Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (57 page)

At the same time, while rejecting dictatorship and centralization, Bakunin still writes about a ‘new revolutionary State’ and the need for the
‘secret and universal association of the International Brothers’
to be the organ to give life and energy to the revolution. This anarchist vanguard movement would consist of ‘a sort of revolutionary general staff, composed of dedicated, energetic, intelligent individuals, sincere friends of the people above all, men neither vain nor ambitious, but capable of serving as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the instincts of the people’.
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The rumbling dispute between Marx and his followers and Bakunin and his supporters came to a head in at the Basel Congress of the International in September 1869. Bakunin could only count on twelve of the seventy-five delegates but the force of his oratory and the charisma of his presence almost made the Congress approve his proposal for the abolition of the right of inheritance as one of the indispensable conditions for the emancipation of labour. The supporters of Marx argued that since the inheritance of property is merely a product of the property system, it would be better to attack the system itself. In the outcome, both the proposals of Bakunin and Marx were voted down but the issue led the partisans of collective property to split into two opposing factions. According to Guillaume, those who followed Marx in advocating the ownership of collective property by the State began to be called ‘state’ or ‘authoritarian communists’, while those like Bakunin who advocated ownership directly by the workers’ associations were called ‘anti-authoritarian communists’, ‘communist federalists’ or ‘communist anarchists’.
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The terms ‘collectivist’ and ‘communist’ were still used loosely; Bakunin preferred to call himself a ‘collectivist’ by which he meant that since collective labour creates wealth, collective wealth should be collectively owned. He believed that distribution should take place according to work done, not according to need.

The orthodox Marxist view is that Bakunin tried to seize control of the International and was motivated by personal ambition.
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A Russian emigré called Utin in Switzerland fuelled the controversy and rumours were circulated from Marx’s camp that Bakunin was a Russian spy and unscrupulous in money matters. Yet Bakunin still admired Marx as a thinker and even took an advance from a publisher to do a Russian translation of the first
volume of
Capital.
The real dispute was not between an ambitious individual (Bakunin) and an authoritarian one (Marx), or even between conspiracy and organization, but about different revolutionary strategies.

Bakunin now devoted all his energies to inciting a European revolution which he hoped would eventually embrace the entire world. In a series of hastily written speeches, pamphlets and voluminous unfinished manuscripts, he tried to set out his views. In the process, he began to transform anarchism into a revolutionary movement.

It was in Russia that he thought the world revolution could begin. Early in 1870, he criticized the attempt of his old friend Herzen to appeal to the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy to bring about reform. In particular, he asked him to reject the State, precisely because he was socialist: ‘you practise State socialism and you are capable of reconciling yourself with this most dangerous and vile lie engendered by our century — official democracy and red bureaucracy.’
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According to Bakunin, the only way to transform Russia was through popular insurrection.

In his search for likely catalysts, Bakunin became involved at this time with a young revolutionary called Sergei Nechaev. It proved a disastrous relationship and did immense harm to the anarchist movement. Nechaev, who later inspired the character Peter Verkhovensky in Dostoevsky’s
The Possessed
, was an extraordinary character: despotic, power-hungry, egoistic, rude and yet strangely seductive. He exemplifies the unscrupulous terrorist who will stop at nothing to realize his aim.

Nechaev managed to convince both Bakunin and Herzen’s colleague Ogarev that he had a secret organization with a mass following in Russia. At first, he seemed to Bakunin the ideal type of the new breed of Russian revolutionaries, a perfect conspirator with a piercing mind and the
diable au corps.
‘They are charming these young fanatics’, Bakunin wrote to Guillaume, ‘believers without a god, and heroes without flowering rhetoric’.
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Bakunin could not stop himself from being seduced by someone who seemed to have his own extreme energy and dedication, and that despite his tender years. He appeared to be a reincarnation of the legendary Russian bandits Stenka Razin and Pugachev.

Whilst in Geneva with Bakunin, Nechaev wrote between April and August 1869 a
Catechism of a Revolutionary
which proved to be one of the most repulsive documents in the history of terrorism. The guiding principle of this work is that ‘everything is moral that contributes to the triumph of the revolution; everything that hinders it is immoral and criminal.’ It calls upon the would-be revolutionary to break all ties with past society, to feel a ‘single cold passion’ for the revolutionary cause and to adopt the single
aim of ‘pitiless destruction’ in order to eradicate the State and its institutions and classes. The second part of the pamphlet opens:

The pamphlet not only recommends drawing up lists of persons to be exterminated but also declares that the central committee of any secret society should regard all other members as expendable ‘revolutionary capital’.
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Another unsigned pamphlet called
Principles of Revolution
written at the time, which has the stamp of Nechaev, declares in a similar vein:

Both works have been assigned jointly to Bakunin and Nechaev, and their alleged authorship has provoked bitter controversy.

Certainly Bakunin was impressed by the spontaneous energy of Russian brigands, and wrote to Nechaev ‘these primitive men, brutal to the point of cruelty, have a nature which is fresh, strong and untouched.’ He also came close to Nechaev’s moral relativism when he declared that ‘Where there is war there are politics, and there against one’s will one is obliged to use force, cunning and deception.’ The
Catechism of a Revolutionary
was written during a period of close co-operation between the two men, but though Bakunin may have helped with the writing, the work most likely came in the main from Nechaev’s hand. In the final analysis, Bakunin categorically repudiates Nechaev’s ‘Jesuitical system’ and his unprincipled use of violence and deception. ‘In your Catechism’, he wrote unambiguously to Nechaev, ‘you … wish to make your own self-sacrificing cruelty, your own truly extreme fanaticism, a rule of life for the community.’ He roundly condemns his ‘total negation of man’s individual and social nature’.
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Unlike Lenin who admired the
Catechism of a Revolutionary
, Bakunin would have no truck with Nechaev’s nihilism. He came to doubt the existence of Nechaev’s secret organization in Russia, and was repelled — while refusing to condemn — his political murder of a student called Ivanov. Bakunin finally broke with Nechaev after learning that his young protégé had threatened with dire punishment the publisher’s agent who had given an advance for a translation of
Capital
if he caused any difficulties. But the damage had been done. Their association earned Bakunin an unfounded reputation for terrorism, and the works were used selectively to justify the
acts of later anarchist terrorists as well as to denigrate anarchist ideals. Bakunin went on to recommend the selective killing of individuals as a preliminary to social revolution and saw in Russian banditry the spearhead of the popular revolution, but he was undoubtedly repelled by Nechaev’s total amoralism.
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When the Franco-Prussian war broke out injury 1870, Bakunin’s revolutionary hopes were aroused again for the first time since the Polish insurrection of 1863. Marx at first supported Prussia in its attempt to defeat a Bonapartist France he regarded as an obstacle to the working class. He wrote: ‘If the Prussians are victorious, the centralization of the State power will be useful to the centralization of the German working class … On a world scale the ascendancy of the German proletariat over the French proletariat will at the same time constitute the ascendancy of our theory over Proudhon’s.’
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Bakunin on the other hand thought Prussian militarism even more dangerous than Bonapartism. He hoped that the defeat of the regime of Napoleon III would lead to a popular uprising of peasants and workers against the Prussian invaders and the French government, thereby destroying the State and bringing about a free federation of communes. To inspire such a revolutionary movement he wrote some draft
Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis
which made a unique contribution to the theory and practice of revolution.

Bakunin advocates the turning of the war between the two States into a civil war for the social revolution: a guerrilla war of the armed people to repulse a foreign army and domestic opponents in ‘a war of destruction, a merciless war to the death’.
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Once again, Bakunin expresses his love of destruction. His anarchy is not merely the peaceful and productive life of the community, the ‘spontaneous self-organization of popular life’ which will revert to the communes. It is also violent turmoil — nothing less than ‘civil war’.
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He argues that the only feasible alternative is to awaken ‘the primitive ferocious energy’ of the French people and to ‘Let loose this mass anarchy in the countryside as well as in the cities, aggravate it until it swells like a furious avalanche destroying and devouring everything in its path.’
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On the more positive side, Bakunin emphasizes the revolutionary capacity of the peasantry while depicting them as noble savages: ‘Unspoiled by overindulgence and indolence, and only slightly affected by the pernicious influence of bourgeois society’. He stresses the need for an alliance between peasants and workers but sees the city proletarians taking the revolutionary initiative. Although recognizing the key influence of economic conditions in bringing about social change, the voluntarist in Bakunin underlines the importance of the consciousness and will of the people in the process: ‘the revolutionary temper of the working masses does not
depend solely on the extent of their misery and discontent, but also on their faith in the justice and the triumph of their cause.’
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After the fall of the Second Empire and the establishment of the Third Republic, Bakunin went to Lyon in September 1870 with a few members of his clandestine Alliance to try to trigger off an uprising which he hoped would lead to a revolutionary federation of communes. It marked the beginning of the revolutionary movement which was to culminate in the Paris Commune the following spring. With the help of General Cluseret, Bakunin took over the Town Hall in Lyon and immediately declared the abolition of the State. On 25 September 1870, wall posters went up around town announcing:

In the event, the Lyon uprising was quickly crushed. But while it earned Marx’s contempt, it was in keeping with Bakunin’s strategy. As he explained in a letter to his fellow insurrectionist Albert Richard, Bakunin rejected those political revolutionaries who wanted to reconstitute the State and who gave Paris a primary role in the revolution. On the contrary: