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Title: Bakunin Author: Hippolyte Havel Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: biography, Mikhail Bakunin Source: Retrieved 08/08/2022 from https://archive.org/details/2917021.0001.001.umich.edu/
No man can emancipate himself, except by emancipating with him all the
men around him. My liberty is the liberty of everyone, for I am not
truly free, free not only in thought but in deed, except when my liberty
and my rights find their confirmation, their sanction, in the liberty
and the rights of all men, my equals.—BAKUNIN.
MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVITCH BAKUNIN was descended from an old aristocratic
family, which according to tradition had emigrated to Russia from
Transylvania. He was born on his father’s estate at Pryamukhino,
district of Torshok, in the province of Tver, on the 8^(th) of May in
year 1814. Bakunin’s father was a former diplomat who at the age of
forty-five married a young girl of the poor but aristocratic family of
Muraviev. One of her uncles was the infamous General Muraviev, who
drowned the Polish Revolution in blood and gained the name “the hangman,
of Warsaw.” . Bakunin was the oldest of eleven children. In a
fragmentary autobiography, “La Histoire de ma vie,” Bakunin describes
his father as a man of intellect and culture, a true philanthropist,
possessed of a broad mind and generous sympathies. He belonged to a
revolutionary society which tried to undermine the autocratic despotism
which oppressed Russia, but changed his mind after the unsuccessful
conspiracy of the Decabrists in 1825. Prom then on he tried with all his
might to make of his children true servants and good subjects of the.
Czar.
Bakunin’s father was very rich. He was the owner of a thousand “souls.”
Including women and children he was the unrestricted ruler of three
thousand human beings.
Bakunin spent his early youth at Pryamukhino, where he received
instruction in languages, history and arithmetic from his father and one
of his uncles. Religious instruction was almost entirely overlooked, as
the father was a free-thinker. His moral education suffered through the
knowledge that his entire material and intellectual existence was
founded on injustice, on the system of serfdom. The youth possessed an
instinctive feeling of hatred for all injustice: the sense for truth and
right was strongly developed in him.
At the age of 14 Bakunin entered the Artillery School at St. Petersburg.
He graduated in 18.32 and was sent as an officer to a regiment in the
province of Minsk. Here he spent two years, witnessing the oppression of
the Polish inhabitants after the suppression of the insurrection of
1830. The vocation of a soldier soon became repulsive to him and he quit
the army in 1834, in his twentieth year. The next six years he spent
either in Moscow or St. Petersburg with friends or with his family at
his father’s estate.
During these years he devoted himself passionately to the study of
philosophy, and came in contact with the most progressive and
sympathetic representatives of the universities of Moscow and St.
Petersburg. This generation lived in a purely intellectual atmosphere
and had little interest in the practical aspects of life. The German
philosopher Hegel had nowhere such enthusiastic disciples as in Russia;
his philosophic system played regular havoc among the Russian
intellectuals of that period. Bakunin, who had already studied the
French encyclopedists and had in 1836 translated Fichte’s “Einige
Vorlesungen neber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten,” became in 1837 a
thorough Hegelian. He wrote a preface to a translation of Hegel’s
lectures, and published shortly after an article “On Philosophy.”
In the fall of 1839 Bakunin and his friends Stankevitch and Bjelinski
became acquainted with Alexander Herzen and his followers, who had
returned from their exile in the provinces to Moscow. Fierce discussions
were the result. The Moscow Hegelians represented the most reactionary
standpoint, while the circle of Herzen propagated the ideas of Western
republicanism and French socialism.
In 1840 Bakunin went to Berlin and entered the University. Soon he
developed from a conservative to a revolutionary Hegelian. Ludwig
Feuerbach, the great critic of Christianity, was the cause of this
transformation. In a pamphlet entitled “Schelling and the Book of
Revelations” Bakunin for the first time shows his revolutionary view of
life. From 1840 till 1843 Bakunin spent his time in Germany, first in
Berlin, where for a time he lived with Turgenjev, and later in Dresden.
He was in close contact with the most progressive Germans; with Arnold
Ruge and his friends; with Adolph Reichel, who proved to be a true
friend through his whole life; with Georg Herwegh, and other free
spirits of that time.
Bakunin’s next literary work, an essay called “The Reaction in Germany;
a fragment by a Frenchman,” published in Ruge’s “Deutsche Jahrbuecher”
under the pseudonym Jules Elvsard, was an attack upon all compromise in
the revolutionary ranks. This work, known principally because of the
last sentence, “The zeal for destruction is at the same time a producing
zeal,” called the attention of the police to Bakunin’s activity. The
result was that he no longer felt secure in Saxony. He left Leipzig with
Herwegh in January, 1843, and they travelled to Zurich by way of
Strassburg. In Zurich Bakunin became acquainted with the German radicals
Julius Froebel, August Follen, and their friends; later he came to know
the Communist Wilhelm Weitling and his followers. He published several
articles on Communism in Froebel’s “Schweizerischer Republikaner.”
Weitling was presently arrested and among his papers the police found
Bakunin’s name. The Russian ambassador asked for information concerning
him, and Bakunin was obliged to leave Zurich as quickly as possible. He
went to Geneva and later to Berne. Here in February, 1844, the Russian
ambassador informed him that his government insisted upon his immediate
return to Russia. Bakunin decided otherwise; he went to Brussels, where
he met Lelewel, the Polish historian and revolutionist, and many other
Polish and Russian exiles. From Brussels he went to Paris, where he met
and became friendly with the Anarchist philosopher Pierre Joseph
Proud-hon, the novelist George Sand, and many prominent Frenchmen.
Herzen, Reichel, Bjelinski, and the naturalist Karl Vogt, all personal
friends of Bakunin, lived at this time in France.
In December, 1844, Bakunin got information from Russia that on account
of his revolutionary activity and his refusal to return to Russia he had
been sen-fenced to exile in Siberia for life and that his entire fortune
had been confiscated by the government of the Czar. In March, 1846,
Bakunin wrote in the “Constitutional” on the Russian horror in Poland;
in November, 1847, he spoke on the same theme in a Polish meeting. The
result was that .at the request of the Russian ambassador he was
expelled by the French government from French territory. He went to
Brussels, but only for a short time. In Paris the Revolution broke out,
and soon the whole of Europe was aflame. The long awaited Revolution had
arrived!
Bakunin saw clearly that the success of the Revolution of 1848 could
only be assured if the democratic parties of all the countries of Europe
should unite. This the Reaction tried by all the means in its power to
prevent. Bakunin took upon himself the mission of agitation among the
Slavs; no man could have been better fitted for the work than he. He
planned to join the Polish revolutionists with the intention of
spreading the movement to Russia. From Paris he journeyed to Cologne,
Leipzig and Breslau, and in each city he met the revolutionary leaders
and participated in all important discussions. From Breslau he went to
the Slavic Congress at Prague, hoping to be able to convert the
delegates to the Revolutionary cause. While Bakunin was in Prague the
Revolution broke out in that city. He was in the thick of the fight; and
it was only after the Revolution had been suppressed that he left for
Breslau.
Thence he went to Berlin, where he became acquainted with Max Stirner,
the author of “The Ego and his own.” In October he was expelled front
Prussia; three days later from Saxony. He found a place of comparative
security in the small liberal state of Anhalt. In Koethen and Dessau he
revealed a feverish activity, mostly of conspirative character. He was
preparing for a general uprising in the spring of 1849. In the eyes of
the reactionary powers he became the most feared and most hated
personality in the ranks of the Revolutionists.
From January till March Bakunin lived in secret in Leipzig, whence he
conspired with Bohemian revolutionists. In May the Revolution broke out
in Dresden. Bakunin was one of the leaders, fighting on the barricades,
in close contact with the provisory government. Active day and night, he
became terror incarnate in the eyes of the Saxon philistines. After the
suppression of the Revolution he marched with Richard Wagner and other
rebels to Freiberg, where the last attempt at an invasion of Bohemia was
made. Then Bakunin and some friends marched to Chemnitz, where they
hoped to find refuge. They were received hospitably, but in the night
the good citizens attacked Bakunin and his followers in bed, arrested
them and turned them over to the Prussian soldiers in A1ten-burg. Here
begins Bakunin’s prison life.
Bakunin and his comrades Heubner and Roeckel were brought in irons to
the fortress of Konigstein. Heubner and Roeckel were sentenced to death,
but the sentence was later commuted to a life term in the penitentiary.
Bakunin was kept in the fortress until June, 1850; on the 13^(th) of
June he was extradited to Austria. He was first kept in Prague, and
later transferred to the horrible prison in Olmutz, where he was
inhumanly treated. On the 15^(th) of May, 1851, he was sentenced to
death, but the sentence was changed to life imprisonment. Shortly alter
Bakunin was extradited to Russia; a welcome change, as nowhere had he
been so maltreated as in the Austrian prisons.
In St. Petersburg he was first incarcerated in the fortress of Peter and
Paul; at the beginning of the Crimean War he was transferred to the
fortress of Schlusselburg. He suffered from scurvy and lost his teeth.
Deep melancholy took hold of him, and he would have ended his life by
suicide if his family had not succeeded in March, 1857, in having his
sentence changed to exile in Siberia. In Tomsk in Western Siberia and
later in the eastern part of the country he enjoyed comparative freedom,
although he was constantly under police surveillance; he came in close
contact with many exiles, and lost no opportunity for the propaganda of
revolutionary ideas. He even gained a great deal of influence over his
relative Muraviev-Amurski, who was then acting as Governor of Eastern
Siberia. Bakunin tried to convert him to the idea of a United States of
Siberia. Muraviev-Amurski tried to get an amnesty for Bakunin, but did
not succeed; later lie was recalled to European Russia, and Bakunin made
preparations for escape. He succeeded in outwitting the authorities and
left Irkutsk on the 5^(th) of June, 1861. He traveled down the Amur to
Nikolajevsk, and from there to Japan. On the 17^(th) of September he
landed in San Francisco, having sailed from Yokohama. The news of the
escape and safe landing of the great revolutionist caused an intense
international sensation. In San Francisco and later in New York Bakunin
found many old friends and former co workers. But he did not stay long
in the United States. On the 15^(th) of November he embarked for
Liverpool, and on the 27^(th) of September he was received with open
arms by his old friends Herzen and Ogarjev in London. During his exile
in Tomsk (in 1858V Bakunin had married the daughter of a Polish
revolutionist, but it was not until two years after his arrival in
London that, he was able to rejoin his wife at Stockholm.
After his escape from Siberia Bakunin threw himself with his old energy
into the revolutionary propaganda. He had the confidence of the
revolutionary elements of all countries. At this time he still hoped for
a general European uprising; Garibaldi’s expedition to Sicily and Naples
produced great enthusiasm, and the exiles in London, among them the
Frenchmen Louis Blanc and Talandier, the Italians Mazzini and Saffi, the
Russians Herzen and Ogarjev, the radical Englishmen Linton and Holyoake,
and especially the Polish leaders had great hopes for an international
revolt. Bakunin attempted to establish a closer connection between the
Russian and the Polish revolutionists. He issued several appeals, among
them “To the Russian, Polish and all Slavic friends,” and “The People’s
Cause: Romanov, Pugatchev or Pestel,” urging all rebels to a concerted
action; but unfortunately his efforts did not meet with success. The
aristocratic element in the Polish movement made a friendly co-operation
with the Russian revolutionist impossible. When the Polish Revolution of
1863 broke out Bakunin himself went to Helsingfors with a Polish
expedition on the steamer “Ward Jackson,” and thence to Sweden, where he
tried to influence the Swedish radicals to an action against Russia.
The breakdown of the Polish Revolution showed that the era of national
uprisings was over. A new epoch had begun. The movement of the
proletariat now became the dominant factor. Bakunin, who was the true
incarnation of the revolutionary spirit, felt this; from now on he
entered the international workingmen’s movement, to display here the
same indomitable energy he had used in the national uprisings before the
prison doors had closed upon him. His ideas were now clarified; he had
developed to a true conception of the philosophy of Anarchism. All
former inconsistencies disappeared; destruction of the State, of every
authority based upon force, of every superstition, even if it should
mask itself under the name of Socialism, now became his goal. The most
interesting and significant part of his life had begun.
After his return from London Bakunin settled down in Italy. His
revolutionary efforts were now directed toward organizing a secret
society of the most intelligent, honest, and energetic men from all
libertarian movements for the purpose of spreading atheistic-anarchistic
ideas and of influencing the next uprisings in a social revolutionary
direction. This society, whose members were mainly his personal friends
and co-workers, was called the “Fraternite internationale.” It was the
real basis of the libertarian International in Italy, Spain, Southern
France, and the Latin part of Switzerland. The International
Workingmen’s Association was founded in September, 1864, in London.
Bakunin had in the beginning no direct connection with that
organization. He and his friends worked in their own way among the
revolutionary elements of all countries. They participated in the Peace
Congress held at Geneva in September, 1867. Bakunin and his intimate
comrades Joukovski, Mroezkovski, Naguet, and others made great efforts
to win the Congress to their side. Bakunin was elected a member of the
Central Committee at Berne. The majority of the League, however,
consisted of bourgeois republicans who had no sympathy with the
workingmen’s movement. The next Congress voted down the proposal of
Bakunin to recognize the social question as the supreme question;
Bakunin, Elisee Reclus, Aristide Rey, Joukovski, Mroczkovski, Fanelli,
and others (18 members in all) left the organization and founded the
“Alliance international de la democratic socialiste.” Bakunin proposed
that they should join the International Workingmen’s Association, and he
and his friends became members of the Jura Section of the International.
The General Council of the International, which was under the influence
of Karl Marx, refused membership to the “Alliance,” and the latter
organization dissolved. But Marx and his faction accused Bakunin and his
friends of keeping a secret organization among themselves to work
against the General Council.
It would take volumes to describe the great historic struggle between
Marx and Bakunin in the International. There was concerned not only
personal antagonism, but at the same time a struggle between two
diametrically opposite conceptions—that of the authoritarian Socialism
of Marx, and that of the libertarian Anarchistic Socialism of Bakunin.
The Jura Federation was the stronghold of those in the International
whose tendency was against the state and toward direct economic
revolutionary action. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the leading
spirits of the General Council in London, were working to divert the
International from the direct economic struggle and make of it a
parliamentary fighting machine. Bakunin opposed this movement with all
his power. He declared that every political movement which has not for
its immediate and direct object the final and complete economic
emancipation of the workers, which has not inscribed upon its banner
quite definitely and clearly, the principle of “economic equality,” that
is, the integral restitution of capital to labor, or else social
liquidation—every such movement is a bourgeois one, and as such must be
excluded from the International.
“Without mercy the policy of the democratic bourgeois, or
bourgeois-Socialists, must be excluded, which, when these declare that
political freedom is a necessary condition . of economic emancipation,
can only mean this: political reforms, or political revolutions must
precede economic reforms or economic revolutions; the workers must
therefore join hands with the more or loss Radical bourgeois, in order
to carry out the former together with them, then, being free, to turn
the latter into a reality against them. We protest loudly against this
unfortunate theory, which, so far as the workers are concerned, can only
result in their again letting themselves be used as tools against
themselves, and handing them over once more to bourgeois exploitation/’
Bakunin, the fearless fighter for the social and economic emancipation
of the working class, presents a direct antithesis to the social
democratic spirit and petty bourgeois cowardice of political life. In
Karl Marx he found a mean antagonist. Even in the midst of the
revolutionary struggles of 1848, Marx published! in his “New Rhenish
Gazette” articles accusing Bakunin of being a secret agent of Czar
Nicholas and the Pan-slavists. Marx and his friends were at that time
forced to stammer their apologies. Whilst Bakunin suffered imprisonment
at Olmutz and in other Austrian jails, Horzen, the great Russian
political writer, and Mazzini, forced Marx to take back his calumnies.
But, Marx was not the man to forgive them this humiliation. Many years
later, after Bakunin had suffered imprisonment in the subterranean cells
of the Schlusselberg and exile to Siberia, Marx and his satellites
started the despicable game anew. Anonymous denunciations appeared in
Social Democratic papers, under the editorship of Liebknecht, Hess and
others. But at the congress of the International at Basle in 1869 the
slanderers were forced to compromise themselves and to declare the
entire baselessness of their charge. No wonder Marx flew into a rage,
and resolved to kill Bakunin morally.
At the Hague Congress of the International, in 1872, Marx succeeded,
with the aid of a fictitious majority, in having the Jura Federation and
its leading spirits, Bakunin and James Guillaume, excluded from the
International, whereupon the Jura, the Spanish, the Italian, and the
East Belgian (Vesdre) Federations broke entirely with the General
Council, which was transferred next year to New York, where it died;
while the Federations just mentioned, concluding a federative alliance
among themselves, and abolishing all central authority, continued the
work of the International Workingmen’s Association on federalist
principles, and up to 1878 held regular yearly congresses, until this
became impossible, owing to Government prosecutions.
In the history of the revolutionary movement there is no personality who
has been so much slandered and maligned as was Bakunin by his
antagonists. His enemies stooped to the lowest depths to besmirch the
character of the man -who represented the true revolutionary spirit of
his time. In his essay on Bakunin “s influence Peter Kropotkin says
truly: “Those who gathered around him were men who stood on a high moral
plane. I never knew him personally, but I made the acquaintance of most
of those who worked with him in the International, and were pursued with
the most bitter hatred of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. And in the
face of those who hated and slandered them, I assert that every one of
Bakunin’s comrades represented a moral personality of the highest value.
I am convinced that history will confirm my assertion. Posterity will no
doubt recognize that his personal enemies, though gifted with
intelligence, entertained a less moral outlook on life than those who
called themselves Bakunin’s friends.”
After October, 1868, Bakunin lived in Geneva, later in Locarno. He
edited the “Egalite,” the organ of the Jura Federation, and busied
himself with general propaganda in the Federation. lie took a prominent
part in the Congress of the International held at Basle in September,
1869. He kept up a correspondence with comrades in Russia, Italy, Spain,
and other countries.
The war between Germany and France called Bakunin again to action. lie
saw clearly the terrible result the triumph of German militarism would
have on the revolutionary movement. Unlike many others, who spent their
time preparing peace manifestos, he immediately began to prepare for
insurrections. He himself went to Lyons where he made ready for an
uprising. The city was taken by the revolutionists on September 28^(th),
1870, but as there was a lack of solidarity and logical co-operation the
attempt to proclaim a Commune failed. Bakunin was for a short time in
danger; he was incarcerated and brutally mistreated. Comrades succeeded
in freeing him from prison, but he had to leave the city the next day.
He went to Marseilles, then to Genoa, and then back to Locarno. When the
Parisians proclaimed the Commune Bakunin was on his way to Florence. The
defeat of the Commune and the slaughter of 35,000 workers threw Bakunin
into a mood of deepest pessimism. He retired from public action for a
short time to make a resume of his ideas. The result was two brilliant
works: “God and the State,” and “The Knouto-German Empire.”
Bakunin’s activities during the years 1871-72-73 were concentrated upon
Russia, Italy, and Spain. In 1871 commenced his great polemic with
Mazzini. As a result we have his forceful “Risposta” to Mazzini; also
the “Risposta All’ Unita Italiana” and the pamphlet “La Theologie
politique de Mazzini, et l’Internationale.” Mazzini died in 1872, but
his followers continued the discussion with bitter animosity.
Bakunin found staunch friends and comrades in Cafiero, Malatesta, and
other Italians. In Spain he was in correspondence with Lorenzo,
Pellicer, Morago, Vinas, and others; A Slavic section of the
International was founded in Zurich. Karl Marx and his faction had
succeeded in excluding Bakunin and his followers from the International,
but they did not succeed in capturing the spirit of the organization.
The Italian, Spanish, French, and the Jura Sections met at St. Imier in
the Jura on the 15^(th) and 16^(th) of September, 1872, and reorganized
the International on a federalistie basis with a coilectivist-anarchist
program. In April, 1873, appeared the “Meraoire de la Federation
Jurassienne” in which Bakunin impartially gives the history of the
International, and of the split in the organization. The Marxians also
published a pamphlet full of lies and attacks upon Bakunin. It appeared
in July, 18715, under the title “L’Alliance de la democratic socialists
et l’association international des travailleurs.” Bakunin answered in a
letter published in the “Journal de Geneve” on September 25^(th), 1873.
After the reorganization of the libertarian International Bakunin
announced in the Bulletin of the Jura Federation (October 12, 1873) his
resignation from the International and his retirement from political to
private life. This announcement was made for the special purpose of
hoodwinking the authorities. A revolutionary movement to great strength
had developed in Spain, and the Spanish members of the International had
invited Bakunin to that; country. Unfortunately, material circumstances
and the arrest of certain comrades made the journey impossible. The
uprisings were crushed, and in 1874 the International was proscribed in
Spain, although it continued to exist in secret organizations for seven
years.
From “Baronata,” the estate on the Lake of Maggiore which Cafiero had
purchased as a refuge for revolutionists, Bakunin and Cafiero, together
with other members of the International, particularly with A. Costa,
organized an insurrection in Italy. Bakunin left Switzerland in July,
1874 and travelled by way of Brescia, Bergamo, and Verona to Bologna,
where he met Costa and other conspirators. Unfortunately Costa was
arrested on the 5^(th) of August, and the uprisings, in Bologna and
other Italian cities ended in failure. Bakunin left the country dressed
in the garb of a priest, and returned to Locarno, disappointed, in very
poor health, and in a bad pecuniary situation. He now retired entirely
from the revolutionary movement, and lived with his family in Locarno
until his death on the 1^(st) of July, 1876, at a private hospital at
Berne. His old friends Professor Adolph Vogt and the Reichel family were
near him when he ended his phenomenal journey on this planet.
Quoting the great French revolutionist, Auguste Blanqui, Kropotkin says
that it is easier to measure accurately the influence of events by their
indirect consequences rather than their direct results, for the former
are always more important than the latter. We must likewise estimate
Bakunin’s influence, not so much by what he personally attained, but by
the influence he exerted upon the thoughts and actions of his immediate
disciples. For his literary legacy is small. “Communism and the State,”
“The Historical Development of the International Worker’s Association,”
“God and the State”—these are the three books he wrote. These originated
in the same way as his other pamphlets, which were written in order to
answer questions of the day, or addressed as letters to friends, but
reached the length of pamphlets owing to their author’s discursive style
of writing. In this way arose “The Knouto-German Empire,” “Report of a
Frenchman on the Present Crisis,” “The Political Theology of Mazzini and
the International,” “The Bears of Berne,” and other works.
As a rule, Bakunin sat down to write a letter dealing with some question
of the moment. But the letter quickly grew to the size of a pamphlet,
and the pamphlet, to that of a book. For the author wrote so fluently,
had so thorough a conception of the philosophy of history, such a vast
store of knowledge relating to the events of the time, that the pages
soon filled themselves. If we only consider what he and his
friends—Herzen, Ogarjev, Mazinni, and Ledru-Rollin amongst others—the
best men of action in that revolutionary period of the forties—thought
about the questions of the day; what they felt during the hopeful years
which proceeded the red year, 1871–2, and the despair which followed it:
if we call this to mind we will understand readily how the thoughts,
conceptions, facts and arguments borrowed from real life must have
invaded Bakunin’s spirit. We learn to understand also how his
generalization of historical philosophy, so richly adorned with facts
and brilliant thoughts, could only be taken from contemporary reality.
Every pamphlet of Bakunin signifies a crisis in the history of
revolutionary thought in Europe. His speeches at the congress of the
“Peace and Liberty” League were so many challenges to all the radicals
of Europe. In them Bakunin declared that the radicalism of 1848 had had
its day, that the; new era, the epoch of Socialism and Labor, had
dawned. Another question besides political liberty, that of economic
independence, had raised its head. This question would become the
dominating factor in European history.
The pamphlet addressed to Mazzini announces the end of conspiracy for
the purpose of waging wars of national independence, and the advent of
the social revolution. Bakunin proclaimed the end of sentimental
Christian Socialism and the dawn of atheistic realistic communism. And
his famous letter to Herzen concerning the International had the same
significance for Russia as the other had for Italy.
In “The Bears of Berne” Bakunin bids farewell to the philistine Swiss
democracy, while his “Letters to a Frenchman,” written during the Franco
German War of 1870–1 were a dirge to Gambetta’s radicalism, and an
enthusiastic appeal for the new epoch, which found its expression soon
after in the Paris Commune, a movement which overthrew the old
State-Socialist ideas of Louis Blanc and proclaimed the new idea of
Communism, the Commune taking up arms for the defense of its territory
to inaugurate the social revolution within their own walls—this was
Bakunin’s advice, in order to repel the German invasion.
His “Knouto-German Empire and the Social Revolution” were the prophetic
vision of an old revolutionist. Then already, in 1871, Bakunin foresaw
that, resulting from the triumph of Bismarck’s military state, a forty
to fifty years’ reaction would descend upon Europe. Likewise Bakunin
prophesied the rise of German State Socialism, to which Bismarck also
stood sponsor. At the same time, Bakunin aimed at winning the Latin
countries for Stateless Communism or Anarchism.
Finally we have “Communism and the State,” “The Historical Development
of the International,” and “God and the State.” These contain, for the
thinking reader, in spite of their fighting tendency, attributable to
the fact that they were written on the spur of the moment, more profound
political thought, a higher philosophic conception of history, than
whole volumes of university or Socialist treatises, which distinguish
themselves as a rule, by the fact that they try to conceal the lack of
deep thought and ideas in a mist of dialectic.
Bakunin’s writings contain no ready-made recipe for a political
cookshop. Those who expect to find the solution of all their doubts in
one book, without exercising their thinking capacity, will get no
satisfaction out of his works. But should the reader be accustomed to
independent thinking and used to looking upon books as material over
which he must reflect individually—as if in conversation with an
intelligent man who awakens his intellect—the sometimes unarranged, but
always brilliant generalizations of Bakunin will be more useful than all
the works of the authoritarian Socialists.
The ideas which Bakunin spread in the middle of the last century form
today the social philosophy of the most advanced part of the
international proletariat. Those ideas, which went through the crucible
to hostile criticism shine today in greater clarity than ever, and form
the basis on which free humanity will build its social structure.
To escape its wretched lot the populace has three ways, two imaginary
and one real. The two first are the rum-shop and the church, the third
is the social revolution. A cure is possible only through the social
revolution—that is, through the destruction of all institutions of
inequality, and the establishment of economic and social equality. The
revolution will not be made by anybody. Revolutions are never made,
neither by individuals nor yet by secret societies. They come about
automatically, in a measure; the power of things,-the current of events
and facts, produces them. They are long preparing in the depth of the
obscure consciousness of the masses—then they break out suddenly, not
seldom on apparently slight occasion. The revolution is already at hand
to-day; everybody feels its approach.
By the revolution we understand the unchaining of everything that is
to-day called “evil passions,” and the destruction of everything that in
the same language is called “public order.”
The revolution will rage not against men, but against relations and
things. Bloody revolutions are often necessary, thanks to human
stupidity; yet they are always an evil, a monstrous evil, and a great
disaster, not only with regard to the victims, but. also for the sake of
the purity and perfection of the purpose in whose name they take place.
One must not wonder if in the first moment, of their uprising the people
kill many oppressors and exploiters—this misfortune, which is of no more
importance anyhow than the damage done by a thunderstorm, can perhaps
not be avoided. But this natural fact will be neither moral nor even
useful. Political massacres have never killed parties; particularly have
they always shown themselves impotent against the privileged classes;
for authority is vested far less in men than in the position which the
privileged acquire by any institutions, particularly by the State and
private property. If one would make, a thorough revolution, therefore,
one must attack things and relationship, destroy property and the State:
then there is no need of destroying men and exposing one’s self to the
inevitable reaction which the slaughtering of men always has provoked
and always will provoke in every society. But, in order to have the
right to deal humanely with men without danger to the revolution, one
must be inexorable toward things and relationship, destroy everything,
and first and foremost property and its inevitable consequence the
State. This is the whole secret of the revolution.
The revolution, as the power of things to-day necessarily presents it
before us, will not be national, but international,—that is, universal.
In view of the threatened league of all privileged interests and all
reactionary powers, in view of the terrible instrumentalities that a
shrewd organization puts at their disposal, in view of the deep chasm
that to-day yawns between the bourgeoisie and the laborers everywhere,
no revolution can count on success if it does not speedily extend itself
beyond the individual nation to all other nations.
The revolution, as we understand it, must on its very first day
completely and fundamentally destroy the State and all State
institutions. This destruction will have the following natural and
necessary effects, (a) The bankruptcy of the State, (b) The cessation of
State collection of private debts, whose payment is thenceforth left to
the debtor’s pleasure, (c) The cessation of the payment of taxes, and of
the levying of direct or indirect imposts, (d) The dissolution of the
army, the courts, the corps of office-holders, the police, and the
clergy, (e) The stoppage of the official administration of justice, the
abolition of all that 13 called juristic law and of its exercise. Hence,
the valuelessness, and the consignment to an “auto-da-fe,” of all titles
to property, testamentary dispositions, bills of sale, deeds of gift,
judgments of courts—in short, of the whole mass of papers relating to
private law.
Everywhere, and in regard to everything, the revolutionary fact in place
of the law created and guaranteed by the State, (f) The confiscation of
all productive capital and instruments of labor in favor of the
associations of laborers, which will use them for collective production,
(g) The confiscation of all Church and State property, as well as of the
bullion in private hands, for the benefit of the commune formed by the
league of the associations of laborers. In return for the confiscated
goods, those who are affected by the confiscation receive from the
commune their absolute necessities; they are free to acquire more
afterward by their labor.
The destruction will be followed by the reshaping. Hence, (h) The
organization of the commune by the permanent association of the
barricades and by its organ, the council of the revolutionary commune,
to which every barricade, every street, every quarter, sends one or two
responsible and revocable representatives with binding instructions. The
council of the commune can appoint executive committees out of its
membership for the various branches of the revolutionary administration,
(i) The declaration of the capital insurgent and organized as a commune,
that, after the righteous destruction of the State of authority and
guardianship, it renounces the right (or rather the usurpation) of
governing the provinces and setting a standard for them, (k) The summons
to all provinces, communities, and associations, to follow the example
given by the capital, first to organize themselves in revolutionary
form, then to send to a specified meeting-place responsible and
revocable representatives with binding instructions, and so to
constitute the league of the insurgent associations, communities, and
provinces, and to organize a revolutionary power capable of defeating
the reaction. The sending, not of official commissioners of the
revolution with some sort of badges, but of agitators for the
revolution, to all the provinces and communities—especially to the
peasants, who cannot, be revolutionized by scientific principles nor yet
the edicts of any dictatorship, but only by the revolutionary fact
itself: that is, by the inevitable effects of the complete cessation of
official State activity in all the communities. The abolition of the
national State, not only in other senses, but in this,—that all foreign
countries, provinces, communities, associations, nay. all individuals
who have risen in the name of the same principles, without regard to the
present State boundaries, are accepted as part of the new political
system and nationality; and that, on the other hand, it. shall exclude
from membership those provinces, communities, associations, or
personages, of the same country, who take the side of the reaction. Thus
must the universal revolution, by the very fact of its binding the
insurgent countries together for joint defence, march on unchecked over
the abolished boundaries and the ruins of the formerly existing States
to its triumph.
To serve, to organize, and to hasten the revolution, which must be
everywhere the work of the people—this alone is the task of those who
foresee the course of evolution. We have to perform “midwife’s services”
for the new time, to help on the birth of the revolution.
To this end we must, first, spread among the masses thoughts that
correspond to the instincts of the masses. What keeps the
salvation-bringing thought from going through the laboring masses with a
rush? Their ignorance; and particularly the political and religious
prejudices which, thanks to the exertions of the ruling classes, to this
day obscure the laborer’s natural thought and healthy feelings.
Hence the aim must consist in making him completely conscious of what he
wants, evoking in him the thought that corresponds to his impulses. If
once the thoughts of the laboring masses have mounted to the level of
their impulses, then they will be soon determined and their power
irresistible.
Furthermore, we must form, not indeed the army of the revolution,—the
army can never be anything but the people,—but yet a sort of staff for
the revolutionary army. These must be devoted, energetic, talented men,
who, above all, love the people without ambition and vanity, and who
have the faculty of mediating between the revolutionary thought and the
instincts of the people. No very great number of such men is requisite.
A hundred revolutionists firmly and seriously bound together are enough
for international organization. Two or three hundred revolutionists are
enough for the organization of the largest country.
Here, especially, is the field for the activity of secret societies. In
order to serve, organize and hasten the general revolution Bakunin
founded the “Alliance international de la democratic socialiste.” It was
to pursue a double purpose: (a) The spreading of correct views about
politics, economics, and philosophical questions of every kind, among
the masses in all countries; an active propaganda by newspapers,
pamphlets, and books, as well as by the founding of public associations.
(b) The winning of all wise, energetic, silent, well-disposed men who
are sincerely devoted to the idea; the covering of Europe, and America
too as far as possible, with a network of self-sacrificing
revolutionists, strong by unity.