CHAPTER THIRTEEN
M. A. BAKUNIN.REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHISM
§ 86.
WE have already made the acquaintance of Bakunin in Stankevič's circle, and have learned how Bakunin, a self-made man in matters philosophical, introduced his Moscow friends to the thought of Hegel. Bakunin is solely comprehensible as product and victim of Russian conditions under Nicholas I. Brought up from the very outset amid decabrist memories, he betook himself to Europe, plunged into Hegelian philosophy, and was urged on towards the revolution by the Hegelian left and by Proudhon. The years before 1848 and the year of revolution were spent by him in revolutionary movements of all kinds, for he hoped to realise his ideal of a free humanity through personal participation in the revolution, no matter where. His experiences in European and Russian prisons, and in Siberia, accentuated his hatred of the existing order, and made of him a professional revolutionary. The world as it was, Russia pre-eminently but Europe as well, extant civilisation and extant institutions, infuriated him, and his head was ever filled with revolutionary thoughts and plans, which, however, never attained to maturity. Neither in the field of practice nor in that of theory did Bakunin know anything of method or order. A genius and yet half-cultured (not wholly by his own fault), an egoist to the pitch of childishness, he was never troubled by the question whether, in the last resort, and amid the universal wretchedness, he might not to some extent share responsibility for his own individuality. The roots of all evil were elsewhere than in himself. The old order and its supporters, nature and the universe, includiding the Almighty, had personally injured him, were to him a continuous provocation; and he spent his life in frantic attempts to transform the world by force and to remould it in accordance with his own ideas. Without the beginnings of a clear conception as to the nature of the new constructions, and equally devoid of real knowledge of the world, Bakunin devoted himself to the career of a cosmopolitan agitator. At work now in England and now in France, then again in Belgium and Germany, and subsequently pursuing secret intrigues in Italy and Switzerland, he was never able to discover the fulcrum from which he might lever the world out of its bed. Thus revolutionary unrest and revolutionary fever mastered him. Mistaking his agitations for actions, he lost the sense of reality, and became unable to appraise at its true value the work done by his fellows. Not only did he reproach Herzen for thinking literature more important than practical activity, for preferring a man of letters to a "man of action," but he even declared Černyševskii to be no more than an arm-chair philosopher. Yet every revolutionary dreamer could lead him by the nose, and could fire him with enthusiasm for subversive designs, however preposterous.
Immediately after the failure of the Swedish enterprise on behalf of the Poles (1863), Herzen wrote to Bakunin: "Divorced from practical life, from earliest youth immersed over head and ears in that German idealism out of which the epoch constructed a realistic outlook 'as per schedule,' knowing nothing of Russia either before your imprisonment or after your Siberian exile, but animated by a grand and passionate desire for noble deeds, you have lived to the age of fifty in a world of illusions, student-like unrestraint, lofty plans, and petty defects. When, after ten years, you regained liberty, you showed yourself to be as of old a mere theorist, a man utterly without clear conceptions, a talker, unscrupulous in money matters, with an element of tacit but stubborn epicureanism, and with an itch for revolutionary activity—lacking only revolution itself."
The characterisation is just.[1] I would draw special attention to what Herzen says about Bakunin's unscrupulousness in money matters, for the accusation is confirmed in the reminiscences of Gué, the painter, the well-known friend of Tolstoi. Gué gives a specific instance. This trait, and indeed Bakunin's whole character, must be taken into account if we wish to form a sound estimate of his socialism. One who desires to provide the world with an entirely "new morality," one who wishes to reconstruct it in all essentials, must put up with the moral standards of everyday life. It is true that Bakunin's political opponents, especially Marx, Engels, and their adherents (some of whom were Russians) vilified Bakunin, to a large extent unjustly, but Bakunin's intimates were hardly more favourable in their judgments of Bakunin the man. Herzen and Ogarev were guarded in their language, but their impression was obviously unfavourable. Herzen, in his diary of 1848, makes an allusion to Bakunin which shows that those well acquainted with the latter were already saying, "He is a man of talent, but a bad lot." It is recorded that on more than one occasion the arch-conspirator displayed the most petty inclination towards gossip and other unmanly propensities. Kropotkin gives an extremely favourable account of Bakunin's personal character. I should value this testimony highly had it been based on personal observation, but Kropotkin never met Bakunin.
Bělinskii says of Bakunin that he loved ideas, not human beings. To this man of half-thoughts and half-deeds, his fellows were never more than means to an end. Half-thoughts, I say, and half-deeds. Hardly any of Bakunin's literary works were completed, nor did he display endurance and constancy in his practical undertakings. If history, as Herzen declares, be an improvisation, there must be individual improvisers, and such was Bakunin.
Bakunin's philosophical development resembled that of Bělinskii and Herzen. His relationship with Herzen, with whom he made acquaintance in 1839, was important to Bakunin and to Herzen as well, and was of a very peculiar nature.
Like Herzen, from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, Bakunin passed on to Hegel, and from Hegel to Feuerbach. On coming to Europe, Bakunin met various members of the Hegelian left, and his relationships with these continued down to the rising of 1848. He knew Ruge, and subsequently met Stirner. In Paris he was on friendly terms with Proudhon. Influenced by Comte and by Vogt, he became definitively positivist and materialist. During his second period of European life he was confirmed in his materialism by the influence of Marx (for Bakunin contrasts here with Herzen), and by that of Darwinism, which by Bakunin as by so many others was taken as proof of materialism. He was fond of referring to the descent of men from monkeys, of speaking of the gorilla as man's ancestor. At this time, too, Bakunin was influenced by the ideas of Schopenhauer.
We see, then, that Bakunin's philosophical development and training closely resembled Herzen's. This is all the more comprehensible seeing that Bakunin remained in correspondence, and in part upon terms of personal intercourse, with his radical friends, and above all with Herzen. For a long time Herzen continued to agree even with the later radical ideas of Bakunin. It may be said that the thoughts to which Herzen gave expression in From the Other Shore remained those of Bakunin throughout life. The two friends sought the same goal, but differed as regards tactics.
We have already heard of Herzen's Letters to an Old Comrade, written in 1869. During this year Nečaev began his agitation among the Moscow students, and Herzen therefore felt it necessary to settle accounts in the theoretical field with Bakunin and the younger revolutionaries. In point of tactics the difference between the two friends arose out of the Herzenian "hesitation." Bakunin never hesitated for a moment; as if by reflex action, we may say, he responded with a blow of his revolutionary fist to all the stimuli of the objective world, of the real world of society. He took delight in the thought of shattering the world to bits. He sought this delight in all directions, and when it was unobtainable in the form of concrete revolutionary activities, he would find it in passionate criticism and negation of the existing social order.[2]
§ 87.
BAKUNIN'S translation of Hegel's Gymnasial Lectures appeared in 1838, being published in "Nabljudatel" (The Observer), a periodical edited by Bělinskii.
In his introduction to this work Bakunin anticipated Bělinskii's explanation of the Hegelian proposition, "All that is real is rational."
Bakunin here settles his account with extreme subjectivism, and in particular with Fichtean solipsism. Building on a Hegelian foundation, he arrives at a position opposed to that of Kant, his former leader in philosophy, and opposed above all to that of Fichte, speaking of extreme subjectivism as egoistic self-contemplation and "the annihilation of any possible love." He condemns Schiller, the Kantian revolté; he condemns Voltaire and the French philosophers of the eighteenth century; and he condemns Saint-Simon. All are repudiated owing to their hostility to Christianity. Like Granovskii, Bakunin expressly defends the doctrine of immortality.
According to Bakunin, subjectivism leads to despair and self—destruction. "Reality is ever victorious; man has no choice but to come to terms with reality, to immerse himself deliberately in reality, and to love reality, for in default of this he must destroy himself." This anti-subjectivist formula of Bakunin is very different from the formula of Bělinskii and Herzen, for whereas the two latter discern in subjectivism the premisses for crime, murder, and revolution, Bakunin discovers the premisses for suicide. Many years afterwards, in 1874, when the rising in Bologna miscarried, Bakunin wished to take his own life, but was dissuaded by a friend. Yet Bakunin had then abandoned subjectivism, and upon objectivist grounds had preached murder—the right to kill.
§ 88.
FOUR years later Bakunin rejected, not Russian reality alone, but European reality as well, his rejection being no less emphatic than had formerly been his defence.
I refer to the essay in Ruge's "Jahrbücher" for the year 1842. From this writing it is customary to quote as characteristic of Bakunin's anarchism the saying, "The desire for destruction is at the same time a creative desire." But the essay should be read in its entirety, for it is the best that Bakunin ever wrote, and furnishes a genuinely philosophical program of democracy.
Bakunin declares war on Schelling and his positive philosophy, which Schelling had counterposed to Hegel's negative rationalism. In 1841 Frederick William IV, "the romanticist on the throne," had summoned Schelling to Berlin, and Bakunin had heard Schelling lecture. Turning away from Schelling's romanticist mythology and revelation, Bakunin contrasts with the German's theosophy the theory of rationalistic democracy. The things which in Schelling's dreams were to appear in his Johannine church of the future were for Bakunin to be realised here and now by democracy.[3]
Bakunin attempts to discover the true essence of democracy by throwing light upon its opposition to the reaction of the post-revolutionary epoch of the restoration. The theoretical basis of this reaction is found in Schelling's positive philosophy and in the historical school of law; the reaction has but one practical aim, to maintain the old social order.
Conversely the task of democracy is to create a new world. The essence, the principle, of democracy is the most general, the most all-embracing, the most intimate of factors; it is what Hegel speaks of as the spirit which reveals itself and develops itself in history. Such is the principle of democracy, but somewhat different is the democratic party, which has not attained to clear views concerning its own principle, and hence its weakness. The party must learn that the task of democracy does not consist merely in opposition to rulers, it must not aim solely at some particular constitutional or politico-economic change, but must bring about a total transformation of the state of the world. Democracy is a religion; it must be religious, must be, that is to say, permeated by its principle, not in the sphere of thought alone, but also in real life, down to its minutest manifestations. Not until this is effected will the democratic party conquer the world.
As a party, the democratic party is not the general, but merely a particular; it is the negative contrasted with the other particular, the positive. The whole significance and the irresistible energy of the negative are found in the destruction of the positive; but in destroying the positive, the negative, too, perishes. Since democracy does not yet exist in its affirmative wealth, but only as an incomplete negative, it must first perish with its opponent, before it can rise renewed in all the fulness of life. This transformation of the democratic party will be qualitative as well as quantitative. The democratic party must become conscious of the priestly office of democracy, must become aware that democracy is a new living and vitalising revelation, a new heaven and a new earth, a young and glorious world, wherein all existing discords will be resolved into a harmonious concord.
Hence the weakness of the democratic party cannot be cured by any superficial union with the positive, for negative and positive are incompatible. Now the negative, considered in its contrast with the positive, appears void of content, and positive thinkers reproach the democrats on this ground. But they err; the negative is nothing by itself, and in isolation would in actual fact be absolutely nothing. Its whole being, its content, are, however, found in its opposition to the positive, and its vital energy consists in the destruction of the positive.
The reactionary party is considered by Bakunin to exhibit two trends, for there are, he says, the pure or logical reactionaries, and the compromising or illogical reactionaries. The logical reactionaries are well aware that their positive can only be secured through the suppression of the negative, but they do not see that their positive is positive only in so far as it is opposed by the negative, and that if it were to secure complete victory over the negative, it would, in the absence of its opponent, no longer be the positive, but rather the completion of the negative. Blindness, however, is the leading characteristic of all positivists and insight is vouchsafed to negativists alone. These pure positivists desire to be honest and complete human beings; they detest half-measures just as much as do the democrats, for they know that only a complete human being can be good, and that half-measures are the tainted source of all that is evil.
Bakunin proceeds to show how the reactionaries hate the democrats, and how they would like to use any means, to use the inquisition were it still possible, in order to annihilate the democrats. The democrats, on the other hand, even though they may often be guilty of unjust and partisan actions, derive from the sublime principle of democracy energy enabling them to carry on their struggle religiously as well as politically, making a religion of freedom, whose only true expression is justice and love. Even in the heat of the struggle the democrat continues to obey the greatest of Christ's commandments, and to realise the essence of Christianity, which is love.
Bakunin next explains how and why the reactionaries take refuge in the past as it existed before the appearance of the opposition between negative and positive. They are to this extent right inasmuch as this past was a living totality and was consequently richer than the disintegrated present; but they fail to understand that to-day this totality can manifest itself to them in no other form than as a self-created, dissolving, and disintegrating contrast; they fail to understand that the totality, as a positive, involves also the negative, and is nothing but the soulless corpse of its old self given up to the mechanical and chemical process of reflection. Not understanding these, things, but sensing the absence of life, they throw the whole blame upon the negative. Being unable to satisfy their desire for love and truth, their incapacity becomes transformed into hatred of the negative.
The compromising positivists are more strongly affected than the uncompromising positivists by the reflective malady of the age. They do not reject the negative unconditionally, but concede to it a relative and temporary justification. They lack, however, the energy of simplicity, and they know nothing of the endeavour to attain to completeness and honesty of disposition. Theoretical dishonesty is the standpoint of the compromisers. Bakunin speaks of this dishonesty as theoretical because he cannot believe that an individual evil will can really exercise an inhibitive influence upon the development of the human spirit, but he admits that of necessity theoretical dishonesty almost always manifests itself as practical dishonesty.
The compromising positivists are wiser than the logical positivists; the former are the wise men, the theorists par excellence, and are therefore the leading representatives of the present. Bakunin characterises them by quoting a well—known dictum concerning the juste-milieu: "Le côté gauche dit, 'deux fois deux font quatre'; le côté droit dit, 'deux fois deux font six'; le juste-milieu dit, 'deux fois deux font cinq.'" The compromisers speak less clearly and definitely than the logical positivists; they evade the simple practical urge for truth; they are too astute to follow the simple practical dictates of consciousness. The democrats say that only the simple is true, real, and creative; the compromisers, with immense trouble, construct an artificial patchwork, so that they may distinguish themselves from the stupid and uncultured mob. They know everything, and being men of world-wide experience they allow nothing to astonish them. They have sampled the entire material and spiritual universe and after this long and tedious reflective journey have come to the conviction that the real world is not worth the trouble involved in securing a genuinely living contact with it. It is difficult to know what to make of these people. They never say "yes" or "no." They say, "You are right to some extent, but still. . ." When they have nothing more to say, they tell us, "Yes it is rather odd."
Nevertheless the democrats cannot venture to ignore the party of the compromisers. Despite their instability, despite their incapacity to effect anything, theirs is numerically the most powerful party; they have no substance, but they are in the majority, and are one of the most important signs of the times.
The whole wisdom of the compromisers is found in their contention that those who represent the two opposed tendencies, the positivists and the negativists, are necessarily one-sided, therefore err; truth lies in the middle, and a compromise must be secured between the opposites. But this is erroneous. Compromise is de facto impossible, for the only aim of the negative is to destroy the positive. The compromisers set forth the two terms of the proposition, and from their own standpoint they ought to allow the opposition due weight; but this opposition leads us to a dissolution, to a negation, not to a compromise. Bakunin appeals here to Hegel's logic, to Hegel's exposition of the category of contrast and its immanent development. This doctrine is of the utmost importance, and, since the category of contrast is the main category, is the very essence, of the present, Hegel is the greatest philosopher of the present, stands at the summit of modern theoretical culture. In so far as Hegel grasped and resolved this category, he was the starting-point of the necessary self-resolution of modern culture. Thus he is at once above theory and within theory. He postulates a new practical world, which will not be attained through the formal application and diffusion of ready-made theories, but only through the primordial activity of the practical and autonomous spirit.
The contrast between the positive and the negative is of such a character that the two elements are mutually exclusive, so that we are forced to ask how these two conflicting elements can be conceived in a totality. Those who wish to do this may arbitrarily turn their backs upon the cleavage, and endeavour to escape from the contrast by returning to the simple totality which existed before the cleavage occurred—but such a return is impossible. The alternative is the endeavour to compromise, but this is likewise impossible, and the would-be compromisers are in reality quite unable to succeed.
Bakunin attempts to show that the positive has a twofold significance in relation to the negative. The positive may be the quiescent, immobile, apathetic, and pure positive, excluding all that is negative. But this exclusion is itself activity, movement; and thus the positive, because of its very positiveness, is no longer the positive but the negative. By excluding the negative from itself, it excludes itself from itself, and destroys itself. It follows from this that the positive and the negative do not weigh equally in the scales; the contrast is not an equilibrium, for the negative scale is far more heavily loaded. The negative determines the life of the positive, includes within itself the totality of the contrast, and alone therefore possesses an absolute justification for existence.
This deduction seems to conflict with what was previously conceded by Bakunin, namely that the negative, taken by itself and considered in the abstract, is just as one-sided as the positive. This is indeed so, in so far as the negative excluded from the positive is itself positive. When the positivists negate the negative in its quiescent relationship to itself, they are discharging a logical and even sacred function, though they know not what they do. They believe themselves to be negating the negative, but they are negating it only in so far as they themselves convert it into a positive. They awaken the negative from the philistine repose for which it is ill-suited, and lead it back to its great mission—to the unresting and relentless destruction of all that positively exists.
Bakunin admits that the positive and the negative are equally justified when the latter, quiescently and egoistically withdrawing into itself, is untrue to itself. But the negative must not be egoistic; it must lovingly give itself up to the positive in order to absorb the positive. With growing enthusiasm Bakunin sociomorphises the logical contrast between the positive and the negative. In his relentless negation the negative appears simultaneously as that which is common to the two terms of the contrast, and as the superposed, the superior, the solely justified term; it is the manifestation of the contemporary practical spirit (which until the contrast has thus been resolved remains indiscernible)—the spirit which by its vigorous mission of destruction exhorts to repentance the sinful souls of the compromisers, the spirit which announces its imminent coming, its imminent revelation in a genuinely democratic and universally human church of liberty.
One who understands the spirit of the time and is permeated by that spirit, can wish no other compromise than the self-resolution of the positive by the negative. The effort to secure compromise is nothing but stupidity or lack of principle. The able and moral man is one who gives him up whole-heartedly to the spirit of the time and is permeated by that spirit.
The compromisers, like the democrats, recognise the totality of the contrast between positive and negative, but they desire to rob this contrast of its mobility, its life, its soul, for the vitality of the contrast is something essentially practical in its nature, and is therefore unendurable by their impotent demi-souls. To the positivists, too, they wish to forbid the negation of the negative. They would like to preserve the decayed and withered remnants of tradition, and to live with the positivists in these traditional ruins, in this irrational rococo world. They would like to make themselves permanently at home in the positivists' world; in a world where not reason but long continuance and immobility are the measure of the true and the sacred; in a world where China with its mandarins and floggings with the bamboo are the incorporation of absolute truth. But since the negativists gather strength daily, the compromisers desire to weaken the negativist movement by urging the positivists to make a little room for the negativists in their society, by casting out of the positivist historical museum a small number of "ruins which are indeed quite venerable, but have after all fallen utterly into decay." They endeavour to persuade the positivists that the negativists are merely young people who have been embittered by poverty, whose behaviour will be quiet and modest as soon as they are permitted to enter the respectable society of the positivists. In like manner do the compromisers attempt to appease the negativists. They recognise the nobility of the negativists' aims and admire their youthful enthusiasm for purity of principle. But pure principles, they say, cannot be applied in practical life, where an element of eclecticism is in place. We must give way to the world if we are to influence the world. . . .
The upshot of this impossible superficial compromise is that the compromisers are despised by both parties.
Bakunin refuses to accept the suggestion that the compromisers serve the cause of progress, whereas the negativists desire to shatter the world to bits. The attempts of the compromisers to effect progress by gradations do not secure progress, but result in the maintenance of the mean and pitiful conditions that now exist. They wish the positive and the negative to continue to exist separate, one-sided, and unrelated; to preserve for themselves in addition the enjoyment of the totality—a totality lacking life. For this reason the compromisers, since they are not truly permeated by the spirit of the present, are immoral, seeing that morality is impossible beyond the limits of the only saving church, the church of free men. Bakunin cites against them the words of the writer of the Apocalypse: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."
To history also, Bakunin applies this Hegelian doctrine of contrast. The principle of freedom was active from the first in the old Catholic world, manifesting itself in the numerous heresies which kept Catholicism alive and vigorous, but did so only whilst they existed within Catholicism, only whilst the oppositions were combined into a totality. In Protestantism, whose spirit had at first developed within Catholicism, the principle of freedom became independent, and the contrast became manifest in its purity.
The compromisers maintain that the contrasts of the present day are less acute and less dangerous. Tranquillity, they contend, is universal; everywhere movement has subsided; no one thinks of war, for material interests, which have now become the leading concerns of politics and universal civilisation, cannot be furthered without peace. Bakunin, however, points out to the compromisers the great signs of the time. He shows them the mysterious and terrible words, liberty, equality and fraternity, graven upon the temple of liberty upbuilded by the revolution. He points to Napoleon, who did not tame democracy, but, as son of the revolution, disseminated the democratic levelling principle throughout Europe. He refers to Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, showing that philosophy established in the intellectual world the identical levelling and revolutionary principle, and the principle of the autonomy of the spirit, which conflicts absolutely with all positive religions and churches. The revolution has not been overcome. It is merely gathering strength for a fresh onslaught. Strauss, Feuerbach, and Bruno Bauer are preaching negation anew they find listeners and followers everywhere, even among the positivists.
Mankind can secure satisfaction and repose in no other way than by the adoption of a universally practical principle, on which comprehends within itself the thousandfold phenomena of the mental life. But where is this life-creating principle to be discovered? Is it in Protestantism? Protestantism is given up to the most deplorable anarchy, and is split into innumerable sects; the Protestant world has no enthusiasm, and is the most disillusioned world imaginable. Is it in Catholicism? Catholicism, once a world-controlling power, has become the obedient tool of an immoral policy foreign to itself. Is it in the state? The state is affected by a profound internal conflict, for the state is impossible without religion, without a vigorous and universal sentiment. Neither Protestantism, nor Catholicism, nor yet the state, is the comprehensive, tranquillising, satisfying principle.
In conclusion, Bakunin once more apostrophises the compromisers in the following terms: "Look within, gentlemen, and tell me honestly whether you are content with yourselves, and whether you possibly can be content with yourselves. Are you not without exception gloomy and paltry manifestations of a gloomy and paltry age? Are you not full of contradictions? Are you complete men? Do you believe in anything real? Do you know what you want, and indeed are you capable of wanting anything? Has modern reflection (introspection), this epidemic malady of our day, left any part of you truly alive; are you not utterly permeated by this malady, paralysed by it, and broken? In fact, gentlemen, you must admit that our epoch is a gloomy epoch, and that we, its children, are yet more gloomy."
Bakunin's hope is therefore fixed upon the spirit of revolution, which will speedily manifest itself and will soon hold its assize. On all hands, and especially in France and England, socialistic—religious unions are coming into being. The people, whose rights are recognised in theory, but who by birth and circumstance are condemned to poverty and ignorance, and therewith also to practical slavery, the people, comprising the great majority of mankind, begin to number the thin ranks of their enemies and to demand the realisation of the rights which have already been theoretically conceded. All nations and all men are inspired with a premonition, and every one who is not affected with paralysis looks with tense expectation towards the near future, about to utter the word of deliverance. Even in Russia, which we know so little and for which perchance a great destiny is in store, lowering clouds are gathering, the heralds of storm! The atmosphere is sultry, pregnant with tempests! "To the positivists we say: 'Open the eyes of your mind; let the dead bury their dead; realise at last that the spirit, the ever-young, the ever-reborn, is not to be discovered in mouldering ruins!' To the compromisers we say: 'Throw open your hearts to the truth; clear your minds from pitiful and blind wisdom, free yourselves from the theorist's arrogance and the slave's dread, which have withered your souls and paralysed your movements!' Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which only destroys and annihilates because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life. The desire for destruction is also a creative desire!"
Immediately after its appearance, Bakunin's essay attracted considerable and favourable attention from the liberal press of Europe and of Russia. Herzen, without knowing who was the author, thought highly of it, for Bakunin had roughed in the outline for Herzen's analysis of the revolution of 1848. Herzen's From the Other Shore was no more than the filling in of this outline with historic content. The abstractness of the exposition is characteristic of Bakunin and his anarchism. Not merely did Bakunin conceive Hegel's dialectical process in a purely schematic manner, but he conceived it unhistorically. According to Hegel the higher historic form develops out of the contrast between thesis and antithesis. Bakunin presents Hegel's formula in a way which indicates that the two contrasts are to be entirely superseded, and to give place to a completely new form. I suspect that Bakunin had already conceived, though not perhaps very clearly, the thought of Russia's messianism. Russia was for Europe the something wholly new, and Europe was perishing from its internal oppositions. Unquestionably when Bakunin spoke of the positive he was thinking of the medieval third and second Rome; and in the struggle between the positive and the negative he presented an accurate schematic representation of the development of the modern age.
Bakunin's article gave clear expression to the revolutionary mood of the circle in which he moved, and to a degree therefore to the revolutionary mood of his time. It must further be admitted that he provided a successful interpretation of democracy in its philosophic aspects when he conceived democracy as a general outlook on the universe. In this matter too, Herzen followed in Bakunin's footsteps. In Bakunin's conception of democracy as religious in character we trace the influence of French socialism. Noteworthy are the energetic protests against scepticism and the longing for a saving faith.
We must consider Bakunin's analysis of bourgeois liberalism in this light, and in this light we cannot fail to give it our general approval.
§ 89.
THE programme of religious democracy was transformed by Bakunin into the program of anarchistic pandestruction. He was led along this course, not merely by his multiform personal experiences, which increased his hostility to existing society, but in addition by the development of his philosophical thought. Bakunin accepted Feuerbach's anthropologism in the form of a sharply defined materialism, adhering to Herzen's exposition of its principles in From the Other Shore. Bakunin's tendencies in this direction were reinforced by the influence of Proudhon (owing to his attack upon the church and the state in 1858, in his book De la justice dans la revolution et dans l'église, Proudhon had to flee from Paris), and by that of postrevolutionary and antireactionary materialism. Thus religious democracy became antireligious democracy.
With Herzen, Bakunin now came to conceive the present as a definitive transition from theological illusion to the positivist disillusionment of realistic materialism. In the program for the peace congress at Geneva (1867), antitheology was placed beside federalism and socialism as the third essential demand. After the Lyons disturbances he had one of his recurrent paroxysms of theorising, and wrote the most detailed of his philosophical fragments, Dieu et l'état, which was first published in 1882 by the press of the Jura federation. Ecrasons l'infâme—thus may be summarised his philosophy of religion and philosophy of history as formulated in 1875. ("L'église et l'état sont mes deux bêtes noires.")
\ Atheism is alone competent to bring true freedom to mankind, and it is therefore the first prerequisite of the social revolution. "If God exists, man is a slave; but man can and must be free, therefore God does not exist"—this ontological demonstration of atheism is vigorously presented by Bakunin. If the authority of God and the church be overthrown, there falls therewith the authority of the state, of which the church is a main prop. "As slaves of God, men must likewise become slaves of church and state, in so far as state is sanctified by church." All authority, therefore, is overthrown, all authority save only the authority of Bakunin. Just as Comte promoted himself to the rank of positivist pope, so did Bakunin look upon himself as anarchist pope.
Bakunin, like his teachers, conceives ecclesiastical religion as a superstition which originated in poverty and enslavement. The church is for him a kind of heavenly tavern (Bakunin naturally has in mind the Russian kabak); and conversely the tavern is the heavenly church on earth. In the church and in the tavern the mužik can for a moment forget his sorrows and his poverty, drowning them in the former in irrational faith, and in the latter in vodka—the same drunkenness in both cases.
Bakunin does not conceive religion merely as theism, but lays great stress in addition upon the doctrine of immortality. To him as to his predecessors atheism is at the same time materialism in the sense of antispiritualism. Bakunin appeals in especial to Comte for the reduction of psychology to a branch of biology, one of the natural sciences.
The assumption that there exists an undying and therefore infinite soul seems to him to conflict with the theological doctrine of God's absoluteness, but theology has found it possible to subordinate the infinite to a higher infinite. To mitigate the absurdity theologians have conceived the doctrine of the devil; the infinite is in revolt against the absolutism of the infinite; revolution is dominant even in the spirit world. Nay, the anchorites, revered as holy, were animated by this principle of revolt, which in their case took the form of a revolt against the infinite as typified in human society.
Religion, or superstition, will be overthrown and replaced by positive science and the disillusionment science brings. Bakunin, therefore, esteems logic highly. "You, my friends, may say what you will. Great is logic; perhaps it is the only great thing" (1868).
History, like psychology, becomes materialistic. Bakunin draws this conclusion, and is therefore forced to recognise the universality of natural determinism; but he takes all possible pains to preserve freedom for the individual. We feel that here Kant, and more especially Fichte, are at war in his mind against Hegel, Comte, and Vogt.
§ 90.
THE goal of history and of individual effort is the equality of all men, absolute equality, such as will render impossible the domination of one human being by another, and will therefore put an end to exploitation. Bakunin refuses to recognise any authority whatever. When God's authority is overthrown, authority of every other kind is likewise-overthrown, and above all that of the state. Even science, which is to play so great a part in freeing mankind from the yoke of authority, must not issue commands. Science, or its representativcs, must not dominate life, but must merely illuminate. The intelligentsia must bring culture to the masses, but this does not give the teacher any rights over the pupil; and besides, inequality in point of culture is but transient, and the teacher may well come to learn from the pupil.
Absolute equality will not lead to the atomisation of society, will not break up mankind into fragments. It offers, on the contrary, to mankind the possibility of a true social union. Bakunin accepts Proudhon's program of federation, federation "from below upwards," conceiving the future society as a federative organisation of communes.
Bakunin continues to cling to the Hegelian dialectical formulation, and writes: "Statehood (centralisation) is the thesis, anarchy or amorphism is the antithesis, and federation will be the synthesis."
Bakunin looks for an entire reconstruction of society, and as a preliminary, therefore existing society and its order must be destroyed root and branch. Pandestruction (when he uses this word "pan" means "wholly" as well as "all") is essential because every element of the old social order would be capable, were life left in it, of proliferating anew, and of leading to the recurrence of the old.
From his antitheological outlook, the "alternative" of the year 1842 seems to Bakunin essential. Since theism, since religion in general, is the foundation of the existing social order, nothing short of the complete destruction of religion can effect the overthrow of the political order that has hitherto prevailed. Alike in the religious, in the political, and in the social field, atheism must be opposed to theism.
For Bakunin there exists no middle term between theism and atheism, and for him therefore pandestruction is above all the annihilation of theism, of religious faith. Bakunin sees (influenced, perhaps, by the theories of Strauss and Renan) that religions are historic growths, have been formed by society as a whole. Bakunin expresses his meaning by saying that "public opinion," which he ranks above state and church, has brought religion into being, and that "public opinion," men themselves and not their institutions merely, must therefore be fundamentally altered. Nevertheless, so runs his naïve argument, it will perhaps be easier to overthrow state and church, and we must consequently make a beginning with these.
Absolute pandestruction being thus reduced to partial destruction, we find that in certain other respects Bakunin is not disinclined to make a few concessions.
It is true that he continually returns to his demand for absolute amorphism, but in proportion as he works for the practical realisation of this aim he makes concessions and is content with partial modifications. Despite his "écrasons," he is actually inclined, as far as Russia is concerned, to tolerate "superstition." When his views began to gain attention in Russia and it became necessary for him to draft a program of political activity, Bakunin made concessions in matters of tactics, agreeing in especial that the religious question need not occupy the first place. Judged by his own program of 1842, Bakunin became a compromiser, a liberal reactionary.
Nor did he find it possible to reject the evolutionary idea. As previously stated, he accepted Darwinism, and had therefore to admit that the desired goal must be attained by numerous transitional stages. His historical knowledge was, however, inadequate, and the idea of gradual progress, rejected by him in 1842, was not clearly conceived or definitely elaborated.
In point of theory Bakunin makes further concessions to Marxism and to historical materialism. Like Herzen, he conceives individual mental energy as a primary historic force, but in his postsiberian period his thought tended to become more economic, and was at times almost Marxist. His contest with Marx in the International compelled Bakunin to gain a clearer understanding of his opponent's theories, and despite all differences of opinion between himself and Marx he began a translation of the first volume of Capital.[4]
§ 91.
BAKUNIN attempted on more than one occasion to formulate the philosophic principles of revolution. In his leading work, the motive force of individual action and of history is discerned in three principles, animality, thought, and revolt; man has an inborn need for revolt, a revolutionary instinct. This ranking of revolt beside thought and animality is manifestly a transference of the Bakuninist revolutionary nervous impulse into the domain of psychology; but it is plain that revolt as a primary psychical element is atrophied in many human beings, or at least that it is "inborn" only in certain periods.
In his program for the Alliance Internationale de la Démocratie Socialiste, which was published in 1873, Bakunin formulated an ethical theory of revolution which was no less typical of his thought than the instinct theory.
Starting from his materialistic determinism, Bakunin denied freedom of the will that he might be enabled to repudiate law, and above all criminal law. The individual, he said, was the "involuntary" product of the natural environment and the social milieu, by which criminals and kings are alike produced. Neither the criminal nor the king is responsible or blameworthy, since both are the natural products of one and the same society. To enable itself to punish criminals, society insists that it is necessary to hold the individual responsible for his actions, but this theory of responsibility derives from theology, which is compounded of absurdity and hypocrisy. The individual is neither punishable nor responsible.
Bakunin failed to note the objection that by this theory the judge and the executioner, just as much as the criminal, are "natural" products of society, so that it is plain that he had forgotten Bělinskii. Nor did he trouble himself to explain why the kings, as the topmost points, were to be overthrown, if they were no more than the blameless victims of the society to which they belonged.
Bakunin deduced all immorality (had he been consistent he would have said "so-called" immorality!) from political, social, and economic inequality. But this inequality, he said, is dominant only in the period of transition, and will disappear after the universal revolution, after a revolution which is simultaneously social, philosophical, economic, and political. During this period of transition, the sole right of society vis-à-vis the criminal is, in self-protection, to kill the criminal whom it has itself produced; but society has no right to judge or to condemn. In connection with this right to kill, Bakunin is of course thinking of the individual assassinations and the mass killings of the revolution; and the right to kill, to assassinate, is not by him properly conceived as a right but as a "natural fact," tragical but inevitable.
Bakunin, indeed, tells us in express terms that this "natural" fact is not ethical at all, but simply natural. The idea of justice is valid only during the period of transition; it is a negative idea, in whose terms the social problem and social ideal may indeed be formulated, but the positive solution of that problem, the positive attainment of that ideal, can be effected solely by fraternity, by the actual realisation of equality. Bakunin further concedes that "natural" murders will even be useless if the oppressors thus removed are merely to be replaced by new oppressors. He condemns the jacobins and the Blanquists for dreaming of bloody revolutions directed against individual human beings, whereas the ultimate and universal revolution must be directed against the "organisation of things" and against "social positions." This radical revolution must destroy private property and the state, and may endeavour to protect individuals in so far as this will not injure the revolutionary cause. Bakunin does not shrink from speaking of this radical revolution as anarchy (anarchy; he says, is the "complete manifestation of the folk-life"), out of which equality will develop; but for this very reason every authority must be annihilated, whether it be known by the name of church, monarchy, constitutionalist state, bourgeois republic, or revolutionary dictatorship. This entirely new revolutionary state [so we cannot get on without the state after all!] "will be the new fatherland, the alliance of the universal revolution against the alliance of all the reactions."
Such in broad outline is Bakunin's justly renowned philosophy of "deed," built up upon the old confusion between determinism and fatalism, which repudiates moral responsibility. For some reasons Bakunin would like to save individual freedom, but for other reasons this would be inconvenient. Bakunin shelters behind the positivist screen of "natural" facts. In his address to the Russian youth he defends on similar lines Karakozov's attempt on Alexander II. representing it as "natural" and "epidemic" passion of youth; but, being aware of the precarious character of this exculpatory suggestion, he demands that "individual deeds" shall become more and more frequent, until they take the form of "deeds of the collective masses." The work will grow continually easier in proportion as panic gains ground in the stratum of society devoted to destruction. The uncorrupted minds of youth, argues Bakunin, cannot fail to grasp that it is far more humane to poniard or to strangle the objects of hatred by dozens or even by hundreds than in alliance with these same hated ones to participate in systematised legal murders. Bakunin therefore preaches the holy war of destruction; evil is to be fought by all possible means, "with poison, the knife, or the noose-for the revolution sanctifies all equally." The true revolutionist knows nothing of scruples or doubts, and has nothing to rue. "Repentance is excellent if it can alter things or lead to improvement. Otherwise, it is not merely useless but injurious." Bakunin inveighs energetically against those who demand from the "man of to-day" a precise plan of reconstruction and of the future. It suffices if we can achieve no more than a hazy idea of the opposite to all that is loathsome in contemporary civilisation. Our aim is to raze things to the ground; our goal, pandestruction. "It seems to us criminal that those who are already busied about the practical work of revolution should trouble their minds with thoughts of this nebulous future, for such thoughts will merely prove a hindrance to the supreme cause of destruction." Bakunin rails against the literature of the day, composed by informers and flatterers, by those in the pay of despotism, who write belletristic and scientific works in defence of the old order, and who have thought out this lie concerning the positive plan for the future. It is true, adds Bakunin, that there are honest dreamers, and socialists among them, who spin cobweb plans of a better life, but this is once more the same detestable business, for they construct their pictures of the future out of the repulsive material of existing conditions. "Let the deed alone now speak."
The absurd, scholastic, sophistical, and positively Jesuitical character of Bakunin's anarchistic humanism must be plain to every thinker. I have already said that this "new morality" (Bakunin considers the old morality, based upon religion patriarchalism, and class tradition lost beyond hope of rescue) is essentially founded upon materialistic and naturalistic determinism; but in addition it may be pointed out that it is Schopenhauerian voluntarism which is here presented to us as the gospel of the deed. Bakunin, like so many other politicians, insists upon the merits of practice as contrasted with theory. Schopenhauer's misanthropic tendencies notwithstanding, his philosophical nihilism is transformed by Bakunin into pandestruction.[5]
We have already learned what Bělinskii and Herzen thought of the deed as contrasted with the word.
Bakunin, despite his positive preference for science, combined with voluntarism a vigorous hostility towards intellectualism. He refused to recognise science as the sole guide in life. Science cannot alone control society, for control by science would mean that mankind would be stupefied, that men would become dumb driven cattle. Bakunin frequently used strong expressions directed against the intelligentsia, which he regarded as just as bad as the aristocracy, and as no less callous than the bourgeoisie. Yet notwithstanding this verdict he demanded of the members of the intelligentsia, not that they should instruct the populace, but that they should revolutionise it. At any rate Bakunin had far less admiration for preaching than had Herzen.
In conformity with this philosophy of the deed, Bakunin approved, not mass revolution alone, but individual assassination and individual expropriation as means for the production of general panic, and he looked upon terrorism as an educative instrument on behalf of the revolution.[6]
He unhesitatingly accepts Jesuitism and Machiavellianism. The secret societies of the Poles and the Italians would naturally encourage this tendency.[7]
We cannot ascertain how far Bakunin was guided by Nečaev in issuing his secret instructions. Bakunin had cut adrift from Nečaev, but his relations with the conspirator had been of a somewhat questionable character. (Consult Dragomanov's Biography in Minzes' German translation of Bakunin's letters, p. xcii).
Notwithstanding the most thorough devotion to anarchy, the revolution of pandestruction must in the end be regulated and led, and Bakunin provided for this with the aid of the central committee, a secret body quite outside the ken of most of the members of the revolutionary association. Bakunin expressly appealed to the example of the Jesuits, saying that the individual revolutionary "must renounce his own will."
As tsar of the secret society Bakunin was, after the Russian model, absolutely irresponsible, and this is why he detested plans for the future. Now it is true that plans for the future are easily formulated when they are no more than a collection of wishes. But from one who arrogates on behalf of his reforms even the right to kill we may demand as a preliminary a precise and conscientious analysis of social institutions and their defects. We may also demand a precise and conscientious analysis of historical evolution, that it may be possible to forecast with reasonable probability the course of future evolution.
Marx was not always just to Bakunin in individual points, but his condemnation of Bakunin's fondness for blind ventures was thoroughly justified.
Moreover, Bakuninian great deeds shrunk lamentably when attempts were made to realise pandestruction. Bakunin was incessantly advocating petty disturbances and conspiracies, the promotion of unrest among peasants and operatives, ferments and revolts of all kinds. These were to keep the revolutionary spirit alive, and to pave the way for the ultimate catastrophe. Bakunin and his adherents spoke of the method as "parlefaitisme" (propaganda by deed).
Bakunin remained the confirmed Russian aristocrat. Everything that he casts up against the Russian aristocracy was preeminently applicable to himself and his anarchism. It is the blinded spirit of aristocracy which conjures up before his vain imagination the spectre of great deeds. It is this same spirit of aristocracy which inspires his willingness to subject the common revolutionists to Jesuitical drill, as a preliminary to making corpses of them. His revolutionism notwithstanding, Bakunin ever remains the defender of serfdom, the lord separated from his revolutionary slaves by the impenetrable wall of the secret society. This secret society business is a mere copy of absolutist aristocracy with its secret police and its secret diplomacy. Bakunin has no inkling that the essential and universal precondition to democracy must be publicity and mutual criticism. Secret societies are an incorporation of the aristocratic spirit with its illusion of great deeds and its contempt for the petty details of work—its shyness of work in general.
Bakunin with his social democracy reaches, in fact, the same result as was reached by Renan, the declared aristocrat, with his ingenious machine. The machine can break the world into fragments, but the elite of the intellectuals, those who alone understand the working of the secret mechanism, are enabled to impose fear and order upon the masses. Bakunin has not discovered an all-destroying machine, but he has discovered the all-destroying revolution, to be directed by the elite of his secret society under his personal leadership.
Bakunin's individualism culminates in the negation of individuality, culminates in absolutism. Crime and murder were dreaded by Bělinskii and Herzen as inevitable consequences of German philosophical subjectivism and individualism. With dauntless inconsistency Bakunin elevated them into a system and proclaimed the right to kill. In early days he had objected to German subjectivism and individualism on the ground that the doctrine led to suicide, but discarding this train of thought Bakunin himself came to advocate assassination.
Bakunin desires anarchy (he expressly revives the etymological significance of the term as the destruction of all authority). He preaches a war of annihilation after the manner of the robber chieftains of popular saga. In 1869 he declares that brigandage is one of the most honourable forms of Russian political life.
"We need something very different from a constitution; we need storm and life, a world that is lawless and consequently free," he had exclaimed in 1848. Similarly in the secret rules of 1869 we read that the international brethren must combine "revolutionary fervour" with intelligence, energy, faithfulness, and discretion—must have a spice of the devil in them.
In Bakunin's own composition there was this spice of devilry, and he nourished his devil with the feelings of revenge that he cherished throughout life. We can understand that the regime of Nicholas I could not fail to inspire sentiments of hatred and a desire for revenge, but hatred and revenge make people blind, and those animated by such passions cannot hope to strike victorious blows.
ln Gué's reminiscences (see p. 432) we are told that the painter's wife once asked Bakunin what were his aims and what were his beliefs. The answer was: "I believe in nothing. I read nothing. I think of but one thing: twist the neck, twist it yet further, screw off the head, let not a trace of it remain!"
§ 92.
AT the close of his life Bakunin recanted from Bakuninian anarchism and Jesuitism. At any rate, on October 21, 1874, he wrote as follows to Ogarev: "Realise at length that nothing living and firm can be upbuilded upon jesuitical trickery, that revolutionary activity aiming to succeed must not seek its supports in base and petty passions, and that no revolution can achieve victory without lofty and conspicuously clear ideals." Dragomanov considers that these words embody a complete renunciamento on Bakunin's part, but I can see in them no more than a momentary doubt, such as often affected him in his loneliness, especially after the death of Herzen. He was always accessible to the words of a friend.
In 1870 he had broken with his adept Nečaev, and had branded him a traitor. In 1872 Bakunin accused Nečaev of Machiavellianism and Jesuitism.
In confirmation of his own interpretation Dragomanov refers to an incident recorded by Malon, who tells us that in February 1876 Bakunin rejoiced over the republican victory in the elections, saying: "La liberté mondiale est sauvée! est sauvée encore une fois par la grande France!" Other writers refer to this utterance as a proof that Bakunin's anarchistic and antipolitical views had undergone modification. To me, however, it seems that we have here no more than one of the numerous improvisations characteristic of Bakunin's impulsive temperament. Moreover, these retractations do not concern the revolution itself but the method of revolution. We must not forget that from time to time Bakunin considered the possibility of revolution without bloodshed, and would then give it the preference over a bloody revolution. Read, for example, what he wrote in the year 1862, in the essay The People's Cause. Having declared that he would rather follow Alexander II as the people's tsar than he would follow Pugačev and Pestel, he continued: "Owing to human stupidity, bloody revolutions are frequently necessary, but they are invariably an evil, a terrible evil and a great misfortune." Even in his secret instructions he refers similarly to revolutions as the outcome of human stupidity, but the trouble is that he collaborates in this stupidity, and demands that others should collaborate. Nevertheless when he writes thus he can no longer be conceiving revolt as a primordial mental energy.
§ 93.
MARX and the Marxists, and some of the liberals as well (Ruge, and others). accused Bakunin of nationalist panslavism, and reproached him therefore with being illogical. Even today many of the historians of socialism continue to puzzle their brains over the question whether (as was frequently maintained in Marxist circles) Bakunin did not become a Russian agent towards the close of his career.
It is true that in 1862 Bakunin continued to wonder whether the tsar would not carry out his plans for him, and we have just read that Alexander II seemed to him preferable as a leader to Pugačev and Pestel. Proudhon entertained similar illusions regarding Napoleon III. Mickiewicz, again, and many others based their hopes at times upon the thought of their most powerful enemies' conversion. Herzen cherished like aspirations, and Bakunin shared such a plan with Herzen, a plan which is certainly opposed to the idea of effecting change "from below upwards."
The views common to Bakunin and Herzen were not the expression of political and nationalistic panslavism, but were derived from slavophil messianism. In contradistinction with Herzen, Bakunin laid stress rather upon Slav than upon Russian messianism. The difference is explicable from the consideration that Bakunin had come into personal contact with other Slav revolutionaries—Poles, Czechs, and southern Slavs.
Marx and the Marxists, and also Ruge and other of the German opponents of Bakunin, are right in considering that Bakunin overestimated the revolutionary capacity of the Slavs. In other respects, however, Bakunin's Slavist program was no more nationalist than that of Marx and the liberals. Marx preposed an antislav combination on the part of Germans, Poles, and Magyars, preaching russophobia, czechophobia, and croatophobia. Bakunin, on the other hand, in the Appeal to the Slavs (1848) which was so strongly criticised by Marx, invited the Slavs to espouse the cause of the Magyars against Windischgrätz. In like manner Bakunin was for the Poles and also for the Germans (the people of Germany, not the despots). The essential difference is merely that Bakunin was a Russian, whereas Marx, Engels, and Ruge, being Germans, were animated with German sentiments.[8] In an earlier work of my own,[9] I have furnished proof of the assertion that at a considerably later date, Marx and the Marxists were still inspired with German nationalist sentiments, and cherished antipathies towards the Slavs. It is necessary to refer to the fact once more to-day, in view of the nationalist struggles now in progress within the ranks of the social democracy.[10]
To this view, which certainly cannot be termed chauvinist, Bakunin continued to adhere. He was a Russian, and as such desired that the Russians and the Slavs should become members of the revolutionary family of the nations. In the year 1848 he participated in the Prague rising; in 1863 he wished to help the Poles; at this time, too, he assisted in the commencing revolutionary organisation of the Russians. He had faith in the revolutionary energy of the Slavs.
If we wish to account for Bakunin's fondness for the Poles, we have only to recall that enthusiastic sarmatiophilism was almost universal at this epoch, and to remember Bakunin's personal acquaintanceship with Poles in Europe and in Siberia. We know, too, that his wife was a Pole.[11] Political relationships had existed between the radical Russians and the Poles ever since the partition of Poland.
When in 1848 the Czechs and the Ruthenians drew up their program of federation, Bakunin was won over to this cause. Bakunin belonged to a multilingual state, wherein distinct nationalities were struggling for national and linguistic rights. To him, consequently, the distinction between the centralising state and nationality was clearer than it was to Marx, by whom this differentiation between state and nation was far less vividly perceived. At the congress of the League of Peace and Freedom held at Berne in 1868, Bakunin drew express attention to the distinction between state and folk. We have seen that Herzen wanted a folk-state, and in like manner Bakunin differentiated folk from state, and had a democratic conception of the folk. For the rest, enough has been said in earlier chapters regarding the principle of nationality and kindred problems.
Proof that Bakunin's panslavism was not nationalist in character is further afforded by the fact that he did not accept the Czech program altogether uncritically. He approved neither Palacký nor Rieger, for in opposition to these two leaders he desired to make common cause with the Magyars against Austria. He wished, too, to take the Rumanians into his Slav federation, for he desired the break up of Turkey as well as that of Austria. As regards all these designs, there were doubtless differences of outlook and differences in the estimate of the political situation, as between Bakunin on the one hand and Marx and the German radicals on the other, but we must not for this reason refer Bakunin's views to Slavist chauvinism. We may admit that Bakunin, like Herzen and Russians in general, was less sympathetic towards Germans than towards Frenchmen, Italians, and other members of the Latin races. Here, however, traditional influences were at work, and more especially family traditions, for Bakunin's father had had a predilection for the Latins, and above all for the Italians. When Bakunin's plans on behalf of the Poles and the Slavs were shipwrecked in 1863, he turned to the Latins. It must not be supposed that Bakunin had any national aversion for the Germans, but he disliked German conditions in general and the German bourgeoisie in particular.
To conclude, Bakunin, like Herzen, regarded the Russian people as predestined to establish the social revolution. In support of this view he referred in 1868 to the existence and significance of the mir. In the opinion of the Russian folk, he said, the soil belongs to the folk alone, to the genuinely working masses, to those who till the ground. Now this outlook, says Bakunin, enfolds all the social revolutions of the past and of the future. The Slavs, he contends, and above all the Great Russians, are the most unwarlike of the nations, and they therefore have no desire for conquests, but are inspired by an unalloyed and passionate eagerness for the free and collective utilisation of the soil. By instinct, continues Bakunin, giving free rein to his imagination, the Russians are socialistic; by nature they are revolutionary; the Russians, therefore, will initiate the federation of the world.
These fancies do not belong to the domain of realist thought, and they are all the more open to censure seeing that two years earlier Bakunin had given utterance to extremely critical opinions regarding the Russian mir. In his letter to Herzen and Ogarev (1866) he strongly condemned the patriarchalism of the mir, saying that it repressed individuality, permitted no internal revolution, and (before all) sacrificed woman. The mir as an institution was the incorporation of Chinese immobility.
In this connection it may be well to point out that Bakunin's opponent Marx, and Engels no less, held at first regarding the Russian mir, and therefore regarding the Russian people, views no less uncritical than those of Bakunin.
After 1863 Bakunin modified his Slavist designs and practically abandoned them. Henceforward he placed more confidence in the French and in the Latins generally, whilst, as we know, he discovered the revolutionary instinct in all men and all nations. Once only, in the year 1872, in response to a German appeal, he elaborated the program for a Slav section of the International in Zurich. The Slavs, including more particularly the Czechs, were to be won over to the cause of revolution and to be weaned from reactionary panrussism. In this program Bakunin expressly declared that the Slavs were not to be organised for their own sake; their organisation was merely to serve as means for their incorporation in the general organisation of the International.
§ 94.
IN order to clarify our outlook concerning Bakunin's philosophical and political views, we will now undertake a comparison between Bakunin and Marx. This will throw much light upon the relationship between anarchism and socialism, in so far as Bakunin may be regarded as one of the principal founders of anarchism, whilst Marx may be looked upon as the founder of contemporary socialism, and thus the contrast between the two men may be envisaged as the contrast between anarchism and socialism.
First of all it is essential to bear in mind that Marx and Bakunin both went through a developmental process, that both men modified their opinions as time passed. Further, in making the comparison, we must differentiate between Marx and Marxism, and must not overlook the distinction between socialism and social democracy.
Turning from these methodological preliminaries to consider the immediate question under review, we cannot fail to find it significant that the opposition between Marx and Bakunin endured for many years.[12] This suffices by itself to justify the conclusion that the difference of outlook was based (even though not invariably) upon essential differences in point of principle.
In philosophy, both Bakunin and Marx started from the same point, from Hegel–Feuerbach and the Hegelian left; both learned from Proudhon and the French socialists; both were positivists and materialists; the two men lived for a considerable time in similar circumstances and in the same localities; both participated in the revolution; both had to suffer from the same reaction and from its effects upon personal safety and freedom.
But under the influence of German philosophy Bakunin remained subjectivist and individualist, whereas Marx (and all that is said here applies equally to Engels) was much more influenced than Bakunin by French and English positivism, passed on to extreme objectivism, and came to regard history and the social totality as the determining influences in social life. Bakunin, too, abandoned the extremer forms of subjectivism and individualism (Introduction to Hegel's Gymnasial Lectures, 1838). A few days before his death, talking about Schopenhauer, he condemned individualism, writing: "Our whole philosophy is established upon a false foundation when it conceives human beings as individuals, instead of looking upon them, as it should, as members of a collectivity. Hence arise most philosophical errors, the upshot of which is that happiness is looked for in the clouds, or else that pessimism ensues, like that of Schopenhauer and Hartmann." In 1838 he considered suicide the necessary consequence of extreme subjectivism and individualism, in 1876 pessimism was the consequence—the distinction is not very great. It is not clear how Bakunin represented to himself the relationship between the individual and the collectivity. His formula of 1876 smacks of Comte, not of Marx—Engels. This corresponds with Bakunin's demand for collectivism, not communism. The question how much individualism and how much collectivism was not precisely formulated by Bakunin.
As compared with Bakunin, Marx is more scientific, more critical. The German is the theorist, whilst the Russian's attention is directed rather towards political practice. At furst, and even later, Marx's outlook did not in essentials differ from that of Bakunin. Marx, too, was a revolutionary, and took personal part in the revolution of 1848, although much more cautiously than Bakunin; Marx, again, wished to destroy the state, and believed in the speedy attainment of an ideal condition of society. But Marx abandoned the revolutionism of his youth, devoted himself to scientific study, spent his days in the British Museum library, and endeavoured to provide positivist and materialist foundations for political economy and the philosophy of history. Bakunin, on the other hand, was an organiser of revolts in which he took an active share, and only on occasions did he endeavour to collect his thoughts theoretically.
This is why Marx so greatly excels Bakunin as sociologist and still more as philosopher of history.
Vis-à-vis revolutionism the main difference is to be found in Marx's historical materialism and in his conception of the determinism of historical deveIopment. But Marx and his disciples did not at the outset deduce the logical consequences of historical materialism; and, moreover, the doctrine was not at first (if ever) clearly and unambiguously formulated. Historical materialism led Marx and the Marxists to views differing from those of Bakunin concerning the state, law, and ideology in general—for it must be remembered that to Marx the state and state policy were likewise "ideology." State, law, church, etc., were not primary elements in social life, were not motive forces; and therefore political revolution was not decisive in its effects. Above all, in the Marxist view, the continual fomenting of revolution, Blanquism and Bakuninism, is inefficacious; decisive issues result from the orderly ripening of great historical epochs and from the definitive overthrow of the entire social edifice. It is true that Marx looked to the near future for the fulfilment of this expectation, and was therefore willing to lend a hand to the ever-recurring revolts, all the more since he did not profess to know what were the unmistakable indications of the coming of the decisive moment. Scientific history cannot pretend to offer apocalyptic signs of the time, and the prediction of the definitive cataclysm has not been fulfilled.
The force of Blanquism has moreover been weakened by the acceptance of Darwinism and the evolutionary idea. If social evolution proceed according to natural law, if it be the outcome of the class struggle, waged unceasingly as part of the natural order of things, then acute revolution is no more than a special case of chronic revolution, and our estimate of acute revolution must be revised. We conceive revolution as an evolutionary manifestation.
From Hegel, and yet more from Comte, Bakunin adopted the idea of an orderly development in great epochs. Bakunin, too, became a Darwinist; and yet he remained faithful to Blanquism.
Bakunin always recognised Marx's superior strength in philosophical and scientific matters. He translated the Communist Manifesto for Herzen's "Kolokol," and began a translation of the first volume of Capital. Bakunin accepted historical materialism and the theory of the class struggle, often expounding these doctrines and recommending them, after his own fashion. Even during the contest with Marx, Bakunin unhesitatingly admitted his opponent's merits as theorist and organiser.
At an early date Marx was distinguished from Bakunin and also from Herzen by his contemptuous neglect of the church and its political significance. In this respect Bakunin remained a Feuerbachian, or, better expressed, continued to adhere to views formed in his age of faith. In the Introduction to Hegel's Gymnasial Lectures, Bakunin formulated the essence of theocracy by saying, "where there is no religion there can be no state," and "religion is the substance, the quintessence, of the life of every state." Such was his opinion throughout life, the only change being that in maturer years he wished to replace religion by philosophy. The two men had at first similar ideas regarding the state, but the views and conduct of Marx underwent modification in proportion as he elaborated his historical materialism and his philosophy of history. From the first and subsequently (after 1863) Bakunin was more hostile to the state, which to him seemed more important than it did to Marx. Bakunin discovered the leading political and social evil in the principle of the state, in authority itself, not in political forms, which seemed to him matters of comparative indifference; this is why he was continually engaged in the organisation of conspiracies for the final destruction of the state. Marx was likewise opposed to the state, but desired to use it for his own ends; Marx, too, looked forward to a condition in which the state will no longer exist; but this is to be brought about with the help of the state, the state is to abolish itself.
From the very outset, Marx and Bakunin differed in their respective conceptions of political and social administration. Marx was a centralist, Bakunin a federalist.[13]
Bakunin remained a revolutionary. Marx and the Marxists did not abandon the revolutionary idea, but they tended increasingly to postpone revolutionary practice to a distant future; political effort, participation in parliamentarism, was to prepare the way for the realisation of the revolution. When Bismarck granted universal suffrage, Marx and Engels forged their weapons out of it in such a fashion that shortly before his death (1895) Engels declared revolution to be needless, and was eloquently silent concerning the definitive revolution. Bakunin would not hear a word of universal suffrage or of any other political institution; he looked upon Marxism as nothing more than state socialism. Even the worker, when he becomes a ruler or a popular representative, is taking part in the state, and the state is the secret or overt source of slavery. All political activity is essentially bourgeois. Bakunin had an immoderate hatred of Bismarck, regarding Bismarckism as nothing but "militarism, police economics, and financial monopoly, united into a system." In agreement with Bismarck, Bakunin considered the Germans to be a state-loving race. In 1874 he declared that his hope was in the Slavs and the Latins, who were to react against pangermanism, not by the establishment of a great Slav state, but by the social revolution, which would bring into being a new, lawless, and therefore free world. Bakunin has no approval of petty reforms, desiring "revolution from the prime foundation." He aims at total disorganisation, entorganisation, political amorphism, and chaos, in the hope that the future society will spontaneously upbuild itself from below.
The Marx-Engels view of the state is therefore more dispassionate, for Marx and Engels, as historical materialists, recognise the socio-political primacy of economic organisation. Bakunin also admits the importance of economic foundations, entertains plans of a general strike, but invariably returns in the end to the expedient of political revolution. Nevertheless, as has been shown, attentive criticism of the utterances made by Bakunin at different epochs discloses a marked vacillation between the idea of economic primacy and that of political and religious primacy. It was impossible that Bakunin should remain uninfluenced by his contact with Marx, a contact which became closer for the very reason that he was engaged in a struggle with Marx.
Like Bakunin, Marx gave the name of "anarchy" to a condition in which there would be no state; in the confidential circular directed against Bakunin, he defined anarchy as the disappearance of state and government. It is true that he here had in view, as he himself formulates it, the transformation of the government into a mere administration. But in Bakunin's writings, also, we can find passages wherein he interprets the annihilation of the state as nothing more than a radical transformation and reorganisation.[14]
It is possible, moreover, to quote from Bakunin passages in which he utters warnings against ill-considered fights and revolts. Apropos of the discussion concerning Karakozov's attempt on the life of Alexander II, he expressed doubts as to the utility of assassinating the tsar, but this scepticism is quite casual, and therein lies its weakness. Again, he shook off Nečaev owing to the accusations made against the latter. The fact remains that Bakunin looked for a rising in every village in Russia—an incredible piece of revolutionary extravagance.
We must not overlook that Bakunin, as he boasted to Marx, possessed some talent for organisation. He collaborated in the organisation of the International, and proved his mettle as organiser of other societies.
Bakunin was the originator of the term "social democracy." Like Marx, Bakunin is in favour of communism, but he wishes this communism to be federally organised, not to be centralised.[15] When Bakunin thus emphatically speaks of himself as a collectivist and refuses to accept the designation of communist, the administrative outlook is determinative, not the social outlook. He desires economic equality and free association "from below upwards." But we find in his writings occasional utterances which may be interpreted as supporting private ownership. For example, in 1868, in the address to the congress of the League of Peace and Freedom, he advocates the abolition of the right to inheritance in a manner which would seem to imply that this is as far as he desired to go. Plehanov adduces this as proof that Bakunin was not vigorous enough in his opposition to private property. Plehanov further points out that Bakunin proposed that the French peasants should retain their property after the social revolution. But it must be remembered that this was simply because Bakunin regarded peasant proprietorship as a matter of trifling importance, and was prepared, just like some of the communists of to-day. to concede small-scale private property in land. Marx wished to established his society with the aid of the industrial workers, the proletarians; Bakunin looked rather for help to the peasants, especially in the case of Russia.[16]
Nor is there any real difference between Bakunin and Marx in their outlook on nationality. The former is Russian and Slav, just as the latter is German. Bakunin's wish to inspire the Slavs with revolutionary ardour is quite comprehensible, far more comprehensible than Marx's antipathy to the Russians, the Czechs, and the Croats. Bakunin's hostility to the Germans was no greater, not even when he was directly attacking them (as in 1862, when he wrote apropos of federation, "that which is endurable to the Slavs is death to the Germans").
Taking everything into consideration, we cannot find that between Bakunin and Marx there existed such an absolute contrast as the Marxists and anarchists of to-day, opposing one another on principle, are apt to contend. Bakunin is more individualist than Marx, more revolutionary, if we think of the longing for revolution as instinctive, or temperamental; Bakunin's mind works more along political lines, and does so because he is not a consistent historical (economic) materialist. Bakunin is notably distinguished from Marx by his approval of terrorism in the form of individual outrages and by his approval of individual acts of expropriation. Marx appeals only to the decisions of the mass, and thereby his policy of course becomes more considered, more mature, and more effective.
It cannot be denied that Bakunin was, to a degree, anarchist in the sense of aimless and turbulent disorder. But Laveleye does him an injustice when he insists that this was the leading factor in Bakunin's views.
Primitive revolutionary feeling, purely negative revolutionism, which were so strongly characteristic of Bakunin, were known also to Marx. In the first volume of Capital the revolutionary mood finds vigorous expression, but we see how Marx is endeavouring to bridle it, and to transform it into positivist dispassionateness. Bakunin could never look on things so impersonally as did Marx, for in the Russian the sentiments of the hunted refugee, the injured outlaw, continually found expression. Marx could be impassioned on occasions, as in his defence of the Paris commune, but when he was impassioned he was strong. Bakunin's excitement betrays weakness.
Bakunin is a revolutionary, Marx a statesman and tactician. Marx was more nice in his methods. Bakunin did not see through Nečaev until his friends remonstrated and the scandal had become notorious. At Prague, again, in 1848, Bakunin was only playing at revolution. Herzen is quite right in his judgment here, and Kropotkin really agrees with Herzen, so does Lavrov, whose adherents could not get on with the Bakuninists. Those anarchists err who extol Bakunin as a man of action; he was a dilettante, and his practical life no less than his theoretical was a collection of fragments. I do not deny that Bakunin was a man of genius; I am not overpersuaded by the arguments of Marx, Engels. and others; but I consider that on the whole Marx was right and Bakunin wrong. Marx understood the nature of democracy better than Bakunin, understood better how democracy might be realised. Bakunin's revolutionism and anarchism are the freedom of the Russian Cossack, the pseudo-hero whose characteristics have been so ably depicted by the painter Verest'agin, the pseudo-hero who made such a poor showing in the Russo-Japanese war. For Russia, Bakunin believes in brigands à la Pugačev and Razin; for Europe, he believes in the dregs of the proletariat.
Bakunin, who desired to transform the world from its foundations, remained throughout life nothing better than a dreamer. When living in a villa near Locarno, an heirloom of his friend and disciple Cafiero which had been placed by the latter at the master's disposal, he wished to organise a rising in Italy. and had thoughts of boring a tunnel through which his anarchists could make their way into that country unnoticed. A manifestation of this same foolish simplemindedness was his antisemitism, which was displayed from time to time in his attacks on Lassalle and Marx.
We must not forget that Bakunin, during his second period of residence in Europe, lived in the Latin countries, whereas Marx was in England. Both men involuntarily constructed their ideas of the future and their thoughts regarding the organisation of society mainly out of the enduring impressions of their respective environments. Bakunin, who wherever he went remained the unresting foreigner, moved by preference in the comparatively unorganised strata of the working class, whereas Marx was influenced by English and German experiences.
This was why the Paris commune impressed the two men so differently.
Bakunin's anarchism is largely explicable by his restless, positively nomadic life in Europe.
Bakunin exercised a powerful influence upon the development of the opposition in Russia, the development by which it became revolutionary and terrorist. The younger generation of the sixties and seventies gave ear to Bakunin, not to Herzen. During 1872 and 1873 there were in Switzerland, and notably at Zurich, hundreds of Russian students, many of whom became Bakuninists, and transplanted Bakuninism to Russia.
Peculiar is the combination that has been effected between Russian realism and Bakunin's unrealism. Pisarev's "destructive criticism" has become pandestruction; the nihilistic word has become the revolutionary deed; to an increasing extent "word and deed" is the revolutionary slogan.
In contradistinction to Herzen, Bakunin conceived nihilism, not as Byronic revolt but as Blanquist revolt. He defended the nihilists against Herzen's attacks; defended their practical activities, while admitting that they were guilty of vacillations, contradictions, and even scandalous and foul abominations. For Bakunin these aberrations were no more than the inevitable accompaniments of inchoate conditions. He regarded them as proofs that the younger generation was striving to construct the new morality. Though he belonged to the older generation, Bakunin numbered himself among those who were seeking the new morality, and indeed he behaved himself to have definitively formulated it.
Nevertheless Bakuninist tactics did not find application in Russia, if we except Nečaev's attempt and the peasant revolt in the Chigirin district (§ 111, iii.).
In the theoretical field Bakunin did little to further the formulation either of socialism or of anarchism, but his example was suggestive to theorists as well as to practical men. It is not difficult to understand why such writers as Kropotkin, Čerkezov, etc., honour Bakunin as their teacher; Turgenev, too, was much preoccupied by Bakunin's ideas. As a man Bakunin was good-natured, but simple, frivolous. and undisciplined.[17] Consistently desiring to realise his ideals, he did not shrink from the risks of action, and was ever willing to set his life upon a cast; this deserves recognition when we contrast him with his two opponents, the hesitating Herzen and the calculating Marx. In this sense Annenkov has aptly termed him "the father of Russian idealism."
A final judgement upon anarchism will not be attempted here, for we have first to make acquaintance with Bakunin's successors.
- ↑ At a much earlier date Bělinskii described his friend Bakunin in the following terms: "Savage energy; restless, stimulating, and profound mobility of mind; incessant striving for remote ends without any gratification in the present; even hatred for the present and for himself in the present; ever leaping from the special to the general."
- ↑ Mihail Bakunin was born in 1814. His father, who belonged to a wealthy family of good position, was a highly cultured man; educated in Italy, he took his degree as doctor of philosophy at the university of Turin. and after his return to Russia was in touch with the decabrists. Bakunin's mother was related to Murav'ev-Apostol, one of the executed decabrists. In 1828 Mihail Bakunin was entered at the artillery school to be trained for a military career. Becoming an officer in 1833, he served for a brief period, but sent in his papers in 1834. For the next few years he lived in Moscow, in continuous association with the members of Stankevič's circle, and through Stankevič his thoughts were directed towards philosophy. He acquired a knowledge of German by the study of Kant and Fichte, and in 1835 translated Fichte's Lectures on the Vocation of the Scholar. Having become a Hegelian in 1838, he translated Hegel's Gymnasial Lectures, and wrote an Introduction to the work. His ardent Hegelian propaganda led BěIinskii at a later date to give him the title of "spiritual father." Herzen, returning from exile in 1839, endeavoured to make clear to him the intrinsic meaning of the Hegelian philosophy, but for the moment with small success. Bakunin's sisters likewise had close relationships with their brother's Moscow friends. Ljubov was betrothed to Stankevič, but died before Stankevič, in 1838. Tatjana was an intimate friend of Bělinskii, whilst the latter was for a considerable period in love with Aleksandra. Aleksandra was attached to Botkin, but the parents forbade the marriage. 1840 Bakunin went to Europe. At Berlin university he attended lectures given by members of the Hegelian school, and came into contact with Young Germany (Ruge and others), deriving from this last source an intimate knowledge of the philosophy of Feuerbach. In 1842 Bakunin published in "Deutsche Jahrbücher" his Essay Concerning the Reaction in Germany, and wrote an impassioned pamphlet against Schelling in defence of Hegel. Before this he had attended Schelling's lectures, and had written, Schelling and Revelation, a Critique of the Latest Reaction against Philosophy. In Switzerland he made the acquaintance of Vogt. Owing to his relationships with communist societies, the Russian government ordered him to return to Russia. Disregarding the summons, Bakunin went to Paris, where he became a friend of Proudhon and initiated the Frenchman into the mysteries of Hegel. In Paris he also made the acquaintance of George Sand and of Marx. Paris was at this time the rendezvous of the refugees. Especially intimate were Bakunin's relations with the exiled Polish revolutionaries, and he was henceforward an ardent advocate of Polish independence. During 1847 Bakunin encountered in Paris his old friends Herzen and Ogarev, and also met Bělinskii there. Expelled from Paris for his speech at the commemorative festival of the Polish insurrection of 1830, he went to Brussels, where Marx, too, was staying, but in 1848 hastened back to Paris to take an energetic part in the organisation of the workers. Alter the February revolution he left Paris for Prague to attend the Slav congress and was leader of the Prague rising. In 1849, having played an active part in the Dresden rising (in which Richard Wagner was also concerned), he was arrested and sentenced to death, the sentence being subsequently commuted to one of perpetual imprisonment in a fortress. In 1850 he was extradicted to Austria, to experience there the same fate of death sentence, reprieve, and subsequent extradiction to Russia, considerations of economy being doubtless the determining cause of the extradiction. From 1851 to 1854 he was imprisoned in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. He was then sent to the Schlüsselburg, and there, suffering severely from scurvy, he lost all his teeth, and his digestion was permanently impaired. In 1857 he was exiled to Siberia. where he came into close relationship with his cousin Murav'ev Amurskii, governor-general of Eastern Siberia, and in 1858 married a Polish woman. Escaping from Siberia, he returned to Europe by way of Japan and America, visiting Herzen in London in 1861. He now renewed his ties with the Polish refugees, and in 1863 endeavoured to come to the help of the Polish rebels by naval operations initiated in Sweden. We have already recounted how Bakunin's sarmatiophil influence proved injurious to Herzen's "Kolokol." The failure of the Polish rising and the triumph of reaction in Russia led Bakunin for the future to devote his attention to the west. From 1864 to 1868 he lived in Italy, where he founded the secret society International Brotherhood (known also as Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists), which lasted until 1869. Bakunin had relations with the Russians of the younger generation and with the Russian revolutionary secret societies then in process of formation. The International Working-Men's Association having been founded in 1864, Bakunin joined it in 1868, and there ensued a fierce struggle between him and Marx. In 1868 Bakunin also founded the Alliance internationale de la démocratie socialiste, with a secret brotherhood of whose central committee he was dictator. The same year, in conjunction with N. Žukovskii, he edited at Zurich the Russian journal "Narodnoe Dělo," but from the issue of the second number it was already in the hands of his opponent N. Utin. In 1860 he became intimate with Nečaev. In 1871 he took part in the disturbances at Lyons, where it was hoped to establish the commune. The struggle with Marx ended at the Hague congress in 1872, when Bakunin was excluded from the International; at Marx's suggestion the grounds for the exclusion were recorded by Utin in a report describing Bakunin's share in Nečaev's machinations. As early as 1871 Bakunin had withdrawn to the Fédération jurassienne; in 1872 he founded a Slav section in this body, which had but a short life, breaking up in 1873 owing to internal dissensions and the conflict with Lavrov; in 1873 Bakunin quitted the Fédération. After participating in 1874 in the abortive rising at Bologna, much disheartened, he desisted from his activities. Attempts were frequently made to bring about a reunion between Bakunin's followers and the Marxists, and this was effected at Ghent in 1877, the year after Bakunin's death, which took place on July 6, 1876, in a hospital at Berne. The following are the principal works dealing with Bakunin. Mihail Bakunin's Correspondence with Aleksandr Herzen and Ogarev, with a biographical introduction, appendixes and elucidations by Mihail Dragomanov. A German translation (by Boris Minzes) of this Russian work is to be found in Theodor Schiemann's Bibliotek rüssischer Denkwürdigkeiten, 1895, vol. vi. No more than twenty-five lithographed copies were circulated of Nettlau's biography of Bakunin in three vols. (1896–1900). There is a précis by the author, M. Bakunin, eine biographische Skizze von Dr. M. Nettlau mit Auszügen aus seinen Schriften, und Nachwort von G. Landauer, 1901. Bakunin's friend James Guillaume has written a biographical sketch in the second volume of his collected edition of Bakunin's French writings, M. Bakounine, Oeuvres, Paris, 1907 et seq., seven vols. The edition is incomplete, but can be supplemented by Dragomanov, and by Guillaume's L'lnternationale, documents et souvenirs, 1864 to 1878, 2 vols., Paris 1905–7.
- ↑ Reaction in Germany, a Fragment, by a Frenchman. The essay is signed Jules Elysard and has a prefatory note by Ruge. "Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst," October 17–21, 1842.
- ↑ In Dieu et l'État, we are told that religion or theism is the groundwork of social slavery, that science and culture are the proper means to secure enftranchisement from religious illusion, from church and state, and consequently from slavery and exploitation. In the speech at the Berne conference (September 1868), he tells us, on the other hand, that the populace must be economically secure before it can become cultured, and that a social revolution is therefore necessary before we can hope for the destruction of religion. "Intellectual propaganda" will not suffice. Atheism will be attained through the social revolution, not conversely. Again, we read: "Economic revolution has an immeasurable advantage over religious and political revolution in the sobriety of its foundations." Thus positivism is represented as the consequence or accompaniment of economic revolution. In an undated letter published by Dragomanov, an arithmetical computation is even given of the relationship between the economic and the ideal endeavours of mankind. Half the human race we are told looks for the satisfaction of material needs, whereas the other half desires the satisfaction of spiritual or ideal needs, and history affords proof of this duplex trend of endeavour. But Bakunin inclines to give the primacy to spiritual needs. Even during the "phase of social-economic development men will not devote themselves exclusively to promoting their material interests.
- ↑ Insistence upon the deed was characteristic of the revolutionary mood of the forties. Proudhon continually demands deeds; and Hess, the Proudhonist, wrote a Philosophy of the Deed (1843); revolutionary practice was placed above theory. It must not be forgotten that postkantian philosophy in Germany had demanded on principle that theory should recede into the background as compared with practice. Fichte categorically demanded the deed.
- ↑ Debagorii-Mokrievič, the revolutionist, declares that Bakunin worked ever in favour of an organised rising, and did not desire individual acts of political assassination, carried out at individual discretion. Not merely does this assertion conflict with what has been referred to above, but from Bakunin's standpoint the philosophically grounded rejection of such individual outrages is hardly possible.
- ↑ The details of Bakunin's and Nečaev's secret instructions to revolutionists may be read in the secret rules of the Carbonari League; they coincide in part with the rules of the Mazzinist secret society Young Italy. Bakunin opposed Mazzini's religious views, but borrowed from Mazzini the plan for a secret universalised league of Young Europe and the idea of the absolute obedience of the members. At that time, moreover, the design had spread throughout the continent. Even before 1848 Bakunin had been a member of secret societies, and I believe that in Siberia his intercourse with the Polish political exiles served to confirm him in his predilection for this type of activity. As early as the twenties the Polish secret societies had similar programs and rules, as we see in the Union of National Carbonari (1821), etc.
- ↑ Marx's criticism of Bakunin's appeal (Appeal to the Slavs, by a Russian Patriot, M. Bakunin, Member of the Slav Congress in Prague, 1848) was published in the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung." It will be found in Die gesammelte Schriften von Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1902. vol. iii. p. 246).
- ↑ Grundlagen des Marxismus, § 119.
- ↑ While still in Siberia Bakunin wrote as follows (1860): "Nationality, just like the individual, just like the processes of life, digestion, and breathing, has no right to concern itself about itself until that right is denied. This is why the Poles, the Italians, the Hungarians, and all the oppressed Slav peoples, naturally and rightly stress the principle of nationality; and this is perhaps why we Russians concern ourselves so little about our nationality, and ignore it in favour of higher questions."
- ↑ Writing tram Siberia in 1861, Bakunin declared that the Polish question had been an "idée fixe" with him since 1846.
- ↑ In the year 1848 Marx was annoyed at the ill-considered rising in Baden of which Herwegh was the leader. At the time Bakunin defended Herwegh, but subsequently agreed that Marx had been right. In the same year, in the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," Bakunin was accused of being a Russian agent, the accusation being based upon the alleged testimony of George Sand. Marx published the contradiction of this piece of gossip. In 1849 Marx animadverted against Bakunin's panslavist policy, but here, too, there was no serious difference upon matters of principle. Such a difference was first displayed during the struggle in the International. Marx was doubtless right in considering that the foundation of the Bakuninian second International was a tactical error. Bakunin appealed in justification to the difference between the Latin and the Teutonic lands. Marx was right, too, in respect of Nečaev, but the behaviour of Bakunin's opponents was not altogether above criticism.
- ↑ In the beginning Bakunin fought only against state absolutism: as late as 1868, like the Marxists, he would hear of nothing but a republic.
- ↑ See, for example, Œuvres, i. p. 155. in Fédéralisme, Socialisme et Antithéologisme (1867).
- ↑ He distinguishes "revolutionary socialists or collectivists" from "authoritarian communists."
- ↑ In his first Slav program Bahunin demanded that in the Slav federation every burgher should have a right to land. He was thinking here at the agrarian communism of the mir. Speaking generally, Bakunin as a Russian (it must be remembered this was many decades ago) had his eyes on the peasant masses, whilst Marx looked towards the operatives.
- ↑ Bakunin's heedlessness was often crudely displayed. I may recall the instance given by Herzen, that the new government in Paris, desiring to be rid of Bakunin, sent him 3.000 francs and told him to go to Germany, to carry on his revolutionary activities there. This is not denied by Bakunin's biographers.