💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › michail-bakunin-national-catechism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:31:42. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: National Catechism
Author: Michail Bakunin
Date: 1866
Language: en
Topics: classical, history, national liberation
Source: Retrieved on February 23rd, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1866/national-catechism.htm
Notes: Source: Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971.

Michail Bakunin

National Catechism

Introduction

The national catechisms of different countries may differ on secondary

points, but there are certain fundamental points which must be accepted

by the national organizations of all countries as the basis of their

respective catechisms, These points are:

That it is absolutely necessary for any country wishing to join the

free federations of peoples to replace its centralized, bureaucratic,

and military organizations by a federalist organization based only on

the absolute liberty and autonomy of regions, provinces, communes,

associations, and individuals. This federation will operate with elected

functionaries directly responsible to the people; it will not be a

nation organized from the top down, or from the center to the

circumference. Rejecting the principle of imposed and regimented unity,

it will be directed from the bottom up, from the circumference to the

center, according to the principles of free federation. Its free

individuals will form voluntary associations. its associations will form

autonomous communes, its communes will form autonomous provinces, its

provinces will form the regions, and the regions will freely federate

into countries which, in turn. will sooner or later create the universal

world federation.

Recognition of the absolute right of every individual, commune,

association, province, and nation to secede from any body with which it

is affiliated. [1]

The impossibility of political liberty without political equality.

Political freedom and equality are impossible without social and

economic equality.

The Necessity of the Social Revolution

The spread and depth of this revolution will more or less differ in each

country, according to the political and social situation and the level

of revolutionary development. Nevertheless, there are certain principles

which can today attract and inspire the masses to action, regardless of

their nationality or the condition of their civilization. These

principles are:

The land is the common property of society. But its fruits and use

shall be open only to those who cultivate it by their labor;

accordingly, ground rents must be abolished.

Since all social wealth is produced by labor, he who consumes without

working, if able to work, is a thief.

Only honest people should be entitled to political rights. Such rights

shall belong only to the workers....

Today no revolution can succeed in any country if it is not at the

same time both a political and a social revolution. Every exclusively

political revolution — be it in defense of national independence or for

internal change, or even for the establishment of a republic — that does

not aim at the immediate and real political and economic emancipation of

people will be a false revolution. Its objectives will be unattainable

and its consequences reactionary.

The Revolution must be made not for but by the people and can never

succeed if it does not enthusiastically involve all the masses of the

people, that is, in the rural countryside as well as in the cities.

Organized by the idea and the identity of a common program for all

countries; coordinated by a secret organization which will rally not a

few, but all, countries into a single plan of action; unified,

furthermore, by simultaneous revolutionary uprisings in most of the

rural areas and in the cities, the Revolution will from the beginning

assume and retain a local character. And this in the sense that it will

not originate with a preponderance of the revolutionary forces of a

country spreading out, or focused from, a single point or center, or

ever take on the character of a bourgeois quasi-revolutionary expedition

in Roman imperial style.[2] On the contrary, the Revolution will burst

out from all parts of a country. It will thus be a true people’s

revolution involving everybody — men, women, and children — and it is

this that will make the Revolution invincible.

At the outset (when the people, for just reasons, spontaneously turn

against their tormentors) the Revolution will very likely be bloody and

vindictive. But this phase will not last long and will never [degenerate

into] cold, systematic terrorism.... It will be a war, not against

particular men, but primarily against the antisocial institutions upon

which their power and privileges depend.

The Revolution will therefore begin by destroying, above all, all the

institutions and all the organizations, churches, parliaments.

tribunals, administrations, banks, universities, etc., which constitute

the lifeblood of the State. The State must be entirely demolished and

declared bankrupt, not only financially, but even more politically,

bureaucratically, militarily (including its police force). At the same

time, the people in the rural communes as well as in the cities will

confiscate for the benefit of the Revolution all state property. They

will also confiscate all property belonging to the reactionaries and

will burn all deeds of property and debts, declaring null and void every

civil, criminal, judicial, and official document and record, leaving

each in the status quo possession (of property). This is the manner in

which the Social Revolution will be made, and once the enemies of the

Revolution are deprived of all their resources it will no longer be

necessary to invoke bloody measures against them. Further, the

unnecessary employment of such unfortunate measures must inevitably lead

to the most horrible and formidable reaction.

The Revolution being localized, it will necessarily assume a

federalist character. Thus, upon overthrowing the established

government, the communes must reorganize themselves in a revolutionary

manner, electing the administrators and revolutionary tribunals on the

basis of universal suffrage and on the principle that all officials must

be made directly and effectively responsible to the people.

In order to prepare for this revolution it will be necessary to

conspire and to organize a strong secret association coordinated by an

international nucleus.

[1] Bakunin believed that voluntary association, impelled by common

needs, will be more durable than compulsory unity imposed from above.

Voluntary unity, says Bakunin, “will then be truly strong, fecund, and

indissoluble.” — Tr.

[2] i.e., sending dictatorial commissars to impose the “party line”