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Title: Marx and Bakunin Author: Ervin SzabĂł Date: June 2005 Language: en Topics: Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, first international Source: Retrieved on 2nd March 2021 from https://libcom.org/history/ervin-szab%C3%B3-marx-bakunin Notes: Introduction by the Barricade Collective
Nowadays the class struggles and within these the viewpoint of some
groups are alarmingly insular minded. These groups throw the experiences
of the past – which have already been accumulated – away, and focus only
on present times. This thing wouldn’t be surprising if we could fight
this struggle in unity against the ruling class and after in bed of
roses we would enjoy the bearings of communism. Who would be that
foolish person that time dealing with the spirit of the past… But we are
living in capitalism and our class is very devided, which thing has very
arborescent reasons – from the scarcity of class-solidarity to the
abscence of class cosciousness. Not long ago we have sent a text to a
libertarian communist activist, who after reading that text has asked
why we are dealing with such an old text. (It was written in the
nineteenth century.) We have answered in our letter: „What have changed
between now and then connected to capitalism and proletarian struggles?”
We cast everything away which rejects dialectic and throws our struggles
to the space and wrest them from their historical context. We don’t want
to argufy but go to blazes those banzai self-advertising actionism and
other craps, which make only press-material for media and enhance
capital’s terror which thing could go with imprisonment and liquidation
of thousands of comrades. Of course, we are not against the organised or
spontaneous street fightings or looting, sabotage, demonstration,
strike. We just want to emphasize, that the most important thing is to
do these actions in organised form and orderly in case if these have
spontaneous aspects to avoid defeat.
For us there is no „past” and „present” divided into two different
parts, just the whole of the struggle in its continuity. Therefore it’s
important to integrate „preterite struggles” as the experiences for the
future. This is the reason why we publish this text.
Ervin SzabĂł had an especial walk of life. His writing which is published
here shows great perspicacity. At first he makes a wild rush at social
democracy with which he was arguing all along his life and condemns its
personalities and its hatred of anarchism. On the one hand this conflict
can originate to Marx and Engels. On the other hand Bakunin and the
anarchists were responsible for the dividing of the revolutionary
movement. He has written this article to establish the unity. It’s
important to point out this because at present working class is divided
at many walks of bourgeois „life”, despite of their common interests.
Because of this, we think it’s necessary for proletarians living in the
West to get to know the writing of comrade SzabĂł.
Szabó shows in his article that the „two tendencies” agreed in most of
the principles of the First International, the only difference between
them was in the question of centralization/decentralization. Marx
supported the centralization against Bakunin’s federalism but this is
only a half-truth, because Bakunin and his associates established a
centralized communist organization with the forming of Alliance. Its
statues had romantic elements but other parts of it compose an integral
part of the communist platform. At the same time the two tendencies
accused each other with authoritarianism, and personal remark empoisoned
the atmosphere. This irresponsible trifling have divided the
revolutionary working-class movement. Thus we have to argue and explain
the basic differences between communism and bolshevism as well as
anarchism and liberalism yet again.
We do not agree with some of the author’s false statements – for example
the partition of „scientist and fighter”, the considering of social
democracy as a part of socialism. After all, social democracy had never
maintained the struggle of the proletariat but it had tried to
inactivate it. Altogether the article is progressive for our struggle
because it tries to enhance unity despite of its ambiguous parts.
Ervin SzabĂł was born in 1877. From 1899 he admits himself anarchist, in
after years Marxist. The Russian revolutionists and the Hungarian-German
social democracy had great affect on his viewpoint. With the latter he
encountered soon after – because of its reformism. He was publishing
regularly all along his life and was all attention to the revolutionary
movement in which he was taking part, too. It’s due to him that
socialist pieces have become accessible in the public libraries in
Hungary. Cultural orientation had a great importance his whole lifelong
through. He made an important role in translating, publishing
Marx-Engels’ selected works and wrote divine forewords. He was forming
connections with Italian and Russian anarcho-syndicalists but he has
never been touched by the waves of nationalism. The experience of
syndicalism hurt him, namely he become syndicalist in 1909. In the next
year he wrote the manifesto of the syndicalist propaganda-group (in his
syndicalism he always rejected the unions and attended to independent
workers’ organizations). He wrote his paper named „The struggle between
Capital and Labour” in 1911 and along about the first world war he had
been the determinant theoretican of the Hungarian „Zimmerwaldists” and
Revolutionary Socialists, but had kept himself in the background. He had
been writing internationalist pamphlets, had been giving piece of advice
connected to conspiracy. Anarchists and communists had been working
together inside this group, they had had no divergencies. Later the
Hungarian Communist Party was formed from this movement, which had been
appropriated by Kun and his associates afterwards and made an advance to
bolshevism. Ervin Szabó couldn’t see this because he died in 1918. He
was waiting for the revolution his whole lifelong through, he saw
expectantly the revolution in Russia but he avoided bolshevism because
he had a flair for this and due to his non-Leninist Marxism. Truly Ervin
Szabó had never been eclectic – although he tried a lot within the
spectrum of the working-class movement. He was an anarcho-Marxist whom
both liberalism and bolshevism tried to appropriate. We are sorry he
died before the proletarian revolution of 1919 in Hungary which he was
fighting actively for.
Barricade Collective, 2005 June
---
Every nation and every generation has its favorite legendary epoch into
which it projects its yearnings and ideals in the form of extremely
enlarged realities-enlarged and exaggerated-because only such
unconscious self-delusion can ever compensate for the misery of the
present, a present upon which desires get shipwrecked, in which the most
beautiful principles shrivel into commonplace facts.
What the heroic age was for warlike peoples and the era of the martyrs
for the Christians, that is the era of the International for the
socialists of Western Europe. That was the legendary age when the
bourgeoisie and the rulers of all Europe were trembling at the sight of
this international spectre, which was in high fever burning and
consuming itself in the rivalry of the titans, Marx and Bakunin. The
Inaugural Address was the first public docu-ment issued by the first
international organization of the working class.
Today we know that the International Working Men’s Association was far
from being the awe-inspiring power the bourgeoisie imagined it to be,
terror-stricken as it was by revolutions and counterrevolutions and as
it still is in the less developed countries. The workers of any minor
country today could throw larger masses and greater force into the
struggle than the entire international camp that the International was
able to muster. It could hardly have been otherwise: the working class
was much less devel-oped in some countries, much less conscious in
others. It was not its actual power that rendered the International
truly great and awe-inspiring, but rather its clear under-standing of
basic principles and the guidance it was able to provide the workers’
movement. This guidance was precisely what was least appreciated at the
time, by the working and by the ruling classes alike. The attention of
contemporaries was drawn to immediate goals, to occasional tactics, and
to devices meant to shock. Very few were able to recognize the essence,
the great principles of liberation.
Perhaps today we are better able to appreciate the true significance of
the International, the fact that it emphasized certain principles more
clearly and more consciously than any of its predecessors: “that the
liberation of the working class can be accomplished only by the working
class itself,” “that every kind of servitude is social misery,” “that in
consequence the economic liberation of the working-class is the major
goal, and all the political movements must be subordinated to it,” and
“that the liberation of work is not a local or national problem, but a
social one, which extends to every modernized country.” All these
principles are eminently up-to-date, relevant, and weighty even now.
They contain everything that we recognize as the basic principles of
contemporary socialist movement. In fact, many wordy party programs say
no more, but take longer to say it less well.
In order correctly to evaluate the theoretical and practical
significance of the International, I would like to deal with a
superstition derived from its internal struggles and which still has an
impact on socialist movements in certain countries. In those countries
where “German Marxism” prevails, that is, mainly in the German Empire
itself, in Austria, Hungary, Russia, and the Balkans, social democrats
are stubbornly convinced that the International was destroyed not
because it came before its time, but because of personality clashes,
particularly the disruptive activity of Bakunin, in other words, that
Bakunin, the true father of anarchism, was the enemy of every kind of
organization and that the true objective of anarchism to this day is
disorganization. Consequently, there can be no more irreconcilable
contradiction than the one between anarchism and socialism; anarchists
and socialists are not brothers, but enemies.
Every improvement in organizing the proletariat is a step towards its
liberation, and every obstacle to its organization is a step backwards.
Those friends of the proletariat who would weaken its solidarity for its
own alleged benefit are actually much more dangerous enemies than the
opponents who would destroy the proletarian organizations by force. No
tendency has advanced further along this line than that of Bakunin. This
is why Marxists are waging a merciless war against it.
Thus wrote Karl Kautsky, the leading theoretician of so-called orthodox
revolutionary Marxism, only a few years ago. The declaration of a Dutch
social democrat at the 1904 international congress in Amsterdam, that
“the anarchists are our greatest enemies,” likewise went unchallenged.
Furthermore, in the above mentioned countries, the anarchists are
frequently accused of being spies for the police or agents provocateurs.
The history of the International sheds light on the origin of these
arguments and accusations. The roots can be found particularly in the
polemical writings with which Marx fought against the growing influence
of Bakunin and which ultimately led to the latter’s exclusion from the
International. These writings not only distort Bakunin’s theoretical
statements to the point where they appear totally muddled or absurd, but
also include grave accusations against his personal and political
integrity. Even Kautsky admits that these charges were entirely without
foundation: “It is impossible to deny,” he wrote in 1902, “that in the
heat of the struggle against Bakunin and his followers Marx and his
friends overshot their mark and resorted to any number of baseless
accusations.” Nevertheless, only two years later, a German social
democrat wrote a rather successful book about the International in which
the followers of Bakunin were, in the words of Kautsky, “occasionally
labeled liars, demagogues, and even criminal characters.” Another social
democrat has, in utter bad faith, distorted the teachings of Bakunin in
a pamphlet that has been translated into every European language. The
party newspapers and agitators make sure that the poison of libel
spreads everywhere. On the other hand, certain anarchists seem to
believe in the same bad faith that they can best serve their cause by
raising similar charges against Marx, Engels, and social democracy in
general.
Under these circumstances it seems appropriate to preface the Hungarian
translation of the first document of the International so as to head off
a possible attempt to embitter the already sharp actual conflicts with
further myths invented in our own country. Hence I will do my best,
insofar as that is possible within the framework of an introduction, to
make an objective comparison of the
theories of Marx and Bakunin and to determine their relationship to each
other.
Bakunin’s Theories and Marxism
It cannot be claimed that Bakunin was one of the great masters of style.
Predisposed to oral agitation and to action, engaged in constant and
almost superhuman activity, Bakunin could not possibly have taken up the
pen with the serenity and objectivity which is required for lucid
writing. With few exceptions, his writings are occasional pieces about
the initiation or justification of some action or polemical tracts. We
know how easily a writer becomes dominated by his temperament in such
cases, how he stresses certain points which might otherwise have
remained in the background, and how he sharpens certain arguments to
harm his adversary rather than to serve the cause of justice. All of
Bakunin’s writings are of this nature, written in the heat of combat. No
wonder his opponents have had no difficulty culling contradictions from
them or pointing out his many sloppy formulations in order to
demonstrate his ignorance and confusion.
Were one to approach his works not with a view to detecting
contradictions at all cost, but rather with the realization that the
work of an agitator, bent to influence whole countries and generations,
must be forceful and single-minded, one would discover something
entirely different in the works of Bakunin. One would discover that the
father of anarchism was far from being a representative of idealistic
philosophical speculations or of the fantastic individualism of the
post-Hegelian period. Rather, Bakunin was, in every respect, the
disciple of the nineteenth-century school of positive sociology.
So how could he possibly be cast as the theoretical opponent of Marx?
Bakunin himself claimed to be a disciple of Marx. “I am your disciple,”
he wrote to him in one of his letters, “and I am proud of it.” He
declared this to others as well. When Herzen urged him to respond in
kind to Marx who had spread rumours about his being a paid agent of the
Russian government, Bakunin replied:
As far as Marx is concerned, I know as well as you do that he is guilty
towards us like so many others; what is more, that he is the author and
instigator of the ignominies attributed to us. Why have I praised him,
then? For two reasons... First, for the sake of justice. No matter how
despicably he behaved towards us, I for one will not pass over his
outstanding merits regarding socialism; he has been ahead of us by
serving the cause for almost twenty-five years intelligently,
dynamically, and faithfully... Second, for political reasons: Marx is
one of the surest, most influential and most intelligent pillars of
socialism in the International, and one of the most solid dams against
penetration by any kind of bourgeois tendency. And I would never forgive
myself were I to annihilate or diminish his un-questionably beneficial
influence for the sake of the satisfaction of my personal desire for
vengeance.
Bakunin had not spoken in such glowing terms of any of his predecessors
or contemporaries even though, like most persons with an impulsive
character, he was inclined to exaggerate the virtues and merits of
others. Still, he does not mention Proudhon in such favorable colors,
though Proudhon was the only truly significant theoretician of socialism
next to Marx and undoubtedly shared some of Bakunin’s ideas. Even less
does Bakunin praise the person who is sometimes described as the true
father of anarchism (although his influence was quite limited), Max
Stirner, or anybody else, for that matter. Actually Bakunin felt himself
closest to Marx, both in theory and in practice. Bakunin was the first
to translate the Communist Manifesto into Russian, and he began to
translate Capital as well, while it never occurred to him to translate
the works of any other west European socialist.
Nevertheless, we cannot refer to him as simply a disciple of Marx or as
a Marxist. Even if we mean no more by Marxism than Marx’s method of
research – historical materialism – and the concomitant principle of
action – class struggle – and exclude from it everything that is not a
generally valid sociological thesis but merely an observation applicable
to a specific period such as capitalism, or to a specific field, such as
political economy, even then we would still have to concede that the
basic theories of Bakunin and Marx are not completely identical. Not
because Bakunin rejected historical materialism, nor because he did not
proclaim and practice class struggle, but because, in his reading of
these Marxian notions, alien elements had crept in which often
interfered with their consistent application.
His general views on social philosophy predisposed Bakunin to Marxism.
Some of its opponents like to pretend that anarchism is an extension of
bourgeois liberalism, the cult of ultimate individualism and of absolute
personal freedom. This is not the place to discuss the untruth of these
assertions, but I can marshal any number of quotations to demonstrate
that Bakunin was not an individualist. He was far from interpreting
historical progress as the work of arbitrary individual will, or from
considering social existence as the death of, or even a barrier to,
individual liberty. He was far from satisfied with the vapid and
superficial formulations of the principle of individual liberty which
states that the only limit to the freedom of the individual is the
freedom of other individuals. This was the principle upon which the most
typical and most outstanding master of the liberal school of sociology,
Herbert Spencer, would have based the society of the future. This
definition matches almost word for word the principle of liberty
enunciated by Rousseau, and that was precisely the target of Bakunin’s
sharpest attacks. For him social life is as much determined by
implacable laws as nature is. The universal law of causality reigns in
one domain just as in the other; the same unseverable connection and
fateful ineluctability prevails in one sphere as in the other. It is
impossible to revolt against the natural laws, because they surround us
and penetrate our every movement, our every thought, regulate our every
action, and even when we think we are disobeying the laws of nature we
do no more than proclaim their omnipotence. With respect to these laws
man can have but one freedom: to recognize them and to use them
increasingly along the road to collective and individual liberation and
humanization on which he is advancing.
Man has reached this road thanks to his understanding, thanks to his
capacity for abstraction. But are abstractions and ideas the springs of
historical development? According to the idealists, yes. They claim that
certain ideas and feelings are innate in humans. Nothing can be further
from the truth. What humans bring with them-selves at the moment of
their birth-at various stages of their evolution and to different
degrees-is nothing but the material or formal capacity to feel, think,
shape, and develop ideas. These capacities are strictly formal. What
gives them content? Society does.
How did the first concepts or ideas come about in history? The only
thing we can say is that they were not created autonomously, in
isolation, by the miraculously enlightened minds of certain inspired
individuals. They were the outcome of collective effort, something that
passed mostly unnoticed by sections of society and by the minds of
individuals. The geniuses, the outstanding individuals of a given
society, are only the most fortunate spokesmen of this collective
effort. Every person of genius is like Voltaire: “He took the best
wherever he found it.” In other words, it was the collective mind of
primitive society that created the first ideas.
Thus man is a social being, both physically and intellectually. To the
idealists a la Rousseau man was free and immortal at the beginning, and
became mortal and a slave only in society. He surrendered the freedom of
his immortal and infinite soul in order to satisfy the needs of his
finite and imperfect body. Social life, therefore, is the surrender of
the infinite and of freedom.
The concept of freedom held by materialists, realists, and collectivists
is precisely the opposite. Human beings become human only within
society, and it is only by the collective action of all society that
they attain the consciousness and realization of their humanity. Only
social or collective work is able to convert the surface of the earth
into an area conducive to human development and liberate men from the
yoke of nature. Without this material liberation, moral and intellectual
liberation would remain impossible. Nor is it possible to free oneself
from the yoke of one’s own inner nature; that is, one cannot subordinate
the instincts and movements of one’s body to the direction of a more
developed intellect except by education and culture. Both processes of
liberation are social manifestations par excellence. Outside of society
man would have forever remained a wild animal... The isolated individual
would not even have awoken to the realization of his freedom. To be free
means that others, all human, recognize one as free, and deal with one
accordingly. Thus freedom is not a factor of isolation, but mutual
reflections; not of exclusion, but of contact. The freedom of every
individual is nothing but the reflection of his humanity and his human
rights in the consciousness of others. It is only in the presence of
others, and vis-á-vis others, that one can claim to be and actually be
free.
The progress of society amounts to the widening of the sphere of human
liberty. What does this widening mean? It means that man learns the laws
of nature better and better and thereby becomes master over them. The
road to civilization and to freedom is one and the same.
A thinker who regarded individual freedom and will to be thus dependent
on the social environment can certainly not be accused of individualism.
When Bakunin emphasizes that “liberty is not at the beginning of
history, but at its end,” because “the true, great, objective and final
goal of history is the actual and total emancipation of every
individual,” then he is in concert with Engels who had stated that
“Socialism is humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity into the
kingdom of freedom.”
We have seen that Bakunin places the origin of ideas in society and
makes freedom dependent on social progress. Only one step separates this
interpretation from historical materialism. And Bakunin took this final
step. In the pamphlet aimed at the German school of socialism (Sophismes
Historiques de l’Ecole Doctrinaire des Communistes Allemands), he once
again contrasted the idealists with the materialists:
While they derive all aspects of history, including material progress
and the development of various sectors of economic organization, from
ideas, the German communists, on the contrary, see in all history, in
the most ideal manifestations of collective and individual life, in the
intellectual, moral, religious, metaphysical, scientific, artistic,
political, legal, and social changes in the past and at the present,
nothing but the reflections of economic factors or necessary reactions
to them. While the idealists claim that ideas precede facts and even
create them, the communists... on the other hand, claim that facts give
birth to ideas and that the latter are nothing but the ideal expression
of discrete events. The communists claim that the economic, the material
world are the facts par excellence; these are the ones that create the
main base, the essential foundation, while all other factors,
intellectual or moral, political or social, are merely inevitable
consequences.
Who is right: the idealists or the materialists? Once the question has
been posed in this way, our answer cannot be hesitant. Without a doubt
the idealists are mistaken, only the materialists are right. Yes, the
facts do precede ideas. Yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a
flower, its roots are the material conditions. Yes, the entire
intellectual, moral, political, and social history of mankind is the
reflection of its economic history. Every branch of serious and
disinterested modern science can be cited to support this great,
decisive truth.
We can see that Bakunin was not only able precisely to explain
historical materialism, but actually accepted it in its full expanse,
though he himself proceeded to limit its applicability right away. Given
the gaps in his training in economics one could hardly expect that at
times he should not perceive other factors as dominant; the objective
view of things, the consistent derivation of the facts of mental life
from the objectified outside world, was incompatible with his active
fighting spirit. Thus Bakunin easily forgot what he had often argued
regarding the social origin of ideas; next to the economic factor he
placed two bio-psychological factors – the ability to think and the
capacity and need to revolt – as complementary aspects of social
evolution. He refers to these two capacities as the negative factors of
progress, whereas the economic is the positive one.
Obviously Bakunin in the same breath has cited two elemental and general
factors of the organic world and a specifically social factor. For the
capacity to think and revolt is not an exclusively human trait, but
merely the mental expression and subjective reflection of that great
elemental force to which all living creatures owe their life: the
struggle for survival. Every struggle is a revolt, the same for the
tiger, the caterpillar, the fir tree, the moss, as it is for man.
Historical materialism does not deny this in the least. But the person
who uses social science as a method of research has to restrict himself
to social facts and seek nothing more than the specific means humanity
uses in its social struggle and hence finds that the existence of
humanity is shaped by the development and forms of its economic
activities. In other words, the complex manifestations of society are to
be reduced to the most basic social activity. That this basic social
activity is founded on even more basic natural conditions is not a
matter for the social scientist but pertains to the domain of the
natural sciences.
We would be inordinately strict with Bakunin, however, if we were to bar
him from the ranks of the adepts of historical materialism simply on the
grounds that he has mixed biological and psychological factors into the
basic factors accounting for social developments or because at moments
he attributed greater importance to ideas. Any number of thinkers who
had no greater familiarity with the genuine essence of historical
materialism than Bakunin were counted as true Marxists to the end of
their life. A whole school of thinkers has identified the examination of
economic factors, that is, the derivation of social manifestations from
the means of production, simply with economic interest; they have
reduced it to a purely psychological category. Engels himself – after
Marx’s death – made significant allowances for the subjective tendency.
Others have confused historical with philosophical materialism. The
problem of historical materialism is not simple, and Bakunin is not the
only Marxist who used the concept mistakenly.
It is undeniable, however, that Bakunin never fell into extremes; when
examining specific social problems he perceived, along with the basic
economic aspect, the concomitant intellectual, moral, religious, and
other factors; nevertheless, in the critique of ideologies and the
struggle against them he never neglected the social bases of ideas.
Among his most deeply rooted tendencies was his antagonism to religion
and to the church. In each one of his works he ends up by discussing God
and religion. Nevertheless, he writes about the propaganda activity of
free thinkers:
Only social revolution, and not the propaganda of free thinkers, will be
able to extirpate religion from the bosom of the people. To be sure,
that propaganda is quite useful. It is even indispensable as a means of
converting the more progressive individuals; but it can-not affect the
masses, because religion is not simply a slip or dislocation of the
mind, but rather and particularly the protest of the live and active
character of the masses against the miseries of actual existence. The
people go to church for the same reason as they go to the tavern-to be
drugged, to forget their misery, and to think of themselves, at least
for brief moments, as equal, free, and happy. Let him have a human life
and he will no longer go to either pub or church. This human existence
can and will be provided for him only by social revolution.
Some Marxists claim that to attribute decisive significance to human
understanding in social development or to attempt the transformation of
society by means of legislation is compatible with the economic
perception of society. Bakunin’s reply to these social scientists was
completely in accord with the spirit of historical materialism.
Society is ruled by morals and customs, never by laws. Individual
initiatives, rather than the thought or will of the legislator, drive it
slowly along the road of progress. There are laws which govern it
unconsciously, but these are natural laws, inherent to the social body,
just as the physical laws are inherent to material bodies. The better
part of these laws is unknown to this day, and yet they have ruled
society since its beginnings, independent of the thought and will of the
persons constituting it; from which it follows that we must not confuse
them with political and juridical laws.
This sounds very much like the opening sentences in Marx’s famous
preface to the Critique of Political Economy.
Bakunin’s Practical Principles and Marx
Thus far I have endeavored to show the proximity between the general
social philosophies of Bakunin and Marx. I have placed greater stress on
this than I shall in the next section, in which I compare their
political and tactical views, their praxis. Yet it was not about
theories that they clashed in the International but rather about
questions of tactics and organization. Admittedly these matters are much
more important than theories. They mean action, life, actual history; at
most, theories provide an account of the extent to which historical
events have registered in the heads of individual persons. If I have
dealt at length with theories, it was because, while the writings of
Marx and of the social democrats, most of which were in German, are
easily accessible, the works of Bakunin and the anarchists, mostly in
French and Italian, remain largely inaccessible to Hungarian readers.
The inevitable consequence of this has been that our working class has
gained a totally one-sided view of the significance of both tendencies
of the socialist movement and has accepted uncritically all the bona (or
mala) fide errors of the German social democrats.
I believe the passages from Bakunin quoted above should make everyone
more cautious in regard to the usual accusations; and it should no
longer be easy to pretend that the contradiction between Bakunin and
Marx is like the one between the working class and the bourgeoisie;
moreover, it will not be possible to deny that Bakunin and Marx are
related by close theoretical ties.
This kinship seems even closer when it comes to the politics of the
working class and the socialist movement. While studying objectively the
history of the International, one is bound to feel that the mutual
accusations, insofar as they had some basis in reality, were either
eminently premature or simply pretended, and farfetched conflicts. There
was but one serious source of conflict: whether the organization of the
International should be centralized or federalized; whether the General
Council sitting in London should be an organization controlling the
local sections, or merely a correspondence office transmitting their
communications. Because of his temperament, his inclination to
authoritarianism, and his personal vanity, Marx was inclined to
centralism whereas Bakunin was swept towards the opposite point of view
by his temperament and his unbridled desire for action.
Yet all this relates solely to the internal organization of the
International. Not a word was said about applying the principles of
organization of the International to either the workers’ movement on the
whole, or to its national, political, and economic subdivisions. After
all, every section and, what is more, every single member belonged to
the association not via some central national organ, but directly.
However, as today, almost forty years after the Hague congress at which
Bakunin was excluded from the organization, the central organ of the
international social democratic movement, the Bureau Socialiste
Internationale in Brussels, is simply that – a bureau, an office, rather
than a higher forum – we must conclude that time has vindicated Bakunin.
As to the basic points of the program of the International, Bakunin was
in total agreement with Marx. What were these points? The program
specified class organization and politics of the working class in total
independence from other classes and of bourgeois parties; a halt to the
monopoly of the means of production as a basic condition of the liberty
of the working class, hence the subordination of the political movement
to the economic struggle; finally, the assertion of the international
nature of the workers’ movement.
The contradictions that have arisen in these matters do not refer to the
essence, but to the inconsequential details or to conclusions that were
not at all relevant in that primitive stage of the working-class
movement, such as parliamentarianism and participation in government or
the problem of the organization of future society-all of which were
entirely academic matters at the time. It is fairly obvious, however,
that it was precisely the Bakuninists who stuck rigidly to the basic
principles of the International, which, as we know, were formulated by
Marx, whereas those who stood by Marx during the controversies (it is
not possible to refer to them invariably as Marxists) were often mere
politicians who made concessions to the early times and the undeveloped
conditions out of political opportunism. That is, they have acted much
the same way as Bakunin had been justly accused of acting in his Russian
policy. The economic and social conditions in Russia were incomparably
more primitive than those of Western Europe at the time, for industry
and an industrial working class simply did not exist; hence the only
possible politics were aristocratic or liberal. In Western Europe, on
the contrary, it was not possible to do anything except pure
working-class politics. This was all Marx insisted on, as was clearly
stated in the program of the International. Bakunin and his disciples
wanted the same; and so it happened that each time Marx opposed Bakunin,
he ended up by opposing himself. Mutual recriminations are mostly what
we get in these matters.
We can see this immediately in the issue of class consciousness. Bakunin
was accused of being petit bourgeois; Bakunin said the same about the
socialists and workers in Germany:
In Germany though the socialist paper kept insisting on awakening within
the proletariat a feeling and consciousness of its necessary
contradiction vis-a-vis the bourgeois (Klassenbewusstsein,
Klassenkampf), the workers and peasants remain part of the network of
the bourgeoisie whose culture surrounds them completely, and whose
spirit permeates the masses. And these same socialist writers, who are
thundering against the bourgeoisie, are themselves bourgeois from top to
bottom; they are the propagandists and apostles of the bourgeoisie, and,
although unwittingly for the most part, they have become the defenders
of bourgeois interests against the proletariat.
Accordingly, Bakunin took the most determined stand against the
bourgeoisie, as well as against the so-called bourgeois socialists or
reform socialists, who are intent on purely political reform by means of
charity, moral preaching, or government assistance: helping the lower
classes, but only through initiatives taken by the upper class. He
fought them particularly in Italy, where he had most room for practical
action,but elsewhere as well. In this regard Bakunin’s attitude was not
a bit less determined than that of Marx. In general he claimed that the
bourgeoisie, “this class which at one time was so powerful, enlightened,
and flourishing and which today slowly but inevitably heads towards
decline is already dead as regards its reason and morals. It no longer
has faith, or ideas, or any spirit of endeavor. It does not want to and
cannot turn back, yet it dares not look forward either.” “The character
of contemporary bourgeoisie is to appreciate the beautiful only in the
past, and to adore in the present only that which is profitable and
useful.” Hence Bakunin kept reiterating that the working class should
not count on the bourgeoisie. No one could have expressed more clearly
and pointedly the contradiction separating the concept of the two
classes regarding the means of progress. One of the two classes, having
developed its economic forces, can increase its power only by means of
political power, whereas the other can develop the forces latent in its
social situation only through the struggle against this power.
The bourgeois see and understand nothing that is not part of the state
or of the means regulated by the state. The maximum of their ideal, of
their imagination, and of their heroism is the revolutionary
exaggeration of the power and function of the state in the name of
general interest. But I have already shown that the activity of the
state cannot save... France... I am the absolute enemy of revolution par
decrets, the consequence and application of the principle of the
revolutionary state; that is, of the kind of revolution which bears only
the outward appearance of revolution. I confront the system of
revolutionary decrees with the system of revolutionary acts, the only
truly effective, consistent, and true one.
Let no one think, however, that Bakunin naively believed it would be
sufficient to make a revolution and a collective society would be ready
right away. He often stressed that the bourgeois world still has more
material means and organized and educated government forces at its
disposal than we would wish. In the sequence of historical periods in
which cannibalism was replaced by slavery, slavery by serfdom, and
serfdom by wage-labor “there will come the terrible day of judgment
which in turn will be followed, much, much later, by the era of
brotherhood.” Bakunin claimed, however, that society cannot be shaken by
words and resolutions: actions are needed, but an act deserves the name
of action only if it changes the world in some way. Undeniably he was
inclined to overestimate the value of violent revolts and to greet every
violent uprising as an action; but no one can pretend that he felt that
individual action was the only possible one, or that the organization of
the masses was superfluous. In some Italian cities where Bakuninism was
especially strong he had thousands of adherents organized by trade, in
accordance with his principle that “it is not enough to be merely
conscious of the truth; it is necessary to organize the forces of the
proletariat...” because “without prior organization even the most
powerful forces remain impotent and nil.” The first congress of
Bakuninists decided in this spirit, when it proposed to all its members
the establishment of trade unions and of strike funds.
In fact, this was not what separated the two nuances of the
International. It was not a matter of whether organization was necessary
or not, but rather whether the basis of socialist organization should be
unions by trade or purely political organizations. One of Marx’s most
faithful disciples, Jung, in an official letter addressed to one of the
leaders of the Swiss Bakuninists, James Guillaume, on behalf of the
General Council of the International, wrote:
You believe that the trade unions will be the ones to obtain the
liberation of the workers? You are wrong. We use trade unions as one
kind of tool among many, but not as an end in themselves. The trade
unions are the expression of economic struggle. They will never
transform society, however; they may initiate social revolution, but
could never finish it. In order to change society, in order to complete
the social revolution, the workers will be obliged to seize political
power.
It is also an unquestionable fact that all the social democratic
parties, and especially those that consider themselves the bastions of
orthodox Marxism, remained for a long time completely indifferent
towards the trade union movement, crediting it with little or uncertain
value. The force of reality, the tremendous growth and impact of
economic organizations as compared to the political movement, was
necessary to finally convince some Marxists of our day that the economic
movement was at least as important as the political one in the struggle
for the liberation of the working class. On the other hand, the
International had proclaimed the great significance of the economic
organizations some forty years ago, while still under the influence of
Marx. As early as in 1864, the first congress held in Geneva stated
that:
…unconsciously to themselves, the Trades’ Unions were forming centres of
organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and
communes did for the middle class. If the Trades’ Unions are required
for the guerrilla fights between capital and labor, they are still more
important as organized agencies for superseding the very system of wages
labor and capital rule.
It is the International itself that describes trade unions as the
organized vehicles against wage-labor and capital. Hence, when the
Bakuninists were stressing the economic movement at whatever cost,
surely they could not be accused of acting against the spirit of Marx.
Therefore, the Bakuninists and the Marxists clashed not about matters of
organization, but rather whether it was seizure of political power or
economic struggle that would lead to socialism in the long run. In the
early period of the workers’ organizations this question was undoubtedly
premature; theoretically speaking, as far as it refers to their
teachings about the state, the issue did not imply any fundamental
difference between Marx and Bakunin.
True, antistatism was Bakunin’s most pronounced tendency. It is hardly
necessary to quote him to prove the point. We can see it as a red thread
running through each and every one of his writings and actions. The
state, everything that is referred to as political power, must be
destroyed, both in theory and in practice. As long as there is political
power there will be rulers and subjects, masters and servants,
exploiters and exploited. “Once political power has been destroyed, it
has to be replaced by organizations of the forces of production and
economic institutions.” Each of his arguments was directed against the
claim that the democratic state and its prerequisite, universal
suffrage, could, if it only tried, change the economic and social
predicament of the working class. The state is necessarily a
class-state, under all circumstances, because when it is not the
propertied classes which use it as their tool of exploitation, then it
is those interested in the maintenance of political power: the state
officials, the bureaucracy. Consequently the state is the natural enemy
of every truly revolutionary act, because it trusts only itself and
feels insecure in face of the free movements and spontaneous actions of
the masses as they can turn against the state at any moment. But because
the free collective society can emerge only from the free and
spontaneous action of the masses, any participation in politics is
detrimental, since it enhances the confidence in the state and
contributes to its strength. The state has to be eradicated and society
liberated.
But those who would resort to these tenets to construct an unbridgeable
gap between Bakunin and Marx neglect the fact that while Marx made all
kinds of concessions to the state and to democracy in practice, he was
just as much an enemy of the state in principle and imagined the
political structure of the future society in the same way as Bakunin. In
a hundred places in his works Marx condemns with ruthless irony those
who see in the state the organization of public interest, an impartial,
unprejudiced, and ethical power above class or group interests. The
state is the powerful weapon of the ruling classes by which they
violently ensure their power; as long as there are classes, the state is
a class-state and will remain so. Since the objective of the struggle of
the working class is the elimination of classes, the state must perish
along with class society. In 1847 Marx asked:
Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a
new class domination culminating in a new political power? No.
The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition
of all classes, just as the condition for the emancipation of the third
estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and all
orders. The working class, in the course of its development, will
substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude
classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power
properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official
expression of antagonism in civil society.
Thirty years later, in his critique of the German party’s Gotha program,
he spoke with sharp irony of state-socialistic tendencies in the
program.
The German workers’ party strives for “the free state”. Free state –
what is this? It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid
of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state free. In
the German Empire the “state” is almost as “free” as in Russia. (...)
The German workers’ party (...) shows that its socialist ideas are not
even skin-deep (...) it treats the state rather as an independent entity
that possesses its own autonomous intellectual and ethical bases.(...)
But the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through
and through by the Lassallean sect’s servile belief in the state, or,
what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles, or rather it is a
compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally
remote from socialism.
After all this, it is not surprising that in the face of Bakunin, Marx
came to the defence of anarchy itself, and gave the concept a broadly
socialist interpretation.
All socialists see anarchy as the following programme: once the aim of
the proletarian movement, i.e., abolition of classes is attained, the
power of the State, which serves to keep the great majority of producers
in bondage to a very small exploiter minority, disappears, and, the
functions of government become simple administrative functions.
When compared with these quotations, which we could continue ad
infinitum, the debate between the followers of Bakunin and the followers
of Marx on whether the organization of future society should be
collectivist or communist, pales into insignificance. How insignificant
these distinctions were is clearly demonstrated by the fact that in
those times it was the disciples of Bakunin who referred to themselves
as collectivists and to Marx’s friends as communists, whereas nowadays
it is mostly the anarchists who call themselves communist, and
collectivism is the ideal of the social democrats. In any case, we are
still far from the day when the different principles of organization of
socialist society will be on the agenda of the struggling working class.
The struggle of the working class will continue for a long time to come
within the framework of the present state, and the immediate problem
facing it is not the philosophy of the present or, if you prefer, of the
future state, but whether the power of the state can be used in its
everyday struggle. While this issue could hardly have been brought up at
the time of Marx and Bakunin, because of the embryonic development and
organization of the working class, today, as a result of its strong
representation in parliament, this has become the most burning issue
among those issues which played a role in the contest between the two
leaders of the International.
It seems to be that the best guideline on this issue is to be sought in
a synthesis of the views of Marx and Bakunin. Although Marx believed in
parliamentary action, he was far from enthusiastic about it. He followed
the activity of bourgeois as well as social democratic parliamentary
parties with sarcasm and never ceased reminding the workers that truly
constructive action takes place not in parliament, but in society, in
the economy and in the movement of the masses. He referred to this
involvement with parliaments as parliamentary cretinism, a disorder
which penetrates its unfortunate victims with the solemn conviction that
the whole world, its history and future, are governed and determined by
a majority of votes in that particular representative body which has the
honor to count them among its members, and that all and everything going
on outside the walls of their house-wars, revolutions,
railway-constructing, colonizing of whole new continents, Californian
gold discoveries, Central American canals, Russian armies, and whatever
else may have some little claim to influence upon the destinies of
mankind-is nothing compared to the incommensurable events hinging upon
the important question, whatever it may be, just at that moment
occupying the attention of the honorable House.
Bakunin, on the other hand, argues that even in the most democratic
states such as the United States and Switzerland, while the people may
appear to be omnipotent, self-government by the masses is pure fiction,
and it is a minority who rules. Nevertheless, he comes down in favor of
democracy.
Let no one think that when we criticize democratic government we are
speaking in favor of monarchy. We are firmly convinced that the most
imperfect republic is worth a thousand times more than the most
enlightened monarchy, because in a republic there are at least moments
when the people, although continuously exploited, are not oppressed,
whereas in a monarchy the oppression is continuous too. Moreover, a
republican government educates the masses little by little to gain an
understanding of public affairs, which the monarchy never does. But
though we prefer a republic, it must be admitted and announced that no
matter what the form of government, as long as human society is divided
into classes as a result of the inequality of professions and trades, of
fortune, of culture, and of rights, it shall always remain in the hands
of the few, and a minority will inevitably exploit the majority.
My description of the internal struggles of the International, of the
battles fought with poisoned arrows, in which I attempted to stop short
of evoking the insults exchanged, might be concluded at this point. I
deliberately allowed the two antagonists to speak for themselves more
and more and to let them stand next to each other in order to let
everyone acquire a direct view of them. Nevertheless, as we well know,
this view cannot be complete. My chief endeavor was to show the
similarities between these two leaders, and I had to relegate into the
background other traits which might have underlined the differences.
Yet, in the face of so much intentional or unintentional falsification,
in the face of all the malevolent and fanatical distortions obfuscating
the true history of the International Working Men’s Organization, I
believe I am justified in emphasizing the similarities. From these
everyone can see that both Bakunin and Marx served enthusiastically and
unselfishly the great cause of the working class, albeit with differing
temperaments, with differing estimates of the real and practical
opportunities. Undoubtedly, the differences between them were profound.
But my presentation should make it clear that the distinctions must be
sought not so much in their teachings, but in that each represented a
different type of human being. One was a thinker, the other a doer; one
a scientist, the other a fighter. The conditions of the emerging and
undifferentiated workers’ organizations particularly demanded the unity
of theory and practice. Under these circumstances two such different
characters, yet equally born leaders, were bound to clash: their
personalities made it impossible for them to express the needs of the
parturient movement of the working class in the same terms, though they
were certainly its most outstanding representatives.
From the passages quoted it should be obvious that the unbridgeable gap
which certain social democrats perceive between anarchism and socialism
exists only as a figment of their imagination, not in reality. Even less
is this gap to be found in the writings of Marx and Bakunin, although
they were cited most often by the disciples of each tendency. Anarchism
is one species of socialism, as is social democracy itself. Socialism
and social democracy are by no means identical. The essence of socialism
is the common ownership of the means of production and the achievement
of this community through the struggle of the organized forces of the
working class. All the anarchist leaders agree with this, except for a
few individualistic anarchists who have never found roots among the
workers. And this is all that matters. Everything else is but a means to
an end, and not the end in itself. It cannot be denied that the
advocates of revolutionary action have at least as much right to refer
to Marx for the justification of the means of the fanatics of
parliamentarianism and peaceful transformation. It is not the advocates
of revolutionary action who are attempting to free them-selves from the
heritage of Marx today, but rather those who advocate parliamentary
action. And those whom the advocates of parliamentary action would so
lightly label anarchists are increasingly sounding off the old slogan:
back to Marx!
Those who continue to feel, even after the death of the two leaders,
that they should fight with poisoned pens against the memory of these
men as well as against their heirs and disciples, might like to read and
assimilate what may have been Bakunin’s last pronouncement before his
death: “Try to introduce into your contacts with new people with whom
you want to establish closer relationships as much justice, sincerity,
and kindness as your nature allows. You must understand that it is not
possible to construct anything live and solid on Jesuitic mischief, that
the success of revolutionary activity must not reside in base and low
passions, and that no revolution will triumph without higher ideals. It
is in this direction and in this sense that I sincerely bid you
success.”