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Title: Michael Bakunin, Communist Author: Guy A. Aldred Date: 1920 Language: en Topics: Mikhail Bakunin, anarcho-communism, communism, collectivism, biography Source: Original text from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=10842][RevoltLib.com]
Michel Bakunin was born in May, 1814, at Pryamuchina, situated between
Moscow and Petrograd, two years after his friend, Alexander Herzen,
first saw the light by the fires of Moscow. The future apostle of
Nihilism was the son of a wealthy landed proprietor, who boasted a line
of aristocratic ancestors. Economic conditions had decided that his
natural destiny was the army. Consequently, at the age of fourteen, he
entered the School of Artillery at St. Petersburg. Here he found, among
a large minority of the students at least, an underground current of
Liberalism which was only outwardly loyal and obedient to the behests of
the Governmental despotism. Among themselves, these rebel students
cherished the memories of the Decembrists of 1825, and handed round the
poems-that some of the martyred rebels had written-as sacred literature,
to be preserved and passed on from generation to generation. Anecdotage
of the martyrs themselves-most of whom had belonged to the First Cadet
Corps and the Artillery Institute-was also eagerly retailed and
jealously recited. Those of the Decembrists who had been sentenced to
Siberia were pitied for not having been able to share the honorable fate
of those who were executed. It was impossible for military despotism to
efface memories of heroic revolt or to silence entirely the genius of
knowledge. So the revolutionary enthusiasm continued to exist and to
grow apace. That it influenced Bakunin is certain; but to what extent we
cannot say. For he was conscious more immediately of the discord
existing between himself and his environment. Thus, writing to his
parents, in the autumn of 1829, Bakunin says:
“... Here begins a new era in my life. Until now my soul and imagination
were pure and innocent. They were not stained in any way. But here, in
the artillery school, I became acquainted with the black, foul, low side
of life. And if I was not dragged into the sins, of which I was often
the witness, I, at any rate, got so used to it as to have ceased to
wonder at anything now. I got used to lying, for the art of lying-in
that useful society of ours-was not only not considered a sin: it was
unanimously approved. I never had a conscious religious feeling, but I
possessed a sort of religious feeling which was associated closely with
my life at home. In the artillery school this feeling disappeared
altogether. There reigned among all the students instead, a cold
indifference to everything noble, great, or holy. All my spirituality
seemed to go to sleep. During my stay in this school I have lived in
spiritual somnolence.”
At the conclusion of his training he passed his examination with great
eclat. Writing home of this event, he said:
“At last I passed as an officer, eighteen year old. Thus began truly a
new epoch in my life. From a condition of slavish military discipline, I
suddenly gain personal freedom. I, so to speak, burst upon the free
world. I could not undertake to describe the feelings that possessed me.
I only can say that, thanks to this vigorous change, I commenced to
breathe freer, I began to feel nobler. After such a prolonged spiritual
sleep, my soul has awakened to spiritual life again. At first I was
surprised, surprised and glad at my new life ... I was glad to be free
to go where I liked and when I liked at all times.... Except in the
lesson hours, I did not meet any of my fellow officers. I severed every
relation with them. Their presence always reminded me of the meanness
and infamy of my school life. I have awakened ! A new life has opened
out ! A strong moral feeling-that has taken off of me the responsibility
of my school life-has kindled in my soul. I have decided to work upwards
to alter myself.”
The truth is, Bakunin at this time was suffering from extreme
conservatism. “The Russians are not French,” he wrote to his parents.
“They love their country and adore their monarch, and to them his will
is law. One could not find a single Russian who would not sacrifice all
his interests for the welfare of the Sovereign and the prosperity of the
fatherland.”
Bakunin should have become an officer of the Guards as a matter of
course. This would have meant participating in the splendor of the
Court. Bakunin had contrived to anger his father, however, and to arouse
the jealousy of the Director of Artillery. As a punishment for this dual
offense he was given a commission in the line. This meant that he was
doomed to spend his days in a miserable peasant village far away from an
center of civilization. A peasant’s hut had been assigned to Bakunin for
his new quarters. Here he took up his abode in consequence. All social
intercourse was abjured, and whole days were spent in meditation. His
military duties were entirely neglected until, at last, his commanding
officer was obliged to order him to resign his appointment. He now sent
in his papers consequently and returned to Moscow, where he was received
into “a circle” of youthful savants similarly situated to himself. This
circle was engrossed in German philosophy, and was especially keen on
Hegel. Its founder was Stankevitch, who had sat under Professor Pawlov
at Moscow University. This worthy pedant had introduced German
philosophy into the University curriculum ten years previously. But he
had confined his attention to Schelling and Oken. Stankevitch, however,
had become fascinated with Hegel, and it was the latter’s philosophy
that seemed to him to be all-important. Consequently he had introduced
it to the select circle of his friends as a subject for serious study.
Among these were Alexander Herzen and Michel Bakunin.
---
Herzen was the love child of a German mother and a Russian noble, and
was recognized by his father from the very first. In 1827 he was sent to
the University of Moscow to complete the studies he had commenced at
home. At this time, reaction was steadily triumphant throughout Russia.
The Czar and his Court were conspiring to close the universities
entirely and to replace them by organized military schools. Moscow, in
particular, was suspect by the reaction as a hotbed of liberal and
revolutionary thought and plans. It boasted an ancient foundation and a
real tradition for learning. It demanded a real respect and an
independent life for its students and boasted professors who were
actually free spirits, inspired by a love of knowledge, and convinced of
the dignity of learning. Such professors declined to servilely flatter
autocracy and developed in the students a true sense of personality and
responsibility. The students, in their turn, secretly revered as saints
and martyrs the rebels of 1825 who had died on the gibbet or been driven
into exile. Czarism and its agents made increasing warfare on the
professors, who could develop their genius only at the expense of secret
denunciation and exile or removal. Devotion to knowledge rendered a man
suspect and placed him at the mercy of ignorant inspectors and servile
auxiliaries of the police department. Weak men bowed before the ruling
system, only to find their genius gone, their personality extinguished.
Lectures declined little by little into the hands of incapable masters,
in whom routine replaced talent. These men were kept in office by
corruption and police considerations. Meanwhile, knowledge banned,
became loved. And the students in their quest proved the truth of
Moncure Conway’s words: “They who menace our freedom of thought and
speech are tampering with something more powerful than gunpowder.” The
French philosophers were forbidden. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot,
Morelli, Mably, and Fourier were denied their place in the University
library. Did Truth despair on that account? Not at all. So much did the
authorities dread the French that they forgot to inquire if there were
German ones. And so Hegel was permitted-Hegel whose method has inspired
more thorough revolutionary thinking than Voltaire. Feuerbach was
allowed also-Feuerbach who denied the existence of the soul and repeated
the Communist warcry, heard in the streets of Paris in those days of
revolution: “Property is Robbery.”
And so the French philosophers were neglected and the Germans succeeded
them in the affections of the students. And the revolution proceeded
apace.
Herzen sought to understand the wonderful German philosophy. It excited
his imagination and fired his ambition. He assimilated its theories and
wrote seditious essays in consequence. His manuscripts were seized. A
year’s imprisonment followed. Then he was exiled to Perm, on the very
borders of Siberia, for his activities, more especially for taking part
in a dinner attended by the revolutionary students, who reverenced Hegel
and sung revolutionary songs. In solitude, he determined to fathom
Hegel. Then he was permitted to return to civilized life and to live at
Vladimir. From here he fled to Moscow and carried off from one of the
imperial schools a young cousin to whom he was engaged. He was forgiven
for this escapade and permitted to live in Moscow, where he joined the
revolutionary study circle at which he met Bakunin. Entire nights were
spent in keenly discussing, paragraph by paragraph, the three volumes of
Hegel’s “Logic,” the two volumes of his “Ethics,” his “Encyclopedia,”
etc.
“People who regarded one another with affection,” says Herzen, in
describing these study circles, “would have nothing to do with one
another for weeks after a disagreement respecting the definition of ‘the
intercepting mind,’ and would regard opinions concerning ‘the absolute
personality’ and its autonomous existence as personal insults. All the
most insignificant pamphlets which appeared in Berlin or the various
provincial cities of Germany, which dealt with German philosophy, and
contained even the merest mention of Hegel, were bought and read until
in a few days they were torn and tattered and falling to pieces.”
Actually there were two distinct circles equally keen on the discussion
of Western philosophy. One was the Bakunin-Bielinsky-Stankievitch group.
The other was the group of Herzen and Ogariov. Little sympathy existed
between these two factions. The Herzen group was French in its outlook,
and almost exclusively political in its aim. The Bakunin faction was
almost exclusively speculative in its outlook and German in its thought.
They were denounced as sentimentalists by the Herzenites.
This was the period of crisis for Bakunin and the friend over whom he
exercised so great an influence, Bielinsky. Both passed through the
crisis and went over to the extreme left before Stankievitch’s circle
dissolved in 1839. They did more. They passed from being Germanophiles
and Francophotes to becoming Francophiles and Germanophotes. The
hindrance of such racial idealism proved as fatal when French prejudices
were favored as when German ones were, except for a more radical form of
address, and a clearer outlook on the world of theology. Herzen asserted
that Hegel’s system was nothing less than the algebra of the revolution,
and that was all he appropriated from it. But it was badly formulated
algebra-very likely the bad formulation was intentional. It had
attracted a band of immediate disciples, therefore, who were not nearly
so closely allied to the Hegelian teaching as the Socialists. For the
Hegelian philosophy left men free in a sense that no other philosophy
had done or could do. It liberated the world from obsolete conditions,
and left no stone unturned in Christendom. It proclaimed the idea that
nothing was immutable and that every social condition contained the
germs of radical change.
Bakunin and his friend Bielinsky came to support these contentions of
Herzen before the dawn of the hungry and revolutionary forties. But at
first both were reactionary.
Whether right or left, Bakunin insisted on thoroughness. He went to the
very depths of German metaphysical idealism and hesitated before none of
the logical consequences of his thought. He applauded it because it was
the philosophy of authority and order, and not Herzen’s algebra of
revolution. He spoke with contemptuous irony of the “philosophications”
of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert, and other French writers,
who had assumed the gaudy and unmerited title of philosophers. He
denounces the turbulent and recriminative French and condemns “the
furious and sanguinary scenes of” their revolution, the “abstract and
illimitable” whirlwind which “shook France and all but destroyed her.”
He rejoiced that “the profound religious and esthetic feeling of the
German people” saved it from such experiences. Hegel had reconciled
Bakunin to reality and oppression. “Yes,” he wrote, “suffering is good;
it is that purifying flame which transforms the spirit and makes it
steadfast.”
He declared that “reconciliation with reality in all its relations and
under all conditions is the great problem of our day,” and maintained
that real education was “that which makes a true and powerful Russian
man devoted to the Czar.” Hegel and Goethe were “the leaders of this
movement of reconciliation, this return from death to life.”
“In France,” he added, “the last spark of Revelation has disappeared.
Christendom, that eternal and immutable proof of the Creator’s love for
His creatures, has become an object of mockery and contempt for all....
Religion has vanished, bearing with it the happiness and the peace of
France.... Without religion, there can be no State and the Revolution
was the negation of any State and of all legal order .... The whole life
of France is merely the consciousness of the void .... ‘Give us what is
new, the old things weary us’-such is the watchword of the Young France
.... The French sacrifice to the fashion, which has been their sole
goddess from all time, all that is most holy and truly great in life.”
This “French malady” had attacked the Russian intellectuals, who “filled
themselves with French phrases, vain words, empty of meaning, killing
the soul in the germ, and expelling from it all that is holy and
beautiful.” Russian society had to “abandon this babbling” and ally
itself with “the German world with its disciplined conscience” and “with
our beautiful Russian reality.”
Thus spoke the apostle of Czarism and Prussianism. No wonder he despised
the students at the Artillery School. No wonder, when he had passed
through the violent change which transformed him into an anarchist and
enemy of Czarism, he hated everything German and adored most things
French. It may not have been reasonable. But it was very human. And
Bakunin was nothing if not human. By temperament he was passionate and
elemental. This fact explains the completion of his mental change.
And so Bakunin came to support the contentions of Herzen with a boldness
and irresistible dialectic that marked him out as the most brilliant
member of a brilliant group of disputants. Herzen was impressed with his
incomparable “revolutionary tact” and tireless energy. He had made
himself thoroughly at home with the German language and the German
philosophy. Proudhon noted the effect of these studies and masteries on
his thought and style when he declared that Bakunin was a monstrosity in
his terse dialectic and his luminous perception of ideas in their
essence.
---
Tourgenieff once invented a Nihilist hero, named Bazaroff. This
character lives in my mind only because of his reply to a skeptical
question. He was asked whether he, as a Nihilist propagandist, imagined
that he influenced the masses. And he replied: “A halfpenny tallow dip
sufficed to set all Moscow in a blaze.” Herzen’s name is associated by
his nativity with the immortal flames thus humbly originated. He is the
lighted tallow tip which began the mighty conflagration now threatening
to consume the whole of Capitalist society. Even as the flames spread,
he spluttered and went out. But he set fire to a rare torch in
Bakunin-one who was destined to spread the smoke and the fire of
revolution throughout the world.
This world mission began in 1841, when Bakunin proceeded to Berlin to
continue the studies commenced at Moscow. He was now a red among reds.
Philosopher, Rebel, Socialist, he left Russia for the first time. The
following year he removed to Dresden in order to gain a nearer
acquaintance with Arnold Ruge, the interpreter of Hegel, with whom he
most sympathized, and to proclaim definitely his rapture with
Conservatism and his adhesion to the Hegelians “of the left.” He did
this in his first revolutionary essay, entitled the “Reaction in
Germany,” contributed to Ruge’s “Jahrbucher” for 1842, Nos. 247–51. As
if anxious to emphasize his change of front on the relative worth of the
French and German spirit, Bakunin used the “nom-de-plume” of “Jules
Elizard,” and had Ruge pretend that it was a “Fragment by a Frenchman.”
The article itself showed that Bakunin had not altered his estimate of
the French and German spirit. He had merely changed sides consciously
and deliberately. He entered an uncompromising plea for revolution and
Nihilism. The principle of revolution, he declared, is the principle of
negation, the everlasting spirit of destruction and annihilation that is
the fathomless and ever-creating fountain of all life. It is the spirit
of intelligence, the ever-young, the ever new-born, that is not to be
looked for among the ruins of the past. The champions of this principle
are something more than the mere negative party, the uncompromising
enemies of the positive; for the latter exists only as the contrary of
the negative, whilst that which sustains and elevates the party of
revolt is the all-embracing principle of absolute freedom, The French
Revolution erected the Temple of Liberty, on which it wrote the
mysterious words: “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” It was impossible
not to know and feel that these words meant the total annihilation of
the existing world of politics and society. It was impossible, also, not
to experience a thrill of pleasure at the bare suggestion of this
annihilation. But that was because “the joy of destruction is also the
joy of creation.”
The year after the publication of this essay, Bakunin quitted Dresden
for Paris, as he believed he had learned all there was to be learned in
Germany. In the French capital he identified himself with all who where
noted for their decided views and revolutionary abandon. But a certain
community of thought attracts him most to Proudhon. The latter had
answered the question “What is Property?” with Brissot’s reply, given
when still a revolutionary, and subsequently adopted by Feuerbach and
accepted by Bakunin. He declared without hesitation that “Property
holders are thieves.” His motto was the early Christian motto which
appealed so much to Bakunin: “I will destroy and I will rebuild.” He
possessed an intense admiration for Hegel and believed, at least,
philosophically, with Bakunin that the process of destruction was also
the process of construction. Hence Bakunin’s friendship. It must be
confessed, however, that Marx’s estimate of Proudhon as an Utopian and a
reformist who uttered bold and striking phrases is much more to the
point than Bakunin’s view of Proudhon as a social revolutionist of the
first water.
A few months after this meeting, Proudhon was obliged to leave Paris for
Lyons. Bakunin was induced by his Polish friends to go to Switzerland.
Two years later he was involved in the trial of the Swiss Socialists. He
was thereupon deprived of his rank as a Russian officer and his rights
of nobility. In all, he whittled away five years in the Swiss villages.
Proceeding to Paris at the end of this time, he here threw himself
wholeheartedly into the struggle for freedom. His activity brought him
into contact with Marx. Nearly a quarter-of-a-century later, writing in
the year that witnessed the disaster of the Commune and the beginnings
of the Parliamentary debacle, Bakunin recorded his impression of his
great German colleague and opponent:
“Marx was much more advanced than I was as he remains to-day, not more
advanced but incomparably more learned than I am. I knew then nothing of
political economy. I had not yet rid myself of metaphysical
abstractions, and my Socialism was only instinctive. He, though younger
than I, was already an Atheist, an instructed materialist, a
well-considered Socialist. It was just at this time (1847) that he
elaborated the first foundations of his present system. We saw each
other fairly often, for I respected him much for his learning and his
passionate and serious devotion-always mixed, however, with personal
vanity-to the cause of the proletariat. I sought eagerly his
conversation, which was always instructive and clever, when it was not
inspired by a paltry hate, which, alas! happened only too often. But
there was never any frank intimacy between us. Our temperaments would
not suffer it. He called me a sentimental idealist, and he was right. I
called him a vain man, perfidious, and crafty; and I, also, was right.”
---
November 29, 1847, was the anniversary of the Insurrection of Warsaw. On
this date Paris witnessed Bakunin’s pronouncement of his celebrated
speech to the Poles. For the first time a Russian was seen to offer a
hand of Brotherhood to this much persecuted people, and renounce
publicly the Government of St. Petersburg. His oration formed the
prototype of countless other speeches of Russian and Polish
revolutionists. It acknowledged the grievous injustice done to the
Polish nation by Russia, and promised that the revolution of the future
would not only make amends for this, but would remove all the existing
differences between the two leading Slav families. It would,
consequently, unite the lands east of the Order into a proper and
beneficent federative Republic.
It must not be concluded from this speech that Bakunin was anticipating
the Poland of Pilsudski and the Allied financiers, the tool of the
counter-revolution. He was anticipating a Soviet Poland and a Soviet
Russia, two allied lands in which all power and authority would be
rested in the hands of toilers and exist only in response to real needs
of social organization and the people’s well-being. Hence his speech
made a great sensation. The Czar’s Government placed a reward of 10,000
rubles on the venturesome orator’s head, and demanded his expulsion from
Paris. His every move was now watched by Russian agents. Guizot-who but
a few years before had been too polite to refuse the Russian
Government’s request for Marx’s expulsion-consequently expelled him from
Paris. Like Marx, he went to Brussels; but he had scarcely reached here
when Paris expelled Guizot and Louis Phillippe from France. The new
Provisional Government-that now invited the “brave and loyal Marx” to
return to the country whence tyranny had banished him, and where he,
like all fighting in the sacred cause, the cause of the fraternity of
all peoples” would be welcome-also welcomed Bakunin. He accordingly
returned to Paris and passionately threw himself into the new political
life that then began. But men like Marx and Bakunin-who took the
Republican ideal in earnest and realized the material revolution that
must precede its realization-were a menace to the Lamartine and Marast
Government. Bakunin’s departure was a relief to it. He went to the
Slavo-Polish Congress assembled at Breslau, and afterwards attended the
Congress convened at Prague on 1^(st) June, 1848. Here his famous
Slavonic program was written. Up to the time that Windisgraetz dispersed
the congress with Austrian cannon, Bakunin worked with the Slavonians.
These events inspired Marx’s famous chapters on “Revolution and
Counter-Revolution.” Treating of this political storm period, Marx sings
the praises of the generous bravery, the nobility, and the
far-sightedness of the spontaneous revolt of the Viennese populace in
the cause of Hungarian freedom. He contrasts their action with the
“cautious circumspection” of Hungarian Statesmanship. Parliamentarians
he dismisses as poor, weak-minded men, so little accustomed to anything
like success during their generally very obscure lives that they
actually believed their Parliamentary amendments more important than
external events.
The most important passages are those treating of the part played by the
military in times of revolution. We are often told by so-called
Marxists, the former slanderers of Bakunin and the present enemies of
Bolshevism, that “we” must capture the Parliamentary machine in order to
control the armed forces. Without discussing who the “we” is who is
going to capture this machine, one may venture to cite the following
excerpts from Marx’s pages, proving that Parliament does not control the
army nor even the executive authority.
“But we repeat: these armies, strengthened by the Liberals as a means of
action against the more advanced parties...turned themselves against the
Liberals and restored to power men of the old system. When Radetzky in
his camp beyond the Adige received the first orders from the responsible
ministers at Vienna, he exclaimed: ‘Who are these ministers? They are
not the government of Austria.’ Austria is now nowhere but in my camp;
‘I and my army, we are Austria; and when we have beaten the Italians, we
shall reconquer the Empire for the Emperor.’ And old Radetzky was right,
but the imbecile ‘responsible’ ministers at Vienna heeded him not.” —
Ch. IX.
“The army again was the decisive power in the State, and the army
belonged not to the middle classes but to themselves....The...army, more
united than every, flushed with victory in minor insurrections and
foreign warfare...had only to be kept in constant petty conflicts with
the people, and the decisive moment once at hand, it could, with on
great blow, crash the Revolutionists, and set aside the presumptions of
the middle class parliamentarians.” — Ch.X.
In these trenchant words, Marx describes how the Austrian army regained
its confidence at Prague and sounds the call of battle and social
revolutionary-anti-parliamentarism. He thus identifies himself and his
work with the struggle and endeavor of Bakunin.
During this storm-period, Herzen left Russia never to return to it
again. For a time he had returned to the service of the State and spent
his spare time in writing novels, romances, and studies of manners. But
the meanness of his occupation outraged his self-respect. Once more he
took up the struggle against Czarism. Once more his pen denounced
despotism. He wrote boldly and bitterly and encountered persecution as a
matter of course. Then he abandoned his office as a barrister and went
into exile.
It was now that Herzen proclaimed his gospel of universal negation, the
need to destroy completely the existing political world. He denounced
bourgeois republicanism, whatever means were employed to bring it about.
His goal was the Socialist Republic, which was to be brought into
existence by burying existing society under its own ruins. Once
abolished, the old society could never reconstitute itself. But another
society would emerge inevitably-a better and truer society without
doubt. Herzen could not see beyond that society. He did not know what
was to follow it. But he knew it could not be the end. In this sense,
regarding life as a constant ferment, and viewing the old society as a
regime of death, Herzen saluted the prospects of revolution with the
words:—
“Death to the old world! Long live chaos and destruction! Long live
death! Place for the future.”
Out of the chaos, Socialism was to emerge:—
“Socialism will be developed in all its phases, even to its uttermost
consequences, the absurd. Then, once again, there will come forth the
cry of negation from the titantic breast of the revolutionary minority.
Once more, the mortal struggle will recommence. But in the struggle
Socialism will take the place of the present Conservatism, to be
conquered in its turn by a revolution unknown to us. The eternal game of
life, cruel as death, inevitable as birth, constitutes the flux and
reflux of history, ‘perpetuum mobile’ of life.”
Thus thought and wrote Herzen “Before the Storm” which swept over Europe
in 1848. That storm left power in the hands of the hated bourgeois, “the
prize beasts of the ‘National.’” He develops his theory with greater
force “After the Storm”:
“We are not called upon to gather the fruits of the past, but to be its
torturers and persecutors. We must judge it, and learn to recognize it
under every disguise, and immolate it for the sake of the future.”
In these words, Herzen challenged the entire constitutional theory of a
gradual conquest of political power by the proletariat under Capitalism.
He denied that Jesus had conquered Constantine by the Church
establishing itself in the Capitol. He saw the original plan of tyranny
being developed and improved in detail, but never abandoned nor
destroyed. The Reformation headed by Luther did not emancipate the
people. It only saved clericalism. The French Revolution did not destroy
authority. It conserved it. But the coming Social Revolution would
uproot and destroy. It would not widen the power of the states but
destroy their entire political structure.
As one follows Herzen in the development of this theory, one knows that
his message is radically at one with Marx. It is the message of the
class struggle. And it foreshadowed, without a doubt, the revolutionary
negation of parliamentarism, and the establishment of Soviet
responsibility.
---
Quitting Prague, Bakunin fled to Germany, where he was received with
open arms by the Radical element. Here he remained concealed for
sometime, first at Berlin, then at Dessau, Cothen, and various towns in
Saxony. Everywhere pursued and expelled by the police, he was a wanderer
until the end of April, 1849, when he succeeded in finding employment,
under an assumed name, at the University of Leipzig. Here a circle of
Bohemian students embraced both his revolutionary and panslavistic
doctrines.
Bakunin now united in opposition to Palacky-whom Marx denounced-the
Slavonian democrats with the Hungarian independence movement and the
German revolutionists. Subsequently he took command at the defense of
Dresden and acquired a glory which even his enemies have not denied.
From the 6^(th) to the 9^(th) May, he was the very life and soul of its
defense against the Prussian and Saxon troops. On the later date, when
all was lost, Bakunin ordered the general retreat to Frieberg with the
same proud dignity as he had issued his commands for resisting the siege
and had insisted, only the day before, on the European importance of
this desperate enterprise. At Chemnitz he was seized by treachery, with
two of his companions; and from that time-10^(th) May, 1849-commenced
his long martyrdom. Even then his proud and courageous demeanor did not
desert him. Twenty-seven years afterwards, one of the Prussian officers
who had guarded the prisoner on the way through Altenburg still
remembered the calmness and intrepidity with which the tall man in
fetters replied to a lieutenant who interpellated him, “that in politics
the issue alone can decide what is a great action and what a crime.”
From August, 1849, to May, 1850, Bakunin was kept a prisoner in the
fortress of Konistein. He was then tried and sentenced to death by the
Saxon tribunal. In pursuance of a resolution passed by the old Diet of
the Bund in 1836, he was delivered up to the Austrian Government and
sent (chained) to Prague instead of being executed.
The Austrian Government attempted in vain to extort from him the secrets
of the Slavonian movement. A year later it sentenced him to death, but
immediately commuted the death sentence to one of perpetual
imprisonment. In the interval he had been removed from the fortress at
Gratz to that at Almutz, as the Government was terrified by the report
of a design to liberate him. Here he passed six months chained to the
wall. After this, the Austrian Government surrendered him to the
Russian. The Austrian chains were replaced by native irons of twice the
weight. This was in the autumn of 1851, when Bakunin was taken through
Warsaw and Vilna to St. Petersburg, to pass three weary years in the
fortress of Alexis. At Vilna, in spite of the threats of the Russian
Government, the Poles gathered in the streets to pay the last tribute of
silent respect to the heroic Russian orator of 27^(th) November, 1847.
As Bakunin drove past them in the sledge, they bowed their heads with an
affection never assumed in the presence of emperors. Bakunin understood.
His fortitude during six years’ confinement in Russian dungeons showed
that he was not unworthy of their devotion.
In 1854, at the beginning of the Crimean War, Bakunin was transferred to
the casemates of the dreaded fortress of Schlusselburg, which actually
lie beneath the level of the Neva. When Alexander II. ascended the
throne in August, 1856, he half-pardoned many political refugees and
conspirators, including the Decembrists of 1825. Bakunin was not among
them. When his mother petitioned the Emperor, the latter replied, with
affability, “As long as your son lives, madame, he will never be free.”
However, 1857 saw Bakunin’s release from prison and removal to Eastern
Siberia as a penal colonist. Three years later, the Emperor refused to
let Bakunin return to Russia, as he saw in him “no sign of remorse.”
After eight years’ imprisonment and four years’ exile, he had to look
forward still to a long series of dreary years in Siberia.
Two of these dreary years had gone when, in 1859, the Russian Government
annexed the territory of the Amur. A brighter prospect was offered
Bakunin by permission to settle here, and to move about almost as he
pleased.
A new flame was kindled throughout Russia-Garibaldi had unfurled the
Italian flag of freedom. Bakunin, at 47 years of age and with his pulse
full of vigor, could not remain a tame and distant spectator of these
events. He determined to escape from Siberia. This he successfully
carried out by extending his excursions as far as Novo-Nikolaievsk,
where he secretly boarded an American clipper, on which he reached
Japan. He was the first political refugee to seek shelter there. Thence
he arrived at San Francisco, crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and came to
New York. On 26^(th) December, 1861, he landed at Liverpool, and the
next day he was with his comrades in London.
“Bakunin is in London! Bakunin buried in dungeons, lost in Eastern
Siberia, re-appears in the midst of us full of life and energy. He
returns more hopeful than ever, with redoubled love for freedom’s holy
cause. He is invigorated by the sharp but healthy air of Siberia. With
his resurrection, how many images and shadows rise from the dead! The
visions of 1848 reappear. We feel no longer that 1848 is dead! It has
only changed its place in the order of time!”
Such were the greetings with which all English lovers of freedom and
members of the revolutionary working class committees welcomed the
approach of the new year 1862!
To justify these expectations, Bakunin settled down to the part
editorship of Herzen’s “Kolokol.”
---
“The slightest concession, the smallest grace and compassion will bring
us back to the past again, and leave our fetters untouched. Of two
things we must choose one. Either we must justify ourselves and go on,
or we must falter and beg for mercy when we have arrived half-way.”
In these terms, written in a mood of uncompromising Nihilism, Herzen
condemned his own career. When he published his pamphlet “Before the
Storm,” in Rome, it did not seem possible that the world would have to
wait long for the inevitable conflagration. The downfall of all existing
institutions seemed imminent. Socialism was the gospel of youth, the
hope of humanity, the goal to be attained. And it seemed as though the
youth of the world was about to come into its own. Herzen reveled in the
thought that the spring-time was at hand:—
“When the spring comes, a young and fresh life will show itself over the
whitened sepulchers of the feeble generations which will have
disappeared in the explosion. For the age of senile barbarity, there
will be substituted a juvenile barbarity, full of disconnected forces. A
savage and fresh vigor will invade the young breasts of new peoples.
Then will commence a new cycle of events and a new volume of universal
history. The future belongs to Socialist ideas.”
But the 1848 upheaval failed. Herzen prophesied more vigorously than
ever. He clamored strenuously and ably for universal destruction. But
his faith in “words and flags, in the deification of humanity, and the
illusion that salvation can be only effected by the Church of European
civilization” declined. The west in which he placed so much hope was
dead. And he began his weary “return to Russia” in thought, though not
in fact. For he lived and died in exile.
“We were young two years ago; to-day we are old,” he wrote in 1850. The
crushing of the French Labor movement angered and disheartened him. He
became ashamed of his precious affection for Europe, “blushed for his
prejudices,” declared that he knew nothing of the lands he had loved
from the distance, and had embellished them with “marvelous colors”
because they were as “forbidden fruit” to him. Universal sorrow at the
general check received by the revolution throughout Europe disturbed his
outlook and he poured out his sense of hopelessness and despair in his
work, “From the Other Shore.”
But he could not quite give up his faith in revolution. The West had
failed — but there was Russia. Why should not Russia become a Socialist
State without passing through Capitalism? Herzen saw no reason : and so
in 1851 he penned the prophetic words: “The man of the future in Russia
is the moujik, just as in France he is the artisan.”
He saw Russia emancipating the world and continued in this faith down to
the renewal of his association with Bakunin in London. At this time he
developed his ideas in “The Old World and Russia.” All the States — the
Roman, Christian, and feudal institutions, the parliamentary,
monarchial, and republican centers — but not the people of Europe will
perish. The coming revolution, unlike any previous change, would destroy
the bases of the States. In line with which understanding of the social
issue, Herzen opposed himself to reformism in the following words:—
“We can do no more plastering and repairing. It has become impossible to
move in the ancient forms without breaking them. Our revolutionary idea
is incompatible entirely with the existing state of things.”
“A constitution is only a treaty between master and slave.” This
declaration was made by Herzen also. It at once became the motto of the
Russian extremists, who were few compared with the constitutionalists
who wanted either a limited monarchy or a republic.
But the boldness of his thought was paralyzed by the Russian character
of his outlook. He attempted to turn opportunist in practice in order to
bring about insurrectionary movements in Russia, and became disheartened
by failure. He compromised with the religious sectarians and conspired
with the peasants. The intrigue collapsed, and he repudiated the
Nihilism he had abandoned in order to intrigue. For practical reasons,
he retreated from his revolutionary position, and left his colleague,
Michel Bakunin, to spread the flame of universal destruction. But
Herzen’s retreat was in direct opposition to all that he taught and
believed.
To Bakunin he wrote, stating that he had no faith in revolutionary
measures and now stood for Liberalism. He neither wished to march ahead
of, nor remain behind, the progress of mankind. The latter would not —
and could not — follow him in his passion for destruction, which
Baskunin mistook for a passion for creation.
The trouble was not with the revolutionary program. It rested with
Herzen’s anti-revolutionary compassion for his fatherland above other
lands. Concessions were made to religion and political conspiracy. He
failed the social revolution and then denied its truth because his work
seemed to end in smoke. The vapor was Herzen not Nihilism.
---
Whereas Herzen appealed to a Russian audience, Bakunin demanded a
European one. He remained the Slav at heart, and on the International
stage paraded his hatred of the Teuton.
In London he assured his admirers that he would devote the rest of his
life to the war with Czarism. He wanted to be “a true and free Russian,”
however, and to keep off the Tartars in the East and “to maintain the
Germans in Germany.” This Nationalist touch marred all his work and
seriously distracted from his revolutionary vigor in moments of crisis.
But it did not seem to hamper his energy.
Herzen’s paper stood for the reform of Russian officialdom, not its
destruction. But he was no match for Bakunin’s energy, zeal, and
abandon. More and more did the “Kolokol” become identified with the
latter’s Nihilism, his applause of the negative principle, and his
denunciation of all positive institution. This altered policy was
maintained down to 1865, when the “Kolokol” was transferred from London
to Geneva only to die.
Four years later Bakunin delivered his famous speech to the Peace
Congress at Berne. He impeached modern civilization as having been
“founded from time immemorial on the forced labor of the enormous
majority, condemned to lead the lives of brutes and slaves, in order
that a small minority might be enabled to live as human creatures. This
monstrous inequality,” he discovered, rested
“Upon the absolute separation between headwork and hand-labor. But this
abomination cannot last; for in future the working classes are resolved
to make their own politics. They insist that instead of two classes,
there shall be in future only one, which shall offer to all men alike,
without grade or distinction, the same starting point, the same
maintainence, the same opportunities of education and culture, the same
means of industry; not, indeed, by virtue of laws, but by the nature of
the organization of this class which shall oblige everyone to work with
his head as with his hands.”
Later on, Bakunin repudiated Communism in a passage that has so often
been misinterpreted, that we reproduce it at length:
“Communism I abhor, because it is the negation of liberty, and without
liberty I cannot imagine anything truly human. I abhor it because it
concentrates all the strength of society in the State, and squanders
that strength in its service; because it places all property in the
hands of the State, whereas my principle is the abolition of the State
itself. I want the organization of society and the distribution of
property to proceed from below, by the free voice of society itself ;
not downward from above, by the dictate of authority. I want the
abolition of personal hereditary property, which is merely an
institution of the State, and a consequence of State principles. In this
sense I am a Collectivist not a Communist.”
Here Bakunin propounds the old Anarchist fallacy of the State creating
property, instead of espousing the sound doctrine that property
necessitates and conditions the State. He fights the shadow for the
substance. His aspiration as to social organization all Communists
share. And when he repudiates Communism for Collectivism, they know he
is giving a different meaning to these terms from that which we give to
them.
Actually, he is expressing his fear of a dictatorship. But since he
believed in violence, which is the essence of dictatorship, we do not
see the point of his objection. No one believes in a permanent
authoritarian society. All realize that there must be a transitional
period during which the workers must protect the revolution and organize
to crush the counter-revolution. Every action of the working class
during that period must be organized, must be power-action, and
consequently dictatorial. It is impossible either for Bakunin or for
anyone else to escape from reality in this matter. To destroy power the
workers must secure power.There is no other way.
The address becomes happier when the author turns to the question of
religion : but since he repeats, word for word, whole passages
subsequently reproduced in “God and the State,” there is no need to cite
his reflections. Bakunin’s one great consistency was his hatred of God
and the idealists.
---
Bakunin’s pan-slavism was the fatal contradiction that paralyzed his
revolutionary endeavor. This will be seen from his pamphlet “Romanoff,
Pugatscheff, or Pestal,” published in 1862. In this, he announced his
willingness to make peace with absolutism provided that the son of the
Emperor Nicholas would consent to be “a good and loyal Czar,” a
democratic ruler, and would put himself at the head of a popular
assembly in order to constitute a new Russia, and play the part of the
savior of the Slav people.
“Does this Romanoff mean to be the Czar of the peasants, or the
Petersburgian emperor of the house of Holstein-Gottorp? This question
will have to be decided soon, and then we shall know what we are and
what we have to do.”
The Czar’s silence angered Bakunin, and he returned again to Nihilism as
he would have done in any case. Bakunin was altogether too loyal to the
cause of revolution to compromise with Czars for any length of time. But
the weakness was there, and the fact must be recorded. It found
expression once again with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and
the German invasion of France. Bakunin forgot the youth to whom he had
issued his revolutionary appeals. All his ancient Russian enmity of the
Germanic race-from whose thinkers he had imbibed the milk of his
philosophic doctrines-came out. He at once addressed an appeal to the
pleasantry of all countries, imploring them “to come to drive out the
Prussians.” The cause of France, he said, was the cause of humanity. And
the powerful Muscovite Press agreed with him. Bakunin was at one with
ruling class Russia. In backing France, he was acting as became a
Russian and a patriot, not as became an Anarchist and an
Internationalist. This is obvious from the company in which he found
himself.
---
Bakunin outlined the case against Germany, and enunciated his theory of
the historic mission of the French, in his “Letters to a Frenchman about
The Present Crisis,” written in September, 1870, and his pamphlet on
“The Knouto-Germanic Empire.” He disowned nationalism and race, and the
Napoleons, Bismarcks, and Czars who fostered patriotism in order to
destroy the freedom of all nations. In his eyes, this was a very mean,
very narrow and very interested passion. It was fundamentally inhuman
and had no other purpose than the conservation of the power of the
national State-that is, the attempted exploitations and privileges
inside a nation.
“When the masses become patriotic they are stupid, as are to-day a part
of the masses in Germany, who let themselves be slaughtered in tens of
thousands with a silly enthusiasm, for the triumph of that great unity,
and for the organization of that German Empire, which, if founded on the
ruins of usurped France, will become the tomb of all hopes for the
future.”
In penning that, he did not recall his own pan-Slavic utterances, and
advocacy of racial antagonisms involving the continuation of government
and the support of militarism.
History was shaved shamefully so as to oppose the France of 1793 to the
Germany of Bismarck. Nothing was said about revolutionary Germany. The
France which demanded Napoleons, supported Royalism, and favored
bourgeois Republicanism, was dismissed. Bakunin was enabled, by these
means, to picture the world as waiting on the initiation of France for
its advance towards liberty. France was to drive back Germany, exile her
traitor officials-and inaugurate Socialism!
“What I would consider a great misfortune for the whole of humanity
would be the defeat and death of France as a great national
manifestation: the death of its great national character, the French
spirit; of the courageous, heroic instincts, of the revolutionary
daring, which took with storm, in order to destroy, all authorities that
had been made holy by history, all power of heaven and earth. If that
great historical nature called France should be missed at this hour, if
it should disappear from the world-scene; or,-what would be much
worse-if the spirited and developed nature should fall suddenly from the
honored height which she has attained, thanks to the work of the heroic
genius of past generations-into the abyss and continue her existence as
Bismarck’s slave: a terrible emptiness will engulf the whole world. It
would be more than a national catastrophe. It would be a world-wide
misfortune, a universal defeat.”
We need add only that the great “French Spirit” murdered in cold blood
its communards in the famous May-June days of 1871.
---
As a national manifestation, the French Spirit was confined within
territorial boundaries. It has been seen that Bakunin believed also in a
Russian nationalism, bounded on the East by the Tartars, and on the West
by the Germans. Given these frontiers, it is impossible not to believe
in a German race, bounded on the West by France and on the East by
Russia. Thus Bakunin believed in upholding the States of Europe. He
aimed at the status quo. Yet he said :—
“Usurpation is not only the outcome, but the highest aim of all states,
large or small, powerful or weak, despotic or liberal, monarchic,
aristocratic, or democratic....It follows that the war of one State upon
another is a necessity and common fact, and every peace is only a
provisional truce.”
This idea was not worked out at some other time, under different
circumstances, but in these “Letters to a Frenchman” eulogizing the
national spirit. He asserted that all States were bad, and there could
be no virtuos State:—
“Who says State, says power, oppression, exploitation, injustice-all
these established as the prevailing system and as the fundamental
conditions of the existing society. The State never had a morality, and
can never have one. Its only morality and justice is its own advantage,
its own existence, and its own omnipotence at any price. Before these
interests, all interests of mankind must disappear. The State is the
negation of manhood.”
“So long as there is a State, war will never cease. Each State must
overcome or be overcome. Each State must found its power on the
weakness, and, if it can, without danger to itself, on the abrogation of
other States. To strive for an International justice and freedom and
lasting peace, and therewith seek the maintenance of the State, is a
ridiculous naivete.”
Bakunin had to escape this very charge of ridiculous naivete.
---
The German Social Democrats believed in a progressive series of State
reforms and German unity with Prussia as the head of the centralizing
movement. By seizing on this fact, Bakunin was able to give point to his
case for the French Spirit. Unless, however, he could make the German
Social Democrats amenable to that spirit, he remained the apologist for
the French State. He carefully pointed out, therefore, that the German
Social Democrats were anxious to go beyond their program, and were
waiting to solidate with the French workers to proclaim the Universal
Socialist Republic of the proletaires. In this way, he destroyed
entirely the significance of the French Spirit. And he did not write the
truth. The German Social Democrats were not waiting to solidate with the
French workers. The French workers were not willing to initiate the
Socialist Republic. So cleverly did Bakunin reconcile his
contradictions, that he buried his superstition and Anarchism in the
same logical grave. It is well that this was only a passing aberration,
that Bakunin was so sincerely proletarian that the Commune of Paris
found him its defender and eulogist, and our gratitude for his vigor and
audacity in consequence exceeds our regrets at his lapses. We recall
that all his contemporaries, including Marx, nodded, and that the age of
the giants who never fail and are superior to circumstance has not
arrived.
---
Bakunin closed his stormy career at Berne on 1^(st) July, 1876. He had
founded his Social Democratic Alliance and had been expelled from the
Marxist International. His heroism and tireless zeal commanded the
respect of all who survived, and it was decided at his funeral to
reconcile the Social Democrats and the Anarchists in one association,
and to bury minor differences-namely, the questions of Parliamentarism
and State reforms! This idea of compromise was supported by the
Anarchists and Social Democrats throughout Europe. Marvelous words of
regard were paid to Bakunin’s memory. On 7^(th) August, the Jura
Federation assembled at Chaux-de-Fonds and sent a fraternal greeting,
drawn up by James Guillaume, to the German Social Democratic Congress at
Gotha. Four weeks later, Wilhelm Liebknecht replied in the following
terms:—
“The Congress of the German Socialists has commissioned me to express to
you my delight over the fact that the Congress of the Federation of Jura
has expressed itself in favor of the union of all Socialists.”
The eighth International Congress of the International was held at Berne
a month later. The German Social Democratic Party sent a delegate who
expressed the following hope of union:—
“The German Social Democracy expresses the desire that the Socialists
may treat each other with mutual consideration, so that, if a complete
union is not possible, there may be established at least, a certain
understanding, in accordance with which everyone may pursue peacefully
his way.”
At the banquet, which concluded the Congress, Cafiero, the disciple of
Bakunin, drank to the health of the German Socialists; and De Paepe
toasted the memory of Michel Bakunin. “Anarchism” kept company with
State reforms and Socialism was regarded as a Parliamentary issue, over
which one must not grow passionate. All Bakunin’s fiery words against
the State, all his talk of the Revolution, his hurrying across Europe to
boost first one and then another insurrection had ended seemingly
in-vapor, smoke!
But the thing was impossible. The events of the storm years, 1848 and
1871, had made the same impression on Marx as on Bakunin. Both believed
in revolutionary violence, in insurrectional politics, in the Commune
and not the Empire. Whatever their personal quarrel and their difference
as to the rigid interpretation of the Marxian formula, both were genuine
social revolutionists, the real pioneers of the new social order, the
masters from whom John Most drew his inspiration. In their differences,
each side erred. In their fundamental aspiration, both were at one. Not
so with Lassalle from whom the Social Democrats drew their fatal
inspiration, whose motto, “Through universal suffrage to victory,” they
substituted, after the downfall of the Commune and the defeat of the
proletariat, for Marx’s magnificent: “Workers of all lands, unite! You
have nothing to lose but your chains! You have a world to gain!”
“To set about to make a revolution,” said Lasalle-the father of that
European Social Democracy which buried itself and attempted to murder
outright the European proletariat in the world war of 1914-18-“is the
folly of immature minds, which have no notion of the laws of history.”
In this spirit, he interpreted the events of 1848 and 1849 as an
argument for-direct universal suffrage! With the movement founded to
maintain this principle and work towards this middle class end, the
Anarchists seriously thought of identifying themselves! They imagined
this to be an honor to Bakunin, just as the Marxists thought they were
honoring Marx by repudiating his revolutionary principles.
---
“And so you think that Marx and Bakunin were at one,” said my friend.
“Yes,” I replied, “I think that they were at one. I believe that they
were one in purpose and in aspiration. But they accomplished distinct
tasks and served different functions. It would not do for us all to act
the same part. Fitted by temperament to enact a peculiar role, each man
felt his work to be a special call, the one aim of life. This developed
strong personality. And when the two strong personalities came into
conflict through the nature of their respective tasks, the natural
antagonisms of their temperament displayed themselves. Then came fools,
who called themselves disciples of the wise men, and magnified their
accidental collisions into vital discords of purpose. Do we not know-the
friend who persuades us to quarrel? And do we not know the ‘disciples’
who are actually street brawlers of a refined order? Marx and Bakunin
have suffered at the hands of these mental numskulls.”
“But how would you define the difference between the two men,” pursued
my friend.
“Very easily,” I answered, “Marx defined the Social Revolution, whilst
Bakunin expressed it. The first stood for the invincible logic of the
cause. The second concentrated in his own person its unquenchable
spirit. Marx was an impregnable rock of first principles, remorselessly
composed of facts. He dwarfed the intelligence of Capitalist society and
witnessed to the indestructability of Socialism. He incarnated the
proletarian upheaval. He was the immovable mountain of the revolution.
Bakunin, on the other hand, was the tempest. He symbolized the coming
flood. Both were great brave men; and together they gave completeness to
the certitude of revolution. They promised success by land and by water.
They symbolized inexhaustible patience, unwearying stability, inevitable
growth, and tireless, resistless attack. Who can conceive of a world not
made up of land and water? Who can conceive of the Social Revolution
without the work of Marx and Bakunin?”
But my friend was not convinced, so we turned to other subjects.