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Title: Bakunin for 21st Century Activists
Author: Anarcho
Date: November 26, 2009
Language: en
Topics: Mikhail Bakunin, 21st century, Black Flag (U.K.), interview
Source: Retrieved on 1st February 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=373
Notes: Published in: Black Flag no. 229 (BM Hurricane, London, WC1N 3XX, UK)

Anarcho

Bakunin for 21st Century Activists

Mark Leier is a Canadian historian of working class history and the

director of the Centre for Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University. An

anarchist, he has written on extensively on British Columbia‘s rich

history of labour radicalism. His fourth book, Bakunin: The Creative

Passion (Thomas Dunne Books, 2006), is an excellent biography of one of

the founders of anarchism. We thought it would good to ask him why

Bakunin would be of interest to 21^(st) century activists.

Q. So, first, why write a biography of Bakunin?

I first started thinking about a biography of Bakunin in the aftermath

of some of the anti-globalization and anti-WTO protests, such as the

“Battle in Seattle” and the terrible police brutality in Genoa that

resulted in the death of Carlo Giuliani. The anarchist presence at these

protests had the media and “terrorism experts” scrambling to explain

what was going on. Of course they were trying to explain away anarchism,

not to understand, and they relied on parodies of anarchism. When they

tried to do historical analysis, they always took it back to Bakunin,

painting him as the father of propaganda by the deed, which they always

interpreted as blind violence and terror. That worsened after the 9/11

destruction of the World Trade Towers. My first reaction was to blame

the journalists and pundits, but when I went back to the English

language works on Bakunin, such as Carr’s book and Mendel’s and Berlin’s

articles, it was obvious that there was no comprehensive book, aimed at

a more general audience, that treated Bakunin seriously as an activists

and a thinker. So I decided to try to do that. I didn’t set out to write

the biography of Bakunin or the most comprehensive biography; I tried to

write a biography that used some primary research and that built on the

splendid academic work on Bakunin that was not easily accessible to a

non-academic audience.

Q. What would you say Bakunin has to offer today’s radicals?

First, he offers some hope, hope in the importance of struggle. This was

an activist who fought on the losing side all of his life, yet did not

lose his passionate hope, his understanding, that the struggle itself

was meaningful, for without it, the world would certainly get worse.

While some seem him as a quixotic figure, I see him as one who

realistically assessed the opportunities for success and failure and

decided to fight for an ideal even when he thought there was no

immediate chance of victory.

Second, he offers a clear appraisal of what the radicals’ targets should

be. After all, capitalism and the state have not changed much since his

time; Bakunin would recognize much in the 21^(st) century. He wrote

powerful critiques of capital and the state that still serve as useful

starting points for understanding the world, and he did so in

accessible, evocative language.

Third, while there is a tendency to draw a dividing line between

“classical anarchism” and contemporary anarchism and post-anarchism, a

careful reading of Bakunin suggests that the “classical anarchists”

wrestled with many of the same problems of goals, strategy, and tactics

that anarchists face today. In fact, I believe that Bakunin offers a

useful critique of today’s post-anarchism, for the ideas of

postmodernism that inform post-anarchism are not as new as its advocates

suggest. That is, Bakunin rejected the idealist thought of his day to

become a materialist and a realist, and I believe materialism and

realism offer a stronger foundation for criticism than idealism and some

variants of post-modernism.

Q. What where Bakunin’s strengths and weaknesses as a thinker? As an

activist?

Like most of us, his strengths and weaknesses often stemmed from the

same source. As an activist, one of his strengths was his optimism,

optimism not so much about the possibility of success so much as

optimism about the necessity for radical analysis and action. At the

same time, it is often the case that refusing to appreciate incremental

change can be immoral. Let me give you an example. Many anarchists

refuse to vote, for many very good reasons. At the same time, voting for

a slightly more progressive party may mean real benefits for people.

Even if that benefit is only, say, $50 a month more for someone on

welfare, that $50 is crucial for some people. And so it may be that some

practical politics should also inform anarchist ideas about what to do

now. Of course I am simplifying the question and I would not presume to

tell anarchists what should be done, but I offer this as an example

where a straightforward argument on refusing to vote may not be as

principled as it first seems. As a thinker, one of his great strengths

was his ability to write passionate, inspiring prose. At the same time,

he could be a little imprecise in his analysis. Political movements need

all sorts of people: orators, analysts, rebels, educators,

street-fighters, people who are angry, people who are compassionate, and

nobody can be all these things all the time. So I have tried to

appreciate Bakunin’s strengths rather than harp on the weaknesses.

Q. Given that Bakunin was right about Marxism (predicting that social

democracy would become reformist and that the dictatorship of the

proletariat would become the dictatorship over the proletariat), why do

you think his ideas are not more accepted in radical circles?

I think his ideas are not more accepted precisely because he was right.

If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, pragmatism is the

first refuge of the scoundrel. Bakunin always shines a critical light on

the compromisers and those who insist that we have to settle for less.

Now, as I suggested above, sometimes compromise is all you can do, and a

little may be better than nothing, but Bakunin’s insistence that we must

always strive for more, even when we compromise, is a stinging rebuke to

those who say, “this far, but no further.”

Q. There are lots of distortions and misrepresentations attached to

Bakunin. What do you think are the worse?

As you suggest, this would be a long list. Among the worst – the belief

that he believed in terror for the sake of terror. His arguments about

violence were much more sophisticated and complicated than that, but

they have been reduced to absurd notions by his critics and sometimes by

his supporters. His arguments about bandits as a revolutionary force

have often been misinterpreted – the social bandits of Russia that he

talked about were very different from, say, motorcycle gangs or criminal

gangs. Not every outlaw is an anarchist – some more closely resemble

fascists, whatever understanding we have for the fact that social forces

created them. Bakunin’s anti-Semitism has been greatly misunderstood. At

virtually every talk I’ve given on Bakunin, I’m asked about it. Where it

exists, it is repellent, but it takes up about 5 pages of the thousands

of pages he wrote, was written in the heat of his battles with Marx,

where Bakunin was slandered viciously, and needs to be understood in the

context of the 19^(th) century.

Q. Bakunin is well known for his love of secret societies? How central

were they in his thought? Do we have any reliable information on how

they worked internally?

In my opinion, the secret societies have been greatly exaggerated. In

some cases, they didn’t exist beyond Bakunin and a few friends, and so

functioned like affinity groups, not revolutionary cells; in other

cases, they had good reason for being secret, for open groups were an

invitation for arrest and imprisonment. The important point is that as

an anarchist, Bakunin did not believe in secret, conspiratorial coups

but in open action and propaganda. The idea that he believed the social

revolution would be accomplished by small sects is simply wrong.

Q. What is known of the process behind creating the early documents for

these groups? Documents like “The Program of the Alliance” are usually

published as authored by Bakunin, but where they collective statements

that he then finalised?

It varies – some pretty clearly seem to be his own work, while others

are clearly more collective statements. He wrote incessantly, and

re-wrote incessantly, not to say obsessively, working and re-working the

material over time, and he clearly incorporated the ideas of others as

he went. He didn’t live in a closet or an ivory tower, and his ideas

evolved as he worked with other people.

Q. Can ideas which reflect the economic and political structures of the

nineteenth century be drawn upon to find new solutions to new problems?

I think that if Bakunin were dropped into our society today, he would be

impressed with the technological progress but dismayed by the lack of

social and political progress. Many of the same problems that existed in

his day are still here today, and in many ways, we have declined, not

progressed. The tsar’s prisons, for example, were regarded as the worst

in Europe, but in many ways, the treatment of prisoners such as Bakunin

was better than that found in US prisons today.

Q. What is the relationship of Bakunin to Proudhon’s anarchism?

Bakunin was undoubtedly influenced by Proudhon’s sense of justice and

liberty, and by his personality, but intellectually, the influence was

rather limited. Bakunin believed that Proudhon had not made the

intellectual breakthrough to a materialist understanding of the world.

For Bakunin, that understanding that ideas do not exist in some pure

form but come out of real, lived experience, opportunity, and

constraints was crucial. For good or ill, Bakunin was a sophisticated

intellectual, aware of contemporary trends and thought. Proudhon was

not, and so was less of an intellectual influence on Bakunin. But

anarchism is not just an intellectual position; it is also an ethical

one and a moral one. In that sense, Proudhon’s anarchism, what Bakunin

thought of as his “instinctual” understanding of anarchism, was

important.

Q. How instrumental was Bakunin in creating modern anarchism, given that

many French mutualists (like Eugene Varlin) had independently come to

similar conclusions?

At one level, of course, we are all anarchists at heart, and so it is

not surprising that people move in similar directions. And similar

social conditions impel people to act and think in similar ways.

Anarchism in particular would seem to be a movement in which it would be

a mistake to attribute the creation or founding of a movement to a

single person. But I think anarchism is not just living without

authority; it is also a political theory, a set – or sets, sometimes in

conflict! – of ideas. In tracing the evolution of ideas, historians are

often limited to those who left records, either their own written work,

works written about them, records of organizations, and the like. That

is unfair, but it is the way the past works. So Bakunin’s influence, his

“credit” for creating modern anarchism, is in large part due to his

prominence as a writer and activist. He was very effective as a writer

and famous – infamous, perhaps, as an activist, and a powerful and

inspirational thinker. It is unfair to say he created modern anarchism,

but he did much to make it intelligible and accessible, and in that

sense, deserves some credit.

Q. Is the high esteem of Bakunin in anarchist circles an example of

radicals subscribing (unknowingly) to a “great men” perspective on

history?

It depends on what you mean by “great man history.” Few of us would deny

that some people are inspirational, or have articulated our thoughts

more carefully than we have, or have taken on roles that we admire. In

that sense, I have no quarrel with “great person history.” But the more

usual meaning is to insist that history is only made by “great men and

women of power,” of kings and queens and magnates. That is a reactionary

notion of history that serves power, not people. No one would cast

Bakunin as that sort of “great man.” Many people know Bakunin’s aphorism

about authority – how he would absolutely acknowledge the authority of

the bookmaker on questions involving boots. But even then, Bakunin

insisted he would not bow down to that authority and would not do

whatever the bookmaker recommended. So too with Bakunin: we can choose

to listen to him and acknowledge his work as an anarchist thinker and

activist without conceding for a moment that we must bow to him as the

authority on anarchism. Having said, I do think that there is much of

interest and utility in his work, though others may disagree. And few

anarchists have ever treated Bakunin as an authority the way some

Marxists have consulted Marx for everything from understanding history

to fixing their faucets.

Q. I remember reading an article which argued, with some evidence, that

Bakunin was gay and his tolerance of Sergey Nechayev was down to lust.

Any comments?

It is always fun to speculate on why people do what they do, but without

facts, the speculation is meaningless. One of the points I wanted to

make in the book is that the psycho-history approach to Bakunin is

deeply flawed because the theories of psycho-history are very weak and

the evidence for the claims about Bakunin is simply non-existent. People

are complex, their motivations and reasons often unclear to themselves

and impossible for historians to understand completely. I have heard the

argument that Bakunin was gay, but have not seen any evidence. Without

evidence, any speculation is possible, but it’s also meaningless. I

would be happy to change my opinion if evidence were found, but to date,

I haven’t seen any. There is no question that Bakunin tolerated some

nasty behaviour and ideas from Nechayev longer than he might have; but

more important, I think, is that he did repudiate Nechayev’s conception

of the revolutionary as an amoral agent and terrorist.

Q. Do you think that a merger of Bakunin and Marx is possible? What

would each give to such a synthesis? What would it be called?

In some ways, that synthesis has always been there. Alvin Gouldner

called Bakunin the first “post-Marxist,” meaning someone who built on

Marx’s insights and focused on questions that Marx had not thought much

about or was mistaken about, such as the nature of the state, the

problems of vanguardism, and the ambiguous role of the “revolutionary

intellectuals” and their relationship to radical and working class

movements. Of course much of Marx’s insight was his own ability to

synthesize ideas from different fields, from philosophy, socialist

theory, and political economy, and Bakunin was in substantial agreement

with Marx on many issues. On some issues where they disagreed, they

misunderstood each other and in fact were more similar than they

allowed; on other issues, their personalities and dislike for each other

clouded the controversies. But I think it is fair to say that Marxism

becomes more palatable and inspiring the more it approaches anarchism,

while anarchism becomes more powerful as a way to view to world

critically the closer it approaches the best Marxist traditions.

Q. You have also written extensively on the IWW. Do you think

revolutionary unionism can grow in influence again?

If we change the question a little, to ask, will revolutionary workers’

movements grow in influence again, I think the answer is, if they do

not, we are in grave danger. I doubt they will take the very same form

they did in the past, but workers’ movements have always risen,

declined, and risen again in new forms to meet new conditions. Clearly

the world can not continue as it has; the old choice, socialism or

barbarism, still faces us. Here I am using socialism in the old sense,

not as state socialism, Bolshevism, and the like. And no group can build

socialism – anarchism – other than the working class. Whether it will or

not is the question.

Q. Many anarchists at the time pointed to the obvious links between

revolutionary unionism with Bakunin’s anarchism, would you agree? Has

Bakunin anything to give for today’s union activists?

Yes, Bakunin, or the ideas that he represented, were hugely influential

in building revolutionary unionism. In some ways, the IWW represented

that synthesis between Bakunin and Marx we talked about earlier. As for

today’s union activists, that radical vision and tradition can be hugely

inspiring; the attempt to grapple with big ideas is essential; the

insistence on organizing from the periphery to the centre, not from the

centre out, is fundamental.

Q. Your second book, “ Red Flags and Red Tape: The Making of a Labour

Bureaucracy”,deals with the institutionalization of a non-revolutionary

labour movement. Do you think that this would affect even a

revolutionary union? Can it be avoided? If so, how?

I suspect any group of two or more people starts running into problems

of power and authority and decision-making! But you’re right, the

question is the institutionalization of power. One of the things I argue

in Red Flags and Red Tape is that people with some power – and the power

of these early labour bureaucrats was limited – often make the wrong

decision for the right reasons. That is, they were trying to build

working class militancy, trying to move workers to resistance, trying to

create a labor newspaper, trying to form new organizations – all worthy

aims. But precisely because they were not immediately accountable, they

made their decisions in a vacuum, without input and consensus from union

members. That separated them from the members and created a bureaucracy:

rule by office holders. The other thing I argue is that a union can be

militant and revolutionary without being democratic; alternatively,

though rare, a union could be conservative and democratic. So the

dangers of bureaucracy are always there. The way to avoid is to ensure

that institutions that let officials make important decisions by

themselves are not created in the first place.

Q. What areas of working class and anarchist history need investigating?

Is there anything you think budding anarcho-historians should be looking

into?

I have three answers here. The first is that there has been an explosion

of work in working class and anarchist history in recent years. A lot of

it has been published by university and academic presses, and that is

great, but we also need people to make that work more accessible and to

synthesize it. Second, there are huge areas of working class and

anarchist history that need investigating. The “ethnic” press of these

movements has not been adequately explored, at least not in North

America; the ways in which anarchism has sometimes retreated to

academia, but remained influential nonetheless is important to unearth;

the writers and activists who have pushed that synthesis of Marx and

Bakunin need to be explored. Here I’m thinking of people such as Paul

Mattick, who never called himself an anarchist but was as

anti-authoritarian and anti-vanguard as Bakunin, and Erich Fromme as

just a few examples. And I am sure there are many, many other areas that

need exploration. But the third answer, and really, these are

observations and suggestions, not answers, is for anarchists to write

about every aspect of history from an anarchist perspective. That is,

there is no reason why anarchist history should only study anarchism. It

could study governments and capitalism and war and every other

historical topic from an anarchist perspective. That would be exciting

work.

Q. Richard Dawkins has provoked a lot of responses with his “The God

Delusion, would Bakunin have approved? And is it not a strange omission

by Dawkins that Bakunin’s “God and the State” is missing from it?

Bakunin would likely have approved of Dawkins’s atheism, but I suspect

he would think Dawkins’s particular critique was a little naive. While

Bakunin was a ferocious atheist, he understood the appeal of religion to

the oppressed. If you want to “cure” religion, he insisted, you had to

remove poverty and oppression. If religion were not a social

institution, a social power, but a matter of individual belief, then it

wouldn’t much matter what people believed, for it would not intrude on

their lives. At the same time, they would soon realize that if they

wanted things to change, they could make those changes without appeal to

a non-existent power. If they wanted to understand the world, knowledge

would be available to them and while they could continue to believe in

anything they wanted, when they wanted to work in the world, they would

understand that science – real knowledge of whatever field – differs

from religion in that it has to deliver or it gets discarded. Take away

its social power, and religion is no longer an issue. Blaming people for

seeking some small solace isn’t helpful.

Q. Finally, Bakunin had a pretty eventful life. Fighting on the

barricades in 1848, solitary confinement, escaping from Siberia,

fighting Marx in the International, taking part in insurrections in the

1870s. When you were writing your biography did you think it would make

a good film? And who would play Bakunin? Marx?

I often thought it would be a great film, or, at least, one I’d like to

see. But Spielberg and Scorsese haven’t returned my calls. Robbie

Coltrane would be my choice to play Bakunin, and he already has the

beard from the Harry Potter series. Marx is a little trickier; but

someone with the intensity of Robert De Niro could pull it off, though

that particular casting does boggle the mind. Personally, I’d love to

see Jack Nicholson pull one of his famous hissy fits with a faceful of

yak hair glued on as he kicked and shouted about Bakunin’s ideas on the

commune…..