The New Europe/Volume 5/Forerunners of the Russian Revolution (2)

by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Forerunners of the Russian Revolution

(II) BAKUNIN AND MARX: ANARCHY AND SOCIALISM

A comparison of Bakunin and Marx serves very well to illustrate the relation between Anarchism and Socialism, in so far as Bakunin is regarded as one of the most important founders of Anarchism and Marx as the founder of present-day Socialism, and in so far as the difference between the two men can be treated as the difference between those two creeds.

The philosophical starting point is the same for Bakunin and for Marx—Hegel, Feuerbach and the Hegelian Left. Both learn from Proudhon and the French Socialists, both become positivists and materialists, both live for some time in the same conditions and the same places, both take part in the revolution, both live through the same reaction and its effects upon personal security and freedom. But Bakunin remains under the influence of German philosophy rather from a subjective and individualist angle, while Marx—and this is true also of Engels—advances under the influence of French and English positivists to extreme objectivism, and comes to regard history and the masses as the deciding factors in social life. Engels even goes so far as to throw over the individual conscience.

Bakunin also rejected extreme individualism. Only a few days before his death, in a conversation on Schopenhauer, he said: “Our whole philosophy starts from a false foundation, in treating man as an individual, instead of treating him as belonging to a collective whole. Hence arise most philosophical errors, which end by transplanting happiness to the clouds or kindling pessimism such as that of Schopenhauer and Hartmann.” In 1838 he looked upon suicide, in 1876 upon pessimism, as a necessary consequence of extreme subjectivism and individualism, and indeed there is no great difference between the two views. Marx, as opposed to Bakunin, is more scientific and critical, in short, a theorist, while the Russian turned his attention more to political practice. In his beginnings, and even later, Marx did not in the main think differently from Bakunin. He took part in the Revolution of 1848, though far more cautiously than Bakunin: he, too, wanted to destroy the State, and believed in the speedy erection of an ideal social order. But Marx gave up the revolutionary ideas of his youth and took up scientific work he was sitting in the British Museum and trying to find a positivist and materialist basis for economics and the philosophy of history, while Bakunin was helping to organise revolts and only incidentally trying to work out his thoughts in theory. That is why Marx is so far superior to Bakunin as a sociologist and interpreter of history.

At an early stage Marx broke away from Bakunin in his habit of ignoring the Church and its political importance. Bakunin remained closer to Feuerbach or, if you will, closer to his own views before he lost his belief. He formulated the essence of theocracy in the phrases: “Where there is no religion, there can be no State,” and “Religion is the substance, the essence of the life of every State.” To this view he always adhered, the only difference being that later on he sought to replace religion by philosophy.

From the very first they differed in their views on social and State administration. Marx is a centralist, Bakunin a federalist. Bakunin remains revolutionary; Marx and his followers do not give up the idea of revolution, but postpone its realisation to a more and more distant future, while seeking to prepare for its advent by a share in parliamentarism. When Bismarck introduced universal suffrage, Marx and Engels employed it so effectively as a weapon that the latter, shortly before his death, declared the revolution to be unnecessary. Bakunin would have nothing to do with universal suffrage or any political institution, and hence looked upon Marxism as mere State socialism. Bismarck he hated beyond words, Bismarckism was to him merely “militarism, police régime, and financial monopoly combined into a system.” And with Bismarck he also condemned the Germans as a State-race, and expected of the Slavs and Latins, not that they would create a great Slav State against Pangermanism, but that they would through social revolution found “a new world, lawless, and therefore free.” Bakunin will not recognise reforms, he desires " overthrow from the foundations”: his aim is total disorganisation, political amorphism and chaos, in the hope that future society will form itself spontaneously from below. Marx and Engels are calmer in their judgment of the State, because, as historical materialists, they recognise the primacy of economic organisation in social politics.

The expression “Social Democracy” started with Bakunin. Like Marx, he was for Communism; he merely wanted it to be organised on a federalist, not on a centralist basis. Marx sought to build up his society upon the mass of industrial workers—the proletariat—while Bakunin set greater hopes upon the peasants, especially in Russia. On the whole there is no such absolute conflict between Bakunin and Marx as their followers to-day would have us believe. Bakunin is more of an individualist than Marx, more revolutionary (revolution being conceived as instinct or “temperament”), and indeed more political; and this is due to the fact that he is not a logical historical materialist. Where Bakunin really differs from Marx, is in tolerating terrorism as an individual act and the expropriation of the individual. Marx merely appeals to the decisions of the mass, with the result that his whole policy thereby becomes riper, more fully thought out and more effective.

Bakunin is a revolutionary, Marx a statesman and tactician. Marx is more conscientious. . . . Nor must it be overlooked that Bakunin, especially in his second European phase, lived in the Latin countries, while Marx was in England. Both men involuntarily constructed the future and the organisation of society to a large extent according to the permanent impressions which they had received from their surroundings. Bakunin, everywhere the restless stranger, preferred to associate in the less organised workmen’s circles and reckoned with these, while Marx had English and German impressions.

On the progress of the Russian Opposition towards revolution, and especially terrorism, Bakunin had a strong influence; it was he, and not Herzen, to whom the younger generation of the ‘sixties and ‘seventies listened. There were many hundreds of Russian students in Switzerland in 1872–73, and many of them became followers of Bakunin and transplanted his teachings to Russia. His strange unrealism links itself with realism in Russia. The “destructive criticism” of Pisarev becomes Pan-Destruction, the Nihilist Word becomes the revolutionary Deed, and “Word and Deed” become more and more the revolutionary watchword.

As a man Bakunin was amiable, but naïve, thoughtless and undisciplined. He sought to realise his ideals in a logical manner, but dared the “Deed” and risked his life for it, and for that he deserves a certain recognition as against his opponents, the hesitating Herzen and the calculating Marx. It was doubtless in this sense that Annenkov called him “the father of Russian idealism.”

THOMAS G. MASARYK.

⁂ The first article in the above series appeared in last week’s number.—Editor.