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Title: Science and Society Author: RenĂ© Berthier Date: 2016 Language: en Topics: Mikhail Bakunin, Cercle dâĂtudes libertaires Gaston-Leval, not anarchist, science, society Source: Retrieved on 2/22/2022 from http://monde-nouveau.net/spip.php?article673 Notes: Publication of the Cercle dâĂtudes libertaires Gaston-Leval; cel-gl@orange.fr; visit our website: https://monde-nouveau.net
âMarxist analysis of Bakunin is, it appears, predetermined by the less
than flattering analysis of the master (...). Indeed, Marxist arguments
against Bakunin are clearly identifiable as arguments from authority
(every possible pun intended). Thus Bakunin emerges as a âvoluntaristâ
with no understanding of political economy or the workings of capital,
that is to say, as an impatient and âapoliticalâ âbanditâ and a
theoretical âignoramusâ â for the simple reason that he dares to
disagree with the historically disputed and, as I will argue,
philosophically tenuous doctrine, as he dared to cross Marx in his
revolutionary activity. This damning indictment of Bakunin is made in
spite of the fact that not one Marxist has actually conducted an
in-depth analysis of the theoretical writings of Bakunin. Hence one
might accuse Marxist scholars of being, at the very least, uninformed.â
Paul McLaughlin. Mikhail Bakunin:
the philosophical basis of his anarchism.
Algora Publishing
The translation and publication of Social-democracy and Anarchism[1]
faced me with a situation I had no longer been used to. I found myself
confronted on several occasions to the antiquated communist argument on
the relations between Marx and Bakunin. There was for instance this
sulphurous review, which I qualified as âbrezhnevianâ, on the website of
the Communist party of Great Britain[1]. I had not been faced to this
sort of argument for years. In France the debates between Marxists and
Anarchists have taken a different turn, except in certain particularly
dogmatic extreme left groups. The French Communists are beginning to
consider the possibility that after all, when you think about it, and
all things considered, the crushing of the Kronstadt insurrection could
have been after all a mistake. There is a similar timid evolution
concerning Marx and the International: perhaps after all did he act in a
slightly bureaucratic wayâŠ
Then during a visit to London to present my book, Tony Zurbrugg,
publisher and translator of Social Democracy & Anarchism, gave me the
issue of Science & Society in which Mr A.H. Nimtz wrote an article
titled âAnother âSideâ to the âStoryââ[2]. I found in this article the
same type of argument that anarchists were confronted with in the 70âs
and 80âs when they were debating with âorthodoxâ (âbrezhnevianâ)
communists or with Trotskyists.
Reading Mr Nimtz reminded me of Jacques Duclos, late well known leader
of the French Communist party. Duclos published a book in 1974,
Bakounine et Marx. Ombre et lumiĂšre (âBakunin and Marx, Shadow and
Lightâ) [3], of which Marianne Enckell, a Swiss historian, said that âin
five hundred pages it contains only one idea and one thousand
falsehoodsâ [4]. The one idea â one of Marxâs obsessions â is that
Bakunin was an agent of the Tsar. Enckell adds that this book throws a
light on the limits of the spirit of orthodoxy. To give an idea of the
âscientificâ approach to which this very Stalinist leader resorted to,
Duclos summed up the constructive work of the socialization of the
economy in Spain, during the civil war, saying that the anarchists had
collectivized hairdressersâ salons. I donât know what Mr Nimtz thinks
about this particular topic, and Iâm not certain I want to know, but the
fact is that he manages to focus on three pages all the stereotyped
arguments of Marxism against Bakunin.
Although much shorter (3 pages) than Duclosâ book (336 pages), Mr
Nimtzâs article follows the same method, it âcomplies with the one-sided
truth proposed by the governing body of the IWA. As if in a hundred
years historians had never done research, nothing had been completed,
reassessed, refuted[5].â What Mr. Nimtz writes is even well below what
had written a perfectly orthodox (but nevertheless honest) Marxist
historian, a contemporary of Marx: Franz Mehring. The problem is that
Mehring, who dared to make some criticisms against Marx and granted
Ferdinand Lassalle a role in the foundation of German socialism [which
is the least a historian could do], hasnât got the commendation of an
Anglo-Saxon Marxist mandarin, Hal Draper. Proclaimed interpreter of
Marxist doctrine, Draper is the author of a voluminous work, Karl Marxâs
Theory of Revolution in five volumes, which became a sort of
English-language Marxist Bible. Needless to say that Draperâs method in
dealing with the Marx/Bakunin relationship is strictly consistent with
Marxist orthodoxy and does not deviate from the path set by the master â
that is to say it is perfectly polemical and perfectly un-scientific.
I felt the need to write a few pages to complete somehow my
Social-democracy and Anarchism, freeing myself from the requirements an
author is obliged to comply to in a published book. So one must on no
account take what follows as a response to Mr. Nimtz, because his
article actually does not call for an answer. Besides, I realize that
there is something unfair and disproportionate in answering 80 pages to
a three-page article. But, as I have said, I do not seek to reply to Mr
Nimtz but to comment on his argument which is, in my opinion, quite
paradigmatic of the pre- and misconceptions within academic and Marxist
circles.
Mr Nimtzâs argumentation is symptomatic of the dominant Marxist attitude
and of the Marxist discourse, ignorant of facts, archaic, dogmatic,
arrogant, devoid of any critical spirit. I found it necessary to
publicize the libertarian point of view on the issues Mr Nimtz raises so
that the reader can have access to another approach.
There is a sort of 1) academic; and 2) Marxist monopoly on these
questions which I find a bit irritating. This is why I do not feel
compelled to proceed with the customary politeness and reserve which
academics use in their writings â besides the fact that I am not an
âacademicâ [6]. And besides the fact that he was particularly arrogant
towards Anthony Zurbrugg, to whom he replies in his article. There is no
better way to situate the gap between the Marxist vision and the
anarchist view of history than to quote Marianne Enckell:
âOne of my hopes, and one of the reasons why I became a historian is
that should stop the dialogue of the deaf between Marx and Bakunin,
between dogmatic Marxists and frantic Bakuninists, and that should
improve the political questions that were raised over a century ago in
the IWA. Too often the disciples look backward, hammering out phrases of
their mentors who are nothing but fixed representations [7].â
There is a French proverb about the man who sees the straw in his
neighbourâs eye but not the beam that is in his own [8]. This proverb
suits Mr Nimtz very well. He seems focused on the idea of the
exceptional profuseness of the edition and exegesis of Marxâs texts
(proof of the seriousness and dedication of his followers) â in contrast
to the poverty of publishing of Bakuninâs texts (proof, on the contrary,
of the little seriousness of the partisans of the Russian
revolutionary): âBakunin and his supporters did not leave the kind of
record his rivals did â which in itself is tellingâ [my emphasis], can
we read at the very first sentence of his article.
According to Mr Nimtz, âmany of the documents [written by Bakunin] that
might be relevant to the substantive and organizational issues (âŠ) were
never completed or published in his lifetimeâ. August H. Nimtz also
writes that âmost of what is known about Bakunin et al. regarding the
argument [with Marx in the International] comes from the documents,
letters, etc. that Marx et al. have leftâ. At the end of his article he
reiterates his âreliance on the Marx party documents in telling the
story of the Marx-Bakunin disputeâ. Mr Nimtz simply takes up Hal Drapers
fallacious arguments, of which I have said what I think [9].
While it is true that the writings of Bakunin have not benefited from
the same massive exegetic and editorial work as Marx, they have nothing
confidential. Mr. Nimtz is not very curious. To speak only of the
âanarchistâ period of Bakunin (1868-1876 [10]), most of his works â
articles or books â were published in his lifetime : they were fully
accessible to anyone who takes the trouble to enter a library. Of the
152 Bakunin writings recorded between 1838 and 1876, 104 were published
during his lifetime, 48 posthumously. To this must be added 1076
letters, 519 of them in Russian, 402 in French, 62 in German [11].
Mr. Nimtz âassumedâ that a collection of Bakuninâs writings was
available but that he was âunable to locate itâ; proof, once again, of
the little seriousness of the edition of the texts of Bakunin. There, Mr
Nimtz must certainly be joking. I donât know what quantity of Bakuninâs
writings are available in English, but it has been a long time since
most of his writings are available in French â the language in which
most of his books were written, except for Statism and Anarchy which was
written in Russian.
Bakuninâs correspondence is something different. Hal Draper suggests
that âa good deal of his correspondenceâ was destroyed by Bakuninâs
followers with the intention of concealing the truth [what truth ?] to
the public. This is typical of Draperâs turn of mind. Bakunin himself
regularly destroyed his correspondence, for reasons of security. He also
used to ask his correspondents to destroy the letters he sent them â and
fortunately some of them didnât, since we have access to them today.
In 1898 James Guillaumeâs younger daughter died, causing a deep crisis
of despair. Guillaume burned part of his archives, which included some
of Bakuninâs papers. Besides that, Bakuninâs private and intimate
correspondence has been given to his wife and partly destroyed. Part of
Bakuninâs archives were in Kropotkin Museum in Moscow and disappeared in
1938. Another part of his archives were at the University of Naples and
was destroyed in September 1943 by the Germans.
Bakuninâs archives were dispersed among a great number of persons (Mrs.
Bakunin, James Guillaume, Reclus, Marie Goldsmith, Bellerio, Charles
Perron, Gambuzzi, Jules Perrier, etc.). Max Nettlau managed the feat to
bring together the largest part of them. Bakuninâs archives have been
entrusted to the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam
in 1935, edited by Arthur Lehning between 1961 and 1981. All this
explains why Bakuninâs correspondence has not been entrusted to the
exegetic care of scholars : he had spent his time escaping from the
police and participated in four insurrections, while Marx was studying
in the British Museum â something he is not to be blamed for, though.
We see that the difficulty with Bakuninâs correspondence does not come
from the incompetence or the indifference of his followers, as Mr Nimtz
suggests, but from the extreme difficulty in which researchers were to
centralize them. If most of his archives are today in Amsterdam, still
more than 40 other archival institutions possess from one to many
thousands of pages of his manuscripts.
The arrogance of those who quibble over Bakuninâs archives, and in
particular his correspondence, will come to more modesty when we remind
them that Laura, the daughter of Marx, destroyed the correspondence
between her parents. Moreover, many of Marxâs personal letters have been
removed or modified and censored. Bernstein and Mehring did not hesitate
to mutilate Marx-Engelsâ correspondence. It took Ryazanov great efforts
to restore the passages which had been cut or watered down [12].
Six volumes of Bakuninâs works were published by the Editions Stock
between 1895 and 1913, republished again by the same publisher in 1980.
Between 1961 and 1981 the Amsterdam International Institute of Social
History released seven large volumes of his works, reprinted in 8
volumes by Ăditions Champ Libre from 1973 to 1984. Ăditions
Tops-Trinquier reprinted volumes III, IV and VII in 2003.
The CD which Mr Nimtz mentions was published in 2000 but it is not the
expression of a confidential publishing activity : it is rather the
expression of the wide distribution of Bakuninâs works. There are
countless reissues of his various works, commented editions, selected
texts and there is a never-ending stream of books published nowadays
analysing his thought, even in English (See Annex).
G.P. Maximoff, a Russian anarcho-syndicalist who fled to the United
States, published in 1953 The Political Philosophy of Bakunin:
Scientific Anarchism, a compilation of excerpts organized systematically
which gives an excellent insight into the thought of the Russian
revolutionary. There are several works of this kind in French. One of
the most interesting was published by François Munoz in 1965: Bakounine
La liberté, choix de textes [13].
We must not forget a fundamental book in two volumes published in 1975:
Marx/Bakunin, Socialisme autoritaire ou libertaire (Union générale
dâĂ©ditions). These two volumes present didactic texts collected by
Georges Ribeill.
The work of Georges Ribeill and that of François Munoz greatly
contributed to the training of libertarian militants of my generation.
More recently, Merlin Press published Bakunin, selected texts translated
by A. W. Zurbrugg. It is true however that most of Bakuninâs
correspondence had not been accessible to the public until the
publication of the CD by the Amsterdam Institute, while that of Marx and
Engels was the subject of systematic editions (and manipulations).
Two of his most fundamental texts were not published during his
lifetime: one theoretical: German Ideology (1932); the other
programmatic: Critique of the Gotha Program (1891). Not mentioning the
1844 Manuscripts (1932), Introduction to the Critique of Political
Economy (1903); Class Struggles in France 1895.
The Grundrisse were first published in East Germany in 1953 (1939
according to other sources) and the first French translation was done in
1967.
Of course one can not expect the entire work of an author like Marx to
be published instantly. I simply want to put into perspective the image
that Mr. Nimtz gives of a Marx whose texts are immediately published and
commented by a battalion of exegets. Some of Marxâs fundamental texts
were not published earlier than some of Bakuninâs fundamental texts.
The first complete edition, or MEGA (for Marx-Engels GesamtAusgabe),
began in the USSR in the 1920s under the direction of Ryazanov who was
purged by Stalin and were not able to complete his project. A second
edition will follow, the MEW (Marx Engels Werke) which is still the most
widespread edition, but it is by no means a complete or scientific
edition: it does not respect the original texts, contains highly
ideological notes and prefaces, and is based on an edition highly
influenced by Soviet Russia.
Iâm afraid that what Mr Nimtz says of the eagerness with which the
followers of Marx published and commented his works is a myth. In
France, for instance, if we except the translation of Book I of Capital
in 1875, no writing by Marx or Engels had been published until 1880
[14]! The Communist Manifesto was not published in France until August
1895 in the form of a serial in a socialist journal, Le Socialiste, so
its circulation was considerably reduced and the text was not available
in brochure. It appeared in pamphlet form only in 1897, more than 50
years after its first publication and 21 years after Bakuninâs death!
(Incidentally, Bakunin had translated the first edition of the Manifesto
in Russian [15].)
The conditions under which the writings of Marx were published in France
are interesting. Marx had two very zealous partisans: his son-in-law,
Paul Lafargue, and Jules Guesde. But zealous as they were, they did not
want to spread his works, preferring to publish their own texts, which
they considered more accessible.
â... the relation that Guesde and Lafargue maintain with the theory of
Marx and Engels does not prompt them to spread, as a matter of priority,
the texts of the two theoreticians. Consequently, it is their own
pamphlets, judged more effective, that the Guesdists, deprived of
publisher, published directly through a printer[16].â
Guesde[17] and Lafargue had a dogmatic and mechanistic interpretation of
Marxism. Marx had just read a particularly flatulent book, The Economic
Determinism of Karl Marx, in which Lafargue develops an extremely
mechanistic and dogmatic interpretation of his thought. It was on this
occasion that he uttered this famous sentence: âIf this is Marxism, I,
Karl Marx, am not a Marxistâ [18]. These words have often been
misinterpreted. It is often said that Marx wanted to explain that he did
not want to create a system, an orthodoxy. The reality is much more
trivial: he simply wanted to dissociate himself from the vulgar
interpretation of his son-in-law.
If I mention this anecdote, it is to show that the publication and
exegesis of the thought of Marx by his followers was something very
toilsome and not always very glorious. As his correspondence shows, Marx
was permanently confronted with followers who did not understand much
about his theories, and this goes for Germany as well as France. Bebel
read the Capital two years after it was published and Marx wrote to
Engels that Liebknecht had not read fifteen pages of the book (Marx to
Engels, 25 January 1868).
Bakunin was probably one of the rare who had actually read the book
[19]. Marx had sent him Vol. 1 when it was published. Bakunin always
considered it as a necessary reference for the workers âIt should have
been translated into French a long time agoâ, he wrote, âfor no other
contains such a deep enlightened, scientific, decisive and if I could
say, such a terribly unmasking analysis of the formation of bourgeois
capitalâ, etc. The only problem, adds Bakunin, is that its style is âtoo
metaphysical and abstractâ, which makes it difficult to read for most of
the workers. The Capital, says Bakunin again, âis nothing but the death
sentence, scientifically motivatedâ of the bourgeoisie [20].
The collectivists of the First International agreed with Bakunin on that
point : so Carlo Cafiero, a follower of Bakunin (ex-follower of Engels,
so he knew what he was talking about), wrote an âAbstractâ of Capital so
that it could be read by the workers, and James Guillaume, another of
Bakuninâs followers, wrote a preface. A particularly non-sectarian
attitude [21].
R.P. Morgan confirms Bakuninâs point of view when he writes that
âSocialist newspapers in Germany agreed in recognizing the bookâs
importance, but almost all of them limited themselves, when publishing
extracts, to the relatively uncomplicated Introduction, and even on this
(with the exception of Schweitzerâs Social-Demokrat) they attempted no
detailed commentariesâ [22]. The irony of the story is that the
Lassalleans were more interested by Capital than the Eisenachians.
Things do not seem as idyllic as that. The reasons why the works of Marx
and Engels may have been very massively diffused, thanks to communist
Russia and China, are perhaps also the reasons why this diffusion may
not have the required quality.
âHow can we understand that there is not at this time any edition of the
complete works of Marx in France, that his major works, when they are
available, often circulate in editions that are at least debatable? (âŠ)
âAt the end of 2009, a quick glance at the available works reveals that
the various attempts at systematic publication of Marx, whether
scientific or not, have never been completed.â (âŠ)
â...in the English-speaking world the edition of the Collected Works has
just finished, which regroups in 50 volumes a large part of the works of
Marx and Engels already known, which can furthermore be found in digital
form.â (...)
âThe reader hardly understands why one text remains almost untraceable,
another is available in multiple editions and for what reasons critical
apparatus and dated translations sometimes find themselves at the
forefront of ânewâ publications [23].â
Hence we do not have, as Mr Nimtz seems to believe, on one side an army
of competent, devoted and serious disciples who published the works of
Marx and commented on them, and on the other side a bunch of dilettantes
who did not take matters seriously. It was only in the 1980s that the
project of a second MEGA was born, freed from the ideological slag of
the MEW and exploiting the huge collection of manuscripts left by Marx.
In other words, the truly scientific non-ideologically biased
publication of Marxâs works started ten years after the scientific
publication of Bakuninâs works by the International Institute of Social
History of Amsterdam!!!
Maybe should I mention Maximilien Rubel, an internationally recognized
specialist of Marx, who was a member of the Scientific Council of the
Marx-Engels International Foundation. He directed the edition of Marxâs
texts published in the âBibliothĂšque de la PlĂ©iadeâ, a prestigious
collection of Gallimard editions. Rubel translated many of Marxâs
unpublished texts into French. Mr. Nimtz will certainly like to learn
that Rubel thought that Marx was a theorist of anarchism! He wrote in
1973 an article entitled âMarx, thĂ©oricien de lâanarchismeâ [24] (âMarx,
theorist of anarchismâ), which appeared in his book Marx critique du
marxisme (âMarx, critic of Marxismâ) [25].
A few months before he died, I interviewed Rubel on Radio libertaire,
the radio of the French Anarchist Federation, hoping to have details on
this (questionable) âanarchistâ Marx. Clearly, he had no intention of
talking about this theses he had developed in the early 70s. Whenever I
questioned him about Marxâs âanarchismâ, he evaded and explained that he
was now much more interested in Proudhon. It took a long time for me to
understand this change of attitude. He had been much interested in the
notes Marx had written on the sidelines of his copy of Bakuninâs book,
Statism and Anarchy [27]. These marginal notes reveal that Marx had
reached positions surprisingly close to those of Proudhon. But this is
another story.
Mr Nimtz is completely mistaken if he thinks that Marxâs doctrine was
widespread during his lifetime: it was almost completely unknown simply
because Marx had not been much published â which brings to its right
place his remark concerning the absence of âdebateâ between him and
Bakunin, and the absence of dissemination of Bakuninâs writings. Outside
of Germany, those of Marx were not more disseminated, in fact. The
writings and thought of Marx were so poorly disseminated that Bakunin
attributed to him Lassalleâs political orientation, because he did not
have the material elements to make the difference.
There was in Germany an implicit agreement to designate Lassalle and
Marx as the co-founders of social democracy (a thesis which strongly
displeases Hal Draper), beyond the disagreements between the two men,
and in spite of the predominant influence of Lassalle. This was
particularly the case after the founding of the German Social-Democratic
party in Gotha in 1875 from the fusion of the Eisenachians (who may be
regarded as vaguely âMarxistsâ), and the Lassalleans. At that time, Marx
and Engels were in fact cut off from the German labour movement. Until
his death in 1864, Lassalle was their only contact with the working
class in Germany. Liebknecht and Bebel, on the other hand, were more
concerned to create a democratic opposition to Prussia than to develop a
socialist movement, and they relied on all democrats â manual workers,
lawyers, teachers, traders. And when the party of Eisenach was created
in 1869, its social composition was very varied. Bebel won an election
campaign in 1867 in a semi-rural constituency dominated by household
manufactures.
When Engels wrote in 1865 that Liebknecht was âthe only reliable contact
we have in Germanyâ [26], it must be remembered that:
a) He was a contact that Marx and Engels considered as âsimple-mindedâ
[27], someone ânot enough of a dialectician to criticize two sides at
onceâ [to be accused by Marx of not understanding dialectics was the
supreme insult. The same goes for Lenin, who accused Bukharin, though
considered the greatest theoretician of the Bolshevik party, of not
understanding dialectics â which leaves us agape about the theoretical
level of party leaders.]
b) That Liebknecht was materially dependent on non-socialists and
non-socialist organizations;
c) That he has always shown (Bebel as well) a very mild interest in the
International.
Marx had made a severe criticism of the socialist program adopted in
Gotha, whose inspiration was very clearly Lassallean: the congress ended
with the song of the âMarseillaise of the Workersâ whose text said: âWe
follow the audacious path that was shown to us by [...] Lassalleâ â
which certainly did not please Marx.
The socialist leaders did not want to hear about Marxâs disagreements
concerning the Gotha program, so Marxâs critical text was not published.
And when Marx asked Liebknecht to communicate it to Bebel, Liebknecht
refused. When Bebel eventually read these critical notes in 1891 (Marx
was dead), he tried by all means to prevent their publication...
Lassalle was seen as the man who had given life to the German labour
movement after the failure of 1848. It is Lassalle who had put in place
the theoretical and organizational structures of what would later be
called German Social-Democracy.
Marx had been in correspondence with Lassalle since 1848, and had at
first been satisfied with the constant references which his friend (and
nevertheless rival) made to his ideas. Indeed Lassalle did contribute to
spread the ideas of Marx in Germany. Exiled to England, Marx probably
thought that his intellectual superiority would eventually prevail.
Perhaps this explains why he constantly refrained from publicly
attacking Lassalle. In private it was something else. In the
correspondence of Marx and Engels appears the fear, and also the
bitterness of the two men at the idea that the socialist agitator would
usurp and distort their ideas. âThat braggart has had the pamphlet
youâve got, the speech on the âworkersâ estateâ, reprinted in
Switzerland with the pompous title Workersâ Programme. As you know, the
thingâs no more no less than a badly done vulgarisation of the Manifesto
and of other things we have advocated so often that they have already
become commonplace to a certain extent. (âŠ) Is not this the most
egregious effrontery? The fellow evidently thinks himself destined to
take over our stock-in-trade. And withal, how absurdly grotesque [28]!â
âLassalle is the man who connects Marx and Engels organically to the
German labour movement: it is therefore not without some reason that
Bakunin declares that he actually realized what Marx would have liked to
do. It may be imagined that Marx and Engels had developed an exasperated
jealousy and frustration towards Lassalle. Until his premature death in
1864, Lassalle was the German labour movement. Bakunin was perfectly
right to note that it was only after his death that Marx openly and
publicly attacked his friend and rival, but it was too late: Lassallism
was firmly anchored in the German working class. And it was undoubtedly
not the least of the frustrations for Marx to have to see, until the end
of his life, the posthumous triumph of Lassalle, which the âCritique of
the program of Gothaâ did not succeed in erasing [29].â
The question reappeared in 1913 during the fiftieth anniversary of the
founding of the ADAV, the Lassallean party [30]. Two men confronted each
other about the respective place of Lassalle and Marx in the genesis of
the German labour movement: Franz Mehring defended Lassalle for the sake
of historical truth; Karl Kautsky, for his part, was the spokesman for
what is beginning to become Marxist orthodoxy.
It can be considered that Kautsky is the inventor of âMarxismâ.
âMarxismâ took a long time to be recognized as a political doctrine; in
Germany because of the strong impregnation of Lassalleâs thought; in
France because of the short-mindedness of the closest disciples of Marx,
Lafargue and Guesde, but also because of the permanent and sordid
quarrels of the half-dozen tiny socialist parties, and probably most of
all because of the dominant influence of revolutionary syndicalism and
anarchism until the war. Contrary to what some idealists seem to
believe, the expansion of Marxism was not the result of a brutal
illumination but of laborious trials and errors.
Were there any debates within the IWA?
M. Nimtz writes that there has been âno open airing and debate of the
principled differencesâ between Marx and Bakunin; he complains about the
âlack of a public debate about the substantive political differencesâ.
He wonders why âthe Marx party and his later partisans were so
conscientious in completing and publishing their side of the storyâ.
The answer to this question is very simple. Marx and Engels absolutely
did not want any debate with the federalist current. For proof, when the
Congress of Basel rejected the motion of the General Council on
inheritance, the account which was made of this congress reproduced the
text of this motion but did not specify that it had been rejected.
Debating in these conditions seems difficult to me.
âTheirâ side of the story can be found in a book published in 1972 in
Moscow, Marx, Engels, Lenin, anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism [33]. Of
the 200 pages written by Marx and Engels, 40 are letters that were
inaccessible to the public at the time. A large part of the texts
concern anarchism but not specifically Bakunin, but we learn that he is
a âman without any theoretical knowledgeâ and that âas theorist it is
zeroâ[31]. Of course they never explain in what Bakunin didnât have âany
theoretical knowledgeâ and in what âas a theorist he is zeroâ â besides
the fact that this remark contradicts with Engels saying that Bakunin
should be respected because âhe understood Hegelâ [32].
Bakuninâs ideas are distorted to the extreme with disparaging allusions
to his physique: âI should very much like to know whether the good
Bakunin would entrust his portly frame to a railway carriage if that
railway were administered on the principle that no one need be at his
post unless he chose to submit to the authority of the regulations
[33].â
Bakunin is labelled as a âStirnerianâ by Engels in his Ludwig Feuerbach
and the End of Classic German philosophy (1888) and in a letter to Max
Hildebrand [34], which is a total absurdity [35].
James Guillaume is called by Engels a âstraight-laced pedant who applied
the fanaticism of the Swiss Calvinists to the anarchist doctrineâ, and
as a ânarrow-minded schoolmasterâ and âpope of this new faithâ [36].
Engelsâ attitude is particularly unfair because at that very same time,
James Guillaume was making great efforts to try to bring about a
rapprochement between the Social-Democrats and the
âanti-authoritariansâ. This explains the intensifying attacks against
him, since the German socialist leaders opposed any eventuality of
reconciliation [37].
As for the texts which do not belong to the correspondence, the book of
the Moscow edition gives us to read:
âą A speech by Engels on the âpolitical action of the working classâ
delivered in London at a confidential meeting (September 1871) of the
IWA to close relations of Marx â a speech which will be published for
the first time in ⊠1934 in The Communist International No. 29.
âą Resolutions bureaucratically decided at the London confidential
conference, without congress debates, about the political action of the
working class.
âą A text by Engels about the Congress of Sonvillier of the Jura
Federation published in the Volksstaat in January 1872.
âą âAlleged splits in the International, private circular [sic] of the
General CouncilââŠ
âą A draft of Engelsâ Anti-Bakunin Address published for the first time
in Russian in 1940.
âą The text of resolution 7a introduced forcibly in the statutes of the
International, without debate in congress, about the âconstitution of
the proletarian partyâ.
It seems that the Russian communists have nothing else to present to us:
if they wanted to show that Marx and Engels had attempted the slightest
debate with Bakunin, we can say that they failed. Or, to paraphrase Mr
Nimtz, if they had âfound a smoking gunâ showing that the âMarx partyâ
had attempted a dialogue, they âwould have cited itâ.
For one is left to wonder whether the terms of the âdebateâ between Marx
and Bakunin, which Mr Nimtz refers to, are so present in the writings of
Marx. We must naturally distinguish published writings (accessible in
principle to contemporaries) and correspondence (by definition private
and inaccessible to contemporaries, at least for a time). I am in
possession of the works of Marx published in France by Gallimard (La
Pléiade), a reference edition under the direction of Maximilien Rubel
[38], a recognized and distinguished âmarxologistâ (in spite of his
fantasy about Marxâs âanarchismâ). This is about 7000 pages and I have
found absolutely nothing to inform the reader about a âdebateâ between
the two men. Bakunin is vaguely mentioned occasionally, especially in
Rubelâs notes.
I have on the other hand the works of Bakunin published by âChamp libreâ
on the basis of the edition which was produced by the International
Institute of Social History in Amsterdam [39]. Eight large volumes
(about 4300 pages), of which
âą volume 1 concerns the International and the conflict with Mazzini,
âą volume 2 is devoted to âThe First International in Italy and the
Conflict with Marxâ,
âą volume 3 concerns the âConflicts in the Internationalâ and the
âGerman-Slavic question and State communismâ,
âą volume 4: Statism and Anarchy whose subtitle is âThe struggle between
two parties in the IWAâ,
âą volume 5 concerns his relations with Necaev,
âą volume 6 concerns the Slavic question,
âą volume 7 concerns the Franco-German war and the Commune.
âą volume 8 on the Franco-German war. It is in this volume that Bakunin
praises Marxâs âmagnificent volume on Capitalâ (p. 357).
Many of the texts mentioned here had been published in Bakuninâs
lifetime and Mr Nimtz will easily understand that they often comment on
Marxâs ideas and positions. I conclude that if one wants to find out
about the âdebateâ that interests us, one will have easier access to the
âBakuninâ version than to the âMarxâ version.
What could have been the material conditions for a debate between the
two men? The last time they met was in 1864 after Bakunin had escaped
from Siberia [40]. He was not a member of the IWA yet. So no
face-to-face meeting. Mr Nimtz is absolutely right when he says that âat
no time there was a direct confrontation on what truly separated themâ.
If by âdebateâ Mr Nimtz means two persons exposing their respective
options in a contradictory (but nevertheless relatively loyal) way there
actually never was a debate between the two men, but naturally Mr Nimtz
does not consider the possibility that Marx and Engels were responsible
for this situation.
Actually, Marx and Engels never wanted a public debate with Bakunin and
they took great care to avoid it. Mr Nimtz obviously never noticed that
the writings of Marx and Engels never contained any argued comment on
Bakuninâs global political views. They only mention Bakunin to ridicule
him, to insult him or to distort outrageously his ideas. The only
exception is a practically unknown document which has not been
published, Marxâs marginal notes on Bakuninâs book Statism and Anarchy
[41]. The problem is that in his comments, Marx sounds strangely
Proudhonian⊠[42].
As concerns Bakunin, his works are literally scattered with comments on
the political and strategic positions of Marx. It is difficult to find a
text of his âanarchistâ period without encountering explanations
concerning his oppositions with Marx and with the âGerman Communistsâ,
that is to say, the Social-Democrats. His critique of social democracy
and parliamentary strategy is remarkably modern.
Despite the inevitably controversial context in the case of
disagreements such as those which opposed Marx and Bakunin, the Russian
revolutionary does not try to distort the ideas of Marx, while Marx and
Engels caricatured to the extreme Bakuninâs point of view, dotting their
comments with insults: âthe fat Bakuninâ, âthat damned Russianâ[43]. He
is an âAssâ called âMohammed-Bakunine, a Mahomet without a Koranâ [44],
a âpopeâ [45] ; or an âemperorâ [46]. Etc.
It is true however that what Bakunin says about Marx does not always
reflect the latterâs thought : indeed, Bakunin relied on what was known
at that time about Marxâs political ideas, that is to say in fact very
little [47]. This is the reason why he attributes to Marx positions
which are those of Lassalle, identifying the programs of the two men.
But Bakunin is wrong when he writes that âLassalleâs program is in no
way different from that of Marx, whom Lassalle recognized as his masterâ
[48].
âThe confusion between the points of view of the two men is explained by
the discretion of Marxâs criticism of Lassalle during his lifetime.
Marx, in fact, exiled to London, depended on Lassalle for the
publication and distribution of his works in Germany, and also
occasionally for borrowing money from him. Bakunin emphasizes, moreover,
that âthe protest which Mr Marx issued after the death of Lassalle in
the preface to Capital appears only stranger. (It is Bakunin who
emphasizes.) But the author of the Manifesto did not hesitate to
criticize the founder of the ADAV in his correspondence with Engels or
with Kugelmann: there are monuments of rancor. What is most evident is
the constant complaints of Marx who accuses Lassalle of stealing his
ideas: âA truly singular protestâ, says Bakunin, âon the part of a
communist who advocates collective and Does not understand that an idea,
once expressed, no longer belongs to anyoneâ [49].â
Mr. Nimtz seems to be unaware that during Bakuninâs lifetime Marx was
practically unknown outside a small circle of persons while Bakunin was
very famous because of his activity during the 1848-1849 revolution in
Central Europe. As for the German labour movement, Marx was not much in
favour precisely because of his activity during that period, as we shall
see.
The diffusion of the Communist Manifesto in Germany in 1848 had been
checked by Marx and Engels themselves who feared that the book should
disoblige the bourgeois radicals whom the authors hoped they would
subsidize the Neue Rheinishe Gazette, a liberal bourgeois publication.
Marx had appealed to Engels to put pressure to sell shares for the NRG,
and âEngels replied that he was having little success raising money and
that he would have none at all if a copy of the programme of seventeen
points ever found its way to Eberfeld or Barmenâ, writes William Otto
Henderson[50]. His exact words were: âIf even a single copy of our 17
points were to circulate here, all would be lost for usâ. (The 17-point
program, or âDemands of the Communist party in Germanyâ, incorporated
the content of the Communist Manifesto.) In the same letter, Engels
informed Marx of his fear at the rise of the action of the textile
workers, who were in danger of compromising everything: âThe workers are
beginning to bestir themselves a little, still in a very crude way, but
as a mass. They at once formed coalitions. But to us, that can only be a
hindranceâ [51].
There is no possible mistake: a) The workers are bestirring themselves;
b) They do it âas a massâ; c) They âform coalitionsâ. All that obviously
counteracts Marx and Engelsâ action. In other words, the ink of the
Manifesto was hardly dry that its authors wanted to delete it.
What was is it the Manifesto said? âThe Communists disdain to conceal
their views and aims...â ?...
How can we explain such an incredible attitude?
Marx had just âdiscoveredâ âhistorical materialismâ (an expression never
found in his writings, for that matter) and according to this miraculous
method he had concluded that the German bourgeois had to make âtheirâ
revolution before the proletariat could enter the scene [52]. In fact he
projected on the German Revolution of 1848 the categories he had
analysed in the French Revolution of 1789, a perfectly artificial
approach insofar as revolutionary processes can not be identical 60
years apart. This is why it was absolutely necessary to prevent the
German proletariat from moving: so as not to hinder the bourgeois
revolution [53]. Besides, there was another reason to keep the workers
from stirring: what Marx and Engels had in mind was absolutely not
social revolution but national unity for Germany (which was divided in
about 50 different states).
Of course, the German working class could not successfully achieve a
proletarian revolution in 1848, but it would have had the historical
experience of a revolutionary movement. Instead, the collaboration of
the leaders of the movement with the liberal bourgeoisie provoked
bitterness and discouragement.
Bakunin did not seek to bring historical events into pre-established
theoretical patterns. His analysis of the nature of the German
revolution was, in my opinion, much more convincing than that of Marx.
He started from the idea that the ârevolutionary inconsistency of the
German bourgeoisieâ was the result of complex determinations on which I
shall not insist, that in 1848 the German bourgeoisie was incapable of
coping with its historical tasks insofar as the main antagonism in
society was no longer that which opposed it to the survivals of the
feudal order still existing in Germany, but that which opposed it to the
working class.
âThe bourgeoisie had no longer any reason to consider the dominant
political regimes then in Germany as the main enemy; it had, on the
contrary, every reason to privilege an alliance with power. Especially
since the destruction of the feudal relations had been done anyway, in
Prussia at least, at the initiative of the State itself. Bakunin shows
very explicitly that the establishment of the Customs union (Zollverein)
and the innumerable economic measures taken centrally by the Prussian
State in favour of industrial and commercial development had done more
to destroy the feudal relations than all the revolutionary inclinations
of the German liberals. The first cannon of the Krupp factories, let us
recall, came out in the year of the publication of the Manifesto. The
one and the other would help to ensure, twenty-three years later, the
hegemony of the German proletariat in Europe [54].â
(I admit that the last sentence, written 25 years ago, may seem a little
forced, but we must remember that Marx rejoiced that the French defeat
in 1870 would transfer the centre of gravity of the European workersâ
movement from France to Germany [55].) If one refers to Bakuninâs
analysis, there was no reason why the proletariat should condition its
activity on the success of the âbourgeois revolutionâ which Marx called
for. The German workers, on the contrary, had every reason to conduct
their own historical experience, to engage in an autonomous action in
opposition to the State and the bourgeoisie, who in any case would have
allied themselves against the working class.
In other words, Marx deliberately attempted to sabotage the
revolutionary activity of the German proletarians because this activity
did not stick with the vague historical theory he had sketched in 1846
in German Ideology, directly inspired by Saint-Simon 59. In the middle
of the revolution he even dissolved the League of Communists, the first
communist party in history [56], because he thought it was useless! For
this betrayal the English section of the League of Communists excluded
him in 1850 [57]. So Marx did not only exclude from the First
International the whole organized working class of the time, in 1872; he
was excluded from the first Communist party in history in 1850. Here is
quite a curriculum!!! It is scarcely believable that he could seriously
ever have been taken as a thinker of the revolution.
The Communist Manifesto, as well as Marx himself, remained virtually
unknown in Germany except for an elite of left-wing leaders. It took
almost a generation, with the publication of the first book of Capital,
for the name of Marx to be recognized by the workers. As says Gary P.
Steenson referring to the legacy of failure after the 1848-1849
revolution: âthere was the strongly felt but ill-defined conviction that
the cause of the workers, in particular, had been betrayed in 1848-1849â
[58].
And it is the same man who mocks the attempts made by Bakunin at Lyons
during the Franco-Prussian War, to raise and organize the proletariat of
this city. A Bolshevik historian, Iuri Stekloff, declares that Bakuninâs
intervention in Lyons was âa generous attempt to awaken the sleeping
energy of the French proletariat and to direct it towards the struggle
against the capitalist system and at the same time to postpone the
foreign invasionâ [59]. Stekloff adds that Bakuninâs plan was not so
ridiculous: âIn Bakuninâs mind, it was necessary to use the commotion
provoked by the war, the inability of the bourgeoisie, the patriotic
protests of the masses, its confuse social tendencies in order to
attempt a decisive intervention of the workers in the great centres,
involve the peasantry and thus start the world social revolution.
Nobody, then, has proposed a better planâ [60]. Of course, Bakunin
failed, but he failed while pushing the workers forward, not pulling
them backwards as Marx had done.
A French historian of social democracy, Georges Haupt, who can
definitely not be suspected of sympathy for anarchism, wrote that the
refusal of Marx to engage a doctrinal debate with Bakunin âis primarily
tactical. All the efforts of Marx tend to minimize Bakunin, to deny any
theoretical consistency to his rival. He refuses to recognize Bakuninâs
system of thought, not because he denies its consistency, as he assures
peremptorily, but because Marx seeks to discredit him and to reduce him
to the level of a sect leader and of an old style conspiratorâ [61]. If
Mr Nimtz is right to emphasize âthe lack of a public debate about the
substantive political differencesâ between Marx and Bakunin, Marx only
was responsible for it.
The only âdebateâ the Bakunists were invited to participate in took
place in 1872 at the rigged Hague Congress during which Bakunin and
James Guillaume were expelled â a decision which had anyway been taken
one year earlier in a confidential meeting between Marx and chosen
delegates : the so called âLondon conferenceâ about which Bakunin
commented: âWe know how this conference was botched; it was made with
intimates of Mr. Marx, carefully sorted by himself, and a few dupes. The
Conference voted whatever he saw fit to propose, and the Marxian
program, transformed into official truth, found itself as a binding
principle to the whole International [62].â
Democracy?
In his article, Mr Nimtz seems very concerned with the issue of
democracy and, of course, Bakunin and his friends are accused of wanting
to challenge it and establish their âdictatorshipâ. As is often the case
among Marxists, Nimtz blindly sticks to the letter of Marxâs speech. It
is after the Basel Congress (1869) that the aggressiveness of Marx
against Bakunin showed itself openly. Indeed, the votes of the delegates
on the question of the inheritance, which had symbolic value for Marx,
so divided up :
63 % of the delegates voted for the âCollectivistâ texts.
31 % for the âMarxistâ texts.
6 % for the mutualists (proudhonians).
Naturally, such a situation was unacceptable for Marx, although it was
the democratic expression of the delegates of the International at that
time, a fact Mr Nimtz should not deny. Eccarius is said to have
muttered: âMarx will be terribly annoyed!â
However, if Mr Nimtz considers as democratic only what is in keeping
with his views and those of Marx, he should say so. After all, the
Constitution of the Soviet Union was considered by the Communists as
"the most democratic in the world".
It was after the Basel Congress that the systematic campaign of
calumnies against Bakunin, orchestrated by Marx, Engels and their
followers, began. Bakunin was in particular accused of being a
âSlavophileâ, which was to him the supreme insult, for during the
revolution of 1848-49 he never ceased to call the Slavs of Central
Europe to fight against the Russian empire and to ally with the German
democrats against despotism, a point of view to which Marx and Engels
were radically opposed because a tactical alliance with the Slavic
democrats would have challenged German national unity and would have
withdrawn from Germany the control it exercised over Slavonic
territories, such as Bohemia. Bakuninâs activity in favour of democracy
in Central Europe owed him 8 years of fortress in Russia and 4 years of
relegation in Siberia, after which he escaped [63]. Few revolutionaries
of the time paid as much for democracy in Germany, yet Bakunin does not
have a statue erected in his honor.
Marx and Engels were convinced that the German domination of Slavonic
territories in Central Europe was a âhistorical progressâ [64]:
âAn independent Bohemian-Moravian state would be wedged between Silesia
and Austria; Austria and Styria would be cut off by the ʻSouth-Slav
republicÊŒ from their natural dĂ©bouchĂ© [outlet] â the Adriatic Sea and
the Mediterranean; and the eastern part of Germany would be torn to
pieces like a loaf of bread that has been gnawed by rats! And all that
by way of thanks for the Germans having given themselves the trouble of
civilizing the stubborn Czechs and Slovenes, and introducing among them
trade, industry, a tolerable degree of agriculture, and culture [65]!â
These not-really âproletarian-internationalistâ lines were written in a
hysterical anti-Bakuninian pamphlet Engels wrote in response to
Bakuninâs âCall to Slavsâ in which the Russian revolutionary called for
an alliance of German and Slav democrats against despotism. Engels ends
his pamphlet with these lines:
âThen there will be a struggle, an âinexorable life-and-death struggleâ
against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating [66]
fight and ruthless terrorânot in the interests of Germany, but in the
interests of the revolution [67]!â
Of course, the ârevolutionâ which Engels refers to is not the
proletarian revolution but the bourgeois revolution that will achieve
German national unity and confirm German domination over the Slavic
territories.
This digression on the revolution of 1848 seemed necessary to show that
the strategic divergences between Bakunin and Marx/Engels existed long
before the founding of the International. After 1868, Marx and his
entourage merely rephrased the accusations and calumnies they had made
against Bakunin 20 years earlier [68].
At the Basel congress, administrative resolutions were put to the vote
which Mr Nimtz suggests they had been Bakuninâs idea, motivated by
Machiavellian intentions. These resolutions were intended to strengthen
the powers of the General Council by giving it the right to refuse
admission to new associations and to suspend sections â decisions which
had to be submitted to a subsequent congress. Mr Nimtz says â speaking
of the General Council â that âBakunin had no qualms in introducing his
proposal to increase its powers. Clearly, he was no shrinking violet
when it came to taking initiatives.â Iâm afraid Mr Nimtz is dead wrong:
he follows a little too literally the lucubrations of Hal Draper.
Contrary to what Mr Nimtz thinks, it wasnât Bakunin but Eccarius, on
behalf of the General Council, who proposed the âadministrative
resolutionâ. J.-Ph. Becker published in the Vorbote (year 1870, page 4)
an account of the discussion that took place on this subject during the
Administrative Session of the Congress (Wednesday 8 September). One can
read: âEccarius proposes, on behalf of the General Council, that the
latter has the right to exclude any section which would act contrary to
the spirit of the International, subject to congressional approval
[69].â
Bakunin was in fact astoundingly naive. He and his friends supported the
vote of the administrative resolutions proposed by the General Council.
James Guillaume commented : âWe were all inspired by the most complete
goodwill in respect of the men from London. And so blind was our
confidence that we contributed more than anyone to the vote in favour of
these administrative resolutions which gave the General Council
authority, authority which they were to use so despicably [70].â In
fact, Bakunin approved that provision, not because it would enable him
to âtake control of the Internationalâ but, paradoxically, to prevent
arbitrary expulsions.
In his report, Eccarius writes that Bakunin recognized the General
Council the opportunity to âdeny new sections to join the International
until the following Congress; as for the National Committees, he wants
to recognize their right to exclude sections of their Federation, but
not the right to exclude them from the Internationalâ [my emphasis].
Eccarius adds: Bakunin ânoted that if the national organisations had the
right to suspend, it could occur that Sections animated by the true
spirit of the International be excluded by a majority unfaithful to the
principles.â It is obvious that Bakunin then did not consider the
General Council as an adversary but as a possible ally against the
reactionary spirit of local coteries. Which was the case in Geneva...
whose sections Marx supported.
Bakunin later wrote (January 23, 1872) to his Italian friends that he
had made âa serious mistakeâ: âI arrived at the Basel Congress with the
impression that a regional federation, guided by an intriguing and
reactionary faction, could do abuse of power, and I looked for a remedy
in the authority of the General Council.â He added that the Belgians,
âwho also knew better than us the secret and very authoritarian
provisions of certain people who make up the General Councilâ, had tried
in vain to make him change his mind. Marx would later on make an
extremely cynical use of these administrative resolutions when the
decision was taken to exclude from the International the federations who
did not comply with the expulsions which had been decided at the Hague
Congress: the Basel Congress having naively given the General Council
the possibility of suspending sections, Marx pointed out that since the
General Council could already suspend one by one all the sections of a
federation, it could thereby suspend an entire federation; the
suspension of a whole federation was simply a compliance of the statutes
[71]. Such a resolution could be voted only because the Congress
delegates were totally confident with the members of the General
Council. No one could then imagine that those who controlled the General
Council would use a few years later this resolution in such a
Machiavellian way.
Since Mr Nimtz is so concerned with the issue of democracy let us see
how it was applied within the General Council itself. James Guillaume
explains that the composition of the General Council was practically
immovable:
âComposed for five consecutive years of the same men, always re-elected,
and by the Basel resolutions covered of a great power over the Sections,
it [the General Council] ended up considering itself as the legitimate
head of the International. The mandate of a member of the General
Council had become, in the hands of a few individuals, a personal
property, and London seemed to them the immovable capital of our
Association. Gradually, these men, who were nothing but our
representatives â and most of them were not even our regular
representatives because they had not been elected by the Congress â
these men, we say, accustomed to walk at our head and to speak in our
name, have been led, by the natural flow of things and by the very force
of this situation, to want to dominate the International with their
special program and their personal doctrine [72].â
Hales confirms the analysis of James Guillaume: he noted that âthe
majority of members constituting the [General] Council were co-opted
from the Basel Congress. The members elected by the Congress are a
minorityâ [73].
Marx used proved manipulation techniques. One of them consisted in not
translating documents sent by other federations or in summing them up in
a very oriented way, so that the only-English speaking members of the
General Council had only very partial informations. When John Hales was
secretary of the General Council, Engels refused to hand him over the
address of Anselmo Lorenzo, a Spanish leader, and Hales was unable to
answer him because Lorenzo had not given his address in Spain. Many
records of the General Council are written and edited with partisan
intentions. The General Council report of the Basel IWA Congress is an
example. It takes a page to present the General Councilâs argument on
inheritance, but does not inform readers that these views, and the
motion it sponsored, had been decisively rejected by the congress [77].
Endless examples of this kind can be given. In fact, Marx and Engels are
very efficient conspirators, much more efficient that Bakunin who,
compared to them, was an amateur.
The General Council meeting of September 5, 1871 is interesting in more
ways than one. Let us remember that we are on the eve of the
confidential London Conference which will set up the exclusion of
Bakunin and James Guillaume. Marx says that the General Council is a
âgoverning body that is separate from its constituentsâ and has thus âas
a Council, a collective policyâ[74]. In other words the General Council
is an entity which is superior to the sum of the federations that
constitute it and therefore it has a better understanding of collective
interests. Although this argument is not entirely false and can easily
be compensated by control and rotation of mandates, this is what all
bureaucratic bodies say to justify their power.
Another issue addressed was that of the voting members of the General
Council. Thiesz âbelieves that no board member shall be allowed to vote
for his own account. If they do, they will re-elect themselves.â On the
contrary, Engels believes that âthe Council has always been represented
by delegates â in unlimited numbers â who are entitled to vote, and this
right should not be abandoned.â Eccarius, who will soon break away from
Marx and Engels, pointed out that if the Council âoverwhelmsâ the other
delegates, that is to say, if it appoints more delegates than there are
elected delegates, it would be just as well to ratify directly the
decisions of the Council: âThe Council has no right to overwhelm all the
other delegates, it might as well vote a number of decisions and invite
the sections to ratify them and dispense with convening the
Congess[75].â It is clear that what Mr Nimtz presents as an exemplary
democratic body under the kindly supervision of Karl Marx is nothing
more than a bureaucratâs nest made up of a majority of co-opted men.
The minutes of the meeting say that Vaillant âbelieves that the Council
would be perfectly justified merely to convene the Conference so as to
inform on the situation of the association, without granting voting
rights to delegates. The Council has the right to decide itself on
organizational matters because it is the centre of the Association, it
best knows the needs of the Association as a whole, and it is best
placed to judge what is best for promoting its interests[76].â This
shows that the London Conference had set up all the bureaucratic
arrangements that will be implemented a year later in The Hague.
Moreover, the direction taken by the discussions in the General Council
showed that it obviously regarded the IWA as a political party, not as a
trade union-type organization, as had originally been the case.
The London conference took place from 16 to 23 September 1871. Its
confidentiality was increased by the fact that it took place at the very
home of Marx. There is a very significant letter Engels sent to
Liebknecht on that issue [77]:
âBoth the General Council and the Conference itself had resolved that
the meetings should be held in private. An explicit resolution, of which
you are aware, charged the General Council with the task of deciding
which resolutions should be made public and which not.â
Probably another example of what Mr Nimtz regards as the exemplary
democracy of the General Council. Which reminds us of something Mr Nimtz
wrote in his article:
ââŠIf the entire membership of the organization isnât privy to what other
members are doing, it makes it difficult to carry out effective
collective actions. Secret organizing assumes that not all workers
should be included in the debates â an implicit assumption that not all
are as enlightened as others, and a telling assessment about what they
think of workers.â
It is hard to believe that Mr Nimtz is speaking of Bakunin, not of Marx.
Once again, we see that the âsecret organization within the
Internationalâ (Nimtz dixit) was the work of Marx, not Bakunin.
Marx and his friends had taken advantage of the disorganization which
followed the Franco-Prussian war and the crushing of the Commune of
Paris to convene a private meeting which decided without congress debate
to transform in a mandatory way the International into a political party
aiming to gain access to power. This was a question which had been
debated in the organization but which had not led to the irreparable
because the autonomy of the federations had not been called into
question, that is to say the faculty for each Federation to define its
own path towards emancipation.
The London conference consisted of twenty-three members, thirteen of
whom â a majority â were members of the General Council and appointed by
it, and had no mandate â precisely the case raised by Thiesz during the
Conference of September 5. Seven of these non-elected members sat as
corresponding secretaries of various countries which were not
represented at the Conference[78]. But the General Council had appointed
six other of its members to represent it. Only nine persons were
delegated by sections : six Belgian delegates [one of whom was also a
member of the General Council], two Swiss delegates, a Spanish delegate.
James Guillaume notes that there was one unknown without a warrant [79].
Bakunin commented:
âIt is fair to add to this list the daughters of Karl Marx, who were
allowed to sit at the last meeting of this secret conference. The
chronicle does not say if the conference gave them the right to vote; it
could have done so without derogation because these young ladies had as
many titles to represent the International proletariat than the greatest
number of delegates[80].â
The International workersâ Association was something unprecedented and
the inevitable trials and errors originated by this situation had not
been followed by the establishment of precise and... democratic rules.
Appointments to the General Council had something really fanciful.
Naturally the International represented something new and the final
shape of such an organization had yet to be discovered. As usual in such
cases, the absence of rules favoured the establishment of an irremovable
feudalism.
At the inaugural meeting of St Martinâs Hall, September 28, 1864,
thirty-two members had been appointed to the General Council with the
right of co-optation (The Beehive Newspaper, London, 1 October 1864). An
English edition of the statutes was published in November: 52 members
were appointed. A second edition, published soon after shows changes in
membership. The Geneva Congress in 1866 voted the General Statutes
stipulating that the Congress would appoint the members of the General
Council: 63 members were so appointed. The articles in French, published
in London by the General Council, give the names of the members of the
General Council.
The Lausanne Congress in 1867 confirmed the appointments of the Geneva
Congress, but added that âthe General Council is authorized to appoint
other members if it is necessaryâ. James Guillaume, who was one of the
editors of the report, noted that this provision only applied to the
1867 election, but the English provisional statutes include this passage
as if it were permanent.
The last appointments to the General Council took place in Brussels
(1868). Arthur Lehning noted that âduring the period from 1864 to 1872,
some 200 members had been appointed to the General Councilâ[81] â but
very few had been elected: this does not exactly speak in favour of the
âdemocraticâ organization Mr Nimtz claims the IWA was: rarely have we
seen such an undemocratic organization.
The Jura federation wrote a circular to the Federations of the IWA in
which it denounced the bureaucratic functioning of the governing body of
the International: it pointed out that nothing in the statutes allowed
the General Council to assume any power over the federations; it stated
that the composition of the General Council had so far been decided âin
trustâ on the basis of lists presented to the Congress âand that it
contained mostly absolutely unknown names to the delegatesâ. The
confidence had been so far that âthe faculty had even been left to the
General Council to appoint whom it pleased; and, by this provision of
the statutes, the appointment of the General Council by the Congress
became illusory. Indeed, the Council could, afterwards, appoint any
staff who would have completely changed the majority...[82]â
There is no doubt that if the project of the Jura Federation to return
to the election of members of the General Council had seen the beginning
of implementation, few members of this organization who had manoeuvred
to exclude Bakunin and James Guillaume would have remained in place,
beginning with Marx, whose sole official function was to represent aâŠ
non-existent German federation. Even the Bolshevik historian Iuri
Stekloff recognizes that âthere was not a single national federation
rallying to the support of the General Councilâ[83]. So Mr Nimtz should
reconsider his saying that the Hague Congress was âthe most
representative meeting of the IWAâ and that âa majority of delegatesâ
had decided to exclude Bakunin. He can only say that a âmajorityâ of
non-elected, non-representative self-appointed bureaucrats took that
decision.
In his article, Mr. Nimtz manages to turn the demonstration of
confidence of the federalist delegates into a Machiavellian attempt of
the âBakunians et al.â to seize power and âimpose his abstentionist
perspective on the Internationalâ, while the question of abstention was
not even on the agenda! Bakunin was actually not in favour of
parliamentary strategy but he never advocated absence of action. He
proposed something else and it is this âsomething elseâ Marx never
wanted to discuss.
Mr Nimtz seems very concerned by the fact that at The Hague Congress
Bakunin did not have a âmajorityâ while Marx allegedly did. He writes
that âsupporters of Bakuninâs abstentionist views actively took part in
the debate and were outvotedâ, but he forgets to say that if Marx and
Engels were unable to prevent certain delegates from participating in
the Congress, most of the others had been carefully selected. So it does
not make much sense to say that the partisans of Bakunin took an âactive
partâ in the debates if one does not specify that they were a small
minority in a rigged congress. So we cannot be surprised that they were
âoutvotedâ.
Faced with the political project of Marx, the Bakuninists naively
thought they would resolve to their advantage what they saw as a simple
conflict of ideas. Besides, at the eve of the Hague Congress, they
perfectly knew that Marx and the General Council had no support among
the federations, in spite of the conspirational manoeuvres carried out
by the latter to undermine the federalists. For instance Engels had
tried to rely on Cafiero to launch a campaign to discredit Bakunin in
Italy. But Engels proved so zealous that Cafiero, disgusted, broke
suddenly and sided with Bakunin[84].
Mr Nimtz writes that a âmajority of delegates to the Hague congressâ had
outnumbered Bakuninâs followers at The Hague. Such an assertion would be
admissible if Mr Nimtz referred to a congress in which the delegates had
been regularly elected by federations or sections and had outnumbered
the self-appointed members of the General Council⊠Mr Nimtz invites us
to examine who were these delegates that he uncritically sees as a
âmajorityâ. For the Hague Congress of September 1872 was as fake as the
London Conference the previous year. French delegates appeared in The
Hague holding mandates no one knew where they came from and how they had
got them. The verification of mandates was impossible. Serrailler,
Secretary of the General Council for France (where the IWA was as
prohibited as it was in Germany, but where, unlike Germany, there were
active sections) arrived in The Hague with his pockets full of mandates.
Six French delegates were only known by their pseudonyms, without
indication of the city they held their mandate from. The only one who
announced a city â Rouen, in Normandy â found himself soon after
repudiated by the Rouen Federation because he had voted with the General
Council when he had the imperative mandate to vote for the federalists.
Same thing with Bordeaux. The Internationalists of this city realized
later that their delegate, who had received the imperative mandate to
vote for the federalists, voted for the General Council. Two other
French delegates, Swarm and Walter â pseudonyms â were arrested shortly
after and went on trial ; one in Toulouse, the other in Paris. It
appeared soon after that Swarm, agent of the General Council in
Toulouse, was a spy ; concerning Walter, agent of the General Council in
Paris, he repented and vowed to become a bitter opponent of the
International[85].
This fact, mentioned by James Guillaume, is confirmed by the Bolshevik
historian Stekloff :
âAfter the prosecution of the French internationalists in June (during
the course of which it transpired than Van Heddeghem, alias Walter, and
dâEntraygues, alias Swarm, who had been delegates at the Hague Congress,
and had voted with the Marxists, were provocative agents and traitors),
the General Council severed all connection with France[86].â
Immediately after the Hague Congress, the English Federal Council
realized that the delegate who represented it was not even a member of
the International ! Germany possessed no section of the International,
but only individual members in extremely small numbers and could not
therefore send regular delegates to The Hague. However, so as to
strengthen the position of Marx, nine Germans were introduced as
delegates of non-existent sections of the IWA. Besides, to vote at the
Congress the sections had to pay their dues, which the Germans had not
done. Bebel wrote in the Volkstaat of 16 March 1872 that the Germans had
never paid contributions to London ! Engels was outraged to note that he
could count only 208 individual German membership cards : âI must ask
you straight out to tell us frankly how the International stands with
you: roughly how many stamps have been distributed to how many places,
and which places are involved ? The 208 counted by Fink are surely not
all there are[87] ?â
âDoes the Social-Democratic Workersâ party intend to be represented at
the Congress and if so how does it propose to place itself âen rĂšgleâ
with the General Council in advance so that its mandate cannot be
queried at the Congress? This would mean a) that it would have to
declare itself to be the German Federation of the International in
reality and not merely figuratively and b) that as such it would pay its
dues before the Congress. The matter is becoming serious and we have to
know where we are, or else you will force us to act on our own
initiative and to consider the Social-Democratic Workersâ party as an
alien body for whom the International has no significance. We cannot
allow the representation of the German workers at the Congress to be
fumbled or forfeited for reasons unknown to us, but which cannot be
other than petty. We should like to ask for a clear statement about this
quickly[88] .â
So this is probably the âdemocracyâ Mr Nimtz refers to. Considering all
this, we are entitled to wonder who actually undermined the âinternal
democratic functioningâ of the International and who were the real
conspirators. All this did not prevent the delegates of ghost German
sections to vote the expulsion of Bakunin and James Guillaume.
So we understand that Mr Nimtz supports the view of Marx in this debate,
but it would be interesting to see what support Marx et al. could
actually rely on at the time. A letter Engels wrote to J. P. Becker,
dated 9 May 1872, is very instructive. Engels is concerned about not
having a majority among Swiss delegates â by Swiss delegates, he does
not have the Jura federation in mind, of course, but the Genevan
workersâ aristocracy enmeshed in electoral compromises with the local
liberal bourgeoisie.
Engels wants to have âa compact and reliable majority of the Swiss
delegatesâ. He is convinced that the âAlliance peopleâ will use âall the
old tricks to gain the majority for themselves, just as in Baselâ. He is
convinced that the âJurassians will make sure that imaginary sections
secure representationâ. In other words he suspects the Jurassians will
do precisely what Marx and himself are about to do in The Hague. But the
situation in Switzerland is not encouraging for the General Council, if
we believe Stekloff: âIn German Switzerland and in Geneva there were
some stalwarts who still remained faithful to the old International, but
their minds were for the nonce filled with the idea of setting up a
Swiss Workersâ League in preparation for a social democratic party[89].â
Engels then tries to assess who will support the General Council at the
Hague Congress:
âą âApart from Turin, the Italians will send nothing but friends of
Bakuninâ (âIn Italy, the Marxist group was extremely weakâ, says
Stekloff) ;
âą âThe Spaniards will be divided, though it is not yet possible to say
in what proportionsâ. This is quite an understatement. The Spaniards
were indeed âdividedâ between an extremely minor factional federation
constituted by Lafargue, who had been sent by the General Council in
Spain to break the legitimate federation of tens of thousands of workers
which was formed after the passage of Fanelli, on behalf of the
Alliance.
We have seen that the conspirational activities of Lafargue, who had
been sent to Spain by the General Council, had pitifully failed, but
that the handful of members Marxâs son-in-law had managed to gather were
granted the status of federation with the right to vote the expulsion of
Bakunin and James Guillaume from the International. This is no doubt
what Mr Nimtz means by âdemocracyâ. As Iuri Stekloff says :
âNotwithstanding Engelsâ optimism, Spain was lost to the Marxists. The
New Madrid Federation, founded with the active participation of Mesa and
Lafargue, did not succeed in freeing the majority of the Spanish
internationalists from Bakuninist influence [90].â
âą âGermany will be weakly represented as usualâ [91] ;
âą England: âthe same applies to Englandâ (Ibid.)
âą âFor France there will only be a few refugees from there and perhaps
some from hereâ ;
âą âThe Belgians are highly unreliable so that very great efforts will
have to be made to secure a respectable majority.â (Italics by Engels.)
(âFor some years to come, the Belgians kept up close relationships with
the Bakuninistsâ, says Stekloff (p. 273.)
âą Holland : Engels doesnât mention Holland in his letter to Liebknecht,
but this is what Stekloff says : âIn Holland, likewise, Engelsâ hopes of
a cleavage between the Dutch internationalists and the Bakuninists were
not realisedâ (p. 273).
âą Portugal : âAlthough, thanks to Lafargueâs influence, Portugal had
remained faithful to the General Council, the movement could hardly be
said to exist there at all.â (Stekloff, p. 273.)
Actually, there was a socialist group in Portugal around the years
1860-1870, which was mostly under Proudhonâs influence, They had
relations with Spanish refugees who were members of the IWA in Lisbon in
1871: Mora, Morago and Lorenzo [92]. Anselmo Lorenzo talks about it in
his memoirs. They created a Portuguese section which had some
importance, especially in Lisbon. This does not fit with what Engels and
Stekloff say. Besides, what Stekloff says is not very consistent with
the fact that was formed in 1911 an anarcho-syndicalist confederation,
the CGT, which was the most important of the country and which declared
150,000 members when it joined the Berlin IWA in 1922.
âą Austria : âThe workersâ movement in Austria was cloven asunder. Led by
Scheu, the Bakuninist section rose up against the leadership of the
moderate and opportunist Oberwind. The General Council had nothing
helpful to expect, therefore, from Austria.â (Stekloff, p. 274.)
âą âAs for Germany, where the movement might have served as a basis for
the International, there was at this time so fierce a struggle going on
between the Lassallists (German Swiss) and the Marxists (Eisenachers)
that any hope of carrying out useful work was completely shattered. (âŠ)
As far as the Eisenachers were concerned, though they were the natural
allies and supporters of the old International, they paid little heed to
the Association, displaying towards it the utmost indifference.â
(Stekloff, p. 274.)
So if we sum up: what is this âvast majorityâ of the IWA, mentioned by
Mr Nimtz, who supports Marx and Engels? Italy : âfriends of Bakuninâ ;
Spain : a small factional minority manipulated by Lafargue ; Germany :
almost nothing âas usualâ ; France : âa few refugeesâ ; Belgium :
nothing. Holland: nothing; Portugal: âthe movement could hardly be said
to existâ; Denmark: âindifference displayed towards the Internationalâ
(Stekloff); England: âweakly representedâ; Austria: nothing.
Iâm not inventing anything: Engels and Stekloff say so.
And what is this âmost representative meeting of the IWAâ Mr Nimtz
refers to ? How can he say that Bakunin and James Guillaume were
expelled from the IWA by âa majority of the delegates to The Hague
Congressâ ? What does the âmajorityâ of a rigged convention mean? Only
by an incredible conspiracy and manipulation of mandates could the
bureaucracy of the General Council manage to expel two militants of the
Jura Federation with â to Engelâs own admittance â so few people behind
them. It was not Bakunin but Marx and Engels who organized âa secret
operation within the International in violation of its rulesâ â to quote
Mr Nimtz.
What is most surprising is that for generations, so-called Marxist
specialists have been hammering us, with the greatest of assumptions and
the greatest of arrogances, unprecedented lies based on nothing, if not
on their ideological prejudices (âalternative truthsâ we would say
today).The most surprising of all is that for generations the anarchists
have contented themselves with shrugging their shoulders before these
âalternative truthsâ without defending themselves, even though all they
had to do was to plunge into the very writings of Marx and his entourage
to unveil these lies.
The preface to Volume 44 of the Collected Works states that Marx and
Engels âemphasized that abstention from politics turned workers into the
blind instrument of bourgeois politiciansâ (p. XXII). Bakunin says
exactly the contrary: it is the participation in the electoral strategy
that has transformed workers into blind instruments of bourgeois
politicians. Look at what has happened in Germany and Switzerland, says
Bakunin, where the Marxist program prevails : the International has
âdescended to the point of being no more than a sort of electoral box
for the benefit of the radical bourgeoisâ[93]. Franz Mehring and Iuri
Stekloff confirm that wherever national socialist parties were created,
the International disappeared. Mehring says: Marx âfailed to recognize
that (âŠ) the more the International attempted to centralize its forces
for the struggle against its external enemies, the more it would suffer
dissolution internallyâ. And he adds : âWherever national workers
parties formed the International began to break up [94].â
Which Stekloff confirms when he mentions âthe indifference displayed
towards the International by such countries as Denmark, Germany,
Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland (lands where national socialist
parties were beginning to develop)â [95].
In the above mentioned introduction to the Collected Works we can also
read that Bakunin âdoes not regard capital, and hence class antagonism
between capitalists and wage workers which has arisen through the
development of society, as the main evil to be abolished, but instead
the stateâ [96]. Such an assertion is completely false and results from
the deformations made by Marx and Engels of Bakuninâs thought, who in no
way neglects class antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. Such remarks are extremely curious since Bakunin gives
priority to action in favor of the economic emancipation of the
proletariat: such a strategy, one might think, should put the workers
directly in the face of capital and confront them directly with class
antagonisms. Besides, Bakunin does not neglect the political struggle at
all, that is to say, the struggle against the State, since it is a key
player in the struggle against the social emancipation of the working
class.
In 1869 Bakunin wrote that âthe antagonism that exists between the
workerâs world and that of the bourgeoisie is taking on ever more
pronounced featuresâ [97]. If I dared, I would say that Bakunin is much
more âMarxistâ than Marx and Engels. He shows in 1873 that capital and
state evolve in a dialectical interdependence: the intensification of
class struggle leads to the strengthening of state power, of the âlegal,
metaphysical, theological and military-police state, considered the last
bulwark that protects at the present time the precious privilege of
economic exploitationâ [98]. He adds that between the two worlds, âno
compromise is possibleâ: today there is only âthe party of the past and
of reaction, including all the possessing and privileged classesâ and
âthe party of the future and of complete human emancipation, that of
revolutionary socialism, the party of the proletariatâ [99].
It seems difficult to be more explicit.
In spite of what Mr Nimtz says, âpolitical actionâ in the sense of
electoral strategy was absolutely not âa basic normâ for the IWA. The
âindependent working-class political actionâ (i.e. the creation of a
political party running for parliamentary elections) as a âbasic norm
for the organizationâ, as Mr Nimtz says, had only been decided in
September 1871 at the London Conference, at what may be called a
fractional meeting that brought together Marxâs supporters. This
decision was then voted the following year during the rigged congress of
The Hague which inserted in the IWA statutes an Article 7a which made
electoral action compulsory. This decision had a catastrophic effect.
All the federations denounced the Congress when they realized they had
been manipulated. The irony of the story is that some of the federations
which had denounced the manoeuvres of Marx nevertheless supported
parliamentary strategy, but they accepted that other strategies could be
considered: they were simply opposed to it being mandatory.
Of course Bakunin was not opposed to working class political action in
general; however, he was:
a) Opposed to the adoption by the IWA of a mandatory political program
because it would inevitably produce splits and, as he said, âthere would
be as many Internationals as there were different programsâ [100], and
b) Very reluctant about the electoral strategy because, far from leading
to the emancipation of the working class, it led instead to its
subjugation to the radical bourgeoisie.
Marx obsessively attempted to introduce the âpolitical issueâ in the
IWA, i.e. parliamentary strategy â âpoliticsâ being according to him
limited to participating in elections. What Mr Nimtz euphemistically
calls âworking-class political involvementâ was absolutely not a
âpremiseâ for the International.
Proudhon had probably never heard about the IWA for he died two months
after the foundation of the International; so, strictly speaking, he
couldnât have been against the IWAâs so-called âworking-class political
involvementâ. But Mr Nimtz is right when he says that Proudhon disagreed
with the idea of âworking-class political involvementâ if it meant
participating in the electoral game. Proudhonâs opinion was founded on
experience : he had been elected to Parliament in 1848 and had
discovered that elections simply drove the bourgeoisie to power. Is it
necessary to say that Proudhonâs view has been widely confirmed by
history ? Is it necessary to say that when Socialists come to power
through elections, they quickly turn into servants of the
bourgeoisie[101]?
This is a conclusion Marx could have reached if he had not been
stubbornly convinced that the working class was the majority of the
population and that it would, arithmetically so to speak, bring one day
the Socialists to power. Marx and Engels have always been unable to
understand that electoral politics necessarily meant electoral alliances
with the âprogressiveâ fractions of the bourgeoisie : the sections of
the International in Zurich had shown the way when they adopted the
program of German Social-Democrats and became instruments of bourgeois
radicalism.
Bakuninâs âabstentionist perspectiveâ is mentioned four times by Mr
Nimtz in his article, to which he opposes the âworking class political
actionâ advocated by Marx, mentioned four times as well. Naturally, he
does not go further than Marx on the question; he takes for granted what
the latter says and does not seek to know what lies behind the alleged
refusal of politics attributed to Bakunin, nor does he insist on what
Bakunin meant by âpoliticsâ. Being an abstentionist is regarded by Marx
as an eminently blameworthy behaviour. Worse, the anarchists are accused
of believing that âthe working class must not constitute itself as a
political party; it must not, under any pretext, engage in political
action, for to combat the State is to recognise the State: and this is
contrary to eternal principlesâ[102]. (We shall see that they are also
accused of being against strikesâŠ)
But it seems to me important to point out that Bakuninâs abstentionism
does not refer to politics in general but to politics as conceived by
Marx. Therefore, before examining Bakuninâs abstentionism, one must
define what he and Marx meant by âPoliticsâ, or at least what Bakunin
thought Marx meant by âPoliticsâ. What Mr Nimtz calls âindependent
working class political actionâ is in fact the participation of the
socialist party in parliamentary action. In other words, âpoliticsâ is
strictly reduced to parliamentary politics, and no other form of
political action is envisaged.
And this is what Bakunin opposes, not âpoliticsâ in a general way. The
Russian revolutionary is most of all concerned with opposing the entry
of bourgeois politicians in the International. In other words, the real
question is not about Bakuninâs âabstentionismâ but about how he defines
âpoliticsâ â and the numerous articles he wrote give precise indications
on that point [103].
â... politics is precisely nothing but the functioning, the
manifestation, both internal and external, of the action of the State,
that is, the practice, art and science of domination and exploitation of
the masses in favour of the privileged classes. So it is not true that
we ignored politics. We do not ignore politics, since we want to kill it
positively. And this is the essential point on which we absolutely
separate ourselves from radical bourgeois politicians and socialists.
Their policy consists in the use, reform and transformation of politics
and of the State; while our policy, the only one we admit, is the total
abolition of the State and of the policy which is its necessary
manifestation.
âAnd it is only because we frankly want this abolition that we believe
we have the right to tell ourselves Internationalists and Revolutionary
Socialists [104].â
âKillingâ politics means in fact abolition of the State and replacing
âthe government of men by the administration of thingsâ â a sentence one
finds word for word in Engelâs Anti-DĂŒhring [109]. So the difference
between the two men is not in the âkillingâ of politics but how to
achieve this goal: by the conquest of political power for Marx and
Engels; by the conquest of social power for Bakunin. What I call the
âconquest of social powerâ is a concept explicitly explained by a number
of IWA activists.
âIWA Anti-Authoritarians perceived the International as a vast mass
organisation, founded on federalism and internal democracy, offering its
structure to the proletariat and poor peasantry. It needed to develop on
its own ground, independently from bourgeois organizations. It saw its
work as: 1. The destruction of state power through an insurrection of
the armed proletariat, organized through sections, trade federations and
local IWA federations; 2. The use of its own structures â trade
federations and local federations â as a matrix for a future libertarian
and federalist society. This was an agenda for what became
anarcho-syndicalism[105].â
It is generally accepted that the opposition between Marx and Bakunin
appears first of all as an opposition on strategy, but the divergences
between the two men were not limited, by far, to the IWA policy. There
was yet another one perhaps even more fundamental, which appeared some
twenty years earlier, concerning international policy and the definition
of the âcenter of reaction in Europeâ â Germany or Russia? The main,
almost obsessive preoccupation of Marx had always been German unity, for
it was the condition of the constitution of the German proletariat as a
national political party (What is good for Germany is good for everybody
else). Tsarist Russia, according to him, was the principal cause of
Germanyâs delay in uniting and was therefore the centre of reaction in
Europe. Bakuninâs point of view was more subtle. He considered that
Prussia, Austria, and Russia were closely connected with one another
because they were the three accomplices of the partition of Poland and
consequently equally reactionary. Bakunin willingly admits that Russia
had indeed been for a time the driving force of reaction in Europe, but
this function had gradually disappeared with the strengthening of
Prussian power which led to the constitution of the German Empire. Now
it was Bismarckâs Germany that had become the centre of reaction. This
topic is in some way the object of the fundamental work of Bakunin,
published in 1874: Statism and anarchy. It was after the publication of
this book that Marx and Engels radically changed their vision of the
Slavic world [106].
The two oppositions collided within the IWA after 1869 when the current
of which Bakunin was the spokesman developed. Marx and Engels only
repeated from 1869 the calumnious maneuvers they had resorted to against
Bakunin in 1848. The accusations of Pan-Slavism against Bakunin served
Marx and Engels as arguments to bring the Russian revolutionist into
disrepute with the public and to counter the political proposals he
made. In 1848-1849 the project of alliance between German and Slav
democrats on the question of German unity and Slav independence had to
be demolished at all costs. In the International, the federalist project
was still to be fought at all costs. The obsessive accusations of
Pan-Slavism against Bakunin were the means that Marx and Engels used to
try to discredit him politically.
But concerning the working class strategy, the question was whether the
working class should organize in an âinterclassistâ structure (people
from all classes can be members) on the basis of programmatic
affinities, or in a class structure in which membership is based on the
membersâ place in the production process. This opposition leads to
another one, no longer strategic but political: should the working class
seize political power by conquering the state, or should it take social
power through its class organization? Here lies the heart of the debate.
Whatever option is envisaged, there is one unavoidable fact: a social
revolution can only produce results if a large mass of the population,
and in particular a substantial quantity of the working population,
mobilizes.
In the âMarx optionâ, the party (and it will be seen that historical
experience shows that it is rather the leadership of the party) plays
the role of strategy-making, and mass organizations follow the
orientations of the party. It is the party/union social-democratic model
of division of labour, a model that applies both to parliamentary
social-democracy and to radical social-democracy (Leninism): in both
cases the mass organisation is supposed to support the party who decides
the policy. In the âBakunin optionâ, the emphasis is on the mass
organization structuring the workers from their workplace, then going
upwards according to a federative process.
But the Russian revolutionary is not a spontaneist, he knows well that
an organized political minority is necessary. Simply this minority is
not organized outside the working class with a view to the conquest of
political power, it is organized within it to forward the conquest of
social power.
The divergent strategies of Marx and Bakunin require the use of
âvectorsâ by which both projects will be implemented. For Marx, it is
clear, the State and the Parliament are the vectors, thanks to which a
socialist party having acquired the majority and having formed a
government will implement âdespotic inroads on the rights of propertyâ
(according to the formula of the Manifesto) which will progressively
(through a âtransitional periodâ) achieve the expropriation of capital
[107].
For Bakunin, the vector is the class organization, that is to say a vast
structure regrouping salaried workers and their allies (peasants and
craftsmen in the process of proletarianization). This organization
groups workers on the basis of their role in the production process, by
trade and/or industry. Thanks to this type of organization, the
proletariat, in the broad sense, occupies all the ramifications of the
economic and social body and is able to control the whole of the
production in which it is inserted.
This idea emanates from the depths of the working class, it is the
expression of the workerâs immemorial claim to control their work and
their life. Proudhon, who was viscerally close to the workers, did not
invent the idea, he merely resumed and developed it. Other workers read
Proudhon and took it on their own account. The idea was diffuse in the
International and accepted by many militants. Bakunin in turn took it up
explicitly. Many militants of the International have expressed this
idea. It will be taken up later by the French CGT and by the syndicalist
movement as a whole: it is the idea that the class organization, which
is an instrument of struggle against capital today, will tomorrow be the
organ of administration of emancipated society.
All this constitutes the doctrinal foundation of Bakuninâs thought, a
thought of which we find echoes in the Congress debates of the
International. Marx and Engels could not ignore that, yet one never
finds in their writings the slightest serious attempt to discuss or
refute these ideas: one only finds scornful taunts, even though
Bakuninâs writings are peppered with commentaries on the Marxian
program. The refusal of the debate, contrary to what Mr Nimtz thinks,
does not come from Bakunin but from Marx.
Did Marx and Engels, beyond the mockery, understand the idea prevailing
in the federalist current, which was largely a majority in the
International, according to which the class organization should replace
the state and take over the organization of society? It is unlikely that
they understood this idea, which was a common heritage of the labour
movement and a hundred miles from their conceptual universe. It is also
unlikely that they noticed that it was commonly discussed in the
International. It was more convenient for them to attribute it to one
man, Bakunin, and to turn this one man into ridicule.
We see how Marx caricatures Bakuninâs point of view in a letter to
Lafargue: âThe working class must not occupy itself with politics. They
must only organize themselves by trades-unions. One fine day, by means
of the International they will supplant the place of all existing states
[108].â If one kept to that part of the quotation one could say that
Marx understood the point of view of the federalists but that he did not
want to discuss it. But the following sentence casts a serious doubt:
Marx adds: âYou see what a caricature he has made of my doctrines!â This
remark makes it clear that Marx simply could not understand a political
and social project different from his own: any project different from
his was only a deviation from his own ideas. In fact, the federalistsâ
social project was totally outside the mental universe of Marx â and of
social-democracy generally speaking.
Marx adds in his letter to Lafargue: âThe ass has not even seen that
every class movement is necessarily and was always a political
movement.â But Bakunin perfectly agrees with that! He simply does not
limit the âpolitical movementâ to electoral activity. Bakunin continues:
âIf political and philosophical questions had not been posed in the
International it is the proletariat itself who would have posed them.
The apparent contradiction between the exclusion of political and
philosophical questions from the program of the International and the
need to discuss them is resolved by freedom. It is the existence of an
official theory which would kill, by making it absolutely useless,
living discussion, that is, the development of the own thought of the
workersâ movement[109].â
Almost two years later, Marx resumed his mockery in a letter to Theodor
Cuno: âNow as, according to Bakunin, the International was not formed
for political struggle but in order that it might at once replace the
old machinery of state when social liquidation occurs, it follows that
it must come as near as possible to the Bakuninist ideal of future
society[110].â
Whilst caricatured, the exposition of Bakuninâs point of view remains
however relatively accurate. But Bakunin is far from being the only one
to think thus: as I have said, it was in the International a widely held
opinion, of which Bakunin was not the inventor. Caesar De Paepe wrote a
short text in 1869, entitled âThe present institutions of the
International from the point of view of their futureâ. The Belgian
militant starts from the idea that the institutions which the
proletariat creates under capitalism are a prefiguration of the
institutions of the future: âWe want to show that the International
already offers the type of society to come, and that its various
institutions, with the necessary modifications, will form the future
social order.â We could propose a perfectly Marxist approach to confirm
this option. Marx says that the bourgeoisie had created, within the
feudal society, the material basis of their power, founded on private
property of means of production. The working class also develops within
the capitalist system the basis of their power, which is not founded on
property but on their organization. This is what the Marxist Anton
Pannekoek says:
âSince revolutionary class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its
organs is inseparable from the seizure of the productive apparatus by
workers and its application to production, the same organization that
unites the class for its struggle also acts as a form for the
organization of the new productive process [111].â
Paradoxically, the best definition of revolutionary syndicalism or
anarcho-syndicalism was given by a Marxist (a heterodox Marxist, it is
true).
It goes without saying that such a position would not be appropriate if
the International were regarded as a political party. For Bakunin, the
refusal of parliamentary strategy amounts to preserving the proletariat
from bourgeois politics:
âThe International, thus putting the proletariat outside the politics of
the states and the bourgeois world, constitutes a new world, the world
of the proletariat, in solidarity with all countries. This world is that
of the future [112].â
Bakunin does not blame the Marxists and the Lassalleans for occupying
themselves with politics, he blames them for occupying themselves with
what he calls âpositive politicsâ (in the sense of the Hegelian
dialectics), that is, conservative, bourgeois, politics.
â...whoever tends to the realization of a practical end can not remain
indifferent to the real conditions of the environment, with which one
must necessarily conform oneâs action, unless one sees all oneâs efforts
struck with impotence and sterility.
âThis necessity of conforming oneâs action to the actual conditions of
the environment imposes on the International a character, a tendency and
an aim which are political.
ââAh! Will say our adversaries, you, too, recognize that the
International should not separate the economic question from the
political question.â No doubt that we recognize it, and what is more, we
have never ignored it. It is improperly, and let us tell you, it is with
bad faith that you accused us of disregarding politics. What we have
always rejected and what we continue to reject energetically today is
not politics in general, it is your policy of bourgeois socialists, of
patriot socialists and of statesman socialists, the inevitable
consequence of which will place the proletariat always under the
dependency of the bourgeoisie [113].â
Here again, it is difficult to be more explicit.
Marx could be extremely critical of the German Social-Democrats, even
accusing them of being âinfected with parliamentary cretinismâ [114]. If
Bakunin condemned parliamentary strategy (but he did not condemn
universal suffrage as such [115]), because he considered that it could
not be an instrument for the emancipation of the proletariat, he did not
raise abstention at the level of a metaphysical principle
(âabstentionist cretinismâ, to paraphrase Marx?). He acknowledged a
certain utility in communal, local elections, and even circumstantially
advised his friend Gambuzzi to intervene in Parliament. If there is a
well-founded critical analysis of electoralism in Bakunin, there is no
such hysterical and visceral condemnation characteristic of many
anarchists after his death.
The notion of workerâs autonomy was strongly anchored in the Belgian and
French labour movement, much influenced by Proudhon. Proudhon had been
elected to the Constituent Assembly after the Revolution of 1848. He had
thus experienced parliamentary action and realized that universal
suffrage did nothing more than bring the bourgeoisie to power. He had
therefore endeavoured to think of other means of guaranteeing genuine
popular sovereignty. It may be said that it is he who formulated the
idea that the labour movement creates within the capitalist system the
foundations of the emancipated society.
âThe ideas of workersâ associations, workersâ autonomy vis-Ă -vis capital
and the state, of management of production by the producers themselves
(we would say self-management today), the notion of federalism in
politics, etc. have been elaborated by Proudhon, but they constituted,
in fact, a common heritage of the working classes, they were aspirations
born within the workers and often expressed in a confused but firm
manner. Proudhonian ideas are much more a draft of the hopes that have
arisen spontaneously in the heart of the working people than a rigorous
science, an intangible doctrine. The reference to Proudhon then in the
working classes is always a reference to this common heritage. Thus we
shall see all kinds of âProudhoniansâ very different from each
other[116].â
Proudhonism will therefore undergo forced mutations provoked by the
evolution of class struggle. Until 1866 the Belgian and French
Proudhonians were opposed to strikes, but after 1867 they could only
note the great value of strikes in the field of propaganda, solidarity
and workersâ unity. The Proudhonians who did not adapt were marginalized
and then eliminated after 1868, when the IWA was forced to take a
combative position. The idea of workersâ autonomy had been clarified in
Proudhonâs La CapacitĂ© politique des classes ouvriĂšres (The Political
Capacity of the Working Classes), published posthumously in 1865 (after
the foundation of the IWA, then), in which he calls the proletariat to
âseparate consciouslyâ from the bourgeoisie: âThe working class must end
its tutorship, it must act exclusively by itself and for itselfâ.
Belgian Internationals were probably the first (after Proudhon) who
formulated the idea of workersâ autonomy. Two years before the Commune
of Paris, they conceived of their organization as an integral class
organization of the proletariat, a revolutionary trade union
organization, built on the basis of dual federalism: horizontal with
local branches responsible for all general political problems, and
vertical (Unions and federations of trade or industry). For them, this
organization alone was capable of assuming all the tasks of the
proletarian revolution through its own structures: the liquidation of
the political organization of society and the direct management of the
workers. On 28 February 1869, we can read in LâInternationale, the
journal of the Belgian Federation.
âThe International workersâ Association carried in its flanks the social
regeneration. There are many who agree that if the association comes to
realize its program, it will have effectively established the reign of
justice, but who believe that certain current institutions of the
International are only temporary and destined to disappear. We want to
show that the International already offers this type of society to come
and that its various institutions with the necessary modifications will
form the future social order [117].â
So these ideas were far from being specific to Bakunin: they were
widespread and could be found in the texts of various militants of the
International: CĂ©sar de Paepe, but not only. Bakunin was only one of the
many who shared the idea according to which the IWA â that is the class
organization of the proletariat â should assume today the day to day
struggle to improve the condition of the working class, and tomorrow the
general organization of society once capitalism and state are
overthrown. It was a commonplace idea at the time and accepted within
the IWA; it cannot be attributed to Bakunin alone. Marx and Engels could
not ignore this idea, which will be found later in revolutionary
syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism[118]. Yet whenever Marx and Engels
evoke it, it is never to debate, but always to caricature and mock it.
In June 1873 James Guillaume and J.L. Pindy participated in a
social-democratic congress in Olten, Switzerland. This was probably the
only example of relatively effective âdialogueâ between federalists and
social-democrats. A few months after the exclusion of the Jura
Federation, the federalists tried nevertheless to engage in a dialogue
[119]. In his report, James Guillaume shows the total incomprehension of
the German-speaking socialists before the theses of the federalist
current. He recognizes that state-socialists had a right to defend their
choices and that they had their legitimate ideals,
âBut the vexing side of things was that in their camp, there was no
equal tolerance: there was a belief that they were in possession of the
true scientific doctrine, and dissidents were looked on with pity;
furthermore not content with pity, there was a belief that they had been
given the mission to extinguish heresy and it was their duty to implant
everywhere one wholesome eternal doctrine [120].â
One could be strongly incited to think that such a statement, written in
1873, anticipates prophetically the fate of state communism. Guillaume
appeared to be âextremely irritated by the self-satisfaction and
arrogance of those who defended âscientificâ socialism, some of them
going so far as to accuse the Jurassians of being âenemies of the
workersâ, âtraitors paid by the bourgeoisie to preach false doctrinesââ.
He realized that dialogue was impossible, because the mind-set of
Social-Democrat militants made any mutual comprehension impossible and
because the meaning of words was not the same on both sides. The
Jurassiansâ explications of federalist organization, in opposition to
centralist organization, was translated systematically into German
expressions that conveyed that âthe Jura delegates wished every
organisation to remain isolated, with no union one with anotherâ. James
Guillaume adds: âEvery attempt to get a better translation was
frustrated. Not out of ill will, but rather, they said, because it was
impossible to translate us more clearly [121].â
âHere we have a perfect illustration of the total impossibility of a
dialogue between representatives of the two currents of the labour
movement because Social-Democrats were simply incapable of understanding
basic Anti-Authoritarian concepts [122].â
I think the same unbridgeable barrier existed between Marx and Bakunin:
Marx was âstructurallyâ incapable of understanding the federalistsâ
point of view in the International based on the notion of workersâ
autonomy.
Marxists authors have an irritating habit of deforming the original
draft of the IWA and of acting as if it had been created in Marxâs image
to fulfil the purpose that Marx had assigned to it. The perfect example
of this fantasy projection can be found in Iuri Stekloff, a Bolshevik
historian, who said that the International worked according to the
principles of âdemocratic centralismâ! An interesting anachronism...
Stekloff is so much convinced the International was a party that he
wrote :
âAt that congress [The Hague] there was to be a decisive conflict
between the champions of the political struggle of the proletariat and
of democratic centralism in the organization of the International on the
one hand, and the champions of anarchism alike on the political field
and in matters of organization, on the other [123].â
Stekloff correctly perceives the debate between centralists and
federalists; however, he imagines that the International is something
like the Bolshevik party, operating on the principle of âdemocratic
centralismâ, that is to say an organization whose lower and intermediate
structures have no power of decision and are totally submitted to the
centre. Actually, the IWA was created by the joint will of English trade
unionists and French Proudhonists to organize solidarity between workers
of the two countries. Nothing more. In 1862, during the Universal
Exhibition of London, a delegation of 340 French workers went to the
British capital and built relationships with English trade unionists,
discussing the technical and economic progress over the past years. The
British workers took the opportunity to propose a rapprochement with
their French comrades. The French workers were amazed by the level of
organization of their comrades from across the Channel. In 1863, the
English trade unionists invited French workers to attend a demonstration
in favour of the independence of Poland. Mass meetings were organized.
At that time, there was then a real effervescence in the European
working class. Ongoing relationships were then established on both sides
of the Channel. Naturally, Marx had nothing to do with all this.
On 22 July 1864 a meeting brought together key union leaders in London
and six French workers. The next day, the British hosted the French in a
restricted meeting during which the foundations were laid for an
agreement. The International Workers Association was finally constituted
during a trip Tolain, Perrachon and Passementier (three Proudhonists,
incidentally) made to London in September 1864. On September 29, 1864,
at a meeting in St. Martinâs Hall, the IWA was officially constituted.
The French project to create sections in Europe connected by a central
committee, that would be called âGeneral Councilâ, was approved. Quoting
one of the signatories of the âManifeste des Soixanteâ [124], James
Guillaume wrote with some reason that the International was âa child
born in the workshops of Paris and fostered in London.â The English
Odger was appointed Chairman of the General Council.
The new organization was first mainly Anglo-French. However it
integrated Polish, German, Italian immigrants â not particularly
proletarians, by the way⊠An interim committee, which Marx, Jung,
Eccarius joined, was responsible for drafting the statutes of the
organization. In spite of the explicit or implicit point of view of many
Marxist authors, the IWA was by no means a creation of Karl Marx, who
remained totally alien to the preparatory work that took place between
1862 and 1864. And its âpremisesâ â as Mr Nimtz notes â has nothing to
do with electoral politics. James Guillaume quite rightly says : âLike
the cuckoo, he [Marx] came to lay his egg in a nest that was not his.
His purpose was, from day one, to make the great labour organization the
instrument of his personal views [125].â Naturally this is an
exaggeration due to resentment following the exclusion of which he was
the victim, orchestrated by Marx.
The International Working Menâs Association [126] basically was a union
type of International : no one disputed this fact. The conflicts within
it and the divisions were introduced by the manoeuvres of Marx and his
entourage who tried to call into question the trade union character of
the International and to transform it into an International of political
parties. But electoral politics never constituted the âpremisesâ of the
organisation.
The question was whether the âpolitical movementâ was or was not to be
subordinated âas a meansâ to âthe emancipation of the working classesâ:
in other words should the working class be organized into a political
party for the conquest of power through elections (and in this case the
IWA was to be subordinated to the social-democratic party); or should
the âpolitical movementâ be understood as the different components of
the working class coexisting in the same organization. Reduced to the
essentials, the problem was to define the International as an
organization of political parties with a unique program and obedience to
party discipline, or as a union-type organization made up of
heterogeneous and autonomous federations. There were those who believed
that the conquest of the emancipation was to be done through the ballot
box and those who promoted not political abstention as Marx and Engels
used to put it, but non-participation in elections and the joint
struggle against the state and the bourgeoisie. The first option
corresponded to most of the British and Germans â but (significantly)
neither British nor Germans had a Federation [127] â, the second
corresponded to the strategy advocated by those who were identified with
the ideas of Bakunin (and which constituted the active majority of the
IWA).
Thanks to his control of the apparatus of the IWA and with the support
of the Blanquists (whom Marx will soon later betray), Marx and his
friends had been able to impose their interpretation (which had never
been discussed in Congress) of the Inaugural address: âthe conquest of
political power has become the first duty of the working classâ, which
amounted in fact to transform the IWA into a centralized International
of political parties, and the General Council into a Central Committee.
So somehow, Stekloff was not entirely wrong when he said that the IWA
was working on the basis of âdemocratic centralismâ: he was only
expressing how Marx saw things.
The decisions taken during the confidential London conference in
September 1871 to transform the IWA into an International of political
parties were soon followed in October by strong reactions when the
information was released. Several federations of the International
denounced them: Jura, Belgium, Italy, Spain. Bakunin played no part in
these reactions. It was not a personal disputation between Marx and
Bakunin but an opposition of all the actually existing federations of
the International against Marx. Obviously, the âsecret organization
within the IWAâ Mr Nimtz mentions belonged to Marx. The expulsions of
Bakunin and James Guillaume in The Hague had been very carefully
prepared by Marxâs secret organization.
In 1873, Marx wrote a pamphlet on âPolitical indifferentismâ [128] in
which he accused the anarchists of being opposed to political parties.
He accuses them also of being opposed to strikes:
âWorkers must not go on strike; for to struggle to increase oneâs wages
or to prevent their decrease is like recognizing wages: and this is
contrary to the eternal principles of the emancipation of the working
class[129]!â
âPolitical indifferentismâ, a relatively short text, was written in 1873
and was published in 1874. At that time, illness and exhaustion had
forced Bakunin to give up all political activity. Strangely, âPolitical
indifferentismâ does not explicitly mention Bakunin. In fact, Marx is
probably targeting the Italian anarchists, for the article was written
for an Italian publication, lâAlmanacco Repubblicano per lâanno 1874.
This raises the question of relations between Bakunin and his Italian
friends. Although there were many sections of the International in Italy
(at the creation of which Bakunin had contributed in some cases), an
Italian federation had belatedly formed in 1872. The Italians
represented in a way the âleftistâ wing of the entourage of Bakunin. It
is they who, in my opinion, are at the origin of the foundation of
âanarchismâ as a political current. In analysing Bakuninâs work, one
finds that he referred to himself as a âcollectivistâ or a
ârevolutionary socialistâ; he mostly used the word âanarchyâ in its
normal (and negative) sense of âdisorderâ, âchaosâ, almost never to
designate a political current; and when he did so, one notes that he
uses linguistic precautions to explicate his thought [130]. Anyway,
whether âPolitical indifferentismâ was written for Bakunin or for the
Italian anarchists, Marx is wrong when he says they were opposed to
strikes.
What is unfortunate in this case is that the two men are much more in
agreement than is usually believed. Indeed, if we put aside electoral
strategy, Bakunin is absolutely not opposed to political action,
although his definition is not the same as that of Marx; and he is
absolutely not opposed to day-to-day union struggle which is precisely
one of the foundations of his policy. The reason why he opposes the
adoption of a compulsory program by the IWA is that he thinks that the
daily experience of industrial action contributes to make workers aware
of the gap separating them from the bourgeoisie and to make them acquire
a class consciousness [131]. The daily struggle is therefore a
determining element of the revolutionary strategy. It would be
fastidious to cite all the Bakunin texts dealing with this issue.
âWho does not know what every single strike means to the workers in
terms of suffering and sacrifices? But strikes are necessary; indeed,
they are necessary to such an extent that without them it would be
impossible to arouse the masses for a social struggle, nor would it be
possible to have them organized [âŠ]
âThere is no better means of detaching the workers from the political
influence of the bourgeoisie than a strike. [âŠ]
âYes, strikes are of an enormous value; they create, organize and form a
workerâs army, an army which is bound to break down the power of the
bourgeoisie and the State, and lay the ground for a new world [132].â
The Russian revolutionary had explained his views as soon as 1869 in a
series of articles for LâĂgalitĂ© of Geneva entitled âPolitique de
lâInternationaleâ (Politics of the International) [133]: unlike Marx,
Bakunin does not limit politics to parliamentary action, although to him
the political is a concept strictly related to the sphere of the State
[134]. This is why âthe real policy of the workers, the policy of the
International Associationâ[135], is yet to be invented. This also is
why, says Bakunin, the International has excluded all political tendency
from its program so as not to turn into a sect.
A key point of the Bakuninian strategy, affirmed in his programmatic
document entitled âPolitics of the Internationalâ, states that âthe
reduction of working hours and higher wagesâ are a priority demand of
the working class [136] â a point on which Bakunin and Marx are in total
agreement: this same claim is the very last sentence of Book III of The
Capital [137]!
Bakuninâs point of view on the electoral activity of the working class
stemmed from the careful observation he made of it in Switzerland.
Tocqueville expresses the situation perfectly. In chapter VI of De la
Démocratie en Amérique (Of Democracy in America), he evokes those
citizens âso dependent on the central powerâ who must âchoose from time
to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise
of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them
from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for
themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.â
Bakunin could have said the same thing, for his criticism of democracy
lies entirely in the continuity of Tocquevilleâs. However, he added some
elements which Tocqueville had evidently not envisaged, in particular
the illusion of democracy in a system where the population is divided
between possessors and non-possessors.
Bakunin understood two things that Marx and Engels seem to have ignored:
a) Since the working class does not represent the majority of the
population, in order to achieve power through elections it will be
forced to contract electoral alliances with more moderate parties, which
will lead the socialist party to adulterate its program.
b) Even if the working class came to power through elections and
undertook major reforms, the bourgeoisie would sweep away âdemocracyâ
and react with the utmost vigour: âThe proletariat has nothing to expect
from the bourgeoisie, not from their intelligence, not from their sense
of equity, even less from their politics; not from the bourgeois
Radicals, not from bourgeois so-called Socialists... [138].â
History has amply demonstrated the pertinence of Bakuninâs analysis
[139].
Bakunin knew since the congress of Basel, when the resolutions inspired
by Marx were clearly rejected in favour of the âfederalistâ resolutions,
that a conflict had become inevitable. But he wanted to delay this
confrontation until the last moment, both because he recognized the
positive role played by his opponent, and for tactical reasons.
âMarx is undeniably a very useful man in the International Society. Even
to this day he exercises a wise and firmest influence on his party, he
is the strongest obstacle to the invasion of bourgeois ideas and
tendencies. And I would never forgive myself if I had only tried to
efface or even weaken his beneficent influence for the simple purpose of
avenging myself of him. However, it could happen, and even within a
short time, that I would engage in a struggle with him, not for personal
offence, of course, but for a question of principle, about state
communism, of which he and the English and German parties he runs are
the warmest supporters. Then it will be a fight to the death. But there
is a time for everything and time for this struggle has not yet rung
[140].â
Bakunin honestly recognized Marxâs merits as a theorist: âMarx is a man
of great intelligence and, moreover, a scholar in the widest sense of
the word. He is a profound economist...â etc. [141]. He also recognized
the inescapable role he had played in preserving the International from
bourgeois influence: âThen Marx is passionately devoted to the cause of
the proletariat. No one has the right to doubt it; For he has been
serving for thirty years with perseverance and fidelity, which have
never been denied. He gave his whole life to this cause...â [142]. That
is why, although he knew that there would one day be an open
confrontation, he had delayed the moment as much as possible.
Although the sincerity of the homage he renders to Marx can not be
questioned, Bakunin is not a âshrinking violetâ, as Mr. Nimtz says: he
acknowledges in his letter to Herzen that he spared Marx by tactics: he
thinks that one must avoid being the first to engage in an âopen warâ.
If the premises of the confrontation appeared at the Basel Congress in
September 1869, the conflict broke out at the London conference at the
initiative of Marx in September 1871.
About this London Conference, Bakunin wrote to his friends of the
Bologna International in December 1871:
âThe General Council has just declared the war. But do not be afraid,
dear friends, the existence, power and real unity of the International,
will not suffer because its unity is not above, it is not in a uniform
theoretical dogma imposed on the mass of the proletariat [...] It is
below, in the identical material situation of suffering, needs and real
aspirations of the proletariat of all countries [143].â
It appears that Bakunin was not afraid of a confrontation because,
according to him, the true international was in the midst of militants
and federations, not in its directing apparatus: on this ground he
thought that the federalist theses he defended had nothing to fear. In
retrospect, Bakunin and his friends seem to have been naive insofar as
they thought that there would be a debate of ideas in which they would
make their point. They had not considered that Marxâs control of the IWA
apparatus would allow him to completely evacuate the debate. Their
excuse is that they lacked the historical experience; they were then in
an unprecedented situation. Today we know the power of an uncontrolled
minority who is at the head of an apparatus
During the year between the London conference and the Hague Congress,
the legitimacy of the General Council had seriously been shaken because
Marx and his followers had taken advantage of the situation to decide on
an issue which had divided the International, which should have been the
subject to debate in the organization and had not been settled by a
Congress decision: the so-called âpolitical questionâ. The challenging
of the policy that Marx wanted to impose on the International owed
nothing to the instigation of Bakunin. The federations did not need
Bakunin to be fed-up with Marx and were perfectly capable of having an
opinion for themselves. However, this challenge tended to be exclusively
reduced by the âmarxistsâ to a personal conflict between Bakunin and
Marx: indeed, when you want to avoid a political confrontation of ideas
it is very convenient to reduce things to a personal dispute.
Bakunin foresaw an attack on him and the federalist current and, in the
months preceding the London Conference, drafted a text entitled âProtest
of the Allianceâ (Protestation de lâAlliance). But as usual, he
bifurcates from the initial object of his text: he makes a staggering
analysis of the bureaucratic phenomenon based on his observation of the
Geneva committees which âby sacrificing and devoting themselvesâ, had
made commandment a âsweet habit and by a kind of natural and almost
inevitable hallucination in all those who keep the power too long in
their hands [âŠ], have finally imagined that they were indispensable
menâ.
A sort of âgovernmental aristocracyâ had gradually formed ïżœïżœïżœwithin the
very working-class sections of the construction workersâ. The increasing
authority of the committees has developed âthe indifference and
ignorance of the sections in all matters other than strikes and the
payment of duesâ. It is there, says Bakunin, âa natural consequence of
the moral and intellectual apathy of the sections, and this apathy in
turn is the equally necessary result of the automatic subordination to
which the authoritarianism of the Committees has reduced the sections
[144].â
The example of the Geneva International is interesting in the eyes of
Bakunin because it was made up of militants who were devoted and
initially devoid of personal ambitions, but who eventually forgot that
their strength lied in the masses. What happened at the level of the
section also took place at the level of the Geneva Central Committee.
The constitution of an aristocracy within the workersâ organization
paved the way for its alliance with bourgeois radicalism in the
elections.
There is a direct link between the constitution of a ruling aristocracy
and the support given to the bourgeois candidates who were supposed to
take over from the workersâ struggles. Politics as envisaged by Marx was
perfectly described by Bakunin: the alliance of a radical party with a
moderate one leads to the weakening of the former and to the alignment
of the program of the radical party with that of the moderate one.
5. â Conspiracy, Secret Communications and Expulsions
In convening the The Hague Congress, Marx and Engels intended to:
a) Introduce electoral strategy in the International and transform it
into a political party;
b) Get rid of opponents â mainly Bakunin and his friends;
c) Transfer the General Council to New York, out of reach of his
opposition.
Concerning Bakunin, this is how Mr. Nimtz presents the case:
âThe Bakunin tendency was expelled from the IWA (âŠ) not because of its
program but because a majority of delegates to the Hague congress agreed
that it had organized a secret operation within the International in
clear violation of its rules.â
Mr Nimtz is wrong. At The Hague, it was not the âBakunin tendencyâ that
was expelled but two men: Michael Bakunin and James Guillaume. There was
a third man â AdhĂ©mar SchwitzguĂ©bel â but the Congress delegates thought
they had done enough and refrained from excommunicating him. Only a
little later was a whole federation expelled â the Jura Federation. But
Mr Nimtz omits to say that shortly later, all the federations denounced
the exclusions when they realized they had been manipulated and they too
were finally all expelled. (When I say âall the federationsâ I mean the
federations that actually existed, paid their dues and showed a minimum
of interest for the International â which excludes the Germans [145].)
Like Marx, Mr. Nimtz is very anxious to present Bakunin as a conspirator
resorting to âorganizational manoeuvres to create a state within the
stateâ in order to âimpose his abstentionist perspective on the
Internationalâ. Here we have the typical situation of the crook who
accuses his victim of having swindled him, because Marx had already
created his own âState within the Stateâ. Indeed, a close reading of the
thousands of pages of the Minutes of the General Council shows that it
was controlled by a small clique of men close to Marx, Marx himself
staying usually in the background, but his correspondence leaves no
doubt. The notes and comments written by the Soviet publishers of the
Minutes of the General Council are quite significant. For example, we
read in the volume for the years 1866 and 1868: âIn the General Council,
Dupont, Lafargue and Jung â Marx and Engelâs disciples and followers
...â (p. 16). And âThe minutes of the General Council reflect the
unyielding struggle waged by Marx and his followers Dupont and JungâŠ
etc. (p. 20). Etc. Everything is done for the reader to understand that
Marx was the one who pulled the strings.
The predominance of Marx on the General Council was due to several
concurring factors: his undeniable intellectual superiority, of course â
which Bakunin was the first to acknowledge. But also his availability,
the loss of interest of the British Trade Unions in the case after the
Commune of Paris. And also he had surrounded himself with some faithful
men who supported him and with whom he constituted an organized group â
exactly what he blamed Bakunin for doing [146]. This group ensured him
the control of the General Council of which he considered he was the
owner. This is why he could write to Engels as soon as 1865: âThe
International Association takes up an enormous amount of time, as I am
in fact the head of it[147].â The situation is no different in 1872:
Engels writes to Liebknecht (15-22 May) : âyou have no idea how
hard-pressed we are, because Marx, myself and 1 or 2 others have to do
absolutely everythingâ [148]. [My emphasis]
Marx and Engels became more and more isolated. After they had been
disavowed by the (perfectly regular) international congress of
Saint-Imier in 1872, they attempted to organize in Geneva their own
secessionist congress in September 1873. Most of their remaining
supporters politely declined the invitation. Once more, as in The Hague,
Becker did the dirty work for his masters and scraped the bottom of the
barrel to find phoney delegates. The Congress was such a âfiascoâ, as
Marx said[149], that the minutes of the congress were not published, not
even a short report.
Being surrounded by men with whom he constituted a covert organized
group is not blameable in itself: but there is no point blaming Bakunin
for doing the same, in another perspective. While Marx wanted to
centralize the power in the hands of the General Council, Bakunin wanted
to decentralize it at the level of autonomous federations â but doing so
was not precisely the optimum condition for exercising a âdictatorshipâ
on the International, as Marx suspected.
Marx is as much a âconspiratorâ as Bakunin, if not more. But at least
Bakunin âconspiredâ to create things (the first sections of the IWA in
Italy, a strong federation in Spain, etc.). And Bakunin never expelled
the whole organized international working class from the IWA.
In January 1870 Marx sent to the Romande federal committee a âprivate
communicationâ in which he harshly attacked Bakunin. It was a reaction
against an imaginary conspiracy supposedly orchestrated by three papers:
LâĂgalitĂ© of Geneva, Le ProgrĂšs of Le Locle, and Le Travail of Paris.
Naturally, Bakunin was suspected of being in the shadow, pulling the
strings. This âPrivate communicationâ was voted by the General Council
on January 1st, 1870. The Jura sections had not been informed about it
and were informed of its existence only in 1872 when another
anti-Bakunin document was published, âThe Fictitious Splits in the
Internationalâ.
There was of course no âconspiracyâ against Marx, but he did have some
reason to be upset, for Paul Robin, who was close to Bakunin, had
succeeded him as editor of LâĂgalitĂ©, and had committed a series of
blunders. Robin had published anonymous letters which accused the
General Council of having omitted to publish a regular information
bulletin, of not having taken position on the conflict between
Liebknecht and Schweitzer, etc. Bakunin, who was not even in Geneva at
that time, had blamed Paul Robin for having made âan unjust protestation
and at the same time impolitic and absurdâ[150]. Naturally, Bakunin was
accused of being responsible.
Marx was very good at shooting a bullet through his foot. He sent the
anti-Bakunin âCommunicationâ to Belgium, where there was a real
federation, very active, and in Germany, where there was none. The
âCommunicationâ had no success in Belgium, and practically no impact in
Germany. He made a try with France where his son-in-law Lafargue lived
[151]. Marx used the same arguments as in the previous âCommunicationsâ
and asked Lafargue to keep an eye on Paul Robin, who was then living in
Paris. Soon after, Lafargue answered that he had asked several people
their opinion of Bakunin (âwithout telling them mineâ, he added): âI saw
that all favoured him. An open attack on him is impossible, and here is
why: for all those who know him, he represents radical ideas, while his
Swiss opponents are reactionariesâ â which was precisely the case [152].
The âCommunicationâ Marx had sent to France had absolutely no effect on
Bakuninâs reputation and the one he had sent to Belgium had resulted in
vigorous protests. So Marx stopped sending âprivate communicationsâ
throughout Europe.
But since he was the correspondent of the General Council for Germany,
he sent a âConfidential Communicationâ (March 28, 1870) to Dr. Kugelmann
for it to be publicized amongst the leaders of the German socialist
party[153]. This text is one of the many pieces to be assigned to the
campaign of slander against Bakunin orchestrated by Marx to discredit
him politically: accusations of being an agent of the tsar, a crook, a
swindler, etc.
Let us remind that on the eve of the Basel Congress (September 1869),
Liebknecht, who had accused Bakunin of being a Russian agent, was
brought before a court of honour and had admitted that he âhad acted
with guilty lightnessâ. This did not prevent Marx from taking the charge
once more in his âConfidential Communicationâ, in which we also learn
that Bakunin had fanatical supporters, wanted to establish his
dictatorship on the International, to capture the legacy of Herzen, etc.
Any reader with a minimum of common sense perceives immediately paranoia
behind this speech.
The âstatusâ of this Communication is curious because although
âconfidentialâ and emanating from the sole will of its author â Marx â
it was written on three sheets of paper bearing the letterhead of IWA
and therefore seemed apparently official. Bakunin was never able to
defend himself against the charges contained in this Circular because he
never knew anything about it! The secrecy of this document was so well
kept that James Guillaume could not read it until it was released July
12, 1902 in the Neue Zeit, the journal of the Social Democratic party.
So who is the conspirator ?
It was the second time Marx had used his position in the General Council
to attack Bakunin: he had previously âdenouncedâ the Russian
revolutionary to the Belgian Federal council. Marx writes in this
âConfidential Communicationâ that he had known Bakunin since 1843, that
he had met him again âshortly after the foundation of the Internationalâ
and that he had âtaken him into the Associationâ, which is not true.
Marx and Bakunin had actually met in 1864, but the only commitment that
Bakunin, who was about to leave for Italy, took vis-Ă -vis Marx was to
fight the influence of Mazzini in that country, âto lay some
counter-mines for Mr Mazzini in Florenceâ[154]. Bakunin was behind the
creation of several sections of the International in Italy while he was
not yet a member, a fact Marx was perfectly aware of, since he wrote on
4 September 1867 to Engels a letter praising the Italian paper LibertĂ e
Giustizia, saying: âI assume that Bakunin is involvedâ [155].
Bakunin joined the International in June 1868.
Fritz Brupbacherâs opinion is probably the most pertinent concerning
this affair: he writes in Marx und Bakunin :
âthere will be nobody on the entire surface of the earth, outside of a
handful of fanatics who deny that this communication appears as printing
on Marxâs character an indelible stain.â
Franz Mehring attempts to cut corners exonerating Marx, but he
nevertheless notes that âit is hardly necessary to enumerate the many
errors the communication contains. Generally speaking, the more
incriminating the accusations against Bakunin appear to be, the more
baseless they are in reality[156].â No wonder why Mr Nimtz doesnât like
Mehring...
The question of Bakuninâs âsecret societiesâ is complex because it is
linked to the context of the struggle against the despotic regimes
reconstituted in Europe after the Vienna Congress at the fall of
Napoleon, in 1815. During the revolution of 1848-1849 in Central Europe
Bakunin had resorted to clandestine organisations, which was inevitable
in such a revolutionary period. It took the immeasurable naivety of Marx
to dissolve the first Communist party in history â the Communist League
â in 1848 because, in his mind, freedom of press and of speech had been
established, and since the League was an organisation for propaganda and
not for conspiracy, it was no longer useful. Fernando Claudin quotes the
report of a meeting held in June 1848 in Cologne:
âMarx proposed the dissolution of the League. As there was no agreement
on this issue and Schapper and Moll required that the League be kept at
all costs, Marx made use of the full powers granted to him and dissolved
the League. Marx considered that the existence of the League was no
longer necessary because it was a propaganda organisation and not an
organisation to conspire, and that under the new conditions of freedom
of press and of propaganda, the latter could be done openly without
going through a secret organisation [157].â
Of course, Marx canât be blamed for having had no idea, in 1848, of what
a socialist party could be. But at the same time and under identical
circumstances, Bakunin â who was not yet an anarchist, by far â proposed
at least one form of organisation capable of supporting the
revolutionaries in their activity.
The famous âAllianceâ which obsessed Marx and Engels and had become
their pet peeve, will be one of the pretexts called by Marx to justify
the expulsion of Bakunin and James Guillaume from the International.
Guillaume always said that he had refused to be a member of the
Alliance, which did exist, but not under the fantasized shape that Marx
and Engels imagined. The main element of the prosecution case is a
document â in fact a pamphlet â written by Engels, Lafargue and Marx,
âThe Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Workersâ
Associationâ, in which the Russian revolutionary and the Alliance are
accused of wanting to destroy the International, no less [158]. This
text did nothing but repeat and develop the thesis of another document,
a âConfidential Communicationâ of the General Council titled âThe
Fictitious Splits in the Internationalâ.
The International Alliance for Socialist Democracy was originally
conceived as an international organisation, but to comply with the
statutes of the IWA it was transformed into a local section. Bakunin and
a group of 84 followers had constituted the âAllianceâ on 28 October
1868; they had applied for membership as a Geneva section of the IWA.
The General Council refused because an âinternationalâ organisation
could not join as such to another international [159]. Bakunin
acknowledged that âthe protests of the General Council against the Rules
of the Alliance were perfectly correctâ [160]. He pointed out that the
objections of the General Council applied to the settlement of the
Alliance, not to its program. The Alliance therefore decided to bring
its statutes into line with those of the International. One of the most
fierce opponents of this compliance was J.P. Becker, who shortly after
became one of the most fierce opponents of Bakunin.
The Alliance was then recognized by the General Council as a regular
Genevan section of the International:
â...on 22 December 1868 the General Council annulled these rules [of the
Alliance] as being contrary to the Rules of our Association and declared
that the sections of the Alliance could only be admitted separately and
that the Alliance must either be disbanded or cease to belong to the
International. On 9 March 1869, the General Council informed the
Alliance that âthere exists, therefore, no obstacle to the
transformation of the sections of the Alliance into sections of the Int.
W. Ass.â [161]â
The confusion was deliberately maintained between this Genevan Alliance
which was a perfectly regular section of the International, and the
existence of an âAlianzaâ that had been founded in Spain and which,
apart from the name, had nothing to do with the Bakuninian Alliance.
Marx and Engels perfectly knew that. Making propaganda for oneâs ideas
requires a minimum of organisation. Bakuninâs balance sheet on this
point is rather positive. Even though he was not yet a member of the
IWA, he played a key role in the Italian labour movement, largely
contributing to detach it from the influence of Mazzini: he contributed
to the creation of sections of the International in the Peninsula [162].
Members of the Alliance founded the first sections of the International
in Italy and Spain: Gambuzzi in Naples, Friscia in Sicily, Fanelli in
Madrid and Barcelona.
The Alliance had been instrumental to detach the most exploited workers
of Geneva from the influence of the gentrified citizen-workers, those
precisely whom Marx supported, and who made electoral alliances with the
local bourgeoisie. Lafargue was perfectly right when he wrote to his
father-in-law: âfor all those who know him, he represents radical ideas,
while his Swiss opponents are reactionariesâ.
Arman Ross, on this point, provides interesting insights. Speaking of
the militants who were close to Bakunin, he wrote in 1926 that there was
âa group of people who saw things the same way and who worked for the
same cause. Sometimes we called our group âAllianceâ while Bakunin
sometimes called it âthe sanctuaryâ (...) I repeat once again that
during my six or seven years of intimate relations with Bakunin,
Guillaume, etc., there was never anything between us that could give the
impression of a conspiracy or a secret society [163].â
But it is James Guillaume who probably gives the best description of
what the Alliance was:
âWhat especially struck me in the explanations he [Bakunin] gave me was
that it wasnât the old classical secret society sort of association in
which one must obey orders from above; the organisation was only a free
rapprochement of men united for collective action, without formalities,
without solemnity, no mysterious rites, simply because they trusted each
other, and for whom agreement seemed preferable to isolated action
[164].â
What Arman Ross and James Guillaume describe looks surprisingly like the
group formed by Marx himself and his friends. In other words, Bakunin
did nothing else than what Marx himself did. The Alliance was to Bakunin
nothing but an instrument whose activity he followed quite casually.
Having left Geneva at the end of 1869, he wrote to Becker (who was later
to become an ardent opponent of the Russian revolutionary) on December
4, 1869:
âMy dear old man, it is absolutely necessary to support the section of
the Alliance of Geneva â- if only as an imaginary centre of propaganda
and action for Italy, Spain and for southern France as well as for the
French-speaking Switzerland. You know better than I that certain
imaginary existences are very useful â and that they should not be
disdained at all. You know that in the whole of history there is only a
quarter of reality, at least three quarters of imagination, and that it
is not its imaginative part which has acted at all times least
powerfully upon men [165].â
Research shows that Bakunin attached little importance to these âsecret
societiesâ [166], whose role was pinpointed by his Marxist opponents and
by some more romantic than objective authors. Some historians find only
what they want to look for. Moreover, many authors deal with Bakuninâs
âsecret societiesâ without distinguishing between those he created or
simply imagined before he became an anarchist, and those of his
âanarchistâ period, after in 1868. Bakunin intended to diffuse his ideas
through his many personal relationships rather than through any esoteric
societies. One text concerning these questions was published in English
in 1974, by someone who probably was the greatest specialist of Bakunin:
Arthur Lehning.
Moreover, when the Alliance militants later decided to dissolve the
Geneva section, which was public and not secret, and had become little
active for lack of militants, they did not even inform Bakunin, who was
absent â which says a lot about the âdictatorshipâ he exercised on it.
But there is no doubt that Bakuninâs militant life was closely
associated with the existence of clandestine organisations. The first
reason is simply the repression suffered by opposition groups all over
the European continent. A problem Marx was not confronted with in
London.
About the pamphlet written by Engels, Lafargue and Marx, âThe Alliance
of Socialist Democracy and the International Workersâ Associationâ,
Franz Mehring writes in his biography of Karl Marx: âAny critical
examination of the Alliance pamphlet, as it came to be called for the
sake of brevity, with a view to determining the correctness or otherwise
of its detailed charges would demand at least as much space as the
original document. However, very little is lost by the fact that this is
impossible for reasons of space [167].â (Quite an understatementâŠ)
Mehring adds that this pamphlet is below anything else Marx and Engels
ever published: âThe Alliance pamphlet is not a historical document, but
a one-sided indictment whose tendentious character is apparent on every
page of it.â
Mehring could have added that the defamation of their opponents in the
âFictitious Splitsâ had borne no fruits, âbut had instead caused waves
of protest and a never-ending discussion about the General Councilâs
right to existâ [168].
Besides, this document âdoes not deal at all with the internal causes
responsible for the decline on the Internationalâ, âthe Alliance
pamphlet does not even offer proof of the very existence of such an
Alliance. Even the committee of inquiry set up by The Hague congress had
to content itself with possibilities and probabilities in this
connection [169].â
âCuno, who gave the report on behalf of the committee, did not put
forward any material evidence, but declared instead that the majority of
the committee had reached the moral certainty that their conclusions
were correct, and asked for a vote of confidence from the congress
[170].â
In other words the committee brings no proof of its accusations but is
in favour of the expulsion. Franz Mehring adds: âThis concluding scene
of The Hague congress was certainly unworthy of it. Naturally, the
congress could not know that the decisions of the majority of the
committee were invalid because one member was a police spyâ [171]âŠ
(besides the fact which Mehring does not mention that one member of the
committee had declared Bakunin not guilty.)
âThe protocol commission of the Hague congress, consisting of Dupont,
Engels, Frankel, Le Moussu, Marx and Seraillier, therefore took over the
task and a few weeks before the Geneva congress it issued a memorandum
entitled: âThe Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International
Workingmenâs Associationâ. This memorandum was drawn up by Engels and
Lafargue whilst Marxâs share in the work was no more than the editing of
one or two of the concluding pages, though naturally he is no less
responsible for the whole than its actual authors [172].â
In fact, Marx was terrified at the idea that Bakunin should do what he
himself had achieved: take the control of the General Council, if not of
the International. But he didnât understand that the federalist project
of ensuring the autonomy of the federations did not fit at all with his
phantasm of a Bakunin striving to take the control of the General
Council, simply because the federalist tendency of the International was
in favour of the autonomy of the federations, which were to decide by
themselves the strategy of emancipation and not wait for Marx or anybody
else to explain what to do [173]. The accusation of Bakunin striving to
take control of the General Council is inconsistent with the fact that
Bakunin was opposed to defining a unique and compulsory program for the
IWA: he founded his strategy on the fact that the federations were all
placed in extremely different contexts, which meant that no unique
program or unique strategy could be possible. This is why John Hales, in
the name of the British Committee, wrote to the Jura Federation that
they were in favour of parliamentary strategy but were not in favour of
imposing such politics on all federations [174].
Concerning the Alliance, this is what I wrote in Social-Democracy and
Anarchism:
âMarx and Engels developed a truly paranoid obsession with the
Bakuninist âAllianceâ; they saw the worst in it and thought it was
behind every initiative that, from their own perspective, erred from the
proper course. The phantom of the Alliance â with Bakunin standing
behind it â haunted Marx and Engels. Franz Mehring, a perfectly orthodox
Marxist militant and historian, would write in his biography of Marx
that there was nothing that could substantiate Marx and Engelsâ
accusations against Bakunin â however, they were not entirely wrong.
[175]â
Indeed, let us imagine a group of militants who share the same views on
the forms of society to build, on the strategy to be implemented and on
the necessary forms of organisation: it would be extremely naive to
think that these persons did not constitute any form of organisation
aiming specifically at achieving this goal. No one seems to have pointed
out that this is precisely what Marx had done: he had gathered around
him men who shared his views and implemented the means deemed necessary
to achieve them. This group played a leading part at the head of the IWA
â although few of them had been elected. And no one, beginning with Mr
Nimtz, blames them for it. But they blame Bakunin [176].
These same men who were organized as a fraction within the General
Council and who used the most reprehensible and most bureaucratic means
to maintain their power, blamed Bakunin and his friends because they
advocated a decentralized organisation which would have deprived them of
the power they held without being elected and without control.
Marxâs successors today, beginning with Mr Nimtz, repeat without any
critical mind a distorted story told by Marx only, with the same
arguments, often with the same words.
After Fanelli, a member of the âAllianceâ, had been to Spain, the
International had known an important development, but naturally the
Spanish workers were not on the centralist side. Marx and Engels sent
Lafargue to Spain in January 1872 in order to do a fractionist work and
undermine the activities of the Spanish International, but he failed
miserably. He also did so well that the activists who initially followed
him eventually joined the Bakunists. Lafargue caused a terrible mess,
but was finally expelled from the Madrid federation on June 9, 1872
[177].
However, Lafargue had clearly explained that the âAlianzaâ was a
strictly Spanish affair in which Bakunin had nothing to do [178]. But as
the âprosecution caseâ against Bakunin and his friends at the Hague
Congress had been mounted on the basis of a ubiquitous and overactive
âAllianceâ, this was left behind. The Spanish âAlianzaâ was on the other
hand very active and dynamic and if its name was probably not due to
chance, it was in no way adherent to any conspiratorial International
seeking to exercise its âdictatorshipâ on the IWA. But at the Hague
Congress, the Alliance and the âAlianzaâ were considered as one
organisation.
Lafargue did not give up his sabotage work.
He created a rival federation with eight other men (compared to the 331
sections and 30 or 40.000 members of the Spanish federation in 1873
[179]) and called it âNew Madrid Federationâ which intended to be
integrated in the Spanish regional Federation (the Spanish
internationalists considered Spain a âregionâ of the International). Of
course, the Spanish Federal Council refused, but the General Council in
London bureaucratically pronounced the admission of this 9-men
federation to the International. So it was as a member of this bogus
federation that Lafargue was appointed delegate to The Hague Congress
where he could vote the exclusion of Bakunin and James Guillaume !!! (Is
this Mr Nimtzâs âdemocracyâ ?) The General Council had implemented
incredible manipulations to prevent the Spanish federation (the real
one) to send delegates to The Hague, knowing that they would not be
docile.
In the same way that Marxâs reports had inflated the results of the
International in Germany because he needed to substantiate his position
in the General Council, âEngels and Lafargue exaggerated their
achievements in Spainâ, writes W.O. Henderson, author of a biography of
Engels[180]. In spite of the repression and the ban on their activities,
the Spanish branches of the International had held their third
conference in Saragossa in April 1872. About this conference,
âLafargue claimed that the Marxists had vanquished Bakuninâs followers.
Engels also asserted that at Saragossa âour people won a victory over
the Bakunistsâ. The very opposite was true. Although the conference had
rejected some Bakunist resolutions it had elected a new Spanish Federal
Council which was dominated by Bakuninâs followers. (âŠ) Engels admitted
at this time that in Catalonia â Spainâs only industrial province â the
Bakunists controlled the International and its journal, La FederaciĂłn.â
[âŠ]
âLafargueâs mission had failed, writes Henderson, because when he left
Spain at the end of July 1872 the International was split into hostile
factions and only a small minority of the branches supported the General
Council in London. The politically conscious workers had found the
doctrines of Bakunin and Proudhon more palatable than those of Marx.
Engels could not derive much satisfaction from the contemplation of his
work as corresponding secretary for Spain [181].â
Henderson is right except on one point: the Spanish workers had not so
much found Bakuninâs ideas more âpalatableâ as they had found Lafargueâs
behaviour ethically unacceptable. Most of the Spanish workers who had
first joined Lafargue had got disgusted with his methods and gone back
to their original (Bakunist) federation.
At the Hague Congress, the Committee which had been set up to prosecute
the case of the Alliance amalgamated the two structures (Alliance and
Alianza) in such a way that one does not know what all this was about:
the existence of this âAllianceâ could not be proved (although the
âAllianceâ of Geneva had been a public organisation adhering to the
IWA), but Bakunin was suspected of having âtried and perhaps succeededâ
to form a Spanish secret society called Alliance. But for Engels, this
secret society was the same as the Spanish Alianza.
In conclusion of the report of the Committee of The Hague congress,
the program of the Alliance was considered as incompatible with that of
the International â but it was not very clear what program was
concerned: the one which had originally existed but which Bakunin had
amended because he recognized it could not be accepted by the General
Council? The one that the biased Committee which had been appointed for
the prosecution acknowledged it could not prove the existence? The
program of the Alliance as a regular section of Geneva whose validity
had been recognized by the General Council? The one of the Spanish
Alianza?
âIf, finally, one asks what really did exist in terms of organisation,
the answer must be: very little indeed. The Alliance âhad no list of
members, no agreed rules or program (since Bakuninâs numerous drafts
were all made on his own responsibility), no officers, no subscriptions,
and no regular meetings. A political association having none of these
attributes was a myth [182].â
To conclude on the fantasy projection concerning Bakuninâs secret
intentions, or on the charge Mr Nimtz carries against Bakunin, let us
say a few words about the famous âConfidential communicationâ (January
1870) which is a model of conspiracy and covert activity â but on Marxâs
side.
The conspiracy orchestrated by Marx and his faction at The Hague
Congress could not remain undetected indefinitely. When the different
Federations of the IWA realized the manipulation of which they had been
victims at The Hague, they rejected the decisions of this rigged
Congress:
September 1872 :
The Jura federation
October 1872 :
The delegates of the French sections
December 1872 :
The Italian federation
The Belgian federation
January-February 1873 :
The Spanish federation
The Dutch federation
The English federation
Of course, all these federations were not âBakunistâ, and the denial of
the practices of Marx and his friends was not a rallying sign to the
âanarchisticâ point of view. This denial expressed however in a clear
way to what point all the federations of the IWA were fed up with Marx,
Engels and their clique. It also expressed that the international unity
of the labour movement could not depend on the imposition of a unique
program and strategy: it was possible only on the basis of practical
solidarity, as proposed by Bakunin. The âpowerful centralization of all
the powers in the hands of the General Councilâ, which Marx demanded in
September 1872 [183], led to the de facto dissolution of the IWA.
Strangely, this analysis was shared by a German Social-Democratic
leader, Wilhelm Liebknecht. R. Morgan mentions a letter written to Marx
in 1875, in which Liebknecht analyses the causes of the failure of the
International: the âfiascoâ of the International, âas Liebknecht bluntly
put it in a letter to Engels, was that the problems of the labour
movement in the different countries of Europe varied so much that any
form of centralized international direction was impossibleâ[184]. This
is exactly what Bakunin had been repeating for years.
Marxâs claim to achieve a âpowerful centralizationâ made no sense at a
time when the communications â men and mail â were slow, when the
techniques to reproduce documents were archaic. Besides, the different
federations of the International, all placed in extremely different
conditions, had to face problems that were too complex to be resolved by
the General Council. The facts themselves showed the need for
decentralization.
After The Hague, the Jura Federation convened a congress (15 September
1872) which voted a resolution denouncing the exclusion of Bakunin and
James Guillaume. Later the same day an extraordinary international
congress had been convened which in turn rejected both the resolutions
taken in The Hague and the legitimacy of the General Council. The
Saint-Imier congress developed what appeared as an anti-sectarian
attitude. It rejected the imposition over the proletariat of a âuniform
line of conduct, or political programme, as a unique path that might
lead to its social liberationâ. That would be, it said, âa pretension as
absurd as it was reactionaryâ. âThe principle of diverse paths to
socialism was thereby recognised. Federations and sections were seen to
be asserting their incontestable right to determine for themselves their
own political path and to follow the path that they thought best[185].â
As for Marx, he had no such open-mindedness; he saw things from the
viewpoint of a manipulative politician. When he realized that his
control over the International was eluding him, he made sure that the
General Council was transferred to New York where there was a small
colony of Germans who were devoted to him. The new general Council
decided to suspend the Jura Federation, which made Marx very angry:
âIn my opinion the General Council in New York has made a great mistake
by suspending the Jura Federation. (...) The great achievement of the
Hague Congress was to induce the rotten elements to exclude themselves,
i.e. to leave. The procedure of the General Council now threatens to
invalidate that achievement [186].â
The New York General Council then voted for a resolution declaring that
all local and regional federations that had rejected the decisions of
the congress of The Hague âhad placed themselves outside the IWA and no
longer formed a part of itâ. Engels made a list of those he wanted Sorge
to declare as having âdepartedâ from the International[187].
The international congress convened in Saint-Imier by the opponents to
the decisions of the Hague Congress confirmed the position adopted by
the Jura Congress and decided that the IWA would continue to operate but
with amended statutes. Marxist and mainstream literature present this
congress as a split, which it was not. The International Working Manâs
Association (or: âInternational Workersâ Associationâ, to be politically
correct) simply decided in a perfectly regular Congress to change the
rules by which it worked.
In conclusion, after having expelled the Jura Federation, the General
Council eventually expelled all the federations which refused to ratify
the decisions taken in The Hague. In other words, Marx and Engels and a
small handful of accomplices expelled from the First International the
whole international working class that was organized within it!!!
There is an astonishing paradox in the history of the turbulent
relations between Anarchists and Marxists â I prefer to speak of
federalists and centralists. The federalists constantly attempted, in
the interest of workers, to alleviate the divergences which opposed them
to the parliamentary socialists. They took several initiatives in this
direction. I will not go into all of them but just mention some of them.
âUnited as we are on the ground of fundamental principles, is it not
regrettable that we have not thought of agreeing to common action? What
has not been done can still be done. ... It would be up to the Romande
Federal Committee to take the initiative of a meeting of delegates from
all over Switzerland, which would undoubtedly bring about happy
results[188].â
There was no follow-up to this call, but the Federalist militants did
not give up:
âFive months ago, Le ProgrĂšs proposed a meeting of delegates from
French-speaking Switzerland and German-speaking Switzerland, with the
aim of achieving a rapprochement and a closer union. This proposal did
not follow. We believe that the time has come to seriously consider a
meeting of this kind, which could only have happy results, since on both
sides we are disposed to a common action [189].â
Mr Nimtz probably does not know that the âanarchistsâ, that is the Jura
Federation, had sent their âfraternal greetings to the congress of
German socialists meeting in Gothaâ [190]. The Gotha congress report
acknowledged this message, expressing âregrets for past divisions that
had reigned between workers of various countries; satisfaction felt for
the happy success of the union of German workers, and the need to forget
past discord and to bring together all forces to accomplish common
goalsâ.
At Bakuninâs funeral, on July 3, 1876, a resolution had been passed in
which the âpartisans of the workersâ stateâ and the âpartisans of the
free federation of producer groupsâ expressed their wish that âirksome
and vain past dissensions should be forgottenâ [191]. I must say that
these favourable dispositions probably emanated more from the Lassallean
sensibility of the Congress than from the strictly much more sectarian
Social-Democratic sensibility.
In the Bulletin of the Jura Federation of September 3, 1876, we can
read:
âThe much-desired rapprochement between the socialists of the various
shades, and especially between those of the said anarchist fraction and
those whose ideal is the popular state (Volksstaat), seems to be on the
right track. We salute with great joy this important fact, which will
have the effect of greatly increasing the strength of the revolutionary
party, dissipating many misunderstandings, and supplying to men who
judged each other only on hearsay, the opportunity to learn to know and
to esteem one another.â
The Jurassian Bulletin adds: â...we have always sought for union and
peace, and (...) the conciliation that is being accomplished today is
only the realization of the wish that we have not ceased to emit for
eight years.â
Of course, all these attempts, somewhat naive of course, but whose
sincerity can not be denied, were mocked by the Social-democratic
leaders. All the German-speaking newspapers, and in particular the
Volksstaat and the Tagwacht, had engaged in a most lively polemic
against the Jurassians, which did not prevent the Solidarité of 25 June
1870 from encouraging Jura sections to subscribe to the socialist
newspapers without distinction, and among the German newspapers they
recommended the Volksstaat, âthe most commendable of the German
socialist newspapersâ.
The naive but sincere attempts of the Jurassians (the âanarchistsâ) to
reconcile the two currents of the workersâ movement obviously did not
have the approval of the socialist leaders. The Tagwacht, to which, as
James Guillaume says, âwe had so often stretched out the hand of
conciliationâ published an article reprinting among other things, the
accusation of Bakunin being a âRussian agentâ. It was obviously a
provocation destined to make matters worse.
On October 17, 1876, the Tagwacht of Zurich published a letter, signed
by a âCentral Committee of the Group of German-speaking International
Sectionsâ, which was a violent attack on the anti-authoritarian
International. It read among other niceties:
âIn all the mumbling of conciliation and unity, designed to betray
sentimentality and mislead hearts, we see simply, and once again, the
Bakuninists at work [197] , as always seeking in all places, consciously
and unconsciously, to provoke discord and disorganization, instead of
unity and organization, bringing to the labour movement contention and
division instead of peace and conciliation [192].â
In other words, the federalists sow discord by proposing a
reconciliation.
This letter was obviously aimed at showing that there was no possible
understanding between the two currents of the labour movement, âbetween
the representatives of scientific socialismâ, as the authors of the
letter modestly call themselves, and the âcracked brains of the
Bakuninist Internationalâ[193]. Knowing that Becker was one of the
signatories of this letter, there is every reason to believe that it was
Marx who sent him to sabotage the attempts to reunify the workersâ
movement. Some time later Becker published a letter which expressed in a
significant way the opinion of his masters: âHow could we, having such
profound differences of opinion, allow ourselves to be made into the
laughing stock of the world, through an attempt to reconcile fire and
water (âŠ) In consequence an end needs to be made as soon as possible of
any sentimental desire for reconciliation [194].â
It is amazing to see how the Marxist discourse on anarchism and Bakunin
is stereotyped and frozen. It has not changed since Marx himself, who
sets the tone and provides the rationale. The disciples follow the
master without taking any distance, without adding much either, often
repeating word to word what Marx said. What Marx says is taken for
granted. It is surprising to see how those who most claim âscientific
socialismâ practice it so little when it comes to themselves.
Yet on the Marxist side there are people capable of a non-ideological
approach. Franz Mehring is one of those rare authors who, without ever
straying from Marxist orthodoxy, are able to put the events and debates
in context.
Hereâs what I say in Social-Democracy & Anarchism:
âThe creation of the IWA was a turning point for Anarchism and Marxism.
It may be useful to momentarily step back to adjust perspective and to
put âtheoreticiansâ in their proper place. The Marxist Franz Mehring is
one of the rare few who saw the situation accurately. Writing on the
Bakuninist opposition, he says: it was apparent that the reason why it
used Bakuninâs name was that it believed that in his ideas it found
solutions to those social conflicts and antagonisms, which had brought
about its very existence.
âStrictly speaking the same might be said of Marx. So in these matters
Mehring does not take an ideological approach. His analysis is made in
terms of class and of the contending social forces. Moreover, it is
precisely here that the key to unravelling the conflict in the IWA is to
be found. Bakunin and Marx invented nothing, they witnessed events and
theorised about them [195].â
Despite innumerable slurs spread by Marx and his entourage, Bakunin
never questioned his merits. When the Russian revolutionary was in
Italy, Marx sent him Book I of The Capital which had just been
published. Later Bakunin made this comment:
âThis work should have been translated into French long ago, for none,
as far as I know, contains such a profound, luminous, scientific, and
decisive analysis, and, if I may so express it, such a mercilessly
unmasking analysis of the formation of bourgeois capital and of the
systematic and cruel exploitation that this capital continues to exert
over the work of the proletariat. The unique defect of this work,
perfectly positivist, with all due respect to La LibertĂ© of Brussels, â
positivist in the sense that, based on a thorough study of economic
facts, it admits of no other logic than the logic of facts â its only
defect, I say, is to have been written, partly, but in part only, in a
style that is too metaphysical and abstract, which has probably misled
La Liberté of Brussels and which makes it difficult to read and almost
out of reach for the majority of the workers. And it is the workers
above all who should read it, nevertheless. The bourgeois will never
read it, or, if they read it, they will not understand it, and if they
understand it, they will never speak of it because this work is nothing
but a death sentence scientifically motivated and irrevocably
pronounced, not against them as individuals but against their class
[196].â
This is for Marxâs merits as a theorist. Here for his merits as a
political activist, which we can read in Protestation de lâAlliance
(July 1871), where he gives his opinion on the role of Marx in the
International:
âWe seize this opportunity to render homage to the illustrious chiefs of
the German communist party, to citizens Marx and EngelsâŠ, and also
citizen J. Philipp Becker, our one-time friend, and now our implacable
enemy. They were â as far as it is possible for any individual to create
something â the veritable creators of the International Association. We
do this with as much pleasure as we will soon be compelled to combat
them. Our esteem for them is sincere and profound, but does not go so
far as idolatry and will never draw us to enslave ourselves to them.
And, whilst continuing to recognise â in full justice â the immense
services that they have given, and continue to give even today to the
IWA, we will never cease to fight their false authoritarian theories,
their dictatorial leanings, and that manner of subterranean intrigues,
vain grudges, miserable personal animosities, dirty insults and infamous
slurs, which moreover characterise political struggles of almost all
Germans, and which they have sadly brought with them into the IWA.â
Such ideas, however surprising they may seem, were sincere; Bakunin
reiterates them many times. He was of course in error in attributing to
Marx the âcreationâ of the IWA, but he often repeated that the latter
had preserved the International from bourgeois influence.
Neither Anarchists nor Marxists appeared to be aware that from a
theoretical point of view Bakunin and Marx were in fact very close,
although they deeply diverged on political questions and strategy. So if
after all Anarchism and Marxism developed separately â on the level of
doctrine and theory â this development emanated out of identical
preoccupations but with the formulation of different conclusions. If a
certain number of Anarchists refuse to consider that the birth of
Anarchism and Marxism came out of identical conditions, this refusal
both impedes a grasp of points on which they come close and equally
impedes a true perspective and understanding of differences.
Anyway, I am always surprised to see how a debate between an anarchist
and a communist, discussing the same historical event, gives the
impression that the two persons are speaking about two completely
different things and live in two completely different worlds. And I
sometimes wonder if the gap will ever be filled.
Both the gap and the misunderstanding started with Bakunin and Marx,
because the two men were not speaking about the same thing : the former
had in mind an international organisation of trade-union-like structures
; the latter had in mind an international of social-democratic parties.
I think if you donât have this in mind, you completely miss the point
[197].
The problem of the International was not a matter of opposition between
Marx and Bakunin, nor between âMarxismâ (which did not exist) and
âanarchismâ (which did not exist either). It was a matter of opposition
between two models of society of which neither Marx nor Bakunin were the
inventors, but which they conveyed somewhat in spite of themselves and
of which they were the spokesmen. If we were to pose the problem in
terms of âhistorical materialismâ, we should ask ourselves what were the
material elements that led to the formation of these two
social/political projects, these two different strategies and what were
the social forces supporting them.
In 1965 was published a booklet with selected texts by Bakunin. The
author of the preface, François Munoz, proposed a materialist approach
of the opposition between Bakunin and Marx, that is to say, based on the
actual conditions of life of the workers of the time. No need to say how
backward Mr Nimtz is in his reflection on the question.
âWith Bakunin: the workers of the Catalan industry and the miners of
Borinage, who could hope for no peaceful reform since even their simple
strikes were drowned by the wealthy in bloodshed. With Bakunin: the
downgraded youth of Italy, whose future was blocked. With Bakunin: the
desperate peasants of Andalusia, hungry prey of large landowners, and
who formed strong sections of the International. With Bakunin in Geneva,
the foreign workers, who did the hardest jobs and who were poorly paid,
despised, and without political rights.
âWith Marx: the English trade unionists, so satisfied with the movement
for electoral reform that it soon became for them an end in itself:
tomorrow the workers will vote, and then everything will necessarily be
pink, wonât it? Well, I mean red. But for today let the red aside: it is
too violent and it might shock our possible allies, the Liberals. With
Marx, the German Social-Democrats, who had already at that time all the
vices of social-democracy, these vices which bogged down Marxism
everywhere (âŠ): wildest hopes in universal suffrage, in reforms achieved
by a bourgeois parliament through dubious alliances and compromises with
the âLiberalsâ. With Marx: in Geneva, the citizen-workers of the watch
industry who formed a kind of respected and considered labour
aristocracy, who earned twice as much as the workers of the âhard jobsâ,
who had some education and political rights, who were all busy entering
into electoral alliances with bourgeois âradicalsâ [198].â
In fact, François Munoz is not quite right: by 1872 the British trade
unionists had lost a great part of their interest in the International.
Bakuninâs approach was a perfectly materialistic one for it was based on
the observation of the great heterogeneity of the objective conditions
in which the various federations of the International were placed: they
were, says Bakunin, âin so different conditions of temperament, culture
and economic developmentâ [199] that it was impossible to adopt a
program applicable to all federations. It was necessary to leave the
political debate evolve by a gradual ripening. Only a progressive
maturation of the international working class and a unification of the
conditions of existence, and free political debate, could lead to the
definition of a program for the whole of the working class. The question
is that Marx was perfectly aware of that, and he totally agreed with
Bakunin on that point, in so far as it concerned the trade unionâs
movement. He too considered that the trade unions should not adopt a
uniform and mandatory program. So where was the problem? Simply here:
contrary to Bakunin, Marx considered the IWA as an International of
political parties. This is where the problem lies and if one does not
have this in mind, one cannot understand the real issues of the
opposition between the two men.
The European society in which they evolved was carrying two political
and social models related to the respective development of productive
forces and political superstructures that supported them. These two
models were not reconcilable, in the sense that it was impossible to
impose a uniform strategy in radically different contexts. The
difference between these two contexts forms the material basis of the
division between âanarchismâ and âsocial-democracyâ. Of course we must
go beyond the usual simplistic explanations about the conflict between
the two men, which is an idealistic approach.
Bakunin, who had a presentiment of this failure, noted that there was a
clear division between the Latin and Anglo-Germanic countries. The
Russian revolutionary quickly sketched this view, without insisting.
CĂ©sar De Paepe also had the intuition of the rift which would divide the
labour movement, and this is perhaps the reason why he envisaged the
possibility of two Internationals: one for the Latin countries, the
other for the countries of the North. Of course that was not the
solution.
Europe in the 1870âs was divided into countries where existed, even at
an embryonic stage, different forms of social mediation, such as
representative democracy, trade unionism, etc. And countries where these
forms of mediation did not exist or were repressed. In the first case,
the implementation of mediation and negotiation structures between the
working class and capital lead to a certain degree of circumstantial
concessions on both sides. Parliament was one of those mediation bodies.
This was the case in England and Germany, and Switzerland: even if the
representative system was partial, it was obviously evolving in a
positive way. In countries where no mediation structures existed, such
as Spain and Italy, and to a large degree France and Belgium at that
time, the slightest claim from the factory and field workers provoked
armed reactions from the power: policemen or soldiers who often fired.
The worker tempted by reformism was very quickly facing armed men:
police, army or thugs: there was no place for reformism.
Between the two sets of examples, there was the intermediate situation:
France and Belgium, where power repressed the labour movement but
progressively granted political and social concessions: universal
suffrage, legal unions, etc., sometimes as a result of tragic struggles,
such as the Paris Commune or the very harsh strikes in Belgium for
universal suffrage. That does not mean that the police ceased altogether
to shoot the workers and peasants, but these practices slowed down and
eventually disappeared â in France around 1908-1909 when the CGT
realized violent strikes caused too many casualties among the workers,
and granted a greater space for negotiation.
Actually, the main question was not: âShould we vote or not?â but âCan
we improve our situation through negotiation (trade unions) and
mediation (Parliament)?â The Jura Federation saw things differently:
should the workers seize advantages through confrontation, at a time
when violent confrontations were beginning to decline and alternatives
seemed to appear with elections? Most workers would probably prefer
avoiding violent confrontation because unpaid days had dramatic
consequences, and it was never pleasant to be brutalized by the police.
If in Latin countries such as Italy and Spain the revolutionary movement
remained still very active, it was not because the âLatinsâ were
genetically programmed to be revolutionaries but because the global
material development of society, the level of cultural development, the
institutions, the state of mind of the ruling classes, etc., were such
that there was no mediation, no culture of negotiation between State and
Capital on the one hand, working class on the other. State repression of
economic struggles and dictatorial power left little choice to the
working class but revolutionary action.
Once the breach was open for the establishment of a representative
system, the working class, and especially some of its elites, rushed
through it. Bakunin knew that perfectly and he had a point of view that
is still relevant on the opportunistic temptations of socialists and
working class elites who use the working class as a stepping stone for
their political careers.
The question is not whether social-democratic strategy or revolutionary
syndicalist-type strategy, which was in fact the one advocated by
Bakunin, was more effective in achieving immediate and temporary
improvements in the living conditions of the working population; the
question is: what would be the most effective way for this working
population to collectively take over all the machinery of society and to
make them work so that they meet the needs of the entire population?
The basis of the debate between Marx and Bakunin, between Marxism and
Anarchism is there. Unfortunately, Marxâs (and his supporters todayâs)
stubborn refusal to discuss these issues, his obsession with accusing
Bakunin of all kinds of ills, his systematic avoidance of debate,
prevented the establishment of a real debate that could have led to a
constructive synthesis.
R.B.
November 2016-February 2017
âą Bakunin: Selected Texts 1868-1875, Anarres Editions.
âą Mikhail Bakunin: HYPERLINK "
" The Philosophical Basis of His Theory of Anarchy by Paul McLaughlin
âą The Bakunin Handbook â HYPERLINK "
" Everything You Need To Know About Bakunin by Brad Duffy
âą Essential Bakunin by Mikhail Bakunin
âą The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism by Michael
Bakunin and G.P. Maximoff
âą The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International
Working Menâs Association by Wolfgang Eckhardt
âą Bakunin by Sam Dolgoff
âą Bakunin and the Human Subject by Brian Morris
âą Bakunin on AnarchyHYPERLINK "
" (RLE Anarchy): 4 (Routledge Library Editions: Anarchy)
âą Michel Bakunin communist by Guy Alfred Aldred
⹠Anarchism and Marxism by Daniel Guérin
âą Doctrine of Anarchism of Michael Bakunin by Eugene Pyziur
âą Michael Bakunin by Edward Hallett Carr
âą Bakuninâs Social PhilosophyHYPERLINK "
" : Written by George Politis, 2006 Edition, Publisher: Trafford
Publishing [Paperback] by George Politis
âą A Critique of State Socialism by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin and
Warren Richard
âą Bakunin, the Philosophy of Freedom by Brian: B Morris
âą We do not fear anarchy, we invoke it, Robert Graham, AK Press
On Bakunin and secret organizations
âą Arthur Lehning, âBakuninâs Conceptions of Revolutionary Organisations
and their Role: a study of his âSecret Societiesââ, in Essays in Honour
of E.H.Carr, Editors: Abramsky, Chimen, Williams, Beryl J. (Eds.). 1974.
âą M. Vuilleumier, âLa concezione bakuniniana dellâorgansazione
rivoluzionariaâ, in Bakunin centâanni dopo, Atti del convegno
internazionale di studi bakuniniani, Edizioni Antistato (1977), pp.
403-421
âą Jean-Christophe Angaut, preface to Bakuninâs âPrincipes et
Organisation de la SociĂ©tĂ© Internationale RĂ©volutionnaireâ, Ăditions du
Chat ivre, 2012.
âą RenĂ© Berthier, âAction et Organisationâ (
) ; âMasses et minoritĂ©s rĂ©volutionnaires (
)
âą RenĂ© Berthier, presentation and notes for âLe CatĂ©chisme
rĂ©volutionnaireâ [of Bakunin],
Bakunin Library
- library/
The Anarchist Library
Robert Grahamâs anarchist weblog
/
Mikhail Bakunin Reference Archive
[1] Social-democracy and Anarchism in the International Workersâ
Association, 1864-1877, by Rene Berthier, Merlin Press.
[27] H. Mayer, Marx on Bakunin: A neglected text. â K. Marx, Marginal
notes on Bakuninâs âStatism and anarchyâ. Ătudes de Marxologie n° 2,
octobre 1959.
[33] Moscow, Progress Publisher, 1972.
[77] Report of the Fourth Annual Congress of the International Working
Menâs Association, held at Basel, in Switzerland, from the 6th to the
11th September, 1869; Published by the General Council, 1869; available
via http://hdl. handle.net/10622/B6E656DD-15BA-4E47-A6F7-B7132F4544C3
[109] Which is also a quotation from the French pre-socialist
Saint-Simon (1760-1825).
[197] An allusion to Engelsâ anti-Bakuninian pamphlet.
[1] âBakuninist hatchet jobâ,
http:/monde-nouveau.net/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article=605 and my
answer: âAbout Mike Macnair and hatchetsâ
[2] âAnother âSideâ to the âStoryââ, Science & Society, July 2016, Vol.
80, N° 3.
[3] See :
[4] âLâemploi du temps (Marx, Bakounine et ⊠Duclos)â, Interrogations n°
1, dĂ©cembre 1974. â
[5] Marianne Enckell, loc. cit.
[6] René Berthier is a French anarcho-syndicalist militant, member of
the CGT printing Federation since 1972. He held mandates for many years
as a shop steward, as president of his union and at a national level. He
has also been a member of the Anarchist Federation since 1984.
[7] Marianne Enckell, Interrogations n° 1, décembre 1974.
[8] âPeople who live in glass houses should not throw stonesâ?
[9] RenĂ© Berthier, âSocial-democracy & Anarchism. â About Mike Macnair
and hatchetsâ (
)
[10] In fact 1868-1874, because his health forced him to cease virtually
all intellectual activity during the last two years of his life.
[11] See: Pierre PĂ©choux, âDiffusion dâune oeuvre: Bakounine.
Publications dans la langue originale et en traductionâ. Revue dâĂtudes
slaves, 1984, vol. 56, pp. 629-633.
[12] âEsquisse pour un portrait de Marxâ, Victor Fay, LâHomme et la
Société, année 1968, vol. 7, n° 1, p. 273.
[13] Ăditions Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1965. See also:
Mr Nimtz should consult the following texts which concern the
publication of Bakuninâs works :
âą Pierre PĂ©choux, âĂcrits et correspondance de Bakounine : bilan des
publicationsâ, in : Bakounine, Combats et dĂ©bats, Institut dâĂtudes
slaves, pp. 45-61 (1979)
âą Arthur Lehning, âMichel Bakounine et les historiens. Un aperçu
chronologique.â in : Bakounine, Combats et dĂ©bats, Institut dâĂtudes
slaves, pp. 17-45. (1979)
âą âLes papiers de Michel Bakounine Ă Amsterdam, Jaap Kloostermanâ
âą Marc Vuilleumier, âLes archives de James Guillaumeâ, Le Mouvement
social, juillet-septembre 1964, pp 95-108.
And no doubt that if Mr Nimtz consults
he will find a lot of references concerning Bakunin in English.The most
interesting work in the perspective of Mr Nimtzâ narrow approach of
Bakunin would probably be Arthur Lehningâs, Bakounine et les autres
[âBakunin and the Others]. It is a compilation of documents â friendly
and not so friendly â from contemporaries of Bakunin: letters, articles,
notes, memoirs, police reports, etc. (Union gĂ©nĂ©rale dâĂditions, 1976. â
Reprinted by Ăditions Nuits rouges, 2013.)
And I would highly advise Mr Nimtz to read at least two books; one on
Bakunin:
âą Paul McLaughlin: Mikhail Bakunin, the Philosophical Basis of Anarchy,
Algora Publishing, New York (2002). (âThe first English-language
philosophical study of Bakuninâ); the other on the IWA:
âą Wolfgang Eckhardt, The First Socialist Schism, PM Press 2016.
[14] See: Jacqueline Cahen, âLes premiers Ă©diteurs de Marx et Engels en
France [1880-1901]
[15] See Preface to the Russian publication (1882). Also: Marx to
Engels, 10 April 1870.
[16] Jacqueline Cahen, âLes premiers Ă©diteurs de Marx et Engels en
France (1880-1901)â,
[17] Jules Guesde claimed a very rigid Marxist orthodoxy. He advocated
the subordination of the trade unions to the Socialist party.
Revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists successfully fought him until
the Leninist theses on the party / union relationship, very similar to
those of Guesde, eventually dominated after the Russian Revolution.
[18] See letter of Engels to Bernstein, 2 nov. 1882.
[19] Strangely, the Lassalleans, among whom was Schweitzer, took Das
Kapital very seriously, contrarily to the Eisenachians â at the
beginning at least.
[20] Bakounine, Ćuvres, Champ libre, VIII, 357.
[21] Compendio del Capitale, Carlo Cafiero, 1878. First French
publication: Stock, 1910. Republished in 2008 and 2013, Ăditions du
Chien rouge.
[22] R.P. Morgan, op. cit, p. 133.
[23] Jean-Numa Ducange, âĂditer Marx et Engels en France : mission
impossible ? A propos de Miguel Abensour et Louis Janover, Maximilien
Rubel, pour redécouvrir Marx, et de diverses rééditions de Karl Marx, Le
Capitalâ.
[24] Petite BibliothĂšque Payot/Critique de la politique, 1974. See also
my refutation: âLâanarchisme dans le miroir de Maximilien Rubelâ (
)
[25] Rubel is not the inventor of the idea that Marx was an âanarchistâ.
Hans Kelsen, for example, wrote an article in 1925, âMarx oder Lassalleâ
[Marx or Lassalle] in which he states that âthe political theory that
Marx and Engels developed is pure anarchismâ (quoted by Sonia
Dayan-Herzbrun, Mythes et mémoires du mouvement ouvrier. Le cas
Ferdinand Lassalle, Logiques sociales. LâHarmattan, 1990.)
[26] Engels to Marx, 7 August 1865.
[27] Marx to Kugelmann, 24 June 1868.
[28] Marx to Engels, 28 January 1863.
[29] René Berthier, Bakounine politique, Révolution et contre-révolution
en Europe centrale. Ăditions du Monde libertaire, 1991, p. 201.
[30] Concerning Ferdinand Lassalle, see Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun: âą Mythes
et mĂ©moires du mouvement ouvrier â Le cas Ferdinand Lassalle, Ă©ditions
LâHarmattan, 1990.
âą Lâinvention du parti ouvrier â Aux origines de la social-dĂ©mocratie
(1848-1864), Ă©ditions LâHarmattan. 1990.
[31] Letter to F. Bolte, 23-11-1871.
[32] According to Charles Rappoport who relates in his Memoirs a
conversation he had with Engels in 1893 in London. Une vie
rĂ©volutionnaire, 1883-1940, Les MĂ©moires de Charles Rappoport, Ăditions
de la Maison des sciences de lâHomme, 1991, p. 145.
[33] âIch möchte wissen, ob der gute Bakunin seinen dicken Körper einem
Eisenbahnwagen anvertrauen wĂŒrdeâŠâ Engels to Paul Lafargue, 30 December
1871.
[34] October 22, 1889.
[35] See: René Berthier, Lire Stirner,
[36] Frederick Engels, âFrom Italyâ, VorwĂ€rts n ° 32, 16 March 1877.
Complete Works, Laurence & Wishart, vol. 24, p. 176.
[37] See ââInitiatives for reconciliaiton appear to gain groundâ and
âGerman socialists oppose rapprochementâ in: RenĂ© Berthier,
Social-Democracy & Anarchism in the International Worlersâ Association,
Anarres Editions, pp. 109-113.
[38] Published between 1965 and 1994.
[39] Published between 1961 and 1984.
[40] Marx wrote to Engels a letter on that occasion, saying: âBakunin
sends his regards. He left today for Italy where he is living
(Florence). I saw him yesterday for the first time in 16 years. I must
say I liked him very much, more so than previously.â (âŠ) â From now on â
after the collapse of the Polish affair â he (Bakunin) will only involve
himself in the socialist movement.â (âŠ) âOn the whole, he is one of the
few people whom after 16 years I find to have moved forwards and not
backwards.â (Marx to Engels, 7 November 1864.)
[41] See
.
[42] See also G. P. Maximoffâs The Political Philosophy of Bakunin,
Glencoe (Ill.), 1953, pp. 286-288.
[43] Engels to Marx, July 30, 1869.
[44] Letter to Lafargue, 19-04-1870.
[45] Engels to Cafiero, 14 June 1872.
[46] The Labor Standard, March 1878.
[47] See: âLes dĂ©buts du marxisme thĂ©orique en France et en Italie
(1880-1897)â, Neil McInnes â Juin 1960, pp. 5 â 51.
[48] Bakounine, Ătatisme et anarchie, Champ libre, IV, p. 345.
[49] René Berthier, Bakounine politique, Révolution et contre-révolution
en Europe centrale, Ăditions du Monde libertaire, 1991, ch. 6, âMarx et
Lassalleâ.
[50] William Otto Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, vol 1, p.
142. See also in French: Marx-Engels, Correspondance, Ăditions sociales,
Paris 1971, pages 540 and 543.
[51] Marx, Engels, 25 April 1848.
[52] See: Marx, âMoralising Criticism and Critical Moralityâ, 1847.
[53] See: RenĂ© Berthier, âLa RĂ©volution française comme archĂ©type: 1848
ou le 1789 manquĂ© de la bourgeoisie allemandeâ in: Les anarchistes et la
RĂ©volution française, Ăditions du Monde libertaire, 1990.
[54] See: René Berthier, Bakounine politique, Révolution et
contre-rĂ©volution en Europe centrale, Ăditions du Monde libertaire,
1991, ch. 4, âNi fĂ©odale, ni tout Ă fait moderneâ.
[55] See: Marx to Engels, 20 July 1870.
[56] See RenĂ© Berthier, â1848 : Quand Marx liquide le premier parti
communiste de lâhistoire⊠et sâen fait exclure.â [When Marx liquidates
the first communist party in history ... and is excluded from it)]
[57] See: Fernando Claudin, Marx, Engels et la révolution de 1848, éd.
François Maspéro, pp. 312-313
[58] Gary P. Steenson, âNot One Man, Not One Pennyâ, German
Social-Democracy, 1863-1914, p. 3, University of Pittsburgh Press. Due
to the conflict between the two socialist factions, Marx postponed
Liebknechtâs demand to publish a new version of the Communist Manifesto.
See: R.P. Morgan, Cambridge University Press, p. 169.
[59] Iouri Stekloff [Iuri Stekloff], M.A. Bakounine, sa vie et son
activité, Moscou, 1927, t. IV, premiÚre partie, ch. III, 1, La tentative
de Lyon. â Quoted by Fernand Rude, in De la Guerre Ă la Commune,
Ă©ditions Anthropos p. 20.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Georges Haupt, Bakounine combats et dĂ©bats, Institut dâĂ©tudes
slaves, 1979, p. 141.
[62] Bakounine, Ăcrit contre Marx, Ćuvres, Champ libre, III, 167.
[63] Engels rightly defines pan-slavism as âthe creation of a Slav state
under Russian dominationâ. (âThe Magyar Struggleâ, Collected Works, vol.
8, p. 233.). Bakunin was fiercely opposed to pan-Slavism.
[64] Just as US domination over California was a âhistorical progressâ:
âAnd will Bakunin accuse the Americans of a âwar of conquestâ, which,
although it deals a severe blow to his theory based on âjustice and
humanityâ, was nevertheless waged wholly and solely in the interest of
civilisation? Or is it perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has
been taken away from the lazy Mexicans, who could not do anything with
it?â (Engels, âDemocratic Pan-Slavismâ.)
[65] Engels, âDemocratic Pan-Slavismâ. Neue Rheinische Zeitung, February
16, 1849. Marx-Engels Collected Works vol. 8, pp. 369.
[66] The German âVernichtungâ can be translated by âdestructionâ,
âeliminationâ or âexterminationâ. âVernichtungskampfâ could very well
mean âwar of exterminationâ.
[67] Engels, Op. cit p. 378.
[68] Among the many campaigns of slander orchestrated by Marx/Engels,
there was this Neue Rheinische Zeitung article (6 July 1848) asserting
that George Sand (a well-known woman writer) was in possession of
evidence that Bakunin was âan instrument of Russia or an agent newly
entered into its service, and that he must be made responsible in large
part for the arrest of the unfortunate Poles which has been carried out
recentlyâ. Naturally, George Sand categorically denied, after which Marx
replied that by publishing this âinformationâ, the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung had provided Bakunin with âan opportunity to dispel this
suspicion, which really existed in Paris in certain circles.â But the
evil was done, and this calumny paralyzed the activity of Bakunin for a
long time.
[69] James Guillaume, LâInternationale, documents et souvenirs, vol. I,
2nd part, ch. XI, p. 207.
[70] Mémoire de la Fédération jurassienne, p. 82. See also: James
Guillaume, LâInternationale, Book 1, Part 2, Chapter 11, 1905, p. 207.
[71] See James Guillaume, LâInternationale, documents et souvenirs, Vol.
I, Volume 2, p. 338.
[72] Circulaire Ă toutes les FĂ©dĂ©rations de lâAssociation internationale
des travailleurs, ou âLa Circulaire de Sonvillierâ, (12 Novembre 1871)
(James Guillaume, LâInternationale, documents et souvenirs, Premier
volume, 4e partie, ch. 1er, p. 239. Ăditions GĂ©rard Lebovici.)
[73] Minutes of the General Council (French version; Ăditions du
ProgrĂšs, Moscou), 5 september 1871, p. 236.
[74] Ibid.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Ibid p. 137.
[77] Engels to Liebknecht. 27-28 May 1872.
[78] âThese thirteen members of the General Council, who had no mandate,
formed by themselves the majority of the Conference, composed of
twenty-three members. James Guillaume, LâInternationale, documents et
souvenirs, t. II, 3e partie, p. 194.
[79] James Guillaume, LâInternationale, documents et souvenirs, Premier
volume, 3e partie, ch XI, pp. 192-193.
[80] Mémoire présenté par la Fédération jurassienne, 1re partie, p. 204.
[81] Bakounine, Ćuvres, Champ libre, II, note 231, p. 464.
[82] James Guillaume, Ibid., p. 230.
[83] G.M. Stekloff, History of the First International, London Martin
Lawrence limited, p. 271. See:
.
[84] See: Wolfgang Eckhardt, First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in
the International Working Menâs Association, PM Press, p. 121 sq.
[85] James Guillaume, LâInternationale, documents et souvenirs, vol I,
t. 2 p. 326.
[86] G.M. Stekloff, History of The First International, op. cit. p. 273
[87] Engels to W. Liebknecht, 22 May, 1872: Marx & Engels Collected
Works Volume 44, p. 376.
[88] Ibid.
[89] G.M. Stekloff, op. cit. p. 274.
[90] G.M. Stekloff, op. cit. p. 273.
[91] Engels to J.P. Becker, 9 May 1872 (SW p. 373)
[92] Carlos da Fonseca, A origem da 1a Internacional em Lisboa,
Editorial Estampa, 1973.
[93] Bakunin, Lettre au journal La Liberté de Bruxelles, 1-8 octobre
1872.
[94] Franz Mehring, Karl Marx, the Story of his Life, p. 482. London,
1936 George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Routledge Library Editions, 1936,
reprinted 2003.
[95] Iuri Stekloff, op. cit., p. 270.
[96] Letter to Th. Cuno, 24 January 1872.
[97] Bakunin, âPolitique de lâInternationaleâ. See Bakunin Selected
texts, translated by Anthony Zurbrugg, Anarres Editions, p. 50.
[98] Bakunin, Ătatisme et anarchie.
[99] Bakunin, âProtestation de lâAllianceâ, July 1871.
[100] Bakounine, âWritings against Marxâ, Nov.-Dec. 1872. Bakunin,
Selected texts 1868-1875, Anarres Editions.
[101] See Proudhon :
âą âMystification du suffrage universelâ.
. Proudhon shows that after the people had thrown down the monarchy in
1848, their revolution was confiscated by universal suffrage who brought
the Conservatives to power.
âą âManifeste des Soixante (1864)â
. Tolain, one of the founders of the International, published a brochure
in 1863 in which he supports workersâ candidates at the complementary
election of 1864. The document was signed by 60 workers, and was
therefore called âManifest of the 60â.
âą âLettre de Proudhon aux ouvriers en vue des Ă©lections de 1864 (8 mars
1864)â.
Proudhon answers to the workers who ask for his opinion concerning the
âManifeste des Soixanteâ.
âą âĂ propos du Manifeste des Soixanteâ.
[102] Karl Marx, âPolitical indifferentismâ, Collected Works, vol. 23,
p. 392.
[103] See: âBakounine faisait-il de la politique?â [Was Bakunin in
politics?] La Rue, revue culturelle et litĂ©raire dâexpression
anarchiste, n° 33, 2e trimestre 1983.
[104] Bakunin, âProtestation de lâAllianceâ.
[105] René Berthier, Social-Democracy and Anarchism in the International
Workersâ Association, Merlin Press, p. 29.
[106] See René Berthier, Bakounine Politique, Révolution et
contre-rĂ©volution en Europe centrale, Ăditions du Monde Libertaire,
1991.
[107] See: R. Berthier: âEsquisse dâune rĂ©flexion sur la âpĂ©riode de
transitionâ
.
R. Berthier: âLa RĂ©volution française dans la formation de la thĂ©orie
rĂ©volutionnaire chez Bakounineâ
[108] 19 April 1870. We could play the same game, but the other way:
âThe working class must occupy itself with politics. Its task is limited
to organizing itself into parties. One fine day they will supplant all
existing states.â Which is a fairly good definition of Marxist strategy.
(Collected Works, vol. 43, p. 490.)
[109] Bakunin, âLa Politique de lâInternationaleâ, 1869. English
translation in Bakunin Selected Texts 1868-1875 Edited and translated by
A.W. Zurbrugg, Annares Editions.
[110] Engels to Th. Cuno, 24 January 1872, Collected Works, 44 p. 307.
About Bakunin and the âtransition periodâ: âThe abolition of the State
is thus the political goal of the International, the fulfillment of
which is the precondition or necessary accompaniment of the economic
emancipation of the proletariat. But this goal can not be achieved at
once, because in history, as in the physical world, nothing is done at
once. Even the most sudden, the most unexpected and the most radical
revolutions have always been prepared by a long process of decomposition
and new formation, underground or visible work, but never interrupted
and ever increasing. So for the International also it is not a question
of destroying all the States overnight. To undertake it or to dream it
would be madness.â (Aux compagnons de la FĂ©dĂ©ration jurassienne,
Oeuvres, Champ libre, III, 75-76).
There are however many Bakunin texts in which he vigorously opposes the
idea of ââtransition, as for example in a letter to the newspaper La
LibertĂ© of Brussels dating from October 1872: âWe do not admit, even as
a revolutionary transition, the National Conventions, the Constituent
Assemblies, the provisional governments, or the so-called revolutionary
dictatorships; because we are convinced that the revolution is sincere,
honest and real only in the masses, and that when it is concentrated in
the hands of a few governing individuals, it inevitably and immediately
becomes the reaction.â In fact, it is not so much the transition to
which it is opposed as the transition implemented by state institutions,
be it ânational conventionsâ or ârevolutionary dictatorshipsâ.
[111] Anton Pannekoek, âGeneral Remarks on the Question of
Organisationâ, 1938; http://
www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/general-remarks.htm
[112] Ăcrit contre Marx.
[113] âAux compagnons de la FĂ©dĂ©ration jurassienneâ, Champ libre, III,
pp. 71-72.
[114] Marx to Sorge, 19 September 1879, Collected Works vol. 45, p. 414.
[115] âDoes this mean that we Revolutionary Socialists do not want
universal suffrage, and that we prefer either the limited suffrage or
the despotism of one? Not at all. What we are saying is that universal
suffrage, considered by itself and acting in a society founded on
economic and social inequality, will always be an illusion to the
people; That on the part of the bourgeois democrats it will never be
anything but an odious lie, the surest instrument for consolidating,
with an appearance of liberalism and justice, to the detriment of
popular interests and freedom, eternal domination of the exploiting and
possessing classes .â (Bakounine, âLa situation politique en Franceâ
(Letter to Palix, Lyon, 29 septembre 1870-début octobre 1870. Champ
libre, vol. 7, pp. 198-199.)
[116] âLâAITâ, an unsigned text written in the mid 1970s by a group of
the âAlliance syndicaliste rĂ©volutionnaire et anarcho-syndicalisteâ,
probably by the group of Saint-Dizier (France).
See:
[117] LâInternationale, 28 February 1869.
[118] This idea can be traced back to Proudhon, whose reservations
concerning the usefulness of strikes are complex and can not be summed
up as âProudhon was against strikesâ. The apparent paradox between his
stance on strikes and the fact that the French revolutionary
syndicalists referred to him is analyzed in Daniel Colson, âProudhon et
le syndicalisme rĂ©volutionnaireâ,
[119] After the exclusion of Bakunin and James Guillaume, the Jura
Federation made several attempts at rapprochement and reconciliation
with the German and Swiss Social-Democrats. These attempts failed
because of the haughty refusal of the socialist leaders.
[120] See: René Berthier, Social-Democracy and Anarchism in the
International Workersâ Association, Merlin Press, pp. 107-108.
[121] James Guillaume, Vol 2, part 5, chapter 3, p. 75. (Ăditions GĂ©rard
Lebovici).
[122] René Berthier, Social-Democracy & Anarchism, op. cit. p. 108.
[123] G.M. Stekloff, History of the First International, London Martin
Lawrence limited, p. 228. See:
[124] The âManifeste des Soixanteâ, written by Henri Tolain and signed
by sixty proletarians in 1864, was a program supporting claims for
workersâ candidates in a by-election under the Second Empire. It
demanded a genuine political, economic and social democracy. It is an
important text in the history of the French labour movement. See:
âManifeste des Soixanteâ (
and RenĂ© Berthier, âĂ propos du Manifeste des Soixanteâ (
)
[125] James Guillaume : Karl Marx pangermaniste, p. 5. (Reprint from the
collection of the University of Michigan Library.)
[126] This is the original name of the organization, although political
correctness, if not historical truth, has changed it (rightly so) in
âInternational Workerâs Associationâ.
[127] There has been belatedly a short-lived British federation the
history of which still has to be written. Let us remember that Franz
Mehring notes in his biography of Karl Marx that wherever national
socialist parties were created, the Internation declined.
[128] Collected Works, vol. 23.
[129] Karl Marx, âPolitical indifferentismâ, Collected Works, vol. 23,
p. 392.
[130] RenĂ© Berthier, âLâusage du mot âanarchieâ chez Bakounineâ [The use
of the word âAnarchyâ in Bakunin],
[131] There was an interesting debate in the French and Italian working
class at the beginning of the 20th century when the ideas of the Jura
Federation and of Bakunin were ârediscoveredâ thanks James Guillaume who
published documents of that period. The debate was on âautomatismâ: do
the workers necessarily acquire revolutionary class consciousness
through the experience of day-to-day action on the work-place. The two
parts of the debate, the pros and cons, were mistaken in referring each
to only one aspect of the analysis of Bakunin, who did not pose the
problem in these terms. See :
âą Maurizio Antonioli, âBakunin tra sindacalismo rivoluzionario e
anarchismoâ, Bakunin centâanni dopo, Edizioni Antistato, 1976. French
translation : Ă©ditions Noir & Rouge.
âą RenĂ© Berthier, 1814-2014, Bakounine bicentenaire. LâHĂ©ritage, Cercle
dâĂ©tudes libertaires Gaston-Leval.
[132] âWorld Revolutionary Alliance of Social Democracyâ. Quoted by G.P.
Maximoff, Bakunin, The Free Press, New York, 1964, pp. 384-385.
[133] Cf. English translation: Bakunin Selected Texts 1868-1875, Anarres
Editions pp. 42-56.
[134] Jean-Christophe Angaut, âBakounine et le concept de politiqueâ,
atelierdecreationlibertaire.com
[135] Le Socialisme libertaire, Paris, Denoël, 1973, pp. 163-164.
[136] Bakunin, âThe Politics of the Internationalâ (1869), in Bakunin
Selected Writings 18368-1875, Anarres Editions, p. 56.
[137] In the French version of Ăditions de La PlĂ©iade : Karl Marx,
Ćuvres, Ăconomie, II, p. 1488.
[138] Bakunin, âWritings against Marxâ, in Bakunin Selected texts
1868-1875, Anarres Ăditions, p. 234.
[139] As soon as the proletariat begins to claim its rights, says
Bakunin, âthe political liberalism of the bourgeois disappears and,
finding in itself neither the means nor the power necessary to repress
the masses, it immolates itself in favor of the conservation of the
economic interests of the bourgeois, it gives way to military
dictatorshipâ (âManuscrit de 114 pagesâ, Oeuvres, Stock IV, p. 172).
Bakunin had closely analyzed French post-1789 society. He makes very
interesting observations on the attitude of the bourgeoisie faced with
the popular threat and develops theses on what he calls âCaesarismâ
which are to be related to Marxâs notion of âBonapartismâ. Naturally,
making a comparative study of the notions developed by the two authors
would imply prior recognition of a minimum of normative value to the
thought of Bakunin, which few Marxist intellectuals are willing to do.
[140] Letter to Herzen, 26 Octobre 1869, in CDRom IISH Amsterdam. The
same letter in a slightly different translation can be found in Michel
Bakounine, Socialisme autoritaire ou socialisme libertaire, pp. 90-91,
UGE 1975.
[141] âRapports personnels avec Marx. PiĂšces justificativesâ, n° 2. In:
Bakounine, Ćuvres complĂštes, Ăditions Champ libre, vol. 2, p. 121,
décember 1871.
[142] Ibid.
[143] Bakounine, âLettre aux Internationaux de Bologneâ, dĂ©cembre 1871.
Ćuvres, Champ libre, II, p. 105.
[144] Protestation de lâAlliance, op. cit., pp. 4-5 du manuscrit. CDRom
IISH Amsterdam.
[145] See: Roger Morgan, The German Social-Democrats and the
International â 1864-1872, Cambridge University Press, 1965. Roger
Morgan provides very precise information on the hesitant and
opportunistic attitude of the German socialist leaders in relation to
the International. He also shows that the German workers at the
grassroots level were interested in the International and sought its
support in the struggles they were leading but were faced with the
apathy of their leaders. Finally, Morgan shows that if the workersâ
organisations did not legally have the right to join the International,
the law was only very weakly applied: this prohibition served as a
pretext for the Socialist leaders not to get too tightly involved.
[146] Bakuninâs famous âAllianceâ, the existence of which can not be
denied any more than one can deny the existence of the fraction
surrounding Marx, provoked in the latter crises of paranoia and made him
literally hysterical.
[147] Marx to Engels, 13 March 1865, Collected Works 42, p. 130.
[148] Collected Works, Lawrence & Wishart, vol. 44 p. 374.
[149] Letter to Sorge, 27 September 1873, in Collected Works, 1989, Vol.
44, p. 534.
[150] Bakunin, âMĂ©moire sur lâAllianceâ, CDRom IISH Amsterdam.
[151] See Marx to Lafargue, 19 April 1870 Collected Works, vol 43, p.
489.
[152] Lafargue to Marx, quoted in Wolfgang Eckhardt, First Socialist
Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Menâs Association,
PM Press.
[153] See LâInternationale, documents et souvenirs, vol. I, pp 262-263
and 291-299.
[154] Marx to Engels, 11 April 1865, Collected Works, 42, p. 140.
[155] Marx to Engels, 4 September 1867, Collected Works, 42, p. 420
[156] Franz Mehring, Karl Marx : the Story of His Life, Chapter
Thirteen: The International at Its Zenith : 7. âThe Confidential
Communicationâ,
[157] Soious Kommunistov, pp. 220-221, quoted by Fernando Claudin, Marx,
Engels et la révolution de 1848, François Maspéro, 1981, p. 133.
[158] Report published by order of the International congress of The
Hague â London & Hamburg, 1873.
[159] See Collected Works vol 43 : Marx to Engels 15 December 1868 ;
Engels to Marx 18 December 1868 ; Marx to Hermann Jung 28 December 1868.
And Bakunin to Marx, 22 December 1868, quoted in : Marx/Bakounine,
socialisme autoritaire ou libertaire, Union gĂ©nĂ©rale dâĂ©ditions, vol. 1,
p. 74-75.
[160] Bakounine, âRapport sur lâAllianceâ.
[161] See Engels to Cafiero, 1-3 July 1871, Collected Works vol. 44, pp.
163-164.
[162] See:
âą T.R. Ravindranathan, Bakunin and the Italians, McGill-Queens
University Press, 1988
âą Robert Paris, âBakounine en Italie ou le socialisme italien face Ă ses
originesâ, in Combats et dĂ©bats. Paris, Institut dâĂ©tudes slaves, 1979.
âą Gaetano Manfredonia, âBakounine en Italie (1864-67): rĂ©volution
sociale ou rĂ©volution nationale?â, in ActualitĂ© de Bakounine. 1814-2014,
Ăditions du Monde Libertaire 2014.
[163] Bakounine et les autres, Union gĂ©nĂ©rale dâĂditions, 1976, p. 284.
[164] Bakounine et les autres, Union gĂ©nĂ©rale dâĂditions, 1976, p. 267.
[165] Quoted in: Marx/Bakounine, socialisme autoritaire ou libertaire,
Union gĂ©nĂ©rale dâĂ©ditions, vol. 1, p. 92.
[166] See RenĂ© Berthier, âBakounine et les âsociĂ©tĂ©s secrĂštesââ,
[167]
F. Mehring, Karl Marx, the Story of his life, Routledge, p. 496.
[168] First Socalist Schism, p. 286.
[169]
F. Mehring, ibid., p. 498.
[170]
F. Mehring, ibid., p. 491.
[171]
F. Mehring, ibid,. p. 491.
[172]
F. Mehring, ibid., p. 496.
[173] âWhence, also, the idea that Bakunin wanted to transfer the seat
of the General Council to Switzerland, although the Russian
revolutionary explicitly says the opposite: he favors a reduction in the
powers of the council and does not seek to gain influence over it.â
Jean-Christophe Angaut, The Marx-Bakunin Conflict at the International:
A Clash of Political Practices, (
)
[174] Quoted in James Guillaume, LâInternationale, documents et
souvenirs, Vol. 2, part 5 Chapter 2, p. 25. English translation in René
Berthier, Social-Democracy and Anarchism, Anarres Editions, p. 18.
[175] Social-Democracy and Anarchism, Merlin Press, p. 19.
[176] These men had names: Dupont, Lafargue, Jung, Eccarius, Lessner,
Forx, Shaw within the General Council, Utin, Becker, Sorge, and the
whole leadership of the Social-Democratic party in Germany which was not
even a member of the IWA.
[177] See documents reproduced in James Guillaume, LâInternationale,
documents et souvenirs, Vol. 4, p. 294.
[178] Besides, the Alianza âwas dissolved at the Saragossa Congress when
it had accomplished its propaganda workâ (F. Sorge, âMinutes of the
Fifth General Congress of the IWA at The Hague, September 1872â, cf. The
Hague Congress, vol. 1, p.128. On 7 September 1872, a delegate, Alerini
declared that the Alianza âhas ceased to exist because traitors have
foully denounced itâ (Le Moussi, âMinutesâ, p. 101) The Barcelona local
Federation published a statement in March 1873 saying that the Alianza
âdissolved itself over questions that arose in its midstâ (Consejo Local
de la FederaciĂłn Barcelonesa, Circular Ă todas les Federaciones locales
y Secciones de la région espanola, Barcelona, Imp. De Manero, 1873, p.
20). This is what had happened: Lafargue had published the names of
leading members of the âAlianzaâ who were then victims of police
repression.
[179] To compare with the German 208 members Engels refers to in his
letter to W. Liebknecht, 22 May, 1872.
[180] William Otto Henderson, The Life of Freidrich Engels, Routledge,
1976, Vol. 2, p. 539
[181] W.O. Henderson, ibid.
[182] Arthur Lehning, âBakuninâs Conception of Revolutionary
Organisations and Their Role: a Study of His âSecret Societiesââ, in
Essays in Honour of E.H. Carr, The Macmillan Press, 1974, p. 76.
[183] Marxâs speech delivered in Amsterdam, published by La LibertĂ© of
Bruxelles on 15 September 1872 and by the Handelsblad of Amsterdam on 10
September 1872. The Handelsblad version is reproduced in extenso in
Bakounine, Ćuvres, Champ libre, III, note 133, P. 411.
[184]
R. Morgan, op. Cit., p. 227.
[185] René Berthier, Social-Democracy and Anarchism, op. cit.
[186] Marx to Bolte, 14 February 1873, ME Collected Works vol 43, Moscow
& London, L&W, pp. 475-476.
[187] Engels to Sorge, 3 May 1873. ME Collected Works vol 43 Moscow &
London, L&W p. 494.
[188] Le ProgrĂšs du Locle, 25 December 1869.
[189] Solidarité of 28 May 1870.
[190] See René Berthier, Social-Democracy and Anarchism, p. 127.
[191] See René Berthier, Social-Democracy and Anarchism, p. 127-128.
[192] See René Berthier, Social-Democracy and Anarchism, p. 112.
[193] James Guillaume, 6e partie, ch. VII, p. 87. See René Berthier, op.
cit. p. 112.
[194] Quoted in James Guillaume, LâInternationale documents et
souvenirs, 6e partie, Ch. VII, p. 87.
[195] Social-democracy and Anarchism, op. cit. p. 10.
[196] Bakounine, Ćuvres, Book 3, Paris, Stock, 1908, pp. 209.
[197] RenĂ© Berthier, âAbout Mike Macnair and hatchetsâ,
.
[198] François Munoz, Bakounine, La liberté, choix de textes.
Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1965. Préface, pp.13-14.
[199] Bakounine, Ăcrit contre Marx, Champ libre, III, 179.