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Title: Man, Society, and Freedom
Author: Michail Bakunin
Date: 1871
Language: en
Topics: society, the State
Source: Retrieved on February 24th, 2009 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1871/man-society.htm][www.marxists.org]].  Proofread online source [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3202, retrieved on July 14, 2020.
Notes: Source: Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971. Man, Society and Freedom is taken from a long, unfinished note to The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution, actually penned by Bakunin’s close associates Carlo Cafiero and Élisée Reclus in 1871, the same work from which God and State is taken.

Michail Bakunin

Man, Society, and Freedom

The doctrinaire liberals, reasoning from the premises of individual

freedom, pose as the adversaries of the State. Those among them who

maintain that the government, i.e., the body of functionaries organized

and designated to perform the functions of the State is a necessary

evil, and that the progress of civilization consists in always and

continuously diminishing the attributes and the rights of the States,

are inconsistent. Such is the theory, but in practice these same

doctrinaire liberals, when the existence or the stability of the State

is seriously threatened, are just as fanatical defenders of the State as

are the monarchists and the Jacobins.

Their adherence to the State, which flatly contradicts their liberal

maxims, can be explained in two ways: in practice, their class interests

make the immense majority of doctrinaire liberals members of the

bourgeoisie. This very numerous and respectable class demand, only for

themselves, the exclusive rights and privileges of complete license. The

socioeconomic base of its political existence rests upon no other

principle than the unrestricted license expressed in the famous phrases

laissez faire and laissez aller. But they want this anarchy only for

themselves, not for the masses who must remain under the severe

discipline of the State because they are “too ignorant to enjoy this

anarchy without abusing it.” For if the masses, tired of working for

others, should rebel, the whole bourgeois edifice would collapse. Always

and everywhere, when the masses are restless, even the most enthusiastic

liberals immediately reverse themselves and become the most fanatical

champions of the omnipotence of the State.

In addition to this practical reason, there is still another of a

theoretical nature which also leads even the most sincere liberals back

to the cult of the State. They consider themselves liberals because

their theory on the origin of society is based on the principle of

individual freedom, and it is precisely because of this that they must

inevitably recognize the absolute right [sovereignty] of the State.

According to them individual freedom is not a creation, a historic

product of society. They maintain, on the contrary, that individual

freedom is anterior to all society and that all men are endowed by God

with an immortal soul. Man is accordingly a complete being, absolutely

independent, apart from and outside society. As a free agent, anterior

to and apart from society, he necessarily forms his society by a

voluntary act, a sort of contract, be it instinctive or conscious, tacit

or formal. In short, according to this theory, individuals are not the

product of society but, on the contrary, are led to create society by

some necessity such as work or war.

It follows from this theory that society, strictly speaking, does not

exist. The natural human society, the beginning of all civilization, the

only milieu in which the personality and the liberty of man is formed

and developed does not exist for them. On the one hand, this theory

recognizes only self — sufficient individuals living in isolation, and

on the other hand, only a society arbitrarily created by them and based

only on a formal or tacit contract, i.e., on the State. (They know very

well that no state in history has ever been created by contract, and

that all states were established by conquest and violence.)

The mass of individuals of whom the State consists are seen as in line

with this theory, which is singularly full of contradictions. Each of

them is, considered on the one hand, an immortal soul endowed with free

will. All are untrammeled beings altogether sufficient unto themselves

and in need of no other person, not even God, for, being immortal, they

are themselves gods. On the other hand, they are brutal, weak,

imperfect, limited, and altogether subject to the forces of nature which

encompass them and sooner or later carry them off to their graves....

Under the aspect of their earthly existence, the mass of men present so

sorry and degrading a spectacle, so poor in spirit, in will and

initiative, that one must be endowed with a truly great capacity for

self — delusion, to detect in them an immortal soul, or even the

faintest trace of free will. They appear to be absolutely determined:

determined by exterior nature, by the stars, and by all the material

conditions of their lives; determined by laws and by the whole world of

ideas or prejudices elaborated in past centuries, all of which they find

ready to take over their lives at birth. The immense majority of

individuals, not only among the ignorant masses but also among the

civilized and privileged classes, think and want only what everybody

else around them thinks and wants. They doubtlessly believe that they

think for themselves, but they are only slavishly repeating by rote,

with slight modifications, the thoughts and aims of the other

conformists which they imperceptibly absorb. This servility, this

routine, this perennial absence of the will to revolt and this lack of

initiative and independence of thought are the principle causes for the

slow, desolate historical development of humanity. For us, materialists

and realists who believe in neither the immortality of the soul nor in

free will, this slowness, as disastrous as it may be, is a natural fact.

Emerging from the state of the gorilla, man has only with great

difficulty attained the consciousness of his humanity and his

liberty.... He was born a ferocious beast and a slave, and has gradually

humanized and emancipated himself only in society, which is necessarily

anterior to the birth of his thought, his speech, and his will. He can

achieve this emancipation only through the collective effort of all the

members, past and present, of society, which is the source, the natural

beginning of his human existence.

Man completely realizes his individual freedom as well as his

personality only through the individuals who surround him, and thanks

only to the labor and the collective power of society. Without society

he would surely remain the most stupid and the most miserable among all

the other ferocious beasts.... Society, far from decreasing his freedom,

on the contrary creates the individual freedom of all human beings.

Society is the root, the tree, and liberty is its fruit. Hence, in every

epoch, man must seek his freedom not at the beginning but at the end of

history. It can be said that the real and complete emancipation of every

individual is the true, the great, the supreme aim of history....

The materialistic. realistic, and collectivist conception of freedom, as

opposed to the idealistic, is this: Man becomes conscious of himself and

his humanity only in society and only by the collective action of the

whole society. He frees himself from the yoke of external nature only by

collective and social labor, which alone can transform the earth into an

abode favorable to the development of humanity. Without such material

emancipation the intellectual and moral emancipation of the individual

is impossible. He can emancipate himself from the yoke of his own

nature, i.e. subordinate his instincts and the movements of his body to

the conscious direction of his mind, the development of which is

fostered only by education and training. But education and training are

preeminently and exclusively social ... hence the isolated individual

cannot possibly become conscious of his freedom.

To be free ... means to be acknowledged and treated as such by all his

fellowmen. The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his

own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men,

his brothers and his equals.

I can feel free only in the presence of and in relationship with other

men. In the presence of an inferior species of animal I am neither free

nor a man, because this animal is incapable of conceiving and

consequently recognizing my humanity. I am not myself free or human

until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my

fellowmen.

Only in respecting their human character do I respect my own. A cannibal

who devours his prisoner ... is not a man but a beast. A slave owner is

not a man but a master. By denying the humanity of his slaves he also

abrogates his own humanity, as the history of all ancient societies

proves. The Greeks and the Romans did not feel like free men. They did

not consider themselves as such by human right. They believed in

privileges for Greeks and Romans and only for their own countries, while

they remained unconquered and conquered other countries. Because they

believed themselves under the special protection of their national gods,

they did not feel that they had the right to revolt ... and themselves

fell into slavery....

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally

free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my

freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation. It

is the slavery of other men that sets up a barrier to my freedom, or

what amounts to the same thing, it is their bestiality which is the

negation of my humanity. For my dignity as a man, my human right which

consists of refusing to obey any other man, and to determine my own acts

in conformity with my convictions is reflected by the equally free

conscience of all and confirmed by the consent of all humanity. My

personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity.

The materialistic conception of freedom is therefore a very positive,

very complex thing, and above all, eminently social, because it can be

realized only in society and by the strictest equality and solidarity

among all men. One can distinguish the main elements in the attainment

of freedom. The first is eminently social. It is the fullest development

of all the faculties and powers of every human being, by education, by

scientific training, and by material prosperity; things which can only

be provided for every individual by the collective, material,

intellectual, manual, and sedentary labor of society in general.

The second element of freedom is negative. It is the revolt of the

individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority.

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the

phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves

on earth. Our reason and our will will be equally annulled. As long as

we believe that we must unconditionally obey — and vis a vis God, no

other obedience is possible — we must have necessity passively submit,

without the least reservation, to the holy authority of his consecrated

and unconsecrated agents, messiahs, prophets, divinely inspired

law-makers, emperors, kings, and all their functionaries and ministers,

representatives and consecrated servitors of the two greatest

institutions which impose themselves upon us, and which are established

by God himself to rule over men; namely, the Church and the State. All

temporal or human authority stems directly from spiritual and/or divine

authority. But authority is the negation of freedom. God, or rather the

fiction of God, is the consecration and the intellectual and moral

source of all slavery on earth, and the freedom of mankind will never be

complete until the disastrous and insidious fiction of a heavenly master

is annihilated.

This is naturally followed by the revolt against the tyranny of men,

individual as well as social, represented and legalized by the State. At

this point, we must make a very precise distinction between the official

and consequently dictatorial prerogatives of society organized as a

state, and of the natural influence and action of the members of a

non-official, non-artificial society.

The revolt against this natural society is far more difficult for the

individual than it is against the officially organized society of the

State. Social tyranny, often overwhelming and baneful, does not assume

the violent imperative character of the legalized and formalized

despotism which marks the authority of the State. It is not imposed in

the form of laws to which every individual, on pain of judicial

punishment, is forced to submit. The action of social tyranny is

gentler, more insidious, more imperceptible, but no less powerful and

pervasive than is the authority of the State. It dominates men by

customs, by mores, by the mass of prejudices, by the habits of daily

life, all of which combine to form what is called public opinion.

It overwhelms the individual from birth, It permeates every facet of

life, so that each individual is, often unknowingly, in a sort of

conspiracy against himself. It follows from this that to revolt against

this influence that society naturally exercises over him, he must at

least to some extent revolt against himself. For, together with all his

natural tendencies and material, intellectual, and moral aspirations, he

is himself nothing but the product of society, and it is in this that

the immense power exercised by society over the individual lies.

From the angle of absolute morality, i.e., of human respect, this power

of society can be beneficent and it can also be injurious. It is

beneficial when it tends to the development of science, of material

prosperity, of freedom, equality, and solidarity. It is baneful when it

tends in the opposite direction. A man born into a society of brutes

tends to remain a brute; born into a society ruled by priests, he

becomes an idiot, a sanctimonious hypocrite; born into a band of

thieves, he will probably become a thief; and if he is unfortunately

born into a society of demigods who rule this earth, nobles, princes, he

will become a contemptible enslaver of society, a tyrant. In all these

cases, revolt against the society in which he was born is indispensable

for the humanization of the individual.

But, I repeat, the revolt of the individual against society is much more

difficult than revolt against the State. The State is a transitory,

historic institution, like its brother institution, the Church, the

regulator of the privileges of a minority and the real enslavers of the

immense majority.

Revolt against the State is much less difficult because there is

something in the very nature of the State that provokes revolt. The

State is authority, force. It is the ostentation and infatuation with

force. It does not insinuate itself. It does not seek to convert; and if

at times it meliorates its tyranny, it does so with bad grace. For its

nature is not to persuade, but to impose itself by force. Whatever pains

it takes to mask itself, it is by nature the legal violator of the will

of men, the permanent negator of their freedom. Even when the State

commands the good it brings forth evil; for every command slaps liberty

in the face; because when the good is decreed, it becomes evil from the

standpoint of human morality and liberty. Freedom, morality, and the

human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does

good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives

it, wants it, and loves it.

The authority of society is imposed not arbitrarily or officially, but

naturally. And it is because of this fact that its effect on the

individual is incomparably much more powerful than that of the State. It

creates and molds all individuals in its midst. It passes on to them,

slowly, from the day of birth to death, all its material, intellectual,

and moral characteristics. Society, so to speak, individualizes itself

in every individual.

The real individual is from the moment of his gestation in his mother’s

womb already predetermined and particularized by a confluence of

geographic, climatic, ethnographic, hygienic, and economic influences.

which constitute the nature of his family, his class, his nation, his

race. He is shaped in accordance with his aptitudes by the combination

of all these exterior and physical influences. What is more, thanks to

the relatively superior organization of the human brain, every

individual inherits at birth, in different degrees, not ideas and innate

sentiments, as the idealists claim, but only the capacity to feel, to

will, to think, and to speak. There are rudimentary faculties without

any content. Whence comes their content? From society ... impressions,

facts, and events coalesced into patterns of thought, right or wrong,

are transmitted from one individual to another. These are modified,

expanded, mutually complimented and integrated by all the individual

members and groups of society into a unique system, which finally

constitutes the common consciousness, the collective thought of a

society. All this, transmitted by tradition from one generation to

another, developed and enlarged by the intellectual labors of centuries,

constitutes the intellectual and moral patrimony of a nation, a class,

and a society... .

Every new generation upon reaching the age of mature thought finds in

itself and in society the established ideas and conceptions which serve

it as the point of departure, giving it, as it were, the raw material

for its own intellectual and moral labor... . These are the conceptions

of nature, of man, of justice, of the duties and rights of individuals

and classes, of social conventions, of the family, of property, and of

the State, and many other factors affecting the relations between men.

All these ideas are imprinted upon the mind of the individual, and

conditioned by the education and training he receives even before he

becomes fully aware of himself as an entity. Much later, he rediscovers

them, consecrated and explained, elaborated by theory, which expresses

the universal conscience or the collective prejudices of the religious,

political, and economic institutions of the society to which he belongs.

He is himself so imbued with these prejudices that he is, involuntarily,

by virtue of all his intellectual and moral habits, the upholder of

these iniquities, even if he were not personally interested in defending

them.

It is certainly not surprising that the ideas passed on by the

collective mind of society should have so great a hold upon the masses

of people, What is surprising, on the contrary, is that there are among

these masses individuals who have the ideas, the will, and the courage

to go against the stream of conformity. For the pressure of society on

the individual is so great that there is no character so strong, nor an

intelligence so powerful as to be entirely immune to this despotic and

irresistible influence... .

Nothing demonstrates the social nature of man better than this

influence. It can be said that the collective conscience of any society

whatever, embodied in the great public institutions, in all the details

of private life, serves as the base of all its theories. It constitutes

a sort of intellectual and moral atmosphere: harmful though it may be,

yet absolutely necessary to the existence of all its members, whom it

dominates while sustaining them, and reinforcing the banality, the

routine, which binds together the great majority of the masses.

The greatest number of men, and not only the masses of people but the

privileged and enlightened classes even more, feel ill at ease unless

they faithfully conform and follow tradition and routine. in all the

acts of their lives. They reason that “Our father thought and acted in

this way, so we must think and do the same. Everybody else thinks and

acts this way. Why should we think and act otherwise?”