Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (56 page)

Although Bakunin’s secret societies never functioned as influential organizations, they reveal a central strand in his thought. He hopes they will act as ‘invisible pilots in the thick of the popular tempest’. Their task is first ‘to assist the birth of the revolution by sowing seeds corresponding to the instincts of the masses, then to channel the revolutionary energy of the people’. But the tension between Bakunin’s libertarian sympathies and his authoritarian strategy of manipulating others through secret societies comes across only too clearly. One of the ‘cardinal functions’ of the leaders is to ‘inculcate’ in their followers the need to prevent ‘all consolidation of authority’ through the foundation of free associations.
⁶⁴
In Bakunin’s overheated imagination, there are still leaders and led, sage pilots and ignorant crews.

At this stage, Bakunin does not call for a direct and immediate expropriation of private industry. Instead, he relies on the abolition of the right of inheritance and formation of co-operative workers associations to ensure the gradual disappearance of private ownership and economic inequality. All property belonging to the State and to reactionaries would be confiscated. Economic and political equality would not however lead to the uniform levelling of individual differences, for diversity in capacities constitutes the ‘abundance of humanity’.
⁶⁵

In place of existing nation states, society should be organized ‘
from the
base to the summit-from the circumference to the centre — according to the principles
of free association and federation’. The basic unit of society would be the autonomous commune which would always have the right to secede from the federation. Decisions would be made by majority vote based on universal suffrage of both sexes. The commune would elect all functionaries, lawmakers and judges and create its own constitution. There would be the
‘absolute freedom of individuals’
, while society would meet their basic needs.
⁶⁶

This document, which has been called the ‘spiritual foundation of the anarchist movement’, nonetheless appears profoundly contradictory and authoritarian at times.
⁶⁷
Bakunin writes that the only legitimate restraint would be the ‘natural salutary power of public opinion’. Yet he also declares that society can deprive all ‘antisocial’ adults of political rights and those who steal or break their agreements and violate the freedom of individuals will be ‘penalized according to the laws of society’.
⁶⁸
Corruption and exploitation are allowed, but not of minors. Children would be educated only by the commune and not by their parents so as to inculcate ‘human values’ in them and to train them as specialized workers. Every able-bodied person is expected to work or else be considered a ‘parasite’ or a ‘thief, since work is the sole source of wealth and the foundation of human dignity and morality. Each adult is expected to fulfil three obligations: ‘that he remain
free
, that he
live by his own labour
, and that he
respect the freedom of others’.
⁶⁹
And as to the means to bring about the social revolution, Bakunin recognizes that it will involve war. It will very likely be ‘bloody and vindictive’ although he felt that it would not last long or degenerate into ‘cold, systematic terrorism’. It would be war, not against particular men, but primarily against ‘antisocial institutions’.
⁷⁰

But while there are undoubtedly some authoritarian elements in the document, Bakunin only wishes to retain political government in its most extenuated form. Certainly he still uses the word ‘government’ to describe the elected parliament at the provincial level which defines the rights and obligations of the communes and the elected tribunal which deals with disputes between communes. But by parliament he means here little more than a ‘coordinating association’.
⁷¹
Again, Bakunin’s use of the word ‘State’ at the end of the document might suggest that he is not yet fully an anarchist. But when he writes that the revolution seeks ‘the absolute agglomerations of communes into provinces and conquered countries into the State’, he is not referring to the compulsory legal order of existing states; instead, he is using it to describe the federal organ which forms the ‘central unity of the country’.
⁷²
While there would be a national parliament co-ordinating production and solving disputes, the nation would remain a voluntary federation of autonomous units, with ‘absolute liberty and autonomy of regions, provinces, communes, associations, and individuals’. There would be no
standing armies and defence would be organized by people’s militias. In the long run, Bakunin hoped that existing nations states would give way in the future to a ‘Universal Federation of Peoples’ with free commerce, exchange and communication.
⁷³

After leaving Italy, Bakunin went to Geneva in 1867 to attend the inaugural Congress of the League for Peace and Freedom, a liberal body which was supported by Garibaldi, Victor Hugo, Herzen, and John Stuart Mill among others. Bakunin thought it could provide a forum for his ideas and he quickly made a considerable stir. Baron Wrangel wrote later:

In fact, in his first speech Bakunin made a clear denunciation of nationalism. He recognized that ‘Every nationality has the indubitable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature’ but he argued that aggressive nationalism always comes from centralized States.
⁷⁵
He further expounded his anarchist views on human nature, society, and the State, although he acknowledged that the full realization of socialism ‘will no doubt be the work of centuries’.
⁷⁶

In his unfinished address, later known as
Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism
, he emphasized during a critique of Rousseau that man is not only the most individualistic being on earth but also the most social:
‘Society
is the natural mode of existence of the human collectivity, independent of any contract. It governs itself through the customs or the traditional habits, but never by laws.’
⁷⁷
Every human has a sense of justice deep in their conscience which translates itself into ‘simple
equality’.
Human beings are born morally and intellectually equal, regardless of sex and colour, and instances of criminality and stupidity are
‘not due to their nature; it is solely the result of the social environment in which they were born or brought up’.
⁷⁸
Like Godwin, Bakunin therefore believes that human beings are born with the same intelligence and moral sense but are otherwise entirely products of their environment. They are naturally social and are capable of governing themselves without man-made laws.

On the other hand, it is the State which is the principal cause of social
evils; ‘it is
the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity’.
Bakunin expatiates in rhetoric worthy of Proudhon that

Bakunin made the first clear and public statement of his anarchism in a speech in September 1868 at the Second Congress in Berne of the League for Peace and Freedom. He declared in no uncertain terms that all States are founded on ‘force, oppression, exploitation, injustice, elevated into a system and made the cornerstone of the very existence of society’. They offer a double negation of humanity, internally by maintaining order by force and exploiting the people, and externally, by waging aggressive war. By their very nature they represent the ‘diametrical opposite of human justice, freedom and morality’.
⁸⁰
He concluded that freedom and peace could only be achieved through the dissolution of all States and the creation of a universal federation of free associations with society reorganized from the bottom up. It was to become a central theme in his anarchist philosophy.

In the summer of 1868 Bakunin joined the Geneva branch of the International, and in the following year acted as its delegate to the Fourth Congress of the International Working Men’s Association in Basel. It marked a turning-point in his career and in the history of the anarchist movement for he came into direct contact for the first time with organized industrial workers. He soon found support amongst the watchmakers of the French-speaking Jura who provided him with a base, and he went on to win over workers especially in France and Italy. His Italian comrade Giuseppe Fanelli went to Spain and soon converted the Spanish Federation, the largest organization within the International, to Bakunin’s collectivist and federalist programme. It was from the libertarian sections of the International that revolutionary syndicalism or ‘anarcho-syndicalism’ eventually sprung.

Bakunin’s immediate suggestion of an affiliation with the League for Peace and Freedom however was rejected by the General Council of the International and by Marx who dominated it. When the Congress of the League also rejected the proposal for the ‘economic and social equalization of classes and individuals’, Bakunin left with fourteen others, including James Guillaume, a young schoolmaster from the Jura, to form the International Alliance of Social Democracy with a central bureau in Geneva.

In the following year, after again being refused affiliation with the International, Bakunin formally dissolved the Alliance early in 1869, but he privately maintained his connections with its members, and through them set up groups in Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Spain. The exact status of the Alliance, and its relationship with the International, was ambiguous and has remained shrouded in controversy. Marx claimed that Bakunin never disbanded his Alliance and intended to turn it into ‘a second
International within the International
’.
⁸¹
Guillaume said it was disbanded in January 1869 although the ‘free contact of men united for collective action in an informal revolutionary fraternity’ was continued.
⁸²
Bakunin himself saw the Alliance as a necessary complement to the International, and although they had the same ultimate aims they performed different functions. While the International endeavoured to unify the workers, Bakunin wanted the Alliance to give them a really revolutionary direction. As such Bakunin asserted in Hegelian style that the programme of the Alliance ‘represents the fullest unfolding of the International’.
⁸³

Bakunin threw himself into propaganda on behalf of the International. In a series of articles for
L’Egalité
, the journal of the French-speaking Swiss Federation of the International, he insisted that every new member must pledge ‘to subordinate your personal and family interests as well as your political and religious beliefs to the supreme interests of our association: to the struggle of labour against capital, i.e., the economic struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie’. This sounds distinctly authoritarian, and would horrify Godwin, who thought the right to private judgement paramount: one should not join a political association which insists on loyalty and obedience contrary to one’s own conscience.

Bakunin defined the principal task of the International as providing the great mass of workers, who are ‘socialistic
without knowing if
, with socialist thought, so that each worker could become ‘fully conscious of what he wants, to awaken in him an intelligence which will correspond to his inner yearnings’. But this is not to be achieved only by propaganda and education, since the best way for workers to learn theory is through practice:
‘emancipation through practical action’.
The fundamental principle of the International is therefore entirely correct: ‘The emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves.’
⁸⁴

Although it had little substance in reality, Bakunin continued to draw up programmes for the ‘International Brotherhood’. In a draft of 1869, he clarified his ideas about revolutionary strategy, calling for the confiscation of private, Church, and State property and its transformation into collective property under a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations. He now gave a positive meaning to anarchy. ‘We do not fear anarchy’, he declared,