one of the greatest merits of M. Marx."[1] In another of his writings he says, with entire conviction, "All the religions, and all the systems of morals that govern a given society are always the ideal expression of its real, material condition, that is, especially of its economic organisation, but also of its political organisation, the latter, indeed, being never anything but the juridical and violent consecration of the former." And he again mentions Marx as the man to whom belongs the merit of having discovered and demonstrated this truth.[2] One asks oneself with astonishment how this same. Bakounine could declare that private property was only a consequence of the principle of authority. The solution of the riddle lies in the fact that he did not understand the materialist conception of history; he was only "adulterated" by it.
And here is a striking proof of this. In the Russian work, already quoted, "Statism and Anarchy," he says that in the situation of the Russian people there are two elements which constitute the conditions necessary for the social (he means Socialist) revolution. "The Russian people can boast of excessive poverty, and unparalleled slavery. Their sufferings are innumerable, and they bear these, not with patience, but with a profound and passionate despair, that twice already in our history has manifested itself in terrible outbursts: in the revolt of Stephan Razine, and in that of Pougatschew."[3] And that is what Bakounine understood by the material conditions of a Socialist revolution! Is it necessary to point out that this "Marxism" is a little too sui generis?
While combatting Mazzini from the standpoint of the
- ↑ "Statism and Anarchy, 1873" (the Russian place of publication is not given), pp. 223–224 (Russian). We know the word "Statism" is a barbarism, but Bakounine uses it, and the flexibility of the Russian language lends itself to such forms.
- ↑ "La Théologie Politique de Mazzini et l'Internationale, Neuchatel, 1871," pp. 69 and 78.
- ↑ Ibid. Appendix A, p. 7.
