BAKOUNINE--(CONCLUDED)
We have said that the principal features of Bakounine's programme
originated in the simple addition of two abstract principles: that of
liberty and that of equality. We now see that the total thus obtained
might easily be increased by the addition of a third principle, that of
solidarity. Indeed, the programme of the famous "Alliance," adds several
others. For example, "The Alliance declares itself Atheist; it desires
the abolition of religions, the substitution of science for faith, of
human for divine justice." In the proclamation with which the Bakounists
placarded the walls of Lyons, during the attempted rising at the end of
September, 1870, we read (Article 41) that "The State, fallen into
decay, will no longer be able to intervene in the payment of private
debts." This is incontestably logical, but it would be difficult to
deduce the non-payment of private debts from principles inherent in
human nature.
Since Bakounine in tacking his various "absolute" principles together
does not ask himself, and does not need to ask himself--thanks to the
"absolute" character of his method--whether one of these principles
might not somewhat limit the "absolute" power of others, and might not
in its turn be limited by them, he finds it an "absolute" impossibility
to harmonise the various items of his programme whenever words no longer
suffice, and it becomes necessary to replace them by more precise ideas.
He "desires" the abolition of religion. But, "the State having fallen
into decay," who is to abolish it? He "desires" the abolition of
property, individually hereditary. But what is to be done if, "the State
having fallen into decay," it should continue to exist? Bakounine
himself feels the thing is not very clear, but he consoles himself very
easily.
In a pamphlet written during the Franco-German war, "Lettres à un
français sur la crise actuelle," while demonstrating that France can
only be saved by a great revolutionary movement, he comes to the
conclusion that the peasants must be incited to lay hands upon the land
belonging to the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. But so far, the French
peasants have been in favour of property, "individually hereditary," so
this unpleasant institution would be bolstered up by the new Social
Revolution?
"Not at all," answers Bakounine, "_once the State is abolished they_"
(_i.e._, the peasants) "_will no longer have the juridical and political
consecration, the guarantee of property by the State. Property will no
longer be a right, it will be reduced to the condition of a simple
fact._" (The italics are Bakounine's own.)
This is very reassuring. "The State having fallen into decay," any
fellow that happens to come along, stronger than I, will incontinently
possess himself of my field, without having any need to appeal to the
principal of "solidarity;" the principle of "liberty" will sufficiently
answer his purpose. A very pleasant "equalisation of individuals"!
"It is certain," Bakounine admits, "that at first things won't work in
an absolutely peaceful manner; there will be struggles; public order,
that arch saint of the bourgeois, will be disturbed, and the just deeds
which will result from such a state of things may constitute what one is
agreed to call a civil war. But do you prefer to hand over France to the
Prussians?... Moreover, do you fear that the peasants will devour one
another; even if they tried to do so in the beginning, they would soon
be convinced of the material impossibility of persisting in this course,
and then we may be sure they would try to arrive at some understanding,
to come to terms, to organise among themselves. The necessity of eating,
of providing for their families, and the necessity therefore of
safeguarding their houses, their families, and their own lives against
unforeseen attacks, all this would soon force them individually to enter
into mutual arrangements. And do not believe, either, that in these
arrangements, _arrived at outside all official tutelage_" (italicised by
Bakounine), "by the mere force of events, the strongest, the richest,
will exercise a predominant influence. The wealth of the wealthy, no
longer guaranteed by juridical institutions, will cease to be a
power.... As to the most cunning, the strongest, they will be rendered
innocuous by the collective strength of the mass of the small, and very
small peasants, as well as by the agricultural proletarians, a mass of
men to-day reduced to silent suffering, but whom the revolutionary
movement will arm with an irresistible power. Please note that I do not
contend that the agricultural districts which will thus reorganise
themselves, from below upwards, will immediately create an ideal
organisation, agreeing at all points with the one of which we dream.
What I am convinced of is that this will be a _living_ organisation, and
as such, one a thousand times superior to what exists now. Moreover,
this new organisation being always open to the propaganda of the towns,
as it can no longer be held down, so to say petrified by the juridical
sanction of the State, it will progress freely, developing and
perfecting itself indefinitely, but always living and free, never
decreed nor legalised, until it attains as reasonable a condition as we
can hope for in our days."
The "idealist" Proudhon was convinced that the political constitution
had been invented for want of a social organisation "immanent in
humanity." He took the pains to "discover" this latter, and having
discovered it, he could not see what further _raison d'être_ there was
for the political constitution. The "materialist" Bakounine has no
"social organisation" of his own make. "The most profound and rational
science," he says, "cannot divine the future forms of social life."[41]
This science must be content to distinguish the "living" social forms
from those that owe their origin to the "petrifying" action of the
State, and to condemn these latter. Is not this the old Proudhonian
antithesis of the social organisation "immanent in humanity," and of the
political constitution "invented" exclusively in the interests of
"order?" Is not the only difference that the "materialist" transforms
the Utopian programme of the "idealist," into something even more
Utopian, more nebulous, more absurd?
"To believe that the marvellous scheme of the universe is due to chance,
is to imagine that by throwing about a sufficient number of printers'
characters at hazard, we might write the Iliad." So reasoned the Deists
of the 18th century in refuting the Atheists. The latter replied that in
this case everything was a question of time, and that by throwing about
the letters an infinite number of times, we must certainly, at some
period, make them arrange themselves in the required sequence.
Discussions of this kind were to the taste of the 18th century, and we
should be wrong to make too much fun of them now-a-days. But it would
seem that Bakounine took the Atheist argument of the good old times
quite seriously, and used it in order to make himself a "programme."
Destroy what exists; if only you do this often enough you are bound at
last to produce a social organisation, approaching at any rate the
organisation you "dream" of. All will go well when once the revolution
has come to stay. Is not this sufficiently "materialist?" If you think
it is not, you are a metaphysician, "dreaming" of the impossible!
The Proudhonian antithesis of the "social organisation" and the
"political constitution" reappears "living" and in its entirety in what
Bakounine is for ever reiterating as to the "social revolution" on the
one hand, and the "political revolution" on the other. According to
Proudhon the social organisation has unfortunately, up to our own days,
never existed, and for want of it humanity was driven to "invent" a
political constitution. According to Bakounine the social revolution has
never yet been made, because humanity, for want of a good "social"
programme had to content itself with political revolutions. Now that
this programme has been found, there is no need to bother about the
"political" revolution; we have quite enough to do with the "social
revolution."
Every class struggle being necessarily a political struggle, it is
evident that every political revolution, worthy of the name, is a social
revolution; it is evident also that for the proletariat the political
struggle is as much a necessity as it has always been for every class
struggling to emancipate itself. Bakounine anathematises all political
action by the proletariat; he extols the "social" struggle exclusively.
Now what is this social struggle?
Here our Proudhonian once again shows himself adulterated by Marxism. He
relies as far as possible upon the Rules of the International
Workingmen's Association.
In the preamble of these Rules it is laid down that the subjection of
the worker to capital lies at the bottom of all servitude, political,
moral and material, and that therefore the economic emancipation of the
workers is the great end to which all political movements must be
subordinated as a means. Bakounine argues from this that "every
political movement which has not for its immediate and direct object the
final and complete economic emancipation of the workers, and which has
not inscribed upon its banner quite definitely and clearly, the
principle of _economic equality_, that is, the integral restitution of
capital to labour, or else the social liquidation--every such political
movement is a bourgeois one, and as such must be excluded from the
International." But this same Bakounine has heard it said that the
historical movement of humanity is a process in conformity with certain
laws, and that a revolution cannot be improvised at a moment's notice.
He is therefore forced to ask himself, what is the policy which the
International is to adopt during that "more or less prolonged period of
time which separates us from the terrible social revolution which
everyone foresees to-day?" To this he replies, with the most profound
conviction, and, as if quoting the Rules of the International:
"Without mercy the policy of the democratic bourgeois, or
bourgeois-Socialists, must be excluded, which, when these declare that
political freedom is a necessary condition of economic emancipation, can
only mean this: political reforms, or political revolutions must precede
economic reforms or economic revolutions; the workers must therefore
join hands with the more or less Radical bourgeois, in order to carry
out the former together with them, then, being free, to turn the latter
into a reality against them. We protest loudly against this unfortunate
theory, which, so far as the workers are concerned, can only result in
their again letting themselves be used as tools against themselves, and
handing them over once more to bourgeois exploitation."
The International "commands" us to disregard all national or local
politics; it must give the working-class movement in all countries an
"essentially economic" character, by setting up as final aim "the
shortening of the hours of labour, and the increase of wages," and as a
means "the association of the working masses, and the starting of funds
for fighting." It is needless to add that the shortening of the hours of
labour must, of course, be obtained without any intervention from the
accursed State.[42]
Bakounine cannot understand that the working class in its political
action can completely separate itself from all the exploiting parties.
According to him, there is no other _rôle_ in the political movement for
the workers than that of satellite of the Radical bourgeoisie. He
glorifies the "essentially economic" tactics of the old English Trade
Unions, and has not the faintest idea that it was these very tactics
that made the English workers the tail of the Liberal Party.
Bakounine objects to the working class lending a hand in any movement
whose object is the obtaining or the extension of political rights. In
condemning such movements as "bourgeois," he fancies himself a
tremendous revolutionist. As a matter of fact he thus proves himself
essentially Conservative, and if the working class were ever to follow
this line of inaction the Governments could only rejoice.[43]
The true revolutionists of our days have a very different idea of
Socialist tactics. They "everywhere support every revolutionary movement
against the existing social and political order of things;"[44] which
does not prevent them (but quite the contrary) from forming the
proletariat into a party separate from all the exploiter parties,
opposed to the whole "reactionary mass."
Proudhon, who we know had not any overwhelming sympathy for "politics,"
nevertheless advised the French workers to vote for the candidates who
pledged themselves to "constitute value." Bakounine would not have
politics at any price. The worker cannot make use of political liberty:
"in order to do so he needs two little things--leisure and material
means." So it is all only a bourgeois lie. Those who speak of
working-class candidates are but mocking the proletariat. "Working-class
candidates, transferred to bourgeois conditions of life, and into an
atmosphere of completely bourgeois political ideas, ceasing to be
actually workers in order to become statesmen, will become bourgeois,
and possibly will become even more bourgeois than the bourgeois
themselves. For it is not the men who make positions, but, on the
contrary, positions which make the men."[45]
This last argument is about all Bakounine was able to assimilate of the
materialist conception of history. It is unquestionably true that man is
the product of his social environment. But to apply this incontestable
truth with advantage it is necessary to get rid of the old, metaphysical
method of thought which considers things _one after the other, and
independently one of the other_. Now Bakounine, like his master,
Proudhon, in spite of his flirtation with the Hegelian philosophy, all
his life remained a metaphysician. He does not understand that the
environment which makes man may change, thus changing man its own
product. The environment he has in his mind's eye when speaking of the
political action of the proletariat, is the bourgeois parliamentary
environment, that environment which must necessarily fatally corrupt
labour representatives. But the environment of the _electors_, the
environment of a working-class party, conscious of its aim and well
organised, would this have no influence upon the elected of the
proletariat? No! Economically enslaved, the working class must always
remain in political servitude; in this domain it will always be the
weakest; to free itself it must begin by an economic revolution.
Bakounine does not see that by this process of reasoning he inevitably
arrives at the conclusion that a victory of the proletariat is
absolutely impossible, unless the owners of the means of production
voluntarily relinquish their possessions to them. In effect the
subjection of the worker to capital is the source not only of political
but of moral servitude. And how can the workers, morally enslaved, rise
against the bourgeoisie? For the working class movement to become
possible, according to Bakounine, it must therefore first make an
economic revolution. But the economic revolution is only possible as the
work of the workers themselves. So we find ourselves in a vicious
circle, out of which modern Socialism can easily break, but in which
Bakounine and the Bakounists are for ever turning with no other hope of
deliverance than a logical _salto mortale_.
The corrupting influence of the Parliamentary environment on
working-class representatives is what the Anarchists have up to the
present considered the strongest argument in their criticism of the
political activity of Social-Democracy. We have seen what its
_theoretical_ value amounts to. And even a slight knowledge of the
history of the German Socialist party will sufficiently show how in
practical life the Anarchist apprehensions are answered.
In repudiating all "politics" Bakounine was forced to adopt the tactics
of the old English Trade Unions. But even he felt that these tactics
were not very revolutionary. He tried to get out of the difficulty by
the help of his "Alliance," a kind of international secret society,
organised on a basis of frenetic centralisation and grotesque
fancifulness. Subjected to the dictatorial rule of the sovereign pontiff
of Anarchy, the "international" and the "national" brethren were bound
to accelerate and direct the "essentially economic" revolutionary
movement. At the same time Bakounine approved of "riots," of isolated
risings of workers and peasants which, although they must inevitably be
crushed out, would, he declared, always have a good influence upon the
development of the revolutionary spirit among the oppressed. It goes
without saying that with such a "programme" he was able to do much harm
to the working class movement, but he was not able to draw nearer, even
by a single step, to that "immediate" economic revolution of which he
"dreamed."[46] We shall presently see the result of the Bakounist
theory of "riots." For the present let us sum up what we have said of
Bakounine. And here, he shall help us himself.
"Upon the Pangermanic banner" [_i.e._, also upon the banner of German
Social-Democracy, and consequently upon the Socialist banner of the
whole civilised world] "is inscribed: The conservation and strengthening
of the State at all costs; on the Socialist-revolutionary banner" (read
Bakounist banner) "is inscribed in characters of blood, in letters of
fire: the abolition of all States, the destruction of bourgeois
civilisation; free organisation from the bottom to the top, by the help
of free associations; the organisation of the working populace (_sic!_)
freed from all trammels, the organisation of the whole of emancipated
humanity, the creation of a new human world."
It is with these words that Bakounine concludes his principal work
"Statism and Anarchy" (Russian). We leave our readers to appreciate the
rhetorical beauties of this passage. For our own part we shall be
content with saying that it contains absolutely no human meaning
whatsoever.
The absurd, pure and simple--that is what is inscribed upon the
Bakounist "banner." There is no need of letters of fire and of blood to
make this evident to any one who is not hypnotised by a phraseology
more or less sonorous, but always void of sense.
The Anarchism of Stirner and of Proudhon was completely individualist.
Bakounine did not want individualism, or to speak more correctly, one
particular phase of individualism. He was the inventor of
"Collectivist-Anarchism." And the invention cost him little. He
completed the "liberty" Utopia, by the "equality" Utopia. As these two
Utopias would not agree, as they cried out at being yoked together, he
threw both into the furnace of the "permanent revolution" where they
were both at last forced to hold their tongues, for the simple reason
that they both evaporated, the one as completely as the other.
Bakounine is the _décadent_ of Utopism.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] "Statism and Anarchy," Appendix A. But for Russia the "science" of
Bakounine was quite equal to divining the future forms of social life;
there is to be the Commune, whose ulterior development will start from
the actual rural commune. It was especially the Bakounists who in Russia
spread the notion about the marvellous virtues of the Russian rural
commune.
[42] See Bakounine's articles on the "Politics of the International" in
the _Egalité_ of Geneva, August, 1869.
[43] The anathemas pronounced by Bakounine against political liberty for
a time had a very deplorable influence upon the revolutionary movement
in Russia.
[44] Communist Manifesto, p. 30.
[45] _Egalité_, 28th August, 1869.
[46] On the action of Bakounine in the International, see the two works
published by the General Council of that organisation: _Les Prétendus
Scissions dans l'Internationale_, and _L'Alliance de la Democratic
Sociale_. See also Engels' article _Die Bakunisten an der Arbeit_,
reprinted in the recently published pamphlet, _Internationales aus dem
Volkstaat_ (_i.e._, a series of articles published in the _Volkstaat_,)
1873-75. Berlin, 1894.