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Title: Writings Author: Michail Bakunin Date: 1867–1871 Language: en Topics: classical, class struggle Source: Retrieved on February 23rd, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/writings/index.htm Notes: Publisher: Modern Publishers, Indore Kraus Reprint Co. New York, 1947; Transcribed/HTML Markup: Natasha Morse.
The Council of Action does not ask any worker if he is of a religious or
atheistic turn of mind. She does not ask if he belongs to this or that
or no political party. She simply says: Are you a worker? If not, do you
feel necessity of devoting yourself wholly to the interests of the
working class, and of avoiding all movements that are opposed to it? Do
you feel at one with the workers? And have you the strength in you that
is requisite if you would be loyal to their cause? Are you aware that
the workers who create all wealth who have made civilization and fought
for liberty — and doomed to live in misery, ignorance, and slavery? Do
you understand that the main root of all the evils that the workers
experience, is poverty? And that poverty — which is the common lot of
the workers in all parts of the world — is a consequence of the present
economic organization of society, and especially of the enslavement of
labor — i.e. the proletariat — under the yoke of capitalism — i.e. the
bourgeoisie.
Do you know that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie there
exists a deadly antagonism which is the logical consequence of the
economic positions of the two classes? Do you know that the wealth of
the bourgeoisie is incompatible with the comfort and liberty of the
workers, because their excessive wealth is, and can only be, built upon
the robbing and enslavement of the workers? Do you understand that, for
the same reason, the prosperity and dignity of the laboring masses
inevitably demands the entire abolition of the bourgeoisie? Do you
realize that no single worker, however intelligent and energetic he may
be, can fight successfully against the excellently organized forces of
the bourgeoisie — a fore which is upheld mainly by the organization of
the State — all States.
Do you not see that, in order to become a power, you must unite — not
with the bourgeoisie, which would be a folly and a crime, since all the
bourgeoisie, so far as they belong to their class, are our deadly
enemies? — Nor with such workers as have deserted their own cause and
have lowered themselves to beg for the benevolence of the governing
classes? But with the honest men, who are moving, in all sincerity,
towards the same goal as you? Do you understand, against the powerful
combinations, formed by the privileged classes the capitalists or
possessors of the means and instruments of production and distribution,
the divided or sectarian associations of labor, can ever triumph? Do you
not realize that, in order to fight and to vanquish this capitalist
combination, nothing less than the amalgamation, in council and action,
of all local, and national labor associations — federating into an
international associations of the workers of all lands, — is required.
If you know and comprehend all this, come into our camp whatever else
your political or religious convictions are. But if you are at one with
us, and so long as you are at one with us, you will wish to pledge the
whole of your being, by your every action as well as by your words, to
the common cause, as a spontaneous and whole-hearted expression of that
fervor of loyalty that will inevitably take possession of you. You will
have to promise:
political and religious bias and would be activities, to the highest
interest of our association, namely the struggle of labor against
Capital, the economic fight of the Proletariat against the Bourgeoisie
whereby you would become at once a bourgeois and an enemy of the
proletariat: for the only difference between capitalists and workers is
this: the former seek their welfare outside, and at the expense of, the
welfare of the community whilst the welfare of the latter is dependent
on the solidarity of these who are robbed on the industrial field.
labor: for the smallest betrayal of this principle, the slightest
deviation from this solidarity, is, in the eyes of the International,
the greatest crime and shame with which a worker can soil himself.
The pioneers of the Councils of Action act wisely in refusing to make
philosophic or political principles the basis of their association, and
preferring to have the exclusively economic struggle of Labor against
Capital as the sole foundation. They are convinced that the moment a
worker realizes the class struggle, the moment he — trusting to his
right and the numerical strength of his class — enters the arena against
capitalist robbery: that very moment, the for of circumstances and the
evolution of the struggle, will oblige him to recognize all the
political, socialistic, and philosophic principles of the
class-struggle. These principles are nothing more or less than the real
expression of the aims and objects of the working-class. The necessary
and inevitable conclusion of these aims, their one underlying and
supreme purpose, is the abolition — from the political as well as from
the social viewpoint of:
imposed on society by, and in the economic interests of the bourgeoisie.
top of the historic ruins of this old word order, the establishment of
the great international federation of all local and national productive
groups.
From the philosophic point of view, the aims of the working class are
nothing less than the realization of the eternal ideas of humanity, the
welfare of man, the reign of equality, justice, and liberty on earth,
making unnecessary all belief in heaven and all hopes for a better
hereafter.
The great mass of the workers, crushed by their daily toil, live in
ignorance and misery. Whatever the political and religious prejudices in
which they have been reared individually may be, this mass is
unconsciously Socialistic: instinctively, and, through the pinch of
hunger and their position, more earnestly and truly Socialistic than all
the “scientific” and “bourgeois Socialists” put together. The mass are
Socialists through all the circumstances of reasoning; and, in reality,
the necessities of life have a greater influence over these of pure
reasoning, because reasoning (or thought) is only the reflex of the
continually developing life — force and not its basis.
The workers do not lack reality, the zeal for Socialist endeavor, but
only the Socialist idea. Every worker, from the bottom of his heart, is
longing for a really human existence, i.e. material comfort and mental
development founded on justice, i.e., equality and liberty for each and
every man in work. This cannot be realized in the existing political and
social organization, which is founded on injustice and bare-faced
robbery of the laboring masses. Consequently, every reflective worker
becomes a revolutionary Socialist, since he is forced to realize that
his emancipation can only be accomplished by the complete overthrow of
present day society. Either this organization of injustice with its
entire machine of oppressive laws and privileged institutions, must
disappear, or else the proletariat is condemned to eternal slavery.
This is the quintessence of the Socialist idea, whose germs can be found
in the instinct of every serious thinking worker. Our object, therefore,
is to make him conscious of what he wants, to awaken in him a clear idea
that corresponds to his instincts: for the moment the class
consciousness of the proletariat has lifted itself up to the level of
their instinctive feeling, their intention will have developed into
determination, and their power will be irresistible.
What prevents the quicker development of this idea of salvation amongst
the Proletariat? Its ignorance; and, to a great extent, the political
and religious prejudices with which the governing classes are trying to
befog the consciousness and the natural intelligence of the people. How
can you disperse this ignorance and destroy these strange prejudices?
“The liberation of the Proletariat must be the work of the Proletariat
itself;” says the preface to the general statute of the (First)
International. And it is a thousand times true! This is the main
foundation of our great association. But the working class is still very
ignorant. It lacks completely every theory. There is only one way out
therefore, namely — Proletarian liberation through action. And what will
this action be that will bring the masses to Socialism? It is the
economic struggle of the Proletariat against the governing class carried
out in solidarity. It is the Industrial Organization of the workers —
the Council of Action.
The masses are the social power, or, at least, the essence of that
power. But they lack two things in order to free themselves from the
hateful conditions which oppress them: education, and organization.
These two things represent: today, the real foundations of power of all
government.
To abolish the military and governing power of the State, the
proletariat must organize. But since organization cannot exist without
knowledge, it is necessary to spread among the masses real social
education.
To spread this real social education is the aim of the International.
Consequently, the day on which the international succeeds in uniting in
its ranks a half, a fourth, or even a tenth part of the workers of
Europe, the State or States will cease to exist. The organization of the
International will be altogether different from the organization of the
State, since its aim is not to create new States but to destroy all
existing government systems. The more artificial, brutal, and
authoritarian is the power of the State, the more indifferent and
hostile it is to the natural developments, interests and desires of the
people, the freer and more natural must be the organization of the
International. It must try all the more to accommodate itself to the
natural instincts and ideals of the people.
But what do we mean by the natural organization of the masses? We mean
the organization which is founded upon the experience and results of
their everyday life and the difference of their occupations, i.e., their
industrial organization. The moment all branches of industry are
represented in their International, the organization of the masses will
be complete.
But it might be said that, since we exist, the International, organized
influence over the masses: we are aiming at new power equally with the
politicians of the old State systems. This change is a great mistake.
The influences of the International over the masses differs from all
government power in that, it is no more than a natural, unofficial
influence of ordinary ideas, without authority.
The State is the authority, the rule, and organized power of the
possessing class, and the make-believe experts over the life and liberty
of masses. The State does not want anything other than the servility of
the masses. At once it demands their submission.
The International, on the other hand, has no other object then the
absolute freedom of the masses. Consequently, it appeals to the rebel
instinct. In order that this rebel instinct should be strong and
powerful enough to overthrow the rule of the State and the privileged
class, the International must organize.
To realize this goal, it has to employ two quite just weapons:
influence of its adherents on the masses.
A person who can assert that, organized activity is an attack on tine
freedom of the masses, or an attempt to create a new rule, is either a
sophist or a fool. It is sad enough for these who don’t know the rules
of human solidarity, to think that complete individual independence is
possible, or desirable. Such a condition would mean the dissolution of
all human society, since the entire social existence of man depends on
the interdependence of individuals and the masses. Every person, even
the cleverest and strongest — nay, especially the clever and strong —
are at all times, the creatures as also the creators of this influence.
The freedom of each individual is the direct outcome of these material
mental and moral influences, of all individuals surrounding him in that
society in which he lives, develops, and dies. A person who seeks to
free himself from that influence in the name of a metaphysical,
superhuman, and perfectly egotistical “freedom” aims at his own
extermination as a human being. And these who refuse to use that
influence on others, withdraw from all activity of social life, and by
not passing on their thoughts and feelings, work for their own
destruction. Therefore, this so-called “independence,” which is preached
so often by the idealists and metaphysicians: this so-called individual
liberty is only the destruction of existence.
In nature, as well as in human society, which is never anything else
than part of that same nature, every creature exists on condition that
he tries, as much as his individuality will permit, to influence the
lives of others. The destruction of that indirect influence would mean
death. And when we desire the freedom of the masses, we by no means want
to destroy this natural influence, which individuals or groups of
individuals, create through their own contract.
What we seek is the abolition of the artificial, privileged, lawful, and
official influence. If the Church and State wore private institutions,
we should be, even then, I suppose their opponents. We should not have
protested against their right to exist. True, in a sense, they are,
today, private institutions, as they exit exclusively to conserve the
interests of the privileged classes. Still, we oppose them, because they
use all the power of the masses to force their rule upon the latter in
an authoritarian, official, and brutal manner. If the International
could have organized itself in the State manner, we, its most
enthusiastic friends, would have become its bitterest enemies. But it
cannot possibly organize itself in such a form. The International cannot
recognize limits to human fellowship and, whilst the State cannot exist
unless it limits, by territorial pretensions, such fellowship and
equality, History has shown us that the realization of a league of all
the States of the world, about which all the despots have dreamt, is
impossible. Hence these who speak of the State, necessarily think and
speak of a world divided into different States, who are internally
oppressors and outwardly despoilers, i.e., enemies to each other. The
State, since it involves this division, oppression, and despoliation of
humanity, must represent the negation of humanity and the destruction of
human society.
There would not have been any sense in the organization of the workers
at al!, if they had not aimed at the overthrow of the State. The
International organizes the masses with this object in view, to the end
that they might recall this goal. And how does it organize them?
Not from the top to the bottom, by imposing a seeming unity and order on
human society, as the state attempts, without regards to the differences
of interest arising from differences of occupation. On the contrary, the
International organizes the masses from the bottom up wards, taking the
social life of the masses, their real aspirations as a starting point,
and encouraging them to unite in groups according to their real
interests in society. The International evolves a unity of purpose and
creates a real equilibrium of aim and well-being out of their natural
difference in life and occupation.
Just because the International is organized in this way, it develops a
real power. Hence it is essential that every member of every group
should be acquainted thoroughly with all its principles. Only by these
means will he make a good propagandist in time of peace and real
revolutionist in time of war.
We all know that our program is just. It expresses in a few noble words
the just and humane demands of the proletariat. Just because it is an
absolutely humane program, it contains all the symptoms of the social
revolution. It proclaims the destruction of the old and the creation of
the new world.
This is the main point which we must explain to all members of the
International. This program substitutes a new science, a new philosophy
for the old religion. And it defines a new international policy, in
place of the old diplomacy. It has no other object than the overthrow of
the States.
In order that the members of the International scientifically fill their
posts, as revolutionary propagandists, it is necessary for every one to
be imbued with the new science, philosophy, and policy: the new spirit
of the International. It is not enough to declare that we want the
economic freedom of the workers, a full return for our labor, the
abolition of classes, the end of political slavery, the realization of
nil human rights, equal duties and justice for all: in a phrase, the
unity of humanity. All this, is, without a doubt, very good and just.
But when the workers of the International simply go on repeating these
phrases, without grasping their truth and meaning. they have to face the
danger of reducing their just claims to empty words, cant which is
nothing without understanding.
It might be answered that not all workers, even when they are members of
the International, can be educated. It is not enough, then, that there
are in the organization, a group of people, who — as far as possible —
re acquainted with the science, philosophy, and policy of Socialism?
Cannot the wide mass follow their “brotherly advice “not to turn from
the right path, that leads ultimately to the freedom of the proletariat?
The authoritarian Communists in the International often make use of
these arguments, although they have wanted the courage to state them so
freely and so clearly. They have sought to hide their real opinion under
demagogic compliments about the cleverness and all powerfulness of the
people. We were always the bitterest enemies of this opinion. And we are
convinced, that, if the International split into two groups — a big
majority, and small minority of ton, twenty or more people — in such a
way, that the majority were convinced blindly of the theoretical and
practical sense of the minority, the result would be the reduction of
the International to an oligarchy — the worst form of State. The
educated and capable minority would, together with its responsibilities,
demand the rights of a governing body. And this governing body would
prove more despotic than an avowed autocracy, because it would be hidden
beneath a show of servile respect for the will of the people. The
minority would rule through the medium of resolutions, imposed upon the
people, and after. wards called “the will, of the people.” In this way,
the educated minority would develop Into a government, which, like all
other governments, would grow every day more despotic and reactionary.
The International only then can become a weapon for liberating the
people, when it frees itself; when it does not permit itself to be
divided into two groups — a big majority, the blind tool of an educated
minority. That is why its first duty is to imprint upon the minds of its
members the science, philosophy, and policy of Socialism.
meaning by that his complete and equal right to enjoy, in common with
his fellow workers, the full amenities of life and happiness that the
collective labor of the people creates. The Council declares that it is
wrong for these who produce nothing at all to be able to maintain their
insolent riches, since they do so only by the work of others. Like the
Apostle Paul, the Council maintains, that, if any would not work,
neither should he eat.The Council of Action avers that the right to the
noble namo of labor belongs exclusively to productive labor. Some years
ago, the young King of Portugal paid a visit to his august
father-in-law. He was presented to a gathering of the Working Men’s
Association at Turin: and there, surrounded by workers, he uttered these
memorable words: “Gentlemen, the present country is the country of
labor. We all labor. I, too, labor for the good of my people.However
flattering this likening of royal labor to working-class labor may
appear, we cannot accept it. We must recognize that royal labor is a
labor of absorption and not of production. Capitalists, proprietors,
contractors also labor: but all such labor is parasitic, since it has no
other object than to transfer the real products of labor from the hands
of the workers, whose toil creates them, into the possession of these
who do not create them, to serve the purpose of further gain and
exploitation. Such labor cannot be considered productive labor. In this
sense, thieves and brigand labor also. Roughly, they risk every day
their liberty and their life. But they do not work.The Council of Action
recognizes intellectual labor — that of men of science — as productive
labor. It places the application of science to industry, and the
activity of the organizers and administrators of industrial and
commercial affairs, in the category of useful or productive labor. But
it demands for all men a participation as much in manual labor as in the
labor of the mind. The question of how much manual and how much mental
labor a person shall contribute to the community must be decided not by
the privileges of birth of social status, but by suitability to the
natural capacities of each, developed by equal opportunity of education
and instruction.Only thus can class distinctions and privileges
disappear and the cant phrase, “the intelligent and working masses” be
relegated to deserved oblivion.
plunged in the misery of economic servitude, all so-called reforms and
even so-called political revolutions of a seeming proletarian character,
will avail them nothing. They are condemned to live in a forced
ignorance and to accept a slave status by the economic organization of
wage-slave society.
interests, material as well as moral, — and moral because so completely
and thoroughly and equally material for each and all — to subordinate
all seeming political questions to definite economic issues. The
material means of an education and of an existence really human, are for
the proletariat, the first condition of liberty, morality and humanity.
class legacy of exploitation, as well as contemporary experience, should
have convinced the workers that they can expect no social amelioration
of their lot from the generosity of the privileged classes. There is no
justice in class society, since justice can exist only in equality; and
equality means the abolition of class and privilege (Monopoly) There
never has been and there never will be a generous or just ruling class.
The classes and orders existing in present day — society — clergy,
bureaucracy, plutocracy, nobility, bourgeoisie-dispute for power only to
consolidate their own strength and to increase their profits within the
system. The Council of Action exists to express the truth that,
henceforth, the proletariat must take the direction of its own affairs
into its own hands.
find expression in the Council of action, or Federated Councils of
Action. Then there will remain no power in the world that can resist the
workers.
to tend, not to the establishment of a new rule or of a new class for
its alleged profit as a class, but to the definite abolition of all
rule, of every class. Dictatorship, political sectarianism, all spell
power, exploitation, and injustice. The proletariat, through their
Council of Action organization, must express the organization of justice
liberty, without distinction of race, color, nationality, or faith — all
to fully exercise the same duties and enjoy the same rights.
solidarity, across and in spite of all State frontiers. Expressing that
common purpose, that complete proletarian identity of interest, the
Council of Action proclaims the International oneness of the workers’
cause. It pioneers the definite International Association of the Workers
of the World in a chain of Industrial Associations. The cause of the
workers is International because, pushed by an inevitable law which is
inherent in it, bourgeois capital in its threefold employment — in
industry, commerce and in banking speculations — has boon tending, since
the beginning of the nineteenth century, towards an organization more
and more International and complete, enlarging each day more, and
simultaneous in all centuries, the abyss which separates the working
world from the bourgeois world. From this fact, it results that, for
every worker endowed with intelligence and heart, for every proletariat
who has vision and affection for his companions in misery and servitude;
who is conscious of the situation of himself and his class and of his
actual interest: the real century is henceforth the International Camp
of Labor. And the true local organization of that camp is the Council of
Action.To every worker, truly worthy of the name, the workers of
so-called foreign centuries, who suffer and are oppressed as he is
oppressed, are infinitely nearer and of more immediate kin than the
bourgeoisie of his own country, who enrich themselves to his detriment.
Because of this the Council of Action will replace the geographical unit
of false democracy, the National State.
exploitation which it endures in all centuries alike, must be
International. In these lands which are bound by means of credit,
industry, and commerce, the economic and social emancipation of the
proletariat must be achieved almost simultaneously by a common struggle
ending in a triumphant challenge to the existing political constitution
of the world. The economic emancipation of the proletariat is the
foundation of the political emancipation of the world. Realizing this,
the Council of Action preaches the proletarian duty and message of
fraternity.By the duty of fraternity, as well as by the call of
enlightened self interest, the workers are called upon to establish,
organize, and exercise the greatest practical solidarity, industrial,
communal, provincial, national and International: beginning in their
workshop, their home, their tenement, their street their political group
and extending it to all their trade societies, to all their trade
propaganda federations a close industrial solidarity They ought to
observe this solidarity scrupulously, and practice it in all the
developments catastrophes, and incidents of the in incessant daily
struggle of the labor of the worker against the stolen capital of the
bourgeois; all these demands and claims of hours and wages, strikes, and
every question that relates to the existence, whether material or moral,
of the working people.
The revolt of the workers and the spontaneous organization of human
solidarity through the free but involuntary and inevitable federation of
all working-class groups into the Council of Action! This, then, is the
answer to the enigma which the Capitalist Sphinx forces us today to
solve, threatening to devour us if we do not solve it.
From this truth of practical solidarity or fraternity of struggle that I
have laid down as the first Principe of the Council of Action flows a
theoretical consequence of equal importance. The workers are able to
unite as a class for class economic action, because all religious
philosophies, and systems of morality which prevail in any given order
of society are always the ideal expression of its real, material
situation. Theologies, philosophies and ethics define, first of all, the
economic organization of society; and secondly, the political
organization, which is itself nothing but the legal and violent
consecration of the economic order. Consequently, there are not several
religions of the ruling class; there is one, the religion of property.
And there are not several religions of the working class: there is one,
the piety of struggle, the vision of emancipation, penetrating the fog
of every mysticism, and finding utterance in a thousand prayers. Workers
of all creeds, like workers of all’ lands, have but one faith, hope, and
charity; one common purpose overleaps the barriers of seeming hatreds of
race and creed. The workers are one class, and therefore one race, one
faith, one nation. This is the Theoretical truth to be induced from the
practical fraternal solidarity of the Council of Action organization.
Church and State are liquidated in the vital organization of the working
class, the genius of free humanity.
It has been stated that Protestantism established liberty in Europe.
This is a great error. It is the economic, material emancipation of the
bourgeois class which, in spite of Protestantism, has created that
exclusively political and legal liberty, which is too easily confounded
with the grand, universal, human liberty, which only the proletariat can
create. The necessary accompaniment of bourgeois legal and political
liberty, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, is the
intellectual, anti-Christian, and anti-religious emancipation of the
bourgeoisie. The capitalist ruling class has no religion, no ideals, and
no illusion. It is cynical and unbelieving because it denies the real
base e of human society, the complete emancipation of the working class.
Bourgeois society, by its very nature of interested professionalism,
must maintain centers of authority and exploitation, called States. The
laborers, by their very economic needs, trust challenge such centers of
oppression.
The inherent principles of human existence are summed up in the single
law of solidarity. This is the golden rule of humanity and may be
formulated this: no person can recognize or realize his or her own
humanity except by recognizing it in others and so cooperating for its
realization by each and all No man can emancipate himself save by
emancipating with him all the men about him.
My liberty is the liberty of everybody. I cannot be free in idea until I
am free in fact. To be free in idea and not free fact is to be revolt.
To be free in fact is to have my liberty and my right, find their
confirmation, and sanction in the liberty and right of all mankind. I am
free only when all men are my equals (first and foremost economically.)
What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However
independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear
from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the
misery of the meanest member of society. The outcast is my daily menace.
Whether I am Pope, Czar, Emperor, or even Prime Minister, I am always
the creature of their circumstance, the conscious product of their
ignorance, want and clamoring. They are in slavery, and I, the superior
one, am enslaved in consequence.
For example if such is the case, I am enlightened or intelligent man.
But I an foolish with the folly of the people, my wisdom stunned by
their needs, my mind palsied. I an a brave man, but I am the coward of
the peoples’ fear. Their misery appalls me, and every day I shrink from
the struggle of life. My career becomes an evasion of living. A rich
man, I tremble before their poverty, because it threatens to engulf me.
I discover I have no riches in myself, no wealth but that stolen from
the common life of the common people. As privileged man, I turn pale
before the people’s demand for justice. I feel a menace in that demand.
The cry is ominous and I am threatened. It is the feeling of the
malefactor dreading, yet waiting for inevitable arrest. My life is
privileged and furtive. But it is not mine. I lack freedom and
contentment. In short, wishing to be free, though I am wise, brave,
rich, and privileged, I cannot be free because my immediate associates
do not wish men to be free; and the mass, from whom all wisdom, bravery,
riches, and privileges ascend, do not know how to secure their freedom.
The slavery of the common people make them the instruments of my
oppression. For me to be free, they must be free. We must conquer bread
and Freudian in common.
The true, human liberty of a single individual implies the emancipation
of all: because, thanks to the law of solidarity, which is the natural
basis of all human society, I cannot be, feel, and know myself really,
completely free, if I an not surrounded by men as free as myself. The
slavery of each is my slavery.
It follows that the question of individual liberty is not a personal but
a social economic question that depends on the deliverance of the
proletariat for its realization. That in turn, involves the spontaneous
organization and capacity for economic and social action through the
voluntary and free grouping of all workers’ organizations into the
Council of Action. The Red Association of these who toil!
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a
lie; and the workers want no lying.
The workers necessarily strive after a fundamental transformation of
society, the result of which must be the abolition of classes, equally
in economic as in political respects: after a system of society in which
all men will enter the world under special conditions, will be able to
unfold and develop themselves, work and enjoy the good things of life.
These are the demands of justice.
But how can we from the abyss of ignorance, of misery and slavery, in
which the workers on the land and in the cities are sunk, arrive at that
paradise, the realization of justice and manhood? For this the workers
have one means: the Association of Councils.
Through the Association they brace themselves up, they mutually improve
each other and, through their own efforts, make an end of that dangerous
ignorance which is the main support of their slavery. By means of the
Association, they learn to help, and mutually support one another.
Thereby they will recall, finally, a power which will prove more
powerful than all confederated bourgeois capital and political powers
put together.
The Council must become the Association in the mind of every worker. It
must become the password of every political and agitation organization
of the workers, the password of every group, in every industry
throughout all lands. Undoubtedly the Council; is the weightiest and
most hopeful sign of the proletarian struggle an infallible omen of the
coming complete emancipation of the workers.
Experience has proved that the isolated associations are not more
powerful than are the isolated workers. Even the Association of all
Workers’ Associations of a single country would not be sufficiently
powerful to stand up in conflict with the International combination of
all profit making world capital. Economic science establishes the fact
that the emancipation of the worker is no national question. No country,
no matter how wealthy, mighty, and well-served it may be, can undertake
— without ruining itself and surrendering its inhabitants to misery — a
fundamental alteration in the relations between capital and labor, if
this alteration is not accomplished, at the same time, at least, in the
greatest part of the industrial countries of the world. Consequently,
the question of the emancipation of the worker from the yoke of capital
and its representatives, the bourgeois capitalists, is, above all, an
International question. Its solution, therefore, is only possible
through an International Movement.
Is this International Movement a secret idea, a conspiracy? Not in the
least. The International Movement, the Council Association, does not
dictate from above or prescribe in secret. It federates from below and
will from a thousand quarters. It speaks in every group of workers and
embraces the combined decision of all factions. The Council is living
democracy: and whenever the Association formulates plans, it does it
openly, and speaks to all who will listen. Its word is the voice of
labor recruiting its energies for the overthrow of capitalist
oppression.
What does the Council say? What is the demand it makes through every
association of these who toil and think, in every factory, in every
country? What does it request? Justice! The strictest justice and the
rights of humanity: the right of manhood, womanhood, childhood,
irrespective of all distinctions of birth, race, or creed. The right to
live and the obligation to work to maintain that right. Service from
each to all and from all to each. If this idea appears appalling and
prodigious to the existent bourgeois society, so much the worse for this
Society. Is the Council of Action a revolutionary enterprise? Yes and
no.
The Council of Action is revolutionary in the sense that it will replace
a society based upon injustice, exploitation, privilege, laziness, and
authority, by one which is founded upon justice and freedom for all
mankind. In a word, it wills an economic, political, and social
organization, in which each person, without prejudice to his natural and
personal idiosyncrasies, will find it equally possible to develop
himself, to learn, to think, to work, to be active, and to enjoy life
honorably. Yes, this it desires; and we repeat, once more, if this is
incompatible with the existing organization of society, so much the
worse for this society.
Is the Council of Action revolutionary in the sense of barricades and of
violent uprising or demonstration? No; the Council concerns itself but
little with this kind of polities; or, rather, one should say that the
Council takes no part in it whatever. The bourgeois revolutionaries,
anxious for some change of power, and police agents finding occupation
in passing explosions of sound and fury, are annoyed greatly with the
Council of Action on account of the Council’s indifference towards their
activities and schemes of provocation.
The Council of Action, the Red Association of these who want and toil,
comprehended, long since, that each bourgeois politic — no matter how
red and revolutionary it might appear — served not the emancipation of
the workers, but the tightening of their slavery. Even if the Council
had not comprehended this fact, the miserable game, which, at times, the
bourgeois republican and even the bourgeois Socialist plays, would have
opened the workers’ eyes.
The Council of Action, ever evolving more completely into the
International Workers’ Movement, holds itself severely aloof from the
dismal political intrigues, and knows to-day only one policy: to each
group and to each worker: his propaganda, its extension and organization
into struggle and action. On the day when the great proportion of the
world’s workers have associated themselves through Council of Actions,
and so firmly organized through Council of Actions, and so firmly
organized through their divisions into one common solidarity of
movement, no revolution, in the sense of violent insurrection, will be
necessary. From this it will be seen that anarchists do not stand for
abortive violence which its enemies attribute to it. Without violence,
justice will triumph. Oppression will be liquidated by the direct power
of the workers through association. And if that day, there are impatient
pleads, and some suffering, this will be the guilt of the bourgeoisie
refusing to recognize what has happened, through their machination. To
the triumph of the social revolution itself violence will be
unnecessary.
Except, Proudhon and M. Louis Blanc almost all the historians of the
revolution of 1848 and of the coup d’etat of December, 1851, as well as
the greatest writers of bourgeois radicalism, the Victor Hugos, the
Quinots, etc. have commented at great length on the crime and the
criminals of December; but they have never deigned to touch upon the
crime and the criminals of June. And yet it is so evident that December
was nothing but the fatal consequence of June and its repetition on a
large scale.
Why this silence about June? Is it because the criminals of June are
bourgeois republicans of whom the above named writers have been,
morally, more or less accomplices? Accomplices in their principles and
therefore indirectly accomplices to their acts. This reason is probable,
but there is yet another which is contain. The crime of June struck
workers only, revolutionary socialists, consequently strangers to the
class and natural enemies of the principle that all these honorable
writers represent. The crime of December attacked and deported thousands
of bourgeois republicans, the social brothers of those honorable writers
and their political co-religionists. Besides, they themselves have been
its victims. Hence their extreme sensibilities to the December crimes,
and their indifference to those of June.
A general rule: A bourgeois, however red a republican he be, will be
much more keenly affected, aroused and smitten by a mishap to another
bourgeois wore this bourgeois even a mad imperialist than by the
misfortune of a worker, of a man of the people. There is undoubtedly a
great injustice in this difference, but the injustice is not
premeditated. It is instinctive. It arises onto of the conditions and
habits of life which exercise a much greater influence over men than
their ideas and political convictions. Conditions and habits, their
special manner of existing, developing, thinking and acting; all their
social relationships so manifold and various, and yet se regularly
convergent towards the same aim; all this diversity of interest
expressing common social ambition and constituting the life of the
bourgeois world, establishes between these who belong to this world a
solidarity infinitely more real, deeper, and unquestionably more sincere
than any that might arise between a section of the bourgeoisie and the
workers. No difference of political opinions is sufficient to overcome
the bourgeois community of interests. No seeming agreement of political
opinions is sufficient to overcome the antagonism of interests that
divide the bourgeoisie from the workers. Community of convictions and
ideas are and must ever be subsidiary to a community of class interests
and prejudices
Life dominates thought and determines the will. This is a truth that
should never be lost sight of when we wish to understand anything about
social and political phenomena. If we wish to establish a sincere and
complete community of thought and will between men, we must found it on
similar conditions of life, or on a community of interests. And as there
is, by the very conditions of their respective existence, an abyss
between the bourgeois word and the world of the worker, — the one being
the exploiting world, the other the world of the victimized and
exploited I conclude that if a man born and brought up in the bourgeois
environment wishes to become sincerely and unreservedly the friend and
brother of the workers he must renounce all the conditions of his past
existence and outgrow all his bourgeois habits He must break off his
relations of sentiment with the bourgeois world, its vanity and
ambition. He must turn his back upon it and become its enemy; proclaim
irreconcilable war; and threw himself wholeheartedly into the world and
cause of the worker.
If his passion for justice is too weak to inspire him to such resolution
and audacity, let him not deceive himself and let him not deceive the
workers. He can never become their friend and at every crisis must prove
their enemy. His abstract thoughts, his dreams of justice will easily
influence him in hours of calm reflection when nothing stirs in the
exploited world. But let the moment of Struggle come when the armed
truce gives place to the irreconcilable conflict, his interests will
compel him to serve in the camp of the exploiters. This has happened to
our one-time friends in the past. It will happen again to many good
republicans and socialists who have not lost their attachment to the
bourgeois world.
Social hatreds are like religious hatreds. They are intense and deep.
They are not shallow like political hatred. This fact explains the
indulgence shown by the bourgeois democrats for the Bonapartists. It
explains also their excessive severity against the socialist
revolutionaries. They detest the former much less than the latter
because of the pressure of economic interests. Consequently they unite
with the Bonapartists to form a common reaction against the oppressed
masses.
Whosoever mentions the State, implies force, oppression, exploitation,
injustice — all these brought together as a system are the main
condition of present-day society. The State has never had, and never can
have, a morality. Its only morality and justice is its own interest, its
existence, and its omnipotence at any price; and before its interest,
all interest of Humanity must stand in the background. The State is the
negation of Humanity. It is this in two ways: the opposite of human
freedom and human justice (internally), as well as the forcible
disruption of the common solidarity of mankind (externally). The
Universal State, repeatedly attempted, has always proved an
impossibility, so that, as long as the State exists, State will exist —
and since every State regards itself as absolute, and proclaims the
adoration of its power as the highest law, to which all other laws must
be subordinated, it therefore follows that as long as State exist wars
cannot cease Every State must conquer, or be conquered. Every State must
build its power on the weakness or, if it can do it without danger to
itself, on the destruction, of other States.
To strive for International justice, liberty, and perpetual peace and at
the same time to uphold the State, is contradictory and naive. It is
impossible to alter the nature of the State, because it is just this
nature that constitutes the State; and States cannot change their nature
without ceasing to exist. It thus follows that there cannot be a good.
just, virtuous State. All States are bad in that sense, that they, by
their nature, by their principle by their very foundation and the
highest ideal of their existence, are the opponents of human liberty,
morality and justice. And in this regard there is, one may say; what one
likes, no great difference between the barbaric Russian Empire and the
civilized States of Europe. Wherein lies the only difference? Russian
Tsardom does openly what the others do under the mask of hypocrisy.
Tsardom with its undisguised political method, and its contempt for
humanity, is the only goal to which all statesmen of Europe secretly but
envyingly aspire. All States of Europe do the same as Russia, as far as
public opinion, and especially as far as the reawakened but very
powerful solidarity of the people allow them — a public opinion and
solidarity which contain in themselves the gems of the destruction of
States. There is no “good” State with the possible exception of the se
that are powerless. And even they are quite criminal enough in their
dreams. He who wants freedom, justice, and peace, he who wants the
entire (economic and political) liberation of the masses, must strive
for the destruction of the States, and the establishment of a universal
federation of free groups for Production.
As long as the German workers strive for the establishment of a national
State — however popular and free they may imagine this State (and there
is a far stop from imagination to realization, especially when there is
the fraternization of two diametrically opposed principles, the State
and the liberty of the people, involved)-so long as they sacrifice the
liberty of the people to the might of the State, Socialism to politics,
International justice and fraternity to patriotism. It is clear that
their own economic liberation will remain a beautiful dream, looming in
the distant future.
It is impossible to reach two opposite poles simultaneously. Socialism,
the Social Revolution, presupposes the abolition of the State; it is
therefor clear that he who is in favor of the State must give up
Socialism, and sacrifice the economic liberation of the workers to the
political power of some privileged party.
The German Social Democratic Party is forced to sacrifice the economic
liberation of the proletariat, and consequently also their political
liberation — or, bettor expressed, their liberation from politics — to
the self-seeking and triumph of the bourgeois Democracy. This follows
unquestionably from Articles 2 and 3 of their program. The first three
paragraphs of Article 2 are quite in accord with the Socialist
principles of the international, whose program they copy nearly
literally. But the fourth paragraph of the same article, which declares
that political liberty is the forerunner of economic liberty, entirely
destroys the practical value of the recognition of our principles. It
can mean nothing else than this:-“Proletarians, you are saves, the
victims of private property and capitalism. You want to liberate
your-selves from this yoke. This is good, and your demands are quite
just. But in order to realize them, you must help us to accomplish the
political revolution. Afterwards we will help you to accomplish the
Social Revolution. Let us, therefore, through the might of your arms
establish the Democratic State, and then — and then we will create a
commonwealth for you similar to the one the Swiss workers enjoy.
In order to convince oneself that this preposterous delusion expresses
entirely the spirit and tendency of the German Social Democratic Party —
i.e., their program, not the natural aspirations of the German workers
of whom the party consists one need only study the third article of this
program, wherein all the initial demands, which shall be brought about
by the peaceful and legal agitation of the party are elaborated. All
these demands, with the exception of the tenth, which had not even been
proposed by the authors of the program, but had been added later —
during the discussion, by a member of the Eisenach Congress — all these
demands are of an entirely political character. All these points which
are recommended as the main object of the immediate practical activity
of the party consist of nothing else but the well-known program of
bourgeois democracy; universal suffrage, with direct legislator by the
people, abolition of all political privilege; a citizen army; separation
of Church and State, and school and State; free and compulsory
education; liberty of the Press, assembly, and combination; conversion
of all indirect taxation into a direct, progressive, and universal
income-tax.
These are the true objects, the real goal of the party ! An exclusively
political reform of the State, the institutions and laws, of the State.
Am I not, therefore, entitled to assert that this program is in reality
a purely political and bourgeois affair, which looks upon Socialism only
as a dream for a far distant future? Have 1 not likewise a right to
assort that if one would judge the Social Democratic Party of the German
workers by their program — of which I will beware, because I know that
the real aspirations of the German working class go infinitely fur ther
than this, program — then one would have a right to believe that the
creation of this party had no other purpose than the exploitation of the
mass of the proletariat as blind and sacrificed tools towards the
realization of the political plans of the German bourgeois Democracy.
Le Beveil du Peuple for September and October, 1870, published an
important summary of an article by Michael Bakunin on the question of
the social upheaval. Bakunin denounces all forms of reformist activity
as being inimical to the emancipation of the working class, and proceeds
to attack: these who advocate a more political revolution, brought about
according to the constitutional forms of capitalist society, and through
the medium of its, parliamentary machine, in opposition to a direct
social revolutionary change effected by the workers through the medium
of their own political industrial organization,
Bakunin argues that the fact that wages practically never rise above the
bare level of subsistence renders it impossible for the workers to
secure increased well-being under bourgeois society. With the progress
of capitalist civilization, the gulf between the two classes gapes wider
and wider.
It follows from this, also, that in the most democratic and free
centuries, such as England, Belgium, Switzerland, and the U.S.A., the
freedom and political rights which the workers enjoy ostensibly are
merely fictitious. They, who are slaves to their masters in the social
sense are slaves also in the political sense. They have neither the
education, nor the leisure, nor the independence which are so absolutely
necessary for the free and thoughtful exercise of their rights of
citizenship. In the most democratic countries, these in which there is
universal suffrage, they have one day of mastery, or rather of
Saturnalia, Election day. Once this day, the bourgeoisie, their daily
oppressors and exploiters, come before them, hat in hand and talk of
equality, brotherhood, and call them a sovereign people, whose very
humble servants and representatives they wish to be. Once this day is
passed, fraternity and equality disperse like smoke; the bourgeoisie
become once more the bourgeoisie; and the proletariat, the sovereign
people, continuo in their slavery. This is why the system of
representative democracy is so much applauded by the radical
bourgeoisie, even when in a popular direction, it is improved,
completed, and developed through the referendum and the direct
legislation of the people, in which form it is so strenuously advocated
by a certain school of Germans, who strongly call themselves Socialists.
For, so long as the people remain slaves economically, they will also
remain slaves politically, express their sentiments as such, and
subordinate themselves to the bourgeoisie, who rely upon the continuance
of the vote system for the preservation of their authority.
Does that mean that we revolutionary Socialists are opposed to universal
suffrage, and prefer limited suffrage or the despotism of an individual?
By no means. What we assert is, that, universal suffrage in itself,
based as it on economic and social inequality, will never be for the
people anything but a bait, and that from the side of democratic
bourgeoisedom, it will never be ought but a shameful lie, the surest
implement for strengthening, with a make-believe of liberalism and
justice, the eternal domination of the exploiting and owing classes, and
so suppressing the freedom and interests of the people.
“Consequently we deny that the universal franchise in itself is a means
in the hands of the people for the achievement of economic and social
equality.”
“On this ground we assort that the so-called Social, Democrats, who, in
these countries, whore universal suffrage does not exist yet, exert
themselves to persuade the people that they must achieve this before all
else — as today the leaders of the Social Democratic Party are doing
when they tell the people that political freedom is a necessary
condition to the attainment of economic freedom — are themselves either
the victims of a fatal error or they are charlatans. Do they really not
know, or do they pretend not to know, that this preceding political
freedom i.e., that which necessarily exists without economic and social
equality, since it should have to precede these two fundamental
equalities, will be essentially bourgeois freedom, i.e.,founded on the
economic dependence of the people, and consequently incapable of brining
forth its opposition, the economic and social, and creating such
economic freedom as leads to the exclusive freedom of only the
bourgeoisie?”
“Are these peculiar Social Democrats victims to a fallacy or are they
betrayers? That is a very delicate question, which I prefer not to
examine toe closely. To me it is certain, that there are no worse
enemies of the people than these who try to turn them away from the
social upheaval, the only change that can give them real freedom,
justice, and well being in order to draw them again into the treacherous
path of reforms, or of revolutions of an exclusively political character
whose tool, victim and deputy the social democracy always has been.”
Bakunin then precedes to point out that the social upheaval does not
exclude the political one. It only means that the political institutions
shall alter neither before nor after, but together with the economic
institutions.
“The political upheaval, simultaneously with and really inseparable from
the social upheaval, whose negative expression or negative manifestation
it will, so to speak, be, will no longer be a reformation, but a
grandiose liquidation.”
“The people are instinctively mistrustful of every government. when you
promise them nice things, they say: — ‘You talk so because you are not
yet at the rudder.’ A letter from John Bright to his electors, when he
became minister, says: — ‘The voters should not expect him to act
according to what he used to say: it is somewhat different speaking in
opposition and different acting as a minister.’ Similarly spoke a member
of the International, a very honest Socialist, when in September, 1870,
he became the perfect of a very republican minded department. He
‘retains his old views, but now he is compelled to act in opposition to
them.”
Bakunin assorts that both are quite right. Therefore it does not avail
to change the personnel of the government. He proceeds to treat of the
inevitable corruption that follows from authority, and insists that
everyone who attains to power must succumb to such corruption since he
must serve and conserve ruling-class economic rights.
You taunt us with disbelieving in God. We charge you with believing in
him. We do not condemn you for this We do not even indict you. We pity
you. For the time of illusions is past. We cannot be deceived any
longer.
Whom do we find under God’s banner? Emperor, kings, the official and the
officious world; our lords and our nobles; all the privileged poisons of
Europe whose names are recorded in the Almana de Gotha; all the guinea
pigs of the industrial, commercial and banking world; the patented
professors of our universities; the civil service servants; the low and
high police officers; the gendarmes; the gaolers; the headsman or
hangman, not forgetting the priests, who are now the black police
enslaving our souls to the State; the glorious generals, defenders of
the public order; and lastly, the writers of the reptile Press.
This is God’s army!
Whom do we find in the camp opposite? The army of revolt; the audacious
donors of God and repudiators of all divine and authoritarian
principles! These who are therefore, the believers in humanity, the
asserters of human liberty.
You reproach us with being Atheists. We do not complain of this. We have
no apology to offer. We admit we are. With what pride is allowed to
frail individuals-who, like passing waves, rise only to disappear again
in the universal ocean of the collective life — we pride ourselves on
being Atheists. Atheism is Truth — or, rather the real basis of all
Truths.
We do not stoop to consider practical consequences. We want Truth above
everything. Truth for all!
We believe in spite of all the apparent contradictions in spite of the
wavering political wisdom of the Parliamentarians — and of the
skepticism of the times — that truth only can make for the practical
happiness of the people. This is our first article of faith.
It appears as if you were not satisfied in recording our Atheism. You
jump to the conclusion that we can have neither love nor respect for
mankind, informing that all these great ideas or emotions which, in all
ages, have set heart s throbbing are dead letters to us. Trailing at
hazard our miserable existence’s — crawling, rather than walking, as you
wish to imagine us — you assume that we cannot know of other feelings
than the satisfaction of our coarse and sensual desires.
Do you want to know to what an extent we love the beautiful things that
you revere? Know then that we love them so much that we are both angry
and tired at seeing them hanging, out of reach, from your idealistic
sky. We feel sorrow to see them stolen from our mother earth, transmuted
into symbols without life, or into distant premises never to be
realized. No longer are we satisfied with the fiction of things. We want
them in their full reality. This is our second article of faith.
By hurling at us the epithet of materialists, you believe you have
driven us to the wall. But you are greatly mistaken. Do you know the
origin of your error?
What you and we call matter are two things totally different. Your
matter is a fiction. In this it resembles your God, your Satan, and your
immortal soul. Your matter is nothing beyond coarse lowliness, brutal
lifelessness. It is an impossible entity, as impossible as your pure
spirit — “immaterial,” “absolute”?
The first thinkers of mankind wore necessarily theologians and
metaphysicians. Our earthly mind is so constituted that it begins to
rise slowly — through a maze of ignorance — by errors and mistakes — to
the possession of a minute parcel of Truth. This fact does not recommend
“the glorious conditions of the past.” But our theologians and
metaphysicians, owing to their ignorance, took all that to them appeared
to constitute power, movement, life, intelligence; and, by a sweeping
generalization, called it, spirit! To the lifeless and shapeless residue
they thought remained after such preliminary selection — unconsciously
evolved from the whole world of reality — they gave the namo of matter!
They wore then surprised to see that this matter — which, like their
spirit existed only in their imagination — appeared to be so lifeless
and stupid when compared to their god, the eternal’ spirit! To be
candid, we de not knew this God. We de not recognize this matter.
By the words matter and material, we understand the totality of things,
the whole gradation of phenomenal reality as We know it, from the most
simple inorganic bodies to the complex functions of the mind of a man of
genius; the most beautiful sentiments, the highest thoughts; the most
heroic deeds; the actions of sacrifice and devotion; the duties and the
rights, the abnegation and the egoism of our social life. The
manifestations of organic life, the properties and qualities of simple
bodies; electricity, light, heat, and molecular attraction, are all to
cur mind but so many different evolution’s of that totality of things
that we call matter. These evolution’s are characterized by a close
solidarity, a unity of motive power.
We de not look upon this totality of being and of forms as an eternal
and absolute substance, as Pantheist do. But we look upon it as the
result, always changed and always changing, of a variety of actions and
reactions, and of the continuous working of real beings that are born
and live in its very midst. Against the creed of the theologians I set
these propositions:
existed.
and social law could never have existed, it would have presented a
spectacle of complete chaos. Ruled from above, downwards, it would have
resembled the calculated and designed disorder of the political State.
emanates from the needs of human society.
the moral law. Far from this, it is a disturbing and socially
demoralizing factor.
imagination unfired from the fetters of its primordial animality
curse of humanity, and the natural ally of all tyrants, social
charlatans, and exploiters of humanity.
of mankind. The abolition of the idea of God will be a fateful result of
the proletarian emancipation.
From the moral point of view, Socialism is the advent of self respect to
mankind. It will mean the passing of degradation and Divinity.
From the practical viewpoint,Socialism is the final acceptance of a
great principle that is leavening society more and more every day. It is
making itself more and more by the public conscience. It has become the
basis of scientific investigations and progress, and of the proletariat.
It is making its way everywhere. Briefly, this principle is as follows:
As in what we call the material world, the inorganic matter —
mechanical, physical, and chemical — is the determinant basis of the
organic matter — vegetable, animal intellectual — in like matter in the
social world, the development of economical questions has been, and is
the basis that determines our religious, philosophical, political, and
social developments. On this subject Bakunin agrees with Marx.
This principle audaciously destroys all religious ideas and metaphysical
beliefs. It is a rebellion far greater than that which, born during the
Renaissance and the seventeenth century, leveled down all scholastic
doctrine — once the powerful rampart of the Church, of the absolute
monarchy, and of the feudal nobility — and brought about the dogmatic
culture of the so-called pure reason, so favorable to our latter-day
rulers the bourgeois classes. We therefore, say, through the
International : The economical enslavement of the workers — to these who
control the necessities of life and the instruments of labor, tools and
machinery — is the solo and original cause of the present slavery in all
its forms. To it are attributable mantel degeneration and political
submission. The economic emancipation of the workers, therefore, is the
aim to which any political movement must subordinate its being, merely
as a means to that end. This briefly is the central idea of the
International.
We have repelled energetically every alliance with bourgeois politics,
even of the most radical nature. It has been pretended, foolishly and
slanderously, that we repudiated all such Political connivance because
we wore indifferent to the great question of Liberty, and considered
only the economic or material side of the problem. It has been declared
that, consequently, we placed ourselves in the ranks of the reaction. A
German delegate at the Congress of Basle gave classic expression to this
view, when he dared to state that, who ever did not recognize, with the
German Socialists Democracy, “that the conquest of political rights
(power) was the preliminary condition of social emancipation,” was,
consciously or unconsciously an ally, of the Caesars!
These critics greatly deceive themselves and, “consciously or
unconsciously,” endeavor to deceive the public concerning us. We love
liberty much more than they do. We love it to the point of wishing it
complete and entire. We wish the reality and not the fiction. Hence we
repel every bourgeois alliance, since we are convinced that all liberty
conquered by the aid of the bourgeoisie, their political means and
weapons, or by an alliance with their political dupes, will prove
profitable for Messrs. the bourgeois, but never anything more than a
fiction for the workers.
Messrs. the bourgeois of all parties, including the most advanced,
however cosmopolitan they are, when it is a question of gaining money by
a more and more extensive exploitation of the labor of the people, are
all equally fervent and fanatical in their patriotic attachment to the
state. Patriotism is in reality, nothing but the passion for and cult of
the national State, as M. Thiers, the very illustrious assassin of the
Parisian proletariat, and the present savior of France, has said
recently. But whoever says “State” says domination; and whoever says
“domination” says exploitation. Which proves that the popular or
“folk’s” State, now become and unhappily remaining today the catchword
of the German Socialist Democracy, is a ridiculous contradiction, a
fiction, a falsehood, unconscious on the part of those who extol it,
doubtlessly, but, for the proletariat, a very dangerous trap.
The State, however popular may be the form it assumes, will always be an
institution of domination and exploitation, and consequently a permanent
source of poverty and enslavement for the populace. There is no other
way, then, of emancipating the people economically and politically, of
giving them liberty and well-being at one and the same time than by
abolishing the State, all States, and, by so doing, killing, once and
for all time, what, up to now, has been called “Politics,” i. e.,
precisely nothing else than the functioning or manifestation both
internal and external of State action, that is to say, the practice, or
art and science of dominating and exploiting the masses in favor of the
privileged classes.
It is not true then to say that we treat politics abstractly. We make no
abstraction of it, since we wish positively to kill it. And here is the
essential point upon which we separate ourselves absolutely from
politicians and radical bourgeois Socialists (now functioning as social
or radical democracy which is only a facade for capitalistic
democracy,). Their policy consists in the transformation of State
politics, their use and reform. Our policy, the only policy we admit,
consists in the total abolition of the State, and of politics, which is
its necessary manifestation.
It is only because we wish frankly to this abolition of the State that
we believe that we have the right to call ourselves Internationalists
and Revolutionary Socialists; for whoever wishes to deal with polities
otherwise than how we do; whoever does not, like us, wish the total abo
lition of politics, must necessarily participate in the politics of a
patriotic and bourgeois State. In other words, he renounces, by that
very fact, in the name of his great or little national State, the human
solidarity of all peoples, as well as the economic and social
emancipation of the masses at home.
I am a passionate seeker for truth and just as strong an opponent of the
corrupting lies, through which the party of order — this privileged,
official, and interested representative of all religions, philosophical,
political, legal economical, and social outrage in the past and present
— has tried to keep the world in ignorance. I love freedom with all my
heart. It is the only condition under which the intelligence, the
manliness, and happiness of the people, can develop and expand. By
freedom, however, I naturally understand not its more form, forced down
as from above, measured and controlled by the state, this eternal lie
which, in reality, is noting bit the privilege of the few founded upon
the slavery of all. Nor do I mean that “individualistic,” selfish,
petty, and mockfreedom, which is propagated by J.J. Rousseau and all
other schools of bourgeois liberalism. The mock freedom which is limited
by the supposed right of all, and defended by the state, and leads
inevitably to the destruction of the rights of the individual. No: I
mean the only true freedom, that worthy of the name; the liberty which
consists therein for everyone to develop all the material, intellectual,
and moral faculties which lie dormant in him; the liberty which knows
and recognizes no limitations beyond these which nature decrees. In this
sense, there are no limitations, for the laws of our own nature are not
forced upon us by a law-giver who, beside or above us, sits on a throne.
They are iii us, the real basis of our bodily and intellectual
existence. Instead of limiting them, we must know that they are the real
condition and first cause of our liberty.
I mean that liberty of each which is not limited or restrained or
curtailed by the liberty of another, but is strengthened and enlarged
through it: the unlimited liberty of each through the liberty of all,
liberty through solidarity, liberty in equality, (Political, economical
and social.) The liberty which has conquered brute force and vanquished
the principle of authority, which is, always, only the expression of
that force. The liberty, which will abolish all heavenly and earthly
idols, and erect a new world of fellowship and human solidarity on the
ruins of all states and churches.
I am a confirmed disciple of economic and social equality. Outside of
this, I know, freedom, justice, manliness, morality, and the welfare of
the individual as well as that of the community, can only be a hollow
lie, an empty phrase. This equality must realize itself through the free
organization of labor and the voluntary cooperative ownership of the
means of production, through the combination of the productive workers
into freely organized communes, and the free federation of the communes.
There must be no controlling intervention of the state.
This is the point which separates, especially, the revolutionary
socialists from the authoritarian i. e. marxian socialists. Both work
for the same end. Both are out to create a new society. Both agree that
the only basis of this new society shall be: the organization of labor
which each and all Will have to perform under equal economic conditions,
following the demands of nature; and the common ownership of, everything
that is necessary to perform that labor, lands, tools, machinery, etc.
But, where as, the revolutionary socialists believe in the direct
initiative of the workers themselves through their industrial
combinations, this is anarchist stand point in contradiction to marxian
or as it claims to be scientific. The authoritarians believe in the
direct initiative of the state. They imagine they can reach their goal
with the help of the radical parties (new it should be understood as
communist) through the development and organization of the political
power of the working-class, especially the proletariat of the big towns,
due to concentration of large industries employing large mass of
proletariat. But the revolutionary socialist oppose all these
compromising and confusing alliances. They are convinced that the goal
of a free society can only be reached through the development and
organization of the non-political, but social power of the working class
of both town and country, with the fusion of forces of all these members
of the upper class who are willing to declass themselves and ready to
break with the past, and to combine together for the same demands. The
revolutionary socialists are opposed, therefore, to all politics.
Thus we have two methods:
proletariat for the purpose of capturing political power in the state in
order to transform society.
solidarity of the proletariat for the purpose of abolishing all
political power and the state.
The advocates of both methods believe in science, which is out to slay
superstition, and which shall take the place of religious church belief.
But the former propose to force it into humanity, whilst the latter seek
to convince the people of its truth, to educate them everywhere, so that
they shall voluntarily organize and combine — freely, from the bottom
upwards through individual initiative and according to their true
interests, but never according to a plan drawn up before hand for the
“ignorant masses” by a few intellectually superior persons.
Revolutionary — new known as libertarian socialists believe that in the
instinctive yearnings and true wants of the masses, is to be found much
sound reason and logic than in the deep wisdom of all the doctors,
servants, and teachers of humanity who, after many disastrous attempts,
still dabble in the problem of making the people happy. Humanity, think
they, has been ruled and governed much toe long and so they think this
state of the affairs should continue. Indeed the search of people’s
trouble, lies not in this or that form of government, but in the
existence and manifestation of Government itself, whatever form it may
assume.
This is the historical difference between the authoritarian communist
ideas, scientifically developed through the German Marxist school and
partly adopted by English and American Socialists, on one hand and the
Anarchist ideas of Joseph Pierre Proudhon which have educated the
proletariat of the Latin countries and led them intellectually to the
last consequences of Proudhon’s teachings. This latter revolutionary or
libertarian socialism has now for the first time, attempted to put its
ideas into practice in the Paris Commune.
I am a follower of the Paris Commune, which, though dastardly murdered
and drowned in blood by the assassins of the clerical and monarchical
reaction, yet lives, more than ever, in the imagination and hearts of
the European proletariat. I am its follower, especially because of the
fact that it was a courageous, determined, negation of the state. It is
a fact of enormous significance, that this should have happened in
France, hitherto the land of strongest political centralization; that it
was Paris, the head and creator of this great centralization, which made
the start — thus destroying itself and proclaiming with joy its fail, in
order to give life to France, to Europe, to the whole world; thus
revealing to all enslaved people — and who are the people who are not
slaves — the only way to liberty and happiness; delivering a deathly
stroke against the political traditions of bourgeois liberalism, and
giving a sound has-is to revolutionary socialism.
Paris thus earned for itself the curses of the reactionaries of France
and Europe. It inaugurated the new era, that of the final and entire
liberation of the people, and their truly realized solidarity, above and
in spite of all limitations of the State. Proclaimed the religion of
humanity. Made manifest its humanism and atheism, and substituted the
great truths of social life and science for godly lies. Paris, heroic,
sane, unflinching, assorted its strong belief in the future of humanity.
It substituted liberty, justice, and fraternity for the falsehood and
injustice of religious and political morality. Paris, evoked in the
blood of its children, symbolized humanity crucified by the
International united reaction of Europe at the direct inspiration of the
churches and the high priests (Politicians) of injustice. The next
International upheaval of humanity will be the resurrection of Paris.
Such is the true meaning and the beneficial and immeasurably important
results of the two-months’ existence and memorable fall of the Paris
Commune. It lasted only a short time. It was hampered too much by the
deadly war it had to wage against the Versailles reaction and Holy
Alliance. Consequently, it was unable to work out its Socialist program,
even theoretically, much less practically. The majority of the members
of the Commune, even, were not Socialists in the real sense of the word.
And if they acted as Socialists, it was only because they were
irresistibly carried away by the nature of their surroundings, the
necessity of their position, and not by their own innermost convictions.
The Socialists, led by our friend Varlin, formed in the Commune only a
disparagingly small minority, say fourteen or fifteen members. The rest
consisted of Jacobins. But we must discriminate between Jacobins and
Jacobins.
There are doctrinaire Jacobins like Gambotta whose, oppressing lust for
power and formal republicanism has lost the old revolutionary fire, and
preserved only a respect for centralized unity and authority. This was
the Jaeobinism that betrayed the France of the people to the Prussian
conquerors, and then to the native re action. But there were honest
revolutionary Jacobins also, the last heroic descendants of the
democratic impulse of 1793, men and women who could sacrifice their
centralized unity and well-armed authority to the needs of the
revolution, rather than bend their condolence before the obnoxious
reaction. In the vanguard of these great-hearted Jacobins we see
Delecluse, a great and noble figure. Before everything he desired the
triumph of the revolution; and as, without the people, no revolution is
possible as the people are Sociallsticallv inclined, and could not be
wen for any other revolution than á social or economic one, Delecluse
and his fellow honest Jacobins allowed themselves to be carried away by
the logic of the revolutionary movement. Without desiring it, they
became revolutionary Socialists, and signed proclamations and appeals
whose general spirit was of a decidedly Socialist nature.
But, in spite of their honesty and goodwill, their Socialism was the
product of external circumstances rather than inner conviction. They had
neither the time nor the ability to overcome bourgeois prejudices
diametrically opposed to their newly acquired Socialism. This internal
conflict of opinion weakened them in action. They never got beyond
fundamental theories, and were unable to come to decisive conclusions
such as would have severed their :connection with bourgeois society once
and for all.
This was a great calamity for the Commune and for the men themselves. It
paralyzed thorn, and they paralyzed the Commune. But we must not
reproach them on that account. Man does not change in a day, and we
cannot change our natures and customs overnight. The Jacobins of the
commune have shown their honesty by suffering themselves to be murdered
for it. Who expect more of them?
Even the people of Paris, under whose influence they thought and acted,
were Socialists more by instinct than by well-balanced conviction. All
their yearnings were in the highest degree entirely Socialistic But
their thoughts were expressed in traditional forms for removed from this
height. Among the proletariat of the French towns, and even of Paris,
many Jacobins prejudices still remain. Many false ideas about the
necessity of dictatorship and government still flourish. The worship of
authority — the inevitable result of religious education, that eternal
source of all evil, all degradation, all enslavement of peoples — has
not yet been entirely removed from its midst. So much is this the case
that even the most intelligent son’s of the people, the self-conscious
Socialists of that time, have not yet been able to free themselves from
this superstition. Were one to dissect their minds, one would find the
Jacobin, the believer in government, huddled together in a little
corner, forsaken and almost lifeless, but not quite dead.
Besides, the position of the small minority of class conscious and
revolutionary Socialists in the Commune was very difficult. They felt
that they lacked the support of the mass of the Paris population. The
organization of the International Workers’ Association was very
imperfect, and it only had a few thousand members. With this backing,
they had to fight daily against a Jacobin majority. And under what
circumstances! Daily they had to find work and bread for several hundred
thousand workers, to organize and arm them, and to guard against
reactionary conspiracies. All in a town like Paris, beleaguered, menaced
with starvation, and exposed to all underhand attacks of the reaction
which had established itself in Versailles by kind permission of the
Prussian Conqueror. They were forced to create a revolutionary
government and army in order to oppose Versailles government and army.
They had to forget and violate the first principles of revolutionary
Socialism, and organize themselves as a Jacobin reaction, in order to
fight the monarchical and clerical reaction.
It is obvious that, under these circumstances, the Jacobins were the
stronger party. They were in a majority and possessed superior political
cunning. Their traditions and greater experience in the organization of
government gave them a gigantic advantage over the few genuine
Socialists. But the Jacobins took little advantage of this fact; they
did not strive to give to the uprising of Paris a distinctive Jacobin
character, but allowed themselves to drift into a social revolution.
Many Socialists, very consequential in their theory, reproach our Paris
comrades with not having acted sufficiently Socialistic, whilst the
barkers of the bourgeois forces accused them of having been toe loyal to
the Socialist program. We will leave the latter gentry on one side now,
and endeavor to convince the storm theorists of the liberation of labor
that they are unjust to our Paris brethren. Between the best theories
and their practical realization is a gigantic difference, which cannot
be covered in a few days. These of us who knew for, our friend Varlin —
to mention only him whose death was certain — how strong, well
considered, and deep-rooted were the convictions of Socialism in him and
his friends. They were men whose enthusiasm, honesty, and self-sacrifice
nobody could doubt. Their very honesty make them suspicious of
themselves, and they under-estimated their strength and character in
face of the titanic labor to which they were consecrating their life and
thought. Besides, they had the right conviction that, in the social
revolution — which in this, as in every other respect, is the direct
opposite of political revolution — the deeds of the single leading
personality nearly disappear, and the independent, direct action of the
masses count as everything. The only thing which the more advanced can
de is to work out, spread, and ex. plain the ideas which suit the
requirements and ideas of the people, and contribute to the national
strength of the latter by waking untiringly on the task of revolutionary
organization — nothing more. Everything else can and must be
accomplished by the people themselves. Otherwise we would arrive at
political dictatorship; that is, a re-instatement of the State,
privilege, inequality, prosecution; a re-establishment, by a long and
roundabout way, of political, social, and economic slavery.
Varlin and all his friends; like all true Socialists, and like the
average worker who is born and bred amongst the people, experienced in
highest degree this well-justified fear of the continued initiative of
the same men, this distrust of the of distinguished personalities. Their
uprightness caused them to turn this fear and suspicion as much against
themselves as against others.
In opposition to the, in my opinion, entirely erroneous idea of State
Socialists, that a dictatorship or a constitutional assembly — that has
emerged from a political revolution — can proclaim and organize the
social revolution by laws and degrees, our Paris friends were convinced
that it could only be brought about and developed through the
independent and unceasing efforts of the masses and the groups. They
were a thousand times right. Where is the head, however genial, or — if
one speaks of the collective dictatorship of an elected assembly, even
if it consists of several hundred uncommonly well educated people —
where is the brain that is mighty and grasping enough to grasp the
unending number and multitude of true interests, yearnings, wills, and
requirements, the sum total of which constitute the collective will of
the people? And who could invent a social organization which would
satisfy every man? Such an organization would be nothing less than a
torture-chamber, into which the more or less aggressive State would put
unhappy society. This has always happened up to now. But the social
revolution must make an end of this antiquated system of organization.
It must give back to the masses, the groups, communes, societies, even
to every man and woman, their full and unrestricted liberty. It must
abolish, once and for all, political power. The State must go. With its
fail must disappear all legal rights, all the lies of various religions.
For law and religion were always only the forced justification for
privileged outrages and established aggression.
It is clear that liberty can only be restored to mankind, and that the
true interests of society, of all groups, all local organizations, as
well as every single, being can be entirely satisfied entirely only when
all States have been abolished. All the so-called “common interests of
society” who are supposed to be represented by the State, are in reality
nothing else than the entire and continued suppression of the true
interests of the districts, communes, societies, and individuals which
are subservient to the State. They are an imagination, an abstract idea,
a lie. Under the guise of this idea of representing common interests,
the State becomes a vast slaughter house or cemetery, where-in is slain
all the living energy of the people.
But an abstract idea can never exist for itself and through itself. It
has no feet with which to walk, no arms with which to work, no stomach
in which to digest its slaughtered victims. The religious idea, God,
represents in reality, the self-evident and real interests of a
privileged class, the clergy, who represent the earthly half of the God
idea. The State, the political abstraction, represents as real and
self-evident interests of the bourgeoisie. Today, that class is the most
important and practically only exploiting class, which is threatening to
swallow up all other classes. Priesthood is developing gradually into a
very rich and mighty minority, but is rather relegated and with poor
majority. The same is true of the bourgeoisie. Its political and social
organizations are every day making for a real ruling oligarchy, to whom
a majority of more or less conceited and impoverished bourgeois
creatures who are obliged to serve the almighty oligarchy as blind
tools. This majority lives in a continues illusion, and is, through the
irresistible power of economic development, unavoidably and ever more
pulled down to the ranks of the proletariat.
The abolition of Church and State must be the first and essential
condition for the true liberation of society.
Only afterwards can and must society organize itself on a new basis. But
not from the top downwards, after a more or less beautiful plan of a few
exports or theorists, or on the strength of decrees of a ruling power,
or through a universal-suffrage-elected Parliament. Such a proceeding
would load inevitably to the creation of a new ruling aristocracy, i.e.,
a class who have nothing in common with the people. This class would
exploit and bleed the people under the pretense of the common welfare,
or in order to preserve the new State.
The organization of the society of the future must and can be
accomplished only from the bottom upwards, through the free federation
and union of the workers into groups, unions, and societies, which will
unite again into districts, communes, national communes, and finally
form a great International federation. Only thus can be evolved the true
vital order of liberty and happiness for all, the order which is not
opposed to the interests of the individual or of society, but on the
contrary strengthens the same and brings them into harmony.
It is said that the harmony and the solidarity between the interests of
the individual and society can never be affected, because of an inherent
antagonism. But if these interests never and nowhere did harmonize, up
to now, it has been the fault of the State in sacrificing the interests
of the majority of the people to the gain of the small privileged
minority. This oft-mentioned opposition of personal and social interests
is only a swindle and political lie, which originated through the
religious and theological lie of the Fall — a dogma which was invented
to degrade man and destroy his consciousness of his own value. Support
was lent to this false idea of antagonism of interests by the
speculation of the metaphysical philosophies. These are closely related
to theology. Metaphysics over-look the fact that man is a social animal,
however, and view society as a mechanical and wholly artificial
conglomeration of individuals, who suddenly organize themselves on the
basis of a secret or sacred compact out of their free will, or at the
dictation of a higher power. Before coming together in this fashion,
these individuals had boasted an eternal soul and lived in alleged
unlimited liberty!
But when the metaphysicians, especially these who believe in the
immortality of the soul, assort that men, outside society, are free
beings, they maintain that men can enter into society only by denying
their freedom and natural independence, and sacrificing both their
personal and local interests. This denial and sacrifice of the ego
becomes greater the more developed the society and the more complicated
its organization. From this viewpoint the State becomes the expression
of individual sacrifice which all have to bring to its altar. In the
name of the abstract and outrageous lie called “the common good,” and
“law and order” it imperils increasingly all personal liberty, in the
interests of the governing class it exclusively represents. Hence the
State appears to us as an inevitable negation and destruction of all
liberty, all personal, individual, and common interests.
Everything in the metaphysical and theological system follows and solves
itself, Therefore the upholders of these systems are obliged to exploit
the masses through the medium of Church and State. Whilst filling their
pockets and satisfying all their filthy desires, they toil themselves
that they work for the honor of God, the triumph of civilization, and
the eternal welfare of the proletariat.
But we revolutionary Socialists, who believe neither in God, nor yet in
(absolute or unqualified) free will, nor yet in the immortality of the
soul, we say that liberty, in its fullest sense, must be the goal of
human progress.
Our idealistic opponents, the theologians and metaphysicians, take the
abstract “liberty,” as the foundation of their theories. It is then
quite easy for them to draw the conclusion that slavery is the
‘indisputable condition of human existence. We, who are in our empirical
scientific theory, materialists, strive’ in practice for the triumph of
a sane and noble idealism. We are convinced that the ‘whole’ wealth of
the intellectual, moral and material development of humanity, as well as
its seeming independence, is due to the fact that man lives in society.
Outside of society man would not only would not have been free. He would
not even have been capable of becoming a man, i.e., a self-conscious
being, capable of thought and speech. Thinking and waking together
lifted man out of his animal condition. We are absolutely convinced that
the whole life of man is a social product. His interests, yearnings,
needs, dreams, and even his foolishness, as we’ll as his brutality,
injustice, and actions, depending, seemingly, on free will, are only the
inevitable results of forces at work in our social life. Men are not
independent of each other, but each influences the other. We are all in
continual co-relation with our neighbors and surrounding nature.
In nature itself this wonderful co-working and fitting together of
events does not take place without a struggle On the contrary, the
harmony of the elements is but the result of this continual struggle,
which is the condition of all life and of movement. Both in nature and
society order without struggle is the equivalent of death.
Order is possible and natural in world system only when the latter is a
previously thought out arrangement imposed upon mankind from above. The
Jewish religious imagination of a godly law-giver makes for unparalleled
nonsense, and the negation not only of all order, but of nature itself.
“The laws of nature” relate only to the goal of nature itself. The
phrase is not true if used to mean laws decreed by an outside’
authority. For these “laws” are nothing else ‘than the continual
adaptation which is part of the evolution of things, of the waking
together of vastly different passing but real facts. The sum total of
all action and interaction is what we call “nature”.’ The thoughts and
science of man observe these phenomena, controlled and experimented with
them and finally united them into a system, the single parts of which
are called “laws.” But nature itself knows no laws. Nature acts
unconsciously. In itself it demonstrates the unending difference of its
necessarily appearing and self repeating phenomena. This is how, thanks
to the inevitableness of activity, the common order can and does exist.
So with human society, which apparently develops against nature, but in
reality goes hand in hand with the natural and inevitable development of
things. one the superiority of man over the rest of the animals and his
highly developed thinking ability brought a special feature into his
evolution — also, by the way, quite natural since man, like everything
else, is the material result of the waking together and union of natural
forces. This special feature is the calculating, thinking ability, the
power of induction and abstraction. Through this man has been able to
carry his thoughts outside himself, and so observe and criticize himself
as a thing apart, some strange or foreign object. And as he, in his
thoughts, lifts himself out of himself and the surrounding world, he
arrives at the idea of the entire abstraction, the pure nothingness, the
absolute. But this represent noting beyond man’s own ability to abstract
thought, who looks down on all that is and finds peace in the entire
negation of all that is. This is the very limit of the highest
abstraction of thought: this is God.
Herein is to be found the spirit and historical proof of every
theological and religious doctrine. Man did not understand nature and
the material foundation of his own thoughts. He was unconscious of the
natural circumstances and powers which were characteristic of them. So
he failed to realize that his abstract ideas only expressed his own
ability to abstract thought. Therefore, he carne to regard the abstract
idea as something really existing — something before which even nature
sank into insignificance. And does he worshipped and honored in every
conceivable fashion this unreality of his imagination. But it became
necessary to imagine more clearly and to make understood somehow this
God, this supreme nothingness which seemed to contain all things in
essence but not in fact. So primitive man enlarged his idea of God.
Gradually he bestowed on the deity all the powers which existed in human
society, good and bad, virtuous and vicious. Such was the beginning of
all religions, such their evolution from fetish worship to Christianity.
We will not stop to analyze the history of religious, theological, and
metaphysical nonsense, nor speak about the ever occurring godly
incarnations and visions which have happened during centuries of human
ignorance. Everyone knows that these superstitions occasioned terrible
suffering, and their progress was accompanied by rivers of blood and
much mourning. All these terrible horrors of poor humanity were
inevitable in the evolution of society. They were the necessary effect,
the natural consequence of that all powerful idea that the universe is
governed and conditioned by a supernatural power and will. Century
succeeds century. Man becomes more and more used to this belief. Finally
it seeks to crush and to kill every effort towards higher development.
The mad desire to rule or to govern, first on the part of a few men,
then of a certain class, demandd that slavery and conquest should be
accepted as the underlying principles of society. This, more than
anything else, strengthened the terrible belief in a God above.
Consequently, no social order could exist without being founded on the
Church and State. All doctrinaires defend both of these outrageous
institutions.
With their development increased the power of the ruling class, of the
priests and aristocrats. Their first concern was to inoculate the
enslaved peoples with the idea of the necessity, the benefit, and the
sacredness of Church and State. And the purpose of all this was to
change brutal and violent slavery into legal, divinely preordained and
sanctified slavery.
Did the priests and really and truly believe in these institutions which
they were endeavoring to uphold with all their power, and to their own
benefit? Or were they only lairs and hypocrites? In my opinion they were
honest believers and dishonest deceivers simultaneously.
They themselves believed,since they participated, naturally, in the
horrors of the masses. Only later, at the time the old world declined —
that is, in the Middle Ages, did they become unbelievers and shameless
lairs. The founders of states can be regarded also as honest men Man
readily believes that which he desires and that which is not detrimental
to his own interests. It makes no difference if he is intelligent and
educated. Through his egotism and his desire to live with his neighbors
and to profit by their estimation he will believe always only in that
which is useful and desirable to him. I am convinced, for instance, that
Thiers and the Versailles government were trying to convince themselves,
violently, that they were saving France by murdering several thousand
men, women, and children.
Even if the priests, prophets, aristocrats, and bourgeois of all times
were honest believers, in spite of all, they were parasites. One cannot
suppose that they believed every bit of nonsense in religion and
polities which they taught the masses. I will not go so far back as to
the time when two Augurs in Rome were unable to look into each others
face without smiling. It is hard to believe that even in the time of
mental darkness and superstition the inventors of miracles were
convinced of their truth. The same may be Raid of polities, where the
motto is: “One must understand how to govern and rob a people so that
they do not complain too much or forget to be subservient, so that they
get no chance to think of resentment and revolt.”
How can one possibly believe after this that the men who make a business
out of polities, and whose goal is injustice, violence, lies, treason,
single, and wholesale murder, honestly believe that the wisdom and art
of ruling the State make for the common weal? In spite of all their
brutality they are not so stupid as to think this. Church and State were
in all times the schools of vice. History testifies to their crimes.
Ever and always were priest and politician the conscious, systematic,
unyielding, bloodthirsty enemies and executioners of the people. But how
can we reconcile two se seemingly opposed things like cheater and
cheated, liar and believer? In thought it looks difficult, but in life
we find the two often together.
The great bulk of mankind live in a continual quarrel and apathetic
misunderstanding with themselves. They remain unconscious of this, as a
rule, until some uncommon occurrence wakes them up out of their sleep,
and forces them to reflect on themselves and their surroundings.
In politics, as well as in religion, man is only a machine in the hands
of his oppress ors. But robber and robbed, oppressor and oppressed live
side by side, ruled by a handful of people, in whom one recognizes the
real oppressors. It is always the same type of men, who, free of all
political and religion prejudice, consciously torture and oppress the
rest of the people. In the l7th and l8th centuries, until the advent of
the great revolution, they ruled Europe and did as they liked. They do
the same to-day. But we have reason to hope that their rule will be over
soon.
History teaches us that the chief priests of Church and State or also
the sworn servants and creatures of these damnable institutions. Whilst
consciously deceiving the people and leading them into disaster, these
persons are concerned to uphold zealously the sanctity and
unapproachability of both establishments. The Church, on the authority
of all priests and most politicians, is essential to the proper care of
the people’s sons; and the State is indispensable, in their opinion, for
the proper maintenance of peace, order, and justice. And the
doctrinaires of all schools exclaim in chorus: “Without Church or
Government, progress and civilization is impossible.”
We make no comment on the heavenly hereafter, since we do not believe in
an immortal soul. But we are convinced that nothing offers a greater
menace to truth and the progress of humanity than the Church. How else
could it be? Is it not the task of the Church to chloroform the women
and children? Does she not kill all sound reason and science with her
dogmas, and degrade the self-respect of man by confusing his ideas of
right and justice? Does she not preach eternal slavery to the masses in
the interest of the ruling and oppressing class? And is she not
determined to perpetuate the present reign of darkness, ignorance,
misery, and crime? For the progress of our age not to be an empty dream,
it must first sweep the Church out of its path.
I am a passionate seeker after truth (and no less embittered enemy of
evil doing fictions) which the party of order, this official, privileged
and interested representative of all the past and present religions,
metaphysical, political, juridical and “social” atrociousness claim to
employ even today only to make the world stupid and enslave it, I am a
fanatical lover of truth and freedom which I consider the only
surroundings in which intelligence, consciousness and happiness develop
and increase.
I do not mean the completely formal freedom which the State imposes,
judges and regulates, this eternal lie which in reality consists always
of the privileges of a few based upon the slavery of all — not even the
individualist, egotistical, narrow and fictitious freedom which the
school of J.J. Rousseau and all other systems of property moralists,
middle class bourgeoisism and liberalism recommend — according to which
the so called rights of individuals which the State “represents” has the
limit in the right of all, whereby the rights of every individual are
necessarily, always reduced to nil. No, I consider only that as freedom
worthy and real as its name should imply, which consists in the complete
development of all material, intellectual and spiritual powers which are
in a potential state in everyone, the freedom which knows no other
limits than those prescribed by the laws of our own nature, so that
there be really no limits — for these laws are not enforced upon us by
external legislators who are around and over us, these laws are innate
in us, clinging to us and form the real basis of our material,
intellectual and moral being; instead of therefore seeing in them a
limitation, we must look upon them as the real condition and the actual
cause of our freedom.
I mean that freedom of the individual which, instead of stopping far
from the freedom of others as before a frontier, sees on the contrary
the extending and the expansion into the infinity of its own free will,
the unlimited freedom of the individual through the, freedom of all;
freedom through solidarity, freedom in equality; the freedom which
triumphs over brute force and over the principle of authoritarianism,
the ideal expression of that force which, after the destruction of all
terrestrial and heavenly idols, will find and organize a new world of
undivided mankind upon the ruins of all churches and States. I am a
convinced partisan of economic and social equality, for I know that
outside this equality, freedom, justice, human dignity and moral and
spiritual well-being of mankind and the prosperity of nation, and
individuals will always remain a lie only. But as an unconditional
partisan of freedom, this first condition of humanity, I believe the
equality must be established through the spontaneous organization of
voluntary cooperation of work freely organized, and into communes
federated, by productive associations and through the equally
spontaneous federation of communes — not through and by supreme
supervising action of the State. This point separates above all others
the revolutionary socialists or collectivists from the authoritarian
“communists”, the adherents of the absolute initivaitve necessity of and
by the State. The communists imagine that condition of freedom and
socialism (i.e., the administration of the society’s affairs by the
self-government of the society itself without the medium and pressure of
the State) can be achieved by the development and organization of the
political power of the working class, chiefly of the proletariat of the
towns with the help of bourgeois radicalism, while the revolutionary
(who are otherwise, known as libertarian) socialists, enemies of every
double-edged allies and alliance believe, on the very contrary that the
aim can be realised and materialized only through the development and
organization not of the political but of the social and economic, and
therefore anti-political forces of the working masses of the town and
country, including all well disposed people of the upper classes who are
ready to break away from their past and join them openly and accept
their programme unconditionally.
From the difference named, there arise two different methods. The
“Communists” pretend to organize the working classes in order to
“capture the political power of the State”. The revolutionary socialists
organize people with the object of the liquidation of the States
altogether whatever be their form. The first are the partisans of
authoritiveness in theory and practice, the socialists have confidence
only in freedom to develop the initiative of peoples in order to
liberate themselves. The communist authoritarians wish to force class
“science” upon others, the social libertarians propagate empirical
science among them so that human groups and aggregations infused with
conviction in and understanding of it, spontaneously, freely and
voluntarily, from bottom up wards, organize themselves by their own
motion and in the measure of their strength — not according to a plan
sketched out in advance and dictated to them, a plan which is attempted
to be imposed by a few “highly intelligent, honest and all that” upon
the so-called ignorant masses from above. The revolutionary social
libertarians think that there is much more practical reason and common,
sense in the aspirations and the of the people than in the “deep”
intelligence of all the learned, men and tutors of mankind who want to
add to the many disastrous attempts “to make humanity happy” a still
newer attempt. We are on the contrary of the conviction that humankind
has allowed itself too long enough to be governed and legislated for and
that the origin of its misery is not to be looked for in this or that
form of government and man-established State, but in the very nature and
existence of every ruling leadership, of whatever kind and in whatever
name this may be. The best friends of the ignorant people are those who
free them from the thraldom of leadership and let people alone to work
among themselves with one another on the basis of equal comradeship.