tion cannot be improvised at a moment's notice. He is therefore forced to ask himself, what is the policy which the International is to adopt during that "more or less prolonged period of time which separates us from the terrible social revolution which everyone foresees to-day?" To this he replies, with the most profound conviction, and, as if quoting the Rules of the International:
"Without mercy the policy of the democratic bourgeois, or bourgeois-Socialists, must be excluded, which, when these declare that political freedom is a necessary condition of economic emancipation, can only mean this: political reforms, or political revolutions must precede economic reforms or economic revolutions; the workers must therefore join hands with the more or less Radical bourgeois, in order to carry out the former together with them, then, being free, to turn the latter into a reality against them. We protest loudly against this unfortunate theory, which, so far as the workers are concerned, can only result in their again letting themselves be used as tools against themselves, and handing them over once more to bourgeois exploitation."
The International "commands" us to disregard all national or local politics; it must give the working-class movement in all countries an "essentially economic" character, by setting up as final aim "the shortening of the hours of labour, and the increase of wages," and as a means "the association of the working masses, and the starting of "funds for fighting." It is needless to add that the shortening of the hours of labour must, of course, be obtained without any intervention from the accursed State.[1]
Bakounine cannot understand that the working class in its political action can completely separate itself from all the exploiting parties. According to him, there is no other rôle in the political movement for the workers than that of satellite of the Radical bourgeoisie. He glorifies
- ↑ See Bakounine's articles on the "Politics of the International" in the Egalité of Geneva, August, 1869.
