The Jura Federation has played an important part in the modern
development of socialism.
It always happens that after a political party has set before itself
a purpose, and has proclaimed that nothing short of the complete
attainment of that aim will satisfy it, it divides into two fractions.
One of them remains what it was, while the other, although it professes
not to have changed a word of its previous intentions, accepts some
sort of compromise, and gradually, from compromise to compromise, is
driven farther from its primitive programme, and becomes a party of
modest makeshift reform.
Such a division had occurred within the International Workingmen’s
Association. Nothing less than an expropriation of the present owners
of land and capital, and a transmission of all that is necessary for
the production of wealth to the producers themselves, was the avowed
aim of the Association at the outset. The workers of all nations were
called upon to form their own organizations for a direct struggle
against capitalism; to work out the means of socializing the production
of wealth and its consumption; and, when they should be ready to do so,
to take possession of the necessaries for production, and to control
production with no regard to the present political organization, which
must undergo a complete reconstruction. The Association had thus to be
the means for preparing an immense revolution in men’s minds, and later
on in the very forms of life--a revolution which would open to mankind
a new era of progress based upon the solidarity of all. That was the
ideal which aroused from their slumber millions of European workers,
and attracted to the Association its best intellectual forces.
However, two fractions soon developed. When the war of 1870 had ended
in a complete defeat of France, and the uprising of the Paris Commune
had been crushed, and the Draconian laws which were passed against
the Association excluded the French workers from participation in it;
and when, on the other hand, parliamentary rule had been introduced
in ‘united Germany’--the goal of the Radicals since 1848--an effort
was made by the Germans to modify the aims and the methods of the
whole socialist movement. The ‘conquest of power _within the existing
states_’ became the watchword of that section, which took the name of
‘Social Democracy.’ The first electoral successes of this party at
the elections to the German Reichstag aroused great hopes. The number
of the social democratic deputies having grown from two to seven, and
next to nine, it was confidently calculated by otherwise reasonable
men that before the end of the century the social democrats would
have a majority in the German Parliament, and would then introduce
the socialist ‘popular state’ by means of suitable legislation.
The socialist ideal of this party gradually lost the character of
something that had to be worked out by the labour organizations
themselves, and became state management of the industries--in fact,
state socialism; that is, state capitalism. To-day, in Switzerland,
the efforts of the social democrats are directed in politics toward
centralization as against federalism, and in the economic field to
promoting the state management of railways and the state monopoly of
banking and of the sale of spirits. The state management of the land
and of the leading industries, and even of the consumption of riches,
would be the next step in a more or less distant future.
Gradually, all the life and activity of the German social democratic
party was subordinated to electoral considerations. Trade unions were
treated with contempt and strikes were met with disapproval, because
both diverted the attention of the workers from electoral struggles.
Every popular outbreak, every revolutionary agitation in any country of
Europe, was received by the social democratic leaders with even more
animosity than by the capitalist press.
In the Latin countries, however, this new direction found but few
adherents. The sections and federations of the International remained
true to the principles which had prevailed at the foundation of the
Association. Federalist by their history, hostile to the idea of a
centralized state, and possessed of revolutionary traditions, the Latin
workers could not follow the evolution of the Germans.
The division between the two branches of the socialist movement became
apparent immediately after the Franco-German war. The International, as
I have already mentioned, had created a governing body in the shape of
a general council which resided at London; and the leading spirits of
that council being two Germans, Engels and Marx, the council became the
stronghold of the new social democratic direction; while the inspirers
and intellectual leaders of the Latin federations were Bakúnin and his
friends.
The conflict between the Marxists and the Bakúnists was not a personal
affair. It was the necessary conflict between the principles of
federalism and those of centralization, the free Commune and the
State’s paternal rule, the free action of the masses of the people and
the betterment of existing capitalist conditions through legislation--a
conflict between the Latin spirit and the German _Geist_, which,
after the defeat of France on the battlefield, claimed supremacy in
science, politics, philosophy, and in socialism too, representing
its own conception of socialism as ‘scientific,’ while all other
interpretations it described as ‘utopian.’
At the Hague Congress of the International Association, which was
held in 1872, the London general council, by means of a fictitious
majority, excluded Bakúnin, his friend Guillaume, and even the Jura
Federation from the International. But as it was certain that most
of what remained then of the International--that is, the Spanish,
the Italian, and the Belgian Federations--would side with the
Jurassians, the congress tried to dissolve the Association. A new
general council, composed of a few social democrats, was nominated in
New York, where there were no workmen’s organizations belonging to
the Association to control it, and where it has never been heard of
since. In the meantime, the Spanish, the Italian, the Belgian, and
the Jura Federations of the International continued to exist and to
meet as usual, for the next five or six years, in annual international
congresses.
* * * * *
The Jura Federation, at the time when I came to Switzerland, was the
centre and the leading voice of the international federations. Bakúnin
had just died (July 1, 1876), but the federation retained the position
it had taken under his impulse.
The conditions in France, Spain, and Italy were such that only the
maintenance of the revolutionary spirit that had developed amongst the
Internationalist workers previous to the Franco-German war prevented
the governments from taking decisive steps toward crushing the whole
labour movement and inaugurating the reign of White Terror. It is
well known that the re-establishment of a Bourbon monarchy in France
was very near becoming an accomplished fact. Marshal MacMahon was
maintained as president of the republic only in order to prepare for a
monarchist restoration; the very day of the solemn entry of Henry V.
into Paris was settled, and even the harnesses of the horses, adorned
with the pretender’s crown and initials, were ready. And it is also
known that it was only the fact that Gambetta and Clémenceau--the
opportunist and the radical--had covered wide portions of France with
committees, armed and ready to rise as soon as the _coup d’état_
should be made, which prevented the proposed restoration. But the real
strength of those committees was in the workers, many of whom had
formerly belonged to the International and had retained the old spirit.
Speaking from personal knowledge, I may venture to say that the radical
middle-class leaders would have hesitated in case of an emergency,
while the workers would have seized the first opportunity for an
uprising which, beginning with the defence of the republic, might have
gone further on in the socialist direction.
The same was true in Spain. As soon as the clerical and aristocratic
surroundings of the king drove him to turn the screws of reaction,
the republicans menaced him with a movement in which, they knew,
the real fighting element would be the workers. In Catalonia alone
there were over one hundred thousand men in strongly organized trade
unions, and more than eighty thousand Spaniards belonged to the
International, regularly holding congresses, and punctually paying
their contributions to the association with a truly Spanish sense
of duty. I can speak of these organizations from personal knowledge,
gained on the spot, and I know that they were ready to proclaim the
United States of Spain, abandon ruling the colonies, and in some of
the most advanced regions make serious attempts in the direction of
collectivism. It was this permanent menace which prevented the Spanish
monarchy from suppressing all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations,
and from inaugurating a frank clerical reaction.
Similar conditions prevailed also in Italy. The trade unions in North
Italy had not reached the strength they have now; but parts of Italy
were honeycombed with International sections and republican groups.
The monarchy was kept under continual menace of being upset should the
middle-class republicans appeal to the revolutionary elements among the
workers.
In short, looking back upon these years, from which we are separated
now by a quarter of a century, I am firmly persuaded that if Europe
did not pass through a period of stern reaction after 1871, this was
mainly due to the spirit which was aroused in Western Europe before
the Franco-German war, and has been maintained since by the Anarchist
Internationalists, the Blanquists, the Mazzinians, and the Spanish
‘cantonalist’ republicans.
Of course, the Marxists, absorbed by their local electoral
struggles, knew little of these conditions. Anxious not to draw the
thunderbolts of Bismarck upon their heads, and fearing above all that
a revolutionary spirit might make its appearance in Germany and lead
to repressions which they were not strong enough to face, they not
only repudiated, for tactical purposes, all sympathy with the Western
revolutionists, but gradually became inspired with hatred toward the
revolutionary spirit, and denounced it with virulence wheresoever it
made its appearance, even when they saw its first signs in Russia.
No revolutionary papers could be printed in France at that time,
under Marshal MacMahon. Even the singing of the ‘Marseillaise’ was
considered a crime; and I was once very much amazed at the terror
which seized several of my co-passengers in a train when they heard
a few recruits singing the revolutionary song (in May 1878). ‘Is it
permitted again to sing the “Marseillaise”?’ they asked one another
with anxiety. The French Press had consequently no socialist papers.
The Spanish papers were very well edited, and some of the manifestoes
of their congresses were admirable expositions of anarchist socialism;
but who knows anything of Spanish ideas outside of Spain? As to the
Italian papers, they were all short-lived, appearing, disappearing, and
re-appearing elsewhere under different names; and admirable as some of
them were, they did not spread beyond Italy. Consequently, the Jura
Federation, with its papers printed in French, became the centre for
the maintenance and expression in the Latin countries of the spirit
which--I repeat it--saved Europe from a very dark period of reaction.
And it was also the ground upon which the theoretical conceptions of
anarchism were worked out by Bakúnin and his followers in a language
that was understood all over continental Europe.