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Title: Letter to Elisée Reclus
Author: Mikhail Bakunin
Date: February 15, 1875
Language: en
Topics: letter, Libertarian Labyrinth
Source: Retrieved on 25th April 2021 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/bakunin-library/bakunin-to-elisee-reclus-february-15-1875/
Notes: Working translation by Shawn P. Wilbur.

Mikhail Bakunin

Letter to Elisée Reclus

February 15, 1875 – Lugano

My very dear friend, I thank you so much for your kind words. I have

never doubted your friendship. That feeling has always been mutual and I

judge yours by my own.

Yes, you are right. For the moment, the revolution has gone back to bed,

and we fall once again into a period of evolutions, one of subterranean,

invisible and often even insensible revolutions. The evolution that

takes place today is very dangerous, if not for humanity, at least for

certain nations. – it is the last incarnation of a used-up class,

enjoying its last game, under the protection of the

military-Mac-Mahono-Bonapartist dictatorship in France, the Bismarkian

in the remainder of Europe.

I agree with you in saying that the hour of revolution has passed, not

because of the frightful disasters we have witnessed or the terrible

defeats of which we have been the more or less guilty victims, but

because, to my great despair, I have observed, and I observe each day

anew, that thought, hope and the revolutionary passion are absolutely

not to be found among the masses, and when those are absent, we will

strive in vain. We will accomplish nothing. – I admire the patience and

the heroic perseverance of the Jurassians and the Belgians—these last

Mohicans of the International—who despite all the difficulties,

adversities and despite all the obstacles, in the mdst of general

indifference, opposing their stubborn front to the absolutely opposite

course of things, continuing to calmly do what they did before the

catastrophes, when the general movement was ascending and the least

effort created a force. – It is a labor that much more praiseworthy, as

they do not collect the fruits of it, but they can be certain that the

labor will not be wasted, – nothing is wasted in the world – and though

the drops of water are invisibles, they nonetheless form the ocean. –

As for me, my friend, I had become too old, too sick, too weary, and,

need I say it, in many ways too disillusioned, to feel the desire and

strength to participate in that work. – I am truly retired from the

struggle and I will pass the rest of my days in a contemplation—not

idle, but on the contrary very active intellectually—that I hope will

not fail produce something useful. –

One of the passions that dominates within me at this time is an immense

curiosity. – Once I was obliged to recognize that evil has triumphed and

that I cannot prevent it, I set myself to studying the evolutions and

developments with a quasi-scientific, entirely objective, passion. –

What actors and what scenery! – At the back and dominating all the

situation in Europe, the Emperor Wilhelm and Bismarck at the head of a

great nation of lackeys. – Against them, the Pope with his Jesuits, all

the Catholic and Roman Church, riches of billions, dominate a great

portion of the world through women, through the ignorance of the masses,

through the incomparable skill of their numberless affiliates, having

their eyes and hands everywhere. – Third actor – French civilization

embodied in Mac-Mahon, Dupanloup and Broglie attaching the chains of a

great fallen people. – Then around all that, Spain, Italy, Austria, and

Russia each painting their faces according to the occasion – and far off

England not being able to decide to become something again, and still

father away the model Republic of the United State of American already

flirting with military dictatorship.

Poor humanity!

It is obvious that it could only escape from this cesspool by means of

an immense social revolution. – But how would it make that revolution?

The international reaction of Europe has never been so formidably armed

against every popular movement. – It has made repression into a new

science that is taught systematically in the military schools to the

lieutenants of all the nations. – And what do we have to attack that

impregnable fortress? – The disorganized masses. But how to organize

them, when they are not even sufficiently interested in their own

salvation, when the do not know what they should want and when they do

not want the only thing that can save them? –

There remains propaganda, such as is done by the Jurassians and

Belgians. – That is doubtless something, but a very small thing, some

drops of water in the ocean; and if there were no other means of

salvation, humanity would have the time to rot ten times before being

saved. –

Another hope remains: universal war. – These immense military States

must well destroy and devour one another sooner or later. – But what

perspective [end of manuscript]