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Title: Statism and Anarchy Author: Michail Bakunin Date: 1873 Language: en Topics: social revolution, the State Source: Retrieved on February 24th, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1873/statism-anarchy.htm Notes: Source: Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971. Extracts from Statism and Anarchy. Written in Russian, with special emphasis on Slavic problems, this work tremendously influenced Russian revolutionary thought.
There is no road leading from metaphysics to the realities of life.
Theory and fact are separated by an abyss. It is impossible to leap
across this abyss by what Hegel called a “qualitative jump” from the
world of logic to the world of nature and of real life.
The road leading from concrete fact to theory and vice versa is the
method of science and is the true road. In the practical world, it is
the movement of society toward forms of organization that will to the
greatest possible extent reflect life itself in all its aspects and
complexity.
Such is the people’s way to complete emancipation, accessible to all —
the way of the anarchist social revolution, which will come from the
people themselves, an elemental force sweeping away all obstacles.
Later, from the depths of the popular soul, there will spontaneously
emerge the new creative forms of social life.
The way of the gentlemen metaphysicians is completely different.
Metaphysician is the term we use for the disciples of Hegel and for the
positivists, and in general, for all the worshippers of science as a
goddess, all those modern Procrusteans who, in one way or another, have
created an ideal of social organization, a narrow mold into which they
would force future generations, all those who, instead of seeing science
as only one of the essential manifestations of natural and social life,
insist that all of life is encompassed in their necessarily tentative
scientific theories. Metaphysicians and positivists, all these gentlemen
who consider it their mission to prescribe the laws of life in the name
of science, are consciously or unconsciously reactionaries.
This is very easy to demonstrate.
Science in the true sense of that word, real science, is at this time
within reach of only an insignificant minority. For example, among us in
Russia, how many accomplished savants are there in a population of
eighty million? Probably a thousand are engaged in science, but hardly
more than a few hundred could be considered first-rate, serious
scientists. If science were to dictate the laws, the overwhelming
majority, many millions of men, would be ruled by one or two hundred
experts. Actually it would be even fewer than that, because not all of
science is concerned with the administration of society. This would be
the task of sociology — the science of sciences — which presupposes in
the case of a well-trained sociologist that he have an adequate
knowledge of all the other sciences. How many such people are there in
Russia — in all Europe? Twenty or thirty — and these twenty or thirty
would rule the world? Can anyone imagine a more absurd and abject
despotism?
It is almost certain that these twenty or thirty experts would quarrel
among themselves, and if they did agree on common policies, it would be
at the expense of mankind. The principal vice of the average specialist
is his inclination to exaggerate his own knowledge and deprecate
everyone else’s. Give him control and he will become an insufferable
tyrant. To be the slave of pedants — what a destiny for humanity! Give
them full power and they will begin by performing on human beings the
same experiments that the scientists are now performing on rabbits and
dogs.
We must respect the scientists for their merits and achievements, but in
order to prevent them from corrupting their own high moral and
intellectual standards, they should be granted no special privileges and
no rights other than those possessed by everyone — for example, the
liberty to express their convictions, thought, and knowledge. Neither
they nor any other special group should be given power over others. He
who is given power will inevitably become an oppressor and exploiter of
society.
But we are told: “Science will not always be the patrimony of a few.
There will come a time when it will be accessible to all.” Such a time
is still far away and there will be many social upheavals before this
dream will come true, and even then, who would want to put his fate in
the hands of the priests of science?
It seems to us that anyone who thinks that after a social revolution
everybody will be equally educated is very much mistaken. Science, then
as now, will remain one of the many specialized fields, though it will
cease to be accessible only to a very few of the privileged class. With
the elimination of class distinctions, education will be within the
reach of all those who will have the ability and the desire to pursue
it, but not to the detriment of manual labor, which will be compulsory
for all.
Available to everyone will be a general scientific education, especially
the learning of the scientific method, the habit of correct thinking,
the ability to generalize from facts and make more or less correct
deductions. But of encyclopedic minds and advanced sociologists there
will be very few. It would be sad for mankind if at any time theoretical
speculation became the only source of guidance for society, if science
alone were in charge of all social administration. Life would wither,
and human society would turn into a voiceless and servile herd. The
domination of life by science can have no other result than the
brutalization of mankind.
We, the revolutionary anarchists, are the advocates of education for all
the people, of the emancipation and the widest possible expansion of
social life. Therefore we are the enemies of the State and all forms of
the statist principle. In opposition to the metaphysicians, the
positivists, and all the worshippers of science, we declare that natural
and social life always comes before theory, which is only one of its
manifestations but never its creator. From out of its own inexhaustible
depths, society develops through a series of events, but not by thought
alone. Theory is always created by life, but never creates it; like
mile-posts and road signs, it only indicates the direction and the
different stages of life’s independent and unique development.
In accordance with this belief, we neither intend nor desire to thrust
upon our own or any other people any scheme of social organization taken
from books or concocted by ourselves. We are convinced that the masses
of the people carry in themselves, in their instincts (more or less
developed by history), in their daily necessities, and, in their
conscious or unconscious aspirations, all the elements of the future
social organization. We seek this ideal in the people themselves. Every
state power, every government, by its very nature places itself outside
and over the people and inevitably subordinates them to an organization
and to aims which are foreign to and opposed to the real needs and
aspirations of the people. We declare ourselves the enemies of every
government and every state power, and of governmental organization in
general. We think that people can be free and happy only when organized
from the bottom up in completely free and independent associations,
without governmental paternalism though not without the influence of a
variety of free individuals and parties.
Such are our ideas as social revolutionaries, and we are therefore
called anarchists. We do not protest this name, for we are indeed the
enemies of any governmental power, since we know that such a power
depraves those who wear its mantle equally with those who are forced to
submit to it. Under its pernicious influence the former become ambitious
and greedy despots, exploiters of society in favor of their personal or
class interests, while the latter become slaves.
Idealists of all kinds — metaphysicians, positivists, those who support
the rule of science over life, doctrinaire revolutionists — all defend
the idea of state and state power with equal eloquence, because they see
in it, as a consequence of their own systems, the only salvation for
society. Quite logically, since they have accepted the basic premise
(which we consider completely mistaken) that thought precedes life, that
theory is prior to social experience, and, therefore, that social
science has to be the starting point for all social upheavals and
reconstructions. They then arrive unavoidably at the conclusion that
because thought, theory, and science, at least in our times, are in the
possession of very few, these few ought to be the leaders of social
life, not only the initiators, but also the leaders of all popular
movements. On the day following the revolution the new social order
should not be organized by the free association of people’s
organizations or unions, local and regional, from the bottom up, in
accordance with the demands and instincts of the people, but only by the
dictatorial power of this learned minority, which presumes to express
the will of the people.
This fiction of a pseudo-representative government serves to conceal the
domination of the masses by a handful of privileged elite; an elite
elected by hordes of people who are rounded up and do not know for whom
or for what they vote. Upon this artificial and abstract expression of
what they falsely imagine to be the will of the people and of which the
real living people have not the least idea, they construct both the
theory of statism as well as the theory of so-called revolutionary
dictatorship.
The differences between revolutionary dictatorship and statism are
superficial. Fundamentally they both represent the same principle of
minority rule over the majority in the name of the alleged “stupidity”
of the latter and the alleged “intelligence” of the former. Therefore
they are both equally reactionary since both directly and inevitably
must preserve and perpetuate the political and economic privileges of
the ruling minority and the political and economic subjugation of the
masses of the people.
Now it is clear why the dictatorial revolutionists, who aim to overthrow
the existing powers and social structures in order to erect upon their
ruins their own dictatorships, never were or will be the enemies of
government, but, to the contrary, always will be the most ardent
promoters of the government idea. They are the enemies only of
contemporary governments, because they wish to replace them. They are
the enemies of the present governmental structure, because it excludes
the possibility of their dictatorship. At the same time they are the
most devoted friends of governmental power. For if the revolution
destroyed this power by actually freeing the masses, it would deprive
this pseudo-revolutionary minority of any hope to harness the masses in
order to make them the beneficiaries of their own government policy.
We have already expressed several times our deep aversion to the theory
of Lassalle and Marx, which recommends to the workers, if not as a final
ideal at least as the next immediate goal, the founding of a people’s
state, which according to their interpretation will be nothing but “the
proletariat elevated to the status of the governing class.”
Let us ask, if the proletariat is to be the ruling class, over whom is
it to rule? In short, there will remain another proletariat which will
be subdued to this new rule, to this new state. For instance, the
peasant “rabble” who, as it is known, does not enjoy the sympathy of the
Marxists who consider it to represent a lower level of culture, will
probably be ruled by the factory proletariat of the cities. Or, if this
problem is to be approached nationalistically, the Slavs will be placed
in the same subordinate relationship to the victorious German
proletariat in which the latter now stands to the German bourgeoisie.
If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another
and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable —
and this is why we are the enemies of the State.
What does it mean that the proletariat will be elevated to a ruling
class? Is it possible for the whole proletariat to stand at the head of
the government? There are nearly forty million Germans. Can all forty
million be members of the government? In such a case, there will be no
government, no state, but, if there is to be a state there will be those
who are ruled and those who are slaves.
The Marxist theory solves this dilemma very simply. By the people’s
rule, they mean the rule of a small number of representatives elected by
the people. The general, and every man’s, right to elect the
representatives of the people and the rulers of the State is the latest
word of the Marxists, as well as of the democrats. This is a lie, behind
which lurks the despotism of the ruling minority, a lie all the more
dangerous in that it appears to express the so-called will of the
people.
Ultimately, from whatever point of view we look at this question, we
come always to the same sad conclusion, the rule of the great masses of
the people by a privileged minority. The Marxists say that this minority
will consist of workers. Yes, possibly of former workers, who, as soon
as they become the rulers of the representatives of the people, will
cease to be workers and will look down at the plain working masses from
the governing heights of the State; they will no longer represent the
people, but only themselves and their claims to rulership over the
people. Those who doubt this know very little about human nature.
These elected representatives, say the Marxists, will be dedicated and
learned socialists. The expressions “learned socialist,” “scientific
socialism,” etc., which continuously appear in the speeches and writings
of the followers of Lassalle and Marx, prove that the pseudo-People’s
State will be nothing but a despotic control of the populace by a new
and not at all numerous aristocracy of real and pseudo-scientists. The
“uneducated” people will be totally relieved of the cares of
administration, and will be treated as a regimented herd. A beautiful
liberation, indeed!
The Marxists are aware of this contradiction and realize that a
government of scientists will be a real dictatorship regardless of its
democratic form. They console themselves with the idea that this rule
will be temporary. They say that the only care and objective will be to
educate and elevate the people economically and politically to such a
degree that such a government will soon become unnecessary, and the
State, after losing its political or coercive character, will
automatically develop into a completely free organization of economic
interests and communes.
There is a flagrant contradiction in this theory. If their state would
be really of the people, why eliminate it? And if the State is needed to
emancipate the workers, then the workers are not yet free, so why call
it a People’s State? By our polemic against them we have brought them to
the realization that freedom or anarchism, which means a free
organization of the working masses from the bottom up, is the final
objective of social development, and that every state, not excepting
their People’s State, is a yoke, on the one hand giving rise to
despotism and on the other to slavery. They say that such a yoke —
dictatorship is a transitional step towards achieving full freedom for
the people: anarchism or freedom is the aim, while state and
dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses of
people, they have first to be enslaved!
Upon this contradiction our polemic has come to a halt. They insist that
only dictatorship (of course their own) can create freedom for the
people. We reply that all dictatorship has no objective other than
self-perpetuation, and that slavery is all it can generate and instill
in the people who suffer it. Freedom can be created only by freedom, by
a total rebellion of the people, and by a voluntary organization of the
people from the bottom up.
The social theory of the anti-state socialists or anarchists leads them
directly and inevitably towards a break with all forms of the State,
with all varieties of bourgeois politics, and leaves no choice except a
social revolution. The opposite theory, state communism and the
authority of the scientists, attracts and confuses its followers and,
under the pretext of political tactics, makes continuous deals with the
governments and various bourgeois political parties, and is directly
pushed towards reaction.
The cardinal point of this program is that the State alone is to
liberate the (pseudo-) proletariat. To achieve this, the State must
agree to liberate the proletariat from the oppression of bourgeois
capitalism. How is it possible to impart such a will to the State? The
proletariat must take possession of the State by a revolution — an
heroic undertaking. But once the proletariat seizes the State, it must
move at once to abolish immediately this eternal prison of the people.
But according to Mr. Marx, the people not only should not abolish the
State, but, on the contrary, they must strengthen and enlarge it. and
turn it over to the full disposition of their benefactors, guardians,
and teachers — the leaders of the Communist party, meaning Mr. Marx and
his friends — who will then liberate them in their own way. They will
concentrate all administrative power in their own strong hands, because
the ignorant people are in need of a strong guardianship; and they will
create a central state bank, which will also control all the commerce,
industry, agriculture, and even science. The mass of the people will be
divided into two armies, the agricultural and the industrial, under the
direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute the new
privileged political-scientific class.
The propaganda and organization of the International is directed
exclusively to the working class, which in Italy, as in the rest of
Europe, embodies all the life, power, and aspirations of the future
society. The International attracted only a handful of adherents from
the bourgeois world who, having learned to passionately hate the
existing social order and all its false values, renounced their class
and dedicated themselves body and soul to the cause of the people.
If they can root out the last vestiges of subjective loyalty to the
bourgeois world, and those of personal vanity, these men, though few in
number, could render priceless services to the revolutionary movement.
They draw their inspiration from the movement of the people. But in
exchange they can contribute expert knowledge, the capacity for abstract
thought and generalization, and the ability to organize and coordinate —
qualities which constitute the creative force without which any victory
is impossible. In Italy and Russia there are more such young men than
there are in other countries. But what is a much more important asset
for the Revolution is that there is in Italy an enormous proletariat,
unusually intelligent by nature but very often lacking education and
living in great poverty. This proletariat comprises two or three million
urban workers, mainly in factories and small workshops, and
approximately twenty million totally deprived peasants. This huge class
has been reduced to such desperation that even the defenders of this
terrible society are beginning to speak out openly in parliament and in
the official press, admitting that things have reached the breaking
point, and that something must immediately be done to avoid a popular
holocaust which will destroy everything in its path.
Nowhere are there more favorable conditions for the Social Revolution
than in Italy. There does not exist in Italy, as in most other European
nations, a special category of relatively affluent workers, earning
higher wages, boasting of their literary capacities, and so impregnated
by a variety of bourgeois prejudices that, excepting income, they differ
in no way from the bourgeoisie. This class of bourgeois workers is
numerous in Germany and in Switzerland; but in Italy, on the contrary,
they arc insignificant in number and influence, a mere drop in the
ocean. In Italy it is the extremely poor proletariat that predominates.
Marx speaks disdainfully, but quite unjustly, of this Lumpenproletariat.
For in them, and only in them, and not in the bourgeois strata of
workers, are there crystallized the entire intelligence and power of the
coming Social Revolution.
A popular insurrection, by its very nature, is instinctive, chaotic, and
destructive, and always entails great personal sacrifice and an enormous
loss of public and private property. The masses are always ready to
sacrifice themselves; and this is what turns them into a brutal and
savage horde, capable of performing heroic and apparently impossible
exploits, and since they possess little or nothing, they are not
demoralized by the responsibilities of property ownership. And in
moments of crisis, for the sake of self-defense or victory, they will
not hesitate to burn down their own houses and neighborhoods, and
property being no deterrent, since it belongs to their oppressors, they
develop a passion for destruction. This negative passion, it is true, is
far from being sufficient to attain the heights of the revolutionary
cause; but without it, revolution would be impossible. Revolution
requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating
destruction, since in this way and only this way are new worlds born...
Not even the most terrible misery affecting millions of workers is in
itself enough to spur them to revolution. Man is by nature endowed (or
cursed) by marvelous patience, and only the devil knows how he can
patiently endure unimaginable misery and even slow death by starvation;
and even the impulse to give way to despair is smothered by a complete
insensibility toward his own rights, and an imperturbable obedience...
People in this condition are hopeless. They would rather die than rebel.
But when a man can be driven to desperation, he is then more likely to
rebel. Despair is a bitter, passionate feeling capable of rousing men
from their semiconscious resignation if they already have an idea of a
more desirable situation, even without much hope of achieving it. But it
is impossible to remain too long in a state of absolute despair: one
must give in, die, or do something about it — fight for a cause, but
what cause? Obviously, to free oneself, to fight for a better life...
But poverty and desperation are still not sufficient to generate the
Social Revolution. They may be able to call forth intermittent local
rebellions, but not great and widespread mass uprisings. To do this it
is indispensable that the people be inspired by a universal ideal,
historically developed from the instinctual depths of popular
sentiments, amplified and clarified by a series of significant events
and severe and bitter experiences. It is necessary that the populace
have a general idea of their rights and a deep, passionate,
quasi-religious belief in the validity of these rights. When this idea
and this popular faith are joined to the kind of misery that leads to
desperation, then the Social Revolution is near and inevitable, and no
force on earth will be able to resist it.
This is exactly the situation of the Italian proletariat. The sufferings
they are forced to endure are scarcely less terrible than the poverty
and misery that overwhelm the Russian people. But the Italian
proletariat is imbued with a greater degree of passionate revolutionary
consciousness than are the Russian masses, a consciousness which daily
becomes stronger and clearer, By nature intelligent and passionate, the
Italian proletariat is at last beginning to understand what it wants and
what must be done to achieve its complete emancipation. In this sense
the propaganda of the International, energetically and widely diffused
during the last two years, has been of great value. This profound
sentiment, this universal ideal, without which (as we have already said)
every mass insurrection, however great the sacrifices made, is
absolutely impossible, has been stimulated by the International, which
at the same time pointed out the road to emancipation and the means for
the organization of the people’s power.
At first this ideal naturally manifests itself in the passionate desire
of the people to put an end to their poverty and misery and to satisfy
all their material needs by collective labor, equally obligatory for
all. Later it will come to include the abolition of all domination, and
the free organization of the life of the country in accord with the
needs of the people. This will mean the rejection of the State’s form of
control from the top in favor of organization from the bottom up,
created by the people themselves, without governments and parliaments.
This would be organization achieved by the free participation of
associations, of the agricultural and industrial workers, of the
communes and the provinces. Ultimately, in the more distant future, it
would erect on the ruins of all states the fraternity of peoples.
It is worth noting that in Italy, as in Spain, the program of Marxist
state communism has had absolutely no effect, while the program of the
famous Alliance of revolutionary socialists [anarchist vanguard
organization], which proclaimed uncompromising war against all
domination, all tutelage and governmental authority, was overwhelmingly
and enthusiastically accepted by the workers.
A people inspired with such ideas can always win its own freedom and
ground its own life on the most ample freedom for everyone, while in no
way threatening or infringing on the freedom of other nations. This is
why neither Italy nor Spain will embark on a career of conquest but
will, on the contrary, help all peoples to accomplish their own social
revolutions...
Modern capitalist production and bank speculation inexorably demand
enormous centralization of the State, which alone can subject millions
of workers to capitalist exploitation. Federalist organization from the
bottom upward, of workers’ associations, groups, communes, cantons
[counties], regions, and finally whole peoples, is the sole condition
for true, non-fictitious freedom, but such freedom violates the
interests and convictions of the ruling classes, just as economic
self-determination is incompatible with their methods of organization.
Representative democracy, however, harmonizes marvelously with the
capitalist economic system. This new statist system, basing itself on
the alleged sovereignty of the so-called will of the people, as
supposedly expressed by their alleged representatives in mock popular
assemblies, incorporates the two principal and necessary conditions for
the progress of capitalism: state centralization, and the actual
submission of the sovereign people to the intellectual governing
minority, who, while claiming to represent the people, unfailingly
exploits them.
The exploitation of human labor cannot be sugar-coated even by the most
democratic form of government ... for the worker it will always be a
bitter pill. It follows from this that no government, however
paternalistic, however bent on avoiding friction, will tolerate any
threat to its exploitative economic institutions or its political
hegemony: unable to instill habitual obedience to its authority by
cajolery and other peaceful methods, the government will then resort to
unceasing coercion, to violence, i.e., to political control, and the
ultimate weapon of political control is military power.
The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every
military State must of necessity become a conquering, invasive State; to
survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that
accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet.
Therefore the modern State must strive to be a huge and powerful State:
this is the indispensable precondition for its survival.
And just as capitalist production must, to avoid bankruptcy, continually
expand by absorbing its weaker competitors and drive to monopolize all
the other capitalist enterprises all over the world, so must the modern
State inevitably drive to become the only universal State, since the
coexistence of two universal states is by definition absolutely
impossible. Sovereignty, the drive toward absolute domination, is
inherent in every State; and the first prerequisite for this sovereignty
is the comparative weakness, or at least the submission of neighboring
states...
A strong State can have only one solid foundation: military and
bureaucratic centralization. The fundamental difference between a
monarchy and even the most democratic republic is that in the monarchy.
the bureaucrats oppress and rob the people for the benefit of the
privileged in the name of the King, and to fill their own coffers; while
in the republic the people are robbed and oppressed in the same way for
the benefit of the same classes, in the name of “the will of the people”
(and to fill the coffers of the democratic bureaucrats). In the republic
the State, which is supposed to be the people, legally organized,
stifles and will continue to stifle the real people. But the people will
feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled
“the people’s stick.”
... No state, however democratic — not even the reddest republic — can
ever give the people what they really want, i.e., the free
self-organization and administration of their own affairs from the
bottom upward, without any interference or violence from above, because
every state, even the pseudo-People’s State concocted by Mr. Marx, is in
essence only a machine ruling the masses from above, through a
privileged minority of conceited intellectuals, who imagine that they
know what the people need and want better than do the people
themselves...
We are as unalterably opposed to any form of pan-Slavism as we are to
any form of pan-Germanism. It is the sacred and urgent duty of the
Russian revolutionary youth to counteract in every possible way the
pan-Slavic propaganda inside Russia itself, and particularly that spread
in other Slavic lands, officially and unofficially by government agents,
and voluntarily by fanatical Slavophiles, which strives to convince the
unfortunate Slavs that the Slavic Tsar deeply loves his Slavic brothers,
and that the dastardly pan-Russian Empire, which throttled Poland and
Little Russia [Ukrainia?] can, if only the Tsar wishes, free the Slavic
lands from the German yoke. [Bakunin includes as Slavs those in the now
defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire — Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Serbia,
Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc.]
This illusion is widespread among Austrian Slavs. Their fanatical though
understandable hatred of their oppressor has driven them to such a state
of madness that, forgetting or ignoring the atrocities committed against
Lithuania, Poland, Little Russia and even Great Russia by Tsarist
despotism, they still await deliverance by our pan-Russian slave driver.
One should not be surprised that the Slavic masses harbor such
illusions. They do not know history or the internal situation in Russia:
all they are told is that an all-Slavic empire has been created to defy
the Germans; an empire so mighty that the Germans tremble in fear and
what the Germans hate, the Slavs must love.
All this is to be expected. But what is sad, hard to understand, and
inexcusable is that people who should know better, the educated Austrian
Slavs, experienced, wise, and well informed, have organized a party that
openly preaches pan-Slavism. According to some, this would involve the
creation of a great Slavic empire under the domination of the Tsar, and
according to others it would consist in the emancipation of the Slavic
peoples by the Russian Empire...
But what benefits would the Slavic people derive by the formation of a
mighty Slavic empire? — This would indeed be advantageous for the states
[composing the empire] but not for the proletariat, only for the
privileged minority — the clergy, the nobility, the bourgeoisie — and
probably for some intellectuals, who because of their diplomas and their
alleged mental superiority feel called upon to lead the masses. In
short, there is an advantage for some thousands of oppressors, hangmen,
and other exploiters of the proletariat. As far as the great masses of
the people are concerned, the vaster the State, the heavier are the
chains and the more crowded the prisons.
We have demonstrated that to exist, a state must become an invader of
other states. just as the competition which in the economic sphere
destroys or absorbs small and even medium-sized enterprises — factories,
landholdings. businesses — so does the immense State likewise devour
small and medium-sized states. Therefore every state, to exist not on
paper but in fact, and not at the mercy of neighboring states, and to be
independent, must inevitably strive to become an invasive, aggressive,
conquering state. This means that it must be ready to occupy a foreign
country and hold many millions of people in subjection. For this it must
exercise massive military power. But wherever military power prevails,
it is goodbye to freedom! Farewell to the autonomy and well-being of the
working people. It follows from this that the construction of a great
Slavic empire means only the enslavement of the Slavic people.
Yet the Slavic statists tell us, “we don’t want a single great Slav
state; we want only a number of middle-sized Slavic states, thereby
assuring the independence of the Slavic peoples.” But this viewpoint is
contrary to logic and historic facts and to the very nature of things;
no middle-sized state, in our times, can exist independently. There will
therefore be either no state at all, or there will be a single giant
state which will devour all the weaker states — a despotic, absolutist
Russian state.
Could a smaller Slavic state defend itself against the new pan-Germanic
empire, without itself becoming just as great and just as powerful?
Could it depend upon the assistance of countries united by
self-interest? In both cases the answer is no. In the first place,
because an alliance of various smaller heterogeneous powers, even when
equal or numerically superior, remains weaker because their enemy is
consolidated, homogeneous, responsive to a single command, and therefore
much stronger. Secondly, one cannot depend on the friendly cooperation
of other states, even when their own interests are involved. Statesmen,
like ordinary mortals, are often so preoccupied with momentary interests
and passions that they cannot see when their vital interests are
threatened...
But could not the centralized pan-Germanic state be neutralized by a
pan-Slavic federation, i.e., a union of independent Slavic nations
patterned after Switzerland or North America? We reply in the negative.
Because to form such a federation, it will first be absolutely necessary
to break up the pan-Russian Empire into a number of separate,
independent states, joined only by voluntary association, and because
the coexistence of such independent federated and medium or small
states, together with so great a centralized empire, is simply
inconceivable...
This federation of states could to some extent safeguard bourgeois
freedom, but it could never become a military state for the simple
reason that it is a federation. State power demands centralization, But
it will be contended that the example of Switzerland and the United
States refutes this assertion. But Switzerland, in order to increase its
military power, tends toward centralization; and federation is possible
in the United States only because it is not surrounded by highly
centralized, mighty states like Russia, Germany, or France. Switzerland
retains federation only because of the indifference of the great
international powers, and because its people are roughly divided into
three zones speaking the language of its neighboring states, France,
Germany, and Italy. To resist triumphant pan-Germanism on the legalistic
and statist field — by founding an equally powerful Slavic state — would
be disastrous for the Slavs, because it would inevitably expose them to
pan-Russian tyranny...
The progressive Slavic people should realize by now that the time for
flirting with Slavic ideology is over, and that there is nothing more
absurd and harmful than to compress all the aspirations of the people
into the narrow mold of a spurious nationalism. Nationality is not a
humanitarian principle; it is an historical, local fact which should be
generally tolerated along with other real and inoffensive facts.
Every people, however tiny, has its own specific character, style of
life, speech, way of thinking and working; and precisely this character,
this style of life, constitutes its nationality, which is the sum total
of its historic life, aspirations, and circumstances. Every people, like
every individual, are perforce what they are and have the incontestable
right to be themselves. This constitutes the alleged national right. But
if a people or an individual lives in a certain way, it does not by any
means give them the right, nor would it be beneficial, to regard this
nationality and individuality as absolute, exclusive principles, nor
should they be obsessed by them. On the contrary, the less preoccupied
they are with themselves and the more they are imbued by the general
idea of humanity, the more life-giving, the more purposeful, and the
more profound becomes the feeling of nationality and that of
individuality.
The same applies to the Slavs. They will remain insignificant as long as
they are obsessed with their narrow-minded, egotistical ... Slavism, an
obsession which by its very nature is contrary to the problems and the
cause of humanity in general. They will attain their rightful place in
the free fraternity of nations when, together with all other peoples,
they are inspired by a wider, more universal interest...
In all historical epochs we find one universal interest which transcends
all exclusively national and purely local boundaries, and those
nationalities who have sufficient understanding, passion, and strength
to identify themselves wholeheartedly with this universal interest
become historical peoples [play major historic roles]. The great
revolution at the close of the eighteenth century again placed France in
a preeminent place among the nations of the world. She created a new
objective for all humanity — the ideal of absolute freedom for all men —
but only in the exclusively political field. This ideal could never be
realized because it was afflicted with an insoluble contradiction:
political freedom despite economic servitude. Moreover, political
freedom within the State is a fraud.
The French Revolution thus produced two diametrically opposed trends
which finally coalesced into one — the systematic exploitation of the
proletariat for the benefit of a diminishing and increasingly wealthy
minority of monopolists. Upon this exploitation of the laboring masses,
one party erects a democratic republic and the other, being more
consistent, tries to erect a monarchistic, i.e., openly despotic,
centralized, bureaucratic police State. In the latter, a dictatorship is
thinly masked by innocuous constitutional forms.
From out of the depths of the proletariat there emerged a new and
opposing tendency, a new universal objective: the abolition of all
classes and their main base of support, the State, and the
self-administration of all property by the workers... .
Such is the program of the Social Revolution. There is only one main
question confronting all nations, one universal problem: how to achieve
economic and political emancipation from the yoke of the State. And this
problem cannot be solved without a bloody, terrifying struggle...
Is it not evident that the Slavs can find their rightful place in the
fraternal union of peoples only through the Social Revolution?
But a social revolution cannot be confined to a single isolated country.
It is by its very nature international in scope. The Slavs must
therefore link their aspirations and forces with the aspirations and
forces of all other countries. The Slavic proletariat must join the
International Workingmen’s Association en masse... After joining the
International the Slavic proletariat must form factory, crafts, and
agricultural sections, uniting these into local federations, and if
expedient unite the local federations into an all-Slavic federation. In
line with the principles of the International, and freed from the yoke
of their respective states, the Slavic workers should and can — without
in the least endangering their own independence — establish fraternal
relations with the German workers, since an alliance with them on any
other basis is entirely out of the question.
Such is the only road to the emancipation of the Slavs. But the path at
present followed by the great majority of the young western and southern
Slavs, under the influence of their respected and venerable patriots, is
a statist path involving the establishment of separate Slavic states and
entirely ruinous for the great masses of the people.
The Serbian people shed their blood in torrents and finally freed
themselves from Turkish slavery, but no sooner did they become an
independent principality than they were again and perhaps even more
enslaved by what they thought was their own state, the Serbian nation.
As soon as this part of Serbia took on all the features — laws,
institutions, etc. — common to all states, the national vitality and
heroism which had sustained them in their successful war against the
Turks suddenly collapsed. The people, though ignorant and very poor, but
passionate, vigorous, naturally intelligent, and freedom-loving, were
suddenly transformed into a meek, apathetic herd, easy victims of
bureaucratic plunder and despotism.
There are no nobles, no big landowners, no industrialists, and no very
wealthy merchants in Turkish Serbia. Yet in spite of this there emerged
a new bureaucratic aristocracy composed of young men educated, partly at
state expense, in Odessa, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Paris,
Germany, and Switzerland. Before they were corrupted in the service of
the State, these young men distinguished themselves by their love for
their people, their liberalism, and lately by their democratic and
socialistic inclinations. But no sooner did they enter the state’s
service than the iron logic of their situation, inherent in the exercise
of certain hierarchical and politically advantageous prerogatives, took
its toll, and the young men became cynical bureaucratic martinets while
still mouthing patriotic and liberal slogans. And, as is well known, a
liberal bureaucrat is incomparably worse than any dyed-in-the-wool
reactionary state official.
Moreover, the demands of certain positions are more compelling than
noble sentiments and even the best intentions. Upon returning home from
abroad, the young Serbs are bound to pay back the debt owed to the State
for their education and maintenance; they feel that they are morally
obliged to serve their benefactor, the government. Since there is no
other employment for educated young men, they become state
functionaries, and become members of the only aristocracy in the
country, the bureaucratic class. Once integrated into this class, they
inevitably become enemies of the people...
And then the most unscrupulous and the shrewdest manage to gain control
of the microscopic government of this microscopic state, and immediately
begin to sell themselves to all corners, at home to the reigning prince
or a pretender to the throne. In Serbia, the overthrow of one prince and
the installation of another one is called a “revolution.” Or they may
peddle their influence to one, several, or even all the great
domineering states — Russia, Austria, Turkey, etc.
One can easily imagine how the people live in such a state! Ironically
enough, the principality of Serbia is a constitutional state, and all
the legislators are elected by the people. It is worth noting that
Turkish Serbia differs from other states in this principal respect:
there is only one class in control of the government, the bureaucracy.
The one and only function of the State, therefore, is to exploit the
Serbian people in order to provide the bureaucrats with all the comforts
of life.
Ways and means to make the Social Revolution can be of two sorts: one
purely revolutionary and leading directly to the organization of a
general uprising of the people; the other, more peaceful, way leads to
the emancipation of the people by a gradual, systematic, but at the same
time radical transformation of the conditions of existence ... it is the
formation of associations of craftsmen and consumers and, above all,
producers’ cooperatives, because they lead more directly to the
emancipation of labor from the domination of capitalism... The
experience of the last twenty years in different lands has shown
conclusively that this is impossible.
For the last several years the question of cooperative associations has
stirred lively debates in the International; based on numerous
arguments, the International has come to the following conclusions,
formulated at the Congress of Lausanne (1868) and adopted at the
Congress of Brussels (1868).
The various forms of cooperation are incontestably one of the most
equitable and rational ways of organizing the future system of
production. But before it can realize its aim of emancipating the
laboring masses so that they will receive the full product of their
labor, the land and all forms of capital must he converted into
collective property. As long as this is not accomplished, the
cooperatives will be overwhelmed by the all-powerful competition of
monopoly capital and vast landed property; ... and even in the unlikely
event that a small group of cooperatives should somehow surmount the
competition, their success would only beget a new class of prosperous
cooperators in the midst of a poverty-stricken mass of proletarians.
While cooperatives cannot achieve the emancipation of the laboring
masses under the present socioeconomic conditions, it nevertheless has
this advantage, that cooperation can habituate the workers to organize
themselves to conduct their own affairs (after the overthrow of the old
society) ...
The Russian people possess to a great extent two qualities which are in
our opinion indispensable preconditions for the Social Revolution ...
Their sufferings are infinite, but they do not patiently resign
themselves to their misery and they react with an intense savage despair
which twice in history produced such popular explosions as the revolts
of Stenka Razin and Pugachev, and which even today expresses itself in
continuous peasant outbreaks.
What then prevents them from making a successful revolution? It is the
absence of a conscious common ideal capable of inspiring a genuine
popular revolution... . [Fortunately,] there is no need for a profound
analysis of the historic conscience of our people in order to define the
fundamental traits which characterize the ideal of our people.
The first of these traits is the conviction, held by all the people,
that the land rightfully belongs to them. The second trait is the belief
that the right to benefit from the soil belongs not to an individual but
to the rural community as a whole, to the Mir which assigns the
temporary use of the land to the members of the community. The third
trait is that even the minimal limitations placed by the State on the
Mir’s autonomy arouse hostility on the part of the latter toward the
State.
Nevertheless, the ideal of the Russian people is overshadowed by three
other traits which denature and retard the realization of this ideal;
traits which we must combat with all our energy... . These three traits
are: 1) paternalism, 2) the absorption of the individual by the Mir, 3)
confidence in the Tsar... . The last two, absorption of the individual
by the Mir and the cult of the Tsar, are the natural and inevitable
effects of the first, i.e., the paternalism ruling the people. This is a
great historic evil, the worst of all...
This evil deforms all Russian life, and indeed paralyzes it, with its
crass family sluggishness, the chronic lying, the avid hypocrisy, and
finally, the servility which renders life insupportable. The despotism
of the husband, of the father, of the eldest brother over the family
(already an immoral institution by virtue of its juridical-economic
inequalities), the school of violence and triumphant bestiality, of the
cowardice and the daily perversions of the family home. The expression
“whitewashed graveyard” is a good description of the Russian family...
[The family patriarch] is simultaneously a slave and a despot: a despot
exerting his tyranny over all those under his roof and dependent on his
will. The only masters he recognizes are the Mir and the Tsar. If he is
the head of the family, he will behave like an absolute despot, but he
will be the servant of the Mir and the slave of the Tsar. The rural
community is his universe; there is only his family and on a higher
level the clan. This explains why the patriarchal principle dominates
the Mir, an odious tyranny, a cowardly submission, and the absolute
negation of all individual and family rights. The decisions of the Mir,
however arbitrary, are law. “Who would dare defy the Mir!” exclaims the
muzhik. But there are among the Russian people personages who have the
courage to defy the Mir — the brigands. This is the reason brigandage is
an important historical phenomenon in Russia; the first rebels, the
first revolutionists in Russia, Pugachev and Stenka Razin, were
brigands...
One of the greatest misfortunes in Russia is that each community
constitutes a closed circle. No community finds it necessary to have the
least organic connection with other communities. They are linked by the
intermediary of the Tsar, the “little father,” and only by the supreme
patriarchal power vested in him. It is clear that disunion paralyzes the
people, condemns its almost always local revolts to certain defeat and
at the same time consolidates the victory of despotism. Therefore, one
of the main tasks of revolutionary youth is to establish at all costs
and by every possible means a vital line of revolt between the isolated
rural communities. This is a difficult, but by no means impossible,
task.
The Russian rural community, already sufficiently weakened by
patriarchalism, is hopelessly corrupted and crushed by the State. Under
its yoke the communal elections are a mockery, and the persons elected
by the people become the tools of the oppressors and the venal servants
of the rich landlords. In such circumstances the last vestiges of
justice, of truth, and of elemental humanity vanish from the rural
community, ruined by the authorities. More than ever brigandage becomes
the only way out for the individual, and a mass uprising — the
revolution for the populace.
Amid the general confusion of ideas, two diametrically opposed trends
emerge. The first, of a more pacific character, inclines toward gradual
action; the other, favoring insurrectionary movements, tends directly to
prepare the people for revolutionary warfare. The partisans of the first
trend do not believe that the revolution is really possible; but as they
do not want to remain passive spectators of the misfortunes of the
people, they are determined to go to the people, like brothers, suffer
with them and at the same time teach and prepare them for action, not
theoretically but practically, by example. They will go among the
factory workers, and toiling side by side with them awaken in them the
desire to organize.
Others try to found rural colonies where all will enjoy the land in
common ... in accordance with the principle that the product of
collective labor shall be distributed on the basis of “from each
according to his ability; to each according to his need.” The same hope
inspired Cabet, who, after the defeat of the 1848 revolution, left with
his Icarians for America where he founded the colony of New Icaria,
whose existence was brief. If this kind of experiment could not last
very long in America, where the chances of success were much greater ...
it follows that it could never succeed in Russia.
But this does not discourage those who want to prepare the people for
peaceful social change. By organizing their own domestic life on the
basis of full liberty, they hope to combat the shameful patriarchal
regime... By their example they hope to imbue the people with practical
ideas of justice, of liberty, and of the means of emancipating
themselves... All these plans are very fine, extremely magnanimous and
noble, but are they realizable? It will be only a drop in the ocean ...
never sufficient to emancipate our people.
The other tendency is to fight, to revolt. We are confident that this
alone will bring satisfactory results. Our people have shown that they
need encouragement. Their situation is so desperate that they find
themselves ready to revolt in every village. Every revolt, even if it
fails, still has its value, yet isolated actions are insufficient. There
must be a general uprising embracing the whole countryside. That this is
possible has been demonstrated by the vast popular movements led by
Stenka Razin and Pugachev.
The struggle against the patriarchal regime is at present raging in
almost every village and in every family. In the rural community, the
Mir has degenerated to the point where it has become an instrument of
the State. The power and the arbitrary bureaucratic will of the State is
hated by the people and the revolt against this power and this arbitrary
will is at the same time a revolt against the despotism of the rural
community and of the Mir.
But this is not all. The principal evil which paralyzes the Russian
people, and has up till now made a general uprising impossible, is the
closed rural community, its isolation and disunity. We must at all costs
breach these hitherto impregnable communities and weld them together by
the active current of thought, by the will, and by the revolutionary
cause. We must contact and connect not only the most enlightened
peasants in the villages, the districts, and the regions but also the
most forward-looking revolutionary individuals naturally emerging from
the rural Russian environment; and above all, wherever possible, we must
establish the same vital connections between the factory workers and the
peasants. These connections can be only between individuals. The most
advanced and active peasants in each village, district, and region must
be put in contact with like-minded peasants in other villages,
districts, and regions, though obviously this must be done with extreme
caution.
Above all, we must convince these advanced elements, and through them
all, or at least the majority of, the most energetic people, that ...
all over Russia and outside its frontiers there exists a common evil and
a common cause. We must convince the people that they are an invincible
force ... and that if this force has not yet freed the people, it is
only because they have not acted in unison to achieve a common aim... In
order to achieve unity, the villages, districts, and regions must
establish contact and organize according to an agreed and unified
plan... We must convince our peasant and our worker that they are not
alone, that on the contrary there stand behind them, weighed down by the
same yoke but animated by the same enthusiasm, the innumerable mass of
proletarians all over the world who are also preparing a universal
uprising... . Such is the main task of revolutionary propaganda. How
this objective should be concretized by our youth will be discussed on
another occasion. We may say here only that the Russian people will
accept the revolutionary intellectual youth only if they share their
life, their poverty, their cause, and their desperate revolt.
Henceforth this youth must be present not as witnesses but as active
participants in the front ranks of action and in all popular movements,
great or small, anytime, anywhere, and anyplace. The young revolutionist
must act according to a plan rigorously and effectively conceived and
accept strict discipline in all his acts in order to create that
unanimity without which victory is impossible... He must never under any
circumstances lie to the people. This would not only be criminal, but
also most disastrous for the revolutionary cause... . The individual is
most eloquent when he defends a cause that he sincerely believes in and
when he speaks according to his most cherished convictions... . If we
try to emancipate the people by lies we will mislead not only them but
ourselves as well, deviating from and losing sight of our true
objective.
A word in conclusion: The class that we call our “intellectual
proletariat,” which in Russia is already in a social-revolutionary
situation, i.e., in an impossible and desperate situation, must now be
imbued with revolutionary ideas and the passion for the Social
Revolution. If the intellectual proletariat does not want to surrender
they face certain ruin; they must join and help organize the popular
revolution.