Bakunin's Criticism of Marxism

Idealists of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists, those who uphold the priority of science over life, the doctrinaire revolutionists— all of them champion, with equal zeal although differing in their argumentation, the idea of the State and State power, seeing in them, quite logically from their point of view, the only salvation of society. Quite logically, I say, having taken as their basis the tenet—a fallacious tenet in our opinion—that thought is prior to life, and abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that therefore sociological science must become the starting point for social upheavals and social reconstruction— they necessarily arrived at the conclusion that since thought, theory, and science are, for the present at least, the property of only a very few people, those few should direct social life, and not only foment and stimulate but rule all movements of the people; and that on the morrow of the Revolution the new social organization should be set up not by the free integration of workers' associations, villages, communes, and regions from below upward, conforming to the needs and instincts of the people, but solely by the dictatorial power of this learned minority, allegedly expressing the general will of the people.

It is upon this fiction of people's representation and upon the actual fact of the masses of people being ruled by a small handful of privileged individuals elected, or for that matter not even elected, by throngs herded together on election day and ever ignorant of why and whom they elect; it is upon this fictitious and abstract expression of the fancied general will and thought of the people, of which the living and real people have not the slightest conception—that the theory of the State and that of revolutionary dictatorship are based in equal measure.

Between revolutionary dictatorship and the State principle the difference is only in the external situation. In substance both are one and the same: the ruling of the majority by the minority in the name of the alleged stupidity of the first and the alleged superior intelligence of the second. Therefore both are equally reactionary, both having as their result the invariable consolidation of the political and economic privileges of the ruling minority and the political and economic enslavement of the masses of people.

Now it is clear why the doctrinaire Socialists who have for their aim the overthrow of the existing authorities and regimes in order to build upon the ruins of the latter a dictatorship of their own, never were and never will be enemies of the State, but on the contrary that they were and ever will be its zealous champions. They are enemies of the powers-that-be only because they cannot take their places. They are enemies of the existing political institutions because such institutions preclude the possibility of carrying out their own dictatorship, but they are at the same time the most ardent friends of State power, without which the Revolution, by freeing the toiling masses, would deprive this would-be revolutionary minority of all hope of putting the people into a new harness and heap upon them the blessings of their governmental measures.

This is true to such an extent that at the present time, when reaction is triumphing all over Europe, when all the States, moved by the wicked spirit of self-preservation and oppression, clad in the triple armor of military, police, and financial power, and getting ready, under the supreme leadership of Prince Bismarck to wage a desperate struggle against social revolution; when all sincere revolutionists should, as it seems proper to us, unite in order to repulse the desperate assaults of international reaction, we see, on the contrary, that the doctrinaire revolutionists, under the leadership of Marx, are ever taking the side of the State protagonists against the people's revolution.

No one, outside of Lassalle, could explain and prove so convincingly to the German workers that under the given economic conditions of today the situation of the proletariat not only cannot be radically changed, but, on the contrary, by virtue of inevitable economic law, it must and will become worse every year, notwithstanding the efforts of the co-operatives, which can benefit only a small number of workers and only for a very brief period.

Thus far we agree with Lassalle. But from this point on, we begin to differ with him. As against Schulze-Delitzsch, who advised the workers to seek salvation only through their own energy and not to expect nor demand anything from the State, Lassalle, having proved, first, that under the economic conditions of today the workers cannot expect even the mitigation of their lot, and second, that so long as the bourgeois State exists, bourgeois privileges will remain impregnable—having proved that, he arrived at the following conclusion: in order to attain freedom, real freedom, based upon economic equality, the proletariat must capture the State and turn the power of the State against the bourgeoisie for the benefit of the workers, in the same manner in which this power is now turned against the workers by the bourgeoisie for the benefit of the exploiting class.

How is the proletariat to capture the State? There are but two means available for that purpose: a political revolution or a lawful agitation on behalf of a peaceful reform. Lassalle chose the second course.

In this sense, and for that purpose, he formed a political party of German workers possessing considerable strength, having organized it along hierarchical lines and submitted it to rigorous discipline and to a sort of personal dictatorship; in other words, he did what M. Marx had tried to do to the International during the last three years. Marx's attempt proved to be a failure, while Lassalle was wholly successful. As his direct aim Lassalle set himself the task of impelling a popular movement and agitation for the winning of universal suffrage, for the right of the people to elect State representatives and authorities.

Having won this right, the people would send their own representatives to the Parliament, which in turn, by various decrees and enactments, would transform the given State into a People's State (Volks-Staat). And the first task of this People's State would be to open unlimited credit to the producers' and consumers' associations, which only then will be able to combat bourgeois capital, finally succeeding in conquering and assimilating it. When this process of absorption has been completed, then the period of the radical change of society will dawn upon mankind.

Such is the program of Lassalle, such is the program of the Social-Democratic Party. Properly speaking, it belongs not to Lassalle but to Marx, who fully expressed it in the well-known Manifesto of the Communist Party published by Marx and Engels in 1848. This program is likewise alluded to in the first Manifesto of the International Association written by Marx in 1864, in the words: "The first duty of the working class should be to conquer for itself political power," or as the Manifesto of the Communist Party says in that respect:  "The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of a ruling class. . . . The proletariat will centralize the instruments of production in the hands of the State, that is, the proletariat raised to the position of a ruling class."

We already have expressed our abhorrence for the theories of Lassalle and Marx, theories which counselled the workers—if not as their ultimate ideal, at least as their next chief aim—to form a People's State, which, according to their interpretation, will only be "the proletariat raised to the position of a ruling class."

One may ask then: if the proletariat is to be the ruling class, over whom will it rule? The answer is that there will remain another proletariat which will be subjected to this new domination, this new State. It may be, for example, the peasant "rabble," which, as we know, does not stand in great favor with the Marxists, and who, finding themselves on a lower level of culture, probably will be ruled by the city and factory proletariat; or considered from the national point of view, the Slavs, for instance, will assume, for precisely the same reason, the same position of slavish subjection to the victorious German proletariat which the latter now holds with respect to its own bourgeoisie.

If there is a State, there must necessarily be domination, and therefore slavery; a State without slavery, overt or concealed, is unthinkable—and that is why we are enemies of the State.

What does it mean: "the proletariat raised into a ruling class?" Will the proletariat as a whole be at the head of the government? There are about forty million Germans. Will all the forty million be members of the government? The whole people will govern and there will be no one to be governed. It means that there will be no government, no State, but if there is a State in existence there will be people who are governed, and there will be slaves.

This dilemma is solved very simply in the Marxist theory. By a people's government they mean the governing of people by means of a small number of representatives elected by the people. Universal suffrage —the right of the whole people to elect its so-called representatives and rulers of the State—this is the last word of the Marxists as well as of the democratic school. And this is a falsehood behind which lurks the despotism of a governing minority, a falsehood which is all the more dangerous in that it appears as the ostensible expression of a people's will.

Thus, from whatever angle we approach the problem, we arrive at the same sorry result: the rule of great masses of people by a small privileged minority. But, the Marxists say, this minority will consist of workers. Yes, indeed, of ex-workers, who, once they become rulers or representatives of the people, cease to be workers and begin to look down upon the toiling people. From that time on they represent not the people but themselves and their own claims to govern the people. Those who doubt this know precious little about human nature.

But these elected representatives will be convinced Socialists, and learned Socialists at that. The words "learned Socialist" and "scientific Socialism" which are met  with constantly in the works and speeches of the Lassalleans and Marxists, prove only that this would-be people's State will be nothing else but despotic rule over the toiling masses by a new, numerically small aristocracy of genuine or sham scientists. The people lack learning and so they will be freed from the cares of government, will be wholly regimented into one common herd of governed people. Emancipation indeed!

The Marxists are aware of this contradiction, and, realizing that government by scientists (the most distressing, offensive, and despicable type of government in the world) will be, notwithstanding its democratic form, a veritable dictatorship,—console themselves with the thought that this dictatorship will be only temporary and of brief duration. They say that the only care and aim of this government will be to educate and uplift the people—economically and politically—to such an extent that no government will be necessary, and that the State, having lost its political character, that is, its character of rule and domination, will turn all by itself into an altogether free organization of economic interests and communes.

Here we have an obvious contradiction. If their State is going to be a genuine people's State, why should it then dissolve itself—and if its rule is necessary for the real emancipation of the people, how dare they call it a people's State? Our polemic had the effect of making them realize that freedom or Anarchism, that is, the free organization of workers form below upward, is the ultimate aim of social development, and that every State, their own people's State included, is a yoke, which means that it begets despotism on one hand and slavery on the other.

They say that this State yoke—the dictatorship—is a necessary transitional means in order to attain the emancipation of the people: Anarchism or freedom is the goal, the State or dictatorship is the means. Thus to free the working masses, it is first necessary to enslave them.

That is as far as our polemic went. They maintain that only a dictatorship—their dictatorship, of course—can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.

While the political and social theory of the anti-State Socialists or Anarchists leads them steadily toward  a full break with all governments, and with all varieties of bourgeois policy, leaving no other way out but a social revolution, the opposite theory of the State Communists and scientific authority also inevitably draws and enmeshes its partisans, under the pretext of political tactics, into ceaseless compromises with governments and political parties; that is, it pushes them toward downright reaction.

The basic point of Lassalle's politico-social program and the Communist theory of Marx is the (imaginary) emancipation of the proletariat by means of the State. But for  that it is necessary that the State consent to take upon itself the task of emancipating the proletariat from the yoke of bourgeois capital. How can the State be imbued with such a will? There are only two means whereby that can be done.

The proletariat ought to wage a revolution in order to capture the State—a rather heroic undertaking. And in our opinion, once the proletariat captures the State, it should immediately proceed with its destruction as the everlasting prison for the toiling masses. Yet according to the theory of M. Marx, the people not only should not destroy the State but should strengthen and reinforce it, and transfer it in this form into the hands of its benefactors, guardians, and teachers, the chiefs of the Communist Party—in a word, to M. Marx and his friends, who will begin to emancipate it in their own fashion.

They will concentrate all the powers of government in strong hands, because the very fact that the people are ignorant necessitates strong, solicitous care by the government. They will create a single State bank, concentrating in its hands all the commercial, industrial, agricultural, and even scientific production; and they will divide the mass of people into two armies—industrial and agricultural armies under the direct command of the State engineers who will constitute the new privileged scientific-political class. 

One can see then what a shining goal the German communist school has set up before the people.

1873

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism. Edited by G.P. Maximoff. 1953

THE THREE INDUSTRIAL FORCES.

 It is not too much to say that the people who think—-those who really occupy themselves with the problems of the world—are full of grave anxiety as to the outcome of the forces, social and economic, which are shaking not only Continental but British and colonial society. The seed sown a couple of generations ago is now bearing fruit. The obscure men who preached and argued in the early fifties have got together an army of disciples which now begins to shake the world, so that the people who really look before and after are full of trouble and dread as to the outcome of the new power which has grown so rapidly and so strongly whilst the nations " slept on their heaps of gold." Many years ago, once more in the early fifties, CHARLES KINGSLEY and the Christian Socialists told the people of England the direction in which thought, even in that country, had begun to flow rapidly, whilst those who watched the movements on the Continent of Europe said that a power was growing up with which account would have to be taken at no very distant date. That date seems nearly to have arrived. The recent general election in Belgium has revealed to the startled middle and upper classes the fact that Socialism in one of its phases has stepped out into the arena of practical politics, and has there thrown down its gage to all comers to take up if they please. The Belgian Socialists, by careful organisation and hard work, have secured some 50 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, having completely annihilated the Liberals, or those who may be called the Whigs of Continental political life. The clerical party, which professes to be socialistic within certain limits as to authority and religion, has gained some 148 seats, so that the two extreme parties are for the first time face to face, but with this strange qualification, that the clerical party, as anyone can see who reads current religious literature, professes to be socialistic so far as economic arrangements are in question. The reflex action of this movement is visible in England, as shown in the speeches of the labour leaders, for which reason it has become very important to ourselves, as a practical question apart from any speculation on the development of opinion, to understand, if we can, the lines along which the forces.at work are likely to be most powerful and finally shape the future relations of the various sections of industry.

To understand this, even in a slight degree, it is necessary to know what is going on. As a rule, the English and colonial reader does not know. He reads of wild, whirling words used in labour conferences, especially in foreign countries, he marvels at resolutions passed in England by a Trades Union Congress, but he does not see what lies behind it all, nor how Continental thought is affecting the English working-classes through its influence on their leaders. Now, on the Continent the fact is well recognised that there are three movements which may be roughly called socialistic, representing three schools of thought and three modes of action. The representatives of those are KARL MARX, BAKOUNINE, and the Co-operative leaders, of which last there is no one specially distinguished. The MARX doctrine is an assault on individualism in all its shapes. The principle of egoism is the curse of society, consequently private property is a thing to be assailed. It has been said that the dream of this section of the Socialists is of a hive of human bees, with or without a queen, in which there will be work for the general good, with a distribution of the results of work for the general benefit. The individual is to be nothing, and the state everything. Plato's Republic and Utopia may be said to be the models on which this conception of society is formed, no account being taken (as in these famous schemes) of the difficulty of carrying out the great principles that are laid down. The distinguishing feature of this section of the Socialists is, that it proposes to act through the legislatures.

It lays itself out to capture members of Parliament. It believes that the working-classes, now that they have the voting power, can obtain the control of the legislative forces, and thus get all that they require by process of law. In other words, the theory is that what is called called collectivism, the conducting of all great industries by the State, can be enacted, and thus the industrial world be so transformed that competition shall cease, and each worker receive what he requires, whilst no one shall be able to accumulate riches. This is the peaceful Socialistic movement which has made itself felt in Belgium. The doctrine of BAKOUNINE is the opposite to this. With him egoism is the supreme good. MARX finds the summum bonum in altruism pushed to its furthest extreme, such as Shelley sets forth in Prometheus Unbound, where a shipwrecked man gives his plank to his enemy, and " plunges aside to die." To BAKOUNINE this would all be nonsense. Man wants but freedom to act to become good, noble, the crown and flower of creation, the supreme manifestation of intelligence and benevolence. The point is to clear the way. Humanity is cramped. It has no chance. Sweep away the artificial barriers set up by the wicked and the cunning, and then man will stand up whole and perfect, the true head of animated nature. To attain this we must clear the decks. We must pull down that we may have room to build. Therefore, force must be used where necessary, for there can be no hope in palaver. The motto, as set forth in so many words, is "hate and vengeance to the bourgeoisie, revolt and dictation from the prolétariat." This is the doctrine that has taken hold of the Latin races, which is called Anarchy, whilst its antithesis, or parliamentary action, is known as the Teuton development of Socialism, which is taken to include the British people, and rightly taken, as may be learned from the recent speeches at the Trades Union Congress.

We may conclude, from a general consideration of history as showing what human nature is, that neither of these movements will accomplish its purpose, though both may cause much trouble. Moreover, there is a force growing up which is fast counteracting them, and forming a vast conservative body which will resist the disintegrating proposals. This is co-operation. Few persons in these colonies, or even in England, know the vast strides that this movement has made of late years, especially in France and Germany, where co-operative banks, trades, agricultural societies, and wholesale and retail stores have been established. All over France this movement is going on, finding much favour amongst the small landholders, who see in it a means to preserve their holdings whilst they shake themselves free from the extortion of the middle-man. The Credit Foncier has failed to help agriculture much, but co-operative banks, locally managed by local shareholders, have solved a number of problems. France is outwardly revolutionary ; at heart she is intensely conservative. Further, there is a strong movement towards international co-operation, largely promoted both in England and France, the motto of which is "the participation of the worker in the rewards of industry." This is the conservative force which confronts Socialism in all its aspects, and which is destined to subdue it in the end, for it combines freedom to the individual with the benefits of united action for the general good. It is the only coming industrial force which has in it the elements of permanency and success.

Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 15 December 1894, page 29

THE FORM AND SUBSTANCE OF GOVERNMENT.

 By M.

NO. IV.—SOCIALISM AND ANARCHY.

It can hardly be doubted that the raison d'etre of Socialism is the longing which exists in a certain class of philanthropic minds to relieve the chronic distress prevailing, especially in congested populations. In so far, consequently, as the theory is prompted by this cause it does not altogether repel our sympathy. But what Socialists apparently fail to perceive is that, without the least intention to do injustice to any section of the community, they may advocate a cure for social distress which is worse than the disease. There is a species of " practical " politicians who would convert the State into an Earthly Providence, and invest it with absolute power to set right what ever may go wrong in the individual and domestic, as well as the social, life of the citizens. The unhappy experience of certain countries in past generations, from the ubiquity and persistence of State interference, is lost upon such men for want of historic intelligence, They are quite content with the proximate results of a quasi-State Socialism, which they have reason to believe is at least immediately beneficial. They never stop to consider the remote effects of the political momentum they are setting up, and what type of social structure the line of action they are taking will ultimately establish. "With more emotion than philosophy they meet us with the exclamation, " Surely, you would not have this suffering continue ! " But State Socialism takes for granted, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has said, "first that all suffering ought to be prevented, which is not true ; much suffering is curative, and prevention of it is prevention of a remedy. In the second place, it takes for granted that every evil can be removed, the truth being that with the existing defects of human nature many evils can only be thrust out of one place or form into another place, often being increased by the change. There is also implied the unhesitating belief that evils of all kinds should be dealt with by the State. There does not occur the inquiry whether there are at work other agencies capable of dealing with evils, and whether the evils in question may not be among those which are best dealt with by these other agencies. Obviously, the more numerous Governmental interventions become the more confirmed does this habit of thought grow, and the more loud and perpetual the demands for intervention."
History exhibits instances of political slavery having insidiously crept into States, and assumed the detestable forms of despotism as really under the guise of a benevolent democracy as under that of a benevolent autocracy. There is no meritorious statesmanship in desiring to sweep away institutions or influences hostile to the public well-being. The true test of political wisdom in rulers lies rather in their ability to discern what barriers to social progress can best be removed by individual or collective enterprise outside the domain of State administration, even though their removal maybe more slowly effected than under the operation of Governmental force. Socialism being by its very nature a highly centralised system directly controlled by State officialism, there is grave danger of the power with which its official organisation is invested becoming sooner or later absolute. If Socialism should ever triumph, the State will become entrusted with the proprietorship of all dwellings and factories, the enforcement of rigid sanitary laws, the regulation of morals, the determination of what literature shall he permitted, and what shall be relegated to a State Index Expurgatorius, what periodicals shall be allowed to be conveyed through the post office and what shall be stopped in transit ; at what rate of expenditure the citizens shall live, what description of food and drink shall be legal, what size of house they shall occupy, and what shall be the quality and shape of their garments. Let the thin end of the wedge be introduced, and the sequel of universal State interference is ultimately inevitable. The tentacala of the tyrannical Octopus may take generations to coil round all the personal and social interests of the population, but that every citizen will in the end find himself more or less in its folds is certain.
It is a leading tenet of Socialism that private property and the incentives to individual exertion which it sets in motion are an unmitigated curse to society. In a Socialistic community the power and influence which money and land command would cease ; but not so the passion of talented and ambitious minds to wield authority over their fellows. In the absence of property, then, as a passport to the gratification of this undying aspiration of strong natures, an outlet for it would be found in the only other possible channel. Office under Government would be eagerly sought after as a ladder of social promotion, "and so vast and importunate would be the number of eligible candidates that we should have enacted — only on a more gigantic scale— the state of affairs a Russian play quoted by Mr. Mackenzie Wallace describes as existing under the rule of the Czar: "All men, even shopkeepers and cobblers, aim at becoming officers, and the man who has passed his whole life without official rank seems to be not a human being." Once the enslaving régime of Socialism is inaugurated, and the organisation of officialism has passed a certain stage of development, it first grows less and less resistible, and then become positively attractive to the superior order of people in the community as affording a great multiplication of respectable bureaucratic careers for their families. If an opponent of an established Socialistic Government should eventually arise and plead for a relaxation of the chains of State tyranny he would be promptly silenced by a host of precedents being quoted against him. As Mr. Herbert Spencer truly observes : "Increasing power of a growing administrative organisation is accompanied by a decreasing power of the rest of society to resist its further growth and control. The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State Socialism — swallowed in the vast wave which they have, little by little, raised." It was its elaborately centralised system of State officialism that brought the Roman Empire to ruin. According to Lactantius, " so numerous were the receivers in Gaul (during the decline of the Empire) in comparison with the payers, and so enormous the weight of taxation, that the laborer broke down. The plains became deserts, and woods grow where the plough had been."
State ownership and appropriation of a given class of public works often, doubtless, contribute to public convenience within certain limits. But the area of Government control must be carefully restricted, lest it should answer to the metaphorical description of fire, which, although a good servant, may easily become a bad master. It is obvious that under the proposed arrangements of Socialism, the liberties of the population must be surrendered in proportion as its physical welfare is cared for. It was this fact which the Bishop of Peterborough had in view when he startled the religious world some years ago with the suggestive paradox in reference to the proposed local option scheme for closing public houses, that "he would rather see England free than England sober." To refer to a modern case we have in France, coincidently with a Republican Government, an arbitrary disregard of legitimate liberty, trampling on the rights of citizens to an extent which is a disgrace to a nation glorying in popular self government. Pure socialism would, in the end, prove immeasurably more despotic, carrying the repression of individualism even to the utter paralysation of distinctive personal characteristics. Socialists, while intense admirers of the bright side of their scheme, for which they are mainly indebted to their own imaginations, are generally indisposed to consider the obverse of the picture. The system would be hopelessly fatal to family life. The hon. Auberon Herbert has with justice said, " This system would create men without affections, without home feelings and without virtues. But they would have the fiercest passions burning round the centre of power. There is not a single man in the whole nation who would be able to use the elements of production except under the regulations laid down by the control authority." In short, Socialism is the baseless fabric of a delusive vision. As with each of the other methods of government I have presented, Socialism, viewed as a mere instrument of government, is impotent to keep the defective natures of average citizens under complete restraint. A great philosopher has wisely remarked, "There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts."
Passing to the consideration of anarchy, it may be stated that while that theory, in common with Socialism, aims at planting society on a new basis, it may fairly be regarded as the antithesis of the latter. Socialism, as we have seen, is a system founded on the principle of co-operation for the equal good of all, and regulated by a central government, in which everyone is rewarded according to his labor. Anarchy, on the other hand, is a negation of government, or a reducing of government to nil, which accounts for the term Nihilism, and the family likeness which that bears to Anarchy. In Socialism we have perfect organisation ; in anarchy or Nihilism we have a complete abandonment of organisation. The Nihilists maintain that organised society, though theoretically existing for the good of the individuals composing it, is perverted into a weapon for oppression, hence they insist that society must be reconstructed, and government annihilated. The Hon. Auberon Herbert, although sternly opposed to Socialism, refuses to be called an Anarchist or a Nihilist ; preferring to be regarded as an "individualist." He professes respect for the reasonable as distinguished from the violent section of Anarchists, and goes with them hand in hand up to a certain point. Like them, he detests great systems of authority and control, and contends that nothing should be done for the people, but that everything should be done by the people. With the Anarchists, he believes in the power of voluntary association, but parts company with them when they insist on destroying as mischievous the whole machinery of State government ; he, as an individualist, being in favor of keeping the State for the one simple purpose of self-defence. Mr. John A. Henry, one of the Chicago Anarchists, who have recently come in collision with the law, lecturing recently at Boston, propounded the following version of Anarchy: — "The man without property has no use for law, and the law is his enemy. The man who first suggested law was a robber, for he felt the need of something being secured to himself by general consent. The law has grown to be a devil. It is the only support that private property has. By means of it one man controls the work of many men. The reservation of private property makes thieves. Anarchy means the wish and the intention to wipe out laws made by man, for there is not one of them that is not a contradiction and a hindrance to natural law. If, however, it should be found that any statute law is for the good of all the people, an Anarchist would be the last person who could desire its repeal. Anarchists see force coming more intense than ever before, and the resistance is not of any man's choice. It is the necessity of self-defence ; it is the impulse of humanity. People look at the bomb explosion and call it murder. They do not see what compelled the bomb. What is capital but a process of killing." Speaking of his confrères in Chicago doomed to the gallows, he adds, "They never thirsted for blood. They saw that labor was prostrate under the heel of capital, and they told the slave to rise. Anarchists are not bringing on the revolt ; capital is doing that. It has its claws upon the life of society, and it is the duty of society to rebel."

 It has been falsely supposed that anarchy is altogether incompatible with communism, and certainly some exponents of the creed do so express themselves. But Prince Krapotkin declares himself to be an adherent of "the School of Anarchist Communism," and although anarchists would combine to resist co-operative organisations, worked chiefly in the interests of capital, they would in no case object to co-operate when they think the general good can be promoted. They would protest, however, against all co-operation associated with compulsion, and would even oppose voluntary co-operation which in any way infringed upon individual rights. Perhaps the most determined anarchist of the Russian type is Michael Bakounine, who, in his work, God and the State, writes : " We reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interests of the immense majority in subjection to them. Such is the sense in which we are really anarchists."
As a demonstration against reckless law making, which has not the concurrence or appreciation of the bulk of the Parliamentary electors, but is, nevertheless, believed in by crude legislators as an agency of social reformation, I am willing to acknowledge that the anarchist theory has some show of plausibility. It is, in fact, a national reaction from undue Government interference, and in that light it has its useful lessons. But when it is seriously affirmed that society, as a whole, will never reach high intellectual, moral and social elevation and satisfaction until law and Government are entirely abolished, it is impossible to view such an idea otherwise than as an utterly visionary conception. So long as crime originates from malformed brains, and is fostered by evil associations, the lives and property of private citizens require common protection from murderers, thieves and swindlers. How far civilised mankind could dispense with the apparatus of Government if their external surroundings were thoroughly ameliorated, and present adverse influences had become inoperative, is a matter of conjecture. We have to take society as we find it, and however voluntary associations for good and useful objects may be commended, I unhesitatingly assert that there is at present no such indication of the perfectibility of humanity as would lead us to believe that law and Government can ever be dispensed with, every citizen being permitted to be a law to himself. That the tendency of parliaments and governments is increasingly to over-legislate and place private citizens in mischievous leading strings cannot for a moment be doubted, But there ought to be readily found a via media between that extreme and anarchy. Is it not the most rational course for society to aim at limiting the function and scope of legislation and government ? It is barely 200 years since the English nation were obliged to protest by force of the headsman's axe against the occupant of the throne exercising authority of too paternal a character. It is by no means impossible that the time may come when the growing extension of legislative and governmental authority, under limited monarchies and republics, may call for the imposition of a check equally emphatic if less severe. Anarchy only furnishes another illustration of the vain idolatry of a governmental form. The part of wisdom is to rely upon no form of government whatever for social regeneration, but to make the best of the system it is our lot to live under, and seek to reform it, not so much through Parliamentary efforts as by intelligent appeals to the reason and sentiment of the public.

Leader (Melbourne, Vic. : 1862 - 1918, 1935), Saturday 29 January 1887, page 16

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM

 By MOSES BARITZ.

The unitiated have been misled in thinking that Anarchism is an advance on Socialism. That the former is a system that will come after Socialism and will be on a higher plane, etc., etc.
There never was a greater delusion. The facts are the other way. First, their is no anarchist system as such; secondly, the evolution of society points the opposite way.

There is not a solitary point in the Marxian system, that in any manner is in harmony with the views of the multitude of individuals who proclaim the (greatness) of Anarchism. Socialism is scientific, Anarchism is the reverse. Socialism is in line with the evolutionary theory of society; Anarchism is not. Socialism based upon the materialist conception of history. Anarchism upon the bourgeois system. Socialism proclaims the existence of a class struggle; Anarchism opposes that view. Marxism demonstrates the concentration of capital; Anarchism stands by the decentralisation theory.
Marxism proves the growth of the proletariat and the dissolution of the middle class; Anarchism contends that the small owners are growing.
Socialism predicates a democratic system ; Anarchism advocates the abolition of authority. Marxism lays the basis of working class exploitation to surplus values; Anarchists deny it.
Marxism shows the fact that classes exist, arising from the social system, the system producing these men; Anarchism states the opposite. And now to prove the case.
The scientific basis of Socialism is the materialist conception of history. It formulates the propelling forces operating in society, and deals with the development of masses, and NOT individuals. With social classes and not with isolated beings. Its essence may be summed up in the two following  sentences.
"The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of mankind that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."
Any person but an unthinking anarchist will realise the potency of those lines. It means that the ideas in any given stage of society are a product of the method of production, which, develops them. It means that ideas emanate from the social process, and that the social conditions produce the classes. The material foundation of society brings with it the reflex, of those conditions. But above all, it shows that morals are the result, of social conditions, instead of social conditions being the outcome of a system of morality.
This is in contrast and opposition to the Anarchist who, being unscientific, thinks that conditions, such as they are, are the result of the act of one or two individuals. Which naturally draws them to the conclusion that if you remove the individual, by death or any such means, that the system they were the product of, would thereby be destroyed. It is because of the ignorance of the Anarchist of the SOCIAL forces operating in human society that he becomes an assassin, or inflames others to perform like deeds AND ASSASSINATIONS HAVE BEEN PART OF THE VERY ESSENCE OF PROPAGANDA BY THE ANARCHISTS.
The science of Marxism is clear when the question of the class struggle is taken under advisement. There it was that both Marx and Engels predated the discovery of Darwin and Wallace, in that the former had already shown the law of development in human society. Or, as Engels said, at the grave of Marx,
"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development in human society."
And the law of human development is the struggle of the classes throughout history, the work of Darwin and Wallace was to show the struggle for existence on the biological field.
And NO Anarchist accepts the materialist conception of history, for if they did, they would not advocate killing individuals as a means of getting rid of a system. If they do advocate violence, it is only because they do NOT understand the social forces.
It is very curious to have to deal with Bakunin, for he was the first to translate the "Communist Manifesto" into Russian, and it was published at his friend Alexander Herzen's newspaper office at Geneva in 1863. Bakunin, though he translated the work which is the foundation of Socialist literature, and the most illuminating document in history, did not realise the importance of it. For he lays down in his "Revolutionary Catechism,"
"The revolutionist is a man under a vow. He ought to have no personal interests, no business, no feelings, no property. He ought to be ready to die, to endure torment, and with HIS OWN HANDS TO KILL ALL who place obstacles in the way of Revolution."
Can there be anything so perverted? Here is an individual, who thinks that his social status in society is the result of a desire. If that were so, there would be no poverty and most likely nothing else. We have interests, but they are class interests. If Bakunin were correct, there is no such thing as a class struggle. But that is not all. Bakunin's opposition to Marx was originally provoked because of an article Marx wrote in the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" on Feb. 14th. 1849. where Marx stated, that a section of the Slavs had no future, because they lacked historical, geographical, political and industrial conditions. This incensed Bakunin who in the simplicity of his ignorance, asked "What has that to do with the matter?" An evidence that Bakunin did not understand the influence of social conditions upon a nation or people.
Bakunin was always an advocate of force, and was good enough to admit to his friend Alexander Herzen that Marx and Engels were right after all. This was after Bakunin wanted what he called the "equalisation of classes." It was in 1869 when Bakunin got into the International. Marx was  not present at that meeting, and he soon demonstrated the ignorance of Bakunin, by writing the famous letter dealing with the class struggle. Marx pointed out that what was wanted was the ABOLITION of classes, not, as Bakunin wanted, their "Equalisation."
Bakunin soon found himself beaten and admitted it too. His friend Herzen, had a surprise one day by getting a letter from Bakunin, in which he stated that Marx was 'a giant.' Herzen replied asking if he meant it. Bakunin sent this answer:
August 28th. 1869.
"Why did I call him a giant? Because in justice it is impossible to deny him greatness. I cannot deny his immense service in the cause of Socialism which he has served wisely, energetically, and truly for the 25 years of my acquaintance with him, and in which he undoubtedly excelled us all. He was one of the founders of the International Society, and that is in my opinion an excellent merit, which I will always acknowledge, his attitude towards me notwithstanding."
Later, about two years afterwards, Bakunin again wrote to Herzen, regarding the armed insurrection, He said: "When I think of it now, I must say frankly that Marx and Engels were right. They truly estimated the affairs of those days."
Bakunin was an advocate of organisation, and favored a system of electing delegates to form a central council which would have an "imperative mandate."
As Marx pointed out in a reply to Bakunin, that a central authority with an inoperative mandate would be leaving the power in the hands of an executive committee to which Bakunin had always been opposed. For did not Bakunin write in his "The Socialism of Mazzini" that "the possession of power transformed into a tyrant the most devoted friend of liberty." The Anarchists have always protested against "authority," as against the system of social democracy, but that did not prevent them from forming an ELECTED international committee when the Anarchist Congress was held in Amsterdam.
Perhaps now we will deal with others who cannot understand the development of society. The famous bourgeois idol of America, Emma Goldman, has time after time, denied the existence of social forces, though she talks of it in her "Social Significance of the Modern Drama." In her first essay on Anarchism, in her book on "Anarchism and other Essays," she actually has the nerve to tell her reader that there would have been no abolition of slavery in the United States if it had not been for John Brown, (He was lynched by a crowd of slave-owners and their sympathisers at Harper's Ferry in 1859.)
To Emma Goldman as with most anarchists, the Civil War in America was not the outcome of the growth of capitalist industry, which necessitated a free market for the obtaining of labor power, but due to the ethical actions of Wendell, Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and the other abolitionists. In fact anarchists like Emma Goldman, cannot be expected to realise the significance of that question when the reader will note that Lewis Henry Morgan, the author of the greatest work of Ethnology, yet printed, "Ancient Society," and the "League of the Iroquois," etc., actually supported the Southerners in the interpretation of Constitution dealing with the holding of slaves.
(Morgan was elected as a Republican in the -New York State Assembly in November 1860, and the writer has seen the resolution he moved in January, 1861 in the 'Journals of the Assembly.' But it maybe pointed out that Morgan's work on 'Ancient Society' had not yet been compiled.)
Though Emma Goldman does not and will not believe in "authority" it is significant that she has lent herself to agitations that have had for their basis the release of prisoners from various gaols, etc.
Another woman anarchist, by far more illustrious than Emma Goldman, was Louise Michel, the 'Red Virgin.' She believed in the 'deed' and was responsible for this view : 'To strike down men personally responsible for the slavery and oppression of a whole nation there can be no more hesitation than to destroy a viper, or knock the poor shewolf with her young ones. Tyrants are doomed to die, no pity can be shown them.
The constantly recurring assassination of monarchs, and 'rulers,' is due to this kind of foolish propaganda. Even political assassination is (nothing but) the work of a destitute brain, inflamed by the ridiculous propaganda of the Anarchists. They fail to learn that the system of society is a growth in the evolutionary process, and that we are the products of the process. The remedy lies not in the hands of a few individuals, but by the action of a social class acting for its CLASS interests. To the anarchist there is NO class struggle, and consequently he seeks to wreak vengeance upon an individual who like himself is a product of the system.
Then, as if not to try and understand the system, the anarchists wilfuly advocate all kinds of silly notions regarding the amelioration of conditions. No anarchist yet, except it be Prince Peter Kropotkin, has endeavoured to give a system of 'economies.' and even he makes a botch of it. Kropotkin his 'Conquest of Bread' he tries to show that there is no such thing as Surplus Value. And further that it is not an evil of this system.
This is, of course, in opposition to Marxian economics. To understand this, we must ask the question what is Surplus Value? It is the portion in the means of life that the workers create, that causes their destitution. IT IS THE VERY BASE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION. It is the taking of the surplus value, that distinguishes this system from any other. Surplus Value is that portion of production in capitalist Society that the workers create, but for which they receive no equivalent. - Hit of it are sustained the master class- their armies, navies, and their "charitable institutions. "
As soon as the workers dispossess the master class, there will be no surplus value created. Social production will be socially owned. The existence of surplus value permits of the retention of a parasite class, who live by taking the pro ducts from I he working class. Robbery within the system, is only possible by the creation of surplus value. YET KROPOTKIN SAYS THAT THERE IS NO EVIL IN IT!
Proudhon, who was —according to the anarchists—the 'Father of Anarchism,' was so scientific, that he told the electors when he was standing for Deputy — taking political action mind you— that the interests of the masters and slaves were identical. He told them that, they ought shake hands, etc.
Other advocates have taught the policy of anarchists acting as petty thieves, such as Netchajeff. Nor is he by any means alone.
Others, though anarchists believe in voluntary (?) organisation, have openly avowed the necessity of organisation such as Malatesta. who at the debate in Amsterdam at the International Anarchist Congress in 1907, said the poor should have an organisation greater even than the 'rich.' Emma Goldman attacked him, but> . . . .illegible . . .< The fact remains, however, that industry is being developed to such an extent, that it now rests in a few hands. The growth of monopolies in trade, cannot exist without its social equivalent, namely, the greater degradation of the working class. The constant effort by the workers to get more out of what they create, is only an evidence NOT OF THE BETTERMENT OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS, but of the deterioration of those conditions. To the thinker, the result is plain. Emancipation from a system that is based on the socialisation of labour, can only be accomplished by a social class. The activities of a social class can only be determined by the majority of the consensus of opinion of that class. That makes the whole project of Anarchism superfluous and — ridiculous.

International Socialist (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1920), Saturday 5 April 1919, page 1

NIHILISM.

[By Magister.]

Nihilism, like Socialism in Germany, Communism in France, Trades Unionism in Great Britain, and, to some extent, Fenianism in Ireland, owes its origin to what was recently called "a certain rough but widespread desire to set wrongs down and see right done." This, perhaps, will be doubted by those who see in Nihilism only a political movement, an agitation directed by men of all ranks against a corrupt autocracy. But, if we examine more closely, we cannot fail to see that it was the miserable condition of the subject classes which first called Nihilism into existence. Other causes have indeed aided in promoting its present strength by attracting men of position into its ranks ; but originally it was a branch of the great European social movement. A brief review of its history will convince us of this.
And, first, it is well to be guarded against the common error that the movement had its origin within the past twenty years, for we can find traces of its spirit so far back as the St. Petersburg insurrection of 1823. This occurrence was the outcome of the dissemination amongst the more educated clashes of the ideas which found their chief expression in the French Revolution. It was thought by Czar Nicholas that the leaders of this insurrection would be taught their mistake by means of such correctives as death and banishment to Siberia ; but, thirty years later, the release of the survivors gave an impetus to the cause of Russian freedom which can hardly be exaggerated. In the interval between 1825 and 1855 the revolutionary spirit in Russia was inflamed by the spread of foreign thought, especially German philosophy. About ten years after Nicholas's grape-shot had proved his divine right to autocracy a Club for studying Hegel's metaphysics was formed at Moscow by several Russian students. The leading men in this Club were Herzen and Bakunin. Both of these men were what we should call advanced thinkers. The first principle of Herzen's political creed was contained in the cry 'Let the whole world perish !' Nothing might be saved from the wreck, for all present institutions had been proved to be utterly bad, and even the smallest remnant might corrupt the new order of things. A still further step in advance was taken when Schopenhauer's doctrines of negation and annihilation were adopted as the gospel of the regenerate. Hear Michael Bakunin, the 'Father of Nihilism':— " The old world must be destroyed and replaced by a new one. The lie must be stamped out and give way to truth. The first lie is God. The second lie is Right. Might invented the fiction of Right, in order to ensure and strengthen her reign. Might forms the sole groundwork of society. It makes and unmakes laws, and that Might should be in the hands of the majority. When you have freed your minds from the fear of a God, and from that childish respect for the fiction of Right, then all the remaining chains which bind you, and which are called science, civilization, property, marriage, morality, and justice, will snap asunder like threads." Such wild pessimism as this is evidently the outcome of an intense disgust with the present state of society, linked to an utter despair of reforming it.
But we should be far from the truth were we to take such frenzied utterances as these to be a political creed to which all Nihilists would subscribe. In this, as in every confederacy, there are enthusiasts whose voices rise above the cries of the main body ; and, besides, it is important to notice that the name Nihilist strictly connotes nothing further than one discontented with the present state of society. There are two distinct classes of Nihilists. The one class contains men who are nothing more than advanced Liberals, who have an objection— rational, surely, and almost universal — to the Russian form of Government, and who wish to change it into a free constitution. The extreme opposite to this class is furnished by men driven frantic by oppression and goaded to despair by the accumulated wrongs of centuries.
These two classes are an evidence of the two streams which produced what we know as Nihilism. It is well to bear this in mind ; the only thing in which all agree is the necessity of completely abolishing autocracy. The one stream is that supplied by the higher classes. But their chief object is to obtain that political freedom which the rest of Europe owes to the French Revolution. Were that freedom once secured there can be but l ?  that they would secede from the revolutionary ranks. The tradition of their order would influence the nobility, the consideration of capital as against proletarianism would influence the middle class to withdraw from a Society whose doctrines cannot be milder than fraternity and equality. Nay, it is very probable, judging from the revelations made of the secret workings of the similar Society in Ireland, that there are even now numbered amongst the adherents of Nihilism many whose fidelity to the cause is only secured by dread of their associates' revenge. 

It was then a desire to set wrongs down and see right done that was the raison d'etre of Nihilism. For it will be remembered that it was nearly thirty years before the emancipation of the serfs that the Club of Russian students, which included Herzen and Bakunin, was formed at Moscow. This Club was composed entirely of members of the higher classes— the set of men that is whose object was a reformed constitution, not annihilation. The years between the dates of the foundation of this Club and of the return of the St. Petersburg rebels from Siberia were occupied by the study of advanced political writers, and by comparisons pointed by exiles between Russian and foreign systems of government. These comparisons could not fail to be in favour of foreign constitutions, and it was when the popular mind was inflamed by such considerations as these that Alexander II. released the surviving exiles. These were men of the highest social position, and they were, as was natural, received with great enthusiasm by the society of the capital. Nor had the liberal opinions of the nobles escaped the notice of the Government. Nicholas saw clearly that the only way to check the aristocracy was to elevate the proletariate; and so Alexander II., in obedience to his dying father's advice, took the step, which could no longer be delayed, of emancipating the serfs. This consideration ought always to be taken into account when the crime of assassinating Alexander is represented as further blackened by the sin of ingratitude to a liberal ruler — the consideration that in reality the emancipation of the 23,000,000 serfs was nothing more or less than an act of State policy rendered necessary by the disaffection of the upper classes. It was, political expediency apart, a tardy act of justice. That all men are born equal is not true ; that any man is born a slave is a monstrous anomaly. Czar Alexander, then, had no claim to the gratitude of the serfs for giving them that which, in the first place, was their own inherently, and, secondly, was extorted from him by the exigencies of his tyranny. This it is which renders surprising the heroics of indignation in which some portions of the English Press assailed the murderers of Alexander for ingratitude. All of us sincerely join in the assertion that that murder was a heinous crime. Politically there is no doubt that it was a mistake. But it is impossible to see in what the ingratitude of the serfs is manifested. In the first place, Nihilists are not all serfs, as has been shown above ; and, secondly, even if they were, they could hardly be expected to feel gratitude for an act which but conceded their rights— a concession which they knew was only made because it was a matter of political expediency, and could no longer be withheld.
But this plan which Alexander adopted to humble the nobles has unexpectedly tended to make them more powerful. The untaught minds of barbarians newly endowed with freedom are the most fruitful fields in which to sow the seeds of revolution. The first generations of emancipated slaves cannot free themselves at once from mental shackles. By one act they might be raised from serfdom to freedom, but the traditions of centuries of slavery can only be erased from their minds by a continued state of independence. Their former masters found in the peasantry the readiest tools for conspiracy. They had been absolutely ignorant; their finest instincts had been blunted by thorough despotism. It was easy to persuade them, as we find the Irish peasantry persuaded, that riches and influence could be only, but easily, obtained in the same way as past rights had been accorded— by loud and, if necessary, armed insistence on their rights. It was told them, and told them truly, that they would not have been freed were it not for the fact that they could be kept in slavery no longer ; and they were taught that before they gained power they must show that it would be dangerous to deny it to them.
The fact is we English cannot understand Nihilism, because we have no adequate idea of the state of life to which it owes its being. It arose from a sense of the wrongness of things. Our own victory over autocracy was consummated more than six hundred years ago. And even then Englishmen had no such wrongs to complain of as the Russian serfs of our own nineteenth century. Arbitrary imprisonment, insecurity of life and honour and property are common, in name at least, to Englishmen before Magna Charta was signed, and to Russians in our own time. True, Alexander II. introduced trial by Jury and a reformed judicial system, but they only agree in name with our institutions. It is true that the serfs have been freed, but since 1862 upwards of 17,000 persons have been exiled to Siberia for political offences. Why we sympathize so little with the Nihilists is due to two reasons. We are so ignorant of Russian mode of life and the present state of Russian civilization that we do not understand that we are hundreds of years in advance of them ; and, in the next place, their plan of operations is not in accordance with British love of fairplay.
To sum up briefly. Before the emancipation of the serfs we find a marked disaffection amongst the upper classes. They compared their position with that of the corresponding classes in foreign countries, and used means— legitimate and illegitimate —to improve their condition. Whilst engaged in this effort they were joined by a large body of their fellow-subjects, who, having won personal freedom, were striving to obtain a share in the government of their country, for these peasants in their turn saw how inferior their position was to that of the masses in other European countries. Of the future Nihilism takes no count. Its business is to annihilate the present order of things. When that is once done it will be time to deliberate on the form of the order which is to succeed. Nihilists are firmly convinced that nothing can be worse than the present ; but here their unanimity ends. Even the most sanguine of them cannot sketch a plan of government which will command the approbation of the Society. All of them feel that their wrongs must be set down, however roughly. They have not yet discovered the best way to see right done.
 

South Australian Register 21 May 1883,

THE CORTES AND THE "INTERNATIONALE."

(From the Journal des Débats, Paris, November 1.)

WE cannot reproduce the whole of M. Castelar's speech. The Spanish orator attributes the greatest share in the international movement to the Russian Bakounine. The first Congress of European democracy was held at Geneva in 1867. The Slavonic Collectivists there presented their formula, which was rejected. Then it was decided that the Congress should vote by nationalities. It met at Berne in 1868. The Germans, French, Italians, and Swiss voted against the formula of collective property, but the Russians, Poles, Americans, and English, who also made up four votes, voted for it. So far there was no solution. M.Castelar, who was the sole representative of Spain, and, consequently, of a nationality, decided the question; and, faithful to his liberal ideas, he voted for individual property. "The Slavs," says he, " reproached us with being only purely formal Democrats, purely Platonic Republicans and they threatened to turn against us, against political democracy, all the associations which they organised throughout Europe."
This threat was accomplished, and the Congress of Bale, in 1869, ended by voting collective property. M. Castelar, as representative of the Spanish nationality and of individual property, is, therefore, outside the party called Collectivist or Communist. What he defends is the right of association, as well for the Jesuits as for Socialists. What he condemns is the doctrine which annihilates human personality, and which chokes its root — that is to say, individual property — in the ground. M. Castelar evidently has Liberal ideas, but he arrives at doctrines incompatible with liberty. The individual is not free in an absolute manner because he has beside him other individuals who are entitled to equal liberty, and a community which, by securing rights for him, also imposes duties upon him. After the somewhat Apocalyptic language of M. Castelar was heard the voice of reason wisdom and positive right. M. Alonzo Martinez let fall drops of cold water on this vapour, and put truth and reality in the place of imagination and dreaming. "Do you know a man," said he " who was not born in a family, who is not either a son or a brother, who is not a citizen of a country or of a commune? As soon as there are several individuals in this world they limit each other mutually. I cannot avoid being born in one country or another ; I may change my nationality but I must take another. Do you think you have an absolute right to life? Here is the constitution which tells you that every citizen is obliged to defend his country with his blood when he is called to do so by the law. You speak of an absolute right of property. But the Constitution orders you to contribute to the expenses of the State in proportion to your income. All individual securities are subject to the law."
It is for this reason that we do not consider special laws necessary. No power, except a theocratic religious, and dogmatic power, has the right to define morality. A civil power can only define order. By virtue of what right and of what dogma can an assembly, composed of men of all possible religions, or of men who have no religion, claim to define morality ? It can make a penal code, but not a code of morality. The " Internationale" comes within the range of the common law, like everything that concerns public order ; and, when it disturbs public order, it is amenable to the ordinary tribunals. Special measures adopted against it can only be efficacious if they are adopted in common with other countries, and that will always be the great difficulty.

 smh 28/12/1871

GERMAN SOCIALISM

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHY. (MAY 12,1894)

THE LABOUR QUESTION IN GERMANY.

Mr Geoffrey Drage's new report to the Royal Commission on Labour on the labour question in Germany covers such a great variety of topics, that it does not easily lend itself to summary (says the Times).
Mr Drage divides the history of German Socialism into three periods—from 1840 to 1852, the second from 1862 to the passing of the Anti-Socialist Law in 1878 and the third from 1878 to the present time. During the first period the movement was strictly of an international and communist character, though it owed much to German leaders such as Engels and Karl Marx.
Its sphere of action was England, France, and Switzerland rather than Germany, and it owed not a little to the influence of Louis Blanc. The failure of the hopes of the leaders based on the revolution of 1848 forced them into retirement in 1852, and Socialism was regarded as dead, but its reappearance was only a question of time, and when it did reappear it was as a German movement on German soil, under the leadership of Lassalle. Its revival was preceded by a period of philanthropic activity, chiefly in connection with the working classes. Herr Schulze-Delitzsch, with German economists of the Manchester school, encouraged the establishment of benefit funds and co-operative undertakings, and brought down on themselves the hostility of various German Governments for their connection with the Liberals, as well as of the Catholic Church. Thus it was that when Lassalle appeared as the champion of the working classes against Schulze and the bourgeoise, he was favoured by Prince Bismarck on the one hand and by Bishop Ketteler, of Mayence, on the other, and this, combined with his own fire and eloquence brought Lassalle his rapid success When he appeared with his econo- mic refutation of Schulz's principle of self-help, his advocacy of universal suffrage, the extension of education, and the substitution of direct for in-direct taxation, the result was immediate and overwhelming. He embodied these principles, in 1861, in a programme which included also a declaration of the inherent rights of the working classes to sovereign power, and in 1862 he formed a general association of German workmen.
With this begins the second period in the history of German Socialism. Lassalle' s death in a duel in 1861 was followed by a split in his party, the differences being increased by the formation in London in 1864 of the International under Marx and of the Social Democratic workman's party in Germany in 1865 under Liebknecht and Bebel, disciples of Marx, while the remains of the Lassalle party were under Schweitzer, his successor. The latter party had its headquarters in Berlin, the former in Saxony. The Lassallians were purely national, while Liebknecht and Bebel were at first, at any rate, directly connected with the International under Marx. The economic difference between the two is more obscure. Lassalle stated what he regarded as the inevitable outcome of the present social order under the form of " the iron law of wages." Wages, he taught, must inevitably tend to fall to the point at which the workman can barely obtain subsistence. If they rise, the increase in population will drag them down. If they fall, the decrease in population from starvation will cause them to rise again , and the only escape from the dominion of this law is productive co-operation, the funds for which are to be supplied by the State. Such a system, combined with the widest diffusion of political power, would lead to the State becoming the owner of the means of production ; and, as Prince Bismarck said of Lassalle, his national and monarchical tendencies would have led him to regard a beneficent autocracy as equally consistent with his system of co-operative production. Marx's remedy for existing economic evils is different. Nothing short of collective ownership can obviate tho evils of a rapidly increasing proletariat and a constantly diminishing number of persons possessed of complete power over the lives of their fellows.
The doctrines of Liebknecht and Bebel were embodied in the Eisenach programme of 1869, which is curious for its claim to a strictly scientific foundation and for its rejection of States socialism of every kind and of all proposals to introduce reforms into the existing social order. Up to 1871 the growth of both Socialist bodies was slow but in that year came the disorganisation of parties and the financial crisis consequent on the Franco-German war and Prince Bismarck's laws against Catholics. In consequence, the Socialists grew in numbers and influence. In 1871 they were scarcely able to return two members to the Reichstag; in 1874 the Lassallians gained three and the Internationalists seven seats; in 1875 a reconciliation took place between the two parties and in 1877 they returned 12 members. Their votes increased from 375 000 in 1873 to 600,000 in 1878 in spite of the disadvantages under which they were placed by the attempts on the life of the Emperor.
The third period begins with the passing of the famous anti-socialist law of 21st October, 1878. There are wide differences of opinion as to the effect of this law on the development of the Social Democratic party. Its immediate effect on the organisation was, disastrous, but after the first shock had passed strenuous efforts were made to carry on the desired propaganda by a secret instead of an open organisation. In 1890 the law was allowed finally to lapse and in 1891 the party met at Erfurt to issue an official programme. The Eisenach programme of 1869 still showed traces of the influence of Lassalle but was in the main characteristic of the Marxists or lnternational section. The Gotha programme of 1875, the year of reconciliation between the followers of Marx and Lassalle, was to a great extent a compromise, and was fiercely denounced by Marx himself, although his letter was concealed from the bulk of the party till 1890. The three programmes agree in asserting the iniquity and injustice of the existing social and economic order, and especially of the private ownership of the means of production but the two later programmes go far beyond that of 1869 in the definiteness with which they state the grounds for their propositions. The Erfurt manifesto reasserts the identity of interests of all workmen in every land, and is far more uncompromising than its predecessors it drops all reference to the " iron law of wages " to co-operative production and to the accomplishment of its objects "by all legal means." The erection of the Socialist State is its only remedy, and there is a great advance over its predecessors in the scope and definiteness of its demands. Mr Drago gives a full translation of this programme, which is as precise and clear in its demands as language could make it.

ANARCHISTS

The report traces the history of the formation within the German Socialists of the Internationalist and Anarchist sections and their effect upon the whole body. The International was the outcome of the London Exhibition of 1862, though it was preceded by a secret society of German Socialists, with headquarters in London, known as the League of Just. Soon after the formation of the International widely different conceptions of its nature and objects were entertained by its different sections. To the English members it appeared as a magnified trade union, which prevented the importation of foreign labour during strikes; to the revolutionary anarchists of Italy, Spain, and the Jura it was to bring about that social conflagration which was to be the precursor of the new era. The English members looked to it to maintain the rate of wages, the Continental members to abolish the wage system altogether. For a time Marx kept the extreme section in check, and after 1867 its membership began to increase rapidly, especially in the United States; but though it had millions of members it had no money. The restraints on the more violent members grew less, and the excesses of the Commune in Paris completed its ruin. Marx's utterances in regard to the Paris Communists caused the secession of English trade-unionists, and the German membership declined because of the manifestoes against the war. Within the body itself there was a violent conflict between the followers of Marx and those of Bakounin, an exiled Russian noble and the leader of the European anarchists, who in 1868 had founded an " International Alliance," with the watchwords " No centralisation, no State, not even revolutionary dictatorship, and above all, no authority. " In 1872 James Guillaume, Bakounin's chief lieutenant, attacked Marx at the Bale address, and, although the majority was with the latter, he thought it prudent to remove the Headquarters to New York, where it practically came to an end in 1873, though its last members did not vote its final dissolution until 1876. It had brought to the front the anarchism as well as the exaggerated individualism which lie close to the extremer forms of socialism, but its true successors to-day are not the anarchists, but the social democrats who produced the Erfurt programme. Modern anarchy may be said to date from Proudhon and his famous work, "Qu'est-ce que la Propriete? " His views were taken up in Germany in 1843 by Moses Hess, who preached the negation of all authority. Doctrines of this kind were widely diffused amongst the educated classes in Germany in the early forties. In Switzerland some German exiles, led by Wilhelm Marx, founded an anarchist association advocating the destruction of Church, State, property, and marriage: its one positive tenet was " a bloody and fearful revenge upon the rich and powerful " They were suppressed by the police. But Bakounin is the founder of all the revolutionary socialism of Europe since 1865. He was a noble by birth, fled from Russia at the age of 32, took part in various revolutionary movements, was handed over to Russia in 1837, and sent to Siberia whence he escaped by way of Japan, returned to Europe and speedily recommenced his propaganda by establishing the Alliance of the Jura for the destruction of all order and authority. His follower Netschaief was the apostle of Russian Nihilism, and, carrying Bakounin's doctrines further than he would have done himself, he advocated "poison, the dagger, the rope, all alike hallowed by the spirit of revolution, " and preached wholesale assassination in order to strike terror into the bourgeoisie. The later German anarchists under Johann Most were organised between 1872 and 1876; after the passing of the anti-Socialist law Most was expelled from Berlin, and carried his paper Freiheit to London, where he continued to advocate agitation combined with revolutionary outbursts and attempts at assassination. Here he was sentenced to imprisonment for his articles and then transferred himself to America. The Chicago bomb-throwing in 1886 disorganised the anarchists but they are beginning to recover now, their chief recruits being amongst Polish Jews, "but the utterances of the party have become much milder, and both in England, in Germany and in America the Anarchists are numerically unimportant as compared with the Socialists. " The International Socialist Congress held at Zurich in August last was remarkable for the strength of the English and German representation, the determined attitude towards the Anarchist party, and the predominance given by the German influence, to the followers of Karl Marx. On the second day the Anarchists were excluded after a free fight.

INTELLECTUAL PROLETARIATE.

As to the attitude of the German educated classes towards Socialism, Mr Drago observes that since 1870 the majority of German economists have adopted a sympathetic attitude towards the labour question and though they are strongly opposed to the extreme views held by the Social Democrats they are equally opposed to the laissez faire doctrines of their predecessors of the school of Schulze-Delitzsch. Thus they have acquired the name of academic Socialists. Associated with these to some extent, are the Christian Socialists. Both appear to be regarded with indifference if not contempt by the leaders of the Social Democrats, who regard their existence as further evidence of the growing importance of the Socialist movement. An interesting section of the Socialists is the so-called " intellectual proletariate " — "a large and increasing class of persons both men and women, whose intellectual capacities are their only provision for the struggle for existence." Of these a non-Socialist writer says that they are more dangerous to the State than the genuine wage-earners because of the greater influence which higher culture and increased political activity enable them to exercise. Another form of Socialism in Germany is that known as Conservative Socialism which is the outcome of the hostility of agriculturists, artisans, and small employers of labour to the old Liberalism. It has nothing in common with Socialism strictly so-called, except the demand for the extension of State activity and the intervention of the State to protect particular classes. There are also the State Socialists of the Bismarckian bureaucracy who act on the principle that Social Democracy is best met by a policy of active social reform, conceived and carried out by authority. Hence the elaborate system of workmen's insurance. Since Prince Bismarck's retirement there has been a greater tendency to encourage the organisation of workmen and to allow a greater degree of freedom to the labour movement.
Nevertheless, the Social Democratic party is increasing rapidly in strength. But, Mr Drago says in concluding, it is not the numerical strength alone which constitutes the peculiar importance of Social Democracy in contemporary German politics it is the steadying influence which the strict discipline and organisation necessitated by Prince Bismarck's repressive policy exercised upon the German workman. Under this influence the party dissociates itself from Anarchist principles, and there is every reason to believe that the consolidation begun under Prince Bismarck's repressive legislation will be continued under the present Government. At the Zurich Congress in August last, Herr Bebel stated that it was Prince Bismark's repression which had driven him and his friends to forsake revolutionary tactics for the present policy of Parliamentary action.
In the face of the principles enunciated in the Erfurt programme, and in view of the recent successes of the party at the polls, it is abundantly clear that all the non-Socialist elements in Germany will find themselves obliged to combine and that here as elsewhere, the political as well as the social struggle of the future will be between a united Conservative, or non-Socialist party on the one hand, and the Social Democratic or Radical party, on the other. As far as it is yet possible to trace tho underlying tendencies in the economic development of Germany it appears probable that the organisation of labour will proceed upon Socialist, and, at the same time, non-revolutionary lines, but that the growing power of Socialism amongst the German working men will of necessity put an end to the present disintegration of religious and political parties.

s.m.h. 12/5/1894

Individual Freedom

The point of view of the idealists is altogether different. In their system man is first produced as an immortal and free being and ends up by becoming a slave...

Individual freedom, according to them, is not the creation, the historic product of society. They maintain that this freedom is prior to all society and that every man, at his birth, brings with him his immortal soul as a divine gift. Hence it follows that man is complete in himself, a whole being, and is in any way absolute only when he is outside of society. Being free prior to and apart from society, he necessarily joins in forming this society by a voluntary act, by a sort of contract-whether instinctive and tacit, or deliberated upon and formal. In a word, in this theory, it is not the individuals who are created by society, but on the contrary, it is they who create it, driven by some external necessity such as work or war.

One can see that in this theory, society, in the proper meaning of the word, does not exist. The natural, human society, the real starting point of all human civilization, the only environment in which the freedom and individuality of men can arise and develop is altogether foreign to this theory....

Endowed with an immortal soul and with freedom or free will which is inherent in them, they are on the one hand infinite and absolute beings and as such complete in themselves and for themselves, self-sufficient and needing no one else, not even God, for being immortal and infinite they are themselves gods. On the other hand, they are beings who are very brutal, feeble, imperfect, limited, and absolutely dependent upon external Nature, which sustains, envelops, and finally carries them off to their graves.

Regarded form the first point of view, they need society so little that the latter appears actually to be a hindrance to the fullness of their being, to their perfect liberty. Thus we have seen in the first centuries of Christianity that holy and steadfast men who had taken in earnest the immortality of the soul and the salvation of their own souls broke their social ties, and, shunning all commerce with human beings, sought in solitude perfection, virtue, God. With much reason and logical consistency they came to regard society as a source of corruption and the absolute isolation of the soul as the condition on which all virtues depend.

If they sometimes emerged from their solitude, this was not because they felt the need of society but because of generosity, Christian charity, felt by them in regard to the rest of the people who, still continuing to be corrupted in the social environment, needed their counsel, their prayers, and their guidance.

In meeting another being which is not itself, it feels itself confined by it and therefore it has to shun and ignore whatever is not itself. Strictly speaking, as I have said, the immortal soul should be able to get along without God himself. A being that is infinite in itself cannot recognize alongside of it another being equal to it, and even less so- a being which is superior and above it. For every other infinite being would limit it and consequently make it a fine and determined being.

In recognizing a being as infinite as itself and outside of itself, the immortal soul would thus necessarily recognize itself as a finite being. For infinity must embrace everything and leave nothing outside of itself. It stands to reason that an infinite being cannot and should not recognize an infinite being which is superior to it. Infinity does not admit anything relative or comparative: the terms infinite superiority and infinite inferiority are absurd in their implication.

God is precisely an absurdity. Theology, which has the privilege of being absurd and which believes in things precisely because those things are absurd, places above immortal and consequently infinite human souls, the supreme absolute infinity: God. But by way of offsetting this infinity it creates the fiction of Satan, who represents precisely the revolt of an infinite being against the existence of an absolute infinity, a revolt against God. And just as Satan revolted against the infinite superiority of god, the holy recluses of Christianity, too humble to revolt against God, rebelled against the equal infinity of men, rebelled against society.

...Society then is formed by a sort off sacrifice of the interests and the independence of the soul to the contemptible needs of the body.

...The individual enjoying complete liberty in his natural state, that is, before he has become a member of any society, sacrifices a part of this freedom when entering society in order that the latter guarantee to him the remaining liberty. When an explanation of this phrase is requested, the usual rejoinder is another phrase of that kind; "The freedom of every human individual should be limited only by the liberty of all other individuals."

In appearance nothing is more just. But this theory, however, contains in embryo the whole theory of despotism. In conformity with the basic idea of idealists of all schools and contrary to all the real facts, the human individual is presented as an absolutely free individual in so far, and only in so far, as he remains outside of society. Hence it follows that society, viewed and conceived only as a juridical and a political society—that is, as a State—is the negation of liberty. Here then is the result of idealism; as one can see, it is altogether contrary to the deductions of materialism which, in agreement with that which is taking place in the real world, makes individual human freedom emerge from society as the necessary consequence to the collective development of humanity.

 

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin. 1953

Bakunin on free will

Free Will

The term "free will" either has no meaning at all or it signifies that the individual makes spontaneous and self-determined decisions, wholly apart from any outside influence of the natural or social order. But if that were so, if men depended only upon themselves, the world would be ruled by chaos which would preclude any solidarity among people. Millions of free wills, independent of each other, would tend toward mutual destruction, and no doubt they would succeed in achieving it were it not for the despotic will of divine Providence which "guides them while they hustle and bustle," and in abasing them all at the same time, it establishes order in the midst of human confusion.

That is why all the protagonists of the doctrine of free will are compelled by logic to recognize the existence and action of divine Providence. This is the basis of all theological and metaphysical doctrines. It is a magnificent system which for a long time satisfied the human conscience, and, one must admit, from the point of view of abstract thinking or poetical and religious fantasy, it does impress one with its harmony and grandeur. But, unfortunately, the counterpart of this system grounded in historic reality has always been horrifying, and the system itself fails to stand the test of scientific criticism.

Indeed, we know that while Divine Right reigned upon the earth, the great majority of people were subjected to brutal, merciless exploitation, and were tormented, oppressed, and slaughtered. We know that up to now the masses of people have been kept in thralldom in the name of religious and metaphysical divinity. And it could not be otherwise, for if the world —Nature as well as human society— were governed by a divine will, there could be no place in it for human freedom. Man's will is necessarily weak and impotent before the will of God. Thus when we try to defend the metaphysical, abstract, or imaginary freedom of men, the free will, we end up by denying real freedom. Before God, the Omnipotent and Omnipresent, man is only a slave. And since man's freedom is destroyed by divine Providence, there remains only privilege, that is, special rights vouchsafed by Divine Grace to certain individuals, to a certain hierarchy, dynasty, or class.

Socialism, based upon positive science, rejects absolutely the doctrine of "free will." It recognizes that all the so-called vices and virtues of men are only the product of the combined action of Nature and society....All men, with no exceptions, at every moment of their lives are what Nature and society have made them.

 

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin. 1953

Bakunin on religion

Thus the true God:— the universal, external, immutable God created by the two-fold action of religious imagination and man's abstractive faculty, was posited for the first time in history. But from the moment that God became known and established, man forgetting or rather not being aware of the action of his own brain which created this God, and not being able to recognize himself any longer in his own creation:— the universal abstraction, began to worship it. Thus the respective roles of man and God underwent a change: the thing created became the presumed and true creator, and man took his place among other miserable creatures, as one of them, though hardly more privileged than the rest.

Once God has been posited, the subsequent progressive development of various theologies can be explained naturally as the reflection of the development of humanity in history. For as soon as the idea of a supernatural and supreme being had got hold of man's imagination and established itself as his religious conviction:— to the extent that the reality of this being appeared to him more certain than that of real things to be seen and touched with his hands, it began to appear natural to him that this idea should become the principal basis of all human experience, and that it should modify, permeate, and dominate it absolutely.

Immediately the Supreme Being appeared to him as the absolute master, as thought, will, the source of everything— as the creator and regulator of all things. Nothing could rival him, and everything had to vanish in his presence since the truth of everything resided in him alone, and every particular being, man included, powerful as it might appear, could exist henceforth only with God's sanction. All that, however, is entirely logical, for otherwise God would not be the Supreme, All-Powerful, Absolute Being; that is to say, he could not exist at all.

...Thus man's reason, the only organ which he possesses for the discernment of truth, in becoming divine reason, ceases to be intelligible and imposes itself upon believers as a revelation of the absurd. It is thus that respect for Heaven is translated into contempt for the earth, and adoration of divinity into disparagement of humanity. Man's love, the immense natural solidarity which interlinks all individuals, all peoples, and, rendering the happiness and liberty of everyone dependent upon the liberty and happiness of others, must unite all of them sooner or later, in spite of differences of race and color, into one brotherly commune— this love, transmuted into divine love and religious charity, forthwith becomes the scourge of humanity. All the millions of human victims immolated for the greater glory of God, bear witness to it....

In religion, man the animal, in emerging from bestiality, makes the first step toward humanity; but so long as he remains religious he will never attain his aim, for every religion condemns him to absurdity, and, misdirecting his steps, makes him seek the divine instead of the human. Through religion, peoples who have scarcely freed themselves form natural slavery, in which other animal species are deeply sunk, forthwith relapse into a new slavery, in to bondage to strong men and castes privileged by divine election.

...But whoever says revelation says revealers, prophets, and priests, and these, once recognized as God's representatives on earth, as teachers and leaders of humanity toward eternal life, receive thereby the mission of directing, governing, and commanding it in its earthly existence. All men owe them faith and absolute obedience. Slaves of god, men must also be slaves of the Church and the State, in so far as the latter is consecrated by the Church.

...And unless we desire slavery, we cannot and should not make the slightest concession to theology, for in this mystical and rigorously consistent alphabet, anyone starting with A must inevitably arrive at Z, and anyone who wants to worship God must renounce his liberty and human dignity.

God exists: hence man is a slave.

Man is intelligent, just, free; hence God does not exist.

We defy anyone to avoid this circle; and now let all choose.

 

 ...Religion, as we have said, is the first awakening of human reason in the form of divine unreason. It is the first gleam of human truth through the divine veil of falsehood, the first manifestation of human morality, of justice and right, through the historic iniquities of divine grace. And, finally, it is the apprenticeship of liberty under the humiliating and painful yoke of divinity, a yoke which in the long run will have to be broken in order to conquer in fact reasonable reason, true truth, full justice, and real liberty.

In religion, man —the animal—in emerging from bestiality, makes his first step toward humanity; but so long as he remains religious, he will never attain his aim, for every religion condemns him to absurdity, and, misdirecting his steps, makes him seek the divine instead of the human. Through religion, peoples who have scarcely freed themselves form natural slavery in which other animal species are deeply sunk, forthwith relapse into a new slavery, into bondage to strong men and castes privileged by divine election.

One of the principal attributes of the immortal Gods consists, as we know, in their acting as legislators for human society, as founders of the State. Man—so nearly all religions maintain—were he left to himself, would be incapable of discerning good from evil, the just from the unjust. Thus it was necessary that the Divinity itself, in one or another manner, should descend upon earth to teach man and establish civil and political order in human society. Whence follows this triumphant conclusion: that all laws and established powers consecrated by Heaven must be obeyed, always and at any price.

This is very convenient for the rulers but very inconvenient for the governed. And since we belong with the latter, we have a particular interest in closely examining this old tenet, which was instrumental in imposing slavery upon us, in order to find a way of freeing ourselves from its yoke.

The question has now become exceedingly simple: God not having any existence at all, or being only the creation of our abstractive faculty, united in first wedlock with the religious feeling that has come down to  us from our animal stage; God being only a universal abstraction, incapable of movement and action of his own: absolute Non-Being, imagined as absolute being and endowed with life only by religious fantasy; absolutely void of all content and enriched only with the realities of earth; rendering back to man that of which he had robbed him only in a denaturalized, corrupted, divine form—God can neither be good nor wicked, neither just nor unjust. He is not capable of desiring, if establishing anything, for in reality he is nothing, and becomes every thing only by an act of religious credulity.

Consequently, if this credulity discovered in God the ideas of justice and good it was only because it had unconsciously endowed him with it; it gave, while it believed itself to be the recipient. But man cannot endow God with those attributes unless he himself possesses them. Where did he find them? In himself, of course. But whatever man has came down to him form his animal stage—his spirit being simply the unfolding of his animal nature. Thus the idea of justice and good, like all other human things, must have had their root in man's very animality.

The common and basic error of all the idealists, an error which flows logically from their whole system, is to seek the basis of morality in the isolated individual, whereas it is found—an can only be found—in associated individual. In order to prove it, we shall begin by doing justice, once and for all, to the isolated or absolute individual of the idealists. 

This solitary and abstract individual is just as much of a fiction as is God. Both were created simultaneously by the fantasy of believers or by childish reason, not by reflective, experimental, and critical reason, but at first by the imaginative reason of the people, later developed, explained, and dogmatized by the theological and metaphysical theorists of the idealist school. Both  representing abstractions that are devoid of any content and imcompatible with any kind of reality, they end in mere nothingness.

I believe I have already proved the immorality of the God-fiction. Now I want to analyze the fiction, immoral as it is absurd, of this absolute and abstract human individual whom the moralists of the idealist school take as the basis of their political and social theories.

It will not be very difficult for me to prove that the human individual whom they love and extol is a thoroughly immoral being. It is personified egoism, a being that is pre-eminently anti-social. Since he is endowed with an immortal soul, he is infinite and self-sufficient; consequently, he does not stand in need of anyone, not even God, and all the less of other men. Logically he should not endure, alongside or above him, the existence of and equal or superior individual, immortal and infinite to the same extent or to a larger degree than himself. By right he should be able to declare himself the sole being, the whole world. For infinity, when it meets anything outside of itself, meets a limit, is no more infinity, and when two infinities meet, they cancel each other.

Why do the theologians and metaphysicians, who otherwise have proven themselves subtle logicians, let themselves run into this inconsistency by admitting the existence of many equally immortal men, that is to say, equally infinite, and above them the existence of a God who is immortal and infinite to a still higher degree? They were driven to it by the absolute impossibility of denying the real existence, the mortality as well as the mutual independence of millions of human beings who have lived and still live upon the earth. This is a fact which, much against their will, they cannot deny. 

Logically they should have inferred from this fact that souls are not immortal, that by no means do they have a separate existence form their mortal and bodily exterior, and that in limiting themselves and finding themselves in mutual dependence upon one another, in meeting outside of themselves and infinity of diverse objects, human individuals, like everything else existing in this world, are transitory, limited, and finite beings. But in recognizing that, they would have to renounce the very basis of their ideal theories, they would have to raise the banner of pure materialism or experimental and rational science. And they are called upon to do it by the mighty voice of the century.

They remain deaf to that voice. Their nature of inspired men, of prophets, doctrinaires, and priests, and their minds, impelled by the subtle falsehoods of metaphysics, and accustomed to the twilight of idealistic fancies—rebel against frank conclusions and the full daylight of simple truth. They have such a horror of it that they prefer to endure the contradiction which they themselves have created by this absurd fiction of an immortal soul, or hold it their duty to seek its solution in a new absurdity—the fiction of God.

From the point of view of theory, God is in reality nothing else but the last refuge and the supreme expression of all the absurdities and contradictions of idealism. In theology, which represents metaphysics in its childish and naive stage, God appears as the basis and the first cause of the absurd, but in metaphysics, in the proper meaning of the word—that is to say, in a refined and rationalized theology—he, on the contrary, constitutes the last instance and the supreme recourse, in the sense that all the contradictions which seem to be insoluble in the real world, find their explanation in God and through God—that is, through an absurdity enveloped as much as possible in rational appearance.

The existence of a personal God and the immortality of the soul are inseparable fictions; they are two poles of one and the same absolute absurdity, one evoking the other and vainly seeking in the other its explanation and its reason for being. Thus, to the evident contradiction between the assumed infinity of every man and the real fact of the existence of many men, and therefore an infinite number of beings who find themselves outside of one another, thereby necessarily limiting one another; between their mortality and their immortality; between their natural dependence and absolute independence of one another, the idealists have only one answer: God. If this answer does not explain anything to you, if it does not satisfy you, the worse it is for you. They have no other explanation to offer.

The fiction of the immortality of the soul and the fiction of individual morality, which is its necessary consequence, are the negation of all morality. and in this respect one has to render justice to the theologians, who, being more consistent and more logical than the metaphysicians, boldly deny what in the general acceptance is now called independent morality, declaring with much reason that once the immortality of the soul and the existence of God are admitted, one also must recognize that there can be only one single morality, that is, the divine revealed law, religious morality—the bond existing between the immortal soul and God, through God's grace. Outside of this irrational, miraculous, and mystic bond, the only holy and saving bond, and outside of the consequences that it entails for men, all the other bonds are null and insignificant. Divine morality is the absolute negation of human morality.

Divine morality found its perfect expression in the Christian maxim: "Thou shalt love God more than thyself and thou shalt love thy neighbor as much as thyself," which implies the sacrifice of oneself, this being an obvious act of sheer folly, but the sacrifice of one's fellow-man is from the human point of view absolutely immoral. And why am I forced toward this inhuman sacrifice? For the salvation of my own soul. That is the last word of Christianity.

Thus in order to please God and save my soul, I have to sacrifice my fellow-man. This is absolute egoism. This egoism, by no means destroyed or diminished but only disguised in Catholicism by its forced collective character and the authoritarian, hierarchic, and despotic unity of the Church, appears in all its cynical frankness in Protestantism, which is a sort of religious "Let him save himself who can."

The metaphysicians in their turn try to mitigate this egoism, which is the inherent and fundamental principle of all idealistic doctrines, by speaking very little—as little as possible—of man's relations with God, while dealing at length with the relations of men to one another. That is not so nice, candid, or logical on their part. For, once the existence of God is admitted, it becomes necessary  to recognize the relations of man to God. And one has to recognize that in the face of those relations to the Absolute and Supreme Being, all other relations necessarily take on the character of mere pretense. Either God is no God at all, or his presence absorbs and destroys everything.

Thus metaphysicians seek morality in the relation of men among themselves, and at the same time they claim that morality is an absolutely individual fact, a divine law written in the heart of every man, independently of his relations with other human individuals. Such is the ineradicable contradiction upon which the moral theory of the idealists is based. Since prior to entering into any relation with society and therefore independently of any influence which society exerts upon me, I already bear within me the moral law inscribed by God himself in my heart,—this moral law must necessarily be strange and indifferent, if not hostile, to my existence in society. It cannot have as its concern my relations with men; it can only determine my relations with God, as it is quite logically affirmed by theology. So far as men are concerned, from the point of view of this law, they are perfect strangers to me. And inasmuch as the moral law is formed and inscribed in my heart apart from my relations with men, it therefore has nothing to do with them.

But, we are told, this law specifically commands us to love people as ourselves because they are our fellow-creatures, and not to do anything to them which we would not like to have done to ourselves; and in our relations with them to observe equality, justice, and identical morality.  To this I shall answer that if it is true that the moral law contains such a commandment, I must hence conclude that it was not created nor inscribed in my heart. For it necessarily presupposes an existence preceding in time my relations with other men, my fellow-creatures, and so it did not create those relations, but, having found them already established, it only regulates them, and is in  a certain way their developed manifestation, explanation, and product. It follows that the moral law is not an individual but a social fact, a creation of society.

 Were it otherwise, the moral law inscribed in my heart would be an absurdity. It would regulate my relations with beings with whom I have no relations and of whose very existence I am completely unaware.

The metaphysicians have an answer to this. They say that every human individual, when he is born, brings with him this law inscribed by God's hand in his heart, but that this law is at first found in  a latent state, in a state of mere potentiality, unrealized or unmanifested for the individual himself, who cannot realize it and who succeeds in deciphering it within himself only by developing in the society of his fellow-creatures; in a word, that he becomes conscious of this law which is inherent in him only through his relations with other men.

This plausible, if not judicious, explanation leads us to the doctrine of innate ideas, feelings, and principles. It is an old familiar doctrine. The human soul, immortal and infinite in its essence, but corporeally determined, limited, weighted down, and so to speak blinded and abased in its real existence, contains all those eternal and divine principles, without, however, being consciously aware of them. Since it is immortal, it necessarily had to be eternal in the past as well as in the future. For if it had a beginning, it is inevitably bound to have an end, and therefore can by no means be immortal. What was its nature, what had it been doing during all the time it had left behind it? Only God knows that.

As for the soul itself, it does not remember, it is clearly ignorant of this alleged previous existence. It is a great mystery, full of crying contradictions, and in order to solve it one has to turn to the supreme contradiction, God himself. At any rate, the soul, without being aware of it, carries within some mysterious portion of its being all these divine principles. But, lost in its earthly body, brutalized by the grossly material conditions of its birth and its existence upon the earth, it is no more capable of conceiving them, or even of bringing them back into its memory. It is as if it had never possessed them at all.

 

 Federalism, Socialism and Anti-Theologism.

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin. 1953