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Title: Bakunin & the Historians Revisited Author: Jon Bekken Date: 2015 Language: en Topics: review, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, Mikhail Bakunin, history Source: Retrieved on 28th January 2021 from https://syndicalist.us/2020/06/28/bakunin-the-historians-revisited/ Notes: From Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #63, Winter 2015
When I reviewed the English-language literature on the pioneering
Russian-born anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in 1992, there was only one
decent biography in print, and it focused almost exclusively on his
(very productive) final years in Italy. As we conclude the Bakunin
bicentenary two new histories have been published – Mark Leier’s
excellent Bakunin (reviewed in ASR 47, which while sometimes overly
casual is far and away the best comprehensive work in English – I still
prefer Ravindranathan’s Bakunin and the Italians for the final years),
and John Randolph’s intriguing study of the intellectual life that
surrounded Bakunin as he came of age. PM Press will release in March an
English translation of Wolfgang Eckhardt’s The First Socialist Schism:
Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association.
Eckhardt argues that this represented a schism between parliamentary
party politics and social-revolutionary concepts that continues to
resonate to the present day.
While the quality (if not the quantity) of this literature is far
superior to that which inspired my original essay, Bakunin still has not
received his due. English-readers have access to only a small sample of
Bakunin’s writings. However, new English-language translations of
Bakunin’s essays and letters are being regularly posted to Shawn
Wilbur’s
(some are working drafts, others completed), even if one often wishes
for more contextual information (which might well be provided when his
eagerly awaited Bakunin Reader is published by PM Press).
There has also been a bit of a flurry of denunciations by academics
(largely post-modernists), much of it part of a larger war on
rationalism and social revolution. Exemplary in this regard is Saul
Newman, who drags a largely imagined Bakunin into his postmodernist
analysis of power. Brian Morris has issued a pamphlet for the
bicentenary of Bakunin’s birth, Bakunin and the Human Subject (building
upon his 1993 Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom), which succinctly
refutes this post-modern school of falsification.
Randolph’s The House in the Garden is a richly documented account of the
intellectual currents that swirled around the Bakunin family estate. We
see here a young Bakunin, beginning to work out his philosophy (albeit
already influential in introducing contemporary European philosophy to
what was an intellectual and economic backwater) and like his peers
somewhat inclined to interpret daily life through rather idealized
lenses. Randolph offers a nuanced account of Bakunin’s effort to
liberate his sister Varvara from her unhappy marriage, which makes it
clear (though some reviewers argue otherwise) that throughout this
episode he worked to support her in her efforts to realize her own
destiny, even if he did not fully appreciate the social constraints
which limited her ability to do so. Randolph offers a valuable
exploration not only of the influences that shaped Bakunin, but of wider
themes in Russian intellectual history in a period when it was
increasingly clear that the old order could not be sustained.
Morris’ Bakunin and the Human Subject offers a spirited defense of its
subject. “Harassed, denigrated, jailed, ridiculed and misunderstood in
his own day, [Bakunin] was now being intellectually assaulted by liberal
and Marxist scholars in the most appalling … fashion.” (3) Morris first
responded with his 1993 book explicating Bakunin’s theory of social
revolution, and now with this pamphlet which unfortunately must engage
not only these longstanding detractors, but a new torrent of
misrepresentation by writers who purport to be anarchists.
Much of the pamphlet is devoted to the assault on Bakunin by
“post”-anarchists, who rather than embracing Bakunin’s sophisticated,
humanist approach instead propose to build a denatured anarchism upon
the bones of the sterile philosophy of the likes of Stirner. These
professional theorists misrepresent Bakunin and the anarchist tradition
so systematically that it is difficult to attribute the results to a
failure of the intellect. They reject even the idea that human beings
(to quote Todd May, a pioneer in this line of obfuscation) “possess
characteristics that enable one to live justly with others in society.”
(Morris, 8)
Morris (10), like Saltman, sees Bakunin as an evolutionary naturalist,
who saw a world in a constant creative process of becoming, albeit
within material constraints arising out of the past and the
inter-relatedness of the natural world. While post-ies deny the
fundamentally social character of humanity, instead suggesting “like Ayn
Rand… that societies do not exist, but only individuals” (Morris, 20),
Bakunin noted that we were so much social animals that is is impossible
to think of humanity apart from society. Bakunin articulated both
negative and positive conceptions of liberty – of the development and
full enjoyment of our capacities – which he contrasted to the illusory
freedoms extolled by the liberals of his day. “All his life,” Morris
(27, 29) concludes, “Bakunin … [worked] to outline the kind of society
that was conducive to human liberty and solidarity – a truly human
society. It was one that was both socialist and libertarian, and no one
as far as I am aware has improved on Bakunin’s essential ideas. … As a
social theorist as well as a political thinker, Bakunin was well ahead
of his time.”
So far ahead that the post-anarchists find themselves returning to
concepts which Bakunin and the broader anarchist movement long ago
rejected, finding their conception of human freedom too limited, and
their reliance upon abstractions like nation and state too dangerous.
Thus, Newman (one of many in this tradition) rejects class analysis,
rationality, sociability, even humanity itself. (Instead we are urged to
embrace the void and develop a “politics” of disruption and
unpredictability – explicitly abandoning any notion of emancipation. It
is an arid philosophy which has found no social base outside of the
academy, where it appeals precisely because it poses no danger to
established centers of power.)
Saltman’s book, not widely available and which escaped my notice in the
original essay, argues that political theorists would do well to stop
ignoring Bakunin; “his work can serve as a powerful corrective to the
tendency of twentieth-century regimes to sink into bureaucratic and
repressive forms of authority.” (xi) Saltman sets out to correct common
misperceptions, to systematically present Bakunin’s political theory,
and to explore Bakunin’s revolutionary strategy.
Many of their misconceptions appear to be based upon these critics’
unfamiliarity with Bakunin’s actual writing, attempts to impose
life-long theoretical consistency (something rarely found in any serious
thinker), and efforts to view his life and work through
psycho-historical lenses. Saltman concludes (16), “these authors were
[evidently] more interested in dismissing Bakunin’s arguments for
political reasons than they were in assessing his thought…”
Saltman argues that Bakunin was a deeply materialist philosopher who
made important contributions to our understanding of the nature of the
state, bureaucracy, science, revolutionary vanguards and the potential
of the peasantry as a revolutionary force. His thought was grounded in a
materialist approach that challenged the abstractions imposed by actual
and aspiring rulers (with often fatal consequences) with lived
experience, a humanist orientation, and respect for the evolving
constraints of our natural environment. Bakunin, he concludes,
“provide[s] a theoretical grounding that places collectivist anarchism
well within the mainstream of useful political analysis… With Bakunin’s
work, … [anarchism] gained the stature of a full-fledged political
philosophy, worthy of equal consideration among the various political
perspectives on the modern world.” (170)
And yet, as Morris demonstrates, philosophers and political scientists
have been unable to rise to the challenge, preferring to fall back on
their shibboleths and epithets – on their fundamentally religious
acceptance of the state, capitalism, and other authoritarian
institutions – rather than confront the world as it is, as Bakunin
sought to do.
Discussed in this essay:
Jon Bekken, “Bakunin and the Historians,” Libertarian Labor Review 13
(1992), pages 30–32.
Mark Leier, Bakunin: The Creative Passion. Thomas Dunne Books, 2006.
Reviewed in ASR 47.
Brian Morris, Bakunin and the Human Subject. Published by the author for
the Anarchist Federation, pamphlet, 2014.
Saul Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the
Dislocation of Power. Lexington Books, 2007.
John Randolph, The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the
Romance of Russian Idealism. Cornell University Press, 2007, 304 pages,
hardcover.
Richard Saltman, The Social and Political Thought of Michael Bakunin.
Greenwood Press, 1983.