The Political Philosophy of Bakunin

SCIENTIFIC ANARCHISM

THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF

BakuninSCIENTIFIC anarchism

COMPILED AND EDITED BY

G. P. Maximoff

PREFACE BY BERT F. HOSELITZ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

INTRODUCTION BY RUDOLF ROCKER

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BAKUNIN BY MAX NETTLAU

THE FREE PRESS OF GLENCOE

COLLIER-MACMILLAN LIMITED, London

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information, storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

FIRST FREE PPESS PAPERBACK EDITION 1964 For information, address:

The Free Press of Glencoe A Division of The Macmillan Company The Crowell-Coliier Publishing Company 60 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10011

Collier-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Ontario

Contents

Publisher’s Preface, by best f. hoselitz / PAGE
9
Introduction, by rueolf rocker / 17
Mikhail Bakunin—a Biographical Sketch, by max nettlau / *9
I / PART I —PHILOSOPHY
The World-Outlook / 53
2 / Idealism and Materialism / 6o
3 / Science: General Outlook / 68
4 / Science and Authority / 77
5 / Modem Science Deals in Falsities / 8i
6 / Man: Animat and Human Nature / 83
7 / Man as Conqueror of Nature / 88
8 / Mind and Will / 92
9 / Man Subject to Universal Inevitability / 98
10 / Religion in Man’s Life / 105
it / Man Had to Look for God Within Himself / 1*4
12 / Ethics: Divine or Bourgeois Morality / tao
1J / Ethics: Exploitation of the Masses / 118
14 / Ethics: Morality of the State / 136
IS / Ethics: Truly Human or Anarchist Morality / 146
16 / Ethics: Man the Product of Environment / 151
<7 / Society and the Individual / >57
18 / Individuals Are Strictly Determined / 164
*9 / Philosophy of History / 169
i / PART II—CRITICISM OF EXISTING SOCIETY
Property Could Arise Only in the State / *79
i / The Present Economic Regime / 182
3 / Class Struggle in Society Inevitable / 188
4 / Checkered History of the Bourgeoisie / 193

199

203

206

210

217

2IJ

23*

*37

248

256

259

263

271

277

283

289

294

301

308

3‘5

3*4

3*6

3*7

338

35*

356

367

37*

379

389

397

404

409

416

4*7

4*5

Proletariat Long Enslaved

Peasants’ Day Is Yet to Come

The State: General Outlook

The Modem State Surveyed

Representative System Based on Fiction

Patriotism’s Part in Man’s Struggle

Class Interests in Modem Patriotism

Law, Natural and Invented

Power and Authority

State Centralization and Its Effects

The Element of Discipline

PART III—THE SYSTEM OF ANARCHISM

Freedom and Equality Federalism: Real and Sham State Socialism Theories Weighed Criticism of Marxism Social-Democratic Program Examined Stateless Socialism: Anarchism Founding of the Workers’ International Economic Solidarity at Its Widest What the Workers Lack Fatherland and Nationality Women, Marriage, and Family Upbringing and Education Summation

PART IV—TACTICS AND METHODS OF REALIZATION

The Rationale of Revolutionary Tactics Economic Problem Underlies All Others Socio-Economic and Psychological Factors Revolution and Revolutionary Violence Methods of the Preparatory Period Jacobins of 1870 Feared Revolutionary Anarchy Revolution by Decrees Doomed to Failure Revolutionary Program for the Peasants On the Morrow of the Social Revolution

Source Bibliography

Source Notes

Index

Publisher’s Preface

Philosophical anarchism is a very old doctrine. One would be tempted to say that it is as old as the idea of government, but clear evidence is lacking which would support such an assertion. Still, we possess texts more than two thousand years old which not only describe human society without government, force, and constraining law, but which designate this state of social relations as the ideal of human society. In beautiful, poetic' words Ovidius gives a description of the anarchist utopia. In the first book of his Metamorphoses Ovidius writes about the golden age which was without law and in which, with no one to use compulsion, everyone of his own will kept faith and did the right. There was no fear of punishment, no legal sanctions were engraved on bronze tablets, no mass of supplicants looked, full of fear, upon its avenger, but without judges everyone lived in security. The only difference between the vision of the Roman poet and that of modem philosophical anarchists is that he placed the golden age at the beginning of human history, whereas they put it at the end.

But Ovidius was not the first inventor of these sentiments. He repeated in his poetry ideas which had been cherished for centuries. Georg Adler, a German social historian, who in 1899 published an exhaustive and well- documented study of the history of socialism, showed that anarchist views were certainly held by Zeno (342 to 270 B.C.), the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy.1 There were doubtless strong anarchist sentiments among many of the early Christian hermits, and in the politico-religious views of some, for example, Karpocrates, and his disciples, (second century A.D.), these feelings seem to have held a strong and perhaps predominant position. Such sentiments lingered on among some of the fundamentalist Christian sects of the Middle Ages and even the modem period.

Max Nertlau, the indefatigable historian of anarchism, also has gone over the field and lists a series of works composed in the two centuries before the French Revolution which contain strong libertarian views or are even outspokenly anarchist.* Among the most important French works

1 Georg Adler, Getcbiehte det Sozialismus tmd Komtmedsmus von fUtto bit zur Gegcn- Wart, Leipzig, 1899, pp. a*-j>.

* Mu Netdau, Ber VorfriibHnz dtr Anarchic, Berlin, 19*5, pp. 34-68.

of this period are Etienne de la Bo6rie's Disc ours de la servitude volomatre, which was composed about ijjo, but remained unpublished until 1577; Gabriel Foigny’s Les aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la dicouverte et le voyage de la Terre Australe, which appeared anonymously in 1676; a few short essays by Diderot; and a series of poems, fables, and stories by Sylvain Marichal which saw the iight of day in the two decades immediately preceding the Revolution. Similarly, during die same period anarchist ideas can be traced in England, where, as in France, they are expressed usually by representatives of the most radical wing of the rising middle class. Thus anarchist views can be found in some of the writings of Winstanley, and it is well-known that the young Burke in his Vindication of Natural Society (1756) presents an ingenious argument in favor of anarchy, even though the work was intended as a satire.

But all these, and many other writings of this earlier period, display one of two characteristics which make them differ profoundly from later anarchist works. They are either openly utopian as, for example, the books of Foigny or Marietta!, or they are political tracts directed against some directly felt abuse by a ruler or a government, or aiming at the attainment of greater freedom of action in a particular political constellation. They contain not infrequently a discussion of political theory, but this is incidental and not the major object of the work.

As a systematic theory, philosophical anarchism may be said to have begun in England with William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which appeared in 1793. Godwin’s anarchism, as well as that of his more immediate predecessors, and of Proudhon some fifty years later, is the political theory of the most radical branch of the small bourgeoisie. In the English Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789 the bourgeoisie had broken the monopoly of political power held previously by the crown and the aristocracy. Although post-revolutionary governments were still influenced strongly by the landed nobility and the bureaucracy (which remained, for long, a noblesse de robe), the more powerful and wealthy middle class families gradually became associated by marriage or through political alliances with aristocratic circles; and provided the government abstained from excessive interference in its economic affairs, the haute bourgeoisie was willing to support it. But since it demanded and obtained greater freedom in economic matters, it was instrumental in gradually abolishing or making ineffective the old guild organizations and other protective, quasi-monopolistic associations which had survived from the Middle Ages and which had become a fetter on the full development even of small-scale trade and manufacture. By the end of the eighteenth century in England the manufacturer who had a few hands in his employ, the small shopkeeper, the petty trader, formed a mass of independent entrepreneurs. By the middle of the nineteenth century in France, the artisan and craftsman, the peasant who owned a lot just large enough to

support himself and his family, also had acquired the nature of independent small entrepreneurs. All these men had only a puny amount of capital at their disposal; they were exposed to the fresh winds of competition, unprotected by guilds or other cooperative organizations; and were relegated at the same time to a state of political impotence. They received no benefits from the government, and whatever legislation they felt, appeared to be designed for the protection of large-scale property, the safeguarding of accumulated wealth, the maintenance of monopoly rights by the large trading companies, and the support of established economic and political privilege.

The more moderate elements among this group supported the trend towards parliamentary reform, the more radical ones followed Paine and later the Chartists, but a few of the most radical intellectuals held anarchist ideas. The distance beween Godwin’s anarchism and the liberalism of some of his contemporaries was not very wide. Basically the two doctrines grew out of the same stream of political traditions, and the main difference between them is that anarchism was the more logical and consistent deduction from the common premises of utilitarian psychology and the conception that the greatest happiness of all and mutually harmonious social relations can be achieved only if every person is left free to pursue his self-interest. To be sure, the liberals, following John Locke, regarded property as an outflow of natural right, and hence stipulated the maintenance of a political power monopoly in the hands of the government to safeguard the security of property and life against internal and external attack. But to this the anarchists replied: The government protects the property of the rich; this properry is theft; do away with the government and you’ll do away with big landed and industrial property; in this way you’ll create an egalitarian society of small, economically self-sufficient producers, a society, moreover, which will be free of privilege, of class distinctions, and in which government will be superfluous because the happiness, the economic security, and the personal freedom of each will be safeguarded without its intervention.

It is of the utmost importance to understand that the anarchist doctrine as propounded by Godwin, Proudhon, and their contemporaries was the apotheosis of petty bourgeois existence; that its ultimate ideal was the same as that of Voltaire’s Candtde, to cultivate one’s garden; and that it ignored or opposed large scale industrial or agricultural enterprises; and that it, therefore, never became a political theory which could find read sympathy and enthusiastic support among the masses of industrial workers. It was the radical extension of the liberalist doctrine which regarded the freedom of each as the highest political good and the responsible reliance on one’s conscience as the highest political duty. It was thus based on a political philosophy which is closely associated with the rise of middle- class, liberal, anti-socialist, political movements. Yet Bakunin, as is well

known, regarded himself as a socialist, obtained admission as a leading member to the International Workingmen’s Association, struggled for the control of this organization, and counted among his followers and adherents many genuine proletarians.

How and why did anarchism become associated so closely, around the middle of the nineteenth century, with socialism, a political philosophy which championed the aspirations of a different social stratum and which had appeal for so different a class of men? That the bedfellowship between anarchists and socialists was never very happy needs no reiteration. And yet, in spite of repeated conflicts, mutual incriminations, and bitter abuse, anarchists and socialists teamed up with one another again and again, so that by the end of the nineteenth century anarchism was quite commonly regarded as the most radical branch of socialism. The reason for the close association between socialists and anarchists can not be found in the similarity of their basic doctrines, but alone in the revolutionary strategy common to both of them.

The political philosophy of Godwin and Proudhon expressed, as already stated, the aspirations of a part of the petty bourgeoisie. With the consolidation of capitalism in western and central Europe during the nineteenth century, with the slow extension of the suffrage, and with the gradual retreat of unconditional laissez-faire and the adoption by the state of added responsibilities towards its citizens, increasingly larger portions of the middle class became staunch supporters of the existing political order, and anarchism became more and more a philosophy held only by a small marginal group of intellectuals. This development had the result that anarchist theory became more diffuse and at the same time more radical than it had been. Instead of writing fat tomes, as had been the practice of Godwin and Proudhon, anarchists turned to writing tracts, pamphlets and newspaper or magazine articles, dealing with questions of the day, points of factional or personal controversy, and problems of revolutionary tactics. Bakunin’s often fragmentary writings, the high proportion of manifestoes, proclamations, and open letters among his works, are typical not merely of hts personal peculiarities but even more of the great bulk of anarchist publications of his day. What was needed in this situation to save anarchist theory from falling apart completely was the appearance either of a great theorist or of a dynamic, powerful personality who would by the sheer appeal of his own convictions draw together the scattering fragments of the movement. This role was played by Bakunin- Although not a theorist of the stature of his great antagonist, Marx, in the fervor of his convictions and the elan with which he expressed them he was superior to the socialist leader.

The importance of Bakunin for modem students of political philosophy thus Lies in the crucial position which his works occupy in anarchist and libertarian literature in general. In spite of his frequently unconcealed con

fusion, in spire of the internal contradictions in his .writings, in spite of the fragmentary character of almost his entire literary output, Bakunin must be regarded as the most important anarchist political philosopher. By accident of birth—both as to time and place—in consequence of manifold early influences which embrace contact with Slavophilism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and Proudhonism, and last but not least because of his restless, romantic temperament, Bakunin is a man who stands at the crossroads of several intellectual currents, who occupies a position in the history of anarchism at the end of an old and the beginning of a new era. There is none of the ponderous common sense of Godwin, of the ponderous dialectics of Proudhon, of the ponderous thoroughness of Max Stirner in Bakunin’s works. Anarchism as a theory of political speculation is gone, and has been reborn as a theory of political action. Bakunin is not satisfied to outline the evils of the existing system, and to describe the general framework of a libertarian society, he preaches revolution, he participates in revolutionary activity, he conspires, harangues, propagandizes, forms political action groups, and supports every social upheaval, large or small, promising, or doomed to failure, from its very beginning. And die type of revolt which Bakunin principally considers is the wild Pugachevch'ma, the unleashing of cennuy-long suppressed peasant masses, who had plundered and destroyed the countryside, but had proven themselves essentially incapable of building up a new and better society. And although Bakunin was not a member of any of the nihilist action groups in Russia or elsewhere, his unconditional partisanship of the revolutionary overthrow of the existing order, provided inspiration for the young men and women who believed in the efficacy of “propaganda by deeds.”

With Bakunin there appeared, therefore, two new tendencies in anarchist theory. The doctrine shifted from abstract speculation on the use and abuse of political power to a theory of practical political action. At the same time anarchism ceased to be the political philosophy of the most radical wing of the petty bourgeoisie and became a political doctrine which looked for the mass of its adherents among the workers, and even the lumpenproletariat, although its central cadres continued to be recruited from among the intelligentsia. Without Bakunin anarchist syndicalism, such as existed for a long time notably in Spain, is unthinkable. Without Bakunin, Europe probably never would have wimessed an organized anarchist political movement, such as made itself felt in Italy, France, and Switzerland in the thirty years preceding the first world war. And it was Bakunin's talent for and imagination in “establishing a school of insurrectionary activity which . . . contributed an important influence to the policies of Lenin.”®