolution on the right path,” to
use Nettlau’s interpretation of the thoughts of his Master. According to
Bakunin and Nettlau the leaders of the secret organization, once they
have become masters of the country, would stay in the background and
nobly and disinterestedly advise the groping multitude and the budding
bureaucracy how to build a new life without a government and without
authority ...
At any rate, present-day Russia has neither a Tsar, nor a police, nor
executioners — all these ugly words have been done away with.
In 1867 Bakunin left Italy and settled in Switzerland. The authorities
in Naples seem to have been disturbed by his propaganda among the
younger generation of the Italian intellectuals. There was also
something else. The imminent danger of war — the clashing ambitions of
France and Prussia — had led to the formation of a society of
middle-class pacifists called the League for Peace and Liberty. Its
membership consisted of law-abiding, liberal lawyers, politicians, and
journalists. The League had called a Convention in Geneva and apparently
intended to establish a permanent committee in Switzerland. Bakunin all
of a sudden felt the urge to take part in the Convention and to impress
his ideas upon it.
This episode in Bakunin’s life aroused much controversy between the
followers of Marx and those of the Russian rebel. It is indeed hard to
explain why the author of the ultra-revolutionary Catechism — at that
time the document was known only to insiders — should have been so
anxious to join a body that was opposed to any violent and thoroughgoing
change in the existing system. Particularly at a time when the
International had already been in existence for three years. The Marxist
critics of Bakunin see in this attitude evidence of his lack of
theoretical clarity. His mental confusion, they say, apparently did not
permit him to see that it was altogether useless to make any attempts at
converting respectable bourgeois to revolutionary idera. There is much
truth in the argument. The chaos in Bakunin’s mind seems to have been as
formidable as his bodily proportions. An internationalist, he had
nevertheless deep prejudices against specific races, such as the Germans
and the Jews. A “negator” of the State, he persisted in demanding the
independence of Poland, that is, the creation of a new bourgeois State,
even during his definitely anarchist phase when the Slavic problem was
no longer paramount with him. An enemy of all authority, he was in favor
of strict organizational discipline, hierarchy and subordination; a
“democrat,” as he often called himself, he believed in the necessity of
a dictatorship during the transitional period following a victorious
revolution. In fact, in 1867, Bakunin had not yet drawn those
theoretical conclusions which might have deterred him from participating
in a purely bourgeois convention. His thunder was not yet directed
against the modern capitalists. In 1867 he did not as yet demand their
outright expropriation but merely their gradual extinction through the
abolition of the right of inheritance. His chief enemies — aside from
the landed nobility — were still “God,” that is the clergy, and the
“State,” in which he saw merely excessive administrative centralization.
Any progressive bourgeois lawyer or politician could to a certain extent
agree with him on these points. (In any case, two years later he had
sufficiently revised his opinions to admit that it was a great
“stupidity” on his part to have joined the League.)
Bakunin was not the only radical who participated in the first
convention of the League for Peace and Liberty, held in Geneva early in
September, 1867. Two fifths of the delegates to the convention of the
First International held a few days earlier in Lausanne likewise took
part in the pacifist assembly. The Russian exile spoke against the
principle of nationalism and advocated the establishment of a system of
decentralized democracy.
Bakunin was elected to the Central Committee of the League, which
established its seat in Berne. During the following year his views went
through a certain evolution. One might almost say that he became more
aware of the antagonism between employer and employee. In addition to
the seizure of the big landed estates, he began to advocate the
expropriation of the means of production, which were to be taken over by
the workers’ associations. It is in connection with the adoption of this
point of view that he began, in 1868, to call himself a “collecti-vist.”
This designation he opposed to those — including Marx and his following
— who were commonly called “communists,” and who advocated the seizure
of the industries by the government.
By the middle of 1868 Bakunin joined the Geneva section of the
International. He had succeeded in winning a few followers in the
League, but in the latter part of 1868 he began to realize that he had
wasted his time in trying to turn that body into an instrument of
revolution. His Marxist critics sometimes insinuate that he wanted to
use the League for the purpose of raising his own prestige, which in
turn would enable him to exert greater influence the moment he entered
the International. At any rate, he decided to make an honorable exit at
the second convention of the League, which was held in Berne in
September, 1868. He delivered several speeches insisting that the
convention should commit itself to his demands for a “complete
equalization of classes.” It was his awkward way of advocating the
establishment of a classless society. The final rejection of this
proposal was for him and his followers the signal for resigning from the
League for Peace and Freedom.
Insignificant as the entire procedure was in itself — not more than
fifteen delegates had followed Bakunin’s lead — it marked the beginning
of a new chapter in the history of the socialist movement of the
nineteenth’century. In addition to those whom Bakunin had converted at
the two conventions of the League, a number of International Brothers
from various countries, whom he had won over between 1865 and 1867, had
at that time assembled in Geneva. These were now urged by Bakunin to
enter the International Workingmen’s Association. At the same time they
were to remain united in a secret organization that would be able to
supply the “general staff of the revolution,” or to constitute that
“invisible dictatorship” which should prevent the popular upheaval from
straying from the right path. These were the expressions which he liked
to use in describing the role of those men who, supported by a secret
organization, would be able to arouse the dormant revolutionary
instincts of the masses.
That secret organization is known as the Alliance of Social
Revolutionists, as the Secret Alliance of Socialist Democracy, or,
briefly, as the “Secret Alliance.” There is much about that secret
organization that has never been definitely cleared up. Paradoxical as
it may sound, one of its most prominent members, James Guillaume, the
author of a voluminous history of the International, actually denied its
existence, apparently in order to clear Bakunin’s followers of the
accusation that they were “plotting” against the International. The
Secret Alliance and the old International Brotherhood were virtually
identical for all practical purposes; but it would seem that the
International Brothers were, so to speak, the inner circle of the Secret
Alliance.
Bakunin’s intention was to have the members of this Secret Alliance work
within the International and gradually take possession of that body. He
considered himself fully entitled to act that way because he was
convinced that Marx and his group were controlling the International
through the old secret Communist League which had flourished around
1848. He did not know that the Communist League had long since ceased to
exist. But Communist League or no Communist League, Bakunin was
determined to get control of the International. After all, he had the
same right to aspire to its supreme leadership as had Marx, whose
followers were likewise a minority within that agglomeration of
political groups and trade union organizations professing a variety of
social philosophies.
Bakunin’s followers wanted more than simply a secret organization which,
unknown to the public, would carry on its work within the International.
They insisted upon an open international organization of their own, an
organization that would publicly proclaim its revolutionary aims, and
would openly compete with the International for the allegiance of the
workers. Bakunin opposed the idea, but was overruled. So a new open
international organization was actually created and was given the name
of International Alliance of Socialist Democracy.
The open Alliance, although established for the express purpose of
competing with the International, nevertheless applied as a body for
membership in that organization. The intention of its leaders was to
constitute themselves officially as the Left Wing, the frankly
revolutionary faction of the International, and to maintain their full
independence at the same time. The application was rejected. As a
result, the followers of Bakunin decided to dissolve the open Alliance
as an international organization, and the various local sections applied
separately for admission to the International. The request was granted.
There could be no objections to their program: any radical or labor
philosophy might be professed within the International, provided it was
not in open contradiction to its general purposes: mutual aid, workers’
solidarity, and the emancipation of the working class.
The program of the open Alliance included in condensed form many of the
demands contained in the Revolutionary Catechism of 1866, such as the
abolition of the right of inheritance, the insistence upon equal
opportunity for all children to obtain education; the abolition of all
religious cults; rejection of any policy based upon patriotism and upon
the rivalry of nations. It recognized only a republican form of
government and stated that “All political and authoritarian States
existing at present ... will have to disappear in the universal Union of
the free agricultural and industrial associations.” It also put forth
the demand for “the political, economic and social equalization of the
classes and individuals” — a phrase which was to bring much ridicule
upon its author.
Of greater importance than the public program of the Alliance was a
document entitled Program and Aim of the Revolutionary Organization of
the International Brothers. It was the secret program of the Alliance
and was circulated only among the most intimate friends of Bakunin. It
placed more emphasis upon such questions as revolution, revolutionary
methods, destruction of the State, reorganization after the victorious
revolution, the unleashing of the “evil passions,” that is, of the
revolutionary instincts. It also contained many arguments against the
“Jacobins or Blanquists” who were out for “dictatorship” and “State
centralization.”
In some places the wording of the document was extremely careless. Thus
in Section Six of the secret program it is stated that “the revolution,
as we understand it, must from the very first day destroy, radically and
completely, the State and all State institutions.” Section Eight,
however, has it that “the new and revolutionary State” will be
“organized from the bottom to the top through revolutionary
delegations.” Which seems to indicate that Bakunin, when using the word
“State” in a deprecatory sense, had in his mind merely a centralized
body ruled from the capital in the manner of Napoleon the First.[8] In
other words, his “destruction of the State” was merely a bombastic way
of saying that the administration would be reorganized on the basis of
democracy and local autonomy. His romantic desire to act the terrible
man, fundamentally different from all other revolutionists, made him
paint himself as a sort of Angel of Destruction who would annihilate
every vestige of the old world.
Bakunin’s confused and inconsistent thunderings against the State were
the reflection of a chaotic jumble of intellectual and emotional
elements in his “theoretical” make-up. The philosopher in Bakunin, his
quest for the “absolute,” made him absorb Proud-hon’s political idea of
“An-archy” in the meaning of “No-government,” that is to say, the
greatest possible realization of human freedom. But the man of action,
the noble adventurer, the practical revolutionist, who was out for
concrete achievements, forced him to contradict and confound the
unearthly dreamer. Subsequently a verbal compromise was effected whereby
a decentralized, democratic government, managed from behind the curtains
by an invisible revolutionary oligarchy, was declared to be identical
with “An-archy.”
That conflict between the two Bakunins, the anarchist and the
revolutionist, occasionally led to curious contradictions. Thus in 1851
he writes about the inability of the Germans to get together for the
purpose of concerted revolutionary action. And he blames it upon the
fact that “anarchy predominates among them,” upon the German principle
“that everyone may and should have his own opinion.” Twenty-two years
later, in a passage in which his anarchist sentiment prevails, he
attacks the same Germans because “they voluntarily submit to the most
unbearable, the most insulting, and the harshest discipline.”
But there was also something else, aside from the purely spiritual
conflict. Bakunin, in entering the revolutionary arena, had to contend
not only with the old powers that be. He also had to face the fact that
besides himself there were three other powerful contestants for the palm
of supreme international leadership. There was the Frenchman Auguste
Blanqui, the last offshoot of the glorious tradition of the Great
Revolution and heir to the equalitarian myth of Gracchus Babeuf.
Strictly speaking, Blan-qui’s ambition did not go beyond the borders of
France; but his methods[9] were gaining followers in various countries,
even among the Poles and Russians. The seizure of power by a band of
conspirators, who would impose a benevolent “socialist” dictatorship of
the country’s Capital over the rest of the nation, had a great
fascination for many educated young men ready to risk their lives.
Besides, Blanqui took it for granted that France would resume her old
hegemony over Europe — thus virtually giving him supreme power over the
European continent. And there was Joseph Mazzini, the great Italian
conspirator, who actually nourished greater ambitions than the mere
liberation and unification of Italy. He had a social philosophy of his
own, a mixture of a vague, spurious socialism, religious mysticism, and
plain national megalomania, which made him attribute to Italy the
messianic role of leader among the nations.[10] The latest and most
dangerous among the contestants was Karl Marx, a German and a Jew,
endowed with glamour as one of the greatest savants of his time, and
champion of the class struggle and of the “proletarian dictatorship”;
the soul of the International Workingmen’s Association, and thus quite
obviously an aspirant to world power as well.
It was in the face of this competition for power that Bakunin had to
propound tenets of a new faith which would be — or at least seem to be —
at variance with those of his rivals. For, though the following is
usually more interested in the personality of the Leader than in any
theories he may preach, the theories constitute an absolutely
indispensable badge by which the flock is given identity and solidarity.
This does not of course prevent the theories from corresponding, on
specific points, to the interests of specific groups among the mass of
the following.
Thus Michael Bakunin had to resort to the immemorial device of Hassan,
the fig vendor, who shouted, “Hassan’s figs are biggest of all figs;
Hassan’s figs are ten times as big as they are!” Hassan-Bakunin simply
shouted: “Bakunin’s revolution is better than that of the other
revolutionists; Bakunin’s government is no government.” As a result,
Bakunin, though he was closely akin to the Blanquists — many passages of
his Confession demonstrate it sufficiently — had to attack them very
violently on the ground that they believed in dictatorship and State
centralization, both of which he found deadly to the revolution. To
their revolution “from above,” as it were, he opposed the revolution
“from below” and “from the periphery,” the unloosening of “the evil
passions” of the masses, the spontaneous initiative of the communities
and of the provinces. This appeal to the initiative of the “periphery”
had its very practical aspects: it was a bid for the support of the
malcontent declasse intellectuals of the provincial cities. This group
played a negligible part in the plans of Blanqui, who counted upon a
successful uprising in the capital, where his followers would become the
actual masters of the entire country.
More than anything else, his competition with Mazzini accounts for the
great emphasis which Bakunin put on the question of atheism, or
“antitheologism,” as he called it occasionally. There is no doubt that
by attacking religion he was trying to undermine Mazzini’s authority
among the many followers the old Italian conspirator still had among the
workers and the intellectuals. This preoccupation with religion led
Bakunin to many absurdities — such as his insistence that the State was
created by religion.
However, it was in his struggle against Marx that Bakunin was to show
himself not only a polemist able to produce fireworks of questionable
brilliance, but also a penetrating thinker and prophet who could raise
problems which the German scholar was either unable or unwilling to see.
But many things occurred before the conflict between the two giants came
to a head.
The contradiction between the libertarian postulates of Bakunin’s
anarchist philosophy and the authoritarian character of his system of
organization was pointed out in connection with his Catechism and his
Organization. That contradiction was bound to come to the fore not only
after the victorious revolution, when that hierarchical body of
“invisible dictators” would have revealed itself as a new aristocracy.
It became obvious in the very relations between Bakunin and his own
followers.
Two episodes from the history of Bakunin’s conspiratorial activities are
particularly illuminating. One of them occurred in 1869, shortly after
the organization of the Alliance. One day practically all members of the
inner circle actually bolted and called a secret meeting to which they
did not invite the Teacher. From the indignant letter which Bakunin
wrote to them on the subject — it was entitled To All These Gentlemen —
it appears that his most intimate friends, the International Brothers,
as it were, accused him of exercising dictatorial power. The truth of
the accusation, paradoxically enough, is demonstrated by the fact that
his resignation rendered his rebellious general staff altogether
helpless and unable to carry on any activities. For he alone had all the
threads in his hand, all the addresses, all the connections, all the
information. Truly, it was a sort of one-man conspiracy, with the
leadership principle going even beyond the monstrous absurdities which
it has reached in the modern Fascist and Communist Parties. Yet it was
done in the name of anarchism, the supposed antithesis of
authoritarianism. There was a similar case of “mutiny” two years later,
when the Geneva section of the open Alliance — it was the only section
of the Alliance which had retained this name — simply decreed its own
dissolution without consulting Bakunin. It was one of those rare moments
when the anarchist conscience of his followers got the better of their
“revolutionary” submission to the Leader.
In his letter To All These Gentlemen, Bakunin stated as his “innermost
conviction” that “that man is, and always will be, the dictator, not
juridically but actually, who acts, and only in so far as he acts in the
spirit and in the interests of the society.” Was there ever a dictator
who did not make the same claim?
It was not Bakunin alone who thus sinned against the Holy Spirit of his
own gospel. Two of his most active disciples — in fact, they were
perhaps the only “men of steel” among his followers — were similarly
stigmatized by their comrades as petty despots. One of them was Sergei
Nechayev, whose story constitutes a separate chapter in this volume. The
other was Michael Sazhin, who, after Bakunin’s break with Nechayev,
became deservedly the most favored disciple of the Teacher. And yet, no
sooner did Sazhin begin his activities among the Russian intellectuals
in Zurich, in 1873, than all of the other Russian followers of Bakunin
rose against the authority of their Teacher’s aide, and actually broke
with the old man because the latter did not choose to separate himself
from the young “dictator.”
All of which fully justifies the suspicion that Bakunin’s anarchy — in
the sense of no-government — was merely a fancy-dress term for his
antipathy to any dictatorship other than his own.
Small as the Alliance was at the beginning, its influence soon spread
beyond the confines of Geneva. Sections were formed in Southern France,
particularly in Lyons and Marseilles. Bakunin’s followers were likewise
successful in Italy and in Spain. South of the Pyrenees the first
initiative toward an impregnation of the labor movement with socialist
ideas came from Italian emissaries of the Alliance. And not far from
Geneva, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the new gospel was
to find particularly fertile soil in the watchmaking communities of the
Jura region. It was in one of these communities, Le Locle, that a young
teacher by the name of James Guillaume ardently em- braced the gospel of
the fascinating Russian. He was to remain a faithful adherent for nearly
half a century and to leave a minute record of Bakunin’s activities in
connection with the International and of the Alliance.
The first clash between the forces marshaled or influenced by Bakunin
and those more or less controlled by Marx occurred at the Convention of
the International held at Basel in September, 1869. It was caused by
Bakunin’s proposal for the abolition of the right of inheritance. That
proposal was opposed not only by the followers of Marx but also by the
Belgian delegates who took an intermediate position between Proudhon and
Bakunin. It was pointed out that this was not a matter of principle,
that the right of inheritance was only one of the manifestations of the
right of property, and that the establishment of a collective form of
production after the victorious revolution would render the abolition of
the right of inheritance unnecessary. It was also argued that if
moderate measures were to be taken for the purpose of avoiding too
strong an opposition, then the same purpose could be much better served
by high inheritance taxes and similar measures. All of which was
perfectly logical, of course.
However, there were two extremely comical twists in Bakunin’s proposal.
In the first place, the proposal which was so ridiculed by Marx had
undoubtedly been conceived by Bakunin under the inspiration of Marx
himself. Twenty years earlier, Marx, in his famous Communist Manifesto,
had recommended “the abolition of the right of inheritance” as Number 3
of the measures to be adopted when the “proletariat” would be in
possession of “its political supremacy” — that is, after the victory of
the revolution. In 1863, Bakunin himself, a few years before he began to
work out his own program, had prepared a Russian translation of that
classic of Marxist literature.
But that was not all. In 1866, when writing his Revolutionary Catechism,
Bakunin had actually believed that the abolition of the right of
inheritance would have to be one of those measures adopted after the
revolution for bringing about a gradual disappearance of capitalism. In
the meantime, that is between 1866 and 1868, he had become convinced
that the revolutionary elements of the West were quite serious about the
immediate establishment of collective ownership of the means of
production “on the morrow of the revolution.” So he himself adopted this
point of view and incorporated it in the principles of his Secret
Alliance, principles which were to be revealed only to the initiated
conspirators. Immediately after the triumph of the revolution, these
principles were to be applied under the “collective dictatorship” of his
revolutionary general staff. However, while accepting advanced ideas in
his secret documents, he was at the same time considering the practical
situation in those sections of Europe where his followers were
particularly active. These were the economically backward countries in
which the small rural and urban property-holders prevailed. He did not
want to irritate them by a frank talk in favor of outright
expropriation. Thus he was blowing hot and cold at the same time:
painting himself pale pink in his public statements in order to
safeguard his popularity among the peasants, and venting his
ultra-revolutionary sentiments in the secret documents which were read
only by the “insiders.”
This game of two truths is candidly confessed by Bakunin’s biographer,
Max Nettlau, who presents the matter as follows: —
In general he [Bakunin] was at a disadvantage in discussions because the
public knew and was supposed to know only one part of his ideas and
plans, and because his secret activities were to remain concealed from
it. Thus it happened that the report about the question of inheritance
which on August 21, 1869, he submitted to a general meeting of the
Geneva sections [of the International], attributed to this question an
importance which it did not have any longer for those who believed in a
collectivist revolution accompanied by expropriation. Besides, he
himself later on paid less and less attention to that subject. This
brought some disharmony into his activities in 1869.
“Disharmony!”
The war of 1870 gave Bakunin the opportunity to test his theories. He
foresaw and welcomed the breakdown of the Empire. He was all for the
defense of the Republic, but he did not believe that the new regime
would find enough strength to carry on the defense of France. In his
opinion it was necessary to arouse the masses. On August 23, 1870, —
that is, ten days before the downfall of the Empire, — Bakunin had
written: “Paris and France can be saved only through a vast popular
uprising. Everywhere the people must seize arms and organize themselves
in order to conduct a war of destruction, a war to the death against the
invaders.” In fact, he saw salvation only in the “spontaneous rising of
the provinces.” The workers of the provincial towns would later be
joined by the peasants.
In speaking about the possibilities of this popular upheaval Bakunin
rose to the heights of a practical revolutionary statesman, as it were,
devoid of any doctrinary squeamishness. He thought it would be possible
and necessary to arouse the rural masses against the imperial
authorities without saying a word against Napoleon III, to whom the
peasants were still devoted. These authorities, as well as all the
wealthy property-owners, would have to be attacked in the name of
patriotism as the “Prussians of the Interior.” Similarly the clergy
should not be attacked in any revolutionary decrees, except on the
grounds that “they are Prussian agents.” All the violent measures
against them should be carried out by the masses themselves, while, on
the contrary, “the revolutionary authorities would pretend to protect
them in the name of liberty of conscience.”
The proclamation of the Republic on September 4, 1870, enabled Bakunin
to enter France without any difficulties. Any other revolutionist would
have chosen Paris. But the Russian rebel preferred to go to Lyons. Paris
was full of active revolutionists, particularly of followers of Blanqui.
The “Old Man” of France’s declasse intellectuals was free now, and there
was no chance of successfully competing with him. Blanqui had the
rebellious young bloods of Paris well in his hand; his idea of a
“Parisian dictatorship” over the rest of France was well adapted to
their imagination, their ambitions and their appetites. The glamour of
his martyrdom could well match that of Bakunin’s, even though in all
other respects — physique, habits, character — he was the very opposite
of the charming, courageous, garrulous, gluttonous and irresponsible
giant. In fact, Bakunin had practically no outspoken followers in Paris.
Those who had begun to see things his way did not come from the ranks of
the intellectuals, as was the case with the Russians, the Italians and
the Spaniards. They were the elite of the more educated workers, who had
once adhered to Proudhon’s pacific and non-revolutionary anarchism. Now
they were in a state of transition. The spontaneous class struggle of
the horny-handed workers, as expressed by a wave of strikes for higher
wages, had made them gradually veer to a position of “Left Wing
Proudhonism,” whose followers were later to become either Bakuninists or
Marxists — Bakuninism being at bottom only a heretical Left Wing variety
of Marxism.
Bakunin, as anxious for power as Blanqui, had to beat the traditional
“political revolutionists, the followers of an open dictatorship,” by
something that would outdo them in the race for the favor of the masses.
Those advocates of an “open dictatorship,” he said in a letter which he
wrote on April i, 1870, — that is a few months before the
Franco-Prussian war, but already in anticipation of the coming events, —
“recommend that immediately after victory the passions should be
appeased, that order and confidence should be restored, and that
everybody should submit to the powers established by the Revolution.
Thus they re-establish the State. We, on the contrary, will have to fan
the passions, to arouse them, to unleash them and to call forth anarchy;
[11] and as the invisible pilots in the tempest of the masses we shall
have to be the guides, not through a visible power, but through the
collective dictatorship of all Allies [members of the Alliance]. A
dictatorship without a badge, without titles, without official rights,
which would be the more powerful as it would have no appearances of
power. This is the only dictatorship which I admit. But in order to be
able to act it must be in existence, and for this purpose it must be
prepared and organized in advance, for it will not spring into being all
by itself, either through discussions, or through debates on matters of
principle, or through mass meetings. Few members of the Alliance [are
necessary] but they must be good, energetic, discreet, faithful, free
from any vanity or personal ambition, strong men sufficiently serious,
whose intellect and heart are on so high a plane as to prefer the
reality of power to its vain appearance. If you form this collective and
invisible dictatorship, you will be victorious; the revolution which is
well conducted will win. If not, it will fail. If you amuse yourself at
playing Committee of Public Safety, at [proclaiming] an official,
visible dictatorship, you will be swallowed up by the reaction you have
yourself created.”
This letter was addressed to Albert Richard, one of his followers in
Lyons. In the middle of September, Bakunin himself was in Lyons, true to
the statement he had made on September 3, 1870, the day before the
establishment of the Republic, that “It was the immediate sacred duty of
a large provincial city to take a salutary initiative [in arousing the
masses]: for France will be lost, if nobody takes this initiative.”
For Bakunin that provincial initiative was also desirable as a
counterpoise to the possible ambitions of the Blanquists of Paris, who
might attempt to concentrate all the power in their own hands. In other
words, Lyons was to become his capital, which would initiate a real
popular uprising and spread it not only over the rest of France but over
the neighboring countries as well. It took him nearly two weeks to
convince his followers in Lyons to take that step which, in his opinion,
was to change the course of European history. Late in September the
masses in the city were showing signs of dissatisfaction. Bakunin and
his friends constituted the Committee for the Salvation of France —
which was apparently to be altogether different from the Committee of
Public Safety that the Jacobins or other authoritarians were usually
wont to establish. This committee issued an appeal which was posted on
the walls of the city. It read as follows:
powerless and is hereby declared abolished. Once more the people of
France are coming into their own.
people is substituted for them.
there shall be contributions by the federated Communes, which shall be
raised from among the rich classes in accordance with the requirements
necessary for the salvation of France.
concerning the payment of private debts.
federated communes there shall be set up in their place Committees for
the Salvation of France, which shall exert all power under the direct
control of the people.
the purpose of constituting the Revolutionary Convention for the
Salvation of France.
the second largest city of France, which is best in a position to
undertake an energetic defense of the country.
This Convention, which leans for support upon the entire people, will
save France.
To Arms!!!
By proclaiming the abolition of the State in Section 1 of the document
and the establishment of a “Revolutionary Convention for the Salvation
of France” in Section 6, the father of modern revolutionary anarchism
composed a satire upon anarchist theory which has never been excelled by
any of its most bilious detractors. Had that Convention actually been
established, and had it extended its authority all over France, the
National Brothers would doubtless have been entrusted with the ordinary
functions of government. And behind them would have stood Bakunin and
some of his closest friends among the International Brothers, who,
without any official authority, would have constituted the “invisible
dictatorship.”
Hassan-Bakunin’s government was no government!
There was a bloodless uprising on September 28, as a result of which the
City Hall of Lyons was for a few hours in the hands of Bakunin’s
followers. Before they had time to constitute a government that would
not be called a government, the revolutionists were dispersed by the
National Guard. Bakunin, who showed great courage during the entire
affray, was arrested, but eventually was rescued by his friends. His
great experiment of playing upon the revolutionary passions of the
French masses was over.
Back in Switzerland, Bakunin resumed his residence in Locarno, a little
town in Italian Switzerland to which he had moved from Geneva in 1869.
From Locarno he conducted a voluminous correspondence with his active
followers, whose number was growing rapidly all over Europe, except for
England and Germany.
A conflict for power within the International became inevitable. That
conflict has been described in the chapter of this book which deals with
the life of Karl Marx. The official Marxist version of that struggle is
still that of Engels, Marx’s closest associate, who called Bakunin’s
activity “a conspiracy against the European labor movement.” However,
occasionally even Marxist historians feel compelled to disregard the
traditional cant and to give a more realistic interpretation. Thus Y.
Steklov, in his extensive biography of Bakunin, frankly admits that it
was a conflict between “two groups of professional revolutionists who
wanted to lead the labor movement.” He even hints vaguely — an orthodox
Marxist cannot afford to be quite explicit on this point — that Bakunin,
who believed in the imminence of the revolution, saw in Marx’s tactics
the first symptoms of the anti-revolutionary opportunism of the
Socialist Parties of the subsequent period. In Steklov’s opinion,
Bakunin’s endeavors were “a prophetic anticipation of ... those
organizational forms which were first elaborated by the Russian
Communists.”
In other words, Bakunin’s “Alliance” was the Third International within
the First International, which at that time had already all the
characteristics of the “gradualist” Second International. Bakunin, it
appears, foresaw the coming persecutions on the part of the various
governments, and for this purpose he kept in readiness his underground
organization of conspirators. Marx likewise foresaw those persecutions,
particularly in view of the reaction which set in after the fall of the
Paris Commune in 1871; but his remedy was the disbandment of the
International by transferring its seat to New York. These two different
attitudes were characteristic of the left-wing “romanticism” of Bakunin
and the right-wing “realism” of Marx. That realism found its uninhibited
expression in the famous anti-Bakunin pamphlet L’Alliance de la
Democratie Socialiste et l’Association Internationale des Travailleurs
which was published with the approval and collaboration of Marx. That
pamphlet, the Marxist Steklov admits, was written in such a way that “it
might seem — and it seems even now — that it condemns in general all
secret, illegal revolutionary activity which is associated with violent
methods.”
Bakunin’s struggle against Marx bore all the marks of tragedy. At
bottom, aside from the “tempo,” there was no deep theoretical dissension
between the two men, even though in the heat of the struggle both sides
occasionally tried to present the conflict in this light.
Personally, Bakunin, for all his bitterness, had a genuine, almost
humble admiration for Marx’s profound scholarship and great achievements
in matters of social theory. In a letter to Marx, written in 1868, he
had said: “You see, dear friend, that I am proud to be your disciple.”
True, the Russian apostle was often confused in his statements, but
occasionally he would show a much deeper understanding of social
phenomena than the great scholar. Thus Marx assumed that the State would
disappear after the elimination of the capitalists. Bakunin, with one of
his flashes of prophetic insight, foresaw the possibility of the
continuance of the State and of exploitation as well, even after the
disappearance of the capitalists. He had studied the situation in Serbia
and had found that that country had neither capitalists nor big
landholders; the entire population, composed of small farmers, was
working to furnish an opulent livelihood to an enormous army of
government officeholders who were the country’s rulers and exploiters
all in one.[12] After his expulsion from the International he began to
visualize the potentialities of his opponents’ victory on a national or
international scale.
He proceeded from the well-known Marxist slogan of the “conquest of
political power by the working class” as proclaimed in the Communist
Manifesto of Marx and Engels (that Manifesto which, by the way, Bakunin
was the first to translate into Russian) . “If the proletariat is to
become the ruling class,” he asks, “whom is it to rule?” His reply is
that it will rule over the peasant populace because of the latter’s
lower cultural level. Or — and here his old Slavic woe comes again to
the surface — the Slavs will, for the same reason, “be slavishly
subjected to the victorious German proletariat, just as the latter is
now subjected to its own bourgeoisie.” However, Bakunin fully realizes
that the majority of the working class are devoid of education and thus
unable to rule over anybody. The actual “proletarian government” will
thus be in the hands of a “privileged minority.” And he continues: “That
minority, the Marxists say, will consist of workers. Yes, perhaps of
former workers. And these, as soon as they become rulers or
representatives of the people, will cease to be workers and will begin
to look upon the entire world of manual workers from the heights of the
State. They will no longer represent the people, but themselves and
their own pretensions to rule the people. Whoever has any doubts about
that does not know human nature. But these selected men will be ardently
convinced, and at the same time, learned socialists. The term
‘scientific socialism,’ which continually occurs in the works of the
Lassalleans and of the Marxists, proves that the alleged People’s State
will be nothing else but the quite despotic rule over the popular masses
by a new and not very numerous aristocracy of real or spurious savants.
The mass is uneducated, which means that it will be completely free from
the worries of government; that it will be included in the ruled herd.”
A few pages later Bakunin further evolves that pipedream — to him it was
a nightmare — of a Marxist seizure of power.
They [Marx and his friends] will concentrate the reins of government in
a strong hand, because the ignorant people are in need of quite a firm
guardianship. They will establish a single State Bank that will
concentrate in its hands all commercial-industrial, agricultural and
even scientific production; and the mass of the people will be divided
into two armies, the industrial and the agricultural, which will be
under the direct command of government engineers who will constitute a
new privileged scientific political class. [Italics mine.]
This was written in 1873, when Bakunin was beginning to lose his faith
and was on the point of giving up the struggle. Did he realize that the
result would be hardly different if his own followers established their
“invisible dictatorship” over the “ignorant people”? Forty-four years
later a group of Russian revolutionists were to make real this vision of
his pessimistic imagination by using his tactical methods and clothing
them in Marxian language.
In these polemics against his Marxist rivals Bakunin unwittingly
stumbled upon a new conception of class antagonisms, a conception which
went far beyond the usual division into capitalist, bourgeois or
employer, on the one side, and proletarian, worker or employee, on the
other. Without formulating the idea, perhaps without giving it a further
thought after he had written those lines, he intuitively pointed to the
age-old antagonism not only between the “Haves” and the “Have-nots,” but
also between the “Knows” and “Know-nots.” In a flash of insight he
visualized the intellectual workers as the exploiting masters of the
future after the elimination of the capitalists; and he thus paved the
way for the Polish-Russian revolutionary thinker Waclaw Machajski, who
about twenty-five years later devoted his writings exclusively to the
question of the intellectual workers.[13]
The struggle within the International ended with Bakunin’s expulsion at
the Convention held in 1872 at The Hague. That measure might have been
justified per se on account of the underground activities of the Secret
Alliance, which was out to conquer the International. But the scandalous
methods by which it had to be effected “ proved that by this time the
“conspirators” were no longer a scheming minority but the actual
majority within that organization.
The expulsion, while preventing the conquest of the International as a
body, did not stop the spread of Bakunin’s ideas in those countries in
which they had succeeded in gaining a foothold. His German-speaking
followers had always been very scarce, and as for England, he was still
waiting for his first convert. So, while the official International was
transferred to a silent grave in New York, the Spanish, Italian, Swiss
and other national federations constituted themselves as an independent
“anti-authoritarian” International, which held its annual conventions
until 1877, when anarchism, outside of Spain, gradually began to ebb
away as a mass movement.
Bakunin’s enemies were not resting. In 1873, about a year after his
expulsion, a pamphlet was published under the title The Alliance of
Socialist Democracy and the International Workingmen’s Association. Its
unsigned authors were Friedrich Engels and Paul Lafargue, the latter a
son-in-law of Karl Marx. It contained various authentic documents
relating to the activities of the Alliance, but its value was destroyed
by exaggerations, unconfirmed gossip, and plain untruths. The Marxist
historian, Y. Steklov, is obliged to admit that occasionally the
presentation of the facts is “quite incorrect.” In this respect the
pamphlet, published with the collaboration of Marx himself, was
self-defeating, even though many of the strictures on Bakunin’s past
were likely to injure his reputation.
The appearance of this pamphlet had, or seemed to have, a crushing
effect upon the further activities of Bakunin. He sent two letters, one
to the conservative Journal de Geneve, and another to his friends of the
Jura Federation of the International. In the letter addressed to the
newspaper he protested against that feature of the pamphlet which
constituted an actual infraction of the tenets of revolutionary and
ordinary ethics: the public attack upon the Alliance, which was thus
denounced to the police as a secret society. He also protested against
various slanders published elsewhere, and wound up with the statement
that “all this has disgusted me profoundly with public activity. I have
had enough, and I am tired after having passed all my life in the
struggle.” Referring to his age and to his poor health, he added, “I
have neither the strength nor perhaps the necessary faith to keep on
pushing the stone of Sisyphus against the reaction which is triumphant
everywhere. As a result, I am leaving the field. The only thing I demand
from my dear contemporaries is that they should forget about me. From
now on I am not going to disturb anybody’s rest. In return, I wish to be
let alone.”
The moving letter addressed to his followers in Western Switzerland,
though written in a somewhat different tone, likewise served notice that
he was retiring from all revolutionary activities.
By those of Bakunin’s followers who were in his intimate circle this
announcement was not taken at its face value. Baku-nin had various
reasons, so they thought, for making the authorities believe that he was
out of the revolutionary game. The fate of his former friend Nechayev,
whom the Swiss authorities delivered to the Russian police, had put in
question his own safety in the mountain republic. Rumors were current
that the Swiss Government intended to confine him somewhere in the
interior of the country, where he could have no contact with the outside
world. He began to contemplate the plan of acquiring Swiss citizenship.
A devoted Italian follower, Carlo Cafiero, the scion of a very rich
family, was ready to help him. He bought, and legally transferred to
Bakunin, a villa in the Italian-Swiss town of Locarno, where his teacher
had been living since 1869. As a country gentleman, the Russian rebel
would thus be more easily eligible for citizenship in that democratic
republic.
However, the country-house in Locarno — its name was La Baronata — was
not to be merely a shield for Bakunin’s respectability. At the same
time, it was to serve as a sort of arsenal, secret printing plant, and
refuge for Italian revolutionists who were preparing an uprising in
their country. Neither Bakunin nor Cafiero bothered much about the
question as to how this aspect of the Baronata could for any length of
time remain a secret to the Italian and Swiss authorities, inasmuch as
Locarno was a rather small place.
So Bakunin’s retirement was to be, so to speak, the beginning of a new
phase in his revolutionary activity. Yet in fact the reasons given in
the farewell letters were essentially valid. The old fighter was tired,
disgusted, and disappointed. He was physically a very sick man, his
health having suffered greatly as a result of his eight years in prison
and his Bohemian habits. His disappointment did not date from his
expulsion from the International. It apparently began as far back as the
first “mutiny” of the Inter- national Brothers against his dictatorship
in 1869; it was probably aggravated by the conflict which he had had
with his favorite disciple Nechayev, a conflict which made him realize
to what depths of baseness political fanaticism and will to power might
lead even the best fighters for the revolutionary cause. Shortly after
that break there had come his venture in Lyons, in September, 1870. He
had looked forward to a glorious unfolding of popular passions that
would mark the beginning of similar movements in many European
countries; but it had all ended in the dismal fiasco of a harmless riot.
The tragic course of the Paris Commune of 1871 was a further blow to his
revolutionary hopes.
The Spanish Revolution of 1873 was perhaps an even greater
disappointment than the Lyons fiasco. South of the Pyrenees his
followers controlled the labor movement — yet the revolutionary
situation caught them completely unawares. They did not know what to do
with it, and more often than not made themselves and the cause of
anarchism ridiculous by helping local radical politicians to seize
power. The tired old man wanted to go to Spain — no longer, it seems, in
the hope of turning the struggle into a real outbreak of popular
passions that would differ from ordinary changes of government. Did he
begin to realize the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of his
“anarchism”? At any rate, the chief purpose of his contemplated trip was
to meet with an honorable death in battle. But his “angel,” Cafiero,
this time refused to advance the necessary funds. He wanted to preserve
Bakunin’s life for the revolution in Italy whose outbreak was expected
soon.
The readiness “to die like Samson” — this was the expression he used in
one of his letters to the poet Ogarev — was all that was left of his
ancient revolutionary passion. He had lost faith in the revolutionary
instincts of the masses, and, where this did not exist, there was no
hope of victory. Denied the opportunity to die like the Biblical hero,
he slowly began to disintegrate.
Cafiero had inherited part of his father’s fortune. The comparatively
large amount which he received immediately after his father’s death he
placed at the disposal of Bakunin — to be used for the cause of the
revolution. A noble character, but altogether unpractical, he did not
realize that Bakunin was the last man to know what to do with money.
Thinking that Cafiero’s resources were unlimited — or, more likely, not
thinking at all — the tired rebel began to spend the money for the
improvement of the Baronata, the future secret headquarters of world
revolution, as it were. In reality, however, he was building a
comfortable nest for his wife’s family. (In Siberia, he had married a
young Polish girl who always remained a perfect stranger to all his
ideas. It was believed he had taken that step with a view to his
contemplated flight, for the authorities were less suspicious of, and
therefore less vigilant with regard to, the movements of married men.)
In lavishly spending the money on the improvement of the property,
Bakunin hoped that in two years the place would become self-supporting.
On less than one acre of land! After a few months, practically all the
money was in the pockets of a dishonest contractor, or had been wasted
on the support of various “comrades” and their hangers-on, who lived in
the house, and to whom Cafiero’s money was a matter of little concern.
When Cafiero returned from a few months’ absence, he realized that the
war chest for the Italian and a few other revolutions was practically
gone. His well-nigh religious devotion to his Russian demigod turned to
bitter rage. His sentiments were fully shared by the Russian Michael
Sazhin and the Swiss James Gui-llaume. These were the three men closest
to Bakunin — but they showed no mercy to the old hero who had now
reached the phase of physical and moral disintegration.
It has not been definitely established whose idea it was that there was
nothing left for Bakunin but to die in glory. An uprising was at that
time slated to break out in Bologna. It was believed that it would
spread all over Italy. In a moment of sudden realization of how he had
disgraced himself, he seems to have offered to go to Bologna and to die
fighting. When he reconsidered and showed an inclination to die in bed,
as behooves a general, Cafiero and Sazhin practically forced him to
abide by his word — or by their decision. The Bolshevik historian
Steklov is very bitter about their callousness toward a dying old man.
He forgets that to them Bakunin was more than a human being — he was the
very symbol of the revolution, the very symbol of their faith. It was
not the stain of his personal disgrace that he was to wash clean in his
own blood — it was the good name of their cause that was to be redeemed
from the ridicule that would bespatter it if the truth were to leak out.
Fortunately or unfortunately for Bakunin, the uprising in Bologna never
went beyond its embryonic stage. There was not even an attempt at a
fight and nothing was left for Bakunin but to go back — to face his
followers again. What he felt at that time he expressed in his Memoire
justificatif addressed to his wife and to his closest friends. That
document was written on his trip to Bologna, that is, on his way to a
certain death, as he believed. Two ideas stand out in this moving
apologia of a dying man: his complete disillusionment, and, as Guillaume
puts it, “the weakness of an old man for a young woman who was a
stranger to us and who did not sympathize at all with the ideas which
were dear to us.” His disillusionment Bakunin expressed in the following
words: “First of all, I am really tired and disillusioned. The events in
France and Spain have dealt a terrible blow to all our hopes, to all our
expectations. We have reckoned without the masses, which did not want to
become impassioned for their own emancipation, and, this passion being
absent, what good did it do to us to have been right theoretically? We
were powerless.” To his friends the document was the final evidence that
“Bakunin was no longer the man he had been.”
The old heroic Bakunin was now dead. He actually withdrew from all
revolutionary activities — even his personal relations with his old
general staff ceased. The final conversation which he had with his most
intimate friends late in September, 1874, ended with a complete break in
his political and personal relations with all of them.
However, he was not altogether cut off from his past. Having left
Locarno — he had to return the Baronata to Cafiero — he settled in
Lugano, about twenty miles distant from the place of his great hopes and
disappointments. It was the old heartbreaking misery and uncertainty
again. From Lugano he continued his correspondence with his old friends,
most of whom knew nothing of his difficulties with Cafiero. But these
letters were no longer epistles of propaganda or political pamphlets.
Their tone was as depressed now as it had been enthusiastic prior to
1873. His only consolation was the nearness of death. The triumph of
reaction all over Europe made him visualize a period during which “the
negation of everything that is human will triumph.” In short, he felt
exactly as any civilized person feels at present when he beholds the
progress of fascism — black, brown and red — all over the world. The
same dejected mood emanates from the letter which, four months later,
that is early in 1875, he wrote to his friend and comrade, Elisee
Reclus, who was on the way to becoming one of the greatest geographers
of his time. There he repeats the idea which was the repudiation of all
his previous preachings: that “the masses were devoid of revolutionary
thought, hope and passion, and that, so long as these did not exist,
nothing could be done.” In that letter he spoke of the strength of
“international reaction [which was] formidably armed against any popular
movement. It has made of repression a new science which is being taught
systematically in the military schools of all countries.”
Did he abandon all hope? No. “There remains another hope,” he writes to
Reclus: “the world war. Sooner or later these enormous military states
will have to destroy and to devour each other. But what an outlook!”
That world war came exactly forty years later. It actually brought in
its wake a whole period of revolutions whose leaders were largely
animated by the ultra-revolutionary concepts preached by Bakunin. For
basically most of Leninism was merely Bakuninism clothed in Marxist
verbiage.
Another symptom of his resignation was his renunciation and denunciation
of the methods of political amoralism. “Realize at length,” he wrote to
Sazhin on October 21, 1874, “that nothing living and firm can be built
up upon Jesuitical trickery; that revolutionary activity, if it is to
succeed at all, must not seek its support in mean and base passions; and
that no revolution can achieve victory if it is not animated by a lofty,
humanitarian ideal.”
It was only natural that with the loss of his faith in the nearness of
the revolution Bakunin began to take a different view of those political
changes which formerly seemed to him only a ripple on the sea of human
history without any lasting importance for the ultimate destinies of
mankind. He became greatly interested in the struggle between Bismarck
and the Catholic Church. Much as he hated the Iron Chancellor as the
embodiment of a Pan-Germanism that wanted to enslave the rest of the
world, he apparently detested still more the spiritual power of Rome,
and he saw in its defeat a step forward. He was quite jubilant in 1876,
shortly before his death, over the victory of the republicans in the
parliamentary elections in France, for that victory once and for all
disposed of the danger of a monarchist restoration. “World liberty is
saved,” he exclaimed, “it is saved once more by great France.” The
Apostle of Pan-Destruction had become a worshiper at the shrine of
democracy.
That last year in Lugano brought a reconciliation with those who had
been closest to him and who had hurt him more than anyone else had done.
Carlo Cafiero, the Italian dreamer, and Michael Sazhin, the Russian man
of action, who had both broken with him definitely a year before, came
to see him in his retreat, and something resembling the old cordiality
was re-established. However, closest to him were not these intellectuals
in whose eyes he had failed when he showed human, all too human
weakness. His most devoted friends were a few humble semiliterate
Swiss-Italian workers in Lugano. They did not know that he had lost his
faith. To them he remained the symbol of the coming social revolution,
the symbol of their redemption from misery and ignorance. Taking turns
day and night, they voluntarily nursed the sick old man, and listened to
his words with that religious awe which members of a primitive tribe may
feel for the Old Man who is the Patriarch and the Prophet in one.
The last weeks before his death brought the complete breakdown of all
his hopes for material security in the few years he still expected to
live. His share in his father’s estate was finally paid to him by his
surviving brothers, but the amount did not even suffice to pay all the
debts he had contracted in Lugano. He decided to turn his back on
Switzerland and to settle in Naples. But he went to Berne first, to have
his health restored or to die, as he told the physician. He was beyond
recovery. Two weeks later his agony was over.
About the time of Bakunin’s death Michael Sazhin, most prominent of the
old man’s followers, was arrested by the Tsarist police. Practically the
entire generation of young idealists who followed Bakunin’s call to “go
among the people” was ideologically under the spell of the famous
exile.[14] Those around Sazhin, the so-called “Buntary” (Insurgents),
were the Bakuninists proper. Their idea was to start local peasant
uprisings with the hope of fanning them into an upheaval on a national
scale. After the arrest of Sazhin, they did not survive long as an
independent revolutionary force. In fact, the “Buntary” never succeeded
in calling forth a single peasant uprising. With all the defects
inherent in the “Emancipation” decree of 1861, the lot of the peasants
had been improved as compared with their previous situation. They
apparently had no inclination to risk their lives for more.
It was well-nigh symbolical that simultaneously with the disappearance
of Sazhin behind prison walls, there occurred the escape of Peter
Kropotkin from the dungeons of the Peter and Paul Fortress. That escape
marked the beginning of his revolutionary career in Western Europe, and
the end of Bakuninism as the theory and practice of anarchism. For
Kropotkin, jointly with a few of Bakunin’s surviving friends, undertook
the “reformation” as a result of which anarchism became the creed of a
sect of millennial, though sometimes violent, dreamers. In a way it was
only another aspect of Bakunin’s loss of faith in the imminence of
revolution.[15]
Only a few, and certainly not the worst, of Bakunin’s followers became
stranded in the lofty irreconcilable idealism of a Kropotkin or a
Malatesta.[16] Most of the others — outside of Spain — went the way of
all political flesh. Even in the economically backward countries a
developing industrialism was gradually producing a vast stratum of
skilled industrial workers, easy to organize and averse to violent
methods. The possibilities of a political career without conspiracies
and barricades were opening to many of the desperate elements of the
educated lower middle-class youth. During their struggle against
Bakunin, Marx and Engels had called these declasses the “dregs of the
bourgeoisie.” Now most of the once fiery Bakuninist intellectuals began
imperceptibly to imbibe Marx’s Sancho Panza wisdom of revolutionary
words for the future and peaceful deeds for the present. Their ranks
included such famous figures as Andrea Costa in Italy, Guesde and
Brousse in France, Plekhanov and Axelrod in Russia. These “down-and-out
bourgeois” as Engels [17] had dubbed them a few years earlier, were
quite welcome now. All these fcjmer worshipers at the shrine of the
great Russian were eventually to become founders of parties drawing
their inspiration from Marx and sometimes even outdoing him in
opportunism. Psychologically, this transition was easy. Under the
changing conditions of a theoretically “doomed” but actually still quite
flourishing capitalism, most of Bakunin’s disciples sooner or later
experienced their former Teacher’s disillusionment as to the imminence
of a socialist revolution. And a cooled-off conspirator automatically
becomes a “gradualist” — if he is still interested in the political
game.
Toward the end of the last century the most militant elements among the
anarchists returned to Bakunin, as it were, even though the movement in
which they now became active was officially not associated with the name
of the Russian rebel. This was that cross between anarchism and
socialism which is called “syndicalism” or “anarcho-syndicalism.” To a
certain extent it sprang from the ideas current in the Swiss Jura
Federation of the First International. The “Jurassians,” led by
Bakunin’s Swiss disciple, James Guillaume, accepted the trade unions
both as instruments of the working class struggle and as the basis of
the social reconstruction after the victorious revolution. They
completely disregarded the question of political power as well as the
conspiratorial methods which Bakunin had recommended for obtaining it,
even though he never openly admitted such intentions.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917 Bakuninism proper celebrated a
sort of resurrection in the movement connected with the name of Nestor
Makhno.[18] In the opinion of some moderate Socialists, the Bolshevik
Revolution itself represented “the victory of Bakuninist unculture over
Marxist culture.” Their viewpoint is to a certain extent confirmed by
the well-known Soviet historian[19] who declared that the methods
advocated by Bakunin in 1848 were “in many points practically an
anticipation of the Soviet power and a prediction, in general outline,
of the course of the great October Revolution of 1917.” Lenin, by the
way, and the other conspirators who prepared that Revolution, had
received their Marxism from ‘ *}eorge Plekh-anov, who had been a fervent
disciple of Bakunin before he became the founder of Russian Marxism, and
thus the teacher of Lenin. Plekhanov, the renegade of Bakuninism,
opposed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, while Lenin reverted to many
of Bakunin’s concepts which he passed as Marxism.
In one of his whimsical moods Alexander Herzen called his friend Bakunin
a Columbus without America. Intended as a good-natured gibe, that
designation was a prophecy of which the great Russian stylist was
altogether unaware. The great Genoese sailor thought he had found India
when in reality he had discovered a new continent. Bakunin thought he
had found the road to the heavenly Utopia of Anarchy. What he actually
discovered was the path to the infernal reality of Dictatorship.
[1] See chapter on Karl Marx.
[2] Immediately upon these words there follows the sentence: “In his
capacity as a German and as a Jew he [Marx] is an authoritarian from the
top of his head to his heel.” It will be seen later that Bakunin’s
thrust against German “authoritarianism” was chiefly directed against
German nationalism, of which he suspected Marx.
[3] Confession, pp. 222–224. Max Nettlau, scholarly historian and
apologist of Anarchism, in annotating this passage, on page 331 of that
book, says innocently that “it was exactly the task of the ‘invisible
dictatorship’ to discard the real dictatorship.” Thus the gist of
Bakunin’s revolutionary theory seems to have been that once a
revolutionist adopts the label of anarchism, he becomes magically
divested of the normal passions and temptations of all those who gain
power.
[4] “There is nothing that could be more narrow-minded, more
contemptible, more ridiculous, than a German professor or a German in
general.”
[5] Even in his State and Anarchy, which he wrote ten years later,
during his internationalist-anarchist phase, there are such phrases as
“He [the German] is made to be a slave and a master at the same time.”
(P. 246.) Or, “A German [when he says “I am a German”] means: ‘I am a
slave, but my Emperor is stronger than all rulers, and the German
soldier who oppresses [strangles] me will strangle you all.’” (P. 248.)
Or, to cap the climax, “In the German blood, in the German instinct, in
the German tradition, there is a passion for State order and State
discipline; the Slavs, on the other hand, are not merely free of these
passions; on the contrary, passions of the very opposite order are
active and alive in them.” (P. 90.) All that was bad in Russian life he
ascribed to Tartar-German” influence. Russia, to him, was a
“Tartar-German prison” — an expression which he used in one of his
articles published in Herzen’s Kokol.
[6] Recorded in the reminiscences of Maxim Kovalevsky, famous Russian
historian and sociologist, in Russkaya Mysl, Moscow, January, 1895,
second part, page 71.
[7] Included in the German edition of Bakunin’s works: Michael Bakunin,
Gesammelte Werke. Berlin, 1921–1924, Vol. Ill, pp. 8–63. It is not to be
confounded with the Catechism of the Revolutionist which Bakunin wrote a
few years later, and which is referred to in the chapter about Nechayev.
[8] The German State, he says in his Gosudarstvennost i Anarchia (p.
57), “is today (1873), in our opinion, the only real State in Europe.”
[9] See the chapter on Blanqui.
[10] In a letter to Marx (dated February 7, 1865) Bakunin had written
that “Mazzini is greatly mistaken if he still thinks that the initiative
for the new movement [for democracy] will come from Italy.” See also, in
our chapter on Blanqui, the references to Mazzini’s ambitions.
[11] Here Bakunin used the word “anarchy” in the meaning of “chaos” or
“disorder.”
[12]
M. Bakunin, Gosudaritvennost i Anarchia, p. 100. That information he
had no doubt obtained from a very gifted follower, a young Serbian
student by the name of Nikola Pashitch, who forty years later, was
to become the Serbian Bismarck and the creator of Yugoslavia.
(Another young Serbian was at that time and for many years to come a
sympathizer of the Marxist wing of the international socialist
movement. His name was Peter Karageorgevich — a political exile from
his native country. In 1903 he became King of Serbia, and the
founder of the dynasty now ruling Yugoslavia.)
[13] An exposition of the views of Waclaw Machajski (pronounced Vatzlav
Makhaysky) is given in Max Nomad’s Rebels and Renegades (pp. 206–208,
239).
[14] See the chapter on Nechayev.
[15] See the chapter on Johann Most.
[16] For a short history of modern anarchism from the death of Bakunin
to the present, see M. Nomad’s Rebels and Renegades, Chapter I.
[17] Engels used the word “verkommen” which has no exact equivalent in
English. It has the connotation of depraved, dilapidated,
gone-to-the-dogs.
[18] See the chapter on Nestor Makhno.
[19]
Y. Steklov, Mikhail Bakunin, Vol. I, p. 343.