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Title: Bourgeois Oligarchy
Author: Mikhail Bakunin
Date: July 1871
Language: en
Topics: bourgeois, Libertarian Labyrinth
Source: Retrieved on 25th April 2021 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/bakunin-library/bourgeois-oligarchy-la-revolte-july-1871/
Notes: La révolte, July 1871

Mikhail Bakunin

Bourgeois Oligarchy

It is obvious that liberty will not be restored to the world and that

the real interests of society, of all the groups, of all the local

organizations, as well as all the individuals who form society, could

find real satisfaction only after the abolition of the State. It is

obvious that all the so-called general interests of society, that the

State is supposed to represent, and that, in reality, are nothing but

the general and constant negation of the positive interests of the

regions, provinces, communes, associations and the majority of

individuals subject to the State, constitute an abstraction, a fiction,

a lie. The State is like a vast butcher’s shop, like an immense cemetery

where, under the sway of that abstraction, all the general men, all

those who make the living strength of a country, come foolishly to let

themselves be sacrificed and buried. Now, no abstraction exists by

itself, no abstraction having either the arms to create, or the stomach

to digest that mass of victims that we serve up to it, it is obvious

that the religious or celestial abstraction, God, represents, in

reality, the very positive, very real interests of a privileged class,

the clergy: it is equally obvious that its terrestrial complement, the

political abstraction, the State, represents the no less positive and

real interests of the class today principally, if not exclusively

exploiting, and which, besides, tends to include all the others, the

Bourgeoisie. And as the clergy is always divided and today tends to

divide still more into a very powerful and very rich minority, and a

majority very subordinate and quite miserable, just so the bourgeoisie

and its various social and political organizations, in industry, in

agriculture, in the bank and in commerce, as well as in the

administrative, financial, judiciary, university, police and military

functions of the State, tend to split more each day into a really

dominant oligarchy and a counter mass of creatures, more or less vain

and more or less defeated, living in a perpetual illusion, always more

cast off in the proletariat by an irresistible force, that of the

present economic development. The wretches are inevitably reduced to

serving as blind instruments of that all-powerful oligarchy.