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Title: What is Authority Author: Mikhail Bakunin Date: 1870 Language: en Topics: classical, introductory, authority Source: Retrieved on 2020-03-27 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/bakunin-library/mikhail-bakunin-what-is-authority-1870-3/ Notes: Translated by Shawn P. Wilbur.
This passage is generally known as part of “God and the State” (Dieu et
l’État, first published in 1882), but it appears in Bakunin’s manuscript
as part of “Sophismes historiques de l’école doctrinaire des communistes
allemands,” the second section of the unfinished book L’Empire
Knouto-Germanique et la RĂ©volution Sociale (The Knouto-Germanic Empire
and the Social Revolution.)
This new translation seeks to clarify some passages that may appear
contradictory in existing translations. In particularly the verb
repousser, which previous translators have tended to simply render as
“reject,” has been brought closer to its literal sense of “push back”
and some attention has been given to distinguishing where Bakunin uses
the word autorité to designate abstract authority and where he refers to
particular experts or authority figures.
In the preceding section, Bakunin has been discussing, among other
things, the idea of God, and the section ends with his reply to
Voltaire’s comment that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to
invent him: If God really did exist, it would be necessary to get rid of
him.
The severe logic that dictates these words is far too obvious to require
a further development of this argument. And it seems to me impossible
that the illustrious men, whose names (so celebrated and so justly
respected) I have cited, should not have been struck by it themselves,
and should not have perceived the contradiction into which they fell in
speaking of God and human liberty at once. To have disregarded it, they
must have considered this inconsistency or logical license practically
necessary to humanity’s well-being.
Perhaps, too, while speaking of liberty as something very respectable
and very dear, they understood the term quite differently than we do, as
materialists and revolutionary socialists. Indeed, they never speak of
it without immediately adding another word, authority—a word and a thing
which we detest with all our heart.
What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which
manifest themselves in the necessary concatenation and succession of
phenomena in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these laws
revolt is not only forbidden, but is even impossible. We may
misunderstand them or still not know them at all, but we cannot disobey
them, because they constitute the basis and very conditions of our
existence; they envelop us, penetrate us, regulate all our movements,
thoughts, and acts, so that even when we believe that we disobey them,
we do nothing but demonstrate their omnipotence.
Yes, we are absolutely the slaves of these laws. But there is nothing
humiliating in that slavery, or, rather, it is not slavery at all. For
slavery supposes an external master, a legislator outside of the one
whom he commands, while these laws are not outside of us; they are
inherent in us; they constitute our being, our whole being, as much
physically as intellectually and morally. We live, we breathe, we act,
we think, we wish only through these laws. Without them we are
nothing–we are not. From where, then, could we derive the power and the
wish to rebel against them?
With regard to natural laws, only one single liberty is possible to
man—that of recognizing and applying them more and more all the time, in
conformity with the goal of collective and individual emancipation or
humanization which he pursues. These laws, once recognized, exercise an
authority which is never disputed by the mass of men. One must, for
instance, be at base either a fool or a theologian or at least a
metaphysician, jurist, or bourgeois economist to rebel against the law
by which 2 x 2 makes 4. One must have faith to imagine that fire will
not burn nor water drown, unless one has recourse to some subterfuge
that is still based on some other natural law. But these rebellions, or,
rather, these attempts at or foolish fancies of an impossible revolt,
only form a rare exception; for, in general, it may be said that the
mass of men, in their daily lives, let themselves be governed by good
sense—that is, by the sum of the natural laws generally recognized—in an
almost absolute fashion.
The great misfortune is that a large number of natural laws, already
established as such by science, remain unknown to the popular masses,
thanks to the care of these tutelary governments that exist, as we know,
only for the good of the people. There is another difficulty—namely,
that the major portion of the natural laws that are inherent in the
development of human society and that are every bit as necessary,
invariable, and fatal as the laws that govern the physical world, have
not been duly established and recognized by science itself.
Once they shall have been recognized by science, and then shall have
passed, by means of an extensive system of popular education and
instruction, from science into the consciousness of all, the question of
liberty will be perfectly resolved. The most stubborn authoritarians
must admit that then there will be no more need of political
organization, direction or legislation, three things which, whether they
emanate from the will of the sovereign or from the vote of a parliament
elected by universal suffrage, and even should they conform to the
system of natural laws—which has never been the case and could never be
the case—are always equally deadly and hostile to the liberty of the
masses, because they impose upon them a system of external and therefore
despotic laws.
The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws
because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they
have been externally imposed upon him by any foreign will, whether
divine or human, collective or individual.
Suppose an academy of learned individuals, composed of the most
illustrious representatives of science; suppose that this academy is
charged with the legislation and organization of society, and that,
inspired only by the purest love of truth, it only dictates to society
laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I
maintain, for my part, that that legislation and organization would be a
monstrosity, and that for two reasons: first, that human science is
always necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered
with what remains to be discovered, we we might say that it is always in
its cradle. So that if we wanted to force the practical life of men,
collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity
with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as
individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon
end by dislocating and stifling them, life always remaining infinitely
greater than science.
The second reason is this: a society that would obey legislation
emanating from a scientific academy, not because it understood itself
the rational character of this legislation (in which case the existence
of the academy would become useless), but because this legislation,
emanating from the academy, was imposed in the name of a science that it
venerated without comprehending—such a society would be a society, not
of men, but of brutes. It would be a second edition of that poor
Republic of Paraguay, which let itself be governed for so long by the
Society of Jesus. Such a society could not fail to descend soon to the
lowest stage of idiocy.
But there is still a third reason that would render such a government
impossible. It is that a scientific academy invested with a sovereignty
that is, so to speak, absolute, even if it were composed of the most
illustrious men, would infallibly and soon end by corrupting itself
morally and intellectually. Already today, with the few privileges
allowed them, this is the history of all the academies. The greatest
scientific genius, from the moment that he becomes an academician, an
officially licensed savant, inevitably declines and lapses into sleep.
He loses his spontaneity, his revolutionary hardihood, and that
troublesome and savage energy that characterizes the nature of the
grandest geniuses, ever called to destroy obsolete worlds and lay the
foundations of new ones. He undoubtedly gains in politeness, in
utilitarian and practical wisdom, what he loses in power of thought. In
a word, he becomes corrupted.
It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position
to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether
politically or economically, is a man depraved intellectually and
morally. That is a social law that admits no exception, and is as
applicable to entire nations as to classes, companies, and individuals.
It is the law of equality, the supreme condition of liberty and
humanity. The principal aim of this treatise is precisely to elaborate
on it, to demonstrate its truth in all the manifestations of human life.
A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society
would soon end by no longer occupying itself with science at all, but
with quite another business; and that business, the business of all
established powers, would be to perpetuate itself by rendering the
society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in
need of its government and direction.
But that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all
constituent and legislative assemblies, even when they are the result of
universal suffrage. Universal suffrage may renew their composition, it
is true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years’ time of
a body of politicians, privileged in fact though not by right, who, by
devoting themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs
of a country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy.
Witness the United States of America and Switzerland.
Consequently, no external legislation and no authority—one, for that
matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the
enslavement of society and the degradation of the legislators
themselves.
---
Does it follow that I drive back every authority? The thought would
never occur to me. When it is a question of boots, I refer the matter to
the authority of the cobbler; when it is a question of houses, canals,
or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For each
special area of knowledge I speak to the appropriate expert. But I allow
neither the cobbler nor the architect nor the scientist to impose upon
me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their
intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my
incontestable right of criticism and verification. I do not content
myself with consulting a single specific authority, but consult several.
I compare their opinions and choose that which seems to me most
accurate. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in quite
exceptional questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the
honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have absolute
faith in no one. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my
liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would
immediately transform me into a stupid slave and an instrument of the
will and interests of another.
If I bow before the authority of the specialists and declare myself
ready to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me
necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because
that authority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God.
Otherwise I would drive them back in horror, and let the devil take
their counsels, their direction, and their science, certain that they
would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and human dignity, for the
scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, that they might give
me.
I bow before the authority of exceptional men because it is imposed upon
me by my own reason. I am conscious of my ability to grasp, in all its
details and positive developments, only a very small portion of human
science. The greatest intelligence would not be sufficient to grasp the
entirety. From this results, for science as well as for industry, the
necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I
give—such is human life. Each is a directing authority and each is
directed in his turn. So there is no fixed and constant authority, but a
continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary
authority and subordination.
This same reason prohibits me, then, from recognizing a fixed, constant,
and universal authority-figure, because there is no universal man, no
man capable of grasping in that wealth of detail, without which the
application of science to life is impossible, all the sciences, all the
branches of social life. And if such a universality was ever realized in
a single man, and if be wished to take advantage of it in order to
impose his authority upon us, it would be necessary to drive that man
out of society, because his authority would inevitably reduce all the
others to slavery and imbecility. I do not think that society ought to
maltreat men of genius as it has done hitherto; but neither do I think
it should enrich them too much, nor, and this above all, grant them any
privileges or exclusive rights; and that for three reasons: first,
because it would often mistake a charlatan for a man of genius; then,
because, through such a system of privileges, it could transform even a
true man of genius into a charlatan, demoralize and stupefy him; and,
finally, because it would give itself a despot.
in summary, then, we recognize the absolute authority of science,
because science has no other object than the mental reproduction, well
thought out and as systematic as possible, of the natural laws inherent
in the material, intellectual, and moral life of both the physical and
the social worlds, these two worlds constituting, in fact, only one
single natural world. apart from this legitimate authority, uniquely
legitimate because it is rational and in harmony with human liberty, we
declare all other authorities false, arbitrary, despotic and deadly.
We recognize the absolute authority of science, but we reject
[repoussons] the infallibility and universality of the representatives
of science. In our church—if I may be permitted to use for a moment an
expression which I so detest: Church and State are my two bĂŞtes
noires—in our church, as in the Protestant church, we have a head, an
invisible Christ, science; and, like the Protestants, more consistent
even than the Protestants, we do not wish to suffer a pope, nor council,
nor conclaves of infallible cardinals, nor bishops, nor even priests.
Our Christ is distinguished from the Protestant and Christian Christ in
this—that the latter is a personal being, while ours is impersonal; the
Christian Christ, already fully realized in an eternal past, presents
himself as a perfect being, while the fulfillment and perfection of our
Christ, science, are always in the future: which is equivalent to saying
that they will never be realized. Therefore, in recognizing no absolute
authority but that of absolute science, we in no way compromise our
liberty.
I mean by this phrase, “absolute science,” the truly universal science
that would reproduce ideally, to its fullest extent and in all its
infinite detail, the universe, the system or coordination of all the
natural laws manifested in the incessant development of the world. It is
obvious that such a science, the sublime object of all the efforts of
the human mind, will never be realized in its absolute fullness. Our
Christ, then, will remain eternally unfinished, which must considerably
moderate the pride of his licensed representatives among us. Against
that God the Son, in whose name they claim to impose their insolent and
pedantic authority on us, we appeal to God the Father, who is the real
world, real life, of which their God is only the too-imperfect
expression, and of which we, real beings, living, working, struggling,
loving, aspiring, enjoying, and suffering, are the immediate
representatives.
But, while rejecting [repoussant] the absolute, universal, and
infallible authority of the men of science, we willingly bow before the
respectable, but relative, very temporary, and very restricted authority
of the representatives of special sciences, asking nothing better than
to consult them by turns, and very grateful for the precious information
that they should want give to us, on the condition that to receive such
information from us on occasions when, and concerning matters about
which, we are more learned than they; and, in general, we ask nothing
better than to see men endowed with great knowledge, great experience,
great minds, and, above all, great hearts, exert over us a natural and
legitimate influence, freely accepted and never imposed in the name of
any official authority whatsoever, celestial or terrestrial. We accept
all natural authorities and all influences of fact, but none of right;
for every authority or every influence of right, officially imposed as
such, becoming straight away an oppression and a falsehood, would
inevitably impose upon us, as I believe I have sufficiently shown,
slavery and absurdity.
In short, we reject all legislation, all authority, and every
privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even that arising
from universal suffrage, convinced that it can only ever turn to the
advantage of a dominant, exploiting minority and against the interests
of the immense, subjugated majority.
It is in this sense that we are really Anarchists.