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Title: The Red Association
Author: Mikhail Bakunin
Date: 1870
Language: en
Topics: organization
Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/writings/ch05.htm

Mikhail Bakunin

The Red Association

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.