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Title: Bakunin vs. Marx Author: Sam Dolgoff Date: 1979 Language: en Topics: Mikhail Bakunin, Karl Marx Source: https://libcom.org/library/bakunin-vs-marx-0
As pointed out in my introduction to Bakunin on Anarchy (Alfred A.
Knopf, 1972), the clash of personalities between Marx and Bakunin was
not the essential element in their running controversy during the
congresses of the International. The debates transcend petty personal
squabbles' and embody two diametrically opposed tendencies in the theory
and tactics of socialism, the authoritarian and libertarian schools
respectively, the two main lines of thought that helped shape the
character of the modern labour and socialist movements.
Unfortunately, Ulli Diemer's articles Anarchism vs. Marxism and Bakunin
vs. Marx (Red Menace, Spring 1978) really do not deal with the main
issues involved in the debates. A discussion of these issues is beyond,
the scope of this paper. I limit myself to correcting the more glaring
factual errors and distortions. I also express my deep appreciation to
the comrades of Red Menace for granting me.space. (Unless otherrwise
specified, all quotes are Diemer's.)
The very fact that there is still, over a century later, a debate
between Marxism and Anarchism on fundamental principles proves that Marx
was not, and could not possibly have been the "central figure in the
development of libertarianism. Neither Marx or Engels ever claimed that
they were "central figure in the development of socialism". According to
Engels, the "central figures", the founders of socialism, were the
"utopians" Saint Simon, Fourier, and Robert Owen, who formulated the
leading principles of socialism, as Marx himself acknowledged in a
letter to his friend Wedemeyer. (See Engels, Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific. Marx even praised Proudhon's What is Property as the first
"truly scientific analysis of capitalism," anticipating Marx's later
findings. (See J. Hampton Jackson's Marx, Proudhon, and European
Socialism.) Marx, who minimized the role of the individual in history,
would certainly have rejected the notion that "...it is not possible to
create...a libertarian world..." without him.
Whether Marx or Engels did or did not use the term "dialectical
materialism" does not invalidate the fact that they WERE dialectical
materialists and that there is a fundamental indissoluble connection
between dialectics and Marxism. For Marx and Engels the dialectic method
was not only a theory but a LAW OF NATURE. Anyone who questions this
connection is not a Marxist. Engels emphasizes this in his preface to
the second edition of Anti-Duhring — a work written with the full
approval of Marx:
" ..Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious
dialectics from German idealist philosophy and APPLY IT TO THE
MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF NATURE AND HISTORY ..." (emphasis mine)
Engels devotes three whole chapters to dialectics, even trying to
demonstrate the validity of the dialectic method to chemistry and
mathematics.
Only one who is almost totally ignorant of anarchist literature could
assert that "with very few exceptions, anarchism failed to produce a
rigorous analysis of capitalism, the state, bureaucracy, or
authoritarianism..." A bibliography of such works could easily fill
several volumes. For example, Max Nettlau's bibliography of anarchism
compiled over half a century ago has been immeasurably enriched by later
works. While there is sufficient Marxist literature on capitalism, there
is almost nothing on such crucial questions as the state, bureaucracy,
federalism, self-management and other forms of social organization which
even modern Marxists deplore. They are trying to drastically revise
Marx's naive and erroneous views on these vital issues.
Bakunin did not "deliberately fabricate" the accusation that Marx
believed in the "People's State". Bakunin criticised Marx for this in
1870 and 1872. He could not be expected to forcee that Marx would
condemn the "People's State" THREE YEARS LATER in 1875 in his Critique
of the Gotha Program. The Critique was published AFTER Bakunin's death
about a year later. But this error does not invalidate Bakunin's
prophetic indictment of the "Workers' State" which Marx and Co. DID
champion.
The assertion that the Marx and Engels "...position is spelled out most
extensively in Marx's Civil War in France is in flagrant contradiction
to everything Marx and Engels wrote before and after the Paris Commune.
To establish this extremely important point, I quoted Franz Mehring,
Marx's disciple and authorized biographer in my Bakunin on Anarchy. I
strongly suspect that Diemer ignored this quote because it decisively
refutes his argument. Here it is:
"..The opinions of the Communist Manifesto could not be reconciled with
the praise lavished by The Civil War in France for the vigorous fashion
in which began to exterminate the parasitic State ...Both Marx and
Engels were well aware of the contradiction, and in a preface to a new
edition of TheCommunist Manifesto issued in June 1872 they revised their
opinions... after the death of Marx, Engels in fighting the anarchists
once again took his stand on the original basis of the Manifesto... if
an insurrection was able to abolish the whole oppressive machinery of
the State by a few simple decrees, was that not a confirmation of
Bakunin's steadfastly maintained standpoint? (Karl Marx, pp. 452-3)..."
Diemer's assertion that Marx and Engels "consistently maintain that the
state is INCOMPATIBLE with socialism…" (my emphasis) is not correct. For
them, the "workers state", the TRANSITION toward full realization of
communism, IS COMPATIBLE with socialism. Diemer himself states correctly
that. Marx and Engels believed the proletariat must "use the state" to
achieve the liberation of the proletariat. "The state employs means
which will be discarded after the liberation." As if means can be
separated from ends: Diemer does not write that Marx and Engels
proclaimed the necessity for the "workers' state" not only to crush the
bourgeoisie, but also to institute socialism:
"...the proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to CENTRALIZE ALL INSTRUMENTS
OF PRODUCTION IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE... centralization of credit...
by the State. Centralization of communication ... and transport by the
State. Establishment of industrial armies by the State..." (Communist
Manifesto) (emphasis mine)
There is therefore no foundation for the assertion that for Marx and
Engels, socialism is not compatible with the state, and still less that
they were "in intransigent opposition to the state..." It is significant
that they proclaimed the same views thirty years later in 1878. "... the
means of production are... transformed into state property...
(Anti-Duhrinq, Part 3, Chapter 2 - Theoretical). Solidly basing himself
on their writings, Bakunin, in this prophetic quote, defined the
authoritarian character of Marxian "socialism":
"...labour employed by the state such is the fundamental principle of
authoritarian communism, of state socialism ... after a period of
transition ... the state will then become the only banker, capitalist,
organizer, and distributor of all its products. Such is the ideal, the
fundamental principle of modern communism... " (quoted in Bakunin on
Anarchy, P. 217)
Since Diemer grudgingly concedes that "...use of the state in the
transition period is dangerous and the concern of Bakunin about the
possible degeneration of the revolution is valid..."further comment is
unnecessary.
On page eleven, Diemer takes exception to Bakunin's remark that Marx "as
a German and a Jew, is from head to toe an authoritarian." On the next
page he flatly contradicts himself. "Both Bakunin and Marx displayed
considerable arrogance and AUTHORITARIANISM" (my emphasis) With respect
to Marx there is ample evidence to substantiate this accusation. I
challenge Diemer to PROVE that Bakunin was either arrogant or
authoritarian.
The greatest historian of anarchism, Max Nettlau, the foremost living
authority on Bakunin and his times, Arthur Lehning, and Bakunin's
contemporary, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist Anselmo Lorenzo — all of
them at one time or another, deplored Bakunin's anti-semitic streak and
his anti-German prejudice. But Diemer, intent on white-washing his hero,
Marx, and discrediting Bakunin, deliberately hides the fact that Marx
was also anti-semitic and prejudiced against Slavic peoples. (on
anti-semitism see Marx's On The Jewish Question). Max Nomad (Political
Heretics, pp. 85-86) tells how Marx insulted Lasalle:
...calling him the "Jewish Nigger' and Baran Itzik". Marx wrote about
the Croats, Czechs, Pandurs and "similar scum" and demanded the complete
"annihilation" of those "reactionary races". Marx even justified the
subjection of eight million Slavs to four million Hungarians on the
ground that the Hungarians had more "vitality and energy"..."
Economic determinism constitutes the essence of Marxism. It is clearly
defined in this celebrated passage from Marx's Critique of Political
Economy:
" ... the economic structure of society always forms the real basis from
which in the last analysis, is to be explained, the whole superstructure
of legal political institutions, (the state) as well as the religious,
philosophical, and other conceptions of each historical period..." (In
another place, Max Eastman's introduction to the Marx anthology Capital,
he quotes Engels)"...with the same certainty with which, from a given
mathematical proposition, a new one is deduced, with that same
certainty, can we deduce the social revolution from the existing social
conditions and the principles of political economy..."
Notwithstanding his anti-slavery sentiments, Marx in his polemic against
Proudhon, tried to justify slavery in America on the ground that it was
an economic necessity, arguing in line with his theory of economic
determinism, that slavery was progressive plase in the evolution of
society:
"...slavery is an economic category like any other. Slavery is just as
much an economic pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery or credit...
without slavery, North America, the most progressive of countries, would
be turned into a primitive country. Abolish slavery and you will wipe
America off the map of nations..." (quoted from Poverty of Philosophy in
Handbook of Marxism; International Publishers, 1935, p.357)
Marx's attitude is justified by the editors of.the Handbook... on the
grounds that while slavery was an economic necessity in 1847, when the
North was industrially backward, the development of industry in the
1860's made slavery economically unnecessary. The question, How
progressive is a country whose very existence depends on slavery? never
occurred to Marx. In his polemic with Duhring, thirty one years later in
1878, Engels repeated that "the introduction of slavery in Greece", was
both an economic necessity and "a great step forward."
How Diemer, in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, can insist
that "Marx was not an economic determinist", supporting his argument
with two long quotations from Engels, which in no manner whatsoever,
invalidate their theory of economic determinism, is difficult to
understand. (see Anti-Duhring p.202)
To back up his charge that Bakunin was expelled from the International
in 1872, because Bakunin's secret Alliance conspired to "take over the
International", Diemer cites George woodcock's Anarchism page 168.
(There is no reference to this on page 168 or anywhere else). He also
cites Eilleen Kelly, an ignorant, scandal monger whose review article in
the New York Review of Books is on par with Diemer's irresponsible
allegations. Diemer's assertion that "most historians" think that
Bakunin was guilty is false. All responsible historians insist that
Bakunin and his close comrade James Guillaume were expelled in a rigged
congress packed by hand picked "delegates" who "represented"
non-existent sections of the International.
Marx's friend Sorge, residing in the United States, sent Marx a dozen
blank credentials from non-existent groups which Marx distributed to his
stooges. Seraillier, Secretary for France, in the General Council, also
came to the Congress with a handful of credentials which could not be
verified. Of the five members of the Commission of Inquiry chosen to
investigate the charges against Bakunin and other libertarian members of
the International and report their findings to the Congress, one, Walter
(whose real name was Von Heddeghem) was a Bonapartist police spy. The
Commission reported that "... the secret Alliance did at one time exist,
but there is INSUFFICIENT PROOF OF ITS CONTINUED EXISTENCE..." (my
emphasis) Nor could the Commission prove that the Alliance established
rules opposed to the rules of the International when it did exist. Roch
Splingard, a member of the Commission submitted a minority report
contending that Bakunin was being indicted on insufficient evidence. He
declared that "...I am resolved to fight the decision before the
Congress..."
On the last day of the Congress after over half the delegates went home,
the Marxist clique staged a successful coup to kill the International by
moving its headquarters to New York. Nearly all the delegates, including
Marx's strongest supporters, refused to accept the decisions of the
Marx-Engels cliques. They joined the Bakuninist sections of the
International, not because they agreed with their anti-statist,
anti-parliamentary political action policies, but because they demanded
the complete autonomy of the sections irrespective of different
political or social ideas. They revolted because the phony Congress
enacted a resolution giving the Marxist dominated General Council power
to expel sections and even whole federations from the International.
Marx's authorized biographer, Franz Mehring noted that the Congress of
the International "...which the General Council in New York called for
in Geneva, drew up ... the death certificate of the International..."
while the Bakuninist counter-Congress which also took place in Geneva
was attended by delegates from all sections and federations of the
International - the Marxist congress consisted "mostly of Swiss who
lived in Geneva... not even the General Council, was able to send a
delegate..." (Karl Marx, pp.495-496).
Bakunin did NOT try to dominate the International. In his Letter to La
Liberte (Bakunin on Anarchy p.278) Bakunin declared
" ..since reconciliation in the field of politics is impossible, we
should practice mutual toleration, granting to each country the
incontestable right to follow whatever political tendencies it may
prefer or find suitable for its own particular situation. Consequently,
by rejecting all political programs from the International, we should
seek to strengthen the unity of this great association solely in the
field of economic solidarity. Such solidarity unites us while political
questions inevitably separates us..."
There is no reference to a post-revolutionary state in any of Bakuamin's
anarchist writings (there is none on page 153 of my Bakunin on Anarchy
given by Diemer.
There is not one shred of evidence to back up the charge that Bakunin
ever wrote that " ...Marx was part of an International conspiracy with
Bismark and Rothchild..."
The motion to invest the General Council with more power was NOT made by
Bakunin but by Marxist delegates. Bakunin voted for the motion because
it was presumably directed against the resolution of the bourgeois
delegate. In an article titled Mia Culpa (I am guilty) Bakunin admitted
that he had made a serious mistake.
It is true that Bakunin, in anarchist opinion mistakenly, advised
Italian members of the Alliance to became deputies in the government, as
a temporary measure dictated by extraordinary conditions. Bakunin
acknowledged that it constituted a violation of anarchist principles.
But to stress this contradiction as the essence of Bakunin's doctrine is
a gross distortion.
The question of whether Bakunin was a collectivist who advocated that
workers be paid according to the amount they produced and not according
to need is discussed by his close associate James Guillaume. (Bakunin on
Anarchy , p.157-158) Bakunin was not in this sense a collectivist. Nor
was Marx a strict "communist" for whom payment according to need would
prevail in the final stage of communism, and payment according to work
would prevail during the socialist transition period.
In connection with secret societies Bakunin's well known predilection
for the establishment of tightly organized hierarchical organizations,
for which he worked out elaborate rules in the style of the Freemasons
and the Italian Carbonari, can be attributed partly to his romantic
temperment and partly to the fact that all revolutionary and progressive
groups were forced to operate secretly. Bakunin's secret organizations
were actually informal fraternities and groups connected by personal
contact and correspondence, as preferred by his closest associates who
considered that his schemes for elaborate secret societies were
incompatible with anarchist principles.
For anarchists intent upon guiding the revolution in a libertarian
direction by libertarian means, the question of how to stop
authoritarians from seizing power without instituting a dictatorship of
their own becomes increasingly complicated. Bakunin understood that the
people tend to be gullible and oblivious to the early harbingers of
dictatorship until the revolutionary storm subsides and they awake to
find themselves in shackes. He therefore set about forming a network of
secret cadres whose members would prepare the masses for revolution by
helping them to identify their enemies, fostering confidence in their
own creative capacities, and fight with them on the barricades. These
militants would seek no power for themselves but insist increasingly
that all power must derive and flow back to the grass-roots
organizations spontaneously created by the revolution.
Because Bakunin tried to organize this secret organization he has been
regarded by some historians as a forerunner of the Leninist Bolshevik
dictatorship. Nothing can be further from the truth. Lenin would agree
that an organization exercising no overt authority, without a state,
without the official machinery of institutionalized power to enforce its
policies, cannot be defined as a dictatorship.
Bakunin used the terms "invisible collective dictatorship" to denote the
underground movement exerting maximum influence in an organized manner.
According to the rules of his secret Alliance;
"... no member... is permitted even in the midst of full revolution, to
take public office of any kind, nor is the organization permitted to do
so ... it will at all times be on the alert, making it impossible for
authorities, governments and states to be re-established..."
The question of the relationship between revolutionary minorities and
mass movements, like the problem of power, will probably never be fully
resolved. But it is the merit of Bakunin, and the libertarian movement
as a whole, that it endeavors to reduce its built-in defects to a
minimum. There is no point in scolding Bakunin. If he did not have
foolproof answers he did ask the right questions and this is no mean
achievement. Our critics would be better advised to came up with
satisfactory answers.
In his remarks concerning Bakunin's relations with the ruthless, amoral
terrorist Sergei Nechaev, Diemer reluctantly admits that "...Bakunin did
indeed repudiate Nechaev when he found out the true nature of his
activities..." Recent research by Michael Confino, (Daughter of a
Revolutionary) conclusively proves that Nechaev, NOT BAKUNIN was the
SOLE author of the most notorious document in socialist history: Rules
That Must Inspire The Revolutionary (better known as Catechism of the
Revolutionary). During his brief association with Nechaev, Bakunin is
accused of writing together with Nechaev, or under his influence, "...a
number of tracts that displayed a despotic Machiavellan approch to
revolution..." Diemer writes that in these pamphlets Nechaev and Bakunin
advocate a new social order, to be erected by (he quotes from the
pamphlets) "...concentrating all the means of social existence in the
hands of Our Committee, and the proclamation of compulsory physical
labor for everyone ...compulsory residence in communal dormitories,
rules for hours of work, feeding of children ... etc.
Diemer, to be sure unintentionally, omits vital information and makes
factual errors which must be corrected. He does not identify the
pamphlets in question, nor the source of the quotation. The quotation is
not part of any of the pamphlets. It comes from an article in Nechaev's
periodical Narodna ja Raspravy (The People's Vengence) Spring 1870. An
editorial note attached to the article reads"
...those desiring a more detailed exposition of our principles should
read our article, The Communist Manifesto, which outlines the practical
measures necessary to attain our aims...
Nechaev himself wrote the article and edited the paper. Bukinin took no
part in writing the articles or editing the paper. In any case, the
measures advocated by Nechaev in his Catechism and other writings are in
flagrant contradiction to everything Bakunin ever wrote or did. (source.
Michael Bakunin and His Relations With Sergei Nechaev - in French -
edited with introduction and notes by Arthur Lehning: International
Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 1971, p. XXVIII )
The charge that Bakunin "...was infatuated with violence is false.
Bakunin insisted again and again that destruction must be directed not
against persons but against institutions:
"it will then become unnecessary to destroy men and reap the inevitable
reaction which massacres of human beings have never failed and never
will fail to produce in society..." (Bakunin on Anarchy, p.13)
Diemer's remarks about Bakunin's attitude toward the problem of
authority does not remotely resemble his views. It was precisely in
regard to the theory and practice of revolution and the nature of
authority which ranks Bakunin as one of the greatest revolutionists in
the history of the socialist movement. Bakunin did NOT reject "... all
forms of authority..." for example:
...do I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots
I consult the bootmaker, concerning houses, canals or railroads, I
consult the engineer... for science as well as industry, I recognize the
necessity for the division and association of labor. I bow before the
authority of specialists because it is imposed upon me by my own reason.
I give and receive such is human life. Each directs and is directed in
turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a
continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and above all, voluntary
authority and subordination..." (God and the State)
" ... a certain amount of discipline, not automatic, but voluntary...
discipline which harmonizes per-fectly with the freedom of individuals,
is, and ever will be, necessary when a great number of individuals,
freely united, under-take any kind of work or collective action. Under
such curcumstances discipline is simply the voluntary and thoughtful
coordination of all individual efforts toward a common goal..." (Knouto
Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution)
In the days of the old International many socialists of both camps,
Bakunin included, then believed the collapse of capitalism and the
social revolution to be imminent. Although this was an illusion, the
debate they conducted on fundamental principles has remained pertinent
and in many forms, still goes on. To many others at the time - as a
French political scientist, Michel Collinet, has pointed out - the
issues discussed by the authoritarian Marxists and the libertarian
Bakuninists seemed to be merely abstract speculation about what might
happen in the future;
but the problems which then seemed so far-fetched, he says "...are today
crucial; they are being decisively posed not only in totalitarian
regimes, which relate themselves to Marx, but also in the capitalist
countries, which are being dominated by the growing power of
the'state..." (Le Contrat Sociale, Paris, January-February 1964)
Collinet lists the basic points in question: How can liberty and free
development be assured in an increasingly industrialized society? How
can capitalist exploitation and oppression be eliminated? Must power be
centralized, or should it be diffused among multiple federated units?
Should the International be the model of a new society of simply an
instrument of the State or of political parties? At the Congress of
Lausanne in 1967, the Belgian delegate, Caeser de Paepe, raised just
such a question regarding ...the efforts now being made by the
International for the emancipation of the workers. Could this not". he
inquired, "result in the creation of a new class of ex-workers who wield
state power, and would not the situation of the workers be much more
miserable than it is now?
A well researched, thoughtful, objective discussion of these always
fundamental questions involved in the controversy between Marx and
Bakunin - especially now when 19th century socialist ideas are being
re-examined, - is sorely needed. Regretfully, Diemer's articles add
nothing to the clarification of these perennial problems and only
obscure the issues.