XI.
ANARCHISM—(Continued).
Fourier—a contemporary of the Great French Revolution, from which he derived his chief ideas—was no longer living when the International was founded. But his views had been popularised so well by his followers—especially by Considérant, who had given them a scientific unity—that, consciously or not, the most enlightened spirits of the Working Men's Association were very much under the influence of the ideas of Fourier.[1]
Now, the leading idea of Fourier was not so much the union between Capital, Labour, and Talent for the production of commodities, to which such a prominent place is usually given in most historical works on Socialism. His chief aim was to get rid of individual commerce for private profit, with all the speculations it necessarily provokes, and to call into existence a free national organisation of exchange of all the Commodities.
To use Considérant's words, the remedy against all infamies of present exploitation Fourier saw in "bringing into direct relations the producer and the consumer, by organising intermediary communal agencies, which would be the depositaries—not the owners—of all food produce, and would deliver this produce directly to the consumers, adding only to its price the real cost of transport, storage, and. administration, which always is almost insignificant."
This is how Considérant understood Fourier ("Le Socialisme devant le Vieux Monde," p. 38); and one sees that Fourier, who at the age of seven took his Hannibal oath against Commerce, and who had lived through the Great French Revolution and seen the speculations begun during the Revolution by the sale of national estates, and the speculations in food during the war, fully understood the dominating importance of that great attempt which was made by the sansculottes, in 1793 and 1794, to nationalise trade, by means of communal depôts.
The Commune, the free municipality—Fourier called it a Phalanx—had thus, in Fourier's opinion, to offer the solution of the great problem of Exchange and Distribution of Produce. But this Commune would not be the owner of the stored produce: it would only be a depositary—an agency for storing the produce and distributing it, which realises no profit and levies no tribute upon the consumers.
Fourier gave a further extension to his idea. He supposed that all the families of a rural Commune constitute a Phalanx; they put together their land, their chattels, and their agricultural implements, and cultivate their land, or engage in industrial pursuits, as if the land, the chattels, the machines, etc., were their common property—a careful record, however, being kept of every inhabitant's contribution to the working capital.
Two main points had to be kept in view in such an association. There must be no disagreeable labour. All labour must be so organised, so distributed, and so diversified as always to be attractive. And no sort of coercion must be exercised. In a society organised on the principle of free association, no sort of coercion could be tolerated, and none would be needed. With some intelligent attention to the needs of every member of the Phalanx, and with its combination of agricultural, industrial, intellectual, and artistic work, the members of the Phalanx would soon recognise that even the passions of men, which under the present structure of society often become a nuisance and a danger, and arc always an excuse for coercion—even the passions can be a source of progress, if their exercise be recognised, and a reasonable social outlet for them be given in the shape of new ventures, risky enterprises, social animation, diversity, and so on.
As to how the commodities produced would be distributed, Fourier—who, after the defeat of the Great French Revolution, and during the awful reaction that followed it, was naturally induced to advocate peaceful solutions only—insisted upon the necessity of recognising the principle of association between Capital, Labour, and Talent. Accordingly, the value of the commodities produced by each Phalanx ought to be divided, in is opinion, into three parts, one of which would remunerate Capital, another would remunerate Labour, and the third would be the ehare of Talent. However, most of the Internationalists saw in this part of Fourier's ideas a mere concession to the reaction that reigned during his lifetime; at any rate, they treated them as a point which did not affect the more essential portions of his scheme, which were the following:—
1. The Commune—i.e., a small territorial unit—is to be considered as the basis of the new Socialist society.
2. It is the depositary of all the commodities produced in the surrounding locality, and the intermediary for exchange. It represents also the association of consumers, and very probably in most cases it will also be the producing unit (which may, however, also be a professional, and not a territorial group, or a federation of producing groups).
3. These Communes freely federate, in order to constitute the Federation, the Region, or the Nation.
4. Labour must be rendered attractive. No solution whatever of the Social question is possible, so long as this has not been achieved. And to attain this is quite possible.
5. To maintain harmony in such communities, no coercion is necessary. The influence of public opinion alone will do.
As to how distribution would take place in each Commune, the working men of the International considered that this must be settled by the Commune itself, which may introduce the Communist principle, "to each one according to his needs," or adopt some system of remuneration by results. This solution, which left to each Commune the choice of the system of remuneration, was the essence of what was known among the Latin nations as "Collectivism"—in opposition to the authoritarian Communism of the Babeuf schools.
And finally, as to how the present society could pass over to a Socialist one, it was almost unanimously recognised by the workers that the time is soon coming when a new revolution, much deeper and more universal than that of 1848, would break out; and then the workers would do all in their power to dispossess Capital of its present monopolies.
This, then, was the ground upon which the Anarchist ideas were going to develop within the International.
One sees from the above sketch how the Jacobinist ideas—centralist and authoritarian—intermingled in the International with ideas of local independence and federation. Both were legacies of the Great French Revolution. If the centralist ideas were handed down directly from the Jacobinists of 1793 and the conspiracy of Babeuf, through the secret Communist organisations of the first half of the nineteenth century, the ideas of local independent action were handed down, at least among the French, from the powerful and truly revolutionary and constructive action of the "Sections" of Paris and the Communes of 1793–94, which I have described lately in "The Great French Revolution."
It must be said, however, that the former, i.e., the Jacobinist current, undoubtedly was the more powerful of the two. The educated middle-class people who had joined the International were mostly Jacobinist.
And now came the terrible Franco-German War, into which Napoleon III. and his advisers madly rushed, in order to save the Empire from the rapidly advancing revolution; and with it came the crushing defeat of France, the Provisory Government of Gambetta and Thiers, and the Commune of Paris, followed by similar attempts at Saint Etienne in France, and at Barcelona and Carthagena in Spain. And these popular insurrections brought into evidence what the political aspect of a Social Revolution ought to be.
Not a Democratic Republic, as was said in 1848, but the free, independent Communist Commune.
Of course, the Paris Commune itself suffered from the confusion of ideas as to the economic and political steps to be taken by the Revolution, which prevailed, as we saw, in the International. Both the Jacobinists and the Communalists—i.e., the centralists and the federalists—were represented in the uprising, and necessarily they came into conflict with each other. The most warlike elements were the Jacobinists and the Blanquists, but the economic, Communist ideals of Babeuf had already faded among their middle-class leaders. They treated the economic question as a secondary one, which would be attended to later on, after the triumph of the Commune, and this idea prevailed. But the crushing defeat which soon followed, and the bloodthirsty revenge taken by the middle class, proved once more that the triumph of a popular Commune was materially impossible without a parallel triumph of the people in the economic field.
For the Latin nations, the Commune of Paris, followed by similar attempts at Carthagena and Barcelona, settled the ideas of the revolutionary proletariat.
This was the form that the Social Revolution must take—the independent Commune. Let all the country and all the world be against it; but once its inhabitants have decided that they will communalise tho consumption of commodities, their exchange, and their production, theу must realise it among themselves. And in so doing, they will find such forces as never could be called into life and to the service of a great cause, if they attempted to take in the sway of the Revolution the whole country including its most backward or indifferent regions. Better openly to fight such strongholds of reaction than to drag them as so many chains rivetted to the feet of the fighter.
More than that. We made one step more. We understood that if no central Government was needed to rule the independent Communes, if the national Government is thrown overboard and national unity is obtained by free federation, then a central municipal Government becomes equally useless and noxious. The same federative principle would do within the Commune.
The uprising of the Paris Commune thus brought with it the solution of a question which tormented every true Revolutionist. Twice had France tried to bring about some sort of a Socialist revolution, by imposing it through a Central Government, more or less disposed to accept it: in 1793–94, when she tried to introduce l’égalité de fait—real, economic equality—by means of strong Jacobinist measures; and in 1848, when she tried to impose a "Democratic Socialist Republic." And each time she failed. But now a new solution was indicated: the free Commune must do it on its own territory, and with this grew up a new ideal—Anarchy.
We understood then that at the bottom of Proudhon's "Idée Générale sur la Révolution au Dix-neuvième Siècle" (unfortunately, not yet translated into English) lay a deeply practical idea—that of Anarchy. And in the Latin countries the thought of the more advanced men began to work in this direction.
Alas! in Latin countries only: in France, in Spain, in Italy, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and the Wallonic part of Belgium. The Germans, on the contrary, drew from their victory over France quite another lesson and quite different ideals—the worship of the centralised State.
The centralised State, hostile even to national tendencies of independence; the power of centralisation and a strong central authority—these were the lessons they drew from the victories of the German Empire, and to these lessons they cling even now, without understanding that this was only a victory of a military mass, of the universal obligatory military service of the Germans over the recruiting system of the French and over the rottenness of the second Napoleonic Empire approaching a evolution which would have benefitted mankind, if it were not hindered by the German invasion.
In the Latin countries, then, the lesson of the Paris and the Carthagena Communes laid the foundation for the development of Anarchy. And the authoritarian tendencies of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, which soon became evident and worked fatally against the unity of action of the great Association, still more reinforced the Anarchist current of thought. The more so as that Council, led by Marx, Engels, and some French Blanquist refugees—all pure Jacobinists—used its powers to make a coup d'état in the International. It substituted in the programme of the Association Parliamentary political action in lieu of the economic struggle of labour against Capital, which hitherto had been the essence of the International. And in this way it provoked an open revolt against its authority in the Spanish, Italian, Jurassic, and East Belgian Federations, and among a certain section of the English Internationalists.
In Mikhail Bakunin, the Anarchist tendency, now growing within the International, found a powerful, gifted, and inspired exponent; while round Bakunin and his Jura friends gathered a small circle of talented young Italians and Spaniards, who further developed his ideas. Largely drawing upon his wide knowledge of history and philosophy, Bakunin established in a series of powerful pamphlets and letters the leading principles of modern Anarchism.
The complete abolition of the State, with all its organisation and ideals, was the watchword he boldly proclaimed. The State has been in the past a historical necessity, which grew out of the authority won by the religious castes. But its complete extinction is now, in its turn, a historical necessity, because the State represents the negation of liberty, and spoils even what it undertakes to do for the sake of general well-being. All legislation made within the State, even when it issues from the so-called universal suffrage, has to be repudiated, because it always has been mode with regard to the interests of the privileged classes. Every nation, every region, every commune must be absolutely free to organise itself, politically and economically, as it likes, so long as it is not a menace to its neighbours. "Federalism" and "autonomy" are not enough. These are only words, used to mask the State authority. Full independence of the Communes, their free federation, and the Social Revolution within the Communes—this was, he proved, the ideal now rising before our civilisation from the mists of the past. The individual understands that he will be really free in proportion only as all the others round him become free.
As to his economic conceptions, Bakunin was at heart a Communist; but, in common with his Federalist comrades of the International, and as a concession to the antagonism to Communism that the authoritarian Communists had inspired in France, he described himself as a "Collectivist Anarchist." But, of course, he was not a "Collectivist" in the sense of Vidal or Pecqueur, or of their modern followers, who simply aim at "State Capitalism"; he understood it in the above-mentioned sense of not determining in advance what form of distribution the producers should adopt in their different groups—whether the Communist solution, or the labour cheques, or equal salaries, or any other method. And with these views, he was an ardent preacher of the Social Revolution, the near approach of which was foreseen then by all Socialists, and which he foretold in fiery words.[2]
- ↑ It is known, from our friend Tcherkesoff's work, that it was from Considérant's "Principles of Socialism: Manifesto of the XIXth Century Democracy," published in 1843, that Marx and Engels borrowed the theoretical part of the economic principles which they expressed in the "Communist Manifesto." The borrowing, indeed, even of the form itself, is quite evident to any one who will consult both manifestoes. As to the practical programme of that Manifesto, it was, as Professor Audler has shown, that of the Communist, French and German secret organisations, originating from the débris of the secret societies of Babeuf and Buonarroti.
- ↑ A number of Bakunin's co-workers and friends—namely, Varlin, Guillaume, and the Italians—had already in 1869 described themselves as Communist Anarchists; but, forced to fight bitterly later on for the independence of their respective Federations, they gave only a secondary attention to this question, leaving it to be decided in the future by the Communes and Labour organisations themselves.