I went first to Neuchâtel, and then spent a week or so among the
watchmakers in the Jura Mountains. I thus made my first acquaintance
with that famous Jura Federation which played for the next few years an
important part in the development of socialism, introducing into it the
no-government, or anarchist, tendency.
In 1872, the Jura Federation was becoming a rebel against the authority
of the general council of the International Workingmen’s Association.
The Association was essentially a working-men’s organization, the
workers understanding it as a labour movement and not as a political
party. In East Belgium, for instance, they had introduced into the
statutes a clause in virtue of which no one could be a member of a
section unless employed in a manual trade; even foremen were excluded.
The workers were moreover federalist in principle. Each nation, each
separate region, and even each local section had to be left free
to develop on its own lines. But the middle-class revolutionists
of the old school who had entered the International, imbued as
they were with the notions of the centralized, pyramidal secret
organizations of earlier times, had introduced the same notions
into the Workingmen’s Association. Beside the federal and national
councils, a general council was nominated at London, to act as a
sort of intermediary between the councils of the different nations.
Marx and Engels were its leading spirits. It soon appeared, however,
that the mere fact of having such a central body became a source of
substantial inconvenience. The general council was not satisfied with
playing the part of a correspondence bureau; it strove to govern the
movement, to approve or to censure the action of the local federations
and sections, and even of individual members. When the Commune
insurrection began in Paris--and ‘the leaders had only to follow,’
without being able to say whereto they would be led within the next
twenty-four hours--the general council insisted upon directing
the insurrection from London. It required daily reports about the
events, gave orders, favoured this and hampered that, and thus put in
evidence the disadvantage of having a governing body, even within the
Association. The disadvantage became still more apparent when, at a
secret conference held in 1871, the general council, supported by a
few delegates, decided to direct the forces of the Association towards
electoral agitation. It set people thinking about the evils of any
government, however democratic its origin. This was the first spark of
anarchism. The Jura Federation became the centre of opposition against
the general council.
* * * * *
The separation between leaders and workers which I had noticed at
Geneva in the Temple Unique did not exist in the Jura Mountains.
There were a number of men who were more intelligent, and especially
more active, than the others; but that was all. James Guillaume, one
of the most intelligent and broadly educated men I ever met, was a
proof-reader and the manager of a small printing office. His earnings
in this capacity were so small that he had to give his nights to
translating novels from German into French, for which he was paid eight
francs for sixteen pages.
When I came to Neuchâtel, he told me that unfortunately he could not
spare even as much as a couple of hours for a friendly chat. The
printing office was just issuing that afternoon the first number of a
local paper, and in addition to his usual duties of proof-reader and
co-editor, he had to write on the wrappers a thousand addresses of
persons to whom the first three numbers would be sent, and to fasten
himself the wrappers.
I offered to aid him in writing the addresses, but that was not
practicable, because they were either kept in memory or written on
scraps of paper in an unreadable hand.... ‘Well, then,’ said I, ‘I will
come in the afternoon to the office and fasten the wrappers, and you
will give me the time which you may thus save.’
We understood each other. Guillaume warmly shook my hand, and that
was the beginning of our friendship. We spent all the afternoon in
the office, he writing the addresses, I fastening the wrappers, and a
French Communard, who was a compositor, chatting with us all the while
as he rapidly composed a novel, intermingling his conversation with the
sentences which he had to put in type and which he read aloud.
‘The fight in the streets,’ he would say, ‘became very sharp.’... ‘Dear
Mary, I love you.’... ‘The workers were furious and fought like lions
at Montmartre,’ ... ‘and he fell on his knees before her,’ ... ‘and
that lasted for four days. We knew that Galliffet was shooting all
prisoners--the more terrible still was the fight,’ and so on he went,
rapidly lifting the type from the case.
It was late in the evening that Guillaume took off his working blouse,
and we went out for a friendly chat for a couple of hours, when he had
to resume his work as editor of the ‘Bulletin’ of the Jura Federation.
At Neuchâtel I also made the acquaintance of Malon. He was born in a
village, and in his childhood he was a shepherd. Later on he came to
Paris, learned there a trade--basket-making--and, like the book-binder
Varlin and the carpenter Pindy, with whom he was associated in the
International, had come to be widely known as one of the leading
spirits of the Association when it was prosecuted in 1869 by Napoleon
III. All three had entirely won the hearts of the Paris workers, and
when the Commune insurrection broke out they were elected members of
the Council of the Commune, all three receiving formidable numbers of
votes. Malon was also mayor of one of the Paris _arrondissements_.
Now, in Switzerland, he was earning his living as a basket-maker. He
had rented for a few coppers a month a small open shed out of the
town, on the slope of a hill, from which he enjoyed while at work an
extensive view of the Lake of Neuchâtel. At night he wrote letters, a
book on the Commune, short articles for the labour papers--and thus
he became a writer. Every day I went to see him and to hear what this
broad-faced, laborious, slightly poetical, quiet, and most good-hearted
Communard had to tell me about the insurrection in which he took a
prominent part, and which he had just described in a book, ‘The Third
Defeat of the French Proletariate.’
One morning when I had climbed the hill and reached his shed, he met
me quite radiant with the words: ‘You know, Pindy is alive! Here is a
letter from him; he is in Switzerland.’ Nothing had been heard of Pindy
since he was seen last on May 25 or May 26 at the Tuileries, and he
was supposed to be dead, while in reality he remained in concealment
at Paris. And while Malon’s fingers continued to ply the wickers and
to shape them into an elegant basket, he told me in his quiet voice,
which only slightly trembled at times, how many men had been shot by
the Versailles troops on the supposition that they were Pindy, Varlin,
himself, or some other leader. He told me what he knew of the death
of Varlin, the book-binder whom the Paris workers worshipped, or old
Delécluze, who did not want to survive the defeat, and many others; and
he related the horrors which he had witnessed during that carnival of
blood with which the wealthy classes of Paris celebrated their return
to the capital, and then--the spirit of retaliation which took hold
of a crowd, led by Raoul Rigault, which executed the hostages of the
Commune.
His lips quivered when he spoke of the heroism of the children; and
he quite broke down when he told me the story of that boy whom the
Versailles troops were going to shoot, and who asked the officer’s
permission to hand first a silver watch, which he had on, to his
mother, who lived close by. The officer, yielding to a moment of pity,
let the boy go, probably hoping that he would never return. But a
quarter of an hour later the boy was back and, taking his place amidst
the corpses at the wall, said: ‘I am ready.’ Twelve bullets put an end
to his young life.
I think I never suffered so much as when I read that terrible book, ‘Le
Livre Rouge de la Justice Rurale,’ which contained nothing but extracts
from the letters of the _Standard_, _Daily Telegraph_, and _Times_
correspondents, written from Paris during the last days of May 1871,
relating the horrors committed by the Versailles army under Galliffet,
together with a few quotations from the Paris _Figaro_, imbued with a
bloodthirsty spirit towards the insurgents. In reading these pages I
was filled with despair concerning mankind, and should have continued
to despair, had I not afterwards seen in those of the defeated party
who had lived through all these horrors, that absence of hatred, that
confidence in the final triumph of their ideas, that calm though sad
gaze of their eyes directed towards the future, that readiness to
forget the nightmare of the past, which struck me in Malon; in fact, in
nearly all the refugees of the Commune whom I met at Geneva, and which
I still see in Louise Michel, Lefrançais, Elisée Reclus, and other
friends.
From Neuchâtel I went to Sonvilliers. In a little valley in the Jura
hills there is a succession of small towns and villages of which
the French-speaking population was at that time entirely employed
in the various branches of watchmaking; whole families used to work
in small workshops. In one of them I found another leader, Adhémar
Schwitzguébel, with whom, also, I afterward became very closely
connected. He sat among a dozen young men who were engraving lids of
gold and silver watches. I was asked to take a seat on a bench or
table, and soon we were all engaged in a lively conversation upon
socialism, government or no government, and the coming congresses.
In the evening a heavy snowstorm raged; it blinded us, and froze
the blood in our veins, as we struggled to the next village. But,
notwithstanding the storm, about fifty watchmakers, chiefly old people,
came from the neighbouring towns and villages--some of them as far
as seven miles distant--to join in a small informal meeting that was
called for that evening.
The very organization of the watch trade, which permits men to know
one another thoroughly and to work in their own houses, where they
are free to talk, explains why the level of intellectual development
in this population is higher than that of workers who spend all their
life from early childhood in the factories. There is more independence
and more originality among petty trades’ workers. But the absence of
a division between the leaders and the masses in the Jura Federation
was also the reason why there was not a question upon which every
member of the federation would not strive to form his own independent
opinion. Here I saw that the workers were not a mass that was being led
and made subservient to the political ends of a few men; their leaders
were simply their more active comrades--initiators rather than leaders.
The clearness of insight, the soundness of judgment, the capacity for
disentangling complex social questions, which I noticed amongst these
workers, especially the middle-aged ones, deeply impressed me; and I
am firmly persuaded that if the Jura Federation has played a prominent
part in the development of socialism, it is not only on account of the
importance of the no-government and federalist ideas of which it was
the champion, but also on account of the expression which was given to
these ideas by the good sense of the Jura watchmakers. Without their
aid, these conceptions might have remained mere abstractions for a long
time.
The theoretical aspects of anarchism, as they were then beginning to be
expressed in the Jura Federation, especially by Bakúnin; the criticisms
of state socialism--the fear of an economic despotism, far more
dangerous than the merely political despotism--which I heard formulated
there; and the revolutionary character of the agitation, appealed
strongly to my mind. But the equalitarian relations which I found in
the Jura Mountains, the independence of thought and expression which
I saw developing in the workers, and their unlimited devotion to the
cause appealed even more strongly to my feelings; and when I came away
from the mountains, after a week’s stay with the watchmakers, my views
upon socialism were settled. I was an anarchist.
A subsequent journey to Belgium, where I could compare once more the
centralized political agitation at Brussels with the economic and
independent agitation that was going on amongst the clothiers at
Verviers, only strengthened my views. These clothiers were one of the
most sympathetic populations that I have ever met with in Western
Europe.
X
Bakúnin was at that time at Locarno. I did not see him, and now regret
it very much, because he was dead when I returned four years later to
Switzerland. It was he who had helped the Jura friends to clear up
their ideas and to formulate their aspirations; he who had inspired
them with his powerful, burning, irresistible revolutionary enthusiasm.
As soon as he saw that a small newspaper, which Guillaume began to edit
in the Jura hills (at Locle), was sounding a new note of independent
thought in the socialist movement, he came to Locle, talked for whole
days and whole nights long to his new friends about the historical
necessity of a new move in the anarchist direction; he wrote for that
paper a series of profound and brilliant articles on the historical
progress of mankind towards freedom; he infused enthusiasm into his new
friends, and he created that centre of propaganda from which anarchism
spread later on to other parts of Europe.
After he had moved to Locarno--from whence he started a similar
movement in Italy and, through his sympathetic and gifted emissary,
Fanelli, also in Spain--the work that he had begun in the Jura hills
was continued independently by the Jurassians themselves. The name
of ‘Michel’ often recurred in their conversations--not, however, as
that of an absent chief whose opinions would make law, but as that of
a personal friend of whom everyone spoke with love, in a spirit of
comradeship. What struck me most was that Bakúnin’s influence was felt
much less as the influence of an intellectual authority than as the
influence of a moral personality. In conversations about anarchism,
or about the attitude of the federation, I never heard it said,
‘Bakúnin has said so’ or ‘Bakúnin thinks so,’ as if it clenched the
discussion. His writings and his sayings were not a text that one had
to obey--as is often unfortunately the case in political parties. In
all such matters, in which intellect is the supreme judge, everyone in
discussion used his own arguments. Their general drift and tenor might
have been suggested by Bakúnin, or Bakúnin might have borrowed them
from his Jura friends--at any rate, in each individual the arguments
retained their own individual character. I only once heard Bakúnin’s
name invoked as an authority in itself, and that struck me so much that
I even now remember the spot where the conversation took place and its
surroundings. The young men began once in the presence of women some
young men’s talk, not very respectful towards the other sex, when one
of the women present put a sudden stop to it by exclaiming: ‘Pity that
Michel is not here: he would have put you in your place!’ The colossal
figure of the revolutionist who had given up everything for the sake of
the revolution, and lived for it alone, borrowing from his conception
of it the highest and purest conceptions of life, continued to inspire
them.
* * * * *
I returned from this journey with distinct sociological conceptions
which I have retained since, doing my best to develop them in more and
more definite, concrete forms.
There was, however, one point which I did not accept without having
given to it a great deal of thinking and many hours of my nights. I
clearly saw that the immense change which would hand over everything
that is necessary for life and production into the hands of society--be
it the Folk State of the social democrats, or the free unions of freely
associated groups, as the anarchists say--would imply a revolution far
more profound than any of those which history has on record. Moreover,
in such a revolution the workers would have against them, not the
rotten generation of aristocrats against whom the French peasants
and republicans had to fight in the last century--and even that
fight was a desperate one--but the far more powerful, intellectually
and physically, middle classes, which have at their service all the
potent machinery of the modern State. However, I soon noticed that
no revolution, whether peaceful or violent, has ever taken place
without the new ideals having deeply penetrated into the very class
itself whose economical and political privileges had to be assailed.
I had witnessed the abolition of serfdom in Russia, and I knew that
if a conviction of the injustice of their rights had not widely
spread within the serf-owners’ class itself (as a consequence of the
previous evolution and revolutions accomplished in Western Europe),
the emancipation of the serfs would never have been accomplished as
easily as it was in 1861. And I saw that the idea of emancipation of
the workers from the present wage-system was making headway amongst
the middle classes themselves. The most ardent defenders of the present
economical conditions had already abandoned the plea of _right_ in
defending the present privileges--questions as to the _opportuneness_
of such a change having already taken its place. They did not deny
the desirability of some such change, and only asked whether the new
economical organization advocated by the socialists would really be
better than the present one; whether a society in which the workers
would have a dominant voice would be able to manage production better
than the individual capitalists, actuated by mere considerations of
self-interest, manage it at the present time.
Besides, I began gradually to understand that revolutions, _i.e._
periods of accelerated rapid evolution and rapid changes, are as much
in the nature of human society as the slow evolution which incessantly
goes on now among the civilized races of mankind. And each time that
such a period of accelerated evolution and thorough reconstruction
begins, civil war may break out on a small or on a grand scale. The
question is, then, not so much how to avoid revolutions as how to
attain the greatest results with the most limited amount of civil war,
the least number of victims, and a minimum of mutual embitterment.
For that end there is only one means; namely, that the oppressed part
of society should obtain the clearest possible conception of what
they intend to achieve and how, and that they should be imbued with
the enthusiasm which is necessary for that achievement--in which case
they will be sure to attract to their cause the best and the freshest
intellectual forces of the class which is possessed of historically
grown-up privileges.
The Commune of Paris was a terrible example of an outbreak with yet
undetermined ideals. When the workers became, in March 1871, the
masters of the great city, they did not attack the property rights
vested in the middle classes. On the contrary, they took these rights
under their protection. The leaders of the Commune covered the National
Bank with their bodies, and notwithstanding the crisis which had
paralysed industry, and the consequent absence of earning for a mass
of workers, they protected the rights of the owners of the factories,
the trade establishments, and the dwelling-houses at Paris with their
decrees. However, when the movement was crushed, no account was taken
by the middle classes of the modesty of the Communalist claims of the
insurgents. Having lived for two months in fear that the workers would
make an assault upon their property rights, the rich men of France took
upon the workers just the same revenge as if they had made the assault
in reality. Nearly thirty thousand workers were slaughtered, as is
known, not in battle but after they had lost the battle. If the workers
had taken steps towards the socialization of property, the revenge
could not have been more terrible.
If, then, my conclusion was that there are periods in human development
when a conflict is unavoidable, and civil war breaks out quite
independently of the will of particular individuals, let, at least,
these conflicts take place, not on the ground of vague aspirations, but
upon definite issues; not upon secondary points, the insignificance
of which does not diminish the violence of the conflict, but upon
broad ideas which inspire men by the grandness of the horizon which
they bring into view. In this last case the conflict itself will
depend much less upon the efficacy of firearms and guns than upon the
force of the creative genius which will be brought into action in the
work of reconstruction of society. It will depend chiefly upon the
constructive forces of society taking for the moment a free course;
upon the inspirations being of a higher standard, and so winning more
sympathy even from those who, as a class, are opposed to the change.
The conflict, being thus engaged in on larger issues, will purify the
social atmosphere itself; and the numbers of victims on both sides will
certainly be much smaller than they would have been in case the fight
had been fought upon matters of secondary importance in which the lower
instincts of men find a free play.
With these ideas I returned to Russia.