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Title: On the Social Upheaval Author: Mikhail Bakunin Date: 1947 Language: en Topics: Uprising Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/writings/Upheaval.html Notes: From Bakunin’s Writings, Guy A. Aldred Modern Publishers, Indore Kraus Reprint co. New York 1947
Le Reveil du Peuple, for September and October, 1870, published an
important summary of an article by Michael Bakunin on the question of
the social upheaval. Bakunin denounces all forms of reformist activity
as being inimical to the emancipation of the working class, and proceeds
to attack those who advocate a mere political revolution, brought about
according to the constitutional forms of capitalist society, and through
the medium of its parliamentary machine, in opposition to a direct
social revolutionary change effected by the workers through the medium
of their own political industrial Organization.
Bakunin argues that the fact that wages practically never rise above the
bare level of subsistence renders it impossible for the workers to
secure increased well-being under bourgeois society. With the progress
of capitalist civilization, the gulf between the two classes gapes wider
and wider.
“It follows front this also, that in the most democratic and free
countries, such as England, Belgium, Switzerland,and the U. S. A., the
freedom and politicalrights which the workers enjoy ostensibly are
merely fictitious. They, who are slaves to their masters in the social
sense are slaves also in the political sense. They have neither the
education, nor the leisure, nor the independence which are so absolutely
necessary for the free and thoughtful exercise of their rights of
citizenship. In the most democratic countries, those in which there is
universal suffrage, they have one day of mastery, or rather of
Saturnalia Election day. Once this day, the bourgeoisie, their daily
oppressors and exploiters, come before them, hat in hand and talk of
equality, brotherhood, and call them a sovereign people, whose very
humble servants and representatives they wish to be. Once this day is
passed, fraternity and equality disperse like smoke; the bourgeoisie
become once more the bourgeoisie; and the proletariat, the sovereign
people, continue in their slavery. This is why the system of
representative democracy is so much applauded by the radical
bourgeoisie, even when in a popular direction, it is improved,
completed, and developed through the referendum and the direct
legislation of the people, in which, from it is so strenuously advocated
by a certain school of Germans, who strongly call themselves Socialists.
For, so long as the people remain slaves economically, they will also
remain slaves politically, express their sentiments as such, and
subordinate themselves to the bourgeoisie, who rely upon the continuance
of the vote system for the preservation of their authority.
Does that mean that we revolutionary Socialists are opposed to universal
suffrage, and prefer limited suffrage or the despotism of an individual
? By no means. What we assert is, that, universal suffrage in itself,
based as it is on economic and social inequality, will never be for the
people anything but a bait, and that from the side of democratic
bourgeoisedom, it will never be aught but a shameful lie, the surest
implement for strengthening, with a make believe of liberalism and
justice, the eternal domination of the exploiting and owing classes, and
so suppression of the freedom and interests of the people.
“Consequently we deny that the universal franchise in itself is a means
in the hands of the people for the achieve-ment of economic and social
equality.
“On this ground we assert that the so-called Social, Democrats, who, in
those countries, where universal suffrage does not exist yet, exert
themselves to persuade the people that they must achieve this before all
else-as to-day the leaders of the Social Democratic Party are doing when
they tell the people that political freedom is a necessary condition to
the attainment of economic freedom-are themselves either the victims of
a fatal error or they are charlatans. Do they really not know, or do
they pretend not to know, that this preceding political freedom, i.e.,
that which necessarily exists without economic and social equality,
since it should have to precede these live fundamental equalities, will
be essentially bourgeois freedom, i.e., founded on the economic
dependence of the people and consequently incapable of brining forth its
opposite: the economic and social, and creating such economic freedom as
leads to the exclusive freedom of only the bourgeoisie?
“Are these peculiar Social Democrats victims to a fallacy or are they
betrayers? ‘That is a very delicate question, which I prefer not to
examine too closely. To me it is certain, that there are no worse
enemies of the people than those who try to turn them away from the
social upheaval, the only change that can give them real freedom,
justice, and well being in order to draw them again into the treacherous
path of reforms, or of revolutions of an exclusively political character
whose tool, victim and deputy the social democracy always has been.”
Bakunin then proceeds to point out that the social upheaval does not
exclude the political one. It only means that the political institutions
shall alter neither before nor after, but together with the economic
institutions.
“The political upheaval, simultaneously with and really inseparable from
the social upheaval, whose negative expression or negative manifestation
it will, so to speak, be, will no longer be a reformation, but a
grandiose liquidation.” “The people are instinctively mistrustful of
every government. when you promise them nice things, they say:-‘You talk
so because you are not yet at the rudder.’ A letter from John Bright to
his electors, when he became minister, says:-“The voters should not
expect him to act according to what he used to say: it is somewhat
different speaking in opposition and different acting as a minister.’
Similarly spoke a member of the international, a very honest Socialist,
when in September, 1870, he became the perfect of a very republican
minded department. He retains his old views, but now he is compelled to
act in opposition to them.
Bakunin asserts that both are quite right. Therefore it does not avail
to change the personnel of the government. He proceeds to treat of the
inevitable corruption that follows from authority, and insists that
everyone who attains to power must succumb to such corruption since he
must serve and conserve ruling-class economic rights.